“Here,” she said. “You left it at the house.”
“I was going to call you,” Jordan said, reaching for the wallet. “Had breakfast at John and Nancy’s, picked up the kids, and discovered it was gone.” She felt strangely embarrassed.
Brie stared straight ahead. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“Interrupt? No, that was Pete’s ex-partner. I haven’t seen him in years. He just stopped by to—” She stopped and looked at Brie’s strange expression.
“You were good friends?” Brie searched her face.
“At one time. Yes.” She answered honestly, looking for the usual hint of tease or laughter in those eyes, but she saw only serious blue.
“Okay, have to go.”
“Wait. I just made coffee. Why don’t you come in?”
“No. I’m going home to try to clean Niki’s office.” Brie tapped the steering wheel and backed down the driveway.
Jordan stood very still until Brie left, feeling a little queasy.
*
Brie watched the garage door rumble down in her rearview mirror. “Well, so much for that. Wake up, Brieanna,” she said to her quiet car. A big clap of thunder shook the house. “You can say that again.” She looked up.
She hauled the vacuum cleaner into Niki’s office and relentlessly tackled every corner. Finally, she collapsed in the big chair and tossed the dust rag on the desk. The image of the man kissing Jordan seemed to be stamped on her brain, and she scrubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. She could have sworn Jordan was going to kiss her last night, but she must have misread it.
She looked at Niki’s desk.“What am I going to do with all of this?” she said. There were four deep drawers and she really had no idea what was in there. “Boxes,” she said and got up to go to the storeroom at the back of the garage. One side of the room held her file cabinets containing the information for her classes and the academic papers she wrote. Across the small room there was a stack of file boxes and she took four, two in each hand. She stacked them beside Niki’s desk and had a sudden flashback to that morning. Jordan had jerked away from the man, not kissed him. She tossed two files into a box just as the doorbell rang.
Jordan and the kids stood underneath the porch while it poured rain behind them.
“Hey,” Brie said, going to one knee in front of the children. “Are you visiting me?” Jenna and Tyler had a handful of flowers and held them out, grinning. “Ah.” Brie gave them each a hug. She looked at Jordan.
“Let’s start this day over,” Jordan said and looked so hopeful that all Brie could do was stand and smile. “I thought maybe pizza? I brought a movie for the kids.”
“I’m cleaning Niki’s office. Could the kids have a root beer?” Both Jenna and Tyler turned to look at Jordan, but Brie turned them toward the kitchen. “Come on. If you’re going to hang out here, you have to know where the root beer lives.” They followed her and Brie gave them each a soda. “Jordan, put the movie in while I find a vase.” She saw the puddle in front of the sink. “Oh, shit,” she said. Jordan and the kids swiveled.
“I’m sorry, kids. I didn’t mean to swear.”
Jenna giggled. “We have to stand in the corner if we say those kind of words.”
“I’ll stand in the corner. I was wrong.” Brie looked at Jordan and raised her eyebrows.
“We forgive you. How about it, kids?” They nodded. “Did we do that?” Jordan pointed at the puddle.
“No, it’s just the same loose coupling under the sink that we’ve battled forever. Drove us nuts.” She moved past them toward the tools in the garage. “Why don’t you get the movie going and I’ll fix it.”
Jordan sat at the table, watching Brie scrunch under the sink. “You know how to do…plumbing?” she said.
“Dad owned a hardware store and I worked there every summer. Not much I haven’t done in the way of plumbing.” She locked the pipe wrench around the fitting and glanced up as Jordan pulled a chair nearby. Her legs were crossed and a sandal dangled off a foot. Her dark purple skirt had hitched, exposing those lovely legs. Brie’s gaze ran up the casual mauve tee. My God, look at her. She swallowed hard and focused back on the pipe above her. No wonder men wanted to kiss her. She did.
“That man, this morning?”
“Pete’s partner at the firehouse. After Pete was killed, we were more than friends for a while.”
“I saw you jerk away,” Brie said, trying to be clear. She concentrated on the wrench.
“He was just being a creep this morning,” Jordan said. “Need some help?” she asked and then laughed. “Honestly, Brie, I’ve never done that in my life.”
“Never?”
“Pete or Uncle John usually took care of it.”
“Umm,” Brie grunted, giving the wrench once last firm tug. She noticed a neon red paper tag hanging from the top of the pipe. She reached and turned it slowly. Thanks, hon, I love you, it said in Niki’s writing. She laid the wrench on the floor and undid the string. “I’ll be darned.” She scooted out from under the sink and ran water in the drain, checking the pipes. “Perfect,” she said, pointing at the dry pipes and dusting her jeans off. Jordan bent to look under the sink and picked up the red tag.
“What’s this?”
Brie shook her head. “A note from Niki. I didn’t know she knew I was working on this sink all the time.” She mopped the puddle dry and picked up the wrench. “We had our hands full with this place. Would you like some iced tea?” Jordan nodded. “Take it into Niki’s office and I’ll put the tools away.”
*
Brie carried the vase of flowers into Niki’s office.
“Looks better in here,” Jordan said.
“Did you have to do this, with Pete? Go through a desk?”
