The Big Keep: A Lena Dane Mystery (Lena Dane Mysteries)

by Melissa F. Olson

  Happily, at that moment Toby rushed up the hall. I’d never been so glad to see him. Flanagan took a reluctant step back to let him by as he rushed to gather me into his arms. I hugged him back, breathing in his special Toby-scent.

  “Hey, Forsythe,” Flanagan muttered, backing up further. “See you later, Dane.” He turned to skulk off. Flanagan is understandably a little afraid of my husband. I waved good-bye to poor Sarabeth over Toby’s shoulder as she followed him toward the exit.

  Toby ignored them both. “Are you okay?” he breathed into my hair.

  “Yep. No big deal. No shots fired.” I said lightly.

  “Good,” Toby said. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled. “I knew how tired you were, and I thought I was just gonna go give her a ride home.” Okay, that was bordering on a lie, but I thought I could defend it if push came to shove.

  “It’s okay.” Toby hugged me tighter. “Listen, baby, about the other night. I’m really sorry.”

  “Me, too.” I basked in the hug, enjoying the familiar comfort of Toby. The adrenaline had worn off, and I felt tired and worn thin.

  After another long moment, he pulled back to look at my face. “No, I mean, I’m sorry I got pissy about the kid thing. I just really want to try for a baby, but I know you’re not ready to leave this part of your life behind yet.” He pulled my body against his, smoothing hair off my face. “Anyway, we’ve got plenty of time. We don’t have to talk about it now, okay?” He hugged me to him again.

  I was glad he couldn’t see my face. My stomach churned, either from nerves or from the baby trying to communicate it’s unhappiness with me. “Okay.”

  I considered for a second, and decided to go for broke, because in many important matters, I am not a good person. “So you’re okay with me taking the Christianti case?”

  Toby shrugged. “It sounds like the kid needs you, and at least you won’t be getting shot at.” He gestured around the ER. “I was just being selfish.”

  I had won the fight. Yay, me.

  13. Your Own Personal Mission

  We had to hang around the hospital for a little while longer. I gave my statement to two different police officers, leaving out the part where I’d impersonated a Homeland Security agent, and spoke to a representative from the hotel named Mr. Sulden, who was pretty genial when he informed me that I was never welcome back to the Stafford. I asked him if Ruby would keep her job, and he said they were still considering the situation. Hearing that, Toby stepped up and introduced himself as Ruby’s attorney. He spouted a bunch of legal stuff at Sulden, with a litigious little glare, and I fought back a smile as the hotel rep began backpedaling. By the time we left Sulden had promised paid medical leave and a small bonus to help with hospital expenses.

  I also checked in with Bryce, who said that the doctor wanted Ruby to stay overnight so he could keep an eye on her shock. I gave him a hug before I left, and promised to call him the next day to check in.

  It was 4:30 in the morning when Toby, Toka, and I trooped in the door at the apartment. I slept fitfully for a couple of hours, finally giving up and getting out of bed at seven. The nausea was back, and I felt the shadow of the night before pressing down on me, adding to the pressure of the pregnancy news. I’d told myself I would tell Toby after today, but now I wasn’t sure that was a good idea. If he found out I’d knowingly brought the baby into a gunfight, he’d...well, I don’t know what he’d do.

  I took Toka for a halfhearted walk and then plopped sullenly on the couch, feeling moody and bloated. My thoughts drifted to the significance of the day. Exactly five years earlier, I’d been an up-and-coming cop with a new boyfriend and a relatively bright future. The Matt Cleary case had been plaguing me, but that day I was finally going to put it to rest: I had a top-secret nine o’clock appointment to put my evidence in front of my commander, someone from Internal Affairs, and someone from the Office of the General Council. There was a lot riding on this one meeting: I hadn’t been subtle when I’d gone after Cleary, and the powers that be were pissed. I had to prove I was right, or face disciplinary action.

  I left really early, feeling nervous and determined. I was going to make my case, goddammit, and this time someone was going to listen. As I drove toward the Internal Affairs building on Michigan Avenue, though, I’d suddenly felt sick. I’d pulled over in a hurry and puked my guts out into a fast food bag I had in the car.

