Jane folded the letter in half and stuffed it in the book she took from Mollie. She noticed that Hank’s truck was no longer parked in front of the B&B.
Good
, she thought. The man listened when he was told to back off. Looking down at the book, she resolved to find Weyler and fill him in on what transpired with Mollie. She spun around and started inside when the sound of squealing tires rang out behind her. Jane turned to find Hank sitting in his truck in the middle of Main Street. He leaned across the front seat and swung open the passenger door. “Get in, Jane!”
I guess the man didn’t listen after all,
she thought. “I’ve got nothing to say to you!” Jane turned back to the B&B.
“Jane! If you want to make a scene, that’s fine by me. But one way or the other, you and I are going to talk!”
Jane turned and strode to the truck. “I’ll give you five minutes,” she said, getting into the car and slamming the door.
“I’ll take them,” Hank replied, gunning the truck down Main Street. “You’re one stubborn woman, Jane!”
“Is that what you wanted to tell me? Because if it is, you’re not the first person to figure that out!”
“Yeah and you wear it like a goddamn badge of honor!”
“You’re eating up your five minutes. Get to the point!”
“I’ve never told you the name of my band, have I?”
Jane rolled her eyes. “Jesus, are you kidding me?”
“’No Regrets.’” He turned to her. “That’s the name of the band. You know why?”
“Because you have no regrets starting a cover band?”
“Funny.
But no.
I have no regrets…period. Even though I’ve done a lot of stupid shit in my life, I don’t regret one damn thing because they all got me to where I am today. Not the drinking, not the recreational drugs, not the fooling around…”
“Ah, so you admit you’re a player. Thank you.”
“I was never a player, Jane. But I did make my share of relationship mistakes.”
“Well, add me to the long list.”
“Dammit, Jane!” Hank quickly turned into an abandoned gravel lot and brought the truck to an abrupt stop. He turned to her. “You’re not one of my mistakes! And neither was Annie, no matter how much her mother tried to convince me!”
There was silence. “Annie Mack is your
daughter
?”
“Yes. Mack is her mother’s maiden name.”
There was that look that Jane had seen between them. It
was
meaningful but her skilled detection of body language failed to be specific as to what type of meaning she was witnessing. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Well, for one, you never gave me a chance and for another…” Hank hesitated and turned away. “Annie doesn’t know
she’s my daughter.” Jane’s mouth fell open. “Now, before you go postal on me, there’s a reason why she doesn’t know. Her mother and I never married. This was back when I lived in Michigan. The relationship was complicated, but Annie was the only decent thing that came out of it. However, her mom decided to leave me when she found out she was pregnant. I fought her tooth and nail because I wanted to be part of the kid’s life. But I was drinking pretty hard at the time and I understand now why she made that decision. I told her I’d pay child support, but she wouldn’t accept it. She made me promise that I would stay out of Annie’s life. So, I did. But I also started a fund. I called it,
Annie’s Fund
. All the money that I would have given her for child support, I stuck in that fund and I invested it. They kept moving, but I kept track of them. I got pretty good at figuring out how to find people who wanted to stay lost working in fraud and just applied it to my kid and her mom. In the meantime, I got sober. They moved again and then to Midas. Ten years ago, I finally got the nerve to show up here. I was going to walk up on their doorstep and introduce myself. But when I showed up, I found out Annie’s mom had just died of cancer and the kid was heartbroken. Didn’t seem like the right time to throw my story on her. Besides, I made her mother a promise. But I never said I wasn’t going to look out for her. I bought The Rabbit Hole and she moved in with a family in town who took good care of her. When they’d come by the place for dinner, I always made a point of finding out what was going on in her life. When she was twenty, she told me her dream was to open a diner and she had her eye on the café in town, but she couldn’t afford the down payment. That was $35,000. Well, it just so happened that all that child support I invested for her had appreciated quite well.”
“You’re the anonymous benefactor who left her the check,” Jane said, recalling Bo’s enthusiastic re-telling of the story.
“You got it.”
Jane looked out the window. “So, how does she see your relationship?”
