Jessica massaged her temples, reached for the tepid remains of last night’s tea.
“Anyway…” Dinah sighed, went to sit on the futon. “The bitch slipped us a letter today.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. Consider it our notice.”
“Specifically?”
“Renovations on our building start October first.”
Jessica downed the mealy contents of her mug, coughed. “So that’s it for us, then.”
“Look…” Dinah leaned forward, bare elbows on bare knees. “I may not be able to get a fucking job in this town anymore, but I think I got us a place we can move.”
“Yeah?”’
“You know that building next to the East Campus wall? Old brick throwback, balconies with those gorgeous arches?”
“Yeah?”
“The lady who lives there is looking to sublet. She’s taking off for a year or two. Been living there since the late nineties, and the place is rent controlled at… you ready?”
Jessica nodded.
“Six hundred a month.”
“Don’t play.”
“Straight up. Ten-fifty square feet. Prime location. We’re talking about apartment that’s as close as we’ll ever get to this place. Top-left corner, balcony looking out onto the campus wall.”
Jessica turned to look out the window. Saying a silent goodbye, greeted with nothing more than a pasture for evil robots looking to tear the whole place apart. “Yeah.”
“Thing is… she’s looking to book by the start of September. No negotiating on this. Which means we’ve got to be out of here by the end of this month… which means we’re going to have to break our lease.”
“Which means we could lose our deposit.”
“And I’m not saying we couldn’t use that money…” Dinah said, close as she ever came to weighing her financial options. “But this is golden. We’re broke, few months shy of homeless. Even if I manage to get some kind of job, one year from now, this place becomes too rich for our blood. So it’s either stay, let Daedalus bleed us dry. Or pick up stakes and move. Whatever the outcome, we only come this way once.”
“Shit.” Jessica swung around in her chair. “I hate running.”
“I know.”
“I don’t cry, and I don’t run.”
“I know.”
If Jessica thought there was a God, she might have taken that moment to pray for guidance. But keeping a close eye on the news had taught her the Man Upstairs had bigger things to ignore. Far as empirical evidence went, it had always been just her.
Her and Dinah.
And with the list of betrayals stacking up, Jessica had to admit: maybe the time had come to start over.
“If I could take just one thing with me,” Jessica said. “Then let it be my aunt and best friend.”
“Really?”
“Why the hell not?”
“That’s my girl!” Dinah threw her arms around Jessica in a gin-and-lime-scented embrace. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand.”
“Yeah,” Jessica agreed wearily, shuffling to the closet. “Here’s what. We signed our lease with Angela, not these jerks. I think I can get us out of this without any fees or penalties. I’ll write up a letter listing all abuses by the new management. Tell them that, come the end of this month, we out.”
“This calls for a drink!”
Jessica let Dinah go and play. Changed into her streets, got her work uniform ready. She began to search for her book bag. Had herself on all fours by the futon, when she got a pretty good idea where she had left it.
Somewhere in the depths of Anita Montero’s house.
With a stiff groan, she went to the kitchen.
Dinah was pouring herself another eye opener, sucking on a lime.
“Hey, Blondie. I’m going to need your makeup, wine key and book bag.”
“Sure.”
“Is Eli around?”
Dinah put a theatrical finger to her lips. “Still snoozing.”
“Well, this is him losing. I’m taking his car.”
“Leaving a little early, ain’tcha?”
“Yeah…” Jessica grabbed Dinah’s makeup kit from the bathroom. Turned the faucet. Found the pipes to be in perfect working condition.
She saw no reason for Chaucer to know anything about that.
Chapter 57: The Ex-Detective Files.
It was with a sinister, almost evil satisfaction that Jessica realized she was getting damn good at this.
Chaucer had not batted an eye when she arrived unannounced. And, as always, he took the opportunity to hit the gym. Jessica closed the bathroom door. Let the shower run. Sat on the counter, waiting till she heard him leave. Popped her head out to double-check, then turned the water off.
