J.M.J.

Author's note: Thank you for continuing to read! Here is the next chapter. It seems like a long time ago that I posted the first chapter, even though it's only been a week. The good part about that, though, is that I've had some time to think about and edit this chapter, which is always helpful! Thank you to Candylou, BMSH, Cherylann Rivers, MargaretA66, ErinJordan, and max2013 for your reviews. I'm super excited to you all back again, and I hope you enjoy the story!

Chapter II

A Hunch, a Theory, and a Piece of Bad News

"Let me get this straight," Mitch Johnson was saying as he sat in the passenger seat of Fenton's car on their way to the Beretta apartment, while two other officers took Mario there in their car since the boy had wanted to ride in the more traditional-looking police car. "This random kid comes into the precinct to report that his parents were kidnapped, and you assume that they were nabbed by the gang that Moretti's boys were fighting because they had kind of long hair? Interesting. I have to give you that. It's very interesting."

Fenton gave an impatient little shake of his head. "I know, I know. It's just a hunch, but it does seem to add up. Look at the timing. Most of the churches in this neighborhood have their Sunday services somewhere between eight and ten in the morning. That means that whatever church the Berettas go to, 'before church' probably means somewhere between seven and nine. The fight happened at ten, so it's not too much of a stretch to think that that other gang could have been trying to recruit Beretta for it, or else for whatever they were doing when the fight started."

"But we don't even know how the fight started or who started it or anything," Johnson objected. "We're not in a business where we can just guess about these things."

"It's not just the timing, even though that's coincidental enough to make a person stop and wonder," Fenton continued. "It's also the way Mario described the three men."

"Ah, the longish hair," Johnson said.

"Yes, but also that they're a mixed race group. It was a mixed race group that Moretti's boys were fighting. Of the three men who were killed, one appeared to be Asian descent, one Middle Eastern, and one white. This means we're not dealing with an ordinary mob here. The mobs are too heavily dependent on ethnicity. We've got the Italians, the Irish mob, the Japanese, the Jewish, just to name a few. They don't allow people in who aren't from those ethnicities."

"Just because the mobsters are racists doesn't mean every other criminal is," Johnson said. "We've dealt with mixed race groups of criminals plenty of times."

"True, but they weren't quite so apparently mixed up with the mobs," Fenton insisted. "The one group took on Moretti, and the other walked into a man's house in daylight and kidnapped him and his wife. These aren't ordinary criminals."

"They're gutsy, okay, but it still doesn't prove that they're the same group."

"Then, there is the longish hair, too," Fenton went on, although he had to admit to himself a little bit of hesitation to talk about that one. "All three of the men who were killed in the fight had a rose tattooed on their necks. It was the same tattoo, so probably it's an identifier of their gang or whatever they want to call themselves. They all had shoulder-length hair, too, which probably covered their tattoos. What if these three who went after Beretta and his wife had the same tattoos and the same hairstyles to cover them?"

Johnson turned to look out the window at the passing sights and sounds of the busy city, even at this hour of the night. Finally, he turned back to Fenton. "You know, believe it or not, I believe you. It's crazy, I know, but you've had some crazy hunches before and you've been right almost every time. I've got no reason to doubt you now. Still, we're cops. We need facts, and I just don't see any way of getting enough to prove that the two incidents are related until we know more about each, individual incident."

"Absolutely," Fenton agreed. "So let's get what we can on the kidnapping."

It was only a couple of minutes longer before they reached the Beretta apartment. Both Fenton and Johnson felt a little shiver of dismay as they looked up at the rundown apartment building with its graffiti-covered walls and its cracked windows. Mario didn't seem to think twice about it as he led them up the rickety stairs to an apartment on the second floor, explaining as he went that his parents didn't allow him or his siblings to use the elevator because they didn't trust it.

Mario opened the door to apartment 202 without using a key, which once again caused the officers to cast glances at one another. Then he flipped on the light switch and called softly, "Angelo?"

A boy who was a couple of years older than Mario peeked out through a door off to the left. "What did you bring the cops for, Mario?"

Mario cast a helpless glance up at the officers.

