Whatever Remains (16 page)

             
“Have a seat,” he told him, and shut the door behind Trey with a firm thump.

             
“What’s this about?” Asher asked, and made a lame attempt at defiance. “I don’t have anything to say that I didn’t before.”

             
“Sit down,” Ben said, and dropped into his own chair beside Trey’s. “The more compliant you are, the less of your day we have to take up. Understand?”

             
Talking to him like a child was somewhat comforting. Asher flung himself down into his chair, looking nauseas, and pushed his hands through his sandy hair. “I have a full day of classes,” he said. “I really need to get back.”

             
“And you can,” Ben said, setting the case file open against the edge of the table, the juive record on top. “Just as soon as we go over some things.”

             
“
What
things?”

             
“Detective Kaiden?”

             
Trey pulled the evidence sleeve with Heidi’s blue coin purse from inside his jacket and laid it on the table. Asher had a physical reaction: breath catching, eyes popping, fingers twitching. But he said nothing.

             
“Asher,” Ben said, “let’s not play games. We pulled your prints off this. It belongs to Heidi Latham.”

             
“I…” He wet his lips.

             
“Did you pull it off her corpse?”

             
“No! Jesus Christ!” His hands slammed down on the table. “Why the hell do you think I killed her?”

             
Ben lifted his brows. “I don’t speculate on motive.”

             
“Oh my God! I didn’t kill her!”

“But you lied to us,” Ben explained, again with the falsely patient voice of a parent. “You told us you hadn’t spoken to or interacted with the Latham girls. And then your prints turn up. If you’d lie about such a small thing…” He clucked his tongue.

“Why lie?” Trey asked. “If you didn’t do anything wrong, why cover it up?”

Asher was sweating now, a high sheen spreading across his forehead. “Because I know how you people work! If I’d told you about picking that up the other day, you would have jumped all over me, made me out to be some kind of pervert.”

“Didn’t we do that anyway?” Ben asked.

“What do you want from me?” Asher exploded, surging to his feet. “I broke things off with Jade! What else do you need?
I didn’t kill that girl
!”

“So you’ve said,” Ben said calmly. “Where were you Thursday?” He was met by a blank, enraged stare. “You canceled your classes Thursday. Where were you?”

He thought it over a moment, breathless. “The doctor.”

“And who’s going to confirm that for you?”

Asher blinked and an odd mixture of relief and terror crashed across his face.

“You didn’t go to the doctor, did you?” Ben asked, that same old thrill building again.

“No…I did.”

“Do you have a witness?”

“I do.” Asher swallowed, Adam’s apple bucking in his throat. “The doc and the nurses and the receptionist. And…my wife.”

It was another bust day for lessons. The moment the case was closed, Jade had a feeling their students would all come rushing back, curiosity rampant about the now locally-famous farm. But while a child-murderer was on the loose, they were keeping their distance. Considering she’d banked her whole future on
teaching kids and adult sacks-of-potatoes to ride, it was a depressing thought.

             
At noon, Jeremy ordered her to take her kid and get out for a little while. “This place is driving you nuts,” he said, dropping a kiss on top of her head. “And I can’t live with a crazy person.” So, leaving the horses in his very capable hands, she put Clara in a windbreaker and loaded up in the truck. Because her head was in snarls, and because she felt like it, they ended up at Rosewood.

             
Ben’s brother Chris was, if she was objective, the less handsome brother, but was cute in a rough, affable way. He was tall and broad like Ben, but less refined, more relaxed. A year and a half ago, he’d married one of his clients – a divorcé hell bent on transforming an old Victorian mansion into an inn – after they’d learned she was pregnant; and after what Jade guessed was a fast, hopeless, complicated, unconventional courtship that had left Chris ridiculously lovestruck. Rosewood was on Lake Allatoona and it saw decent business; it was white clapboard and black shutters and gardens that took her breath away. Clara love visiting, and Jade did too.

             
The day they met Jess, Jeremy had glanced sideways at Jade and said, “That’s one serious sister, yo,” in a voice that had possibly been racially insensitive. Jess had lifted her sculpted blonde brows and asked, “You think?” And Jeremy had grinned like a Cheshire cat. She
was
serious, in a way that left Jade feeling about sixteen and socially stupid. But there was a kindness to her, one just as blunt as the rest of her personality.

             
“Well you know what I think of him,” Jess said with a little head shake, blonde hair rippling over her shoulders. They were in her office – a room that had once been a parlor; Jess was behind the desk leafing through her date book and Clara was visible through the open door, playing in a patch of sunlight on the foyer floor with Madison – and Jade was throwing back coffee like it had whiskey in it. “Jeremy’s right; he’s manipulative.”

             
Out in the foyer, Maddie was on her back on a padded blanket, laughing up at her cousin. Clara was delighted by her.

             
“No offense, Jess,” Jade said with a thin smile, “but I’m already getting the Ben-sucks spiel at home…”

             
Jessica waved like she was shooing a fly. “Right. Sorry.” She flipped more date book pages and snatched up a pen from the desk. “I got off topic. What I meant to say” – she labeled something, perfect profile shining in the sun – “is that, manipulative or not, he’s kin to Chris. And Chris takes security seriously.” She glanced up, expression thoughtful. “I think he’s worried about you. Chris is a gigantic ass when he’s playing protector. I can’t think his big brother would be any different.”

             
Jade fiddled with the zipper of her hoodie and wanted to believe her, but she couldn’t. Both Haley brothers had managed to work themselves into identical situations: pregnant girlfriends. But Chris had thrown himself at Jess’s feet and asked to marry her. Ben had shoved her away from him while there were tears coursing down her cheeks and denied being the father.

