by Karen Rose
“I know,” Daniel said wryly. “Too bad you didn’t tell me before she walked in here this morning and scared the ever-livin’ shit outta me.”
Luke’s dark brows shot up. “She was here? Alexandra Tremaine?”
“She calls herself Fallon now. Alex Fallon. She’s an ER nurse from Cincinnati.”
“So she lived then,” Luke said thoughtfully and Daniel frowned.
“What do you mean?”
Luke handed the stack of papers over the table. “Well, the story didn’t stop with Alicia’s murder. The day Alicia’s body was found, Kathy Tremaine, that’s their mother, shot herself in the head. She was apparently discovered by her daughter Alexandra, who then took all the pills the doctor had prescribed for the mother, who was hysterical after having to identify her daughter’s body.”
Daniel thought of Jane Doe on the table at the morgue and of a mother having to identify her child looking like that. Still, suicide was the coward’s way out . . . and for Alex to have discovered her that way. “My God,” he murmured.
“Kathy Tremaine’s sister had come down from Ohio because of Alicia and discovered them both. Her name was Kim Fallon.”
“Alex said she’d been adopted by her aunt and uncle, so that makes sense.”
“There’s more in the stack, obits and articles about the trial of Gary Fulmore, the man they charged with the murder. But there was no other mention of Alexandra after the article on Fulmore’s arrest. I guess Kim Fallon took her to Ohio after that.”
Daniel leafed through the pages. “Did you see mention of a Bailey Crighton?”
“Craig Crighton, yes, but not Bailey. Craig was the man Kathy Tremaine was living with at the time of her death. Why?”
“That’s why Alex Fallon came to see me today. Her stepsister Bailey went missing Thursday night and she thought she was the Arcadia woman.”
Luke whistled softly. “Well, that had to have been a shock.”
Daniel thought of the fists she’d squeezed nearly bloodless, and the way her hand felt in his. “I imagine it was, but she held herself together well.”
“I was actually talking about it being a shock for you.” Luke swung his feet off the desk and stood up. “I’ve got to be getting back now. Break’s over.”
Daniel narrowed his eyes. “You gonna be okay?”
Luke nodded. “Sure.” But there was little conviction in his voice. “I’ll see you later.”
Daniel lifted the papers. “Thanks, Luke.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Ripples, Daniel thought as he watched him go. They changed the lives of the victims and their families. And sometimes they change us. Usually they change us. With a sigh he turned to his own computer to look up the number for Fun-N-Sun. He had a victim to identify.
Dutton, Monday, January 29, 1:00 p.m.
“Here’s all the stuff.” Alex dumped it on the sofa in her hotel room. “Play-Doh, Legos, Mr. Potato Head, more crayons, paper, and more coloring books.”
Meredith was sitting next to Hope at the little dinette table. “And the Barbie head?”
“In the bag, but they were out of Barbies. You got Princess Fiona from Shrek.”
“But she has hair we can cut? I’m thinking since Bailey was a hairdresser they might have played that way together.”
“Yep. I checked. And I got Hope some clothes. Man, kids’ clothes are expensive.”
“Get used to it, Auntie.”
“You moved her from the desk in the bedroom.”
“Had to. Wasn’t room for both of us to color in there and I needed a change in scenery.” Meredith chose a blue crayon from a pile. “Hope, I’m picking periwinkle this time. Periwinkle sounds like a happy color, like it’s winking at me.”
Meredith continued to chatter as she colored and Alex could see this had been going on for some time while she’d been gone. There was a stack of pages with ragged edges that Meredith had torn from Hope’s coloring book. All were colored with blue.
“Can we talk while you color?”
Meredith smiled. “Sure. Or you can sit down and color with us. Hope and I don’t mind, do we, Hope?”
Hope didn’t appear to even hear her. Alex dragged the chair from the bedroom desk up to the dinette and sat down, meeting Meredith’s eyes over Hope’s head. “Anything?”
“Nope,” Meredith said cheerfully. “There are no magic wands, Alex.”
