She was in the backyard working on come and stay with Wally when Nick’s unmarked police car pulled into the driveway. It was Saturday evening, and she wasn’t surprised he was on the clock. Nick was always working. Then again, he was something of a superhero, what with finding and collaring bad guys. After the shock of finding Bernadette’s skeleton, after the grim realization that Bernadette had been killed in a place that should have been solely about learning and nurturing, one look at Nick and Jazz felt a sudden rush of warmth. Back in the day when they were a couple, it was all about sex. Right then, right there, it was deeper than that. Stronger. She felt safe when Nick was around.
She gave him a big smile that was totally wasted since he ignored her completely and headed right for Wally. Aside from gnawing on shoelaces, the puppy liked nothing better than making new friends and seeing old ones, and he jumped up on Nick and yipped a greeting. “He’s getting so big!”
“Bigger and feistier every day.” Jazz told Wally that jumping was not acceptable behavior, and while she was at it, she reminded Nick, too. “Don’t let him do that.”
Nick rubbed a hand over Wally’s woolly head. “Why not? He’s cute.”
“It’s not going to be so cute when he weighs sixty pounds and he’s knocking people over.”
“Point taken.” When Wally jumped up again, Nick told him no and backed away. “He’s doing well?” he asked Jazz.
“As happy as a clam and as smart as an Airedale is supposed to be. And that’s plenty smart.”
“And plenty stubborn, right?”
“He has his moments.” Since Wally insisted on proving this by jumping up again and again, she hooked his lead to his collar and reeled it in nice and short so he couldn’t get near enough to Nick to hop onto the legs of his khaki pants. Wally tugged, tried again, grumbled, and finally gave up and sat down at Jazz’s side. “All in all, he’s a great dog.”
“I’m glad.” Nick smiled down at the dog, then up at Jazz. It was seven in the evening, but it was nearly summer and the light was still strong, and the sun glinted against his sandy hair and sparked in his blue eyes. “I’m on dinner break. Thought you might want to get something to eat.”
It wasn’t the first time in the weeks since they’d reconnected that he’d offered the gift of his time—and a meal. All those other times, Jazz had been reluctant. What they’d had, her and Nick, had been so good that when it fell apart thanks to the pathetic but undeniable fact that they both forgot they were supposed to be the most important thing in each other’s lives, it made her ache in ways she never knew were possible.
She refused to think about letting herself fall under the spell of his kindness and his intelligence and his darned sexy self again because she hated the thought of getting hurt again.
But not nearly as much as she hated not having Nick in her life.
She looked down at her black running shorts. “Do I need to change?”
“I was thinking of La Bodega.”
One of her favorites, and she didn’t need to change.
“I’ll put Wally in his crate,” she told Nick. “And lock up. We can walk.”
“We’d be crazy not to. You don’t think there’s anywhere to park around here on a Saturday, do you?”
He was right and Jazz knew it. More than one hundred years earlier when the neighborhood was settled by immigrants who built its working-class houses, its churches and schools, no one had imagined modern traffic. Streets were narrow. Parking was at a premium, and Jazz always thanked her lucky stars that her Kurcz grandparents, who had once owned her house, had the foresight to buy the lot next door and put in a driveway.
Jazz got the puppy into the house, and while she was inside she checked her hair (presentable), changed her shirt (the T-shirt she’d been wearing was a little threadbare even for La Bodega), and changed out of her crummy house sneakers into ones that were a little more decent.
She stepped out onto the back porch, locked the door, and turned to find Nick at the bottom of the stairs, grinning up at her.
“You look terrific.”
“I look like a woman who’s been cleaning the house all day and just spent the evening outside with her dog.”
“Yeah, like I said”—when she descended the steps, Nick wound an arm through hers—“terrific.”
It was good to walk side by side with him, great to feel the warmth of his body so close to hers, distracting (in a good way) to breathe in the woodsy scent of his aftershave.
All of which didn’t mean she’d completely lost her mind.
“What do you want?” she asked him.
“I was thinking of the roast beef sub. You know, the one with the caramelized onions and mushrooms.”
When they stopped to wait for traffic to go by so they could cross the street, she slid him a look. “Not what I meant and you know it.”
“Or maybe the Greek sub with the artichoke hearts and—”
She untangled herself from him and crossed to the restaurant, where she pushed open the door and stepped up to the counter to order. She decided on a salad with chicken and walnuts, and while Nick ordered—who knew if it would be the Greek or the roast beef sub—she snagged a table outside near the sidewalk.
