Blood Bond (22 page)

“Is that what you think will happen here?” Bertrise asked sharply. “That the wrong person will take the blame for
her
death? Maybe you?”

Marva shifted her gaze over to Bertrise. “I don't really care what happens to me, if you want to know,” she said. “Lock me up. It might be a good change of pace. Or maybe whoever attacked Aidan will come after me next. Aren't you wondering why Aidan isn't already dead?”

In fact, Joe was wondering that. The theory he was working on—that the attacker had planned to carry out the same general method he used on Gail, immobilizing McKay with a blow to the head and then binding him to take him somewhere else—seemed sound, if you figured the guy was interrupted or scared off.

But there were problems with the theory. For one thing, why attack McKay with the garage door up, in the open? Even though it was dark, wouldn't it have made more sense to follow him into the house, forcing him if necessary, where he could immobilize McKay at his leisure?

And what sort of interruption had there been? It could have been as simple as a car driving by, or a sound from the bushes—even an animal—that scared off the attacker.

No matter what, Joe's concern for Marva's safety had ratcheted up. If the attacker was motivated by the events that had taken place at San Diego State, and was going down a trail of culpability in Jess's death, then Marva would logically be next in line.

Perhaps the killer's rage ended with McKay; perhaps he could understand that Marva was barely more than a bystander, an accidental accomplice.

But if that was true then she wouldn't be receiving packages, would she?

“Your sister's service is in the morning,” Bertrise said, declining to follow up on Marva's question.

“Yes. Yes, and it will be beautiful. My mother will have seen to that. She and Gail always knew who to call.”

“What did you do when you got Gail back in the house?” Joe asked. He had to see this through.

“I pulled her into the kitchen and I made her drink the rest of her wine and I got a few inches from her face and I told her to pull herself together and then I watched her, and she put that look back on her face and fixed her hair and then she walked back into the other room, and she told them what happened and she played it exactly right and it's no wonder no one noticed when I came in behind her—right behind her, but everyone was looking at Gail. Everyone always looked at Gail.”

Joe realized he'd unconsciously echoed Marva's gesture; he was rubbing the table slowly with his fingers. He made himself stop, and kept his hands still while Bertrise asked a few more questions. At last Bertrise stood, gathering her folders.

“I'll call someone to drive you home,” she said. “And we'll put an officer outside your home for tonight.”

“Just for tonight?” Marva asked, faintly mocking. “And if I make it through tonight, you figure I'm out of danger? Why is that, Detective Wellington? You thinking my sister's killer must be getting tired, if he couldn't even murder Aidan properly?”

“We'll discuss further protection tomorrow,” Bertrise said stiffly. “For now, you'll be driven home and you can rest assured that the department is making your safety a priority.”

“I can do it.” Joe pushed back from the table. “I'll drive her myself. Have the uniform meet us over there; I'll have a word with him. Who's on?”

Bertrise looked at him sharply; he'd have some explaining to do tomorrow. But all she said was “I'm not sure, I'll go look at the duty roster.”

Marva looked back and forth between the two of them, and there was something almost amused in her expression. “I appreciate your . . .
protection
.”

Bertrise shrugged. “Fine. I'm on my way home, anyway. Ms. Groesbeck, perhaps I'll see you at the service tomorrow. Please accept, again, my sincere condolences.”

Marva nodded and stood, gathering up a filmy bead-shot scarf that had been draped across the back of the chair. She pulled it around herself like a shawl, looping one fringed end through the other, and followed Joe from the room.

In the car she said nothing. Joe drove slowly, observing traffic signs with exaggerated care, taking his time through intersections. There was something he wanted to say to Marva, but he wasn't sure exactly what it was. Or whether it would even be appropriate, but that was a secondary concern. That he was sure she wasn't guilty? That she was too hard on herself? That she would get through tomorrow, and the next day, and eventually it would get easier?

But he didn't know if any of those things were true.

At her condo, he got out of the car. She waited for him to come around and open the door, and this time she did accept his hand. She stepped gracefully from the car and she didn't stop.

She didn't stop. She walked into him and slid her arms around him and he shuddered in surprise and something else, inevitability maybe, and he kissed her back and it was harsh and yielding at the same time.

