The Given

by Vicki Pettersson

  “Of course not—”

  “Sure—”

  Now Justin chuckled.

  Officer Stokes drew near just as a groan sounded from the front seat. “Is this man okay?”

  Al Zicaro’s head popped up in the front seat so quickly that Officer Stokes took a full step back. “Sir? Are you all right?”

  But Zicaro was squinting past him, rubbing his eyes like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. When he rose, Grif nodded and gave him a sheepish shrug. Zicaro broke into a giant grin and hurtled himself forward.

  “Why, you old dog!” he shouted, using the car to steady himself before throwing his arms around Grif’s shoulders. Zicaro pounded his back with surprising strength before pulling away to regard Grif in closer detail. “Just look at you. Either my eyes are bad or your genes are good, because you haven’t changed a bit!”

  “Hasn’t he?” asked Justin from his post behind Dennis. Kit shot him a dirty look, but that just made his smile widen. Dennis noticed it, and his frown deepened.

  “Nope,” Zicaro said, oblivious to the tension around him. He removed his bifocals and rubbed them on his shirt. “What’s it been? Fifty years or so? Look at you, you look good!”

  “Not quite that long, I don’t think,” Grif muttered, then rolled his eyes at Stokes, as if to say, These old-timers.

  Officer Stokes relaxed enough to lean on the hood of the patrol car. “So if everyone’s so friendly here, why did we get a call that there’s trouble?”

  “Sorry about that,” Justin said. “It was likely Mr. Blakely. He’s our newest resident. We try to monitor the phone in his room, but sometimes he slips one by us. Guess we’ll have to take it out altogether. We encourage our residents to be as independent as possible, but sometimes the elderly can be a harm . . . even to themselves.”

  Kit filed away the lie, along with the knowledge that these men—no “caregivers”—didn’t want the police nosing around. For now, it gave her and Grif the upper hand. At least, until Zicaro spoke again.

  “Jiminy Crickets, I thought you were dead!” he exclaimed, still shaking his head as he reached back for his wheelchair. He plopped down, exhaling loudly. “We all did!”

  “Why would you think that?” Officer Stokes asked, also likely wondering why the man in their car seemed to be only now recognizing Grif.

  “Yeah,” said Justin cheerily. “Why?”

  “Because Griffin Shaw has a knack for getting himself in sticky situations,” Dennis said, out of the blue. Kit froze. All three men behind him beamed.

  “He does?” Larry asked, earning an elbow in the ribs from Eric.

  “You mean ol’ Griffin Shaw?” Justin said, drawing out the name. Grif sighed.

  “Yup,” Dennis said, seemingly oblivious to the way the men were digesting this information. “And everyone around him, too.”

  “Like who?” Justin asked, before jerking his head at Kit. “Like her?”

  “Dennis,” Kit said, before he could say her name. “Can I talk to you for a moment, please? Privately.”

  “Sorry. I’m on the clock,” he huffed, giving her and Grif one last glance before turning his back on them both. He jerked his head at Justin. “We’re going to have to make sure there’s nobody inside who needs help. It’s procedure.”

  “Of course,” Justin said magnanimously, gesturing to the building. He shot a wink at Zicaro, then put a finger to his chin like he’d just remembered something vital. “But I don’t think the young lady signed in. If you’ll be so kind as to accompany us?”

  Kit didn’t move.

  “That’s okay,” Dennis said, misreading her hesitancy. She could tell from the way his gaze darkened that he thought it had to do with him. “She looks like she’s in a hurry.”

  Kit almost breathed a sigh of relief.

  “I’ll sign in for her.”

  And then she wanted to cry.

  Justin clapped his approval, then pointed one of his sausage fingers at Zicaro. “Now, Al, you make sure you get back before curfew. We don’t want to worry about you getting into any sticky situations . . . especially considering you’re with Griffin Shaw.”

  “Ol’ Griffin Shaw,” said Larry, rocking happily on his heels.

