HITS & MRS.

By Jack Jerome

A California state auditor is shot to death after leaving a San Jose restaurant. At the same time, thirty miles away, John Barclay and his seventeen-year-old daughter are shot to death in a theater parking lot. The murders are not related.

When Harrison Dane, an attorney working for her employer, suborns perjury to free the man who killed her father and sister, twenty-five-year-old Mary Barclay exacts her own retribution and stumbles down a path that changes her in ways she could never have imagined.

Visited by the charming but enigmatic James Patch, she learns her actions have also made her an unwitting threat to a mysterious cabal that insists she end her pursuit of revenge. When she fails to comply, Patch instead saves her life and urges her to disappear.

Fleeing to Chicago, she assumes a new identity, marries an aspiring contractor with a young daughter, and enjoys a peaceful family life until her husband is threatened by corrupt businessmen. Once again she plans to take matters into her own hands, but Patch reappears and together they eliminate the threat without her husband’s knowledge. Although her relationship with the much older Patch deepens, he returns to California. There appears to be more to his interest in her than affection.

When her world is again upended by an attempt on her life in an up-scale Chicago mall that results in the death of her assailant, she knows Dane has found her. Unwilling to abandon her new family or put their lives at risk, she decides to return to California to deal with him personally before he sends someone else, only to learn he is already on his way to Chicago and Patch may be the one contracted to kill her.

The spectacle at the mall had drawn the interest of Chicago Tribune reporter Tom Dunagan, who suspects the mystery woman involved is Mary Barclay and responsible for several murders, and he is about to print the explosive story. She now has only a few hours to end the threats posed by all three men–Tom Dunagan, Harrison Dane, and James Patch—without losing her anonymity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Feb 16, 2024
• ISBN: 9781665755276

Jack Jerome

Jack Jerome retired from a successful career in financial services and management. Having spent years writing professional articles and training manuals, he now writes fiction. After his Readmeastoryplease book, The Elf Who Betrayed Santa Claus, his first adult novel was Jacob’s Dream. He hopes you also enjoy Hits & Mrs. He and his wife, Diane, live in Venice, Florida.

Book preview

HITS

& MRS.

JACK JEROME

71713.png

Copyright © 2024 Jack Jerome.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Archway Publishing

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.archwaypublishing.com

844-669-3957

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6657-5526-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-5528-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-5527-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024900531

Archway Publishing rev. date: 03/21/2024

DEDICATION

Dedicated to my wife, Diane

and my brother Tom

with

special thanks to Janis Eisman

Contents

Part I: Revenge is a Lonely Ride

Part II: Trial and Tribulation

Part III: When you spit in someone’s eye …

Part IV: Memories are portable; you can take them anywhere.

Part V: Even the Garden of Eden had a snake

Part VI: The Balcony Babe

Part VII: All’s well that ends well?

PART I

Revenge is a Lonely Ride

Thursday, September 8, 2005

1

SAN JOSE: NOCERA’S RESTAURANT

It was a little before 10:00 when forty-five-year-old Sidney Lamb folded the newspaper that had been his dinner companion and rose from the back table in his favorite San Jose restaurant. Whenever his travels as a California state auditor placed him near the Alameda district, Nocera’s was the perfect choice for a leisurely late dinner and tonight did not disappoint.

A lean man of medium height and receding hairline pushing back sandy red hair, he wore a blue suit with a white shirt and a red and blue striped tie still tightly knotted after a long, busy day. Jamming the paper under his left armpit, he headed for the front counter.

After settling his bill and pocketing the receipt, he helped himself to a toothpick from a shot glass in front of the register and began excavating his lower jaw for the stubborn piece of veal parmiagiana that had pestered him during the canoli course.

Pushing on the door that opened to the street, he stepped out under a green and white striped awning. A gentle mist had begun to fill the crisp night air and he paused to assess whether the light rain merited working up a sweat in a run to his car. Deciding it didn’t, he flipped the toothpick into the street, repositioned the newspaper under his suit coat, turned to his right, and proceeded down the tree-lined street at a pace only slightly quickened.

