I’ve not only figured out the case by the time Burke arrives at the Edina home of Jeff and Karen Holmes, but I’ve worked up a serious head of steam, too.
The Holmes’ place is nice. An older white colonial, with black shutters and a circle drive. The tall cedar trees flanking the yard suggest money.
In my time, we’d be looking at a 1.5 mil retro fixer upper. Now, it’s a cool million, and I’m wondering what went on inside to cause Gretta to run.
I have some ideas, and they’re dark, so I don’t want to entertain them. But a guy in my line of work can’t rule anything out.
So, I’m sitting in my car, my arms folded, just barely resisting the urge to stalk up the driveway and take Jeff Holmes apart.
Asia’s, Heat of the Moment isn’t helping. And yes, it’s the young, impetuous me inside roaring to life, but it’s the old me, too, the me who has lost a daughter.
The me who can’t imagine a father who would hurt his own child.
Burke has pulled up behind me. He gets out and walks over to me just as I get out, too. “What’s up?”
I can’t stop myself. “The father did it.”
Burke glances at the house, then back at me. “You get roughed up last night?” He’s staring at my chin.
“Took a spill. Listen, here’s how—”
“Were you on a case?”
What? “No—yes, sorta, but—listen to me—”
“Without me?”
I give him a look. “I was helping Danny Mulligan with a stakeout. You had a gig. Whatever.”
Burke frowns, and his jaw tightens. “Yeah, whatever. What are we doing here?”
Thank you. “The Lexus.”
“And?”
“In Lulu’s parking lot. Teresa remembers seeing it, early, before Gretta’s shift.”
“Yeah?”
“I think it belongs to Gretta’s father.”
Burke draws in a breath. “He didn’t mention seeing her—”
“C’mon. The mom knew where she was. She’d been giving Gretta money for weeks through her softball coach.”
“When did you—I haven’t even written my report of the interview yet.”
Shoot. That’s right. We didn’t find that out until after we’d questioned Robert. Or rather, Robert’s wife, Angie. She let that little piece of information slip out after he left the house to attend softball practice for this weekend’s tournament.
So, what am I going to do? “Karen told us. Remember? Yesterday?”
Burke narrows his eyes as I hustle on. “My thinking is that Dad found out where she was and tracked down her location from Mom, then went to find her. Maybe he wanted to ask her to come home.” And then it occurs to me. “What if he knew she was pregnant? And they got in an argument—”
“And she got out of the car, and started to run? But where did the strangling come in?”
“I don’t know. Eve said the bruises were old.” And now, our conversation rings back to me. What if the guy in the car was the father of her child? Maybe she told him she didn’t want an abortion, and they got in a fight.
No. Please no. Because if Jeff Holmes is the father of his daughter’s child—I can’t even think it.
I turn and stalk up to the house. Burke runs after me. “Rem—what’s going on?”
“Nothing. I just want to ask him where he was the morning of his daughter’s murder.”
“You don’t look like you’re in a just asking mood.” He puts his hand on my shoulder, but I shrug him off.
“Rem—”
I round on him, hold up my hands. “Chill. I have full containment.”
But when we ring the door and it opens, I’m not so sure. Jeff Holmes is wearing golfing clothes—a yellow shirt with a green Burl Oaks Golf Club logo on the breast, a pair of white pants, and is clearly headed out for a nice day on the course.
While his wife grieves their dead daughter?
I nearly push him into the house while Burke explains that we have more questions.
I just have the one. “Where were you yesterday morning around 6 o’clock?”
He frowns at me, probably trying to stir up an alibi. I hope he sees the warning in my eyes.
“Jeff? What’s going on?”
Jeff turns to his wife, who has come down the stairs. She’s wearing a yellow summer sweater, a golf skirt, her hair back in a headband and I can barely take it in.
Who are these people?
“Detective Stone seems to think I had something to do with Gretta’s death.” Jeff snaps and looks at me.
Burke’s hand again lands on my shoulder.
He talks because my words are balled in my chest. “We just need to clear up a few more questions,” he says. “Paperwork.”
Karen joins her husband. “We answered all your questions.” But wariness hovers in her eyes, as if afraid we’ll pry too deep.
She’s probably protecting Jeff, and that burns me.
We’re standing in a living room, just off the entry, with a grand piano, a glass coffee table, flanking white linen sofas, and a wall of pictures. I walk over to the wall.
“You haven’t answered the one I just asked.” I glance over my shoulder at Jeff. Raise an eyebrow.
“I was running,” he says. “Every Friday morning, I take a longer run while Karen has a breakfast with her friends.”
“Anybody see you?” Burke asks.
