The Big Keep: A Lena Dane Mystery (Lena Dane Mysteries) Read online

  I’m a great liar when I have time to plan my story in advance, but I’m absolute crap at on-the-spot lies, which Bryce enjoys terribly. “I accidentally threw away my credit card,” I tried.

  “Uh-huh. Not buying it.”

  “I dropped a piece of gum in here this morning, and I thought there might be a little chew left in it.”

  Bryce raised a single, perfect eyebrow, probably because he knows how that makes me jealous. “That’s just stupid.”

  I sighed. “Fine.” I retrieved the pregnancy test from the bin and tossed it unceremoniously on the desk in front of Bryce. He leaned forward to see, not touching it, and looked up at me immediately, shocked.

  “Whoa.” Bryce blinked rapidly a few times, looking staggered. I was right there with him. “So? What’s the deal? Were you and Toby trying?”

  I blinked. “You’re awfully nosy for an employee.”

  “But I’m just nosy enough to work for a PI,” he reasoned. “You know you raised me to be inquisitive.”

  I sighed “I guess that’s fair. No, we weren’t particularly trying. Toby does not know yet. I didn’t even know until about half an hour ago.”

  “Oh.” He paused for a moment, and I could see him mentally sorting his questions out into appropriate and inappropriate categories. Finally, he settled on, “Are you excited?”

  “Yes. I mean, I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it too much. I had the pregnancy thought, took the test right away, got into this meeting right away, and now here I am.”

  “Is...is Toby going to be happy?”

  “Will he be happy that I’m pregnant?” I repeated. “Yes. Definitely.” Bryce looked at me inquiringly, but I just shook my head.

  2. Clutch the Pearls

  I decided not to go straight home, because in many important matters, I am a coward. Instead, I texted Toby to let him know I was stopping by what we lovingly refer to as the family business.

  My mom died when I was little, so my sister and I grew up with just my dad, who had owned a comic book store in downtown Chicago for more than 35 years now. Great Dane Comics has never been incredibly successful, but it had never struggled much, either – my dad had a unique knack for bringing new people into the many worlds of comics, and this gift kept a steady stream of new and regular customers to the shop.

  Which is nice, because they pretty much made up all of Dad’s contact with the world, besides his daughters. To his credit, Dad was never fazed that fate gave him two little girls to raise by himself. Even when we were little, long before anyone dreamed up the word “fangirls,” he taught us to love comic books. We’re even named after his favorite female comic characters, if you account for some creative spelling. My full name is Selena Kyle Dane, whose secret identity is Catwoman. My big sister is Aurora Munroe, the alter ego of Storm from the X-Men comics. I know the whole thing seems a little weird to new people, but when you’re born with a poster of Spiderman hanging above your crib, having a comic book name never really seems that strange.

  Besides, we’re both just grateful he didn’t try to actually call us Storm and Catwoman.

  Great Dane is located in a small afterthought of a building, attached to a row of brownstones in the Humboldt Park neighborhood downtown. I fought through a brief amount of dense traffic and made it to the store ten minutes before close, driving around the building to the two reserved parking spots behind the store. My sister’s minivan was in her spot, but Dad’s was empty, so I swung my beat-up little Jeep into the slot. Then I walked around the outside so I could go in the front door.

  A familiar, ancient bell chimed as I went in. My sister was perched on a stool behind the enormous counter just inside the entrance, but she didn’t even look up as I entered. The store was deserted, and her nose was buried in an issue of something Joss Whedon-y. Rory’s a comic book reader in a brainy, intellectual kind of way.

  I went around the counter and kissed her cheek. “Hey, Ro.”

  She smiled at me without looking up from her page. “Hey, little sister.”

  I dropped my carry-all bag behind the counter and pulled myself up onto the second wooden stool by the cash register. “Where’s Dad?” Our father still lived in the cramped two-bedroom apartment upstairs where Rory and I grew up. He was almost always in the building somewhere.