“We’re friends. I gave her a lot of business advice when she opened up the diner and it paid off for her. She still asks me for advice. That’s exactly what she was doing this morning when you saw us out in front of the house. I didn’t have her come in because I’m a private person and I know you sure as hell are. I wasn’t about to advertise us to anyone.”
Jane turned back to Hank. “
Us
?”
“Sorry. I forgot. It was a one-night stand. We made no connection. We don’t think alike. We don’t feel comfortable with each other. I don’t think you’re smart and I’m an idiot. And the lovemaking? Well, that meant nothing to either of us. You also hate my cooking. So, yeah, there’s no
us
.” Hank backed his truck out of the lot. “You know what you’re problem is? You don’t think it’s a real relationship unless you feel like shit because, in your book, happiness is a four-letter word.”
Okay, that one stung. Jane tried to figure out a decent retort, but she had nothing. She was right back on that
Life’s a struggle and then you die
highway and the road was getting rocky. The hard and brutal trail was wearing thin. There was always that fear that if she attained happiness—whatever in the hell that was—there was nowhere to go from that point. Nowhere but death. Thus, happiness equaled death. She realized it was one of those suppositions that a brain trust could deconstruct and show the falsehoods within it. But it was a dogma she’d carried her entire life and one doesn’t just throw off dogma without a fight. Dogma must be wrestled and then cut from one’s grip. One just doesn’t wake up one morning and decide that their tenets are useless. Or do they? Isn’t that possibly what Jake Van Gorden did?
They drove back to the B&B in silence. When Hank parked at the curb, he looked at the clock. “Look at that…five minutes on the nose. I guess I do keep my word.” Jane sat still, looking straight ahead. “Aren’t you getting out?” She opened the door, stepped outside and shut the door. “Before I forget…” He pulled a piece of paper out of his breast pocket. “I was finally able to
translate that
Patois
saying you asked me about.” He handed her a folded piece of paper.
Jane opened the paper and read the words:
I HOPE FOR THE ONE WHO CAN MAKE MY TENDER
HEART WHOLE AGAIN.
“I don’t know where you got that from,” Hank said, motioning to the translation. “But I find it just a little too ironic, don’t you?” He put the truck in gear. “It’s too damn bad you decided not to keep me around, Jane. I could do a lot of the heavy thinking for you.” Hank slowly drove away.
Jane thought she was confused before, but now it was magnified by the shame and hell she was feeling. She stood there in a daze until the sound of her cell phone slammed her back into the world. She checked the number and didn’t recognize it.
“Hello?” There was an onslaught of loud music in the background.
“Hey, it’s me!”
Jane didn’t recognize the voice. “Me who?”
“Candy! Candy Cane from the club?”
Jane jumped to attention. “Candy! What’s up?”
“You told me to call ya if that guy ever came back? Well, he’s here by himself, but when I told him we weren’t open for another hour, he gave me a hundie if I’d let him wait inside.”
“Did he say who he was waiting for?”
“Yeah, sure,
riiiiight
,” she said with a sarcastic laugh. “All he said was he had an important appointment.”
“Don’t let him leave, Candy!” Jane yelled before hanging up and jumping into her Mustang. She tossed the book onto the passenger seat as the envelope Butterworth dropped slid out from the book and onto the passenger floor. Jane peeled out of town, calculating it would take at least forty minutes to get to the strip club, and that was if she drove like a bat out of hell. The mountain roads were mostly clear as she easily flew by cars and trucks and took the curves too fast. Thirty-eight minutes later,
she skidded into the parking lot of The Cat House Lounge. A smattering of cars were in the lot, including Bailey’s black SUV. Jane removed her holster and Glock and stuck it under the front seat before getting out of her car and walking inside. The place pounded with too much bass as Don Henley’s recording of “Get Over It,” punctuated the darkness. It took several seconds for Jane’s eyes to get used to the drastic change in light. She peered over to where Bailey had been seated on her first visit but saw no one.
“Hey!”
Jane turned around. There was Candy wearing an exceptionally tight, loose knit top with no bra. A short pink skirt that barely covered her ass and chunky, four-inch Lucite heels completed the tawdry ensemble. “Where is he?”