Hope’s hand stopped abruptly, still clutching the red crayon in her small fist. She kept her eyes on the coloring book, but she’d gone completely still. Alex opened her mouth, but Meredith shot her a warning glance and Alex remained silent.
“At least not in that sack from the store,” Meredith went on. “I like magic wands.” Hope didn’t move a muscle. “When I was little, I used to pretend celery stalks were magic wands. My mom would get so mad when she’d go to make a salad and all the celery was gone.” Meredith chuckled and kept coloring with her periwinkle. “She’d fuss, but she’d play with me. Celery was cheap, she’d say, but playtime was precious.”
Alex swallowed hard. “My mom used to say that, too. ‘Playtime is precious.’ ”
“Probably because our moms were sisters. Did your mom say that, too, Hope?”
Slowly, Hope’s crayon began to move again, then faster, until she colored with the same focus as before. Alex wanted to sigh, but Meredith was smiling.
“Baby steps,” she murmured. “Sometimes the best therapy’s just in being there, Alex.” She tore a page from her coloring book. “Try it. It’s really very relaxing.”
Alex drew a deep breath, steadying herself. “You did that for me. Sat with me, when I first came to live with you. Every day after school and all that summer. You’d just come into my room and read a book. You never said a word.”
“I didn’t know what to say,” Meredith said. “But you were sad and you seemed happier when I sat with you. Then one day you said, ‘Hi.’ It was days later before you said any more and weeks before you were carrying on any conversation at all.”
“I think you saved my life,” Alex murmured. “You and Kim and Steve.” The Fallons had been her salvation. “I miss them.” Her aunt and uncle had died the year before when Steve’s little plane had crashed into an Ohio cornfield.
Meredith’s hand faltered and her throat worked as she swallowed hard. “I miss them, too.” She rested her cheek on Hope’s pretty curls for a brief moment. “That’s a very nice caterpillar, Hope. I’m going to use the periwinkle on the butterfly.” She chattered on for another few minutes, then casually turned the topic. “I would love to see some butterflies. Did you find a park where we can take Hope, Alex?”
“Yes, there’s a park not too far from the elementary school. I picked up one of those real estate booklets when I was out. There’s a furnished house near the park that we might rent for a while.” Until I find Bailey, she added silently.
Meredith nodded. “Got it. Oh, and you know what? When we go to the park we can play Simon Says.” Her auburn brows lifted meaningfully. “I found instructions online. You’ll find them fascinating. I left the page open on my laptop. It’s in the bedroom.”
Alex stood up, her heart tripping. “I’ll go check.” She’d called Meredith right back after Captain-Reverend Beardsley had driven away, and relayed the conversation, especially the line, “I’ll see you in hell, Simon.” Apparently Meredith had done some searching while Alex had bought out the toy section of the local Wal-Mart so that Meredith could do play therapy with Hope.
Alex clicked the page Meredith had been reading and sucked in a startled breath as her memories began to fall into place. Simon Vartanian.
Vartanian. Daniel’s name had been naggingly familiar, but she’d been too worried about Bailey to dwell on it at the time. Then, waiting to view that woman’s body . . . he’d held her hand and she’d felt an awareness that had heated her from the inside out. But there had been more. A closeness, a kinship, a . . . comfort, as if she’d known him before. Maybe she had.
Vartanian. She remembered the family now, vaguely. They’d been rich. The dad was important. He’d been a judge. She remembered Simon, also vaguely. He’d been a big, hulking, frightening boy. Simon had been in Wade’s class at school.
She sat down to read the article, immediately engrossed in a story so evil . . . Simon Vartanian had died just one week ago after murdering his parents and a lot of other people. Simon had been killed in Philadelphia by a detective named Vito Ciccotelli.
Simon was survived by his sister Susannah Vartanian. I remember her. She’d been a cultured girl in expensive clothes. Susannah had been her age, but had gone to the expensive private school. She was now an ADA in New York.
Alex released the breath she held in a slow hiss. Simon was also survived by his brother, Daniel Vartanian, a special agent with the GBI. Alex replayed in her mind the moment they’d met, the utter shock on Daniel’s face. He’d known about Alicia and Alex had attributed his shock to that only. But now . . . I’ll see you in hell, Simon.
