The Ultimate Romantic Suspense Set (8 romantic suspense novels from 8 bestselling authors for 99c)

by Lee Taylor

  “Nope. Couldn’t care less. Sorry,” I reply, shrugging my shoulders, feeling the hairs on the back of my neck prickle up.

  He stares down at the carpet for a moment. He’s really an attractive man without his tight polyester uniform. Reminds me of my dad, somehow. Maybe it’s the eyes, sincere. I was always a sucker for my dad’s eyes.

  “I can get into a lot of trouble for telling you this, but Speck likes his life in prison. A lot of inmates do. Specially the guys who were made trustees. They got it the easiest. The gangs live like they did out on the streets. Run the place. Run each other. Do pretty much what they want, when they want to. The guards don’t have no authority anymore. The gang leaders got the control. Warden’s hands are tied by politicians. Maybe you could do something with that information. Use it somewhere.”

  “Sorry, can’t help you. Not the crusader type. I cast extras. Don’t care about the politics of a prison. Go to the media. They get fat on that kind of stuff.”

  He’s silent for a moment, then he stands and walks toward the door. I’m relieved. Suddenly he stops, turns and says, “I’d lose my job. Got three kids at home and a wife that has M.S. Can’t take the chance. I thought since your dad was a cop—”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Warden ran a background on both you and Mike before he let you in.”

  My pulse starts to race. “What else do you know?”

  “Everything. Where you grew up. Where your mother worked. That your dad was one of the first cops on the scene in the townhouse.”

  “So what.” The guy’s starting to get under my skin now. I pull out a cigarette, light it and pour myself a shot of bourbon.

  “And that he died a year later from a heart attack.”

  I down my liquor. “He had a bad heart. What are you getting at?”

  “Your mother died a few years after him.”

  I walk straight over to him wanting to slap his fat, ugly face. “Where do you get off coming in here and laying all this shit on me? Who the fuck are you? What do you want from me?”

  “Calm down. I’ll go, but I think you want to help me. That you have to help me. That Speck’s eating at you and you can’t stand it. Was that really an accident when you hit that tree a few years ago, or did you have something else in mind?”

  “Get the hell out of my room,” I yell and swing open the door. The late afternoon sun breaks through my room like a beacon, falling on him, as if he’s the star of some play walking out on a red carpet with fans ready to applaud his every move. I hate him, just as I hated my father for that last year. They can see through me, know my weakness, know my secret.

  “Get out,” I repeat, standing beside the door, crazy from the rage shooting through my veins.

  Captain Bob leaves. I slam the door and slide down the front of it, sobbing.

  Gotta get out of here. Gotta get to New York City.

  My name is Mary Ann Jordan.

  I didn’t live at the townhouse, didn’t want to. I lived at home with my family: four brothers, one sister, and a great set of parents. I was in no big hurry to be out on my own, but I did like to spend the night with my friends once in a while. That’s what I was doing at the townhouse that night—a sleep-over with my best friend Suzie. Something we had done a hundred times before.

  Suzie and I had spent the day going over plans for her wedding to my brother, Phil. Even looked at Serbian Hall for the reception. It was going to be one of the biggest and finest weddings South Chicago ever saw. We were sure of it; after all, nothing could stop the two of us once we fixed our minds on a goal. Just like nursing. We were determined to be the best. The Florence Nightingales of South Chicago Community. Well, at least we were going to try. In our nursing class, being the best was an ambition we all shared.

  There had been something extraordinary about the class of ‘66 right from the start. All of us—we were in tune, in step, in sync with one another. Each helping the other whenever we got stuck. We were never jealous when one of us received praise from a teacher or was rewarded for something special we did. It just gave the rest of us a reason to celebrate, and brother could we ever celebrate. We were the queens of celebration and fun. Sometimes I’d laugh so hard that my cheeks would hurt for days afterward.

  We grew up during those three years, sharing the hardships while we “served our time” at the hospital, or worked away from each other for those three miserable months in state institutions, worrying, then calling to make sure each was all right.

