OFFICER MOLLY CRANE was sitting at her desk outside Chief Jesse Stone’s office when I walked into the Paradise Police Department a little before six o’clock that night.
“Deputy Chief Crane,” I said.
“From your lips,” Molly said.
“You never age,” I said.
“Neither do you,” she said, standing to give me a hug.
“Liar,” I said.
Molly pulled back and said, “You started it.”
I looked past her and saw Jesse standing in the doorway to his office, grinning at us.
“Did you check her for concealed weapons?” he said to Molly Crane.
“You’re the chief,” she said. “If she needs frisking, you handle it.” She winked at me. “It’s not as if he doesn’t have experience in that area. Or various other areas, for that matter.”
“Dirty job,” Jesse said. He lifted his shoulders and dropped them. “Somebody had to do it.”
He motioned me into the office and shut the door. Now he was the one giving me a hug, one that I felt had far more follow-through to it than Molly’s had. I did not offer much resistance. But then I rarely had with Jesse Stone, with whom I had once made love standing up in a changing room in a boutique in Beverly Hills.
We finally pulled back from each other. He walked around his desk and sat down. He was wearing a zippered blue sweatshirt and jeans and looked older than he had when I had last seen him a little over a year ago. We had stayed in touch even after ending what had been, for me, the most serious relationship of my adult life other than the one I had shared with Richie. I knew Jesse had stopped drinking. I knew a woman with whom he had been deeply involved had been previously murdered by a serial killer. I knew a grown son, one he had not known existed, was now a part of his life, and living in Paradise. Cole, his name was.
“You look good,” he said.
“So do you.”
“Older,” he said.
“And wiser?”
“Hard to tell.”
“Little grayer, too,” I said.
“Comes with being wiser, pretty sure,” he said. “Maybe I need your colorist.”
“Hey,” I said.
“Okay, enough small talk,” Jesse said. “How’re things with Richie?”
“His ex-wife has moved back to Boston with their son,” I said.
“Permanently?”
“Unclear,” I said.
“But getting a place of their own?”
I nodded.
“So we’re both learning to be parents,” he said.
“You’re an actual parent, even if you’re getting a late start,” I said. “Right now, I’m a glorified babysitter. But he’s a cute kid.”
“Lucky one, too,” he said. “If he’s got you as a babysitter.”
“The whole situation is somewhat out of my control,” I said.
“Uh-oh,” he said. “That’s never what we’re looking for.”
“Exactly.”
I had walked to the Four Seasons after Darcy had dropped off my phone, left through a service entrance, and requested the Lyft car that had picked me around the corner from the Park Plaza hotel. If someone were still following me, I did not want them coming to Paradise if there was even an outside chance that Lisa Morneau was still here and an even more remote chance that I could locate her.
I had called Jesse to tell him I was on my way. I told him some of the backstory in the process. Now I told him the rest. The last time we had worked together on a case had been when I had helped him bust the cult known as the Bond of Renewal, run by a smooth-talking grifter who called himself The Patriarch. At the time, Kathryn had just given birth to Richard, and I had convinced myself that Richie and I would never again be together as a couple. And thought that Jesse and I might stay together, despite his lingering feelings for his own ex-wife.
I had been wrong on both counts.
I saw Jesse smiling at me.
“What?” I said.
“Just thinking of your song,” he said.
“It’s not my song,” I said.
Bobby Hebb’s old song, “Sunny.”
“You’re dating yourself,” I said.
“Always liked the part about nature’s fire,” he said.
“You really remember all the lyrics?”
“I remember everything,” he said.
I said, “Are we going to flirt, or talk about my case?”
“What,” Jesse said, “we can’t do both?”
“I’m going steady,” I said.
But remembered everything he remembered. Maybe even more. Down, girl, I told myself. First Jake Rosen. Now here I was with Jesse. Somehow, even with everything going on, I suddenly felt as if my day had turned into a hormone festival, with everything except floats and marching bands.
I played the message Lisa Morneau had left, then played it again.
“You got a picture of her?” Jesse said.
I took the one I had out of my purse and slid it across the desk. There was a file cabinet next to him. On top of it was a baseball glove. I knew he still played softball in the summer, and had been a star player in the minor leagues before getting hurt. I wondered if he still had the poster at home of the shortstop he said had been his hero, one he called the Wizard and talked about as if he were some kind of baseball holy man.
“So somebody could have tracked her here before you did,” Jesse said. “Hard as that is to believe.”
“Practically unthinkable,” I said.
“You know any possible connection she would have to Paradise?”
“I do not.”
“But despite the way the message ended,” he said, “she still could be here.”
“Why I’m here,” I said.
Jesse said, “I was hoping it was at least partly because you missed me.”
“I do miss you,” I said.
“Even though that was the old me?” he said.
“Even though,” he said.
He smiled again. I smiled back. I didn’t know what there was still between us. Something. He had never been Richie. But he’d come the closest.
“I’d like to ask around about her,” I said. “But I don’t want to spook her if she’s still here.”
“You thought about how you’ll handle it with Marcus if you do find her?” Jesse said.
“I just want to hear her story,” I said.
“But you’re still working for Tony,” Jesse said.
“Sort of,” I said.
“Care to talk about that?”
“Later,” I said. “For now, I want you to help me find Lisa.”
“I can do that,” he said. “I’m the chief of police. We know practically everything. And what we don’t, we find out.”
