Jack of Hearts Read online

  Ted took Laura by the hand. “After.”

  “But we’ve been dying to find out,” Ruby complained.

  “She had the cat figurine,” Alice said proudly. She scrolled through her phone and pulled up her photos. She enlarged one photo and held it out for everyone to see. In the back of a large utility closet, between an old vase and a statue of a dolphin, was a black cat figurine with red eyes.

  Laura, Ruby, and Ginny all rushed over to look. “That’s the cat! You did it!”

  Alice gave them all high fives. “We did it.”

  “I knew she was lying,” Laura said. “This proves it.”

  “Not necessarily, Mom,” Jack said. “It could mean she lied. The statue was a gift, right? Maybe Janet didn’t like it, and she lied to spare Ginny’s feelings. But it’s also possible she stuck it in the closet and forgot it was there.”

  “Look, its red eyes are glowing,” Ted whispered. “I would have put it in the closet too.”

  Laura slapped his arm. “It’s adorable!” She turned to Jack. “And if she was lying, that means she could be the thief. She lied about the cat to throw off suspicion.”

  “Was Janet home all day?” Jack asked Alice.

  Alice grimaced. “Most of it. She watched my every move like a gargoyle. ‘You should get that spot again. You’re using too much spray cleaner. When you bring your own, you can use that much, but I bought that bottle.’” Alice shuddered.

  “Was she home in the last hour?” Ted asked.

  “I think she was there. The last thing she had me clean was the lanai, and she wouldn’t let me back in the house.”

  “Then she’s not the thief.” Laura sounded disappointed. “She couldn’t have stolen the frog if she was home all day.”

  “So who is the thief?” Ruby asked.

  Jack smiled confidently. “Dad and I are about to go find out.”

  33

  It Was a Good Plan

  “What are we doing here?” Ted asked as they walked up to Carl’s front door.

  “I need to ask Carl about his spreadsheet.” Jack glanced at his phone one last time before he rang the doorbell.

  Carl opened the door, and his thick eyebrows pulled together. “Evening.”

  “Hey, Carl.” Jack smiled. “Do you have a second? I could really use your help; I’d like to run a couple of things by you.”

  Carl pulled his shoulders back and lifted his chin. “Sure. Come on in and have a seat.”

  He led them into the living room. It was similar to the Strattons’, but Carl’s decorating had a distinct Western feel: dark woods, with cowboys and horses emblazoned on everything from the furniture to the artwork. “Can I get you two anything to drink?”

  “All set,” Ted said as he and Jack sat on the couch.

  Carl took a seat in the leather easy chair. “It’s too bad about your plan, Jack. Ellie and I went to check on the frog statue before our surveillance shift started, and the frog had already ‘hopped’ the scene.” He chuckled. “That was Ellie’s joke. Maybe we can try something like that again.”

  “We don’t need to.” Jack placed his phone on the coffee table.

  Carl shifted in his chair, running his hand over the faded leather on the arm. “But it was a good plan. I think, under the right circumstances, it could really work. Ellie and I are going tomorrow for something else to use as bait.”

  “I’m glad you brought up Ellie,” Jack said.

  Carl looked from Jack to Ted. “What about her?”

  “She’s the whole reason behind these thefts.”

  “What?” Carl’s initial look of shock turned quickly to laughter. He laughed so hard that he removed his glasses to wipe tears from his eyes. “I’m sorry.” His guffaws subsided into chuckles. “But you think Ellie is the mastermind behind these thefts?”

  “I actually said she’s the reason behind the thefts. You’re the mastermind, Carl.”

  “What?” Ted said.

  Carl stood and shoved his glasses back on. “Now, you listen to me, young man.”

  “Mr. Wilkerson, please sit down.” Although Jack’s voice was calm, there was no question that he wasn’t making a request.

  Carl sat down. “This is absurd. I’ve been putting more time into trying to catch the bandit than anyone.”

  “I’m sure Jack has proof.” Ted gave Jack a strained, please-tell-me-you-do-have-proof look.

  Jack tapped his phone on the table. “My girlfriend has been giving me some tech lessons. See, we have this enormous dog.”

