Jeff Shelby - Thread of Hope

The afternoon sun was high and prominent and the heat weighed on me, unwanted. I sat down beneath the sprawling portico, slipping into the shade.

I was trying to be sympathetic to Olivia Jordan’s situation, but failing. I knew that my own loss played into those feelings, but I didn’t think that if Elizabeth was still with me and Lauren, and we were still married, that I’d feel any different. I didn’t know what had drawn Olivia into prostitution and I didn’t care. She'd made the choice and had to live with it, which wasn’t an easy thing to do. But she'd made the choice. I didn’t see how taking out her frustration on her daughter helped.

By all accounts, Meredith was a good kid. I knew that wasn’t the entire story, but it appeared that she had friends and people liked her. Regardless of the choices she was making now, she didn’t deserve to be looked at as an ugly talisman by Olivia.

And no matter how long Olivia thought she could keep her secrets buried, she was wrong. Secrets don’t stay buried.

They just wait to be dug up.

I was halfway back to Coronado when my cell chirped.

“I checked with vice here,” Mike Lorenzo told me. “Nothing on Olivia Jordan. She runs clean.”

“Okay.”

“You don’t sound surprised.”

I wasn’t. “I just finished talking to her. She’s screwed up, but she gave it up awhile ago. Pretty sure about that.”

“Gotcha. I did get something else, though” he said. “Not sure if it matters or not.”

“Alright.”

“I called my buddy Tully over in Vegas again, just asked him to poke around her name, see if anything shook out,” he said. “He dug up one thing.”

I pulled over to the side of the road. I kept forgetting that California was a hands-free state and I didn’t want to get stopped while I was paying attention to Mike’s call.

“He tried to track back to her, see if any of her old connections were still live,” he explained. “Turned up the name of the piece of crap who was supposedly her pimp. Tommy Lutton.”

Her manager, Olivia had called him. Thomas. She’d even tried to dress up his name.

“But his ticket was punched awhile back,” Mike said. “Found dead in an alley behind a Denny’s.”

A dull flash fired inside my head. “Oh yeah?”

“Couple of bullets in his face,” he said. “Shooter never found.”

My stomach clenched. “When was this?”

More pages flipped. “Awhile back, actually. Maybe sixteen years? Can’t find the date on here.”

I didn’t need the date. Olivia had been adamant that he would never bother her again. Now I knew why.

“Joe?” Mike asked. “Joe?”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

He paused. “That do anything for you?”

I watched cars fly by on the highway, a knot in my stomach. I wasn’t a cop anymore, but the instinct to act like a cop was always with me and influenced everything that I did. I was certain that Tommy Lutton’s death was not a coincidence and that Olivia Jordan had, at the very least, played a part in it. Maybe she hadn’t pulled the trigger, but she was involved. But I wasn’t sure what was to be gained, either, by exposing her. It wouldn’t help Chuck and it wouldn’t help me locate Meredith.

“No,” I finally said. “That doesn’t do anything for me.”

Gina Coleman was waiting at my hotel for me.

“Charges are dropped,” she said.

I looked around the hotel lobby. “Where’s Jordan?”

“Probably trying to find someone to choke,” she said. “He’s furious.”

“Good for him.”

“I get that you feel like you got screwed,” she said. “And I’m not even saying you didn’t. But you agreed to help find Meredith and it hasn’t happened.”

“I can’t just snap my fingers.”

“No, you can’t. But you show up at his house and pull that power play, you can’t expect him to be happy about it.”

“You think he expected me to be happy about kicking the shit out of my friend?” I asked. “Sending two assholes to cut him down for something he didn’t do in the first place?”

She started to say something, but I cut her off.

“The same guy that you allegedly give a shit about,” I said.

Her cheeks reddened. “I didn’t know.”

“Sure.”

Irritation flared in her eyes. “I didn’t know.”

“Well, now you know. Bother you at all?”

She stepped in closer to me, the red having spread to most of her face. “Of course it bothers me. That’s why I just quit my job.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Nothing to say to that?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “No wiseass comeback, no sarcastic rebuke questioning my loyalty?” She clicked her tongue. “You must be tired.”

She'd caught me off guard and I deserved what she was giving me.

“I’m sorry you had to quit your job,” I said.

“Sure you are.”

“I am.”

“Fuck you.”

She turned and headed for the lobby doors.

I stood there for a moment, not sure what to do. She was angry at me for a couple of reasons, but she was also clearly angry about quitting. She needed time to cool off, but I didn’t want to waste the time.

I followed her outside. “I am sorry about your job, whether or not you believe it.”

She was standing in front of the hotel, arms crossed, annoyance set like concrete on her face, her eyes like hollow-tipped bullets. Aimed at me.

“But I still need your help,” I said. “Chuck still needs your help.”

“Chuck is clear,” she said, the concrete cracking a bit.

“No, he won’t be clear until Meredith is found and she clears him,” I said. “It’ll stick to him until she says it was a lie, charges or no charges.”

She thought about that.

“Did you know Olivia Jordan was a hooker?” I asked.

The concrete shattered completely. “What?”

“I need your help,” I repeated. “Come inside and let me tell you what I know. Please.”

After a moment, she nodded and we went inside and sat down at a table in the hotel cafe. I explained what I’d learned from Mike and from Olivia, leaving out the part about Olivia having possibly killed her pimp. I watched her expression the same way I’d watched Olivia Jordan’s. If she was aware of anything I was telling her, she fooled me.

“That is really hard to believe,” she said when I’d finished.

“Tell me something,” I said. “It’s been bugging me since Olivia told me. Wouldn't Jordan have checked out Olivia before marrying her? Wouldn’t he have done some sort of look into her background?”

She cocked her head to the side, running it through her mind. “I don’t know. Now? For sure. It’s one of the things I spent the majority of my time on. Anyone that was working for him, we did lengthy background checks on.” She squinted, like she was trying to see into the past. “But back then? I don’t know. He hadn’t amassed his wealth yet and his company wasn’t nearly what it is today. It’s hard to say. I’ve never for a second thought that their marriage was a sham.” Her eyes came back to their normal gauge. “I think he loves her. You don’t normally run your prospective fiance through the system, you know?”

I did know. I thought back to when Lauren and I were engaged. If anyone had suggested that I needed to check her history, I would’ve thought they were insane. But I wasn’t putting together a multi-million dollar fortune and I hadn’t met my future wife, by chance, in Las Vegas.

“He had security people before you, right?” I asked.

“I met the guy I replaced,” she said, shrugging. “I don’t know anything about the ones before him. I’m not sure how long ago he created the position.” Her mouth twisted into a frown. “And it’d be a little hard for me to find out now.”