Detective On The Hunt

Chapter 3 (#u3993855a-04ae-533e-b526-12a192447bc8)

JJ beamed, well aware that growls would start echoing from her empty stomach if she didn’t eat soon. “I’m glad you asked. Can we go to Whataburger? The nearest one to Evanston is a couple of hours away, so I haven’t had one in years, and that’s way too long.”

He took the back way out of the strip mall, passing a Chinese restaurant and a hot dog place, then turned back onto Main Street southbound. In a couple of minutes, he was parking in the restaurant’s lot. The dining room was warm and smelled of beef and onions and French fries and the best ketchup in the world, and she breathed in deeply, appreciating every happy, sweet, treat-with-Granddad bit of it.

When they placed their orders at the counter, she swiped with her card before Quint got his out of his wallet. “Expense account,” she explained.

His gaze narrowed. “Your department must have a bigger budget than ours.”

“The lawyer’s expense account.” She wouldn’t abuse it—she was meticulously documenting every penny she spent—but buying lunch for an officer who’d been pulled away from his regular duties to help her was definitely a legitimate expense.

They got their pop, then chose a table by the plate glass window on the side where they’d parked. Sitting across from each other, they were able to keep an eye on each other, the other customers, the employees and the pickup outside. Cops like expanded horizons.

When she sat on the hard bench, the papers in her hip pocket crackled. Shifting her weight, she pulled them out. “These are the notes Morwenna and Lois did for me.” She smoothed them on the tabletop and scanned over them.

Morwenna had listed a few dozen names, half of them only first or last, with additional data when she had it. Tanya West—works at Starbucks on Taft. Landon Jonas—mechanic at the garage on First. Lily Ransom—day shift at the local ER.

“Anything interesting there?” she asked, sliding the page to Quint.

He scanned it as quickly as she had. “I know some of these kids’ parents or grandparents. Tanya is a friend of Lia’s. Giggly, goofy, doesn’t have any ambition. Jonas does the routine service on department vehicles. My own truck, too. He’s okay, except that he’s got a motorcycle that goes really fast and a need to prove it occasionally. He’s got a string of tickets for that, but nothing else.”

Another long conversational piece from him. She was reminded of a conversation with her aunt, the mystery author. Jada had hefted a dictionary and said, “My entire book is in here. I just have to pull it out one word at a time.” Was more than twenty words at once a sign that Quint was warming up to her?

“I was first in my academy class in pursuit driving,” she said, “but motorcycles make me scream like a girl. Way too exposed. All the protective gear in the world can’t really protect you. Give me a four-thousand-pound cage wrapped around me any day.”

She took his grunt as agreement before turning her attention to Lois’s list. It was shorter but had more commentary. Like Quint, she knew most of the kids’ parents and had filled in ages, vehicles and job information. She dedicated an entire paragraph to one Alexander Benson: oldest of three kids, twenty-six, arrests for bar fights, possession, reckless driving, driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol, harboring a fugitive—his sister—and three counts of assaulting a police officer. All three times, he’d gotten between a relative and the cops trying to arrest said relative. Where Maura and Mel went, he followed.

He went by the nickname of Zander, and he was definitely, according to Lois, the boy our mothers warned us about. Bad boys. Every town had them, and every good girl managed to meet them.

“Do you know Zander Benson?” Then, remembering his comment, she teased, “Or should I ask if you know his parents?”

His gaze narrowed again, almost as if from habit. “Yeah, I went to school with his dad. Hank had better things to do than spend every day in school, so he went to class when it suited him. He was a senior when I started my sophomore year, and he was still a senior when I started my senior year. He did manage to graduate that time. Marisa was sitting in the audience, holding Zander and pregnant with number two.”

That image could have been inspiring. She loved underdog stories, people who never gave up until they achieved their goal. After three senior years, Hank had graduated, but had it really been an accomplishment, or had the school given him the diploma so they could be done with him? If his son was anything to judge by, probably the latter.

“I’m guessing marriage and fatherhood didn’t turn Hank into father of the year material.” Though her cynical cop side snorted at the idea, she believed it was possible. Hank could have learned his lesson about the value of education and staying out of trouble. He almost surely would have wanted better for his kids. It happened. Sometimes. On occasion. And Zander and his sister might have simply rebelled.

“Nah, Hank’s still the overgrown idiot he was back then, and Zander’s just like him. Too lazy to work, likes his drugs and his booze, rude and surly and looking for someone to take it out on.”

JJ rolled one corner of the paper tightly, smoothed it, then rolled it again. “So Maura’s best friend is rude, obnoxious and disrespectful, and her other friend is rude, surly and finds trouble everywhere he goes. Not that Maura didn’t have obnoxious and surly friends at home, but they came from money. They were just like her.”

“You mean they were her own kind.”

That sounded ugly and made her nose scrunch and her mouth wrinkle. “I don’t mean they were better because they were rich. God knows, that’s not a plus for most of them. Just…they all had money, so none of them took advantage. One day it was Maura blowing five grand on a party, but the next time someone else stepped up. They took their turns.”

“But none of these people—” he gestured toward the lists “—have money, which would explain why $100,000 a month is no longer adequate for her expenses. Friendship doesn’t come cheap.”

A pang twinged around her heart. Was that what Maura had sunk to? Buying friends? She was a pretty girl. She’d been taught perfect manners, all the social graces. She would be as comfortable at a White House state dinner as a regular person was at McDonald’s. She was smarter than average, had an enviable prep school education and all the potential in the world. And yet grief and sorrow had led her to a spot where she had to pay big bucks for the barest of friendships.

“My dad used to joke that he and Mom had me so my sisters would have someone else to torment, but now they’re my best friends. They drove me crazy—still do on occasion—but they also stood by me, no matter what. If Maura had had a brother or sister to lean on, to grieve with and recover with, maybe…” Maybe that brother or sister would have been her rock. Or maybe he or she would be floundering with her, dragging her even farther down.