5
Tamara Elkin was pacing just inside the church doors. The medical examiner, usually given to loose-fitting sweaters, tight jeans, and pointy-toed cowboy boots, was decked out in a deep burgundy cocktail dress that clung to her athletic body and showed a fair bit of her long, muscular legs. She’d been an Olympic-class distance runner in college until a slip during a steeplechase took her off the track team and put her on track for medical school. The black stilettos emphasized the sculpted beauty of her legs.
She lit up at the sight of Jesse, as she always did. Then she tempered her excitement, knowing that he was probably drunk and grieving. Those were pretty much givens these days. But she owed a lot to Jesse. He was the first person in the area to befriend her when she took the job as ME, and there was nothing she wouldn’t do for him. She’d always wanted more than friendship from him, but less than commitment. Like Jesse, Tamara was divorced, and as she said, she was nobody’s Miss Right. For more than a year now, she had pressed Jesse to let her become more than a friend. She’d been careful to back off the pressure since Diana’s murder. If and when Jesse decided to let her in, Tamara didn’t want it to come with excuses. She didn’t want to hear that he had been too out of it to know what he was doing or that she was just a temporary salve for his pain. A friend with perks was one thing. A Band-Aid was something else.
Still, she worried that even after he got over his grief, there would always be one thing standing in her way. Tamara wondered if Jesse would ever be able to get past the image of her doing Diana’s autopsy. She had tried to recuse herself from it, begged Jesse to let her find someone else for the job, but he was adamant that Tamara should do it.
“She’s a person to you, not just another body,” he’d said. “Please, I don’t want a stranger to touch her.”
Now he brightened at the sight of Tamara, smiling a half-smile.
“Hey, you,” he said, kissing her on the cheek. “You look stunning.”
“Hey yourself, Jesse Stone. You don’t look too shabby your own self in that tux.”
Tamara hugged him, and when she did she sniffed for hints of alcohol. She could feel her own smile when she detected none. She pushed back, looking into his eyes. She was tall to begin with, and in heels her eyes met his. And with her impossible mane of brown curls piled atop her head, she was taller than him.
“What are you smiling at, Doc?”
“You, Jesse. Your eyes.”
“No red, huh?”
“No red. That because you used a whole bottle of Visine or—”
“Haven’t had a drop of alcohol. Look,” he said, showing her his still-shaky hands.
“That’ll recede in time.”
He didn’t say anything to that. Not because he didn’t believe her, but because he didn’t intend to give the shakes a chance to recede. As Molly had said, he owed Suit to be all in today, to be present. Come tomorrow, all bets were off. If he felt like drinking, he would. And if he chose to, it would be a small gathering: Johnnie Walker, himself, and his poster of Ozzie Smith. What he enjoyed about Johnnie and Ozzie was that they didn’t do any talking, though Jesse did sometimes feel judged by Ozzie’s silence.
“You better get inside,” he said. “Have you seen the bride?”
“Elena looks gorgeous, but you shouldn’t worry about her. You better go find Suit. Last time I saw him, he was pacing a rut into the floor downstairs.”
Jesse found Suit in a bare room with an empty coatrack, pacing as Tamara had described. For one of the few times since they had met, Luther “Suitcase” Simpson looked the part of a full-grown man. Suit, a former high-school football star, was always boyish in his looks and in his demeanor. All men, Jesse supposed, seemed to lose those last vestiges of boyishness when they were about to exchange vows. Jesse laughed to himself at the sight of Suit in a tuxedo. Though it was well tailored to his big body, poor Suit looked out of place in it. Unlike Jesse, Luther Simpson was not a man born to carry off a tuxedo.
Suit looked up and caught his boss and best man smiling at him. “Jesse!”
They took hold of each other’s biceps, Suit beaming at the sight of his boss. Then, just as with Tamara, some of the sparkle went out of his joy. Only Suit wasn’t quite as skilled as the ME at checking Jesse out for signs of cracks in his armor without being detected.
“Relax, Suit, I’m fine.”
“You know, Jesse, I wouldn’t blame you if you weren’t. I mean, this could’ve been your wedding day, too.”
“I’m fine.”
It was a lie, of course. Things might not have been so intense for Jesse had it been anyone else’s wedding. Diana had been killed saving Elena.
“You got the rings, Jesse?”
“Uh-huh,” he said, pointing at his jacket pocket. “Right here, Luther.”
“Okay, boss, you can call me that today, but when I get back from my honeymoon—”
He smiled. “I’ll think about it, Officer Simpson.”
“Thanks, Jesse. You don’t know how much you being my best man means to me and Elena.”
“C’mon, let’s get this show on the road. I hear there’s a gorgeous woman waiting to be your bride.”
After he said it, Jesse noticed he wasn’t the only man in the room with shaky hands.
6
They had pretty much taken the house apart and had run out of places to look. Neither King nor Hump would ever be mistaken for the next Einstein, but they had been thorough. They had run their hands along the exposed beams and joists in the attic and the basement, moved the furniture away from every wall, inspecting the plaster to make sure there were no hidden alcoves or secret little doors. They’d checked all the floorboards, pulled up the loose ones to see if there were any hidden compartments. They’d looked inside every jar, poured out every kitchen tin and poured the contents back in, and checked the toilet tanks.
“I don’t got any idea of where to look no more,” Hump said, sweat dripping from his forehead.
“Me neither, Hump. Me neither.”
“But you said your guy was sure it was here somewheres.”
“I know what I said and I know what he said.”
“We been neat about our business till now, King, but should we start breaking things up? I’m good at that, breaking shit up.”
“You are, I know it. I guess we got no choice, huh? I thought we would’ve found something by now. If we were gonna break stuff up or if I knew the old lady was gonna crap out on us, I wouldn’t’ve wasted our time putting stuff back in place. But first things first, let’s cut the old lady down and put her in her bed.”
Hump liked that. He felt bad about the old woman dying on them. He felt bad about leaving her there the way they had, propped up against the metal pole in the basement while they looked at her old love letters, touched her underthings, and emptied out her medicines. It wasn’t right to do that stuff, but they had money coming, at least five grand each, maybe a lot more.
“You think we’re gonna get all the money if we don’t find what we’re looking for?” Hump asked as he followed King down the basement steps.
“We’re gonna find it. We’re gonna find it!”
King used his pocket knife to cut through the duct tape and the old woman fell into Hump’s arms.
“She’s as light as a feather.”
“Come on, let’s get her upstairs and get back to work.”
They had her halfway up the steps when the doorbell rang, followed by insistent knocking at the front door.