  “I’ve seen it,” Carl said. “It should be in a circus.”

  “She’s a great dog. Her name’s Lady. And Alice really worries about her. So she got Lady this special dog collar, and she got me this app for my phone. The collar’s special because it has a GPS in it, so I can track where Lady is with my phone. Just in case she ever gets away.”

  Ted slapped Jack on the back. “That’s why you bought that dog collar in the pet store. It wasn’t for Lady.”

  “Nope. It wasn’t. The frog statue is hollow. I taped the GPS collar in there.” Jack pushed his phone over to Carl, who had gone noticeably paler. “Do you want to see where that statue is now?”

  Carl slumped in his chair. He didn’t say anything.

  “Why?” Ted asked.

  Carl shrugged.

  “Ellie,” Jack said simply.

  Carl shook his head. “She had nothing to do with this.”

  “Actually, she did. Do you remember when Ellie said the bandit would come for the statue like Robin Hood going to the archery tournament to get the golden arrow?”

  Carl nodded.

  “It’s a great analogy, but Ellie got one thing wrong. Robin Hood knew it was a setup, but he didn’t go to the tournament to win the arrow. He went to win a kiss from Maid Marian. The arrow was just a means to an end. That’s why you’ve been stealing things, isn’t it? Ellie’s why you did it. You like her, and these stakeouts of yours were the perfect excuse to spend time with her. But you needed a reason for the stakeouts, so…you created the reason. Isn’t that correct, Mr. Wilkerson?”

  Ted slapped his forehead. “Why didn’t you just ask her out?”

  Carl stared at his hands. “Ask her out? What am I, seventeen?”

  “No, you’re seventy,” Ted shot back. “I would think you’d have learned a thing or two.”

  Carl slumped down even more. “I haven’t asked a girl out since…” He thought for a moment and gave a sad sigh. “It’s been fifty years. I was married for over thirty years, Ted. I haven’t even been interested in anyone since my Christy passed. But…I like being around Ellie. I wanted to spend more time with her. I tried to talk to her, but I’m just no good at it.”

  “So you resorted to stealing instead?” Ted said.

  “It didn’t start like that. It was that stupid solar rooster. That blasted thing was driving me insane. It was literally waking me up at the crack of dawn every day. I asked Beverly to take it down, but she refused—so I took it.”

  “I think everyone in the neighborhood was glad about that,” Ted muttered.

  “They were.” Carl lifted his chin and looked directly at Jack and his father. “They talked like whoever did it was the hero of Orange Blossom. And then the book club got involved. Once they started looking into it, Ellie wanted to catch the thief. She was so excited about it, and she asked me to help. We met at her house. She even made cookies. But when nothing else was stolen…”

  “So you kept stealing so you could spend time with Ellie?” Ted shook his head.

  “I tried to take only the things that people didn’t like.”

  “Bernie Lane loved his cheese-dial,” Ted said.

  Carl pointed at the Chicago Bears clock on his mantel.

  “You stole his cheese-dial because Bernie’s a Packers fan?”

  Carl nodded. “I was going to give everything back after…” Carl’s eyes went wide. “I’m going to have to move.”

  “What?” Ted and Jack said at
once.

  Carl stood. He looked close to tears. “I have to. Ellie will be so embarrassed. I stole the dates with her too. She had no idea what I was up to. Everyone will know that I’m nothing but an old fool. Seventy years without as much as a parking ticket, and now I’m a criminal. A repeat offender! Are you here to arrest me? Am I going to jail? Don’t go to the papers!” With his shoulders rounded and his worried expression, Carl suddenly looked a hundred years old.

  “Just dial it back,” Jack said. “You’re not going to jail. Do you still have everything that you’ve stolen?”

  “It’s in my garage.”

  “Good. Now, I need to talk to you about the break-in at Roy McCord’s.”

  “I had nothing to do with that. I didn’t take anything from Roy’s. To tell you the truth, Roy kinda scared me.”

  “I know you didn’t break into Roy’s.”

  “How do you know that?” Ted asked.

