by Laurel Dewey
“We didn’t hear you walk out,” Carol said, her face looking typically cautious.
Jane saw the same look on both Weyler and Bailey.
“What happened to you?” Bailey asked, jutting his jaw toward Jane’s clothes.
She looked down. The white powdery bark from the aspen tree was heavily caked across her jeans, jacket and shirt. Jane thought quickly. “There was a strong gust of wind. I must have been in its path.”
Weyler snuck a glance back toward the Van Gordens’ house.
Bailey looked at Jane as if she were one taco short of a combo platter. “I’m assuming you found nothing of interest in Jake’s room?”
“No. Nothing.” She couldn’t resist. “That poster is something, though.”
Carol took an embarrassed breath in and put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, that woman in the yellow bikini…”
“No, not that one. The one by his computer? The one that just says, TRUTH.” Jane let the word linger in the high mountain air. She watched as Bailey’s jaw clenched and Carol got that familiar frozen look in her eye. “What’s the story on that?” Jane tried to sound offhand but it came out more probing.
Bailey let out a tense “Heh!” and narrowed his eyes into the distance. “Jake always likes to push the envelope.”
Jane secured her gaze on Bailey. “Push the envelope? Interesting comment.”
Bailey’s eyes traveled back to Jane. They bled fire. “I do have to go.”
Jane and Weyler walked in silence down the long driveway back to their respective cars. She didn’t speak up until Weyler unlocked his borrowed patrol car.
“Loved Carol. Usually you have to join the Taliban to see a woman that subservient to her husband.”
“You can fill me in on what you found in Jake’s bedroom when we get to the B&B.” He took another look at Jane’s disheveled appearance. “You’re lucky you didn’t fall out of that aspen tree.” He got into the car. “Follow me.”
Jane liked the fact that Weyler read through her deceptions—both her impromptu exit as well as the lie regarding Jake’s room. But she hoped he wasn’t reading her mind at that exact moment because she had one stop to make before the B&B. Instead of following Weyler, she lagged a few minutes behind on a hidden side street until Bailey zoomed by. Then she waited a few more minutes to give him time. After that, Jane headed toward Main Street and passed the only gym in Midas. As she fully expected, Bailey’s SUV wasn’t parked anywhere near the place.
CHAPTER 9
By the time Jane pulled up to the Victorian-inspired, Historic Midas B&B on the main drag, Weyler was already outside the front gate chatting up their hosts. “Shit,” she muttered under her breath. There was too much to go over and talk about. The last thing she wanted to do was waste time with the B&B owners chewing the fat. She observed the man, presumably the town’s Methodist preacher and Mollie’s father. He was a gentle-looking man, around his mid-forties, about thirty pounds overweight with dark curly hair and a well-kept beard and mustache. The woman, around forty, didn’t have that wife of the Christian preacher vibe. She was less uptight than Jane expected as she leaned her angular body against the wrought-iron fence and let her curly dark locks blow free in the breeze. Her olive complexion was beautifully set off by a jaunty red wool hat, along with an East Indian-inspired top and wide-legged trousers. Perhaps, Jane mused, they head up a more liberal church.
Just as Jane was bringing the luggage out of the Mustang, she caught sight of the same clean-cut, older guy with the twinkling eyes she’d seen earlier outside the Town Hall during the improvised news conference. He was across the street getting out of the same truck and heading up Main Street. She grabbed her leather satchel and leaned her small duffel bag against the tire, watching the man momentarily. He glanced between the B&B and Jane. Great, she thought. Now her little groupie knew where she was staying.
“Jane!” Weyler called over. “I’ll get the bags.” He waved her over. “This is Aaron and Sara Green,” he introduced.
Jane shook their hands and offered a quick hello, excusing her disheveled appearance.
“We were just asking Sergeant Weyler if you guys coming to Midas was a positive sign that there’s movement on the case?” Sara pointedly asked.
Obviously, Weyler hadn’t let the Greens in on the fact that they were only there because Weyler “owed” their odd police chief some damn favor. She opted for the vague answer cops were well trained in delivering. “We’re still sorting out a lot of the details.”
Sara offered a weak smile, but it was sharply edged with concern. She fiddled nervously with the gold cross dangling from her necklace. “I know you can’t tell us anything. I was hoping if you could just let us know if Jake was alive?” Aaron put a comforting hand on his wife’s shoulder.
“We don’t know,” Jane answered with less of the cop front.
Sara’s eyes swelled with tears. “We’re all aware of the odds. After five days…”
Aaron pulled Sara closer to him. She tucked her head on his shoulder. “We gotta keep the faith, sweetheart.”
Jane observed the two of them. There was true love here, but there was also an overt laidback vibe that most ministers and their wives eschewed. The energy between them flowed beautifully and effortlessly. Their shared, heartbreaking worry for Jake’s welfare was honest and sincere—a far cry from the constrained, preoccupied reaction his own parents demonstrated.
