“That’s fair. I don’t, either.”
“At art school, all of us used to go out partying together, dancing. No offense, but straight places suck for dancing. That hasn’t changed since I got out of school. So when I feel like dancing, I head up to Tipton. One night I was there with an old girlfriend from school and Daisy asked me to dance. I didn’t know who she was then. I danced with her. But when she kissed me, I backed her off by telling her I was already with my girlfriend. So you can imagine that she probably doesn’t think too highly of me with the man in town she’s closest to.”
Jesse laughed, shaking his head. “Daisy’s a pit bull to begin with. You sure pushed her buttons.”
Between courses, he explained about why he and his cops had done what they did at the high school.
“I know we don’t agree about some things, but I can’t let it stop me from doing my job the way I feel I need to do it. We can argue about drugs like marijuana. My bet, it will be legal in this state in a few years. But opioids are a plague and it’s not right.”
Maryglenn didn’t push back. What she did was pay the bill, grab Jesse by the hand, and make sure to have him speed back to her bed.
Fifty-eight
The next morning, while Maryglenn was just rousing, he noticed a scar on her right leg he hadn’t seen before. Given the ferocity of their lovemaking, he wasn’t sure he would have noticed it if they had been in full sunlight. It was a long vertical scar on the front of her shin that ran from the base of her knee to the top of her ankle. On either side of the scar were tiny, faint dots of faded pink scar tissue.
“I was riding my bike,” she said, noticing him staring at her leg.
“You’re up.”
“Yeah.”
“What happened?”
“Car turned right into me. My leg was caught under the front tire. Compound fracture of my tibia, broken fibula, broken bones in my foot.” She gathered the blanket around her, clutched herself, and rocked gently as if to calm herself. “I had three surgeries and they had me in all sorts of gadgets to hold the bones in place while I healed. The scarring actually used to be much worse, but I had some cosmetic work done. I’m a little self-conscious about it, Jesse, so if you could stop staring...”
He kissed the top of her head. “You must’ve been in a lot of pain.”
“You can’t imagine. It’s a good thing we can’t remember pain. We can remember having it, but not the pain itself.”
Jesse realized he was rubbing his right shoulder. “Does it hurt anymore?”
“Sometimes, in damp weather,” she said. “But nothing like when it happened. I was drugged up for months. I don’t even like thinking about it.”
Before Jesse could respond, his cell phone buzzed in his pants pocket. His pants were on the floor next to the bed and the wood amplified the buzzing. He grabbed his pants, retrieved the phone, and saw the call was from Molly. Unlike the night before, Molly was about to go on duty now. If she was calling him this early, he couldn’t blow her off again.
“I’ve got to take this,” he said, walked into the bathroom, and closed the door behind him.
“Molly, what’s up?”
“Did you get my message last night?”
“No, sorry. What is it?”
Molly explained about her interviews and told Jesse that Ambrose North protested way too much.
“He didn’t let me get within twenty yards of Petra, but I saw her listening at the top of the stairs. She heard everything. When do you want to speak with her?”
“Asap. Call them up and tell them I want her and her lawyer in tonight.”
“You want me to call at this hour? It’s six-fifteen.”
“Time for polite manners is over,” he said. “How did the other interviews go?”
Molly detailed the call she received from Sara York.
“She says that Chris Grimm was involved with a female teacher at the high school.”
“That’s what my source says Heather Mackey told him.”
Molly was furious. “Why didn’t you tell me about that, Jesse?”
“Think, Crane. I heard this secondhand from a kid. I didn’t know if I could trust it. If it was true, we needed it to come out independently. I didn’t want any of your questions to lead the kids to a false conclusion or to spook them into silence. I also didn’t want to have them run back to the teacher to warn her. One of these kids knows who she is.”
“Okay, Jesse.”
“I’ll be in by seven.”
When he clicked off, he recalled the image of the scar on Maryglenn’s leg, remembered her admission that she had been drugged up for months following the accident. The alarm bells were blaring in his head. She fit the profile.
When he came out of the bathroom a few minutes later, he began gathering up his clothing to get dressed. She got out of bed, letting the blankets fall away from her body. She pressed herself against him, kissed his neck. He kissed her back.
“Aren’t you going to shower?” she asked when the kissing was done. “I can put up some coffee and join you.”
“Won’t you be late?”
“I’ll call in.”
“Sorry,” he said, buttoning his shirt. “I can’t. Duty calls. I’ll shower at home and then I’ve got to get to work.”
She looked at him sideways. “This about Chris Grimm?”
He half smiled at her, pulling on his pants. “I’ve already told you more than I should have.”
“One of the perks of sleeping with the police chief.”
Just now, Jesse didn’t find that particularly funny.
Fifty-nine
Although Molly understood Jesse’s reasoning for not sharing the information about the potential involvement of a female teacher in the drug distribution network at the school, she was still POed at him. But seeing the expression on Jesse’s face as he walked through the stationhouse door changed that. Molly’s wounded pride suddenly seemed less important. Reading a self-contained man like Jesse Stone was no mean feat. When he openly showed he was upset, as he did entering the station, it raised a red flag.
“What is it, Jesse? What’s wrong?”
“My office in five,” he said, blowing past her.
In the meantime, Jesse made a call Molly wouldn’t have approved of.
Vinnie Morris picked up on the second ring. “Jesse Stone. What’s up?”
“How would you like me to treat you to a meal? Lunch?”
“Today?”
“That’s when I’ll be in town.”
“What’s the catch? Not that I don’t like your company, but this is short notice.”
“Remember that pawn shop I—”
Vinnie said, “Precious Pawn and Loan. Like I told you, I know them.”
“Should I ask how you know them?”
“Take a guess.”
“I’d like to do more than use your name,” Jesse said. “How about you meet me there at noon.”
“You ask a lot. I getting anything out of this besides steak?”
“Creamed spinach.”
Vinnie laughed. “Seriously, Jesse.”
“I think the drug syndicate we were discussing might be using them,” Jesse said, though he had proof that only Chris Grimm had actually done business with them. “You want your business tied to them if the DEA gets wind of things? They’ll give you up in a second if it helps knock time off their sentence.”
“Noon. Don’t be late.” Vinnie was off the line.
Jesse still had the phone pressed to his ear when Molly knocked and came into his office.
He put the phone down. “Sit.”
“What is it, Jesse?”
“Call someone in to take the desk today.”
“Do we have that kind of money for overtime in the budget?”
“Yeah, but for all the wrong reasons,” Jesse said. “Since I was forced to let Alisha go, we’re one officer down.”