Closer Than Blood

by Gregg Olsen

  Kendall squeezed a lemon into the salad dressing she was mixing with a wire balloon whisk in a small glass bowl. She dropped in a little Dijon, some minced shallots, and a sprinkle of cayenne. With the tip of a spoon, she tasted the dressing, made a face, and added another squeeze of honey from a plastic bear-shaped bottle.

  “Perfect timing,” she said, catching the sight of a BMW as it moved into the parking area behind the house. “Josh is here now.”

  Josh Anderson had been an infrequent guest in the Stark residence for the past year. He’d heard about the remodel and had even offered to help out, but his proposal was halfhearted and the relationship was somewhat strained following their last major case, the so-called Kitsap Cutter, and subsequent media brouhaha. He stood at the doorway, bottle of Oregon pinot noir in hand and a somewhat nervous smile on his face. At fifty-two, Josh no longer looked like he was trying so hard to be the ladies’ man that he’d once been. The gray at his temples was more pronounced, as though he’d given up on coloring it to “just a touch of gray.” His jacket, an ill-advised tweed with elbow patches that seemed a little more “professor” than “detective,” was a little tight around the middle.

  “Ninety-two points on this one,” he said.

  Steven took the bottle. “I’d probably like it if it had sixty points.”

  Kendall motioned for Josh to come inside. She looked at Steven and rolled her eyes. It was a playful gesture, not to repudiate him for a lack of knowledge.

  “My husband, the wine connoisseur,” she said.

  Steven, however, took the bait. “It isn’t that I don’t like a good bottle of wine,” he said, “I just don’t usually know the difference between the notes of this or that.”

  “It was twenty bucks,” Josh said, hanging his jacket over the back of a chair. “I buy by price, not points.”

  “Something we have in common besides Kendall,” Steven said.

  Josh ignored the sarcasm, intended or merely the result of Steven’s attempt at making a quip.

  “Hi, Cody,” he said.

  Cody looked at him, but said nothing.

  “How’s he doing?”

  “He’s doing better. Every day is better,” Kendall said.

  “Wish I could say that about me.”

  Josh Anderson may have been knocked down a peg in the past year, but he was still surprisingly adept at putting himself back into any conversation as its focus.

  Steven uncorked the wine and poured it into the bulbous globes of Kendall’s grandmother’s stemware—the only thing they had in the house that was reserved for company. Josh somehow rated. Steven almost said something about that, but thought better of it. He kind of liked a kicked-to-the-curb Josh.

  “Cheers,” Steven said, swirling the syrupy red liquid in his crystal wineglass.

  Three glasses met in the clinking sound that comes with the promise of a good evening.

  They went into the living room with its windows taking in glorious nighttime views of Puget Sound. The choppy waters had been sliced by a passing boat, leaving a foamy V from its engine to the rocky shoreline. They had a few moments before dinner and they chatted about the weather, the view, the things that they were doing around the house.

  “How’s that class reunion coming along?” Josh asked.

  Kendall set down her wine. “Don’t get me started.”

  Steven looked at Josh and grinned. “Don’t get her started.”

  Kendall laughed. “Since you brought it up, Josh, I’ll ask you to remind me never to get involved in another committee.” She glanced in Steven’s direction. “Someone here could have saved me a lot of trouble.”

  “Don’t get me involved in this. You’re a Wolf through and through,” he said, invoking the name of the South Kitsap High School mascot.

  “So, really, how’s it going?” Josh asked. It seemed that he wanted to talk about something other than himself or the gossip around the sheriff’s office, which was fine with Kendall. There was a subject she really didn’t want to get into, though she knew the conversation would go that way eventually.

  She talked about the process of selecting everything with a group of people who had nothing in common other than they came from the same graduating class.

  “Ask me about napkins sometime and I can bore you for a good two hours.”

  “Napkins can be tricky,” Josh said. “Not that I’d know much about that.”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” she said. “You seemed more the kind of guy who’d use your shirtsleeve to wipe off your mouth.” She paused. “Not that there’s really anything wrong with that.”

