The Southern Comfort Series Box Set

by Clark O'Neill, Lisa

  Something inside her trembled.

  “When you put it that way, it doesn’t make much sense.”

  “Gee, you think?”

  Finn whined and bumped Jordan’s leg, and Ava took the opportunity to step back. Physically. Emotionally. “I’ll tell Lou Ellen about the window, so she can have it replaced.”

  “You need to call the police. Get this on record.”

  What trembled inside her cracked. “I’ll leave that to Lou Ellen.”

  “Damn it, Ava. Don’t try to tell me this was just a prank, or a coincidence. I’ve got a new tire in my trunk that suggests otherwise. Two incidents of a destructive and threatening nature in two days. That’s what we lawyers like to call harassment.”

  Where was her mad? She needed to find her mad. She’d asked him to stay out of it, hadn’t she? Told him it was none of his business. And yet here he was, scolding her like a child.

  “Ava.”

  But the raw scrape of concern as her name tumbled from his lips made anger impossible. The crack turned into a fissure, and the fissure threatened to flood. “I’ll tell Lou Ellen about the window.”

  “Baby –”

  “Don’t ask me to do more. I’m sorry. I can’t. Now please. I have to get to work.”

  She turned and fled up the narrow stairs, and found the shadows deeper than ever.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “IF you say one word about this to Jesse,” Jordan threatened Clay as he pulled into the parking lot of Riverview Apartments. Which was completely misleading as a name, since the view was more decaying warehouse and fast food dumpster. Maybe if you stood on top of the building…

  “One word,” Jordan continued as Clay checked out the roof, “and I’ll stake you to a fire ant mound and pour honey on your naked, bleeding body.”

  “Sounds like Jesse’s bachelor party. Though I think the stripper was naked, I was covered in beer, and it was more of a bean bag than an ant mound.” He scratched his chin. “Could have been a futon.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Shutting.”

  Jordan whipped out his phone. Clay rolled down the window to release some of the steam pouring from his buddy’s ears. Eu de dumpster wafted in, but Clay had certainly smelled worse. Instead he admired a seedling palmetto tree growing right up from a crack in the pavement. Determined little sucker. Life did find a way, he mused, even when the conditions sucked.

  It hadn’t been the best of mornings. Aside from the sleepless night, Jordan had been late picking Clay up – and from the look on the man’s face, the vet’s tire wasn’t the only thing causing him trouble – then when they’d finally made it to the DA’s office, their witness decided not to show up.

  Since Jordan had managed to track the man down and they were even now preparing to visit his residence, Clay concluded that this particular phone call was of a more personal nature.

  He sat back, prepared to hear his friend grovel.

  “Hey Jack, it’s Jordan.” The use of the eldest Wellington brother’s name had Clay’s eyebrow sliding upward. Not the vet, after all.

  “Wow, is that Caleb I hear? I take it you’re still at home. Oh, that’s too bad. Tell Caitlin I hope she feels better. Hey, the reason I called is –”

  There was an ear-splitting cry from the phone.

  “Man, the little dude is mad. Well, I can’t say that I blame him. I’d rather have a breast than a bottle, myself. Anyway, I was wondering if I could get the number for Evan’s cell.”

  “Evan Hardwick? As in Hardwick Investigations?” Clay’d played poker with the man last night.

  Jordan glared at Clay’s interruption. “Don’t you have anything better to do than eavesdrop?”

  “Not at this precise moment.”

  “What? Sorry, Jack. No, I was talking to Clay. And no, the DA’s office isn’t trying to horn in on your best PI. This is personal.”

  Jordan laughed, but it was brittle as glass. “Well, if I told you that, it wouldn’t be personal anymore, would it? Come on, Jack.” The chatty tone died. “It’s important. Yes, I’ll owe you. Firstborn son, and all that. Okay.” He snagged a pen from one of the cup holders, scratched a number on the back of a business card. “Got it. And Jack? Thanks.”

  He flipped his phone shut and opened his door. “Ready?”

  Clay tugged his ear. Stretched. Rolled his left shoulder.

