Chapter Thirteen

 

 

 

I heard the shower switch off, followed by the click of the screen as it swung open. Seconds passed. On screen, the ribbons of yellow tape and the surfeit of police cars did nothing to dissuade the cameras from zooming in on the slightest twitch of movement. Helicopters whirred over the reporter’s voice, drowning out her senseless speculation.

“Residents report seeing police wheel a black body bag off the premises. So far we have no confirmation from the authorities whether this is related to the case of Bethany Faye Cruz, the missing five year old from Missouri…”

I muted the sound. I didn’t care to hear the media’s take. I knew where this was going. It was only a matter of time before a connection was made.

The bathroom door swung open. Ashley emerged with a towel wrapped around his waist, damp glistening on his skin. Our eyes met across the room.

“What is it?” He couldn’t see the screen from his vantage point and I couldn’t find the breath to tell him that our quiet streak was over.

I crooked a finger. Ashley joined me in the sitting room and swore under his breath when he registered the scene. Somewhere in a quiet neighborhood in Topeka, Donna Barnes had just been exhumed. I rested my chin on my knees, my stomach twisted up in knots. “They know,” I murmured.

“What? Who?” Ashley asked, frowning.

“Everyone back home. I guess the police must’ve called my grandparents…” Who, not knowing where I was, had called Melanie, maybe even Piotr. I wasn’t surprised that Javier had found out.

“They’re not reporting it yet—”

“Probably waiting for confirmation from Barnes.”

A knock at the door roused me from the descending gloom. I sat up a little straighter.

“Ms. Reynaud? This is the police,” echoed through the door, if slightly muffled.

It was my turn to swear. “Can you get that? I need to put some clothes on.” I found my jeans and underwear on the floor, and hastily buttoned up my shirt. My thighs shook with exertion and nerves. I’d never placed much faith in cops. After they’d separated me from my dad, I hated them with a passion I usually reserved for bugs.

Their voices traveled from the sitting room in a dull staccato. They wanted to talk to me and they wanted to talk to me now. Ashley tried to fend them off as best he could, stalling until I was ready to face them.

I sucked a deep, fortifying breath, and swung open the double doors. At least this time the officers didn’t go for their guns as soon as they saw me. The plainclothes agent who was with them stepped forward. “Morning, ma’am. Can you confirm that you’re Laure Reynaud?”

“I can. Do you need my passport?” I went to fetch it from my handbag.

The plainclothes checked it, then introduced herself as Special Agent Valenzuela. The FBI was involved, I realized with a certain degree of surprise. No wonder they were calling my grandparents.

She nodded to the TV screen. “I see I don’t have to explain what this is about. I’m going to need you to come with me—”

“Let me put some clothes on,” Ashley said.

“You don’t have to join us,” I murmured.

He fixed me with a glare. “You want to face this alone?”

I didn’t, but the alternative was dragging Ashley into my mess. I hesitated just long enough for him to mistake my silence for uncertainty.

“Five minutes.”

I turned to Valenzuela. “I guess we’ll wait… Have you spoken to Joshua Barnes?” I only asked for the sake of making conversation.

The FBI agent pressed her lips into a taut line. “I can’t comment on the case, ma’am.”

“It’s not a case. She’s been dead twenty years.” I suddenly felt very weary, like I’d been crawling toward this summit for a very long time. I was ready to tumble down the other side of the slope, back into anonymity, and stay there for the rest of my days.

“You know the victim?” Special Agent Valenzuela asked, furrowing her penciled eyebrows.

“Her name is Donna Barnes. I have her father’s number if you need it.”

“Might not be her.”

I smiled without mirth. “It is.”

Ashley emerged from the bedroom with his laces undone. He looked harried, but determined. I took his hand when he offered it. He was right. I didn’t want to do this alone.

 

* * * *

 

Special Agent Valenzuela was joined by another colleague in the interrogation room. They offered me coffee, but I didn’t want to get comfortable down at the precinct. I told them everything they wanted to know, from Barnes’ calls—which phone records would confirm—to my arrival in the United States just five days earlier.