“Taking a leak. That guy standing by the far booth,” Candy pointed discreetly, “just showed up about ten minutes ago.”
Jane tried to make out the man in the semidarkness. Based on her memory, it wasn’t the same one as before.
Candy stuck out her chest, showing off her top. “Hey, what do ya think?”
She turned back to Candy. “About what?”
“You gave me money to buy a sweater, remember?”
Jane looked askance. “That wasn’t the kind of sweater I had in mind.”
“It’s made of yarn, right? Anyway, I wanted to say thanks again.
Because this sweater worked
.”
Jane snuck a look back at the men’s room but Bailey was still inside. “Worked?”
“Yeah!” Candy said, her eyes wide with enthusiasm.
Behind her, a stocky man, mid-fifties appeared. His combover was inexcusable and his oily skin matched his greasy vibe. “Let’s go, baby!” he said, locking his right hand around her neck. His gold pinky ring screamed
creep.
“See what I’m talkin’ about?” Candy quietly said to Jane. “
He’s a doctor
!”
Jane grabbed Candy and took her aside. “Yeah, he’s a doctor and I just split the atom. Candy, or whatever the hell your name is, don’t do this!
Go home
.”
The girl’s doe eyes lost their glimmer. “I can’t. I don’t exist anymore as far as they’re concerned.”
The guy spun Candy around, gave Jane the evil eye and disappeared out the door.
Jane shook her head in disgust and turned back just as Bailey emerged from the bathroom. But instead of crossing to a booth with the other man, they exited the back door. This time, Jane wasn’t going to let him slip away. She raced out the front door and got into her Mustang before Bailey could see her. Hunkering down in her front seat, she watched as the two men had a seemingly somber conversation as they walked around the club. Bailey motioned several times up the road, pointing and turning his hand right and left as if he was giving directions to the other man. They nodded and each got into their own vehicle. She watched Bailey slide into his black SUV and roll to the edge of the parking lot while he waited for the other guy to drive up behind him in his sedan. Bailey rolled down his window and gave the thumbs up sign before turning right onto the two-lane road that headed further away from the club. The man followed him closely. Jane gradually got behind the sedan, making sure to stay far enough away so as not to attract Bailey’s attention.
They drove for several miles, passing the occasional convenience store and gas station on the rural roadway. As Jane looked around the somewhat desolate area, she envisioned it being the perfect place to dump a body. Gradually, more houses rose up and the topography gained a few signs of an active, albeit, pissant town. She followed behind the sedan, easily hidden by several other cars as they made their way down the main drag of the nameless community. At the far end of the town, they turned left onto a short side street and slowed. Jane backed off a bit, not knowing when the two cars were going to stop.
Watching in the distance, she saw them turn into the
parking lot of a one-story motel. She followed and parked on the street behind a tree for adequate cover. Jane watched as Bailey got out of his SUV and furtively looked around the parking lot in an apprehensive manner. The other man joined him but didn’t have the same body language that indicated concern. They talked briefly before Bailey pulled a large envelope out of his shirt pocket and handed it to the man. Jane had a perfect line of sight as the man opened the envelope and counted the cash. The man nodded, replaced the money in the envelope and stuffed it in his jeans. Bailey then took the assertive lead and walked to a door, opened it with a key and ushered the man inside. He closed the door and Jane watched as they appeared in the window together, highlighted by an auspicious shaft of sunlight. Bailey aggressively pulled the man toward him and locked lips with him in a passionate kiss. He chaotically stripped off his starched white shirt, continuing their ardent affection before drawing the curtains on their covert tryst.
Jane sat back, staggered. She never saw this one coming. Bailey was indeed working a backend deal. The only difference was, it was Bailey’s backend that was getting worked. In seconds, everything shifted for Jane. The entire case took on a new and curious patina of possibilities. Jane’s eyes drifted to the nondescript motel sign, located above her head. Suddenly, one of the mysteries was solved.
This back-road motel was strangely called,
Fourteen O-One Imperial.
CHAPTER 32