  “Because I’m telling the truth,” Carl grumbled.

  “You do understand why your credibility is in question,” Ted shot back.

  “I’m not a liar.”

  “Dad, there’s no way Carl climbed onto the air-conditioning unit, cut the screen, and pulled himself up through the window to get into Roy’s house. But someone did. And I need to know if whoever broke into Roy’s broke into anyone else’s house. So Carl, I need you to go over the sheet and flag everything that you stole.”

  34

  Surprise

  Dixon waited until he heard the bathroom door close and the fan turn on before he got off the couch and hurried over to Auntie’s purse. He’d already blown through his cash, and he wasn’t going to be getting any more until he got the Strattons’ statue.

  Auntie had three hundred dollars in cash. One for her and two for me, he said to himself as he pocketed two hundred dollars. He’d make her an extra-strong vodka and hope she’d forget how much she had. He grabbed her American Express, too, snapped the bag closed—

  And looked up to see Auntie in the doorway with her silver Glock pointed at his chest.

  Dixon straightened up. “I was going to ask for a loan.”

  “Get off my rug.” Auntie walked forward, keeping the gun trained on him.

  “You can’t be serious, Auntie. I only took fifty bucks. You haven’t paid me, and I need…to get some food.”

  “You’re using again. I warned you, Curtis. Now step onto the tile.”

  Dixon laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding me. You care more about this stupid carpet than your own sister’s son?”

  “Yes.” Auntie stopped at the edge of the rug. “And if you had a brain in your thick head, you’d know how much more valuable that rug is than you are.”

  Dixon’s mouth twisted into a snarl. “My mother always said you were a selfish bitch.”

  Auntie grinned. “I bet she did. Your mother was a stupid one.”

  “You take that back.”

  She laughed. “Get off my rug, Curtis, and I’ll tell you something that you’ve been dying to know.”

  Dixon stared at his feet. He wanted to call her bluff—but was she bluffing? Would she really shoot him? Not over fifty bucks, certainly?

  Dixon stepped off the rug. “Well.” He lifted his arms out wide, the two cobras pointing to the Anubis on his throat. “What’s the big secret?”

  “You know your mother introduced me to Baldwin?”

  “Not this freaking story again.” Dixon rolled his eyes. “You can have the fifty back and I’ll pay you another fifty not to tell me the story of how you and my mom were both stripping and some rich, horny guy took you away from all that.”

  Auntie’s smile was oddly calm. She shook her head. “I left off the part about how your mother ‘danced’ for Baldwin before I did.”

  “So?” Dixon shrugged, but as Auntie’s smile grew, he realized what she was saying. “Wait…” His jaw dropped. “Your old dirtbag husband was my father?” He tasted bile in his throat.

  “Your mother was so stupid she didn’t see the resemblance until you were ten. And then she made the mistake of telling me she was going to tell Baldwin and ask for money. I couldn’t have that. Couldn’t have my money going to some snot-nosed kid. And I certainly couldn’t allow Baldwin to have an heir—other than me.”

  “So, what? Are you saying you killed my mother? Your own sister?”

  Auntie caressed the intricately carved, gilded lamp on the table. “What can I say? I love my beautiful things. And now that you’ve made such a mess of everything, you’re risking me losing it all. I warned you, Curtis. No loose ends.”

  “Like you’d survive going to prison. You won’t shoot me.”

  “They’d never put me in prison. A poor old widow who shot her drug-addicted nephew?” She adopted a meek, helpless tone. “He broke into my home! What could I do?”

  “You rotten—”

  Auntie pulled the trigger.

  The gun clicked.

  Auntie’s eye twitched, and she pulled the trigger again.

  The gun clicked again.

  Dixon’s eyes brightened. He pulled something from his pocket and walked up to her. “Oh, Auntie, you should see your face! You look so disappointed.” He snickered. “But thank you for sharing that secret tale of sisterly love.”

  He leaned close enough for her to feel his breath on her cheek. “Now let me tell you a little secret. My mother didn’t raise a fool.” He held out his hand. In his palm were the bullets he’d taken from her gun. “Surprise.”

