I’ll hire a whole team of someones.”
“Who died and left you boss? You’re not in charge of either Jade or me. And don’t look now, Sam, but you don’t own Jolie. She proved that when she left.”
Now Sam turned to glare at Jessica.
“Sam, no, please. And Jessica, I can fight my own battles, thank you,” Jolie cut in before there could be actual bloodshed.
“It’s all right. I am coming on pretty strong, I guess. No wonder they called you the pest,” Sam said, his smile helping to soften his words as he ruffled Jessica’s hair.
Jolie had been watching Sam’s face as her older sister had explained their plan and she’d known he wasn’t going to stand up and applaud. But he seemed genuinely angry—which might be flattering, if her sisters wouldn’t kill her if she said so. If Jessica’s nonsense had made him smile, at least for the moment, she’d be an idiot not to take advantage. “Sam, look, it can’t hurt anything to just talk about it. Teddy’s been working these cases on his own since he left the force. Cold cases, they’re called. We probably won’t get anywhere with any of them. Lord knows he never did.”
“Unless he did and that’s why somebody framed him for murder and then killed him, making it look like a suicide. There is that. Besides, we’ve got to do something. We can’t let this stand the way it is now. Teddy would never forgive us and we’d never forgive ourselves. Fighting is better than crying any day,” Jessica pointed out, picking up one of the file folders and reading the words on the tab. “The Fishtown Strangler. Juicy. I think I want this one. Jade? Do you know what it’s about?”
“Slow down, Jessica. First we’ll discuss all of them, then pick one and work it together,” Jade told her.
“Why?” Jolie asked her sister. “Three of us, four cases. Whoever solves theirs first, or runs into a definite dead end moves on to the fourth one. I can only be here for another two weeks, remember? Going one by one makes no sense.”
Jade looked at her levelly for a moment and then nodded. “All right. But we discuss each case every night. Together.”
Sam looked at each one of them in turn. “I can’t stop you, can I? No, I can see I can’t. All right, all right, then I’m in. My house, my coffee table, my booze—I’m in.”
“Not with me, you’re not. As long as we’re dividing things up here, I prefer to work alone,” Jade said quickly. “It’s bad enough I have to keep an eye on my sisters, I’m not taking responsibility for you, too, Sam. We said three cases. Jolie, he’s all yours. You watch him, he watches you, and that’s one problem solved.”
“Two amateurs do not one professional make,” Jessica pointed out but then waved off her words. “It’s all right, a fair division of labor. Forget I said anything.”
Jolie was about to protest but then realized she had no good argument to offer. She and Sam weren’t a couple anymore and hadn’t been for five long years, that embarrassing interlude of two hours or more ago notwithstanding. And if she said no, Jessica would probably ask why, and then they’d go round and round and…no, she wasn’t up to it. “Okay,” she said at last. “If I have to, I suppose it’s all right.”
“It’s so wonderful to be wanted. I feel like the last kid on the playground to get picked for kickball,” Sam said, mockingly toasting them all with his wineglass. “Now, before I give in to the urge to get royally drunk, let’s hear about these cases.”
“Do the Fishtown Strangler first,” Jessica pleaded. “Some headline writer came up with that name, right?”
Jade took a sip from her soda glass and then carefully replaced it on the coaster. “The Fishtown Strangler wasn’t the Fishtown Strangler until the third murder. And nobody probably would have noticed someone was out there strangling prostitutes if it hadn’t been for that headline—Fishtown Strangler Strikes Again. By the time the fourth body showed up the mayor had set up a task force. It was an election year, you understand. Concerned citizens, some higher-ups from the mayor’s political party, a couple of pastors, that sort of thing. But after the sixth body there weren’t any more and the trail went cold. If there ever was a trail—and I don’t think there was.”
“So why was Teddy involved?” Sam asked, finding a seat on the couch next to Jolie.
“He caught the second murder,” Jade told him. “He couldn’t stay the primary because of the task force and the detective who’d caught the first murder, but he got involved with the victim’s mother and young daughter.” She turned to look at Jolie. “You know Teddy—always leading with his heart. Funny, they weren’t at the funeral. I would have thought they would be after what Teddy did for them.”
“And what was that?” Jolie asked before Sam could open his mouth again, establish himself as the leader of their two-person team. Really, he was only hearing any of this because he was here. And it was his house. Jolie inwardly winced. Maybe she should take the chip off her shoulder.
“He moved them out of some condemned building in Fishtown,” Jade told them as Jessica began paging through the manila folder in her lap. “And he’s been checking up on the daughter all these years, the same way he’s done with Jermayne.”
Jessica looked up from the page she’d extracted and was holding in her hand. “Who?”
“Jermayne Johnson.” Jade looked at Sam. “Sam, maybe you remember this one. Terrell Johnson? The high school basketball player who was found shot on a city playground about ten years ago?”
“Yes, I think I remember that. He was just about to sign a letter of intent with one of the top Division One schools and then he was gone.” He shook his head. “A real waste of a good kid. Scholar-athlete, wasn’t he?”
“He was going to use his talent to get his grandmother and brother out of the city—that’s what the grandmother told Teddy. So Teddy got them out. He wiped out more than half of his savings doing it, but that’s Teddy.” Jade shrugged her shoulders, sighed. “That was Teddy…”
“Were the Johnsons at the funeral?” Jolie asked, as long as they were all descending into the maudlin again.
“Mrs. Johnson passed away sometime last year,” Jade told them. “But, you know, I don’t think I saw Jermayne. Not that that means anything. I really wasn’t looking around, counting noses.”
“It wouldn’t have taken you long,” Jolie muttered, and Sam covered her hand with his. She didn’t pull away. The man was offering her comfort and she was grateful for the gesture. But that didn’t mean she was going to make any more mistakes. In two weeks, no matter what happened here, she would be back in Hollywood for the premiere and then off to Ireland to film a new movie two weeks after that. That’s just the way life was for her now, for both of them.
“All right,” Jessica said, still holding up a page of Teddy’s precise notes. “This could be interesting. Teddy has notations on two of the four strangling victims, made in the last three weeks. A Tarin White and a Kayla Morrison. Are either of these two the one with the daughter?”
“Kayla Morrison. Her daughter’s name is Keely. Now put that away because we’re not finished yet.”
“The warden has spoken,” Sam whispered to Jolie, and once again she had to bite her bottom lip to keep from smiling. What a strange day she was having. Tears, yes, and also laughter. And a mistake…
“Case number three,” Jade said, pulling another manila envelope onto her lap. She opened it, frowned. “Oh, this one. Another catchy headline. This one was called the case of the vanishing bride.”
“Jolie and I will take that one,” Sam volunteered much too quickly, and Jolie pulled her hand out from beneath his as if his skin had just turned white-hot. “You could say I’ve got experience.”
“Not funny, Sam,” Jolie said, absently rubbing at the ring finger of her left hand