“Sounds interesting.”
“Yeah, I told him I’d get back to him in a day or two. We’ve gotta wrap up the Lambert case.”
“It feels like we’re close with what Gina told us.”
Griff nodded and went to the refrigerator for a beer. “You didn’t answer me. Where were you all day?”
I’ve never kept anything from Griff and I didn’t want to start now, especially not now. We’d begun a new chapter as they say, having bought a home together. It was the start of something. I wanted it to be the beginning of a future not the beginning of the end.
“I went back to the day care today.”
He slid onto a bar stool at the counter and nodded, waiting for more, watching me dress the salad.
“Rhea was under the tree again.”
He raised his eyebrows. A good sign, I thought. He’s showing interest.
“She stayed and watched the kids for a while, like she did the other day.” I set down the bottle and pushed the bowl aside. “There’s a kid who looks just like her.”
“What are you saying? He’s her long-lost son?”
“I thought he might be. After she left I went inside and talked to the teacher.”
“And?”
“I said I was new to the area and needed day care for my daughter. When she left the room I took the roster listing the children.”
“You what?”
“That teacher’s gonna get canned.”
“She’ll think she misplaced it and print another one. It’s not a big deal.”
“Jesus, Britt,” Griff shook his head.
“The kid’s the spitting image of Rhea.” Griff didn’t say anything so I kept talking, fast as though warding off a blow. “Why else would she be hanging around the day care?”
“What’re you planning to do with this information?”
“Nothing right now. Rhea caught me.”
He set his beer on the counter. “Nice. What’d she say?”
That she knows the kid looks like Jonathan, but it isn’t him and that I don’t need to look for him because she knows he’s okay.”
“She knows he’s okay?”
“Yeah, isn’t it kind of odd that she wouldn’t take me up on an offer to reopen the search? Unless she knows he’s all right because the kid at the day care is him. What do you think?”
“I think you’ve put your nose, yet again, where it doesn’t belong. If Rhea knows something about her son’s whereabouts then it’s up to her to act on it or not. And the possibility of that little boy at the day care being Jonathan is so slim it’s almost negligible. They looked for him for over a year and you think you just happened to stumble upon him a few miles from home?”
“Those things happen.”
“On television.”
“C’mon, Griff, why are you so against the possibility?”
“We’re working a case that we need to finish up. We’ve now got another one on the threshold and we’ve just moved into a new house and are trying to make nice with the neighbors. Instead of focusing on these things, you’re off on a wild goose chase to find a kid who’s been missing for four years. Have you even thought of the pain and suffering you’ll inflict? The wounds you’ll reopen? Rhea and Mike have been through a major trauma. You want to make them re-live it because you have a hunch? Rhea told you to stop. Respect her wishes.”
I felt like a trap door had opened beneath me. Deflated, I picked up my pinot and took a long swallow, digesting his words.
The doorbell rang and Griff went to get it. I followed along behind. Mike McKenzie was standing on the steps, his bike leaning against the porch railing.
“Hey you two, Rhea sent me over to invite you for dinner tomorrow night. You free?”
Griff glanced at me.
“We’d love to,” I said. “What can we bring?”
“Just yourselves. Six o’clock. She has it all planned out. She’s gotta have something to do hanging around the house all day.”
He laughed.
I didn’t.
“Great,” Griff said. “We’ll see you then.”
We stepped back inside and Griff closed the door. He grabbed my hand and smirked. “Maybe you can tell Mike what you just told me over dinner.”
I pulled away without answering, walked into the kitchen and topped off my Pinot. Then I went out to the deck, leaving the marinating chicken and the salad sitting on the kitchen counter. If he was hungry, let him cook.
Nineteen
I woke up hungry. Last night’s uncooked chicken was sitting on the top shelf of the refrigerator when I reached in to get the half and half for my morning coffee. I hadn’t heard or felt Griff get into bed last night even though I’d stayed up late reading, half hoping he’d come upstairs and half hoping he wouldn’t. He’d already left for the office and I was feeling like shit.
We rarely fought. In fact, this may have been our first major disagreement. We’d had differences of opinion, but this felt bigger than that. The way I saw it, I was concerned with a woman’s wellbeing, questions of abuse and the disappearance of her child, legitimate concerns for any friend and neighbor.
“Don’t mix personal with professional,” Griff always said.
But hadn’t we mixed it six months ago when I went undercover to look for John Stark’s daughter? I mean isn’t Detective Stark Griff’s best friend? Wasn’t that a mix of personal and professional? I would remind him of that when I got to the office. That is, if we were speaking.
“Hey,” Griff said.
He was standing by the fax machine when I opened the office door.
“Hey. Where’s Katie?” I asked using her as a buffer.
“Went to Staples.”
I nodded and walked into my office. I could feel him behind me. I opened the window, took a Honey Berry out of my pocketbook, lit it and sat on the fire escape, my legs dangling over the windowsill inside the office.
“You trying to piss me off?” Griff asked.
“No, just wanted a smoke.”
“Sorry about dinner,” he said.
“Me too.”
“I didn’t feel like cooking.”
“Me either.”
“We on for McKenzie’s tonight?”
