Criminal Intent (MIRA) (15 page)

A red Nissan pulled in and circled around to the drive-through. Traynor remained silent while the blonde behind the wheel gave her breakfast order to the anonymous voice coming from the speaker. “It’s your call, champ.”

“Look, man, I was drunk, okay? I wasn’t in control of my faculties. I’d had a few too many beers. I wanted to rent
Wayne’s World,
but they didn’t have it. I got pissed and started mouthing off. That fucking Estelle, she can be a real pain in the ass when she wants to.” The kid’s eyes darted all around, looking everywhere but at Davy. “I never liked her anyway. She was a snotty bitch in high school, always thinking she was better than everyone else. That’s why she’s working in a video store now, right? Her superior intellect.”

Traynor paused, finally met Davy’s eyes, seeking affirmation. After a moment, when he didn’t get it, he looked away again. Flicked an ash. “It wasn’t that big a thing. I said some things to her, she said some things back to me, then she told me to get my ass out and not bother coming back. I didn’t much like that, but my buddy grabbed me and dragged me out of there. He took me home, I went to bed, and I slept it off. End of story.”

“Estelle suggested you might’ve gotten physical with her.”

Traynor turned his head, his eyes widened in exaggerated innocence. “What? Oh, man, you gotta be kidding. I never touched a woman in my life. That bitch is lying.”

“She claims you grabbed her arm.”

Traynor took a quick puff on the cigarette. Shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“What
do you mean, you don’t know? Either you grabbed her arm or you didn’t. The question’s not that difficult, Traynor. Did you or didn’t you?”

“I was drunk. I don’t really remember.” Traynor took a last drag on the cigarette and tossed it onto the ground. “I might’ve. It’s all pretty hazy.”

“So you might have grabbed Estelle’s arm, but you’re not sure. You don’t like her much, do you?”

“I told you, she’s a fucking bitch.”

“Just how much do you dislike her, Jeffrey? Enough, maybe, to go back later and get even?”

“Hunh?” For the first time, Jeff Traynor seemed genuinely puzzled. “What’re you talking about?”

“I don’t know, Traynor. Why don’t you tell me?”

“Dude, you’re talking in riddles. I don’t have time for this shit. If I don’t get back in there pretty soon, they’ll fire me.”

“Where were you last night?”

Traynor blinked in confusion. “Last night? I was home in bed. What’s this all about, anyway?”

“You got anybody who can verify that?”

“My mom was already in bed when I got home. I live with her. So she couldn’t say what time I got in. I think it was around ten. But she knows I was there this morning. She got me up for work. I had to be here at five-thirty. What’s going on? Did somebody do something to Estelle?” His already pale complexion grew appreciably more pallid. “Shit, man, you better not be trying to pin anything on me. I ain’t done nothing wrong.”

“Like I said, if you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to be afraid of.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s the way it works, all right.” His defiance seemed to give way to something else. “Is Estelle okay?”

“Estelle’s fine.”

“Look, man, I don’t much like her, but I wouldn’t do nothing
to her. Christ, the woman’s pregnant. I’m not that kind of guy.”

As much as it pained him to admit it, he believed the kid. He would double-check, follow through just to be sure, but it looked as though he’d hit a brick wall. Jeff Traynor might not be the most admirable of men, but his story about being in bed by ten last night was probably the truth. Even the dumbest of criminals generally knew enough to set up some kind of an alibi before committing a crime. And Traynor’s concern for Estelle’s welfare seemed genuine. It was possible that somewhere beneath that belligerent exterior, skillfully hidden from sight, there beat the heart of a real human being.

“Go,” he said. “Get back to work. I’m finished with you for now.”

Without a word, Traynor slid down off the picnic table and headed for the back door of the restaurant. Halfway there, he turned. “You tell Estelle,” he said. “You tell her I said I’d never do anything to hurt her.”

Luke Brogan wasn’t a happy man.

He had business to attend to, a sheriff’s department to run. He didn’t have time to waste cooling his heels for forty-five minutes in the district attorney’s office while he waited for his brother to finish a conference call. Marcus had been the one to schedule this meeting. The least he could do was be on time for it. When Marcus’s secretary, Sydney Ann, had called to tell Brogan that his brother wanted to see him, she hadn’t said what it was about. But it was pretty obvious. After twenty years of ass-kissing and politicking, Marcus had finally gotten that bench appointment he’d been salivating over. The town was all abuzz with the news. And wasn’t it a damn shame that he’d been forced to wait until poor old Abner Mellen kicked the bucket?

