Текст книги "Lunch at the Club"

Автор книги: Kate Kane

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 1 (всего у книги 11 страниц)

 

Lunch at the Club

By Kate Kane

Lunch at the Club is a work of fiction.  Characters, Incidents, Names, and Places are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.  Any resemblance to any events, locales, or persons living or dead is completely coincidental.

Copyright 2014 Kane Communications

eBook Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Editing by Kaid Kane

Cover image courtesy of Keey Kane

Cover by Joleene Naylor

 

 

Dedication

As always, thanks to the Kane Kids: Keey for her ideas and one liners and Kade for telling me when I’ve finished telling the story and both of them for being a sounding board as I talk about my other family.

Author’s Note

I love hearing from my readers you can contact me by clicking this link.

Just a note about the use of Italian dialog between characters.  When the Bellini and Luciano families talk to each other, they almost always speak Italian.  When they speak Italian in front of non-Italian speaking characters, the dialog appears in Italian.  I do this to help my readers feel the frustration and exclusion that the characters in the book feel during exchanges they don’t understand.  As an avid reader myself, I hate it when an author uses words, phrases, or complete sentences in a language that’s foreign to me and leaves me wondering and often searching the internet to figure out what the character is saying.  So, for my readers, I provide a hyperlink from the Italian dialog to the translation for it.  The translation has a hyperlink that returns the reader back to the spot in the book where you were before.  I hope you find this helpful.

 

Other Books by Kate Kane

The Lane Parker Series

Favor for a Friend

Family Secrets

Coming Soon:

The Murder Mayhem and Merlot Mysteries

Pat Elliott, Kay Kellogg and other members of Lane’s book club, need I say more?

 

Contents

Author’s Note

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Italian Translations

Kate Kane answers your questions

About the Author

Preview Lane’s next adventure

Chapter 1

Overland Park Police Department

While watching crime shows or reading mystery novels when a character came across a body, she had always been the one who said to the character, “Call the police. Put your hands in your pockets. Don’t touch anything.”  And as the character bent to touch the victim and perhaps the murder weapon, Lane would sometimes literally shout, “YOU IDIOT!  DON’T. TOUCH. THAT. CALL 911!!” And yet, there Lane Parker sat, in the Overland Park police station, trying to figure out what could possibly have possessed her to ignore her own wise advice.  Ignore it, hell, it never even crossed her mind.

Thank God, she’d at least had the presence of mind to tell the detectives that she wouldn’t answer any questions without her lawyer.  She took pride that she was able to ignore their promise that she wasn’t under arrest, which soon turned into taunts about innocent people not needing lawyers.  While it was true they hadn’t done the Miranda warning yet; she wasn’t taking any chances.  She was sure that her daughter Jess had phoned…well I guess you’d call him her boyfriend, Ben Bellini.  Ben was a criminal defense attorney and until he arrived, she was determined to keep her mouth shut.  She wasn’t going to take the coffee, tea, or soda they kept offering. She just sat in the interview room; knowing full well they were standing on the other side of the mirrored glass watching her.  She sat hoping that the years of training at Marion High School were finally paying off; as she heard Sr. Mary Margaret’s voice, calmly but sternly, saying, “Polite, well-bred young ladies sit erect, head held high, hands folded in their laps, legs crossed at the ankle at all times no matter the circumstances.” She was doing what she liked to call her calming breathing exercise: inhale slowly for a count of four, hold for a count of two, and exhale for a count of six.  It had worked through the years during union negotiations, corporate buy-outs, and teenage temper tantrums. There was no reason it wouldn’t work now.  She avoided looking at her watch, letting the time pass, while mentally reciting the bible verses she learned from her Nana as they spent time together baking.  “You have to knead the dough before you roll the pie crust out.”  Nana had said. When the crust didn’t turn out like her grandmother’s, Nana had told Lane her secret.  While she kneaded the dough, Nana recited Bible verses in her head.  Whether pie crust, bread, cake, cookies, or any other thing she baked; Nana recited Bible verses as she mixed, stirred, or kneaded.  And Lane had memorized them all. If a recipe said to stir for five minutes she knew which verse to use. This was the method she used now to calculate the time as she waited, alone, in the interview room.  She’d been waiting exactly 42 minutes, when Detective Hunter opened the door and her lawyer entered the room.

