by Diane Capri
Claire said, “What’s wrong?”
“He’s there. In Mom’s 2006 yearbook.” She paused, summoning the strength to keep talking. “Mom worked with him. She must have.”
Claire’s tone was gentle. “We knew that already, didn’t we?”
Jordan’s voice cracked. Stay strong. She breathed deeply to control her voice. “But it’s so much more real now. Seeing his picture in the Footsteps Mom owned. You know?”
Claire did know. She had been close to Brenda, too.
“Yeah,” Claire replied quietly. “I’m sorry.”
“I just had to tell someone.” Left unspoken was the rest of the sentence. Someone other than my dad.
Then, a sniffle on the other end of the call.
“Claire? Are you crying? I didn’t mean to upset you.”
Claire’s sniffles increased in volume and frequency after Jordan asked.
“It’s just, the whole night. Everything. You getting to meet a new guy and you might be moving on and I’m not. I’m not moving on at all. I miss Sal.” Claire was full out sobbing now.
Jordan had been ignoring Claire’s boyfriend, hoping Claire would stop thinking about Salvador and Caster Shrimp Company if she didn’t talk about him all the time. Epic fail for a best friend, for sure.
Jordan searched frantically for something to say that wouldn’t sound like the truth, which was, “You’re better off without him.”
Her silence lasted long enough that Claire finally hiccoughed twice and her sobbing quieted a bit. “I’m sorry. It’s nothing compared to what you’re going through with your mom and everything. I know that.”
Jordan felt like Claire had slapped her, hard, to wake her up. She had been too focused. She should stop being so self-involved. So should Claire.
Jordan softened her tone. “You told me I get to be happy, and I’ll tell you the same thing.” Jordan imagined looking into Claire’s beautiful blue eyes, a hand on each of her shoulders. “Once in a while, it’s okay to be sad. You loved Sal. He’ll always be a part of your life, good or bad.”
She stopped before she added, so paste Sal in your scrapbook and move on.
Duh! Jordan slapped her palm to her own forehead. Take your own advice about your ex, why don’t you?
Jordan cleared her throat. “Claire? Sal is gone. So is Paul. Both of us need to move forward. I promised you I’d try with Tom Clark, and I will. Now you promise me you’ll be looking for the next adventure, too.”
Claire broke down again into louder sobs.
“Sal is in Witness Protection, you don’t have to worry about him. You deserve way better, anyway. You know that, right?” Jordan’s blunt honesty was her best asset. It was also one of her worst faults.
“He was the one, Jordan.” Claire’s voice was hollow. “At least, I wanted him to be.”
Be honest, but be careful. “I think he wanted to be that man for you. But he just couldn’t do it.”
Jordan tucked the yearbook away. She stood, straightened her spine and put backbone into her voice, too. “Listen. Tomorrow is Thursday, right? I’m off work. I have an appointment, but after that, let’s do something fun. Again. Who says we can only have fun once a week?”
Claire’s crying had quieted. “I have to spend the day applying to grad schools. I promised myself I would.”
“Friday then. Before I go to work. I’ll pick you up this time.”
“K. And I made it home now.”
Jordan had heard her car door close and the elevator dinging through the phone a while ago.
She pictured Claire standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling window of her twelfth floor apartment, overlooking downtown Tampa, all alone, with tears streaming down her cheeks.
“See you Friday. For sure. No excuses.” Which was a perfect because it meant Jordan could spend all day Thursday working on her most important mission: finding Brenda Fox’s killer.
For now, she returned all the other yearbooks to the plastic tub in the closet and put the cardboard box back on the stack. She took the 2006 Footsteps with her into the kitchen where she made a pot of coffee and fired up her laptop.
CHAPTER 7
A sunray fell across her face and woke Jordan Thursday morning. Her bonus day off. Her head felt fuzzy and her eyes grainy. She hadn’t slept enough after her near all-nighter researching Aaron Robinson and friends.
