CHAPTER 6
Julia kept the speedometer of her SUV locked at a heated ninety as she beat a fast track out of Sparrow and whatever fresh hell her father had dragged her into. She blew off I-75 toward Rochester Hills, desperate to get home, as the horror show of what had just transpired in Sparrow played out in her head. One thing Julia was sure of, she wasn’t going to let herself be used as bait again for whatever mess Duke was in. But more so, she wasn’t going to let her father’s dangerous chaos trickle down to her children.
Julia eased off the gas when she neared Paint Creek Trail and what looked like a father and son riding their bikes along the side of the road. She used hands free to call her housekeeper and self-appointed den mother, Helen Jankowski, to be sure her boys were okay. Helen was a whippet-thin, older woman with a distinct Polish accent and the best pierogi recipe north of Detroit. Helen had moved in with Julia after Helen’s husband, Alek, had died of a heart attack a few months earlier, causing Helen to christen Julia’s house “wdowa centralny,” or “widow central.”
“Are the police there?” Julia asked as Helen answered. “I’m five minutes away.”
“Yes. Two sheriff deputies. I just gave them cake.”
“Thanks for the hospitality, but they don’t need cake. They should be watching the house. Where are Logan and Will?”
“Here with me. I took Will to the zoo, and we picked up Logan from his morning camp and came home. They’re safe, but with the police coming by here again, it worries the children, especially Logan.”
“Today was just a precaution. I ran into a situation, and I reached out to Navarro. I needed to make sure you and the boys were okay. Everything is fine, though.”
“Fine, right. The police show up here just to eat my cake. I don’t think so. I’m not a foolish old woman. You tell me what happened,” Helen insisted.
“Someone wanted to find a man I used to know. But he’s gone now, so everyone is fine.”
“You like this word ‘fine.’ You keep saying it so you’ll believe it. Who is this man you speak of?”
“I can’t tell you. I’m sorry.”
“You keep chasing life like it’s a mystery, then that’s what it becomes.”
“At least I’ve got you to keep me sane.”
Julia hung up with Helen and thought about the pale man in the suit whom Duke had killed. Whoever Jameson was, he obviously wanted Julia to lead him to Duke. But Julia wondered why someone would want to use her as a bargaining chip to get to her dad, who was no more than a ghost of a painful memory in her life.
Being a reporter for fifteen years, Julia considered herself fairly skilled at tracking people, but she had never once tried to find her parents after they abandoned her and Sarah. When it came to Duke and Marjorie Gooden, Julia had long ago given up any thoughts of justice or vindication. All she wanted from her parents was for them to be gone for good.
As Julia pulled into her driveway, she noticed two things: the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office cruiser was parked on the street out front; and the FOR SALE sign that had been a fixture on her front lawn for the past few months was missing.
Julia made her way inside, never happier to be home, dropped her bag by the front door, and beat a quick path to her kitchen.
Two sheriff deputies sat on stools next to the kitchen island. One was broad and middle-aged, with salt-and-pepper hair. His partner looked to be early twenties, with a lean build and a buzz cut, probably trying to look tough to make up for his inexperience. Both had plates of homemade honey cake, courtesy of Helen, who was wearing a bright red apron and topping off their coffee cups.
“You smell like cigarettes,” Helen said to Julia. “Smoking can kill you.”
“The cigarettes weren’t mine, and the person who was smoking them doesn’t have to worry about that anymore,” Julia answered.
The older deputy stood up quickly from his stool, and Julia read his name tag, SCARBOROUGH.
“I appreciate you coming over,” Julia said.
“We’ve been parked outside your house for the past half hour, and we didn’t see anything suspicious. My partner talked to your neighbors. They said they hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary going on. But we can stay awhile longer if you need us to,” Scarborough said. “I wasn’t one hundred percent clear on the situation. Detective Navarro didn’t give specifics when he requested a unit over here.”
Julia let the not-quite-asked question hang in the air. Duke Gooden was one of the last people on earth she was going to trust, but when someone warned her she could die if she told anyone what just went down in Sparrow, she took notice.
“Thank you for the offer to stay, but we’re good. I appreciate you coming by,” Julia said.
“Can I take a piece of this cake to go?” the younger deputy asked. “This is, like, the greatest thing I’ve ever eaten.”
“It’s Polish, that is why,” Helen answered, and began to cut two more slices of cake for the deputies.
“Well, Julia Gooden. It’s nice to finally meet you. I’ve been reading your stories for years,” Scarborough said.
