Dru brought the mugs to the table and sat down.
“We weren’t really close anymore, you know?” Shea said. “I mean, I loved Becca like a sister; she’s a big part of my past.”
“You were friends from seventh grade; you, Becca, and Kate were like the Three Musketeers.”
“I know, but I’ve told you, she changed in high school. We didn’t have anything in common anymore.”
Dru sipped her latte. You and Kate changed. That’s what she could have said, but she wouldn’t stir that pot again. Shea, and Kate, too, had finally outgrown that unsettled time. They weren’t the rebelle fleurs now that they’d been when they’d run off from Kate’s church camp in Abilene at age fifteen and, after lying about their ages, gotten the French phrase tattooed in lovely but alarming script on their necks à la Rihanna, their latest idol at the time. The tattoo artist had embellished his work, adding a long-stemmed pink rose beneath the words—a rose with thorns. Of course there were thorns.
And, of course, when the girls returned, camp officials had been forced to expel them. Dru and Charla had gone together to pick them up, both of them furious but for different reasons. While Charla had fretted over nonsense like what her church friends would think, Dru had worried about regret. Until then, there had only been face paint, dyed hair, and body piercings to contend with, damage that could be easily repaired. Neither Kate nor Shea had ever said whether they regretted their tattoos, but their hair nowadays was untreated. Kate was a streaky blonde like her mom, but Shea took after her dad. She had Rob’s brown hair, a shade so dark it was almost black. Her body piercings were limited to her ears and navel and the tiny fleck of a diamond she wore on one side of her nose. Dru didn’t mind it. She didn’t even mind the tattoo so much anymore.
Shea said, “This is going to sound awful, but I only asked Becca to be a bridesmaid because she introduced me to AJ. I knew who he was at school, but she’s how we actually met. Asking her to be a bridesmaid was a way to thank her.”
“Well, I think you felt some loyalty to her, too. I remember you saying—to me, anyway—that it was as much for old times’ sake.”
“Yes, there was that,” Shea admitted. “I feel bad, though, and so does Kate. We really wanted to be close with her, the way we were as kids. But Becca’s—Becca was so quiet.” Shea sat forward, nudging her untasted latte to one side. “I just don’t get it. What was she doing in Dallas? Why did she go? Who was she with? She didn’t have friends there, really, and it’s not like she was putting herself out there, taking chances, hanging with losers.”
“She wasn’t dating anyone?”
“Not that I know of, and she would have said. Everyone liked Becca—” Shea stopped, and Dru heard it, too, the ethereal chime of Shea’s cell phone, coming from her bedroom. “I bet that’s AJ,” she said, dashing from the kitchen.
Dru was loading their mugs into the dishwasher when Shea returned.
“It was Mrs. Gordon,” she said, “my adviser from school. The police came to her office. They want to talk to me.”
“Why?” Dru felt a jolt of alarm.
“She didn’t know. I’m supposed to call this detective, Sergeant Troy Bushnell.” Shea read the name from a scrap of paper. “They want to talk to AJ, too.”
“AJ.” Dru, unhappily, repeated her future son-in-law’s name.
“He’s still not answering his phone. I’m worried now. I think I should talk to him before I call this detective, don’t you? I mean, what do they want with us? What could we possibly know? I wasn’t in Dallas last night.”
“AJ was.”
“Yes, but he was working at Café Blue. He was supposed to work till midnight, but they weren’t busy, so he took off early.”
Dru turned. “Maybe they only want to question you about what sort of girl Becca was, whether you know anyone who might want to harm her, that sort of thing.” Dru had no idea if she was right. She could only say what she’d heard watching shows like Dateline and the like. She was upset, though, as disturbed as Shea. What could the police possibly want with her?
“What should I do, Mom?”
Call and get it over with. That’s what Dru was going to say when her cell phone went off. She picked it up, glancing at the ID window. “It’s AJ’s mom,” she said.
“Answer it. She might know where AJ is.”
Dru did so, reluctantly, formal in her greeting—she and Lily Isley would never be friends. By contrast, Lily’s voice was sharply urgent.
