Listen To Me (Rizzoli & Isles #13)(14)

“No.” Amy yawned. “I think I’ll go to bed.”

“Yes, you look tired. Do you need help getting upstairs?”

“I’m fine.” Amy pushed herself off the sofa and reached for her cane. “I can’t wait to get rid of this thing.”

“Let’s make a ceremony of it! A cane-burning party. I’ll bake a cake.”

Amy laughed. “Of course you will.”

She hobbled up the stairs, one hand on her cane, the other on the railing. She could feel her mother’s gaze on her, watching. Always watching over her. Safely at the top of the stairs, she turned to wave goodnight, expecting to see her mother wave back, but Julianne wasn’t even looking at her. Instead she was punching in the code on the foyer security keypad: 5429. System armed.

“Goodnight!” Amy called down to her.

“Goodnight, sweetheart,” said Julianne, and she went to the window. She was still standing there, still staring out at the night, as Amy limped away to bed.





My daughter thinks I’m wasting her time. I see it in her face as she walks into my kitchen, as she carelessly tosses her purse onto the countertop. Jane has never been a patient girl. When she was growing up, she was in a rush to learn how to walk, to wear big-girl panties, to play basketball with the boys. My smart, fierce, indomitable daughter is always ready to go up against the enemy.

Tonight what she’s up against is me, and the battle lines are being drawn as she stands in my kitchen, pouring herself a cup of coffee.

“Bad day at work?” I ask, to make small talk. She’s a homicide cop; for her it’s always a bad day.

“Dead lady in Roslindale. A nurse.”

“Murder?”

“Yeah. Surprise.” She sips her coffee. “You heard from Vince lately?”

“He called me this morning. Says his sister’s still in a lot of pain, so he’ll need to stick around for another two weeks. I always thought hip replacements were a breeze. Not hers. He’s been waiting on her, hand and foot.”

“Tell him to make his escape and get back here. Then he can help you track down Tricia.”

“This is your old neighborhood, Janie. Girl goes missing, you oughta take a personal interest.”

“I did what you asked. I talked to Detective Saldana, found out where they are on the case.”

“Jackie says he’s not doing a damn thing to find her.”

“What he’s doing is going with the probabilities. Tricia ran away from home three times before. She came home all three times.”

“This time could be different. It could be a stalker. Some creepy old guy who’s lured her to his house and locked her up in his basement as a sex slave. Like that guy in Cleveland who locked up those three girls for years. Made the cops look like idiots.”

At the mention of the Cleveland case, which ended up splashed all over the cover of People, Jane falls silent. I knew that would make her reconsider. No detective wants to screw up a case as public as that one.

“Okay,” Jane sighs. “Let’s go talk to Jackie.”

We don’t have to drive; the Talleys’ house is only a block and a half away, and at this time in the evening it’s a pleasant walk, the smell of cooking in the air, the glow of TV sets in windows. When we get to the Talleys’, I see Rick’s blue Camaro in the driveway and I wonder if he and Jackie are getting along any better these days. You’d think, after twenty years of marriage, they’d have either ironed out their differences or gone their separate ways. Jackie told me that during one of their arguments, he’d shoved her against the refrigerator and Tricia had seen the whole thing. While I have lots to complain about when it comes to Frank, mainly his running around with another woman, at least he never shoved me. Maybe because Jane would’ve slapped handcuffs on him.

I knock on the door and almost instantly Jackie appears, her hair in disarray, her cheek smeared with eyeliner. I have always thought she was an attractive woman—maybe too attractive—but today what I see is a frightened mother. “Oh Angela, you brought her! Thank you. Janie, I can’t believe you’re a detective now. I remember that day when you were babysitting Tricia and you put her in the playpen and told her she was in jail. Even then, you were practicing to arrest people.”

Jackie keeps up the nervous chatter as she leads us into the kitchen where Rick sits reading the sports page. Although you could call him a handsome man, still with a head full of dark hair at forty-five, I never liked his looks, and I like them even less tonight. His hair is slicked back and a gold bracelet winks from beneath the cuff of his shirt. I cannot abide men who wear bracelets. When he sees Jane, he sits up straighter. Maybe it’s because she has a gun on her hip. Sometimes the only way for a woman to earn a man’s respect is to come packing heat.

Jackie scurries to the stove, where a pot’s about to boil over, and turns down the burner. The table has been set with two plates and a careless pile of silverware. The kitchen smells like burned food and the range is filthy with grease and brown crud. The sad state shows me just how much their daughter’s disappearance has disrupted this household.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Talley. I see you’re about to have dinner,” says Jane.

“No, no, don’t worry about it. Your visit is much more important.” Jackie pulls out a chair. “Please, sit. To think that our Janie is now hunting down criminals. If anyone can help us, you can.”