Blood Bond (5 page)

He had to hand it to her, though; Gail made no secret that she was evaluating him. It was an unfamiliar sensation in this room, where people generally felt nervous and defensive—but elsewhere, Joe was used to being stared at. He considered his features to be typical Indo-Pak, with the defined cheekbones and chin, strong brow, full mouth and broad nose, but still some people couldn't guess his ancestry. It added to their confusion that he had no trace of an accent.

“Thank you for coming in. I know this all must have been difficult for you.”

“You're welcome,” Gail murmured. No change in her expression.

“And I know that my colleague, Detective Wellington, already spoke to you.”

“She was thorough.” There was a slight, imperious pause before the last word, a trace of derision.

So far, she was utterly consistent, a woman who played to type. Vain. Shallow. Competitive with other women. Since becoming a cop, Joe had been most fascinated by people who didn't quite fall into the usual boxes, the ones who defied expectations. It made police work easier when people behaved in predictable ways, but it wasn't the easy days that Joe craved. His most satisfying victories had been the ones that tested him most deeply.

“So I'm sorry to ask you to come back to talk with us again today,” Joe said, not bothering to disguise his insincerity.

“What is it they say, Detective? You never know when some small detail might be relevant.”

The observation was straight from TV; faint amusement played across Gail's face, as though she were challenging him to call her on it.

Only two people had been away from the group before the discovery of Bergman's body—Gail and Marva. And their story was consistent: Gail had gone outside, alone, before returning to tell Marva. She had to know that made her a possible suspect, and yet she seemed to be baiting him.

“One thing that you and Detective Wellington apparently didn't talk about was the recent disturbance call,” Joe said. “When one of Mr. Engler's projects attracted the attention of environmental activists. I checked—you were the one who made that call, Mrs. Engler.”

The change in her was instant, if subtle, tension tightening her features. “Did Marva tell you that?”

“As a matter of fact, no. Is there a reason why you
didn't
?”

She shrugged. “I'm not sure why I would. I don't see what it has to do with Tom.”

Joe explained the findings about the blood. “It's possible that it was intended as a message, and that the person who brought it was interrupted before they could do what they had planned with it. I did a little research—animal blood's not all that uncommon in environmental protest.” Red paint was more common, but in 2010, pig blood had been used to write slogans on half-built homes in a Sacramento development.

Gail merely raised an eyebrow. “How gruesome. But the people who came to my house were only carrying signs. And I'm pretty sure they wrote on them with Sharpies, not blood.”

Joe pressed on. “Conner Dybck was the leader of the group who came to your house. It's in the report. He's been arrested in connection with vandalism at several building sites in the last couple of years. Arson, cut hydraulic and fuel lines on earthmoving equipment like your husband's company uses.”

“So how come you haven't locked him up?”

“Haven't been able to convict him yet. It's a little tricky; these guys tend to be hard to pin down. Have you or Mr. Engler had any encounters with Dybck, other than the call on July first?”

“Well, I certainly haven't. You'd have to ask Bryce himself.”

Joe could see that the seed was planted; he'd managed to make Gail nervous. He'd created a crack in her flawless veneer—was that an accomplishment to be proud of?

He kept at her for another few minutes, trying other angles, but the discussion about Dybck seemed to have taken away her zeal for baiting him. She really didn't seem to know much about Tom Bergman or any of the other guests, and her responses to questions about Bryce bordered on indifference.

“One last thing,” Joe said. “Your sister, Marva. I understand you include her frequently when you entertain?”

A knowing smile. “Marva's so accomplished. She's a great conversationalist, too; she livens things up. We love having her.”

Joe watched Gail carefully. She didn't bother to mask her faint sarcasm. He got the feeling that Gail didn't enjoy having her sister around that much at all.

Which raised the question—why did she keep inviting her?

