Jex Malone Read online

  Jex Malone

  C.L. Gaber & V.C. Stanley

  F+W Media, Inc.

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to our families, who each day provide meaning to the mystery.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  Introduction

  NEW JERSEY

  FAMOUS GIRL DETECTIVE QUOTE:

  “Very few of us are what we seem.”

  —Agatha Christie

  So, this is what it’s like to be condemned. Here I am, Jessica Malone, nice to meet you, sentenced to my mother’s version of an industrial-strength great idea.

  She is usually full of them.

  Here I am, sitting on this hard wooden bench in the Arlington County Courthouse with cold shivers running up my spine. Quick question: If you sit absolutely still, is it technically possible to go completely unnoticed and just dissolve into space—especially if you don’t move a molecule? You know. Move it or lose it.

  Just wondering.

  I’m sixteen and will be seventeen this April 19. No biggie, but it does make me an Aries, and each day I take my fire-sign self and act out the complicated role of being a junior at Kennedy High School in Spring Heights, New Jersey. It also makes me legally too young to do certain major life things like sign a lease for an apartment, get a passport, or move to a foreign country to avoid my mother.

  Oh, I’m also not allowed to defy court orders.

  Insert a few choice cuss words here.

  Right now, my mother is taking me to see a real judge to prove a point. It started a few months ago when I refused to show any freaking respect to this big manila envelope delivered to our doorstep by the cutest UPS guy in the history of boys who actually look good in putrid brown. Touching fingertips with him was the only highlight because inside was a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo that boiled down to one thing: I would be spending the summer of my 17th year on this earth in HELL.

  Mom tried to talk me into respecting the envelope, but I told her no go. She begged me to read the court order tucked neatly inside. I said it was like reading Chinese—and I’m taking Spanish this semester, thank you very much. Or should I say, gracias, mi madre?

  She tried to scare me with words like jail or violation of the child custody agreement. Since I do watch Law & Order and grew up on all the great girl mystery novels, I knew where this was going, but I gave her that blank look that murder suspects use on the police.

  “You are being so … infuriating,” Mom huffed. It was never good when she used that many syllables on me.

  By the way, it’s not like I’m that defiant. I make my bed, get straight Bs, and show up at precisely 9:59 P.M. on summer nights because my curfew is 10. I’m a law-abiding citizen … except when it comes to staying with strange men for an entire summer season.

  “He is not a strange man,” Mom huffed in that gurgling type of voice designed to show me she was having a physical reaction to my point of view. Medically speaking, this was stress-induced strangulation from her excess phlegm-ing over The Topic We Dare Not Speak of in Our Two-Bedroom Townhouse.

  After clearing her throat so many times I thought we might have to call 911, she said the four words I hate the most. These exact words were the reason I was being sent to HELL.

  “He. Is. Your. Father,” Mom grumbled until she was overcome with phlegm, threw her hands up in the air, and searched for an organic, nontoxic, non-tree-killing tissue.

  It was ten weeks later and Mom announced she was “beside herself”—whatever that meant—except it was all about the drama.

  She decided a few weeks ago to get a judge involved because each time she brought up the envelope I alternated the words “not in your lifetime” with “not in my lifetime,” or if I was being really creative, I would race up to my bedroom and yell back downstairs, “Only a crazy person thinks I’m getting on a plane on the first day of summer vacation to spend the next eight weeks with a crazy man I don’t even know.”

  The response? He. Is. Your. Father.

  Infuriating!

  “Was there ever a DNA test?” I inquired with a sweet smile before Mom started gurgling again.

  What can I do with her?

  She. Is. My. Mother.

  Since the words inside the envelope state that Mom might go to jail if she doesn’t put my butt on a plane on June 1, she became “beside herself” and made an appointment for both of us to visit an actual walking, talking, breathing Arlington County judge who would tell me “what’s what.”

  “You won’t listen to me,” Mom gurgled. “You will HAVE to listen to a judge.”

  Shhhh. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m really scared.

  It’s a cold March day and we’re waiting in the dank hallway of the county courthouse where my heart races because I’m not exactly sure what a real walking, talking, breathing judge will do with a girl like me.

  Where is Judge Judy when you really need her?

  On judgment day, spring is taking one step forward and one step back. A lonesome train whistles in the distance, making this entire morning seem even more like a movie-of-the-week that should have starred a young Tori Spelling in her post-90210 re-establishing herself era.

  I can’t allow my mind to wander to vintage TV stars now because the clack-clack-clack of high heels trotting double time across the ancient, black linoleum floor makes my heart lurch in a non-Tatum Ryan-just-walked-into-the-room kind of way.

  “Your daughter’s case is next,” announces the old lady courthouse clerk who previously plopped us—as in Mom and me—in a dank, moldy-smelling courthouse hallway an hour ago.

  She stops click-clacking for a second to look down at me in that disgusted way only old ladies with cat-eye glasses on strings can manage when the fine scent of youth is in their presence.

