Comes the Dark

by Celia Ashley

  Maris flipped through to the next page. “There’s Grandma. The one on the pony. She died when she was sixty-two. Way too young.” Maris lifted her head. “How did Alva die, Detective? I know it was poison, but how did somebody manage it?”

  Jamie bridged his fingers, wrists flat on the table. “You tell me, Maris.”

  Ignoring him, Maris went back to the album, working her way toward the back. She paused, smiling. “There’s my father. Look how young he looks. Why do you think he was dressed like that?” She flipped to the next page. “Oh my God. It was his wedding day. Look, there’s Mom. Isn’t she beautiful?”

  Maris flicked her eyes in Jamie’s direction to find him stone-faced.

  “Other family members?”

  Maris moved on to the next album. “Here’s Morris. Uncle Morris, my father’s youngest brother. He died at sea before we left Alcina Cove. Never married. Like a lot of men around here, I think he was wed to the ocean. He had a girlfriend, though. On again off again relationship for a while. I don’t think she was good for him. He didn’t seem happy.”

  “Anybody else?”

  Obviously, Jamie held no enjoyment in Maris’s trip down memory lane. His voice was clipped with impatience.

  “Here’s my other uncle. The middle boy, Andrew. He died in an auto accident, and his wife married again a few years later. They had no kids. You see, there were only the two sisters in the older generation. My grandmother, Anne, and her sister, Alva. Anne married and had three sons. Alva never did marry.”

  Maris considered the loneliness of almost a century without male companionship. She didn’t know that was true, however. Alva had been beautiful. She might have had many men in her life, but had chosen not to marry. The only thing Maris knew for certain was there had been none in Maris’s childhood years in Alcina Cove.

  “So the only living blood relative in that immediate line is you.”

  Maris closed the album beneath her hand and placed it on top of the pile with the others. “Correct. Will I be allowed to have these?”

  “No, not…not yet.”

  He’d been about to say something else. Maris had caught the tail end of unspoken words like the snap of a whipping branch in the wind. She waited.

  “I’m going to record what we say here.” He pushed an old-fashioned Dictaphone in her direction so it sat in place between them.

  “Don’t you need to read me my rights, or something?”

  “I’m not arresting you, Maris. I’m only questioning you.”

  “But if you decide to arrest me later, I’ve already blown my right to silence, haven’t I? And you’ve recorded it.”

  He sighed, dropping his hand from the table to his lap. “Don’t you want to be helpful?”

  “Is that a trick question?”

  “No.”

  “Should I have a lawyer present?”

  “Do you need one?”

  Maris shook her head. “No.” This was why Dan wanted to be here. To keep her from infuriating this man.

  Jamie poised his finger above the record button. “May I?”

  “Sure.”

  “Interview of Maris Granger, commencing at”—he glanced at his watch—“one-nineteen on September twenty-eight. Detective Jamie Rogers conducting interview.”

  He spent the next half hour expounding on the questions Dan had asked her previously, using the notes Dan had scratched on the yellow legal pad for reference. She repeated the information she had given to Dan, but he dug for details. Maris took her time replying, making certain she didn’t phrase responses as questions, and maintained her calm. Several times she reached to her ear to caress the feather in an attempt to maintain her equilibrium.

  “Why do you do that?”

  “What?”

  “Mess with that earring of yours?”

  “It’s a dove feather. I find it keeps me calm.”

  “And do you need to keep calm? What is it you actually want to be? Angry? Defensive?”

  Maris shifted in her seat. “I want to stay calm, that’s all. I don’t want to be resentful of your questions. I want to remain understanding of your duty. I don’t want to think about someone killing my aunt because that upsets me. I want to be able to answer your questions as concisely and completely as possible in order to assist your investigation. Okay?”

  He grunted what she assumed was meant to be an affirmative. “Let’s return to the stop you made on your way from your home to Alcina Cove. Are you familiar at all with the route you took?”

