Jex Malone Read online

  At least, he did go through the happy-to-be-your-summer-jailer motions.

  Let’s recap: My father has basically been absent my entire life, which is why this whole get-to-know-Daddy plan seems like the biggest sham in the entire world. Correction. It is the biggest BS I’ve ever heard.

  Dad is like Santa. He plops in about once a year around Christmas after a ride on Guilty Airlines, usually wearing his mondo blue police-issued parka, which makes everyone stare at us like they’re under arrest. He wears it to embarrass me at The Olive Grove, which is the only place he can ever find that’s open on Christmas Eve.

  Bonding and breadsticks.

  It’s a classic American family holiday.

  It’s not like he would ever do any advanced planning to find a nice restaurant to catch up with his phantom of a kid. Nope. He prefers all-you-can-eat salad, lukewarm, sponge-like chicken parm, and questions. Endless questions. This is usually followed by some lame present like a gigantic doll that accessorizes—not exactly a dream gift at ages 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16. At least he’s consistent.

  Physically, he is a mountain of a man. He tosses the parka into the booth and then by the sheer act of sitting down makes all the air whoosh out of the seat cushion. The waitress inevitably comes by one too many times with a stupid smile on her face that says, “Dump the kid. Let’s go on a date.”

  Even I notice his muscles trying to burst out of a black, mondo kind of sweater. It’s like he’s some superhero about to get a call to save the city. I’d like to imagine that his cape is in the rental car, but that’s not the case. Only his return ticket is on the passenger’s seat, so he can quickly get out of Dodge. This is his standard whiplash fast trip to Jersey.

  By the way, his jeans are always extra faded like he doesn’t care, which he doesn’t about most things, except for crime and criminals. The weird thing is, he can’t turn off his inner cop and gives me these intense, make-you-want-to-confess-to-something stares, the kind I give my mom, but I’m sure I invented them. With him, it’s always like I’m being booked for illegal ordering of extra fried calamari.

  Ten years to life for bad spaghetti twirling.

  Let’s recap last night, shall we? Daddy-o picks me up at the airport looking tanned and frankly younger than the last time I saw him—in other words, forever ago.

  Now, it’s summer and shock of all shocks: Dad is stylin’ at McCarran Airport in fabulous Las Vegas. The parka and wool knit shirts of his Jersey visits are gone. He’s dressed in a very white polo shirt tucked into actual human-looking khaki shorts and wearing really nice Perry Topsiders. Hmm, something is up. Either he’s vying to become People magazine’s Sexiest Dork Cop Alive or … well, something is up.

  Women in the airport are doing whip-fast double takes because he has that big square face, all those arm muscles, shoulders that go for a city block, and he’s like six foot four with a mess of longish, wavy brown-blonde, older hunk surfer-guy hair that goes past his chin. He shoves it off his XL face. Technically, he looks like he walked off the cover of some dopey romance novel.

  The man who has summoned me to his turf musters a big friendly wave and shouts “Jex” as soon as he sees me, which is right away at the airport, where there are about one trillion people on fun gambling trips.

  He looks past them.

  He’s a cop.

  He has laser vision because he’s Super Dork Cop. Remember?

  Oh, and as for the Jex thing, I might as well explain right now. Jex is a nickname my dad gave me as a baby.

  He would never admit it, but he convinced himself that I was going to be a boy, and a girly name like Jessica or Jessie or even Jess didn’t really seem to fit the little tough guy he really wanted in his life. He wanted a Jake or a Nick. Instead, he got me, a six-pound crying little frail thing, a preemie that looked like she might break. I guess he was afraid of me as a baby and didn’t do any of the heavy lifting—or light lifting. According to my mom, he didn’t touch diapers or even feed me for many months. All he did was wiggle a finger in my face and give me a nickname.

  I don’t mind the Jex thing—but I’d die before I’d admit that I liked it, which I sort of do.

  Like it, I mean.

  Not that he says my complicated name all that much. Our conversations have always been short sentences separated by long silences as we each tried to think of something that meant mostly nothing to say to the other.