The younger deputy got up from his stool and looked at Julia for the first time with interest.
“Julia Gooden. No kidding. Now I know why your name sounded familiar. You were married to that D.A. guy, David something,” the younger deputy said.
“Tanner. That’s correct.”
“Right. That story was all over the news.”
Julia felt an uncomfortable prickle run through her, not wanting to rehash a dark and painful time for her and her boys, especially in what should be the sanctuary of her own home. Julia turned her back on the rookie and reached her hand out to the senior officer. “Deputy Scarborough, thank you for coming by, but we’re fine here.”
Helen glowered at the younger officer, handed Scarborough his container of cake, and shoved the other one into the refrigerator.
“If anything else happens, feel free to give the substation a call and we’ll send someone by,” Scarborough said.
Julia walked the deputies to the door, and when she returned, Helen was pulling a plate of stuffed cabbage rolls out of the oven.
“That young cop eats my cake and then has the nerve to bring up hurts from your past. He’s lucky I didn’t dump this pan of Golabki in his lap,” Helen said. “He tries to come back for the cake, and I will do it, I swear.”
“I’ve got a pretty thick skin, Helen. But thanks for having my back.”
Julia reached out and patted Helen’s hand as a pair of fast-moving feet tore down the hallway. Julia looked in the direction of the sound to see her youngest son, Will, pounding toward her, full throttle. Julia almost lost her balance when Will threw his arms around her legs in his trademark fierce hug delivered with the force of a mini linebacker.
“You’re stronger than a superhero,” Julia said.
Julia picked Will up in her arms, realizing she needed his comfort probably more right now than he needed hers. Julia swung Will around in the air until he squealed for her to stop, and when she did, he squealed for her to do it again. Julia let herself get lost in the simple moment where everything was small, unburdened, and perfect. She buried her nose against the soft skin of her little boy’s neck, making him laugh even harder, and felt the tight knot that had settled in her chest start to loosen just slightly.
“You, little sir, give the best hugs. It’s just what your mom needed.”
“The police came,” Will said.
“I know. They were just checking on you while I was gone. That’s all. Police officers are good guys.”
“Helen took me to the zoo!” Will said, clearly more excited about the zoo than the police. “Show Mom. Show her the picture.”
“That child is getting so big, and he refused to go in the stroller. I had to carry him back to the car because he was too tired to walk. Soon he will be carrying me around in a papoose,” Helen said. She lifted a postcard from a bag with the Detroit Zoo logo on the front and handed it to Will, who grabbed it greedily and presented it to his mother like it was as wondrous to him as the keys to Disneyland.
“Is that a fox?” Julia asked.
“No. Red banda. Can I be him forever?” Will asked.
“He means ‘red panda,’” Helen corrected.
“Can I be him forever?” Will asked again.
“Yes, forever,” Julia said, and turned her attention to Helen. “Where’s Logan?”
“He’s been in his room since he got home from camp. He came out once to drill the police on why they were here. That child was relentless. Then he made Will go back into his room with him. The boy tries to protect his little brother.”
“Damn it. Okay. Let me go talk to him.”
Helen raised her eyebrows and tilted her head in Will’s direction, making Julia wonder who really was the head of the house these days.
“Sorry, Will. Mom said a word she shouldn’t have.”
Julia handed Will off to Helen and felt a pang of guilt as she approached Logan’s room. She didn’t want the police to cause him any more anxiety, but she needed, first and foremost, to be sure her family was safe.
Logan’s door was closed tight, and Julia knocked while she opened it.
Logan was sitting cross-legged on his floor, drawing Poké-mon characters, with his baseball bat from Little League next to him.
“Anyone home?” Julia asked. She took a quick pan of the room and noticed Logan’s closet door was ajar, and the missing FOR SALE sign was poking out of it.
“I’m guessing that bat isn’t for practice,” Julia said, and sat down next to her son on the wooden floor.
“The police were here. The police only show up if something bad is happening.”
“The police came by to talk to me about a story I’m working on,” Julia said, her lie feeling like a sharp pin caught in her throat. “Nothing bad is going to happen. Not to you, not to your brother, not to Helen or anyone else close to us. Got it? I won’t let it. I promise.”
“Cross your heart, right?” Logan asked.
Julia drew an X over her heart with her index finger.
“How about we put the bat back in your closet. Do you have something in there you want to tell me about?” Julia asked.
A shot of red blossomed up Logan’s neck as his head darted in the direction of the closet door and he realized his mistake.