“Have you seen AJ?” she asked. “Has Shea? Is he there?”
Dru straightened. “Why are you looking for him?”
A moment passed as if Lily needed time to compose an answer.
“Mom?” Shea took a step toward Dru. “What’s the matter?”
Dru met her daughter’s gaze, shaking her head slightly.
Lily apologized. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to—to frighten you or Shea, but it’s—have you seen AJ, either of you? Or spoken to him?”
“No. Shea tried calling him. You’ve heard about Becca Westin?” Dru was guessing.
“She was murdered last night. I know. It’s awful.”
“Yes,” Dru said. She felt wary now and somehow suspicious of Lily. She met Shea’s alarmed stare, and although she tried, she couldn’t hold it. She wouldn’t realize it until later, that it wasn’t Shea’s fear she was avoiding as much as it was some inner recognition that once again their lives were taking a sudden detour down a dark and twisted road she hadn’t even known was there.
Lily spoke. “The police said AJ and Becca dated.”
Dru could have confirmed that was true, but in her preoccupation with her sense of things falling apart, she didn’t.
“I’m on my way to Wyatt,” Lily said. “I’m going to the ranch. I should be there in a half hour or so.”
Dru’s heart, as if it knew there was more to come that was worse, fell against her ribs. “Why? What is going on, Lily?”
“Becca was killed in AJ’s apartment.” Lily rushed the words. “The police think he had something to do with it.”
No, Dru thought. They think he did it. She turned her back to Shea, teeth clenched, fighting for breath, sense, calm. But her mind was on fire. She’d known, hadn’t she, that AJ was trouble from nearly the moment Shea brought him to meet her? The guy was a time bomb, one of those IEDs, looking for a place to explode. She didn’t give a rat’s ass about his medal or his bravery in battle. She’d seen in his eyes the mess all that had made of his sanity, and she was sorry for him. Sorry for all the boys, the fine young men, who got their bodies and minds twisted up in the name of service to their country. But compassion for their damage didn’t alter its toxicity. She’d seen what it could do—seen that same unbalanced turmoil in her ex-husband’s eyes twelve years ago, the night he ran her and Shea out of their house in Houston at the business end of a loaded shotgun.
AJ had that same wild, haunted look. Not in every moment, but Dru had seen it, nonetheless. He tried to keep it masked, but the disconnect was there. Oh, yes, it was. Dru didn’t want AJ having her daughter. She’d forbid the match if she could. But no, Shea loved him like she loved her daddy. And now look. Just look.
“Mom?”
Dru turned and went to Shea, pulling her in close.
Lily said, “The police are looking for AJ, Dru. I think he’s at the ranch.”
“Have you called?”
“I don’t want to worry Dad, and Winona’s not answering her cell phone.”
Winona Ayala was Erik’s mother and the Axels’ housekeeper. Dru knew her. Not personally, but Wyatt was a small town. Everyone talked about everyone else. Over time, Dru had learned Winona’s story: that she was from Oaxaca, a small town called Loma Bonita near the border with Veracruz. She’d come to the United States when she was seventeen on a visa, and a cousin had gotten her the job with the Axels—Jeb and his late wife, Roseanne, when Roseanne was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Winona had been required to earn her citizens
hip, but Erik had been born in Wyatt. Dru didn’t know where his father was—back in Oaxaca, if what she’d heard was true.
He was a good kid. She’d hired him once when, in junior high, Shea talked her into adopting two orphaned donkeys. Dru had housed them in the old barn on her property. Not knowing a thing about caring for them, she’d stopped in at the feed store in town, where Erik had been working part-time. He’d offered to deliver their weekly allotment of feed and bedding straw, even though it wasn’t in his job description. Shea, and Kate, too, had nearly swooned every time he came over. They had acted so silly that Dru had despaired. Erik was older, eighteen to the girls’ thirteen, so she’d thought he would surely get enough of them and quit. But somehow the three had become friends. They laughed at themselves and those memories now and marveled how it was that Shea had needed to go all the way to Dallas to culinary school to meet AJ when he’d spent almost every summer here, at his granddad’s ranch, hanging out with Erik.
