Cracked (7 page)

“Rich,” I finished for him.

“Yes,” he said. He looked like the word was distasteful to him. In my experience, rich people don’t like to use the word “rich.” Especially in front of the poors. “You’d have to talk to the District Attorney, or maybe the detectives can help you. But all I know is that DNA analysis was done only about forty-eight hours after the… event.”

“The event,” I said. I got a flash of my sister hanging from a shower rod, and for a moment I thought I would scream and never stop.

“As this is all just now happening, I am going to have my team study the legalities of using this technology in court, its accuracy, possibly a constitutional challenge. We do have our work cut out for us.” He took a long swallow of vodka. “But even if we get this technology excluded, they will still be doing old-school DNA testing. And let’s face it, it probably is Fred’s DNA. They were apparently… intimate before your sister left the house that evening.”

Oh God. Oh my God. How do people get through things like this without drugs, I thought. Why don’t they all just go mad? I needed to smoke crack. I needed to get him out of here.

“This looks very bad for him,” I said. Concentrate on Fred for a minute, the police are coming, then within maybe thirty minutes I’ll lock myself in a bathroom, one of the far upstairs ones, and smoke. Hopefully until my heart explodes.

No, not that much. After I kill whoever killed Ginger. Then I would gladly let my heart explode. It was on its way already.

Chandler York looked at me. “Danny. Don’t worry. Not to toot my own horn, but I’m the best at what I do. I have a team dedicated exclusively to proving that Fred Lindquist did not murder his wife.”

“Then who did, Chandler? Who do you think did?”

Chandler York put his glass down on the coffee table, a low, wide thing made of teak. What was this doing here, I found myself thinking. Ginger had always said she hated mid-century modern. He leaned his elbows on his knee and swivelled his head around to look at me. “Who do you think did it, Danny?”

“I don’t have a fucking clue,” I said. “How the fuck should I know? Ginger was my twin, but I haven’t been here in three years. My life has been sort of, uh, chaotic since I saw her last. I hardly talk to her, really. How should I know?”

“Danny,” Chandler said. “You haven’t seen the note yet.” He drained the rest of his glass of straight vodka in one swallow. “You haven’t seen the bloody note.”

* * *

The doorbell rang, and before I could move, I could hear Rosen talking to some people.

“Detectives Miller and French, Danny,” he said. I brightened up a bit at the use of my name. Miss Cleary was getting old, but not as old as ma’am.

I stood and held my hand out in my best lady-of-the-manor fashion. I was faking it of course, taking it all from movies and
Dynasty
. Pop culture to the rescue. Chandler didn’t get up from the couch, just leaned forward to grab the Grey Goose and refill his glass. I found it a vaguely endearing gesture, that he felt so at home here, and that he was obviously taking this situation hard. He and Fred could be best buddies, as far as I knew. And as far as I was concerned, that was a good quality in a defence lawyer.

Note to self: become buddies with a good defence lawyer. One never knows when it’ll come in handy, apparently.

For my part, the crack craving was beginning to ease a bit, giving way to a slight Grey Goose buzz and a profound desire for oblivion in the form of sleep, not drugs. It was a new feeling. Novel, one might say.

Detective Miller was such a cliché it was like I was shaking hands with Columbo crossed with the actor Gabriel Byrne. Nicotine stains on the index and middle fingers of his right hand, tousled black hair that could really do with a wash. I liked him immediately. Didn’t trust him – he was a cop – but I liked him. Detective Amelia French, on the other hand, seemed like a real hot shot. Expensive suit, expensive highlights, expensive rock on her ring finger. She couldn’t have been much older than thirty or so – maybe a dozen years younger than Miller – but she wanted to let me know who ran the show. I took an instant dislike to her, and from the slight look of distaste she gave me when I got the old cold fish handshake, the feeling was mutual.

But to be fair to her, I probably wasn’t in my best making-friends kind of mood. And I was pretty sure I did still have vomit in my hair.

“Can either of you tell me who the fuck really killed my sister? And why you’ve got an innocent man in jail? And why Social Services took my nephews, when there were people here to take care of them?”

Miller looked at me and smiled. “Get to the point, why don’t you?” he said. He flipped his keys around his index finger. Nervous tic. Definitely a smoker.

“Want an ashtray?” I said to him.