  “Sit up straight, Jessica,” Mom, otherwise known as Professor Elizabeth Beatrice Malone, mouths. When she is truly upset, Mom mouths words without sound, forcing me to read her lips. I think she saw this in an old Bette Davis movie where the actress actually was mute. My mom has a speaking voice, so there is no real excuse.

  I’ve tried to cool it all day, but I can’t stop a runaway eye roll. I’m not sure what’s worse: Mom’s silent-but-still-speaking act or the tap-dancing clerk who repeats the word teenagers as if it were made up of four letters.

  Despite my mom’s stern mind-your-manners-missy look, I sneak-reach for my cell, which is vibrating like it’s doing some spazzy new dance. Glancing down, I can see that my BFF Kelly has sent me only twenty frantic texts. It makes sense. When your BFF is at the city hall courthouse in danger of doing “time” in a faraway Dad zone not of her choosing, nonstop, nervous, ADD texting is the least you can do.

  When Mom looks away, I hit that magical right silver button an
d the text is illuminated.

  Kelly: No freakin’ way. Your mom actually went through with this insanity! Are you doing time yet? LOL. PS: You don’t look good in stripes.

  Me (typing with the phone hidden in the fold of my sweater—it’s a skill): Here come da judge. PS: Jail would be a vacation from my regular life. Would I have to take our calculus final in the Big House?

  “Jessica!” Mom mouths. Again, she’s soundless, but still makes my name sound like a tragedy.

  Me: TTYL. Death sentence. Coming.

  Kelly: K. In the Big House, they serve bologna on white bread. Gross.

  Me: You’re just hee-larious. Gotta go. It’s judgment time.

  Just like in the movies, a heavy oak door squeaks open in an excruciatingly slow way like nails lingering on a chalkboard. Under the brass nameplate of Judge Joanne Goslee, Ms. Nosy Clerk pokes her head out just past the door jam. I guess she has clacked enough for one day.

  “Malone vs. Malone—the judge will see you now,” she barks, not looking at my mom or me, although we’re still the only people sitting in the hall.

  Like, who the hell else is this all about?

  “Right this way,” the clerk snaps, still not making eye contact as Mom grabs me by the flesh in my upper arm and pulls me into my uncertain future.

  Her Honor, the judge, has a ton of books. That’s what I notice first. I guess being a judge gives you a lot of free time to read because this judge has reading material piled up to the ceiling and crammed onto every inch of the dark wooden shelves in her cave-like office.

  Judge Goslee doesn’t choose to acknowledge me.

  She’s psyching me out. I know. But I won’t break.

  It’s not call waiting in here. It’s life waiting.

  Meanwhile, Judge Goslee flips through a file folder for what seems like another eternity. Mom is still standing, too, and we shift nervously in our designer-wannabe faux leather pumps, burning calories from a combo workout of weight shifting and stress.

  I’m trying to read Mom’s mind and I hope she’s thinking, “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. Let’s get out of here now. Let’s grab a burger and … ”

  “Please be seated,” the judge suddenly orders, her voice annoyingly calm and filling all the space in the small room. Mom nods and nudges me toward a big, dark leather chair.

  I sit.

  Slowly.

  “Professor Malone, your daughter doesn’t think the custody agreement between you and your husband—I’m sorry ex-husband—John Malone should be enforced,” begins the judge. “This is because—and let me make sure I say this exactly as she put it in her petition to the court—she is a ‘free and independent spirit who should not be forced to submit to an agreement in which she had no say.’”

  At this point, the judge allows her glasses to slip-slide to the bottom of her nose as if she can’t believe it either. She has no string and the glasses actually fall off and land on her desk blotter with a tiny ping. They bounce once and then there is the most awful silence.

  “Did I get that right, Miss Malone?” the judge finally says, looking me dead in my baby blues. Oh, right, I’m the Miss Malone in question. I don’t blink. I don’t even move my mop of long red curls or shift my otherwise unremarkable bod with my scrawny, pale, freckled arms. Maybe it’s the free and independent thinker in me—or maybe I’m just plain crazy here.

  “Yes!” I finally answer—and boldly (plus loudly) to boot. Then I feel Mom nudging me with her elbow. “I mean, yes ma’am,” I add in a quiet tone.

  “Your honor, my daughter is a very independent thinker, and I thought you could explain to her the odd nature of the child custody agreement,” Mom blurts.

  Judge Goslee holds up her hand to halt Mom again. Clearly, she isn’t into some long-winded history of why my super weird, split-up family, the Malones of New Jersey and Nevada, agreed to some whacked out custody agreement when I was only five years old.

  “Let me explain, Judge,” Mom verbally marches on, nervously twisting the hem of her sensibly boring navy blue cardigan from Target. She does have a PhD from Yale in archaeology and knows that she can talk her way out of anything.

  “I was protecting my child’s life when we signed the agreement. She was only a little girl. You don’t know the situation. She was in immediate danger. She could have been killed. My ex-husband is … ”

  “Ms. Baker-Malone. You’re an upstanding citizen of this community. In fact, you’re a professor at Princeton. You’re an educated woman, so I’m sure you have tried to explain to your daughter that when you sign a child custody agreement, you have to honor it—no matter what bizarre twists are in it,” the judge lectures, suddenly standing up from behind her desk like a human exclamation point.