“Yeah.”
“Britt.” He looked at the floor, choosing his words. “I know you’re concerned about Rhea and I will admit there are some things that seem a little off, but you don’t know them well enough yet to be making such grand assumptions. The things you’re suggesting are huge. Life changing. I’m not saying you’re wrong to have questions and I agree it’s strange that Rhea is so sure Jonathan’s okay. But I am suggesting that you slow down. Let’s enjoy dinner tonight and see how you feel after that.”
I took a long drag on my cigar and blew the smoke in his general direction. (Okay, a little passive aggressive, nobody’s perfect.) “Deal,” I said.
He nodded and stepped out, closing my office door behind him.
I stubbed out what was left of my Honey Berry and scooted back inside.
I did a little more research on performance enhancers and how to beat drug testing. Then I read up on Jones and Lockridge, the company owned by the guy Griff had talked to about his not so honest business partner. At four o’clock, I called it day, an unproductive day, but a day none-the-less.
Griff was in the shower when I got home so I hit the elliptical making sure I would be stress free when I got to McKenzie’s. No preconceived notions would come to dinner with me tonight. I was tabula rasa. We could put the pieces together when we got home. I had no doubt there’d be fuel for my fire. I just hoped the flames would be big enough for Griff to see.
At six o’clock we came through the path that led from our house to McKenzie’s. Mike was out by the pool, the grill hot and smoking.
“Right on time,” Mike said. “Beer and wine. Help yourself.” He nodded to the table set for four.
An ice basket held a bottle of Pinot Grigio and the cooler on the floor was packed wit
h a variety of microbrews. Griff popped the cork on the wine and poured me a glass then pulled an IPA from the cooler. Rhea appeared from the kitchen holding a platter of fruit and cheese, a box of crackers tucked under each arm.
Mike swallowed half his beer and watched her come down the steps. I set down my wine and went to help her.
“Last thing we need is for you to take a spill,” I said lifting the plate out of her hands.
“Thanks,” she said. “It’s almost time anyway.”
“Yeah, but you don’t want to go like that.”
She laughed. “At this point I’m ready to go however it happens. The last month is a killer. I left my tea in the kitchen. Be right back.”
“Let me get it,” I said. “You sit down.”
“It’s on the counter by the sink.”
I walked up the steps to get Rhea’s tea already relegating Mike to asshole status. What kind of husband watches while his wife, in her ninth month of pregnancy, carrying shit in and out of the house, up and down the stairs? On the way back outside, I reminded myself to slow down, don’t rush to judgment. That was the deal.
Mike threw four NY strip steaks on the grill and we took seats around the table, munching on cheese and crackers.
“You guys working on a case now?” Mike asked.
“Yeah,” Griff said. “A young girl committed suicide, parents want to know why.”
Mike set his beer on the glass top table, his eyes on Griff. “You’re not talking about Ashley Lambert, are you?”
“You knew her?”
Mike drew his mouth in a fine line. “I know her mother. She’s my step-sister.”
I looked at Mike then at Griff. Gwen’s lowlife stepbrother named Michael. What the hell?
“You’re Gwen’s step-brother?” Griff asked obviously as surprised as I was.
Mike nodded. “The step-brother from hell, according to her. Her family didn’t acknowledge me, to say the least. I was an embarrassment. I guess it’s understandable since her father, our father, was unfaithful. They were one of those families who believed if you didn’t talk about it, it didn’t happen. Needless to say, my name was rarely mentioned.”
“Wow,” I said. “This is crazy. Did you know Ashley?”
“No. I never met her. Read about her occasionally in the newspaper. I understand she was quite the athlete.”
“She was,” Griff said. “And an exceptional student, which is why her death is so difficult to understand.”
“No note?” Mike asked.
“Nothing,” Griff said.
“You sure it was suicide?” Mike asked, the cop in him creeping out. He got up to flip the steaks and put a baked potato on each plate then took the plastic wrap off the salad in the middle of the table. (Redeeming himself ever so slightly).
“Autopsy says so.”
“They did an autopsy after a fall like that? Couldn’t have been much to work with.”
“Her father wanted it.”
“Good old Greg,” Mike said.
“You know him?” I asked.
“Not really. I remember him a little from when we were kids. Met him once or twice when I was actually in their house. But that was rare. Like I said, I wasn’t their favorite person. Greg was a dick then. What’s he like now?”
“Same,” I said.
Mike laughed.
“They do a tox screen?”
“Just the standard,” Griff said.
“Show anything?”
“No results yet,” Griff said fast, like he’d wanted to get that out before I could say anything.
I glanced at him. He met my eyes with a look that told me he was choosing how much to say. I let him take the lead.
“We’re looking into the possibility of drugs. Like you said, she had everything going for her. Suicide doesn’t make sense, although it is ruled as cause of death. We’re wondering if drugs could have affected her thinking.”
Mike nodded as he put a sizzling steak on each of our plates and sat down. “Worth looking into,” he said. Then he raised his beer, “To kids and the parents who fuck ‘em up.” He glanced at Rhea.
Her eyes were on her glass of iced tea, sweating on the table.
