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Garrick Chauncey tried to regain possession of his left arm. It was losing feeling, pinned under her neck. Worse yet, her tangle of long blonde hair was starting to itch. He gave up on delicacy and pulled free in one harsh movement. She didn’t wake.
Minutes later, he stood under the strong jets in his marble shower, looking out at the private fern garden beyond the glass enclosure. He reflected, as he often did, how nice it was to be rich.
Misty was lovely. Garrick had met her the way millionaires meet models and actresses in California. At somebody’s party where a man’s money, not his age, mattered. Garrick had made a habit of these young women for several decades—he’d gotten older, they hadn’t. But having turned the corner at forty-five, he wanted some measure of stability, maybe even children.
Garrick was surprised it was taking Maren Kane so long to see things his way. He was sincere that he loved her, and despite the fact that she was soft rather than firm in places, Maren did something for him and to him that those much younger women did not.
Not that he would give up the Mistys of the world entirely. He would just have to be more careful.
As he stepped out of the shower, his phone rang.
“Garrick?” Maren’s voice seemed far away.
“You sound like you’re in Budapest.” He didn’t bother to towel off, donning a robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door.
“I’m at Polly’s. Maybe it’s a bad connection. I can try again. Call you back.”
“No, it’s fine. How are you?” Garrick asked as he started toward the kitchen, down a long wide hall accented by a Picasso, strategically lit. As he passed the master bedroom, Misty called to him.
“Garrick, darling, come back to bed. “
Damn. He covered the phone.
“Garrick, are you there?” Maren asked.
Misty called again, more insistently. “Garrick?”
Garrick hung up on Maren in midsentence and returned to his bedroom. He kissed Misty lightly on the forehead and told her he was late for a conference call meeting.
He dropped his robe on the floor—the maid would take care of it—then dressed quickly, opened the sliding glass door, and crossed to a broad slate patio under the trees. Once he was seated in a comfortable Adirondack chair, he hit redial. “I’m sorry. That bad connection got the better of us.”
At first Garrick thought the line really had gone dead.
After a moment, Maren spoke. “I can’t agree to marry you.”
Not what he had expected.
“Maren, you’ve been through a lot. Let’s wait and talk about this later.”
“It’s not that. I don’t think I love you anymore.” She said it gently, but clearly.
Garrick’s right eye twitched. His free hand involuntarily formed a fist. The intense jealousy that had been his shadow for as long as he could remember sparked. “Who is he?” His voice came out as a growl.
“No one. But you and I . . . I can’t. Not again. I need to move forward in my life. Not back.”
He calmed slightly. There was another man, he could hear it in her voice. A crush, maybe an infatuation. But not someone else’s arms around his woman. Because that was what Maren was, he realized.
His.
Garrick’s fist opened. He flexed his broad fingers. He took a deep breath and wound down the trajectory of his emotions. He was accustomed to tough deals, to hesitant clients and competitive bids. Rule number one, ask only questions that you know will yield a “yes” answer. “I understand. But I’m here for you. As a friend. You know that?”
Maren Kane said “yes”.
He smiled. It might take time, but the way Garrick saw it, until she walked down the aisle with someone else, the prize was his to win.
* * *
AS MUCH AS SHE WANTED to know what the investment documents Tamara had sent meant, after her conversation with Garrick, Maren was hesitant to ask for his help in interpreting them. Though he had said he was there for her and would be her friend. So while she gave it a little time, at 9:00 p.m. she completed a new e-mail and sent it to him. Then she took a pain pill as prescribed and slept for 12 hours straight, until a soft knock at 7:00 a.m. awakened her.
She called out with an invitation to enter.
Jenna opened the door.
Polly had insisted to Maren that police protection or not, she had to stay with them a day or two, at least until the swelling in her leg was down. In truth, Maren knew Polly was determined that she not return home until Wallis was caught. But Maren wanted to go home, not in small part because she hated displacing Jenna onto the sofa.
Jenna remained in the doorway, surveying the scene. Maren’s overnight bag lay open, clothes spilling out onto the limited floor space. The work Evie had dropped off yesterday at Maren’s insistence filled the surface of Jenna’s student desk.
“Thanks again for letting me borrow your room,” Maren said, following Jenna’s glance as it captured her appropriation of every inch of her space. “I know how inconvenient it must be.”
“I just need a new reed,” Jenna said. “For my sax. I have jazz band rehearsal.” She shifted from one foot to the other, her black trainers making a squeaking noise on the wood floor.
Maren realized she might need to be more explicit in indicating that this was still Jenna’s domain, that she hadn’t taken over completely. She’d learned in her brief experience teaching art to high school students that adolescents could regress from mini-grown-ups to children needing adult direction in minutes. It was a bewildering age for those going through it and for those on the outside looking in.
“Please, come in,” Mare said.
That seemed to do it. Jenna crossed to her desk, stepping over Maren’s open bag. She rummaged through the top drawer before finding a foil-wrapped Jazz #2 reed. She was almost out the door when she stopped. She looked down at the reed in her hand, turning it over.
“Is Camper okay?”
