Mischief 24/7 (2 page)

“I’m sorry, Court. I know what it looked like. I was there, remember? The door to the office closed, Rockne shut outside that door, whining and agitated. The nearly empty bottle of whiskey for liquid courage. Teddy’s body on the other side of that door, slumped back in his chair, the gun on the floor beside him after he’d… after he’d been shot. I know, Court. I know how it looked. I’ll never forget how it looked.”
“And the front door locked, the alarm on and no signs of forcible entry anywhere,” Court added, his voice tight, as if he didn’t want to say what he was saying, but likewise, knew that some things had to be said.

“I don’t
remember,”
Jade told him. “Honestly, Court, I don’t. Is that it? Have you been thinking that I lied to you all about that? About the alarm being on or off, the door locked or unlocked? Do you think I only said I don’t remember about the security code because otherwise the verdict of suicide is impossible to argue? How long have you thought I’ve been lying?”

“Not lying, Jade. Not intentionally. But sometimes we do forget what we don’t want to remember.”

“Then I should have been able to forget finding Teddy like that. Holding Rockne back so he couldn’t contaminate the scene when all I wanted to do was go to Teddy, shake him back to life. Calling Jolie and Jess and telling them our father was dead. Living through the hell of the medical examiner and a bunch of cops poking around the house for hours, all of them talking about Teddy and other cops who couldn’t take civilian life and ate their guns,” Jade said, blinking back tears. “Why can’t I do that, Court? Why can’t I forget
any of that? Why can’t I forget that Teddy went to his grave labeled both a murderer and a suicide, disgraced, denied the departmental funeral his long years of service to Philadelphia demanded?”

Court had gotten up from the couch and come to sit beside Jade as she spoke. Now he gathered her close. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m a jerk for bringing it up at all. I’m so, so sorry.”

“But you’ve been thinking it,” Jade said against his chest even as she put her palm against his shirtfront and pushed herself away from him. She dipped her head forward, allowing a curtain of long, golden-brown hair to fall forward and hide her profile. “Sam, too? And Matt?”

“We’ve discussed it. But two things still can’t be explained. One, Teddy didn’t leave a note, and we think he would have done that. And two? You’re right, Jade, Teddy wouldn’t do that to you. He wouldn’t have let you find him. If he were going to kill himself, he wouldn’t have done it where you could see what he’d done. He loved you too much.”

Jade wiped her eyes with the handkerchief Court had passed to her. “Thank you. Unfortunately those conclusions come from our feelings. The cops worked with what they saw. Just the way they saw Teddy on Melodie Brainard’s front-door
security cameras, the last visitor the camera picked up before she was found doing the dead man’s float in the swimming pool.” She made a face. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. Although dead woman’s float doesn’t sound any better.”

“You were around Teddy all the time,” Court reminded her. “Sometimes you sound a lot like him.”

“And that’s a bad thing,” Jade said, sighing, willing herself to be composed, or to behave as if she were. “Or at least, it wasn’t a good thing when I met your friends. Savannah Harper? She was always after me to tell her stories about how to shadow a cheating husband.”

“She would be, considering she’s done some fairly extensive cheating of her own on poor Buzz.”

Jade allowed herself to be diverted. “She got caught?”

“Caught, forgiven, and she’s back at it. Jade, many of the people I associate with are simply social or business acquaintances. Not my friends. You knew that. But I did pretty much toss you into the deep end with their wives, didn’t I? I’m sorry about that.”

Jade moved to return his handkerchief, but
then reconsidered, and blew her nose into it. “It’s all right. It was even fun at first, listening to them, sorting them out. But I wasn’t built to be a society wife, Court. We both know that now. It wasn’t that I couldn’t fit, because I think I could, if I worked on it. I just didn’t want to fit. Country club lunches and charity balls? They’re not my thing.”

“You were bored.”

“No, Court, I was being
smothered.
Melting away, losing myself. There’s a difference.” She looked at him, felt a small catch in her belly and reached once more for the stack of files. Those files were the only things she could hold on to right now. Solving the remaining cold cases, praying one of them led to Teddy’s killer.

“I was a jackass, only thinking of my own happiness,” Court said, and she sliced a quick look back at him, seeing the hurt in his face.

