Brian Freeman - Goodbye to the Dead (Jonathan Stride Book 7)

But a book needed an ending, which he didn’t have yet. It would end when Janine was free.

‘What did you do today?’ she asked, making the question sound like an accusation.

‘I went to a pawn shop in Grand Rapids.’

‘Every week you’re in a different pawn shop,’ she snapped. ‘You’re never going to find anything after all this time. What do you hope to accomplish?’

‘The missing jewelry is still out there,’ Howard retorted. ‘Those are expensive pieces. Sooner or later, whoever has them is going to figure they’re safe. They’ll try to sell them.’

Carol opened her mouth to shout at him, the way she usually did, but this time she held her tongue. He’d heard it all before. The jewelry wasn’t missing; it was at the bottom of a lake, where Janine had tossed it, along with the gun. He would never find it. He was wasting his time.

His wife closed her eyes. She took a long, slow breath. He realized she was crying.

‘Tell me why,’ she said.

‘I’ve told you before.’

‘Tell me again,’ she said.

He got up from the chair with a sigh. There wasn’t much room to walk in the office anymore. Too many boxes, but he knew what was in each one. He went to his wife in the doorway, but they didn’t touch. They were strangers who shared a house and a child. It had stopped bothering him long ago. Couples grew older. They grew apart. If they were lucky, they stayed friends.

‘I put her in prison,’ he explained. ‘Me.’

‘No, you didn’t.’

‘It’s my fault. I wasn’t strong enough to stand my ground. If I can prove that she’s innocent—’

‘She’s not innocent, Howard. She’s guilty. She’s immoral. She’s the devil.’

‘Stop that,’ he snapped.

‘She took you away from me!’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

Carol laughed without a glint of humor. She spread her arms, pointing at the stacks of boxes, and her voice was wild with desperation. ‘Is all of this really more important than your marriage? Is this fantasy about her more real to you than I am?’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ he said.

She put her arms around his waist and held him tightly, and he let her do it. Her head sank against his chest. It felt the way it had years earlier. When a minute had passed, he gently peeled away her hands, and then he went back to his desk.

‘Why don’t you come to bed?’ Carol murmured. An invitation.

‘I will. In just a little bit.’

She was silent, but she didn’t leave. Then his wife said: ‘I know you see her, Howard.’

He looked up nervously. ‘What?’

‘I know you visit her in prison.’

Howard wanted to deny it, but he didn’t think she was fishing for the truth. She hadn’t pulled this idea out of the air. She knew. Besides, his face was a confession, and he didn’t want to hide it from her any longer. She stared at him, and they both didn’t say a word, and then she turned and left him alone in the basement.

Cat lay on her back, watching the stars. Her boyfriend lay beside her. She had no idea what time it was, but she knew it was late. She’d turned off her phone, because she didn’t want Stride and Serena spying on her. They didn’t need to know that she was only fifty yards from their cottage, sprawled with Al on the beach, with the lake waves reaching almost to their bare feet.

He placed a hand on the bare skin of her swollen belly. The baby thumped from inside, and he grinned and said, ‘Cool.’

Al wasn’t the father of her child. She didn’t know the father’s name; he was just one of the men who’d paid her for sex in the bad days. Funny that the man would never know he had a child. A son. She didn’t know what she’d tell her boy about his father when the time came. Or about herself.

Cat felt Al’s fingers caressing the side of her breast, but that was as far as it went. He hadn’t pressured her for sex. Just kissing and petting. If he’d wanted sex, she would have said yes. Some boys got freaked out about being with pregnant girls, but Al said it wasn’t that. It was respect, he said. She’d told him that sex didn’t mean anything to her, not after years of doing it for money, so he said he wanted to wait until it did.

She wondered if that meant he was getting what he needed from someone else. She didn’t want to ask.

He sat up on the beach and helped her to do the same. Superior was loud. The cloudless sky shimmered with stars. She felt a strange rush of contentment, but it was shadowed by the guilt of hiding things about herself from Stride and Serena. And from Al, too. Keeping secrets was a hard habit to break. In the past, her secrets had kept her alive.

‘My buddy gave me a couple joints,’ he said. ‘You want a puff?’

‘No, thanks. I shouldn’t. But you go ahead.’

He lit one and held the smoke in his mouth. When he exhaled, sweetness surrounded her. He had a warm beer can in the sand, too, and she’d allowed herself a swallow, but nothing more.

‘Anna’s not speaking to me,’ Cat said.

Anna was the waitress at the Grizzly Bear Bar.

Al said nothing. The joint did its thing. He looked as if he were far away, on one of the stars, where all their little problems didn’t matter.

‘She’s not even reading my texts,’ Cat went on. ‘She’s pissed because I didn’t tell her I was living with two cops.’

Her boyfriend sighed as he returned to earth, as if this were a conversation he didn’t want to have. ‘Well, why didn’t you tell her?’

‘I didn’t want to scare her away.’ Cat scrunched up her pretty face in annoyance. ‘It’s not fair. Serena doesn’t want me hanging out with any of my old friends. She told Fred at the bar she’d have the place busted if he let me inside again.’

‘Sorry.’ Al added: ‘Do Stride and Serena know about me?’

‘No.’

‘Do you think they’d say you shouldn’t see me?’

‘I don’t know. Probably.’

‘Well, you’re not going to be able to hide it forever,’ he said.

‘Have you told your mother?’

He grinned, because she’d just given him a taste of his own medicine. ‘Okay. No.’

‘So there.’

He put an arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer. She liked him a lot, even though they’d only known each other a couple of months. He was two years older than she was. His body was tall and scrawny, with long legs made for basketball. He wore his black hair trimmed to a point on his forehead, and his goatee made a wiry square against his dark skin. His voice was soft and mellow, and it made her think of distant thunder. He wore cheap, baggy clothes from Goodwill, except for his Converse sneakers, which were the one treat he allowed himself at Christmas.

She’d met him because of Anna. Anna volunteered at local churches, and every couple of months, she twisted Cat’s arm to go along with her on community projects. It wasn’t Cat’s favorite thing, but she did it to stay friends with her. In May, she’d spent a weekend painting Al’s mother’s house from top to bottom. Cat and Anna supplied the labor, and the church donated the paint. Al got them burgers at the Anchor Bar for free when they were done.

Despite working two jobs, Al never had much money. The mortgage ate up most of his paycheck, and a backlog of credit card bills took the rest. His father had died of a stroke five years earlier, which was when the debt began piling up. His mother had emphysema and couldn’t work. His younger siblings were still in school, which was where he wanted them to stay. Between his days working maintenance at the Duluth Zoo, and evenings and weekends washing dishes at the Anchor, he didn’t have much time to spend with Cat. Stolen moments like this were precious to her.

The beach was mostly deserted. A mild lake breeze rustled her perfect chestnut hair. In the dark, fifty yards north of them, she could see another couple making out under the starlight. She knew Al had to go soon, because he worked in the morning, but she wished they could stay here all night.