The cell phone in his pocket vibrated, and Brogan checked the
caller ID. Recognizing the number, he pushed a button, and said, “Yeah?”

“I have good news,” Louis Farley said in greeting.

Brogan glanced up, caught Sydney eavesdropping from behind her work station. Scowling, he got up and walked to the far end of the room so he could talk in private. Tersely, he said, “You found her?”

“Not yet,” Farley said. “But I’ve found out who’s helping her. From there, it’s only a matter of time until I locate her.”

He ventured another glance at Sydney, who was busying herself shuffling papers and trying to pretend she had no interest in his private telephone conversation. Brogan turned away from her, toward the wall, and said, “Where are you?”

“Detroit.”

“I thought you’d already been to Detroit and hit a dead end.”

“I did. It just opened back up. Trust me, my friend. I’ll have your information for you in no time.”

Farley was a fool if he thought they were friends. Theirs was a business association and nothing more. “You damn well better,” Brogan said. “And when you find her, you call me. Don’t make a frigging move until I tell you to.”

“You’re the boss,” Farley said. “I’ll be in touch.” And he hung up without saying good-bye.

“Sheriff?” It was Sydney Ann, smug smile in place. “The District Attorney will see you now.”

“About time,” he muttered, and shoved past her desk and into his brother’s office.

Marcus Brogan was dressed, as usual, in an expensive three-piece suit and polished Italian loafers. He sat behind a burnished mahogany desk piled high with file folders and law tomes. On the wall behind him, he’d hung his ornately framed status symbols: an undergraduate degree in political science from Stanford and a law degree from Yale. Only the best for Marcus
Brogan, the Chosen One, the son who’d fulfilled every expectation their daddy had set forth for him.

Luke Brogan had often tried to tell himself it wasn’t Marcus’s fault that he’d been the favored son. Life just had a funny way of working out, that was all. It wasn’t Marcus’s fault that Darius Brogan had divorced his first wife when Luke was four years old, leaving his ex-wife and young son with barely enough money to survive. It wasn’t Marcus’s fault that Darius had moved on to establish a second, more socially acceptable family. It wasn’t his fault that Luke had been raised by a single mother in a little shotgun house on the wrong side of the tracks while Marcus, child of Darius Brogan’s second marriage to an Atlanta debutante whose daddy just happened to be a senator, got it all: the big house, the fancy cars, the expensive college education.

To his stepmother’s credit, Luke had never been left out. On the surface, he was part of the family. He’d always been included in Brogan family outings and parties. He’d spent Christmases, Thanksgivings, and Easters with his father’s new family, and Dorothy Brogan had never, until the day she died, forgotten her stepson’s birthday. But in truth, he’d been little more to his father than an also-ran, and he’d spent his entire life resenting his younger half brother for being and having everything he’d been denied.

Still, as the old saying went, blood was thicker than water. The two half brothers might not have been close, but they’d always taken care of each other. It was what family did.

Right now, Marcus wasn’t looking any too happy. “Shut the door,” he said. “If Sydney Ann overhears what we’re saying, it’s apt to show up on the front page of the
Journal-Constitution
tomorrow morning. Why I haven’t fired that woman before this is something I simply can’t explain.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Luke said, settling comfortably into a plush visitor’s chair. “She must be good at something.”

His
brother’s poker face, perfected over a quarter of a century spent in the courtroom, first as a defense attorney, then as a prosecutor, was legendary. Luke must have touched a nerve with his comment, because Marcus wasn’t bothering to hide the cool disdain with which he regarded his brother. Rumors about Marcus and his secretary had been circulating for years. Luke had never paid much attention to them. It was none of his business where his brother chose to get his wick dipped. The man’s taste in women might be suspect—after all, he’d married that harpy Marilyn Evers—but that was Marcus’s problem, wasn’t it? Ignoring his brother’s snotty expression, he said, “What’s so all-fired important that you made me wait forty-five minutes in the outer office?”

In his best clipped Yale-lawyer voice, Marcus said, “I imagine you’ve heard about my judicial appointment.”

