Chapter Twenty

Roman squirmed in his car seat, trying to work some feeling into his butt. “How long does it take to shear a little dog, for crissake?” he muttered as he kept an eye on the entry to “Kittencapoodle.” For almost an hour he’d been waiting for Jan, the General, and the dog. Roman had parked his Beemer next to a Ford 150, the truck hiding him from their view, but allowing him to observe the front door of the dog salon. To cover his true purpose, he drank coffee and worked on Sidney’s eulogy. He hoped he looked like a real estate agent, getting an extra jolt of caffeine before meeting with another client.

“I’d rather research dead people, thank you very much. At least they stay put,” he said to the empty passenger seat. The numbness crept from his butt to his back. What he wouldn’t give for a numb brain. He decided the worst part of a stakeout was it gave a person too much time to think, easily working up a serious funk.

The woman whose body he was entrusted to guard, didn’t trust him.

“You lied to me, Jazz,” he grumbled, practicing what he’d say to her. “Promising we’d meet with Tess together, when you’d already met her in secret. You kept one rendezvous from me. What clandestine activities are on your docket today?”

She’d had her moments to come clean. He’d embraced her, danced with her, drunk wine with her, complimented her newly decorated rooms and stunning gallery of portraits. He’d even surprised her with the spare bedroom and persuaded her to sleep in the new bed. Morning coffee delivered in person.

One tough, secretive woman was Jan Solvang. He’d never worked so hard to curry a woman’s favor, to get her to trust him. Sure, through all his ministrations, she’d smiled and said the right words, seeming appreciative. When he’d brought coffee to her…God, she looked good in bed, all tousled and sleepy-eyed. In repose, she was an angel; newly awake, Jan was the picture of eroticism, pre-ruffled and ready for him.

A dog barked.

He scootched up in the car seat, alert. Sure enough, out came the General, holding the door open for Jan who cradled a decidedly smaller dog in her arms. Shearing complete.

Roman started his car and eased to the end of the coffee shop’s driveway, hiding behind a parked car. Movement on the other side of the street caught his attention. A black SUV roared out of the grocery store parking lot and stopped abruptly at the side of the entryway. The extra dark windows of the car made it difficult to see who was inside.

One person? A man? “What’s he waiting for?”

Jan put Elwood in the rear of her Volvo station wagon. The General hopped into the passenger seat; Jan took the wheel and headed east on Highway 1.

While Roman calculated how far he should retreat to keep Jan from recognizing his car, the SUV rolled onto the road behind Jan. “Shit! Who the hell is that?”

Roman gripped the steering wheel, forcing himself to wait until the SUV disappeared from view. “She’s safe in her car. The General’s with her. I won’t lose her.”

He looked both ways for traffic, cursing as he tore onto the highway ahead of a car threatening to come between him and the SUV. Punching the accelerator, he raced to spy on his woman.

****

Jan parked her Volvo in a shady spot near the Medi-Quick Clinic, cracked all the windows, and promised Elwood she’d return in ten minutes. The dog, seemingly in the throes of adjusting to his new haircut, gave her a baleful look and a “humph,” then curled up in the seat to sleep.

“And we’re here because?” asked the General, following her to the side of the clinic hidden from Grand Avenue.

“Hi, Tess,” Jan said, holding out her hand to shake Tess’s. “And this must be your brother, Ryan,” she said, turning to the man standing at her side and shaking his hand as well. Jan beckoned to the General. “My father, Walter Solvang. We’re This is Your Life, Inc., together. Both of us need to hear what you have to say.”

Neither sibling spoke. They’d shaken hands automatically. Grim. Tense. Tess wore old jeans and a wrinkled T-shirt, absent make-up and hair askew. Ryan was her match in ragged wear, but a head taller than his sister. Same mousy brown hair; slim, too, verging on anorexic. Jan wondered if they were twins, but knew it wasn’t the time to ask. Standing in a parking lot with two event planners was the last place on earth these two wanted to be.

Tess thrust a sheet of paper at Jan. “You have to sign this before we show you anything.” Tears coursed down her cheeks while she cast furtive glances around the parking lot, apparently looking for enemies. “Read it.”

Ryan handed Jan a pen.

The General leaned over to examine the document with Jan.

“Confidentiality Clause,” “Bring suit,” “Ensure privacy.”

Jan looked at Ryan. “You’re an attorney?”

The man nodded. “We keep the secret between us and you stop the memorial.” He shrugged. “But if you tell, we sue your asses.”

“What if we can’t stop the memorial without giving people your information?”

Tess grabbed Jan’s arm and squeezed, hard enough to make Jan wince. “No. One. Knows. Ever.”

The General reached over to Tess’s hand and gently lifted it off Jan’s arm. He pointed to the paper. “Someone else could leak the information. Your mother, say. Or another sibling.”

“They won’t.”

Jan played a hunch. “A doctor or a nurse?”

“No,” Tess said through clenched teeth. “Dad made sure.”

Ryan put his hand on his sister’s shoulder, showing solidarity. “Madmen are skilled at covering their tracks.”

With her back against the clinic wall, literally and figuratively, Jan mused. She glanced at her business partner. “Dad?”

The General shook his head. “Whatever they’ve got in that clinic won’t stay a secret. As soon as we try to stop the memorial, all hell will break lose. We sign the document, we get sued.” He glared at Tess. “You come at my daughter with a knife. Two guys rough me up in the Euc forest and run down my daughter on a public street. What’s more, we get threatening phone calls from you.” He drilled Ryan with a withering look. “And now you want to guarantee we’ll be sued?”