Fenton stepped forward to take charge of the situation. He had a feeling that Angelo was the type of boy who would respond best to being treated as maturely as possible. "I'm Lieutenant Fenton Hardy, and these are Sergeant Mitch Johnson and Officers Kate Sawada and Jeremy Dillon. I take it you're Mario's brother, Angelo?"

Angelo gave a barely perceptible nod, his brown eyes still narrowed. "We don't need any cops."

"Mario said that some men took your parents away," Fenton told him. "They could be in big trouble. We can help them."

"Cops don't help nobody," Angelo declared.

"Couldn't you at least give us a shot?" Fenton asked. "At the very least, you and your siblings can't stay here alone."

"Why not?" Angelo replied. "I can take care of us."

"Oh? How are you going to buy food for them? Do you have a job?" Fenton glanced around at the drab apartment with its threadbare furniture and carpet. The walls were a stark white and almost completely bare, except for a small, plastic crucifix above the entrance. He was beginning to wonder whether the children's parents had jobs.

Angelo hesitated only slightly. "We have food here already. Enough to last until Mom and Dad get back."

Fenton shook his head. "I'm sorry, Angelo, but since we don't know when your parents are coming back, we can't let you stay here by yourselves."

Angelo turned to Mario with a glare. "Now look what you did. They're going to take us away and we'll never see Mom and Dad again."

"That's not true," Johnson broke in quickly. "When we find your parents, we'll bring you back to them."

"Do you have any relatives you can stay with until then?" Fenton asked.

"Just Uncle Giovanni," Angelo said with obvious disgust. "He's not gonna help us, though. He ran out a long time ago."

"You don't have any other relatives?" Fenton asked again.

Both boys shook their heads. Then a little girl appeared in the doorway next to Angelo. She was about three, which made her just the right age to be the sister Mario had mentioned, Isabella, and she was rubbing her eyes as if she had just been woken up.

"Where's Mama and Papa?" she asked.

Officer Sawada stepped forward, smiling brightly at the girl. "They're still away. My name is Kate. I'm a police officer. I'm going to help you and your brothers find a place where you can stay until your mama and papa come home again, okay?"

Isabella looked shyly at the officer who had crouched down and was holding out her hand to her. Then she looked up at her brother, Angelo, who was giving her a disapproving frown.

"They're just trying to help us," Mario argued.

In the end, Angelo had no choice but to give in. Officers Sawada and Dillon took them back to the precinct, while Fenton and Johnson remained behind to investigate the apartment. The furnishings were sparse and old. It was clear that the Berettas were not well-off financially.

Fenton flipped through the calendar hanging on the wall, which had clearly been used to keep track of appointments. There was nothing written down for the day before, nor could he find anything else out of the ordinary. He then looked through the kitchen drawers, but there were only the ordinary utensils stored away in them.

Johnson, meanwhile, had focused his attention on the bathroom, paying careful attention to drains and other common hiding places for drugs. The most likely scenario, he felt, was that Nico Beretta had been peddling drugs as a cushion to his income and he had disappointed some of his customers, who had then decided to get revenge. Nevertheless, so far, he could find no evidence of drugs anywhere in the house.

"We should keep our eyes open for an address book or something," he said as he worked. "Just because the kids don't know where this Uncle Giovanni is, doesn't mean that Beretta or his wife haven't kept in touch with him."

"Right," Fenton agreed as he closed the last drawer in the kitchen.

He opened one of the cupboard doors. It was practically empty, except for a few bottles of spices that looked as if they had been purchased quite a few years earlier. The next cupboard held a faded assortment of plates and bowls that had probably once been fancy but were now chipped and stained. They might have been a wedding gift, Fenton thought, considering that nothing else in the house looked as if it had ever been nice. Fenton took out a salad plate and looked at it, hardly knowing why. A delicate blue and gold design with white roses at intervals ran around the edges, but it was marred by an unsightly chip. The one underneath it had a crack running through it that had been glued at some point.

