Jeff Shelby - Thread of Hope

There was something in his demeanor, though, that told me if Meredith was involved in prostitution, her father didn’t know. The uneasiness with which he spoke about getting her on birth control told me a lot. It wasn’t a subject he talked a lot about and probably tried never to think about. There were no signs that sex for his daughter was anything other than a normal parental concern.

So I brought up something else that I knew was going to piss him off.

“Have you ever hit Meredith?” I asked.

The coffee mug was at his lips when I asked. He watched me over the porcelain edge, his eyes trained on me as he drank. He swallowed, set the cup down carefully, adjusting it to the position he wanted it in. The waiter returned to the table and asked if there was anything else we needed. Neither of us said a word and he quickly stepped away.

“Fuck you,” he said.

“That’s not an answer.”

“Fuck you for asking,” he said, laying his hands flat on the table, the tips of his fingers beginning to dig into the linen tablecloth. “I’ve never touched her.”

“Sure about that?”

“Fuck you, Tyler. Where is this coming from?”

“Something I heard.”

“From where?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

His hands flinched on the table, like they wanted to grab more than just the tablecloth. “The fuck it doesn’t. You accuse me of hitting my own daughter, it matters. Because whoever told you that is a lying piece of shit.”

He was defensive, as anyone would be. But I didn’t see anything that indicated he was lying. He wasn’t avoiding my eyes, he wasn’t squirming in his chair. His eyes were locked with mine and he was rock solid across the table, waiting for an answer.

Which confused me.

“You remember an argument you had with her?” I asked. “Couple months back?”

“I can remember a lot of them,” he said through his teeth.

“On a Sunday? Out in your pool house?”

His eyes flickered.

“She was going camping?” I said.

“I remember,” he said, quietly.

I didn’t respond.

With a concerted effort, he brought his hands together, forcing them into a tight knot on the table. “She wanted to quit basketball.”

That was completely opposite from what Derek told us and, even thought it shouldn’t have, it took me by surprise.

“Came out of nowhere,” Jordan continued. “I still don’t know where it came from. But she told me that she was thinking about quitting, that she just didn’t want to play anymore.”

“Why?”

He shook his head. “She never really gave me a reason. She just said she was tired of it and was going to quit on Monday.”

Maybe she’d had a bad week of practice. Maybe she was exhausted from the demands of playing. But I had seen nothing that indicated she was finished with basketball the day I saw her in practice. She was energized, enthusiastic and playing like someone who was going to play forever.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“I blew up at her,” he said. “Lost it completely. I told her I wouldn’t allow it, that she’d put too much time and effort into the sport, not too mention that it would be letting down her teammates and coaches.” He shook his head slowly. “I was not going to let her quit this year.”

“This year?”

Jordan ran a hand through his hair, thinking before he spoke. “I told her she had to finish out this year. She started it and she had to finish it.” He tilted his head to the side. “But I told her that if she was truly serious about quitting, she could quit after the season. She doesn’t have to play in college if she doesn’t want to.”

I watched his face. “But you still want her to, don’t you?”

He thought about it, then shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. I enjoy watching her play. She’s good. Better than good. She’s busted her ass for years to be this good. So I’d hate to see her trash it all. But it’s her choice. I’m not one of those maniacal parents trying to relive my own shortcomings through her.” He smirked. “I hated sports as a kid and I don’t have a real love for them now. But I love seeing my daughter do something she’s good at and something that she’s said she’s always loved. That’s why I don’t want her to give it up, particularly when she couldn’t give me a reason.”

I believed him. He didn’t have that insane look about him that made sports parents so easy to identify. He just seemed like a father concerned about his daughter.

Except for one thing.

“So when you blew up at her?” I asked. “Is that when you hit her?”

Everything about him went rigid. “I told you. I didn’t hit her.” He leaned across the table. “I’ve never hit Meredith. I was furious with her, but I did not touch her. Ever.”

He was either a terrific actor or telling the truth.

I believed the latter, which confused me.

We sat there uneasily for a few moments, Jordan’s words hanging between us. He finally relaxed and sat back in his chair.

“Your turn,” he said. “Why are you asking me this?”

I was running the scenario through my head, trying to figure out which pieces to the puzzle didn’t fit. “When you saw her that day, in the pool house. Was she okay?”

“Physically?”

I nodded.

“Yes, fine,” he said, frowning at me.

“No bruises or marks on her face, anything like that?”

His frown intensified. “You don’t think I would’ve noticed that?”

I did think he would’ve noticed that. And that was the problem I was trying to rectify.

Jordan pressed me for what I’d learned. I gave him a rough replay of my interview with Derek, leaving out the part where Derek said Jordan hit her. Jordan wasn’t stupid. If I gave him an exact recount of our conversation with Derek, he would’ve put two and two together. Fact was, I still thought Jordan would even without that info. Jordan getting in the way, though, would be counterproductive because I didn’t trust him to get to the heart of things. Without doing that, I wasn’t sure we could find Meredith.

I fended him off for the rest of dinner. I knew he thought I was holding information back from him and I had no doubt he’d go immediately to Gina to find out what I’d left out.

I was fine with that because it gave me time to find Derek on my own.

The address on the sheet that I’d gotten at the high school listed the Weathers' address on the north side of the island, near the Navy base. It took me twenty minutes with traffic and the GPS in the rental to find the split-level stucco home, tucked onto one of the streets that looked back across the bay. The lawn was well-manicured, the hedges trimmed and the sidewalks clean. A stark white GMC Yukon was parked next to a red M-class Mercedes in the driveway.

I drove past the house, circled back and parked on the opposite side of the street, a block away with a good view of the home that Derek Weathers lived in.

My initial inclination was to knock down the door, kick the shit out of anyone who got in my way, then drag Derek out of the house by his balls before I kicked the shit out of him. There was a nagging feeling in my mind that he had been lying when Gina and I spoke to him earlier in the day. I couldn’t put my finger on it then, but after talking to Jon Jordan, I thought I’d figured it out.

I resisted that initial urge to man-handle Derek because I wasn’t sure that would get me all the info I needed. Besides, I really wasn’t sure whether or not he knew where Meredith was. But I thought he was a good place to start.

I’d been in the car about half an hour, hearing the radio, but not really listening to it when he finally came out of the house, dressed in baggy jeans, an untucked button-down shirt and a baseball hat turned backward on his head.