  “How was your flight? Did you have any turbulence? Any strange guys on the plane?” he interrogates.

  Now that I’m in his “custody,” Dad is rattling off questions in lieu of conversation. Should I call my lawyer? Do I even have one?

  I try my best to answer in order of unimportance.

  “Uh—fine, no, and yes but not sitting next to me,” I answer in the order the questions are shot at me.

  Dad isn’t paying attention. He’s fixated on the luggage going around and around. It’s like he’s hoping to defuse a bomb or take down an international cosmetics-bag thief trying to get some free deep conditioner.

  An evening of long awkward silences pretty much sums up our meal, and then the big nothing continues on the drive home—I mean, to his home. Speaking of which, we’re suddenly here at his house, but it’s too dark to check out the outside or even get a clear picture of the yard.

  Pushing open the door of the neat, tidy ranch house still decorated in 1970s wood paneling and brass fixtures, Det. Malone, which is what I call him, and his long-lost daughter (me) step through the front door of our mutual home for the summer.

  It doesn’t feel like home to me. It feels like nothing. But there is no time to be sad about real estate.

  The first thing that happens is I’m mauled. My dad’s big, friendly German shepherd police dog nearly knocks herself out wagging in sheer joy before she body slams me to the fake but still hard oak floor down below.

  “Cody!” Dad shouts as I fall backward onto the ground, but it’s not a bone-breaking landing. No one rushes up with an ice bag, although the dog slops some extra drool on me to cement our new love or maybe heal any wounds. When I pet her, she decides to plop down on top of me, her 100-pound body landing squarely on my stomach. Lowering her face over mine, she joyously slobbers all over my face.

  “Hi … uh … good girl. Now, get up, please,” I command. The dog ignores me and gives me her version of a canine-saliva facial.

  By the way, Dad is bigtime into the dog. He gives her several affectionate pats on the head and even calls her “baby” when he thinks I’m not listening, which is impossible unless I develop sudden hearing loss. I feel the love, for the dog, as Dad explains how having her changed his life. Yes, he even installed a computer workstation in the den/second bedroom so he could work on his cases and take Cody for evening walks. I’m so glad that he has a four-legged child.

  He explains all of this while giving me the tour, which takes five minutes.

  Quick 411: The house is real small. Just one bedroom and one den down a super-dark hallway with no pictures on the walls. Det. Malone apologizes quickly (as if to get it over with) as he informs me of the “bed situation.” It turns out I will be sleeping on a foldout couch in his makeshift den/office/doggy room.

  For a whole summer.

  Thank you very much.

  I’ll be the hunchback of Kennedy High by the time I get home.

  Let’s be more specific; my new bed is a brown, orange, and green nubby tweed foldout couch that he must have found at a garage sale for two dollars or they paid him to take it away. I don’t have to call The Guinness Book of World Records to know this is the single most hideous couch in the entire universe. The crusted dog drool just adds to the overall yuck factor.

  Daddy-o pulls the giant cushions off it and searches around the room for a place to put them. Beside the couch are stacks of boxes with his work stuff and a cold metal desk where his mondo computer glows green. A big, old television set is perched on a corner shelf and angled directly at the couch.

&
nbsp; No high-def for me. I make a quick mental note.

  “I don’t have cable,” Dad apologizes, and I think my heart actually stops beating. Come again? It’s like he just said we don’t have oxygen and masks will soon be dropping from the ceiling of the den. He doesn’t have cable? Is this even legal?

  “I don’t really watch TV, but you can probably get a few basic stations,” he mentions.

  A dream come true. I wonder what’s on the Korean station right now? Or MSNBC?

  Behind the door of my new “room” is the target paper from a shooting range where my father pumped a dozen rounds into a tight circle of holes over what might have been the right frontal lobe of the “suspect.”

  Dad continues to apologize about the Walmart pillows on the bed. Make that pillow. There is just one.

  And now the dog is plopped soundly on top of it, happily dripping her trademark clear drool onto the cotton pillowcase with … no, it can’t be … Strawberry Shortcake on it!