  “Not really. I haven’t come back this way in a very long time.”

  “But perhaps you’ve visited other towns off the main route and so might be familiar with certain areas.”

  Maris looked down at a folded map he was pulling from a folder and back up at him. “What, exactly, do you want to ask me?”

  “You say you stopped for gas and paid cash, but you don’t recall the name of the station and have not yet produced the receipt you told Dan—Detective Stauffer—you would. So let’s open this map here and see if you can point out the approximate location of your stop. When you left your house, how much gas did you have in the tank?”

  “Why is this so important?” There she went again, answering a question with another.

  “To prove you arrived in town when you said you did. We know the approximate time of your aunt’s death. Being able to prove definitively the impossibility of your being in town then would clear you of being the physical perpetrator. Understood?”

  “Yes, I understand by your wording that it wouldn’t clear me of being in possible cahoots with somebody, though. Am I right in assuming that’s what you’re trying to skirt around?”

  “Dan talks too much.”

  “No, he doesn’t. But you, sir, most certainly do.”

  Jamie’s hand shot out to cover the mic. “Don’t you dare tell me you can hear what I’m thinking right now.”

  “I can’t. But I can read your intent loud and clear.”

  He uncovered the microphone end of the machine and resumed spreading the map across the table. “Gas. How much did you have?”

  “About a quarter tank.”

  “Myself, I like to start a trip with a full tank.”

  “So do I, but I was in a hurry.”

  “Yes, Detective Stauffer mentioned that. A dream, was it?”

  “It was.”

  “Right.” He spun the map around and planted his finger at a point on the far edge. “What kind of mileage do you get?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Thirty-four, thirty-five miles to the gallon on the open road?”

  “And what size tank?”

  “Twelve gallons.”

  “Was the tank on empty when you stopped?”

  “I’m not an idiot. I wouldn’t take a risk like that in the middle of the night.”

  He bit back an exclamation. She really was trying his patience. Dan had warned her not to. She took a deep breath. “I think it was on the last line. It’s a digital meter.”

  “Okay, so you’d driven about seventy miles or so. And this was the road you were traveling?”

  Maris leaned over the table, looking where he pointed. She nodded.

  “Seventy miles puts you about here.” He sat back, pulling out his phone.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Doing a search for gas stations in that vicinity. Most have security cameras these days if we need to check them out.” He reached over and clicked off the recorder. “I’ll compile a list, and you can let me know if any sound familiar. You might want to head home—well, not home, obviously. To Dan’s. You look tired.”

  “What happened to bad cop-bad cop?”

  He tore his gaze from his cell phone. “Don’t you mean good cop-bad cop?”

  “You’re the only one in here, so…”

  He jerked his chin toward the door. “I’ll be in touch soon. It would be a hell of lot easier if you could find the rec
eipt for your gas that night.”

  “Got it. I’ll look.”

  “You mean you haven’t already?”

  “I’ll look again. You have any information on the intruder in Dan’s house?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Did you put the sketch of the guy in the hospital in the paper?”

  He lowered his phone to the tabletop. “Not yet.”

  Maris rose and went to the door. She grasped the knob. “Because you think it all comes down to a connection with me.”

  Jamie cleared his throat. “I didn’t say that.”

  Maris returned his look of false innocence with one of challenge. “You didn’t need to.”

  Chapter 19

  Maris sat on Felicia’s back deck, eyes closed, face lifted to the sun. Dan had dropped her off there and returned to work.

  “How are you feeling?”

  Maris cracked a peek at Felicia approaching across the weathered boards. “Like a criminal.”

  “I meant physically.” She handed Maris a glass of tea.

  “Tired. Still a bit disoriented. I tend to blank on the ability to tell time more than anything else. Isn’t that odd, that your brain would pick out one thing to cast away?”

  “I’m sure it’ll come back. The doctor didn’t say any of the damage was permanent, did he?”