Jan closed her eyes and leaned against the rough stucco wall, warm from the sun. Clearly the General wanted to walk away. The easiest thing to do would be to drop Madeline Barker for a second time and let the Barker children find their own strategy for stopping the memorial.

“You’re right, Dad,” she said aloud so Tess and Ryan could hear her reasoning. “Even if we keep their secret, even if we shut down the memorial, the truth could come out another way. The maid we found in Mexico, a nurse, a doctor…it’s only a matter of time before someone comes forward.” She stepped away from the wall. “Tess, I’m sorry. We’re sorry.”

“No!” Tess screamed. “You promised you’d help. I’ll pay you,” she added, foisting a check at Jan.

“Let’s go,” said the General, ignoring the money and taking Jan’s elbow. “We’re done with this mess.”

Jan walked with her father a few steps, her eyes sweeping Grand Avenue.

Roman. What would Roman think of all this…a memorial where a man was praised who should be vilified. Roman would be so incensed he’d crash the event, shanghai the podium and tell the world about Barker’s dark past. That is, if he knew what Jan knew.

She smiled, thinking of Roman’s outrage. She liked the way he looked when he was impassioned, unleashed in a sexy kind of way.

When Jan stopped, her father gave her a puzzled look.

Facing him, she said, “We’re giving them some time to think, Dad. We’ll stand here talking for a while, okay?” At her father’s nod she went on. “I should have told you about my research on the late, great Cliff Barker. Roman shamed me into it.”

The General raised his eyebrows, waiting.

“I picked a local reporter who’d clocked a ton of hours following, interviewing and writing about Barker. The guy didn’t have a thing to say about the old man’s relationship with his kids. Barker carefully separated his family from politics, to protect their privacy.”

“Makes sense.”

“When I asked the reporter about Barker’s flaws, he said, ‘Nasty streak. Temper issues.’” Jan glanced at Ryan, who seemed to be comforting Tess. “The reporter witnessed the old man ripping into a couple of people, verbally. Just barely able to control himself from throttling them.”

His eyebrows knit, the General said, “That’s hardly evidence the man hurt his children.”

“No, but it makes the matter worth pursuing.” She drew in a breath, deciding to let the sobs of the children in her faint dreams guide her next move. “We’re going to help the Barker children, Dad. Remember I told you I wouldn’t bail on Tess? That was a promise I made to myself as much as to her.”

“It’s dangerous, Janny. In so many ways.”

“This from a General who’s done battle with the Viet Cong?”

He gave her a wry look. “I didn’t have my daughter in my platoon.”

With a wink and a turn on her heel, she said. “You do now, Dad.”

****

Tess’s parking lot drama unfolded while Roman watched from the front window of Donna’s Furniture Store. “I’m waiting for my wife. I’ll just stand here out of the way,” Roman lied to the saleswoman, “and watch for her.”

From his vantage point he could also keep his eye on the black SUV, boldly parked forty feet from Jan’s car and only twenty feet from the furniture store entrance. The driver was a man, alone, his backside toward Roman. Big ears, wide shoulders. Wore a baseball cap. Chain smoker. Made three phone calls in five minutes.

Roman yearned to shock the big-eared guy by opening his car door, pulling him out of his SUV and forcing him to tell his story. Even more, he wanted to join Jan and her father, learning what Tess and her companion had to say. Was it significant that they’d rendezvoused in front of a medical clinic? Now they passed a piece of paper around. What did it say?

Roman had seen Tess grab Jan’s arm. When the General had stepped in to protect his daughter, Roman had been relieved, but not satisfied. Why couldn’t she trust Roman? Let him help?

Instead he got to hide in a furniture store while struggling to interpret a pantomime.

Why had Jan walked away from Tess even when Tess appeared to hand her something the size of a check? More to the point, why had Jan and her father returned to Tess and the man after a short conference?

Later, Jan and her father waited in the side parking lot with the man while Tess entered the clinic. When the woman emerged, she held a piece of paper by its corner, her face pinched in anguish. Tess handed the sheet to the man. Back to Tess. Tess to Jan.

Jan read it twice as if she couldn’t believe what it said. She thrust it at the General, patted Tess on the shoulder and said something to the guy. The General shook his head when he returned the paper to Tess, his shoulders bowed with the burden it must reveal. The four continued to talk while they edged toward their cars. Clearly something was accomplished and this meeting was over, but what action would Jan take because of it?

Roman glanced at the SUV, knowing Big Ears had viewed the same mute drama. Sure enough, the guy punched a button and raised the cell phone to his fat ear. Who was he talking to? Madeline Barker? Someone connected to the mayor who wanted Barker’s memory to stay lily white? Roman held his cell phone up, willing it to ring. He’d called Pete to trace the SUV’s license number. Why was Pete taking so long?

A whiff of new leather reminded him he was in a furniture store playing the role of a husband waiting for a tardy wife. He held up his watch, grimaced at it and said, aloud, “Where is she?” The irritation was real but the question of the moment was, who to follow now? Jan or Big Ears?

The order was obvious, wasn’t it? Jan had cut him out.

“I get the story no matter what,” Roman muttered, knowing his nature doomed him forever to a place at the periphery of Jan’s life.

He gazed to the right, expecting to see Jan pull out of the parking lot. Instead, he saw Jan and the General striding straight toward him. Had they seen him? Shit! Now she wants to buy furniture?

Pivoting, he fast-walked through the furniture obstacle course to the rear of the store where bargains beckoned thrifty buyers. He passed a puzzled salesperson, waved, said, “I’ll be back,” and ran out the rear door, cursing Jan, her secrets, and oddities. By the time he got to his car, he’d worked up a full-fledged mad.