“When are you flying out?” Valenzuela asked, jotting something down on her notepad.

“Tomorrow morning,” I said. “I have an electronic ticket if you want—”

“That won’t be necessary. You mentioned you flew to Kansas City?”

“Yes.” I gave as objective an account of my visit to Leavenworth as I could, but whenever my father came up, my blood pressure also ratcheted up a few notches. I pinched the bridge of my nose, willing away a migraine. Skipping breakfast and not sleeping nights did not agree with me. I was getting old.

Valenzuela wanted to know how I’d found out Donna Barnes’ location—and why I hadn’t said anything all these years.

“I was six when my father killed her,” I pointed out. “How much do you remember from when you were six?”

Valenzuela’s colleague arched an eyebrow. She’d told me her name, but I had forgotten it already. “And after you saw your father you suddenly recalled where he buried the body?”

“It’s a little more complicated, but essentially… Yes.” I glanced from her to Valenzuela. The light in the interrogation room was so bright that it reflected off her shaved skull. “Unless you’re going to charge me as a six-year-old accomplice, you really need to tone down the skepticism. I’ve already been thrown in jail once this week. Frankly if it happens again, I’m going to my embassy, maybe even the press.”

“Are you threatening us, Ms. Reynaud?”

I tilted back in my creaky plastic chair. “Damn right. I do your job for you, I put my safety and mental health on the line… And now you’re treating me as a person of interest because—what? I tried to help a man you all gave up on years ago?” I hitched up my shoulders. “I have nothing left to lose.”

Valenzuela pursed her lips. “You’re not a person of interest, ma’am. We’re simply trying to establish how you came to know Ms. Barnes’ location.”

“Assuming that is Donna Barnes,” her colleague added under her breath.

“It is,” I repeated. “I was there when Kane put her in the ground.” Right beside my wooden swing set, a little farther away from the pool, next in the row of rubber ducks.

Hot, angry tears sprang to my eyes. I brushed them away with quaking hands.

“Christ. Let’s get this over with. What else do you want to know?”

They kept me for another half hour, until my growling stomach became too much of a nuisance to continue the interview. Valenzuela walked me out, looking appropriately embarrassed. “This is my card. If you remember anything else…”

I took the card. “Yeah, I’m sure I’ll come back for seconds.”

Ashley was waiting for me in the hall. He sprang to his feet as soon as I appeared. “You okay?”

“Starving.” I was sure I looked like hell, but Ashley had seen me look worse and I didn’t have the strength to feel anything more than exhausted.

We pushed past the revolving doors of the precinct and I sucked in a deep gulp of exhaust fumes, scorching the inside of my throat with God knows what chemicals. The urge to retch came and passed in a flash.

“What did they want?” Ashley asked as we crossed the street to the nearest café.

“The usual. How did I know, why didn’t I come forward sooner, am I sure I don’t remember anything else…? At least this time they didn’t ask me to play with puppets.” Schooling bitterness out of my voice was all but impossible. Granted, I didn’t really put in the effort. I trusted Ashley to cut me some slack. I doubted anyone else would.

The coffee shop was largely empty. Ashley instructed me to get a table while he put in our order. I went for the booth furthest from the door. I had a good look of the counter and the street, plus the flat screen nestled between the quirky, lopsided chalkboards inscribed with the coffee menu.

CNN was still running with the story. The on-site reporter had somehow dragged Eileen Macintosh out of the house for an exclusive interview. It won’t be long now, I thought as I played with my phone. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was standing on the edge of a cliff looking down at the steep drop.

My phone buzzed in my hands—I’d muted it before I went in to give my statement. Another call registered on screen. It was Mel, no doubt worried and confused about what was happening.

The urge to pick up and let Melanie inspire me with her strength lashed through me. I refrained. I didn’t want to talk about what was happening because then I’d worry. These things never went away as fast I would’ve liked. They lingered, put down roots. Twenty years after the trial, my father still had fans who thought he was set up. Some of them knew where I lived.