“I heard. I also heard that Abner Mellen was barely cold in his grave before you hired a decorator to redo his chambers.”

His barb hit its intended target. “Fuck you, Lucas,” his brother said. “I’ve worked my ass off for twenty-seven years to get to this point. And I intend to let nothing—
nothing
—get in my way. Do you understand that?”

“Your point, Marcus?”

“Robin Spinney.”

Oh, shit. Suddenly, his palms were clammy and his stomach began to churn. Luke closed his eyes, but the woman’s face was still there, inside his head, taunting him. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t make her go away. “I know you haven’t found her yet,” his brother continued. “That useless private investigator you hired couldn’t find his own ass in the dark with a flashlight.”

Luke opened his eyes. “Now, listen here, Marcus—”

“Fire him, Luke. The half-baked fool isn’t doing us any good. I have somebody in mind who’ll take care of the situation
for us, once and for all. And he won’t leave any loose ends.”

Luke’s hands, of their own free will, clenched into fists. “I have the situation under control.”

“Like hell you do. You dragged me into this mess, Lucas. You got into trouble and I covered your worthless ass. Do you understand what that means? If you go down, I go down with you. You haven’t forgotten that, have you?”

Jaw clenched, he muttered, “I haven’t forgotten.”

“Good. See that you don’t.” Marcus leaned forward over his desk. “Because I have no intention of going down, you hear me? Call off your bulldog. Let me send my man in.”

He was tired of Marcus calling all the shots. From the time they were kids, he and his younger brother had been locked in a power struggle. “This is my deal,” he said, “and I’ll handle it. We don’t even know what Spinney’s got. She may have nothing on you.”

“I’m not willing to take the chance. Since the day I graduated from law school, I’ve had one goal: that seat on the bench. And I’m not willing to sacrifice that just because I made the mistake of saving you from a lynching. We may be brothers, but blood only goes so far. And this brother’s looking out for number one.”

“Good to know where I stand.”

“I’m just calling it the way I see it. You’re an idiot, Luke. You do realize that, don’t you? I can’t put my entire future in the hands of an idiot.”

Steaming, he said, “Farley just called me a few minutes ago from Detroit. Things are progressing nicely. He expects to pinpoint Spinney’s whereabouts within a few days.”

Marcus rapped his Mont Blanc pen against the desktop. The sound echoed like a gunshot in the room. “And how do you intend to resolve the situation once you find her?”

“I should think that would be pretty clear.”

“If
you fuck this up,” Marcus warned, “we’ll get the chance to spend the next twenty-five to life as cellmates over at Mississippi State Prison. I don’t believe I like you well enough to spend the next three decades locked in a five-by-seven room with you.”

His usually smooth manner had begun to deteriorate. Marcus Brogan, fearless district attorney, was scared. “I fully intend to be sitting on the bench,” he continued, “not standing before it. Do you understand that, big brother?”

The way he said those words,
big brother,
made Luke want to draw back and let him have it. For an instant, he allowed himself to fantasize about the satisfaction he’d get from hearing the sharp crunch of his brother’s nose breaking under his fist. “Louis Farley,” he said in a voice as quiet as death, “knows what the hell he’s doing. I’m not quite as stupid as you think I am, Marcus. If Farley tells me he’ll find Robin Spinney, he’ll find her. Stop expecting an overnight miracle and give the man time to do the job.”

“Five days, Lucas. That’s what I’m giving him. If Robin Spinney and her kid aren’t dead and that envelope in my hands in five days, I’m sending in my man. And he’ll leave no loose ends. That includes Louis Farley. Am I making myself clear?”

A trickle of sweat ran down Luke Brogan’s spine. “Clear as crystal,” he said.

“Good. Now get the hell out of here. I have work to do.”

After he’d gone, Marcus Brogan sat there in the silence, thinking, for a very long time before he picked up the phone and dialed a number.

“Constantine?” he said. “This is Marcus Brogan. Farley’s in Detroit.” He paused. “Make sure you don’t leave any loose ends.”