And then it was over and Marva was walking away from him, unhurried, her back straight, and he watched her find her keys and let herself in the house and she never turned around, not once. Joe waited for the officer to arrive, his eyes never leaving Marva's door.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

WELL BEFORE DAWN, MARVA
woke up and thought about Aidan. With a strange new clarity, it occurred to Marva that he had loved Gail more than she herself ever had, and that made her sad. At five thirty she called his cell; after all, the nurses had to be waking him up every hour anyway—wasn't that what they did when people got a head injury? He answered after only a few rings.

“Aidan,” she'd said softly, not wanting to disturb the peaceful quiet of her own home, “it's me, Marva. How are you feeling?”

He told her he'd been awake anyway, that she'd laugh when she saw his stitches because he looked like Frankenstein. He said he didn't remember anything about being hit, or calling 911, that he must have blacked out again.

“I wonder if he'll come after me,” Marva said, but the thought was abstract, no real threat to the odd peace that lingered.

“We have to take this seriously,” Aidan said, his light tone giving way to his sober lawyer voice. “Something happened to interrupt him yesterday, or I could be dead, Marva.”

“But why—I mean, killing Gail should have been the end. Who could have enough anger left to go after us?”

“Deanne Mentis,” Aidan said—as though he'd given it a lot of thought. He was a lawyer, a thinker, so of course he had. “Or Conrad Bartelak. I didn't want to believe it before. I was so sure it had something to do with Bryce, even after Gail was killed, I thought . . . you know, he could have been jealous. She gave him reason.”

Something in his tone caught Marva's attention. There was an edge of bitterness there, and she regretted having told him about Gail's affair with Tom. But there had been others, of course, and Gail had never worked that hard to hide them; Aidan, the few times a year when they saw each other socially, must have read between the lines and seen that Gail was still unable to commit to just one man.

Poor Aidan. He'd never really gotten over the way Gail dumped him for Bryce, the way she leaned on him to get through that last year, letting him believe he had her gratitude and her loyalty, making him think she was as impressed with his academic honors and pro bono work and law review as everyone else was. And maybe she had been, until someone came along who shone even brighter, whose promise was backed up by the ruthless cunning that Bryce had already mastered even back then.

Aidan had tried to find his own happiness a couple of times after that. Everyone talked about how his first wife was a dead ringer for Gail, but Renee really wasn't; she was lovely but insubstantial, and she didn't stand a chance once Aidan started to be disappointed in her. In himself.

“Oh, Aidan,” she said. “You must be— I'm so sorry you won't be able to come to the service.”

“About that.” Aidan laughed, a lonely sound over the phone; Marva imagined him in the indignity of a hospital gown, with no one to bring him pajamas. She would have done so herself, of course, if she'd been able. “Maybe I can be there after all.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the last time they were in here they said I'm in the clear. With the bang on the head, anyway. And it doesn't take a genius to know what to do with the stitches. Keep 'em dry or something, I'll look online.”

“Are you
leaving
? Without being discharged?”

“What are they going to do, arrest me?”

Marva was silent for a moment, thinking of the officer outside. She hoped he hadn't dozed; for the first time she felt a little frightened. Somehow talking to Aidan made her feel more isolated, not less so. “No, but—they have a policeman here, outside my house. I think they'll do the same for you, Aidan. The murderer—Deanne or Conrad or whoever it is—until they find out and arrest them, they'll have someone watch us and make sure nothing happens.”

That laugh again. “Marva, whoever hit me on the head isn't going to be coming back. For all they know I'm dead, right? Look, I just want—no, I
need
to be there. To say goodbye.”

To Gail—he wanted to say goodbye to Gail. There it was again, that uncomfortable feeling. So many years had gone by, but Aidan's feelings hadn't deteriorated with them.

But all along Aidan had been there for her, too. She'd leaned on him so many times: when she needed to draft her prenup, for instance, because who but a friend could advise her on something so sensitive—and then again when Harmon left, because of course she knew she'd need a “real” lawyer, but wasn't it easier to call someone who you didn't have to explain it all to, someone who already knew that you'd blown your one shot and the humiliation hurt as much as the painful process of extrication, of the legal untangling of the life you'd gambled away for so little.

