“Are you finished?” Emma asked.
“Have you seen it?”
“Yes.”
“And?” I considered crushing the handset.
“And what?”
“You’re not furious?”
“Sure I’m furious. My butt looks huge. Are you done venting?”
That’s what it was, of course. Venting.
“Our goal is to get the skeleton identified.” Emma’s voice sounded dull. “Exposure could help.”
“That was your line on Friday.”
“It still is.”
“Winborne’s article could tip the killer.”
“If there is a killer. Maybe this guy died of an overdose. Maybe his buddies panicked and dumped his body where they thought it wouldn’t be found. Maybe we have nothing more serious than a Chapter Seventeen violation.”
“I’ll bite.”
“Improper disposal of a corpse. Look. Someone’s probably missing this guy. If that someone is local, he or she may read the piece and make a call. Admit it. You’re just pissed that Winborne outwitted us.”
I threw up a hand in an “I’m not believing this” gesture.
When puzzled, Boyd twirls his eyebrow hairs. He did that now, from the safety of the doorway.
“I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” Emma said.
Climbing the stairs, I went to my bathroom and rested my forehead on the mirror. The glass felt cool against my flushed skin.
Goddamn nosy, interfering reporters! Goddamn Winborne!
I breathed deeply and let it out slowly.
I have a temper. I admit that. Occasionally, that temper triggers overreaction. I admit that, too. I despise such lapses. And I resent those able to trip that switch in my head.
Emma was right. The article was benign. Winborne was doing his job and he’d outmaneuvered us.
I took another deep breath.
I wasn’t angry at Winborne. I was angry at myself for being outsmarted by plankton.
I straightened and stared at myself in the mirror, assessing.
Hazel eyes, bright, some would say intense. Crow’s-feet at the corners, but still my best feature.
High cheekbones, nose a bit on the small side. Jaw holding firm. A few gray hairs, but the honey-brown still in charge.
I stepped back for a full body view.
Five-five. One twenty.
Overall, not bad for an odometer reading forty plus.
I locked on to the hazel gaze in the glass. A familiar voice sounded in my brain. Do your job, Brennan. Ignore the distractions and focus. Get it done. That’s what you do. Get it done.
Boyd padded over and nudged my knee. I directed my next comment to him.
“Screw Winborne.” The eyebrow hairs went crazy. “And the byline he rode in on.”
Boyd shot his snout skyward in full agreement. I patted his head.
After splashing water on my face, I applied makeup, twisted my hair into a topknot, and hurried downstairs. I was filling pet dishes when the front door slammed.
“Honey! I’m home!”
Pete appeared with yet more groceries.
“Planning a reunion of your entire Marine unit?”
Pete snapped a salute and replied with the Marine Corps motto. “Semper Fi.”
“How did it go with Herron?” I extracted a jar of pickled herring from Pete’s bag and placed it in the fridge.
Reaching around me, Pete grabbed a Sam Adams and popped the cap on a drawer handle.
I bit back a rebuke. Pete’s annoying habits were no longer my problem.
“Spent my time doing recon,” Pete said.
“You couldn’t get anywhere near Herron,” I translated.
“No.”
“What did you do?”
“Watched a whole lot of prayin’ and making joyful sounds unto the Lord. When the show let out, I floated Helene’s picture to a few of the faithful.”
“And?”
“They are a spectacularly unobservant flock.”
“No one remembered her?”
Pete drew a snapshot from his pocket and laid it on the table. I crossed to study it.
The image was blurry, a blowup of a driver’s license or passport photo. A young woman stared, unsmiling, into the camera.
Helene wasn’t pretty, though her features were even in a bland sort of way. Her hair was middle-parted and drawn back at the nape of her neck.
I had to admit. Helene Flynn had little to distinguish her from a thousand other women her age.
“Afterward I had a chat with Helene’s landlady,” Pete said. “Didn’t learn much. Helene was polite, paid her rent on time, had no visitors. She did volunteer that the kid seemed agitated toward the end. But Helene’s leaving took her by surprise. Until the envelope with the final rent showed up, she had no idea Helene was leaving.”