  “He left early for a doctor’s appointment.” She twirled a pen absently in her long fingers, which are just like mine. Rory and I look a lot alike, with brown eyes, pointy chins, and long legs. But her long hair is chestnut instead of blonde, and she carries about twenty pounds that I don’t, a vestige of her two kids and her too-busy lifestyle. Today she was wearing her square-rimmed reading glasses and her usual mom clothes – a cream-colored turtleneck under a green cardigan, and prim ankle-length jeans. The whole thing was probably from Eddie Bauer. At 34, Rory is fully on board the Mommy bandwagon. Actually, I’m pretty sure she’s driving the Mommy bandwagon.

  “Was it just a checkup, or is something going on?” I asked.

  “Just a checkup on his heart and man-parts and stuff-”

  “Ew.”

  “But I think he was gonna run some errands after,” she continued, ignoring me. “We don’t have any shipments tonight. I sent Aaron home 45 minutes ago.”

  “Cool.” Aaron was one of the few teenagers who had successfully sweet-talked Rory into letting him work part-time at the store. “So, Ro,” I began, reaching over to tug lightly at a strand of her dark hair. Her eyes were still on her page. “I need to talk to you about something. Actually, I need to talk to someone about something, and you’re my second or third favorite person in the world, so I’ve chosen you.”

  She looked up for the first time since I’d walked in, her eyebrows rising quizzically. “Who’s first? Toby?”

  “Most of the time.”

  “Did I beat Dad?”

  “It’s neck and neck, and it all rides on whether or not you have any pretzels under the counter right now.” Rory rolled her eyes, tugging her hair out of my hand, and reached into a cupboard under the cash register, tossing me a half-full bag of pretzels. I did a fist-pump and pulled out a handful. I was starving.

  “Okay,” I said around a mouthful of salty goodness. “You’re number two.”

  “Wow. Your affection comes at so cheap a price,” she said wryly. “What do you need to talk about?”

  “Well, please don’t freak out on me, okay, seriously. Really.” I hesitated for a second, but I knew I had to tell her. “But I’m sort of, a little bit...pregnant.”

  “What?” My reserved, serious sister, who had been giving me half her attention at best, jumped up and threw her arms around me, knocking the bag of pretzels to the floor and almost knocking me off the stool. Jeez. For Rory, that’s pretty much the equivalent of running down the street naked. “Omigod congratulations! When did you find out?”

  “About an hour and a half ago.” I pried her arms off and said, “Dude. You’re going to squash the baby.”

  Ignoring this, Rory picked up the bag of pretzels, handed them to me, and settled back on her own stool. “Oh man, I have so much baby stuff I can give you. Were you guys trying to get pregnant?”

  I blanched. “Why is that everyone’s first question? Rude. But no, not really.”

  “Did you tell Toby yet?”

  “Not yet. Just Bryce, because he saw me with the test.”

  Rory paused in her jubilation and eyed me suspiciously. “Okay. So why aren’t you rushing home right now to tell your husband?”

  “I...kind of don’t want him to know,” I confessed.

  Rory gasped, gaping at me. “You are planning on keeping it?”

  I rolled my eyes. Clutch the pearls, Rory. “Yes, yes. I know, I have to tell him eventually.”

  “So...?”

  I ate a few more pretzels and thought about the question for a moment. I didn’t quite know myself, honestly. Why was I so hesitant to tell my adoring husband, who desperately wanted kids, that we were going to h
ave one?

  “Uh...if I tell him, I’m afraid he’s going to want me to quit my job and stay home with the baby.” It was an unfair answer, but maybe not entirely untrue.

  “Ah.” Rory leaned back in her seat, seeming to buy it. “I see. Do you know that for sure?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. When I was with the cops he used to complain that it was too dangerous for both of us to be in law enforcement, if we ever started a family.”

  “But he was with the cops then, too.” Toby and I had met when he was a Homicide detective and I’d just been assigned to the department as a 23-year-old uniform. He’d quit the force shortly after me—hell, partly because of me—and gone to law school.

  “Yeah,” I acknowledged, “but he still considers what I do dangerous.”

  “Well, in his defense, you did get shot last year,” Rory pointed out. “And stabbed the year before that.”

  “Whoa,” I protested. “First of all, I wasn’t stabbed, I was slashed a little in the arm, and it barely needed stitches-”

  “Wasn’t it, like, thirty?”

