by Beth Andrews
“Well, as Nora mentioned, I can’t tell you what’s in my father’s head—”
“You’re a cop. A good one. You must have a theory.”
A burst of pleasure at his offhand compliment flew through her, almost made her forget what they were discussing. Almost. “My theory,” she said, “is that he always hoped she’d come back.”
“Even after all these years? And after he’d moved in, moved on with his life, with another woman?”
“He loved her,” she said simply, despite there being nothing simple about the situation. And certainly nothing fair about it. Valerie had lied and cheated and left Tim for another man and yet Layne had no doubt that if things had been different, if instead of discovering Valerie’s remains her mother had showed up very much alive and wanting Tim back, he’d have opened his arms to her.
Just as he had in Layne’s dream.
Leaving Celeste, the woman who’d loved him, who’d always been there for him and his daughters, with nothing.
“Dad was never the same after Mom left,” she continued, rubbing her palms down the front of her jeans. “Not really. It was as if something inside of him…broke.”
And nothing, and no one, could help him heal. Not Celeste. Not his daughters.
So Layne had stopped trying. Had learned not to give her love to someone who couldn’t, who wouldn’t, return it. She’d learned what happened when a person loved too much. They lost themselves.
Ross straightened. “What can you tell me about Dale York?” he asked as he went behind his desk.
The relief at not discussing her family anymore made her shoulders sag. “He was a small-time crook. Had a record, mostly petty stuff but there were a couple of B and E and assault charges against him.”
Bent over his desk as he wrote on the legal pad, Ross lifted his head. “You seem to know a lot about him.”
“It’s a small town. Pretty much everyone’s life is on display.”
“Do you think that’s what your sisters are worried about? Your family’s privacy being invaded?”
“Possibly.” Probably. Especially Nora who’d been too young to understand what had happened, what people were saying about them. How their personal business had been discussed, their family judged. “Mostly I think it’s…well…it’s not easy being on this side of an investigation. Actually it sucks.”
“Neither you nor anyone in your family is under investigation,” he pointed out calmly.
She ran her finger down the spine of a hardbound copy of Massachusetts Driving Laws. “Funny, but it doesn’t feel that way.”
“That was never my intention.”
She glanced up at him. He sounded sincere, but could she trust him when she no longer even trusted herself? “I know. You wouldn’t play games like that.”
The corners of his mouth quirked in a completely unexpected, totally sexy, grin. The first real smile she’d seen from him. She finished her cold coffee in an effort to ease her suddenly dry throat.
“You don’t think I’d do whatever I had to in order to get to the truth?” he asked with a lazy inflection that made his Boston accent even more pronounced. “To make an arrest?”
There were cops who used lies or intimidation or who twisted the law to suit their purposes. Who weren’t above bending the rules or resorting to trickery to get what they wanted. Evidence. A confession. Their questions answered.
There’s right and there’s wrong.
“I think you’d go up to that line, maybe even straddle it. But cross it?” She shook her head, tossed her empty cup into the trash. “Not a chance.”
He’d been nothing but honest with her. Fair. More so than she deserved after she’d kept her knowledge about the necklace from him. At the very least she owed him the truth.
Enough of it to keep him from suspecting she was hiding the rest away.
“Look,” she said, taking the two steps needed so that she stood at the back corner of his desk. Closer to him. “In the interest of full disclosure, I need to tell you something. I wasn’t…completely honest about what happened between me and Mom the night she disappeared.”
“Let me guess,” he said, crossing his arms. The muscles of his forearms flexed. “You didn’t fight over a skirt.”
She jerked her gaze from the sight of his biceps straining his uniform sleeve to his face. “Oh, no, we fought over that skirt. At least, that’s what it started out about, but it escalated from there. I didn’t want to say anything in front of my sisters because I didn’t…I don’t…want them to know how bad it was.”
A lump formed in her throat. She tried to clear it away but it stuck there, right there, as if she needed reminding of what she’d done that night, what she’d said.
Ross trailed his fingertips over the back of her hand, the touch so soft, so brief, she would’ve thought she’d imagined it if not for the sharp prickles of awareness shooting up her arm.
“Tell me about the fight,” he said, his hands now behind his back, his expression clear.
Inhaling deeply, she let herself be taken back to that night. To the truth.
“I was in my room reading when I heard several thumps on the stairs, like someone had fallen. I checked on both Nora and Tori but they were sleeping so I went downstairs. I stepped into the kitchen as Mom came in through the back door. I didn’t even ask her what she was doing. As soon as I saw her wearing that skirt, I lost it.”
She became aware of a soft whirr, glanced down and saw the tape player still recording. As it should be. It, more than anything, reminded her of where she was, what she was about to do.
Ross moved over to stand in front of her. Though there was a respectable distance between them, she leaned back, pressed against his desk. The hard metal edge of it dug into her thighs but she didn’t move, afraid if she so much as shifted her weight, she’d brush against him.
“You argued with your mother,” he prodded.