He joined her in a minute and set down two bottles of iced tea. “They’ll bring our dinners out when they’re ready.” He sat next to her, opened his iced tea, and took a drink. “So…” He set the bottle on the table. “Tell me about it.”
Of course she knew exactly what he was talking about, but she took her time, collecting her thoughts, her emotions. Washing the kitchen floor, scrubbing the bathroom, and doing three loads of laundry had pretty much helped to push thoughts of yesterday’s discovery at the school out of Jazz’s head all day.
Now she was forced to face them again.
She opened her iced tea and took a long drink. “It?”
He leaned forward. “No way you’re not thinking about the skeleton at school.”
A chill scraped her shoulders. “That would be pretty impossible.”
“Then tell me about it.”
“You’re not working the case.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t care.”
“About the case?”
“Maybe about the woman who found the skeleton in the first place.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him she was fine and, while she was at it, to ask him why he cared, but she never had the chance. Tony, a man who’d worked at the restaurant forever, came out of the restaurant with a plate in each hand, took one look at the two of them, and grinned.
“Hey, Detective Nick!” Tony set down both plates so he could shake Nick’s hand. “And Jazz! I haven’t seen you two in here together in forever. What, you decided you didn’t like the food?”
“The food is always good,” Jazz said at the same time Nick mumbled something about being busy.
“Well, this one…” Tony glanced her way. “She’s in here once a week, I bet. Always by herself. I asked her a couple months ago … remember, Jazz? I asked you a couple months ago where Supercop was.”
“And Jazz said?” The question was meant for Tony, but Nick looked at her when he asked it.
“Just like you said, told me you were busy!” Tony answered before Jazz could, and it was just as well, since she wasn’t sure what she would have said. “I told her I don’t care how busy you are, you gotta eat. Isn’t that right, Detective Nick? You gotta eat. I’m glad you’re here eating now.” He put one hand on Jazz’s back, the other on Nick’s. “You two enjoy!”
Once Tony was gone, Jazz thought about the other times he’d been to their table to chat, all the times she and Nick had sat just like this—at ease and at peace, not wanting anything more than to enjoy each other’s company.
Nick was a good man. No matter their differences, she’d never forgotten that. No matter how hard she tried not to get too close, not to get too involved, not to get so wrapped up in him and in their relationship, she could never deny that. Nick was honest and he was loyal. He could be funny and he was a great dancer. For weddings on her mother’s side of the family, he’d learned to polka. On her dad’s side … well, none of them could really do an Irish jig, not properly, but at least Nick was game enough to try.
And he could slow dance.
Oh, how Nick could slow dance.
The memory caused a rush of heat and she sat back and smiled.
“What?” Nick wanted to know, basically proving with that one word what she already knew about him—he was suspicious of everyone and everything, even the smile that lit her face and the color that touched her cheeks.
“Nothing. I’m just enjoying the moment, that’s all. This is good.”
“How do you know? You haven’t touched your salad yet.”
She could have played along with his misconception, but there was something about the evening air and the delicious promise of summer and the fact that he’d come to see her on his dinner hour that made her brave, reckless.
“I wasn’t talking about the salad. I was talking about this.” As if it would somehow demonstrate what she was saying, she tapped the table. “Being here. Now. With you. This is good.”
A slow smile lit his expression. “Like the old days.”
“I hope not,” she said, and then so he didn’t get the wrong impression, she added quickly, “It would be nice if we could work around the things that went wrong back then.”
“Like me working too much.”
“And me devoting all my free times to the dogs.”
“And then there’s your family, of course.”
Seeing her spine straighten and her fingers tighten over the fork she held in one hand, Nick made a face. “You are pretty devoted to them.”
“That’s how families are supposed to be with each other.”
“Yeah, I get that. I guess.” She couldn’t blame him for being confused. Nick’s family consisted of just his mother, Kim, an alcoholic with rotten social skills and a talent for ripping out her only child’s heart and stomping on it every chance she got. “I think sometimes it’s hard for me to understand all that warm and fuzzy stuff.”
“How is Kim?” she asked, and she could have spoken the answer along with him, because it was the one she always got when she asked.
“Fine.”
“And how are you with handling Kim?”
He lifted one shoulder. “Same as always. She won’t listen to advice. She refuses to go to rehab. She keeps reminding me that she’s an adult.”
