Hot Rocks

Couldn’t steal what wasn’t there to be stolen.
    The dog had been in Willy’s possession when they’d split up, in the hopes that Crew would track Jack himself to give Willy time to slip away, get to Laine and give her the figurine for safekeeping.
    But the vicious, double-crossing Crew had tracked Willy instead. Nervous old Willy, who’d wanted nothing more than to retire to some pretty beach somewhere and live out the rest of his days painting bad watercolors and watching birds.
    Should never have left him, should never have sent him out on his own. And now his oldest friend in the world was dead. There was no one he could talk with about the old days now, no one who understood what he was thinking before the words were out of his mouth. No one who got the jokes.
    He’d lost his wife and his daughter. That was the way the ball bounced and the cookie crumbled. He couldn’t blame Marilyn for pulling stakes and taking little Lainie with her. She’d asked him, God knew, a thousand times to give the straight life a decent try. And he’d promised her that many times in return he would. Broken every one of those thousand promises.
    You just can’t fight nature, was Jack’s opinion. It was his nature to play the game. As long as there were marks, well, what the hell could he do? If God hadn’t intended for him to play those marks, He wouldn’t have made so damn many of them.
    He knew it was weak, but that was the way God had made him , so how could he argue the point? People who argued with God were prime suckers. And Kate O’Hara’s boy, Jack, was no sucker.
    He’d loved three people in his life: Marilyn, his Lainie and Willy Young. He’d let two of them go because you can’t keep what didn’t want to be yours. But Willy had stuck.
    As long as he’d had Willy, he’d had family.
    There was no bringing him back. But one day, when all was well again, he’d stand on some pretty beach and lift a glass to the best friend a man ever had.
    But meanwhile, there was work to be done, thoughts to be thought and a backstabbing killer to outwit.
    Willy had gotten to Laine, and surely he’d had the dog in his possession when he had or why make contact? He could’ve hidden it, of course. A sensible man would’ve locked it away until he was sure of his ground.
    But that wasn’t Willy’s style. If Jack knew Willy—and who better?—he’d make book he had that statue with the diamonds in its belly when he’d walked into Laine’s little store.
    And he hadn’t had it when he walked out again.
    That left two possibilities: Willy had stashed it in the shop without Laine knowing. Or Daddy’s little girl was telling fibs.
    Either way, he had to find out.
    His first stop would be a quiet little search of his darling daughter’s commercial enterprise.
     
     
     
    Max found Laine in her home office working some sort of design onto graph paper. She had several tiny cutouts lined up on her desk. After a minute’s study he recognized them as paper furniture.
    “Is this like an adult version of a doll house?”
    “In a way. It’s my house, room by room.” She tapped a stack of graph paper. “I’m going to have to replace some of my pieces, so I’ve made scale models of some of the things I have in stock that might work. Now I’m seeing if they do, and how I might arrange them if I bring them home.”
    He stared another moment. “I’m wondering how anyone that careful about picking out a sofa ended up engaged to me.”
    “Who says I didn’t make a scale model of you, then try it out in different scenarios?”
    “Huh.”
    “Besides, I don’t love a sofa. I like and admire it, and am always willing to part with it for the right price. I’m keeping you.”
    “Took you a minute to think that one out, but I like it.” He leaned on the corner of the desk. “Looks like I’ve located Crew’s ex-wife and kid. Got a line on them in Ohio, a suburb of Columbus.”
    “You think she knows something?”
    “I have to speculate Crew would have some interest in his son. Wouldn’t a man like that see an offspring, particularly a male offspring, as a kind of possession? The wife’s different, she’s just a woman, and easily replaced.”
    “Really?”
    “From Crew’s point of view. From mine, when you’re lucky enough to find the right woman, she’s irreplaceable.”
    “Took you a minute, but I like it.”
    “The other thing is, in my line when you pick loose any thread, you keep tugging until it leads to