Mischief 24/7 (10 page)

Jade shrugged. “My youngest sister started it when she was about three, I guess. Mom called Dad Teddy, so Jessica, who parroted anything anyone else said, started calling him Teddy, as well. Well, she called him Ted-Ted until she got it right, but then she wouldn’t stop and he thought it was cute that his Little Princess was calling him Teddy. So we all did.”

“And your mother didn’t mind?”

“My mother? She called him simplesh—No, she didn’t mind. I don’t know if she even noticed.” Jade raised the camera as a screen door opened down the street, but then lowered it again. It wasn’t Maude’s screen door, but the one on the house next door. “This could take a while, you know. She leaves the house every day, but the time varies between nine and noon or so. And then I have to follow her. Didn’t you say you have to fly back to Virginia today?”

“I’ll get there when I get there. It’s just a dinner party that happens to come with noisemakers, funny hats and some people who don’t want to start the new year sober. Believe me, it wouldn’t break my heart to miss most of it,” Court answered. “I’d much rather talk about the weekend. May I send my plane for you? I’d like you to see my home.”

Jade, panicked, latched on to the first thing he’d said. “Your plane? You own your own plane?”

“Technically, it’s the Becket plane, as in Becket, Incorporated, as in available for use by any of the companies under the Becket umbrella, but I do end up using it more than anyone else. Sam owns his antique business outright, an inheritance from his father outside the company, and I hold the majority of shares in Becket Hotels. Everything else falls under the larger heading, which could prove difficult if there were more of us, but Sam and I are the only ones left, as far as we know. Only children, both of us.”

“I didn’t get to know Sam well enough to learn anything about his family, other than that his parents are deceased.”

“Mine, as well. I understand the Beckets were a pretty large clan two hundred years ago when they arrived here from England. But there were some typical family falling-outs, at least typical during the Civil War—things nobody would talk about—and then some of them listened to Horace Greeley’s advice to ‘Go West, young man, and grow up with the country.’ ”

“And you’re not curious? You don’t want to find any of these relatives? You know, there are genealogy sites all over the Web these days. We’ve used some of them to help estate lawyers track down missing heirs, things like that.”

Court looked at her, his brown eyes twinkling. “Is that right? So that means I could
hire
you?”

She leaned past him to get a better view of the street. “Yes, I suppose so. Okay, here she comes. Where are we going today, Maude? Grocery store at one end of the block, bar at the other. You have to love Philadelphia. Ah, she’s got that telltale mesh shopping bag attached to the front of her walker. I guess she’s out of the staples, cigarettes and Tastykake chocolate cupcakes. Are you bored enough yet, Court, or do you want to spend the next hour watching Maude Landers thump melons at the local market?”

They both watched as Maude Landers, a heavyset middle-aged woman in a flowered dress, carefully using the folded-up walker to balance herself, closed the screen door as she stood on her tiny porch. She looked left, she looked right and then left again, as if about to cross a busy intersection, and then carefully picked her way down the few cement steps to the sidewalk.

The walker sides clicked open, Maude took her purse from her shoulder and slipped it into the mesh bag, and she was ready, she was mobile.

“Bored? On the contrary, Jade. It all sounds fascinating. How long have you been doing this?”

“This particular job? Twice a week for the past month, sometimes mornings, sometimes evenings, and thank God today’s the last day, even if I couldn’t nail her and she gets to collect all the
money that maybe isn’t owed her. This job in total? One way or another, I’ve been working with Teddy since I graduated high school. And no, I’m not going to tell you how long ago that was, so don’t ask me.”

Court frowned.

“What? Something’s bothering you. You’re ready to leave?” Jade knew it was a stupid question. Of course he wanted to leave. When a person had to choose between a private jet and all this… glamour, who would stick around?

“No, I’m just thinking. You’re telling me that you’ve been watching this woman for a month, and she’s never done any backflips, gone dancing, climbed a ladder to wash her windows—nothing? Did it ever occur to you that the woman isn’t faking, that she’s really disabled?”

“It is possible, yes. But Maude had a falling-out with her sister, it seems, and the sister tipped off the insurance company that good old Maude is faking it. It’s either sour grapes or it’s true.”

“What do you think?”