She cautiously checked his closet, all pockets. Came across a black Samsonite attaché case. Complete with dual combination locks, and Jessica wasn’t going to waste any time going down that road. She left the closet as found and began to dig through the dresser.
Rummaging past socks and white cotton briefs, she came across nothing more than an empty money clip and a thimble-sized brass unicorn hanging from a chipped, pink-painted chain.
“You got anything to say?” she asked it.
The unicorn’s single, tiny glass eye winked back.
“If that’s how you want to play it…” Jessica sent the horse back into its stable, covered it with some of Chaucer’s undergarments, and crossed the room.
Opened yet another door, only to find another one staring right back.
Jessica reached for the doorknob. Came up empty, finding only a round, metallic disk wedged into the wood. The door before her led to the adjacent room, number 213. Connecting doorways meant for large groups of clients looking to remain close while maintaining autonomy. Parents and their kids, sets of couples on vacation. Just for the hell of it, Jessica pressed her ear close to the door.
Didn’t hear anything from room 213.
She closed the first door and circled the bed. Opened Chaucer’s nightstand and found a torn envelope.
Addressed to Anita Montero, from the main branch of Pantheon Hospital.
Inside, Jessica found three pages worth of hospital bills. Meticulously itemized. Chemotherapy, EKG, pharmacy, X-rays, lab work, physical therapy; even ice packs, gowns and Tylenol came with their own price tags.
All totaling to well over twenty-thousand dollars.
Jessica was willing to bet this wasn’t the only such bill Anita received.
She carefully folded everything back into the envelope.
Ducking under the bed, she found the laptop.
In a brilliant bit of luck, Chaucer must have simply closed the screen last time he used it. No need to hack another password. She opened the web browser and did a search on Anita Montero. Didn’t get much. On a whim, she typed in the name of her deceased son, Sebastian Montero, paired with Chaucer Braswell.
Right off the bat, there was an article from the Wilmington Star News featuring both their names.
Easy credit means hard choices for The Blue Paradise.
Jessica didn’t recognize the article from her previous searches into Chaucer’s background.
She clicked the link, found the article to be dated 9/15/2002.
Throwing a quick glance at the clock, she began to read.
Dromio Johansson has been raising eyebrows since he moved to the Carolina coast some thirty years ago. He’s saved small businesses from going under, turned out hundreds for blood drives. He’s opened art galleries and raised thousands for endangered loggerhead turtles.
But perhaps his most revolutionary enterprise was the advent of The Blue Paradise, a local restaurant where a couple of quarters could buy you a solid meal. Every item on the menu, barring beverages, was priced at twenty-five cents; from crab cake appetizers to pan-seared mahi-mahi.
Wilmington’s business community started a pool on when the restaurant would finally be forced to close its doors. No
body put their money on anything past one month. One year later, The Blue Paradise was the number one hotspot for locals and tourists alike, bringing in travelers from across North Carolina.
And Dromio Johansson was making a killing.
“It’s twenty-five cents, suggested price,” Dromio had told this newspaper. “The average Joe doesn’t want to look poor. The rich want to look richer. And the prices they choose to pay end up subsidizing everyone else.”
Of course, there was one catch. Nobody gets a seat at The Blue Paradise without a working credit card. This was meant to keep the bad element from taking advantage of the restaurant’s bargain bottom prices.
However, eyebrows are once again being raised along with Blue’s prices.
Over the years, credit has loosened up so much that plastic no longer reflects what truly rests in our bank accounts. Nowadays, anyone can get a credit card. And now that anyone can sit down at The Blue Paradise, don’t expect your bill to look any different than Jacob’s, The Pilot House, or Water Street Bar and Restaurant.
“It’s economics 101,” says Chaucer Brasuell, longtime general manager of The Blue Paradise. “Our prices have gone up because more people have credit cards. More credit means people can afford it. And more is what the restaurant business is all about.”
