Mischief 24/7 (25 page)

“Maybe you’d like my screen name. I’m the Sam-in-ator. Ernesto, just remember to put the controllers back in the bottom drawer of my desk. It seems that Rockne likes to chew on the wires.”

Jade glanced at Court, hoping he wouldn’t mention that Sunny was following in the Irish setter’s footsteps and had chewed on Sam’s dining-room carpet. He shook his head almost imperceptively. Good, at least they could postpone
something.

What they couldn’t postpone, what she didn’t want to postpone, was the confrontation with Joshua Brainard.

Jolie excused herself to take yet another cellphone call from Jessica, who was already downtown at Carpenters’ Hall, moaning that she’d been conned into taking the shoot for her station so she couldn’t meet them until the speech was over. Jolie made soothing noises for about thirty seconds and then said, “No, we are
not
going to bring him along for you, Jess. Some theories just have to remain theories, okay?” She closed her cell with a snap and rolled her eyes as she headed for the door. “Honestly, some people’s kids…”

“Wait a minute,” Jade said once she was outside on the drive, suddenly realizing that when she counted noses, she came up with two extra ones—Bear Man’s and Rockne’s. “What’s Rockne doing here?”

“I give up. She’d probably already called Ernesto and told him to sic Rockne on us. She wasn’t asking me just now, she was
telling
me.” Jolie opened the rear hatch and urged the dog to climb inside. “She says it’s a test.”

“She’s still going with the idea that Rockne was locked out of Teddy’s office because the killer was allergic to dogs? Brainard sneezes and she yells
gotcha?”
Jade made a face. “She never gives up, does she?”

“I think it’s a family trait,” Court said, giving her a kiss on the cheek before opening the rear passenger-side door for her. “Bear Man’s driving and Sam already called shotgun, so I get to ride back here with you and Jolie.”

Moments later the Mercedes was pulling out through the gates of Sam’s sanctuary and heading for the Brainard estate, Bear Man singing along with Queen’s “We Are the Champions” until Sam turned off the radio and swiveled in his seat to ask another question about their interview with Jermayne.

Jade just sat in the rear seat, her head back, her eyes closed, Jolie holding her hand on the seat between them, and let Court handle the questions.

She let her mind roam where it wanted to go, which was anywhere but where she was at the moment, because she just wanted this all to be over. She wanted to be with Court, maybe on some small island somewhere, one without phones, without the Internet, without any outside contact. Someplace private where they could talk to each other, hold each other… and heal.

She just wanted to be with him. She needed to be with him.

The Scholar Athlete case was solved, although Jade wished there could have been another solution. They were three for four, Jade and her sisters. Teddy, more often drunk than not, had amazingly done the really hard work, and they had simply followed in his path, one foot in front of the other, fitting the final pieces in the puzzles—or, to be truthful, getting lucky.

“Y
OU KNOW,
Miss Sunshine,” the doctor said as he put the last stitch in the gash at her temple, just at her hairline, “you’re one very lucky lady. Another inch to the right and you might have lost an eye. As it is, we’re still waiting on that X ray, to make sure there’s been no orbital-rim fracture.”

“Then I can leave?” she asked, longing for a hot shower and a soft bed. She felt as if she’d been beaten on by a man with a camera, which she had been.

“We called your father, yes,” the doctor said. “He’ll be allowed to take you home as soon as those X rays are back. You’re still not out the woods on those ribs, either, remember.”

Jade tried to sit up, but the nurse put a hand to her chest to hold her still. “You called my father? Why would you do that?”

“Because he’s listed on your contact informa-tion, Miss Sunshine,” the nurse told her. “From when you were in the emergency room a few weeks ago.”

Jade subsided onto the uncomfortable gurney “Oh,” she said in a small voice.

‘We’re very careful, Miss Sunshine,” the nurse went on, taping a few Steri-Strips to her sewn-up wound. “There are extremely strict laws now about who we can tell things to and who we can’t. Which is why you might want to change your last name on your medical insurance and your contact person. Your husband was very upset when we told him we couldn’t give out any information.”

“Oh, God.” Jade felt tears stinging at the back of her eyes. “Court called here? He’s in Greece. How did he find out I was here?”