             
“They’re not the same,” she said sadly, glancing back at the girls. “Ben isn’t a protective ass. He’s just an ass.”

             
There was a moment of unclear silence, Jess’s pen scribbling and Clara talking to the baby. Then Jess closed her date book with a little flapping sound and Jade looked across the desk at her. “What do you think happened,” she said, “when Chris found out he’d knocked me up?”

             
Jade hadn’t expected this question. She shook her head. “I dunno. ‘How soon can you find a dress?’”

             
Jess snorted. “He asked if the baby belonged to my ex. And then your sweet Ben came by to call me a slut. It was loads of fun.”

             
“Shit. I had no idea.”

             
“I know.” Her smile twitched, wry. “It’s taken me a while to figure out that love turns some men into shitheads every so often.” Her green eyes were too knowing. “Ben cares. Ben is freaking the hell out that a dead body turned up at you and Clara’s doorstep. That spells – ”

             
“Don’t say ‘love.’”

             
Jess almost smiled. “It’s Ben’s shriveled, mutant, parasitic brand of love. But it’s still love.”

**

Bridget McMahon had one of those military-short soccer mom haircuts in brassy blonde, and an awful paisley dress wrapped tight around her pear-shaped mommy figure. She answered the door with two fair-headed, Asher-faced kids at her hips, gulping air like guppies. She had her alibi primed and ready: the doctor’s appointment had been hers – she was pregnant with their third – and Asher had come along. There would be video tape from the hospital parking lot if he so chose to investigate further, and she nearly slammed his fingers shut in her bright yellow front door. She had a plaque on her wreath that read
Jesus Loves Us All
, and clearly, she didn’t share the Savior’s perspective.

             
Trey whistled as they walked back to the car. “Okay, how does
that
guy, married to that, get some Jade on the side?”

             
Ben punched him. Not playfully. And Trey went leaping off the sidewalk to regain his balance, clutching his arm.

             
“Dude!”

             
Ben snapped his jacket back into place and kept walking. “Don’t say it again.”

             
Trey had a nice sulk about it, sitting on the hood and peeling down his own jacket to check his arm. Ben had his hand on the wheel, over the horn, when his cell rang. It was five-fifteen, and it was Chris.

             
“What?” he answered, not in the mood for his brother at the moment.

             
“I got home and Jade’s here,” Chris said. “She’s staying for dinner. I think you should come by.”

             
Anger went rippling under his skin, a hot flush. “Why’s she there?”

             
“Apparently she and Jess have bonded over their mutual bad taste in men.”

             
They weren’t sisters-in-law. He had this fervent wish that they not act like they were; he didn’t want Jess planting seeds of expectation in Jade’s mind. “I’m not coming.”

             
Chris sighed. “Why not?”

             
“I’m working,” he said, and hung up.

             
But after a silent ride back to the precinct, and finding out that Jason still didn’t have print results on the key to the Lathams’ back door, he decided maybe some of his fellow detectives were onto something with this whole vacation thing. He turned his phone off and went to Rosewood.

Twilight was sweeping in with a thick wave of fog and snatches of purple sky visible through it. Chris had a fire going out in the pit on his patio; the smell of wood smoke hit Ben the moment he was out of his car. The sharp crackling of the flames cut through the evening, pulling him, drawing him across the yard. The back door was open and there were women’s voices floating out of it and Ben knew he should leave; but he didn’t.

              Chris watched his approach, holding back what Ben knew was a smug smile, but all he said was, “The girls made fajitas. For the kids.”

             
Ben wouldn’t have cared if they were having dog shit kabobs – he already had a stomach ache over his own stupidity for showing up.

             
Chris pulled a beer from the cooler at his feet and twisted off the cap. “Here.” He waved it at Ben. “You look like you need this bad.”

             
He took it with a grimace. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing.”

             
“Your detective training tell you that?”

             
“You’re worse than she is.”

             
“Maybe that’s why you always liked her; she reminds you of me,” Chris said with a grin.

             
Clara spared him a reply. She appeared at the top of the back steps – in pink overalls with strawberry-embroidered shirt beneath – and gave him a look she’d never given him before: a distrustful one. She clutched at the doorknob and narrowed her eyes and peered down at him without her usual, jubilant greeting.
“She’s old enough to feel abandoned,”
Jeremy had said, and maybe it was true.

             
“Hi, sweetie,” he called, and she stood rooted, staring at him. She had cried before, sobbed against the front of his shirt, but she’d never given him the cold shoulder. It was as cutting as her mother’s rendition. “Come here, love.”

             
He wondered what thoughts were spinning in her little head. He was reminded, every time he saw her, that a four-year-old wasn’t an incoherent, babbling wind-up doll; she had complicated emotions and her own childlike grasp of logic. She knew he wasn’t living up to his end of the bargain as her father.

             
“Come on, Clarabelle,” Chris urged. “He doesn’t mean to keep running off. He’s had a busy week at work. Give your old man a break.”

             
She responded, coming down the stairs with slow, deliberate steps, eyes moving between the two of them like she was trying to decide if it was okay to believe her uncle. She listened to him, though, when she wouldn’t listen to Ben. Chris had made himself available from the start. Even though Ben hadn’t married Jade – had cast her off – Chris had established himself as Clara’s uncle from the get-go. He was good with kids; he liked them. His stepson had, Chris had revealed the other night at dinner, started slipping up and calling him “Dad.” Because Chris was just that kind of guy: happy and friendly and easy. A natural dad.