Over the Line (8 page)

"I'm sure it was special to her."

Tears stung Janey's eyes as guilt outdistanced both the sense of displacement and the paranoia. "I should have known her better."

Max covered her hand with his. "She didn't exactly make that easy for you now, did she?"

Janey roused herself from her thoughts, tuned into what Max was saying. Comfort. He was offering comfort... and absolution. No. Her mother hadn't made it easy to know her. Or to love her.

And no matter how many times Janey told herself that alcoholism was a disease, a warring faction in her mind and heart told her that her mother had had a choice.

She'd chosen the booze.

And that had left a fatherless little girl wanting for a mother, too.

Jase flanked Janey on one side, Max the other; all
three of them stared in stupefied silence as they stood in the middle of Alice Perkins's living room—or what was left of it.

"Jesus," Jase muttered, surveying the destruction, and watched for a sign that Janey Perkins, who had buried her mother not more than thirty minutes ago, was going down for the count.

The entire house had been ransacked. End tables and lamps lay drunkenly across the tile floor, smashed and broken. Chairs were overturned. Cushions slashed. House-plants had been upset; the fetid scent of damp potting soil permeated the air. Even her mother's clothes had been strewn all over the bedroom. Shards of pottery and shattered glass were scattered all over the kitchen floor.

Her face chalk-white against the black of her funeral dress, Janey reached out, unaware that she was doing it. Jase grabbed her hand to steady her. Her fingers were ice-cold. Shock. Against her throat, below the delicate strokes of her tattoo, he could see her heartbeat knocking out of control.

And as he had several times today, Jase resisted an unexpected urge to offer her more than a steadying hand.

"Why would anyone do this?" Her voice was as shaky as her hand.

"I'm afraid it's all too frequent an occurrence, Baby— pardon me. I mean, Ms. Perkins."

The uniformed officer who'd been the first to respond to Max's 911 call was a young, scrubbed-faced freshman cop. Officer Rodman of the rapidly blinking blue eyes, steel-wool cap of carrot-red hair, and nervous shoulder jerk was obviously also a fan. His face flushed as red as his hair. He smelled of gun oil and Mississippi heat.

"You'd be surprised how many break-ins coincide with obituary listings in the newspaper," Rodman continued.

"That's just sick." Max scrubbed a hand over his face as he surveyed the damage.

"Yes, sir," the officer agreed with a slow southern drawl. "There's a criminal element even here in Mississippi that preys on these types of situations. They scan the papers, know the house is empty during the funeral services, and figure they've got easy pickins."

The officer waited for that information to settle, then pulled a notebook out of the breast pocket of his uniform shirt with another jerk of his shoulder. "Can you tell me if there's anything missing?"

Janey hesitated, clearly still grappling with the devastation. Hell, Jase was having trouble grasping it. It looked like a lot more than a break-in. It looked like someone had been good and pissed.

"I have no idea," Janey said, responding to the officer. "I've... this is the first time I've been to my mother's ... to her house."

"Well," Rodman said, glancing around, "it's obvious they weren't going for the bigger items. TVs are still here. So's the DVD player, the stereo system. Would she have kept cash in the house, do you think? Jewelry?"

"I... I don't know. I don't know anything about what she might have kept in the house."

For that matter, it was obvious by the way she looked around, kind of lost and uncertain, that she didn't know much of anything about the way her mother had lived. Jase found that a little sad. And he could see in Janey's eyes that she did, too.

"Officer Rodman," Max intervened, steering the young policeman toward the door. "You must understand. Ms. Perkins has had a difficult day. She's just buried her mother. And now this. Is it possible these questions could wait? Perhaps until tomorrow?"

Rodman nodded, his face flushing red again. "Sure thing.

"Listen," he added with another jerk of his shoulder, "I wish I could let you stay for a while, but we need to get Forensics in here and—"

"Just give her a minute, okay?" Jase said.

Rodman looked uncomfortable, but finally nodded. "Just for a minute, but don't disturb anything."

"Yes. Yes, of course," Max chimed in. "We understand. Let me give you my card. You can reach Ms. Perkins through me or Wilson here, if you have more questions."

Jase had questions. A lot of questions. But he kept them to himself, watching, with a growing concern that he hadn't expected to feel for a bad-girl rocker who suddenly looked as fragile and breakable as a piece of delicate handblown glass.

Chapter 4

The sense of violation was crippling. So was the sense of doom. Janey stood in numb silence, vaguely aware of Max talking to the officer, of Baby Blue's quiet vigilance behind her, and thought,
This was where my mother lived.

The small two-bedroom ranch was Alice's home—but it had never been Janey's. She'd never lived in anything remotely this nice as a child. And yet even in the shambles of the break-in, Janey could see the house was modestly furnished—just like the house itself was modest. Small.

She didn't understand. Given the amount of money she'd been sending her mother the last few years, Alice Perkins should have been living like a queen. Another knot of emotion Janey didn't entirely understand balled up inside her.