At her mother’s funeral while her father wept and Noel sobbed, Maren had bitten her lip until it bled rather than permit herself to cry. Since then her eyes might water, but she kept any real hurt locked deep inside. Not as a matter of pride, but of privacy. But at Jenna’s question about Camper something strange took hold of Maren. It started with an uncontrollable shaking in her shoulders followed by a soft, low keening escaping from her mouth. She hunched over and wrapped her arms around herself in a futile effort at containment of the utter, bereft loss of control she was experiencing. Then the tears came, her nose running and her face soaked within minutes.
She didn’t know how much time had passed, but when she looked up, Jenna was gone.
That must have terrified her.
She remembered what it was like to see an adult in her life completely lose it, and wondered if Jenna would suffer nightmares as she had. But in a moment Jenna was back at Maren’s side. “I found this website,” she said as she pulled the rolling desk chair, a worn cast-off from someone’s office, close to the bed and opened the inexpensive laptop she held, covered with stickers of musicians. She didn’t look at Maren, her eyes fixed on the keyboard as she clicked and typed. Her voice, though tentative, was hopeful. “See? It’s called tripawds.com.” She turned the screen toward Maren. “It says here it’s better to run on three legs than to limp on four.” She pointed to a banner at the top of the site. There were images of a golden retriever leaping for a ball, and a corgi playing happily with two small children. Both animals had three legs. “There are cool things you can buy that help with balance so the dogs can get around more easily. Plus training videos . . .” Jenna’s voice was gaining strength. She hazarded a glance at Maren to see if she was getting it. “And look, people blog about their dogs, what happened to them, how they’re doing. I bet Camper would be featured. Since he’s a hero.”
“He is that,” Maren said, a few new tears escaping her. This time she found it didn’t hurt to cry. She realized having someone stronger, even if that someone was fourteen years old, made a difference.
Maren rubbed her eyes with both hands, then looked directly at Jenna. “Camper will be home in a few days. If you make a list, we can figure out what he might need. I don’t know when I could do a blog, but if you . . .”
Jenna was up again, headed out the door. “I’m on it. My friend Danny is a really good writer. He can help.”
* * *
A FEW HOURS LATER, Polly had gone into her office and Jenna was at rehearsal, but Maren wasn’t entirely alone. A black-and-white patrol car was parked across the street in front of her house making sure Wallis Lisborne didn’t make another appearance.
Maren was getting around pretty well, although leaning heavily on the cane and taking only a few steps at a time. A patch the doctor had given her to put directly over the wound contained a numbing salve that helped a lot. She’d been able to cut the oral pain medication dose in half and intended to stop it altogether as soon as she could.
Polly’s dining table made a better work surface than Jenna’s small desk, so Maren sat in one of the padded chairs, her left leg outstretched. She opened Polly’s laptop, on loan since Maren’s iPad was still with Noel. The first two messages of the morning were from him. He expected to be discharged soon. Not that it meant he was ready to function at anything close to full speed. He would be on bed rest for at least two weeks. More likely the hospital needed the room, or his insurance limit had kicked in. Still, convalescing at home had to be better than the sterile environment of an inpatient unit.
Maren stretched her neck, and took a moment. She thought she and Noel, the Kane siblings, made quite a pair now. Gimpy and gimpier. But they were alive. Both of them. And she knew better than to take anything for granted anymore, especially not that.
She turned back to her in-box.
There was a note from Garrick on the subject of the Tamara Barnes attachments.
Maren,
The document is a history of three different stock prices over the past six years. It provides their value and other parameters up through two months ago. It’s odd that the company names aren’t listed. Many stocks show similar patterns over time, but one of my research assistants should be able to identify these with the programs I have.
More interesting is where the investments are located. The credit card receipt is charged to the main account, the investment partnership, held in a savings and loan in Albuquerque.
New Mexico has extremely permissive laws with regard to investor anonymity. All someone needs to park assets there via a limited liability corporation is to give a company name and provide an address for the principal office and a registered agent who lives in New Mexico. The owners don’t show up on any public record.
Garrick
Maren moved too quickly, putting weight on her leg before she had the cane in place. She winced but kept going, realizing she would need to keep her phone at her side from now on. She found it in the kitchen on the counter where she had made tea.
“Polly Gray speaking.”
“Polly, it’s Maren. Did you say Tamara Barnes went to college in New Mexico?”
“Yes. Born in New York, college in Albuquerque.” She thought for a moment. “University of New Mexico. She graduated with honors. Why?”
“The document I sent Garrick, the attachment from Tamara’s e-mail. It’s an investment account located in Albuquerque. The partners can be anonymous, all except the local agent.” Maren was talking fast. “Wallis Lisborne had access to the money. If Tamara did too, it might explain her expensive car and clothes, and how she got the charge receipt, the evidence placing Wallis at the Hopkins murder.”
“Hold on, love.” Maren could hear Polly talking to someone else, then the sound of a door closing. “How does this help Sean?”
“If we can find who was on that account, if there is someone else, that might be the person Wallis worked with to kill Tamara. Clearly, there’s money behind this somehow, and we’re getting closer.” Pain shot through her leg. Maren leaned against the counter for support, but didn’t stop talking. “Tamara said she and the governor had done something awful. That must be it—Ray Fernandez must be a partner on that account.”
