LITMIR.BIZ

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from the mayor’s office. He’d stay on it because that little girl deserved justice. He didn’t envy Andy’s need to balance justice with politics. He just respected his friend’s ability to take the heat while letting his men do the job they were paid to do.

      “I’ll try not to leave you on the hot seat too long,” he promised.

      “You can’t know how much I appreciate that,” Andy said wryly. “By the way, before I forget, you had a call earlier, some woman by the name of Jackson. When she heard you were out, she demanded to speak to me.” He grinned. “Tough lady. Seems to have something on her mind.”

      Walker shook his head. “Don’t know her.”

      Andy fished the message out of a pile of papers on his desk. “Says she’s with Social Services down in Trinity Harbor, Virginia.”

      “Never heard of it.”

      “I’ve been there. It’s a great little town on the Potomac a couple of hours from here. The sweetest crabs you’ll ever taste. Victorian houses. A bunch of little froufrou shops. You know, the kind women love. Antiques, crafts, all that artsy crap. Gail was in heaven. She wants me to buy a place down there so we can spend weekends and summers away from D.C. Says she could support us by opening a shop of her own.” He sighed. “To tell you the truth, after a day like today, it’s beginning to sound real good to me.”

      “You’d be bored to tears in a week,” Walker predicted.

      Andy grinned. “Maybe less, but I’m willing to give it a try. Give the woman a call. She said it was important.”

      “Whatever,” Walker said, tucking the message into his pocket. Strangers took a back seat to the immediacy of this investigation.

      Two hours later, the message was still in his pocket, untouched, when the phone on his desk rang.

      “Ames.”

      “Walker Ames?” an unfamiliar voice asked.

      “That’s me.”

      “This is Frances Jackson. I left you a message several hours ago,” she said, a note of censure in her voice.

      Andy might have found her tough attitude amusing, but prissy women like this always got Walker’s back up. “So you did,” he agreed, tilting his chair back on two legs as he prepared to enjoy himself a little. On a day like this, any amusement, however slight, was welcome.

      “Then you did get the message?” she asked.

      “I did.”

      “I believe I mentioned it was important. Didn’t your boss explain that?”

      “He did.”

      “Then why haven’t you returned the call?” she asked impatiently.

      “I’ve had some important things of my own to deal with.”

      “Such as?”

      “A dead five-year-old, shot right through the chest.”

      Her dismayed gasp gave him a certain measure of satisfaction. “Okay, then,” he said, ready to end his little diversion and get back to work. He wanted to hit the streets again before dark. It was destined to be another fourteen-hour day. “You’ve got me now. What’s on your mind?”

      “Are you related to Elizabeth Jean Flanagan?”

      Oh, hell, he thought, as the front legs of the chair hit the floor with a thud. What had Beth gone and done now? His baby sister had always been troubled. She had taken off at sixteen with a worthless piece of trash named Ryan Flanagan, who’d eventually gotten around to marrying her, gotten her pregnant two years later, then dumped her on a highway somewhere outside of Vegas when he concluded the responsibility for a kid was more than he’d bargained for.

      That was the last Walker had heard from her, ten, maybe twelve years ago. She’d called him in tears, saying she couldn’t live without that jerk. Walker had badly wanted to tell her she was better off without him, but he’d managed to keep his opinion to himself.

      Instead, he had overnighted her some money for a ticket back to D.C., but she’d never shown up. Nor had she ever called again. He’d tried every way he knew how to trace her, but if she was working, it was for cash. There wasn’t a Social Security number in the system, probably thanks to the gypsy lifestyle she’d led with Flanagan. The man had thought the government was evil and that the less it knew about him, the better. Some of that must have rubbed off on Beth. She didn’t own a car and hadn’t registered for a driver’s license. There was no trail of credit card debt he could follow. He’d been stymied. He didn’t even know if she’d had the baby or gotten an abortion the way she’d been talking about doing.

      “Detective Ames?”

      The woman’s testy voice snapped him back to the present. “What about my sister?”

      “Then she is your sister?”

      “You wouldn’t be calling unless you knew that,” he said tightly.

      “Not with certainty,” she said. “I discovered the names of Beth’s parents through her birth certificate. Then I ran into a dead end finding them.”

      “They died several years ago.”

      “That explains it, then. At any rate, I checked at the hospital where Beth was born and discovered that an older brother had been born to the same parents, one Walker David Ames.”

      “Maybe you should be the detective, Ms. Jackson.”

      “I’m just persistent,” she said. “Besides, once I finally had your name, you were much easier to locate.”

      No one went to that much trouble without a really good reason. Walker was beginning to get the uneasy sense that he should have taken a page out of Flanagan’s book and maintained a lower profile.

      “And now you’ve found me,” he congratulated her. “Why?”

      “When was the last time you heard from your sister?”

      “Years ago.”

      “Are you her closest relative?”

      “Yes. Why?”

      “I’m sorry,” she said, sounding suddenly sympathetic. “I really am.”

      “Sorry about what? What the hell is going on?”

      “Your sister is dead.”

      Once the blunt words were spoken, he realized he should have expected it. He’d been on the other end of enough calls like this to know exactly how they went, but Beth? Dead? It just didn’t compute. For all of her reckless ways, he couldn’t imagine her dead. She’d been beautiful and full of life before she’d gotten mixed up with Flanagan.

      “How?” he asked in a choked voice, fearing the worst. In his line of work, homicide and drug overdoses came to mind quicker than anything else.

      “She caught the flu a few weeks ago. She didn’t get to a hospital until it was too late. It turned into pneumonia, and the antibiotics didn’t work. There was nothing else the doctors could do. We’ve been trying to locate her family ever since.” She paused, then corrected herself. “I mean the rest of her family.”

      The implications of her remark made his blood run cold. “Don’t tell me she was still with that scum Flanagan.”

      “No, he died before she ever came to Trinity Harbor. A motorcycle crash, I believe. But there is the boy. Her son. Your nephew, ” she stressed in a way that suggested she had specific expectations.

      “What are you telling me, Ms. Jackson?”

      “I think you’d better come to Trinity Harbor, Detective. You and I need to talk.”

      “About what?” he asked, though he already knew the answer.

      “There’s

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