by Mara Jacobs
I stare into the eyes of the man who killed my father.
Maybe.
I mean, maybe he’s the man who killed my father, not the staring part. Although, to be honest, I’m not really staring into his eyes, because I’m looking at a photo of him on a computer screen.
Okay. Let me start over.
I stare at the eyes of a man who maybe killed my father.
I only knew him for a few weeks before witnessing him murder my father, twenty-two years ago. And, I was only a five-year-old girl, not the most reliable witness.
But yeah, it’s him.
I try to calm down. This isn’t the first time I thought I saw someone from my past. I’ve quickly left grocery stores, abandoning my cart mid-aisle, when seeing the flash of a handsome man with dark hair. Only to be embarrassed as I hid in the parking lot and saw a complete stranger walk out later.
But I never thought I’d seen Uncle Chazz before. Until now.
The picture is the desktop picture of my newest acquisition, a used Mac IMAC. The man – I knew him as Uncle Chazz though, even at five, I knew he wasn’t really an uncle – stands behind the bar in a bar/restaurant. To the right of him, in front of the bar is a young couple standing with their arms around each other. They’re more dressed up than the people in the background of the bar, like maybe they’ve come from somewhere else. They look to be about my age.
The woman is blonde and pretty. The man is handsome with black hair and blue eyes – a combination I used to love on a man. I quickly dismiss them.
I do a couple of quick clicks and realize that the previous owner didn’t wipe the hard drive clean. That’s not as unusual as you might think. In fact, it’s somewhat common. Even after doing this for four years, I’m still amazed at how people can sell their computers without totally obliterating every bit of personal data.
Some don’t know how, I suppose. Some don’t care. And of course, some computers are stolen, but those are mostly laptops.
The shock value of seeing people’s personal things wore off long ago. And there were some shocking things. On one of the first machines I dismantled, I found a folder of the most disgusting pornographic photos I’d ever seen.
I’ve been around the internet a while, and I’ve …stumbled upon...a lot of porn. Some made me laugh, some aroused me, some got no reaction, some made me sick. So when I say this was DISGUSTING…well, you know it was bad. A couple of folders down from the porn folder on this machine were all the letters the owner had sent out…to his parishioners.
Yeah, that’s right, the guy with all the hard core porn was also a minister.
After awhile I became immune to all the personal docs on the computers I refurbished. Now, I simply don’t care enough to look.
I pick up the ebay receipt that was in the box. The seller is an N. Carpenter. There’s a hand-written note that I’d tossed aside when I unpacked the computer.
I hope you like it. It served us well, but time to move on – Nick
Nick Carpenter from Tennessee sold his Mac on ebay and I bought it. He probably joined the PC nation. Or maybe got a laptop with a new job. Or upgraded to a new Mac. I get a lot of Mac sales that way. Mac users love to have the newest version of everything.
I wonder if the bartender – Uncle Chazz, now, to me – is a part of this Nick’s everyday life, or is he just a bartender that happened to be in one of his pictures? The likelihood of him being my Uncle Chazz slims in my mind. The bartender has the same basic features that Uncle Chazz had, but that was twenty-two years ago. He would have been in his early thirties then. The bartender looks to be younger than mid-fifties. And hopefully, Uncle Chazz is rotting in prison somewhere. And if he isn’t, then he got away with killing my father, is running free, and I really can’t imagine him – or any of his ilk – in Tennessee.
Those guys don’t leave their home turf unless they have to.
Like I did.
But the more I stare, the more my hand doesn’t move on the mouse. I can only see the desktop picture.
And Uncle Chazz.
My mind races as to how I can confirm this. Or, better yet, to eliminate the possibility that it’s him. My fingers itch to start Googling, but I know better. No search like that can be traced to this IP address. Or anywhere in the vicinity.
I know there are ways around that, proxies and other stuff, but I don’t trust them. I’ve learned not to.
A thought hits me. The bank. My safe deposit box. I look at the clock, I still have a few hours before my branch closes. Thank goodness they have Saturday hours.