I looked again at the face in the photo. So forgettable. Witnesses would give unusable descriptions. Medium height. Medium weight. No recall of the face.
“Flynn had no other photos of his daughter?” I asked.
“None post-dating high school.”
“Odd.”
“Flynn’s an odd bird.”
“You said he hired an investigator.”
Pete nodded. “Former Charlotte-Mecklenburg cop named Noble Cruikshank.”
“Cruikshank simply vanished?”
“Stopped sending reports and returning phone calls. I did a little digging. Cruikshank wasn’t in the running to be CMPD poster boy. Got invited off the force in ninety-four for substance abuse.”
“Cocktail of choice?”
“Jimmy B neat. Cruikshank’s also a non-nominee for PI of the Year. Seems he’s pulled his disappearing act on other clients. Takes a job, collects an upfront fee, goes on a bender.”
“Wouldn’t a PI lose his license for that?”
“Apparently Cruikshank doesn’t believe in paperwork. That was also a problem with the CMPD.”
“Flynn didn’t know Cruikshank drank and wasn’t licensed?”
“Flynn hired him off the Net.”
“Risky.”
“Cruikshank’s ad said he specialized in missing persons. That’s the skill set Flynn needed. He also liked the idea that Cruikshank worked Charlotte and Charleston.”
“When did Flynn hire him?”
“Last January. Couple months after Helene dropped out of sight. Flynn thinks their last conversation was in late March. Cruikshank said the investigation was moving forward, but provided no detail. Then nothing.”
“Where did Cruikshank go on his other benders?”
“Once to Atlantic City. Once to Vegas. But not all Cruikshank’s clients were unhappy. Most that I contacted thought they’d gotten their money’s worth.”
“How did you find them?”
“Cruikshank gave Flynn a list of references. I started with those, picked up new names as I worked my way backward.”
“What do you know about Cruikshank’s final activities?”
“Cruikshank never cashed the last check Flynn sent him. That was the February payment. There’s been no activity on his credit card or bank account since March. He owed over twenty-four hundred on the former, had four fifty-two in the latter. The last phone bill was paid in February. Account’s since been cut off.”
“He must have had a car.”
“Whereabouts unknown.”
“Cell phone?”
“Terminated in early December for nonpayment. Wasn’t the first time Cruikshank had been dropped.”
“A PI without a mobile these days?”
Pete shrugged. “Maybe the guy worked alone, did all his phoning from home.”
“Family?”
“Divorced. No kids. The split wasn’t amicable. The wife’s remarried and hasn’t heard from him in years.”
“Brothers? Sisters?”
Pete shook his head. “Cruikshank was an only child and the parents are dead. Toward the end of his stint with the Charlotte PD he’d become pretty
much a loner, and wasn’t close to anyone.”
I looped back to GMC.
“If you can’t get to Herron, what’s your next step?”
Pete pointed a finger heavenward. “Fear not, fair lady. The Latvian Savant has just entered the footrace.”
Pete was a law student when we met. He’d already adopted the nickname back then. I never learned who coined it. I suspected it was Pete.
Rolling my eyes, I returned to the groceries and put a package of feta into the fridge.
Pete tipped back his chair and rested his heels on the table edge.
I started to object. Not my problem. Anne’s? She invited him here.
“And how was your day, sugar britches?”
I retrieved the Post and Courier, dropped it on the table, and pointed.
Pete read Winborne’s article.
“Hey, nice use of alliteration. ‘Buried Body Barrier Beach.’ ”
“Pure poetry.”
“I take it you’re not pleased this kid talked to the press.”
“I’m not pleased with any of it.”
I hadn’t even thought about Topher. When had Winborne buttonholed him? How had he persuaded Topher to give a statement?
“The photo’s not bad.”
I shot Pete a look.
“What’s this cruise ship thing your friend screwed up?”
