Death of an Irish Diva (22 page)

The police station was unusually quiet for a Saturday night. Annie knew that Detective Bryant would most likely be there, because he had confessed once that he caught up on paperwork on Saturday nights and liked being at the office for any Saturday night incidents. A workaholic. The only day of the week he took off was Sunday.

“Hello, Ms. Chamovitz,” the woman behind the desk said. “Can I help you?”

“Is Detective Bryant in?”

The woman nodded. “I'll let him know you're here.”

Annie wound her way through the halls, noticing new desks and a cleaner environment. It was coming together. They were finally getting the funding to hire more officers and renovate the offices a bit.

Bryant's door was open and his back was to her when she walked in.

“Adam?” she said.

He turned and looked up at her. He looked as if he hadn't shaved or showered or slept for days.

“What's with you?” Annie said.

“Oh, uh, nothing.” He frowned, rubbed his face. “I'm just not sleeping well these days.”

“Are you okay?”

He looked up at her with a world-weariness that nearly broke her heart. He shrugged. “You're not here to check on me, are you?”

“Ah, no,” she said. “May I sit down?”

“Of course. Now what's up?” he said, sitting back in his chair.

“I wanted to let you know that I visited Alicorn's genetic labs the other day,” she said. “I didn't find out anything, but I have a friend who is working on a story about them.”

“What kind of story?”

“A story about creating designer babies.”

“What does this have to do with Emily's case? Anything?”

“I'm not sure. She was an egg donor and was obviously wanting to use their services to make a baby,” Annie said.

“Hmm. Interesting. You think someone offed her because she wanted to make a baby in an unnatural way?”

“No. But there is something fishy about all of it.”

He chortled. “Always is when it comes to murder.”

“There's something else, and I hope you will keep this to yourself.”

“Annie—”

“Listen, Adam, this is a very delicate situation. We're dealing with babies, life, death, sperm—”

“What? Jesus.”

“My friend has some files.”

He looked at her with more interest. “Can I use those files as evidence?”

“No,” she said.

“You journalists.” He stood. “Doing illegal stuff in the name of a story.” He sighed.

“If you don't want to know, I won't tell you,” she said, starting to stand up.

“Wait, I don't have to use it in court. I might be able to make it work some other way,” he said.

“Look, don't give yourself a hernia,” Annie said. “It might not be anything. But I have the names of some donors.”

She took a pen and paper and wrote them down, slid the paper closer to him.

“Well,” he said. “I'll be damned.”

Annie leaned back in her chair. “Thoughts?”

“Well, we can rule out Vandergrift. But the other two? Between you and me, I don't like either one of them, personally.”

Annie frowned. “I'm not sure I can see either one of them as murderers.”

Adam thought a moment, rubbed his scruffy chin. “You'd be surprised. I often am. We humans . . . sometimes . . . we are hard to read. We do stupid things.”

Annie tilted her head. Was he talking about this case, or was he talking about them?

“Annie . . .” His voice lowered. “We need to talk.”

She took a deep breath. “Go on.”

“I'm sorry. I've been so stressed out, and it seems like . . . this attraction between us . . . I just could not avoid it. It was way out of line. It won't happen again.”

That was not what she had expected to hear. A mature, sensitive Bryant spoke to her. She wished it were that way for her. She had been seriously tempted by him. A big part of her, her ego, to be sure, wanted to hear him professing his undying love for her. Could she just walk away and pretend the attraction didn't exist, that it didn't shake her to her core?

“I, um, ah—” she began.

“You don't have to say anything. You never did. Why start now? We kissed. I'm an idiot. I thought there was something there. Sometimes you seem so unhappy with Mike. I thought I had a shot. My mistake. Could we just please drop all of it . . . ?” he said, his face turning bright red.

She looked away, feeling the breath leave her. He was hurt. She had hurt him. But she had done nothing to lead him on, had she? What could she say to him? That yes, she had thought about him? Lusted after him? Was shaken by him? But. She loved her husband. She loved her children. The life they had created. It was worth fighting for.

“So, let's move on to the case. I'll run a background check on Reilly. We pretty much know all there is to know about Bill Ledford, but I'll run a check on him, anyway,” he said and smirked.

“There's something else. Might not be worth mentioning. But I thought it was strange,” Annie said. “The Greenbergs are still hanging around.”

He jumped to attention. He sat more erect, looked more alert. What was going on?

“I've been talking to Rachel a lot. She's painted quite a picture of her daughter. From her point of view, Emily had a fabulous family life, growing up on the commune. When she found out she was adopted, she went kind of berserk and rebelled. They think she was still rebelling.”