“Maybe you can give us a little insight,” Griff said.
“In what sense?” Mike asked, spearing a piece of steak with his fork.
“Performance Enhancers, you were a pro-cyclist weren’t you?”
“Yeah, but I never touched the stuff. Hence, I’m not a pro anymore. Sank to the amateur level, but I’m clean.”
“Did you know anybody that used them?”
“Lots of guys.”
“Mind if I ask you about it?”
“Shoot.”
I gave Griff the alpha position in this conversation. I figured Mike might be more into it if it were man to man. He seemed like that kind of guy. Like I wouldn’t be smart enough to understand what he had to say, but another guy was on his level.
“I was reading about blood doping.”
“Yeah, that’s kind of old school now. I mean there are still guys that do it because it’s easy if you’re using your own stash. It used to go undetected, but the testing is savvier now and a high hematocrit raises a red flag. You think she was doping?”
“I’m not sure. What do you know about EPO?”
“Erythropoietin,” Mike said. “Does the same thing as doping, but with a lot less mess.” He smiled. “It’s popular, but again it raises flags due to the hematocrit level on tests. It’s getting tougher to be a user, that’s for sure. WADA’s cracking down.”
“WADA?” I asked.
“World Anti-Doping Agency.”
“How hard is it to get this stuff?”
“For a college kid? I’d say it would be difficult. If you’re in the pro-circuit that’s one thing, but for a college athlete, I’m not sure she’d have the connections. I mean, maybe she did. I don’t know who she hung around with, but my guess is that college athletes are more into amphetamines. They’ve gotta be easy to find on campus.”
Griff nodded. “Yeah, that’s been our thinking too. That is if anything shows up on toxicology.”
“Let me know when you get it back. I mean, if I can be of any help.”
“Will do,” Griff said, refilling my Pinot and grabbing another beer for himself and a fourth one for Mike.
“Can I get you something?” I asked Rhea. “More tea?”
“No thanks, I’m fine,” she said.
She hadn’t said two words since we’d arrived and I wondered if something had happened between her and Mike. They’d hardly looked at each other all evening. I stood to clear our empty plates.
“I’ve got that,” Rhea said.
“No really, let me carry them in.”
“Well, I’ll come with you and get desert.”
I followed her up the stone stairway and into the kitchen. “You okay? You seem quiet.”
She shrugged. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“You’re always quiet when Mike’s around.” The words came out of my mouth before I thought to filter.
“You’ve noticed.”
“Hard not to.”
“He doesn’t always give much credence to what I have to say, especially in front of guests. He likes to be the one in the know. I’ve learned to say very little when we have company, it protects me from being embarrassed.”
“That’s awful.”
“That’s life with my husband.” She picked up an apple pie from the counter and slipped it into a pre-heated oven. “Warm in here,” she said and slipped off the sweater she’d been wearing outside.
The gasp was out of my mouth before the sleeves were fully off her arms, no reining it in. “Rhea, what happened?” But I knew before she answered. A thick black smudge on each bicep, with four navy blue extensions encircling her skin, like a slave bracelet or a perfectly tattooed handprint. “He held you down.”
“Shit,” she said and slipped her sweater back on. Then she looked at me, her eyes
holding my own even as they brimmed with tears. “Britt…”
I held up my hand. “I know. I knew the first day we met. There’s something unmistakable about an abused woman. I’ve seen it too many times.”
“Hey, what’s a guy have to do to get a little pie around here?” Mikes voice came up the steps from the deck.
“You’ve got to get help, Rhea.”
“From who? He’s one of the most well-liked cops on the force. You think his buddies will come down on him? Nobody breaks the code. And I have no one else. No family, no money, a high school education.”
“Well you’ve got me now. We’ll figure it out. How long has this been going on?”
“Things used to be good between us. His temper has always been an issue, but he wasn’t physical. That came later. He started pushing me around a little, getting right in my face when we’d argue.” She sighed and shook her head. “Then one day he backhanded me. It’s only gotten worse since then.”
“What’s going on in there?” It was Mike again.
“I’m coming,” Rhea called and slid the pie from the oven. “Grab the ice cream in the freezer,” she nodded to me. “Hurry, I have to get out there. He’ll think we’re talking.”
“What the hell’s wrong with talking?”
“He doesn’t like it.” She hurried toward the door.
“Things are gonna change around here,” I said more to myself than to her.
As Rhea went through the door she glanced back at me. She’d heard what I said and I couldn’t tell if it was hope or fear on her face, but my money was on the latter.
“What the hell you two doing in there?” Mike asked.
There was an irritated undertone in his voice. I hoped Rhea wouldn’t pay later.
“This looks great,” I said, scooping ice cream onto plates beside the pie, hoping to shift Mike’s focus onto the homemade dessert.
“Haven’t had apple pie in ages,” Griff said. “This is a treat.”
“She’s got nothin’ else to do.” Mike cracked another beer.
“She will soon,” I said.
“Yeah, not much longer now.” Mike looked at his wife.
It was a strange look. No hint of a smile or wink of acknowledgement of the birth they’d soon share. Just a steady gaze, unnerving and making me wish we didn’t have to leave her alone with him.
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