The Cover Up

By Melissa Stern

Aly has just lost her mother and is now the soul guardian of her little sister AJ, who just happens to be a computer genius. Not only is she taking care of a hyperactive genius, going to school, working and trying to have some resemblance of a life; but she is also trying to help the FBI and all the other forms of government out there catch her step father David, who has embezzled millions from her family's company. Life wasn't great by she managed.
Kevin loves being a detective. The only thing in the world he loves more is his little sister, who can be a supercharged hellion on a good day. Life for him is hard but he wouldn't have it any other way.
All it takes is two children, a pizza, and a gruesome crime scene to throw them together. Now bullets are flying and Kevin must keep them safe while upholding the law.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Melissa Stern
• Release date: Jan 4, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310528552

Melissa Stern

Melissa Stern is a self published author who also works in healthcare as an Occupational Therapy Practitioner. A healthcare professional by day and writer by night, she also finds time to read in between. She fell in love with writing in eleventh grade and has done it obsessively ever since. You can find her books at any ebook store and is looking forward to printed versions being sold on Amazon in the near future. You can follow news and updates about Melissa on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and on her Blog.

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Chapter 1

Aly

In all honesty, it should have been a cold, dark, and stormy night. There should have been thunder. Lightning. Spooky gusts of chilling wind to make the tree branches scratch against the side of the house like fingernails on a blackboard. And rain. There should have been ice cold rain. Pouring and pounding sheets of freezing rain.

Instead, it was a cloudless, sunny morning with just enough of a breeze to make me wish I was lying on the beach in Hawaii with one of those cute umbrella drinks in my hand. Not that I drink all that much.

Unfortunately I was running errands instead. Lucky me.

Who in their right mind would imagine that going to the Town Center Mall to take advantage of the End of Spring sales would be a particularly dangerous sort of thing to do? I mean, just how much living-on-the-edge adrenaline rush could you expect from shopping for a few summer accessories? It wasn’t even as if AJ and I actually needed anything desperately. AJ is my ten year old genius sister by the way.

I just had a few extra minutes and I thought it would be a convenient morning to go stock up a little.

What school age kid doesn’t need more stylish clothing and shoes?

Of course, I was not going to buy anything for myself. I was just going to look.

Then I walked by Nordstrom, and there it was, right there in the window: a chiffon dress in a dreamy, soft pink. Absolutely gorgeous. Soft. Fluttery. The kind of dress that makes you think of royal balls. In other words, nothing I’d ever have any occasion to wear. Ever!

And the price!

Oh my dear sweet Jesus, almost anything in Nordstrom requires an arm, leg and a few fingers and toes.

Of course, it was silk chiffon, with the kind of detailing that you aren’t going to see even at the better bridal shops.

Did I mention it was gorgeous?

And on sale? How lucky could I be?

I assured myself that I was not so lost to responsibility, that I’d spend that kind of money on a dress that I had no place to wear. I didn’t even have anyone to wear it for.

So I left it there and ignored the fact that it looked like my size.

My inner five-year-old all but stuck out her lower lip, stomped her feet, and howled. I was stronger than that, though. I am, after all, a grown-up. Well, close enough and my mother taught me better or at least she tried.

In all honesty, all those etiquette classes when I was a young child taught me better.

So I did the rest of the shopping for AJ. I gave myself very adult lectures about bank balances, mandatory bill payments, and school fees being due.

I assured myself I would forget about the dress. It was a mere blip on my radar. I was practical. Rational. A grown woman in control of myself and my destiny.

I left the mall.

I got in the car, fully intending to drive to Publix for hamburger and fryer leg quarters, both of which were on sale. I had even cut out coupons for laundry detergent before I left home. Being the adult in charge of running the house was a lot more work than I had thought but I was determined to do it and do it right.

My first mistake was not starting the car.

Like a perfectly idiotic teenager mooning over the latest American idol, I sat there in my five-year-old-but-paid-for Mercedes, and instructed myself to get a grip, to just forget about the dress. It wasn’t going to happen.

But this insidious little voice whispered that the dress was every dream I’d ever given up when David the Sleaze decided he preferred his over-endowed, little harlot of a secretary to my mom. At about the same time, he liquidated all our assets and put them somewhere even our shark of a lawyer couldn’t find them.

All the grief he left behind bore down on my mother until her heart could take no more. While she was lying in the hospital dying, she made me promise that I would take care of AJ. She also made me promise to forgive David for all his wrong doings but that wasn’t going to happen. Ever.

He took everything. Drained the bank accounts and sold the stock. Even the house had been mortgaged behind my mom’s back, so that instead of us owning it free and clear my attorneys were fighting against me having to make payments.