“I think it’s true. I think Maude was lording it over her sister about how she was going to be rich and move to the suburbs, and take a cruise to Alaska or whatever, while her loser of a sister had to stick it out here in Philly through another hot, humid summer, neener-neener and all that. That’s what I’m thinking. I just can’t prove it.”

“All right, then, let’s find out. Let’s go. Bring the camera.”

“Court?” Jade fumbled with the door handle, one hand grabbing the camera and her purse, and ran around the car to meet Court on the curb. “What the
hell
are you doing?” she asked him in a fierce whisper. “I know this isn’t exactly high-level covert operations, but I really don’t want to be out here where she can see me. Court? Hey, don’t you
shush
me.”

He had held up his hand as if commanding her to silence. Not only that, but he was grinning. She didn’t know which made her more angry.

“Get that camera ready.”

He slipped on the mirrored, wraparound sunglasses and zipped his black jacket up all the way, so that the roll-down collar was now almost covering his mouth. “How do I look? The new breed of physically fit mugger?”

Then, before she could answer him, he grabbed her shoulders and ground his mouth against hers in a brief, fierce kiss.

“Oh, one more thing, sweetheart,” he said, holding her slightly away from him as she tried to catch her breath, “we’d better pray that your hunch is right, and that there aren’t any of Philadelphia’s finest around. Maybe you’d better keep the motor running.”

“I don’t believe this,” Jade said as she watched Court turn and begin jogging down the
sidewalk in the direction Maude Landers had taken. “I do not freaking
believe
this. The man is insane.”

Still, she snapped off the lens cap, checked that the time and date stamps were correct and then raised the camera, ready to snap photographs of whatever happened next.

What happened next was that Court, keeping up his steady jogging pace, edged up beside Maude and her walker, deftly reached into the mesh bag and pulled out the shoulder purse.

“Hey! Stop! Stop, thief!” Maude Landers screeched in that timeworn cliché of victims everywhere.
“Somebody!
Stop that guy, he’s got my purse! Damn it, somebody help me!”

In this particular neighborhood in the City of Brotherly Love, Maude should have known better. Or maybe she did.

She hesitated for all of about two seconds, and then tossed the walker to the sidewalk and took off after Court like Yogi Bear hot on the tail of an overflowing picnic basket.

Jade could barely stop laughing long enough to shoot frame after frame of Maude Landers chasing Court, who was hotfooting it down the sidewalk. Then he stopped, handed the purse to the pursuing Maude, appeared to say something to her, made a quick U-turn and headed back toward Jade, waving her back to the car as he ran.

She hopped in before he did and had the car already in gear by the time he had collapsed into the seat, laughing like a loon.

“Did you get it? Did you get her on film?”

“I got it, you idiot,” Jade replied as she made two quick left turns, heading them out of Kensington as quickly as possible. “You said something to her, didn’t you? What did you say to her?”

Court unzipped his jacket and removed his sunglasses. “I told her she might want to cancel that cruise to Alaska. Oh, and to have a happy New Year. I think my sense of direction is getting better. If we turn right here, it should be a pretty straight shot to the hotel, correct?”

“We’re turning left. Your car is in a parking garage in the complete opposite direction, remember?”

“I’ve got the stub. I’ll send somebody later to pick it up. Turn right.”

The light turned green. Jade looked in the rearview mirror and saw that nobody was behind her. “I need a shower.”

“I’ve got one.”

“I need clean clothing. I ran in these, and I can’t shower and then put them back on again.”

“There’s a terrific boutique on the mezzanine level. Give me a list of your sizes, and someone will send up whatever you need. Next objection? We’re two stubborn people, Jade. I can keep
going as long as you can. But at the end of it, we both know what we want. Don’t we?”

A horn honked behind her.

Jade turned right.

“T
URN RIGHT
at the next corner,” Jade said, and then sighed in relief as she saw that the car wash was already open for business. “I suppose we may as well get Sam’s car washed while we’re here. You stay with the car, and I’ll go hunt for Jermayne. Just pray he’s here.”

But instead of pulling onto the lot of the car wash, Court pulled over to the curb half a block away. “You want to try that again, Jade? From the top?”

She sighed, almost like Jolie would sigh as a teenager when asked to actually make it home before her curfew. Almost theatrically. “Jermayne’s shy, and nervous. I don’t want to scare him by showing up with you next to me.”