  “He said as long as I gave the old noggin plenty of rest, it would heal. You know what’s odd? The day I was hit is like a shattered mosaic of memories. That, he said, might never fall back into place.”

  Felicia made a small noise of commiseration. “Which might not be such a bad thing, right?”

  Except it was. With all that Jamie believed and Dan’s certainty that the man in the hospital might be the one who had been driving the car, if she could remember, she would at least be able to put that mystery to rest. And the gas receipt. She needed to find the blasted receipt for the tank of gas, or at least remember the name of the place where she’d filled the car up.

  “You’re frowning, Maris. Are you in pain?”

  “I’m good. Thinking about things, that’s all.”

  “Well stop. You’re not supposed to be doing that, are you?”

  “It’s pretty darned hard to stop thought altogether. Impossible, really, short of…well, you know. And I’m not there. I survived being struck and count myself damned lucky.”

  Maris heard the ice clinking in Felicia’s glass as she drank, then the bump of the base on the arm of the chair. “I’m aware we don’t know each other very well, but I’d like to ask you something personal.”

  Maris grinned. “Fire away. I’ve become the queen of premature intimacy.”

  “Ah, well, I guess I don’t need to ask the question then. I was going to ask about you and Dan…”

  “Dan and me is one of the scariest things in my life. And one of the best. And I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do about it.”

  “Right, then. Want a shot of something in that tea? It’ll be dinner time soon.”

  “Can’t. Doctor’s orders.”

  She thought of what else she’d been doing against doctor’s orders, none of which involved the brain. Good thing, because she didn’t possess the fortitude to turn Dan down.

  * * * *

  “Working late?”

  Dan looked up from the circle of light illuminating papers on his desk to find Sally at his door, peering in at him with a too bright smile.

  “What are you doing here at this hour?” he asked, perhaps a little brusquely.

  Her smile faded. “Overtime. Could use the money, so I’m not complaining. I thought, um, maybe you’d like to get a drink with me?”

  “A drink.” She had to be the only person in the entire station who didn’t know about him and Maris at this point. Or maybe she did and didn’t care. “I have a lot of work to catch up on, but thanks.”

  She started to back away but returned. “She’s trouble. She’s no good for you. Everyone knows that. She’s got your head turned around backward.”

  “Sally, you need to leave my office now.”

  She stepped right inside and took the chair Maris had the night that had begun the transformation of his life. Sally leaned forward, hands together between her knees in a way that caused her arms to push her breasts together and out, the cloth of her blouse stretched tight across them. A couple of weeks ago, he would have viewed the invitation as his due. What an ass he had been.

  “You told one of the guys I was pretty.”

  Dan dropped his pen to his desk and lowered the monitor on his laptop. No need for her to view what he was working on. “I did. I also said you were young. Too young for me.”

  “I’m twenty-two. Almost twenty-three.”

  “And I’m thirty-six. In an unfortunate set of circumstances, I could be your father.”

  “Unfortunate? What they hell do you mean by that?”

  “Nothing against you. I meant fathering a child at thirteen—or however that works out age-wise—though not impossible, would have been an unfortunate event. You’re too young for me, Sally. Period. And I’m involved.”

  “Involved. Is that what you call it? That’s not what the guys are saying.”

  Dan swiveled his chair. “I don’t care what they’re saying.”

  “You should.” She stood. “You really should if you care about your job at all.”

  Dan turned back to his desk. “Have a good night, Sally. Please shut the door on your way out.”

  She did, with a slam that made his right ear ring. He picked up his cell and called Maris. He pressed the phone to his left ear, listening for her voice.

  “Dan.” A sultry simple greeting that rushed blood into places not requiring it at the moment.

  “Are you still at Felicia’s?”

  “She offered to take me back to your place, but we’re watching a movie right now. Well, I’m listening with my eyes closed. Are you finished working?”

  He glanced at the laptop. “Not yet. Can you stay there a bit longer?” After the other night, he didn’t want her at his place alone. She conferred briefly with Felicia before assuring him there would be no problem. “Okay. I’ll let you know when I’m heading over. We won’t bother Felicia with a ride.”

