Colby Conspiracy

BOUND BY THE CHICAGO RIVER and developed by the industrial working class, Chicago’s Lower West Side was as diverse as it was eclectic.

“Stop here.”

Upon Emily Hastings’s order, the taxi driver braked and eased the cab up to the curb on 18th Street. She paid the fare and got out, lugging the carry-on bag with her. The weight of the hastily packed bag dragged at her shoulder, but she ignored it. She made a quick swipe at her skirt in an attempt to smooth the travel wrinkles.

She was home, for the first time in too long to remember.

She inhaled deeply, drawing in the inviting scents of corn tortillas and spiced peppers from the Mexican restaurants and specialty shops that formed the cultural heart of the neighborhood. She let the sounds of salsa emanating from open windows and doors—and it wasn’t even noon yet—seep into her soul.

Her feet guided her; no thought was required. That was good, since her eyes were too busy taking in the changes since she’d last been here…home.

Nineteenth-century buildings served as stoic, sophisticated backdrops to the vibrancy of the street vendors. Emily felt a smile tilt her lips as she surveyed one of her favorites. Walking to the bus stop everyday for school, she’d watched as the dilapidated structure had been overtaken by artists searching for low-rent digs. Over time, the whole district had been brought to life by murals and dotted by funky galleries, all as a result of the influx of those starving artists. Emily had been too young to really understand the change; she’d simply been enthralled with the evolution.

As she took the turn onto her old street, Emily felt the wonder wane a bit. Other memories, ones not so comfortably recalled, filtered through her mind. The sound of weeping at her brother’s wake…the constant arguing between her parents after the death of her only sibling. The sharp pain of knowing that life would never be the same.

Emily pushed those old hurts aside and strode more briskly toward the house where she’d lived as a child before fate had taken its heavy toll on a typical lower middle class family, breaking it into pieces that would never again fit together.

She stood on the sidewalk for several seconds before stepping up onto the stoop. It looked just the same, only smaller. She stared up at the bow-shaped window on the second floor of the modest house. Her old room. She’d sat at that window many nights and prayed that her parents would stop fighting, that everything would be okay again.

But her prayers had gone unanswered.

Her brother had died, at age sixteen, of a sudden heart attack. His rare, congenital heart defect had gone undiagnosed. Her mother had blamed her father. As a cop, he hadn’t been a good enough provider, in Emily’s mother’s opinion. The loss and pain, all of it, were her father’s fault.

So her mother had left, taking Emily with her. They’d moved all the way to Sacramento, California, in an attempt to escape the memories.

Emily’s father had stayed right here. In this house, living with the memories and somehow surviving.

But now he was gone, too.

She blinked out of the trance the past weaved and reached up to the ledge above the door to retrieve the spare key her father had kept there for as long as she could remember. Her bracelet jingled as the numerous charms clinked together. She still wore it every day, had since the day her father had given it to her more than a dozen years ago, back when life had been normal.

On autopilot, she opened the door and stepped inside. A wave of emotion washed over her, as did the scents she’d associated with her father. Old Spice aftershave and gun oil.

For as long as she could remember, her father had been a cop. She’d sat in his lap many a night as he cleaned his service revolver and explained to her the hazards of not showing proper respect for the weapon. Both Emily and her brother had learned early not to play with guns.

An ache pierced her, and Emily fought for control. How could this have happened?

Her father had been murdered only three months from retirement.

She shuddered and closed the door behind her. Her bag dropped to the floor in the narrow entry hall and she moved deeper into the house.

The call she’d received at five this morning had been surreal, like a dream that couldn’t possibly be related to reality. But it was. It was all too gut-wrenchingly real.

Her father was dead.

Murdered.

The detective who’d called had assured Emily that it would not be necessary for her to identify the body and that the body wouldn’t be released before day after tomorrow, but she’d insisted on coming to Chicago immediately.

How could she not?

It was the least she could do.

Though Emily had been raised by her mother and stepfather since she was twelve, she still loved her father. Maybe they hadn’t seen each other often, but he’d gotten out to California when he could. He’d written regularly, had called once in a while.

No matter how much her mother would have preferred that she forget her father and the past altogether, Emily had never done so.

She moved slowly through the house, peeked into the parlor that looked as neat as she’d expected. Her father had always been meticulous about housekeeping. With his busy schedule as a homicide detective, she imagined that he’d hired a cleaning lady for the more tedious routine work, but the small, everyday tasks of keeping things tidy would have been something he naturally did. Emily had inherited that obsession from him. Her friends had always called her a neat freak.

The kitchen and downstairs bedroom her parents had shared looked exactly the same. Every picture, every knickknack sat exactly where it had fourteen years ago. Her mother hadn’t taken a single household or personal item when she and Emily had left. To this day, her mother never spoke of the son who’d died, or of her old life in Chicago. It was as if the past had never happened.