She pressed her knuckles into her lips, staring at the picture of Simon Vartanian on Meredith’s screen. There was some small resemblance between the brothers. Both had the same body type, tall and broad, and they shared the same piercing look around the eyes. But Simon had a harsh look to him while Daniel had looked . . . sad. Weary and very sad. His parents had been murdered, so that explained the sadness, but what explained his shock at seeing her face? What did Daniel Vartanian know?
I’ll see you in hell. What had Simon done? Alex could read what he’d done recently—and it had been inhuman. But what did he do back then?
And what had Wade done? I know what he did to me . . . but what did he do with Simon? What was Wade’s connection to Simon Vartanian? And what did it have to do with Bailey? And Alicia? And what about the poor woman they’d found in the ditch yesterday evening, killed just like Alicia? Could Wade have . . . ?
Alex’s pulse began to pound in her ears and it was suddenly as if all the air were sucked from the room. Calm. Focus on the quiet. Slowly she began to breathe again, to think rationally again. Alicia’s murderer was rotting in jail, where he belonged. And Wade . . . no. Not murder. No. Whatever it was, she knew it wasn’t that.
What she did know was that she was meeting Special Agent Daniel Vartanian tonight and he would tell her what he knew. Until then, she had things to do.
Atlanta, Monday, January 29, 2:15 p.m.
Daniel looked up from his computer when Ed Randall came into his office looking generally disgusted. “Hey, Ed, what do you know?”
“That this guy was careful. We haven’t found so much as a hair so far. We took mud from around the entrance to the storm sewer and we’re checking it in the lab now. If he came down from the road by the storm sewer, maybe he dropped something.”
“What about the brown blanket?” Daniel asked.
“The labels have both been cut away,” Ed said. “We’re trying to match the fabric to manufacturers. We might get lucky and trace it to a point of purchase. Are we any closer to an ID on the victim?”
“Yeah, actually. Felicity also found a stamp on the victim’s hand from Fun-N-Sun.”
“So you get a trip to the amusement park and I get to play in the mud. No fair.”
Daniel smiled. “I don’t think I need to go down to the park. I spent most of the afternoon on the phone with their security. They were able to patch me into their network so that I could view their security tapes from my desk.”
Ed looked impressed. “Ain’t technology grand. And?”
“And we found a woman standing in line at the Italian food kiosk. The victim had eaten pasta as her last meal. She was wearing a sweatshirt saying Cellists Do It With Strings Attached—the victim has calluses on her fingertips. The park is going through their receipts to see if she paid for her lunch with a credit card. I’m waiting for them to call back. Cross your fingers.”
“I will. We did find one thing of interest.” Ed put a small jar on Daniel’s desk. “We found hair and skin in the bark of one of the trees about fifty feet back from the ditch.”
Daniel looked at the headline Corchran had faxed that morning. “The reporter?”
“That’s what we’re thinking. If you find this Jim Woolf person, we can put him at the scene before we got there.”
“How did he get away without being seen?”
“My team was there till after eleven last night and back again this morning. Between eleven and six we had a unit patrolling. We found shoeprints along the road about a quarter mile from here. I think the reporter waited until we were all gone, climbed down and stayed low until he got a quarter mile away, then caught a ride.”
“There’s no cover along the road. He must have slithered on his belly to get away.”
Ed’s jaw tightened. “Slithered is about right. Guy’s a snake. He gave away everything we’ve got in that article. I heard you went to school with him.”
Ed sounded slightly accusatory, as if Daniel were to blame for Jim Woolf’s behavior. “I was a V and he was a W, so he always sat in back of me. He seemed nice enough then. But as Chase so astutely observed, he appears to have changed. I guess I’m about to go see how much.” He pointed to his computer screen. “I was just checking him out. He was an accountant until his dad died a year ago and left him the Review. Jim’s pretty new at this reporter stuff. Maybe he can be persuaded to talk.”
“You got a flute?” Ed asked sourly.
“Why?”
“Isn’t that what those snake charmers use?”