She heard Baby Blue's voice in the background, reaching her through a hollow tunnel as he asked the officer some questions. She walked numbly across the living room, skirting an overturned end table to get to an open window and the fresh air scented of summer roses and lilies that she suddenly needed. She glanced jerkily around the house, unable to shake the sensation of being caught in the crosshairs of a rifle scope.

Perfect.
Now her paranoia came with details.

Outside, a soft, hot Mississippi breeze rustled the trees in this quiet suburban neighborhood. She could hear the shouts of children playing in their yards, smell suppers cooking on grills nestled on patios opening onto neatly manicured lawns.

It was the kind of neighborhood she'd dreamed of living in when she was a little girl. Quiet and clean.

Safe.

Her reality, however, had never been any of those things. Her reality had leaned more toward rusted-out trailer houses with weedy dirt yards where mangy dogs fought rats for the garbage rotting in overflowing trash cans. And where crack houses flourished every four blocks.

Instead of flower scents, she remembered the scent of stale, spilled beer or, if her mother had scored a "visitor," the whiskey that had been her drink of choice.

"Come on, snooks."

She started when Max's voice and bracing hand on her arm brought her back to the moment.

"Let's get you out of here. If the local Barneys want to talk to you again, they've got mine and Jase's cell numbers."

She didn't argue. More than anxious to leave, she let Max guide her out the door as Wilson dealt with the throng of reporters lurking like gnats and yapping like dogs and help her into the waiting Lincoln they'd rented at the airport. An hour later they were airborne in her private jet.

Janey closed her eyes, let her head fall back against the plush leather headrest, and steadied herself by breathing deep of perfectly conditioned air. Alice Perkins was dead. She'd died a violent, solitary death outside a run-down bar—probably at the hands of someone whose blood alcohol level had rivaled that of the woman whose life had been taken.

Liver disease. Suicide. Janey had always thought that was how it would end for her mother. That was the call she'd always anticipated. But this. This was just one more grievous insult to a sad and wasted life that could have been so much more.

She wished she could cry. She wished she could feel something ... something more than empty ... as if someone had used a rusty knife to carve a gaping hole in her chest.

How a hole could have a presence she didn't know. But the weight of it stayed with her—along with a persistent, nagging sense that someone was watching every move she made.

Friday, July 14th, Atlantic City Hilton, New Jersey

"You're not going to believe what happened." Chris Ramsey wedged the phone between her shoulder and ear and rummaged through her suitcase for her green silk blouse. She liked the way it looked with her red hair. Liked the new short and sassy cut she'd gotten before joining Sweet Baby Jane's Fire and Soul tour.

Quincy Taylor, Chris's longtime lover, an independent movie producer, was sitting poolside back in California.

"Babe, I'd believe damn near anything you told me after some of the tape you've sent. This documentary is going to make you the most sought-after videographer in L.A."

Which was exactly what Chris was shooting for when she'd wangled her way into Sweet Baby Jane's inner circle. She'd begged. She'd bribed. She'd called in favors. And it was all paying off. Janey Perkins's mother—a drunk, from what Chris had been able to dig up—was dead, the victim of a hit-and-run. This kind of drama was going to be the power boost that propelled Chris's career to that A-list level.

Quickly, sparing little detail, she filled Quincy in on Alice Perkins's death. "And on top of that, Edwin Grimm—the guy who was convicted of stalking her three years ago? He's been released from prison. They've hired a full-time bodyguard to protect her because of it."

"Holy shit."

Almost giddy with the scent of success, Chris laughed and flopped to her back on the hotel bed. "I'm so high, if you were here right now, I swear I'd take you on a ride you'd never forget."

Quincy groaned, which made her laugh. "You're killing me here, babe."

"Speaking of killing," she rolled to her side, propped herself up on an elbow, "wouldn't it be something if Sweet Baby Jane ended up dead, too, before this was all over?"

Quincy made a sound of agreement. "Yeah. Wouldn't that be something? This Grimm character—you thinking he's going to come after her again?"

Chris smiled. "He almost killed her once."

"The world loves a dead artist, I always say. Think of the bucks you'd make off this documentary then."

"Way ahead of you there, pal."

"Going to be interesting to wait this out, see what unfolds, huh?"

"You know me, Quin. I'm not the waiting kind."

"Say what? What are you up to?"

Chris laughed at the shock in Quincy's voice. He had her pegged. She'd been known to "help things along" from time to time to elevate the drama level of a story. "Nothing. I'm up to nothing. Don't mind me, okay? Too many late nights. Love you, babe. I've got to go."

She headed for the shower after she hung up with Quincy, who would be shocked if he knew how much Chris thought about Janey Perkins's demise. Thought about it so much, in fact, that sometimes it scared her. She'd even caught herself plotting ways to facilitate Janey's death.

She'd never actually do it, of course—but it wasn't against the law to think about it, right?

"The world loves a dead artist."

The play this film would get if Sweet Baby Jane suddenly turned up dead would make Chris a fortune.