 

CHAPTER FIVE

AIDEN'S LATEST OFFICE SUITE
held a sleek new desk, a couple of chairs, some glossy plants, and exactly the girl Marva expected: long, highlighted hair, a knit top cut a little too low, fake nails, and a textbook open in front of her.

“Hi,” Marva said.

“Hi. You must be Mrs. Keller. Mr. McKay said you were coming.”

Marva thought about correcting her; she'd switched back to her maiden name over a year ago. But it wasn't the girl's fault—it was Aidan who couldn't remember.

“Shall I wait?”

“Oh no, go ahead.” The girl jerked a thumb behind her. Marva passed through a narrow hall to Aidan's office, a big room with a conference table, a view out the window of all of Oakland spread out below. On the best days you could probably see San Francisco. The walls were bare except for Aidan's diplomas in gaudy gold frames.

“Marva.” Aidan pushed back his ergonomic chair and crossed the distance between them in two loping strides. He took her in his arms and gave her a delicate hug.

“Aidan—you're looking so good,” Marva said, kissing him on the cheek, inhaling that clean old-boy cologne he always wore. It was true: since the last time—two months ago? three?—the redness around his nose, the bags under his eyes, were gone.

“Better than I've looked in a while, anyway.”

“Oh, I didn't . . .”

“Come on, Marva, you're one of my oldest friends. If I can't be straight with you, I don't know who's left.”

Marva nodded, swallowed, backed up a pace, looked again. Fresh haircut. The red hair all faded now, gone to auburn with a few grays at the temples. Aidan's eyes were as blue as ever, chambray blue, like a faded work shirt. And he'd gotten some sun: the pallor from his heavy drinking days was gone, and his forearms looked strong and sun-burnished where he'd rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. Pure Brooks Brothers, as always, down to the rep-stripe tie, a style nobody wore anymore.

Well, nobody but lawyers, probably. Marva knew few of those. Just Aidan, who had been there for each of the disasters in her life—there weren't many, but they'd knocked her flat every time.

“Marva . . . are you all right?”

“I barely slept. Gail came over at three—of course. Drank my wine. Probably had Isabel up first thing cleaning from the party and serving coffee to the cops.” Marva took a breath, spent a few seconds on the exhale. Wondered if she'd cry. Flash of a prayer not to—
please God, make me stronger.

Aidan patted her knee. “So tell me what happened.”

“Gail slept with him. With Tom Bergman, the man who died.” There. It was out. Not without a bit of a waver in her voice, but at least it was said.

Aidan: the stillness, the way he drew in a fraction of an inch—so it still worked on him like this. Marva supposed she shouldn't be surprised. “They were having an affair? Did anyone know?”

“No. No, I didn't know until last night—I asked her. It wasn't an affair, it was just one time. You know how she is—Bryce is gone too much, she spends all her time taking care of other people's needs, they didn't mean to, it just happened. She makes everything so—so—”

There wasn't a word for what she was trying to say, but there didn't need to be; Aidan, of all people, knew.

“Is she a suspect?”

“No, absolutely not. She was inside—she'd gone out just for a second—she couldn't have—”

She told Aidan the story of the evening, from start to finish. The telling made it more real, sharpened the edges. She couldn't help wondering what the driveway looked like this morning. When would they clean it up?
Who
would clean it up? Who would make sure Gail didn't have to see?

“We have to call her,” she said, breathless, when she reached the end.

“Not yet.” Aidan leaned forward, elbows on knees, a youthful collegiate pose that made the most of his earnestness. She'd seen it before, a bit Kennedy-like. “We need to think this through first. Together.”

“The police need to know about what day it was. I mean, it'll be worse if they find out themselves.”

Aidan nodded. “Probably. Maybe. But if there's a way to do it so we, you know, minimize the impact on Gail . . .”

Marva nodded. It was what they did, and if she resented it more every year, that petty reluctance was nothing in the face of this new thing. “Last night she seemed like she was handling it. She was even joking about the cake. You know, let's get the cake out and have it for breakfast. If you didn't know better you'd think she was, I don't know . . . unfeeling.”

