This was intriguing. Jane noted a mischievous glint to Aaron’s eyes. “Maybe I should look at it. I could use a little inspiration.”
Aaron’s mischievous look turned almost embarrassed as he used his heel to shove the album even further back into the grass. “Are you already hitting roadblocks?”
Change of subject. Yes, well done, Aaron,
Jane thought. “There’s more questions than answers on this case, Aaron.”
He slightly winced and shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
Jane noted that the
I’m sorry
was more than just a minister’s
reflective understanding of her trouble. There was also something else mixed in with it—a sense of regret possibly. “I talked to Hank Ross yesterday,” Jane offered, her voice more pointed. “He told me what a great kid Jake is.”
“Absolutely. Absolutely,” Aaron muttered, averting Jane’s glance.
“I guess he was a little…how would you put it…unique? Walks to the beat of his own drum?”
“Yes, yes. That he does.”
This was starting to sound like pabulum and Jane hated swallowing that crap. “But you liked him, right?”
“We
loved
Jake. He’s like the son we never had.” Aaron’s eyes welled with tears.
“He hangs out here a lot?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said smiling. “We aren’t his second home. We’re his first.” Aaron quickly caught himself. “That’s not to say that Bailey and Carol don’t care. It’s just that we’re more accessible to Jake.”
Aaron had learned the fine art of damning a soul with faint praise. For a guy who considered Jake as the son he never had, Jane found it curious that he would instigate a breakup between Jake and Mollie. It was time for Jane to cast a lie into the water and see what she could catch. “Hank said that Jake broke off his relationship with Mollie.”
There was a moment of stunned silence. “Really?”
“Isn’t that what happened?”
Aaron uncomfortably shifted on the bench. “Yeah, yeah.”
Thank Jesus there wasn’t a Bible hanging around the area because Jane could then point out to him that he was breaking one of the Ten Commandments. “It wasn’t the other way around?” Jane stressed.
“No…that’s the way it went down.” Jane’s first thought was
went down
? These Methodists certainly did have an easygoing vernacular. She half-expected Aaron to call her
dude
next. He swept up his sermon. “I’ve really got to focus on this.”
Again, she was dismissed. This was getting to be a habit. Jane got up and started across the yard.
“Do you mind if I read this to you?” Aaron asked. “Just the first part. I’m not sure if it flows.”
Jane did not want to listen to a Sunday sermon on Saturday morning but she agreed, returning to the bench and sitting down.
Aaron stood up and cleared his throat. “The talk is on fear,” he explained to Jane. “I figured with all the unknowns surrounding what’s going on with Jake, it was a suitable topic.” Jane nodded. Aaron proceeded to read in a commanding yet gentle tone. “’When faced with uncertainty in our lives, I always harken back to something my wife’s grandfather told her to say during times of trepidation. It was just ten words but in those words, there was both comfort and courage to continue. Those ten words were: I will be all right and one day I will die.’” Jane felt her gut clench. Aaron continued. “’I can believe the first part and it calms me to the inevitability of the second part. I will be all right…and one day I will die. When we are faced with misfortune or hard luck, we are naturally programmed to revert to that primal essence of fear. And when you break it down—break all the things in life down that make us really fearful—the bottom line is death. When you take away that fear, the rest of the things we fear—whether it be poverty or shame or loss of reputation—the rest is fixable to some extent. Death is inevitable, but to stay in the moment and say
I will be all right
allows us all to keep our faith and not shadow our lives with the castles of fear we often build in the future.’” He stopped reading and looked at Jane. “What do you think?”
She hoped he couldn’t see her jaw quivering. “Sara’s grandfather sounded like a wise Jedi Master.”
Aaron smiled. “I only met him and his wife a couple times. But they were incredible people. They certainly were tested in their lives, but he applied these words during those tests and he came out of everything the better for it. His wife was fond of
saying, ‘You must be the light you wish to see.’”
Sara opened the kitchen window and softly called to Aaron. “I’m putting coffee on. It’ll be ready in a few minutes.” Her voice seemed to suddenly catch on and she moved from the window to the back door and joined them. There was a clear nervousness to her gait as she strode between them, her body seemingly blocking the photo album under the bench. She tried to conceal her anxiousness with a forced smile. “How’d you sleep?” she asked Jane.
