A Dirty Shame (12 page)

I took it to the counter and opened it up. It was a photograph, slightly faded and a little worse for wear, but I recognized Murphy’s Auto Shop. There was a smattering of people standing in front of the bays—some were mechanics—but it was mostly local men. The auto shop had always been a gathering place, and I didn’t see anything incriminating or suspect in the photo. It looked like any other day at that particular spot. Nothing in Bloody Mary really changed. I had the proof in my hand.

I grabbed an evidence bag and logged and dated the information on the outside before placing the photo inside. It wasn’t until then that I noticed Frank Greenbaum and Jesse Fife in the photo. It didn’t explain anything really. It just meant the photo was eight to ten years old, since Frank and Jesse had both passed on—both of natural causes—some time back. I’d been away at college when Frank had died, but I’d been back home for the Christmas holidays when Jesse had gone, so I’d had to help my parents with his interment. I looked closely at all the others in the photograph, but didn’t see anyone else who made me think there was anything out of the ordinary happening.

The rest of George’s body didn’t give me any more clues to his murder, and the autopsy didn’t take nearly as long as normal since most of his brain was missing. His tox screen came back negative, and there were no abnormalities internally that I could find. Gunshot to the head was official COD, and there was no amount of putty in the world that would make George presentable for an open coffin. It was a little sad to think George would probably be going into the plot next to the one we’d dug for his wife only a few months before.

I put George away and then went to use the shower in the bathroom attached to my office. I scrubbed and washed my hair twice, and I didn’t get any whiffs of embalming fluid when I got out and dried off. I grabbed the extra pair of clean clothes I kept inside the office closet, and yanked on jeans and a long-sleeved black Henley. I set my boots out on the side porch to air out, and grabbed my tennis shoes instead.

I tried calling Jack to let him know about the photograph, but it went directly to voicemail. I had no idea where he was, but I wasn’t going to sit around and wait for him to come to me. I needed to get out. Seeing those boxes in the lab had ideas forming in my head, and I knew if I stayed at the funeral home, I’d be ripping into them to read what was on the inside. I’d already seen some of it. I just wasn’t sure it was the right time to look at the rest. Maybe I was just a coward.

I checked my phone for the twentieth time in ten minutes and saw I had no messages, either from Vaughn or from Jack, so I grabbed the photograph and my bag and headed for the Suburban. I knew exactly what I had to do and where I was going. It was past time I faced my demons. Maybe once I did I could finally find peace.

The darkness was coming later and later in the day as spring neared, and today of all days, I was thankful for it. The clouds had grown gray and angry while I’d been cooped up with George and Mrs. Perry, and they roiled dangerously even as thunder rumbled in the distance.

My fingers tightened on the wheel at the crossroads of Queen Mary and Heresy, but I pushed ahead and turned left on the rutted path. The inside of the Suburban seemed to be getting smaller and smaller the closer I got, so I rolled down the windows for some fresh air. The smell of the water from the Potomac was strong, especially with a storm rolling in, and the wind had picked up so the trees arced towards the ground and my hair whipped around my face.

I hadn’t realized I’d arrived until I saw the line of trees at the dead end just past the turn into my driveway. I stopped there in the middle of the road and stared at the house in disbelief. Jack
had
been busy while I’d been away.

The old Victorian had been built in the early part of the twentieth century, and when I’d left Bloody Mary four months ago it had looked its age. But now, everything looked right. At least on the surface. The roof had been repaired, the rotted wood had been replaced and repainted a bright white, and the sagging porch had been rebuilt and painted a dark navy to match the new shutters. There were no broken windows. And I knew the inside would be fixed as well.

But beneath it all, it was still the same old house.

I stumbled from the Suburban and walked up the graveled drive. Someone had cleared out the weeds and overgrown brush, but I hardly noticed. I’d left my coat in the car, and the wind was vicious as it cut through my shirt to the skin. But I just wrapped my arms around myself and stared.

I’d grown up in the house. A house that had held nothing but lies and deceit. A house that had already been drenched in blood before my own brush with death a few months before. And I knew no matter how many coats of paint now covered those walls, the blood would always be there. I thought of Brody—of the man I’d wanted to love. But I’d been incapable of forcing the emotion. I thought of my parents who’d made me that way.

The first drops of rain started to fall at the same time I heard the tires of another car approaching. A car door slammed and footsteps crunched across the gravel, but I didn’t turn around. I knew it was Jack, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the house. And I couldn’t bear to face him when I told him what needed to be said. The footsteps stilled behind me, as if he were unsure how to proceed.