There was a silence now in the office. It had never made him uncomfortable. He was like Richie that way. But there was more darkness in him, or sadness, or pain. Maybe all of those things. As close as we had been, as well as we had understood each other, and as much of a bond as we had shared because of failed marriages, there were places inside him that I knew I had never come close to reaching, places I’m sure even his ex-wife had never reached.
“How’s Jen?” I said.
“Still married,” he said. Grinned. “I think if she stays at it another year, it might be a record for her.”
“She happy?”
“Happy as Jen can be,” he said.
“How’s it going with Cole?” I said.
“We’re getting there,” he said. “Work in progress. Like his old man.”
He took the photograph of Lisa Morneau out to Molly and asked if she would make some copies. He said that he and Molly and Suitcase Simpson, a young guy on the force whom Jesse had treated like a son before his real son showed up, could discreetly distribute them around town in the morning.
“Is Spike’s still the most popular restaurant in town?” I said.
“I assume you’re referencing the Gray Gull,” Jesse said.
“He thinks of it as Spike’s North,” I said.
“He would,” Jesse said.
“Why don’t we go over there and grab a bite to eat and ask if anybody there has seen her?” I said.
Jesse said that sounded good to him. He grabbed a blue baseball cap with PPD on the front, stuck it on his head. As we walked past Molly’s desk she said, “See you for coffee in the morning, Sunny?”
“Funny,” I said.
“Who’s joking?” she said.
“Like we used to say when I was playing ball,” Jesse said as we headed for his Jeep. “You can’t stop Molly. You can only hope to contain her.”
WE SCORED A corner table that we’d had plenty of times before. There had been a night, after Spike had bought the place, when he’d described Jesse and me as “fooling around.” Jesse had corrected him, saying we weren’t fooling around because we were serious. Which we most certainly had been.
I hesitated briefly when the waitress asked for our drink order. Jesse noticed and told me I was of a legal age and allowed to have an adult beverage. I ordered a white wine. He ordered iced tea.
When she left I said, “Do you miss it?”
“Every damn day,” he said, then added, “at a time.”
When she brought our drinks back we clicked glasses.
“Did I mention you look good?” he said.
“Tony referred to me as a woman of a certain age,” I said.
“What does he know?” Jesse said. “He can’t even hold on to women he’s paying.”
I told him why I’d taken the case. And about Jabari. Even about the kid at Harvard Stadium.
“You got the drop on him,” Jesse said.
“Did I ever,” I said.
He raised his glass of iced tea in a toast.
He said that tomorrow he and Molly and Suit would circulate Lisa’s picture. They would work the downtown area and the bed-and-breakfasts that he said still did a pretty good business, even at this time of year.
“It’s still a small town,” he said. “If she’s been here, somebody saw her. We’ll find her.”
“Like the old days,” I said. “We did make a pretty good team.”
“Not just as crime-stoppers,” he said.
“Stop,” I said.
“Right,” he said. “You’ve got a boyfriend.”
“Keep that in mind,” I said.
“Just making conversation,” he said.
I smiled at him again. “The hell you are,” I said, and he laughed.
We both ordered salmon. While we were eating it Jesse said, “You think there’s any possibility she’s trying to shake him down?”
“I’ll ask her when we find her,” I said. “But if she lived with Tony and worked with him, she knows him. And knows what generally happens to people who cross Tony Marcus.”
“I know,” he said.
“Do you?”
“Like I said,” Jesse said. “I’m the chief of police. Guys like us know all kinds of shit.”
“Then tell me why we didn’t end up together even when Richie and Jen weren’t in the picture.”
“Damned if I know,” Jesse said.
We passed on dessert and coffee. Jesse asked for the check. I told him I was going to Uber back to Boston, or Lyft, whichever one could get here first. He said he’d drive me.
“Not like the old days,” he said. “I can be a designated driver now.”
I told him I didn’t think that was the best idea in the whole world.
“Don’t trust me?” he said.
“Don’t trust either one of us,” I said.
“Even though you’ve got a boyfriend?” he said.
“Even though.”
As we made our way past the bar, I got the bartender’s attention. He was young, but then who didn’t look young to me these days? He was wearing a tight black T-shirt that was like an advertisement for whatever time he’d been putting in at the gym. He had a full array of tattoos up and down both arms. Spike had informed me they were now called sleeves. I’d asked if guys preferred puff, or raglan.
He nodded at Jesse, who said, “Hey, Andrew.” I showed Andrew the picture of Lisa Morneau.
“Have you seen her around here?” I said.
“Yeah,” he said.
Boom.
“You did?” I said.
“Last night,” he said.
“She was here last night?” I said.
“Sat down at the end by herself,” Andrew said. “Paid with cash.”
“You talk to her?”
“She was a good-looking woman drinking alone at my bar,” he said. “It was practically my sworn duty to talk her up.”
“How did she seem to you?”
“Nervous,” he said. “Every time the door would open she’d whip her head around. I finally kidded her and asked if she was on the lam or something. And she said, ‘Or something.’”
“What time did she leave?” I said.
“Not sure,” he said. “Maybe around eleven?”
The message on my phone had been left at ten minutes after eleven o’clock.
“Anything else?” I said.
“She ordered one more, for the road,” he said. “I told her it was on me. Then she said she was going outside to make a phone call and never came back.”