“Like a baby,” Jane lied. She wanted to add “with colic,” but opted not to.
It was patently clear Sara was guarding that photo album. Aaron’s little red photo album of Sunday sermon inspiration certainly was getting more intriguing to Jane.
Walking into the house, Jane let the back door slam shut which generated a pissed-off yell from Mollie behind her bedroom door. Her angry footsteps stumbled from her bed and she swung open her door. “Mom! It’s not even seven!” Out of her drowsy eyes, she saw Jane standing there in the same damn outfit she was wearing when she saw her the night before. “My God, do you even
own
clean clothes?” A look of utter disgust came over the kid as she was about to slam her door. But Jane moved quickly and held the door open with the palm of her hand. “
Ei
!”
“I gotta talk to you!” Jane insisted as she slid into Mollie’s bedroom and closed the door behind her.
The room was not your typical teenage girl’s room. There was the usual desk and computer but it was absent of rock ’n’ roll posters, girly touches and the like. Instead, there was a lone table in the corner that held a copy of the Talmud. A small menorah stood behind that. A votive candle burned in a purple glass holder.
“You burning that for Jake?” The girl was silent. “Is that for his soul or his safe return?”
“Anytime you shed light in the darkness it’s a
brocheh
.”
“Whatever. Make sure you don’t burn down the house.” Jane heard the back door open and swing shut. She lowered her voice. “I gotta know why you broke up with Jake.”
“It’s none of your business, you
yenta
!”
“The hell it isn’t!” Jane’s tenor was strict. She grabbed Mollie’s shoulder. “Your dad forced you, right?” Mollie’s eyebrows arched in a look of surprise. Clearly, Hank’s information was not meant for general distribution. “
Why
?”
“He said that it wasn’t going to work out…that it would never work out and that it was best if I just ended it.”
“Why did he say that?”
Her eyes drifted to the side. “How in the hell should I know?” Jane read this as a lie.
“Were you and Jake having sex?”
“
No
!”
“Hey, Jake hung out here a lot. The two of you had plenty of time to be together. Your father being a preacher, there’s plenty of reason he wouldn’t want his only child bangin’ her boyfriend…”
“Good God, woman! What’s wrong with you?!” Mollie pulled away from Jane. “We didn’t have sex. I’m a
b’suleh
.” Jane looked confused. “A
virgin
,” Mollie whispered with purpose.
Jane watched Mollie. There was something in the way she said, “We didn’t have sex” that sounded uneven. But there was no use pushing the issue. The kid was clearly not going to talk any further. Jane nodded and turned toward the door and then looked back at Mollie. “Hey, I’ve got a question for you, off topic.” Mollie regarded Jane with suspicion. “Has anyone ever asked you if this place is haunted?”
Mollie’s gaze was unyielding. “No one has ever asked me that. Is there a problem?”
“I don’t know,” Jane uttered, feeling ridiculous for asking the girl such an off-the-wall question.
Jane turned to go. “Give my regards to Casper,” Mollie
whispered.
Jane quietly crept into the hallway after leaving Mollie’s room, but when she turned to ascend the staircase, she couldn’t help but see Sara standing on a short ladder in the kitchen and replacing the red photo album in a locked cabinet that was situated above one of the glass cupboards. It was also easy to see where Sara hid the key.
By the time Jane and Weyler arrived at Annie’s Place
,
the local diner, there were wall-to-wall people waiting for tables. A flat screen TV was tuned to the Denver morning news program in the far corner of the diner. Weyler assured her that they had a reserved booth, courtesy of Bo Lowry and his immeasurable pull. Jane had slipped into her last clean shirt, which looked like a carbon copy in color and design of the other two that were sitting in a muddy heap on The Gardenia Room carpet. Her Glock was secured in its shoulder holster. Once situated in the booth next to Weyler, she brought out a stack of notes from her leather satchel, along with the sketchpad with the hanging man she stole from Jake’s room.
“I would think twice before I bring that out for show and tell,” Weyler warned, eyeing the sketchpad.
“The fact that Jake meticulously takes the time to create an animation of an old man hanging in a cell isn’t the least bit disturbing in this case?”
“Baby steps, Jane. You can’t come off balls to the wall with Bo. You know that.”
“Right. I’m a strident dyke.” She stuffed the sketchpad back into her satchel.