  “C’mon,” Dennis said, and without even looking at Kit, he and Justin turned toward the building. Officer Stokes gave Kit and Grif a polite nod, shut the door of the patrol car, and followed. The two orderlies, though, remained where they were. They watched Grif and Kit pile Zicaro and his wheelchair into her Duetto, memorizing Kit’s license plate. Watching them drive off.

  Filing it all away for later.

  Man, that was close,” Al Zicaro said as soon as they cleared the lot. He craned his chicken neck around, making sure they weren’t being followed, face bright and eyes shining. Kit and Grif flanked him, shoulders hunched in the tight front seat. Feeling their gazes upon him, Zicaro turned back around. “What? I haven’t been that close to being busted by the fuzz in years!”

  “Why would they want to bust you?” Grif asked.

  “Because they know I’m onto them,” Zicaro said, emphasizing each word.

  Grif said, “I’m the one who called them.”

  “And thank you for that,” Kit put in, peering around Zicaro to meet Grif’s eye.

  “Sure,” Grif replied, and couldn’t help but add, “Gave you a chance to see your old buddy Dennis again.”

  Kit stared straight ahead, jaw clenched, and Grif sighed. He shouldn’t have said that. He could tell from Dennis’s reaction that they weren’t seeing each other, and it clearly wasn’t by the other man’s choice. Besides, she wasn’t Grif’s girl anymore. In fact, it felt like she belonged more to herself than ever before. But it still sent a white-hot pang soaring through his gut to see another man look at her with the same sort of hunger gnawing in his own belly.

  “So why would the cops be after you?” he asked Zicaro, getting back on track.

  Zicaro put his hands down his pants.

  “Oh, God,” Kit said, gripping the wheel, eyes trained on the road.

  But the old man just pulled out a plastic denture case, and shook it. Grif relaxed. He’d been wondering what was going on down there. “Because they’ve been keeping tabs on me, and they know I’ve got this.”

  Kit glanced over, then immediately directed her car into the first strip mall they saw so that Zicaro could relate his whole story to them over three cups of overpriced coffee.

  “The Sunset Retirement Community isn’t just an end-of-life facility,” Zicaro began, once they were settled. Steam rose from their cups in comforting deceit. Nothing was settled; this was only respite. “It began as a retirement community, which is how I got there. But a year ago everything changed.”

  “What changed?”

  “Sunset was taken over by a new company. The workers were summarily fired and replaced by new staff. The caregivers changed overnight. Long-term residents were allowed to stay, because we had contracts, like leases, and I don’t think they wanted to draw attention to themselves by turning a bunch of old geezers out on their behinds.” He shot them a winning smile. “We’re predisposed to complain and have all the time in the world to do it. But they didn’t allow any new retirees in after that.”

  “Is that when Larry and Eric came along?” Kit asked, and was given a quick nod.

  “And Justin.” Zicaro explained how he was rousted in the middle of the night and taken to the administrative office, where Justin quizzed him about his relationship with one Barbara DiMartino. “That’s why I was so surprised when you said she was dead. Is it true? Did they kill her?”

  Kit nodded, and reached out to give his hand a quick squeeze. “I know it’s hard to hear, Al, and we’re going to find out why, but just to be clear . . . they called her DiMartino? Not Barbara McCoy?”

  “Yup, and that’s when I knew something was fishy.” He turned to Grif. “But you know my history with the DiMartino crew. We weren’t what you would call friendly.”

 
“You were what I might call downright antagonistic.”

  Zicaro beamed.

  “How long did Justin question you that night?” Kit asked, taking notes, ordering them in her mind.

  Zicaro shook his head so that his neck-skin wobbled. “Not sure. But by the time it was over I was thirsty and tired, and would’ve said anything he wanted if he’d just let me go.”

  “And what did he want?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine! All I know is that they moved my room!”

  “What do you mean they moved your room?”

  Zicaro’s eyes bugged. “Instead of returning me to my old room they took me to one on the second floor. That’s where the overnight staff bunks up. And when I walked in? All my stuff was waiting for me. It looked as though I’d lived there for years.”

  “Anything missing?” Kit asked, lips pursed.

