He was here now, though, so he might as well go in.
The kitchen was as loud as usual, and the familiar scents of tomato sauce and roasting meat filled the air. The combination settled him as he closed the door.
“Hey, Nate, what are you doing here?” Marco called from his position in front of the stove. “I thought Phoebe was on tonight.”
“She is. Just stopped by to, ah, get something to eat.”
Marco scowled, and pointed his wooden spoon at Nathan. “You’re here to check on Phoebe. The point of hiring her was to give you some time away. Of course, none of us thought you’d go easily. Paddy and Darcy are here, too. In your office.” Marco smirked at him.
Nathan pushed the office door open. Patrick was sitting in his chair with Darcy on his lap.
When the door opened, they both smiled at him. Darcy slid off Patrick’s lap, and Patrick shifted in the chair. “Figured we’d find you here,” he said. “We’ve come to save you from yourself.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“We need to talk, and we’re going to check out our competition at the same time. So let’s go.”
“Wait.” Nathan glanced from Darcy to Patrick. They looked pleased with themselves. “What? What competition?”
“That new Mexican restaurant on Central. We’ve been meaning to stop in, but we’ve been busy. But you’re free, we’re free and tonight’s the night.”
“Okay,” he said slowly. “Mexican it is. But let’s go out the front door so I can make sure Phoebe doesn’t need anything.”
Grinning, Darcy elbowed her fiancé. “You owe me ten bucks, buddy.”
Nathan shrugged his coat back on. “Very funny. Let’s go.”
Phoebe was in the bar, talking to a customer. She looked up as he walked over.
“Hey, Nathan. What are you doing here?”
Her dressy black slacks and dark blue blouse fit her slender body perfectly. Heels and small gold rings in her ears completed the elegant look. She looked good, he admitted. Professional. Put together. “Just on our way out.” He gestured to Darcy and Patrick behind him. “Everything okay so far?”
“Absolutely.” Small lines formed between her eyes. “Are you checking on me?”
“Why would I do that?” he asked, but he was afraid she saw right through him. “You’re doing a great job. Patrick and Darcy and I are heading to the new Mexican restaurant.”
His new manager nodded. “Have fun. Don’t worry about Mama’s. We’ll be fine.”
Patrick nudged him in the back, and Nathan headed for the door.
Twenty minutes later, as they ate salsa and chips, Nathan looked around the mostly empty restaurant. Multicolored fabric art decorated the walls, and the floor was terra-cotta tiles. The heavily varnished wood tables all held fresh flowers. It was a completely different look than Mama’s. Hipper. More contemporary. It would attract a younger crowd. “It’s a nice place, Paddy. I’ll grant you that, but it’s not our competition. So why are we here?”
“I’ve got some news, and I didn’t think Mama’s was the best place to talk about it.” Patrick scooped up more salsa, dripping a blob on the table. “That thing Danny Kopecki told you about Alderman O’Fallon’s kid? How he mysteriously disappeared several years ago? Well, he was right. Sean O’Fallon got busted for selling weed at his high school. Then the case disappeared, along with the kid. He was in some fancy rehab place out in the suburbs for a couple of months. I talked to the judge, and he said the deal was they’d drop the charges if he finished rehab and stayed clean. Some new A.S.A., a wet-behind-the-ears recent law school grad, set it up.”
“You think someone pulled some strings.” Nathan leaned toward his brother. “That whoever brokered it is the guy behind the money.”
Patrick shrugged. “It’s a possibility.” He hesitated. “Thing is, that’s a pretty common deal for first offenders. Go to rehab, stay clean, charges get dropped. So it could mean nothing.”
“And we’re back where we started.” Nathan clenched his hand into a fist, stopped himself from punching the table. “Damn it.”
“Not necessarily. This was a good tip,” Patrick said. “I know a couple of people in the D.A.’s office and I’m having them ask around to find out who okayed the deal. Every bit of information helps.”
“What about the health inspector?” Nathan’s foot was jiggling. This investigation wasn’t moving fast enough. “The one who thought I was bribing him?”
“His financial records should be on my desk tomorrow. Won’t take long to see if there’s a regular pattern of deposits. Then we can start following the trail.”
“It was cash in his mail slot. How do you trace that?” Nathan pushed his empty beer bottle to the center of the table. “I want this over, Paddy. Now.”
“We’re getting there.” Patrick’s eyes were sympathetic. “We all want this to be over.”
“None of you is the one who started the whole thing. And none of you has a kid to worry about. What if this guy starts to feel cornered and tries to use Harley against me?”
“There’s been nothing to suggest that this guy’s dangerous or means you any harm. Why would he threaten Harley?”
“He stopped paying a bribe,” Nathan said. “That’s a little threatening.”
Patrick leaned forward. “Maybe, but why? What changed to make the bribe stop? Our snooping?” He snorted. “If so, I have no idea what he thinks we’ve found. The O’Fallon kid? Possible, but so far, it leads nowhere. I don’t think you need to worry about Harley.”
