Unraveling the Past

by Beth Andrews

  HELL. NO PRESSURE there or anything.

  “I can promise you I’ll do my best,” Ross said, realizing how badly they needed to be reassured that he’d fix this for them. But he couldn’t lie, couldn’t give them false hope. “Unfortunately there are no guarantees when it comes to any criminal investigation.”

  Especially one that happened eighteen years ago, one with no evidence, no eyewitnesses and the likeliest suspect nowhere to be found.

  All of which Layne damned well knew but she wasn’t reacting as a cop. She was reacting, thinking and feeling, like a daughter who’d just found out her mother had been murdered.

  “The more information I have,” he said, picking up his pencil, “the better. So let’s get back to what happened. Mrs. Mott, you said your mother acted nervous that night? Edgy?”

  Layne let go of Tori and laid both her hands on the back of the empty chair.

  “The last time I saw Mom,” Tori said, “spoke to her, was that night. The night she left. I was in my room listening to music and doing homework when she came in looking ready to take on the world. She was all dolled up, which wasn’t unusual, either.”

  “Mom didn’t step outside of the house without her hair and makeup done,” Layne put in, her own hair a simple braid, her face clean. “And she changed her clothes at least twice a day.”

  “Right. So, she comes in, practically bouncing around the room.” Tori tucked her hair behind her ear—the movement, the way her mouth turned down—reminding him of Layne. “I tried to ignore her. I was studying for a big history test—”

  “Never your strongest subject,” Layne murmured, but not unkindly.

  “True,” Tori agreed, her lips twitching. “But I was determined to kick butt on that test no matter what.”

  She and Layne shared a smile, one that showed their history and the bond between them as clearly as when they’d held hands.

  “Did your mother help you study?” Ross asked.

  This time, Tori aimed that killer grin his way. “Mom wasn’t big on educational pursuits. But if you ever needed someone to do your hair or nails—”

  “Or help you plan the best Halloween party ever,” Layne interjected.

  “Or teach you how to paint a mural on your bedroom ceiling,” Nora added.

  “She was the perfect person for the job,” Tori said. “For any of those jobs. But homework? She had no desire to spend her time going over spelling words or multiplication tables. When she came into my room and turned up the music, I snapped at her to turn it down. To leave me alone.”

  “Did she?” Ross asked.

  “No. She cranked it up even louder, pulled me to my feet and started dancing. She told me there were times when we needed to do what we wanted instead of what we should do or some such crap. So we danced.”

  “Mom was hard to resist,” Layne told Ross. “Especially when she put on the charm.”

  Tori either didn’t hear the hard edge to her sister’s voice or chose to ignore it. “We danced until we were both breathless and laughing. When I collapsed onto the bed, she sat on the edge, brushed my hair back and told me she loved me. Then she kissed my forehead and walked out of my room and out of my life forever.”

  How hard that must have been for Valerie’s daughters, being left by their mother. Her choosing a life without them.

  “What time was this?” Ross asked.

  “It must’ve been right after she put Nora to bed,” Tori said. “Early. Maybe eight-forty-five?”

  Nora shifted, scooted forward on her seat. “I remember hearing them. Hearing the music and their laughter as I lay in bed. It was unusual but comforting. But it didn’t last long so I’d say no later than nine.”

  “That sounds about right. Hard to say for certain, though,” Tori said apologetically.

  “Just do the best you can,” he said, writing down the events and their best guess as to the time. “It was a long time ago and some events—and the timeline—might not be as clear. Now, you say she left your room around nine…did you speak to her again after that? Do you know if she left the house at that time?”

  “I didn’t talk to her again ever. But no, she didn’t leave the house right away. She was still there a few hours later.”

  “How can you be sure of that?”

  “I’m sure,” Tori said slowly, “because I…” She flicked a glance up at Layne. “I heard her around eleven.”

  Layne moved to sit in the chair, her expression unreadable.

  “You heard Valerie moving around inside the house?” Ross asked. “You heard her voice? Was she talking to someone?”

