The Queen of Cool (33 page)

She set the journal on her lap. Eight by
eleven inches, the journal book had a brown maple colored cover.
She held the binding in her hands. The journal had writing on more
than three-fourths of the pages. Holding the journal up to her
nose, she took a deep breath.

Don.

She closed her eyes, and for a moment she
felt as if he was there. Truman made a noise and Lo opened her
eyes.

“
You’re absolutely right,”
Lo said. “Today is not the day for drifting off into dreams. I made
a promise and I’m going to keep it.”

Lo nodded to the dog and opened the
book.

She started reading the first entry.

“
Today, I’m grateful for
the light way Lo touches me. In the morning, when it’s time for me
to get up, I feel her touch and I know that even the most wonderful
dream holds no greater glory than spending even a moment with
Lo.”

Covering her face, she began to sob and the
book slid off her lap onto the floor. She fought against the tide
of grief by grabbing a handful of tissues and plugging up the tears
running down her face. Truman moved across the living area to lie
at her feet.

She tried to take deep, cleansing breaths as
she fought to keep her sanity. Closing her eyes, she took one deep
breath and then another. She could do this.

She picked up the book and began to flip
through.

What looked different?

What looked unusual?

As far as she could tell, there wasn’t
anything new or different. Don had continued the journal years
after she thought he’d stop. The last entry was the day he
died.

“
As the flowers are all
made sweeter by the sunshine and the dew, so this old world is made
brighter by the lives of folks like you.”

Lo blinked. That was the inscription on
Bonnie Parker’s grave.

Don had felt a strong connection to Clyde
Barrow. The famed outlaw had suffered tremendous abuse in his
childhood, including a year of sexual abuse in a prison work camp.
Clyde’s abusive past left him a hard, cruel rattlesnake of a man.
Don was always terrified that he would become like Clyde. He told
her when they first met that, as a child, he felt doomed to live an
outlaw’s life because of his abuse. He was sure that only luck kept
him from becoming just like Clyde.

Lo and Don had a lot of things in common
with Bonnie and Clyde. They grew up within miles of each other.
Bonnie married her first husband just before she turned sixteen,
and Lo married Don just after she turned sixteen. Bonnie was small
like Lo. While Lo never felt a connection to the famous outlaws,
Don used them as examples of how things might have turned out if he
hadn’t taken his life by the horns.

Lo sat up. When she did, Truman shifted. He
looked at her and jumped up on the couch.

“
Mutt’s going to be mad at
you,” Lo said to the dog. Imitating his voice, she said, “Couches
are for people, not for dogs.”

Truman cocked his head and she smiled. She
grabbed some tissue and wiped her eyes. Tossing her tissue in a
nearby trash can, she noticed something on the ground under where
Truman had been laying. She bent over and picked it up.

It was the iconic photo of Clyde Barrow with
Bonnie Parker on his arm. Don had carried this photo in his wallet
to remind him of how lucky he was. He must have left the photo in
the book when he wrote the inscription.

What did that mean?

Lo turned it over. Gasping, she dropped the
photo. Truman hopped off the couch and came to her. Bending over,
she picked up the photo and patted the dog’s head. He lay back down
at her feet.

Lo closed the journal to try to quell her
rising panic. She counted her breath. One breath in; one breath
out. When she was calmer, she turned the photo over again.

In the same pen as the inscription, Don had
drawn on the back of the photo:

Somehow, this symbol had something to do
with Bonnie and Clyde.

Or just Bonnie.

Or maybe he meant her.

Picking up the pint of ice cream, Lo ate ice
cream and thought through the possibilities. She was the only one
who would know about Bonnie’s inscription. He’d definitely left the
inscription for her. To make sure she got it, Don had left the
photo.

Or…

She closed the ice cream container. Grabbing
her water bottle and the journal, Lo whistled for Truman. The dog
followed her down the stairs and into Don’s truck. The only way to
find out was to go to Bonnie Parker’s grave at Crown Hill Cemetery
in Dallas. She might not be Romani but if there was a clue there,
she would find it.

Q

One and a half hours later

Sunday afternoon—4:35 p.m.

Sundance Square

Downtown Fort Worth, TX

Days: 135

Lo pushed the lettuce around her plate and
looked up at Manny.

“
You’re sure?” she
asked.

With his coffee cup up at his lips, he
nodded. They were sitting in the back of the restaurant. Manny and
Mindy Sue had been watching a movie with their kids at the AMC when
Lo texted. Manny met her at the Cowtown Diner for coffee.

“
I’m sure,” Manny said. “As
you saw, someone cleaned out the Williams storage locker just a few
months ago.”

“
But there’s no forensics?
No security video? No one saw anything?”

“
Appears so,” Manny
said.

“
How can someone come and
take everything out of a storage locker without anyone seeing
them?” Lo asked. “How is that possible?”

“
How is any of this
possible, Lo?” Manny leaned toward her. In a low tone, he said,
“I’m on administrative leave. Me! The Golden Boy who made detective
earlier than any other man or woman on the FWPD. If you’d asked me
even six months ago whether I’d be on leave now, I’d had told you
that it was impossible.”

Manny shook her head.

“
Nice to see the kids more
though,” Lo said.

“
And you,” Manny gave her a
wry smile. “What did you learn at the gravesite?”

“
Nothing,” Lo
said.

“
And the mark?”

“
Nothing,” Lo
said.

“
You still think it’s a
lead?” Manny asked.