L
engthening
shadows cast slivers of darkness over bright green lawn as the sun worked its way westward. This was Davy’s favorite time of day, and Jo’s backyard tonight was an oasis of rich and varying shades of green, punctuated by splashes of crimson, pink and pale yellow. The roses she took such pride in were big as a man’s fist and fragrant enough to override the mingled odors of charred beef and pool chemicals. In the pool, a half-dozen kids of various ages shrieked and splashed. While he watched, Jessie climbed out of the water and stood shivering on the concrete patio near the diving board. She looked up, saw him, and waved. He waved back. Jessie stepped onto the diving board and walked carefully to the end. She lined up her toes on the edge of the board and bounced a couple of times on the balls of her feet, setting the board in motion. Then, with a single, powerful bound, she plunged off the diving board and into the deep end of the pool.

The resulting splash had him wiping drops of chlorinated water from his face with his shirt sleeve. Jessie surfaced and started swimming toward the shallow end. Beside him, Dixie Lessard edged up to the redwood railing and set down her bottle
of Budweiser. “Nice evening,” she said. “I wasn’t sure you’d show up here tonight.”

“Neither was I.” Elbows braced against the railing, he picked up his cup of coffee and took a sip. “But it seemed pointless to stay home. I knew if I didn’t show up, Jo would come knocking on my door, pitchfork in hand, ready to prod me until I gave in.”

“That’s one scary picture.”

Davy turned, one hip braced against the wooden railing, and said, “So you’re here tonight with Keith Gagnon.”

Across the deck, the tall, gaunt mortician stood engaged in earnest conversation with Jack Crowley, who was pretending to know how to cook. Smoke rose in a blue cloud from the grill as Jack flipped burgers. Keith Gagnon was a decade older than Dixie, and he looked it. He lowered his head to listen more closely to something Jack said, and the sun reflected off his shiny pate, clearly visible through the thin layer of hair he’d combed over in a useless attempt to camouflage his baldness. Davy didn’t get it. Who the hell was Keith trying to impress? Everybody in Serenity already knew the man was bald. He wasn’t fooling anyone but himself.

A breeze stirred Dixie’s flowered cotton muumuu. She lifted the bottle of Bud to her lips and took a long, slow swallow. “Any port in a storm,” she said.

“There’s nothing wrong with Keith.” Except for the hair thing. “He’s a decent guy.”

Dixie shrugged. “He’ll never light the world on fire, but at least he has the decency to talk to my face instead of my chest. That has to be worth something. The last three losers I dated all had the same idea, that the word divorcée is synonymous with the initials DGL.”

“DGL?”

“Dying to Get Laid. Cretins.”

Another kid, one he didn’t recognize, jumped off the diving
board, sending plump drops of water his way. “I hate these get-togethers,” he said. “People expect me to mingle and make small talk and act like—” He stopped abruptly.

Dixie turned and leaned her back against the railing. Smiling knowingly, she said, “Like a human being?”

“Ah, hell. Is the werewolf that visible?”

“Lurking right there in your eyes, my friend.”

He gazed balefully into his coffee cup. “I wish to Christ this was something a little stronger.”

“As you indubitably know,” she said, “it doesn’t help.”

He gave her a cynical smile. “Indubitably.”

From the kitchen window, a female voice called, “Davy Hunter! Can you come here for a minute? I need to talk to you.”

“Busted,” Dixie muttered under her breath.

“Yep. I’ve been summoned. And when Jo calls—” Coffee in hand, he straightened and stepped away from the railing. “Later, Dix.”

“Later.”

He found Jolene at the kitchen sink, struggling with a carving knife and the world’s biggest watermelon. “Think you can slice this thing?” she said.

“Better than you can,” he said, and set down the coffee. “You’re a freaking accident waiting to happen.” He took the knife from her and plunged it deep into the heart of the watermelon. “Don’t I remember some old saying about not sending in a woman to do a man’s job?”

“Bite me, Hunter.”

“Do your students—” he hacked away at the hard rind “—know you talk that way?”

“They do not. And if you breathe a word of it to anybody under the age of twenty, I’ll have to use that knife on you.” She stood silent for a moment—a rare thing for Jo—and watched him carve the watermelon into neat slices. “How the hell do you do that?”

“Werewolf
power.”

“What?”

“Never mind. Private joke. You putting this on a platter, or what?”

She opened a cupboard door, took out a turkey platter, and set it on the counter. He began laying out slices of watermelon in a tidy circular pattern. “Presentation,” he said dryly. “It’s everything.”

