The Girl in the Moss

by Loreth Anne White

  Yeah, maybe this was better than the alternative. For now.

  CHAPTER 50

  FRIDAY, MARCH 1

  Angie sat at her desk in her apartment, a hot mug of coffee at her side as she went through files for the new case she was working. Things were going well with Brixton and Coastal Investigations. He’d extended his contractual arrangement with her. He’d pretty much tripped over his feet to do so after the positive results from the Moss Girl case, as he called it, and the extensive media coverage that had flowed out of it. When Brixton had seen all the headlines, he’d seen fresh business. Angie was confident she’d have her full license before long and then her own firm. But for now she was content. She was getting the kind of cases that fired her engine.

  The cell on her desk rang. She snatched it up and answered.

  “Pallorino.”

  “Angie, hey, it’s Claire. I’m in town to visit my gran. You busy today?”

  Angie glanced up, feeling a punch of pleasure at the sound of the young woman’s voice. Outside her windows the sky was blue. Spring was in the air. She’d been so absorbed in her case reports she hadn’t even noticed it was past noon.

  “A woman’s gotta eat,” Angie said with a smile in her voice. “What do you have in mind?” This was the third time Claire Tollet had called to see Angie when she’d come into Victoria to visit with Justice Jilly Monaghan. The old judge and her great-granddaughter were getting to know each other, one small step at a time, and it warmed Angie’s heart. Even while ripping apart one family, Angie had managed to bring this new and disparate family together. It made things seem worthwhile. On her last visit, Claire had told Angie that she’d successfully completed her GSAR, the requisite training to become a full-fledged member of Port Ferris Search and Rescue. She was volunteering with the team now but looking farther afield for a new place to live. She’d said she needed to make a full break. Maybe after time she’d manage to go back and form some sort of truce with Shelley and Garrison. Maybe after the trials, Claire had said. But it would still be a long way to trial for Garrison and his wife, and for Beau and Joey Tollet, and Wallace and Jessie Carmanagh. The forensic ident team was still busy carefully sifting through soil on Axel Tollet’s property and trying to identify the bones they’d found there so far. At least four more victims had been discovered buried on Axel Tollet’s spread, including, as Holgersen had suspected, the remains of a street worker who’d vanished from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside in 2002 and the remains of the female who’d disappeared near Blaine in Washington State in 2009 after her car had broken down on the highway. The other two bodies were yet to be identified. There was a feeling there might be more unearthed yet.

  “How about meeting at Fisherman’s Wharf?” Claire said. “It’s such a nice day, and”—she paused—“this time I have someone I want you to meet.”

  “Who?” Angie said, her interest immediately piqued.

  “You’ll see. One hour?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  Angie shut down her work, grabbed her jacket, and headed to the elevator. When she reached the lobby of her apartment building and saw the fresh green leaves budding on the branches outside, the sun sparkling on the waters of the Gorge, she decided to walk.

  By the time she reached Fisherman’s Wharf and was making her way down the gangway to the docks, she was famished, and Claire was already there waiting. Angie saw her immediately, sitting in a red jacket at a picnic table near the water’s edge, her long black hair shining in the sun, her back to Angie. But there was no one else with her.

  Angie paused, wondering if the person she was supposed to meet had bailed.

  “Hey,” Angie said as she approached the table.

  Claire turned and grinned broadly. Angie blinked in surprise. Tucked down the front of Claire’s jacket was little hairy black face with liquid eyes. A Labrador pup with a red collar.

  Angie stilled, a wave of emotions crashing through her as she stared at the dog.

  Claire came to her feet. “Angie, meet Echo,” she said. “My new search-and-rescue-pup-in-training.”

  Goose bumps washed over Angie’s skin at the expression of sheer love and pleasure in Claire Tollet’s green eyes, and for a moment words eluded her.

  “Echo’s my second chance,” Claire said. “We’re going to move north, to Smithers on the mainland, where we’ll train in both tracking and air scenting—I’ve been offered a position on the SAR team up there.” As Claire spoke, she unzipped her jacket and took the fat little hairball out. She handed the pup to Angie.

  Echo was warm. And soft. And tubby, and had too much skin for her body and smelled just like puppies should smell. She squiggled in Angie’s arms, trying to lick her face all over. Angie laughed with unabashed pleasure.

  As Claire took Echo from Angie and set the pup down on the dock, she said, “Echo and I are going to start a new chapter.” She held Angie’s eyes for a beat. “We’re going to find the missing. We’re going to follow our dream.”

  And Angie knew Claire was thinking of the words she’d spoken on the Port Ferris pier.

  You need to hold on to that dream of yours. The SAR, the tracking. Finding the missing. You can help others find closure. In doing so you will find yourself.

  Angie couldn’t begin to articulate what this meant to her—that she’d made some difference, had some impact on this woman’s life. It made it all worthwhile. It fired her to keep going, follow her own dream, her own new chapter.