“I wouldn’t know that, Miss Sunshine,” the nurse said. “Okay, you can sit up now, but don’t get dressed yet. Dr. Hennessey will return shortly with the results of your X rays. I’ll send your father back in a minute. He’s been pacing out there and driving our reception people crazy.”

Jade waited until the nurse had pulled the curtain of the cubicle closed behind her and then gingerly swung her bare legs over the side of the litter and slowly stood up. A soft moan escaped her lips as she felt her bruised ribs—
please, God, don’t let any of them be broken
—protest at the movement.

She padded barefoot over to the sink and leaned in close to the shiny chrome paper-towel holder on the wall to get a look at herself. Not good. Besides the Steri-Strips, the skin around her right eye was swollen and already showing signs of turning colors, and there were other bruises along her chin.

She’d gotten in one good leg kick before the enraged husband had managed to grab the strap of her camera, throwing her off balance. He’d hit her twice with the camera, and when she went down, he’d started kicking her. If that squad car hadn’t come along, she could be dead.

And if she’d really been pregnant, as she thought she’d been until that ER run ten days ago, she might have lost Court’s baby, which, to Jade’s mind, would have been worse than dying.

But she hadn’t been pregnant, and her silly plans to tell Court the news over a romantic dinner when he came home from Greece had been replaced with the reality of a kind doctor’s words that wishing for a pregnancy sometimes makes the body wish for it, too—but sooner or later, reality and nature take over.

She’d mourned the loss, anyway, even as the doctor told her that she needed to relax, not wish so hard, and if, in a year, she still wasn’t pregnant, only then would they investigate further.

Jade wanted a baby, maybe needed a baby. She rattled around in Court’s huge Virginia home, with him traveling more often than not until this important buyout of another hotel chain was completed.

Court promised her that he’d soon be home more, operating more from his home office and laptop than globetrotting, but that this negotiation had been going on for three years and he had to finish it.

Jade understood that. She understood all that.

But that didn’t mean she wasn’t lonely. She wasn’t made for idleness, for long days spent shopping or having her hair and nails done. If there could be a baby—

“Margaret Mary! Oh, sweet Jesus, I was so worried!”

Jade turned around in time to hold Teddy off so that he didn’t try to hug her and finish the job on her ribs that the cheating husband had started. “I’m okay Teddy. I’m
fin
e.”
And stop calling me Margaret Mary. You’ve been doing it for months and I hate it. I feel like you want me to be someone I’m not.

Teddy walked over to the gurney and sat down on one edge, the image of despair. “This is all my fault. I was supposed to be out there tonight. I was supposed to be snapping those pictures. Me, baby. Not you. What kind of father am I? Not even a man anymore—”

“Stop that. You didn’t feel well, and we knew your boy was going to show up at that motel for his Tuesday-night special,” Jade said, picking up her clothing from where it lay folded on a chair.

She immediately saw that her pretty silvery blouse was ripped at one shoulder. But she was pretty sure she could fix it. She loved that blouse; Court had told her that the color did wonderful things for her eyes—and his libido.

Jade smiled, and her cracked lip stung as it began to bleed again.

“I wasn’t drinking. I wasn’t, Jade, I swear it,” Teddy said quietly. “I was only taking a little nap, that’s all. You should have woken me up. That husband of yours made me promise you’d only be working on the computer, doing those background checks for me, and maybe some interviews out in the field, maybe trying to collect some of the money owed us. That’s all. No running around at night, no pictures, no sneaking up on people. That was the deal, Margaret Mar—Jade. Now I’ve got to deal with him, too.”

“Yes, Teddy. How did Court find out I’m here?”

Teddy hung his head, his complexion pale against the bright oranges and greens and blues of his Hawaiian shirt, the rather purple and red stain that had become more noticeable on the tip of his nose.

He was still a handsome man, but he was looking more and more worn around the edges. He only lost the battle with the bottle “now and then,” but the now and then was becoming more frequent since her marriage.

“Oh, that. He called for you just as I hung up with the hospital people. Caught me at a really bad time, when I was half-awake, all blubbering and worried about you and… He said to tell you he’s on his way here.”

“Oh, no. I wish you hadn’t done that, Teddy. I don’t need him to see me this way, and there’s really nothing he can do for me. Now I’ve interrupted his important meetings.”