  I bury my head in the dog’s coat.

  She wags like crazy.

  My first Nevada friend, if you don’t count Dad.

  And I don’t.

  The next morning there is more awkward silence over chocolate Pop-Tarts. Breakfast is not going to be one of my complaints when I call Child Welfare and beg for them to take me back to civilization.

  I’m nibbling on the toasted cocoa edges, working my way slowly toward the frosting and a crunchy white sprinkle when Dad’s voice breaks the silence in a loud announcement.

  “Real sorry, honey. I’ll be late. Big deposition in court today,” he says. “Maybe you could go see a movie or go to the mall. Uh, here’s fifteen dollars and a map of the local bus route. If you get on the number five, it will take you right where you need to go … the community rec center or the library.

  “Don’t go anywhere else,” he warns. “And then when I get back maybe we can grab a late dinner—how about Mexican? I know you love Mexican.”

  I love tacos in New Jersey.

  “So, Jex … Mex?” he cracks.

  I get it … but don’t want to get it.

  “Oh, and one more thing,” he adds.

  This time he’s serious. Real serious.

  “Jex, there is one main house rule,” Dad says, staring at me in his hard cop way. “No sleuthing around the house. Please.”

  Now there’s a word you don’t hear every day. Suddenly, I have a memory of being a little girl. It was months before my parents split up, and I was a curious kid who found Dad’s worn brown leather briefcase one night. It looked so darn interesting that I simply opened it and started looking through the papers inside.

  “Daddy, what is all this stuff?” I asked.

  “Oh, you’re a little sleuth,” said my father, grabbing a murder file out of my chubby hands. “When I was a little boy, I used to dig through my dad’s things. My mom called me a junior league sleuth. It’s from the English word sleuthhound.

  “It means don’t be nosy, you little monkey. But, I guess some things just run in the family,” he said.

  I hear the door slam shut behind him. That’s an odd thing to say as the big parting words for the day. Does he really think I came here to pry into his life?

  “No slew,” I mutter softly to myself as I gingerly lift the lid off the first carton of police files in his den. “Sure, Daddy. Whatever you say.”

  Chapter 2

  Famous Girl Detective Quote:

  “You know, Dad, I’m old school. An eye for an eye.”

  —Veronica Mars

  Hmmmm, I wonder what his security code would be?

  I’m sitting alone in my dad’s manly, dark wood den. Even the air in his office feels heavy, which matches my mood.

  It’s only day one and I’m a bit ashamed of myself. Somehow, I am already breaking a house code by “sleuthing” around my father’s office. It’s not that I want to defy the old guy, who isn’t so old, but I was honestly looking for a pad of paper (kind of), so I opened the big closet door, which is overflowing with file folders threatening to cascade like a waterfall.

  I don’t want to clean up a mess, so I slam that door shut and plop down in my father’s cushy brown leather chair, which is conveniently near his very large desktop computer.

  I wonder if using his computer is cyber breaking and entering. It certainly violates Dad’s sacred sleuthing rule, but wouldn’t there be leniency for my first offense? Maybe he would even send me home for being so defiant.

  “A six letter code is required,” the computer says, denying me. Yes, my father has a computer that’s high tech enough to actually talk to you as you try to break its security code.

  The fake electronic voice is my first talking friend in Nevada, but it isn’t exactly bucking for BFF status.

  Six letters. I type: M-U-R-D-E-R.

  Jessica is seven letters. Is Dad that much of a secret softy? Maybe he left off one of the s’s.

  Taking a deep breath before my fingers hit the keyboard, I type my own name without an s: J-E-S-I-C-A.

  Closing my eyes, I listen for the voice, which doesn’t let me down. “Access denied,” she/it says.

  For some reason, this hurts deeply, and for some other reason, I feel my eyes welling up with tears.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid. My father barely saw me grow up and I repeatedly blew him off, so why would he want to remind himself of his distant relative, a.k.a. AWOL daughter, every single day by making her his security code?