Benito Giovanni Bellini, second generation Italian American and the best criminal defense attorney in the Kansas City Metropolitan area, stood exuding calm confidence.  He resembled George Clooney; except he was taller, younger, had a more chiseled body, and was much, much better looking.  He flashed his perfect Bellini million watt smile.

“I’d like to talk to my client alone,” Ben said with his back turned to the detective.

And as the door was closed behind the exiting detective, Lane released a sigh of relief. “Please tell me that Hunter there is still one of your basketball buddies.”

Ben played a friendly game of basketball every Wednesday, in a league comprised mostly of guys from police forces and fire departments around the metropolitan area.

“Yes, Hunter still plays in the league.  On the team that we trounced last week.”  Ben looked at the blood on her hands and clothes and shook his head. “So Red, what brings us here today,” Ben said, using the nickname he’d given her shortly after they’d met.  “Don’t tell me you stumbled across a body.”

Lane, who had strawberry blonde hair, thus the nickname; was an executive at Telco Unlimited, a wireless telecommunications company.  And sadly this wasn’t the first time she’d been in a police interview room, talking about a dead body she’d stumbled over.

Lane heaved a sigh. “I’d love to not tell you that... but I can’t.  You want the long or the short version here?”

When had she turned into that woman she’d read so much about?  The one who couldn’t even go to the bathroom without stumbling into the scene of a murder. Lane was a voracious reader; and she couldn’t help thinking she’d turned into a character from one of the fictional mystery series that she read.

“Start with the short version.”

“Okay, I took the afternoon off to do a little shopping with Jess.  We stopped at the Club for lunch first.  I went into the restroom and saw a woman lying face down on the floor, so I went over to offer assistance.  I felt for a pulse, nothing.  I rolled her onto her back and found a large, bloody gash on her left temple.  And as I was leaning over her, my hands covered in blood, another woman came into the rest room and screamed.”

Lane paused, the woman was… well… screaming bloody murder.  At least she now knew exactly what that phrase meant.

“The next thing I knew, I’d given my statement to the uniformed officer and was looking into the disbelieving faces of Detective Hunter and his partner, explaining that I’d found the woman that way.   Ben, I can’t be certain, because I haven’t seen in her in years, but I think it was Carol Anne Woods.”

Carol Anne Woods had been a local on-air radio personality.  She’d taken a job in Denver; hoping that the bigger market would be just what she needed to spring board her into syndication.  She’d once dated Ben; but then most of the beautiful women, between the ages of 30 and 50 in the greater metropolitan area, had, at one time or another, dated or tried to date Ben.  He was, after all: tall, dark, handsome, rich, smart, witty, charming, and heterosexual. As far as Lane could tell, Ben only had two flaws.  He was drop dead gorgeous and he was 12 years younger than she was.  And, neither of them was ever going to change.

Lane prided herself on her ability to read people, but Ben was often a difficult read.  He’d been practicing law and honing his ability to hide his emotions for years.  She knew Carol Anne held the dating record with Ben at two full months. Since Lane had known him, Ben had never dated anyone longer than the six week mark.  She used to attribute it to a fear of intimacy and commitment. But, recently, their friendship had changed and they had started dating.  They had, in fact, long since, passed that crucial six week mark.

A few months ago, while she and Ben were on a road trip, he’d kissed her; it was then that she had finally realized that she and Ben had what many would call a dating relationship, and had since their first meeting.  Since they’d met, they had talked on the phone several times a week.  They spent nearly every Saturday together running errands.  And before dinner and a movie, they went to Mass together.  During those first three years, Saturday had been their day together.  But Ben had always held Friday in reserve as his date night.  He still held Friday night for date night and now that night belonged to Lane too.

Finally Ben said, “Carol Anne called me to say she’d be in town this week.  She wanted to get together for a drink.  I told her I was with someone now and that we’d have to play it by ear.  So, it could have been her.”  He and Lane were together now and he wouldn’t have jeopardized his relationship with Lane to meet Carol Anne, but he was still curious about what brought her back to Kansas City.   “Who’s Hunter’s partner on this?”

She smiled and winked at him.  “His partner’s a woman. Is the basketball league co-ed?  Is there any chance Detective Crane plays with y’all?”

Ben shook his head. “No. Volleyball’s Lila’s sport.”

The door opened.  Detective Crane entered the room and lyrics to the Joe Diffey song Third Rock from the Sun began playing in Lane’s head. “She walks into Smokey’s one hip at a time…”  Lila Crane was about five feet seven inches tall and athletic.  Her blue-black hair was pulled into a sleek pony tail and she had a gleam in her emerald green eyes as a smile spread across her full red lips.  She could have been a body double for Angelina Jolie in the Tomb Raider movies.