“I suppose.” He shrugs. “I don’t know.”
I do. I turn back to the pictures on the wall. They’re the usual pictures of Gretta at all ages—cute girl, who went through her buck-toothed stage—and some of the entire family. They had a springer spaniel at one time. “Gretta is an only child?”
Karen walks over. “Yes. She was adopted. We couldn’t have children of our own.”
“She looks like a good girl,” I say. “Did she get into trouble?”
Karen is quiet. “Until recently, she seemed very happy. Then, she started acting out. Getting moody. I think she was depressed. She ran away three months ago, after a terrible fight.”
“But you knew where she was.” I’m still looking at the pictures. There’s one with grandparents, a picture taken on the lake. And another with her standing by a grand piano, in a gold-gilded room. “This one. Where was it taken?”
“At orchestra hall. She was a gifted pianist, and she and a few other students had a private concert. She only invited one other couple to the event.”
“Who?”
“Her softball coach and his wife.” Karen touches the picture, and her voice turns low. “They’ve been very good to us.”
“They gave her a place to stay, didn’t they? At one of their rental units.”
She meets my eyes. Nods, something of fear in her expression. My gaze flicks to Jeff. He’s watching us, his mouth tight.
“That’s how you knew where she was,” I say quietly to him.
He swallows. “No,” he says. “I didn’t know where she was.”
He’s lying. I turn back to the wall.
“Then why was your Lexus at Lulu’s yesterday morning?” Burke asks.
There are more pictures, of Jeff and Karen in their youth, little Gretta on Karen’s lap. And their wedding picture, Karen looking young and pretty in a flouncy dress.
My gaze lands on another picture.
Jeff Holmes, undergrad, sitting on the steps of his fraternity at the University of Minnesota.
Sigma Chi.
My gut tightens because I knew it. I was an idiot to not see it the first time, but we didn’t have the cufflink, or the Lexus sighting, and somewhere in the back of my mind, maybe we didn’t even dig into the alibi—I don’t want to know where we screwed up.
I just know we did.
I turn, my eyes hard on Jeff. “You went to Sigma Chi.”
He nods, his gaze hitting the picture.
I take a step toward him. “Did you know Gretta was pregnant?”
His mouth opens, and he looks at Karen, then back to me. “What?”
Of course, I don’t know she was pregnant, not for sure, but just in case— “She visited an abortion clinic the morning of her death. And you knew it. Because you were waiting for her in the Lulu’s parking lot. Probably saw her coming down the street from the clinic. And maybe she saw you and because your wife had been giving her money, she was probably relieved to see you, hoping you’d shown up to help her, to rescue her…except, were you?”
Jeff is just standing there, his mouth closed, his Adam’s apple dropping in his throat.
I know guilt when I see it. “You went to see her, didn’t you? What, to tell her to come home? Or maybe…maybe you gave her money to have that abortion.” I haven’t mentioned the twenty dollar bill in her grip.
His breath hiccups, and I don’t care. I take a step toward him. “Why did she run away from home, Jeff? You said it was because you two fought over her boyfriend. But was it really because she didn’t feel safe? Maybe…because you were the father of her child?”
I should have expected the right hook, given the dark look in the man’s eyes. The punch is flimsy at best.
It barely stings, and I step back, ready to round on him.
But he roars and leaps on me, and suddenly, I’m back peddling and slamming into the glass coffee table.
The thing shatters, and Jeff is on top of me.
I let him have another lick because I can’t figure out a way to get him off me without tearing myself to shreds.
Then Burke is on him, pulling him up.
I find my feet and he breaks away from Burke and comes at me again. This time, I bat his hand away, the wimpy golfer that he is, grab his other arm, twist him around and in a second, he’s against a wall, his arms behind him, in cuffs.
“No!”
Karen might have been screaming this entire time, but I haven’t heard her until now. She is crying and shouting as she rushes Jeff.
Burke catches her. “Calm down. He’s not under arrest—”
“Yes he is,” I say. “He attacked me—”
“It wasn’t him!” Karen is trying to unlock Burke’s arms from around her waist. “It wasn’t him at Lulu’s—it was me!”
Everyone stills as we look at her.
“I didn’t kill my daughter! But I did go there to plead with her to talk to me. To come home and let us…let us help her.” She’s crying now and gone is the woman of poise. Her headband is torn free, her eyes blackened, mascara running down her face. “She called me to meet her, but she never showed up. And I didn’t want Jeff to know—”
“I knew.” His voice is quiet and for the first time, I see a man broken, a man beyond the golf shirt, the perfect hair, the million-dollar home. “I knew you were visiting her.”
“How?” Karen’s eyes fill.