Aidan nodded grimly. “She
is
unfeeling; you know that. She's a bitch. But she's
our
bitch.” Lips tilting into a small smile. “I know you must be thinking we should have let her sink or swim on her own, a long time ago.”

Marva shook her head. There were things they weren't mentioning: the suicide attempt on the second anniversary, when the package contained a porcelain-headed doll, the gown's silk ribbons worn to matted shreds. The sudden trip to a spa in Arizona one year, when Marva had to sneak over to the house and intercept the UPS man so Bryce wouldn't find out—that year it was a large envelope containing cutouts from bridal magazines, dresses and rings and china place settings, everything for a wedding that would never take place, for a girl who would never be a bride.

“What I'm thinking,” Aidan said, leaning back in his chair. “It's possible this whole thing really
is
about Bryce. That they never meant to hurt this other guy.”

“I don't know, Aidan. I thought that, too, but it seems so far-fetched. Those protestors were just kids. They've probably lost interest, got a whole new cause by now.”

“But listen. Bryce isn't keeping it any kind of secret that he's thinking of running for Board of Supervisors. And he'd be on that developer-sanctioned ticket, right?”

“Well, probably, but Gail says Bryce is keeping his options open. That he doesn't want to come down on certain issues until he can figure out where the votes are.”

“Fine, but it's public knowledge that he's in the business; it's going to be clear to everyone that he's aligned with growth. That's got to have the environmentalists going nuts. And it wouldn't be just a few kids, either; it would be the whole damn lot of them, including the wackos. I mean, think of how they piled on with Measure D.”

Measure D was a water rights issue on the ballot a few years earlier in Coyote Canyon, at the eastern edge of the county. At the height of the tension, ranchers were taking potshots at people's tires as they drove past, and environmental groups had mobilized mass protests. Activists threatened to sabotage the pipeline, but the measure had been defeated before anything happened.

Marva knew Aidan had a point. “Okay. Say the attack, or accident or whatever it was, was directed against Bryce . . .”

Aidan held his hands wide. “All I'm saying is that maybe that's a direction to go. Since it doesn't matter either way, right? I mean if this was somehow about Gail, then it's done for another year, at least. If it's Bryce, this is something he needs to figure out anyway. How he's going to deal with these crazy environmental terrorists. If he needs to hire some private security or something.”

“I just can't believe that's what it is. There haven't been any threats lately, no calls or letters or anything since that thing in July.”

“Maybe there have been things that Gail hasn't told you about.”

No. Despite all the petty little snubs she directed at Marva, Gail could not shut her out. That had always been the case, since childhood. After the most vicious fight Gail would come slinking back, sometimes into the room where Marva was serving a time-out sentence she hadn't earned, and pick and tease at her until Marva couldn't maintain her fury anymore.

“Gail tells me everything,” she insisted. “The more I think about it, I feel like it has to do with the anniversary. But attacking someone, the blood, they've never done anything like that before. All these years, it's been just the packages. Little things to make her remember, to remind her of Jess. So how does this fit in?”

Aidan shrugged, tapped his fingers on his thighs. “I don't know. An escalation . . .”

“And I don't understand why they skipped the last two years.” Two years ago, Marva had waited in Gail's kitchen all day, holding Marshall, only a baby then. Drinking tea, trying to distract Gail. When evening came, and it finally sank in that there would be no package, no letter, no threats or accusations, Marva had been almost giddy with relief. But Gail had acted disappointingly blasé, wanting to get back to watching
Dancing with the Stars
. “It had to end some time,” she'd said, reaching for the clicker, but Marva sensed that the fear remained unabated beneath Gail's feigned indifference.

Last year Marva played it safe, staying home during the day, putting the binding on a triptych quilt for a client's townhouse in San Francisco. Moving around the edge taking tiny stitches, dropping metal binder clips into a plastic box, occasionally poking the needle into the pad of the fingers on her left hand. But Gail had never called.