“I don’t know.”
“Gonna ask her?”
“Definitely not.”
Roast peppers, salmon spread, and Ben & Jerry’s into the fridge and freezer. Chocolate chips and pistachios into the cabinet. Then I turned back to Pete.
“A man is dead. His family doesn’t know that yet. I view Winborne’s story as an invasion of that family’s privacy. Am I way off base?”
Pete shrugged, then drained his beer.
“News is news. Know what you need?”
“What?” Wary.
“Picnic.”
“I had a sandwich at three.”
Dropping his chair to the floor, Pete stood, turned me by the shoulders, and gently pushed me from the kitchen.
“Go grade a paper or something. Meet me at the gazebo at eight.”
“I don’t know, Pete.”
I did know. And every cell in my hindbrain was running up a warning flag.
Pete and I had been married for twenty years, separated for only a few. Though our marriage had posed many challenges, sexual attraction had never been one of them. We’d rocked when we were newlyweds. We could still rock.
If Pete hadn’t rocked off the reservation.
My libido’s view of Pete worried me. Things were going well with Ryan. I didn’t want to do something that might compromise that. And the last time Pete and I spent an evening together we’d ended up like kids in the back of a Chevy.
“I do know,” Pete said. “Go.”
“Pete—”
“You’ve got to eat. I’ve got to eat. We’ll do it together and include a little sand.”
There’s something deep in my psyche that links food with human interaction. When home alone, I live on carry-out or frozen dinners. When solo on the road, I order room service and dine with Letterman or Raymond or Oprah.
Company did sound nice. And Pete was a good cook.
“This isn’t a date, Pete.”
“Of course not.”
7
I GOT THROUGH THREE MORE EXAMS BEFORE drifting off. Slumped sideways on my bed pillows, I floated in that limbo between waking and sleep, dreaming meaningless snatches. Running on a beach. Arranging bones with Emma.
In one fragment, I was sitting in a circle at an AA meeting. Ryan was there. Pete. A tall, blond man. The three were talking, but I couldn’t hear the conversation. Their faces were in shadow so I couldn’t read their expressions.
I awoke to a room bathed in orange and a breeze clattering the palmettos against the outside deck. The clock said eight ten.
I walked to the bathroom and rehabbed the topknot. While I’d been dozing, my bangs had decided to go for that spiky thing. I wet them, grabbed a brush, and began blow-drying. Halfway through, I stopped. Why? And why had I bothered earlier with makeup? Tossing the brush, I hurried downstairs.
Anne’s house is connected to the beach by a long wooden boardwalk. A gazebo occupies a deck at the walkway’s highest point in its trajectory over the dunes. Pete was there, drinking wine, the last glow of sunset warming his hair.
Katy’s hair. The genetic echo was so strong I could never look at one without seeing the other.
I was barefoot, so Pete didn’t hear me approach. He’d found a tablecloth, silver candles, a bud vase, and an ice bucket. Two places were set, and a cooler rested on the gazebo floor.
I pulled up short, clotheslined by an unexpected sense of loss.
I don’t buy into the “there’s but one soul mate” philosophy, but when I met Pete the attraction had been nuclear fusion. The flipping gut when our arms brushed. The thumping heart when I spotted his face in a crowd. I’d known from the start Pete was the guy I was going to marry.
I looked at Pete’s face now, lined and tanned, the forehead creeping a little to the north. I’d awakened to that face for more than two decades. Those eyes watched in awe as my daughter was born. My fingers had traced that skin a thousand times. I knew every pore, every muscle, every bone.
Every excuse those lips had constructed.
Every time the truth had shredded my heart.
No way. Done.
“Hey, dude.”
Pete rose and turned at the sound of my voice. “Thought I’d been stood up.”
“Sorry. I fell asleep.”
“Table by the window, madam?”
I took a seat. Towel-draping his arm, Pete pulled a Diet Coke from the ice bucket and laid it on his wrist for my inspection.