Two blocks later, he turned right at a one-way residential street and headed for the gray Ford Taurus waiting against the curb halfway down. As he approached the car with his right hand extending a key, a voice behind him asked, Sidney Lamb?

Turning around, he answered, Yes, and was shot twice in the chest. Staggering backwards against the car, he stood erect for several moments and then toppled face first onto the sidewalk.

CARLISLE: DOWNTOWN

It was a little after 10:00 and a gentle mist was falling on downtown Carlisle. Two-lane Main Street had been deserted since the last of the shops closed an hour ago and now the only traffic was a windblown candy wrapper tumbling back and forth across the center line trying to decide which gutter to spend the rest of the night in.

Only the marquee fronting the old single-screen Argosy Theater suggested the small northern California town might not be completely abandoned. The garish canopy’s cache of chasing lights was still boasting its show bill—two classic noir films ("Key Largo and The Big Sleep")—so there could be an audience inside.

The question was answered when the lobby doors suddenly flew open and the last of the day’s patrons—all two dozen of them—began filing out. In ones and twos they exited past the empty ticket booth and out from under the blanket of lights on the marquee’s underside. Unhurried by the light rain, nearly everyone headed for the small public parking lot wedged between two-story brick buildings directly across the street.

Last to exit were John Barclay and his seventeen-year-old daughter, Susan. Wearing a black windbreaker over gray slacks and a white golf shirt, John was a tall, distinguished-looking forty-nine year old with dark hair showing gray at the temples. Walking in lock-step at his side, Susan was a pretty, short-haired brunette in jeans and a light blue cardigan over a white blouse. While John looked up assessing the drizzle, Susan was feeding herself from the popcorn box in her left hand.

Barclay and his late wife had been big Humphrey Bogart fans since their dating days and a double-header with Lauren Bacall on a big screen seemed like an ideal way to introduce their youngest daughter to the reason why. Four hours later, Bogie’s appeal was still a mystery to her but she thought Bacall was hot and vampy. Though not fully appreciating her father’s nostalgia, spending an evening with him was always time well spent.

Ten feet from the curb, the elder Barclay stopped, turned around, and pointed back at the theater’s marquee. 688 lights up there! he announced like a tour guide. And two dead sockets!

How do you know that? Susan asked, looking back at the theater’s glitzy facade.

All us old locals know that! he replied, feigning it was something to be proud of.

Why? she asked, scrunching her eyebrows a bit and withdrawing a fistful of popcorn.

The way the simple question was asked drew a chuckle before an answer. Well, the Argosy opened in the summer of … ’64, and it was a really big deal for Carlisle. Our very own movie theater! And the first movie it showed was a biggie: Mary Poppins.

Mary what? Susan asked.

Poppins. Mary Poppins!

Was that one of those Betty Davis movies?

Don’t tell me you never heard of Mary Poppins! Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?

I beg your pardon! Susan exclaimed.

That’s a song in the movie.

You’re kidding, right?

No. It’s a real song.

What does it mean?

Nothing really. It’s a nonsense word. In the film it’s explained as something to say when there’s nothing more to say because everything is so … grand and glorious!

"I bet the movie has a very happy ending!" Susan offered a bit sarcastically.

Of course it does! It’s a Disney film!

The Mickey Mouse guy?

Yep.

So it was a cartoon?

No. Well, actually some of it was animated, but it starred Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke. She won an Oscar for it.

I think I heard of them, Susan offered, hoping to soften her father’s disappointment with her initial reaction.

Lowering his head until he was looking through his eyebrows, he groaned, Talk about your generation gaps! Then, smiling and putting his arm around his daughter’s shoulder, he added, Believe me, Honey, it was a big-deal movie. Everybody in town was here. There wasn’t an empty seat in the house.