  Jordan leaned his head back against the seat and sighed. “You are such a woman. What happened to the manly aversion to talking about anything other than sports?”

  “Psychology doctorate. Comes with a fancy piece of paper and a pretty skirt.”

  “Because I’m in a hurry, and I want the full power of your concentration focused on the man we’re about to speak with once we get inside, I’ll forgo the pleasure of telling you to mind your own damn business. So here’s the deal. I replaced a tire for Ava today because the old one got slashed. Someone broke into the garage beneath her apartment and shut off her power, carving a smiley face on the breaker box as a happy little parting gift, and when I took her back to her clinic the other night – and we were followed, by the way. But when we got inside, I found her landlord guarding the place with a shotgun.”

  “Okay.” A boat horn split the air like an axe, and Clay figured he’d do the same with his usual bullshit. Jordan apparently needed an ear, just this once, and not a smart mouth. “I’m assuming, since you’re looking to hire Hardwick – and if the man’s investigative skills live up to his poker game, I’d say you made the right call, there – that you’re not counting on the police to do their job.”

  Jordan’s eyes moved behind his closed lids. “She wouldn’t call them. Tried to pass it off as kids, an eccentric landlord. Hijinks. Blah, blah.”

  Uh-oh. “Well, I’ve met the woman and she didn’t strike me as dumb. So I’m guessing, just from what you’ve said, that it’s one of two things. She knows or at least suspects who’s responsible, and is embarrassed. Maybe it’s a crazy relative, a former associate who’s turned nasty, the neighborhood delinquent, a disgruntled ex. Someone she thinks she can handle, for whatever reason. She just doesn’t want to do it in front of you.”

  “I’m leaning toward the ex. Broken engagement about a year and a half ago. She says it was his call.” He opened his eyes, turned. “I don’t know if I believe her.”

  And the pain Clay saw there told him that was the sticking point. “Jordan. You’ve known her, what, a week? You may be on the fast track, son, but most of us prefer not to dash into things like a crazed rabbit. She’s well within her rights not to feel comfortable letting you rifle through her life like it’s your sock drawer.”

  “That was the worst analogy in the history of pep talks. What’s the second thing?”

  “Well, my second guess would be that she knows or at least suspects who it is. But that more than embarrassed, she’s afraid. Of the responsible party, or of what might happen should the authorities get involved.”

  Jordan scrubbed a hand across his face. The bruises of fatigue showed deeper now that they’d been painted with the shadow of worry.

  “Everything I’ve seen tells me she’s not the kind of woman to avoid a confrontation. But either way, it amounts to the fact that she knows something and she won’t tell me.”

  “Which is why you’re hiring a PI behind her back.”

  “I ran a quick check on the ex. Lives locally, no criminal record. I would have done more, but I was running late as it stood. I don’t have time, just now, to dig as deeply as I would like, and the police can’t do much of anything without her cooperation. So I’m hiring Evan. You think it’s a wrong move.”

  “Knowing you, I think you need to do what you can to ease your mind. Maybe you’ll find out her ex has been harassing her, and you can prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law, after you beat him to a bloody pulp. Maybe you’ll find out a whole lot more than you bargained, which is what you risk when you rifle through other people’s sock drawers. I think that analog
y’s pretty good. But whatever the end result, you have to be prepared for the fact that she will likely not take kindly to the means.”

  “I know that. I do. It’s… well, presumptuous, to say the least. Hell, let’s face it. It would piss me off if she dug up my past. And if I wasn’t half crazy already – worrying about her, my happy little hospital stay, and this political short stick of a trial – I’d probably have enough sense to sit back and see how things play out. But I am half crazy, so sense isn’t really an option.”

  “Admitting to insanity is the first step.”

  Jordan managed a half laugh. “Can we just go talk to my witness now? Whether I like it or not, I have a prosecution to prepare.”

  “Sure.”

  Clay stepped around the palmetto as he climbed from the car, wishing both it and his friend the best of luck.

  They were surely going to need it.

  “I convinced her to move in here. Insisted, really. Did I tell you that?”

  Daniel Hatcher peered at Jordan out of bleary brown eyes. The sunny kitchen stank of last night’s whiskey, of garbage just gone over. Of despair.