“Excellent year,” I said.
Pete poured, then began spreading food. Cold spiced shrimp. Smoked trout. Lobster salad. Marinated asparagus. Brie. Pumpernickel squares. Tapenade.
I doubt my estranged husband could survive in a world without a good deli.
We ate, watching fingers of sunlight change from yellow to orange to gray. The ocean was calm, a background symphony of swells rolling gently to shore. Now and then a seabird called out and another answered.
We finished with key lime pie as the gray turned to black.
Pete cleared the table, then we both put our feet on the railing.
“The beach suits you, Tempe. You’re lookin’ good.”
Pete looked good, too, in his rumpled, tousled Pete Petersons way.
I repeated my earlier warning. “This isn’t a date, Pete.”
“I can’t mention the fact that you look nice?” All innocence.
Muted yellow lights were appearing in the houses lining the shore. Another day was checking out. Pete and I watched in silence, the salt breeze playing with our hair.
When Pete spoke again his voice had taken on a deeper tone.
“What I’m having a hard time remembering is why we split up.”
“Because you’re annoying as hell and spectacularly unfaithful.”
“People change, Tempe.”
All responses to that seemed dumb, so I didn’t make one.
“You ever think—”
At that moment my cell phone sounded. I dug it from my pocket and clicked on.
“How’s the most beautiful woman on the planet?” Ryan.
“Good.” I dropped my feet and did a half turn in my chair.
“Busy day?”
“Not bad.”
“Any word on your skeleton?”
“No.”
Pete served himself more of the Chardonnay, then waggled another Coke in my direction. I shook my head no.
Sounds slipped over the line. Or Ryan picked up on my reticence. “Is this a bad time?”
“I’m finishing dinner.” A gull screamed overhead.
“On the beach?”
“It’s a beautiful night.” Dumb. Ry
an knew my attitude toward dining solo. “Pete made a picnic.”
Ryan didn’t answer for a full five seconds. Then, “OK.”
“How’s Lily?”
“Good.” After another long pause, “I’ll talk to you later, Tempe.”
I was listening to dead air.
“Problem?” Pete asked.
I shook my head. “I’m going to turn in.” I rose. “Thanks for dinner. It really was nice.”
“My pleasure.”
I started up the boardwalk.
“Tempe.”
I turned.
“When you’re ready to listen, I’d like to talk.”
I walked toward the house, feeling Pete’s eyes on my back.
* * *
My late afternoon nap kept me up until well past three.
Or was it agitation over Ryan’s displeasure? Though I phoned several times, my calls went unanswered.
Was Ryan displeased? Was I being paranoid? He’s the one who’d gone to Nova Scotia to visit Lily. Wasn’t Lily’s mother in Nova Scotia?
Whatever.
And what was bothering Emma? Saturday’s caller had obviously not delivered good news. Was she in trouble over this cruise ship case?
Who was parked outside Anne’s house early this morning? Dickie Dupree? He’d threatened me, but I hadn’t taken him seriously. Would Dupree stoop to physical intimidation? No, but he might send somebody.
Could Dupree have something to do with the skeleton buried on Dewees? That seemed a stretch.
Had bacteria really contaminated the iceman’s bones? Five thousand years in the Alps and now he’s snack food for microbes?
Why two spellings for ketchup? Catsup? And where did that name come from, anyway?
I tossed and turned for hours, then slept later than I’d planned on Monday.
By the time I got to the hospital it was after ten. Emma was there. So was the forensic dentist, a behemoth in a sweatsuit he must have picked up at a Kmart closeout. Emma introduced him as Bernie Grimes.
Grimes’s handshake was one of those you don’t know quite how to handle. Too weak to grasp. Too clingy to slip.
Freeing my hand, I smiled at Grimes. He smiled back, looking like a silo in blue velour.
Emma had already wheeled the skeleton from the cooler. It lay on the same gurney it had occupied on Saturday, a large brown envelope covering the ribs. The dental X-rays were again spread on the light box.