  Zeroing in, she pivots and I’m the new target.

  Disappear. Evaporate. Dust in the wind, I pray.

  “Jessica, you were supposed to start spending entire summers with your father at age nine. That was seven years ago,” Judge Goslee continues, almost daring anyone to interrupt her. “But you took it upon yourself to repeatedly defy a court order. Year after year, you decided that you would be absent for these summers. On your own volition.”

  Even a B student like me knows “my own volition” means that I blew him off.

  Intentionally.

  Hey, I had my reasons.

  I swallow because I’m basically a criminal who ignores court orders. A teen felon. The bad kid. A Lohan.

  “At nine, you had Girl Scout camp and your father understood. At age ten, your Aunt Mary needed you in Ohio. For the entire summer. To help her horse give birth. How many babies did that horse have? Ten? Twelve? Were these births staggered?” Judge Goslee continues to admonish.

  “Just, uh, one colt born on a hot summer day,” I say. “We named him Fred.”

  Judge Goslee’s stare says that she isn’t a horse lover.

  “At age twelve, your pet snake Fluffy died and you were in mourning. For twelve weeks. Again, your father understood these excuses and allowed you to blow him off, as you might say—and I could go on and on. But no more! He has lost out on a lot of time with his only child.

  “Jessica Malone, I order you to spend this summer and every summer from now until you are of age, which means eighteen, with your father, Detective John Malone, in Green Valley, Nevada, where your life certainly, or should I say hopefully, won’t be in danger. Again, hopefully, you two can form some sort of a real relationship and you won’t see this as some sort of punishment,” the judge commands, her eyes locked on my face.

  “But Judge, he’s not fit, plus he’s a total dor … ” I begin to argue, only to be halted by the judge’s right hand shooting up. Again with the hand.

  “It’s over, young lady. Decided. Done,” the judge states. “Have your mother buy you a plane ticket. You leave on June first, the day after school is over. You are very lucky to have a father who wants to spend time with you.”

  I feel an eye roll coming on, but I command my eyeballs to stay where they are.

  “Don’t give me that face, young lady. If you choose to defy this court order,” the judge continues, “I will personally make sure that this will be the worst summer of your entire life.”

  It already is.

  It’s dark now, at 4:30 P.M., and I wish upon the starless sky that the last of the dirty snow would never melt. I hope the winter lasts forever and spring, or even my 17th birthday, doesn’t come this year. While Mom fumbles for the car keys, I watch as my breath forms puffy clouds in the freezing air. Mom is so shaken that she’s still digging aimlessly in her purse, so I text Kel.

  Just one word.

  Death sentence, I type.

  Then I see something horrifying: a sign for summer camp sign ups at the local YMCA. The cold hard facts slap me in the face: Spring is just around the corner, which means summer is just a few months away.

  Which will mean the end of my life.

  As I know it.

  Chapter 1

 
; JUNE

  Famous Girl Detective Quote:

  “‘This is the first mystery I’ve solved alone,’” she thought. “‘I wonder if I’ll ever have another one half so thrilling.’”

  —Nancy Drew

  This is hell.

  Closing my eyes, I let the sun beat down on my face. It’s so bright that even with my eyelids squeezed extra shut, there are still little bouncing spots of bright light. I breathe deeply.

  Yep. Still alive.

  It’s Tuesday in Green Valley, Nevada, and I’m some twenty minutes away from the Las Vegas strip, but I might as well be hanging out in Anywhere Suburbia, USA, with rambling front “lawns,” small brick houses, nosy old lady neighbors, and absolutely nothing to do.

  Doing nothing here in H-E-Double-Toothpicks means watching a baby lizard crawl across the driveway and then into a little hole in the brown rocks that make up our front yard because it’s too scorching hot for real grass to grow in hell.

  “Don’t go, little lizard. I have to talk to someone,” I tell her. Him. It. Talking to reptiles? I wonder if they put this stuff on your permanent record or put you into some sort of loony bin? Of course, I could easily end up in that bin because it’s only 110 super-hot degrees here with the sun beating down directly on my fried brain, which must be scrambled goop by now.

  I’m sitting on the hot sidewalk with my feet dangling into the painted green gutter, thinking just one thing: This really sucks. Extra sucking points could be granted because I am obviously being held against my will in a strange, foreign land talking to Jurassic Park–like creatures.

  It is June 1, the first day of the first week I’m legally required to spend time with my father in this faraway land doing absolutely freakin’ nothing—except bonding.

  Oh yeah.

  That.

  However, it’s hard to bond with someone who is not there—mentally, physically, or in any other way. In other words, what else is new? He’s at work, which is just a supersonic great twist of fate. You’d think the guy could take off on his daughter’s first real day at Camp Getting to Know You. He has to work. Big cases. Gotta go. Gotta bust some felons.