Mischief 24/7 (21 page)

“She was never great at history,” Jade said, shaking her head, and thanked Court for passing the salt. “Jess, Carpenters’ Hall is set back a little from Chestnut Street, and it has been around since the 1700s. The First Continental Congress met there for a while. Benjamin Franklin negotiated with a French spy there, he even kept some of the first Philadelphia library inventory stored there. The building’s on the National Register. Tourists go there every day.”

“Well, then, that explains it. I grew up here, I’m not a tourist,” Jessica said smugly. “And Joshua

Brainard’s got the place for his speech tonight? How’d he manage that one?”

“He doesn’t
have
Carpenters’ Hall,” Jade explained patiently. “He does have the area
outside
Carpenters’ Hall for this rally he’s got planned for tonight. Maybe five hundred people, maybe a thousand. And he’s holding it at night, as the sun starts going down, because he looks good with television lights on him, according to what you’ve told me before about politicians and good lighting. Plus, if the crowd is small, nobody will know. Understand now?”

“No, I don’t, not completely. If this rally is outside, where is he meeting you?”

Jade looked from Court to Matt. “All together now?”

They said it all together: “At his campaign office downtown.”

“Which is only a few blocks away,” Jade added before her sister could ask another question.

“Oh. Well. That’s all right, then. Do you know we’re supposed to have thunderstorms tonight? They’re even talking hail, high winds, power lines down, all the usual baloney that never happens. Still, I found out that we’re already sending a crew, and I told them to keep their cells on, because we might need them for a big story.”

She popped the last of her sandwich in her mouth as she and Matt both stood up. “Which is why we’re heading to the studio now. I need makeup, some other gear. Jade? You wouldn’t consider wearing a hidden microphone and camera, would you? Would you mind if I did?”

“Jessica Marie Sunshine,” Jade said flatly. “Go. Don’t talk anymore. Just go. We’ll meet you outside Brainard’s campaign headquarters at seven o’clock, all right?”

“Say good night, Gracie, it’s time to leave,” Matt said, grinning at Jade. “Don’t worry, Jade. I’ve got Sunny’s leash in my pocket. I’ll keep her in line.”

“Funny man,” Jessica said, but she smiled at Matt adoringly as she said it. “Let’s go. I want to show off my ring to everybody.”

“I don’t think I want her there,” Jade said once Jessica and Matt were gone. “She’s doing that dumb, spacey-blonde routine of hers, you know, which means she’s already planning to go for Joshua Brainard’s throat. Eight will get you ten, Court, that by the time we see her next, two more of those blouse buttons will be open and the girls will nearly be coming out to play. Hi, look at us, aren’t we cute and sexy, aren’t you the nicest man, and then…
bam.
So, Josh, baby, you strangled your wife and tossed her in the pool, right?”

“Embarrassing for you, I imagine,” Court said, grinning. “But they’re…I mean,
she’s
pretty effective.”

Jade gave him a dirty look. “You’ve been looking at Jessica’s breasts, Court?”

“Can I plead the Fifth?” He smiled again. “Oh, come on, Jade, I’m only kidding. Besides, Matt carries a gun.”

Jade bit back a smile of her own. “You’re in a good mood.”

“I am, yes. It’s had its ups and downs, but today has been a pretty good day overall. And you look beautiful in that blouse. Joshua Brainard won’t even notice the
girls.”

“Everybody
notices the girls,” Jade said, rolling her eyes. “According to Jessica, Chris Matthews shouts people down, Keith Olbermann uses his smart mouth, Wolf Blitzer goes more for the ‘Help me out, please, I’m confused’ question, and that other guy? Bill O’Reilly? Oh, right, he pushes the moral-outrage line. Jessica says everybody has to have a gimmick. The girls are hers. I think cable-television news has a lot to answer for, personally.”

“Would I be inviting disaster to say that, from a male point of view, hands down Jessica’s got the best gimmick? Oh, hi, Ernesto, you’re just in time to save me from falling into the hole I just dug myself.”

“I think you mean he’s saving you from having me push you into that hole you’ve been digging yourself,” Jade said quietly. Not that she was angry. Unbelievably she, too, was actually feeling pretty good, which was amazing, considering what she faced in the next few hours. “Are you hungry, Ernesto? We’re just grabbing sandwiches tonight.”