  Jordan looked at the man who’d been three weeks away from vowing to love, honor and cherish Sonya Kuosman. Before a killer took her away.

  “Mr. Hatcher –”

  “Insisted.” The man slapped the butcher block table with the flat of his hand. “Why pay rent on two places? Didn’t make much sense. Not when we had the wedding, the honeymoon to pay for. Her parents, they don’t have a lot, what with her father being on disability and all, so we didn’t feel right asking. Besides, I make pretty good money, and Sonya, she was almost finished with her degree. Four credit hours, the certification deal, and she would have been a high school teacher. History. Knew everything about every invention, war, skirmish, plague and land purchase there ever was. Could talk your ear right off. But she wouldn’t have bored them. Not my girl. She made that shit interesting. Because she talked about it on an everyday level, know what I mean? Kids could relate. Sonya, she had a, I guess you could call it a gift for spinning a yarn. Real colorful. And man, could she curse up a storm when she was on a tear. But… I’m sorry. That’s not what you were asking. We were saving to buy a house. That’s why I insisted she move in here.”

  Jordan waited a beat, unsure if the man was going to hold or simply break into pieces at the kitchen table. Not that he blamed him. The woman Hatcher loved had been brutally murdered. Scrape away the rage, the purpose that had bled from him like a wound after Sonya’s death, scabbing over after Fuller’s indictment, and what festered there was guilt.

  Because he’d talked his fiancé into sharing his home. And it was here that she’d met Elijah Fuller.

  Recognizing a man sliding into the black hole of depression, a man who needed something worth fighting for to help him climb back out, Jordan figured it was time to rally. He may have doubts – was in fact riddled with them – but he owed it to the city, to the victims, to the loved ones they’d left behind, to carry out his duties.

  And he needed this man’s testimony to do that.

  The coffee pot sputtered on the counter behind him. “I’ll get it,” Clay said, and slapped a hand on Jordan’s shoulder as he rose. “Uh, mugs?”

  “In the cabinet next to the fridge.” Hatcher ran a hand through his disordered black hair, gestured vaguely. “And… there might be milk in the fridge. Sugar’s… uh, I haven’t gotten around to buying any, I guess. Sonya was on a diet before the wedding. But I think there are some packets of that artificial deal. Somewhere.”

  Before he lost him again, Jordan took charge of the conversation. “Mr. Hatcher… Daniel. I won’t say that I know what you’re feeling, because I can only imagine. But I need you to pull it together. It was your insistence that had police looking Elijah Fuller’s way, your testimony before the grand jury that helped bring down the indictment. I’ve got the transcripts, I’ve seen the tapes of your interviews, and I know you held up. Did what was needed, when it needed to be done. But this is the first time you and I have met, face to face, and I have to say that I’m a little concerned.”

  Clay sat filled mugs on the table, but Jordan ignored his and continued to push. “You didn’t show up today, Daniel. You didn’t show up, and when I track you down, make it easier on you by agreeing to come by your residence, I find you not just hung over, but still drunk. It’s ten-thirty in the morning, Daniel. And you smell like the barroom floor. You do this at trial, and you might as well hand Elijah Fuller the acquittal yourself.”

  “You son of a bitch.” The mugs pitched, one of them crashing to the floor as Fuller erupted from the table. Coffee splashed and ran, some of it onto Jordan’s lap. Fuller’s bathrobe fell open to reveal the heaving chest of an angry bull. “You sit there, in your damn suit, and run your two-hundred-dollar-an-hour mouth. Look down your fucking nose because a few shots made the thought of going through this again a little more bearable. Because you don’t know. You say you can imagine, but you can’t. No one can, until it happens to you.”

  “That’s right.” Jordan nodded his head, ignored the heat burning through his pants. He figured the pain was small change, in comparison. “I don’t know. I don’t know until you take me back through it, step by awful step. And neither will the jury. It’s horrible, and it’s harsh, and it’s unfair that you have to relive it. But I need you, Daniel. Sonya needs you.”

  “I want her back.”