Since David’s name was never on the house to begin with the attorneys argued I shouldn’t have to make payments on a loan illegally granted against the property.

The bank begged to differ of course.

Bank examiners wanted to know who had helped him get an illegal mortgage. The local and state investigators were actively looking for him. The Securities Exchange Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and a number of other governmental alphabet soups all wanted to have a little chat with David. International governments were even fighting over who got to prosecute him first.

One does have to give David credit: he was an equal-opportunity bottom feeder. I can think of several more appropriate words for him, but I don’t use that kind of language. Again my mother taught me better.

According to what I pieced together from the questions all those investigators asked us, it seems that David had set everything up during the last four months before he left. He managed to finalize all those various forms of fraud in a matter of days. During those last sixty two hours, he was apparently traveling from bank to bank so quickly that even the people who were already starting to ask questions couldn’t catch up to him before he fled the country.

Of course, they were leaving polite little messages on his voice mail. They wanted to bring his attention to a problem they’d discovered.

Surprise, surprise – he never answered his voice mail, emails, or texts. Idiots!

If there was a blessing in any of this, it was that I didn’t have to pay the salaries and expenses of all the various investigators who wanted to talk to David and his chubby-chested little friend.

So I really had no business even thinking of the dress in the Nordstrom window. So I did the practical thing.

I went back into Nordstrom and tried it on.

I trusted that an evil fate would make the dress make me look dumpy, fat, or something equally dreadful. Then I could cheerfully leave it behind, all the while giving myself credit for having done the right thing.

That’s what was supposed to happen.

Do you know how sometimes a dress looks like nothing at all on a hanger, but when you put it on something magical happens? It shimmered with a soft, subtle glow. The silk slid against my skin the way you imagine the hand of a really sensual lover.

Discreetly, I looked at the price tag again.

The sales representative Greta came over to help. Greta’s smile was warm and generous, as if she didn’t have the heart of a serial killer underneath that elegant little black suit.

I turned slowly in the circle of mirrors. The skirts floated softly and gracefully.

It really does look lovely on you, Greta crooned, Let me just go get the shoes and bag to go with the dress.

The shoes were pure frou frou.

Fragile-little-nothing sandals with four inch heels.

The sides were just these little, black leather, rhinestone studded, scalloped loops. The swath tied at the back of the ankle in a cute, fluffy, little bow.

Do I need to tell you that the shoes were exactly my size? That they felt like a dream when I put them on. Don’t ask me how four inch heels could have been comfortable but they were. The bag was made from the same material as the dress and also had little rhinestones designing the outside. It was just big enough for a girl to get her lipstick and a very small compact wallet in.

As it was, I had a credit card with which to buy the dress. Still, I resisted. I didn’t take the dress off, but I didn’t agree to buy it.

And then Greta murmured that, of course, the shoes and the bag were included with the price of the dress, making the purchase a sensible, rational decision based on adult economics.

I told you she was evil.

She very kindly ran my card while I forced myself to take off the dress.

I wasn’t even feeling buyer’s remorse. I supposed I would eventually. But I knew it would be worth it. The beautiful, magical, powerful dress was mine.

I laid the garment bag on the back seat of the Toyota with exquisite care.

And then, I backed out of the parking space and hit a cop.

Told you I would regret it.

**********

Chapter 2

Kevin

You know, it’s hard to save the world when you can’t find a babysitter. Not that I became a cop to save the world, but I did expect that maybe I’d make my corner of it a better place. I used to add, Or die trying, but my sister informed me it wasn’t funny. Of course, after our mother and father died and I became her only living blood relative and now guardian, she didn’t think much of anything was funny unless she was behind it.

If Cali sees or hears anything about our parents, it’s a sure bet I’ll be getting a call from the school some time that day saying that Cali is acting out.

Again.

Like that’s a surprise.

So she acts out.

That’s what the school shrink calls it, anyway.

I call it needing a swat on the butt.

Not that I’d ever hit her. First off, Cali’s small for her age, a fact which hacks her off something fierce, so most of her four foot six and all of her eighty-three pounds is mouth. At six five, I’ve got her beat by a hair more than twenty-two inches and a shade less than a hundred sixty pounds, so I leave physical discipline out of it. I mean, it’s not exactly a fair match-up, now is it?

Second, Cali doesn’t get mad, she gets even, and if you don’t think an eleven year old can have a mean sense of what constitutes justice, then you haven’t been around a bunch of highly gifted miniature braniacs recently. We’re talking a kid who whizzed up a couple of poison ivy leaves with a bit of water in the blender, strained the stuff, put the liquid into a sprayer bottle, and misted her babysitter and the babysitter’s boyfriend.

