Free The Big Keep: A Lena Dane Mystery (Lena Dane Mysteries) by Melissa F. Olson

yes. Esteban, no. The new one is called Miguel, and Baby Girl, I am in love.”  
    “Wow, I’m impressed.” And I was. Cristina’s always been a love-’em-and-leave-’em kind of girl.
    “You have no idea.” Her voice lowered. “But, Baby Girl, you do not call me on a Thursday afternoon to hear about my many romantic triumphs.”
    I told her, as briefly as I could, about Nate’s father and the phone number in LA. “It’s kind of a long shot, Cristina, but it’s all I have. This guy is a phantom. He’s been through more identities in the last ten years than you’ve been through twenty-somethings.”
    She laughed again. “Give me the number.”
    I read it off to her, and waited while she typed it in.
    “Okay, let’s see. The number was assigned to an apartment in Studio City. Disconnected last year. The name on the account is James Jacob Tyler.”  
    I fist-pumped in my empty office. Finally, I had real evidence that Jason Anderson had gone to LA. It felt great to have something to dig my nails into. “Can I have the address?”
    She gave it to me. “And does this mean you are coming to see me?”
    “You know, Cristina, I think it probably does.”
    I promised to call her back soon, and hung up the phone. As soon as I put the receiver down, the black office phone flashed the time: 3:45. Hmm. It looked like I was going to Los Angeles, but I needed to run it by my client first. So I picked up my jacket and bag and headed for the car.

9. Typical Teenager Stuff

    Nate’s school looked like every other high school in the country—a collection of large, connected brick boxes with a giant fiberglass mascot—in this case, a cardinal—nailed haphazardly above the entrance. I smiled at the oversized bird. When I was in high school, across town, some deadbeat students had decided it would be a brilliant idea to kidnap our own mascot, a husky dog. Unfortunately, they’d unscrewed the back of the statue first, not realizing that the damn thing was lightweight and hollow. The Chicago wind tipped the whole thing forward, and when everyone came to school the next morning the dog was flipped all the way over, displaying his ass to the student parking lot.  
    I was a suspect in the great Husky vandalism case, but only because I was so frequently a suspect for one thing or another, being known throughout the school as Not a Team Player. I told the principal that if it had been me, I would have gotten the whole dog off the roof and into a nearby dog park before the first bell, and she actually conceded that that sounded much more like me.
    On the left side of the building was a student parking lot, and on the right a long line of buses snaked past a big yard with picnic tables that were littered with cigarette butts. I parked the Jeep illegally at the front of the bus line, careful not to block in the lead vehicle, and stepped out, leaning against the Jeep to wait for Nate.
    It was a beautiful day for early spring: about 50 degrees with a wary stream of sunlight breaking through the overcast skies. I turned my face to the sun and sighed, trying to ignore the churning that had begun in my stomach again. Did pregnant women always feel sick? Because that was getting old really fast. I realized with a guilty stab that I still hadn’t made a doctor’s appointment or bought my mandatory copy of “What to Expect When You’re Expecting.” I hadn’t done anything, really, except cut out caffeine and alcohol. But hey, the kid wasn’t going anywhere for a while, right? I pushed the thought aside.
    A tone echoed across the parking lot – why do they still call that a bell? – and a few moments later a flood of students rushed the door in a chaotic escape attempt. A couple of the older boys whistled at me, attention that I found sort of quaint and adorable, considering the rather large handgun that was locked up in the Jeep at that very moment. Shading my eyes, I finally spotted Nate as he headed toward the bus line. He saw