Darker Than Any Shadow

Chapter Three

I skipped the crowded ladies room out front in favor of the small private restroom in the back. Usually it was unmarked, but tonight it sported a handwritten OUT OF ORDER sign thanks to the leaky toilet. I decided I’d take my chances. Unfortunately, when I tried to adjust the tiny French hairpins, the whole hairspray-thickened tumble fell about my shoulders.

I dropped the pins in my purse. To hell with it.

I heard the voices the second I came out of the bathroom, both male, both of them coming from the open office ten feet away. I recognized one voice immediately—Jackson Bentley, the restaurant’s current owner. A former college football player, Jackson had a voice with a built-in megaphone. He was currently wielding that voice against someone in his office, and it was a firefight, harsh words flying like shrapnel.

“—and then you show up here wearing that!” he bellowed.

“I get to wear what I want to. And I have every right to be here. I’m on the team.”

“Not for long.”

“You don’t get to decide that.”

“You’d be surprised what I get to decide. Now get out.”

Low laughter. “What are you gonna do if I don’t, beat me to a pulp? Go ahead. I’m sure your wife wouldn’t be too mad. Cricket understands how you get, right?”

At the mention of his wife’s name, Jackson’s voice dropped to a growl. “Get the hell out of my restaurant.”

I inched closer. Oh boy, was I not supposed to do this. I was trying to go on the straight and narrow—no more eavesdropping, no more snooping, no more glancing at e-mail when someone’s back was turned. It was part of my rehabilitation into a girlfriend, someone a secret agent boyfriend could trust to leave in his apartment with his guns and secure files.

“I’m not going anywhere until you give me my stuff back.”

“Not until you cough up that missing two grand.”

“I didn’t take that money.”

“I don’t believe you.”

More laughter. “Do you really want to play it this way, Jackson? Really? Because you know as well as I do that I can make some serious trouble for you and Cricket.”

I heard a scuffle, then the door flew open, and Lex ricocheted into the hall, banging against the wall with a fleshly thud. The door slammed behind him. He winced and rubbed his side, his breath hitching. Suddenly I saw years in his face, hard ones.

“You cracked a rib,” I said. “Maybe two.”

He jerked. Instantly, the pain melted into cool. “No, a cracked rib feels like a broken pool cue in the side. This’ll make a helluva bruise tomorrow, but that’s all.”

“So I guess he wasn’t really trying to hurt you.”

“Jackson? Nah.”

The self-assurance was back now, even if he moved gingerly. There was something electric about him, and I could see how he made it sizzle, on stage anyway. But it wasn’t sizzling now. It was jittering and sparking, two degrees from shorting out.

He stepped closer. “That’s not bragging, you know. Jackson talks big—”

“Jackson is big.”

“Maybe around the mouth.” Then he smiled, though the look in his eyes was like flint striking flint. He gave me the up-and-down. “Nice dress.”

“It was a gift from my boyfriend.”

“Oh yeah. The guy at the door. I saw y’all arrive.” Lex pulled his phone out of his pocket, a sleek black number decorated with rhinestones. “I gotta take this, but listen, if you ever get tired of playing dress up with the mannequin out there, give me a call.”

He pressed the phone to his ear. “Hey there, lady friend.” Then he pushed open the fire door and left for the back parking lot. No limp, no hesitation, like nothing had happened.

I watched the door close behind him. So Rico and Frankie weren’t the only ones having problems with Lex Anderson. Jackson had problems too, money problems definitely. But from the way Lex had been tossing around Cricket’s name, I wondered if there were something more personal than financial conflicts going on. I could understand if there had been. All Lex Anderson needed was a motorcycle and a rap sheet, and he’d have been every guy I pined for in high school.

I knocked tentatively on the office door, and Jackson snatched it open. “I told you—” He frowned when he saw me, then forced a smile. “Tai? What are you doing here?”

“Using the bathroom.”

“The toilet’s leaking.”

“I only needed a mirror.” I leaned on the doorframe. “Is everything okay?”

“A little shorthanded, but making do. Cricket’s having to tend bar, but—”

“I mean about Lex.”

The smile crimped into a grimace. “You heard?”

“Not on purpose.” I hesitated. “Is it true there’s money missing?”

He looked up and down the hall. “Christ, Tai, don’t go throwing that around. Get in here.”