  She agreed and hung up. He was about to open his computer again when a knock sounded on the door. “Sally, I told you—”

  The door opened. Jamie stuck his head in. “Sally’s gone home. In a bit of a hurry.”

  Dan rolled his eyes. “Thank God.”

  “Problem?”

  “Yeah, she wanted me to go with her for a drink.”

  “And the problem is?”

  “I don’t want to.”

  Jamie pushed the door wide. The knob struck the wall with a small crack. “Crap. Sorry.”

  Dan shrugged.

  Jamie threw himself down into the chair recently vacated by Sally. “You really are into this Maris chick all the way.”

  “And if I am?”

  “It could end badly.”

  Dan stretched his arms above his head. The chair rocked backward. He shifted his weight to bring it forward again. “Any relationship can end badly. Look at my marriage.”

  Jamie grunted in agreement. “What are you still doing here?”

  “Catching up on some things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes,” said Jamie, “it does.”

  Dan ignored him. “How’d your interview with Maris go today? Are you allowed to tell me that?”

  “I shouldn’t.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “Damn it, Dan!” Jamie’s face had gone an apoplectic red. “You’re a stupid fucking asshole.”

  “Thanks. Appreciate the vote of confidence.”

  Jamie threw up his hands. “We could find both our heads on the block, and though you might not care, I fancy mine right where it is.”

  “
I know you do. I really don’t want to endanger your job. But if I’m sacked without any dirt flying your way, my job is yours. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  After a moment, Jamie shook his head.

  Dan narrowed his eyes. “Look, if there’s anything you can tell me…”

  Jamie maintained a stubborn silence until he finally released his breath on a long sigh. “I worked with her to narrow down the area where she got gas. I’m compiling a list of stations in the hope she’ll remember which one. If not, I’ll try to get someone local to check out all the surveillance cameras. For or against her, the timeframe of her travel is the number one priority.”

  “Understood.” Dan picked the pen up from his desk and clicked it twice with the ball of his thumb.

  “The hour she bought gas could eliminate Maris being here when Mabry died. It won’t, however, fully eliminate her as a person of interest until we find out who did it for certain.”

  Dan swallowed and nodded. “What about the poison? Any idea how it was administered?”

  “I can’t answer that. You talk to Maris. I know you do. Hell, I would, too, in your position, but I can’t risk that sort of contamination of the case. It could make the difference between a successful prosecution and having the case thrown out of court. If it comes to that,” he added as concession.

  “Yeah. If it comes to that.” Dan had been locked out of the case file in the computer, but that hadn’t stopped him from researching the various types of quick-acting poisons and how they could be administered. Without knowledge of the precise toxin, though, all the research in the world was a futile exercise.

  “You should go home, Stauffer. Isn’t Maris waiting for you?”

  “She’s visiting a friend. I’ll pick her up in a bit.”

  “A friend? Good God, that woman works quickly all the way around—” Jamie dropped his head on a release of breath. “Sorry.” He looked up. “I’m not trying to be insensitive. Is this someone she knew before?”

  “No.”

  “Huh.” Jamie pushed against the chair arms and stood. “Seriously. Go home. Or wherever. Just get out of here.”

  Dan waited until Jamie had departed before he logged out and shut down. He gathered up his paperwork into a folder, then reached into his drawer to grab a few things he wanted to take home. Forks and a crusty butter knife that needed to be run through the dishwasher, a credit card bill, some notes he’d been making on post-its about a trip he’d considered. In his haste, he scooped up more than he wanted, but he didn’t have the time to sort it all out now. He shoved everything into the empty plastic bag from his lunch and then slipped on his coat. Before locking the door, he stood a moment gazing into the darkened office, thinking of how hard he had worked to get to this place in his career. Would it really come down to his job or Maris? He hoped not because he feared he already knew which he would choose.