Looking back at the marquee again, he explained, Anyway, about the lights. One of my schoolmates was a kid by the name of Harold Hankle. We called him Hankie—not just because of his name but because he was always blowing his nose into his handkerchief. Well, he counted those lights while standing in line that night, and next day at school he quizzed everybody about it. Asked us all to guess how many there were. It was probably the first time in his life he knew something he thought nobody else knew. We ignored him of course. Didn’t want to concede that little victory to him. We were really cruel at that age! But the seed had been planted and I don’t think there was one of us who didn’t count them for ourselves the next time we came here. Now it’s just one of those nostalgic pieces of information that sticks in your brain, I guess. They never did fix those dead sockets by the way. Fascinating stuff, huh?

Uh, no! Susan answered, giggling through a wide smile.

Laughing with her and tugging her shoulder into a one-arm hug, her father consented, No, I suppose not. Your sister didn’t think so either.

So you shared that exciting old tale with Mary too?

Of course I did. I try not to show favoritism. Both of my girls are entitled to an equal share of my fatherly counsel.

Turning toward the street, they headed for the almost empty parking lot.

There was a time before the suburban shopping mall sprang up with its multiplex theater when shoppers and moviegoers regularly filled the lot to capacity. These days—even during the daytime shopping hours—downtown traffic was modest at best, and evening traffic had been reduced to a declining number of moviegoers loyal to the Argosy for its regular offering of the kind of classic movies unlikely to be shown by other theaters.

Stopping at the curb to watch the last of their fellow moviegoers exit the lot and drive off, the elder Barclay blurted, Damn! Forgot my hat! After a quick glance back at the theater, he placed a hand on his daughter’s shoulder and said, Don’t wait in the rain, Honey. Go ahead to the car. I’ll catch up in a minute.

Choosing to wait for him instead, Susan watched him stride smartly toward the closed lobby doors and try to open one. Finding it already locked, he knocked twice and waved at someone inside. The door was quickly opened by a young man in black slacks and white dress shirt, words were exchanged, and her father re-entered the theater.

When the door closed behind him a sudden sense of apprehension began to overtake her. Realizing she had been abandoned to the insecurity of the night, she snapped anxious looks in all directions. Nothing in eyeshot moved and the silence seemed unnatural and foreboding. All alone on the dark and deserted downtown street, she felt like the only survivor in an apocalyptic film.

Suddenly the marquee lights blinked out and every muscle in her body tensed. Now there was only the mist-shrouded glow from a lone street lamp to light the disquieting night that seemed to be closing in around her. No longer bathed in the psychological warmth of the marquee lights, she also felt a chill. Her light sweater had been fine for six-o-clock, but the sun was long gone and the cool mist filling the night air added physical discomfort to her growing anxiety.

Recalling her father’s counsel to go ahead to the car and mindful of the comfort and security it would provide, she turned to peer into the dimly-lit parking lot across the street. Only two cars remained inside. Sitting side by side facing the back wall, on the right was her graduation present-in-advance (a burgundy red Toyota Camry) and beside it was a large black sedan.

Throwing one more look into the darkened theater lobby with no sign of her father, she stepped from the curb and was immediately caught in the headlights of a car approaching quickly from the left. Scurrying to the safety of the opposite curb, she looked back over her right shoulder to watch the vehicle pass behind her. As its headlights washed the storefronts beyond the theater entrance, she caught a momentary glimpse of a man standing in one of the doorways. Wearing a long coat and a brimmed hat, he appeared to be watching her. As the car followed its headlights down the empty street, she maintained her gaze on the now darkened alcove for several anxious seconds expecting to see the man step out onto the lamp-lighted sidewalk. Instead, he remained hidden in the shadows. With an escalated sense of jeopardy, she dipped her hand into her pocket for her car keys and hurried into the parking lot.

Approaching the two vehicles, she turned to look back toward the theater again, hoping to see her father finally crossing the street and not the man from the storefront. Instead, she saw two different men turn the corner and hurry into the lot. Both were large and hatless and in the modest glow from the security light they appeared to be dressed in suits. One had advanced well ahead of the other and was already within twenty feet of her. While he appeared to be headed for the driver side of the other vehicle—a Lincoln Town Car—his size and haste were intimidating nonetheless.

