“I got it directly from parties involved. Parties I trust.”
Her father had been just some guy her mother had fucked. She had always told Alex she didn’t know who he was; Alex had preferred to believe she’d been lying.
It hurt so bad she could hardly breathe. Everything she had ever imagined about her father and the past her mother kept hidden had just been shot to hell.
She lashed out at Reed. “That makes me, what? The whore’s kid? Not even conceived in love?”
“What she did or was has nothing to do with you.”
“What a joke my coming back must be to them all. I can imagine what they’re saying. How they’re snickering behind my back.”
“Why would they?” He tried to take her into his arms.
She fought against him. “No. No! Don’t touch me.”
Her stomach rushed to her throat and she turned and ran for the bathroom. She made it just in time, heaving over the commode, heaving until she was empty. And broken. The way she felt inside.
“I’m sorry, Alex,” Reed said softly from the doorway.
She flushed the toilet and stood. “Leave me alone.”
“Can’t do it.”
“Then hand me the mouthwash. It’s in the medicine cabinet.” He did and she rinsed her mouth and spit once, then again. “You don’t have to worry I’m going to freak out or something. I’m not.”
“I wasn’t worried. Sit.”
She flipped down the commode lid and did as he asked. He wet a washcloth and handed it to her. “Hold that on the back of your neck. You’ll feel better.”
She did as he suggested. “This is just great,” she said. “Simply fucking wonderful.”
“Feel better?”
“Than what?” She handed him the washcloth. “You’re calling my mother a whore. And a… my God, a child molester?”
“Technically, since the boys were all older than fourteen, it’s considered statutory rape or carnal knowledge of a juvenile.”
“I feel so much better now.”
“I’m sorry.”
She stood. “If you say you’re sorry one more time, I swear to God, I’m going to lose it.”
He let that pass. She stalked out of the bathroom and to the kitchen. An open cabernet sat on the counter. She poured herself a glass. “Want one?” she asked.
“I’d rather have a beer.”
“Sure. Help yourself.” She sipped the wine and made a face at the taste.
“I was going to warn you about mixing a good red and mouthwash, but figured you’d have tried it anyway.”
He was right, she would have. Stubbornly, she took another sip. This time, the taste was more tolerable. She looked at him. “Who are they? The young men my mother… initiated?”
“Does it matter?”
“To me, yes.” When he didn’t respond, she pursed her lips in thought. “Family friends, you said. As young as fifteen. Let me guess. Your brother Joe. Clark Sommer. The rest shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.” She narrowed her eyes. “The guy who was murdered. What was his name?”
“Tom Schwann.”
“Right. Him.” She thought of what Rachel had said, that Reed had more of a reason to take her ring than just Max’s suicide.
“He had the tattoo that matched my mom’s ring. Of course. That’s what got you asking questions.”
She nodded to herself, confirming her own thoughts. “Your questions either jostled someone’s memory or upset an applecart or two and… voilà, Patsy Sommer, defiler of young men, is exposed.”
“Alex-”
“Who’d you hear it from?” She tapped the stem of her wineglass, considering the options. “Your dad, I’ll bet. Am I right?”
She saw from his expression that she was and went on. “Too bad you were only ten. You missed out on all the fun.”
“Stop it, Alex.”
“But that’s not quite true. You had a piece of the whore’s daughter, so in a way-”
“Stop it,” he said again. He crossed to her, took the wineglass from her hand, then caught her by the shoulders. “Don’t do this.”
“Is it in the genes, then? Is that why I-” Sudden tears flooded her eyes. Dammit, she didn’t want to cry! She preferred anger or even bitterness.
But the tears spilled over anyway. And he caught them with his fingertips, then lips. Kissing her, he dragged her to his chest and into his arms.
He carried her to the bedroom and there, in a frenzy that obliterated grief and transformed anger to passion, they made love.
Afterward, he didn’t release her, instead held her tightly in his arms. She pressed her face to his damp chest. His heart thundered beneath her cheek and she pressed closer.
She thought of all the men she had been with, the therapy sessions she’d had, trying to figure out why. The answers had varied: she’d been looking for love, for Daddy, to rewrite history, as a way to complete or validate herself.
Did it all come down to genetics? Was she just like her mother?
Fear licked at her and she shuddered. Did the same future await her?
Reed stirred; he cocked his head to see her face. “Don’t like what you’re thinking,” he murmured.
“So, now you’re both cop and mind reader?”
She said it lightly, but he didn’t bite. Instead, he drew her up so they were nose-to-nose. “You’re not like your mother.”
She frowned. “I’m here with you, aren’t I?”
“I’m not young or uninitiated. And you didn’t seduce me.”
It hurt to look at him; she shifted her gaze and stared blankly at the wall. “It hurts,” she said finally, softly.
“I know.” He kissed her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
She turned to meet his eyes. “Don’t say that anymore, okay? I’m tired of people telling me that. I’ve heard it so many times. Not just since Mom’s death, but all my life.”
“What would you rather hear?”
She searched his gaze. “No clue. I just know pity’s not cutting it.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Friday, March 12
7:04 A.M.