“Do you mind?” he asked, sitting down and making himself comfortable. He looked like he was in for the long haul. I was glad I had taken off my vomit-stained t-shirt. But the jeans were still pretty messy. And why did I care? Jesus. I must really need a hit if I was looking for some kind of distraction in a quick flirt with the homicide detective assigned to my sister’s murder.

“This is my brother-in-law’s lawyer,” I said, motioning to the couch. “Chandler York.” Chandler waved half-heartedly with his glass.

“We know,” she said, looking around the room as though she was a Secret Service Agent and I was the President. She flipped the drapes to one side.

I looked around and grabbed a green glass
objet d’art
which probably cost more than my rent, put it in front of Miller, sat down next to him and took a cigarette out of his pack. “Sorry,” I said. “I just ran out.”

“You’ll pay me back,” he answered. I shrugged. I doubted it. I also doubted that Fred and Ginger would have allowed smoking in the house, but I figured these were exceptional circumstances.

“Who killed Ginger?” I repeated.

Detective French, satisfied that the room was clear of potential perps, flopped herself down on the couch opposite us. “Fred Lindquist killed his wife,” she stated flatly. Chandler sighed heavily.

“No,” I replied. “He did not.” I took a long drag of Miller’s Marlboro. “And what about this suicide note someone made her write? It’s addressed to me, he said.” Chandler nodded. He was looking tired. It occurred to me to wonder if him swilling Fred’s Grey Goose constituted billable hours, not that I gave a fuck. “Can I see it?”

Miller shook his head. “Not yet,” he said. “You will eventually see it, or a copy of it. Maybe tomorrow,” he added.

“Why do you think Fred didn’t kill your sister?” French asked. She had gotten up and was pacing, giving off an air of impatience with all of us. But then she smiled, and all of a sudden she was beautiful. Smile more, honey, I thought. Catch more flies with honey, and all that.

“Because I’ve known him since I was, oh, eight years old. Because my sister was the most trustworthy person on this fucking
planet
” – I slammed my glass down on the coffee table, hard, spilling Grey Goose. Shit. “…and like she did, I would trust this man with my life. With the life of anyone I loved.”

I caught the two detectives giving each other the eyeball. I thought maybe they should go now. And Chandler, for that matter. I had the small matter of a balloon of drugs to attend to. Tomorrow I would find out more. Tomorrow I would do some of the coke to perk up and my brain function would improve, and I would start putting the pieces together. But right now, I needed crack.

“Guess we’re done here,” Miller said, moving as if to go. “We’ll leave you to your…” he gestured to the vodka. “You must be very tired. We can do this tomorrow.”

Everyone paused for a minute as we heard a car squeal up out front. I hung my head for a couple of seconds, exhaustion overcoming me. It was only what… ten at night? But that’s one a.m. Toronto time, and when was the last time I had slept more than three hours at a stretch?

Crack, anyone?

Darren came in, even before Rosen could get to the door. He glanced at the detectives, but spoke to me.

“The boys,” he said. “They’re missing. Someone took the
boys
.”

Jack and Ginger were in the pool, playing with the twins.

“Marco,” Jack called out.

“Polo,” Matthew yelled. He and Luke were six, and worshipped their uncle Jack. I had married him when they were just babies, and we flew down to California every few months or so to visit.

Fred and I sat on beach chairs next to the pool, watching them. Fred’s skin was sunburnt, but I was turning a nice golden brown.

“You guys have all the luck,” Fred said, comparing our skin. “Why, pray tell, was I cursed with two red-haired parents?”

I watched Ginger splashing around in the pool. Hyperactive six-year-old twins, and she looked like a slightly more robust Elle MacPherson. If I didn’t love her so much, I’d have hated her. Being fraternal and not identical twins meant that while, in our case, we looked very much alike, we had been hatched from two different eggs. And she got the prettier one.

I watched Ginger lifting Luke in and out of the water, her long brown arms glistening in the sun. Unlike his brother, who was four minutes older, Luke wasn’t a water baby.

“Hey,” Ginger called over to us. “Darren should be arriving soon.”

Fred made a noise at the back of his throat, which I chose to ignore. Darren had just become successful, the band that he had formed at nineteen now actually appearing on the Billboard charts. He looked every inch the rock star suddenly, all blond curls and expensive sunglasses.