She stretched and glanced at the clock. Already nine thirty? She had to be in the lawyer’s office at eleven.
She pushed back the covers and stood for a few moments in the warm sunbeam before she slipped on her cotton robe and walked into the hallway still rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Had she even removed her makeup before she finally went to bed this morning? She couldn’t remember.
A soft-soled shuffle whispered to her ears. Then, a wide, toothy smile consumed her face.
Her dad stood upright, facing the kitchen, lifting her spirits. After all those long years of seeing him resting in his bed or captive in his wheelchair. He gripped the rubber handles of a walker and continued at the slowest tortoise pace to the far end of the hall. Plastic braces around his ankles helped support his weight and stabilize him. But he was walking. Jordan fist pumped the air. “Yes!”
“I know you’re watching me, Freckles.” He sounded the opposite of annoyed, though.
She mimicked his tone. “I know you’re trying to impress me, showoff. Don’t overdo it. I’m already impressed.”
Like Jordan and Claire, her dad was moving forward in his life, too. Finally. Jordan took it as a good omen.
He’d been practicing with the walker for about a week. At first he could only go halfway down the hallway. Now he could do at least four laps without stopping to rest.
Jordan had done the research and talked with all of his doctors. They told her to be realistic. Fifteen percent of stroke victims died shortly after the stroke, they’d said. Another forty percent survived with special care and shortened life spans. Only thirty five percent recovered enough to live independently.
When they’d sufficiently terrorized her with “realism,” they admitted that ten percent of stroke victims recovered almost completely.
Her dad had heard that statistic loud and clear. Nelson Fox Ten Percenter, as he called it. That was his aim. There were many times when Jordan didn’t think he’d ever get there.
He’d had the stroke five months after Brenda’s murder. The doctors said Brenda’s murder wasn’t the cause. They also said the police naming Nelson a person of interest and hounding them day and night and losing his job and being abandoned by almost everyone they knew wasn’t the cause.
Jordan didn’t believe them about that, either. Truth was, they killed her mother and they’d almost killed her dad. All of them. Through the long hours in the hospital and long years of therapy, she vowed she’d never forgive them for it. Never.
Since she and her dad had moved from the Turtle Road house and settled here on Thompson Street a few weeks after he left the hospital, he had handled Brenda’s death at lot better. Or so he made it seem for Jordan’s benefit. But she didn’t believe that lie any more that the others.
She never objected to his living in denial because his optimism helped them both. But his refusal to discuss anything at all about Brenda’s murder had put an impenetrable roadblock in Jordan’s way, too. Now that he was walking, she hoped a lot of things would change for the better.
Jordan patted his shoulder and moved past him toward the kitchen. “Want some coffee?”
“Already had a boat load, thanks.” Nelson was still shuffling toward the far end of the hall long after she’d reached the kitchen. “I hope you’re inviting your new friends to our wheelchair burning party.”
“We’re not burning the wheelchair.” She called back to him. “Someone else will need it.”
He sighed loudly enough to be heard through the walls. “We can still have a party though.”
“Of course,” She came back and gave him a quick hug and slipped past him
again on her way to the shower. “You can grill the steaks!”
Red meat was his weakness. Nelson’s post-stroke diet was low-calorie, low-sodium, and low-fat. In other words, nothing remotely tasty. The doctor’s actual words were, “If it tastes good, spit it out.”
“And for you, chocolate cake,” he called out a moment before she ducked into her bathroom and turned on the shower.
Chocolate cake was Jordan’s weakness. Not that she was on a diet. She usually forgot to eat, and half the time, she just grabbed a piece of fruit.
She shouted to be heard over the running shower while she lathered her hair. “You know, when you get to the point of walking and celebrating with a steak party, Nelson Fox Ten Percenter, you might have to go back to work.”
“When I get the green light, I will be there.” Nelson’s eagerness almost broke her heart.