Sunlight spilled across the bed. Alex opened her eyes. It all came crashing back. Reed. The night before. The things he had said about her mother. The way they had hurt. Their desperate lovemaking.
She moaned.
“Morning, sleepyhead.”
Alex shifted her gaze. Reed stood at the door to the bathroom. He wore his jeans and a towel looped around his neck. His hair was wet. “I took a shower, I hope you don’t mind?”
She told him she didn’t, watching as he toweled his hair, then disappeared into the bathroom, emerging a moment later without the towel.
She sat up, pulling the blanket to her chin. “What time is it?”
“Just after seven. I’ve got to hit the road.”
“I’ll make coffee.” She moved to climb out of bed.
“Stay put. I’ll grab a cup on my way.” He crossed to the bed, retrieving his shirt from the floor on the way. He pulled it over his head, then grinned down at her. “The drive’ll be a lot more pleasant imagining you here and naked.”
“It’d be a lot more pleasant here, if you’d call in sick and climb back in bed.”
“Wish I could.”
“Prove it.”
“Is that a challenge?”
She let the blanket slip away, revealing her naked torso. “You tell me.”
He bent and kissed her, softly at first, then deeply. Alex arched up to meet him, rubbing, hungry. Desperate.
She didn’t want to be alone.
He caught her hand and brought it to him. “See?” he murmured against her mouth. “I really do wish I could stay.”
“So, stay.”
He groaned and set her away from him. “Can’t. Sorry.”
“No problem. Your loss.” She tossed aside the covers and climbed naked out of bed. She stretched, then slipped by him on her way to the bathroom. She stopped in the doorway and looked o
ver her shoulder at him. The view was having an obvious effect on him. “Be careful out there, Detective”-she lowered her eyes-“you’ve got a loaded weapon.”
He grinned. “I know what you’re doing, Alex.”
“Really? And what’s that?”
“Putting off the inevitable.”
“The inevitable?”
“Dealing with what I told you last night. About your mother.”
He was right, dammit. Not that she was about to let him know that. “First off, take a little more credit. A girl doesn’t need an excuse to want to have sex with you. Secondly, there’s nothing to deal with.” She tipped up her chin. “Because it’s not true.”
He studied her a long moment. To his credit, she didn’t read pity in his expression. “It all makes sense now, Alex. Her guilt. Her self-hatred. The way she hid the past from you.”
It did make sense. She hated that it did. “You don’t get it. She was my mother. Not perfect. Not even close. But she was mine, the only one I’m ever going to have.”
“Yeah, I get that, Alex. And I’m sorry. But all that doesn’t change what’s true.”
A knot of tears settled in her throat. “Not buying it.”
But she was. She knew it-and so did he, she could tell by his expression.
“Are you going to be okay?”
“I’m fine. You don’t have to worry about me.”
He nodded, started toward the bedroom door, then stopped. “Can I call you later?”
“If you want to.”
He didn’t respond and a moment later she heard the front door snap shut.
Alex used the bathroom, then crawled back into bed. She propped the pillows up behind her, leaned back and stared up at the ceiling. A long, thin crack ran from the room’s far right corner to the center light fixture.
She gazed at the imperfection. How had he known? How had he seen so easily through her? She had wanted him to stay so she wouldn’t be alone with her thoughts. To put off the inevitable, just the way he had said.
No putting it off now, she thought. No distractions. Just her, the things Reed had said about her mother, and the way those things made her feel.
Alex plucked at the blanket. Her mother had seduced her friends’ sons. Seduced? That was too nice a word for what Reed had described. Too soft.
Her mother had fucked them. She had fucked them individually and in a group. She had stolen their innocence. Initiated them into sex in a way that was perverse. Twisted and sick.
And she had lied to everyone: her husband, friends, her own daughter. Alex curved her arms around her middle. She’d been an adulteress. A user and a liar. Morally corrupt.
Tears flooded her eyes and she fought them off, angry. What did that make her? She had asked Reed that question, lashing out in pain. But it was true. Who was her dad? Some guy her mother screwed? A one-night stand? Hell, maybe some pimply-face teenager who hadn’t known any better.
What did that make her? she wondered again. She thought back on her life, on the number of guys she had been with, how for a time she had turned to sex for answers. To everything. Boredom, anger, rebellion, powerlessness.
Is that what her mother had been doing? Looking for answers? Filling up the empty places? Had she finally recognized how self-destructive that behavior was, the way Alex had?
Alex looked down at her hands, feeling helpless and disingenuous. If she’d learned so much, what was she doing sleeping with Reed? They didn’t have a relationship, they barely knew one another. Hell, she’d gone to bed with him when a handshake would have been appropriate.
No wonder he could so easily accept the story about her mother.
Alex realized she was crying and fisted her fingers. Why did her mother even have her? Alex wondered. Why have one baby, then another? It didn’t make sense.
Angry, she swiped at her tears. She wished she hadn’t come here. She wished she had never found the trunk with all its bittersweet mementos, never seen the photograph of her mother beaming as she held Dylan in her arms. Smiling with adoration at her husband. Looking for all the world like the perfectly content wife and mother.