I closed my eyes against the California sunshine, and debated going inside for sunglasses. I didn’t want to look at Fred, who had been acting strange since Jack and I had arrived a couple of days earlier. The gentle, geeky boy who had doted on my sister in high school had become a millionaire many times over, and he had hardened into someone I was no longer quite comfortable with.

When I had said this to Darren on the phone the night before, his explanation was that money is a soul-destroying, corrupting influence. He said that there aren’t many laid-back multi-millionaire entrepreneurs floating around. I somehow doubted that Fred was still reading Yeats to Ginger before bed.

Still, Ginger had said nothing by way of complaint against him, and I was sure she would talk to me if there were serious problems. I thought I had caught Fred looking at her with something approaching disdain, once or twice. Before now, the only look I’d ever seen on his face when he gazed at his wife was a kind of wonder that such a beautiful creature existed.

Something started dripping on me, and I yelled.

Jack was standing over me, shaking his wet hair – what was left of it – onto me. He had a big smile on his face. He loved coming down here, loved Ginger and the boys almost as much as I did. He certainly seemed to have more time for playing with them than Fred did. Jack grew up in foster care, and while he didn’t like to talk too much about it, I knew that he loved the closeness of my family. Like us, he was from Maine, and had been taken away from his own parents at the age of five. He spent the next twelve years on a working farm with apple orchards, he’d told me, with foster parents who housed six or seven other displaced kids. He left for university at seventeen and never looked back. He rarely talked about his childhood, and I had learned not to push him about it. He just got quiet for a day or two and seemed sad. I felt almost guilty to have had a well-adjusted childhood full of love, and I didn’t want to push the issue.

“You shithead,” I said to him. I grabbed his hand.

“Ignore her, boys,” Jack called over his shoulder. Matthew and Luke were standing behind Jack. They followed him everywhere. “Your aunt Danny has a potty mouth.”

“Potty mouth, potty mouth,” Matty started yelling. Like Ginger and me, the boys were fraternal twins. They were both tall and hearty like the Clearys, and physically confident. Neither of them seemed to have picked up much from Fred’s gene pool, which he always said made him very happy indeed.

“Sorry, boys,” I said. “Your uncle Jack makes me say swear words sometimes.” Matt plopped himself on the edge of my chair and picked up my book. Unselfconsciously, he leaned against me and started reading. I looked up and gave Jack a look which said,
don’t get any ideas, fuckface.
Jack had been making noises about us having kids, but I was in my twenties and I didn’t feel quite ready. But the sweetness of having a child’s weight leaning trustingly on me caused my eyes to water. Jack noticed, and kissed the top of my head, and then Matty’s.

From the front of the house, we could hear the enthusiastic beeping of a car horn, a light, tinny sound. Probably an expensive import. Probably Italian. Probably Darren.

Matthew got up and ran into the house, followed by Luke, who had jumped out of the pool upon hearing the car, like a loyal dog who hears his master coming home from work.

It had to be Darren. If they loved Jack, they worshipped Darren.

Five minutes later, he appeared through the French doors at the back of the house. Matthew was dangling in a fireman’s hold over Darren’s shoulder. Luke was riding Darren’s other side, his little legs trying to wrap around Darren’s narrow waist.

“Delivery for the Lindquists,” Darren called. “Would somebody please sign for these?” The boys giggled happily, helplessly, as Darren dumped them both gently on the soft grass behind the house, and started tickling them.

Darren was going to be such a great dad someday. Fred got up and shook Darren’s hand, and Jack hugged him, that manly, back-slapping kind of hug that always touches me.

“Keeping my sister in line?” Darren asked him, and I got out of my chair.

“Hey,” Jack responded, peeling Luke off his leg and picking him up. “She just won her third straight fight. She’s keeping me in line, these days.”

It was true. Under Jack’s tutelage, I had started boxing, then mixed martial arts. I had a knack for it, and against Jack’s better judgment, he had started to train me. Over the course of just over a year, I had gone from being a gym bunny to a woman with a bit of a bloodlust for fighting. I wasn’t sure that Jack was all that happy about it, either. He had been a bit quiet lately. But down here in California, all that had seemed to wilt in the bright sun. I didn’t ever want to leave.