“I heard you talking to her. And I knew you were giving her money. But I just…” He closes his eyes. “I just thought, in time, she’d come home.”
Oh. Denial. I’m painfully familiar with that game. For a moment, I’m standing in the middle of my kitchen, looking at an empty bottle of Macallans.
“Are you sure she was pregnant?” His eyes are fierce even as they cloud over.
I have a terrible, sinking feeling.
“Not for sure,” Karen whispers. “Why?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t trust him.”
And I know who, even as Burke asks.
“Robert Swenson,” I say, and Jeff nods.
“I think he talked her into leaving. I think maybe…maybe he was sleeping with her. We had it out a few weeks ago, before a game. He was coming from some deal he made, all cocky, like he was some hotshot, and I confronted him.” Jeff takes a breath. “He told me that my daughter didn’t belong to me anymore. That she was eighteen and could make her own choices.”
“And what did you say?”
“We scuffled, but I…” He looks at me, then Karen. “I loved Gretta. I would never hurt her. And I feared that he might say something to her to make her push us out of her life.”
“A father never stops caring.” I don’t know why I’m channeling my father. “The only way you survive is to hang onto hope.”
Jeff looks at me like I get it. And I do. Oh, wow, I do. More, I’m doing some scant math. What if during the scuffle, his cufflink fell off, lodged into the door of the Lexus? And maybe, while Karen was at Lulu’s it fell out…
Before I can test this theory, however, I hear a voice.
Oh no.
“Did you call Booker?” I hiss to Burke, who frowns at me, but Booker strides in before I get an answer.
“Stone!” His voice rings out again. I slowly look up at him.
“Yeah.”
“We got a 9-1-1 call from a neighbor,” Booker says, “And dispatch ran a search on your cars. Placed you both here.” He walks over to Jeff, looks at me. “Wanna tell me what’s going on?”
He’s giving me a hard look, and for some reason, I feel like his arrival has something to do with our previous conversation, the one about changing time. I shake my head. “Following up on a case.”
“And?” He looks at Jeff.
I’m unlocking the man’s cuffs. Mostly because I believe him, and yes, he took a swing, or two, at me, but you were there. You heard what I said. So, “You good?” I ask Jeff.
He rubs his wrists, glances at Booker, then nods. “We have an alarm system. You can check the time I returned from my run. My wife was back from her breakfast—or I guess, her visit to Lulu’s—by then.”
My hunch is that it’s long before we showed up at Lulu’s to find Gretta’s body still warm.
Which means, I’m still looking for a killer.
Booker glances at me, and gestures with his head. And I know I’m in for it when we step out on the stoop and he shuts the door behind me.
He purses his lips, puts his hands in his pockets. He’s wearing his badge on a lanyard around his neck, his leather jacket, and that watch on his wrist. My watch.
I want to ask if he’s done any traveling lately.
“I know where you were last night.”
My head pops up and all I can think was…Eve?
“You went to that stakeout with Danny to stop him from getting killed.”
Yeah, I did. But here’s the thing. If he believes that I stopped Danny’s murder, then maybe he won’t get his knickers in a knot when I go over to the Mulligan’s house today…
To, um, stop the murderer.
So I nod. I really hate lying, but maybe I've already stopped Danny’s death. Because if I hadn’t been there, it would have been him chasing down Hassan, and Danny would have been in the sights of his brother, the gunman. So I make a face. “I just…”
“Can’t live with yourself if you don’t try. I get it…I’ve done it.” His face grows hard. “Don’t do it again. I promise, there are some consequences you can’t live with.”
I want to ask, but don’t. Still, I apparently can’t keep my youthful mouth shut. “We make changes to our timeline all the time—we just don’t know what the outcome would have been. But imagine being able to save lives, to never let someone suffer—”
“You don’t know what havoc you’re setting in motion. A thousand tiny changes—all that carry their own ripples. It never ends…” Booker’s mouth tightens. “Don’t make me regret giving you the watch. I might not give it to you after all.”
I can’t think past the time conundrum that he already did give it to me so…okay, let’s agree that he could go back and rewrite time, too, so maybe I’ll just keep my mouth shut. “I won’t,” I say, my words true.
“Try and stay out of trouble, Stone.”
The door opens and Burke walks out. “I got the report from the alarm company. Their alibi checks out.”
“Jeff and Karen didn’t do it,” I say, my hands in my pockets. “And Swenson has an alibi.”
“Yeah,” Burke nods, again frowning. “Did I mention that?”
“Probably.”
Booker is looking at me, and I’ve had enough scrutiny for today.
I’m going to pick up some ice cream and go to a party, and somehow, try and stay out of trouble.