“Well, Counselor, long time, no see.”

Although Ben didn’t need to see her to know whose silky voice was talking to him, he turned and looked at Lila Crane.  The last time he’d spoken to Lila was three months ago.  It was over Memorial Day weekend that he’d called her to break a date, so he could help Lane with a favor for a friend.  His relationship with Lane had changed that weekend.  Lane had been crying and Ben wanted to comfort her, console her, so he pulled her into his arms.  The smell of her hair, the feel of her skin, the beat of her heart so close to his coupled with a healthy dose of lust and that was all it took.  He kissed Lane and never even thought of Lila Crane again. From what he knew of Lila, she might be the kind of woman to hold a grudge.  It would be better for everyone if she didn’t know that he was dating Lane Parker.

Ben was a babe magnet, yet to Lane’s observation, he didn’t encourage it.  Women sort of just flocked toward him.  Half of the beautiful women in the greater metropolitan area had their eyes on Ben.  The other half had already dated him and been dumped.  The question was, in which camp did Detective Crane belong?  In the three years since she’d met Ben, Lane had only met two of the women Ben had dated, and Lila wasn’t one of them.  Since Lila Crane wasn’t so much fawning over Ben as irritated by his presence, Lane was pretty sure that she was either an ex or that Ben hadn’t even given her the time of day.  She didn’t know which it was; and she could only pray that whatever the situation, it wouldn’t end with her in a jail cell.

Ben smiled.  Lane couldn’t tell whether it was polite, friendly, professional, cat that ate the canary, or maybe cat who wanted to lure the canary in.

Without taking his eyes off the detective, Ben replied calmly, “Detective Crane, I understand you have some questions for my client.”

Detective Crane took a seat across the table from Lane and Ben, and was joined by Detective Hunter.   Thank God Detective Hunter had come in,   who knew when the staring match between Ben and Lila Crane would have ended otherwise.

Detective Hunter took the seat next to Lila as he said, “Mrs. Parker what were you doing at the Club today?”

Since this wasn’t Lane’s first time in a police interview room, she knew the drill.  Answer their questions as honestly and as briefly as possible.  Most importantly, don’t elaborate and don’t offer any unsolicited information.

“My daughter and I were there for lunch.”

“Your daughter? Mrs. Parker you didn’t mention your daughter at the scene.”  Lila made it sound like an accusation.

Lane thought it was possible that she hadn’t mentioned Jess to the officer in her initial statement.  After all, Jess hadn’t been with Lane in the restroom, and the manager, who had come into the restroom when he heard the scream, had kept Lane and the screamer away from the other patrons until the first responders arrived on the scene.  That left Jess outside with all of the other curious bystanders.  It was one of the reasons she knew Jess would have called Ben.  Jess would have seen Lane with blood on her hands being not so gently led away and helped into the backseat of a police car. Then she would have seen the body bag being removed.  Jess was 20 years old and an aspiring actress who had landed several small roles on TV, while studying film making at UCLA.

“What relevance does Mrs. Parker’s daughter have to this, Detective?”

“It just strikes me as odd that she hadn’t mentioned her daughter before.  It makes me wonder what else she might have forgotten to tell us,” Lila said and then she raised her eyebrows and smirked at Ben.

They went through the normal questions

“What time did you arrive?”

“Around one o’clock.”

“When did you go to the restroom?”

“As soon as we arrived.”  When Jess arrived at Lane’s office, she’d given her mother some flowers. Lane had gotten pollen, sap, or something on her hands and wanted to wash before she ate. She looked down at her hands now.  They had taken blood samples from her hands and then let her use something like baby wipes to remove the blood. The wipes hadn’t done much good.  In fact it had mostly just smeared the blood around.

Lane remembered that when her oldest child, Jake, was little, he’d fallen and hit the back of his head on the corner of her in-laws’ concrete patio.  Head wounds bleed like crazy.  She still had blood on her hands.  Make no mistake here, she thought, “The blood was literal and not figurative.  She had N O T H I N G to do with the death.”  She knew Ben would get things straightened out and she’d get out of this interview room.  He’d take care of her.  He’d done it before and he’d do it now.

“When did you see the deceased?”

“As soon as I entered the restroom.”