  “Hard to tell. All I know is that they trained cameras on me twenty-four/seven after that. Not that they said as much, of course, but I knew it. There was an alarm system on my suite door, my phone was tapped, and I even caught them searching my papers at night.” He winked at Kit. “That’s when I stopped taking my meds.”

  Zicaro didn’t seem to notice Kit and Grif’s shared look.

  “I’m watched day and night,” he said, shaking his head. “I was essentially kidnapped, and now I’m never, under any circumstances, permitted to leave the grounds. I’m a hostage. A prisoner in my own home!”

  “I dunno, Al,” Grif said, leaning back, folding his hands around his coffee cup. “Sounds like one of your own conspiracy stories.”

  “Grif!” Kit said. “Those men had guns!”

  Zicaro nodded vigorously, strands of hair wisping atop his head. “They were cops! Or military! That’s how they knew how to interrogate me, what questions to ask. That’s how they got the technology to bug my room!”

  Grif just raised his eyebrows. Equally skeptical, Kit nonetheless tried to keep her tone neutral. “Big Brother watching? The Man holding us down?”

  Zicaro’s shoulders drew up, his eyes bulged, and he began to visibly shake. “And clearly I was onto something, wasn’t I? And then something happened that surprised everyone.”

  “Barbara came to visit.”

  “Damn it!” Zicaro pumped his fist at Kit. “You’ve been spying, too!”

  “Relax,” Grif said, rolling his eyes. “We heard the message you left on Barbara’s phone.”

  “Oh.” Zicaro thought for a moment, clearly considering whether that constituted spying, then shrugged. Apparently he was only bothered when someone was watching him. “She left at the end of visiting hours on Friday. Justin and his cronies had gone for the day, but I knew the interrogations would start up again in earnest the next day. And I knew they wanted something from me that I didn’t have. So I decided to figure out what.”

  So Zicaro planned a break-in, from within, just after the med techs’ evening rounds.

  “It was just like the movies,” he said, fingers splaying as he leaned forward in his chair. “Except better. I even borrowed the military uniform from the guy next door just in case I was seen. He’s known to wander.”

  Kit looked at Grif. “Weird.”

  Grimacing, Grif nodded.

  “The administrative offices are located at the exact opposite side of the building from the residences. No security patrol there at all.”

  “I saw them,” Grif said.

  “At first all I found were personnel forms and patient charts and the usual admissions data. I tried to access the main desktop, but it was password-protected. Finally, I jimmied open a file cabinet, and that’s when I hit pay dirt. These.”

  He flipped open his denture case and out clattered three small black objects. “Disk drives.”

  “Flash drives,” Kit corrected.

  “Whatever.” Zicaro rolled them like dice across the table. “I took them back to my room and hid ’em in my dentures box. They never look in here.”

  “So what’s on them?” Kit asked.

  “How the hell do I know?” Zicaro shrugged. “I don’t own a computer. But it might have something to do with you.”

  Grif blinked in surprise, realizing Zicaro was looking at him. “Why me?”

  “Because Barbara didn’t visit out of the blue just because she was concerned for my health,” Zicaro said, eyeing Grif carefully. “She was there because she wanted to know about you.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  They reached a bit of an impasse after that. Grif asked Zicaro what Barbara had wanted to know about him, but Zicaro only shrugged, saying she’d left as soon as she realized he had nothing to tell. And why would he? Grif had been dead for all but one of the past fifty years.

  After that, they all agreed they next needed to find out what was on those flash drives. Yet after the standoff at Sunset, Kit no longer felt safe heading home. If Dennis had signed her name in the Sunset guest book, then Justin and company now knew who she was, and likely where she lived.

  “What about the paper?” Zicaro said, eyes glinting as he wheeled himself back out to the car. He was practically salivating at the chance to get back into the newsroom, and his craggy face fell a good inch when Kit shook her head.

  “I can’t go around Marin. Not on this.” Though it was possible. Ever since Marin’s life had been threatened the previous summer, she had loosened her grip on her reins at the paper. She no longer overnighted in her office, and even took a full day off each week without going in at all. Most would still consider her a workaholic, but Kit had watched her aunt work a seventy-five-hour workweek for years, and the difference was glaring.

