Licensed for Trouble (32 page)

“. . . for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God's very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.”

Maybe it was time for a new name.

Chosen. Royal. A possession of God.

Heiress.

Beloved.

The word thumped inside her. She leaned her head back, feeling again the rush of wind against her face, losing her breath, then finding it again.

Beloved daughter of God.

Indeed, a . . . princess.

She looked at Connie, who stood in the doorway, backlit by the glow of the house. “It's time to come inside, PJ. Where you belong.”

* * *

“Did you unpack?” Connie lay on the sofa with a blanket over her, puffs of Kleenex like snowballs on the green knitted afghan, her eyes red.

“For now. Until I find Jeremy.”

“So where is he?”

“Probably trying to find Max. He's not answering his cell phone.” PJ entered Connie's now snow- and ice-tight screened porch, pacing to the edge and back. “He probably stopped by the police station to get Boone, where they loaded up their six-guns and got on their white horses and tracked down the current Lyle Fisher to hang from the nearest poplar at first light.”

“You're making me seasick, PJ. Sit down. Are you sure you don't want a banana? They're really tasty before bed.”

PJ sat in a teakwood chair. “I can't eat.”

“Oh, me neither.”

PJ looked at the litter of banana peels, half a box of crackers, and a cup of tea. All since dinner—deep-fried chicken à la Vera. “I can see that. What's with the Kleenex?”

“It's this diary. It's so sad. ”

“Is that Joy's diary?”

“Yeah. I stayed up too late reading it last night, and now I can't get it out of my head. Thanks a lot.” She sighed. “Poor Hugh.”

“Poor Hugh?”

“Haven't you read any of this?”

“I got as far as Hugh MIA.”

Connie gave her a disgusted look.

“I've been busy!”

Connie put the diary down. “You missed the best part. Hugh didn't die.”

Hugh didn't—
“What?”

“Two years after he went MIA, he walked out of the jungle, wounded, angry, and in need of help. He went to a vet hospital and then came straight back to Kellogg.”

“He came back to Joy.”

Connie nodded as she grabbed a Kleenex. “Oh, these hormones. I've just been blubbering all day.”

“Why?”

“Because Joy had already come back to Kellogg and married Clayton. His dad ran the Barton Dock Works. They fixed sailboats—remember the place?”

“Yes, I remember. Right by the beach. Big gray building. Didn't they turn it into a restaurant?”

“Yeah. They tore it down a few years ago, when old man Barton died. But Joy met Clayton right after she got back, at a picnic. She even admits that her grief changed her, that maybe her feelings weren't real, but she fell in love with Clayton—as much as she could—and married him five months later.”

PJ tried to imagine the overwhelming grief of losing someone she loved. Yeah, that could change someone. Make them marry someone they might not have expected. She reached for an unused Kleenex. “What happened when Hugh showed up?”

“Baby Sunny was four years old, and the only daddy she knew was Clayton. Joy fought with herself for weeks and finally told Hugh she wouldn't leave Clayton.”

“Poor Hugh.”

“Yeah, well, he left town.”

“Did he go back to Vietnam?”

Connie shook her head. “I don't think so. But he was never heard from again.”

“Never?”

Connie sat up. “Well, maybe not
never
. I started thinking. We had this case a few years ago, a local woman who was moving to a nursing home. My firm handled it—the wills and estates department. I remember one of the associates talking about it because she was from Kellogg—lived on that big acreage to the west of town. I called into the office today and they did some checking of records. Her name was Janet Murphy. And she had a son named Hugh.”

“Hugh?
Joy's
Hugh?”

“I think so. Mrs. Murphy was signing over her acreage to the nursing home in return for her stay there, but she didn't want to give up her house. Apparently she said her son would take it over when she moved out.”

“Did she know where he was?

“No—no one had seen him. As far as anyone knew, he'd vanished, no forwarding address. Some attempt was made to find the son—according to the notes on the case, they spent about a month searching marriage records, property ownership, death records . . . and military records. According to the Army, Hugh Murphy was a deserter.”

