by T. E. Woods
“Like I said. Everybody loved Banjo. Teachers, coaches. He would sit with the little ones down at Our Joint. That’s the name of the center…Our Joint. He’d go and sit with the kids from preschool and such. Show ’em their letters and colors. Play puzzles with them. You can ask anybody. They all love that boy.” His voiced cracked.
Micki shifted her attention to Bayonne, allowing Vester a moment to compose himself.
“How about you? There’s ten years’ difference between you and Benji. Sometimes a kid will tell his big brother stuff he wouldn’t tell his parents.”
Bayonne looked away. He said nothing, but Jim could see his anger still simmered.
“Were the two of you close?” Micki asked.
Bayonne’s jaw churned. His breathing was quick and shallow. It took a while for him to respond.
“He’s my blood.” Bayonne looked at Jim. “We talk. We joke. Be there for one another.”
“Two of them had a standing basketball game,” Vester added. “Every Tuesday and Saturday. Down at the park.”
“You don’t talk for me, old man.” Bayonne glared at his father. “They ask me a question, I’ma answer.” He turned back toward Jim. “No talk about any trouble. Like the old man say, everybody love Banjo.”
“How about those games?” Micki asked. “Two of you knew how to play. Anybody resent it? Can you think of someone who might have not taken kindly to losing a game of hoops to the Jackson brothers?”
“Nothin’ like that. Sometimes we play with Banjo’s group. I dumb my play, let the little ones win. Other time we play with my crew. Nobody show that boy favorites. Banjo wanna play with the big boys, they gonna school him. Banjo loved it. Made him better. Most times, though, it just Banjo and me on the court.”
Micki gave Jim a long look. He shrugged. There was nothing to be gained here.
Micki pushed herself up from her seat. “We’re going to find out who’s responsible for Benji’s death, Mr. Jackson.” She looked down the table as Vester struggled to stand. “If you or your son have any ideas, no matter how odd they might seem, about who or why, I want you to call me. Day or night. Either of you.”
Vester Jackson shook her hand and headed out the door. Micki walked out behind him. Jim waited by the wall until Bayonne Jackson stood.
“I’d like a word, Bayonne.”
Bayonne sauntered toward him. “It matter if I mind?”
“Not really. You got a lot of anger, Three Pop. Daddy issues are dripping off you like sweat. Your father’s going through a tough time. Can you cut him some slack?”
“You my buddy now?” Bayonne was six foot two, two hundred pounds of muscle. He threw his shoulders back and pulled himself tall. “Some kinda social worker?”
“You loved Banjo. Times like these, families can help one another.”
“You let me take care of mine.”
Jim pointed to a tattoo on Bayonne’s face. Two teardrops outlined in dark ink.
“That second one there looks fresh.”
Bayonne said nothing.
“I’m guessing the first one’s for your mom. Outlined. Mom died of natural causes. No reason for revenge. That one’s always going to remain an outline, isn’t it?”
“What you do, Mr. Detective? Watch some gangster movie? Maybe read yourself a handout?”
“But that second one. That’s new as dawn. You got ideas of filling it in? Maybe finding who killed your brother and taking revenge?”
Bayonne stared at a spot somewhere behind Jim.
“You get any ideas who did this, you bring them to me. Understand? Shove any gangland notion you might have of hitting this bad guy first right out of your head. Because revenge…justice…payback…whatever the hell you want to call it—I’ll haul your ass to jail without blinking, Three Pop. And no judge is going to care about some filled-in teardrop.”
Bayonne “Three Pop” Jackson brought his stare back to Jim. Then he stepped away. His shoulder bumped Jim’s as he made his way to the door.
Chapter 10
Olympia
Lydia sat behind her communications console, eager to follow up on what Oliver had told her. She canceled her patients for the rest of the week, feigning a case of the flu. Most were sympathetic, offering home remedies sure to cure her symptoms. A few sounded irritated but were soothed when Lydia appealed to their own self-interest, assuring them the last thing she wanted was to infect them. She had to hold firm with only one. Audrey Sullivan was a thirty-four-year-old law student who was working with Lydia to break her habit of sexually acting out when she was under stress. When Lydia called to cancel their appointment, Audrey shrieked so loudly Lydia needed to hold the phone away from her ear.