Lily was talking about the poor cell reception at the xL. She said, “Winona’s probably there, but I’m worried the police are, too. You haven’t heard anything, have you, on the news about the police being out there?”
“No, but Shea heard from someone at the school in Dallas that the police want to talk to her and to AJ. Shea’s got nothing to do with this, Lily. I don’t want her involved.” Not with the police and not with your son. The rest of Dru’s thought carved a bitter path through her brain.
“Involved in what?” Shea asked. Alert to every nuance of hostility on Dru’s part, she pulled free of Dru’s embrace.
Dru had never tried to conceal her misgiving when it came to AJ. But her concerns weren’t personal; it wasn’t, as Shea insisted, that Dru disliked AJ so much, as it was a matter of intuiting he was the wrong choice for her. No matter how Dru tried to shake it, she had a bad feeling about him.
Shutting Shea from her view, Dru addressed Lily. “Now you get hold of Paul and have him call some of his high-toned politician friends, or whoever, and you tell them to leave my daughter—” She broke off, uncertain what had stopped her. Some sound of distress, whether from Shea or Lily, she didn’t know. But God knew none of them needed more distress.
Dru swept the countertop’s edge with her fingertips. She had a temper; it was true. She’d be the first to admit anger was her default, her go-to place when she was scared.
And, damn, she was scared—plenty.
“I’m sorry,” Lily said. “I don’t know what else I can say.” Her voice bumped and slid.
Dru felt her jaw loosen, her shoulders relax. It wasn’t as if Lily was responsible. She hadn’t killed Becca, nor had she sent AJ off to war. If what Shea had told Dru was right, that had been his father’s doing. Evidently Paul Isley had been looking for a way to make a man out of his son. Dru said, “I need to tell my daughter what’s going on, Lily.”
“AJ didn’t do it, Dru,” Lily said. “I promise you he did not. He doesn’t have it in him.”
Really? So he shot and killed no one while he was in Afghanistan, fighting for his country, not even while he was defending the buddy whose life he supposedly saved from certain death, for which he was awarded a medal? “I hope when the police find him that he can explain.” Dru didn’t know what else to say.
“I hope he’s at the ranch. He loves it there, you know? Ever since he was little,” Lily added, and her voice caught again.
Dru’s throat closed.
“Will you, or Shea, call me if you hear from him?” Lily asked.
Dru said she would, and Lily agreed when Dru asked that she do the same.
“Why did you say that to her? About Paul calling all his politician friends?” Shea spoke even as Dru bid Lily good-bye. “I can’t believe you talked to her like that, Mom.”
“I don’t want you involved, Shea.”
“But I already am. The police want to interview me.”
“They are probably going to question you about AJ—when you last saw him, spoke to him—”
“Why?”
“Because, honey, they found Becca’s body in his apartment.”
3
Lily didn’t leave the shoulder of I-35 right away after speaking to Dru. She felt light-headed and closed her eyes, waiting for the sensation to pass. Her BMW was rocked slightly by the wind of other passing cars. Looking out, she caught sight of a woman driver, one hand flung up as if in emphasis. Her passenger, a man, was laughing. It was only an instant, yet Lily felt the impact of their happiness, their pleasure in each other like a blow, and she bowed her head, willing herself not to cry. Her phone went off, and she jumped. AJ!
Instead, it was Paul. “Where are you?” he asked when Lily answered.
“North of Greeley. I just got off the phone with Dru. She and Shea haven’t seen AJ or spoken to him.” Lily allowed no sign of her offense at how Dru had spoken to her come through her voice. It would only rile Paul, who liked AJ’s future mother-in-law even less than Lily did. “The police want to talk to Shea, though. They probably think she knows where AJ is.”
“Does she? Did you ask her?”
“No,” Lily admitted. “But Dru would have told me.” Would she have? Dru’s whole focus was on protecting Shea, not her daughter’s fiancé. Lily understood that; she felt the same about AJ, but she doubted he’d look for it—her protection. The gulf between them had existed for so long that he assumed it was her choice and not her heartbreak.
