Welcome to Last Chance (Last Chance #1)(42)
Author: Hope Ramsay

“Hey, look,” Chad said. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”

Clay let go of a cynical laugh. “Oh, yes, it does. But for the record, I’m glad you’re here.”

“Really? So you’re ready to reconsider and come back? We could sure use—”

“Are you insane? I meant that I’m glad you came to get Tricia. I’m glad on her account.”

“Oh, that.” Chad shrugged like that didn’t matter much. “Look, the thing is, everyone in Tumbleweed feels bad about what happened. Fact is, we wouldn’t be where we are today without your songs. It—”

“You mean you wouldn’t be where you are without ‘I Gotta Know.’ ” If he could bottle up this hurt and turn it into lyrics, he might end up as a success at something. Isn’t that what Jane had told him on Saturday night? Country music was made for sad love songs, and he had plumbed the depths of human heartache.

“The songs are good, Clay, that’s what I mean. But more than that, there’s no reason you had to walk out. Everyone wants you back. Our new fiddler hasn’t worked out, and there’s a place for you in the band, man.”

Something deadly coursed through Clay. Chad Ames was a hanger-on. And so were Tricia and Ricki. They came into his life when they needed him and left when the need disappeared. Tumbleweed had been Clay’s band. He’d been the one to hire Chad as a lead singer. Boy, the guy had cojones.

“Is that what this is all about? Is that why you came back here? Are you more interested in getting me to write a few more songs than you are in Tricia?”

“Look, Clay, this is a good deal for both of us. It’s not like you haven’t made some money on the songs Tumbleweed recorded. And, hey, it would make Tricia happy, you know. She says you’re still her friend. And I figure with the baby and all, it would be better if you were around.”

Clay lost it then. He let all the emotions that had been building up through the morning explode. “You are a supreme a**hole,” he bellowed. “You take a look at that woman over there. She’s carrying your baby. She loves you for some reason I cannot fathom, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t love her back. What she feels for you is whole and pure, and she’s going to give you a miracle. And instead of taking Tricia off to a preacher and marrying her and making sure she feels like the center of your universe, you let her come to me? And now you’re saying you’re ready to share her with me just to get a few hit songs. Oh, my God, that is just wrong.”

Clay turned his back on Chad and stalked down to the bathroom at the end of the hall and slammed the door. He stood there shaking for a solid minute.

Why the hell couldn’t he have a love like that? Why did he have to fall for all these screwed-up people? Why did he have to be in love with someone who was a criminal?

Aw, crap.

Clay sat himself down on the lid of the commode and hung his head in his hands and waged a ten-minute battle with his emotions. When he’d managed to regain control of himself, he took a quick shower and placed a call to the hospital that netted him no information about his mother’s condition. A half hour later, after cursing Chad Ames out a second time, he was back in his Windstar, dry-eyed and heading north toward Orangeburg with a hole in his chest where his heart used to be.

Chapter 21

Jane sat on the hard chair under the bright fluorescent light. She wore a Day-Glo jail jumpsuit that was several sizes too large. Someone had given her a cup of coffee and a blanket. She was still cold, even though she was no longer wet.

She had made a full confession to FBI Agents Hannigan and Wilkes during the car ride from Golfing for God to the Allenberg County jail. She made a clean breast of everything. Not just the location of the Cambodian Camel, but a blow-by-blow description of her life for the last seven years.

They had recovered the necklace from Haley before the EMTs left for the hospital, and they had listened with avid interest about Joey Hamil and Woody West and the stupid things Jane had done in her life.

Then they had brought her here and left her alone so she could ponder the Universe and her place in it. During this time, Jane concluded that she sucked at manifesting change in her life. She decided that when they got around to booking her, she would destroy Dr. Goodbody’s tapes. They were not particularly useful.

While she was waiting, she also did a lot of thinking about Clay. She decided that she would always hold the memory of the last twenty-four hours close. She would let herself remember that for one instant, she had been on the point of having a remarkable man tell her he loved her.

She sniffled and shivered as a single tear left her right eye and trickled down her cheek. She was too depressed to wipe it away.

Her morose thoughts were interrupted by Agent Hannigan, who entered the room carrying a bundle that looked a whole lot like the soggy clothes she had given up for this ugly, oversized jumpsuit with the words Allenberg County stenciled on the back.

He sat down across from her. “Turns out you were right about the necklace you gave to Haley Rhodes.”

“Huh?”

He shrugged and gave her a warm smile that had his Irish eyes sparkling. “Turns out the necklace is, in fact, an item that you can find at any Value Mart. It’s not even gold.”

She blinked at him for a few moments as her brain processed this. “Are you telling me Woody the weasel went on a crime spree over a discount-store necklace?”

He nodded, and a little blush crawled up his face. “I’m afraid so.”