I rejected the call and sent Mel a message to say I was okay and would talk to her tomorrow. In person. I found another message from Lawrence in my inbox. He wanted to know how I was holding up. Badly, I replied. I wondered if police would ask him to confirm our meeting—if my movements were at all important, if I was under suspicion. Part of me hoped Valenzuela proved nosy just to ruin Harry Pruitt Senior’s day.

“Two black coffees, no sugar, no cream—and the food of the gods,” Ashley announced, joining me at the table. “Danishes. I hope that’s okay.”

“Yeah, sure…” I flicked a glance at the TV screen. “Do you think there’s any chance we could get an earlier flight? My impending celebrity is making me antsy.”

“Why?”

I frowned. Was he serious?

“I mean,” Ashley said, sighing, “Carmen’s a publicist. She has a lot of contacts. If you wanted to manage this and get something out of it, you could do an interview with a reputed journalist. Get ahead of the rumor mill—”

“No.”

“You don’t want to consider it?”

“Are you kidding me?” I scoffed. “I want to get away. I’ve lived with this shit all my life. The last thing I want is to give Kane any more publicity.” I took a sip of scalding coffee, my eyes watering as it scorched my esophagus. “I know you’re in the business and—”

Ashley stopped me short, clasping my wrist. “Hey, no. I wasn’t speaking as Ashley Compton columnist extraordinaire just now… You don’t want to go to the press, you don’t go to the press.”

I flashed him a smile. “You’ll never get anywhere in life with that kind of attitude, buddy.”

“I got into your bed,” Ashley answered with a rueful grin. “Good enough for me.”

We made small talk over breakfast, clinging to any and all topics unrelated to the melodrama playing out on TV. We didn’t mention the FBI or the statement I’d given. We definitely didn’t acknowledge my father’s mugshot flashing across the flat screen once CNN caught on that this was about a much larger, juicier whodunit—one with a predictable ending because the perpetrator was already behind bars.

Ashley suggested we take a cab back to the hotel and get packing, but I wanted to walk. With the brewing furor on the horizon, I had a feeling I wouldn’t be back to the States for another twenty years. Ashley agreed.

Our hand-in-hand stroll took us down long, paved streets, around glamorous and not so glamorous shops, all the way to the Hudson. We stopped for drinks at a riverside eatery because we had time to kill, and Ashley took the opportunity to call the airline to check if our tickets could be changed to an earlier flight.

“Nine tonight?” he repeated, looking at me for confirmation. “Nine tonight it is.”

I closed my eyes and let the salty, humid breeze buffet my cheeks while Ashley gave our details to the operator. I didn’t ask if there was a fee for the alteration—probably, but I would make it up to Ashley when we got home. I was fairly certain my checking account was in the red already. “Guess we need to pack,” I mused, slowly tipping my head into my chest.

Ashley nodded. He looked as forlorn as I felt. I could guess why.

“If you want to meet Marissa again before we leave, I can take a cab back to the hotel by myself.”

He considered it for a long moment, then shook his head. “No. We’re doing this together. Marissa’ll understand.” His smile was tepid. I wasn’t the only one struggling to put on a brave face.

“She did say she wanted to see more of Paris.” My attempt at levity felt as flat as I anticipated. I didn’t push the point. I didn’t want to be on my own.

This morning my biggest worry had been making things right with Ashley. Less than four hours in and all I could think of was the sword of Damocles swinging above my head.

 

* * * *

 

We landed at Roissy at noon—six in the morning New York City time—and stumbled through baggage claim like a pair of zombies. Ashley had spent the flight paging through newspapers and napping. I tried to follow his example, but I couldn’t get comfortable. The thought of Donna Barnes’ hand peeking from the garbage bag wouldn’t give me peace. In the space of an eight hour flight, I’d grown to hate her, to pity her, to tell myself that maybe I’d made the thing up and it was just a lucky coincidence.