“A deserter.”

“Yep. Went from special forces to a deserter. That's a pretty big leap.”

“He'd spent two years surviving in the jungle, doing and eating who knows what, only to come home and find out the very reason he'd stayed alive had vanished.” PJ wiped her eyes. Good grief. She wasn't even pregnant.

“But Joy thought he was dead,” Connie said, throwing out one Kleenex only to grab another.

“I'm not blaming Joy,” PJ said. “It's just . . . horrible. They loved each other so much, and life just threw them off course.”

“It does that. But here's the important part: Joy really did begin to love Clayton. Listen to this—it's on their fifth anniversary.”

July 1968

We picnicked at the beach today for the celebration. Clayton took our picture with his new Olympus. Then we walked the beach. Sometimes, when I look at Clayton, I'm amazed at my life, at the way it turned out. I don't love him the same way I loved Hugh. I love him better. Stronger. He is the face of God's grace to me. The face of mercy and compassion. Yes, I loved Hugh—loved the wildness, the freshness, the hope of it. But Clay took that hope and gave it depth and commitment. He nursed me through my grief; he helped me find my way back to Sunny, to myself. Clayton is my happy ending. Five years. I hope for fifty.

Connie pressed a Kleenex to her face and blew her nose.

“He helped me find my way back to myself.”
PJ stared out the window to the blackness outside. Thankfully, Boris hadn't covered the ceiling, and she looked through it to the stars.
“He is the face of God's grace to me.”

For a while, Jeremy had made her believe that he saw the real PJ Sugar, the woman she wanted to be. He'd been the face of mercy, of compassion. The face of hope.

With Boone, she'd never seen herself as anything but trouble.

But Jeremy had set her free from that. Jeremy believed she could be more . . . or at least she thought he did.

Princess
.

“PJ?”

“I'm fine. Just realizing that some stories don't have happy endings.” She wiped her eyes. “So Hugh never came back—”

“Oh no, that's what I was trying to say. He did. His mother said that he'd returned to Kellogg in 1977, when the draft dodgers were pardoned by Jimmy Carter. But no one ever saw him or even mentioned him. Except . . .”

“Joy.”

“Yes. There're a number of sketchy entries around that time, and then listen to this:

March 1978

If he wanted to destroy our lives, why did he choose now? Seventeen years—as if he knew how I would feel, remembering the night he kissed me, on the eve of my own seventeenth birthday. Poor Sunny didn't even know him—of course she didn't know him. I found him in the kitchen, at the door of her bedroom, watching her. He'd even brought her a gift—diamond earrings. Tears ran down his face, and he shook as I let him take me in his arms. We still had our daughter between us, and I couldn't begrudge him that. He left on his terms, but if he must return, it will be on mine. Of course I will make room for him. Clayton disagrees, and we had a terrible argument after Hugh left. He is so angry. Not at me, but at Hugh. He doesn't want Sunny to know. I don't know what to do. Of course she should know Hugh is her real father, and I was wrong to hide her past from her. But I feared she'd never see the life she'd been given with Clayton. Maybe I was wrong; maybe I should have let her see her legacy. Hugh was such a good man, before . . . If only I knew how to help Hugh let go of his nightmares. If only I wasn't the one who caused them.

“‘If only I wasn't the one who caused them.' Is that the last entry?”

Connie shut the book. “Yes.”

“And no one ever saw Hugh again?”

Connie rubbed her hand on the book. “Nope. He probably took off again for Canada or wherever he'd gone during those deserting years.”

“Is his mother still alive?”

“No, she passed about a year ago.”

Davy came down to the kitchen, his curly dark hair still dripping, his pajamas stuck to his wet skin. “Hey, Auntie PJ!” He bounced toward her, leaping onto her lap. “See my new
lapa
?”

He shoved a long-eared stuffed dog onto her lap.

“Lapa?”

“It's Russian for teddy bear or something like that.” Connie said, closing the diary.

Sergei entered the room, looking half-soaked.