“I yelled at her,” Layne said, unwilling to let what happened between her and her mother that night be classified as anything as civilized as an argument. “But it wasn’t just about the skirt. It was her. It was eleven o’clock at night and instead of being in bed, instead of staying home like a good mother should, she was sneaking out of the house.”
“Did she do that often? Leave the house late at night?”
“When she wasn’t working? Sure,” she said, sounding as if it didn’t matter. “I didn’t even realize it until one night when I was at a sleepover at a friend’s house and Tori called me, frantic because Mom wasn’t home. I guess Nora had had a bad dream and when she couldn’t find me or Mom, she woke up Tori. Mom had left them alone. A ten-year-old and a six-year-old. She knew I wasn’t there and she still left.”
And Layne had never gone on another sleepover.
“I was tired of her doing whatever she wanted whenever she wanted,” Layne told Ross. “Acting like she didn’t have any responsibilities, as if what she wanted was more important than her kids. We were screaming at each other, me telling her to stop dressing like a teenager, to grow up and be the mother we needed. Her telling me I had no right to speak to her that way, that no matter if I agreed with her decisions or not, she still deserved my respect…”
Her breathing hitched, her words trailed off as her throat closed. Slumping back against the desk, Layne curled her fingers around the edge. Ross watched her, waiting patiently. Hard to believe a few days ago she’d sneered at his ability to remain imperturbable in all situations. Now she envied it.
“And as she’s telling me how I need to respect her for no other reason than because she gave birth to me, I…I noticed the suitcase by the door. The one she’d obviously come inside for when I first saw her.”
“You’re sure the suitcase was hers? That she’d planned on leaving?”
“I asked her. I asked her if she was going somewhere, when she’d be back. She told me she and Dad were having some problems and she needed a break from being his wife. And our mother.”
&nbs
p; She’d been lying, of course. And Layne had known it, had known Valerie was going to be with Dale. That she’d chosen him over her family.
But she couldn’t tell Ross that. Not without him wanting to dig deeper into her story. Not without giving the rest of her secrets away.
“She told me when I was older, I’d understand.” Layne lifted a shoulder. “I’m older and I still don’t get how she could walk away from us.”
“Did she mention where she was going? If she planned on coming back?”
“She said she was staying with a friend for a few days.”
“You never told anyone about this? Never told your father or your sisters?”
“No. Because if I admitted that I knew Mom was leaving, I’d have to tell them the rest. That I didn’t try to stop her. That I told her I was glad she was leaving. And I hoped she never came back.”
CHAPTER TEN
ROSS REACHED OVER and shut off the recorder then shifted to the side to put some distance between him and Layne. Before he did something stupid like touch her again. He rubbed the tips of his tingling fingers against his thumb. Inwardly cursed himself for giving in to his instincts to soothe her. To take away her pain.
“Do you think anything you could’ve said would’ve stopped her?” he asked, glad he sounded as professional as always.
“I’m not sure.” Layne hugged her arms around herself and walked to one of the small windows behind his desk overlooking the alleyway. “But I let her leave. And now she’s dead.”
Ross stopped himself from pointing out that Valerie had been dead for eighteen years, because he knew to Layne and her family, it was as if the murder had just happened. “It’s not your fault.”
“Yeah. I know that.” But her voice shook, and it took all he had to stay where he was. To not close the distance between them and pull her into his arms.
“Do you?” he asked and she dropped her gaze. “You were a kid. It wasn’t up to you to stop her from leaving. She made that choice.”
“I kept telling myself that. After she left I must’ve stood in the kitchen, right in the spot where she’d left me, at least two hours, waiting for her to change her mind. To come home. I had it all worked out in my head. How she’d come in, tell me she was wrong, that she was going to change and finally become the kind of mother my sisters and I deserved.” Laughing softly, Layne shook her head. “God, what a fantasy. When she never came home, I wondered…what if? What if I’d tried to stop her? Maybe she wouldn’t have left. Not that night.”
He couldn’t help but step closer, so close he could smell her light scent, could see the flecks of gold in her whiskey-colored eyes. The flare of surprise in them when he skimmed his fingers up her arm to her elbow and back down to her wrist. Let his hand linger there.
“What happened to her wasn’t your fault,” he said.
She swallowed but didn’t step back, didn’t pull away from his touch though part of him wished she would. “I should’ve asked her to stay. Maybe if I had, she’d still be alive.”
If she’d simply been the daughter of a murder victim, a civilian, he’d treat her with kid gloves. Would help her back to the chair, try to gently convince her she was wrong. He’d be thoughtful. Kind. But that wasn’t what Layne, with her smart mouth and her loyalty to her sisters and her tendency to want to control everything, needed.
She needed a swift kick in the ass.
“That’s a load of bullshit,” he said, more than mildly pleased when her eyes narrowed. “Unless you’ve changed your mind about being treated like a victim after all?”
Stepping back, her mouth opened. Shut. Opened again. “Don’t they give cops in Boston police sensitivity training? Or maybe you skipped that day.”
Her tone was snippy, her shoulders stiff and she looked at him as if contemplating the chances of her being able to toss him out the second-story window.