Daniel grimaced at the image. “I hate snakes almost as much as reporters.”
Ed broke into a good-natured grin. “Then you’re going to have a fun afternoon.”
Dutton, Monday, January 29, 2:15 p.m.
“It’s a thousand a month,” the realtor said, a gleam in her eye as if she sensed a done deal. In her mid-fifties, Delia Anderson had a bouffant-do that dynamite couldn’t budge. “First and last month’s rent payable on signing.”
Alex looked around at the bungalow. It was homey, had two bedrooms and a real kitchen—and was less than a block from a really nice park where Hope could play. If they were ever able to get her to drop the crayons. “Furnishings all stay?”
Delia nodded. “Including the organ.” It was one of the older models that synthesized every instrument in the orchestra. “You can move in tomorrow.”
“Tonight.” Alex met the woman’s eagle eyes. “I need to move in tonight.”
Delia smiled cagily. “I think that can be arranged.”
“Does it have an alarm?”
“I suppose not.” Delia looked unhappy. “No, it doesn’t have an alarm.”
Alex frowned, thinking of Vartanian’s caution before she’d left the morgue viewing room. She wasn’t a big fan of guns, but fear was a great motivator. She’d tried to buy a gun in the sporting goods department of the store where she’d bought all the toys for Hope’s play therapy, but the clerk told her that she couldn’t buy a gun in Georgia if she wasn’t a resident. She could prove residency with a Georgia driver’s license. She could get a driver’s license with a rental contract. So let’s get this done.
Still, she was practical. “If it doesn’t have an alarm, then can I have a dog?” A dog was a better deterrent to an attacker. She lifted a brow. “An alarm will cost the owners money. I’d pay an extra security deposit if I got a dog.”
Delia bit at her lip. “Maybe a little dog. I’ll check with the owners.”
Alex swallowed her smile. “You do that. If I can have a dog, I’ll sign right now.”
Delia took her cell phone outside and two minutes later she was back, as was her cagey smile. “Darlin’, we have a deal and you have a house.”
Dutton, Monday, January 29, 4:15 p.m.
Daniel felt like he was channeling Clint Eastwood as he walked Dutton’s Main Street. As he passed, conversations stilled and people stared. All he was missing was the poncho and the eerie music. Last week he’d been to th
e funeral home, the cemetery, and his parents’ home out past the city limits. With the exception of the funeral and the graveside, he’d managed to stay out of the public eye.
But not now. He met the eyes of each staring person. Most of them he knew. All of them had aged. It had been a long time since he’d been back. Eleven years since he’d fought with his father over the pictures and left Dutton for good, but he’d left in spirit the day he’d left for college, seven years before that. He’d changed a lot in those years.
Dutton’s Main Street, however, had not. He walked past the curious eyes peering from the windows of the bakery, the florist, the barbershop. Three old men sat outside the barbershop on a bench. Three old men had always sat outside on that bench, ever since Daniel could remember. When one went on to the Great Beyond, another took his place. Daniel had always wondered if there was some kind of formal waiting list for the bench, as there was for box seats at Braves’ games.
He was surprised when one of the old men stood up. He couldn’t recall ever having seen any of the old men stand up before. But this one stood and leaned on his cane, watching Daniel approach. “Daniel Vartanian.”
Daniel recognized the voice instantly and was a little amused to find himself standing straighter as he stopped in front of his old high school English teacher. “Mr. Grant.”
One side of the old man’s bushy white mustache lifted. “So you do remember.”
Daniel met the old man’s eyes. “ ‘Death, be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so.’ ” Odd that that would be the first quotation to enter his mind. Daniel thought about the woman lying in the morgue, unidentified and as yet unreported as missing. Or maybe not so odd.
The other side of Grant’s mustache lifted and he bobbed his white head in salute. “John Donne. One of your favorites, as I recall.”
“Not so much anymore. I guess I’ve seen too much death.”
“I suspect you have at that, Daniel. We’re all sorry about your parents.”
“Thank you. It’s been a difficult time for all of us.”
“I was at the funeral and the grave. Susannah looked pale.”