Private: #1 Suspect

CHAPTER 127

Justine took Rocky for a run. She needed the exercise more than he did, wanted to flat-out drive the tension right out of her body and mind.

A half hour later, she and her doggy were back on Wetherly Drive, going up the path to her wonderful old house. It had been built in the late 1930s as a carriage house and had terrific architectural details.

More than that, the house gave off a sense of permanence, very different from the modern place she’d bought a couple of years ago with Jack.

There was no ocean to hush her to sleep here, but there were other sounds she liked as much: kids biking on the sidewalks, sprinklers chunking out spray over the close-cropped lawns, TV laughter coming from living rooms on her street. This all felt cozy and right to her.

Inside the kitchen, Justine fed Nefertiti and Rocky, and went to close the cabinet doors she had opened when Jack had called and cajoled her into having a drink and a conversation.

The ten sets of cabinet doors in her kitchen had been written on inside from top to bottom. Different pens had been used and different hands had penned little notations that told the family history of the Franks, who had lived here for three generations, right up until the time she had bought the house.

The door she was looking at now had notations from the 1940s: a baby had been born, Eleanor Louise Frank. There were stars around the little girl’s name. A year later, there was a new Packard in the garage. John and Julie got engaged. Saul got polio at the age of ten. Puppies were born in a closet. There was a wedding in the backyard. And a cousin, Roy Lloyd Frank, had gone off to war.

Justine closed the cabinet door.

She had a good life. No question about it. She had a home of her own and a good job, and her life was the way she wanted it.

Just today, she’d brought in a new case: a twenty-four-year-old fashion model had inherited a fortune from her now-dead eighty-year-old billionaire boyfriend. And the dead man’s family wanted Private to investigate the woman.

This was a plum job, a nine-to-five kind of case. There would be no shooting. No mobsters. No one would get shoved off a cliff. She was going to enjoy this case and until she had the time to rest, work would fill her days in a fine and satisfying way.

When the doorbell rang, Justine angrily jerked her head toward the front door. Rocky ran to the living room, threw his front legs up against the door, and whined.

He knew who was ringing the bell and she did too.

It was after ten. It was a weeknight. The man at her door couldn’t open up and he couldn’t settle down. He was a good boss, but in every other way, he was a waste of her time.

Damn it.

Her phone rang.

She said, “What is it, Jack?”

“Let me in, Justine. Please.”

She clicked the phone off, went to the living room, and shouted through the door, “Jack. Go home. I mean it. I don’t want to see you.”

Her phone rang again.

She pressed the button and held the phone to her ear, slid down the wall, and sat on the floor. And she listened to him telling her what she already knew.

“Two weeks ago we were on track, Justine. I made a bad mistake, a backslide, that I deeply regret. But we were making our way back to each other after a long time apart. We were building on all of it, everything we know about each other. There is nothing we can’t work out. You can’t turn your back on love, Justine, not ours. Please, sweetheart. It’s just me. Let me in.”

“Oh, Jack,” she said into the phone.

He loved her. Jack still loved her.

And damn it, damn it, damn it. She still loved him.