“So how are you?” she said. “Really.”

Something about her solicitous manner sent up a red flag. He glanced up from his work. “I’m fine,” he said evenly. “How’re you?”

“Oh, I’m just peachy. How’s the new job going?”

He studied her face. Her cheeks were flushed. Whenever Jo’s cheeks were flushed, it meant she was up to something. “The new job’s going fine,” he said carefully. “Why do you ask?”

“I hear you’ve met my new neighbor. Annie Kendall.”

He set down the knife. “All right,” he said, “you’re the third person who’s brought that up to me in the past two days. I know this is a small town, but this goes beyond the norm for even Serenity’s world-champion gossip-mongers. Am I missing something here?”

“I just wondered what you thought of her. She’s a nice-looking woman. And easy to talk to. Very pleasant.”

He stared at her, sighed, and returned to arranging water-melon. “No,” he said.

“She’s single, although I can’t honestly say she’s in dire need of a man—”

“No.”

“—considering that she just got done fixing her own roof.”

He paused, knife in hand, intrigued in spite of himself. “She did what?”

“Fixed her own roof.” Jo dimpled prettily. “She had one hell
of a leak over one of the guest rooms. It pretty much ruined everything. The ceiling, the bed, the carpet. Jack told her how to repair it, and he loaned her his ladder and his pickup truck. She spent two days tearing it apart and putting it back together. Jack checked it out a couple of hours ago. He says he couldn’t have done it better himself.”

“Hunh. I saw the ladder, saw the old shingles all over the ground, but I never—I’ll be damned.”

Jo went to the refrigerator, took out a plastic container of lemonade, and busied herself shaking it. “She’s smart, like Chelsea was.”

Davy stiffened, but she didn’t notice. Or, more likely, chose not to. “She has a sense of humor, too. I think the two of you—”

“Damn it, Jolene, what part of no don’t you understand? N-O. Not interested. End of discussion. Got that?”

She raised her chin, ready to rumble. “Not interested?” she said. “Or scared?”

Stiffly, he said, “Stay out of it. My life is my own business.”

“Oh.” Her voice lowered to a dangerous level. “Is that it? Jack and I should just sit by and watch you slowly rotting out there in that horrible little trailer in the swamp? You don’t talk to people, you don’t socialize, you’re just growing old and bitter!”

“What the hell business is it of yours, anyway? Who died and made you boss? Who are you to tell me how to live my life?”

“I’m your friend, that’s who I am! I’m somebody who’s known you since you rode a tricycle. I care about you, and I can’t stand to see you give up on life. There’s nothing wrong with mourning, Davy. It’s healthy and necessary. But eventually, there comes a time when—”

Woodenly, he said, “She’s only been dead for a year.”

“It’s
been fourteen months. And the relationship was dead long before that.”

Her words hurt more than they should have, probably because they were the truth. It didn’t make them any easier to take. “Thank you for clarifying that,” he said.

Any other woman would have flinched, but Jo just stood there, defiance painted all over her face. “Look,” he said, “I appreciate your concern, but I don’t need interference from my friends. I’m a big boy, and if I want to rot out there in my trailer in the swamp, I’ll damn well do it. You can relay that message to all the rest of my well-meaning friends, too. When I’m ready to date, you’ll be the first to hear. In the meantime, please don’t try to set me up, because you’re just going to piss me off worse than you already have. Do I need to repeat that, word for word, or have you got it?”

“Oh, to hell with you,” she said irritably, dismissing him with a flippant wave of her hand. “You want to rot, you go ahead and rot. It’s probably just as well that you’re not interested anyway, because when we were talking about you the other day—”

He blinked. “We?” he said. “We, who?”

“Annie and I. She said—”

“Wait just a minute. Let me make sure I have this right. You and Annie Kendall were talking about me?”

“She made it sound as though she wasn’t that impressed with you anyway.”

Jesus Christ.
Talk about kicking a man when he was down. “What do you mean, she wasn’t that impressed?” he said. “I’ve met the woman twice, for Christ’s sake. I wasn’t trying to impress her. I was doing my job.”

“I know, hon. You’re an absolute knight in shining armor. But she said you seemed…let’s see, how did she put it? Oh, I remember. Grim. That’s it. She said you seemed rather grim.”

