To a typical sixteen-year-old, the beautiful and regal Kaye Slaughter looked like a member of the royal family on holiday. Truth told, he’d had a bit of a crush on her back then. Now, many years later, infatuation had evolved into deep affection.
When he left her at the base of the stairs leading to her own vacation home, Kaye kissed his cheek and squeezed his hand.
“I’m so grateful,” she said.
“I’ll give you a call.”
On the walk back, he slowed at the dock where Riggs and Allie lounged side by side, feet dangling over the side as they chatted sweetly. Danny envied the easy relationship between father and daughter, and he wondered whether he might ever be so blessed. As he took the stairs up toward the deck—and before he could stop the train of thought barreling down the track—he tried to imagine a sweet little girl with Jessie’s glossy dark hair and crystal blue eyes simmering with fascination for the world around her, blended with his mother’s single-dimpled smile and melodious voice.
“Oh good, you’re back,” Jessie exclaimed as he reached the wooden summit and stretched out on the long bench where she’d been sitting when he left. She grinned at him from the other side of the table, and leaned down to zip a small cooler. “I packed a few stakeout snacks for us. When do we leave?”
* * *
“I thought we’d go out Picayune way today. Maybe catch us a speckled trout ’r two.”
These was the words that delighted my Jessie’s young soul. Not ’cause she ever took to fishin’ all that much. What she did like was packin’ us up a lunch to share from the bank o’ that river, and pickin’ a Hardy Boys book to read out loud to me while I cast a line or two.
“You sure you don’t wanna bait a hook and give it a cast?”
“Nah,” she’d tell me. “That’s icky.”
“Then why you wanna go fishin’ a-tall?”
“We do our best talkin’ out here, Grampy. You wanna hear what the Hardy Boys are up to next?”
Chapter 5
5
Jessie glanced over at Danny seated next to her on the floor behind Kaye Slaughter’s sofa. She could almost read his mind, and it tickled her somehow.
How did I let her talk me into this again?
As if on cue, he sighed. “I don’t know why I keep letting you talk me into coming along on stakeouts.”
“Uh, because I’m good company and I help you solve cases?” she ribbed, rolling her eyes at him dramatically. “And I brought snacks. What do you want? Chocolate chip cookies or corn chips?”
He tried to resist and make a point, she could tell. She giggled when he surrendered. “Corn chips.”
She pulled out a snack bag and handed it over before opening the zipped plastic bag of cookies. “So what’s your gut feeling?” she asked. “You think anybody’s really going to show?”
Danny leaned against the back of the sofa and shrugged. “I don’t know. But I have a hard time buying Kaye as a doddering old woman who doesn’t remember washing a load of towels.”
“Yeah. She strikes me as pretty sharp,” she remarked before stuffing a whole cookie into her mouth. “Kick the cooler over here, will you?”
Danny snagged the strap of the cooler with the toe of his shoe and maneuvered it toward her.
“This floor is getting cold,” she said, producing a can of root beer. When she popped the top, Danny shushed her. “Sorry.”
She took a couple of chugs from the can and handed it to Danny. “Share?” He downed half the liquid inside before passing it back to her. A soft rumble drew her attention, and she nearly lost her grasp on the soda. “What is that?”
“Excuse me,” he offered, tapping the center of his chest with a closed fist.
“Not that, silly. That sound. I think it’s coming from the kitchen.”
Danny glared a hole into her. “The garage.”
“It’s coming from the garage?”
“It is the garage. The door is going up. Stay here.”
Before she could even reply, Danny shifted and popped off the floor. He disappeared around the other side of the sofa, and Jessie shimmied to her knees and peered over the back of it.
“Get. Down.” he whisper-yelled at her. “I mean it. Stay put.”
“Okay, okay.” She slowly lowered herself, but then snapped back up again. “Where are you going? Do you have a gun or a knife or something?”
At the corner near the kitchen, Danny turned back and looked at her. The odd expression he flashed elicited a snicker that she barely caught with both hands over her face.
“Well,” she managed over the hushed giggles, “you have to defend yourself.”
“Jessie,” he hissed, slicing his hand through the air.
“Okay. Okay.”
Crouched behind the sofa where she’d been relegated, Jessie only saw the reflection of the kitchen light as it turned on.
“Mind telling me what you’re doing?” Danny called.
The question was immediately followed by a crash and the strange sounds of a scuffle. When someone groaned, Jessie popped to her feet in an instant. She bounced from the ball of one foot to the other, her heart racing and all the nerve endings in her body crackling with electricity. When another groan sounded—this one definitely Danny—she grabbed a carved elephant sitting on an end table and raced into the kitchen ready to clock someone if necessary.
When she reached the doorway to the kitchen, clutching the elephant by the trunk and holding it in the air, Danny had already pinned the intruder to the marble floor, face down, and held him there with both hands.
“Who are you?” he demanded. “How did you get this?”
Jessie craned her neck until she spotted a garage door remote on the floor next to them.
“I found it.” The creaky little voice of the lanky man under Danny came out in puffs.
“Try again . . .” he said, yanking the wallet out of the man’s back pocket. He flipped it open and added, “Brandon Rucks.”
“All right. Will you get off me so I can breathe, man? No kidding, I need some air.”
“Better talk fast then. What are you doing here? And how long have you been letting yourself into a house that doesn’t belong to you?”
“Th-three months,” he sputtered, and Jessie inched closer.
Danny eased up on the guy and rolled him over to his back. Leaning over and glaring into his face, he asked, “Why?”