  But why wouldn’t he? He is the one who pressed this idea of summer togetherness and bonding with his baby girl, so perhaps there is something deep down that links us, besides DNA and hair that curls at the most inappropriate times.

  J-E-X-M-E-X, I key in.

  “Welcome, Officer Malone. Key in case name now,” says the voice.

  I scream.

  Loud enough to shatter the glass patio door.

  It has absolutely nothing to do with the computer.

  “What the hell?” I scream as a girl I’ve never seen before presses her face to the patio door, her eyes bugged out and black like two giant olives. Her expression is frozen in terror, which seems oddly normal. Even her tan lines seem to fit precisely into this hyperscared place.

  But she doesn’t look like a felon.

  I figure she didn’t exactly expect to scare me, and for a second I start to feel bad. Then I remember that she’s the one peeping into my house and not the other way around.

  “OMD,” she yells in delayed response.

  “OMD?” I ask, going from feeling terrified to feeling stupid in a split second. Most people my age experience this swing several times a week, if not daily.

  “You know—oh mi Dios—translation, oh my God!” the wide-eyed girl replies. We keep staring at each other in uncomfortable silence for a few more seconds. “That’s how we say OMG.”

  “Oh,” I reply, a clearly stellar response for the moment.

  “Sorry I frightened you,” says the girl, who has now pulled back the sliding glass door and starts to stick her head through the opening. I tense up a little more, wondering if I should grab something to smack her with.

  But I can’t smack her, because she looks too freaked out. Strangely, this seems like the first time in her life that she has ever slid open a patio door. I figure maybe she’s from France, where they only have French doors. Wait! My brain really can’t handle chocolate this early. My IQ is slipping.

  “I’m Cissy and I live in the neighborhood,” she starts to explain, her round black eyes softening when she adds a smile. “I really, really didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “Do you always just sneak up on people and look through their windows?” I shoot back at her, my hand searching the desk for a stapler or a letter opener, something that can be deployed as a weapon if she moves even one inch closer.

  “Well not really,” she giggles. Who giggles at a moment like this? “We just heard that the mystery daughter belonging to Det. Malone was in town, so I came to check out the r
umor.”

  “We?” I ask. Who is this “we” who’s suddenly interested in my presence here?

  “Yeah, my friends and me,” she responds. “We heard you were in town.”

  Must be a slow news day.

  I continue sizing up the stranger.

  “Well, yes I am here,” I respond. “But you knew that already.”

  “Well, okay, then. Nice to meet you,” Cissy stammers. “We heard you existed, but—uh—I guess I am the first to ever see you. That’s really sort of scary, but my friends triple dared me to do it. And you know, I never take on dares, historically speaking, but for once in my boring life I thought, ‘This is the summer where you face your fears, Cissy. You can’t be a total wuss forever.’

  “Do you mind if I take a picture on my phone? For proof? So I can get the shirt? My friend Deva said she would buy me a new shirt, an expensive one, if I could prove I did find you.”

  “I’m not the yeti,” I respond in my defense, feeling suddenly big, furry, and legendary. “And who cares if I’m in town anyway?”

  “Well, pretty much everyone who lives around here cares!” Cissy exclaims, a bit too enthusiastically. The girl is a walking punctuation mark. “I mean, we heard you might come spend some time with Det. Malone, but gosh, no one ever believed you’d ever actually come visit. This is so exciting!”

  “Really?” I respond with exaggerated confusion. “Exciting? Maybe for you, but not for me. For the record, I am here under duress. And threat of court order, too.”

  “Oh really, wow, that sounds serious,” Cissy says in breathless response, not at all exaggerating the serious look that has now crossed her round face.

  Her black curls are in contrast with gorgeous and flawless skin. Dark eyes are framed by eyelashes as long as my arms. Her chubby cheeks are punctuated with dimples. It’s a bit odd that she’s wearing an old pink T-shirt decorated with frilly ruffle on the bottom. It’s not exactly the wardrobe of your typical home invader. And no wonder she’s out to get that new shirt from her friend.

  “Do you want to come in?” I finally say, beckoning her inside with my hand.