by Aimee Hix
I shook Fargo awake and she turned her head toward me, yawning.
“Time to get up, Fargo. Time to go out.”
I had some special morning command to give that told her to go to the bathroom in Dutch, but it was too complicated to remember in the early-morning hours. And who was going to try to break into her training to tell her to get up in the morning besides me? She understood the English version just fine if her reaction was any indication. She scampered off the bed and sat at the door waiting for me to open it and lead her to the slider.
The air chilled my bare arms and feet as I stood outside waiting for her, an icy fog hovering a few inches off the ground. She was barely a few feet away from me and I could only make out her faint silhouette. One of the first things we’d taught her was the perimeter of the yard, but she was still young and in training.
“Fargo, stay close.”
She knew that command well. It was probably the two words she heard most. Stay close. She ambled back toward the door, still sniffing around, still not doing her business.
“Fargo, get on with it. I’m cold.” She didn’t care about the temperature. She had a fur coat. She had no concept of thin cotton shirts and flannel pants that did nothing to block the damn air creeping up the leg. She finally squatted and did her business. And like an asshole, I left it because it was going to be months before anyone was back here and it was unlikely anyone would ever be walking flush to the house. If someone was there, I doubted they had good intentions creeping around and, at minimum, deserved a sole full of dog crap.
The meditation droned on in my ears as we went inside. We both skipped the bottom step and went up the stairs in search of sustenance. I was trying this thing where I ate real food to make my moms happy and I didn’t want to admit to either of them that I had more energy and felt better than when my diet was ninety percent fake everything except sugar. I just kept eating healthier and we all left it undiscussed. I hadn’t even checked my stash in days. For all I knew, my dad had decimated it.
Nancy was at the counter, fiddling with the electric kettle Seth had given her for Christmas after finding the whistle of the manual kettle did something unpleasant to his hearing. I didn’t even hear it but I’d lived with it for years. She didn’t seem to like the new one much and I thought it was a crappy reason to give someone a gift, but she used it even if Seth wasn’t around.
It was an early morning for me but she’d been up for an hour getting Ben and Aja off to school. It struck me how odd it was that Aja’s seamless transition into our family wasn’t being treated as odd. With Michael and Seth and Ben’s friend, John, there were always kids that weren’t hers in and out of the house, all days of the week, all hours of the day. It didn’t matter to her if she had four mouths to feed, five, six, eight, ten. There was a space at her table and enough food. It was one of the things I loved most about her—her heart expanded out like the biggest sofa bed you could imagine, always room made for something to find shelter.
“Morning, Mom,” I said, pulling my earbuds out. I laid my head on her shoulder and wrapped my arm around her waist. Times like this were the few I felt comfortable with physical affection. I’d never been touchy-feely as a kid because Leila hadn’t really been a huggy-kissy kind of mom. When Nancy became my mom, she was always careful to go at my speed. She laid down firm rules, but my body was mine. I decided who touched it and when.
“Morning, sweetheart. Sleep well?”
That was my cue to yawn. “Actually, yes. Fargo is a good pillow.”
Hearing her name so close to the proximity of her food bowl caused her ears to perk up. Nancy laughed.
“Yes, it’s time to eat, puppy.” Nancy bent to open the cabinet with the special food she bought when she saw the dry kibble Ben had brought home. No amount of explaining to her that it was nutritionally balanced, high quality, and expensive as hell could dissuade her. She took the inferior dog food to the shelter and went out to buy even more expensive food. For a woman who fought getting a dog so long, she certainly seemed to be enjoying all the tasks she swore she wanted no part of.
“I got it. Finish making your tea.” She had another hour before she needed to be at the elementary school to oversee any of the maladies that grade-schoolers passed around like crayons. It was flu season so her tea was echinacea with a vitamin C chaser.
I scooped out the food and placed the bowl in front of Fargo. She stared at me in anticipation. I looked back at her. I let another few heartbeats pass before I said, “Paid for.”