Stepping between the two cars, she fumbled nervously with her keys. In the hurried attempt to unlock her car door, the key ring fell from her hand and she bent down quickly to retrieve it. As she rose with the key ring in hand, the Lincoln’s interior lights snapped on and through the tinted side window she saw the lead man drop onto the driver’s seat.

Taking a deep reassuring breath, she calmly unlocked her car door. But, as she grasped the handle, she looked up to see the second man—all six-feet-three, three hundred pounds of him—coming at her like a charging bear.

In an instant sense of panic, she yanked the door open so quickly it left her hand and swung into the Lincoln’s passenger door with a thunk. Reaching to retrieve the door, the box of popcorn fell from her hand and spilled its contents on the ground between the two cars. Lunging inside the Camry, she down the lock just as her view out the side window was completely blocked by the back of the huge man who suddenly yowled, Mother fuck! You should see what the stupid bitch just did to our car, Ralph! It’s a big fuckin’ dent!

Spinning around, he glared down at the petrified young woman who looked up to see a fifty-year-old pock-marked face with deep-set eyes under bushy eyebrows glowering within inches of her window.

What the fuck is wrong with you! he yelled. Did you see what you did to our car! And you’re also a pig! You got me standing in your fuckin’ popcorn! I should make you clean it up!

Too terrified to speak, Susan turned away from his angry stare and faced forward. Clutching the steering wheel in a white knuckle grip, she was afraid to look at the huge bull-necked man whose words carried spittle to her window.

Calm down, Robby, the other man said. It’s just a dent for chrissake!

Calm down my ass! he said as he bent forward to glare at the terrified teen from barely an inch away from her window. Don’t you fuckin’ ignore me, Girlie! he bellowed. Get out here! Get outa the fuckin’ car!

Susan could barely breathe, much less move. Too scared to reason that an apology and her insurance card might diffuse the assault, or that putting her car in gear could offer an escape, she began to cry.

Come on, Robby! the other man yelled. Let’s go! No big deal. Get her license number if you want. We can take care of it tomorrow."

But Robby Meeko wasn’t listening. For him, yelling was a common and persuasive language tool and he was used to being obeyed. Pounding on the car window with his huge fist, he continued his rant. Get out here, Miss Piggy, or I’ll break this fuckin’ window and then your fuckin’ face!

Suddenly, there was a hand on his shoulder and an unfamiliar voice in his ear yelling, What are you doing! Leave her alone!

Meeko’s reaction was instant reflex. Spinning right, he threw his heavy arm at the source of the voice. The powerful forearm caught John Barclay hard across his nose, throwing him backward against the Lincoln into a half-roll across the side of the trunk and down onto the asphalt. Landing hard, the back of his head bounced on the pavement and he lay still, face up. Blood flowed from his broken nose and more was forming a puddle beneath his head. Then he began to tremble and his eyelids began to flutter.

Susan began to scream.

After a quick glance at the convulsing man on the ground, Meeko looked back at the wailing teenager behind the Camry’s side window. With worried eyes, he whispered loudly, Shut up! Shut up! But she didn’t. I said shut-up! he repeated louder. But she couldn’t. Reaching inside his coat, he withdrew a Beretta PX4 from a shoulder holster and pointed it at her.

Still trying to reduce his yell to a whisper, he ordered, Shut up, I said! Shut the fuck up!

Staring now at the weapon, she screamed even louder. Only the 9mm round exploding through the Camry’s window was able to silence seventeen-year-old Susan Barclay.

Robby! Jesus Christ! You dumb fuck! came an outburst from the man seated behind the Lincoln’s steering wheel.

For a long moment, Robby Meeko stared down at the girl whose bloody ruined face now lay on the passenger seat of her car. He seemed surprised by what he had just done. Then he looked up and stared out at the empty street for several long seconds. Satisfied that neither the screams nor the gunshot had attracted anyone, he stepped over to the man lying motionless on the pavement in a growing pool of blood, aimed his weapon at his chest, and pulled the trigger.

The body of John Barclay bounced once and joined his daughter’s in death.