Much better.
“I was there,” he assured her. “But I hadn’t realized I’d need to convince you not to blame yourself for something that was out of your control.”
“I could’ve stopped her. I could have—”
“Could have what? Tied her to a chair? What good would that have done? She was an adult, she wanted to leave and there was nothing you could’ve done to stop her. And you’re too smart, too good of a cop, to think otherwise.”
He almost squirmed under her long, intense stare. Him. A veteran homicide detective and now a police chief.
No doubt about it. He was in hell and Layne Sullivan was the devil in charge.
“You’re right,” she finally said. “Which really ticks me off, by the way.”
“Glad I could help.”
“That’s another thing. It did help. Which, aside from being weird, makes me wonder how you seem to know what to say to make me feel better. Can’t say I like it much.”
“That makes two of us.” He considered turning the recorder back on for his next question but figured he had so much off the record, he might as well keep going. “The night your mother left, did she happen to mention which friend she was going to stay with?”
“Celeste Vitello.”
He paused in the act of spelling the name. “Your father’s current girlfriend?”
“Celeste and Mom were friends, best friends. They also worked together at the Yacht Pub.”
“That the bar on the docks? The one with the front half of a boat sticking out of the second floor?”
“It’s more of a rowboat.” She smirked, cocking one hip to the side in the way that made him want to grab her waist and yank her against him. “I’m having a hard time picturing you hanging out with the Yacht Pub’s clientele.”
“I answered a public disturbance call there my first week in town.”
“Ah. That makes more sense. Though if you ever do want a drink, most of the department prefers T.J.’s Bar and Grill over on Barber Street.”
“Including you?” he couldn’t stop himself from asking.
Her smirk changed, morphed into a sharp grin. “Hanging out in bars was my mother’s idea of a good time. Not mine.”
He glanced through the notes he’d made earlier. He hadn’t realized Celeste had a history with the Sullivans so the only notation about her was that she currently resided with Tim Sullivan on Northcott Ave. “Does Miss Vitello still work at the bar?”
Layne picked up the stapler on his desk. Turned it in her hands. “Seriously?”
“Is this a joking matter?
“No, it’s just…Celeste owns the Ludlow Street Café.” When he looked at her blankly she added, “The restaurant Jess started working at today.”
“Is everyone in Mystic Point somehow linked to everyone else?”
“Small town,” she said, as if that explained it all. She set the stapler back down. “Which reminds me, I saw Jess when she showed up for work this morning.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What for?”
“For whatever she said that was offensive or rude, or did that was illegal or immoral.”
Layne laughed, the sound husky and low and so damned sexy he considered lifting the stapler to his temple and putting a dozen or so staples into his head. Except that wouldn’t put him out of his misery. So he moved the stapler to the right, spinning it so it lined up once again with the edge of the desk.
“She wasn’t that bad,” Layne said.
“You’re kidding.”
Her smile slid away. “Maybe part of the problem is that you expect the worst from her. She’s living down to your expectations.”
His shoulders tensed, indignation making his face feel stiff. “I expect the worst from her,” he said evenly despite the urge to growl, “because over the past six months, her behavior has been nothing but worst.”
“I’m not saying she’s up for the Teenager of the Year crown but it sounds like she’s been through a lot. It must be hard on her, coming to a new town, being away from everyone and everything she knows.” Layne shrugged. “You might want to
cut her some slack.”
Damn it, he didn’t need to be reminded he was screwing everything up. That he was incapable of dealing with a slip of a girl with a penchant for trouble, an acerbic tongue and her mother’s somber eyes.
“Thank you for your invaluable input, Captain,” he said coolly, not missing the way her lips thinned at his use of her rank instead of her name, “but I’m not really comfortable discussing my personal life with you.”
Hurt flashed across her face but vanished so quickly he wondered if he imagined it. Especially when her expression darkened. “Forgot for a moment there are rules,” she said, walking to the bookcase where she’d left her large purse. “We wouldn’t want to get too close to that line separating personal from professional.”
He was already at that line, he thought as he watched her pick up her bag, sling the strap over her shoulder. He’d dug into her family’s past, into their lives, in an effort to unearth a truth that had been buried for eighteen years. But that was different. That was his job.
Wanting to know Layne better, wanting her to trust him with whatever secrets she kept hidden? That had nothing to do with his investigation or his position as police chief and everything to do with him just wanting her.
He had to maintain a certain distance between them.
“Celeste is at the café most days from morning until after six or so,” Layne said, already heading for the door. “I’ll tell her you’ll be contacting her.”
He should thank her. Should tell her he appreciated her cooperation during this difficult time. More than that, he felt honored she’d opened up to him, that she’d told him the secret she’d kept for so long, something she hadn’t shared with anyone.
He should keep his mouth shut and let her leave.
She was two steps away from the door when he heard himself say, “She’s an addict.”
For a second, he didn’t think Layne would stop. Thought she’d keep going as if he hadn’t spoken. When she faced him, he couldn’t decide if he was disappointed or relieved.
“What?” she asked, her chin lifted in challenge.