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Chapter 615 Another Victim

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Scarlett dug into the Dutch Baby pancake her father made her. When she lived at home, he used to make the most epic Sunday breakfasts. This special pancake was her favorite.

"Did you talk your way out trouble with Jax?" her father asked before taking a sip of coffee.

"What do you think?" she asked with a grin. "Jax and I are good."

"What were you planning on telling him?"

"Not the traveling prankster seamstresses' story that's for sure. He deserved what he got," Scarlett said. She explained about the band-aids, his punishment and her swearing retribution.

"You're lucky Jax is so good-natured," her father told her.

"No, I wouldn't be with him if he weren't. I thought of hiding cameras so I could see the results of my handiwork, but I thought that was too much. I wish I could have seen his face. He must have been so confused," Scarlett laughed imagining Jax's face as he dealt with his clothes sabotage.

"What are you doing tonight since Jax is gone?"

"Enjoy the alone time," Scarlett admitted. "It will be nice to just be on my own. Tara called, left a message wanting me to come over, but I didn't call her back. I'm rethinking my friendship with her."

"Is this over the whole faking her death thing?"

"That, but there's more to it," Scarlett said frowning. "Her ex Steve paid me a visit at the store and we got coffee. He told me that she is still in love with Jax." Scarlett finished her pancake and speared a piece of sausage that she dragged through what was left of the maple syrup from her pancake before eating it.

"I thought she told you she wasn't in love with him."

"She did and I believed her, but that was then. Things change and maybe her feelings for him changed and her love for him got rekindled."

"You aren't jealous over her?"

"Jax is a smart guy and he can find his way to the door if he'd rather be with her. No, I'm not jealous. He and I are solid, but I just don't like the feeling that she's not really a friend," Scarlett said frowning. "OK, I know that I will never have the kind of friend who I can tell everything to. I do that with you and to some degree Jax. It was nice having a limited friend to shop and have lunch with though. I'm not so sure I even want that with her."

"Are you going to tell her or phase her out?"

"I want to watch her a little more first before I make a decision. Steve could be wrong, but if she's in love with Jax, it's best for her not to be in my life. As for Jax, I don't think he'll care one way or the other."

"You don't have anything to worry about with Jax. Tara won't be able to take him away from you, but it would be a little creepy having her as a friend knowing she wants Jax for herself. I think you're right about giving it some time. You don't have to make a decision."

"Jax was right about Tara when he said she shouldn't have faked her death. Customers come into the store and talk and St. Thomas is in a huge mess. People are afraid the hospital will close. I don't think the loss of the neonatal unit is a big concern. I suspect when this all shakes out, Namid's baby part selling business was keeping the neonatal unit in business."

"I think the neonatal unit is dead too. It never made sense for a small town to have much of a neonatal unit with Oakland being so near with their larger better equipped and staffed hospitals."

"Tara mentioned that she might go into family practice. She has her board certification, but it seems strange to spend all that time training as a surgeon to just let it go."

"Maybe she isn't a great surgeon," Decker suggested. "Could be why St. Thomas hired her. They aren't going to be able to attract top tier talent."

"Never thought of that. It definitely seems her career took a huge downturn when she came back to Charming. I mean if you are a talented surgeon, you go on to larger hospitals not a small community hospital with a mediocre neonatal unit."

"Unless she was coming back for Jax."

"I think that was part of her motivation and then Jax told her that wasn't going to happen," Scarlett said. "She could have returned to Chicago at that point. That would have been the smart thing to do. Or she should have left after she killed Josh Kohn. It would have given her the perfect reason."

"It goes back to maybe she wasn't a great surgeon. Surgeons don't get fired, they just get moved along to another hospital."

"And that is scary as hell. I've watched the Dr. Death miniseries with Joshua Jackson several times and I feel so sorry for those poor victims. They had surgery similar to my back surgery. What really makes me angry aside from hospitals passing on their problems to other hospitals is the family doctors that recommended this guy. Patients trust their family doctors and obviously these family doctors didn't know anything about this surgeon or they wouldn't have recommended him. They probably got a referral fee for every victim they sent his way."

"That's why I checked out your surgeon. It's also why I don't trust doctors."

"Or anyone else except me," Scarlett teased her father.

"That's true. You didn't ask me what I'm doing tonight."

"Do you have a date?" Scarlett teased him.

"I do. She works at the hospital in admitting."

"Where did you meet her?"

"Your store. Sold her a desk and some pillows. She's a widow of about ten years and has a son in the Air Force. He's stationed in Hawaii."

"Good for you."

"I do have some other news that isn't as good. I was scouring the internet and there's been another dead body found. Same as all the others. This one was found in another county. The results of the autopsy and cause of death weren't released, but I bet it fits the pattern. I updated my chart to make her a questionable. There is no ID yet."

"It's never going to stop unless we stop it," Scarlett said. "I know the MC has been busy, but it's time. We need to get this solved beginning with checking out the MC guys and widening the circle."

"The only two victims with a link are Violet and Louise. It could be a coincidence or they could be the key to catching the killer."

"Maybe I should wait to tell Jax about Buck Jeffers until after he's helped us solve Violet and Louise's murders."

"Coward. You need to tell him. The longer you wait, the worse it's going to be."

"Well, Jeffers is not much of a threat to the MC. He isn't allowed to sit in on club meetings, so he doesn't know about any club business. Mostly he just hangs around the clubhouse. I want him gone, but I want Violet and Louise's killer caught more. Besides, what harm does Jeffers pose to the MC now anyway?"

Scarlett would soon learn just exactly how dangerous was Buck Jeffers was to the MC.