Fargo stuck her face in the bowl and made little sounds of joy as she crunched the bites of food.
“I wish that wasn’t necessary,” Nancy said.
“We’d do that even if she wasn’t in training as a working dog. We don’t want her eating just anything that smells like food. She could eat a dead, rabid animal carcass. That would suck.”
“I know.” She sipped her tea. I could see she wanted to say more.
Fargo finished her breakfast and trotted out of the kitchen to stand at the front door. Good girl.
I went to let her out again and she trotted out to sniff around a bit finding her favorite spots. I shut the door behind me so I wouldn’t get yelled at for letting the cold air in. Or the warm air out. They were never too married to either point. They’d given up yelling at either one of us for not having coats on. Ben had pointed out that it was an old wives’ tale and that you couldn’t get sick from being underdressed. That had been about the same time he was doing my math for me.
Fargo finished her desecration of the grass and hurled herself up the cement steps toward me. I’d need to take her for a run as soon as I finished eating enough fuel for exercise. She was getting as antsy as I felt. We’d run; she’d avoid the zoomies and I’d avoid getting too deep inside my own head.
“We’ve interviewed them a number of times over the years so they know the drill. No question is off the table. Just be as tactful as possible.”
I hadn’t been offended when Jan went over the rules in the car, but sitting in front of Mandy’s mother I reminded myself that tact wasn’t my strongest skill. I vowed to treat her like I would my own mother if something happened to Ben.
“Mrs. Veitch, this is a consultant who works with the department. I’ve asked her to review your daughter’s case to give us a fresh set of eyes.”
The woman who stood before us seemed smaller than the pictures I had seen of her. She was painfully thin with skin that looked loose on her bones. I knew from the files that Mandy’s birthday was coming up. She’d have been thirty-five. It didn’t seem fair that she had to get through the anniversary of her daughter’s death and the holidays all on top of one another only to have to face her daughter’s birthday and then Mother’s Day in a short interval. Not that any day was a day she’d have forgotten or put it behind her for even one moment.
“Willa Pennington, Mrs. Veitch. I’m so sorry about what happened to your daughter. I’m doing my best to help Detective Boyd give you a resolution.”
She grasped my outstretched hand with one that felt as fragile as a bird’s wing.
“You’re so young.” She stared at me, eyes dry and somewhat empty.
“Willa is a very talented investigator, Mrs. Veitch. I trust her completely.” I’d never get such high praise from Jan directly. It would have felt good if I’d heard it any other time but as I stood in front of this woman who looked like she was dying slowly, it didn’t give me any pleasure. It did make me all that more determined to find out who had killed Amanda.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that you weren’t good at your job, Miss Pennington.”
I smiled at her. “No offense taken.”
She gave her head a little shake. “Please come in and sit down.”
She ushered us into a small living room that seemed to be decorated as a technicality. It had the air of a room that had been staged for p
hotos to appear on a realtor’s website. The furniture looked as fresh as if the delivery service had just dropped it off. No magazines on the table, not even in a neat stack. Not one family photo anywhere to be seen. I knew from the file that her son was married with a daughter of his own, but there was no evidence this woman had a family of any kind.
“Can I offer you a beverage? I have a fresh pot of coffee.”
I looked at Jan hopefully.
“Coffee would be great,” Jan said.
I used the time she was in the kitchen to organize my files and review my questions. I made sure my notepad and pen were ready and available. I willed my hands to stop shaking. Nerves or caffeine withdrawal would be determined when the coffee was served.
Mrs. Veitch brought the coffee in on a tray so at one point she’d entertained. She set it down on the coffee table and handed out cups. Tiny cups. Infinitesimally tiny cups. Caffeine withdrawal for the win. Come collect your winnings.
“Sorry, I only have real sugar. I don’t keep artificial sweetener.”
I dumped a full bag of cookies’ worth of real sugar in and smiled. “That’s okay. I’m allergic to it.”
Jan stared at me. “I didn’t know that.”