But will the Paradise lose its essence without the very thing that made it so special?
“It’s still the same restaurant,” insists Sebastian Montero, onetime waiter and longtime friend of the Johansson family. “Same great food, same lively atmosphere. And Dromio Johansson will continue to guest bartend every Sunday night, serving up his signature drink, The Blue Paradise.”
Whether or not Dromio’s establishment will remain the toast of Wilmington remains to be seen. In the meantime, hungry patrons are going to have to find some other place to spend their two bits.
Shave and a haircut, anyone?
Jessica blinked. Scrolled back to find Chaucer’s name misspelled for the variant Brasuell.
She scrolled down, found a few related articles. Nothing directly involving Chaucer, Anita, or her son. Though each consecutive link laid out a pretty clear story.
Blue Paradise Now Closed on Sundays.
Tourism Down for the Second Continuous Year.
Not All Wilmington Businesses Weathering Storm.
Paradise Lost, if Only Temporarily.
“Looks like somebody ain’t rollin’ as high as he’d like me to think…” Jessica took a look around the room. There was a sobering clash between the designer threads, the loss of a once prospering business, Chaucer’s classy ride and Anita’s outrageous hospital bills –
“His car.”
Jessica closed the laptop and shoved it under the bed.
She scooped the keys off the nightstand and bolted from the room.
Crossing the parking lot with measured steps, Jessica casually approached Chaucer’s Cadillac and unlocked the driver’s side. She dove into the clean interior. Nothing to be found but that new car smell suggesting a recent reupholstering. Yet another expenditure that her midnight stalker may or may not have had the cash to cover. Jessica popped the trunk and went around back, keeping a close eye on all surrounding vehicles.
Wasn’t too shocked to find a black Colt semiautomatic resting in a shoulder holster. A strapped private investigator wasn’t anything to write home about, retired or not.
She was more interested in a pair of white cardboard boxes, filled with alphabetically listed files. Fully expecting more evidence of financial woes, Jessica removed one of the manila folders. Felt herself descending further into the dark, face to face with a familiar name.
Patricia Council.
Jessica flipped through the contents. A few pages of nearly illegible handwritten notes. A couple of photographs, taken from a distance. Malik’s mother outside her house, in her backyard, parking on Pantheon’s campus. Each one tagged with a red marker: lengthy ovals hovering just to the left of Patricia in every picture. No matter how closely she stared through the various hoops, Jessica couldn’t figure what the background held that was so damn significant.
She found a Xeroxed police report, dated January second, 2008; the night of Patricia’s car accident.
The head on collision had been with none other than Dr. Lazenby.
Prius versus Escalade. Nobody placing any bets on that outcome.
Jessica shut the folder, replaced it and pulled out the next in line.
Malik Council.
Amongst photocopied yearbook pages and the manifest from his internship in 2008, she found more handwritten notes. Most interesting were details involving his relationship with Jessica; the amount of time they dated, when they broke up and under what circumstances. His past use of antidepressants, walking and talking in his sleep. Information she had fed him over the course of the whole summer.
There was Dinah’s file, fat with recent police reports.
Vice principal Clarence Davenport; crime scene photographs coupled with the child pornography investigation. Carlton Walsh, Philip Council, Glen Roberts; the one thing they all shared in common were Chaucer’s written notes, most findings lifted straight from Jessica’s own lips.
“You sneaky, fucking plagiarist…”
Jessica flipped her way through to the letter K.
And there was her file. Everything Chaucer ever wanted to know about her but was afraid to ask, including her police and court reports for public affray. Knocked down from assault, those were the words scrawled along the margins.
Jessica was beginning to think this was never about her, never about Dr. Lazenby or revenge. It was about Anita’s hospital bills. It was about a global recession with no immediate end in sight. It was about money. It was all about a cash reward for any information leading to the capture of Angry Jonny that now tipped the scales at a combined sixty thousand dollars.
At the center of which sat Jessica Kincaid.