  They laughed a little. It was always fun to zing Josh. Zinging the pompous was always a good time.

  With a lull in the conversation, Steven spoke up. “You did have one thing worth talking about today. Tell Josh about your old schoolmate, Tori.”

  “She was your old schoolmate, too,” she said. “I told him.”

  Josh looked at her. “What’s up with your old pal? Win the lotto or something?”

  Kendall shook her head. “Not hardly. I mentioned it today in the office. Tori’s husband was shot and killed in Tacoma. She was shot, too. Her sister Lainie’s on the reunion committee.”

  Josh narrowed his brow and Kendall’s demeanor had changed. If Kendall had mentioned it, it had been so fleeting that he’d missed it. He could have called her on it, but there was no point in that.

  “What’s up with Tori?” he asked. “I’m getting the vibe here that she’s not in your top ten.”

  Years on the job had allowed Josh and Kendall to understand each other only too well. He could read her and she didn’t like that. Not at all.

  She set down her wine. “We had our moments. I won’t lie. But really, I was better friends with her twin.”

  Kendall seemed uncomfortable and that made Josh dig a little deeper.

  “Twins?”

  This time Steven jumped in. “Yes, exactly the same, but completely different.”

  Kendall looked at her husband, quietly acknowledging what he said was true, then turned her attention back to Josh.

  “I like Lainie,” she said. Her tone was surprisingly defensive, as if she needed to back up the so-called good twin. For some reason or another. “And honestly, I have no idea how she could share the same genes with her sister.”

  Kendall stood to go to the kitchen.

  “Dinner’s ready,” she said. “Be prepared, Josh, to have the best lasagna made by a non-Italian. My husband’s a pretty good cook.”

  She faced the lasagna pan and started cutting, the sharp knife slicing through layers of pasta and cheese, clear, distinct strata of white and amber. Each piece came from the pan in a perfect rectangle. There would be no messy, ill-shaped portion served for the cook or his wife.

  “So what’s the prognosis for Tori?” Josh asked.

  Kendall handed him a plate. As steam curled from the food to the ceiling, he breathed in the garlic and oregano as if it were a drug and smiled.

  Steven beamed. He knew he was a pretty good cook.

  “I don’t know,” Kendall said. “I really don’t know much more than what I’ve told you.”

  “Did you call Tacoma PD?” Josh asked.

  When Kendall didn’t answer right away, Steven echoed the question. “Did you, Kendall?”

  She looked at her husband. It was a hard look, the kind of expression meant to shut down that line of questioning before it went too far.

  Josh picked up the subtext of the conversation and pounced. “I didn’t know you were that close,” Josh said.

  “Tori and I were schoolmates,” she said. “End of story.”

  “We all were,” Steven said, taking a bite. “But then so was Jason Reed.”

  Jason Reed. Kendall let out a quiet sigh at the mention of his name. She really didn’t want to discuss Jason in front of Josh Anderson. Talking about Jason always brought back a flood of sad memories. Sometimes it brought tears, and with tears came too many q
uestions.

  Steven spoke up. “Tori was driving a car that killed the guy. Back in high school.”

  “Parm? I have some shredded in the kitchen,” Kendall said, in a completely ungraceful attempt to alter the direction of the conversation.

  “Killed the guy?” Josh said, putting down his fork.

  “It was an accident,” Steven said. “Wreck on Banner. At the Jump. Tori actually did some time for it in juvenile detention. Some people thought she did more and deserved more time. Not all accidents are accidental, you know.”

  “Some class you SK Wolves must have had back then,” Josh said.

  “I guess so. Jason’s death hit us hard,” Kendall said, putting herself back into the conversation, seeking control. “He was so young and it was so final.”

  “So, are you going to look into Jason’s case?” Steven asked.

  Kendall shook her head, a rote response to a question she’d already considered. “No,” she said, watching her son slide into a chair next to her. “Of course not. But I am worried about Lainie.”

