take Terrell Johnson. Leaving us with the fourth and last case. I don’t think we have to concern ourselves too much about it, either, because this is one cold case that gets worked every year. These others? The cops assigned to them after the primary has retired must pull the cases out once a year, look them over…and that’s about all they do with most of them. And since a homicide was never proved, the vanishing-bride case doesn’t get looked at at all. She’s just one more missing person. But it’s different with this fourth case. In fact, this one was just on the news again last month.”
“Let me guess,” Sam said, actually raising his hand as if hoping to be called upon to answer. If Jade wanted to give up her job as warden, she’d be a great high school principal. “The baby in the Dumpster. A real heartbreaker.”
“You’ve got it right in one,” Jade said, grabbing the thickest folder. “This one hurt everyone, not just Teddy, who happened to catch it late one rainy night. He isn’t—wasn’t—the only active or retired cop who kept a personal file on the Dumpster case. A baby, only a few months old, thrown away like garbage. It hit everyone—bad. The skull was kept, forensic artists update what the boy would have looked like if he’d lived, there’s DNA just waiting to be matched to someone out there. But nothing. Back when he was still on the job, Teddy would get reporters calling him every year on the anniversary of discovering the body. Which, by the way, were the only times I ever saw Teddy drunk. That he was drunk the night he died just screams to me that he’d discovered something he really didn’t want to know.”
“Which is why we’re going to work these cases,” Jolie said firmly, getting to her feet. “Is anyone hungry? I seem to have missed lunch.”
“Most of it, anyway,” Sam said, also getting to his feet. “We’ll be in the kitchen.”
“Why are you following me?” Jolie asked him once they were out of earshot. “I remember where the fridge is, you know.” God, she was a bundle of screaming nerves, ready to explode. Didn’t he know that? Surely she couldn’t be that good an actress.
“True, and I don’t think you’re planning to pocket any of the silverware,” he said, moving ahead of her to push open the service door to the kitchen. “We need to talk.”
“No, we don’t. What happened upstairs was a mistake. You know it, I know it. It was…it bordered on disgusting, frankly. I attacked you. I have no excuses, but I will say I’m sorry. But that’s it. Discussion over.”
“Agreed.”
Jolie whirled around to goggle at him. “Agreed? You agree with what? That the discussion is over? That I should have apologized? Or that it was disgusting?”
Sam held up his hands, making a T, signaling time-out. “I agree it was a bad start, probably due to a bad ending five years ago. I also apologize and don’t think we’ll gain anything by having a postmortem, okay? Although I will say it’s nice to know we’re both so limber five years later—uh-uh, no hitting.”
“Then stop tempting me,” Jolie said, sure her cheeks were growing pink.
“If I might continue? I do not, however, agree that it was disgusting. If anything, it was a little like old times…at least some of the old times. Now, white bread or rye?”
“Neither, thank you,” Jolie said quietly, feeling she’d been rightly chastened. They may not have actually swung from those chandeliers in the dining room that long-ago night, but it had been a close-run thing. And then there was the night they’d discovered the joys and varied interesting applications of the nifty pulsating hose sprayer on the kitchen sink just behind her. They’d nearly flooded the place. And that time she’d come straight to Sam’s from dress rehearsal at the local theater, still in full makeup and wearing her black wig and Velma Kelly costume from the final scene of Chicago, and Sam had taken one look at her and…
“You don’t want any bread at all?”
“Huh?” Jolie snapped herself back from the movie reel of bordering-on-the-lascivious memories. “No. I’ll just make up a small plate of ham and cheese. They practically had to sew me into my gown for the premiere at my last fitting. If I gain an ounce anywhere, I could sneeze and end up with the seams exploding in front of a million cameras.”
“Film at eleven,” Sam said, smiling.
“Yes, and the cover of every trash magazine out there,” Jolie told him as she grabbed a plastic bag filled with ham slices from the meat drawer of the industrial-size stainless-steel refrigerator. “Where’s the cheese? I really need something that wasn’t free-range-bred or organically grown or certified to be healthy for you while only tasting a little bit like soggy cardboard.”
Sam reached past her to retrieve the package and then retired to one of the stools placed at the large granite-topped breakfast bar that might, Jolie had once remarked, be used to land a 747. He turned over the package and squinted at the fine print. “Let’s see, how many calories in a slice of cheese? Hmm, how about that? More than I thought. You may have one slice, Ms. Sunshine, no more. Break it into little pieces—it’ll last longer. I always wondered what the big time felt like. Now I know. Slow starvation. You know, Jolie, you get famous enough and you could just disappear altogether.”
“Funny man.” She grabbed the package from him and pulled out a single wrapped slice. Then she thought about that for a moment and extracted a second one. Near-constant dieting was one of her least favorite things about the movie industry, and wasn’t it just like him to zero in on that fact. “You know, Sam, if you’re just going to take shots at me, we can end this right now. Jade and Jessica shouldn’t have come here, and it wasn’t my smartest move either, when you get right down to it.”
“You want to go home now, run that gauntlet of reporters again? Be my guest.”
“And don’t dare me!” Jolie turned away from him, pinching at the bridge of her nose as she mentally counted to ten, trying to calm her temper. “I haven’t slept in days. I hate staying in that house. Jade had some disaster-recovery company come in, promise to make things right again, and I guess they did—as much as they could, at least. Jade stays there with no problem. Jessica is back in her old room, surrounded by cheerleading trophies, stuffed animals and that frilly lace canopy over her bed. The princess back in residence, as if she’d never left. But I still know what happened in Teddy’s study, right below my bedroom, and whenever I walk past that closed door I—”
“That settles it, Jolie. You’re staying here with me. No more talk of leaving. And I won’t pressure you for anything else, I promise. I won’t turn you down if you offer. I’m not a monk, Jolie. But there will be no pressure, I promise. And no more arguing, either. I just want to make things easier for you.”
“You know,” Jolie said, slowly turning back to face him once more, “we never used to fight. I thought it was strange, actually, how well we…how well we got along. Slightly crazy but compatible. What happened to us, Sam?”
“We could only remain stagnant for so long before we came to a fork in the road? We got to it and I wanted to go one way, you wanted to go another. I lost. And,” he ended on a wry smile, “it turns out I’m pretty damn lousy at losing.”
“Oh, Sam,” she said, collapsing onto the stool next to his. “I had to try, I had to know if I was good enough. If I hadn’t…”
“It would have come back to bite me in the ass, I know. The road not taken, the wondering what might have been. You’d have grown to hate me, or at least resent the hell out of