“And just exactly how did he get the idea that this necklace was valuable?” She was warming up a little bit. A dose of healthy anger percolated down in her belly. Ruby Rhodes got shot over a piece-of-crap necklace? It was too awful to even consider.

Hannigan cleared his throat. “Well, ma’am, I’m afraid the FBI gave him that idea. We had gotten a tip from a reliable source.”

“I see.”

“Turns out our Miami Office has recovered the real Cambodian Camel.”

“Do tell. And where did they find it?”

“In a vault deep beneath Oliver Cromwell Jones’s compound in Palm Springs. Seems the old goat was a little strapped for cash and stole it himself.”

“Say that again?”

“For the insurance, you know. Apparently, Jones faked the robbery and then passed a forgery to Freddie the Fence, who runs one of the largest high-end stolen property rings in the country. Freddie was probably in on the scam, and being a wily kind of guy, he arranged to have Jones’s fake transported to a buyer in Los Angeles.”

“Los Angeles? So what does that have to do with Woody and the necklace he gave me? We were going to Nashville.”

“Well, see, Freddie was fed up with Woody. Near as we can figure, Woody’s gambling had become a huge liability for Freddie, so he set Woody up. Gave him a fake Cambodian Camel, told him to give it you, and then we think he was the one who provided the anonymous tip that my partner and I followed.”

The anger was really making her hot now. She shrugged off the blanket. “You mean Woody only asked me along because this Freddie guy wanted me to wear the necklace?”

“It looks like that’s what happened. At least that’s what Woody says. Woody was a decoy, designed to keep us off the scent. And by having us pick up Woody, Freddie also allowed the Colombian’s goons to take care of Freddie’s little problem.”

“Woody works for Freddie the Fence?”

“’Fraid so. There is no honor among thieves, Jane. That’s for sure.”

“I see.” But she didn’t see at all.

“If you want my advice, you’d do a whole lot better if you avoided jerks like Woodrow Arnold West and Joseph Andrew Hamil in the future.”

“So you checked out the whole Lexington thing, huh? Are you going to arrest me for Jane Coblentz’s murder?”

“No, ma’am, I’m not. Jane Coblentz isn’t dead.”

Jane blinked a few times. “You believe me?”

He nodded. “Seems the Last Chance chief of police has a DNA report that proves you are Jane Coblentz. And your story about the miscarriage squares with what Hamil told authorities years ago.”

“And no one believed him back then?”

“No one had reason to believe him. You gave the impression of being a pretty responsible girl until you ran away.”

“So what happens now?” she asked.

“You’re free to go, although I’m pretty sure the state of South Carolina and the federal government are both going to want you as a witness at Woody’s trials.”

She nodded. “I’d like nothing better than to put that peckerwood away.”

“Well, I’m sure that will happen. But look on the bright side: Maybe you’ll luck out, and the state will negotiate a plea bargain, and we can put this sorry and embarrassing situation behind us.”

Sorry and embarrassing? Is that what he thought? Woody had shot Ruby right there in the parking lot of the Cut ’n Curl. That was not sorry or embarrassing. That was a disaster. It was something she would regret for the rest of her life.

And a piece of cheap jewelry from Value Mart was the reason Ruby might be dead.

Hannigan cleared his throat. “Look, it’s going to be all right, Jane. The worst is over, and we appreciate the way you cooperated with us. Sheriff Bennett says you can keep the jumpsuit since your clothes are soaked. But I wanted to make sure you didn’t lose this.”

He put a copper penny down on the Formica tabletop and pushed it across the surface with his index finger.

Jane stared down at the 1943 wheat penny, as her anger transformed itself into a grief so deep she could hardly breathe.

She should have told Clay and Stone that there were bad guys on her tail. She should never have taken a job babysitting Stone’s kids. That was just dumb, and neither of those men would ever forgive her for it.

She stared down at that penny through a smear of tears. She would keep it with her for the rest of her life as a reminder. What had Clay said when he found it? Oh, yeah, that it was something special hiding out in plain sight. That its worth was not measured by its value.

She reached for it, and took it into her palm, and squeezed it. When he’d said those words, he’d been halfway talking about her.

“So where’d you find it?” Hannigan asked.

She looked up at him. His tone had been more than casual. “Why?” She sniffled back her tears.

“Because if it’s real, it’s worth a great deal of money.”

“If it’s real?”

He grinned. “You have no idea, do you?”

She shook her head.

Hannigan folded his arms and leaned on the table. “I do a lot of stolen property work, and we come across cases all the time involving rare and valuable coins. I’m not much of an expert, but if that’s an authentic 1943 copper penny, it’s very rare and valuable. The U.S. wasn’t supposed to make any copper pennies in 1943 because copper was needed for the war effort during World War II. All of the pennies struck in that year were supposed to be made of steel. Only a mistake was made, and an unknown, but small, number of copper pennies were made. If it’s real, that penny is worth thousands of dollars.”