  At first I just chalked it up to nerves, but that didn’t really happen to me – I’d never been a nervous vomiter. But it had been a tough month: I’d been working all hours, trying to excel in my regular work and investigate the assaults on my own time. With so much going on, my boyfriend Toby and I had gotten a little careless about birth control. A thrilling, terrifying thought crossed my mind: could I be pregnant?

  Since I had the time, I stopped at a drugstore for some mouthwash and a pregnancy test, taking both straight into the drugstore’s moldy bathroom.

  The test was positive.

  I found myself grinning the whole rest of the way to the IA building. I was gonna have a baby. It was completely out of left field, it was terrible timing, professionally, and Toby and I hadn’t been together all that long. But...yeah. I couldn’t stop smiling. This was gonna be great.

  I never did find out how Matt Cleary learned about the meeting. It must not have been long before we started, or he wouldn’t have risked attacking me in a parking structure right next to the CPD building, the one all the cops used. Then again, that was assuming he was sane and logical, and sane, logical people don’t disfigure young women with box cutters, so who knows. At any rate, when I got out of the car, dressed in my business suit, my thoughts now torn in the direction of the pregnancy, Cleary was waiting for me.

  Afterwards, after the fight and the police and the ambulance ride, they took a blood test at the ER. This time it was negative. No one could tell me if the first test had been a false positive, or if I’d miscarried a baby because of Matt Cleary. Either way, I never told Toby about the test. It would hurt him too much. I’d pushed the whole experience aside, put my head down, and endured. I endured the criticisms, the taunts, the suggestions that I must have been fucking Cleary. I tried to keep being a cop –to keep being my mother’s daughter– but staying with CPD was like continuing to work with your ex after they’d dumped you. Every day hurt, and it didn’t get better. Cleary and the department had broken my heart.

  No, Rory was right. They’d broken me. And every year on this day, a small group of douchebags took it upon themselves to remind me.

  I hung around the apartment for most of Saturday, though I was too distracted to do much. I told myself that I wasn’t afraid, that I hadn’t actually let Flanagan’s taunts get to me, but I didn’t believe me. I was hiding, and feeling sorry for myself.

  In the afternoon I called Bryce to check in, as promised. Ruby had been discharged and was recuperating at the cramped two-bedroom apartment they shared. “The hotel’s giving her two paid weeks off, and physically, she’s gonna be fine,” Bryce said softly, and I knew he’d stepped into the other room so Ruby wouldn’t hear. “But I can tell she’s feeling like her past is going to follow her around forever. She seems...despondent.”

  I’d never actually heard anyone use that word out loud before, but it certainly fit the situation.

  At dinnertime I decided to take some food to Toby at the office. He’d appreciate the gesture, and I’d get to prove to myself that I wasn’t cowering anymore. I made a big pot of fettuccine Alfredo, Toby’s favorite, packed some in a Tupperware container, and after a moment’s thought, grabbed Toka’s leash. I might not be cowering, but I wasn’t stupid, either. I had the Browning, but in certain situations, Toka was even better.

  We made it as far as the underground parking garage.

  In the past Flanagan and his cronies had never escalated past the hang-up calls, some hate mail, and a few graphic packages of Barbie dolls in compromising positions. They must hav
e decided on a bigger stunt for the fifth-year anniversary, though, because they’d turned their petty testosterone-jacked anger against the poor Jeep. All four tires were sliced to ribbons, and all of the windows were shattered. The words “Rat Bitchmobile” were spray-painted on the poor Jeep’s side in bleeding black paint.

  I turned around in a slow circle, scanning the security. The parking garage was quiet –most of the people in this building were older couples and young families who ate early, so everyone was either in or out at 7:00 on a Saturday. There were no cameras in the parking garage, just a wrought-iron gate that required a key card to get in. Somehow Flanagan and his cronies had gotten a key card or found a way around it. I should have known they’d go for the parking garage attack. They were sentimental that way.

  “Is that all you’ve got?” I shouted to the empty cars and empty parking spaces around me. “Some slashed tires and an insult my three-year-old nephew could have written? How about you come out and tell me to my face, huh?” Silence. Sensing the change in my mood, Toka began to growl softly in his throat.