“
I feel it in my very
soul,” Lo said. “Bonnie and Clyde have something to do with all of
this. Can you get their case files? Maybe there’s something in
there that will give us a clue.”

Manny nodded.

“
Are you going to check
Clyde’s grave?” Manny asked. “Go to where they were
shot?”

“
In my spare time,” Lo
smiled at him.

He chuckled.

“
I’d like to propose a
‘what if’,” Lo said.

“
We haven’t played ‘what
if’ since we were kids,” he said.

“
You remember the
rules?”

“
Nothing crazy or
fantastic,” Manny said. “Just pure logic. Go ahead.”

“
What if Marilyn, you know,
Don’s secretary, is a key to all of this?” Lo asked.

“
If Marilyn is a key to all
of this…” Manny looked off into the restaurant. “She was probably
murdered.”

“
She probably didn’t know
she was a key to all of this,” Lo said.

“
Or she did,” Manny said.
“What if Marilyn is related to Bonnie or Clyde?”

“
What if Marilyn knows
where they stashed their loot?”

“
Or where the VX is?” Manny
asked. “That’s what sticks with me. The people who killed Don don’t
know where the VX is located.”

“
No, it’s the Feds who
don’t know where the VX is located,” Lo said.

“
Same thing.” Manny’s phone
vibrated. “Got to go. The movie’s at the credits.”

“
Thanks for coming,” Lo
said.

“
Thanks for looking at the
book.” Manny stood up and took out his wallet. “I started doing
that, you know, keeping a journal of what I appreciate about Mindy
Sue.”

“
Yeah?”

“
Changed our entire
marriage,” Manny said. “Right away. Like magic. So
thanks.”

Manny threw a twenty on the table and left
the restaurant through the kitchen. Lo continued pushing her salad
around the plate.

“
Are you done, Lo?” the
waitress asked.

“
Yes, thank you,” Lo
said.

“
Was that your boyfriend?
He seems very married,” the waitress said. “I heard you were dating
Sy Monquist.”

“
My husband just died,” Lo
said. “I’m not really interested in other men right
now.”

“
But Sy’s the father of
your baby, right?” the waitress asked.

“
No,” Lo got up from the
booth. “No, how can you say that?”

“
Everybody’s talking about
it,” the waitress said. “Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it. I was
just trying to be… friendly, I guess. You seem really sad. Sy’s a
good guy. He’s been really sad too. I guess we all wanted him and
you to be happy again.”

Lo shook her head at the odd logic.

“
Anyway, no offense meant,”
the waitress said.

Lo nodded and left the restaurant. She
checked her watch and walked to Rick’s office where she was meeting
Alisha and Lisa to go over the Queen of Cool finances. She used the
brief walk to clear her head.

Sy Monquist? The father of her child? Fat
chance.

She went into the lobby of the Legacy Bank
building. The elevators whisked her to the eleventh floor. Lost in
thought, she wandered along the hallway until she found the right
suite. She stepped into the reception area. The office was dark and
quiet.

“
Hello?” Lo asked.
“Alisha?”

“
Mom?” Alisha came from the
back offices. “There you are. We were getting worried.”

“
Am I late?” Lo
asked.

“
No, not really,” Alisha
said. “I wanted to talk to you about something before Lisa gets
here. Come on back.”

Lo followed Alisha through the small
office.

“
You remember filling out
the paperwork to become a widow?” Alisha asked.

“
I remember signing it,” Lo
said. “I didn’t fill it out.”

“
That was one of my
questions,” Alisha said. “Who did?”

“
Jaden,” Lo said. “His
office emailed it to me. Why?”

“
It’s a long story, but did
Sy go with you that day?”

“
He stood behind me in
line,” Lo said. “That’s where I met him.”

Alisha nodded and wrote something on a piece
of paper.

“
He copied my paperwork,”
Lo said. “Said he didn’t know how to figure it out.”

“
Oh,” Alisha said. “I never
thought of that. Not once.”

“
Alisha, what’s going on?”
Lo asked.

“
The short answer is that
your paperwork was wrong,” Alisha said.

“
And the long
answer?”

“
You were registered as
married to Sy,” Alisha said.

“
What?”

“
It’s a paperwork snafu,”
Alisha said. “You’re registered as married, but you don’t have a
marriage certificate or anything. You remember Francie?”

“
Francie Moline?” Lo asked.
“Your friend from middle school.”

“
And the only one who
stayed my friend in high school,” Alisha said.

Lo nodded.

“
Francie works at the
Recorder’s Office,” Alisha said. “She fixed it. The paperwork got
flagged by licensing because you don’t have a marriage license.
It’s been on a girl’s desk for all this time. She’s on maternity
leave. She just quit, so Francie went to see what needed to be
cleaned up and found your paperwork.”

“
So it never went though?”
Lo asked.

“
No,” Alisha said. “That’s
why you haven’t been able to get a bank account.”

“
What do I need to
do?”

“
Nothing,” Alisha said.
“It’s all fixed.”

“
Is that why people think
I’m dating Sy?” Lo asked.

“
You and Sy?” Alisha
laughed. “No one who’s seen the two of you at the same location
would say that. You hate him.”

“
Hate is a strong word,” Lo
said.

“
Hmm,” Alisha said. “Any
ideas why Jaden would do this?”

“
Keep me dependent on him?”
Lo asked. “You have to remember, when I went to see him I had
thirteen dollars to my name and that came from the emergency room
nurse.”