by Kelly Irvin
“Slow down, Peter. You woke me up out of a dead sleep.” Rick hazarded a glance at Chuy Lara, who stood inside the bedroom door, his beefy arms resting on his solid chest. He looked cheerful. He just busted up a perfectly good door to get into Rick’s condo. “What’s going on? I was at the fund-raiser until five a.m.” He glanced at the clock again. “I barely got two hours of sleep.”
“I don’t care if you were meeting with the president of the United States. Next time I call, answer the phone. I shouldn’t have to send a guy over to wake you up. Get your butt out of bed and get over to the Fischer house.”
Nina.
“What happened? Is Nina okay?”
“You need to be more concerned about her father.”
“What happened to the Judge?” It was always a capital J in Rick’s head. He wouldn’t mind being Judge Zavala someday. A Supreme Court Judge if a future senatorial run didn’t work out. “Is he hurt?”
“He’s dead, you idiot. Nina’s your girlfriend. You’ve got a perfect reason to stick your nose in the cop’s business. My sources tell me Matt King caught this case. I don’t do criminal, but my friends who do say he’s a major pain in the butt.”
Rick stood. His stomach lurched. One too many shots of tequila chased by icy cold Modelo Negra. Woozy. The smell of stale beer and cigarette smoke—not his, he never touched tobacco—wafted from his white wife-beater undershirt. Nina was sensitive to smells, especially ones that reminded her of the time before she came to San Antonio. In other words, of her mother.
The heavy metal drummer in his head started his solo. “I have to grab a shower.”
“Make it quick. Get there before your girlfriend is transported downtown or you’re fired. No more quick trip to the top for you.”
“I—”
Peter disconnected.
Rick stumbled toward the closet. He tripped over a pair of seven-hundred-dollar Hugo Boss Italian calfskin oxfords. One was stained with something greasy. He swore.
Chuy chuckled and leaned against the wall. “Need some help?”
“You want to wash my back?”
The big man straightened. “I ain’t like that.”
“Then make yourself useful and brew us both some coffee. The Keurig is on the counter. Can you handle that?”
“I prefer an espresso, but I can live with that. You got skim milk?”
“No. Live with it. And while you’re at it, find a way to close that door and make it stay closed. I have a kick-butt surround-sound stereo system and an outrageously expensive Mac computer setup. I’d like to keep it.”
“Yah-yah-yah. Hear me playing the world’s smallest violin for you, homie?”
Where did Peter get this guy? Rick raced into the bathroom. He’d have to live with it too. His future was on the line.
Not to mention that of the woman who was his ticket to a certain social group in San Antonio. One he would very much like to be the mother of his future children.
And besides, he loved Nina. He planned to have his cake and eat it too. No one—not Chuy and not Peter and not some dumb, poor photographer—would get in his way.
4
Foster kids learned to get good at waiting. This was no different. Nina tucked her hands under her arms to warm them and concentrated on breathing in and out. Time stretched and snapped. She longed for a fire in the mammoth stone fireplace that filled one wall of the living room. Anything to still the shaking of her hands.
So she had been the only one in the house when Dad died. How could she have not heard the gunshots? Was the darkroom that far away?
It didn’t have to be an intruder. It could’ve been someone Dad knew. Someone he let in. But at three in the morning? And why did the shooter leave the weapon? Why not dispose of it? To make her appear guiltier? Why?
The shaking increased until her body might vibrate from the chair. Breathe. Breathe. In and out. In and out. “One, three, eight, two, five, ten. One, three, eight, two, five, ten. One, three, eight, two, five, ten.”
Counting aloud out of order helped stave off the panic attack. She concentrated on the numbers. Remembering the order. Not the horror. Not the panic. She couldn’t afford a full-blown attack. Not now.
“Breathe in, one, two, three, four. Hold, one, two, three, four. Out, one, two, three, four. Again.” Doctor Wallace’s kind voice echoed in her head as it had been doing for the past sixteen years. Her therapist deserved a medal. Or to be reported to whatever board certified her as a psychologist.
Aaron would tell her to pray, but no words came that didn’t start with how could you and end with why.
Geoffrey Fischer had been a believer. He went to church every Sunday. But so did many people for many reasons. It was easier, somehow, for Jan to believe. As a Christian she saw nothing strange about trusting a God everyone called Father. Two different fathers had abandoned them. Fathers left. How could she be sure a God people called Abba Father wouldn’t abandon her too?
Gone. Gone. Gone.
Detective King, his raincoat absent, returned, shed a pair of rubber gloves, and stuck them in his pants pocket. He towered over her, his lean body tense, his expression thoughtful.
“Miss Fischer—”
“Nina.”
“Nina, I’m sorry for your loss.”
Better late than never. Not that she needed empty platitudes from anyone. She’d also learned that adults said they were sorry as if it made a difference in what happened next. It never did.
She needed her camera. She needed that lens between her and King. That buffer. If she could observe him as a subject, she could keep the tears and the disbelief at bay. He had high, sculpted cheekbones and a classical-shaped nose over full lips. His face clamored to be photographed. He had a small scar on his chin and another over his eyebrow. Tiny flaws that kept him from having a pretty-boy look that didn’t go with his demeanor. All cop.