  I fought against the tears as long as I could, but in the end I dropped down to the concrete floor, crying into Toka’s coat. Some tough detective I was turning out to be.

  I went upstairs and called Sarabeth, who promised to make a few calls and ensure that two female officers came over to make the vandalism report on the Jeep. There might have been plenty of female cops who sided with Cleary too, for all I knew, but so far all of the people who’d openly disparaged me had been men. If nothing else, I was playing the odds. The CPD was huge, and full of excellent cops who had nothing to do with me or Matt Cleary, if they even knew about us. But I wasn’t in the mood to risk it.

  I called Toby too, and he and I spent the rest of the night and most of Sunday morning dealing with the cops, insurance, a tow truck, a mechanic, and our landlord, who grumbled for twenty minutes over having to replace everyone’s key cards. Toby was furious on my behalf, and asked me if I wanted him to stay home from work on Sunday afternoon, although the other associates on his team were going in. I desperately wanted to say yes, but that made me all the more determined to say no. I promised him I’d be fine.

  The wandering, distracted feeling returned as soon as he’d left. I would watch an hour of television, get up during the commercial break for a snack, and end up spending 45 minutes reorganizing the area under the sink where the little garbage can was kept. I kept walking into rooms and forgetting what I was looking for. By late afternoon, I found myself calling a cab to take me to the comic store, figuring I could at least visit my dad without Rory’s presence, since she didn’t work weekends. At my request, Toby had agreed not to tell my family about the Jeep, but I still wasn’t ready to see my sister.

  When I walked in the door, however, I discovered I was definitely ready to see her kids. The store was deserted, and there was a blanket littered with toys and Magic School Bus books spread out on the floor at the front of the store. Either the munchkins were around, or my father’s reading level had degraded considerably.

  Sure enough, my niece came running from the back of the store. “Auntie Lean! Auntie Lean!” Cassie shrieked, racing up to throw her impossibly short arms around me. At six, Cassie was my own personal mini-me, with my light hair and dark eyes and the features I shared with Rory. She had her father’s thoughtful gaze and sturdy frame, though, and when she concentrated she chewed on her lower lip exactly like Mark. “Auntie Lean, Logan is trying to catch me, but he can’t!” Her baby lisp crept back into her voice, as it does when she’s excited, and “trying” came out more like “twying.”

  “He is, huh?” I crouched obligingly down to her eye level and dropped my voice to a whisper. “Where is he?”

  She followed my cue. “I tink he is hiding in the Mahvol,” she whispered. Priceless.

  “Okay,” I said in normal tones, “Well, why don’t you see if you can find him? Then tell him he better come give me a hug, or I’m going to tickle him, okay?” She nodded solemnly and dashed toward the life-size cardboard figures at the back of the store, which is where the two of them always, always hide from each other. I straightened up and stepped over to the counter, where my father was absently reading a new Detective Comics. I smiled to myself. He was posed exactly like Rory had been a few days before. Dad often says that I take after our mom, but Rory is all him.

  He looked up, giving me a warm smile. “Hiya, Firecracker.”

  “Hey, Dad. Where are Rory and Mark?”

  “They wanted to go to dinner and the Home Depot, so I said I’d watch the kids. Logan!” he called to the back of the store, “If you don’t stop knocking over that Boba Fett, your Aunt Lena is going to tickle you silly.”

  Logan, now exposed by the uprooted figure, gave up and trotted hurriedly towards me for the hug. I leaned down to swoop him up and swing him around, while he cackled. While Cassie looks like me, it’s Logan who takes after me – always in trouble, always ready for a fight, and stubborn as hell, even at three. I’m pretty sure I’m his hero, and I know that drives Rory nuts. I turned him upside down and buried my face in his soft belly, blowing raspberries as he giggled uncontrollably, until I finally set him down to toddle unsteadily back to Cassie, who was dutifully trying to right the abused Mr. Fett.

  “What brings you to my neck of the woods, Firecracker?” my dad asked. “You run out of reading material?”

  “Nope,” I said ruefully. “I’m way behind on the stuff I’ve got at home. I just wanted to say hi. I’m going out of town in the morning.” I explained about my trip to LA to find Nate’s father.