How to do this? I think it through. I don’t want the contents of that box in this house. I know it’s overkill, but it’s how I feel. That life, even the remnants of that life, have no place in this house.
I’ve been through too much to make sure I had this one, small, safe haven.
I take a screen shot of the desktop and then open it up. I enlarge the pic as much as I can without totally blowing out the pixels. I crop out the blonde and her good-looking boyfriend – presumably Nick Carpenter. I hook up a printer to the IMac and print out a copy.
As if someone is watching me, I quickly fold the picture several times, image inward, and place it on my work table. I run upstairs and change out of my sweats, baggy turtleneck, Hello Kitty slippers – my basic work uniform – and into slacks, a light-weight sweater set and loafers. I have about three such outfits for the rare times I go to the bank or to some other professional establishment.
At home I just wear sweats or yoga pants. To run out for take out or to the store, I usually wear jeans. Or sometimes I just stay in the yoga pants.
Pretty inexpensive wardrobe needs. It makes for an uncluttered closet. And not a lot to have to pack on a moment’s notice.
I make the thirty-minute drive to the bank in silence, the print out of the picture sitting on the passenger seat, as if Uncle Chazz is coming for a little ride with me.
I feel a moment of panic at the bank when I pull out my two forms of ID. No reason I should, this is my safe identity. No one outside of this town knows me by this name.
At least no one who wants me dead.
The woman looks at both forms of ID for a while. I don’t blame her; they’ve never seen me in the four years since I got the box. I do my financial stuff at a different bank and most of all my transactions are done online anyway.
The woman finally takes me in the little room and we put our keys into the drawer together and then she leaves to give me privacy. I take the box out and bring it over to the high table in the center of the room. There are four tall stools around the table. I scooch onto one, wishing I was bellying up to the bar to order a brew, not opening the lid on my deadly past.
I turn the key and lift the heavy lid. I open it slowly, as if something inside could strike out at me.
There are only seven items in the box. My birth certificate. My California driver’s license. My Social Security card. A stack of hundred dollar bills totaling four thousand dollars. A picture of my father. A gun. And a sealed envelope.
The identification things I quickly move to the bottom of the box. They are no good to me now, and could get me killed. The cash is my safety net, it goes back into the box. The gun…the gun may be needed, but not today.
I finally come to the sealed envelope, not able to put it off any longer. I don’t know why the procrastination now, after I’d hurried like hell to get here before the bank closed.
Yeah, on some level I do know why. Because what I find it this envelope may blow my safe world apart.
I take a deep breath and place my finger under the flap of the envelope and quickly slash it across, causing a momentary flash of pain from a tiny paper cut. The envelope flap turns a diluted pink where I bleed, ever so slightly, onto it.
Holding the offending fingertip out of the way, I pull out the contents of the envelope, careful not to let them touch the bloodstain. Two photos. Both single shots of a man alone. Different men. The first is a face I know well.
Knew well.
Or maybe, never really knew at all.
I see now that the resemblance to the handsome man in the desktop picture is surface, at best. Black hair, blue eyes, extremely good-looking, yes. But this man…my man…has a gleam in his eye, a charming predator look that draws one in.
Drew me in.
But I flew away.
I swallow down emotion, careful not to examine closely what the exact emotion is, and place that photo back into the envelope. Left remaining is a photo of Uncle Chazz. I take the folded printout of the desktop picture out of my pants pocket. I slowly unfold it, pressing out the creases with my now shaking hands.
I lay the picture from the envelope, a smaller snapshot, onto the table next to the unfolded printout.
He has aged, but it’s Uncle Chazz. There are differences, yes. But even if I hadn’t been sure, and I now was, the man in both these photos has a small scar running through his right eyebrow. Very tiny, not very noticeable, unless you were looking for it.
Or looking at it. As I had, at five years old, when I saw him standing over my father’s body, gun in hand. He’d lifted his index finger to his lips as he watched me watch him, in a “shhhh” motion. It wasn’t necessary. I didn’t scream. I didn’t speak. I only stared at the man who had just killed my father.
