The Big Keep: A Lena Dane Mystery (Lena Dane Mysteries) (3 page)

“Uh...if I tell him, I’m afraid he’s going to want me to quit my job and stay home with the baby.” It was an unfair answer, but maybe not entirely untrue.

“Ah.” Rory leaned back in her seat, seeming to buy it. “I see. Do you know that for sure?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. When I was with the cops he used to complain that it was too dangerous for both of us to be in law enforcement, if we ever started a family.”

“But he was with the cops then, too.” Toby and I had met when he was a Homicide detective and I’d just been assigned to the department as a 23-year-old uniform. He’d quit the force shortly after me—hell, partly because of me—and gone to law school.
 

“Yeah,” I acknowledged, “but he still considers what I do dangerous.”

“Well, in his defense, you did get shot last year,” Rory pointed out. “And stabbed the year before that.”

“Whoa,” I protested. “First of all, I wasn’t stabbed, I was slashed a little in the arm, and it barely needed stitches-”

“Wasn’t it, like, thirty?”

“–And that wasn’t even for work, that was when I saw those three kids trying to set that dog’s tail on fire. And I kicked their asses.” Rory snorted.
 

“Secondly,” I continued, ignoring her, “Okay, yeah, I got a teeny bit shot,” – I put my left thumb and index finger a half inch apart to demonstrate the triviality of the whole thing – “But that little girl is home tonight because of it.”
 

Amanda Ann Rink was a four-year-old who was snatched from home a year earlier by her junkie father, who figured he could rent Amanda out to his sexual predator friends, and then ransom her to his ex-wife for drug money. The police didn’t know about the drug connection or the sleazy friends at first, and dismissed the whole thing as a domestic squabble. So I spent a full week living and breathing the case, and when I finally found the shitty apartment where Rink was keeping his daughter, he managed to shoot me in the right shoulder before the police arrived.
 

That case had put Dane Investigations more or less on the map, and eventually the publicity got me enough business to hire Bryce full-time and rent decent office space. But I would have found Amanda for free, bullet and all.

“I know. And I know you saved her from going through some pretty awful stuff, much less maybe being killed,” Rory said calmly. “But, Lena, a few inches over and you would have been shot in the heart.”

“And a few inches the other way and the bullet would have missed me entirely,” I said through more pretzel. “Shit happens.”

Rory rolled her eyes and glanced at the clock. It was officially closing time. “Can you grab the lock?” she asked, because I was closer.

“Sure,” I said, hopping off the stool. I speedwalked over to the front door and flipped the deadbolt. Then I leaned on the counter so I could reach the pretzels again.

“Look, Lena,” Rory continued, “This topic must have come up before now. You guys have talked about kids?”

I swallowed. “Of course. I just... I just kind of figured this would sort itself out, later.”

“Little sister,” Rory said, not without sympathy, “it’s later.”

I sighed. “Yeah.”

Rory drummed her neat fingernails on the counter for a moment, then took off her reading glasses and tossed them on top of a stack of receipts. “You know you’re going to have to be incredibly, incredibly careful with yourself. You need to get to the OB, like, right away. And I know you’re worried about it, but you are going to have to tell your husband that you are pregnant.”

I fidgeted, rearranging the little knickknacks that were lined up on the counter. I don’t like being told what to do, even—or maybe especially—by my big sister. “Right. And how long do you think I have before I have to do that?”

Rory threw up her hands. “Selena Kyle Dane. Are you listening to me at all?”

“I hear you, but can you just pretend for a minute that I just want to keep it private a little longer to make sure the baby’s healthy? And tell me how long before I will start to show? I mean, our bodies are pretty much identical.”

Her jaw dropped. “
That’s
why you came to me? To quiz me on our similar physical qualities?”

Busted. “Pretty much, yeah.”

She glowered at me for a second, then relented. “Fine. I’m too excited for you to be annoyed right now.” She tilted her head, thinking it over. “With Cassie, I didn’t show until four and a half months. With Logan it was right around four.”

I crunched a few more pretzels. “Okay. So I’ve theoretically got four to six weeks before I have to start telling people. I can work with that.”

