Chapter Seventeen
J
ack took Caroline to a little Mediterranean café on South Market Street. Quaint mosaic and ironwork tables spilled onto the sidewalk and soft background music accompanied a delicious shared plate of Mediterranean fare. They sat in a corner surrounded by short potted palms—cozy and quiet. But the coziness was short lived. Whatever warmth Caroline had been feeling toward Jack didn’t survive dinner.
She told him about Kelly, and he listened quietly, reassuring her that she wouldn’t have to deal with Kelly again. Jack was pretty sure that, while she was temporarily angry about the entire situation, she was a good person and wouldn’t hurt a fly. Caroline wasn’t sure about that. In fact, she was pretty damned sure if Kelly were holding a fly swatter and Caroline were a fly in front of her face, she’d be as flat as the pita bread sitting on the table right now. Still, he said he would look into it and that satisfied her.
Kelly wasn’t what sent her over the edge.
Jack wanted her to retract her story. He wanted her to print the “official police story.”
“Just say you made a mistake.”
“Let me get this straight. You still don’t believe this is an isolated homicide, but you want me to report that it is anyway?”
He sat forward, leaning into the table, leaning into the pitch. “I’m just asking you to report the official story, Caroline. If you call the Public Information Officer, that’s exactly what he’ll tell you. No matter who this guy is—he’s likely to be following the story in the paper. If this isn’t an isolated incident, maybe the guy’s already gotten a taste for media attention. . . .”
The atmosphere at the paper was only now beginning to normalize, and Caroline was unwilling to compromise her relationship with Frank any more. “Can we quote you saying that you believe this is an isolated case?”
“No.”
“Because you don’t believe it?”
“Caroline, you owe me. . . .”
Caroline looked at him in that instant—really looked at him. His eyes were sunken and bloodshot, probably from lack of sleep. And while his clothes were neat, he obviously hadn’t shaved in days. He ran a hand through his hair, looking weary, but he was persistent.
“Look, I’m hoping that if we deny his existence, this guy will make a move to show everyone he’s out there.”
“No, Jack! I won’t play with the truth that way!”
He sat back in his chair, his blue eyes darkening as he studied her. “Seems you’re pretty choosy about your ethics,” he said after a moment.
Caroline tossed down the piece of pita bread she’d been munching on, her appetite vanishing. “That’s not even fair to suggest! I published the initial story because I believed I was doing the right thing. If you’re sitting here telling me you don’t believe it’s over, and yet you want me to say it is—I don’t care what the Public Information Officer has to say or what the official story is—you’re asking me to mislead the public and I won’t do it!”
They were like oil and water, Caroline decided in that moment. The feelings she had for him were undeniable, but she didn’t like him very much at this instant.
Thankfully, he didn’t ask her again, but the rest of the evening passed in a blur of quick, angry bites and accusatory looks. It was all Caroline could do to shove her food down without throwing it at him. She wasn’t sure which galled her most—that he was asking her to do this at all, or that he was asking her to do it under the guise of a stupid date.
She had foolishly gotten it into her head that he was trying to make it up to her and that he actually
wanted
her company—that maybe he still wanted to see if there was something left between them.
She tried to tell herself that he had essentially done to her no more than she had done to him—but something had changed for her—maybe because she wholly regretted having used him and she realized she still had strong feelings for him. Maybe she’d hoped he realized the same.
But this was nothing more than tit for tat. And it pissed her off.
By the time they got back to her car, Caroline had worked herself into a furious state that was only exacerbated by what she found on her return to the garage. Someone had written the word “BITCH” in capital letters through the thick yellow pollen coating her driver’s-side door.
The exit booth was unmanned, the lights out and the garage was mostly empty.
Jack got out, took a look around, then took her keys from her hand and opened her door to check inside her car. When he was sure it was safe, he started it for her. “I guess it’s time to visit the car wash,” he said, but his attempt at humor fell on deaf ears. Caroline didn’t find any of this funny at all. She hadn’t asked to be thrust into the middle of mayhem.
Although deep down she knew the thought was ridiculous, at the moment her life felt like a cruel joke—her mother’s way of saying with her last dying breath, “And you thought you were good enough. See, I told you so—you’ll never measure up!”
Tears stung the back of her lids. She swallowed hard.
Right about now, she desperately missed life in Dallas—free from serial killers and jealous girlfriends—free from crushing responsibility, decisions and expectations—and most of all, free from Jack!
He got out of her car and she slid in without saying a word. The last thing she heard him say before she slammed her car door and drove away was “I’ll talk to her, Caroline.”
She squealed out of the parking garage.
Jack had to stop himself from pulling out onto the road after her. She wouldn’t welcome his attention right now, but he wasn’t comfortable just letting her go without some reassurance that someone would be there to see her safe inside her house—which was ludicrous. He couldn’t be there to protect her every second of every day. Still, he couldn’t let her leave like this after finding something like that on her car.
Maybe they should have called a report of the graffiti in to have it on record—though there was no property damage, and if every person who had a nasty note left on their car reported it as a crime, there wouldn’t be enough manpower in the city to log all the complaints.
The truth was that if Caroline weren’t the daughter of Florence Aldridge, if they weren’t in the middle of looking for a killer, if she weren’t the woman he was still in love with, he wouldn’t even second-guess himself right now.
He would just let her go.
Caroline was so angry, she didn’t even wipe the smear off her car door.
Had Kelly done that?
He sure as hell intended to find out.
He called Josh first to see where he was, to see if he was heading to the Aldridge estate tonight. He was relieved to know that he was at his mother’s, just down the road, and he promised to go wait for Caroline to arrive. Jack explained what had happened, and thanked him, then he hung up and called Kelly.