“Did you bathe too?” Connie asked, laughing.

He leaned down to kiss her, then lifted her legs and sat under them, replacing them on his lap. Connie ran her fingers into his dark hair. “You know, Davy
could
use a towel.”

“Ah,
nyet
. Khe vants his own vay.” Sergei glanced at Davy and gave him a wink.

“See, my
lapa
talks to me!” Davy pressed the dog's floppy ear, and PJ heard the voice of Sergei emerge, in Russian,
“Ya tebya lublu.”

I love you.
“How'd you do that?”

“He went to Babies and Baubles. They let you make your own stuffed animals there and add your own recorded message.”

Davy hugged the dog to his chest.

As PJ watched him, Flora's words rushed back to her.
“A teddy bear. Just a cheap trinket he picked up in some airport, probably. But Tyler carries it everywhere.”

The last package Owen had ever sent home.

“How would the smuggler get the diamonds home?”
PJ touched the
lapa
's ear, heard the voice play again.

What if the diamonds were inside the teddy bear?

But had Max sent them . . . or someone else?

He'd been wounded, sent to Germany . . . recovering from a head injury.

One that probably necessitated shaving his head . . .

The Kellogg hobo had said that Max had arrived onshore naked as a baby. Had he also meant bald?

Which meant Max
couldn't
have been the long-haired, tattooed soldier standing on the driveway yelling at Bekka. She'd been right—it had to be Ratchet. And when Bekka said to her mother that she “had to get back to him,” she must have meant Owen—wounded, hurt Owen.

Owen, who probably never even
knew
about the package since he was busy recovering from a head injury . . . one so damaging that a fall into the bay easily knocked the memory out of him.

Ratchet
had
been there that day . . . and maybe he'd come back that night, even dumped Owen.

But . . . it still didn't feel right. They'd been POWs together in Iraq. If she spent time suffering with someone, they'd probably have a lifelong bond. They'd even brand it on their arms.

Her hand went to the tattoo on her shoulder, the one with Boone's name. She too had a lifelong bond. With Boone, just like he had with her. And yes, like Owen's, it was based in suffering, even if it wasn't quite as deep as wartime pain. And despite their wounds, she and Boone would never really be enemies.

In fact, their friendship might even be the kind that went so deep he'd risk his life for her. And vice versa. At the very least, warn her of trouble.

Except, according to Windchill, Ratchet and Owen were enemies . . .

PJ sat up. “I can't believe I didn't see it.”

Connie took her hand from Sergei's hair. “What?”

“If Ratchet was planning on killing Owen, or even demanding the diamonds from him, he wouldn't have had an argument with Bekka out in the street for the entire neighborhood to see. If he was any kind of special ops soldier—especially a black ops soldier—he'd know to stay under the radar. If anything, Jeremy's taught me that. And they were fellow survivors. Not enemies like Windchill said. They had a lifelong bond to protect each other.” She wanted to scream or at least grab someone—Jeremy—by the lapels. “I'll bet that Ratchet went to
warn
 Bekka!”

Connie gave her a long look. “Should I take notes?”

She pressed her palms to her head. “I'll bet Windchill showed up, and Max, being the hero he is, got into a fight with him—and Bekka maybe got in the way. So he had to make it look like Max killed his wife. But then why did Windchill go to the funeral?”

“Davy, go get Mommy a pen, please,” Connie said.

“Of course, he went to find Ratchet! But Ratchet probably knew Windchill was after him, so he went into hiding. And Windchill's best option was to lie low and wait, hoping nothing surfaced to tie him to the smuggling or Owen's murder. Then I put Max in the paper this week. Suddenly Windchill realized that Owen wasn't dead.” She wanted to bang her head against something. “Windchill told me about Ratchet so that I would
track him down
. He needed to cut off any final threads to Max's disappearance and Bekka's murder. And when I showed up, he realized that I would eventually figure it out—wait! What if Windchill was the one who rented the house? What if he's another Lyle Fisher?”

“I feel like we need CliffsNotes of some sort.” Connie said.