“I have mock court coming up next week!”
“I have all the confidence in the world in you, Audrey.” Lydia faked a raspy voice for her panicked patient. “You know the topic. You’ve built your arguments. Use the tools we’ve discussed to stay calm and you’ll be stunned how well you do.”
“But it’s my first time in front of the whole class! I need to see you!”
“You’ll be fine. We’ll meet in two weeks. I can’t wait to hear how it all turned out. In the meantime, if you feel any urge at all to troll campus bars, I want you to imagine my voice whispering in your ear.”
“I don’t know.” Audrey’s voice was shaky. “What’s your voice telling me?”
“Knock it off! My voice is telling you to knock it off. Slow yourself down enough to use the skills you’ve learned. Do you understand me, Audrey? First sign of trouble, what are you going to do?”
“Hear your voice.”
“That’s right.” Lydia coughed for effect. “And what am I saying?”
“Knock it off.”
“Goodbye, Audrey. I’ll see you in two weeks.”
Oliver had assumed the beautiful woman he had slept with recently was one of Lydia’s patients, out to create some drama. Lydia let him hold on to that. It seemed an easier explanation than the truth. How could she explain that the woman he knew as Cassie was actually Allie Grant, the sociopath daughter of Seattle’s chief of detectives? A woman who had targeted him specifically to hurt Lydia? A woman who saw any obstacle standing in the way of what she wanted as an exercise in domination? Seduction, kidnapping, murder…they were tools Allie used to reach her goal.
Allie and Oliver had spoken about places to vacation. It was a long shot, but Lydia was fresh out of ideas. She entered a search for “BVI and Spanish Town.” Less than a second later she had an island name: Virgin Gorda, British Virgin Islands.
Next she searched area hotels and retreats. An internal radar hummed into readiness as she scanned the luxury sites. Virgin Gorda was not a place for the masses. It was dotted with exclusive—and wickedly expensive—accommodations. Hotels, spas, and retreats promising unparalleled service with complete discretion.
Just the type of place Allison Edith Grant would favor.
Lydia began with the most expensive hotel on the list. The Prince of Wales Hotel promised indulgent pampering from the moment the guest arrived on the island. Lydia was interested in two particular services offered in the hotel’s extensive list of options: private heliport and on-site, prescreened nannies.
She targeted the hotel’s central computer and her own system did its thing. Within ninety seconds she had full access to the hotel’s electronic records. Lydia learned seven helicopters had landed on its property in the past ten days. Some names were recognizable. Movie stars, government figures, even one member of the Swedish royal family. Two landings were names she didn’t know. Richard Flankinhauff had arrived in his private helicopter from a yacht anchored six miles offshore. Records indicated Flankinhauff had rented four poolside villas for him, his wife, their adult son, three bullmastiffs, and various support staff.
The other potential alias Allie could have used was Meredith Sinnow. The hotel’s files showed Meredith had requested a month’s stay in the Eaton Square Suite, along with an adjoining room for her nurse. The hot
el manager had added an electronic note urging everyone to treat Meredith with special care. Apparently she was a frail seventy-three-year-old widow who’d been coming to the same suite every other year since her honeymoon fifty years earlier. This would be her first visit without her husband.
Lydia shifted tactics. Allie had a large criminal enterprise to run. She also was the type of woman who relished pampering herself. She might be looking to build a relationship with her niece, but Lydia didn’t think Allie was up to the challenge of spending every waking moment with a seven-year-old. She scrolled through the hotel’s database until she found the nanny schedule.
Nine requests for nannies had come in over the past two weeks. Lydia ignored requests for sitters for families with multiple children. That eliminated seven. Of the two remaining, one sought daily care for a three-year-old named Jeremy. The records showed Jeremy had an allergy to peanuts and was lactose intolerant. Jeremy’s parents sought a nanny with experience in dealing with “spirited and willful youngsters.”