“You were right, you know,” I said. “I didn’t love him—Brody, I mean. It makes his death somehow worse, doesn’t it?”

“Jaye—”

“No, let me get this out. I need to tell you why I don’t think I’m capable of loving. Why you’re wasting your time.” I licked my lips, but my mouth was completely dry, so it didn’t help. “What I feel for you is stronger than what I’ve ever felt for anyone, but I need you to try and understand why you may not find what you’re looking for with me.”

The rain was coming faster and my shivers more violent, and Jack moved closer so he could hear me over the howling wind.

“Then tell me,” he said, his voice gentle despite the turbulence I felt inside my own body.

“My parents—” I gulped in a deep breath. “I didn’t tell you everything about my parents. You know the basics. You know the FBI accused them of smuggling stolen goods and worse things into the country. They used the dock in the little cove behind the house. I had no idea the magnitude of their
business
when I was growing up. Even when I was an adult.”

“I found some things while I was up at the cabin. Documents. The FBI never found the bolt hole they’d built behind the house. It’s built like a storm shelter into the ground about a hundred feet back, but it’s covered with leaves and brush. Dad showed me where it was.” I stopped feeling the cold the longer I spoke. “It was like a game, he’d said. A family secret. Just in case I ever needed to hide.”

I felt a jacket come around my shoulders and knew Jack had given me his, but he didn’t say anything. He just waited for me to get it all out.

“There are so many papers. Documents recording body after body that they used to hide smuggled goods. Most of them were military, shipped back from overseas for a proper burial. My parents had a government contract, so bodies in the state of Virginia automatically went to them for preparation before interment at Arlington Memorial. It made it more convenient for cover. Then they’d pretend to bury them and ship them off to another location for the buyer. Jesus, Jack. What do I do? How do I tell all those families their loved ones aren’t really buried where they’re supposed to be?”

“Christ,” Jack said. “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry.” His arms came around me and I buried my face against his chest. He was always so warm. So steady.

“That’s not even the worst of it.” My voice was starting to fade, and I’d stopped noticing the tears running down my face. They only mixed with the rain. But my anger grew even as I thought of what else I had to tell him.

“They were traitors. Did you know that?” I looked him in the eye as the words rushed out, and he smoothed the wet strands of hair back from my face. But I didn’t want gentleness. I needed my anger.

“Those documents were records of each body that came through. American soldiers and spies that could have died by the same people my parents worked for. It’s like a nightmare.” My words spilled out faster and faster. “Their list of sins doesn’t even end there. There was a body in the bunker at the cabin. Gunshot wound to the head. A couple of years old by the looks of it, but not as badly decayed as it should have been because the bunker is climate controlled. So now I can add murder to the list, because who else could have put him there?”

My fists pounded against his chest, but he didn’t try to stop the violence erupting from the deepest part of me. He just held me close, his broad hand rubbing up and down my back.

I had to tell him the last of it. The part that would make him understand why things wouldn’t work between us. Why he couldn’t possibly love me.

“I wasn’t theirs, Jack.” The sob that broke out of me sounded more animalistic than human, and I saw the shock on his face before I tried to pull away. To hide. But he didn’t let me go no matter how I fought against him.

“Get the rest out,” he said. “You’ll feel better for it.”

“I wasn’t theirs,” I yelled. “Isn’t that enough? Do you know what it feels like to know your parents smuggled you into the country like diamonds or guns?”

I crumpled against him, and he picked me up where we were and sat down on the ground, rocking me back and forth like a child. We were both soaked to the skin, and the storm didn’t show any signs of letting up, but his arms were solid and sure around me.

“She’d been pregnant,” I said. “My mother. Pretty far along when something happened on a trip she and my dad took overseas. It was supposed to be vacation, but who the hell knows what they were really doing. She somehow got shot and lost the baby. They were there for weeks while she recovered, and part of the shipment of goods they were overseeing were the bodies of an American colonel and his French wife, along with several other unfortunate soldiers. And inside their bodies was more than half a billion dollars in heroin. The Colonel and his wife had a week old baby girl, and no one knew what to do with her. So my parents just took me, and told everyone I’d been born during their vacation in Italy. I always thought I’d been born in Italy.”

