“C’mon, we have to find a picnic spot.” Jase reached for her hand.
She glanced down at the shoes. “Can’t we eat here?”
Leaning down, he scooped the high heels up and handed them to her. Then he urged her off the path onto the grass. It felt cool and soothing beneath her feet.
“Barefoot in the Park. There’s an old Neil Simon movie by that title,” he remarked as he led her further away from the footpath.
“Starring Jane Fonda and Robert Redford when they were in their twenties. You know that film?”
“Jordan has a copy of it. She’s a real movie buff. One of her favorite ways to relax is watching old films.”
“I used to watch movies all the time with my dad. He has an amazing collection. Some of them are really old—The Thin Man and some Charlie Chan movies.”
“You’ll have to look through Jordan’s collection. How about here?” Jase asked.
“Great.” He’d chosen a circular stretch of grass at the foot of a hillside banked with large boulders. A line of trees branched off on either side providing plenty of shade, and a soft breeze offered respite from the heat. Maddie glanced over her shoulder. The footpath was still visible, but it was a couple hundred yards away and the sounds were muted.
Jase settled himself cross-legged on the grass, and after hitching up her skirt, she joined him.
“Sorry there’s no picnic blanket.” He dug into the bag and handed her a hot dog and a bottled water.
“I’ll complain later when I see the grass stains. Right now I’m too hungry to care.” She turned her attention to the hot dog. The spicy aroma of onions and chili had her stomach growling.
“I ordered it loaded,” Jase explained.
She licked mustard off her thumb, then bit into the hot dog. The explosion of flavors on her tongue had her closing her eyes and sighing. “It’s great. I can even taste some of the flavors of Santa Fe.”
“It’s the chili,” Jase said around a mouthful. “Although I like mine hotter.”
“So that it cauterizes your throat.”
“Exactly.”
“Me too.”
The second time she paused to lick condiments off her fingers, Jase dug in the bag and produced napkins.
For a few moments they ate in silence, except for the muted sounds from the footpath. And farther away, she could hear the sounds of New York City traffic—the horns, the revved motors. But here in this spot, the buzzing of bees was louder.
She’d eaten nearly the whole hot dog when she set it carefully on a bed of napkins and opened her water bottle. As she swallowed the cold liquid her thoughts slipped back to the four-way conversation they’d had with Cash and Jordan.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Jase said.
She met his eyes. “Ever since I got that phone call from Mr. Fitzwalter, my mind has been filled with questions.”
Jase used one of the napkins to wipe his mouth. “Maybe I can help. Ask away.”
Maddie hesitated. She didn’t want to return yet to the questions that had been plaguing her about her parents’ separation, about Eva, about Eva’s death. Not when the sun was shining so brightly and they’d found a little oasis of seclusion in the teeming city. So she asked, “Tell me about your family.”
His eyebrows rose. “I’ll bet that’s not the question at the top of your list.”
“Maybe not.” She smiled as she stretched out her legs and leaned back on her hands. “But I asked it. I already know you have a brother.”
Jase gathered up their trash and put it in the empty bag. “D.C., aka Duncan Dunleavy, is a captain in the army’s military police. He’s served two tours of duty in Iraq, and he’s currently on leave because of a leg injury. Last night when I landed at LaGuardia, I called my office and he picked up the phone. He visited my mother and sister in Baltimore for a while and then a couple of days ago he decided to drop in on me.”
“But you were out of the country.”
Jase nodded. “He decided until I got back that he’d work at my office. My partner being the smart man that he is took D.C. up on the offer. My brother likes to keep busy. You might have a chance to meet him in person later today—depending on how long his charade runs with Adam.”
“And the rest of your family?”
“My father was a career military man in the marines. Nineteen years ago, when he was just a year short of early retirement, he was killed by friendly fire.”
“I’m so sorry, Jase.”