Such a handsome man. That’s what had caught her attention at first, his dark good looks, but his innate goodness had been what held that attention. She couldn’t stand to see him hurting.

“I should have told you I was unhappy—that was unfair of me. And we were both pretty stubborn, as I remember it. You were always gone on business, and Teddy needed help back here until
he could replace me. One thing led to another, didn’t it? But that’s all water under the bridge, right?”

“Is it?”

“Court, I…” She dumped several files in Court’s lap. “Let’s do this now, clear off Sam’s priceless antique table, sort out what we need and don’t need. I can’t count on Jessica having her head anywhere near the game for at least a few days, and I think we’re getting too close to slack off while she walks around with stars in her eyes.”

“We’re going to have to talk about this sooner or later, Jade. You do know that. I love you. I’ve never stopped loving you.”

“Court, please,” Jade all but begged him. “Not now.”

“Not now. That’s becoming a familiar refrain.”

“I’m sorry, Court. But I really can’t do this now. Every day that Teddy is believed to be a murderer is one day too many. If we’re…if I’m to have any future, I’ve got to correct the past.”

“Sometimes that isn’t possible, Jade. Sometimes we simply have to close the door and move on.”

“Like we have? Our divorce was final almost a year ago. Have we moved on, either of us? Would you be here now if Teddy hadn’t died? Is it time we gave up, Court, and closed the door on us?”

Court looked at her for a long moment, his deep brown eyes unreadable. “Point taken. Pass me one of those folders.”

Jade handed him one of the files, blindly, as she couldn’t read the words on the tab through the tears in her eyes, and then pulled another file onto her lap. She opened it, staring at nothing as she felt Court’s assessing gaze on her, burning into her. What was he thinking?

Two years earlier

I
T WAS THREE DAYS
after Christmas. Court sat at the hotel bar with Sam Becket, watching as his cousin made a valiant attempt to drown his sorrows with gin and tonic. Clearly not a dedicated drinker, his cousin, or else he’d go for a single malt, neat, and doubled.

“Tell me again why you didn’t just go after her?” Court said, thinking it might be a good idea to keep Sam talking, instead of drinking. “You know, fly to the Coast, grovel, plead, grovel some more?”

“I told you,” Sam said, lifting his glass and looking into it, frowning. He set it back down. “I don’t even like gin and tonic. Teddy warned me away.”

“Teddy. That’s the father, right? Jolie’s over twenty-one, isn’t she? It wasn’t as if you needed his permission.”

“Jolie’s his daughter. He knows her better than anyone. Obviously better than I do, or I wouldn’t have offered her money.”

Court picked up his own glass. Bottled water with a twist of lemon, as he had elected himself designated driver, even though he was staying at the hotel and that meant driving Sam back to his own house in the middle of a snowstorm. But these were the sacrifices one made for family. “I have to hand it to you, Sam, that’s unique. Here’s money—marry me. Yet slightly lacking in romance, I’d say.”

Sam shot his cousin a sharp look. “I offered her money to live on while she waited tables or whatever it is out-of-work actors do to survive while looking for their big break. She threw it back in my face. Literally.” He pushed back on the bar stool. “Damn it, Court, I was trying to help.”

“But that help came with a time limit. I remember this part. Go to Hollywood, Jolie, fall flat on your face—but eat well while you’re doing it—and then come home at the end of one year and marry me. You ought to think about a career in the diplomatic corps. Especially since, last I heard, she’s still out there and you’re still here, kicking yourself in the backside.”

“I’m done kicking myself for that one, Court. I’ve done something else since that fiasco. The dumbest damn thing I’ve ever done.”

“Dumber than the day you pinned a pillowcase to your shoulders
and flew
off the garage roof?”

Sam smiled at the memory, rubbing the arm he had broken in the fall into some saving shrub. “I
was seven. I had an excuse. I don’t have an excuse for this one. I know a few people out there in La-La Land and I… I bought Jolie’s way into the worst movie ever released straight to video.”

“Porn?”

“Very funny. No, Court, a horror flick. You know, kids out for a night of necking in the woods, the obligatory masked madman running through those woods, chopping up teenagers with a souped-up Cuisinart or something. She had a few lines and then got some pretty good close-ups where she had to look scared and scream a lot.”