My teeth chattered as I choked out those last words, and I knew the symptoms well enough to know I was in shock. But damned if I knew what to do about it. I looked up into Jack’s eyes and saw the rage he was trying hard to contain for my sake. I looked away so I wouldn’t have to see the pity I was sure would follow.

“Look at me, Jaye,” he said, placing his hands on each side of my face and forcing me to look up. “You think you can’t love or be loved because you came from that? Fuck them. You should be jumping for joy that you don’t share their blood. Their sins aren’t yours. And dammit, I’m not going to stand by and let you tell me I’d be better off loving someone else because you have this clusterfuck of a shit storm about to explode around you. Do you think I can’t, or won’t, stand with you? If I’d go to hell and back again for you, then I sure as hell can take whatever Bloody Mary or even the goddamned FBI has to throw at us.”

My breath was coming faster and faster, and my vision clouded, either because of the tears or the rain, I couldn’t be sure.

“Jack—”

“I’m not finished, dammit.” His thumb brushed at the tears that couldn’t seem to stop falling, and despite the anger I saw in him, his hold on me was gentle. “I’m sorry about Brody. I’m sorry to the depths of my soul that you had to go through that. That you had to watch him die. But you can’t blame yourself because you didn’t love him. It’s not because you weren’t able to love him. You have the capacity to love more than anyone I know. It’s because you weren’t
meant
to love him. That love belongs to me, Jaye. It always has. And you’ve always had mine.”

Something broke free inside of me as his lips took mine in a kiss that was years—decades—overdue. There wasn’t the gentleness of a first kiss, nor the awkward maneuvering and adjustments that had to be made until you became used to each other. It was just—right. There was no other way to describe it.

His fingers tangled in my hair and brought me closer, so our bodies were fused together in every way but the most vital. I cursed the clothes that separated us, and relished the heat that suffused my body as his teeth nipped at my bottom lip.

Someone moaned—probably me—and my arms and legs tightened around him as he coaxed my mouth open and his tongue stroked erotically against mine. His kisses trailed across my cheek and down my neck, where his tongue and teeth did something that had fireworks blasting behind my eyelids. My body felt so hot that it amazed me steam wasn’t sizzling from my skin as soon as the rain touched flesh.

“God, Jaye,” he whispered. “So long. I’ve waited so long for you.”

I’d stopped thinking the moment his mouth touched mine. My past and my parents no longer seemed as important. The bodies that waited for me at the funeral home could all go to the devil. Only Jack mattered. He’s the only one who’d ever mattered.

“Jack,” I moaned.

His hands caressed my shoulders and slid sinuously down, following the dip in my waist and then flaring out as he reached my hips. His fingers tightened and he pulled me closer, so I could feel every inch of his hardness. He pressed my hips against him, and my eyes rolled back in my head just before my lids fluttered closed.

Everything was happening too fast. My brain couldn’t quite catch up with my body, and part of me still thought this was all an illusion. Maybe I’d finally gone over the edge.

His head dropped to my shoulder, and his rapid breaths heated the side of my neck. “We’ve got to stop,” he finally said. The cold was starting to seep in, so I snuggled closer to draw his warmth. “Christ, Jaye. Don’t move or I’ll end up embarrassing myself.”

For some reason that made me giggle, and I buried my face against his neck as exhaustion and euphoria took control. The tears hadn’t completely run their course, but I wiped viciously at my eyes, determined to force them to subside. I wasn’t a crier. There was no need to start now.

“Jesus, Jack. What are we doing? This is insanity.”

“Feels pretty sane to me,” he said, unwinding my arms and legs from around him. He lifted me enough so he could stand and then helped me to my feet. My knees were wobbly and I knew I probably looked like hell, but Jack had already seen me at my worst, though this time was probably running a close second.

He all but carried me to his cruiser and helped me into the seat. The shivers had come back with a vengeance, and there was no hope of warming up when every inch of me was soaking wet. I watched, my brain foggy, as Jack gathered my stuff from the Suburban, pocketed my keys and then tossed my things in the back seat. His lips were blue by the time he got in and started the car.

“I can tell you exactly what we’re going to do, Doctor Graves.” He did a u-turn in the middle of the road and headed back down the lane. “We’re going home. And we’re going to get warm and eat soup and talk about murder.”

My whole body relaxed against the seat, and I’d just realized I’d been scared to death he was going to ravish me as soon as we walked through the door.

“And maybe while we’re doing all that, you can work on getting used to me kissing you.”