Please, God, make it so. Jordan worried that he’d never return to work. He’d never go back to the high school where he’d been the principal, for sure. Parents and administrators would object. Many still refused to accept that Nelson was innocent in his wife’s death.
It wasn’t okay that her mother’s killer was still out there, somewhere, walking free. After almost five years, too many people still gossiped about the crime. They said more than ninety percent of female murder victims were murdered by the men in their lives, as if that statistic applied to her dad, too.
Jordan shuddered as she stepped out of the shower. The fresh-brewed coffee aroma filled her nostrils and made her stomach growl. She toweled off and dashed through her grooming routine so she’d have time to grab a quick breakfast.
Today, she had an appointment with Jenny Lane, a lawyer who knew at least some of the answers.
Next chance she got, she’d head back to the newsroom archives to look for new leads at work, too.
Cold cases were usually solved when time presented new evidence or new witnesses. Time and Jordan Fox would catch up with Brenda’s killer. She’d make sure of it. She had a plan. Jordan Fox, Woman on a Mission.
CHAPTER 8
Jennifer Lane’s law office was located on Cleveland Street near Howard Avenue in one of several historic buildings recently renovated for professional offices instead of the private homes they’d been at the turn of the twentieth century.
Jordan’s little blue Honda sub-compact, Hermes, had covered the short distance as fleetly as his name implied. She’d missed the driveway to the parking entrance on the first pass, which required a second trip around the block. Even so, she arrived two minutes early for the ten o’clock meeting.
She checked her lip gloss and confirmed that her hair hadn’t frizzed in the ten minutes since she left home before she locked Hermes and dashed to the front entrance and stepped inside what had once been a parlor.
The waiting room was decorated in what could only be called shabby antiques that might have been original to the house. An uncomfortable Rococo rosewood sofa and two less comfortable Victorian needlepoint parlor chairs, all covered in moth-eaten green brocade were separated by a Victorian marble turtle top parlor table. The wormy hardwood floor was partially covered by a Donegal carpet of dubious pedigree.
Jordan sneezed twice because the dusty old carpet irritated her nose.
She looked around for a receptionist or a bell or anything she could use to announce her arrival. She was still searching when a young woman walked into the parlor from the opposite end of the corridor.
“You must be Jordan Fox. I’m Jenny Lane,” she said, extending a firm hand with slender fingers, neat, short nails and no polish.
Jordan had no time to wipe the sweat from her palm before shaking. “It’s nice to meet you.”
Jenny Lane was dark, compact and totally unthreatening. Brown curly hair, very little makeup, and nothing at all frivolous about her appearance except, perhaps, the dimple in her chin which was accentuated by her smile.
According to The Florida Bar records Jordan had researched, Lane had graduated suma cum laude from the University of Florida Law School six years ago. She’d left a prestigious law firm under odd circumstances, but Jordan didn’t care about the skeletons in her closet. She was thirty-three, eleven years older and more polished than Jordan.
Jordan cleared her throat and clasped her hands behind her back. “I’m glad we were finally able to schedule this meeting, Ms. Lane—”
“Call me Jenny, please.” She smiled and gestured toward the back of the house. “Come into my office. It’s more comfortable.”
Jordan sneezed again.
Jenny smiled. “And less dusty.”
She turned and walked back the way she’d come. Jordan followed.
Jenny’s interior office was more modern. Computer screens, printers, telephones, the works. The furniture had probably been purchased at Staples or Office Depot within the past year. Pressboard contemporary was as accurate a style description as whatever the catalogue had dubbed it.
Jenny moved to the black leather desk chair and waved toward two Ikea-quality client chairs. “Please take a seat.” Jordan did. “Would you like a cup of coffee?” Jordan shook her head. “Okay. How can I help you?”
Jordan took a deep breath and jumped right to the point. “As I said on the phone, I got your name from Tony Grantham, Jr.” She didn’t say how long it had taken her to find the man or how many blind alleys she’d gone down before she succeeded. Her instinct was to make her visit seem as routine as possible.