Detective Crane still had her eyes on Ben, but it was Lane she spoke to. “Tell me what you saw when you entered the room.”

“I saw her lying on the tiled floor, next to the sinks, as soon as I entered the room.  She was on her stomach, on the tile, with her head facing the wall.”  Lane held her hands in the air and turned her head to mimic the way the body had appeared on the floor.

“What did you do when you saw the body?”

“I went to her and felt for a pulse. I didn’t feel one so I turned her over, and found the gash on her temple. I was about to get help when the other woman came in and started screaming.  You know the rest.”

The detectives looked at her as Hunter said, “We have identified the deceased.”

So, that should be a good thing Lane thought.  God willing, unlike the last time, it would be someone she didn’t even know and she had no reason to kill.

“Her name is Carol Anne Woods,” Crane said.

Then, still watching Ben, she opened a file folder and pushed two pictures across the table.  Both pictures were of Carol Anne.  One was taken in the restroom at the Club and the other appeared to be have been taken in the autopsy room.  Lane looked at Ben.  He patted her hand once.

“My client told me she thought she recognized the deceased.”

“How well did you know the deceased, Mrs. Parker?” Again Crane hadn’t taken her eyes off Ben as she talked.

“We were acquaintances.  I’d met her once or twice at social events.”

“You hadn’t spoken to her since she moved to Denver?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

Heck, Lane was pretty sure she hadn’t spoken more than 50 words to her… ever.  They had met at a fund raiser for a new Catholic high school.  Lane had been recruited by one of the board members as a volunteer and Carol Anne was there with Ben.  It was probably a week or two before the break-up and maybe three months before Carol Anne left for Denver. It was a Friday evening in the summer.

~~~

The fund raiser was a carnival and was held in the gym and the parking lot of the Church that both Lane and Ben attended.  Lane was manning the duck booth.  The game that has little plastic ducks floating around in a moat with numbers on the bottom of them.  You pay two dollars each or get three for five dollars and make your selections.  Then, based on the number on the bottom of the duck, you select a prize.

Lane looked up after placing a big prize duck back in the moat, saw Ben at the ring toss booth, and waved. A couple of minutes later, he brought over a dozen kids from the little league team he coached and dropped a fifty dollar bill on the table.  Lane explained to the kids how it worked, and each of them grabbed two ducks and waited patiently… well as patiently as six and seven year olds can, while she checked each duck and they claimed their prizes.  The kids wandered off leaving Ben and the woman.

Until that moment, Lane had thought the woman was the mother of one of the kids.  She then realized the woman was Ben’s date.  He made introductions.  Lane smiled and reached to shake the other woman’s hand as she said that she’d heard Carol Anne’s show on the radio and what a pleasure it was to meet her. Carol Anne had a limp handshake. On the radio she had a sultry seductive voice as she talked about love and relationships.  In person not so much, as she said, “So, you’re the woman Ben talks about so much.”

Lane had gotten another surge of kids who wanted ducks, so Ben asked what time things wrapped up and Lane agreed to meet them at her favorite barbecue restaurant when she’d finished at the carnival.  She remembered it was late August, and it was hot. Carol Anne was wearing a light blue sundress with little white embroidered flowers with white, wedge heeled espadrilles.   As they walked away, Carol Anne put her arm through Ben’s and grabbed his hand.  Lane remembered thinking it was less a loving gesture and more like she was marking her territory.  She smiled now, remembering how ridiculous she thought it was at the time.

~~~

“Mrs. Parker, is there anything you’d like to add,” Detective Hunter asked.

Lane shook her head slightly. “Nothing I can think of.”

Ben gave Lane’s hand a squeeze, looked at the detective, and asked, “Are you cutting my client loose, or are you going to charge her with something?”

“We’re not charging her at this time, but we’re going to need her shoes and clothes, Counselor,” Lila Crane said.

Lane looked at Ben, thinking, at first in a panic, “They want my clothes?” And then calmer, “Ah of course, they wanted to check for blood spatter patterns.  Yes, I have read way too many crime novels.” Actually Lane usually read between three and five books a week, all crime and mystery.  The fact was that there was no blood spatter in the room where she’d found Carol Anne.  There was just Carol Anne, on the floor, with a gash on her temple.  If they wanted her clothes they could have them.  Lane’s suit and shoes were ruined anyway.