The other request had come in nine days earlier. It was identified by a reference number and sought an energetic and intelligent female nanny to care for what was described as “a bright and creative seven-year-old.” Care was required for eight hours daily. The guest demanded a signed confidentiality agreement and stressed the need for “utter and complete discretion.” The hotel had complied and assigned only an identification number. A young woman named Constance had been dispatched. Lydia blinked when she saw the hourly amount Constance was paid.
But that would be no obstacle for Allie.
The hotel required daily notes from its nannies. Lydia read Constance’s daily electronic entries. They were unremarkable. Trips to the gift shop, one to a local museum. Bedtime routines. Preferences for games and stories. Constance was following the mandate to be discreet, using only pronouns and ID numbers when referring to her work.
Until her last entry.
Constance had gotten fired.
Guest asked me to take charge to rear of suite for bathing and bedtime routine. Requested charge be kept away from guest until summoned. Hadley got away from me and rushed in to greet her mother. Guest demanded I be replaced.
Hadley. In her disappointment, anger, or frustration, Constance had made one simple slip. She had let her guard down long enough that her fingers inadvertently typed the name of her charge. Since the record was still in the system, Lydia assumed the error was so small the manager overseeing the assignment hadn’t thought to erase the direct, named reference to the child in Constance’s care.
It was enough.
Lydia knew where Allie and Hadley were. At least where they had been yesterday. She looped back. Using the ID number the hotel had assigned Allie, she accessed the hotel’s room service orders and learned that a chef was assigned to Allie’s five-room terraced suite. A list of specific menus for Allie’s entire stay was available.
Including this morning’s.
Juice, yogurt, and fruit had been served on the terrace at eight thirty local time. A lunch of swordfish, rice, and cake was scheduled for two o’clock this afternoon. And this evening the chef was preparing an eight-thirty barbecue. For four people.
A flush of heat surged through Lydia’s body.
She maneuvered out of the hotel’s data system. Thirteen minutes later, she had successfully chartered a flight that would take her directly to Virgin Gorda, BVI. She’d used the company and pilot before, and they guaranteed excellent service and complete confidentiality. The agent assured her the plane would be ready for takeoff when she arrived, and estimated a landing in Virgin Gorda just before midnight local time.
Your dinner party may be over by then, Allie. But you’ll have one more guest to consider.
She left her communications console, went into her office, pulled a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird from the bottom shelf, and pressed the button hidden behind it. The back wall of her office slid open.
Lydia entered her arsenal and made her selections.
Chapter 11
Seattle
“Hayden?” Mort knocked on the door to his granddaughter’s bedroom. “It’s Papa, honey. Can I come in?”
Mort heard the shuffle of slippered feet behind the pine door.
“I’m feeling lonely out here, sweetie. I sure could use some company.”
“I don’t feel good, Papa. Maybe you could go downstairs and come see me some other time.”
Mort’s heart broke at the sound of the girl’s voice. Hayden had isolated herself since her twin disappeared. Robbie and Claire tried their best to comfort her, but they were overwhelmed themselves. A team of FBI agents in their home, demanding access to every intimate family detail, fueled the family’s despair.
“That’s a 10-0, Hayden.” Mort hoped the police scanner code for “poor reception” would be enough to get his granddaughter to let him in. “Repeat.”
The door opened wide enough for Mort to see Hayden’s blue eyes, swollen from crying. “Papa, I’m so scared.”
Mort bumped the door open with his hip and scooped Hayden into his arms. He paced the hallway with her, rubbing her back as she sobbed into his shoulder. “Me too. We’re doing everything we can to bring your sister back. It’s okay to be scared. It’s okay.”
He carried his granddaughter back and forth across the patterned carpet runner in the upstairs hall. Robbie and Claire had chosen a roomy Dutch Colonial when they moved to Seattle from Denver. Their master bedroom was at the east end. At the center of the hall was the entry to their daughters’ room. Hayden and Hadley shared a large space with wide windows—Robbie and Claire insisted that what little sunlight Seattle offered shine in on their girls. Mort walked and cooed, whispering assurances until Hayden’s sobs drifted first into sniffles and then into one heavy sigh. Then he carried her back into her bedroom and laid her head on her pillow. Hayden’s bed was separated from Hadley’s by the old wooden desk Robbie had once used for his own homework. Hayden’s bedspread was tufted gingham as green as a meadow in spring. Hadley’s was the same fabric in pink.