But now, in her home in the dark early morning hour with her new life rising around her like groundwater coming to the surface, Marva realized something about Aidan. He'd never really come to her, to Marva, except as a way to come back to Gail. She'd seen the way he looked at her sister over the years, the way he remembered exactly what she liked to drink, had it ordered by the time she came fashionably late to the table. She'd watched him with Bryce. Bryce treated Aidan like one of Gail's girlfriends, friendly and indulgent, but didn't Bryce always find something else to do when Aidan came around? And Aidan—he'd never complained, never wandered off to join the men talking sports, he'd always been happy to sit with Gail and Marva and the kids and listen, he had been such a good listener.

He had always been there for Gail. Not for Marva, except as a gatekeeper, a means of access. And now Gail was dead, and Aidan would do whatever it took, break out of the hospital, to see her one last time. And then what—would he disappear from Marva's life, with nothing left to bind them?

“JOE BASHIR,”
Joe said, juggling his cell phone with his steaming coffee and paper bag.

“Hey, buddy.”

Joe stepped away from the counter. He found an empty table in the corner of the bustling shop, dodging the off-to-work crowd and a few early risers with their laptops in high gear.

“What's up, Odell?”

“Thought you might like to know that our gal Deanne might be a whack job but it don't look like she's
your
whack job, not this time anyway.” Odell pronounced her name “DEE-yann,” making it sound like it had sprung from his own muddy vernacular.

“Oh, how do you mean?”

“I followed her credit card trail up here but it wasn't Napa she went to. Try Reno.”

“Reno?”

“Yup, checked herself into the Starblazer and had herself a good old time. Too good, you ask me, seeing as she took two advances on her credit card. Fifteen hundred bucks.”

“You mean for gambling?”

“Nah, just really big tips for the waitresses. Fuck a duck, Joe, you're a little slow today, ain't you?”

Joe had to smile at that. He hadn't slept well. He'd called Amaris's cell four times the night before. She had the thing turned off. He knew of only one circumstance when she could bear to be out of easy reach.

He found no comfort that it was when she was with him.

“I'm tired, yes.”

“Well, let me spell it out nice and slow for you then. Your gal went on a bender and it turns out it ain't the first time.”

“Oh?”

“The manager of the Starblazer told me all about it; she goes up there every six months or so, usually drops enough they end up comping her.”

“Does she go with a man? A boyfriend?”

“He didn't say . . . does it matter?”

It didn't, of course. Deanne in Reno, marking the anniversary in her own sad and self-destructive way, meant no Deanne in Montair wreaking vengeance. But remembering how she'd grabbed the little girl who'd been racing by, long blond hair flying, Joe had a fleeting wish that she'd had something in her life to distract her, something other than a smoky casino and a bottle.

“No, guess not. Well, another one down, then.”

“You ask me, today'd be a good day to shake the Bryce tree, see what falls out.”

“Shake the . . . Is that another one of your Missouri-isms?”

“Naw, just a regular American kind a thing. Don't feel bad, you'll catch up one of these days. But look, he's under all kinds of pressure, got to look sad at the service, got to keep the smirk off his face, all the while sitting on a couple, three million bucks. That's gonna be a trick for a guy like that.”

“All right, Odell, let's put you on it. You're the man on Bryce detail, how does that sound?”

“Sounds peachy. Now I got to get off the horn and go iron my shirt.”

“Press away,” Joe said. “See you soon.”

WALKING FROM
the parking lot to the church, Joe slowed his steps so Bertrise could keep up with him. The high-heeled black shoes, he suspected, were slowing her down. Then again, they put her over six feet and showed off her legs magnificently, so maybe she was enjoying the attention in her wake.