  35

  Embrace the Hate

  Jack pulled into the quiet park and Alice shifted nervously in her seat.

  “I thought we were going to go talk to Roy’s friend.” She straightened up and unclicked her seat belt.

  “We will. We need to talk first.” Jack put the car into park but didn’t shut it off. “It’s not about the whole marriage thing.”

  Alice’s fingers traced the plastic outline of the door handle. Like a teeter-totter, her shoulders slumped for a second and then rose. “It’s not a marriage thing.”

  “Bad choice of words,” Jack admitted. “Look, this is going to be tough enough as it is, and I’m already dancing on eggshells. But I need to talk to you about something else.”

  Alice turned in her seat to face him. Her right hand was balled into a fist. Jack knew it was a defense mechanism. She was nervous, so she’d shifted into self-protection mode.

  “It’s about your mom,” Jack said.

  Alice gasped slightly. Clearly, this was not a topic she had anticipated. She looked at Jack with her green eyes wide.

  His words brought pain. He knew they would. Jack wanted to wrap his arms around her and stop this difficult conversation in its tracks. He didn’t want to hurt Alice, but she had to know the truth.

  “I realized that after your family died, you didn’t have anything of theirs to help remember them by. The same thing happened to Chandler and Michelle, remember? They lost everything when their house burned down.”

  “That was something Chandler never talked about.”

  “He never talked to me about it growing up. But in Iraq…” Jack looked out over the grass and palm trees, but he saw another place, another time. “Chandler and I were on patrol. We came under heavy fire. The bullet missed my head, but the piece of concrete it shattered didn’t. It hit me here.” He tilted his head away and showed the jagged scar on the side of his neck. “I told you it was a battle scar when we first started dating, but I didn’t tell you the whole story.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. But no more secrets, right?”

  She nodded and ran her fingertips over it. Her gentle touch stood in stark contrast to his memory of the pain.

  “I didn’t think a person could hurt that bad,” Jack said. “Chandler dropped on top of me and applied pressure to the wound.” He chuckled. “Between him crushing me with his body and jamming down on my neck, I thought I’d suffocate before I bled to death. With what little air I had, I
kept screaming.”

  “You were in pain. It’s okay to scream.”

  “Not when the enemy is close by.” Jack held her hand. “You don’t want to draw machine gun fire. But I just couldn’t stop myself. We were waiting for the medic, and Chandler said something I never expected: ‘Embrace the hate.’”

  Alice lifted her chin, shifting her weight toward the door.

  “Freaked me out,” Jack said. “Chandler told me, ‘Don’t run from the pain. Embrace it. Hug it, and then kill it. It ain’t as bad as you think. But it’s you or the pain. It’ll kill you if you let it. Kill it first.’”

  Sweat rolled down Jack’s back. He reached out and redirected the air-conditioning vent toward Alice. “Blood was spraying out of my neck. I thought I was dying. I told him he didn’t know pain like this. Chandler pressed harder and said—” Jack had to stop for a moment to swallow down the lump that had formed in his throat. “He said, ‘I covered Michelle’s ears so she couldn’t hear my parents’ screams as they burned to death. I covered her ears and couldn’t cover my own. So, yeah, Jack. I know pain. It burned in me for years. It didn’t stop hurting until I embraced the agony I was in. Embrace it, Jack. Face it, and kill it.’”

  Jack took a deep breath. “Those were the last words I heard before I woke up in the hospital.

  “We talked about it again after I got patched up. Chandler said that before he made himself face the pain of his parents’ deaths, he felt like he was losing them all over again, because he was forgetting who they were. Somehow, by denying the pain, he had been denying himself the feeling of love for them too. But after he faced what happened, after he embraced the pain, the happy memories came back to him.”

  Alice let go of his hand. She planted both feet flat on the floor and her hands on her thighs, bracing herself for whatever Jack had to say. “What are you telling me?”

  “I located a friend of your mother’s,” Jack said. “She had moved to Florida. I didn’t want to tell you until I was sure, because I’ve been looking everywhere and striking out every time.”