Perfectly content. In love. Adoring of her husband and baby.
She couldn’t have faked that, Alex thought. Even the most accomplished actress couldn’t fake it one hundred percent of the time. Not in candid shots. The camera didn’t lie.
Candid photographs.
Lyla Reed, she remembered. The wine launch party. On the walls of “the trophy room,” as Reed had called it. His mother, offering her the opportunity to thumb through the family photo albums.
Alex wondered if that offer was still good. Acknowledging there was only one way to find out, she climbed out of bed and hurried to dress.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Friday, March 12
8:20 A.M.
Reed made his way through the still smoldering remains of Max Cragan’s cottage. The irony of the situation hadn’t struck him until this moment-he’d left his and Alex’s still smoldering fire to be routed to this one.
The fire had begun sometime after midnight. Though the firefighters had been unable to save the house, they had kept the fire from spreading to neighboring properties. A feat considering the dry conditions and brisk wind.
An accelerant had been used to start the blaze; the fire investigator had officially called it arson and it’d become the Sheriff’s Department’s baby.
Reed frowned. When a home was deliberately torched, it was typically for one of two reasons: insurance fraud or an attempt to hide a crime. Several other motivations cropped up from time to time, like revenge, racial hatred, or pyromania.
So why did somebody torch the old man’s cottage?
Something shiny winked up at him from the blackened debris and he bent and picked it up. He turned it over in his hands, a feat made difficult by the bulky protective gloves he wore. An eyeglass lens.
Tanner had arrived and finished suiting up. The protective gear swallowed her, but without it neither of them would have been able to investigate the scene for hours.
She made her way to his side. “What’s it looking like?” she asked, voice muffled by her respirator.
“Arson investigator found a fuel can in back. Looks to him like that was the point of origin.”
“Any victims?”
He replied that there hadn’t been and held out the lens. “Found this just now.”
She took it. “The old guy wear glasses?”
“Don’t know, though it wouldn’t surprise me.”
“What’re you thinking?”
“That maybe Alex and the old man’s daughter are right. Maybe Cragan didn’t kill himself after all.”
A high, thin wail of grief pierced the morning air. Reed turned and saw Angie Wilson being consoled by a man he didn’t recognize. Her husband, Reed guessed.
He looked back at Tanner. “Do your thing. I’ll catch up with you later.”
He picked his way through the blackened rubble, heading toward the sobbing woman. When he had cleared the scene, he removed his helmet and respirator.
The daughter caught sight of him and broke away from her husband’s grasp. “You!” she cried, stumbling toward him. “Do you believe me now?”
Reed faced her stoically. “I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Wilson.”
“To hell with that! I told you! You wouldn’t listen! Are you listening now? All my father’s things… our family photographs, all his designs… everything I had left of him, gone now!”
The man slipped his arm around her. “Honey,” he said, “calm down. It’s only stuff. Just things.”
“To you!” She struggled free of his arms. “He was my father, I grew up here. All my childhood photographs and my memor-” The words caught on a sob. “Do you believe me now, Detective Reed? My father didn’t kill himself, he was murdered!”
She broke down then. Sobbing against her husband’s chest, obviously heartbroken. The man met Reed’s eyes. In them he saw apology-and cond
emnation.
“I’m Sean, Angie’s husband. Do we know yet, was this accidental or-”
“It was deliberately set. What we don’t know is who did it or why.” He turned his gaze to the woman. “Mrs. Wilson, do you have any idea who might be responsible for this?”
“Whoever killed him. They did this.”
He tried another tack. “Did your father have any enemies?”
“None that I know of. Everybody liked him.” She looked up at her husband. “Right, Sean?”
“Right,” her husband agreed, then looked at him. “Did you ever meet him, Detective?”
“I’m sorry to say I did not.”
“If you had, you’d understand. He was loved by everyone.”
“What about his house. Any idea why someone would want to torch it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Could he have been involved in something illegal?”
The question elicited vehement denials from them both. Reed tried again. “The house’s contents, anything of great value? Perhaps the fire was used to cover up a burglary?”
The two looked at one another in question, then simultaneously replied in the negative.
“No art or jewelry? Rare coins or books?”
“My dad lived on his Social Security, Detective. To do that, he needed our help from time to time.”
“Help we were happy to offer,” her husband added. “He was always there for us, to help with the girls, whatever.”
“You believe strongly he was murdered, yet you say everyone liked him. Somebody torched his house, yet you can’t think of a reason why.”
“Maybe it was just some wacko,” she offered. “Some sick stranger. It happens, right?”
“It does, Mrs. Wilson, but frankly it’s rare. Murder is a crime most often committed by a friend, family member or an acquaintance.”
She started to cry again and pressed her face against her husband’s chest. He wrapped his arms protectively around her. “Tell us what to do, Detective Reed. Anything that might help.”
He wished he had something to offer them, something that would give them a sense of purpose. He had nothing. “If you think of anything later, even if it seems like nothing, call me.”
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