  Dropping her gaze to the top of his desk, Tori fidgeted then stopped when she raised her head and saw him watching her. “I heard her voice.”

  “It’s okay,” Layne told her. But when she faced Ross, her eyes were wary. And so sad it felt as if someone had kicked him in the chest. “She heard Mom yelling. Half the block probably heard Mom yelling that night. Along with me screaming right back.”

  “You and your mother had an argument?” he asked.

  Crossing her legs, she smiled sadly. “An argument? No. We had a fight. A heated one—as our fights usually were.”

  “And what was this…heated fight…about?” he asked.

  “It started because she was wearing my skirt.”

  “Your skirt?” he asked, not bothering to hide his disbelief. “Really?”

  “Chief Taylor,” Nora said, her tone frosty, her fierce demeanor as intimidating as a fluffy kitten with her back up, “are you accusing my sister of lying?”

  He leaned back, noted Layne’s smirk, Tori’s scorching glare. Guess the Sullivan sisters could say anything they wanted to and about each other, could hiss and scratch at each other, but if anyone else so much as looked at one of them the wrong way, there’d be hell to pay.

  Good thing he didn’t have a problem covering his debts.

  “What gave you that idea?” he asked smoothly before meeting Layne’s eyes. “Did your mother often borrow your clothes?”

  “More often than any thirty-two-year-old mother of three should.” But her dispassionate tone couldn’t hide the way her jaw tensed. “When I caught her wearing my brand-new denim miniskirt—the one I’d bought with my own money—I got pissed. Went off on her about how she couldn’t borrow my clothes without asking, that I didn’t want her in my room at all unless I was in there…” She waved a hand, as if flicking away the rest of what happened that night. “Trust me, the whole conversation went downhill from there.”

  Trust me.

  His fingers tightened on the pencil before he deliberately, carefully set it down. She was a colleague. A trusted officer in his department. She had a stellar reputation, a strong work ethic and the respect of her peers.

  Trust me.

  He wanted to. Damn it, he wanted to believe every word that came out of her mouth, wanted to ignore the instincts screaming at him that she held something back. That she was lying to him—like she’d lied about the necklace.

  He wanted to put her first, before the facts, before his instincts. Before the job.

  Trust me.

  He couldn’t.

  He picked up the pencil again. “What happened then?”

  “When she refused to change I said a few…choice words…” Layne swallowed visibly. But when she spoke again, her voice was steady. “Words that were not appropriate for a fourteen-year-old to say to anyone, let alone her mother. Then I went to bed. I was lying there still fuming when I heard the front door shut about fifteen minutes later. I looked out my window and saw Mom drive away.”

  “You’re certain she was driving?”

  “Positive. My bedroom was at the front of the house, which faces the driveway and the street. I saw her clearly. She was driving. She was alone,” Layne added, anticipating his next question.

  And yes, he’d been about to ask just that.

  Layne knew what questions to ask, what information he wanted. Which could mean nothing more than
she was a good cop. A smart one. That she offered the facts as they’d happened eighteen years ago, that she wanted to help him find the truth.

  Or it could mean she knew exactly how to manipulate those facts to her advantage.

  “What was your parents’ marriage like?” he asked.

  Nora stared at her lap; Tori checked the ends of her hair as if bored with the whole conversation while Layne studied him as if trying to see inside his brain—when more than anything he wanted her out of his head, out of his thoughts and dreams.

  “Did your parents argue often?” he asked, his tone gruff. Impatient. And he couldn’t do a damn thing about it. “Was there abuse?”

  “No,” Layne said quickly. “No abuse.” She exchanged a long look with each of her sisters then shifted slightly in her seat to face him head-on. “Mom and Dad’s relationship was…well…I guess imbalanced would be the best way to describe it. Mom needed a lot of attention and Dad was more than happy to give it to her.”

