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The conversation that morning was minimal at best. The headache brewing from lack of sleep and perhaps a little hangover wasn’t helping.
Jenny Hoyt was still reeling from her mother’s betrayal and in no mood to deal with a chatty Beau Arlen. To his credit, Beau was keeping to himself. He had left the windows of his Land Rover slightly open and the cool, barely after dawn, air was actually taking a little of the edge off. She could see the almost blissful look on his face as he drove, complete with a slight smile and distant look in his eyes as he was both focused on the road and taking in the wide open sky.
She wished she could find peace in such simple things.
It would be nice and relaxing if her mother had not just stolen thirty thousand dollars from her and they were not now on their way to a murder scene.
Jenny turned her gaze away from him and out the passenger side window. Disappointed that she had let herself think, even for the smallest moment, Gigi was actually helping her out of some sense of duty or attachment to her daughter. She always fell for it too, she thought as the disappointment twisted into anger. She knew better and allowed herself to fall for the hope anyway. She could feel the tears trying to gather in her eyes.
“Hoyt? Hey.” Beau called over to her. “You good? Where’s your head at?” He had a very odd way of getting people to focus and not become lost in their own internal problems or thoughts. Being distracted was dangerous in their line of work and that simple question was like a snap of the fingers that cleared the fog away.
She glanced over and then away. She really did not want to deal with him right now. “Nowhere, I’m all good.”
“All good my ass,” she heard him reply and not bothering to hide his disbelief. “You're a bad liar, Hoyt.” Then he continued in what she could only assume was his attempt to make her feel better. “I told you we were gonna fix this situation with your mom.”
Normally, she would have shot him down. She would have shot anyone down, not just Beau, from the presumption that she wanted their help. But, for some reason, today she found she couldn’t. Maybe it was the sleep deprivation or the last of the beer she’d had the night before or maybe it was just the earnestness and determination she heard in his voice. “How? She stole thirty grand from me.”
“Well, technically she stole it from the government. Same government that spends fifty bucks on a roll of toilet paper.” Beau answered. Jenny had to give him credit for trying. “She helped us catch a murderer. Maybe we should call it a wash.”
Jenny sighed. There was no way she would be letting Gigi get away with defrauding the one place she was finally starting to feel she belonged in. “It’s personal.”
“Okay,” was Beau’s reflexive response. One he gave frequently and that bothered her sometimes. He wasn’t necessarily agreeing with her and he wasn’t disagreeing either. It was as if the response was just acceptance. “The bills were marked, so there is that,” Beau offered, trying one last time.
“Okay, can we not talk about this anymore?” She cut him off tersely and put on her sunglasses so he could no longer read her.
“Copy that,” he backed off and fell silent with a sigh.
Jenny could not blame Beau exactly. After all, he had mostly listened to her warnings and respected that her antagonism towards her mother was solidly rooted and did not presume to be able to fix her relationship with her mother for her. Even though he did recruit her mother for information and planning, Jenny had respected his strategy. She probably would have done the same if the roles had been reversed so she only put up a token resistance to the plan. But Beau had not really gotten out of yesterday’s operation unscathed either.
She would be lying if she said she had not found a little joy in Beau’s alarmed “What?” and the look on his face after she suggested they go undercover as a married couple. She was pretty sure he squirmed if Poppernak’s amused smile was any indication.
Then her mother stepped in and undercut the banter and Jenny left to head to evidence lockup to put together her wardrobe for the operation. Jenny did not even know how to react to her mother’s comment. She should have known better but it just left her empty. Beau had been behind her the whole way down to evidence. He had said nothing but he was this steady presence like always.
They had met back at the evidence locker after having changed into their wardrobe. Jenny remembered thinking about how ridiculous she had looked in a dress and red wig. Beau, on the other hand, apparently couldn’t look anything but a proper gentleman even while sporting cowboy boots, a bolo tie and Stetson in hand. She smirked remembering telling her mother the night before that Beau “wasn’t that cute” but she wasn’t blind.
Beau grinned back at her then gestured at the new hair. “Nice touch.”
She smiled in return, struck a pose with one hand on her hip and the other brushing through the red strands, and replied in an exaggerated southern accent, “Why, thank you, Honey.”
Beau’s response was interrupted by the not subtle clearing of Sergeant Madge’s throat as she waited impatiently from behind the evidence room’s protective glass. The older woman’s dour expression never changed as she held up two small wedding bands and an impressive diamond engagement ring.
“You need to sign for these too,” she ordered, pushing the paperwork across the counter and then dropping the jewelry into each of their hands.
Jenny slipped the two rings on and then signed the documents before noticing Beau out of the corner of her eye.
She saw him pause briefly with the wedding ring like a weight in his palm. She suddenly felt a small wave of empathy for him. She had only wanted to relieve a little of her own stress by teasing him and maybe make him a little uncomfortable with the concept of their undercover personas. She hadn’t really thought through the actual reality of those personas.
He turned the plain gold band over between his fingers before taking a short breath, clenching his jaw, and sliding it onto his left ring finger. He brusquely signed his own documents and by the time he looked back up to Jenny the grin was back and whatever he had been feeling just then was bottled back up tightly.
“Here we go,” Beau’s voice broke the silence in the cab as he leaned forward and switched off the police lights he had installed in his Landrover.
Jenny blinked and realized they had arrived. Let’s focus on the job here, she thought, hearing Beau’s voice from months ago. As she took in the sleepy suburban street broken by the cluster of sheriff and crime scene tech vehicles she realized she hadn’t really been fair to him.
As Beau pulled the truck to a stop at the end of a driveway, Jenny realized that as difficult as yesterday had been for her, Beau had been struggling too and yet had been nothing but supportive and understanding. Even then, he must have known she would need something to focus on and pulled her along with him to this case instead of sending her home.
She climbed down from the truck and felt Beau fall into step behind her and follow her under the crime scene tape. It was time she started accepting the person Beau was and not pushing away the person she thought he was supposed to be.
She pushed yesterday into the back of her mind. It was also time to focus on what was in front of her. They had Jody Cutter’s murderer to catch.
end.