The teen didn’t answer, didn’t give Jade his usual smile. Instead, he pulled out a chair and poured his skinny body into it, sliding down onto the base of his spine in a boneless move that threatened to continue until his butt hit the floor. Except that teenagers must practice sitting like that, because he seemed able to anchor himself before disappearing under the edge of the table.

Jade and Court exchanged looks.

“What’s up, Ernesto?” Court asked, and then sort of winced. “Sorry. Dumb question. It’s about your mother, right?”

“I just left her there,” Ernesto said, still avoiding their eyes. “I didn’t even say goodbye.” He finally looked up and straight into Jade’s eyes. “Who’s going to feed her, Miss Sunshine? She doesn’t eat if I don’t make her, you know? Who’s going to take care of the apartment, wash her clothes and stuff like that? She’s on disability, you know? She gets those checks once a month. But if I don’t take some of the money and give it right to the landlord, then she won’t pay him. She’ll be out on the street.”

Jade slipped her hand into Court’s beneath the table, and he gave her fingers an encouraging squeeze.

Ernesto was quiet for a few moments. Then he sighed, a sigh that came from the depths of his young body, before he spoke again, his voice low and threatening to break. “Who am I kidding, Miss Sunshine? I can’t go to school. I can’t leave her. She can’t make it without me.”

“There’re, uh, programs, Ernesto, places she could go,” Jade said, knowing she didn’t sound convincing. “You know, rehabilitation programs? We could try to arrange something like that for your mother. We could do that, right, Court?”

Ernesto shook his head. “She did those. Twice. After she got picked up for, you know, for soliciting? The judge sent her. They put me into the system and sent her away to get clean before she could get me back. She said she got better drugs in there than she ever did on the outside.”

“They took you out of there and they let you go back to her?” Court asked, looking at Jade in disbelief. “What the hell?”

“Twice, Mr. Becket. They let me go back to her twice. They knew she needed me, right? Somebody’s got to be responsible for her, and I’m her family. You don’t just walk away from family because you don’t want to do it anymore. That’s not right.”

Jade felt Court’s gaze on her again, almost heard him:
Tell him. Responsibility has its limits. Go on, Jade, tell him.

At the same time, Jade was having so many lightning flashes of her own childhood, her own decisions—her own mistakes, her lost dreams for her own future—that it was almost as if Jessica had burned them all onto a DVD that was playing before her eyes now.

“Ernesto,” Jade said, getting up from her chair and going around the table to hold out her hand to him. “Come outside with me. Please, sweetheart. We’ll take a walk down around the pool, maybe sit there awhile. You and I really need to talk.”

COURT
’
S APPETITE
disappeared sometime around the moment Ernesto had entered the room, and he gave up eating as a bad job, deciding instead to walk down to the gatehouse and tell Bear Man they might be expecting a guest.

If indeed he did show up, Jermayne Johnson wasn’t exactly the sort of guest the ex-professional wrestler was probably accustomed to letting through the gates to Sam’s house, so a phone call to the gatehouse might not do it.

He checked his watch as he stepped outside. A little more than two hours before they were to confront Joshua Brainard. Had this been the longest day of his life, or did it only feel that way?

A breeze had begun to kick up after the heat of the day. Although it felt good, Court knew that Jessica was right, and there would probably be a storm later. His check of the weather channel had shown heavy thunderstorms already moving east toward Harrisburg. That usually meant about two hours before Philly got hit, unless the storm went north of them.

“But that’s all right, Mr. Brainard,” Court said under his breath. “One way or the other, your little parade is going to get rained on tonight.”

Court continued down the curving drive, wondering how Jade and Ernesto were making out with their heart-to-heart. Jade saw the similarities between her story and his; Court knew that. No, Teddy hadn’t been an addict, but he’d been needy in his own way. Jade had tried to be mother and father to her sisters, and maybe wife and mother to her own father while she was at it.

But that was Jade. If somebody dropped the ball, you could count on her to be the one who picked it up, ran with it. Court was pretty sure Jade now realized what she’d done, the decisions she’d made in her teens and then stuck to because nobody else stepped up to carry the ball—like Teddy, who just let himself get comfortable in the role of deserted husband, wounded cop, avenger of all those forgotten victims and protector of those the victims had left behind.

The guy had been half-martyr, half-saint.