  Angie and Claire bought fish tacos from one of the stalls and sat in the sun eating their lunch while Echo played on her leash at their feet and gulls wheeled in the clean sea air.

  “How’s Maddocks?” Claire asked as she chewed.

  “Good. Really good. We put in an offer on a place.”

  “What? Seriously? Where?”

  “James Bay. Just up the road from here. It’s got a little garden.” Angie smiled. “Like I’d know what to do with that.”

  Claire laughed. “You’ll learn. Start with herbs. Can’t go too far wrong with a pot of parsley.”

  “You’d be surprised, given what I know about plants. Maddocks is keen, though.”

  They chatted awhile about Angie’s work, about turning the schooner into an office down the road, about Ginny and Jack-O and Holgersen. And about how Claire was getting on with Jilly Monaghan.

  “She’s an interesting one,” Claire said. “Crusty. But I like her.” She reached for her drink.

  “I like her, too,” Angie said. “She’s a strong woman. I’m glad she got to know you, Claire.”

  Claire nodded, took a sip from her cup. “Me too. What’s happening with Eden Hart?”

  “She’s being charged for attempted murder,” Angie said. “She was fourteen at the time, but the prosecutor is seeking an adult sentence, given the nature of the offense.”

  “What about the investigation into the drowning of her little brother and her husband’s ex?”

  “Ongoing. No proof so far from what I understand. They might never be able to convict her of those.”

  “She won’t talk? I mean, in exchange for lesser sentencing or something?”

  Angie shook her head and popped the last of her taco into her mouth. She chewed and wiped her lips with a paper napkin. “I think silence is Dr. Eden Hart’s weapon now. It’s her means of maintaining some kind of control. But part of me thinks she will talk one day, especially after doing time for a while. She has a pathological need to be the center of attention, and I heard via the grapevine that she’s already made tentative contact with Dr. Reinhold Grablowski.”

  “The true crime writer? The forensic shrink who did the book on you?”

  Angie nodded. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Dr. Hart is vying with me for true crime attention now. It’s in her nature, this kind of game. I suspect we haven’t heard the end of Dr. Hart, not by a long shot.”

  Once they’d finished their lunch, Claire, Echo, and Angie made their way back up to the parking lot where Claire’s c
ar was parked. Claire put Echo into her doggie crate in the back, and she turned to Angie.

  “I want to say goodbye, for now.”

  “When are you leaving?”

  “We drive up to Smithers tomorrow.”

  “You’ll come down for the wedding?”

  “Of course. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Neither would Jilly.” Claire reached forward and gave Angie a hug. Angie tensed, a knee-jerk reaction to unanticipated physical closeness, but she forced herself to relax, and she hugged Claire back tightly.

  Claire looked directly into Angie’s eyes and said, “Thank you. For everything.”

  Angie swallowed. Her eyes pricked. She nodded, suddenly unable to speak. But Claire’s words made her world feel right. They gave meaning to what she did for a living now. Angie felt as though she was finally on her true track, becoming the person she was meant to be.

  Echo might be Claire’s new chapter. This was hers.

  THE WEDDING

  SATURDAY, APRIL 27

  The heavy cathedral doors opened, exposing Angie in her bridal gown, her arm hooked into the crook of her father’s. Her dad beamed from ear to ear with pride, and she could feel him shaking slightly from nerves. Or was that her?

  The strains of the processional began inside the ancient cathedral. Spring sunlight filtered down through stained-glass windows up high, painting a soft rainbow of color over the wedding guests in the old wooden pews. At the far end of the aisle—in front of the altar, next to Father Simon in his white robe—stood Maddocks in full police uniform.

  The sight of her man dressed like that punched Angie hard in the stomach and clean stole her breath.

  “Let’s do this,” her father whispered.

  Angie stepped into the church with her dad. As they came forward, the music swelled, rising to the steeples and echoing off the old stone walls. The choice of music was Ginny’s, a haunting arrangement Ginn had wanted to sing solo in the idioglossia in which it had been written—an idiosyncratic language invented and spoken by only one person or by very few. A private language. Like the “twin-speak” Angie had once shared with her little sister, Mila.

  “It’s beautiful, spiritual, lyrical, and romantic,” Ginny had said. “And it sounds like ancient Latin. It would be a tribute to Mila, your other half, Angie, so your twin can be with you in spirit, too.”

  Angie did feel that Mila was here with her now. That little ghost girl in pink who’d haunted her from within the deeply buried memories of her childhood, until Angie had dug out the truth, found Mila’s bones, and laid her properly to rest along with their mother. In much the same way Jilly Monaghan and Claire Tollet had been able to do with Jasmine Gulati’s bones.

  Beside Maddocks and Father Simon stood the best man, Kjel Holgersen. In Holgersen’s hand was a red lead. At the other end of the lead sat three-legged Jack-O, sporting a red-and-white polka-dot bow tie.