“It’s never come up before.” I shrugged, dumping in creamer.
We both turned back to Mrs. Veitch hearing a sniffle.
“Amanda was allergic to artificial sweetener. I’ve never met anyone else who was. It was always a struggle to keep it out of her way since they put it in everything back then, but I read every label. I still haven’t broken the habit.”
I nodded, blowing on the coffee. “My mom is pretty militant about it too. I’ll admit, when I’m responsible for it, I’ve had some slips. It’s not enjoyable.”
Mrs. Veitch shook her head. “It’s hard to watch your child suffer and not be able to do anything about it.”
An awkward silence settled over the room. The conversation had gotten a little too real, but it didn’t matter where it went at that point. I mentally tossed my first set of questions. I’d ignored the receipts with their time and date stamped. Those could be faked and I’d come into the house with the assumption that all suspects were on the table, but this woman hadn’t killed her daughter. I closed my eyes as I took a sip of the now cooled coffee. One down, two more to go.
Kyle Warnicky—Amanda’s boyfriend—had moved out of the area so we had plans to Skype with him later in the day. We drove straight from Mrs. Veitch’s house to her son’s. Kevin Veitch lived no more than a mile from his mother. Both had moved out of the house Amanda had died in within a month of the murder. Kevin transferred to George Mason to finish his degree and in short order married and became a father. His daughter was named Amanda.
“That’s hardly the sign of a guilty conscience. You wouldn’t want to be reminded of murdering your sister every time you talked to your daughter,” I said, reviewing my notes, finally able to chat with Jan about some of the details. She’d been so insistent that her views not taint mine that, outside of generic talk about me working the case, we’d avoided the topic entirely.
“Could be penance.”
I wasn’t sure how that worked as we weren’t a religious family but that seemed a pretty extreme way to punish yourself. I’d have cracked before now. Long before now. And I was damn good at compartmentalizing my feelings. Of course, I’d never murdered a sibling.
We pulled up outside a tidy brick Cape Cod. It didn’t look like the Veitches made a bundle of money. I flipped to the financial report on them and saw they were a one-income family, Kevin being a high school chemistry teacher and his wife, Courtney, a stay-at-home mom. I reviewed the family demographic page again.
“Their daughter is fifteen. Date of birth is April twenty-second. She’ll be sixteen soon.”
I started to do the mental math but Jan interrupted my train of thought. “Yeah, the wife was pregnant when Amanda was murdered.”
“Did that ever cause you to doubt that he was the guy?” It had to have. Jan was a great cop and part of that was being able to read people. She’d know immediately upon finding out that information if it made the suspect more or less likely. But that was now. This was then. She’d been a new Homicide detective. Just off Burglary on her first murder case. No second chair on other cases, like they do now. Deep end of the pool, copper, where you sink or swim.
“It was the piece I couldn’t place in the puzzle. I thought I knew where it was supposed to go but always doubted myself.”
“And now?”
“Now I’ve got you to look at it with fresh eyes, kid.”
But when Kevin opened the door, I knew. I looked back at Jan standing on the cracked concrete step behind me.
His broad smile and sad eyes told me everything I needed to know about him. Two down, one to go.
“Come in, detectives. It’s a teacher workday so it worked out well. I just put a pot of coffee on. Oh, maybe you’d like something else to drink. We’ve got water, juice, sodas, regular and diet.”
He was nervous. That was understandable. He just didn’t seem guilty to me. He seemed more eager than anything. Eager to help. Eager to find out the truth. Eager for it all to be over. If he’d done it and he’d wanted it over, he’d confess.
“Water for me, Mr. Veitch. My associate will likely want coffee,” Jan said.
She was right. That itty-bitty cup earlier had barely dented my deficit.
“Come on into the kitchen then. Manda, my daughter, has got a science project all spread out in the family room. She and my wife had to run out to get some more supplies. The science fair is later this week. I hope you didn’t need to talk to them.”
Definitely eager. He was not our guy. I knew it soul deep.