“Nice job trying to hide the sign, but we journalists tend to pick up on things. What’s going on?”
“I don’t want anyone else living here. This is our house. If someone buys it, then I’ll have to switch schools.”
“I thought you wanted to switch schools.”
“I did when I got in trouble, but I’m okay now.”
“You sure?” Julia asked, remembering the call she got a few months earlier from the principal’s office telling her that Logan had gotten into a fight with another boy at school.
“What happened, it wasn’t my fault. That Luke kid said something really bad about Dad. I couldn’t let him get away with it.”
“What Luke did wasn’t right. But if something like that happens again, use your smarts and your words, instead of your fists, or you tell a teacher. You don’t get in a fight.”
Four sharp knocks sounded on the door and Helen barged in without waiting to get official permission to enter.
“Your phone keeps ringing in your purse,” Helen said.
“We’ll talk more about this later,” Julia said to Logan.
She gave Logan a quick kiss on the top of his head, dashed to her bag, which was still lying on the entryway table by the front door, and saw that she had missed calls from Navarro. Julia made her way outside to her front porch, away from inquisitive ears, and hit the call-back button.
“What did you find out?” Julia said when Navarro answered. No “hello” required.
“You guys all okay?” Navarro asked.
“Everybody is fine. The sheriff deputies just left.”
“I would’ve preferred they stuck around until I got through my shift. The guy who tried to grab you, whoever he was working for could be coming back. Someone must have tailed you and thought you’d lead them to your father.”
“Knowing Duke, he’s long gone, and I can’t help whoever is after him.”
“They don’t know that.”
“Did you get any more on Jameson?” Julia asked.
“I just got off the phone with the Sparrow cops. They went to your old house and couldn’t find a thing, not even a speck of blood.”
“That’s not possible. That Jameson person, his blood was all over the windshield of his car after my dad shot him. The car was a tan sedan and it was parked out front of the house. And there was a dead man inside the trunk. Duke referred to him as Chip.”
“There wasn’t a tan sedan anywhere near the property. The cops said they got to the house ten minutes after you called me.”
“Then whoever Jameson was working for had a skilled cleanup crew on the ready. My dad took Jameson’s body. He dragged it around the back of the house.”
“Strange souvenir. Your dad either got rid of the car with the other dead guy in it or someone else did,” Navarro said. “I did a trace on your dad. Here’s the thing, and it doesn’t make sense. There are zero public records on the guy in the past thirty years. No driver’s license renewals, IRS records, job history, arrest records, nothing. The only hits I got happened before your brother was abducted. Duke had a couple of misdemeanors for writing bad checks and one for embezzlement. He had a grand-theft one too, but that got dropped. I’m not sure if you knew this already, but your dad served some time.”
“I know. I was five. Ben told me Duke was on a business trip so I wouldn’t be upset. But one of the kids on our school bus, his dad was a prison guard and knew that my dad was locked up. The kid told everybody on the bus ride home one day about my dad being a convict, and Ben punched him in the nose. We had to walk home the rest of the way because the bus driver kicked Ben off, and I wasn’t going to stay on there without him.”
“There’s a note in your dad’s file that he was affiliated with a man named Peter Jonti, a hood who served time at the same prison with Duke. Jonti was younger than your dad, but it looks like he was connected. I did a check, and Jonti got popped again recently, but he’s out now and working at a sushi joint downtown on Fourteen Mile in Madison Heights.”
Julia jotted the name of her father’s former associate down in pen on the palm of her hand.
“I’ll check him out,” Julia said. “There’s one thing that keeps coming back to me about what went down in Sparrow. Before Jameson died, he said Duke took something that didn’t belong to him, and when that happened, things got taken from him. He could’ve meant Ben. I’m sure of it.”
“Don’t go looking for this Jonti guy until I finish my shift, and I’ll come with you. Your father has been leaving a hell of a wake in his trail since he resurfaced in the last three hours, so I’d prefer you stay close.”
“How are things going with the Angel Perez case?”
“I’m just leaving his apartment. I talked to the pregnant girlfriend who just came back here after leaving Councilman Sanchez’s place. Poor kid. She said Angel was trying to scare up some day laborer work to pay for an upcoming doctor’s appointment for her. Angel didn’t tell her where he planned to go this morning to pick up work, but she clued us in on some usual spots he’d go when they were desperate for cash. The problem is, she wasn’t big on specifics. She said he went to Lowe’s, Home Depot, and Menards at locations in the suburbs when he couldn’t find work where they lived in Dearborn. We’ve got some ground to cover. But at least he was wearing a distinctive piece of clothing.”