  “–And that wasn’t even for work, that was when I saw those three kids trying to set that dog’s tail on fire. And I kicked their asses.” Rory snorted.

  “Secondly,” I continued, ignoring her, “Okay, yeah, I got a teeny bit shot,” – I put my left thumb and index finger a half inch apart to demonstrate the triviality of the whole thing – “But that little girl is home tonight because of it.”

  Amanda Ann Rink was a four-year-old who was snatched from home a year earlier by her junkie father, who figured he could rent Amanda out to his sexual predator friends, and then ransom her to his ex-wife for drug money. The police didn’t know about the drug connection or the sleazy friends at first, and dismissed the whole thing as a domestic squabble. So I spent a full week living and breathing the case, and when I finally found the shitty apartment where Rink was keeping his daughter, he managed to shoot me in the right shoulder before the police arrived.

  That case had put Dane Investigations more or less on the map, and eventually the publicity got me enough business to hire Bryce full-time and rent decent office space. But I would have found Amanda for free, bullet and all.

  “I know. And I know you saved her from going through some pretty awful stuff, much less maybe being killed,” Rory said calmly. “But, Lena, a few inches over and you would have been shot in the heart.”

  “And a few inches the other way and the bullet would have missed me entirely,” I said through more pretzel. “Shit happens.”

  Rory rolled her eyes and glanced at the clock. It was officially closing time. “Can you grab the lock?” she asked, because I was closer.

  “Sure,” I said, hopping off the stool. I speedwalked over to the front door and flipped the deadbolt. Then I leaned on the counter so I could reach the pretzels again.

  “Look, Lena,” Rory continued, “This topic must have come up before now. You guys have talked about kids?”

  I swallowed. “Of course. I just... I just kind of figured this would sort itself out, later.”

  “Little sister,” Rory said, not without sympathy, “it’s later.”

  I sighed. “Yeah.”

  Rory drummed her neat fingernails on the counter for a moment, then took off her reading glasses and tossed them on top of a stack of receipts. “You know you’re going to have to be incredibly, incredibly careful with yourself. You need to get to the OB, like, right away. And I know you’re worried about it, but you are going to have to tell your husband that you are pregnant.”

  I fidgeted, rearranging the little knickknacks that were lined up on the counter. I don’t like being told what to do, even—or maybe especially—by my big sister. “Right. And how long do you think I have before I have to do that?”

  Rory threw up her hands. “Selena Kyle Dane. Are you listening to me at all?”

  “I hear you, but can you just pretend for a minute that I just want to keep it private a little longer to make sure the baby’s healthy? And tell me how long before I will start to show? I mean, our bodies are pretty much identical.”

  Her jaw dropped. “That’s why you came to me? To quiz me on our similar physical qualities?”

  Busted. “Pretty much, yeah.”

  She glowered at me for a second, then relented. “Fine. I’m too excited for you to be annoyed right now.” She tilted her head, thinking it over. “With Cassie, I didn’t show until four and a half months. With Logan it was right around four.”

  I crunched a few more pretzels. “Okay. So I’ve theoretically got four to six weeks before I have to start telling people. I can work with that.”

  She glared at me suspiciously. “Job-wise, are you working on anything dangerous right now?”

  “Not at all,” I said truthfully. “I’ve got, let’s see, an insurance scam that’ll be wrapping up next week, some background checks for that computer software company that we work with a lot, and the Emerson case, which I’m going to terminate because I’ve got nothing and I’m draining their money. Oh, and a kid hired me today to find his biological dad.”

  “That doesn’t sound too bad.” She frowned. “No bodyguarding?”

  “No bodyguarding,” I promised. There was never really a science to which cases were dangerous and which weren’t, but bodyguarding was about the only thing I took on where you were practically assured a threat against your person. My entire family hated when I had those cases, but sometimes people needed a woman who could blend in at clubs and events. Can I help it if I’m cute as a button?

  3. A Creeping, Growing Fog

  Iswore a reluctant Rory to secrecy and finally turned the Jeep toward home. Toby and I recently moved into a pretty swanky apartment in Lake View, not far from the comic book store. It was the nicest apartment I’d ever lived in, and I was still a little in awe of it. I guess I just wasn’t used to being married to a lawyer yet.

