The Old Deep and Dark (4 page)

“Where do you want it to leave you?”

“Remember,” he said, over enunciating the word and yet still slurring so badly that it was almost indecipherable. “We both know where the bodies you
failed
to mention are buried.”

“You know, Tommy, if I were you, I'd stop pointing out what a liability you are to me. It's not real smart.”

“What are ya gonna do about it? You can't unring a bell.”

The floor creaked.

“Think I better help you to bed,” said Jordan.

“I don't need your help. Just need some fresh air.”

A moment later, Tommy tumbled out of the room holding a bottle of scotch by the neck, knocking into the wall across from the door and nearly upending a narrow table and a vase of flowers. “Sweet dreams, my prince,” he mumbled as he passed by Booker, never seeing him as he careened down the stairs.

 

5

Jane stood next to a tall filing cabinet, pawing through the first few folders in the top drawer, searching for a specific form, one she needed to fill out and get into the mail before the end of day. She was tying up loose ends with the intent of focusing all her attention on her restaurant until the new year.

Jane had worked for fifteen months to earn her PI license from the state of Minnesota. Once she was legal, she'd formed a business partnership with a friend and retired homicide cop, A. J. Nolan. As an incentive to get Nolan back to work after a difficult surgery, one that had left him in a wheelchair, Cordelia had offered them office space on the second floor of her new theater. Thus, Nolan & Lawless Investigations was born.

Nolan worked the job more or less full-time. Because neither of them relied on the income the business generated for their livelihoods, they were free to choose their clients. Most PIs were forced to do grunt work—tracking down personal assets, doing background checks, sitting in endless parking lots waiting to take pictures of some cheating husband or wife leaving a paramour's apartment. Not the kind of work that Jane, now in her midforties, or Nolan, in his midsixties, wanted.

Jane was a restaurateur by training and by passion. The Lyme House on Lake Harriet in south Minneapolis was the culmination of her childhood dream. She'd named it after the town in which she grew up—Lyme Regis, on England's southwestern coast. She'd lived in England with her family until she was nine, returning again for two years after her mother had died. In her late thirties, however, shortly after her partner of some ten years, Christine Kane, had succumbed to cancer, Jane began to feel an itch to move beyond the confines of a 24-7 restaurant life. Her father was a criminal defense attorney, and the gift of his DNA, as well as the interest she'd taken in his cases when she was a child, were beginning to tug at her. Melding these interests had created some difficult hurdles, but for now, Jane felt satisfied that the two were coexisting reasonably compatibly.

Sometimes she wondered why she hadn't pursued a law degree. It was what her father had wanted. The problem was, unlike her dad, Jane wasn't a fan of the U.S. criminal justice system. She didn't think voting on the truth was a particularly persuasive way to locate it, especially when lawyers were allowed to play so many legal games, mostly behind the scenes, aimed at suppressing relevant information. Even under the best of circumstances, with all the facts placed clearly on the table, putting a life or death decision in the hands of twelve fallible human beings seemed an immensely tricky proposition. Justice might be the goal, but once hobbled by poorly informed opinions based on facts that had been shape-shifted into a compelling, though fundamentally misleading narrative, truth was what suffered the most. As Jane's father often said, the lawyer who was able to spin the best story from the permissible evidence generally won. Finding criminals, solving the puzzle, proving guilt, compelled Jane, though once they were delivered into the legal system, the whole process gave her a huge headache.

Just as she located the form she was looking for, her cell phone buzzed inside her jacket.

“Hello,” she said, sitting down behind her desk. She began pulling drawers open until she found a pen.

“Janey, hi. It's Peter. You got a minute?”

“Hey, kiddo. How was the plane ride?”

“Uneventful. That's about the only good thing you can say these days.”

“And New York?”

“Sigrid and Mia are in heaven. I'm nervous.”

“You've got meetings today, right?”

“This afternoon.”

Peter had been asked to shoot a documentary on the Latin American Spring—all the protests in Brazil, the change that was right on the cusp. Since he would be gone for more than a year, living and working out of Rio, his wife and daughter had agreed to accompany him. They considered it the chance of a lifetime. Though Jane would miss them, she heartily agreed. “What happened with your house?”