  Tori snorted. “Attention. Clothes. Money. Jewelry. Didn’t matter if we could afford it or not, if Mom wanted something, he made sure she got it. Even if that meant he had to work upward of ninety hours a week, be away from home for weeks at a time, to make it happen.”

  “Sounds like your father was very devoted to his wife. Is that why he never filed for divorce?”

  “You checked into our dad’s background?” Tori asked. She looked at Layne. “Can he do that?”

  “I checked into Valerie Sullivan’s background,” he clarified.

  “It’s a matter for public record,” Nora said, speaking over him. “As to why he never filed for divorce, I’m afraid that’s a question none of us can answer without a great deal of supposition.”

  Ross hitched a hip onto the corner of his desk. “Very well, counselor. How about this one, then—were you all aware that your father never filed for divorce from your mother?”

  She fidgeted. “I don’t see what this has to do with—”

  “We knew,” Layne said. “We all knew.”

  “You don’t sound too happy about it,” he said.

  She flipped the end of her braid over her shoulder, almost hitting Tori in the face in the process. “I’m not happy that he’s been in a relationship with another woman—a decent, caring woman who loves him—for almost ten years, has lived with her for the past five and yet he won’t fully commit to her.”

  “You mean—” He slid the notebook over, scanned his handwriting. “Celeste Vitello?” Layne nodded. “Miss Vitello didn’t mind that your father was married to another woman?”

  “This whole line of questioning is irrelevant,” Nora said sharply. “Because, as we all now know, our father wasn’t still married all these years. He was a widower.”

  “Or maybe your father knew that all along.” Ross watched Layne carefully, searching for a sign, any sign that would tell him, once and for all that his suspicions were wrong. That she didn’t know more than she was saying. That she wasn’t hiding something from him.

  “Maybe your father never filed for divorce,” he continued, “because he knew he didn’t need one to be free of his wife.”

  * * *

  IT TOOK ALL OF LAYNE’S self-control not to let any of the emotions churning inside her—frustration, anger, fear—show on her face.

  Nora, however, didn’t have Layne’s self-restraint.

  After a moment of stunned silence, Nora leaped to her feet. “My father didn’t kill my mother.” Her voice shook, her eyes flashed with indignation. “He’d never hurt her. Never. He loved her.”

  Nora sounded so certain. As if the words were true simply because she wanted them to be.

  “Unfortunately,” Ross said in what Layne had come to recognize as his professional tone—authoritative, patient and sympathetic enough to make her teeth ache, “love isn’t always a deterrent against acts of violence.”

  Tori leaned forward, gripping the chair’s arms as if holding herself back from taking a flying leap at Ross. “He had no reason—”

  “If he loved her that much, finding out she was unfaithful could have pushed him to the edge.”

  Layne’s breath caught, became trapped in her chest. As if she was trapped, between the past and the present. Between the choices she made eighteen years ago, what she did then and what she needed to do now to protect those she loved.

  “Dad didn’t even know about the affair,” Tori said hotly. “No one did. Not until Mom left and Dale’s vehicle was found abandoned at the quarry. Only then did it come out that they’d been seeing each other.”

  And in the seconds after her sister spoke Layne made another choice. The choice to keep the truth to herself.

  It was the right thing to do, she assured herself as she swallowed the sick feeling rising in her throat. Because it didn’t matter, wasn’t important to the investigation.

  “Dad wasn’t even in Mystic Point the night Mom disappeared,” Layne pointed out, thanking God that she didn’t have to wonder, didn’t have to worry if what she’d done as a scared, angry kid had played an even bigger role in her mother being killed. “He was hundreds of miles away working aboard the Wooden Nickel. They didn’t get back to port until the next afternoon.”

  Ross stood but didn’t pace—like Layne would’ve done if she’d had the opportunity. If it wouldn’t make her seem nervous to him and her sisters.

  The man sure was contained. He made a note—probably writing down the name of the ship her father had been on—then moved to the front of the desk. “Did your father spend a lot of time out to sea?”