  Somehow, we felt that the hospital used us for slave labor so they wouldn’t have to hire any more nurses. We would have to do almost everything an RN did but without the pay. One of our responsibilities was to run the floors at night and sometimes, during a crisis, had to turn to each other for help. It was in those times, those days and nights when we found true friendship.

  Richard Speck may have taken my life, but he could never take away the love we had for one another. There are some friendships, some memories, some emotions that go on forever and no one person has the power to alter its force.

  The three years I spent in the company of my classmates were, perhaps, the happiest years of my life.

  Ten

  July 11, 1966

  “You know, if Wolf could get our letters to the Beatles before the concert, he could tell them how sincere our love is and I betcha they’ll want to meet us,” Sharon announced while Lisa and I set up the Ouija board in the middle of the tent. The Beatles concert was just a few weeks away, August twelfth, to be exact, and we were all so excited that it was hard not to talk about it twenty-four hours a day. We could only afford balcony tickets for three dollars and seventy-five cents each, but at least our seats were in the front of our section of the balcony.

  We put our board on an old coffee table that Sharon’s mother kept in the basement. For sound effects I brought my red and white record player with the 45 stack changer, along with some Peter and Gordon, Jerry and the Pacemakers and Herman’s Hermits. Lisa brought her collection of Beatles singles and Sharon’s dad set up one of those thick black extension cords out of a basement window. We were all set for an evening of British invasion.

  “And we could write our letters on my new stationery. It’s so beautiful the lads would be sure and notice it,” I said almost as if I had just had a revelation.

  Sharon told us to hold all our thoughts for Ronald, our spiritual connection. We did.

  The three of us sat cross-legged around a small cherry-wood coffee table. Each of us stuffed a pillow or blanket under our bottoms for height. We each gently placed an index finger on the Coke bottle cap that sat in the middle of our homemade Ouija board. Ferry Cross the Mersey played in the background as Lisa asked Ronald, “Are you aware of the German sailor who rented a room next door?”

  We waited.

  No movement.

  “Ask him another question,” I ordered.

  “Ronald, are you there?”

  We waited. Lisa asked again. Finally, the bottle cap started moving in no particular direction. She repeated her question.

  Circular moves, nothing specific.

  “Are you some other spirit?”

  The cap shot up to YES. Sharon and I freaked and jumped away from the board.

  Lisa said, “Get back here. You’re going to ruin it.”

  We obeyed her order.

  “Who are you?” Sharon asked.

  The cap spelled out Y-O-U-R F-R-I-E-N-D.

  She kept on asking it to give us a name, but it wouldn’t. Finally she gave up and wanted to know about the sailor.

  “Is the sailor German?”

  Y-E-S

  “Does he know the Beatles?”

  Y-E-S

  “Should we give our love letters to him?”

  The cap hesitated, as if it were being pulled in many different directions.

  “Are you pressing down on the cap?” I asked Lisa who seemed too intent on the bottle cap. I pulled away from the board. “I think you’re mo
ving it on purpose. Are you?”

  “No. Stop talking and concentrate. You’re gonna break the mood.”

  I put my finger back on the cap and we all waited.

  Then: F-I-N-D T-H-E S-A-I-L-O-R

  Sharon pulled her hand away from the board. “See,” she said. “The spirit wants us to find the sailor. Now we have to find Wolf and give him our letters. The spirit said so.”

  “It just told us to find the sailor. It didn’t tell us to give him our letters,” Lisa argued.

  “Oh Lisa, do you have to have every little detail spelled out for you? He said he was our friend.”

  “We don’t know that. This spirit could be the devil. I don’t know if I like this whole thing,” Lisa countered.

  “What do you mean? What about the German ship? We asked for a sign and we got it. The ship was a sign from God. We all agreed.” I was getting mad. Lisa was backing out of our plans.

  The three of us argued like that until Lisa decided to go look for the sailor herself and ask him straight out if he knew the Beatles. When we followed her out of the tent it was around ten-thirty.