My little eyes had followed the line of his index finger as if it were pointing straight up, and saw the scar that bisected his eyebrow. I suppose I was already going into shock because all I could think at the time – and I still remember this, twenty-two years later – was “ I wonder how Uncle Chazz got that owie?”
My finger glides over the scar in the printout of the desktop photo, as if it might be embossed, and I could feel the nail in Uncle Chazz’s coffin.
I’m not sure how long I sit and stare, but I finally put the snapshot back in the envelope, careful not to look at the other picture in there. I fold up the printout and add it to the envelope. I don’t want it in my home. In fact, Nick Carpenter’s IMAC is going to be nothing but nuts, bolts and motherboard by then end of the day.
My hand slides over the gun as I place it on top of everything in the box. Yes, I silently tell it, I will be back for you soon.
I put the box back into the long drawer, call the woman in and we both lock it up and take our respective keys with us. I thank her and walk out of the bank, wondering how I can possibly drive home.
I can’t. Not yet. I’m not even sure I’d be able to find my way home, as shaken up as I am. I look at the coffee shop across the street and head over. I spend the next two hours nursing a black coffee, turning a muffin into a pile of crumbs and plotting how to kill Uncle Chazz.
My hands stop shaking at some point and I know it’s okay to drive. I clean up my mess, half expecting to see napkins littered with murder plots, but no, I’d done all the planning in my head.
On the drive home I turn over all the different ways to exact revenge.
No, not revenge. Vengenance.
Plots and schemes skim through my head, one idea more delicious than the next. I turn down my street and head toward my driveway. The entrance to my safe haven. My nest. A place I hadn’t ventured far from for four years.
A soft sound, almost a wail, escapes from me as I realize none of these plans for Uncle Chazz will happen. None can happen.
I have finally found my father’s killer.
And there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.
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Read a sneak peek from a new romantic mystery series from Mara Jacobs
Chapter One
Get it together, I told myself.
This isn’t life or death. It’s just college basketball. Nobody was going to die from what I was about to do.
And yet, if not death, it could be very…unpleasant if I failed. I could almost hear my foot screaming out from remembered pain.
I quietly practiced a street twang. I tried to conjure up all the female bad-asses I’ve seen in the movies but couldn’t picture Lara Croft doing what I was about to.
Finally, I just let JoJo come out.
I adjusted the gold lame tube top to show optimum cleavage for my very average bosom, hiked my mini skirt up, set the grocery bag I was holding on the carpet, looked up and down the empty hallway then pulled the thong wedgie out of my butt.
It’s not like I hadn’t done this before, but that thought didn’t make it any easier. It only made me slightly sick to my stomach to find myself in this position again.
Enough with the self-pity, I only had myself to blame.
I took a deep breath and knocked on the hotel room door.
After a moment, the door opened and I came face-to-face, or face-to-chest, with a giant. I looked up at the man, boy, really, smacked my gum in a way that would have made my mother cringe, and said, “You Mr. Smith?”
“Hunh?” came the laconic reply. He reminded me of Lurch, a baby-faced Lurch. “Mr. Smith. You him?” I repeated.
He looked down at me, then out into the hallway, as if someone there could give him the answer to his identity. “Hunh?” he grunted again.
“Who is it, Lurch?” came a voice from inside the room.
I mentally smiled to find I wasn’t the only one to peg the giant with the nickname. And it hadn’t even been in the team’s media guide.
“Don’t know,” Lurch said to the voice behind him as he kept his eyes on me. Me and my cleavage.
The giant was brushed aside – not an easy task – and a much smaller, and much darker man took his place. Ebony and Ivory. Mutt and Jeff. The two were complete mismatches, but it only confirmed that I had the right room.
“I think I’ve got the wrong room,” I said.