Seems Lindsey was developing a habit of putting Cali to bed early. Locking her in her room. Then Lindsey’s boyfriend would come over for a little unauthorized use of my couch.

Apparently, there was a lot of exposed skin involved. Cali informed me they were already pretty sweaty, so they didn’t even notice the misting.

It says a lot for the teenaged power of concentration when neither Lindsey nor her boyfriend ever heard Cali open her window.

Picture it: Cali’s window is on the second story. She crawled out the window, onto the roof, down the oak tree, and in through the dining room window she’d left unlocked before Lindsey even arrived. At least she’d left the bottle downstairs so she had both hands free for the descent.

That kid is going to make me old before I’m twenty-eight.

Cali was sitting in the carport waiting for me when I got home. She confessed the whole tale, Because I wasn’t sure how to clean it off the couch, and I didn’t want you to get all itchy. I told her I appreciated that. Since I wasn’t sure how to clean it either, I called in a professional.

The boyfriend had left and Lindsey was fully dressed, watching TV when I came inside, Cali in tow. After telling Lindsey what I thought of her locking Cali in her room, I made Cali tell Lindsey what she’d done. I suggested that Lindsey get home as fast as she could and take a bath in laundry detergent.

Lindsey didn’t even wait to get paid. After some garbled apologies, she took off.

I called Lindsey’s mom on my cell phone as I watched Lindsey bolt down the street to her house.

A day or two later, I saw Lindsey on her way home from school. Let’s just say that her mom hadn’t gotten the invisible stuff and pretty much every inch of visible skin was pink with calamine. The kid looked miserable.

Lindsey’s mother actually called to thank me a couple days after it happened. I never did find out who the boyfriend was.

When I asked Cali why she didn’t just tell me what was going on, she said she didn’t want to bother me. Mom said a woman should learn to take care of her own problems.

I mean, you have to kind of admire the kid’s ingenuity – not to her face, of course, but still. I had a long talk about what might have happened if either of the kids had been allergic. She said she’d asked first, a couple of days earlier so they wouldn’t be suspicious. I’d have to talk to the state’s attorney to be sure, but I told Cali that a stunt like that could land her in juvie.

Cali was not impressed.

Fortunately, no one ever tried to sue us or have the kid arrested for assault with a chemical weapon.

But it does play merry hell with trying to find babysitters though she insists she doesn’t need one.

Anyway, all that’s just to explain why, when the school called Dispatch to say that a water main had broken and the school was being flooded, I had to leave in the middle of an interview we’d set up at the substation. Being a little worried that Cali might have had something to do with the disaster, I decided I’d better pick up Cali myself.

It also explains why, with Cali waiting, very possibly in creative mode, I didn’t have time for a parking lot fender bender. It also explains why – after checking to make sure the other driver was okay – I was paying more attention to the cars than I was to the blonde who’d hit me. Of course, once she finally got off the phone and unfolded herself from the Toyota that was a whole different story.

Hell, I may be slow, but I get there. Annoyed is a good long way from dead. We’re talking seriously expensive arm candy, here. Not the bubble-headed bottle-blonde you see hanging onto some rich studs, but the kind of woman power brokers escort to the opera. You just know she speaks half a dozen languages. Just the way she moved screamed class. Ballet training for a good number of years looked pretty much a given. Training so ingrained, it looked natural. Five six, give or take. A true gentleman wouldn’t try to guess a lady’s weight. But what there was, was distributed in ways a man, gentleman or not, could appreciate. Some things just don’t come along with a steady diet of fat free yogurt and dressing-free salads. C-cup at the very least. A man would have to be seriously hormone deprived not to take a little time doing inventory. Now and then, there are times when using police academy training to observe details is a pure joy.

The fact that she was obviously a man-hater did kind of take the edge off, but my Mama, God rest her soul, always said, It’s okay to look as long as you don’t touch. Of course, Mama was talking about stuff on the shelves when she dragged me along shopping, but the principle’s the same.

*****

Chapter 3

Aly

It’s not my fault that I didn’t know he was a policeman.

Really, it isn’t.

He wasn’t wearing a uniform and, although Crown Victoria is notoriously a police vehicle, it wasn’t marked, and certainly didn’t have a bar of lights on the roof, so how was I supposed to know?

After I hit him, I closed my eyes, said a quick prayer that nobody was hurt, just the cars, and took a deep breath. It couldn’t have taken more than a few seconds, but by the time I was opening my eyes, he was already banging on the glass.