“Sigrid's brother, Matthew, finally signed on to stay there. We gave him a great deal—free rent, as long as he cuts the grass and shovels the snow. And pays the utilities.”

She leaned back in her chair. “Sounds like you've got all your bases covered.”

“Dad already gave us the you-have-to-be-careful lecture. I can hardly believe this is happening.”

“That makes two of us.”

“Listen, Janey. You have to take extra care with Dad. I know his breakup with Elizabeth was three months ago, but I think he's still feeling the effects. He seems so lonely. And how does he solve that? He works more, which is the last thing he should be doing at his age.”

Jane's father had just turned seventy. He had heart problems, though from what his doctors told him, he was in generally good shape. He'd always been a workaholic, which was probably where Jane got her own workaholic tendencies.

“With Elizabeth taking a job with another firm, he's been trying to fill in when he can,” continued Peter.

“I know,” said Jane. “Why don't they just name another partner?”

“Apparently it's a long process. Anyway, will you make extra time for him? I worry, you know?”

“I'm on it.”

“Well, I guess this is good-bye. Like I said, we'll e-mail and Skype. Mia says she'll learn everything she can about Brazilian cooking so she can teach you when she gets back. Oh, and tell Cordelia we'll come home bearing gifts. She should let us know if there's anything specific she wants. That includes Hattie, too.”

Hattie was Cordelia's eight-year-old niece. She'd lived with Cordelia most of her young life. For the last couple of years Hattie had been into collecting bugs, an interest that horrified her aunt, especially when her secret bug collection had orchestrated a jailbreak and infested their loft. Recently, under pressure from Cordelia, she'd moved on to archeology. “Bring Hatts back a pre-Columbian twenty-four karat gold necklace. That would make both Cordelia and Hattie happy.”

His laugh was deep and rich, a sound Jane loved. “She'll probably have moved on to particle physics by the time we get home.”

“Probably,” agreed Jane. “My love to all of you.”

After saying a somewhat emotional good-bye, she felt the phone buzz. Glancing at the incoming text, she saw that it was from Avi Greenberg, her girlfriend. She read it, smiling:

Hate Chicago. I know, stop whining. Third meeting w/ editor on new book. Didn't go as well as hoped. The hotel is okay. Quiet. Boring Lonely as hell. Y don't you come down 4 the weekend? Am having dinner w/ Julia tonight. She's been the only bright spot. All for now. Miss you.

The mention of Julia's name gave Jane a brief jolt. She had no idea that her ex was in Chicago. As she thought about it, the questions she'd had about why Avi needed to travel there to work on her revisions were all tied up neatly with that one simple word: Julia. She owned the press and thus had pulled the strings, urging, or perhaps ordering, Elaine Ducasse, the senior editor at Ducasse & Ducasse, to not only acquire the book, but to insist that Avi come to Chicago to work on the revisions. What a coincidence that Avi's arrival coincided perfectly with the few days Julia happened to be in town.

Ever since Julia had learned that Jane had a new love in her life, and that this new love was an aspiring writer, she'd been playing her little games behind the scenes. Avi's newest novel was wonderful, in Jane's opinion, and well worthy of publication. That had never even been a question for Jane. What was in question were Julia's motives. Did she want Avi for herself? Did she simply want to mess with Jane, cause her a few sleepless nights for old times' sake? Either was possible, as were other scenarios Jane had no desire to contemplate. Having a sociopath in your life was truly the gift that kept on giving.

As Jane stuffed her phone back in her pocket, Cordelia appeared in the doorway. Sauntering over to a folding chair, she sat down and crossed her legs, pulling her skirt demurely over her knees. “Something wrong?” she asked as Jane studied the form in front of her.

“Just … business.” She signed her name at the bottom.

“Don't you want to know why I'm here?” asked Cordelia.

“I assume you're going to tell me.”

Leaning close to the desk, she whispered, “Ghosts. The theater's lousy with them. Isn't that fabulous?”

“It certainly makes
my
day,” said Jane, folding the form into thirds and slipping it into an envelope.

“I already knew about the cat.”

“A ghost cat?”

“It bit me a couple times. Landed in my lap once. But the real news is…” She glanced dramatically over each shoulder. “Gilbert and Hilda King. They were murdered. In the basement.”