Saturday, September 17, 2005

2

CARLISLE: BARCLAY RESIDENCE

The last drops of rain ran a crooked path down the driver’s side window as Mary Barclay stared out at the house that had been home for most of her twenty-five years.

Home is where your heart is, they say. If that was true for anyone, it was true for her. Her apartment in San Francisco was just a place to live for a while because it was only two miles from where she worked. Home was still this house.

It had been nearly an hour since she pulled her silver Maxima to the curb and turned off the engine. It wasn’t the rain that had kept her inside the car. It was what waited for her inside the house. Or, more accurately, what didn’t.

This was the third time she had come home since the murder of her father and sister nine days ago. The first time was to ransack—that’s what it felt like—her father’s downstairs desk for the paperwork she was told to look for. The second time was the following day when she faced the gut-wrenching task of choosing clothes to dress her father and sister for the joint visitation and funeral. Those were both hurried, purpose-specific visits.

This visit had a less urgent purpose—which is why she put it off until today and almost turned around on her way here—but it was no less intimidating. In a way, it was even more so. Decisions had to be made about the house and everything in it, and as the sole surviving member of the John Barclay family that responsibility had fallen to her. Realizing that the things waiting for her inside represented the only remaining physical evidence of the wonderful people who had lived there was heartbreaking. She couldn’t possibly deal with that yet. But she had to try.

Expecting to overcome the depression and get ambitious, she had tied her long blonde hair in a pony-tail and dressed in faded jeans, a simple black shirt, and tennies. The white windbreaker was for the rain. Dressing for the task ahead didn’t mean she was prepared for it. She wasn’t.

Gazing out at the white two-and-a-half story craftsman colonial brought a flood of memories. Only three years old when her parents brought her here, she tried to remember how it had changed over the years that followed. The landscape had matured, of course. The viburnum shrubs now hedged the back yard at a trimmed height of five feet, smaller bushes—she forgot what kind—hugged the sides of the house, and the live oak her father planted that first year now dominated the large front yard. Those changes—too subtle to notice one season to the next—were obvious only in retrospect and the credit was owed to Mother Nature. The changes she wanted to recall were the ones made by her family.

Like the first time the house was repainted. She was seven. She remembered watching her father in paint-spattered jeans, sweatshirt, and baseball cap standing so daringly on that tall wooden ladder leaning against the side of the house. Stretching a brush to the second floor window frame, each swipe made it bright white again. And then, when he saw her watching him from below, he laid the brush on the rim of his paint can and climbed down. Wiping his hands with a rag from his back pocket, he grabbed her hand and walked her around to the front porch. Together they climbed the stairs and when they reached the top he sat down and pulled her close beside him.

"You know, he said. Everyone who comes to visit us has to climb these stairs just like we did. That makes them pretty special, don’t you think?"

"Uh-huh," she answered accommodatingly.

Well, they need to be painted too! And I just don’t have the time to do it. I wish there was somebody who could do that for me. But it can’t just be anybody. It has to be somebody who can add a little love to the paint. I’d ask your mother, but she’s much too busy tending to your sister and doing stuff inside. I wish there was someone else who could do it for me.

Me, Daddy! she yelped. I could do it! Please! Can I do it? I’ll add lots of love!

Then he sat back and rubbed his chin carefully considering her enthusiastic offer before finally announcing, You know what? I think you would be perfect for the job!

How proud she was and how hard she tried to do the job as perfectly as she could. She smiled as she remembered saying, "I love you, stairs!" every time she slopped one of them with paint. And then when her father came to survey her work he gave her a big smile and said, Perfect! You did just as good a job as I would have done! And I would have spilled a lot of paint too!

And there was the white wooden swing that still hung from a rafter in the porch ceiling. After seeing a film about a southern plantation house that boasted such a swing, she pestered her father that if they had one their house might be just as grand as the one in the movie. The swing was hung the following Saturday morning. Late that very afternoon she and her sister sat on it side by side in frilly dresses of pink and white while their mother served them strange drinks with leaves in them. She called them mint juleps (minus the bourbon she would later learn). She remembered how Susan began kicking her legs to make that swing rock faster and how she lectured her three-year old sister on the propriety of swinging gently "because southern belles must always behave like ladies!" Feeling quite grand, the two girls sat and swung and sipped until bedtime, confident that all the passers-by were sure to be impressed by the elegant young belles of Followell Road.