  Parking the Jeep in my underground spot, I said a syrupy-sweet hello to Tucker the Judgmental Doorman, who merely sniffed at me. To Tucker, who probably irons his underwear, my general appearance and demeanor are far too unladylike. Which really amuses me, because if Tucker knew I carried a gun he’d probably shit his perfectly pressed boxers.

  When I put my key in the doorknob there was a crash and a thunderous pounding as Toka the pit bull cleverly detected my presence and knocked down a kitchen chair on his way to get to me. I dropped the bag and crouched down a little, so when the dog crashed into me I didn’t tip over. Toka was eighty pounds of white-and-brown fur over corded muscle, and if you weren’t ready for the love, it was coming anyway. After his enthusiastic greeting the dog lumbered off to hunt those elusive food smells, and I laughed and stood up. I followed him down the hall toward the room we refer to as the Big Glorious Kitchen. It’s all granite and stainless steel, with a wet bar island in the center and state-of-the-art fixtures all around. It happened to come with the apartment we wanted, but the whole thing is way out of our league.

  “Hey, Wife,” Toby said over his shoulder. He shot me a smile, and a thrill went through my heart. Toby was great-looking in a clean-cut Irish way, like Colin Farrell without all the eyebrow. “Dinner’s almost ready. How was your day?” He went back to the restaurant-sized stove and stirred what looked like spaghetti sauce and ground beef.

  I leaned over and scratched Toka’s neck. “Good.” I felt the pregnancy news bubble up in my throat, but I swallowed it down. “I have a new case,” I said instead. I told him about Nate Christianti and the deadbeat dad’s mysterious novel.

  “Wow, that’s kind of out there,” Toby said when I was finished. “Are you going to read the book?”

  “Yup, it’s in my bag. I figure if nothing else I can learn a little about how this guy thinks.”

  “You wanna set the table?” Toby asked me. “I haven’t gotten that far.”

  “‘Course.” I jumped up to set out a couple of place settings and grab last night’s leftover salad from the fridge,
putting everything on the small kitchen table we squeezed on the other side of the island in the Big Glorious Kitchen. Toby put the finished pasta on one side of the island, and I pulled it across and put it on the table, a routine we had down pat.

  We ate peacefully, with Toby telling me about his client meetings and Toka spinning in excited circles underneath the dining room table, trying to catch any scraps of food. I’m betting that Toby slipped him some beef under the table. I know I did. Unless Toby’s actively training the dog to do something, we’re terrible disciplinarians.

  “Did you get any packages today?” he asked as we cleaned up the kitchen.

  “One,” I admitted. “They’re back to the Barbie dolls.”

  Toby was silent, and I turned around from where I’d been stacking dishes in the dishwasher. “I wish you would let me call the police,” he said unhappily.

  I snorted. “That’s exactly what they want. Then it’ll be all over the department that they’re still showing up the rat bitch, and they can all pat each other on the backs and brag about it.”

  He frowned, but didn’t argue the point. “The anniversary’s in a couple of days, it should die down again after that.”

  “I know.” I turned away and finished loading the dishwasher in silence.

  After supper I headed toward the guest bedroom that we take turns using as an office. I rarely bring work home with me, but since I was mostly planning to read a book anyway, it seemed like an okay time to put in some after-hours hours.

  The office might be my favorite room in the apartment. Toby and I had installed a giant, wall-sized bookshelf on one of the cream walls, and there was also a small desk with a laptop, a sturdy wood futon, and a big overstuffed blue armchair. Despite the crowding, though, the whole thing felt relaxed and sort of collegiate, the perfect place for reading case files or paging through online search engines. Before opening Sunset Dies, I started at the computer on my desk, hoping that maybe I could get Nate Christianti an easy answer from one of the databases I subscribe to. The reality of modern private investigation is that it’s harder and harder for people to actually be missing these days. With my P.I. license and some monthly fees, I can track people down by their credit reports, whether they own property, if they’ve ever been in jail, if they’re dead, through a driver’s license, and so on. It’s actually pretty easy, though often tedious.