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“Just don’t tell me to sit back and look pretty,” she sarcastically added.
Annie arrived at their table with three glasses of ice water. “Hello, Jane,” she said cheerfully. Weyler looked somewhat perplexed. “Hank came back to the locker room with half-birthday
cake, but you’d already split!” Annie offered in a very familial tone.
Jane had only been orbiting the town for less than twenty-four hours and she was already getting the down-home treatment. “Tell him I had to get back to work,” Jane said in an
all business
tenor.
“Tell him yourself. He’s in his usual spot at the counter!”
Jane looked up and saw Hank wave at her with those twinkling eyes.
Good God Almighty
, she thought. This was starting to feel like high school. “You got espresso?” Jane asked, desperate to change the subject. Annie nodded. “I’ll take six shots in the dark and two in the dark to go.”
Weyler ordered a cup of black coffee and Annie left to retrieve the drinks. He handed Jane a menu that was tucked between the napkin holder and a greasy bottle of Frank’s Red Hot Sauce. “You’ve been busy,” Weyler surmised, taking a gander at the menu.
Jane explained that she talked to Hank about Jake and checked out his locker. She conveniently left out the whole part about the half-birthday. She did disclose the mysterious notation in Bailey’s handwriting of
1401 Imperial
. “You think that’s going to come off as too dyke-ish to Bo?” Jane asked curtly, referencing the discovery of the address.
“Jesus Christ, you really are hurting for a cigarette, aren’t you? Try sucking on some ice cubes. Heard that takes the edge off.”
Jane surveyed the menu. “Even a bag of ice wouldn’t work, Boss.” She slapped down the menu. “I gotta ask you something before he gets here. Did you notice the boxes in Bo’s office? The ones labeled with question marks and exclamation points?”
“I did.”
“So…what’s up with that?”
“Everyone has their own way of organizing their paperwork. Some people color code. What’s your point?”
Jane took a sip of water and slid an ice cube into her mouth.
“I just think it’s odd.” She sucked on the cube, hoping it would reduce the growing edge that was building around her. “What’s with Bo’s limp?”
Weyler set down the menu. “It’s an old injury that happened in the line of duty.”
Jane stared at Weyler as the wheels turned. “Oh, shit. Did you shoot him by mistake when you were rookies? Is that what this whole
I owe you
is about?”
“Suck on another ice cube, Jane. Your imagination is going wild.” Weyler motioned to the front door of the diner.
Bo entered, lumbering across the linoleum toward their booth. He dropped into the seat across from Jane and Weyler, with his generous gut arriving shortly thereafter. “Goddamnit! It’s colder than a lawyer’s heart out there. Sorry I’m late,” Bo said, directing his words toward Weyler. “I thought I was dyin’ this mornin’ when I saw blood in the toilet after I took a dump. Then I remembered I ate beets last night for dinner.” He scooped up the menu and gave it a cursory exam. Without looking at Jane, he directed his words toward her. “Beanie tells me you’re tryin’ to quit smokin’.”
Jane was a little taken back. “Yeah. That’s right.”
Bo had a strange way of reading a menu, glancing back and forth from side to side as if he were watching a tennis game. “So, is that the excuse for your attitude?”
Jane eyed Weyler. “No excuse. I’ve got the same mentality whether I’m smoking or not.”
Bo regarded Jane over the top of his menu. “Is that right? I quit smoking once.” Jane furrowed her brow, realizing Bo was puffing pretty good on his cigar when they first met. “First five days, I’d like to have drawn and quartered every damn person I met. But on day six, everything smoothed out real nice.”
“Really?” Jane asked with genuine interest. “How?”
“Because I started smokin’ again on day six! Took that damn edge right off!” Bo chuckled, enjoying his joke at Jane’s expense. “I sure as hell hope you’re quittin’ for the right reasons.
I quit because a friend of mine got emphysema. I felt like shit when I heard that. And then, it dawned on me. What in the hell was I thinkin’?
He’s
got the disease, not
me
! Why should
I
quit ’cause
he’s
dying?!” Jane was dumbfounded. Bo’s mind was a seriously odd little place to dwell. Bo slapped down the menu. “Oh, I almost forgot!” Reaching into the inside of his shirt, he pulled out a black-and-white photo. He slid it in front of Jane. “This belongs to you.”