You know all those e-mails that you get about men who cause minor damage to a woman’s car and then kidnap her for rape, murder, and torture? The end depends on the e-mail, but it’s always something perfectly gruesome. Of course, in the story, sometimes the woman goes back into the mall to report the accident to security and saves herself, but still, the e-mails are always a Dreadful Warning.

So I screamed, which showed an unfortunate lack of self-control.

In my own defense this man was trying to open my door, and he was big. And he looked seriously angry.

So there I am, elbow holding the lock down and leaning on the horn to attract attention. And he stands up, reaches inside his sports jacket and pulls out a badge.

Let me tell you, I saw the gun under his arm a whole lot sooner than the badge. Then he tapped the badge on the window, and I focused my attention of trying to decide whether or not the badge was real.

As if I’d know.

It looked okay. I mean, it didn’t look like he’d made it himself in his basement or had run off at Kinko’s or anything, and it was in a nice leather-looking case. The picture sort of looked like him on a much better day, too. It could be real. Before my mom’s husband, David, I had honestly never seen a badge from a law enforcement officer. Well except on television, and we all know how accurate that is.

Still, it did look all right, as far as I could judge, and I trusted that there were security cameras on the parking lot, so even if he did try something, someone would see it.

Assuming the mall security person was watching the monitors.

I’ve got to find something better with my evenings than watch television.

Be that as it may, nobody in their right mind would think the man abusing my window was a nice man. This was not someone you would dismiss and hardly remember what he looked like. Did I mention he was built like a middle linebacker?

Definitely not good serial killer material.

So I pulled back into the parking space and turned off the engine. I was going to pop the lock and get out, really I was, but my cell phone rang, and the caller ID said it was the school.

AJ was fine. They simply wanted me to come pick her up because a pipe had burst and the school was flooded.

And meanwhile, while I was talking to the school, the cop was fuming outside my window. You know the look. Typical male, glancing at his watch every two seconds like a woman’s never had to wait for him.

Well, anyway, I did need to get to the school, so I wanted to be on my way as quickly as possible. I thought for perhaps half a nanosecond of asking him to wait there until I got back with AJ, but I decided against saying it, even as a joke. He did not look like he was in a mood to be accommodating. Looking at him, I wasn’t sure he had a sense of humor. I had this semi-hysterical vision of a row of uniformed policemen tidily stowing their sense of humor in their lockers before they reported for duty. I did not think that giggling was going to get me on my way, however, so I assumed a suitably serious expression and unlocked the car.

I unfolded myself from the front seat, taking care to flash him only a teeny bit more leg than was strictly necessary.

The way his stance eased, even though he didn’t actually smile told me that the display had been a good move.

I’m so sorry, Detective Schultz, I told him. See, I told you I studied the badge he showed me. Please notice, I did not mention that he had been going well over the speed limit posted for the parking lot. I was polite. Alienating police detectives was not on my agenda. Are you all right? he asked, but I can’t say he sounded concerned. He sounded as if he were settling in for the duration. Duration of what, heaven only knew, but that was the attitude. He kept his eyes above my neckline, but I got the impression he had very good peripheral vision.

I smiled. Yes, of course. I’m fine. Being nice to policemen does not include anything above the very hint of flirtation. Just enough to make a man feel macho and protective without issuing any kind of invitation. It’s a delicate balance, knowing where that difference is, because that line is different for every man.

That’s good, but just to be sure, I called it in. The paramedics can check your neck and anything else that might be injured.

Thank you, but that won’t be necessary.

Sure, it is. Any time a police vehicle is involved in an accident, we go by the book. You may have suffered trauma you don’t know about.

I felt my smile slipping, but I made the effort to keep it. I do assure you, I’m fine.

He shrugged ever so slightly, crossing his arms and leaning back against the Cadillac Escalade parked next to me. So you can tell the paramedics that, and the department won’t be hearing from your lawyer in a couple of months that you have permanent neck injury, and you can’t play golf anymore.

Tennis, I corrected.

His eyes narrowed just a teensy bit. Whatever. We’ll wait here until someone comes to take the report and the paramedics clear you to leave.

Why can’t I just give you my license and insurance card? I really do need to be going. After all, he was a policeman, wasn’t he? What was he: too good to write up accident reports anymore?

Conflict of interest, he said. Somebody else has to do the report.

But I have to –

We wait.

But –

We. Wait.

Macho jerk.

But, of course, I didn’t say that out loud. I just continued to smile sweetly. I did spare a moment to hope there was enough grime dusted on the Escalade he was leaning