  Grif finally spoke, saying what she knew he would, even though it was the last thing she wanted to do. “So maybe she could help.”

  Of course, she could . . . and she would, too. But it still galled Kit to ask.

  Seeing it, Grif put a hand on her shoulder. “Now is not the time for pride.”

  No . . . and so they headed directly to her aunt’s town house, located on a west Vegas golf course with sprawling views of the ninth green. Kit didn’t call ahead, and the guard at the gate recognized her, or at least her vintage Duetto, and just waved her in. That’s why her breath caught when Marin answered the door in a silk robe, one far too decadent for the late-afternoon hours. Zicaro whistled softly from his wheelchair, and Grif tilted his head like he’d never seen her before. As for Kit, she blushed the same bright hue as Marin before clearing her throat. “We need help.”

  Six months earlier, she’d have thought nothing of showing up on Marin’s doorstep with her former lover and a paranoid senior citizen. They were family, and Marin would know in a glance that Kit was desperate, and that would be enough. Yet an ever-widening wedge had grown between them since Kit discovered that Marin had knowingly withheld information about the murder of Kit’s father. They worked in the same office, they saw each other daily, but conversations were short and never personal.

  And now Kit was on her doorstep with another case that could bring harm to them all. She bit her lip, wondering if that was immediately apparent. Probably, from the way Marin’s eyes narrowed as she spotted Grif. She opened the door wide anyway.

  “Hello,” said Zicaro, holding out a hand. “I’m—”

  “Crazy Uncle Al,” Marin finished shortly, earning a scowl from the old man. Grif flared his eyes at Kit, but she only shrugged. Marin ran the paper like a sea captain facing down the perfect storm. The longitudes and latitudes, and indeed all the workings of the bowl-like valley, were seared in her brain. She knew exactly who Al Zicaro was.

  And it was that mental cache of information that Kit needed now.

  “The Wilson family archives are infamous,” Zicaro enthused when Kit told him where they were going. “Is it true that she’s ferreted away every story ever brought to her in her whole tenure as editor in chief?”

  Not just every story, but every rumor, old wives’ tale, eyewitness account, and bedroom gossip . . . whether it could be subst
antiated or not. It was a habit she’d learned from her own father, and no matter how great or minute the information, if there was even the hint of truth to it, she squirreled it away. “Some people hoard money or collect tchotchkes,” Kit told Zicaro. “Marin stockpiles information.”

  And so focused was Kit on getting that information that it was only after the door had shut behind them, and Kit was leading the way into the familiar living area, that she smelled the vanilla-scented candles burning in the air, accompanied by the remnants of what could only be a late, or very extended, brunch.

  “Hello.” The sight of the petite blond woman seated in the corner of Marin’s slipcovered sofa had Kit pulling up short.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, turning toward her aunt. “We interrupted your evening. Er, afternoon.”

  “You’re not sorry,” Marin replied, sweeping into the room with the wave of her hand, before resecuring the sash at her waist. “Would you like some wine?”

  Zicaro, missing the sarcasm in the question, wheeled past Kit to enter the room, heading straight for the dining-room table. “Absolutely.”

  “No,” said Kit, putting one hand on his chair and the other on her forehead. “Oh . . . shit.”

  Chuckling, the other woman rose from the sofa and offered her hand. “I’m Amelia. It’s good to finally meet you.”

  “Kit Craig,” Kit replied, shaking hands.

  The lines bracketing Amelia’s eyes deepened with her smile. “I know who you are.”

  A sense of sadness swirled in Kit’s gut as she realized she couldn’t say the same. Pulling away from Marin didn’t just mean they were out of touch at work, it meant she was disconnected from the only living family she had left in this world. Strange how sometimes you didn’t notice how much you missed that sort of connection until faced with it again. Blowing out a hard breath, she tried to ward off her sadness by motioning to the others. “This is Griffin Shaw and that’s Al Zicaro.”

  Grif shook Amelia’s hand as well, but Zicaro had already made his way to the wine. Apparently they didn’t offer sauce with the meds at Sunset.

  Marin just smirked. “So what’s a reporter, a P.I., and a washed-up newshound—”