  The shift in conversation interested Josh. It was like the second half to an ongoing dialog that Steven and Kendall must have engaged in earlier.

  “Why dig into it now?” he asked.

  Again, Steven answered for Kendall.

  “You cops like the word hinky, don’t you? Something about the case that bothered people. Rumors. Gossip, whatever. There’s always a lot of time for speculation in Kitsap County. Not a lot of other things to do.”

  Kendall didn’t want to cause an argument at dinner, but she was irritated with her husband.

  “There were some rumors, yes,” she said.

  “Look,” Josh said, leaning closer to her, “I know you. You’re gonna dig.”

  Kendall knew he was right. They both were.

  “All right. Probably. Four deaths around one person, that’s pretty remarkable odds.”

  Josh knitted his brows as he swallowed his 92-point pinot—a number he’d exaggerated when he presented the bottle at the front door. It was only an 88. He held out his fingers and wiggled three of them.

  “Four?” Josh ticked off two of them. “Jason Reed and her husband in Tacoma? That’s two.”

  Steven nodded as he prepared to drop the bomb. “And the husband before that. Never knew the guy. None of us did. And her mother—that was quite a few years ago. A suicide.”

  Josh nearly spilled his wine. “You’re shitting me.”

  Kendall looked over at Cody, who was happily enjoying the gooey top layer of his lasagna.

  Seeing the boy, Josh Anderson’s face went a little red. Despite what everyone thought about him, he knew better than to curse in front of a kid.

  “Sorry,” he said, lowering his voice. “But you’re kidding, right?”

  “Afraid not,” Steven said. “Husband number one bit the dust on a Hawaiian vacation a few years back.”

  Josh leaned across the table toward Kendall. Clearly, he was enthralled by the conversation. “Nice. That Tori seems like trouble.”

  Kendall didn’t respond and Steven poured more wine into each of their glasses.

  “Yeah, as I recall, that Tori was like a whirlpool,” Steven said. “She can suck everyone down in her misery.”

  “I guess,” Kendall finally added. “Like a whirlpool.”

  Kendall Stark rinsed the dinner plates of the sticky residue of pasta and ricotta before aligning them just so into the open grate of the dishwasher. The breeze had kicked up a little and the flowering plum by the window had lost most of its petals, sending a creamy pink drift across the patio. Josh had gone, and Cody was tucked in down the hall of the old house. She slid the dishwasher shut with her hip as she dried her hands on a white-and-red checkered towel.

  The evening had not been bad. Not one hundred percent bad, anyway.

  “Look,” Steven said after Josh left, “I know you cared about Jason. I get that. He was special to you and he’s gone. I’m not threatened by that.”

  His words were undeniably heartfelt, yet they made Kendall feel uncomfortable. There were areas that had been off limits even in a marriage as good as theirs had been. Jason Reed was one of those areas.

  “I know,” she said, lying a little to make him feel better. The minute she said it, she questioned it.

  Why do I do that? she thought. Why do I care about making someone feel better all the time?

  As the dishwasher started to hum and Steven went to turn off the lights, Kendall thought of Jason and how she’d been so haunted by his death more than fifteen years ago. The dinner that night. The talk about Tori’s latest tragedy, if that’s what it was, had released old feelings.

  Feelings she avoided.

  She wondered what her life might have been like if Jason hadn’t died. She wondered what everyone’s life might have been like.

  Most of all, she felt sad that those thoughts hadn’t evaporated over time. Not as she’d been told they would. Not as they should have. Fifteen years, she assured herself, was long enough to grieve.

  With Cody already asleep, Kendall turned off the red, white, and blue tugboat lamp by his bedside. She brushed her lips against his straw-colored hair and kissed him good night. She lifted the always-sticky double-hung window a crack to let in a little night air. Not too much. Just a trickle of cool. Cody was one of those kids who slept hot, often kicking off the covers by morning.

  Sleep, my baby, she thought.