  Daniel sank into his chair, and there was misery in his voice as well as anger. The man needed both to make it through, so Jordan didn’t mind deliberately baiting him if that’s what it took to get there.

  “I know you do. So bring her back for me, Daniel. Tell me about Sonya, and what you witnessed happening between her and Elijah Fuller.”

  “Okay.”

  Clay handed the man a dish towel to mop himself up, and grabbed another one for Jordan.

  “I’m… I’m sorry about the coffee.”

  “Those pants of his are ugly anyway.” Clay patted the man’s shoulder, winked at Jordan. “Two hundred an hour, you’d think he could buy something a little better. I’ll make more coffee.”

  Two hundred an hour for a public servant. What a joke.

  Clay brewed another pot, and Jordan listened to Hatcher’s story. How his fiancé, who talked to everyone, started chatting up Fuller in the building’s laundry. How Fuller started hanging around, catching Sonya in the parking lot, even showing up where she took classes. “Just happened to be passing by,” Daniel said. “Which was bullshit, but Sonya was too nice to call it.”

  The escalating tension between Daniel and Sonya, because Daniel had had enough of Fuller. “‘He’s harmless,’ Sonya would say. Until I caught him with that camera.”

  Jordan knew the story, but consulted his notes. “You and Mr. Fuller had an altercation on the seventeenth of March, last year.”

  “Saint Paddy’s Day.” Hatcher agreed, and sipped his coffee. Clay’d made it strong enough to peel the skin from the roof of your mouth, but it seemed to be doing the job. “You know how crazy the city is. People everywhere, most of ‘em drunk.”

  “Had you been drinking, Mr. Hatcher?”

  “Not a drop. I had to work, missed the parades and whatnot. But Sonya, she’d been out with friends. Was going to meet me here, have a little dinner, then we’d head out together for round two. You know we’ve got this ground floor unit, and when I park and get out of my car, I can hear her singing. She’s got the window open, like she likes to do. And she’s in there just belting out some Irish song. Danny Boy, I think. Woman carried a tune about as well as a buffalo can do the two-step, but she’s singing anyway. So I think, hey, I’ll just sneak around to the window. Throw a rock or something. Maybe scare her a little so she’ll get fired up.”

  “That’s when you noticed Fuller.”

  “The bastard.” Hatcher’s face tightened with rage. “Hiding in the damn bushes, taking… taking pictures of Sonya through the window. I’m sor
ry.” He grabbed the discarded dishtowel, rubbed it against his watery eyes.

  “You’re doing fine.”

  “So, I, uh, confront the little prick. Pop him one in the jaw, and he squeals like a girl and goes down. Sonya comes over to the window and starts asking what the hell is going on, and Fuller is blubbering and there’s just this… red haze in front of my eyes. So I pick him up by the shirt – I don’t really even remember doing it – and just… slam him into the window.”

  Jordan had sworn to uphold the law, to conduct himself in a manner befitting a representative of the court, but part of him pumped its fist. Even if Jordan couldn’t be sure that Elijah Fuller had caused three deaths, his behavior had been reprehensible. “Fuller was later treated at the hospital for lacerations to the back of his head.”

  “Yeah. Uh, some of the glass flew in and hit Sonya, too. She got five stitches right about here.” Hatcher made a slicing motion across the top of his foot.

  “You spent that night in jail.”

  “Some of the neighbors called the cops. I was… I guess I was still working him over, and just got caught up in it and took a swing at one of the officers. Sonya, uh, she finally agreed there might be a problem and was talking about getting a restraining order. The cops had Fuller’s camera, the memory stick pretty well filled with pictures of Sonya. Here. At school. Walking through the damn park. We figured we’d move, get away. Get the glass replaced and break the lease, who cares? But a little over a week later she’s dead.

  “The same day the stitches came out of her foot.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  AVA stared at the tub of pansies with helpless rage.

  They were dead. Not just withered. Dead.

  She knew – even before Jordan had so thoughtfully pointed it out – that she had a tendency to neglect them. They always looked so cheerful, their happy purple faces bobbing in the barrel as she breezed in and out the door, and then – whoops! They’d be drooping. Forgot to water them, again.