Sara wiped away a tear. “I have to figure out how to process this with our daughter.”
Process? Jane wondered. That wasn’t a word that Christian minister’s wives bandied around. Shouldn’t she talk about praying with her, or asking God for guidance? “Does she have any ideas about what happened?” Jane asked, falling back into the detective role.
“Hard to say,” Aaron chimed in. “She hasn’t said a word. We let her take off this last week from school and next week is Easter break so she’ll have two weeks under her belt. We hoped it would give her the time she needed to deal with everything…”
Jane was floored. “So, nobody’s talked to her about this? Not you, not Bo?”
“No,” Sara offered. “She needs time to decompress from everything. First the breakup and now this…”
Jane couldn’t hold back. “But what if the breakup played a role in Jake…” Aaron’s eyes immediately reacted to the word “breakup.”
Weyler interrupted. “I think we can get a bead on all of that shortly.” He turned to Jane. “You sign us in and I’ll get the bags.”
Jane hated it when Weyler short-circuited her advancing interview techniques. He always did it when she was getting too aggressive or when the interviewee was getting uncomfortable. It was the standard good cop/bad cop routine except this was more suave cop/bitchy cop. He captured his flies with honey, while Jane preferred to just slaughter the damn things.
Jane reluctantly followed Sara down the cobblestone pathway, its edges still covered with encrusted snow. Sara did her best to make conversation, telling Jane that she hoped the daffodils popped while she was there and what a quiet town Midas usually was…until recently. The entryway of the bed and breakfast was fittingly done up in keeping with the historic name of the place. Dozens of sepia-toned photos lined the walls, the entry, sitting area and along the wall that led upstairs. Sara suddenly felt a need to play tour guide and told Jane that the B&B used to be a boarding house for young women up until the early 1970s before transforming into an historic hotel. Jane listened with half an ear as she glanced around searching for the source of the familiar aroma that had been following her since the night before.
“Do you have gardenias in the house?” Jane inquired.
“Gardenias? No. I’ve got some bread in the oven…”
“A potpourri maybe?” Jane forced the issue, almost desperate.
“We steer clear of the usual Victorian foo-foo crap. No doilies. No dead roses in saucers.”
“That’s crazy,” Jane whispered to herself.
“What’
s that?”
Jane thought she’d take a stab in the dark. “You seriously don’t smell gardenias?”
Sara sniffed the air. “No…just the bread in the oven.”
Jane shook her head. “Jesus Christ,” she muttered and then realized she was talking to the minister’s wife. “Oh, fuck, sorry about that.” Jane winced, realizing that her apology was probably worse. Strange thing was, instead of Sara looking aghast or shooting Jane a pursed-lipped show of Christian judgment, Jane could have sworn she saw a little smile creep up before Sara extinguished it.
A downstairs door opened and closed, and out walked Mollie. With iPod in hand and earbuds firmly in place, she effectively locked out the world around her. She looked just like the photo Jane saw in Jake’s room, but her eyes were even more beautiful and probing. She was dressed in black jeans, a dark blue T-shirt with a Flower of Life design on the front and a trendy hoodie jacket. Her stubby fingernails were painted in black nail polish that had been chewed off around the tips. When Mollie caught sight of Jane, she stopped in her tracks, taking in Jane’s dusty and mud-splattered appearance. Mollie released one earbud as if to say that Jane was only worth half of her time.
“Sweetie,” Sara said lovingly, “this is Sergeant Detective Jane Perry from Denver. She’s here to help find Jake.”
Mollie regarded Jane with thick disparagement that reminded Jane of Bob Dylan’s advice from the 1960s to not “trust anybody over thirty.” The kid took a moment before offering her hand to Jane.
Jane shook Mollie’s hand and immediately noticed a thin, woven red string bracelet around her wrist. “Hey,” Jane said, trying to not come off too cop-like.
“Hey,” Mollie repeated, but her tone was much more sarcastic. It was as if she knew Jane was trying to make her feel comfortable and she was having none of it.
“You goin’ for a walk, Mol’?” Sara asked.
Mollie quickly showed ire, removing her remaining earbud. “Mom!”
Sara bit her lip. “I’m sorry. Liora.”
Jane stood confused.
“I’ll be back in an hour.” Mollie slid between Jane and her mother toward the front door.
“You have your cell phone, right?” Sara asked, her voice laced with fear.
“Yes, Mom,” Mollie tiredly said, replacing her earbuds. “I’ll be fine.”
Sara watched her daughter leave the house, her face etched with concern. “Until this thing with Jake gets solved,” Sara said, still watching Mollie walk down the pathway and onto the sidewalk, “I can’t help but worry, you know? What if there’s some crazy serial…”
“It’s not a serial kidnapper. You don’t have to worry about that.” Jane’s first thought was that for a devout woman, Sara Green was certainly not tasting her faith at the moment. The second thought was, Liora? She had to ask.
