.

quickly pushed it aside. “Sure, Court, there was something else I wanted to do. I wanted to go out West and be a cowgirl. Right after I was the first female astronaut to step on the moon. One small step for woman, one giant leap for womankind. Come on, let’s get back to work.”

      “Stay where you are,” he said, and something in his voice told her he wasn’t going to let her get away without giving him a straight answer.

      “Why, Court?” she asked him, nearly pleaded with him. “Why this question and why now? What I want, wanted, has nothing to do with what happened then or with what’s happening now.”

      “True enough. But someday this is going to be over, one way or the other. What are you going to do then, Jade? Run the agency by yourself?”

      She shook her head. She’d wondered when he’d get around to asking this particular question.

      “No, that’s not possible. Teddy was the heart and soul. I was just the nuts-and-bolts person, working the computer and hardly ever going out into the field. I don’t have… I don’t have his flair. The Sunshine Detective Agency is officially out of business.”

      “Leaving you free to go out West and be a cowgirl or fly to the moon. Which will it be, Jade?”

      Did he have any idea how much he was hurting her? Tears stung her eyes, and she blinked them away as she cleared the counter. “Neither. I suppose I’ll have to find a new dream.”

      “Or tell me the real one,” Court said, finishing his sandwich. “I’m guessing ‘chef isn’t on the top of your list.”

      Jade smiled at his attempt to lighten the moment. Obviously he did know he was hurting her. Yet he kept on pushing. Maybe if they’d talked more before they’d married, they wouldn’t have fallen apart at the first obstacle. Maybe…

      “You’re not going to stop, are you? You’re going to push at me and push at me until I tell you what you think you want to know.”

      “That’s the general plan, sweetheart, yes,” he said, following her back into the living room. “Is it working?”

      She stopped and turned to face him, surprised that he had been walking so closely behind her. “A doctor. I thought I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up, all right?”

      Court just looked at her, his expression unreadable. “What kind?”

      Jade sighed. “What do you mean, what kind? A doctor doctor. Okay, so I thought I wanted to be a pediatrician,” she said quietly. “From the Christmas I was six and got a play medical kit and practiced on all our dolls. And on Jessica and Jolie, whenever they’d let me. It’s all I’d ever wanted. And then our mother took a hike and I had to have other priorities. Now I’m edging into my thirties and too old to think about years of medical school, specializing, going through an internship and residency. A dream, that’s all it was back then, and I’ve put it away. Happy now?”

      “No, I can’t say that I am,” Court told her as he reached out a hand and gently stroked her cheek. “A pediatrician. Because you love medicine and you love kids. Ah, baby, it still hurts, doesn’t it? All these years later, and it still hurts.”

      She longed to melt against him, feel his arms tight around her, his strength supporting her as she let go of some of her grief. For Teddy. For everything she’d lost. “I told you, Court, medical school was only a childish dream. I’m too practical to live in dreams. I needed… I wanted to help Teddy.”

      “Because he needed you. Because he relied on you. And you let him steal your dream.”

      “No, that’s not true!” Jade bristled, probably because she’d sometimes thought the same thing. “My mother was gone. She didn’t care enough about me…about us all, I mean, to stick around. So maybe I needed him, too. Maybe I needed to feel indispensable to someone. Did you ever think of that? Don’t dissect me, Court. I know I’m not perfect, I know I’ve got what shrinks call baggage. But it’s my baggage and I can live with it. And we made it work, Court. Look at Jolie, look at Jessica. Look at their successes. We made it work.”

      “Not to belittle your achievement with your sisters, Jade, but to hell with Jess and Jolie. I’m looking at you, I’m looking at us. But there is no us. I never really fit in there anywhere, did I? Yet there I was, at least for a little while. Jess and Jolie grown and gone, and you still here, still mothering the bright, personable, but always needy Teddy. What was I for you, Jade? Your one stab at rebellion, at adventure—at independence?”

      “You’re wrong. It wasn’t like that between us. It couldn’t have been like that, damn it.” Her eyes shifted involuntarily to the left—according to

      Jessica, a sure sign someone is at least searching for an alternative truth—so she quickly looked at Court again. “Don’t cheapen what we had, please, or try some psychobabble explanation to explain it. I loved you.”

      “I hope so, Jade. I really hope so. I hope that, somewhere inside, you still do.” He leaned in and kissed her. On the cheek. Like they were friends, pals. Former lovers, one-time mates. “Come on, let’s do what you really want to do. Let’s get back to work.”

      Jade nodded, unable to say anything, and Court took her hand and led her back to the couch, back to the stack of files on the coffee table.

      He picked up the Vanishing Bride file and tossed it to the floor. “One down. What’s next?”

      “The Fishtown Strangler,” Jade said, willing her mind back on the cases. The cases, and solving them, clearing Teddy’s name, that’s all that was important now. Later, when the nightmare was over, when she’d fixed things—yes, fixed things, the way she always did—only then could she think about what Court had said to her. “This is where it all gets tricky, doesn’t it? Jess and Matt found the killer, but he denies that Tarin White was one of his victims.”

      “The man’s a terminal AIDS patient in Grater- ford Prison. His confession to Matt and Jess could almost be called a dying declaration. There’s no reason not to believe him. And no real reason for him to lie, come to think of it.”

      “I know,” Jade said, looking at the photograph of Tarin White. “Yet the MO, on the surface, is so similar, right down the line. Raped, strangled, dumped in Fishtown. The same brand of plastic wash-line cord used to bind her wrists and ankles, everything. Allegedly a prostitute, just like the other victims, and smack inside the time frame when the Fishtown Strangler was active. So what makes her different?”

      “Which of Jess’s many theories do you want to run with?” Court asked her, picking up a legal pad with Jessica’s neat notes written on the top sheet, the main points highlighted in pink. “Crazy as it sounds, I pretty much favor the one where Tarin White dovetails somewhat into the Baby in the Dumpster case.”

      “I know, me, too. Tarin as the dead baby’s mother,” Jade said, nodding. “Farfetched, but possible, especially since the infant’s body had been frozen, making time of death impossible to determine. Nobody ever claimed the child, no one reported a child that age missing. With Tarin dead, who could?” She reached for the Baby in the Dumpster file. “Give me the date of Tarin’s murder again.”

      After a few moments Court told her the date on the medical examiner’s report. “Does that work?”

      “It’s the same year, the same summer. About three months give or take between the day of Tarin’s death and the discovery of the baby’s body. But anything else is conjecture, just another of Jessica’s theories. Let’s review what we actually know, okay?”

      Court ripped off the page of Jessica’s notes and picked up a pen, ready to start a new list. “Whenever you’re ready.”

      “In a second,” Jade said, shuffling notes and papers. “So much is fact and so much is conjecture. It’s becoming difficult to sort them out in my head. Okay, let’s start just with Tarin.”

      “Prostitute.”

      “We