Lurch seemed to accept the mistake, nodded and turned back into the room. The other kid, however, was not quite ready to see his unexpected visitor leave. Probably pretty damn boring for these kids being cooped up in a hotel room with just text books to study and TV to watch.
“Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Who you looking for darlin’?” His eyes roved over my body and I had to hold myself very still instead of smacking him one. “Mr. Smith? I could be Mr. Smith.” He spoke with an urban slang to his voice.
South side of Chicago. Hell, I even knew who his eighth grade coach was. His mother and sister sang in the church choir and here he was trying to make time with some floozy who showed up at his hotel door.
But then he flashed a grin that spanned his whole face – surely that was way more teeth than a human head could possibly hold – and I forgave him for the leer.
I almost – almost – smiled back.
I hid my amusement and instead raised my brows and licked my lips. I looked him up and down, jutted my hip out at a hard angle and said, “You sure, sugar? You don’t look like you could afford me.” My voice sounded so foreign to myself and I waited to see if the kid would call me on it or if he would bite.
“Awww shit, baby, give me an hour and you’d be paying me.”
Hook, line and sinker.
I snorted with laughter, turned to leave, and then pretended to see someone down the hall. My feigned look of fear alerted Mr. Smith who started to step into the hallway to take a look for himself. Before he could, I placed my hand on his chest, pushed him backward and followed him into the room, shutting the door behind me.
“Wasss up?” Mr. Smith said with a drawl.
“Just give me a minute, sugar, ‘kay?”
“Somebody out there?”
I nodded. “Yeah, security.”
“Hotel security?” Mr. Smith asked.
“Oh shit,” Lurch said behind us.
I brushed past Mr. Smith, walked further into the room, and set my grocery bag on the desk. I took a quick glance around the room. Duffel bags, gym shorts, and tee shirts were strewn all over. And all adorned with Central Iowa Wild Hogs logos. Definitely the right room.
“No problems, honey,” I said to the nervous Lurch. “Let me just make a quick call, wai
t for security to scram and I’ll be out of your hair.”
Lurch breathed a sigh of relief while Mr. Smith grunted his disapproval. “No need to be hasty. Stick around. Make sure the coast is good and clear.”
I turned around and looked at Mr. Smith. I gave him a pitying smile. “Don’t get your hopes up sweetie, I didn’t sign on for a party of three.”
“Lurch here was just leaving, weren’t you, Lurch?” He gave Lurch a hopeful look.
“Hunh?” Lurch said, looking from Mr. Smith to me.
I chuckled. “You don’t wanna throw your poor roommate out in the cold, honey. That’s not neighborly.”
The black young man waved a hand of dismissal at his sidekick. “Aw man, he can go crash with any one of the guys. We already had bed check, nobody will know.”
I made a show of looking around the room, pretending to notice the athletic gear for the first time. “You on some kind of team or something?”
Both male chests puffed out but it was Mr. Smith that answered. “We’re the Central Iowa Hogs, defending conference champs. Final Four.”
And I could list both their stats for the last three seasons. But I swallowed my pride, looked back and forth between them, put a bored look on my face and said, “That’s basketball, right?”
The chests deflated. “Yeah,” Lurch said and then turned and sat on one of the two beds, pulling an open text book that had been lying on the bed onto his lap. His eyes, however, stayed on me. Or, more accurately, on my chest.
I pulled a cell phone from my large, bejeweled purse and punched speed dial. “Stu. What the fuck, man? You gave me the wrong damn room number,” I said into the phone, careful to turn away from the men so they couldn’t hear Stu’s response. So they couldn’t hear that there was no response.
No Stu. Just a dead phone.
“Yeah. Right. That’s where I’m at, Stu. And there ain’t no fucking Mr. Smith here.” I shot Mr. Smith a warning look over my shoulder, correctly halting a smartass comeback. “You got a number?” Pause. “No number, Stu? That’s fucking great.” I turned back to the room, looked at the men staring at me. “I’m wasting valuable date time here watching two college kids get hard at the sight of a working girl in their room.”