“You need to ask Shea directly, Lily. Don’t rely on her mother. We need to keep ahead of this thing.”
“Now you get hold of Paul and have him call some of his high-toned politician friends . . .” Dru’s command drummed through Lily’s mind. Dru had such an inflated idea of the Isleys’ importance. If there were any such friends, Lily thought, Paul wouldn’t call them on Shea’s behalf.
“I don’t have long,” he said. “I’m at the police station, in the men’s room. I didn’t want to call from the interrogation room in case it’s bugged.”
Lily wondered how Paul could be so sure the restroom wasn’t.
“They asked me back at the apartment what AJ drove, if he had a computer, owned a gun. Did he have a phone.”
“He has all of that.”
“Yeah, and it’s all missing. They found his wallet. That was it.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Why would he leave his wallet?”
“How the hell do I know?”
Lily bit her teeth together, refusing to engage. Paul was afraid; they both were, and it made them hostile. They’d been hard on each other before, the last time they’d gone down this road with AJ. “There was a cop in a patrol car outside, watching the house when I left,” she said in an attempt to get them through the moment.
“Bastards,” Paul muttered. “Look, from now on, if anyone from law enforcement—I don’t care who it is—asks you anything, you tell them to get in touch with Jerry Dix. Do you understand?”
“You’ve spoken to him, then?”
“Yeah, he’s on his way here.”
“To the police station? Why?”
“Jesus, Lily. He’s an attorney, for Christ’s sake.”
Corporate, Lily thought. She wouldn’t say it. She wouldn’t bring up Edward, the possibility that they—that AJ would need his services as a criminal attorney again. Her mind shied away from the complications that could present, so much unfinished business.
“Jerry has connections; he knows his way around the DA’s office. He can get information we can’t.”
“Paul?” Lily was hesitant. “What if the person who killed Becca, what if they took AJ, abducted him, along with his truck, the gun, his laptop and phone? He could be a victim, too.”
“Bushnell claims they aren’t ruling that out. I should have told you,” Paul conceded. He was exhausted. Horrified. He had said to Lily earlier that every time he closed his eyes, he saw Becca—“pants down, stabbed, blood everywhere”—his words rattled across Lily’s brain. As a consequence, she saw it, too, but th
e reality would have been much worse, and coupled with the fact that their son’s apartment was a crime scene, and their son was implicated—
“Bushnell says they only want AJ for questioning so far, but I feel like he’s working me, Lily. Trying to be my buddy, you know? We can’t forget there’s history here.”
He was repeating himself, and Lily wasn’t going to listen to it. She switched on the ignition. “I need to go, Paul.”
“You’ll call when you get to the ranch?”
“I’m worried about Dad, how he’ll handle this. He’s so forgetful lately . . .” It was more than that. Winona had said he was sleeping late in the morning, something he’d never done. She’d said she’d had to remind him to change his shirt, eat a meal. “He’s just not himself, not right,” Win had said.
“Oh, come on, Lily. You act as if you want Jeb to be losing his mind. That old bastard is as sharp as he ever was.”
Old bastard. It was how Paul and her dad addressed each other nowadays. The two had been friends for almost thirty years. That was how Lily had first known Paul, as her dad’s friend, the one who’d bring her gifts on occasion, once a stuffed bunny when she was thirteen. And when he’d realized she was too old for toys, he’d brought her jewelry, opal earrings, a necklace with a dainty gold horseshoe pendant. Neither man, her dad nor Paul, could be considered young anymore. Not that she would ever say that to Paul, and while she was well aware of the talk, the twenty-three-year difference in their ages was something that was never discussed, either. It was the elephant in the living room of their marriage. “I’ve got to go,” Lily repeated. She checked the flow of traffic in her rearview mirror.
“You know what I thought when AJ didn’t show up this morning?”
Lily waited.
“I figured he was ducking out,” Paul said.
“Of the wedding, you mean?” Lily dropped her glance.
“Yeah. Until I went into his apartment, I thought maybe he got cold feet.”
The Truth We Bury: A Novel Page 3