  Angie’s legs turned to rubber at the sight of them all. It swelled her heart to near bursting and made her falter in step. She could enter a crime scene with an armed gunman, she could fight off an attacker with a knife, she could deliver a solid Muay Thai kick, but this? She didn’t know how to do this. She didn’t know if she could make it all the way down that aisle in one piece. She clutched more tightly to her father’s arm, and he said gently, “Come on, Ange. We can do this.”

  We.

  She drew in a deep breath and continued forward slowly, step by step, keeping pace with the music.

  Ginny separated herself from the choir. She looked resplendent in a shimmering golden dress. She began to sing, her solo voice rising in crescendo, reaching to the rafters in that mysterious, haunting language. Like an angel communicating directly to the heavens in the name of all that was love. Angie felt tears prick her eyes. She saw tears glistening in the eyes of all the guests as she passed them.

  It amazed her that so many had come. Her old colleagues from the MVPD took up several pews. They stood proud in a sea of neatly pressed black uniforms. With them was pathologist Barb O’Hagan, who’d even donned a frock. Beside Barb was city coroner Charlie Alphonse in his best suit and tie. On the other side of the aisle stood Jock Brixton with Daniel Mayang and a bunch of staff from Coastal Investigations. She was one of them now.

  Step by slow step, Angie continued down the aisle toward the man she loved. The man who’d shown her how to be unafraid. How to trust. How to love herself. Watched by these people who now made up her tribe, people who’d helped shape the past year of her life as she’d journeyed into her tumultuous past and come out with a future.

  Her therapist and old mentor, Dr. Alex Strauss, was there, too. And so was murder victim Gracie Drummond’s mother.

  In the second pew from the front, being supported by Claire Tollet on one side and Gudrun Reimer on the other, was Claire’s great-grandmother, Justice Jilly Monaghan. Claire was going to be okay. Angie believed that wholly now. She’d be okay because she was helping others.

  Miriam Pallorino was seated next to the front pew in her wheelchair, dressed in mother-of-the-bride lilac. She was beaming, seemingly happy to be back in her beloved and familiar Catholic church, reembracing the faith that had once been so deeply rooted in her psyche.

  Maddocks smiled as Angie and her dad reached them. It was a deep and pure smile, and it lit his dark-blue eyes, filling them with love, appreciation, and pride. That look of pride meant everything to Angie.

  Her father took her hand and placed it into the strong hand of her homicide detective. Her Sergeant James Maddocks.

  The music died, and the church fell silent.

  Father Simon solemnly joined them in holy matrimony. They exchanged their vows. Then Father Simon said, “You may now kiss the bride.”

  As Maddocks kissed Angie on the lips, the old pipe organ started up with the strains of “Ave Maria.” Joseph Pallorino wheeled his wife over to the choir and handed her a mike. Miriam took it with a trembling hand and began to sing the hymn in a startlingly clear mezzo-soprano, the choir joining her, their voices rising to the steeples of the ancient building, rippling a chill over Angie’s skin.

  Maddocks whispered in her ear, “Remember, go easy on the death-do-us-part bit.”

  Angie laughed, emotion filling her soul as she listened to the hymn that had once brought her such strange and dark memories but would now always be remembered for this—a joyous occasion. A promise of a future.

  They exited the church and stepped into yellow sunlight. The cathedral bells started to clang, their peal ricocheting up and down the city streets as cherry petals blew from trees in the soft sea breeze.

  Uniformed officers lined the stone stairs. Baskets were handed out, and fistfuls of petals were cast into the air, settling like spring snow on Angie and Maddocks and falling in a pink-and-white carpet on the pavement outside the church.

  There was a gaggle of journalists out on the street. Cameras flashed. But this time the headlines would tell of a happy-for-now for an ex-cop and her clan who’d brought home alive one of the city’s daughter’s—Annelise Janssen.

  Maddocks took Angie’s hand. The light in her man’s eyes as he looked into hers said it all. Love.

  Maybe it wasn’t just truth. Maybe at the heart of it all, at the heart of all that was human, even in the dark, was love.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo © 2013 Paul Beswetherick

  Loreth Anne White is an award-winning, bestselling author of romantic suspense, thrillers, and mysteries, including The Drowned Girls and The Lullaby Girl, the first two books in the Angie Pallorino series. Winner of the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mainstream Mystery/Suspense, Loreth is also a three-time RITA finalist, plus a recipient of the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award, the National Readers’ Choice Award, the Romantic Crown for Best Romantic Suspense and Best Book Overall, and a Booksellers’ Best finalist. A former journalist who has worked in both South Africa and Canada, she now resides in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest with her fa
mily. When not writing, she skis, bikes, and hikes the trails with her dog, doing her best to avoid the bears (albeit unsuccessfully). Learn more at www.lorethannewhite.com.