“How do you take it?” he asked.
Too eager. I hated people who insisted on fixing your coffee for you. It seems considerate, but nine times out of ten I can’t drink it.
Look, you wouldn’t let someone adjust your car seat for you. Or determine what temperature your shower should be, right? It’s not any different. I’ve been making my coffee since I was twelve. I know the exact pour. And if you can’t afford to let me have all the creamer I need, don’t offer me coffee. It was a testament to Jan’s powers of observation that she got mine even more right than I did.
“That’s okay. I’m happy to do it.”
He looked up, guilty. “Right. I’m just … when I get nervous I get fidgety.”
I shifted through the blue and yellow packets looking for the actual sugar. I found a single white one under half a dozen blue ones.
“Why are you nervous, Mr. Veitch? This is only routine. We’ve asked a consultant to review the case and we’re getting her up to speed.”
I don’t know if Jan meant to sound like a hard-ass but her demeanor and delivery were worlds apart from an hour earlier with the mother. I shot her a look that basically read cool it, already and she shot me back a look that wasn’t defiant but was annoyed. Tough crackers, sister. This was my interview.
The front door burst open and a flurry of bags and chatter swept into the small house. The wife and daughter had accomplished their supply shopping and then some, it appeared. Their first stop was the kitchen, probably looking to dump out the bags and organize the purchases. It was a familiar scene. Nancy and Ben had done it plenty over the years, though not as much recently. Lately all Ben’s science fair projects were less supply-based and more cloud-based. Gone were the diorama days.
“Oh, sorry.” The girl looked exactly like the pictures of her deceased aunt. I must have gaped because I felt Jan’s hard look. I wiggled my eyebrows at her and she tipped her head slightly. Damn right she should have warned me.
“We’ll get out of your hair, honey,” the wife said. They must be fairly used to the drill.
The daughter dropped her bags in the hall and breezed into the kitchen w
ith the air of a kid who didn’t quite grasp the gravity of the situation. A dead aunt that she’d never met, even one she was named after, even with pictures she’d seen, wouldn’t really register as a real thing. Cold cases, police interviews, these were not her real life. These were elements of a TV show or movie. She wouldn’t maintain that naivete too much longer.
“Manda, Daddy’s busy,” the wife stage whispered. Right, like we weren’t going to hear. She was trying to get us to excuse the kid’s actions but it didn’t bother me, getting to see the family interplay. I watched Kevin fix his daughter and wife cups of coffee with the practiced air of a man used to being surrounded by women—first his mother and sister, now his mother, wife, and daughter.
Kevin handed his daughter a white, no sweetener coffee and his wife a cup with cream and two packets of sweetener added—one blue, one yellow. I turned my back, pretending to look for a spoon as I gagged at how tooth-achingly sweet that coffee had to be. I was glad I hadn’t let him make my coffee—I didn’t want to spend the rest of the day in an allergy-induced haze of migraine and vomiting because he’d gone on autopilot and made me his wife’s coffee.
The daughter practically danced out of the kitchen after getting her coffee, so much motion I feared for their rugs. Kevin just smiled indulgently.
“I’ll get her to put in some headphones and do some quiet calculations while you finish up,” the wife said. Courtney. I needed to think of her as Courtney.
“Thanks, dear.” He sat only after his wife was completely through the door.
“Sorry about that. Manda tends to be a bit of a whirlwind. She may look like her aunt but her personality is exactly like my wife at her age.”
Nice opening to the past, Kevin. Thanks.
“You’ve been together a long time?” I asked, sipping my coffee, appearing nonchalant.
He laughed. “Romantically, no, but she was my sister’s best friend. They were opposites, kind of like we are.” He’d grown wistful as he’d finished the sentence. “They were quite the pair—Amanda was more thoughtful, reserved, nose in a book. I guess Manda does take after her, and me, in that respect. She loves school like her aunt did. Courtney … she was always ready for an adventure. She’d never met a wall she didn’t try to climb over or break down.”