I yawned into my hand as we rolled our suitcases through the throng of friends and families eagerly crowding around the arrivals gate. No one was waiting for us because, at my request, we hadn’t told anyone we were flying back early. I wanted one last evening of peace. Tomorrow I would have to come clean to my grandparents. I would get in touch with Mel and fill her in on everything that happened.

Ashley squeezed my hand as we slid into the backseat of a taxi. “Almost there,” he breathed, a tepid smile tipping up the corners of his lips.

For a moment there I’d deluded myself into thinking we might have a shot at being together—at being happy. Then this had exploded in our faces. I pressed Ashley’s fingers with mine. How long before he decided I was more trouble than I was worth?

I banished the thought as we sped down the highway, chasing the flow of traffic past Porte de la Villette and into the city proper. It was slow going around the North Station and we were completely immobilized for a good ten minutes along the quay. I started to doze off despite the angry debate taking place on the radio and it took Ashley giving me a little shake to wake up as we skirted Place de la République.

“You’re exhausted, aren’t you?” He sighed. “If I suggest you have a lie-in tomorrow…”

“What?” I mumbled when he trailed off. I quit rubbing the grit from my eyes. His own were wide open and trained on something beyond the windshield. I had to crane my neck to see the press of reporters outside our apartment building.

Blood fled my extremities and relocated to the back of my skull. “Keep going,” I told the driver.

“But—”

“Keep going, don’t stop here!” I switched to English, for all the good it would do me. “Jesus Christ, they already know where I live. How can they fucking know where I live?” I scraped my hands through sleep-matted hair. What was I going to do? I couldn’t go back here, but all my stuff was inside the building. And what about Ashley?

He seized my hands in his before I could tear my hair out by the roots. “Calm down. We’ll figure something out—”

“Figure what out?” I retorted, vaguely aware that I was becoming hysterical.

The cab driver glanced at us in the rear-view. I had to bite my tongue not to cuss him out. The last thing we needed was to be thrown out where there were reporters to catch a glimpse of me—and shoot tomorrow’s front-page scoop.

“What about your grandparents’ place?” Ashley suggested “We could go there…”

I shook my head. “No way. If they’re here, then they’ve already scoped out the town house.” Where else could we go? I’d spent my cash on three flights in and out of the US, plus two hotels. “Melanie!”

“What?”

“My friend—let me call her.” I groped for my phone with shaking hands.

She picked up on the second ring. “God fucking damn it, Laure, where have you been? I’ve been trying to call you—”

“Can I come over?” I interjected.

“What?”

“There’s a pack of reporters outside my apartment, I’m freaking out—”

Mel swore long and harsh, stringing French and English slurs together in a truly transatlantic ode to vulgarity. “Have the cab drop you off a block away. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“You’re not at home?” I asked, heart sinking.

“I’ll be there,” Mel assured me in a voice that brooked no opposition. I hung up and told Ashley the plan. He looked dubious, but didn’t offer any other ideas.

I bit my nails to the quick in the time it took for the cabbie to find his way to the Trocadero. I did as Melanie suggested and had him drop us off a long way from her apartment—something I regretted as soon as we started trudging down the street with our suitcases in tow. I was tired, my nerves frayed like rope, and I wanted nothing more than to curl up and choke on my fist for a while. Instead, I made myself press on.

The Huitième Arrondissement was chockfull of big buildings with all-white frontage and artfully crowded window boxes. I could never have afforded to live in this area on a shop girl’s salary.

Ashley whistled as I rang the doorbell. “You have friends in high places.”

“How did you know Melanie lives on the top floor?” I quipped, my wit coming and going like a bad rash.

The concierge wasn’t at her post, so there was no one to let us in.

I cast a wary glance down the street, half expecting to see a horde of reporters hurtling toward us, cameras and microphones brandished like weapons over their heads. Naturally, there was nothing—no sign that anyone recognized us, no reason to believe we would attract attention. Paris as a whole didn’t give a shit that somewhere far across the ocean, I’d pulled a dead rabbit out of a very old hat.