She glared at me suspiciously. “Job-wise, are you working on anything dangerous right now?”

“Not at all,” I said truthfully. “I’ve got, let’s see, an insurance scam that’ll be wrapping up next week, some background checks for that computer software company that we work with a lot, and the Emerson case, which I’m going to terminate because I’ve got nothing and I’m draining their money. Oh, and a kid hired me today to find his biological dad.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad.” She frowned. “No bodyguarding?”

“No bodyguarding,” I promised. There was never really a science to which cases were dangerous and which weren’t, but bodyguarding was about the only thing I took on where you were practically assured a threat against your person. My entire family hated when I had those cases, but sometimes people needed a woman who could blend in at clubs and events. Can I help it if I’m cute as a button?
 

3. A Creeping, Growing Fog

Iswore a reluctant Rory to secrecy and finally turned the Jeep toward home. Toby and I recently moved into a pretty swanky apartment in Lake View, not far from the comic book store. It was the nicest apartment I’d ever lived in, and I was still a little in awe of it. I guess I just wasn’t used to being married to a lawyer yet.
 

Parking the Jeep in my underground spot, I said a syrupy-sweet hello to Tucker the Judgmental Doorman, who merely sniffed at me. To Tucker, who probably irons his underwear, my general appearance and demeanor are far too unladylike. Which really amuses me, because if Tucker knew I carried a gun he’d probably shit his perfectly pressed boxers.
 

When I put my key in the doorknob there was a crash and a thunderous pounding as Toka the pit bull cleverly detected my presence and knocked down a kitchen chair on his way to get to me. I dropped the bag and crouched down a little, so when the dog crashed into me I didn’t tip over. Toka was eighty pounds of white-and-brown fur over corded muscle, and if you weren’t ready for the love, it was coming anyway. After his enthusiastic greeting the dog lumbered off to hunt those elusive food smells, and I laughed and stood up. I followed him down the hall toward the room we refer to as the Big Glorious Kitchen. It’s all granite and stainless steel, with a wet bar island in the center and state-of-the-art fixtures all around. It happened to come with the apartment we wanted, but the whole thing is way out of our league.

“Hey, Wife,” Toby said over his shoulder. He shot me a smile, and a thrill went through my heart. Toby was great-looking in a clean-cut Irish way, like Colin Farrell without all the eyebrow. “Dinner’s almost ready. How was your day?” He went back to the restaurant-sized stove and stirred what looked like spaghetti sauce and ground beef.
 

I leaned over and scratched Toka’s neck. “Good.” I felt the pregnancy news bubble up in my throat, but I swallowed it down. “I have a new case,” I said instead. I told him about Nate Christianti and the deadbeat dad’s mysterious novel.

“Wow, that’s kind of out there,” Toby said when I was finished. “Are you going to read the book?”
 

“Yup, it’s in my bag. I figure if nothing else I can learn a little about how this guy thinks.”

“You wanna set the table?” Toby asked me. “I haven’t gotten that far.”

“‘Course.” I jumped up to set out a couple of place settings and grab last night’s leftover salad from the fridge, putting everything on the small kitchen table we squeezed on the other side of the island in the Big Glorious Kitchen. Toby put the finished pasta on one side of the island, and I pulled it across and put it on the table, a routine we had down pat.

We ate peacefully, with Toby telling me about his client meetings and Toka spinning in excited circles underneath the dining room table, trying to catch any scraps of food. I’m betting that Toby slipped him some beef under the table. I know I did. Unless Toby’s actively training the dog to do something, we’re terrible disciplinarians.
 

“Did you get any packages today?” he asked as we cleaned up the kitchen.

“One,” I admitted. “They’re back to the Barbie dolls.”

Toby was silent, and I turned around from where I’d been stacking dishes in the dishwasher. “I wish you would let me call the police,” he said unhappily.

I snorted. “That’s exactly what they want. Then it’ll be all over the department that they’re still showing up the rat bitch, and they can all pat each other on the backs and brag about it.”

He frowned, but didn’t argue the point. “The anniversary’s in a couple of days, it should die down again after that.”

“I know.” I turned away and finished loading the dishwasher in silence.