  We didn’t tell Sharon’s mother that we were leaving the backyard—she wouldn’t have let us go out that late—so Sharon stacked up as many 45s as she could and assumed her mother wouldn’t check on us as long as the music held out. We figured we had about an hour or so. I rigged up some pillows so that the shadows looked like we were sitting inside the tent, and Lisa led us out of the yard without anyone being the wiser.

  We three were very clever at getting in and out of places without any adult ever catching us. We did it all the time at McCormick Place—knew the Aerie Crown Theater like our own home. Just last April when Peter and Gordon performed there, we sneaked backstage after the show to get autographs. If it wasn’t for Ringo, I’d marry Peter Asher any day. He’s so fine. That night, we stayed at the Sheraton Hotel and met some of The Raiders in the lobby. Sharon kissed Keith Allison, but she’d kissed a boy before so she wasn’t afraid. Sharon’s older sister had been our chaperone, along with their cousin, Beth. They stayed up in the room mostly and let us roam the hotel. Very cool chaperones.

  “Do you think Wolf’s in one of the taverns?” Lisa asked once we were clear of the house. It was really dark out, only a sliver of a moon.

  “We could go inside and see,” I answered,

  “Yeah, but the bartender will kick us out,” Sharon said.

  “Not if we say that we’re looking for my dad,” Lisa argued.

  “But what if your dad is in one of the taverns. Won’t he be mad if we’re outside this late?” I asked knowing perfectly well that her father probably was in one of the local taverns and he would be furious with all of us and make her go home.

  “You’re right, but we can peek in the windows at least.”

  And that’s what we did, for almost two hours. We walked around the neighborhood peeking into tavern windows and telling each other our Beatles stories.

  The neighborhood looked eerie at night. It took on a different personality, a different tone. Ominous, especially when U.S. Steel poured slag and the sky lit up like a ball of fire. It was the dirty, old part of South Chicago that didn’t really fit in anywhere. Commercial Avenue wasn’t part of the East Side, nor part of the South Side. Whenever I’d tell someone where I lived they’d get a weird look on their face as if it wasn’t even on a map.

  The place had a sort of gray look to it. Mom said it was from all the soot that came pouring out of the smoke stacks from the surrounding steel mills. Most of the men worked in the mills and after a while they developed some sort of lung problem, but the money was good so they kept right on working.

  There were no front lawns and very few trees. The houses were mostly two-story apartment buildings with brown brick-like siding. One family would live upstairs and another downstairs or a family would live over their own storefront. Some older storefronts were now converted apartments, with blinds covering the glass windows that used to show off baked goods, groceries or the latest Maytag washers. There were a few catholic churches, rectories for the priests to live in, and a convent for the nuns who taught at Saint Patrick’s, which was the only nearby grammar school. Serbian Hall was the place to hold a wedding reception. We had a shoemaker—who was also the local bookie—a few independent grocery stores, a restaurant or two and a tavern on every corner. It was the taverns that we were most interested in.

  “Here comes a cop,” Lisa said and we all ducked into a gangway until he passed. Gangways were scary places. They were the passageways between two buildings and dark as slate at night. I hated them.

  “Is he gone yet?” I whined, worried that he could be a friend of my father’s, and terrified about being stuck at the back of the gangway.

  “Yeah,” Lisa said and slowly walked out. I leaped ahead, pushing them out of my way.

  There was a tavern not ten feet from where we stood. We peeked inside the front windows but couldn’t see anything. A young man came out. At first glance I thought he was our sailor until his face caught the lights of a passing car. He was just a guy from the neighborhood, a greaser type, wearing a leather jacket with his hair combed back in a D.A.

  “What’re you girls doing out so late? You could get into a lot of trouble out here alone,” he said.

  “We’re looking for somebody. Maybe you’ve seen him,” Sharon said and walked right up to him, as bold as could be. He looked her over from top to bottom. I hid behind Lisa.

  “Oh yeah? Who?” His eyes lingered on Sharon’s breasts. She pushed them out and twirled her hair with her fingers.

  “A sailor. He’s tall, with a German accent. Has sandy-colored hair and a tattoo on his right arm.”