Now
there was a surprise. Maybe she’d like to tell him something he didn’t already know about himself. Gruffly, he said, “Why the hell should I give a damn about what some woman thinks of me? Some woman I’ve met exactly twice? Hell, I don’t even know her.”

“Exactly!” She gave him one of those silky smiles that he knew meant trouble. “That’s just what I told Jack. Which is why I’m sure you’ll have no problem whatsoever with the fact that she’s walking up the driveway, even as we speak.”

“What? Christ, Jo, you didn’t.” He shoved her aside and stalked to the window. Sure enough, there she was, Annie Kendall, dressed in some kind of filmy white thing which, backlit by the sun, revealed every curve of her slender body. Her hair, a soft, muted shade of blond that was the antithesis of the brassy boldness that had been Chelsea, was pulled back from her face in a French braid. Cool and elegant. It suited her, this woman who thought he was grim. He closed his eyes. Let out a sigh. “Damn you, Jo,” he said. “You fight dirty.”

She patted his arm. “It’s not me,” she said cheerfully. “It’s you.”

He turned to look at her indignantly. “Me?”

Jo rolled her eyes. “Not you, singular. You, plural. Men. You’re so easy. Like shooting fish in a barrel. Now stop scowling at me and get out there. And play nice, or this’ll be the last invitation you get from me.”

The driveway was lined with cars of various makes and vintages. This was Jack Crowley’s idea of a few friends? Good Lord. She’d seriously considered staying home tonight. She really wasn’t ready to face all these strangers, especially after the craziness of the last few days. She could have used some down time before being thrust into the limelight where, as the new kid in town, she would be examined like a bug under
a microscope. But when Jack had stopped by a couple of hours ago to check on her roofing job, he’d made sure to remind her that the get-together was tonight and she was expected to make an appearance. And Uncle Bobby’s advice about putting down roots kept echoing in her head. She supposed now was as good a time as any to start establishing herself as that nice Annie Kendall, single mother and entrepreneur, who’d just moved in next door.

Sophie, on the other hand, was enthused about this little party. Or as enthused as Sophie got these days. All it had taken were the words
swimming pool
and Soph was ready to roll. In honor of the occasion, she’d pulled her hair into a ponytail and dressed in athletic shorts and a white T-shirt with the Budweiser lizards on the front. There wasn’t so much as a smear of black lipstick in sight. Had Sophie already learned the lesson Annie was trying to teach herself about fitting in?
When in Rome, do as the Romans do.
Or was she simply dressing in the most practical manner for swimming? Annie didn’t dare to hope for too much, but any respite, however brief, from living full-time with Morticia Addams was a good thing, and Annie sent up a silent prayer of thanks.

They followed the party sounds to the backyard, where people were gathered in clusters, drinking beer and talking and generally having a good time. Annie scanned the crowd, although she wasn’t sure what or who she was looking for. Strangers, every one of them, with the notable exception of Jack Crowley, who manned the humongous grill that sat on the redwood deck emitting heavenly smells.

In the swimming pool, kids splashed and squealed. One of the twins—she couldn’t be sure whether it was Sam or Jake, since they were identical—waved and yelled, “Hey, Sophie, come on in! We’re playing volleyball! You can be on my team!”

Her daughter turned to her with a hopeful face. “Mom?”

It
was wonderful to have the old Sophie back, if only temporarily. “Go,” she said. “Have fun. I’ll just wander around, find a conversation to worm my way into.”

She didn’t have to say it twice. Sophie was off like a bullet. She reached the edge of the pool, left her towel and sneakers on a deck chair, peeled down to her bathing suit, and waded eagerly into the water. Kids. It was so easy for them. Once you reached adulthood, friendships didn’t come so easy. People were wary of each other. With good reason, but still…these last six months, she’d been so intensely caught up in crisis mode, so involved in staying hidden from Brogan and creating a new life for Sophie and herself, that she hadn’t taken the time to realize she was lonely.

But she realized it now. She’d never been a social butterfly, but she’d had a few close friends, and there’d been several couples she and Mac had socialized with on a regular basis. None of them had quite reached the level of close friends, but she would have called them friendly acquaintances. Somebody with whom to spend a few pleasant hours talking about mutual interests.