But he hadn’t been Jade’s father in the ways she’d needed him to be, not for a long, long time.

When he had been mad at the man, which had been often, Court believed Teddy had consciously decided that Jade, as the oldest, saw the sense in being the spinster daughter, destined to play the role of the loyal child who stayed home and took care of her parents—in this case, Teddy.

When he was feeling more charitable, Court believed the man didn’t realize what he was doing.

Except that Court had never felt all that much in charity with the guy, not when it came to Teddy’s almost archaic treatment of Jade.

He felt his hands clench into fists at his sides. They had to solve Teddy’s murder. It was time to put the man to rest. Jade’s one last rescue of the man. Only then would she feel free to get on with her own life, pursue her own dreams, feel free to share that life with him.

And if that was selfish of him, then damn it, so what?

“Problem, Mr. B?”

Court looked ahead to see Carroll “Bear Man” Yablonski stepping out of the gatehouse, adjusting his pants, which had a tendency to hang beneath the man’s waist by a good two inches.

“No, Bear Man, no problem, thank you,” Court said. He realized that, although Bear Man wasn’t very tall, he packed a lot of muscle into his square frame. “No more reporters camped outside the gates?”

Bear Man wiped a hand beneath his nose. “No. All gone. I think I kinda miss them. They used to bring me stuff. Doughnuts, those big pretzels you get at the ball games, cheese steaks. One of them tried to give me money. I told him where to get off, let me tell you. Food? That’s okay. I mean, if I didn’t eat it, then it would just go to waste. But money’s a
real
bribe, an insult to my integrity and stuff, and I tossed those guys in a hurry, let me tell you! They all thought I’d tell them something they didn’t know, or maybe let them sneak inside for a couple of pictures of Miss Jolie when she was here. I didn’t.”

He smiled, showing off a startlingly white set of dentures. “Ate well, though. I think I put on a good five pounds.”

“You’re a man among men, Bear Man,” Court said, keeping a straight face. “I don’t know what we would have done without you when the media was camped four deep on the other side of that gate.”

“Hey, it’s Sam, you know? You think I don’t know what he did for me? Bringing me here, giving me a place to live, a real job to do? My brains got a little scrambled during my pro-wrestling days. Some from taking hits when I zigged, instead of zagged, or when some rookie forgot to pull his punch, and some of it from those’roids we all used. I swore I didn’t use them, but Sam knew I’d messed myself up. He didn’t care. I was his friend and that was that. He took care of me. So now I take care of him. Just like I did on the football field back at old Temple U. You always got to protect your quarterback. That’s just the way it is.”

“I understand,” Court said, not at all amazed that Sam had manufactured a job and living quarters for Carroll Yablonski, although he did think that was probably the longest speech the man had ever made, within his hearing, at least.

Bear Man put up his arms. “Hey, hey, I shouldn’t have said that.”

“It’s all right. I already knew, Bear Man. Sam told me.”

“No, no, not about Sam. That’s good about Sam. I shouldn’t have said that about the zigging and the zagging and pulling the punches. That wasn’t true, okay? It’s real. Pro wrestling’s
real,
it really is.”

“Now you’re lying to me, Bear Man,” Court said, laughing. “If pro wrestling is real, so are those teeth of yours that you already told me Sam bought for you, no insult intended.”

The other man lowered his hands—hands the size of small pizzas, attached to forearms that could have doubled as tree trunks. He wouldn’t have wanted to have faced Carroll Yablonski across the neutral zone back when he was playing college ball. “Okay, okay. I tried. Just don’t tell nobody, all right? Kids and little old ladies especially. They believe the dream. Now, what can I do for you, Mr. B? You didn’t just come down here to hear about my glory days. Is something up? I can get Chief Iron Claw back here to watch the gate, if you need me somewhere else.”

“Chief…?” Sam had a sudden memory of the gates being opened one day by a tall, fierce-looking guy of about sixty wearing fringed buckskins and a big feather war bonnet. “Oh, right, your wrestling friend. You know what, Bear Man? I came down here to tell you to look out for a visitor we hope is going to show up soon, but I think you just gave me an idea.”

“I’ll go call Claw,” Carroll said, already heading back to the gatehouse.

“Whoa, Bear Man,” Court called after him. “How about you let me tell you my idea first. You might not want to do it.”