“Some, but not to this extent. We shared an office and used the same desk.”
Brie opened file after file, going over the information carefully, and made three stacks of papers, brochures, magazines: information for the house, business, and personal. Jordan got up, looking at the sound system, and took a dust cloth to it. She hit the On button. A woman’s voice filled the room and Brie froze. Jordan quickly turned it off.
“What was that?”
“Niki,” Brie said faintly and put her head in her hands. “Oh God. This never occurred to me. She always carried a little recorder, called it her ‘notes to self’ and ran it off to disc. Open that cupboard above the CD player.”
There were three rows of discs, and Jordan tilted her head to read the dates. It began over fifteen years ago. “Wow,” Jordan said, sitting back down beside Brie. “Can you stand to listen to that?”
“I don’t know,” Brie said. “This is crazy. I haven’t thought of these discs since before the shooting. I’ve never opened that cupboard.”
“Do you want to take a day?” Jordan gestured at the wall. “I’ll sit with you, if it would help.”
Brie looked unsure. “I have a feeling that’s ‘us’ up there.” She took a deep breath. “She talked everything and I wrote all my stuff.”
“Yes. You did write. I meant to tell you last night that I finished your first book. It was excellent.”
“Thanks. Niki found a family’s letters and documents in an old house she and her father were working on. The odd thing about the family’s letters and information was that it is exactly the time period I teach, after the Civil War and up through the eighteen nineties. I had a question about the family and that’s what started everything. It was fun, relaxed my mind.”
“Your second book was a bestseller?”
Brie finally smiled. “Luck and good marketing. I started the third one in the series and have a contract, but it’s going to expire if I don’t get going. It’s all based on that family.”
“Are you really an authority on an election in the late eighteen hundreds?”
“Where on earth did you hear that?” Brie laughed.
“The university Web site.”
Brie shook her head. “Same th
ing as the book. Just marketing. They’ll say anything on that Web site, I swear. Maybe, by the time I’m one hundred, I’ll know something.”
“Why aren’t you writing?”
Brie looked out the window. “Why aren’t you carving?”
They sat for a moment, listening to the sounds of the kids’ movie floating down the hallway. Jordan cleared her throat. “Carving? I sat at the kitchen table when I got home last night and thought about carving and…dancing.”
“I really enjoyed myself, despite Mary.” Brie’s mind raced. She hoped she understood what they were really talking about. “You know I’m not home free yet,” she said. “I’m only finding pieces of life, here and there.” Brie took the washer out of her pocket and threaded it through the string from the red tag, all the time thinking about the almost kiss last night. The phone rang and they both jumped.
Brie recognized Detective Jim Carnes’s voice immediately and sank back into Niki’s chair, listening.
“We have someone that you need to see, here at the station. This may be the break we’ve been looking for. Can you come down now?”
Brie swiveled the chair and stared at Jordan. “Of course,” she said automatically.
Jordan was already moving. “He talks so loud I could hear every word. I’ll go with you.”
“The kids?” Brie said.
“Let me check with Nancy. Maybe she’ll watch them. Let’s take my car,” Jordan said and began talking into the phone. Brie got up to gather the kids but didn’t move.
“What’s the matter?” Jordan asked.
“This isn’t right. They’re grabbing at anything that comes along.” She finally started to walk out of the office. “I just don’t want to go.”
Chapter Fifteen
Brie had never been in this part of the police station before. The smell of disinfectant and sweat agitated her. Her stomach churned. She wiped her hands on her jeans with a quick glance at Detective Jim Carnes. Every time he opened his mouth she felt as if he was shouting. Did he have a hearing problem? Jordan shifted in the chair next to her.
Carnes looked down at some papers. “We’ve picked up a man that we’ve proved was in the vicinity at that time, and we believe he’s involved with Ms. Willis’s murder, your shooting. Would you be willing to look at a line-up?”
“You know I believe this was a random killing,” Brie said, clenching her jaw. Her arms felt heavy. “However, I’ll do—”
The detective interrupted with a crisp comment. “We don’t have that luxury.”
“Luxury?” Brie said with a deep breath and her heart began to pound. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“It’s our job.” He stared at her. “We’ve done quite a bit of work on this case and this suspect. The last time we spoke, last month? You said you were still unable to remember anything. What if seeing this man makes you remember?”
Brie began to sweat. The longer she sat there, the worse she felt. “Do you understand I can’t remember?” Her entire body shook as she stood, leaning on the table. Brie grappled with tears and a quick wash of anger.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He reached for a box of tissues.
She held up her hand to stop him but he repeated it. “Ms. O’Malley, please. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” The slap of her hand on the table was like a gunshot in the tense room. “I try to remember every single day of my life. Or what’s left of my life.” She wiped her eyes. “Jesus Christ!”
Someone knocked and Carnes went to the door. He traded words with a man and turned to Brie and Jordan. “We’re ready. Would you follow me, please?”
They were led into a dark room behind two-way glass. Six men came in, all approximately in their mid-thirties. Brie, Jordan, and Carnes stood there, looking at them. Brie wondered who they were or if any of them but one were actually criminals. Suspected criminals, she corrected herself.