  “I like that boy,” he said thoughtfully. “Quiet, but a nice kid.”

  “Yeah, he is,” I said. “And I know you made a good impression on him, too.”

  “Auntie Lean,” Cassie said, stepping towards me with a battered copy of Curious George. “Will you read to me and Logan?” I obliging squatted down on the floor, legs folded to create enough lap space for both of the kids.

  We read that book twice and one Magic Schoolbus, and then I glanced at my watch, and up at my father. “How soon are they going to be back?”

  “Any minute.”

  I stretched out my legs and stood up, knees cracking. “I should get going.”

  My dad narrowed his eyes at me, not fooled. “Selena Kyle, are you and your sister fighting?”

  “What? Of course not.” My dad gave me a skeptical look, but it was true: I wasn’t so much fighting with Rory as I was afraid of Rory. When it comes to temper, Rory’s like a hibernating mother bear. Most of the time, she’s the soul of patience and wisdom and bemusement. But mess with her kids, or any other kids, or anyone else she truly loves, and Rory can do vengeance like freakin’ Batman.

  “Gotta boogie, Daddy,” I kissed his cheek and went out the front door.

  It wasn’t until I was already outside that I realized I didn’t have a car there. I got out my phone to call a cab, but at the same moment I saw Rory’s minivan pulling up to the curb in front of the store. Crapcrapcrap. I waved cheerfully and started walking down the sidewalk like I was out for a stroll. Behind me, I heard Rory’s voice shout, “Selena Kyle Dane! Stop right now!”

  Well, shit. I was busted. I turned around in time to see Rory’s husband Mark shoot me a sympathetic look on his way into Great Dane to collect the kids. I don’t know Mark all that well, really, but he certainly understands what it’s like to be on the receiving end of my sister’s temper. She stomped toward me, and I decided to go on the offensive. Sort of. I held up my hands. “I’m sorry.”

  Rory reached me and put her hands on her hips. “For what?” she said coldly. “For putting me a position where I have to lie to our family, or for taking an unborn child into a gunfight?”

  Whoa. All cylinders. “It wasn’t a gunfight, Ro.” Who had even told her? Toby, probably. I had to put a stop to the two of them conspiring against me.

  She stared at me incredulously. “And that’s your big defense?” she his
sed, stepping closer. “That no shots were actually fired? You know darn well there could have been, and you promised me you were going to stay out of danger.”

  I took a deep breath. “Rory, someone needed me.”

  “Your baby needs you. For God’s sake, Selena, what is wrong with you? Do you not have even a little bit of maternal instinct telling you to take care of that baby?”

  I flinched. Rory saw it and sighed, crossing her arms over her chest. She was wearing a purple quilted jacket, but there was a cold breeze coming in off the lake, and the temperature had dropped below forty. “You have a baby now, Selena. You can’t keep running around like Billy the Kid, on your own personal mission to clean up Chicago.”

  I blinked, momentarily stunned. “Is that really how you see my life? As just some Wild West fantasy?”

  “I think there’s a big part of you that, yeah, is trying to be a cowboy. Or cowgirl, or whatever,” he corrected, waving a hand. “I don’t have to like it, but that’s what you wanted after Cleary. But now things are different.”

  “Don’t I know it,” I muttered. To Rory, I said coldly, “Your opinion is noted,” and turned on my heel to walk away.

  “Selena.” Unnerved by her tone, I turned back to look at my sister. Rory’s gorgeous chocolate hair whipped in the wind, and her eyes flashed at me. “If you don’t tell Toby by the end of next week, I will.”

  Great. An ultimatum. Because I’m so good with those.

  14. Something Different About You

  I hate flying. It’s not a fear of crashing thing, or a claustrophobia thing, or a toss-your-cookies thing. I simply hate having choices taken away from me, and being on a plane takes away more choices than any other activity, with the possible exception of being in prison. Think about it: you have to sit where you’re told, stay down until you’re told, eat and drink only if allowed...even your entertainment choices are limited, and God forbid you want to sleep, lean back, or talk to your friends. I’ve never actually served time, but I’ve visited prisoners, and they seem to get a lot more privileges than even a first class passenger on your average United flight. Better food, too.