“Who says police chiefs don’t have a sense of humor? Wine or scotch?” she asked, holding a bottle of each.
Jesse pointed at the wine. As he watched the wine pour into the glasses he thought that he should consider moving back into the heart of Paradise. It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy his house. He did. It was awfully pretty out where he lived — peaceful, too — but it had never quite suited him. He wasn’t lonely, not exactly. While not a total disaster, his experiment with cat ownership hadn’t done the trick. His house was the kind of place to share with a woman and he was less sure now than ever that he would get married again.
He supposed that if Sunny Randall had been able to extricate herself from her marriage, they might’ve worked together. But she was equally inept at distancing herself from Richie as he from Jenn. Though they still kept in touch, that ship had sailed. He thought about Diana again. They could definitely work. He would be willing to try. The thing was, he didn’t know if she was willing. She made the right noises about it and when they were together that one weekend none of the magic between them had gone away. He wondered if Diana was too independent and too much about the action to be tied to a small-town police chief. Her physical beauty notwithstanding, the things that attracted Jesse to Diana probably made her an unlikely bride. Maybe that’s why he had never fully let go of Jenn.
Jesse shook his head at himself. All this wondering, all these what-ifs, were new to him. He had never been the type of man to go round and round with himself like this. He’d never been a man to second-guess or to waste too much energy on regret. Then he laughed silently to himself. Jesse had a sneaking suspicion that Dix’s views on these matters would likely differ greatly from his own. He would probably never know, as Dix seemed to delight in not sharing his own feelings about Jesse with Jesse. He could hear Dix’s voice in his head. It’s not important how I feel about it. How do you feel about it, Jesse? Suddenly, Jesse got out of his own head, stopped looking at the wine being poured, and readjusted his eyes to the woman doing the pouring. He just felt very lucky that Tamara Elkin had come to the door.
“You seem deep in thought,” Tamara said. She handed him his wine and sat down on the sofa next to him. They clinked glasses and sipped. “What were you thinking about?”
“Luck.”
“What about it?”
He shrugged. Tamara moved farther away from Jesse so she could study his expression.
“What?” he said.
“You’re an interesting fella, Jesse Stone.”
“Better than being a dull one, I guess.”
“Interesting’s not the right word.” She tilted her head as she continued staring. “No, definitely not.”
He took a long sip of wine and played along. “Then what is?”
“You’re what my daddy calls a Chinese box.”
“A Chinese box?”
“Beautiful on the outside, full of secrets, and impossible to open.”
“Not impossible,” he said.
“Certainly not easy.”
“What fun is easy?”
She laughed. “I don’t know. Sometimes easy ain’t too shabby.”
He nodded. “Point taken. Then let’s go back to the beautiful-on-the-outside part.”
“After dinner,” she said. “Dinner was promised and dinner you shall have.”
“We can skip a meal if you’re not up for it.”
“Not this one, Jesse. I’m hungry. Get in the dining room.”
“Sure, Doc.”
Jesse stood, wine in hand, and walked to the table. As he walked past Tamara she shook her head at him.
“A Chinese box, all right,” she said. “A Chinese box.”
67
Suit had been happy to once again escape the front desk and didn’t much care how or why. Getting to go into Boston was just an added benefit, and he liked that Jesse had let him take a Paradise cruiser to collect their “guest.” Suit knew he should have been long past the stage where strutting around in his uniform or driving a marked car mattered, but it did. He didn’t think he would ever get over his love of being a cop, though the bullet scars across his abdomen and the last month inside the station house had surely put a strain on that romance. So, too, had the drive from Boston back to Paradise.
Suit was no Sigmund Freud, but it was easy to see that this Jameson guy he’d collected at the bus station had a few pieces missing from his jigsaw puzzle. His hard blue eyes were very far away and staring at something no one else could see. And it was pretty clear, too, that he was either homeless or most of the way to the street. He smelled of old sweat and smoke, and a razor hadn’t touched his face in months. His beard was ragged, long, and black. His jeans were filthy and the cuffs were frayed to the point of disintegration. His once-beige desert boots were now blackened, scuffed, and held together with layers of duct tape. He wore an equally tattered fatigue jacket that bore the bald eagle sleeve patch of the 101st Airborne and the name JAMESON written across the left side of the chest. Most of the snaps and buttons were missing or broken and the zipper pull was gone. Beneath the jacket he was wearing a Bubba Gump Shrimp Company T-shirt that had to be as old as the movie.
Although Jameson had saluted when Suit introduced himself, it had taken all of Suit’s golly-gee and aw, shucks charm to get the guy’s rank — corporal — and that was all he got. He wasn’t about to offer up a first name or much of anything else. Getting him into the cruiser wasn’t easy, and even then Suit wasn’t sure that his passenger would stay planted in the backseat. At every traffic light and stop sign, Suit steeled himself, preparing to deal with Jameson if he tried to jump ship. Suit knew that with the cage between the front and back seats and with the back-door security locks in place, it was nearly impossible for a prisoner — or, in this case, a passenger — to escape. But none of that meant Jameson wouldn’t attempt it. Prisoners, the drunk and drugged-up ones, the crazies, sometimes did. They’d try to kick out a window or claw through the cage. It was never pretty and it could be dangerous for everyone involved. Suit finally relaxed a little when they hit the highway.
He tried to make conversation with Jameson, but had no luck with that. All Jameson did was keep his head on a swivel during the whole ride up to Paradise. Out of frustration, Suit asked Jameson if he’d like something to eat or drink. That usually worked to break the ice with everyone. Jameson was the exception. But when they passed the road sign that welcomed visitors to Paradise, Jameson stopped swiveling his head. He leaned forward in his seat as far as his shoulder belt would allow.
“Do you know Molly Burke?” he asked.
It was all Suit could do to keep his concentration on the road. Maybe this guy really was legit, Suit thought, but he wasn’t sure he should answer. When he didn’t say anything, Jameson spoke again.
“She was very pretty.”
Suit figured he better say something. “I know a Molly.”
“Is she very pretty?”
Suit ignored the question. “How do you know your Molly?”
It was Jameson’s turn to ignore Suit’s question. “He said Molly was very pretty. The prettiest girl he ever knew.”
“He? Who’s he?” Suit asked.
All that did was get Jameson to withdraw. He sat back in his seat and once again began scanning the road from side to side.
Suit tried to rescue the conversation. “Yeah, the Molly I know is very pretty.”
But it was no good. Jameson had gone back to that faraway place in his head. When he pulled up to the station, the reporters all rushed the cruiser. Suit called in to get some help, to clear the way, but it was too late. Jameson was in full-fledged freak-out mode, kicking at the street-side back-door window. Suit hopped out of the car, yanked open the roadside passenger door, and grabbed Jameson. The guy may have been a mess, probably twenty pounds too skinny for his frame, but even Suit had a tough time handling him.