I leaned against the metal gate. “She said she’d be here.”

“And here she fucking is,” Mel growled under her breath as she came stomping down the sidewalk, her hair a riotous crown around her head.

I jumped when I heard her voice, then fell into her arms, hugging her like I would a life raft.

“Hey, hey… It’s okay,” Melanie breathed into my ear. “You’re kinda choking me here, squirt.”

Shit, the baby! I pulled away quickly. “Sorry, fuck—I’m not having the best day.”

“So I hear.” Mel held out a hand to Ashley. “You must be the boyfriend.”

He didn’t contradict her. They shook on it as Mel badged us into the gangway that led to the inner courtyard of her building. The entrance itself was nestled at the other end like a well-kept secret.

“They’re saying you dug up a body. I didn’t even know you were in the States, never mind playing archeologist…” Mel’s voice echoed around the vast and empty hallway. No peeling plaster here, no crumbling mortar or exposed brick. No graffiti, either. Melanie lived in one of the few parts of Paris where anti-burglar alarms were the norm rather than the exception.

We took the elevator up to the seventh floor, where Melanie fiddled with the triple latch for a good twenty seconds. “Home sweet home. Come on in…”

The last time I’d visited must have been when she bought the place. Neither of us had time for house calls during the work week and on the weekends we preferred to meet someplace in town—anything to avoid having to do dishes. I’d forgotten how big her place was, especially for an apartment in the heart of Paris. Sunlight traversed the expanse of the white-painted walls and spilled across the hardwood floors in golden slashes. Melanie didn’t believe in artwork or baubles, so the walls and shelves were mostly empty. The furniture was all dark wood, chrome and glass, as austere as it was sleek and modern.

If I didn’t know Mel lived here, I would’ve said this was a bachelor pad.

All the same, it made for one hell of a safe house.

“Sit,” Mel ordered. “Both of you. I’ll get the booze.”

I started to say I didn’t feel like drinking, but the truth was I didn’t think I could get up from the white leather couch without some liquid courage.

“Sorry to state the obvious,” Ashley said upon her return, “but this place is incredible. Must’ve cost you a fortune…”

“Yeah, I had to rob a bank.”

“Seriously?” Ashley’s eyebrows met his hairline.

Mel snorted under her breath. “Your sarcasm detector needs tweaking.”

“Eight hours on a plane,” I pointed out. “Give him a break.”

“Not until you tell me what the fuck is going on, babe… Your grandma called. She was frantic, said the FBI wanted to talk to you…”

Melanie pressed a glass of something liquid and amber into my hands, and I downed it with a grimace. She shook her head and refilled it while I got my breath back.

“They did. They won’t call again.”

“What did they want?”

I gave Mel a condensed recap of my trip to the States, sparing her most of the troubling details—up to and including dinner with Ashley’s ex-wife and daughter. I was down to the last two inches of dignity I possessed, so some creative editing was in order.

“You need a lawyer,” Melanie told me as she played with a pleat in her skirt. Her work outfits were always sensible, but I could tell she’d had to let out her clothes. The baby bump was becoming harder and harder to conceal. It nearly made me ask how she was coping, if she’d made up her mind about what she was going to do.

I bit my tongue. I was in no position to nose around other people’s business.

“What can a lawyer do other than take my money? I’m not being accused of any crime…” And I doubted that the FBI would want to question me again. I’d already told them everything and I’d left the country.

Mel glanced from Ashley to me and back. “You’re a journalist, right?”

Ashley confirmed it with a nod.

“Then you know the right to privacy is enshrined in the French constitution. They’ve started hounding you for sound bites and snapshots,” she added, gesturing toward me with a bottle of Evian. “You have to nip their interest in the bud. Threaten legal action and they’ll pipe down.”

“You think so?” The thought of doing anything more than hiding in this apartment for the next, oh, five decades or so—until I turned into some Ameri-French version of Miss Havisham—appealed far more than a protracted legal battle against the tabloid press. “I just want them to go away,” I groused, tipping forward to refill my glass for a third time.