“Let’s review. Jermayne Johnson, as I remember him from the last time we were here, stands well over six feet tall, and he’s built like an All-Pro tackle. He could probably snap me like a
twig if he wanted to, shy or not, so I think he can handle being a little scared.”

“Jermayne is mine, Court. I get to handle him. You understand that and you won’t try to take over?”

“When have I ever done that?” He grinned like a child. “Tried to take over, I mean. That part of your two-part question.”

Jade laughed softly. “Right. Silly me. What could I have been thinking? All right, but just in case you’re wondering, this isn’t a good-cop, bad-cop situation.”

“You’re right,” Court said, putting the transmission into Drive once more and then parking the car in the Valet Service area of the car wash. “It’s a
no-cop
situation. Not to mention a no-win situation, since you’ve met with Jermayne a couple of times now, Teddy stuck close to him all these years, and nobody’s gotten any new information out of either little Jermayne or big Jermayne.”

“I love working with optimists,” Jade muttered, opening the car door as she spotted Jermayne, dressed in bright yellow coveralls that could have doubled as prison garb, which seemed reasonable, as half the car-wash employees were probably on work-release programs. At the
moment, Jermayne was wiping down the hubcaps on a car parked over in the shade. “Okay, let’s go.”

Jermayne saw them, or sensed them, and his entire body stiffened, as if an adrenaline surge had him caught between fright and flight.

“Jermayne, hi,” Jade said quickly, hoping to make up his mind for him. “We were out this way and I thought I’d stop and see if you’ve filled out those forms I gave you last time. School starts soon, and you don’t want to be too last minute, right?”

“I tol’ you, Ms. Sunshine, I ain’t goin’.” Jermayne spoke softly, with a touch of velvet in his voice that belied his size. “I tol’ Teddy the same thing I tol’ you. It’s too late. I messed up in high school, I messed up bad, so there ain’t no way I can cut it in no trade school. Besides, Teddy, he done enough for me and my gran, so there ain’t no need to do no more, you know?”

“Teddy wanted you to go to school, learn a trade, Jermayne,” Jade reminded him, suddenly weary of hearing the same excuse yet again. “He did everything but hold a gun to your head to get you to sign the papers. He wanted what’s best for you. He made that promise at
Terrell’s funeral, and if he can’t keep it, then I will.”

Jermayne seemed to reel where he stood, and Jade suddenly realized what she’d said.

Terrell Johnson had been shot in the head all those years ago. Just like Teddy. Talk about your dumb choice of words.

“Look, Jermayne, I’m sorry,” Jade said quickly, reaching out a hand to him. But Jermayne shook off the gesture as he stepped back, again looking as if he might turn rabbit on her and take off. “Jermayne? What’s going on here? What’s wrong? What are you afraid of?”

“I ain’t afraid of nothin’, Ms. Sunshine. I just want you to go away. I can’t take this anymore. My head’s all messed up. I can’t sleep, I can’t think, I… Just, please, Ms. Sunshine, don’t come here no more.”

“Driving you crazy, is she?” Court asked, smiling at Jermayne. “I’m her ex, by the way, so I know the feeling. Look, Jermayne, how about you and I go grab a soda or something and talk this over some more.”

Jermayne looked at Court, but not like a drowning man who’s just seen the Coast Guard cutter pulling up beside him. It was more like Court had maybe just thrown him an anchor. “Why do you all keep comin’ after me? I know what you want. You want to talk about Terrell, about who might a killed him. I don’t know. I tol’ Teddy a million times.
I don’t know.”

Jade and Court exchanged glances, and Jade shrugged, telling him without words that she’d run out of ideas, because she had. Jermayne wasn’t just built like a brick wall. Sometimes trying to get to him was like
talking
to a brick wall.

“My friend, that cop you saw here with us the other day,” Court said, “he thinks you do know something. What about that, Jermayne?”

Jade lowered her head, rolled her eyes. Brilliant. Court had to mention Matt. If the kid was scared before, he had to be near to wetting his pants now.

“So what? Cops always think we know something’ we don’t,” Jermayne said, and his voice was harder now, changed enough to have Jade raising her head to look at him, see the panic—yes, it was, it was panic—that had crept into Jermayne’s soft brown eyes.