“How would this guy find out about her, anyway?” Darcy asked. “You haven’t told anyone but us. Right?” She took a drink of beer. “So how would he know?”
“Half the neighborhood probably knows,” Nathan said. “Harley was pretty loud the night she showed up at Mama’s.”
Patrick smiled at the waitress as she delivered their food. “Can I get another beer? Darce? Nate?”
“Yeah, I guess. Thanks,” Nathan said to the waitress. He shuffled his feet. Relaxing at dinner was foreign to him. Made him antsy. At Mama’s, he ate in a hurry, standing up, whenever he could grab a minute.
To change the subject, he said, “Hey, Paddy, you find out anything about Shaughnessy?” The topic of the man who killed their parents was no more relaxing, but at least it was different.
“As a matter of fact, I did. He’s working at a place called Urban Table. Far south side. Some kind of farming operation. The owner hires a lot of ex-cons.”
Nathan pushed his plate away. “Good. More progress. Think I’ll pay him a visit there, since I can’t go to his halfway house.”
Patrick frowned at him. “Be careful. If you scare him off, we’ll never know what ‘other stuff’ he was talking about.”
“Don’t worry. I’m just going to talk to him.”
* * *
THE MORNING AFTER his dinner with Patrick and Darcy, Nathan pulled up outside a beige pole barn that had several greenhouses behind it. Urban Table grew herbs and sold them to local restaurants. The owner made a point of hiring ex-cons and giving them a chance at a fresh start. According to Shaughnessy’s parole officer, he was a model employee.
Nathan got out of the car beneath a gray sky. With any luck, he could talk to Shaughnessy and get back on the main road before it started to snow again. The road to the farm was two dirt ruts that would turn into an ice rink in a storm.
When he walked into the pole barn, several men and a few women were p
acking small plastic containers into cartons. They all looked at him, but no one said anything. Finally a guy with long gray hair tied at the nape of his neck, wearing motorcycle boots and a Harley-Davidson T-shirt, walked over.
“Can I help you?”
Nathan held out his hand. “I’m Nathan Devereux. I’m looking for Peter Shaughnessy, and I was told he works here.”
The man studied him. “What do you want him for?”
“I just want to talk to him for a few minutes. Ask him a couple of questions.”
“I’m Bryce Crockett. The owner.” He narrowed his eyes. “You’re the second guy to come looking for Pete in the last couple of weeks. What’s going on? I don’t allow anyone to harass my employees.”
“I have no intention of harassing him. I saw him a few weeks ago and he told me he had something he needed to tell me. That’s why I came out here.”
Nathan felt as though Crockett could peer into his soul and uncover all his secrets. But he held the guy’s gaze, and finally Crockett nodded.
“I’ll get him. But I’ll be watching. I don’t like it when people show up, looking for one of my guys.”
“I understand.”
A few minutes later, Shaughnessy walked through the door that must lead to the greenhouses. He stopped dead when he saw Nathan.
“He’s over there,” Crockett said, laying a hand on Shaughnessy’s shoulder and nodding at Nathan.
“What are you doing here?” Shaughnessy’s mouth was a hard line. “What do you want? I’ve done my time. You got no right to come here and bother me.”
“You said you had something to tell me,” Nathan said in a low voice. Crockett and all the people packing the boxes were watching him. “I need to know what it is.”
“Stay away from me,” Shaughnessy yelled, backing up. He sounded angry, but his expression was terrified. His hands shook.
“But you said...”
“I said I was sorry. I was following the steps. That don’t give you the right to come to the place I work.”
Nathan frowned. The guy’s voice was too loud, as if he wanted all his coworkers and his boss to hear him. Crockett was hurrying toward them. “Please,” Nathan said softly. “I need to know what you wanted to tell me.”
“Don’t come back here.” Shaughnessy kept backing away. “Ever again.”
Crockett stepped between them. “You need to leave, Devereux. And I don’t want to see you here again.”
Shaughnessy disappeared through the door to the greenhouses. Nathan pulled the exit door open and let it close with a bang behind him.
The first fat snowflake hit the windshield as Nathan slid into his car. He stuck his Bluetooth device in his ear, dialed Patrick and started the engine.
“You talk to Shaughnessy?” Patrick asked as he answered the phone.
“Yeah. He wouldn’t tell me a thing. Yelled at me to leave him alone. He put on a good show, but he was terrified.”
“Of what?”
“Got no idea. But someone came to see him a couple of weeks ago. Maybe you should look into Shaughnessy a little more.”
“I’ll do that. Call you back when I can.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
EMMA’S HAND SLIPPED on her phone as she waited for Nathan to answer. In spite of the cold in her car, her palms were sweaty and she wiped them on her jeans. It had only been two days since the visit to Harley’s school. It was too soon to call him. When he didn’t answer after a few rings, she cleared her throat to leave a message with equal parts relief and disappointment.
“Hello?” Nathan sounded frazzled, and in the background metal clanged and voices yelled. He was at the restaurant.
This was a bad idea. But he’d answered the phone. She had to say something. “Hey, Nathan, it’s Emma.”