“Maybe.” Polly hesitated. “I still don’t see how being part of this investment account links to any of the murders—Hopkins, Barnes, or the attempts on your life.”
“It is, it must. It’s just that everything’s so complicated. But I’ll figure it out. Or the police will.” Maren moved back to the sofa and gratefully took the weight off her leg as she sank down into the large cushions.
Once the call had ended, Maren took a sip of her tea, cold now, and suffered a moment’s doubt. She thought about the hunches she’d had so far on Sean’s case and how they had played out.
The similarity in the methods of killing in the Hopkins and Barnes cases, a single knife strike through the heart, had suggested to her one killer. The police hadn’t agreed, at least not without something more. The hairbrush with strands of orange-red hair in Ray Fernandez’s car also hadn’t meant anything to anyone but her. And Bethany Castro being Tamara’s child wasn’t linked to Sean’s case in any way she could see yet, not enough to expose Tamara’s secret.
She thought back to Rorie Rickman’s warning. To be thoughtful. To be careful. Generally good advice—Maren knew that. She just wished it weren’t so hard for her to follow.
* * *
SAL INSISTED ON CARRYING Noel’s bag and his briefcase in from the car while he waited on the pullout sofa bed in her living room. He lay on top of the covers, his hat and coat still on, while Sal started dinner and Bethany played upstairs.
Noel was on strict orders of bed rest for several weeks, and Sal wouldn’t hear of him going home alone to his apartment to fend for himself.
He was taking time to adjust to the idea.
Not that it would be his first overnight at Sal’s. They always started like this, with him on the sofa bed. They had agreed that Bethany shouldn’t be exposed to the fact that he and Sal were sleeping together unmarried. It wasn’t a strict religious code for either of them, although Sal went to church regularly. It stemmed from their shared concern that young children were highly impressionable. Neither of them wanted the future teen Bethany sleeping with someone just because she thought they had sanctioned it.
Sal’s modest Davis townhome had two bedrooms and a bath upstairs, with the living room, eat-in kitchen, and half bath downstairs.
In the past when Noel had stayed, he’d moved upstairs to Sal’s room for the night after they were sure Bethany was asleep, setting an early alarm for the next day so he could be back downstairs making up the sofa bed when Bethany woke in the morning. The strategy had only failed them once, when Bethany had a nightmare and knocked on Sal’s locked bedroom door at 2:00 a.m. Before Sal could say anything, Noel had jumped out of bed and hid in the walk-in closet. He’d stayed there for nearly an hour while Sal comforted Bethany, until the child had fallen asleep and Sal carried her back to her own room. When Sal teased him about it later—an hour was a long time to wait in a closet—Noel had looked puzzled, failing to see the humor in what he felt had been a logical action on his part.
But this time would be different, more than a night or two.
Several weeks. An extended stay.
Noel hadn’t lived with anyone since college. Then only a semester passed before he found he was ill-suited for roommates. They seemed uncomfortable with him, despite his trying to stay out of their way. As far as Noel could tell, the problem was simply who he was. Noel reasoned that if he moved in with Sal, the chill that followed him would become obvious to both Sal and Bethany. He might lose them, a risk he was unwilling to take. As he was preparing to get up and tell Sal that he would be fine in his own apartment and needed to go home, there was a knock at the door.
* * *
SAL WIPED HER HANDS on a dishtowel and went to see who it was. Likely a door-to-door salesperson or petitioner. They always chose the dinner hour to find people at home. Annoyed, she turned the heat under the stir-fry down so it wouldn’t burn.
Billy Machelli stood on the stoop, hands jammed deep in the front pockets of his jeans, his curly dark hair longer than Sal remembered it. A heavily made-up, platinum blonde woman stood next to him, her eyes struggling to stay open under lashes thick with mascara. Her smile was more childlike than the rest of her, something sweet and genuine in it. It was hard to tell her age, but Sal guessed the woman was younger than Billy. That was his type.
“Hey, Sis, great to see you,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“This is my fiancée, Marilyn Lewis. Seeing as how I’m getting married, I had to introduce you two.”
Billy took Marilyn’s hand and started to step inside, but Sal blocked him.
She acknowledged Marilyn with a nod, keeping her eyes on Billy. “If this is about money, call me and I’ll—”
“No, I have a job. We just want to be with family to share our news.” “Mommy, Daniel is hungry.”
Bethany took the stairs carefully, holding the banister with her free hand and cradling her stuffed lion, Daniel, with her cast against her narrow chest.
Noel’s medication made him dizzy, but he was up in time to intercept Bethany’s path toward the entry. “Let’s go in the kitchen and feed Daniel,” Noel said, taking the little girl’s free hand and turning her toward the back hall. “I’m hungry, too,” he said.
Marilyn gazed at Bethany’s retreating figure.
There was a longing, a depth of feeling in that look that gave Sal a chill. She remembered her own days when all she wanted was a child. And in that moment Sal knew. This visit wasn’t about money. It wasn’t about a marriage.
It was about Bethany. Her daughter.
Billy’s daughter.