“How is Tony? I haven’t seen him in a while,” Jenny said, her eyes crinkling when she smiled.
“He’s fine.” Jordan wouldn’t be distracted by small talk. Besides, she didn’t really know anything about Tony Grantham, Jr. She’d never met him in person. One phone call had been the extent of their communication. “He said all of his father’s client files were transferred to you after Mr. Grantham was killed in a car crash three years ago.”
“That’s right.” Jenny folded her hands in her lap and leaned back slightly in the chair.
“My mother was murdered two years before Mr. Grantham died. He was our lawyer. Our file was sent here, Tony said.” Jordan’s voice wavered even as she struggled to control it.
The words were not easy to say. She’d actually practiced several times last night to be sure she could say what she needed to say. She rarely talked about her mother and never discussed the murder. Ever. With anyone. Not even with Claire.
And most definitely not with her dad.
Jenny’s brows dipped low over her nose and her eyes softened. Sincerely, she said, “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Jordan felt her spine straighten. If she had a nickel for every time she’d heard words just like that in the past five years, she’d be a wealthy woman now. No matter who said them or how sincerely they were delivered, those words never brought Brenda Fox back to life. They never made Jordan feel better, either.
Still, Jordan wanted something from Jenny and bristling at her compassion wasn’t likely to get Jordan where she wanted to go. So she lowered her gaze a moment and said a simple, “Thank you.”
Jenny waited a moment. “Why are you looking for this file now, Jordan? Has something happened?”
The unvarnished truth was Jordan’s usual response to all questions, but how much could she trust this woman she’d never set eyes on before? Witnesses often asked Jordan to keep information off the record and she always complied. Maybe she could trust Jenny Lane to do the same.
“The fifth anniversary of my mom’s death is coming soon. There’s been no progress on the investigation. Now that I’m out of college and my dad’s physical condition is improving, I’m thinking about hiring a private detective.” Whoa! Where did that come from? It was a good plan, though. Maybe she would do exactly that, if she couldn’t make progress on her own. “He’ll need the file and any other information we can give him.”
“I see.” Jenny nodded as if Jordan’s hasty plan made perfect sense. She moved closer to her desk, which put a barrier between the
m. “Tony Grantham, Sr. was a difficult man, but was a top notch lawyer and he kept excellent records.” Jenny paused half a beat, maybe expecting Jordan to agree, so Jordan nodded. “The good news is that when you called, I searched and found the file and it still exists. I pulled it from storage and reviewed it.”
Jordan’s legs had started bouncing when Jenny mentioned the file. Her stomach turned a dozen back flips in half a second when Jenny said she’d located it.
Jordan was determined to find her mother’s killer and bring him to justice, but every time she took even a baby step in that direction, her body seemed to revolt.
She took a couple of deep breaths and steadied her voice as well as possible. “I’d like to see our file, please.”
Now, Jenny seemed uncomfortable for the first time. She pushed away from the desk and folded her hands in her lap. She frowned and pursed her lips a moment before speaking softly. “I can’t show you the file unless you have written permission from Nelson Fox. I’m sorry.”
Jordan blinked. She canted her head. Her eyebrows knitted together over her nose. “What?”
“Mr. Grantham’s client was actually Nelson Fox. He represented Nelson in connection with the investigation of Brenda Fox’s murder.” The words were reasonable and obvious. Nelson Fox was the one who was under suspicion at the time, not Jordan.
“That’s right. Nelson is my dad. Brenda is, er, was my mother.” Jordan blinked to clear her vision and breathed deeply. Even speaking Brenda’s name to a stranger was hard.
“Yes,” Jenny drew the word out and cleared her throat again. She dipped her head to nod. “But you were not Mr. Grantham’s client. Your father was. The file is confidential. And it’s protected by attorney-client privilege.”
Jordan shook her head and scrunched her face and blinked a few times as if that would clear her hearing, too. “I don’t know what you mean.”