She answered on the first ring, as though she had been expecting his call, so he asked her straight out.
“I didn’t do it,” she replied.
Jack couldn’t imagine who else would have done it, especially in light of her recent visit with Caroline. She was feeling needy and unhappy and maybe even a little angry at him for wasting her time. He couldn’t blame her.
“I said I didn’t do it!” she offered a second time, and her tone grew more furious.
Jack was so worked up he couldn’t take her at her word—not tonight. He wanted her to understand beyond any shadow of doubt that he was through. It was over between them. Finito.
Not that he had a chance in hell with Caroline at this point, because he’d managed to fuck that up too, but he felt for the first time in years that he was doing the right thing where his personal life was concerned.
And more to the point, he was feeling.
God, was he feeling.
Like complete and total shit.
He’d been going through the motions for too long now, just doing the job—whatever that meant. Even fucking had grown to be a perfunctory task, and he hated to admit that Kelly was just a vessel—not that he hadn’t tried to make a go of it. He had desperately wanted to love her. Just as he had desperately wanted not to love Caroline.
People couldn’t help the way they felt.
But they could damned well control how they behaved. Kelly had every right to be angry with him. She didn’t have a right to defile Caroline’s car. He told her as much.
“For the last time,” Kelly screamed, “I didn’t do it!”
She hung up on him.
A lightning rod of anger shot up Jack’s spine and he nearly hurled his phone out the window. He tossed it onto the passenger seat, staring furiously out at the road ahead.
The moon was new, and the night dark. Crossing over the Ashley River, he left the glow of the city behind him, and drove into blackness.
He was angry.
Anger clouded judgment.
He wasn’t thinking straight and he needed to start.
Right now.
Whoever had written that note on Caroline’s car was angry too, or they wouldn’t have gone into a public garage to leave a message like that for a public figure.
Not a smart move.
Clearing the fog from his brain, he allowed himself to ask, “If not Kelly, who else would leave a message like that?”
Could it be connected to the attempted break-in at her house?
If that were the case, it would be personal. The murder of Amy Jones, by contrast, was
not
an act of anger. They were two separate things, he reassured himself. Completely unconnected. But who the hell had she pissed off?
Just about everyone, he realized.
On the heels of that thought came the realization that he hadn’t even had enough wits about him to check to see if there were surveillance cameras installed in the garage.
He turned the car around. If they were lucky, their artist’s moment of stupidity would be caught on tape.
As soon as Caroline pulled into the drive, she got out of the car and wiped her hand over every inch of her driver’s-side door, erasing the offending letters.
She felt as though she was nearing a breaking point; something had to turn around—fast.
What if it was true that she couldn’t measure up? No matter how much Frank worked with her, the shoes she had to fill were massive. What if she could never be the community darling her mother had been?
She certainly wasn’t off to a great start, inciting anger and contempt in the people she was trying to protect.
They were dedicating a garden for her mother. What would be her legacy? A great, big empty building on Meeting Street where people would point and say, “That used to be the eighth oldest paper in the country, but some dipshit bankrupted it.”
She dusted the pollen from her hands onto her skirt and stood there, staring at her car, and for the second time in two days started to cry. Tears were becoming a frequent occurrence for the girl who didn’t know how to cry!
A movement caught her eye on the porch and her tears stopped abruptly.
From the windows, a soft glow emanated. Not enough to shed light on the figure standing in the shadows, watching . . .
Caroline stiffened, and the tiny hairs at the back of her neck tingled. “Who’s there?”
Josh stepped out of the shadows, onto the top step, and started down the steps toward her. “Rough day?”
Caroline let out a breath of relief. “You scared the hell out of me!” She swiped at her eyes. “You don’t know the half of it.”
“Actually, I do. Jack called.”
Caroline glowered at him, without really meaning to.
“He just wanted to make sure you got home all right, but he told me what happened.”
Her gaze narrowed. “All of it?”
“No, just about the car. I’m assuming you two fought?”
Caroline didn’t want to admit to Josh what Jack had asked her to do—the things he had said to her. The thought of it alone was enough to bring another swell of tears to her eyes.
Josh held out his arms and she went into them automatically. He patted her gently on the back. “I can’t seem to do anything right,” she said plaintively.
Josh squeezed her. “You’re doing the best you can, right?”
Caroline nodded, wiping tears from her cheeks with her shoulder.
He pushed her away and peered into her face, his dark skin even darker under the moonlight. “That’s all you can do, Caroline. Come on over here.” He took her by the hand, dragging her to the stairs. “Sit down,” he commanded.
Caroline did as he asked, feeling as wretched as a little girl whose feelings had been hurt by the mean boy in school. Except that Jack had always been her protector—not her tormentor.
She sat next to Josh and he squeezed her hand, but didn’t let it go. “We’ve come a long way,” he told her. “Who’d have thunk you’d be running the
Tribune
all by your lonesome . . . and look at me. I’m gonna run for mayor if James Island ever gets its shit together. Together, we’ll own this city, Caroline. They don’t know how lucky they are to have us . . . but they will.”
Caroline appreciated the pep talk. This was why family was important, she reminded herself. Her family was her anchor. Without them—without Josh right now—she would be lying in a quivering heap on the oyster shell driveway.
She squeezed Josh’s hand. “I wonder if Mother had this much trouble in the beginning. I wish now I could ask her more about her early days. My grandfather died young and she inherited the job not much older than I am now.”
He let go of her hand and slid an arm around her shoulder, drawing her close. “I’m sure Flo had her own troubles, but you Aldridge ladies come from a long line of strong, solitary females.”
He might as well have said “alone,” because that’s where it felt like she was headed. Caroline peered up at him. “Do you think Mother ever dated?”