“At her age?”

Annie nodded.

“But she also admitted that Emily was difficult and was a loner. Rachel is still on a quest to find her daughter's lover. She thinks his first name begins with the letter
L.
”

Adam bristled. “I can't get into that with you right now.”

Annie's stomach sank. There was that feeling again. Her gut instinct pulling at her. There was no shaking it.

He knew way more than he was telling her.

Vera loved her naps with Lizzie. Sundays were all about playing and napping and eating. She lay snuggled in the bed with her daughter. She had never been happier. Being a mother was the best thing that had ever happened to her. It was also the hardest. How could that be?

She listened to Lizzie's breathing. Rhythmic. She thought about the conversation at one of the last crops that focused on genetics. She wondered about the mixing of her and Bill's blood and genetics in their daughter. Lizzie was the only good thing that had ever come of that relationship. Why had she spent all those years with him? Almost all of her youth was spent on him. It was maddening. She tried not to think about it.

Then his girlfriend had been stalking her.
Lovely.
Kelsey had preyed on her by trying to make her feel like she had lost her mind. Trying to set her up for murder. What kind of a person did that? And what would Bill see in a person like that? She meant it when she told Bill that sometimes she wondered if she knew him at all.

They had met in college in New York City and had been astounded that they had grown up not fifty miles from one another. His family, like hers, had been in the area for generations. He could trace their roots back to the
Mayflower
. She could never be bothered. Who cared about all that? What was important was the here and now.

She brushed a piece of Lizzie's red hair off her face. For a moment, she swore she could see Beatrice in her daughter.

That wouldn't be such a bad thing, would it? Beatrice would be a great role model for any young woman, and this one had her genetic code in there somewhere. Vera had often thought that if her mother had been born a little later, she'd be queen of the planet by now. As it was, she had still accomplished a great deal in her life. Vera was proud of her. Maybe Lizzie would inherit some of Beatrice's intellectual prowess.

 

 

Later that afternoon Detective Bryant stopped by.

“Can I come in?”

“Certainly,” Vera said, opening the door.

“What do you want?” Beatrice said when she saw him in her foyer.

“I just wanted to touch base with you about a few things,” he said.

“Well, come in,” Vera said and led him to the couch, where they both sat. Beatrice stood with her hands on her hips.

“Can I get you anything? Iced tea?” Beatrice said.

“That would be fine. Sans poison, of course,” he said as he grinned at her, referring to the time Beatrice was poisoned and threw up all over Tina Sue and Zeb's front porch.

“Don't tempt me,” she muttered, walking off into the kitchen.

He didn't look well. It looked like he hadn't shaved in days, and she wondered if he had been showering at all.

“Everything okay?” Vera asked.

“Yes,” he said. “I just need to clarify a few things with you.”

She smiled and leaned forward.

“You are still under suspicion for Emily's murder. I know you think Kelsey did it, but she has a rock-solid alibi. So you are it at this point,” he told her.

Her heart pounded. She swore he could probably hear it. Sweat rushed to her forehead. “I thought I had been cleared because of the hypnosis walk-through.”

He shook his head. “No, I'm sorry. I was there, and I'm still uncertain about what you saw or what you think you saw. Was it someone else? Or was it you seeing yourself? And I found out that we need an unbiased expert to witness it for the court.”

“Oh,” she said, now focusing on breathing.

“So I wondered if we might try it again. Maybe this time it would be clearer. Maybe you'd remember.”

“I just don't know,” she said, suddenly feeling tired. So tired she swore she could sink in the couch and sleep sitting up.

“What's going on?” Beatrice said, walking into the room with a pitcher of iced tea and several glasses.

“We'd like Vera to do it again,” the detective said.

Beatrice poured the tea. “Do what?”

“Go through the hypnosis,” he said.

“Absolutely not!” Beatrice said. “You saw what happened to her.”

“I did,” he said. “And I wouldn't ask it, except that I'm getting pressure to make an arrest. All the evidence leads to Vera still. I don't know what else to do to try to clear her. We have hired a specialist, a forensic hypnotist, to work with your doctor on this.”

Beatrice handed him a glass.

Vera was afraid her mother would pour it on him and was happy to see that she didn't. Not that it hadn't happened before. With teachers. With other parents. Even with her teenage friends.

“What do you think, Vera?” Beatrice said.

“I think I don't have much choice, Mama,” Vera said.

Beatrice's brows knit as she turned to Bryant. “I want you to know that if anything happens to her, it's your balls. I'm holding you responsible.”

“Understood,” he said.