“Then I hope you’re telling her to start acting like one.”
His smile was soft. “She’s not going to listen.”
She reached across the table long enough to squeeze his hand. “None of it is your fault.”
“No, but it is my problem.”
“Not if you just walk away.”
“Like you’d do that if it was someone in your family?”
It was his turn to bristle, and she couldn’t blame him. “I know you’d never do that,” she jumped in and told him. “You’re too kind a person.”
“Or maybe I just always want to be in charge of everything and everyone.” As if he could so easily get rid of the problem that was Kim, he jiggled his shoulders. “Speaking of which…”
Nick slathered his roast beef sandwich with horseradish and mustard. “Skeleton?”
“Yeah, Bernadette Quinn.” Jazz pushed her fork through her salad. As long as she had the attention of an expert, she figured it didn’t hurt to ask. “It is her, isn’t it?”
“Sure looks that way.” Nick took a bite of his sandwich and chewed. “Skeleton’s the right size, right age. Her hyoid bone…” Nick pointed to a spot on his neck under his chin. “It was fractured. She was strangled. I hear Lindsey hasn’t had any luck tracking down dental records so far, so that’s not going to help with final identification, but there’s DNA, of course. For now, we’re going with what we know. Or at least what we’re pretty sure of.”
“It’s her, all right,” Jazz told him. “The clothes, the cross. Still, it just seems … I don’t know … wrong.”
“Wrong that it’s her?”
“Wrong that she’s dead. That her skeleton has been up in the attic all those years and no one knew. Why would anyone want to kill Bernadette?”
“I’m sure that’s what Gary Lindsey’s asking himself.”
“And if it was you, what would you be asking yourself?”
He took another bite of his sandwich, chewed, considered. “Enemies?”
“None we knew about, and though she was admired for her teaching skills, she didn’t really have fans, either. She was odd. And she was seen around school with a man.” Jazz filled him in on the details she’d learned from Marilyn Massey.
This time when he bit and chewed, he raised his eyebrows, too, waiting for her to tell him more.
“There really isn’t any more. We don’t know who the man is, but if I see him around again I’ll let you know. The only other thing about Bernadette … well, she was really holy.”
“That’s a good thing at a Catholic school, isn’t it?”
Jazz thought about what Eileen had said. The truth but not the whole truth. She understood Eileen’s reasoning. If the media got ahold of the entire story, they’d make a mockery of Bernadette, and of St. Catherine’s, too. She couldn’t let that happen.
“You won’t tell?” she asked Nick.
He didn’t have to think about it. “If it affects the case—”
“It doesn’t. But if the press gets hold of the details, it could get ugly.”
“If it points to any suspects—”
“Definitely not.”
He gave her that old, familiar smile. “Spill the beans!”
Jazz took a bite of chicken, added a bit more dressing. “She … Bernadette…” She pulled in a breath and let it out slowly. “She said she talked to angels.”
Nick wiped mustard off his mouth, then pursed his lips. “Isn’t that what prayer is? Talking to God? Talking to saints and angels?”
“Well, yeah. Except Bernadette believed the angels talked back.”
He wasn’t expecting this, and for a minute Nick simply stared at her. At least until he found his voice. “To her?”
“I know, I know!” She set down her fork, the better to put out both her hands, palms toward him as if to signal that he needed to stay quiet, to hear the rest of the story. “It sounds crazy.”
“Amen to that!”
“It is crazy. She was crazy. Nick, it’s not something Eileen wants the world to know.”
“Because she doesn’t want the blowback. Yeah, I get that. It’s bad enough the remains were found in the school; if the public knew this teacher was some sort of nutcase—”
“Exactly.”
He took another bite of his sandwich, and while he was at it, he poked a finger at her salad, urging her to eat, and for a few minutes they concentrated on their food.
Finally, Nick took a drink of tea and sat back. “What did they tell her?”
“Who?”
“The angels, of course. What did the angels tell Bernadette?”
“You don’t really believe that stuff about how they talked to her, do you?”
“Ah, see, that’s the whole point.” A satisfied smile lighting his face, Nick opened the bag of potato chips that came with his sandwich and offered the bag to Jazz. He knew her well. She was a sucker for potato chips.
Jazz grabbed a handful of chips and pushed the bag across the table at him, and after Nick chomped on a couple he leaned his elbows on the table.