I stepped into his office. It was dark-paneled and messy, jumbled heaps of paperwork stacked on every flat surface—ledgers, receipts, promotional flyers. A box of swag from the Performance Poetry Internationals lay on its side in one corner, plastic cups and bumper stickers spilling onto the floor. The rest of the office was Georgia Bulldog black and red, including a poster-sized photograph of the 2005 first string team, with Jackson kneeling and grinning, his broad shoulders even more massive under the pads.

He sat behind his desk. Still built like a linebacker, but now as bald as an ice cube, he was prone to wearing bright citrus shirts and too-tight jeans. His boyish features sweetened up what would have been an otherwise fearsome package.

“It’s gone, all of it. Almost two thousand dollars.”

“Your money?”

“No, the money Cricket and I got from the team fund for tonight. I kept it in the safe.” He gestured toward a small square lockbox in the corner. “Only Cricket and I have the combination.”

“You think Lex took it?”

“I know Lex took it. He—”

The cacophony from the restaurant area intruded—the efficient swish of the double doors, the clang of pans, the rising clamor of voices.

Jackson stood. “I gotta check on the kitchen. Don’t breathe a word of this to anyone, okay? Cricket’s freaked out as it is, and this is the last thing she needs to worry about.”

“If money’s missing, don’t you think—”

“No. I’ve got enough worries without bringing in the damn cops.” He looked at me with fake nonchalance. “What all did you hear anyway?”

I thought about the words flying back and forth between him and Lex. Something more than missing money was stewing, that was for sure, and I was betting it involved Cricket.

I kept my voice neutral. “Nothing that needs to go anywhere, right?”

“Exactly right.”

He moved from behind the desk, and I followed him out, my wet shoes leaving half-moon prints on the wooden floor. He shut the door to his office, locked it, then slipped the key in his pocket.

“I mean it, Tai. Not a word, not to anyone.”

I nodded. “Got it.”

***

Back in the main room, I made a beeline for Trey, who hadn’t moved from his spot at the door. Rico, however, was no longer at our table. In fact, I didn’t see him anywhere in the room. I stepped right in front of Trey and put my hands on my hips.

“All right, where is he?”

“Who?”

“Rico.”

Trey shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know? Aren’t you supposed to be watching him?”

“No, I’m watching the room. There’s a difference. But if you want to know where he was going the last time I saw him…” Trey pointed. “He left through the double doors leading to the back.”

“But he’s not there now!”

“Nonetheless.”

I made an exasperated noise. “Never mind, I’ll find him. Right now I need you to talk to Jackson. He’s in the kitchen. Or maybe follow Lex, he and Jackson were seriously into it, and then Lex left out the back way…” I grabbed Trey’s elbow. “Omigod, what if he was heading to the parking lot for a gun or something?”

Trey put his Pellegrino on the table very carefully. “Say that again, more slowly.”

“We don’t have time for slowly! You have to do something!”

“Start by telling me who Lex is and why he and Jackson were…” He frowned. “What were they doing?”

So I explained. Quickly. I left out the part about the leering and the innuendo, but despite Jackson’s warning, I mentioned the missing money.

“How much is missing?”

“Don’t worry about that right now. Find Lex. Or Rico. Or Jackson. Whoever comes first.”

Trey scanned the room. “I’ll look for Lex first. But Jackson should tell the authorities about the missing money, especially if he thinks he knows who took it.”

This was Trey’s answer for everything—alert the authorities. He thought in hierarchies, top-down systems. But a flow chart wasn’t going to solve our current dilemma.

“We’ll lecture Jackson later, okay? Right now defuse whatever time bomb is ticking.”

Trey’s expression sharpened. “Bomb?”

“Metaphor.”

“Okay.”

“Wait! Should I come with you?”

“No. Stay here.”

He tossed that directive over his shoulder, already moving toward the back of the restaurant. I started to argue and then gave up. He had a plan, and once a plan was in motion, he would not deviate from it. I’d seen the x-rays and MRIs. They looked normal at first glance, and yet I knew that his cranium was a precise maze of binary functions. Left or right. Yes or no. Stop or go.

Two and a half years had passed since he’d crashed his Volvo into that concrete embankment, rearranging his right frontal lobe, permanently rewriting his circuits. He was making progress, slow and steady, as his brain re-knit itself into interesting new configurations. But my five months in his life—and in his bed—had taught me one thing. You can’t argue with the flow chart.

So I let him go. And then I slugged my way through the crowd to the bar. Time to get more champagne, but even more importantly, time to get a woman’s perspective. And if that woman happened to be Jackson’s wife…all the better.