“Oh, Mama,” Vera said and waved her off. Had her mother just said “Balls” to Detective Bryant? That thought warmed her. Same old Beatrice.

A huge smile cracked on Bryant's usually stern face. DeeAnn was right. He was a handsome man. But only when he smiled, which wasn't often.

“Well, you have to wonder who the outsiders are,” Beatrice said.

“I'm not too thrilled to know the police want a few other people there to watch the hypnosis. I'll feel like I'm on display,” Vera said. “But what can I do?”

“I hope you're under and things are in hand before they bring the others in,” Beatrice said, pulling out a cherry cobbler from the oven, its scent filling the kitchen and making both of them nearly swoon.

“What do I smell?” Jon said as he walked into the kitchen with Lizzie on his hip.

“Dessert for dinner tonight. A cherry cobbler. Nancy gave me a bunch of cherries. This recipe is actually from Willa Rose's book,” Beatrice said, then turned away from Vera, who looked surprised.

“A recipe?”

“Oh yes,” Jon said. “There were several.”

“Difficult to follow, though,” Beatrice said. “No measurements to speak of.”

“Mama, why are you keeping this book? You know, it really belongs to the state.”

“They have everything else,” Beatrice said.

“They won't miss it,” Jon said, shrugging.

“So? What will you do with it?”

“I don't know. And here's the thing.... That book is special. I can't explain it. But I feel like I have it for a reason. I sort of feel a connection to it. A connection to Willa Rose, too,” Beatrice said. “Well, that needs to cool off. I need to sit down for a bit, and then I'll get supper.”

“Lizzie and I can do that, Mama. Go relax,” Vera said and waved her off. Beatrice shrugged and went outside.

Out in the garden, or what was left of it, Beatrice was finally alone with her thoughts. These days she liked to daydream about Willa Rose, what they knew about her and what they didn't. She was born before the Civil War into a family that helped settle this area. They owned an inn at one of the busiest crossroads. She somehow managed to impress enough politicians or soldiers so much that they trusted her, a woman, to help spy, carry valuable information from one place to the other. Remarkable.

Most remarkable, though, was that she somehow fell in love with Ez. But maybe it wasn't that remarkable at all. Young women and men had been falling in and out of love for generations, most of them not caring whether their families or their culture supported it. But to be a white woman in love with a black man during the Civil War and shortly after it, well, it was so romantic. And also dangerous. As it turned out, very dangerous for Ez.

What was he like?

What was she like?

How did they meet?

How deeply had they loved one another?

These thoughts rolled around in her mind.
I am an old romantic fool. And this is one of the many things Jon has done to me.
She smiled. Beatrice was in love for the second time in her life. Blessed twice.

Now, if she could only see that for her daughter, she'd die a happy woman. Poor Vera. First, there was Bill and all his shenanigans. Then this Tony character in New York, whom Vera had never even brought back to Cumberland Creek. Now there was this doctor, Eric. He was a nice guy, and Vera seemed to like him, but she didn't seem to be smitten. Oh, well, time would tell.

Truthfully, the only person Vera had ever seemed smitten with was Lizzie. Land sakes, maybe that was enough. Who said you had to have a man in your life to be happy?

Love was good, but it was also the cause of pain, turmoil, and sometimes death.
Look at poor Ez. A man who fought against slavery. A man who was given freedom by the government, only to be lynched by his community for loving a white woman,
she thought before she sank into her chair and dozed off.

She woke up, startled.
Oh, damn.
She'd been dreaming about Willa Rose, hadn't she?

A thought came to her as crystal blue as the sky.
This book belongs to her family.
Were the Greenbergs still in town? Was Emily's birth family the McGlashens who were spawned by Willa Rose and Ez? It certainly looked that way, but Paige was still researching.

“Well,” Jon said as he walked up to her, “are you ready for supper?”

“Supper? How long have I been sleeping?”

“A few hours,” he said, shrugging. He sat down. “Are you feeling well?”

“Yes,” she said. “I'm fine. I was dreaming about Willa Rose.”

“Really?”

“I don't remember much about it,” she said. “But I awoke with the thought that I'd like to get this book in the hands of her family.”

“We need to prove that the McGlashens are indeed her family.”

She nodded. “I never really cared for Emily McGlashen. She was so mean to Vera. It was unnecessary, and I've always thought there was more to it than the dance studios competition.”

“What do you mean? What could it be?” Jon said.

“I've no idea,” she said. “But even so, it was a cruel way to die. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.”

Jon nodded. “Quite right.” He paused. “Has there been any break in the case?”

“I don't know. The last I heard, Annie and Bryant were up to something. God knows what.”