two-story, redbrick buildings flanking the wide thoroughfare were as familiar today as they had been when he’d worked Saturdays as a stock boy at Henderson’s Hardware, bought sodas at Baxter’s Pharmacy and had his hair cut at Morris’s Barbershop.
He’d eaten his share of burgers and fries at the Riverton Café, which still existed, but was now under new ownership and called the Riverton Bar & Grill. He’d made that discovery the last time he’d been home because he and Emily Finnegan had gone to the restaurant for dinner. And there, in the back row of the Big River Theatre, he’d made it to first base for the first time with...? Huh. He’d been sixteen or thereabouts. She’d been hot, blonde, that year’s Riverboat Queen, if memory served. Why couldn’t he remember her name?
Did it matter? Not even a little bit. What mattered was this unexpected homecoming gave him a chance to see Emily again. He slowed as he drove past the Riverton Gazette office, glanced up at the windows of her second-floor apartment and told himself he was being an idiot to feel disappointed he didn’t see her.
He shook his head. “What? You expected her to be standing by the window, waiting for you?”
Now that he was here, he deeply regretted not calling her. In some ways, it seemed like a lifetime ago. In reality, it had been—what?—six weeks. Or was it longer? Maybe eight? Too long to expect her to simply pick up where they’d left off. She probably thought he was a first-class jerk.
Would she understand when he explained how he’d been catapulted into the most bizarre triple-homicide investigation of his career, sometimes working more than twenty-four hours before realizing he hadn’t slept? And when he did nod off, usually for just a few hours, his dreams were crowded with images of three innocent people, their cold, bruised flesh cut so deep, he wished they’d already been dead by the time the wounds had been inflicted.
Slapping cuffs on the killer should have provided some satisfaction. It hadn’t. Instead, he had hoped the guy would resist arrest, give him a reason to pump a couple rounds into his chest. Jack hated himself for wanting that, but not as much as he’d hated the narcissistic sicko who had held his head high and smiled widely, preening for the TV cameras on the day of his arraignment. That’s when Jack knew. He was bitter, burned out and he needed a change. He wanted a normal life. He wasn’t sure what that was, but he wanted a woman like Emily Finnegan to be part of it.
She was bound to be irate with him for not calling and he couldn’t fault her for that, but he would make it up to her. As soon as he finished interviewing Rose Daniels this afternoon, he would take Emily out for dinner. Pasta with marinara sauce, coffee and a lemon meringue tart for dessert. He never forgot details like that, and he remembered other things, too. The way she’d smiled when he’d reached across the table and covered her hand with his. The way she’d sighed after their first kiss, the way that kiss had led to another, and another, and...
He remembered, all right, and he would put those memories to good use tonight. He grinned at his reflection in the rearview mirror, ran a hand over the stubble on his jaw. He should probably get cleaned up before he interviewed this witness. From what he’d read in Rose’s file, he had a better shot at getting her to open up if he used his good cop routine. His current five o’clock shadow and too-long scruff were more in keeping with the bad-cop version of Jack Evans. Besides, the longer this witness languished in a cell, the more likely she’d be to spill the details once he had her sitting in the interview room.
He had a hunch that Emily preferred the good cop, too.
He swung right on Second Avenue, circled the block and angled into a parking spot in front of Morris’s. Again, he glanced up at Emily’s apartment across the street, relieved this time she wasn’t by the window. Better to wait and catch her unawares. He would use the element of surprise to get her attention, apologize and then tell her about the case that had consumed him for the past however many weeks.
Jack strode between the red, white and blue striped poles that flanked the barbershop door, wondering if Chicago had any old-fashioned barbershops like this one. It must have, but he couldn’t remember having seen one. He certainly hadn’t looked for one. Morris’s was...normal. Familiar.
Fred Morris sat in one of a pair of ancient barbershop chairs, facing the mirror, reading a newspaper. Jack pushed the door open, the sound of the bell causing Fred to glance up. There was no mistaking the flicker of deer-in-the-headlights surprise in the man’s eyes, but it was gone by the time he swiveled around and stood up.
“Jack. Ah, good to see you. What...ah...what brings you to Riverton?”
The guy was a bundle of nerves.
“A case I’m working on.”
“Right, right. So...ah...what can I do you for you?”
Seriously? “Shave, haircut.”
“Right, of course. Here, sit.” He moved around to the back of the chair and held it while Jack shrugged out of his jacket. “Here, I’ll take that.”
After he sat down, Fred swung the chair to face the mirror, and Jack watched the man’s reflection as he scurried about, stuffing his hastily folded newspaper into a wall-mounted magazine rack. He hung Jack’s jacket on an old coat tree.
Jack didn’t know Fred well, admittedly, but he didn’t remember him being this jumpy, acting as though he had something to hide. Besides, what could he be hiding? Come to think of it, Fred was a longtime friend of Emily’s. Would she have told him about the night she and Jack had spent together?
Awkward. Not to mention unlikely. He was jumping to conclusions for which he had no evidence. He watched Fred take his cell phone out of his pants pocket, tap out a quick message and put it back.
“Okay. A shave and a haircut.” Fred, suddenly all business and apparently recovered from his case of nerves, shook out a black plastic cape and draped it over Jack’s chest and shoulders.
* * *
MABLE POTTER LIVED in a quaint one-and-a-half-story house on Cottonwood Street, in the middle of a block of identical dwellings. Over the years, the homes had been personalized with a picket fence here, a glassed-in veranda there, window boxes, skylights and paint colors that spanned the rainbow. The clapboard of Mrs. Potter’s house was salmon pink, the trim snowy white. In the back corner of the yard was a garden shed. Mable’s husband, who’d passed away more than a decade ago, had designed it to look like a miniature version of the main house, capturing every detail right down to the lace-curtained windows.
As a child, Emily had daydreamed about playing house in the Potters’ garden shed. Today, her current reality made her wonder how in the world she was going to manage a baby on her own in her cramped one-bedroom apartment over the newspaper office.
Emily followed the elderly woman through the gate and up the steps. Mrs. Potter opened the front door and stooped to unfasten the dog’s leash. Instead of going inside, though, the scruffy, wiry-haired dog of indeterminate breed let out a yip, raced back down the steps and disappeared around the corner of the house, a black-and-white blur in pursuit of a squirrel.
“I don’t know why he chases them,” the woman said. “He’s never caught one. And I think they come in the yard on purpose, simply to torment him.”
Emily laughed at the idea of a ragtag scurry of squirrels plotting to outwit a hapless predator. Possibly something she could work into a story for her blog. “Where would you like me to put the groceries?” she asked.
“Would you mind carrying