“I told him that, I think. I told him what they told me, that you were okay, just banged up, but he just kept saying he’d be here as fast as he could. Jesus, they weren’t lying on that one, you look like hell, pumpkin. What are you going to do about that, Jade? What are you going to tell Court? Are you going to tell him it’s all my fault?”

“You didn’t make me go, Teddy. It was my decision. Court will understand that. Is he flying here or back to Virginia?”

“Here, I think,” Teddy said, standing up as the doctor came back into the cubicle. “How is she, Doctor? How’s my little girl? Is she going to be all right? I want the best. If you’re not the best, then go get the best, you hear me? I can pay.”

“Teddy, stop it,” Jade said, looking at the doctor, apology in her tone. “How were the X rays?”

“As I said before, Miss Sunshine, you’re a very lucky woman. No cracks, no breaks. But you will be hurting soon in places you didn’t think you could hurt. I wrote some prescriptions for you, a painkiller, an antibiotic cream for your wounds, and I suggest you don’t try to be brave and not take the pain pills. Take them for at least a week, and see your family doctor in five days to check on those stitches. There’s only two, so I’m sure he can handle them. The nurse will be in to give you a copy of all those instructions and I’ll be back to sign you out.”

Jade thanked the doctor, who looked at Teddy one last time before leaving the cubicle.

“Teddy, that was embarrassing. You insulted the man.”

“Not if he’s good, I didn’t,” Teddy said, his smile finally appearing. “Get dressed, Jade, and I’ll take you home. Then I can take care of you for a while. That’s a turn of the table, isn’t it?”

Jade dressed as quickly as she could, signing the release papers, and downed her first pain pill the nurse had brought her before she allowed Teddy to drive her home and help her upstairs to bed.

Either her injuries or the pain pill or a combination of them both combined to let her sleep until well past ten the next morning.

Her first thought upon waking was that she needed to call Court on his satellite phone. But then she realized she didn’t know what to say to him that wouldn’t upset him, and she probably wasn’t yet up to what he wanted to say to her.

For now, she’d let Teddy field his phone calls. That was cowardly, but she wasn’t feeling very brave at the moment.

She took a shower, pulled on loose sweats, tied her hair back in a ponytail, slipped her feet into pink fuzzy slippers and went downstairs, following the aroma of canned chicken noodle soup that was coming from the kitchen.

Poor Teddy, he was trying so hard to make it up to her. Maybe he’d made her some bread, butter and sugar bread, her favorite? She’d like that. She hadn’t had bread with butter and sugar on top since she was a little girl. The perfect accompaniment to canned chicken noodle soup.

She then fell asleep on the couch in the living room, too sore to think about climbing the stairs again, and when she next awoke it was to see Court standing beside the couch, looking down at her.

If he looked bad, and he did, she must look like she was half in the grave. “Court—”

“Oh, my God,” he said quietly, shaking his head. He dropped to his knees beside the couch as she struggled to push herself up against the cushions, doing her best not to wince. “Have you seen your face? No, scratch that. Of course you’ve seen your face. Where else are you hurt? I want to hold you, but I don’t want to hurt you more.”

Jade reached out a hand and he took it in his, squeezed it. “Do you…did you ever see those old
Dick Van Dyke
shows on that station that runs old sitcoms?”

Court shook his head, looking puzzled. “No. Is this going somewhere? I’ve had a long flight—I kept wanting to get behind the plane and push—and unless you have a point here, now I’ve got to worry that you’re delirious.”

“I’m not delirious. Well, maybe just a little. I’m taking some pretty wicked little pain pills. Anyway, on one of the shows, Dick Van Dyke goes skiing and falls off a mountain. His wife—I think its Mary Tyler Moore, you know, playing Laura Petrie—wants to kiss him and hug him, but he stops her. He points to his mouth and tells her there’s this one spot, at the corner of his mouth. He says she can kiss him there, because it’s the only spot on his whole body where he doesn’t hurt. I’d say that to you, except I don’t think I have a single spot on my body that doesn’t hurt.”

God, now she was babbling, like Jessica.
Avoiding,
like Jessica. Except she knew her baby sister was better at it.