“The Run-DMC shirt.”
“Someone should remember him.”
“Keep me posted. I’ve got to head down to the paper, and we’ll catch up later.”
“Be careful. And call me if you need anything. I’d feel better staying at your house until things settle down. I don’t like the idea of you and your kids alone right now with what happened today.”
“Thanks. Let me think about it, though. Logan is having a rough patch.”
“You don’t have to worry about me sneaking into your bedroom in the middle of the night. I can keep my hands to myself if I have to.”
“I might be the one with the weaker flesh.”
“There’s absolutely nothing wrong with your flesh. Trust me on that. I love you, beautiful.” Navarro hung up, not waiting for Julia to say it back. She’d often told Navarro she loved him, when they were first together, when she was twenty-five. She felt the same way now, and she was certain Navarro knew how she felt, but she hadn’t been able to say it back to him just yet. It wasn’t a matter of self-preservation or having the upper hand in the relationship. She just had far more than herself to worry about this time around.
Julia stared at the name she’d written down on her palm, did a quick Google search for an address, and headed out to track down Peter Jonti. Thirty years of never being able to find out what happened to her brother, if there was even a remote possibility Duke was involved—something the Sparrow cops had ruled out early on, since Duke had an airtight alibi—Julia wasn’t going to wait another second to find out. And if Ben had been some kind of payback in lieu of Duke’s personal pound of flesh for a long-ago transgression, Julia swore to herself that she’d make sure her dad would pay for what he’d done.
* * *
Sushi Z, where Peter Jonti worked, was located in a depressing, faux-brick strip mall. It was located between a bail bondsman’s office and an adult-entertainment shop advertising some sort of LIQUIDATION SALE, EVERYTHING MUST GO.
A tiny bell sounded as Julia entered the sushi place, and four waving maneki-neko cat statues, which needed a good dusting, greeted her as she made her way to the hostess stand. A lone sushi chef behind the bar eyeballed Julia and then barked something to a dark-haired woman in a midnight-blue satin dress. Julia took a seat at the far end of the bar and ignored the only other patron, a biker-looking man, who appeared to have taken on the full-time job of staring at her.
The waitress came around the bar and handed Julia a menu, which had dried stains of what looked like soy sauce on the vinyl cover.
“You here for a late lunch?” the waitress asked in a sulky tone. “My shift ends in five minutes, so you need to order.”
“No, I’m here to see Peter Jonti.”
The waitress’s impatient demeanor softened as she realized she could probably go home soon, after all. “I’ll see if he’s around. What’s your name?”
“Julia Gooden. Tell Mr. Jonti he knew my father, Duke.”
The waitress disappeared behind a door with an EMPLOYEES ONLY sign posted on its front. Julia watched a fly pick its way across a plastic California roll on display as the door to the back room opened back up in a hurry. A solidly built man in his fifties came out. He had dark, greased-back hair, which curled at his shoulders, and a gold chain around his neck. Peter wore a short-sleeved, white T-shirt that exposed a tattoo on his left upper arm of a ghoulish-looking, bald-headed figure that had its mouth wide open and its hands clasped to either side of its wan cheeks.
Peter gave Julia a friendly smile as he approached her. With every step, his cologne got stronger and stronger until Julia had to stop herself from wincing.
“Mr. Jonti. I believe you knew my father, Benjamin ‘Duke’ Gooden,” Julia said, and eyed the tattoo again. “That image on your arm there. It’s from the painting The Scream, right?”
“Yeah, but there’s no good backstory about it. I was coming off a killer hangover at the time and the picture of the guy pretty much summed up how I was feeling when I saw it at the tattoo parlor,” Peter said. “Sure, I knew your dad. What can I do for you?”
“I need information about Duke.”
“You need information about your own father?”
“I don’t know much about him. Duke took off when I was seven. I don’t care what happened to him. But I believe whatever my father was mixed up in at the time you knew him could be connected to my brother’s disappearance. My brother, Ben, was abducted when he was nine.”
“I’d heard about what happened to Duke’s boy. Your brother was never found?”
“No. It’s a cold case.”
“All right. I’m not sure how I can help you, but if you’ve got questions, shoot,” Peter said, and led the way toward the door behind the sushi bar.
“I appreciate your time. First off . . . ,” Julia started to say as the door closed behind them, but her words got lost as Peter shoved her against a wall and then started to pat her down with more expertise than a TSA handler.