“All right, I think I’m beginning to follow this,” Court said, commandeering a bowl of peanuts from the bartender. When you own the hotel, someone is always watching, ready to supply anything you want. “The film bombs, Jolie bombs, and she gives up, comes home to pick out china patterns. So? Tell me about the flaw in this master plan, because obviously there was one.”

Sam ran a hand through his already mussed dark blond hair. “So this big Hollywood type saw her, said he’d never seen anyone the camera loved more since Julia Roberts, and signed her to a three-picture deal. The first one isn’t out for another month or so, but according to the grapevine, she’s brilliant in it.”

“Ah, hoist with your petard,” Court said, toasting Sam’s debacle with bottled water. “Or something like that. Now what?”

“Now I face the fact that I’ve lost and I’ve got
to learn to live without her, that’s now what. Now I keep doing what I’ve been doing.”

“Burying yourself in work,” Court said, thinking of Sam’s legacy separate from the Becket family inheritance, a large import/export antiques empire that had its beginnings nearly two hundred years ago and, in the past few years, a steady increase in high-end retail antique stores. Court had leased him a large area inside this same hotel and many of his hotels around the world. “How’s that going for you?”

Sam held up his glass. “How does it look like it’s going? But enough of me crying in my gin and tonic. How are things with you? I know you just flew in from somewhere. Where was it this time? London? Paris?”

“Rome. You’ll be happy to know that your share of our latest acquisition to the Becket family portfolio includes an owner’s suite overlooking Vatican City. It’s yours to use whenever you want.”

“Sweet,” Sam said, clinking glasses with Court. “I propose a toast. To Ainsley Becket and his entrepreneurial spirit. Shipbuilding, land, thoroughbred horses, banks, developing industries. He was a man ahead of his time.”

“He was a privateer and a pirate, chased out of his own country before he could be hanged,” Court said, smiling. “Come to think of it, so are we. Pirates, that is. We just play more within the rules than he did two centuries ago.”

“Good, because I don’t think getting hanged from some yardarm is on my to-do list for the New Year. How about you? Court? I said, how about you?”

“Hmm?” Court had turned on his bar stool, his interest caught and held by the woman just entering the bar. He watched her steady progress toward him, everyone else in the crowded room fading away as if a spotlight was on her, moving with her.

She was stunning, from her unbelievably long legs to the artlessly piled honey-brown hair that made him itch to find the pins that held it in place and slide them out one by one, all those warm-looking curls cascading down over her bared breasts. The clear mental image surprised him. “A couple of days after the fact, but better late than never. Thank you, Santa Claus.”

“Santa Claus? What the hell are you talking—Oh, damn it all to hell. What’s she doing here?”

“You know the lady?” Court asked, dragging his gaze away from the woman who was heading for a bar stool two down from him. A good thing he was civilized, or he’d push the guy next to him to the floor so she could sit beside him. “Talk to me, cousin. If I’m going to propose marriage to the woman, I probably should know something about her.”

Sam kept his head down, a hand raised to shield his profile. “That’s Jade Sunshine. Jolie’s
older sister. She works with Teddy at the Sunshine Detective Agency. She’s a PI, Court. And you’d have about as much luck trying to tackle a porcupine. Maybe more luck with the porcupine, come to think of it. Trust me. You don’t want any part of that.”

Court was silent for a full three beats. “Really. She’s a private detective? Do you think she’s here on a job or something? At least she isn’t a high-class call girl, which would have ruined every-thing. You know, thinking ahead, for when one of our kids asks how I met their mother.”

“Which one of us was drinking tonight? Look, Court, give me your elevator key. I don’t think I should drive tonight, so I’ll crash with you.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. I may have plans for that suite. Believe me, cousin, they don’t include you as a roommate.”

“You’re casting Jade in that role?” Sam peeked out from behind his hand to grin at his cousin. “I’ve got fifty bucks here that says it doesn’t happen.”

“Just go to the front desk and tell them I want you set up in a room, all right? Now, if you’re not going to introduce us, just go away. If you two don’t like each other, you won’t be any help, anyway.”

Sam slid off the stool, his head still averted. “It’s not a question of dislike. It’s just that I hurt Jolie, or at least that’s how Jade sees it. Stick to first names,” he advised quietly. “She hears Becket, and you can kiss any ideas you’ve got goodbye.”