“It was a long time ago. D.C. and I were nine and ten, and we were very close to him, which is probably why we both ended up joining a branch of the military. Then there’s my mother, who’s a high-school principal in Baltimore.” He smiled. “You’d like her. She’s a petite woman—but tough. She takes no prisoners. And there’s my sister Darcy who’s still in college. She’s not sure yet what she wants to be when she grows up. Currently she’s torn between law school and joining the staff of our congresswoman. D.C. and I don’t want her going into the army or the navy, so we’re bad-mouthing lawyers and politicians.”
Maddie’s eyes widened. “Why?”
“We learned when she was two that anytime we offer advice, she does the exact opposite.”
She laughed, and he joined her. The way he described his family, she could almost picture them.
“I’ve got a cousin too. Sloan Campbell. He trains horses out in the San Diego area. His father and mine were stepbrothers. I haven’t seen him in years.”
She tilted her head to one side. “How did you end up in the security business?”
Jase’s eyes grew more serious. “I guess one answer is that my father’s dream was to open his own private-investigation firm once he got out of the army. I always thought that one day D.C. and I might join him—a sort of family business. That’s why I went to Wharton and majored in business. But I also got into security and investigation because I like solving puzzles.”
“Puzzles?”
“It was the same thing that drew me to special ops in the navy. Oh, I liked the action and adventure, the adrenaline highs, but it was coming up with a plan that I liked best. There’d always be this goal, and I’d enjoy coming up with more than one way to get to it. Because a good op always needs back-up plans.”
Maddie studied him for a moment. The man had a natural bent for making light of things—even serious issues. But there was something more serious in his eyes when he talked about his work. “It sounds a bit like designing jewelry. I get a vision of the finished product in my head, and then I have to figure out a way to get there.”
“It’s a lot like that.” Jase reached out and took her hand. “Now, why don’t you ask me the question that put that frown on your face when you were eating?”
Maddie sighed. It helped that Jase had taken her hand. It was a question that had been nagging at her ever since she’d started to get to know her sister. “What can you tell me about Jordan’s relationship with Eva?”
“Jordan never talked much about it, but I sensed it wasn’t as close as she may have wanted it to be.”
“Why not?”
“Eva was a very self-contained woman, very focused on her art. Jordan never put it into words, but I think your sister believed that if she had inherited her mother’s talent for designing jewelry, she and Eva would have been closer.”
Something tightened around Maddie’s heart. “Do you think that’s true?”
Jase shook his head. “I think Eva distanced herself from everyone because the most important thing to her was her art and Eva Ware Designs. Your sister called it tunnel vision. That’s why Jordan’s description of how your mother might have wanted to handle the robbery rings so true to me. I should have anticipated that Eva would have wanted to keep it quiet and minimize the scandal.”
Releasing Maddie’s hand, he rolled to his feet and paced to the boulder. “That’s why she came to me instead of going to the police. I should have pressed harder to convince her to let my partner Dino work on it. But I was scheduled to leave the next morning and I was thinking about the three hostages they were holding.” He whirled to face her. “I’m betting Jordan’s right and Eva did some investigating on her own.”
Maddie got up off the ground and moved to him. “You believe she figured out who broke into the store.”
“Yes. And I’m betting it was someone we met today.”
The faces ran through Maddie’s mind on a little video loop—Arnold Bartlett, Cho, Michelle Tan, Adam. She didn’t want it to be any of them.
“If I hadn’t taken that case in South America, if I’d just been here…”
Maddie lifted her hands to his face. “The father and the son you helped rescue might be dead. It won’t do any good to blame yourself for Eva’s death. We’ve got to concentrate on solving the puzzle. Who ran Eva down and why?”
AT HER TOUCH, Jase felt his temper and frustration with himself ease. “You’re right. And we should get on it.”
“So what’s the plan? I was thinking before we go back to the office, we should go to Eva’s apartment and find the appointment calendar. I’m sure it will tell us something.”He took her wrist in his hand intending to guide her out, but then he felt her pulse speed instantly at his touch and it drew an immediate response from him. They had places to go, people to see. But what he felt when he looked into her eyes had him backing into the boulder and drawing her closer.