His accent said he came from that part of East Texas that really should’ve been Louisiana, with its gumbo and hunting and backwoods mentality. Her mental camera pictured him outside, on a pontoon in a lake. Or a camouflage deer blind deep in the piney woods. Someplace rustic and earthy with mosquitoes and chiggers.
“Nina? Is that short for something?”
She started. Lack of sleep and the sense that her life had taken a sudden, irrevocable left turn made it hard to keep her mind on the subject at hand. It was preferable to focus on the way the enormous gray clouds scudding outside the bay window behind him filtered weak, patchy sunlight that came and went, casting shadows on his face. “No. My mother was a blues fan. You know, Nina Simone.”
“I’m more of a country music fan. Like Miranda Lambert.” He smiled. Good teeth. “Or Carrie Underwood. Or Toby Keith, if I’m in the mood for attitude.”
Which quite likely was often. She shrugged and waited.
“Let’s get started. You’re tired. You’ve been up all night. You’ve been through something traumatic.”
Something traumatic. He didn’t say she’d lost a loved one or discovered the body of a loved one. He hadn’t decided yet what that something was. Or her role in it. “Yes, I have. Why is your partner temporary?”
“What? Oh, my real partner is out on workers’ comp. He got shot.”
“Because of you?”
“No, not because of me.” His mocking tone didn’t match his puppy-dog eyes. “I’m a good detective, maybe even an excellent one, as you’re about to find out. So, did you call someone?”
“My mother is out of state at a conference. I called her agent, who’s there too. He’ll break the news. I thought it was better that it be done by someone in person—”
“Does the agent have a name?”
“Conrad Strobel. Why?”
King was busy writing in his notebook. He glanced up. “How long has he represented your mother?”
“Her entire career. Twenty years at least.” Nina got it. Everything now—and everyone—could lead to a motive for murder. “He’s a nice man with an excell
ent reputation. He has a dozen clients whose books are bestsellers.”
“But he takes care of booking flights for your mother and holding her hand in times like these?”
“Like I said, he’s a nice man. He’s taken on more of a role of logistical support in recent years. He attends these conferences anyway to hear pitches from potential clients, so he holds her hand while he’s there. Figuratively, of course.”
“Of course. Umm-hmm. We’ll come back to him later. So your mother wouldn’t be the one to—?”
“Hold my hand?” She’d learned to stand on her own two feet a long time ago. “I’m a big girl. My sister is camping with her daughter. I don’t want to tell her long distance. I texted my brother, asking him to call me before your colleague took my phone. I don’t know if he answered.”
His gaze went to her hands still gripped in her lap. Her knuckles were white. She loosened the tension in her fingers. His gaze returned to her face. “No husband or boyfriend?”
The jury was still out on that question. Rick thought he was her boyfriend. She’d texted him before they took her phone. Who knew if he replied? Most likely he turned it off to get his beauty sleep after the party that was to have lasted all night. “I’ve texted a friend.”
“What about your sister’s husband? Is he in the picture?”
“Army. He’s deployed in Afghanistan.”
“And the photographer out there . . . what’s his name? McClure?”
“He’s a good friend.”
“In his head it’s more than that.”
“That’s between him and me.” As their friendship had grown over the years, the curious space between friendship and something more had shrunk to a minuscule line. More than once she’d wavered, longing to stick her toe over that imaginary line. She always shrank back, unwilling to risk a friendship that would be lost if the relationship didn’t work out. Sometimes she caught him staring at her with this strange expression. She’d ask him what was wrong, and he’d grin and tell her a stupid joke or reel off an inane piece of trivia that made her laugh. “He’s special to me.”
King’s dark eyebrows rose and fell, but nothing changed in his neutral expression. He eased into a matching paisley chair across from the love seat and pushed back the ottoman to make room for his long legs. “Let’s take it from the top. What’s your relationship to the deceased?”
“The deceased has a name.” Nina pried her hands apart and heaved a breath. Easy. Easy. “It’s Geoffrey Fischer.”
“I know.” His tone softened. “I really am sorry for your loss. Sometimes it’s easier to put some distance—”
“Easier for whom? The man was the only father I’ve ever known—”
“He’s not your actual father, your biological father?”
He jumped on the implication quickly. Detective Matt King was sharp, which explained how he’d made detective. He couldn’t be more than thirty. Not much older than herself. He looked older in the eyes, just as she surely did.
“Not my biological father.”
“You’re adopted?”
“Yes. Geoffrey and Grace Fischer are my biological aunt and uncle.” He didn’t need to know any more. The route she and her sister had taken to living in this house with Geoffrey and Grace was not germane to his death. She refused to drag it all up for some stranger. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
“When it comes to homicide, everything is my business.” King leaned back in the chair and laid his leg over his knee as if they were chatting about the weather. “Let’s talk about what happened.”
“I already told Detective Carter. In detail.”
“Now tell me.”