  By the time she got to their bedroom, Steven was already in bed, smelling of toothpaste, and looking at his sales call sheet for the morning. Kendall had a visit with her mother in mind for the next day, but given the late hour, it was the next day.

  “Don’t you ever take a break?” Kendall asked as she undressed.

  “When you’re on commission,” he said, “there’s no such thing as a break. Particularly in this day and age.”

  The publishers of the magazine Steven represented had made a big push to focus on electronic advertising. Steven had gamely gone along with the change. The results were not as encouraging as he’d hoped. It appeared that hunters and fishermen didn’t necessarily take their laptops when they went out in the sticks. It appeared that Wi-Fi had not caught up with the great outdoors. Sales were down sharply and he was feeling the pressure.

  “Tomorrow’s a busy day all the way around,” she said, slipping into a chambray blue pair of pajama bottoms and an oversize T-shirt. “I’m going to see Mom. Run some errands. Solve a crime.”

  “Sexy look, girl,” he said, eyeing her as she crawled next to him.

  “I’ll show you sexy.” She kissed him. That was all the cajoling Steven needed. He set down the paperwork that had held his attention. His hands found the softness of her skin underneath the T-shirt. She let out a sigh. They were tenderly entwined, tangled in the bedsheets.

  “Didn’t take much,” she said. “Did it?”

  Steven’s stubbled face skimmed the surface of her breast as he slid lower into the bed.

  She still felt the excitement that came with the touch of her husband.

  “No, baby. Not much.”

  Neither one said another word about Jason Reed. If his ghost had hovered around the dining room only a couple hours ago, he’d vanished once more.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Tacoma

  Tears filled her eyes and there was no stopping them.

  I shouldn’t feel this sad, but I do, Laura Connelly thought. Her ex-husband’s death had left her feeling bereft in a way that she would have told someone a week ago was completely impossible. Alex had left her for another woman. Betrayed her. Left their son.

  And yet my heart aches? Why?

  At her home in Fircrest, just south of Tacoma, a brokenhearted Laura moved about her seventeen-year-old son’s bedroom, picking up what he’d carelessly left on the floor. It was early in the morning, and Parker hadn’t come home. He’d been doing a lot of that lately—staying with his best friend, Drew. Laura was a petite strawberry blonde, with gree
n eyes that she made the color of clover with tinted contact lenses. In her mid-forties, she was a single mother with no prospects for being anything but. Her world was about her son. It had been that way for a very long time. Until that week, Parker had his dad, too.

  But no more.

  She shook her head as she looked around. Parker was no more a slob than any boy his age, but she’d noticed a little improvement in areas that mattered. He’d asked her to buy new jeans and a couple of new shirts. He even wanted new underwear.

  “Not boxers, Mom, boxer briefs. They fit better.”

  Point taken. In fact, everything Parker wanted those days seemed to reflect a need to improve his appearance. He’d been working out, bulking up his adolescent frame to one that showed the definition of a young man’s physique. Not quite six-pack abs, but getting there. When he wasn’t Skyping on his computer, he was out running or lifting weights in the basement.

  Parker was growing into a young man, and whatever she thought of Alex, she knew that only in death—senseless, untimely, tragic—would he leave his son behind.

  A pair of Tacoma police officers came the morning after the shooting to let them know what happened. Parker got up from the breakfast table and bolted for the door. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t even take his backpack to go to school. He just left.

  Come home, baby, she thought over and over. I’m still here. I won’t leave you.

  Everything in her son’s room took on an unbridled poignancy. Laura smiled when she came across his cache of personal hygiene products on top of the cherry highboy. A bottle of body spray, a tube of acne medicine that he’d begged her to buy off a TV commercial, and a hair product called Bed Head. Her teenage son was growing up. He was still somewhat distant, but the signs were there. He was interested in girls. That was good. While her relationships with men had not gone the distance—her failed marriage to Alex was only one of four longtime relationships that had ended—she hoped that Parker would have better luck in that arena. His relationship with his father and stepmother had also improved. The cellular phone bill indicated a sharp increase in phone calls to his father’s.