Looking up at the dormer jutting proudly from the side roof, she whispered, Julie’s Whatever Room, and only a deep breath held back the tears. Her father had spent most evenings and weekends for at least a month adding that dormer and finishing the attic room inside. When he was done, she watched him twist a little golden hook into the hallway door and hang a wooden sign with the message in it she had watched him carve: JULIE’S WHATEVER ROOM. And then, with the full Barclay clan of four in attendance, he announced as if proposing an amendment to the Constitution that a wife and mother as wonderful as Juliet Barclay deserved a room of her very own to do whatever she wanted to do in it.

It had always been that way. This wonderful old house had always been a warm and safe and reassuring place, a place where love and respect abided for the family of John Barclay. He had always seen to the things that mattered to the women in his care.

She wondered if as a child she had ever given conscious thought to how blessed she had been. Had she truly appreciated her idyllic childhood? It saddened her to admit that she probably had not, but conceded that children rarely appreciate such things. They typically accept the way things are as the way they’re supposed to be. Discontent, after all, requires some kind of neglect, and she had never experienced any—at least none that left an impact. She was relieved to conclude that she must have appreciated it or she wouldn’t be remembering it so fondly now.

In a very real sense, Mary’s capacity to cope with her loss was made more difficult by those advantages. Her family had played such an active role in her life she never had cause to imagine one without them. And now she was suddenly facing life alone and was ill-prepared to live it.

People had been gracious in their attempts to console her at the visitation and funeral, but no relationships were struck. One neighbor urged her to attend a meeting for Victims of Violent Crimes. Thank you," she had replied, But I’m not comfortable sharing my personal feelings with strangers. That was true. I’m fine. Really I am! she added. That was not true.

And there was no man in her life. She was pretty, shapely, and intelligent but didn’t send out the kind of signals that most men need to encourage pursuit.

Brad Willis was the closest she came to true love. They shared an exclusive relationship during their last year at Carlisle High, but that only amounted to one or two early evenings a week plus a weekend movie. When they graduated, Mary wanted to stay close to home so she enrolled at City College of San Francisco while Brad accepted a scholarship to Colorado State University and headed off to Fort Collins. That summer, desperate to cement a bond that would survive the distance that was about to come between them, her resolve to wait for marriage and his patience with that resolve collapsed big time. Unfortunately, three months into the first semester she got a letter from Loveland, Colorado in which Brad confessed to having met someone. She was crushed of course, but the hurt was short-lived because she had a loving family to console and distract her. Corny jokes about "Love-land" also helped. No serious relationship since.

Attending City College of San Francisco required an hour commute each way and she was a serious student. Then, after accepting the job at the law group of Mitchell & Young and moving to San Francisco, she spent most of her weekends coming home to Carlisle, which pretty much ruled out weekend suitors. She did date, but dates were few and casual and no one had been inspired enough by her interest in them to pursue a relationship with any kind of vigor.

Conceding to having procrastinated long enough, she exited the car and began a slow walk toward the covered front porch that ran the full width of the house. Climbing the stairs slowly, she reflected on how in the past she had always made this ascent in a rush, anxious to be embraced by the love that waited inside. As far back as she could remember—whether it was after playing in a neighbor’s yard, or coming home from school or more recently her job in San Francisco—this was always a warm-welcome place to come home to. After all, this wonderful old house was where her family lived: the people who had loved her so long and so well.

But now there was no longer a reason to hurry.

Mary was the first child of parents without siblings or living parents. Her father had been an orphan from childhood and her mother lost her parents as a teenager; two wonderful people with love to offer and no family to offer it to until she arrived. Then they showered her and her sister with it in an environment where they had never known insecurity or serious