The detective was looking at her intently, but she shook her head. “I’m sorry. They look like what I see every day at the university.” She shut her eyes and willed her mind back to the shooting, one more time. The sequence began to play once again, that moment. She closed her eyes. “All I remember is what Niki said to me. She told me to put the glasses down. I heard a noise and asked her if it was the waves. The dirt bike was suddenly there. I could smell the exhaust and then, gunshots. There was a flash of red in that direction.”
“A flash of red?” Carnes was alert. “You’ve never said that before.”
“I haven’t?” She couldn’t remember. “There were birds, seagulls I think, after the noise.” She opened her eyes and turned back to the glass. “Could it have been blood?”
The detective cleared his throat. “No. I don’t think so, Ms. O’Malley. I remember the scene clearly and…no. The shots came from behind.” In the darkness of the room, Jordan put a hand on Brie’s shoulder.
“I don’t recognize any of them.”
The detective visibly sagged. “All right, that’s enough. Thank you, Ms. O’Malley.” He opened the door. “Let me take you ladies out.”
They hurried across the parking lot in the rain to the car. Wisps of ground fog sprang up as the day began to end and the temperature dropped.
Jordan started the car. “Let’s get the kids and go for pizza, how about it?”
Brie stared out of the window, still shaking.
Jordan reached into the backseat. “You’re shivering. Here, put this on.” She helped her into the fleece jacket.
Brie turned the collar up on the jacket. It smelled like Jordan. “Do you realize they’re never going to solve this? And even if they do, it won’t bring Niki back…or un-shoot me. I hate this.” She gritted her teeth. “But still…he’s only doing his job. I was too rude.”
Jordan stared out the windshield. “Have you been at this precinct before?” she asked as she pulled away from the police station.
“Thomas Teller and I were here, after I was released from the hospital. I gave a statement before Niki died, but they wanted more.”
“More?”
“I was not in any shape in the hospital to give much of a statement.”
“That’s right,” Jordan said. “You said you and Niki were in the same room.”
Brie nodded. “I made the decision to stop the machines based on what the doctors told us. They didn’t give me a shred of hope, but even as out of it as I was, I knew she wasn’t alive. Thomas could have made the decision but I didn’t want him to carry that the rest of his life. He and Niki were close.”
Jordan made a left turn onto a quiet street. “That took courage.”
“No,” Brie said as they pulled into John Kelly’s driveway. “It took love.”
*
After dinner, they drove home through the rain. The kids were unusually quiet.
Jordan grinned across the car at Brie. “Food coma.”
The pizza and laughter with the kids had brightened Brie’s mood and she dashed through the rain toward her front door. Jordan ran after her.
“I forgot the movie the kids were watching. Also, I saw a book about wood finishing in Niki’s office. Is there a chance I could borrow it?”
“Sure, as long as you’ll let me troll through Pete’s books,” Brie answered as they walked to Niki’s office.
“Thanks for coming over with my wallet,” Jordan said. “Are you all right? Would you like us to stay for a while?”
“No, but thanks.” Brie said. She turned to give Jordan a light hug but Jordan moved first, holding her hard. The arms felt warm and strong, too good to move. Brie pushed her face into Jordan’s hair and inhaled the scent of rain, spicy shampoo, and fresh air.
“I’ll call you tomorrow night.”
“I have class. Call me after nine thirty.” Brie waited at the door as Jordan ran to her car. “Thanks for the flowers,” she called after her and Jordan waved.
As Jordan drove away, Brie realized she was still wearing her jacket. “Wait,” she called but it was too late. She
closed the door and locked it. Coffee sounded good. She started a pot and then hung Jordan’s jacket in her bedroom closet, between her clothes and Niki’s.
There was a light on in Niki’s office and she stepped in to turn it off. The cabinet door under the sound system was ajar and Brie saw something inside. Three letter-sized corrugated boxes were side by side. Brie immediately went to her knees. She had asked Niki to get them from storage that day, their anniversary. They were the letters, the family’s correspondence that provided the basis for her fiction.
“I have no mind left,” she said. She touched the fragile papers lovingly. She knew exactly what was there because she had packed them. Why can I remember that I asked Niki to get these boxes that day but not the shooting? She gathered the boxes and carried them into her office.
Brie turned her computer on and immediately went to her book file. She typed some notes to herself, based on the afternoon at the police station. All the computers and technology in the world hadn’t changed a thing. Crime still won.
The smell of coffee drifted into her office and she got up to go to the kitchen. She hated this underlying anger she carried right now. And the hopelessness that hung in its shadow.
*
The wind practically took the door out of Jordan’s hand as they entered Patrick’s the following Tuesday night. They were early, and George came out and sat with them before the dinner rush began.
“You look better. You’ve gained some weight,” he said, smiling at Brie. “Nice outfit.”
Brie was all business in a charcoal suit with a faint lavender pinstripe and lavender blouse to match. “You look pretty good yourself,” she said, bumping him with her shoulder.
“Why the serious clothes?” Jordan asked and leaned in, examining the small gold necklace that glimmered in the hollow of Brie’s throat.
Collision Course Page 14