Jane looked up. “Murdered?”

“In the basement.”

“Who were Gilbert and Hilda King?”

“They used to own the theater. It was a gangland hit. Because of Gilbert's gambling debts. Or, maybe because of the speakeasy.”

“What speakeasy?” Jane was beginning to get lost in all the unconnected details.

“The one they ran out of the basement. Back in the twenties and early thirties. Have you ever looked around down there?” she asked, sotto voce.

“No.”

“I have. It's mostly stuffed with a hundred years of theater detritus. But—and this is straight from Archibald Van Arnam—the speakeasy is still there—the room, the bar, the stairs up to the street.”

Jane knew Archibald, mainly from Cordelia's legendary dinner parties. She also knew never to call him Archie. Apparently, according to Cordelia, he'd been called that as a kid, something he'd loathed. When he'd become a professor, he'd shaken it off like a dirty and disgusting old coat, becoming Archibald, a name worthy of his new persona. If people made the mistake of calling him Archie, they were met with such a withering stare that they never did it again. When Archibald had suggested doing a little research on the theater without the need for compensation, Cordelia had been over the moon.

Pulling a couple of small flashlights out of her blazer pocket, Cordelia continued, “I thought we should go down and do a little reconnaissance.”

“Now?”

“Something wrong with now?”

“It's just … I need to get back to the restaurant. We're bringing out that new tasting menu—”

“This won't take long. You know me and basements. They're full of creepy crawlies.” She shivered.

“Maybe you should get Hattie to down there with you.”

“She's at school. You'll have to do.” Standing erect, she handed Jane one of the flashlights. “This will be an adventure, a ride on a time machine back into the gangland past.”

“What if we run into Gilbert and Hilda?”

Cordelia's eyes gleamed. “All the better.”

 

6

Archibald would never forget the first time he'd met Jordan Deere. It had been a warm September evening in 1980, long before Jordan became famous. Archibald had been standing on Hennepin Avenue after the theater had closed up for the night, waiting for a bus to take him back to his apartment near the university. During the last two years of his undergraduate study, he'd run the Piccolo Theater box office for $4.10 an hour, a buck over minimum wage. He thought it was a perfect part-time job, allowing him a chance to expand his interest in the theater and at the same time assure him that he'd have plenty of free time for his studies. He made a point to get to know Kit, of course. Everybody wanted to meet her. Not only was she glamorous in an old-fashioned Hollywood kind of way, but she was friendly and funny, and occasionally even went out for drinks with the theater staff after the place shut down for the night.

That evening, as Archibald was lighting a cigarette, he saw Kit come around the corner with a guy's arm around her waist. Kit introduced Archibald to Jordan and then asked if he needed a ride home. Since it was late and he had a test in the morning, he took her up on the offer, which allowed him to study Kit's newest boyfriend more closely.

Jordan explained that he'd been born in Maryland, raised in Kentucky, and was currently in Minnesota playing guitar and singing at his uncle's bar in Saint Paul. He wasn't reticent about the fact that he intended to make a career in country music. With his Irish looks—strong chin, slanting blue eyes, rosy cheeks—he reminded Archibald of a Catholic choirboy: beauty and innocence combined in almost perfect harmony. Kit was clearly smitten. While Archibald hated country music on principle, he liked Jordan. The guy had a Kentucky twang and an easy way about him that made people forget—well, almost forget—how startlingly good-looking he was. Less then two months after that first meeting, Jordan and Kit had been married in a ceremony that seemed as if it included the entire Twin Cities.

Seven months later, Chloe was born. No one commented on the timing. At least, not in front of Kit.

Archibald had been working on his friendship with Kit ever since he'd begun running the box office at the theater, and after the marriage, his friendship with Jordan grew as well. He was touched and deeply honored when they asked him to become their second child's godfather. Booker Tiberius Deere had been born three years after Chloe. The name Tiberius had actually been Archibald's suggestion. Archibald had moved on to a doctorate by then. Roman history had always been his primary interest. Booker loved his middle name so much that in his early teens, he'd insisted people call him Tiberius. It hadn't lasted, which had always made Archibald a little sad. He'd been closer to Chloe than Booker, though he loved them both like a father.