Ben opened his brief case and produced a zip lock bag containing a T-shirt, yoga pants, flip-flops, and fresh underwear. Lane wondered how Ben had known to bring clothes and then realized that it must have been Jess’s work.  She followed a female uniformed officer to a room where she’d been directed to step onto a tarp and told to remove her shoes and clothes. The uniformed officer and Detective Crane then carefully bagged and tagged the items. Until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to her that she’d have to strip in front of strangers.  Lane wasn’t embarrassed, even though she eventually stood there naked.  She’d birthed three children, and with her youngest she had labored over 12 hours.  It felt like everyone in the metropolitan Omaha area had come into the room during those 12 long hours.  Besides, she was nearing 50 and still had the body of a 35 year old.  It felt surreal, like someone else was disrobing, stepping off the tarp, and then dressing again, but she wasn’t embarrassed.

They walked back to the interview room where Ben waited.  Crane jerked her head toward Ben. “Your client’s free to go.  Just see to it that she doesn’t leave town.”

Client and Attorney walked through the squad room, accompanied by Detective Crane, and made their way to the lobby where Lane’s daughter, Jess, waited.  Jess jumped up and hurried to her mother as Lane and Ben passed from the secured area.  Hugs were exchanged as Lane whispered into Jess’s ear, “Let’s talk outside.”  Call her paranoid, but she’d read enough crime novels and seen enough crime TV to know there is no expectation of privacy in a police station.  No matter what she had to say, she didn’t want to say it within ear shot of the Overland Park Police.  Ben and Detective Crane were saying what seemed to be polite goodbyes as mother and daughter left the building.

They walked toward the parking lot and the safety of Lane’s Cadillac Escalade.  Jess, who had her mother’s purse, began rummaging through it.  “I’m sure you have some hand sanitizer in here, Felix.”

Jess, who had nicknames for everyone in the family, had called her mother Felix for years now referring to the cleanliness freak in the Neil Simon play The Odd Couple.  Jess brought out the keys and clicked the remote to unlock the doors. She began walking toward the passenger door.

“No, Jess, you drive.”

Once in the car Jess handed Lane the hand sanitizer and Lane opened the glove compartment to get napkins.  She really needed to wash her hands, but until she got home this would have to do.  Jess started the car and looked at her mother.  “We missed lunch, and it’s nearly dinner time now, but I imagine you want to get out of those clothes and have a shower.”

Lane smiled.  She had to give it to her daughter.  The girl really knew her mother. Lane had been wearing a flax colored silk suit this morning.  Now it was in the hands of the Overland Park police, considered as evidence which she may never get back, but it didn’t matter, the suit was ruined.  There was no dry cleaner on earth who could get out all of that blood.

“It’s not what we had planned, but how do you feel about ordering a pizza,” Jess asked. “We can make a salad and just stay in.”

Lane heard a tap on the window and saw Ben standing at the door.  She hit the button to lower the window.

Ben leaned down to eye level. He looked at her as she shook the hand sanitizer and tried to squeeze the last of it onto her hands. “Hi, Jess.  Red, are you all right?”

Lane gave her head a slight shake. “I’ve been better.  We’re on our way home for pizza and salad.”

Friday was date night for Ben and Lane and that meant going out alone.  She should have been surprised when he said he’d pick up the pizza and meet them at her house.  Date night was important to both of them, but Ben knew that being safe in her own home was more important tonight.

Lane started to raise the window, but Jess called out to Ben.  “Hey, you’d better get two.  Jake’s coming over.”

Jake was Lane’s oldest child.  He was 25 and was a civil engineer working for Burke and Jones.  He had a house near 119th and Metcalf.  Lane had given each of her Kids two hundred fifty thousand dollars from an unexpected windfall she’d gotten during the summer.  Jake had used his money to buy a house and furnish it.

“You called Jake,” Lane asked as she raised the window.

“Mom, I’m a Parker. I called everyone.” They laughed.  They had a long running family joke.  What are the three fastest forms of communication?  Telephone, Telegraph and Tell-a-Parker.

“Seriously, Jake didn’t have plans tonight and since I’m only here through the weekend, I thought he could hang out with us.  When will Jams be home from football practice?”

Lane smiled. Jams was Jess’s nickname for the youngest of the Parker Kids, Jamison.  Jamie was a senior in high school and would be going to West Point in June.

Lane leaned her head against the window.  Could this day possibly get any worse?  And then she did a little mind slap, thinking that it certainly had been worse for Carol Anne.