  “He’s on water more than he’s on land,” Layne said, making sure to give none of her thoughts, her feelings away on the subject. Certainly nothing that would make it seem as if she’d hated how often her father left them. How much she’d wished they’d been enough to keep him home. But Tim Sullivan had two great loves in his life: Valerie and the sea. There’d never been room for anything or anyone else.

  Not even his daughters.

  “Could your father have hired someone to murder your mother?” Ross asked.

  “That’s it,” Nora said as she got to her feet. “We’re leaving.”

  Tori got to her feet, her movements jerky as she yanked her purse onto her shoulder. Layne didn’t move.

  “Relax,” she told them, earning two glares. “Nora, Chief Taylor is only doing his job.” A job that included asking hard questions and dealing with their familial drama. Not that Ross seemed affected by any of it. “In a case like this, we often check into the husband and the people closest to the victim first.”

  “So now we’re all suspects?” Tori asked, as usual taking what Layne said and twisting it until everything was messed up. Standing hip-to-hip, her sisters stared at her, a show of unity against a common enemy. Their older sister. “We all know who did this,” Tori continued, now facing Ross. “I don’t understand why the police are wasting time with these questions when they should be searching for Dale York.”

  “Mr. York is being sought for questioning. But it’s too early in the investigation to narrow our focus on one suspect.” He didn’t snap, didn’t seem the slightest bit offended her sisters were taking their grief and fear out on him. “I realize these questions are difficult—”

  “Difficult?” Nora repeated, reaching a pitch only dogs should hear. “Our mother is dead and instead of finding Dale York, you’re trying to pin her murder on our father.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Layne grumbled as she rose to face her sisters. “No one is accusing anyone of anything. Chief Taylor wouldn’t be doing his job if he didn’t ask tough questions. We need to calm down and answer him to the best of our ability. We can do this. We can get through it like we got through Mom leaving. Together.”

  But when Layne held out her hands, Tori narrowed her eyes then slowly, deliberately, turned away. Nora shook her head, kept her own hands on her hips.

  Her throat burning, her pulse drumming in her ears, Layne lowered her arms.

&n
bsp; “If you have any more questions you want to ask us,” Nora said to Ross, “you can do so in the presence of our attorney.”

  They left, walking out while Layne watched. Leaving her to deal with this on her own.

  Neither one of them looked back.

  She heard Ross move, felt him come up behind her. “Are you—”

  “Don’t,” she said wearily, facing him only to have her heart jolt in her chest at him being so close. She took a step back and bumped into her chair.

  “Don’t?” he asked lowly, his gaze intense on her.

  “Don’t ask if I’m okay,” she clarified. “Because I am. I’m fine.”

  Or, at least she would be if he’d give her some space, enough room where she could breathe without inhaling the musky scent of his cologne. Where she couldn’t feel the warmth emanating from his body. Far enough that she wasn’t tempted to lean into him, just a little.

  “Good to know,” he said. “But I was going to ask if you’re able to answer a few more questions for me?”

  Yeah, she thought with an inward sigh, she was an idiot. Going all feminine, practically melting because he was solid and handsome, strong and steady and honorable. While for the first time in her life she felt weak and unsure of herself. Her stomach sank. And as deceitful as her mother.

  “Sure,” Layne said, praying he couldn’t detect any of her worry, her guilt, on her face. “I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

  He gestured for her to retake her seat but she shook her head. Walked back to the bookcase where she’d left her coffee. She picked it up, sipped and grimaced. Cold. Damn. And she could really use a shot of caffeine.

  “Do you think,” Ross said, hitching a hip onto the corner of his desk, “that it’s possible your father hired someone to kill your mother?”

  She set her cup back down, her eyes never wavering from his. “Getting back into the ring with a one-two punch, huh?”

  “As you pointed out to your sisters, I’m doing my job.”

  Right. But that didn’t mean she had to like it. “No. I don’t think my father would ever do anything to hurt my mother.”

  “Then I guess it’s back to my earlier question—if your father really thought your mother was still alive all these years, why didn’t he file for divorce?”