Mort settled himself on the floor between his granddaughters’ beds and waited for Hayden to say something.
“I shoulda told Mommy and Daddy about the phone Aunt Allie gave Hadley.” Hayden’s voice was barely a whisper. “They woulda stopped her for sure. Hadley mighta been mad at me, but that’s better than her being disappeared.”
“This isn’t your fault.”
“I made a promise, Papa. Hadley made me promise not to tell, so I didn’t.” Hayden’s eyes were wide. The plea in them stabbed into Mort’s chest like a red-hot dagger. “I didn’t think it would be bad. I didn’t think that for one stinkin’ minute.”
Mort remembered the first time he saw Hayden’s eyes. She was less than two hours old. Mort had been sitting with Edie for nearly six hours at the same Seattle hospital where Robbie and Allie had been born. Playing cards, reading the papers, drinking bad coffee, and waiting for news. When Robbie finally came to get them, so exhausted he could barely walk, he was grinning like a jack-o’-lantern on Halloween night.
“I’ve got girls,” Mort remembered his son saying. “Two of them. Claire was magnificent. Twins. Doc says they’re perfect.”
Edie cried. Mort wrapped Robbie in a bear hug and danced him around the polished linoleum of the obstetrics waiting room. Then the three of them floated to the nursery, leaning on one another as ecstatic words of hopes and dreams tumbled from their lips.
“There they are.” Edie pointed to a double-sized clear bassinet. “There are my grandbabies.”
Mort looked down at the two small bundles inside. One twin, who he soon learned was Hadley, wore a pink cap and slept sweetly, wrapped up in her matching blanket. Next to her was her sister, wearing a white cap and squirming against the constraints of her swaddling. Mort watched her little legs push as tiny hands reached upward. Hayden.
Then it happened.
The miniature human opened her ice blue eyes and looked right
at him. Separated by glass and under lights Mort wanted to scream were too bright, Hayden Edith Grant, newly born and instantly loved, fixed on him…claimed him…and he was hers.
Edie used to tell him not to get used to the color. “Lots of babies are born with blue eyes. They’ll change. It may take a while, but that color will settle down.”
It didn’t. His granddaughters were seven years old now. Their eyes were still the color of an Alaskan glacier in full sunlight.
And now those mesmerizing eyes begged him for forgiveness.
“Honey, this has nothing to do with anything you’ve done.”
Hayden looked away.
“Have I ever lied to you?”
She pulled a stuffed panda closer to her and held it against her chest.
“Ever? Maybe even once?” Mort asked.
Hayden shook her head. Blond curls danced across her pillow.
“I’m not going to start now. Look at me, sweetie. Can you?”
Hayden turned toward her grandfather, giving Mort a full view of her torture. He laid his hand on the panda she clutched as armor.
“Aunt Allie took Hadley. We think Hadley wanted to go.”
“She left a note.”
“I know she did. She said she was going on an adventure, remember?”
Hayden’s breath caught. Mort stroked her hair, hoping to avert another round of pain-filled tears.
“Aunt Allie didn’t have permission to take Hadley, sweetheart. And Hadley didn’t have Mom and Dad’s permission to go.”
“Is she going to be in trouble?”
“Hadley? No, sweetie. We’re going to be happy when Hadley comes home. She belongs here. With us.”
Hayden scooted closer to Mort. He touched the end of her turned-up nose and smiled.
“What about Aunt Allie? Will she be in trouble? She belongs here with us too, right?”
Mort heaved a sigh. He had just promised never to lie to his granddaughter. But he was forced to deal with the difficult truth that his daughter, the golden child who had once brought such magic into his and Edie’s lives, had grown into a calculating criminal. A manipulative murderer who held nothing and no one above her own desires.
