Lane Parker #2

By Kate Kane

Copyright 2013 Kane Communications

ebook Edition

Family Secrets is a work of fiction.  Characters, Incidents, Names, and Places are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.  Any resemblance to any events, locales, or Persons living or dead is completely coincidental.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover images courtesy of Jamenpercy, Alexmit, & Canstockphoto.com

Cover by Joleene Naylor

Dedication

While the Parker, Bellini, and Luciano families were born in my brain, I have to thank my own family for their encouragement and help.

Thank-you to my daughter Keey who helped with a really good one-liner almost every time I needed one.

Thank-you to my son Kaid who helped with the cover concept.

And, thanks to both who listen, laugh, and encourage me as I talk about the disasters and dilemmas my other family faces.

Contents

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

Italian Translations

Lane’s next adventure:

Chapter 1

Saturday Night at the Movies

Lane Parker loved the movies.  She’d grown up in a rural farming community where, in an effort to encourage adults to spend more money in the local stores, the merchants sponsored a free Saturday Matinee for the kids.  She’d spent countless hours watching the old movies, versions of action flicks – Tarzan starring Johnny Weissmuller; suspense thrillers – like The Pit and the Pendulum - staring Vincent Price; or romantic comedies – starring Elvis Presley, while her faithful dog Ginger waited not so patiently in front of the theater.  Perhaps that was what angered her most about the murder.  Sure, she was bothered that one human being decided it was their right to take the life of another human being but what really irked her was that they did it in a theater filled with kids, well teenagers at least.

The medical examiner’s van had removed the body. The detectives had questioned the theater employees – mostly teenaged kids who acted as if this was the coolest thing that had ever happened to them. The multiplex manager was standing in front of the cop in charge, yelling about lost revenues.  On one level, it was easy to sympathize with him.  It was, after all, Saturday night – the biggest movie night of the week and it was release weekend for the new Jason Barlow action film, which was expected to break all of Jason’s very impressive previous box office records and to be the summer blockbuster of all times.  But, this guy really needed to get his priorities straight.  One of the movie patrons was dead.  The place was closed for the night whether this guy liked it or not.

She had a sinus headache from hell and sat with her eyes closed, as she pinched the bridge of her nose.  She felt a hand on her shoulder.

“Ms. Parker?”

She slowly turned to face the man in charge.

“I’m Detective McGuire.  I understand you found the body.”

She nodded ever so slightly, careful not to give her head more reason to throb.

He went on.  “I know you spoke with one of the other officers earlier, but I’d like to ask you some questions. Would you come with me?”

She rose slowly.  Sometimes the slightest change in altitude would intensify the throbbing.

“Can you show me where the man was sitting,” he asked as he led her into theater 18.  The scene of the crime as they say.  They hadn’t put up all that yellow and black “Police Line Do Not Cross” tape that you see on television yet and she wondered if they would.

The theater had stadium style seating so they had to walk down a long aisle to the front of the theater to get to the seats.  They climbed up the steps to the landing below the top tier of seats.

“Second row from the top.  Right in the middle,” she said as she pointed to the seat the man had occupied.

“And where were you sitting?”

Her head felt like Stomp was giving a command performance on a little stage just behind her eyes.  She knew from experience that if she didn’t get this headache under control soon, it would turn into a full-blown migraine.  “Behind him,” she said, just before the headache and the acrid smells of soda, stale popcorn and death caused her to vomit all over his nice suit.

In times like these, Lane wished that she were some little petite southern thing, the kind of helpless woman that men fawned over and would forgive anything. But, there she stood, all five feet ten inches and 175 pounds of her.  And, she was embarrassed from throbbing head to neatly polished red toenails.  Her strawberry blonde hair was pulled into a ponytail and she tugged it loose hoping it would help alleviate the pain in her head.

“Oh my God, I am so sorry,” she said as she fumbled in her purse for a tissue, as if that would even begin to help.

There was a stifled chuckle from one of the uniformed officers as Detective McGuire removed his suit coat and yelled for someone to get him a towel.  He took Lane gently by the arm and led her out of the theater as he asked, rather calmly, if she was all right.  She explained about the headache.  Someone handed her a bottle of water.  She sat on a bench in the lobby and rummaged through her purse for extra strength sinus pain relief tablets.

Lane sat there and looked up, well squinted, at the profile of the man she’d just vomited all over. He was a tall man, about six feet four inches tall, he had broad shoulders and a trim waist.  He had dark wavy hair, cut short and wore small gold wire rim glasses.  She thought he looked a bit like Pierce Brosnan.  She swallowed the pills, chased them with water, and looked back up at Detective McGuire.

“I don’t think I’ve been this embarrassed since Ricky Blair unbuttoned the back of my dress in the fourth grade,” Lane said as she handed the bottled water back to one of the uniformed cops.

Detective McGuire smiled.  At least she thought it might have been a smile, the corners of his mouth twitched.  “I only have a few more questions and we don’t have to go back into the theater.  Think you’re up to it?”

She squinted as she looked at him again. Her head was still throbbing and the bright lights in the lobby hurt her eyes.  “I’m game if you are,” she said smiling sheepishly as she looked woefully at the jacket he had laid on the concession stand counter.  Boy, was that stain going to be tough to get out.  “Although my head and I would be happier if we could get out of this bright light.”

She noticed one of the other detectives jerk his head slightly toward the theater next door. Lane swayed almost imperceptibly as she stood.  Detective McGuire grabbed her arm.

“This could wait until tomorrow.”

Lane put her thumb and fingers back on the bridge on her nose and squeezed.  “I’d just as soon get it over with.  I promise the vomiting is all over.”  Hoping even as she said it, that it was the truth.

They walked into theater 17 and she sat in the first row.  Detective McGuire stood.  “You were here alone.   Is that right Ms. Parker?”  He looked at her.  She was beautiful.  Surely, she had a husband, significant other, boyfriend in her life.  Why was she at the movie let alone anywhere alone on a Saturday night?