Sara seemed distressed. “Mollie decided to change her name to Liora about six months ago. It’s part of her conversion to becoming a Kabbalist.”
Oy vey, Jane said to herself. The red string around the kid’s wrist—she was dabbling in the fashionable faith of the rich and famous. Mystic Judaism. Looked like Mollie decided to stick the Almighty cross in her parents’ back and twist it. “Why’d she choose Liora?”
Sara shook her head, one eyebrow arched. “It’s just so weird…” She seemed lost for a moment.
“Weird?”
“Oh, uh, I shouldn’t say weird. It’s just an…interesting name to pick out of the blue.” Sara let out a hard breath. “It means my light and I see.”
“You checked that out online, huh?”
“No.” Sara quickly caught herself. “Well, yeah. Yeah. I checked it out. I wouldn’t know that offhand.”
The woman was becoming increasingly nervous in front of Jane’s eyes. It reminded Jane of the same vibe that oozed off guilty suspects across the table in the interrogation room. Her daughter’s decision to become a mystic Jew and change her name was having a nerve-wracking effect on Sara.
Jane was at a loss. “I guess it could have been worse. She could have called herself Delilah. Explain that name at Sunday service, right?”
Sara managed a smile. “Tell me about it!” she uttered with a wave of her hand. “I’ll let you go. I’m sure you want to change.”
Jane took a gander at her scruffy appearance and realized that Sara was essentially telling her to put on another shirt and pair of jeans. It was almost like this Christian woman had turned into the Jewish mother who insists she doesn’t want to get involved while she’s busy getting involved.
After signing the registration and finding out that she and Weyler were the sole guests—thanks to the off season timeframe—Jane climbed the paisley-carpeted stairs that led to a crisp white hallway. Lined with more historic photos from Midas and northern Colorado, the hallway led past two cheerful doors, each with a brass plaque and engraved flowery name instead of a number. One was The Rose Room and the other, The Lilac Room. Sara had told Jane that her room was at the end of the hallway. She had to pause momentarily when she saw the name on the brass plaque. It was The Gardenia Room.
Jane crossed the threshold and found a sizeable space in which to spread out. The Gardenia Room featured a generous king-size bed with a gauzy canopy, an ornate writing desk, two overstuffed chairs, a wooden rocker by the window, a dark wooden table and matching dresser along with two sizeable windows that allowed plenty of light into the dreamy setting. The bathroom had a black-and-white tiled floor, a clawfoot bathtub and Victorian-styled sink. A platter of pillar candles sat on a wicker table. Unlike the showy ones at the Van Gorden’s monolithic house, these candles had actually seen some activity. As Jane scanned the bathroom and then the main area, she realized this was most likely the honeymoon suite. She could almost hear the pillow talk and wet kisses on the conjugal bed and see the longing gazes between past lovers who had occupied the room. The thought crossed her mind that the only action this place was going to see with Jane Perry was late nights spent connecting the distorted dots of a confusing case.
Weyler knocked and Jane opened the door. He carried her duffel bag into the room. “You travel light, Jane.”
“I figured three days max.”
“And you packed accordingly?” He deposited her small bag on a nearby chair. “We’re going to be here longer than three days.”
Jane let out a sullen breath. “Yeah, I know that now.” Weyler handed her a paper bag with a sandwich inside. It was courtesy of Sara who was apparently concerned that Jane “looked hungry.” “You bring copies of the kidnapper’s clues?”
Weyler unzipped his briefcase. “No. I brought the originals.” He handed Jane the stack of clues, all sealed in their plastic evidence bags. “Vi typed transcriptions of the phone calls.”
Jane took them from Weyler. “What’d you have to tell Bo to get the originals?”
“Promise him we’ll solve the kidnapping.”
Jane carefully laid down the stack on the bureau. “Boss, this whole case has a sick stench. It’s got…” Jane tried to wrap her mind around what her gut was feeling.
“Contradictions,” Weyler stated.
“Exactly!” This is what Jane liked about Weyler. He was more than a sounding board; he was like having an analytical twin that used careful logic and reasoning to solve crimes. “It’s JDLR,” Jane stated, realizing she sounded like his good buddy, Bo.
“’Just Doesn’t Look Right,’” he said with a smile. “It sure doesn’t.”
She unbuttoned her leather jacket and brought out the sketchpad she stole from Jake’s room. “Check this out!” With that, she flipped the pages to create the disturbing animation of the man hanging himself in a jail cell. Weyler was stunned that she jobbed the pad, but Jane assured him that his parents would never miss it. “Carol’s not allowed in his room,” she revealed. “And his ol’ man? I doubt he’s been able to pull himself away from a mirror long enough to remember he’s got a missing son.” Jane set the pad on the table. “When you go to the gym, do
you wear your finest Colorado wannabe duds and pour half a tube of gel in your hair?”