Ashley stroked a warm palm up my spine. “We should look into it. I know a few people—”

“Or you could try my friend Marc.”

“Your friend…” I frowned. “I thought you two weren’t in touch since…” Since the baby, I meant but didn’t say. Melanie had as disastrous a romantic track record as I did. I recognized the name, but until today I had no idea her one-time lover was a lawyer. She didn’t talk about him.

Melanie rolled her shoulders. “We’re trying. It’s… It’s a thing. But he’s pretty good. Our firm works with him a lot.”

“I see.”

“Yeah, we can talk about the mess I’m in some other time,” she said, waving a hand. “Should I give him a call or not?”

“On my behalf?” I glanced to Ashley, who kept his expression studiously blank. The whiskey was already filling me with heat, blurring out the edges of panic. “Sure, why not? What’s the worst that can happen?” I was already hounded by paparazzi looking for a scoop. The next logical step was the arrival of the crime-watch crazies, both the ones who believed all along that Kane had been set up—then coerced into a confession—and the ones who thought I was the spawn of the devil and should burn in hell.

I couldn’t bring myself to take another sip of liquor, so I set the glass back on the table. “Are you okay if we stay here tonight? I haven’t had the chance to go to the bank—”

Melanie stopped me with a scoff. “Yeah, like I’m going to throw you out. Spare room’s through there. You think you’ll make it?”

“I’ll help,” Ashley said, holding his hand out to me. I took it without objection and let him pull me to my feet. I staggered drunkenly, alcohol swirling in my bloodstream like oil in a puddle.

“Thanks, Mel. You’re the best…” If I could’ve told her as much without slurring, it would’ve been even better.

I landed in crisp, dark gray sheets on my front, too dizzy to pry off my clothes. I had a vague notion of Ashley tugging my shoes off and covering me with the comforter, but I might have imagined it, just like I might have imagined the touch of his fingertips carding through my hair. Or the sound of his voice as he lingered on the threshold.

“We won’t impose for long,” he was saying. “I’ll figure something out.”

Melanie hummed dubiously. “You have no idea what you’re up against here, do you? Laure… She’s put up with this crap her whole life. Even when we were girls, she’d get all kinds of messages online, burnt Barbies in the mail. Scary stuff. If I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that all this is going to get a lot worse before it gets any better. Even if we get an injunction against the press, it might not do any good…”

“So it gets worse,” Ashley retorted boldly. I recognized the thread of mulishness in his voice. We were alike in that respect—once we dug our heels in, there was no way around us.

“You say that now, but what happens when they drag you into this? Or your family?”

A beat passed, silence slotting into place between Ashley and Mel. I thought of Marissa back in New York, of Carmen looking at her with more affection than I ever knew a child could receive from a parent. I didn’t want to see them hurt because of me.

“It’s not a zero-sum game,” Ashley said. “And I’m not leaving Laure to go through this alone. You said it yourself, she’s put up with it long enough.”

Melanie sighed. I pictured her shaking her head in dismay. “You men and your desire to fix everything… Well, have fun trying. If you’re still around in six months, I’ll buy you a drink. I need to head back to work before they send out a search party,” she added ruefully. “You’ll be all right on your own?”

“Yeah,” Ashley replied, oozing confidence I knew he didn’t feel. “Look, Melanie—”

She cut him short before he could finish. “Relax, cowboy. I’m pretty sure we’re on the same page here. We both want what’s best for Laure, right?”

“Right.”

“Okay. Make sure she doesn’t throw up all over my sheets.”

The receding click-clack of Melanie’s heels was followed by the clang of the front door. Ashley’s footfalls announced him long before the mattress dipped as he lay down beside me. I wanted to turn around and wrap myself around him like a vine, but I was worn out and tanked up, and without their conversation to keep me alert, I could feel myself beginning to slip under.

Oblivion rushed to meet me to the tune of Wedding Bell Blues scratching along on an old turntable, twenty-some years ago.