  “Every sailor I ever met got a tattoo on his arm. What’s his name?”

  “We don’t know that for sure. We think it’s Wolf,” Lisa said.

  “Well I ain’t heard of no Wolf comin’ in here tonight. But I’m here. I’ll be your Wolf tonight.”

  Sharon giggled.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  The greaser took a step closer to Sharon. I backed up while Lisa grabbed Sharon’s arm.

  “Come on. Let’s go,” Lisa ordered but Sharon kept flirting until Lisa pulled hard on her arm.

  “You better listen to your friends or you’re gonna get me into a lot of trouble,” he said, as he brushed up against Sharon. Lisa pulled her away.

  Finally, Sharon moved away from the guy, giggled and we all ran up the street with Sharon turning back every now and then to wave.

  We ran up to the corner, and even thought about going across the bridge to look inside some of the East Side taverns, but the bridge looked spooky at night. The sidewalk from Commercial Avenue up to the bridge ran along a chain-link fence on one side and the other side was mostly dirt with weeds and gravel. There weren’t very many cars on the street anymore and even though we had each other for protection, I didn’t think we should go.

  “Let’s go home. Maybe we can catch Wolf in the morning before he leaves,” I said looking over at the bridge.

  “Yeah,” Lisa said, yawning. “I’m getting tired.”

  “Oh, you’re just chickening out,” Sharon taunted.

  “No I’m not,” Lisa argued. “We can’t find him and Carly’s the chicken ‘cause she doesn’t want to go across the bridge to Pete’s Tap and look.”

  “I’m not a chicken. Once we cross the bridge it’s a long way over to Pete’s Tap. It’s late. We’ve been gone a long time. What if your mother is looking for us right now?”

  “I don’t care,” Sharon answered. “So we get in trouble. So what! I say we go across and find him. The spirit told us to find the sailor.” She was determined to walk across that bridge.

  “I’m tired. Let’s go back,” Lisa whined. “We can take turns watching Pauline’s front porch and when he comes back I’ll ask him if he knows the Beatles. I promise. Besides, we may miss him if we stay away much longer. He probably has to board a ship tomorro
w. Let’s go home.”

  We were all pretty tired so we went home.

  When we got back to the tent and crawled inside, Sharon’s mother appeared to say goodnight with a plate of cookies and a pitcher of milk. She told us to turn down the record player because Pauline might complain about the noise. The stack had just been started again and there was a note next to the record player. I could hardly make it out. “Beth wants you guys to come visit her tomorrow. She has a surprise for you…and stay in the yard now or I’ll tell.” I knew the writing. It was Sharon’s sister, Mandy. She had saved our butts.

  While Sharon’s mother continued to give us orders, I peeked out of our mesh window at Pauline’s front porch and who should come weaving into view? Wolf. He was so drunk he actually ran into Sharon’s fence and then held on for a moment to steady himself before he walked the few steps up the sidewalk and then climbed the cement stairs onto Pauline’s front porch. Lisa was busy with the plate of cookies so I couldn’t get her attention, but I got Sharon’s.

  We watched Wolf make his way up the stairs. When he finally got to the top there must have been somebody else on the porch because I heard him say, “Damn, there ain’t no girls around here, not even at Pete’s. What kind of place is this?” Then a door slammed.

  Sharon and I had to hold each other down. What was he talking about? We were girls. We wanted to yell out to him. Invite him over. Stay up all night and talk about the Beatles, but there was Sharon’s mother making us do something we didn’t want to do. Making us eat cookies. Who cared about cookies at a time like this?

  Lisa did.

  Eleven

  September 9, 1987

  I spend most of the night at Bud’s Place, alone, in a booth, drinking straight bourbon, thinking. Can’t get the Captain out of my mind. Too many questions. What does he want from me? I can’t help him. Don’t know how. Let somebody else do his dirty work. So what if he has three kids and a sick wife. What do I care? That’s his problem, not mine. He wants to blow the whistle, let him blow it. Probably get some kind of award. All that crap about the gangs and the trustees—what do I care?