Unlike Tom Bergman's service, Gail's seemed to draw most of Montair. Marva had arrived before Joe; he spotted her right away in the front row sitting with her mother and Bryce and the children. Her hair was pulled back in a silver clasp low on her nape, and her curls spilled down her back. She wore the same deep purple clothes that she had before, startling among the sea of black; the shade made her pale skin seem almost luminescent. Turning to settle the wriggling children, she found him right away with her gaze; neither of them looked away. He could see, even from the side aisle of the church, the dusting of freckles across her collarbones, the strong line of her brow, the sadness in her eyes. She parted her lips and mouthed something, and Joe wasn't sure if it was “hello” or “no” or something else—or if, maybe, she wasn't looking at him at all.

Abiding Savior was larger than St. Timothy's, but the crowd just kept coming. By the time the priest came down the aisle, altar boys trailing him with the tall cross, Joe and his colleagues were not the only people standing along the sides. Bertrise whispered that she was going to go outside and watch people coming and going.

The service was nothing out of the ordinary. Joe kept an eye on Marva; other than shushing the children she seemed still and calm. Afterward he watched her confer with the priest before making her slow way through the congregation, greeting people in twos and threes, accepting hugs; her mother did the same with a stiff dignity that Joe had come to associate with old money, of which there was precious little in Montair, but an abundance in places like Atherton.

He withdrew into the crowd as the family passed. The memory of last night's kiss burned in his mind, but he wouldn't be surprised if it had slipped Marva's memory entirely. It had been almost like a natural disaster, an atavistic instinct that she had indulged like other people might follow an urge to stare at the stars or walk into the surf.

Before they reached the gleaming black Town Car at the head of the procession, a woman broke out of the crowd at a hurried stride and put a hand on Marva's shoulder. Joe watched from a dozen paces back as she leaned close to Marva's ear and whispered something; Marva suddenly blanched and wrenched her shoulder free.

At that moment Joe recognized the woman as Dilys Ellis, in high heels and a black sheath that made her thin body look even more gaunt. Dilys staggered back, but in a voice that carried easily to where Joe stood, she said, “I saw what I saw.”

Marva pulled back her hand and for a second Joe was sure she was going to slap Dilys across her face, and he saw a look of such intense anticipation on the woman's face that he realized she expected the blow, not only expected it but
wanted
it, waited for it with the rapture of a martyr.

Joe was halfway through the throng, trying to get to Marva's side, but she slowly lowered her hand to her side and took her mother's arm, turned her back on Dilys, and disappeared into the sleek car where Bryce and the children were already waiting.

Joe reached Dilys, Bertrise hurrying to catch up behind him.

“What was that about?” he demanded.

She turned a mildly disappointed face to him. “You're the detective,” she said. “I would think you'd know what they're saying.”

“What who's saying?”

Dilys swept the crowd with her shoulder, then looked at him with her head tilted almost coquettishly. “Everyone. About Marva. It's not the kind of secret you like to talk about unless you have to.”

“What are you talking about?”

She fixed him with a chilling smile. “It turns out that Marva had more reason to hate her sister than I realized.”

JOE HEADED
from the service to the hospital, taking Bertrise with him. Odell went ahead to the Engler home to keep tabs on the reception.

Joe and Bertrise found the nursing station on McKay's floor and identified themselves. The receptionist, a pleasant middle-aged blonde in scrubs printed with pink cats, looked up with surprise.

“Mr. McKay checked himself out,” she said. “Technically, it was against doctor's orders. Dr. Vicencio got tied up and wasn't going to be here until lunchtime and Mr. McKay didn't want to wait that long.”

Joe glanced at Bertrise, then back at the receptionist. “But didn't he have a concussion or something?”

She pursed her lips and regarded them for a second. “Why don't I have you talk to Dr. Vicencio?”

“I thought he was tied up,” Bertrise said.

“
She
. Dr. Vicencio's female, and she's around the corner with a patient. If you'll take a seat in there, I'll have her come talk to you.”

She gestured to a glass-walled room decorated like a family room—if the person decorating it had been down at the heels and not terrible concerned with a unifying theme. Joe sat on a shabby plaid sofa, moving a stack of paperbacks out of the way, and Bertrise took a bentwood rocker with a pink corduroy pillow tied to its back rungs. Joe took in the prints of street scenes in Paris, the white laminate entertainment unit whose shelves sagged with beat-up games and DVDs and plastic plants, and decided that the prospect of spending time here might cause him to check out prematurely, too.