The drains had yielded no results for Johnson, so he had turned his attention to the medicine cabinet. He began checking inside every bottle to make sure that what was advertised on the outside was what was really inside. Everything checked out until he came to a very large bottle of hydrogen peroxide. As soon as he picked it up, he could tell that there was no liquid inside, if there was anything inside at all. He uncapped it and peered inside. Then he whistled.

"Hardy, you better come take a look at this," he called.

Fenton replaced the plate and came into the bathroom to look at what Johnson had found. Johnson held the bottle so that Fenton could see inside. Fenton blinked when he realized what it was and reached a finger in to pull it out. Twenty hundred dollar bills had been rolled up and hidden inside.

HBHBHBHBHB

Laura Hardy turned over again. It had been a restless, worrisome night, as it always was when her husband was out all night with his work. She pulled the covers down just enough so that she could see the alarm clock on the nightstand next to her. It read 5:18 a.m.

She sighed and sat up. She probably wouldn't get any more sleep that night anyway, and maybe Fenton would be coming home soon. She might as well have some breakfast as much ready for him as she could. She pulled some clothes out of her dresser and then tiptoed down the hall toward the bathroom, pausing along the way just long enough to open the door to the boys' bedroom a crack and look inside. The shaft of light that came through the open door was just enough for her to make out the dim outline of her two sons, still fast asleep. Laura smiled out of pure love for them and then continued on her way to the shower.

After her shower, she measured out all the dry ingredients for pancakes and put them in a mixing bowl. Then she took out the electric griddle and greased it. Still there was no sign of Fenton, so she scrambled some eggs and put them in the fridge. She even set out plates, but still her husband didn't return.

With nothing left to do, she sat down at the table and rested her head on her arm. She was tired after her sleepless night, and so she allowed herself to close her eyes. She truly hated the nights like this one, when Fenton was gone all night, getting into who knew what kind of danger. Even if he wasn't in danger, Laura still knew that he wasn't getting any rest. Either scenario worried her.

Five years ago, when she and Fenton had gotten married, her parents had warned her that being a police officer's wife would be difficult, but Laura had brushed it aside. She had thought that she knew what she was getting into. At first, things had been pretty well what she had expected: extra long shifts for Fenton, a general sense of dread every time the phone rang while he was on duty, and an overworked, tired husband at the end of most shifts. Then Fenton had become a detective and everything had changed. Extra long shifts turned into shifts that lasted well over twenty-four hours. She never knew what to think when the phone rang now because she never knew whether Fenton was sitting behind a desk or if he was on some undercover assignment that he would rather not talk about, which meant that the phone could be him calling to say he would be late again or another officer calling to say he wouldn't be coming home at all. And she could tell that her overworked husband was swiftly becoming a burned out husband.

Laura must have dozed off, because she suddenly awakened with a start to the sound of a key in the lock. She breathed a sigh of relief and stood up just as Fenton entered the door, looking very worn out.

"Fenton!" she said, rushing to him and embracing him. "I was worried. I didn't know when to expect you back."

A smile appeared on Fenton's lips and he pulled her in for a kiss before returning her embrace. "I'm sorry, Laura. I didn't know when I'd get home either. I was afraid it might be even longer than this."

Laura looked up at the clock on the wall. "It's after six. That's twenty hours straight." She let her shoulders sag a little. "I guess you've worked longer shifts than that."

"That's true." Fenton yawned and his eyes fell on the already set table. "Is breakfast ready? I'm half-starved. More than half, honestly."

"I'll have it ready in just a minute," Laura said, rushing toward the kitchen. She put the eggs on the stove and finished mixing up the pancakes in practically no time flat. Then she sat down at the table again next to Fenton, who had already taken a seat there. "How was it?" she asked, knowing better than to ask for any more details than that.

Fenton shrugged. "There's been worse days, I guess…" He paused, and then decided all at once to be completely honest. "It hasn't been too good, though. I'm only going to have time to sleep for a couple of hours and then I need to get back."

"It's that shooting I heard about on the news, isn't it?" Laura asked. "I knew it was, once I'd heard what time it happened at. That was right before they called you in."

Fenton nodded. "Yeah. It's that and one other thing. It was ugly, Laura. I'd rather not talk about it right now."