Her throat closed. Air would not come. No. Not now. Not in front of him. She clenched her jaw and willed herself to breathe. Think of Grace. She’ll be home soon. She’ll need help. In and out. In and out.
Theirs had never been a typical mother-daughter relationship. Her adopted mother lived in a world of fictional characters of her own making. Which was handy in times of crisis—for her mother. Nina closed her eyes and breathed, in and out, in and out, fortifying herself with the oxygen filling her lungs.
“Miss Fischer. Nina?”
“What happened is I found my father in his study.” She swallowed bile that burned the back of her throat. Images crowded her. The brown slipper sticking out behind the desk. Peanuts’s worried whine. The blood on his pajama top and her hands. “Dead.”
“What made you go into the study?”
She explained the cats’ strange behavior and the trip to the kitchen to make something to eat at three in the morning. At the mention of her name, Daffy rose, stretched an unbelievable distance, and then proceeded to wind herself around the detective’s rain-spattered black dress shoes. Such a traitor.
He leaned over and scooped her up. The cat’s purr could be heard in the next county.
“You like cats?”
He shrugged and settled Daffy into the corner of the chair instead of on his lap. “They like me.”
King began by asking all the usual questions about family and pets. Only Nina’s cobbled-together family was different. He paused and fiddled with his pen when she got to Jan and Brooklyn.
“You have a sister who lives here?”
“Yes, Jan, when she’s not deployed. It’s Janis, actually.” When he didn’t react, Nina shook her head. “As in Janis Joplin. Blues queen? From your part of the country?”
His forehead wrinkled. “How’d you know?”
“Your accent.”
“There’s an alarm system. Why wasn’t it on?”
“My dad had a slew of guns in the house. We only turned the alarm system on when we all left the house.”
“Not at night, when you’re here.”
“No.”
“Possessions more important than people?”
“Again, he had guns. He didn’t think it was necessary. Like most Texans, he intended to defend his own property.”
“You’re a Texan. Do you know how to use a gun?”
“I’m not a Texan. Not by birth. And no, I don’t.”
“The alarm system wasn’t on.”
“No. And it wouldn’t have mattered. It’s not monitored.”
“Why not?”
“Because my dad didn’t want to pay for it. He was tight with money.”
That was an understatement. Even after he’d started driving a Prius hybrid, he still checked gas prices online and scrambled to line up for cheap gas sales between competing convenience stores. When they made fun of it, he simply noted how much they would appreciate his frugal nature when they received their inheritance.
It didn’t seem humorous now.
“Really?” King raised his eyebrows and glanced around the room. “It doesn’t appear that way.”
“Grace did the decorating. With her own money.”
His piercing gaze returned to her face. “You call your mother Grace?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Where were you?”
His sudden change of subject threw her for a second. No, it wasn’t a change of subject. He didn’t care about the other stuff. Just her. She was the only one in the house.
“Where was I?”
“Before you heard him call your name.”
Beginning to feel a certain irritation at the repetition designed to catch her in a lie, she chewed the inside of her lip, trying to keep both feet on that thin tightrope of emotional balance. “In the kitchen.”
“And before that?”
“Working in my darkroom.”
“Where is that?”
She sighed and stood. Time to stretch her legs. “On the third floor. It’s really the attic, but we call it the third floor.”
“For how long?”
She moved to the bay window where huge drops of rain slid down the glass, giving the outside world a blurred, teary-eyed look. “I’d been there most of the day and night.”
“Let’s just talk about the ev
ening. You never came out of the darkroom for anything? To eat? To go to the bathroom?”
She touched a hand to the glass. It felt solid under her fingers. The rain had cooled it. She leaned her warm forehead against it, enjoying a tiny bit of relief from the feverish sense of disbelief and unreality. “Do you want a blow-by-blow or just the high points?”
“I’m trying to understand how a man could be killed and you not hear or see anything.”
“I told you I was in my darkroom working.”
“Is it soundproof?”
“No, but it’s on the third floor.” She let her mind run through the events of the previous evening. “And I like to play music while I work.”
“A little classical background music?”
His disdain dripped from the words.
“Classic rock, more likely.” She closed her eyes, running through the tunes in her head. Songs from her mother’s era, not her own. “Van Halen, Eric Clapton, Bruce Springsteen, Bryan Adams. ‘Summer of ’69.’ I turned the radio down to take a couple of phone calls, but up until that point, the darkroom was rocking.”
“Who called you at three in the morning?”
“A lot of people. I’m a night owl. I work at night.”
“Be more specific, please.”
“Aaron called about a video we’re working on for our exhibit. Rick Zavala called.”
“Rick Zavala, the attorney? What’s your relationship with him?”
Complicated. Unclear. Long-standing. Unsettled. “He’s a family friend.”
“With whom you have conversations at three in the morning?”
“I’ve known him since I was nine.”
“Did he pull on your pigtails and pass you notes?”
Rick had felt familiar when everything about her big room, nice bed, clean sheets, and huge plates of food had seemed surreal. “No. We didn’t attend the same schools. He was around when I needed a friend.”