After supper I headed toward the guest bedroom that we take turns using as an office. I rarely bring work home with me, but since I was mostly planning to read a book anyway, it seemed like an okay time to put in some after-hours hours.
 

The office might be my favorite room in the apartment. Toby and I had installed a giant, wall-sized bookshelf on one of the cream walls, and there was also a small desk with a laptop, a sturdy wood futon, and a big overstuffed blue armchair. Despite the crowding, though, the whole thing felt relaxed and sort of collegiate, the perfect place for reading case files or paging through online search engines. Before opening
Sunset Dies
, I started at the computer on my desk, hoping that maybe I could get Nate Christianti an easy answer from one of the databases I subscribe to. The reality of modern private investigation is that it’s harder and harder for people to actually be missing these days. With my P.I. license and some monthly fees, I can track people down by their credit reports, whether they own property, if they’ve ever been in jail, if they’re dead, through a driver’s license, and so on. It’s actually pretty easy, though often tedious.
 

Unfortunately for me and my case, most of those search engines require either a social security number or a date of birth, and for Jason Anderson I had neither. I went through a few sites anyway, going through the white pages, the Social Security Death Master File (yep, they really do keep a list of dead people, and they really do call it that), Illinois drivers’ records, and so on. I even checked the Federal Bureau of Prisons website.
 

The news was not good. It wasn’t that I couldn’t find any info on a “Jason Anderson”—it was that I found too much. I had no idea which Jason was the one I needed—Chicago alone had 14 listings for Jason Anderson, but that would be assuming he’d stayed in the city, which seemed unlikely. If you’re going to leave your family and never contact them again, it seems foolish to hang around where you might bump into them at Starbucks.
 

I also had to consider the possibility, of course, that maybe Jason Anderson hadn’t just
left
his old life—maybe he had deliberately not wanted to be found. From the little I knew about him, it sounded like Jason really wanted to shirk any residual responsibility when it came to his family—and it was conceivable that he was still thinking he needed to hide from childcare payments. Fantastic.
 

Letting it go for the time being, I switched from the desk to the armchair, pulled a fleece Cubs blanket over my lap, and settled in to read
Sunset Dies
.
 

I ended up mostly skimming. Toby and I are both big readers, but our mutual tastes tend toward biographies, true crime stories, and a bit of nineteenth century English literature: Sherlock Holmes, naturally, and Jane Austen, and some poetry. We’re also, of course, big mystery people—we like to race to figure out the killer, each marking where in the book we think we know. It’s a great game, although nobody ever wants to borrow books from us.

But
Sunset Dies
wasn’t something that either of us would have looked at twice in the bookstore. Nate’s father’s book was more of an obvious attempt to write what my high school English teacher would have called a Great American Novel, one that would accurately sum up the human experience of trying to live in these conflicting times and blah blah blah. The main character, Caleb, was a family man in the Chicago suburbs with a pretty young wife named Sarah and a brand-new baby son. In the book, “Caleb” is trying to eke out a living as a writer and struggling with his own discontent – he feels too big, too unique, for the suburban dad lifestyle he’s trapped in. The novel was about his tortured decision of whether to leave his family for no reason that anyone would ever understand, or stay and never again be understood.
 

It was extremely depressing stuff, and I did feel some sympathy for Caleb/Jason, despite his woe-is-me attitude about his life. But there was another voice in this beat-up novel—Nate’s. The teenager had gone through the whole book with a red pen, underlining sections which he thought proved that his biological father and J.P. Hashly were the same person. Caleb’s house has a red door and blue shutters, which Nate has marked with a little note that said, “this is true!” Sarah in the novel has broad shoulders, wide hips, and chin-length red hair, a description that earned a bright red affirmation from Nate. There’s even a scene in the book where Caleb breaks down in tears when a neighbor asks him what color the baby’s eyes are, and Caleb can’t remember. Nate has determinedly circled the whole section with a red pen, noting “Story confirmed by neighbor Chris Hoppe,” and a date, which was for nearly two years earlier. Reading this, I felt my eyes beginning to fill. One way or another, Nate had been researching this book’s authenticity for a long time. I couldn’t imagine having to go over and over how much your father wanted to leave you.