living room and a den. She'd bragged about the new hardwood floors, the fresh paint, and the new appliances that justified the rent she was charging me.
'No. Not all the time.'
I was within arm's reach of her but Lucy didn't back up or relax, telling me with a wry smile that she didn't consider a middle-aged man with the shakes to be much of a threat.
'Well that's a relief. I'd hate to put someone on the street who shakes all the time.'
Chapter Seven
'Don't be in such a hurry. Follow me,' I told her. I kept the lease in the top drawer of a desk in the kitchen. I showed it to her. 'Like I said. It's my house for another eight months.'
She skimmed it, nodding at the signatures. 'My turn.'
She led the way to the bedroom that overlooked the driveway. A duffel bag and backpack lay on the bed. She rummaged through the backpack, handing me an envelope. I opened it. Inside was a copy of the deed to the house naming Lucy Trent as the owner.
'Lorraine didn't say anything to me about this.'
'Don't feel bad. She didn't say anything to me about you but, then again, we don't talk much. My father left my mother for her when I was ten. Kind of chilled the whole stepmother-stepdaughter bonding thing. Dad's will provided she could live in the house for five years after he died. Then the house went to me. The five years was up four months ago. I wasn't ready to move back until now.'
'She said she was a biologist, that she was going to Africa to do research for a year.'
'With luck, she'll lose her passport.'
I sat on the bed, another tremor rippling through me. My ex-wife, Joy, and I bought a house in the suburbs when the FBI transferred me to Kansas City. We sold it when we got divorced, the proceeds paying our debts and our lawyers and putting a small stake in both our pockets. Either of us could have left, picked a place without the raw memories of our failed marriage and dead children, but Kansas City was a good place to heal. The pace was easy, the people friendly. The city was comfortable and comforting, like a soft sweatshirt on a cool day.
The house I'd rented was part of that fabric. The fireplace, the overstuffed furniture, and the trees that towered over the front and back, home to enough birds and squirrels for Ruby to chase until she was exhausted, were all part of the balm.
'I'll buy it. The house, I mean. Plus the furniture, everything.'
She laughed. 'If you could afford that, you wouldn't be renting.'
Ruby found us, first jumping on Lucy who was standing in the middle of the room, then leaping onto the bed, sticking her nose in my face.
'That doesn't sound like no. It sounds like how much.'
She put her hands on her hips. 'All it sounds like is that I'm not going to kick you out tonight.'
'Suppose I come up with enough money to make you an offer to sell?'
'I have a rule, Jack. I only deal with what's in front of me.'
'Fair enough.'
My cell phone rang. I flipped it open and recognized the voice.
'Jack, it's Ammara Iverson.'
Ammara had been one of my agents when I ran the Violent Crimes Squad in the FBI's Kansas City office. Most of my Bureau friendships had faded once the shared work that held them together ended. Ammara was different. Though we hadn't seen each other very often, the bond was still there.
'Hey, it's great to hear your voice. What's up?'
'You doing anything?'
'Just trying to decide whether to buy a house or get evicted from it. Why?'
'I've got a dead man wants to talk to you.'
The dead man was what my squad called the scene of a homicide, the scene telling us what the victim couldn't. Ammara knew that I trusted the dead man more than anyone or anything but that didn't explain why she was calling me.
'Tell the dead man I'm retired.'
'You might wish you weren't when you talk to this one. You better get over here.' She hung up after giving me the address and directions.
The FBI had rules for everything including the handling of crime scenes. Preserving the integrity of the physical evidence was critical to solving a crime and getting a conviction. Access to the scene was tightly controlled. Ex-FBI agents didn't qualify. Whatever her reasons, Ammara wanted me inside the yellow tape.
Lucy watched me throughout my brief conversation, making no pretense of not listening.
'Who's the dead man?'
'Inside joke. I've got to go meet a friend of mine.'
'What are you retired from?'
'The FBI.'
'Your friend with the FBI?'
'For someone who's throwing me out of my house, you ask a lot of questions.'
'Best way I know to learn.'
'Find another teacher.'
I stood for an instant before muscle contractions jackknifed my head to my knees. I reached for something to hold onto, finding Lucy's arm, her steady grip stabilizing me.
'I'll drive,' she said. 'You're in no shape.'
Some lessons are forced on me. One of them is accepting help when I didn't have a choice. I was in worse condition than the snow-packed streets. If Ammara needed me, my first concern was getting there, not who drove. The contractions released me.
'Okay, let's go.'
Chapter Eight
Kansas City covers a lot of territory from the airport north of the Missouri River, to the NASCAR track across the state line in western Wyandotte County, Kansas, to the Truman Sports Complex in eastern Jackson County, Missouri. There are better than forty municipalities spread over five counties and two states, enough for everyone to claim a fiefdom yet many will tell a stranger that they live in Kansas City rather than Raytown, Prairie Village, Independence, or Overland Park.
The southern reaches aren't identified with an iconic landmark. On the Kansas side, they are defined by large, new, and expensive rooftops sheltering more per capita disposable income than many of the country's zip codes, extending beyond the eye's reach much as prairie grasses must have in another time. The rooftops on the Missouri side are smaller, older, and modest, covering the working middle class. The address Ammara gave me was for one of these.
Despite its reach, you could drive from one edge of the metropolitan area to the other in forty-five minutes, sixty in traffic. Snow changed that. The storm had singled out midtown where six inches had fallen. As we crept south, the accumulation was less, the streets more navigable. The slow drive gave my body time to stuff the clown back into the jack-in-the-box. My breathing eased, my muscles relaxed, my head cleared. I was back in control.
Lucy limited her questions to the directions Ammara had given me. I watched her as she drove, turning into a skid when ice grabbed the tires, grinning as we spun. I wondered how she had earned her swagger. She carried herself like someone who came from my world, someone who was trained for the perpetual scrum between the good guys and the bad guys, someone who knew the dead man.