“What the hell is this?” Julia demanded.
“Sorry,” Peter said in a thoughtful tone. When the body search was done, Peter dumped out the contents of Julia’s bag on the floor.
“Hey, what are you doing? I’m not carrying and I’m not wired,” Julia said.
“That’s what they all say.” Peter combed through Julia’s wallet and pulled out her license and her press pass, which he studied until he shoved both documents back inside Julia’s purse.
“Well, you’re definitely Duke’s kid. Who are you working for?” Peter asked. He offered Julia a smile, but then pulled out a knife from his back pocket and snapped open the blade. “I liked your father, but if you’re trying to set me up, I’m afraid I can’t extend any favors to his daughter.” Peter backed Julia up against the wall and ran the smooth side of the blade across her cheek. “Pretty girl. It would be a shame to have to carve you up.”
“You try and cut me with that, you’re done. The cops know I’m here,” Julia bluffed. “And for the record, I’m not working for anybody, and I don’t care what kind of front you’re running. I’m trying to find out what happened to my brother.”
Peter looked up at Julia’s face and seemed to study her, unblinking, until he pulled away and slid his knife back in his pocket. “All right. I think you’re being straight with me. We can talk in my office.”
“Let me make one thing clear. If you ever pull a knife on me again, I’ll make sure your so-called business and whatever you’ve got going on here is shut down.”
“Aren’t you Duke’s little firecracker? Come on.”
Peter led the way down a narrow hallway until he reached a door with a security pad mounted on the wall next to it. Peter then plugged in a series of numbers that deactivated the alarm and went inside. Julia followed him and did a quick assessment of the room, which consisted of a scuffed wooden desk, two folding chairs, and stacks of boxes that lined the walls.
Peter caught Julia studying the boxes and sat down on his desk, facing Julia with his arms crossed in front of his chest. “Mind your business, or I’ll mind it for you.”
“Like I said, I’m not interested in what kind of business you’ve got going on here. How do you know my father?”
Peter motioned for Julia to take a seat, but she kept standing. “Ancient history. It must have been my second lockup when I first met your dad. I was a kid, probably around twenty-five, when I met Duke. We were both serving time at Macomb Correctional Center. Your dad wasn’t in there long, though. Just a couple of months, as I recall. Anyway, I was working a couple of guys in a card game. They caught on that I was conning them, and they were about to jump me. Your dad had a pal who was King Kong huge in there. Duke was always real good at making friends. Duke sicced his giant friend on the two guys and saved my ass. What else do you want to know?”
“My dad was working a job in Indiana when my brother went missing. It sounded legit, like maybe Duke was trying to go straight. He was working for a flooring company. His foreman gave my dad an airtight alibi the night Ben was abducted, and the St. Clair County Sheriff’s Office cleared him as a suspect. I’ve worked with the deputy who was the lead investigator on my brother’s case through the years, and I trust him.”
“You trust the deputy, but you shouldn’t trust your dad. The thing about Duke’s alibi, it was fake. The man Duke was working for owned the foreman. That’s how he got off,” Peter said. “Your dad wasn’t anywhere near Indianapolis at the time your brother went missing. He was here in Detroit. I saw him myself that day and later that night. Sounds like a bunch of people have been lying to you.”
Julia tried to keep a straight face as a fresh burn of anger moved through her.
“What do you know about what happened to my brother?” Julia demanded.
“Not a thing. Duke told me about it after the fact.”
“If you’re lying to me, you’ll regret it,” Julia warned.
“Tough one, aren’t you? But if you make a threat like that to me again, you won’t be walking out of here.”
“Who was my father working for? I need a name.”
“Not coming from me. I’m trying to do business in this town again, and I don’t want trouble.”
“What kind of business did you and my father do together when you got out of prison?” Julia asked.
“Your dad was an excellent salesman. I located the product, he made the sales.”
“Are we talking drugs?” Julia asked.
“No. Drugs are a dirty man’s business. Your dad was working a real estate scam for a while, trying to sell bogus properties down by the Detroit RiverWalk before it was developed. He had a buddy who was a maintenance guy in one of the buildings down there. He’d give your dad the key after hours, and Duke would show these hapless idiots around the place, acting like he was a real estate agent or something. But that didn’t go far, so he used his skills to help me unload some of my product, usually electronics, that I lifted from shipments down at the port.”
“The man my father was working for who gave him the phony alibi, he was in on this with you?” Julia asked.