"Okay." Laura hurried to flip the pancakes over, and then she returned to Fenton's side.

"What did you and the boys do yesterday?" Fenton asked.

"We just stayed here at the apartment," Laura said, intentionally not mentioning the fact that the shooting was the reason she had decided to stay at home after they had returned from church. "The boys played, and then Joe got the idea that climbing up on the couch and trying to jump off the back looked terribly fun, but I stopped him in time. I think that was about the most exciting thing that happened. Well, except for when they both fell asleep at the same time and I actually got to read for a little while."

"Sounds thrilling." Fenton glanced around at the four walls that had closed in and protected his family all that long day. It was a comfortable apartment, at least, even if it was small. There was just the front room, which served as a combination living and dining room, with the kitchen as little more than an alcove of it, cut off by a counter. Then there was a hallway with a bathroom and the boys' bedroom on one side and Fenton and Laura's bedroom on the other. It was as clean as a home with two toddlers could be and all the furniture and decorations were new and cheery. Yet, Fenton couldn't help thinking he would soon become depressed staying there all day, afraid to go out.

Laura stood up again to dish up the now-ready pancakes and give the eggs a stir. "I think I'd better give them a few more minutes," she said. "Oh, yes, there was one other thing that happened yesterday."

"What was that?" Fenton asked, eagerly setting to work on the pancakes.

"Gertrude called." Laura tried to force a smile. "She wanted to know if she could come and stay for a while in a few days. I should have asked you first, I guess, but I told her to come. She'll be here on Wednesday."

Fenton sighed. "Well, there's nothing else we could do, I guess. She's having a hard time ever since that jerk Mike dumped her."

"Poor Gertrude," Laura said. "I think she's starting to think she'll never find anyone who will really care about her."

"She's only thirty," Fenton told her. "It's not like she's in her twilight years yet. At least, I hope not, because in a couple of years, you and I are going to be thirty."

Laura pretended to shudder. "Frightening thought. But then, you and I have each other. That makes such old age seem a little less unappealing."

They both laughed.

Then Fenton became a little more serious again. "Laura, I want to talk about moving again. Obviously, we need to move to a new apartment or a house soon, but I think we need to look at a small town again."

"Do you think right now is really the best time to talk about it?" Laura countered.

"No, of course not," Fenton replied, "but I want to talk about it again soon."

"Okay," Laura agreed, but before she could say any more, the phone rang. Laura hurried to answer.

"Hello, Laura," an overly cheery male voice on the other end of the line greeted her. "This is Casey from Missing Persons. Is your husband around?"

"Well, yes," Laura replied, handing the phone over to Fenton and telling him who it was.

"Yeah, Casey?" Fenton said, taking the phone from her. "Do you have news?"

"Yeah," Casey replied. "We ran the serial numbers on those bills Johnson found at the Beretta apartment. We got a hit on three of them. They were reported stolen in a bank robbery about two years ago."

"A bank robbery?" Fenton repeated. "That can't be right. From the looks of Beretta's apartment, he couldn't have possibly ever pulled off a bank robbery in his life."

"That's what we're thinking, too. Especially three factors, in particular. Number one, what you just said. Number two, almost a quarter of a million dollars was stolen in that bank robbery. If Beretta's only managed to keep three hundred of it, at least a few other bills would have shown up by now, and this is the first time any have. And number three, we're already about ninety-eight and a half percent sure who pulled that robbery off, and it wasn't Beretta."

"Then who was it?" Fenton asked.

"Guess."

Fenton allowed himself to roll his eyes, considering that Casey couldn't see him over the phone. "I'm really not in any mood for guessing at the moment, sergeant."

"Okay, I'll give you a hint, then," Casey said. "Gregorio Moretti."

Fenton froze. "As in Alessandro Moretti the godfather's son?"

"Ex-son, or whatever you call a kid who's been disowned by his old man."

"If Beretta is involved with Gregorio Moretti…" Fenton began.

"He's already dead," Casey concluded.

Fenton shook his head and sighed. "Probably. And before this is over, a lot of other people will be, too."