Keys to the kingdom, combination to the vault.
Jessica forced back the bile, tore the top off the second box.
She blinked. In a blatant contradiction to her enraged theorizing, she found a box of vinyl gloves. A box of plastic shower caps. A box of sterilized shoe covers, the kind worn in operating rooms. And finally, a brown bag.
Inside that bag, a brown bottle with a label marked Chloroform.
FOR PROFESSIONAL USE ONLY.
There was always the possibility that Chaucer had been using the gloves and shoe covers for snooping. He’d obviously been doing a lot of it. He’d mentioned lifting the chloroform from Carlton Walsh’s fridge.
But the connection to Dr. Lazenby was still too much to ignore.
“Then again,” Jessica murmured… “Maybe it’s about a little bit more than money.”
She replaced the lid, slid her file back into the first box.
Went for one last fishing trip.
Extracted a folder that came with a name, and a very curious amendment.
Eli Messner… Followed by a single, unsettling question mark.
Jessica tucked the featherweight file under her arm, closed the box and the hood of the car.
“Time to break some records.”
Jessica ran across the parking lot, into the lobby. Slid across the marble floor, two inches from cannon-balling into a stack of suitcases. Nuts to the elevator. She took the stairs two at a time, giving herself a ludicrous reminder to update her contact information at the YMCA.
For one sickening moment, Jessica was positive she’d left the key card in Room 214.
The moment passed, and she sprinted into the bathroom. She’d left the water running, knowing it wouldn’t do for Chaucer to come back to a bathroom free of condensation. Jessica stripped naked and hopped in. Bunched her hair with both hands, forcing the water into every fiber.
Hopped out one minute later, thoroughly unsatisfied.
Jessica dried herself off, slipped into her work duds. Another moment of alarm as she real
ized that her damp curly top would undoubtedly give the ruse away. She reached for the hair dryer and threw it against the floor. The protective cap popped off, went skidding behind the toilet. Coupled with a large crack in the plastic shell, Jessica felt that would count for broken.
She wrapped a towel around her head, walked out into the bedroom.
Darted back into the bathroom, scooped up Chaucer’s car keys and set them on the nightstand just as the door opened. Jessica didn’t play her smile too hard, containing her heaving chest with crossed arms.
“Hey,” Chaucer was frowning, holding up a copy of the Observer. “You didn’t tell me Al Holder had a heart attack.”
“Yeah, sorry…” Jessica said. “It’s just that when the shit piles up this high –”
“Is he going to be OK?”
“Looks like. I’m going to visit him later on…” Jessica scooped Dinah’s book bag. “After I’m done with this shift.”
“Hey. Look at this…” Chaucer had sat down on the desk, eyes serious. “Says here the cops are starting to doubt what Stoppard’s wife is selling.”
“That he attacked Terence Woods?”
“No, that looks open and shut… But the wife’s love affair with the press is making them doubt that Scott Stoppard is behind every incident.”
“Hmm…” Jessica shrugged. “With the debt they’re stuck with... Maybe she did it for the reward. Maybe they both did.”
“You know… That never occurred to me.”
“Well, that’s one for me then.” Jessica made for the door. “I’ll call you if I hear anything else about Al.”
“Jessica?”
She froze. Turned slowly, trying to catch any sign of her search before he could spring it on her.
Chaucer pointed to his head. “Towel, Jessica.”
Jessica laughed, took it off and tossed it across the room. “Yeah, forgot to mention that I might have broken the hair dryer.”
“Smooth.”
“One of us has to be.”
“Later.”
“Peace.”
Jessica experienced one last bout of fright as the elevator doors closed behind her. Loose ends. Ripped open Dinah’s book bag, instantly soothed by the sight of Eli Messner’s file. She crossed the lobby and strode out to the parking lot.
Wasn’t even scheduled to work the Prescott that day.
Jessica smiled bitterly. “I am definitely starting to get good at this.”
Chapter 58: Prince of Darkness.