“It's hard to say why it stopped,” Aidan said.

It was brilliantly cruel: to wait until they all felt comfortable again, until their defenses were down, and then strike. Except—Marva always had to remind herself—none of this was directed at her; she was only the sister. “Why skip two years, and then come back and do something so different?”

“If it
is
the same person or persons.” Reasonable, lawyer talk. “I'm still betting on Bryce, but say it's someone who knew Jess. Maybe they told someone else, maybe someone else took over for them.”

“But
who
?”

“Marva,” Aidan said gently. Lines of concern in his forehead. He placed his hand on her shoulder, gave a gentle squeeze. “It's the same as it always was.”

Who Could Have Done It
. She'd visited that list a thousand times. Jess's mother and brother. The girl who took the blame for what Gail had done, Deanne Mentis. Deanne's parents. Maybe her boyfriend, if they were still together.

“I always wondered if it was Deanne,” Marva murmured. Because Deanne had good reason, didn't she? She ended up being expelled, while Gail managed to finish out her senior year. But of course everyone talked; everyone on campus knew what had really happened.

Aidan frowned. “I'd agree except . . . well, in my line of work, I see people under great duress every day. People who've experienced terrible things. You know?”

People looking for someone to pay them for their pain,
Marva thought. In her mind, though there were undoubtedly exceptions, personal injury law was an ethical gray area. “Sure.”

“So I've seen a lot of people do a lot of crazy things when there's been a tragedy. And what I've learned is, you just really never can predict how someone's going to react.”

“But—”

Aidan held up a hand to stop her. “Listen to this one. Case I had two, three months ago. A woman takes a spill in a pizza joint, breaks her collarbone, and when they do the X-ray it turns out there's leaking from her breast implants. Fifty-fifty on whether the fall caused the problem, but the restaurant—it's a chain—they decide to settle. Meet with their corporate guys, work out a settlement, everybody's happy, right? So a week later the guy that runs the franchise, he was on duty the night the woman went down, they find him in the back alley with his legs broken. Know who did it?”

Marva shook her head, fascinated despite herself.

“The victim's mother-in-law.” Aidan sat back in his chair, arms across his chest. “And you know why?”

“I can't even imagine, Aidan—”

“Because her son bought those tits for that woman, for her fortieth birthday. They cost a bundle, so the old lady hired a guy from church to come around and settle up.”

Marva waited, not sure what to make of the story.

“Don't you see? You never know what's going to set people off. And in the end, it's rarely what you think it will be. I could tell you dozens of stories like that, Marva, but the point is that there's no telling who's been after Gail all these years.”

“But we have to find out. Even if it's just to put her mind at ease.”

“To put
your
mind at ease,” Aidan corrected her, his voice sharp. “Or mine. Come on, be honest, by next week Gail's going to be on to the next thing. The next fund-raiser or dinner party—”

Or affair,
Marva couldn't help thinking, studying Aidan through narrowed eyes. She guessed the thought hadn't escaped his mind, either.

“—and it'll be over for her until next year.”

“But maybe we could let the police know anyway,” she said. “Tell them everyone who might have, you know, a grudge against Gail. In case there's a danger of something else happening.”

Irritation flashed across Aidan's face and was gone. “If you go to the police, tell them this whole story about something that happened all those years ago, it's going to just bring more chaos and intrusion into Gail's life. Into
everyone's
life. Questions no one is going to want to answer.”

“But if it means preventing something else—”

Aidan held up his palms. “Marva, look at it this way. If we ask them to look into the political angle, there will be protection, for the house, the kids, Gail. No one, crazy or otherwise, is going to come back while the cops are hanging around. Don't you see that?”

Marva considered. She supposed there was a chance it might be true. If it was someone motivated by politics, or even someone with a grudge against Bryce personally, when they realized they had killed someone they were bound to be terrified to return, knowing they could face a murder charge.