“If Bernadette made up the fact that the angels were talking to her, then what they told her was really just the workings of Bernadette’s mind, and that’s interesting in one way,” he said. “But if the angels really were talking to her—”
“Nick, are you listening to yourself?” Jazz actually might have laughed if they weren’t discussing something so weird. If there wasn’t a murder involved. “How could angels talk to her? Why would they?”
He wrinkled his nose. “Why wouldn’t they? Don’t Catholics believe in miracles?”
“Bernadette did,” Jazz admitted, and in spite of the warmth of the sun, she felt the icy pain of remembrance, of telling Bernadette that Titus the cat had really never been cured, that he was dead. “I guess in her world, it was perfectly normal to expect to hear from angels. The rest of us … well, it’s not like everyone in school knew about it, thank goodness, but Eileen and I did.”
“And Eileen…?”
“Offered her the name of a good therapist and told Bernadette not to say anything to anyone. We couldn’t let people think we had a crazy teacher!”
“Could someone have found out?”
“And killed Bernadette because of it? Why? They were jealous that Bernadette was hearing from angels and they weren’t? They were afraid Bernadette would talk about it too loud, too long, that people would hear, the news would spread?”
“There had to be some reason.”
“Maybe, but—” Jazz was about to stab a dried cranberry with the tine of her fork and she shot Nick a look. “You’re thinking about Eileen. You’re thinking that if she was afraid Bernadette was going to embarrass the school—”
“Was she?”
“Yes, of course she was. We both were. We still are. If word of this gets out … It’s not the Middle Ages, Nick. People aren’t going to flock to St. Catherine’s on pilgrimage. They’re going to talk psychosis. And personality disorders. They’re going to question Eileen’s judgment and say that Bernadette never should have been allowed through the front door of St. Catherine’s.”
“Do you think that’s true?”
Jazz shook her head. “We didn’t know about it. Not when she was hired. She never said a word. But then, that’s not exactly something you just start talking about with people you hardly know, is it? Early in the semester, she said something to me about angels, but heck, I thought it was just a figure of speech. It wasn’t until about the middle of the term that she mentioned it again. That she told me they were talking to her.”
“And you told Eileen.”
“Of course I did. Bernadette was a teacher; she was responsible for our students. If there was something wrong with her—”
“Was there?”
Jazz felt as helpless as she did the day she’d informed Eileen of what Bernadette told her and Eileen asked her the same question. “I’m not a psychiatrist. I don’t know.”
“And that’s when you two—you and Eileen—decided to keep things under wraps.”
Jazz wasn’t cold, but she wrapped herself in a hug. “You make it sound like a cover-up.”
“Was it?”
She drew in a long breath and let it out slowly. “I told you, Eileen told Bernadette she wanted her to get counseling.”
“And she wanted her to keep quiet. So did you.”
“That doesn’t mean I killed Bernadette!” When Jazz realized how loudly she’d spoken, she cringed and looked around. Except for two people sitting nearby who stopped their conversation and gave her funny looks, no one else there seemed to notice. She lowered her voice. “That doesn’t mean I killed Bernadette. And it doesn’t mean Eileen did, either.”
“I hear she’s the only one who has a key to the room where the skeleton was found.”
Suddenly Jazz wasn’t so hungry anymore. She pushed her plate away. “That doesn’t mean anything, either.”
“No, it probably doesn’t. But I guarantee you it’s what Lindsey’s thinking.”
“Then his thinking’s as bad as his fashion sense.”
Nick laughed. “The man’s just doing his job. He’s got to follow where the facts lead him.”
“Then we’ve got to find the right facts.”
“Oh, no! Don’t even think about doing that again.” He might have gotten away with the warning if he didn’t add a finger wag. One little gesture and Jazz’s anger shot through the roof.
She kept her voice calm, innocent. “Doing what?”
“Investigating.”
“I was never investigating. Last time, all I did was ask some questions.”
“Yeah, and it could have gotten you killed.”
“But it didn’t, did it?” She pushed back her chair. “I’m not going to sit back and watch Eileen get railroaded.”
“And I’m not going to, either. Look…” Nick stood when Jazz did. “I’ll see what I can find out, okay? I’ll ask around. I’ll talk to Lindsey and see what he knows and what he’s thinking.”
She looked up into his eyes. “Really?”
“But only if you promise to stay out of it.”
She had no choice but to agree. That, or lose his support.
It was a good thing he grabbed her right hand and held it when they crossed the street and headed back toward Jazz’s house.
That way, he never knew the fingers of her left hand were crossed.