Slowly Emily climbed the stairs to the second floor. Her breath caught when she opened the door to her old bedroom. Her father had left it exactly as Emily remembered. She moved about the room and touched the stuffed animals and pictures that told the tale of her childhood. The small canopy bed with its frilly pink coverlet, the poster of her one-time favorite TV heart-throb taped to the wall. She’d sat in the window seat and daydreamed about growing up and marrying her idol someday.

Dizzy with the remembered voices and moments from her old life, Emily made her way to the other bedroom on the second floor. Her brother’s room. A small bathroom that the two had shared separated their rooms.

Colton’s room took her breath away. The football trophies. The big high school banner. Photos of him armored in sports gear. He had played them all, the epitome of the perfect athlete. Who would have expected him to drop dead on the field running laps?

Emily picked up a framed photograph—the last one taken of her brother—and touched his face. It had been the beginning of the end. Nothing had been the same after that summer.

She took a deep breath and blinked back the emotion burning in her eyes. Memory Lane wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, she decided as she closed up the rooms that served as tributes to forgotten childhoods. She wondered if her father had spent time in those rooms, wishing things had turned out differently. She hoped work had kept him too busy for that. Or maybe he’d moved on, as her mother had, and found someone new with which to share his life. But he’d never remarried and not once had he mentioned another woman to Emily. Just another sad truth to add to the growing stack that represented her old life here.

Back downstairs, she took her bag to her father’s room, opting to sleep there while she was in town. She picked up his pillow and inhaled deeply of his essence.

He’d been lost to her for so long that the impact of his death hadn’t fully sunk in. It was as if he would walk through the door after his shift ended and all would be the same. But that wasn’t going to happen. Maybe she should have identified his body in an effort to force the reality past the barrier of natural denial.

She’d come back to Chicago to plan his funeral, to take care of his final arrangements and his estate. Her mother had refused to come. To her, Carter Hastings had died the same year her son had died.

Emily tossed the pillow aside and decided a hot cup of tea would help get her started. She’d called the law office where she worked this morning to tell them she was taking two weeks off to settle her father’s estate. Her bosses had understood.

She’d gone to college and gotten a degree in journalism in hopes of becoming a Nobel Prize-winning author, but it hadn’t panned out yet. What did a hopeful journalist do when she couldn’t get work in her field? She became a secretary. She could type and file and answer the phone; it was a no-brainer.

After a soothing cup of her father’s longtime favorite, Earl Grey, Emily got to work. Her first chore was to go through her father’s official papers and determine what insurance policies were in effect. Someone from Chicago PD’s human resources department would touch base with her on whatever benefits would be forthcoming.

By the time dusk fell over the neighborhood, she had contacted the funeral home where her brother had been taken all those years ago and made preliminary arrangements. Barring any unforeseen obstacles, a service would be held Thursday afternoon at two. The wife of her father’s partner had called and insisted on having Emily for dinner that evening. She’d almost declined but hadn’t wanted to hurt any feelings. The partner her father had served with the past several years was not the one he’d had when she was a kid. She didn’t really know what had become of his first partner. Emily had vaguely recalled her father mentioning his first partner had died, but she really wasn’t sure

With all she could accomplish today done, Emily shuffled the papers and policies back into neat little stacks and prepared to put them back into the briefcase-size fireproof safe box her father had kept them in. He’d mailed her a key and the location of the safe box years ago. Foolishly she’d kept the key on the charm bracelet he’d given her the Christmas before the divorce. And, even more foolishly, she still wore the damned thing. It was the one part of the past she’d clung to…the single part she hadn’t been able to give up. Unlike her mother, Emily had still loved her father, still cherished the memories of the family they had once been so very long ago.

In the process of lugging the heavy fireproof box back into the closet to tuck it back into its hiding place behind the shoeboxes of photos and other family mementos, something shifted inside.

Not the papers or policies. This was something heavier, something she hadn’t noticed or heard before.

Curious, she hauled the load to the bed and reopened it. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. The papers were no longer in their neat little stacks, but that was to be expected since shifting the box into its hiding place required standing it on end. Then she noticed the difference. One side of the bottom appeared to jut up a little higher than the other.

Emily pressed down on the uneven bottom, but it didn’t budge. She removed the papers and set them aside, then hefted the box to an upside-down position and watched the interior floor fall onto the mattress. A bundle of yellow-tinged envelopes flopped onto the metal plate now lying on the covers.

Emily pushed the box upright once more and considered that she’d heard of, even seen, false bottoms. She just hadn’t expected to find her father harboring something like this in his bedroom closet.

She picked up the stack of bundled envelopes and read the addressee’s name. James Colby. She frowned. Who was James Colby? She looked at the date and was startled again. The envelope was postmarked over eighteen years ago. Strange.