“Emma.” The background noises on his end faded, then she heard the click of a door. He must have gone into his office. “How’s it going?”
He sounded so impersonal. So carefully polite. “Everything’s fine. I thought you’d like to know that Harley loves her new math class.” Not the most original excuse to call you, but you play the hand you’re dealt. “She has a lot more homework, though. She doesn’t like that part.”
“No, I guess she wouldn’t.”
He sounded distracted. She should have realized there was a lot of work to be done before restaurants opened, and that she’d be interrupting. Her face hot, she said, “You’re busy. I’ll call some other time.”
“No, wait.” Something creaked. “I was in the middle of an argument with a deliveryman. Can you hold on a second so I can make sure he’s giving us what we need?”
“Sure.” She heard footsteps walking away, then Nathan’s voice again, loud. A muttered reply. Then silence.
A few minutes later, Nathan came back to the phone. “Sorry. He was unloading bad mushrooms on us. I needed to make sure he switched them out.” He cleared his throat. “Actually, I was going to call you. Phoebe is managing again tonight, and I was wondering if you and Harley wanted to go out to eat together. Someplace besides Mama’s. Or...or do something else. Spend some time together.”
“Harley has a makeup soccer game tonight,” she said, more disappointed than she should be. “In fact, I have to pick her up early from FreeZone.” She hesitated. “You could come, if you’d like. If you wanted to see her play.”
“Where is it?”
She gave him the location of the dome and told him what time the game started. “This is a no-pressure deal. All you have to do is watch. Maybe get ice cream or something afterward.”
“Okay, meet you there.”
He didn’t sound very excited. But at least he was willing to try. “Good. I’ll see you then.”
“Ah, Emma, you called me. Was there something you wanted?”
“Oh, right.” She swallowed. The sound of his voice, which triggered memories of that kiss at the school, turned her brain to mush. “I called because Harley wants to learn how to ski. Since we got fresh snow, I thought I’d take her to a ski hill this Saturday. Want to come along?”
His pause stretched out uncomfortably long. “I can’t ski.”
“That’s okay. Neither can Harley, but the ski hill gives lessons.”
An even longer pause. “That’s not what I mean, Emma.” His voice was tight and hard. “I mean I can’t ski. My leg isn’t strong enough or healed enough to put that kind of stress on it.”
“Oh, God.” She’d forgotten about his injury. Probably because he didn’t make a big deal out of it, or ever talk about it. And because all she’d been able to think about was that kiss two days ago. “I’m sorry, Nathan. I didn’t think.” She hesitated. Was she digging herself a deeper hole? “I mean, yeah, I knew you were hurt. You limp a little, but I don’t notice it anymore. I don’t think about your cane. You know?”
“No, I don’t.” His voice was expressionless. She had no idea what he was thinking. This wasn’t the kind of conversation to have over the phone.
“I mean that when I look at you, I don’t see a guy who’s been injured. I don’t see the cane or the limp. I just see you. A guy who can do anything he wants.”
“Well, I can’t ski. Sorry.”
Her breath had fogged the car windows, and she couldn’t see outside. “No, I’m sorry. That was...insensitive of me. And it sounds as though you’re busy at the restaurant. If you have time for the game, I’ll see you there. If not, I get it. We’ll do something another time.” She gripped th
e phone so tightly that her cold hand ached. “Take care, Nathan.”
Her hand shook as she pushed the red end call icon, then she threw her phone on the passenger seat. Squeezed her eyes shut against the tears that wanted to fall. Had Nathan thought she was mocking him?
Thinking about Nathan, about that kiss on the stairway, made her stupid. All she’d focused on was seeing him again. Spending a day with him and Harley. God. He must think she was an idiot.
She’d embarrassed herself. He hadn’t been very excited about seeing her again.
Let alone Harley.
Emma should have figured that out at the school on Tuesday. Nathan had been great in the conference with Dempster, and he’d been great with the principal.
But when Emma had talked about Harley’s relationship with Nathan, he’d shut down.
Her phone rang and she glanced at it. Nathan. She touched the icon for refuse call.
She should have paid more attention when she’d told him about Harley in the first place. He’d said he didn’t want to be a parent. She should have believed him.
She shouldn’t have pressed. It would have been better if Harley had never known about him at all.
If Emma hadn’t left that DVD in her desk, none of this would have happened. Now Harley was going to be hurt, and it was Emma’s fault.
In her hubris, Emma had thought she’d be a perfect parent. In reality, she was as far from perfect as it was possible to be.
* * *
FOUR HOURS LATER, sitting on the cold, hard metal of the bleacher seats, Emma blew into her hands to warm them. During the winter, Harley played soccer in an inflatable dome, and although there were heaters near the concession stand, the rest of the space was frigid. As the kids ran up and down the artificial turf, she wiggled her toes and tugged her gloves out of her pockets.
On the field, one of Harley’s teammates passed her the ball. Harley dribbled it toward the goal. Without looking to the side, she passed it across the field, and one of her teammates shot it at the net. The goalie caught it, but Harley and the other girl high-fived each other.
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