“No. He was involved in a different type of sales, you could say. You said Duke took off when you were a kid. You still must’ve been upset when you heard about the fire.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You know your parents are dead, right?”
“Sure,” Julia lied, backtracking as not to show her hand again. An old, tucked away memory rushed back as Julia recalled a police officer coming to her aunt Carol’s house when Julia and Sarah were living there after their parents took off. Her aunt had scooted the girls upstairs to talk to the officer, and when Julia came back down, the officer was gone, but her aunt was sitting at the center of the kitchen table, crying, likely over the news that her sister Marjorie’s body had been found, Julia now realized. When Julia had asked what was wrong, her aunt had composed herself and promised everything was “Fine, just fine.”
Julia tried to process the secret her aunt had kept to the grave as an unexpected image of her mother sparked through her mind: beautiful Marjorie Gooden, with her thick, black hair and lovely smile, which she had lost to booze. Julia looked away from Peter over the unexpected painful memory, but he seemed to sense a shift in her demeanor.
“Memories can be brutal. Especially if a good one surfaces about someone who’s done you wrong. Lots of times, I’ve seen suckers go back to the people who’ve hurt them because they remember a single act of kindness, like an abused dog that runs away, but then returns home to the bastard that’s been beating him, because the dog remembers the asshole petted him once. Still, whether you hated your dad or not, you must have been upset when you heard your parents died. There were rumors, though, lots of them, that Duke got out and may still be alive. That’s my theory. I think he’s been running fast under the radar all these years. Did Duke ever try to contact you?”
“No. I haven’t talked to my father since he walked out on me when I was seven. Tell me about the fire.”
“I can tell you what I heard. A week after I got the news your brother was abducted, your dad fell completely out of sight. Two weeks later, a car registered to Duke was found burned to a crisp in an abandoned lot in the boonies, with two bodies inside. You hear things on the street. I had a real good source that said the cops couldn’t get a positive ID on Duke, since all the teeth had been pulled out of the dead guy’s mouth. But they found Duke’s wallet, with just his license inside, a couple of feet away from the car. They were able to ID your mom, though. You want a drink? You look like you could use one.”
Peter reached into one of his desk drawers and pulled out a bottle of scotch and two filmy tumbler glasses. He poured one to the fill line for himself and belted the contents back without waiting for Julia’s response.
“You know, you don’t look like your sister. What’s her name again?” Peter asked.
“Sarah. You know her?”
“That’s right. Sarah, the blonde. Tight little body like yours, but she’s older, or looks that way. Booze and drugs will do that to you. I ran into her recently, and she started asking the same types of questions you did, but not about your brother. Seems like she wanted to find Duke to make him pay for running out on her. She seemed pissed when she found out he was dead.”
“That sounds like Sarah. You saw her in Florida?”
“Florida? No, at the Renaissance House. I was locked up the last time for arms possession and intent to sell, but I was drunk when the cops did the sting. They added insult to injury, making me serve time and then having me go to AA meetings once a week when I got out.”
“My sister is at the Renaissance House in Detroit?”
“That’s the place. I tried to ask her out for a drink after the meeting, but she turned me down. Her loss. You know, I lent your dad something before he took off and he never returned it. Did Duke have a storage unit or anything where he stashed stuff?”
“A storage unit? We could barely afford rent. I can’t imagine my father had the money to pay for something like that. At least he never mentioned it.”
“Your father never tried to reach out to you after he took off?”
“No. And that was fine with me.”
“Maybe now, but I doubt that’s how you felt when you were a kid. Children always want to be with their parents, no matter how bad they treat them. Little girls look up to their daddies.”
“My father was never my hero. Thank you for your help, Mr. Jonti. If you remember anything else about Duke, please give me a call,” Julia said, and slid her business card across the desk.
Peter filled his glass halfway this time with scotch and raised the glass to Julia just as a fist banged against the office door.
“Peter,” the waitress from earlier said in a panicked rush from the other side of the door. “There are two men out front with badges. They don’t look like ordinary cops.”
“Could be ATF. Damn it.” Peter shoved the bottle of scotch and the glass back in the drawer and pulled a tan sports coat from the back of his chair. He threw the blazer on, which didn’t help him look any more presentable than he did without it. His fingers beat a fast rhythm against the keypad to deactivate the alarm.
“Do yourself a favor,” he told Julia. “Go out the back door and don’t come back. But if the rumors are true that Duke is alive and he looks you up, you let me know. That bastard owes me.”