sighed. “I decided to talk to Harmony after all. I’d rather do it face-to-face, but I can’t wait until Monday evening. She’s not answering.”
“I don’t answer numbers I don’t know.” Piper ought to call her, too. How mad was she going to be hearing Piper hadn’t followed her wishes and told the police about Boone after all? “I’ve got to get back and see to Mama Jean.” Piper headed toward Mama Jean’s room. Luke stayed with her.
“Is she going to be okay?” he asked. Concern touched his voice.
“Yeah. Needs therapy. Probably have to stay in an assisted-living center while going through it. In the meantime, I’m going to try and talk her into moving into an apartment or something in a better neighborhood. Or maybe I can rope her into coming back to Jackson with me. I should have done that long ago.”
Luke shoved his hands in his jeans pockets and stopped outside Mama Jean’s room. “You—you doing okay in Jackson? Making a good life?”
The hesitation in his voice melted her. Her throat tightened. “Yeah. I’ve got a nice house with an extra bedroom for Mama Jean—if she’ll move. It’s a quiet life. Until now.”
Luke looked as if he wanted to ask something else, but he scuffed the toe of his shoe against the tiled floor. “Good. That’s...good.” He avoided eye contact, nodded and scratched the back of his head. “I’ll keep you posted. Be careful, Piper. You might be strong, but you’re not invincible.”
Piper stared at his back as he traipsed down the corridor, her insides exploding. No, she wasn’t invincible and everything told her to run, to hide. Chaz Michaels terrified her. Always had. But she couldn’t sit by while Mama Jean’s attacker ran scot-free, especially since it might be Piper’s fault. She entered the hospital room. Sterile. Lifeless. A lot like the way Piper felt.
Was her life good? On the surface, yes. But inside, Piper was never settled or at rest. Longing for a family of her own dogged her as the aging clock ticked by. Competing internationally had been a brief stint of contentment, keeping her focused and occupied, but when those karate competitions were over, Piper came home to an empty house with no one to love and no one to love her back.
“I thought I heard a man’s voice,” Mama Jean said as Piper neared her bed.
Should she tell her about Luke? He was going to ask her some questions anyway. Why hadn’t he done it just now? If Piper didn’t know any better, she’d think she’d run him off with something she’d said. But what?
“I was talking with Luke Ransom. He’s working Christopher’s case. He was here yesterday, actually. Checked in on you. He’ll want to ask you a few questions about the incident.”
“He’s a wonderful man. I always hoped you two would get married. I know how much you loved him.”
Piper wasn’t sure anyone could know how much she’d loved Luke. How much she still did. Even if she’d tried not to. It wouldn’t take. “So, what’s on TV?” Thinking of all she’d lost ached too much, and she needed Mama Jean engaged in a show. Piper had no choice but to hunt down the scumbag who had hurt her. Starting by sifting through the crowd at Riff’s.
* * *
Luke sat in his car gripping the steering wheel but going nowhere. He’d come to the hospital on his dinner break with every intent to talk with Mama Jean about the incident.
Then Piper went and talked about her good life—a life without him—and Luke wanted nothing more than to bolt.
Before he’d left the precinct, he’d received some information on Boone Wiley, sending Luke’s mind and heart into a game of tug-of-war, flustering him. His heart said Piper was innocent and would never do anything that might put Mama Jean in danger, while his mind continued to replay the night he’d shown up at Ellen Strosbergen’s house ten years ago.
Luke and his old partner, Kerr Robbins, had been staking out that bogus address Piper had given them. In the end, she’d been loyal to a criminal, and Luke had carried the guilt from the events that escalated that night. He still struggled with how it ended. How Piper flushed what they had down the toilet.
Maybe he should have never got in too deep with her in the first place. But the moment he’d walked—undercover—into that smoke-infested low-life pool hall on Beale Street, she’d captured him. Not with her beauty, though she was beautiful, but with her downcast expression. As if the world had chewed her up and spit her out, leaving her alone and hopeless. As if she needed fixing.
Turned out to be her eighteenth birthday. And where had she been? Alone, sitting at a booth.
Luke pawed his face and rested his head on the seat, forcing the memories down. He tried Harmony’s number and got voice mail again. So what now? His phone rang. Not Harmony.
Eric.
“Hey, bro.”
“I talked to one of my CIs downtown. Says he knows Baxter but he hasn’t been down for a fix in a long time. Hung out at Riff’s. Easy place to score. But he found Jesus at that shelter off Front Street. So it’s looking like our vic is clean. Not saying he didn’t have some money stashed away, but I think we need to turn direction and roll down Piper Kennedy’s street.”
Luke had a contact at Riff’s, too. The very place he’d met Piper.
“I put in a call to Baroni’s brother. Haven’t heard from him.”
The coroner had confirmed the blunt force trauma to the back of his head had probably knocked him for a loop, but it was the swift crack of the neck that had done him in. Not from a fall but a perfectly executed break.
Luke had asked if it were possible for a woman about five foot three to have done that to a man six feet tall. Unfortunately, the coroner let him know if the man had dropped to his knees from the blow, it would have been easy.
Another nail in Piper’s coffin, but the theory wasn’t enough to arrest her. And quite frankly, he couldn’t make himself believe it.
“Luke, you hear me?”
“What? No. Sorry.”
Eric sighed. “You need to get focused, man. I said no prints on the tire iron. I was hoping there would be, not that I want the Kennedy woman to be guilty, but since her prints are on file...”
No, this wasn’t going to be a slam dunk.
“I’ll meet you back at the precinct, and let’s see if we can dig anything else up on Boone Wiley. Maybe we can directly connect him to one of the old crew members. And let’s turn over a few rocks, see if any of Christopher Baxter’s friends are lurking underneath.”
Luke bought two coffees and met Eric at the precinct. Luke handed Eric his caffeine jolt and collapsed into his office chair.
“I need more information about that night back when you worked theft, man.”
Luke tapped a pen on his desk calendar. “At the time, we suspected Chaz Michaels was running a crew who burglarized the elderly in wealthy neighborhoods. In and out. No injuries. No fatalities. I’d just come on board the Crimes Against Property Bureau. A little younger than Chaz and his crew but a prime candidate for the undercover work. Get in, snoop around, see if I could get close to them.”
Eric raised an eyebrow and paused middrink. “Piper Kennedy was your in.”
Luke nodded. It hadn’t started out that way, though. He’d simply taken a seat in the booth with her. Had no idea she even knew Chaz. Never dreamed she’d been in a romantic relationship with him. But the door was open. And he went through it.
“Do we know where this Chaz Michaels is?” Eric set his cup on the desk, pulled a Twizzler from his coat pocket and went to work on his computer.
“I’ve already searched the system. It’s like he vanished after Ellen Strosbergen was brutally beaten. They arrested Sylvester ‘Sly’ Watson and