“You know what happened to the businesses, don’t you?” Drew asked.
Keeping his back to Drew, for a long moment, Marcus remained silent. Then he nodded.
“Why haven’t you said anything to Carly?” Drew asked.
Marcus ran a hand through his hair then rested it against the windowsill. “When I was twenty-seven, Marguerite arranged a meeting for me with Bill Wycoff, the chair of the board that oversees all the businesses,” he started. “Carly was twenty-four at the time. I was out of the military, out of the police academy, and had just started my job here. She was getting ready to go to the academy after finishing her masters and I knew she planned to join me out here—either in Windsor, if she could, or somewhere nearby.”
Marcus paused, tapped the wooden sill with his finger, then turned and took a seat behind the desk.
“Bill told me about the will my mom and uncle had left. He told me about how we both inherited all the businesses when I turned twenty-eight.” Again, Marcus paused, his eyes focused on nothing in particular except maybe the past.
“He wanted to know what I wanted to do.” He picked up his narrative again with a heavy voice. “He told me that all the horses had been sold, which was something both Carly and I figured had happened, since they couldn’t very well take care of themselves, but the news about the will and the businesses surprised me.”
“Did it?” Drew asked. Because he didn’t believe it.
Marcus’s eyes came up and a sardonic smile touched his lips. “No, I guess it didn’t really surprise me. I guess I meant that I didn’t ever give it any thought. If I had, of course I would have expected us to get the inheritance at some point. But it, well . . .” His voice trailed off.
“It wasn’t something you had let yourself think about, was it?”
Marcus shook his head.
“And so you told him no?”
Marcus pushed away from the desk and stood again. “I told him no,” he answered as he paced back to the window. “More specifically, I told him to set up a trust or power of attorney and keep the businesses running without me. That was six years ago. That’s why all the property was transferred into private holdings at that time. Marguerite arranged it all.”
“You said you wanted to go into the family businesses. You had a chance. Why did you say no?”
“Because of Carly, damn it.” The window rattled as Marcus slapped his hand against the wall. “She was so young when it happened. You should have seen her.” As Marcus spoke, Drew heard years of frustration in his voice. “She was shattered. Everything she knew was gone, everyone she knew was gone. All she had was me. And eventually Lorraine and Marguerite, but that was some time in coming.”
“You lost everything, too.”
Marcus paused, perhaps letting those words sink in. Then he let out a deep breath. “I did. But if I’d taken over the businesses and we’d come back out into public as ourselves, as Carolyn and Michael Davidson, with whomever had killed my mom and uncle still out there, it wouldn’t have been me they would have come after. It would have been Carly.”
“And you couldn’t have that,” Drew finished.
Marcus looked up sharply. “Of course not. Who in his right mind wants to give his sister a death sentence?”
Drew regarded the younger man. Despite all his issues, Marcus wanted to do the right thing. At least when it came to his sister.
“You don’t believe me?” Marcus demanded, taking his silence for something it wasn’t—judgment.
“Of course I believe you, and obviously you were right to be concerned about Carly’s safety, especially given what’s happened recently. But you said you did it for her. I have to think maybe you did it a little for yourself, too, and that’s a good thing. I believe you made the decision you did to protect her, but the thought of losing your sister wasn’t one you wanted to contemplate either, was it?”
Marcus stared at him. Then he shook his head. “No, we don’t have a lot left of our pasts, but we do have each other,” he replied quietly.
Drew rose from his seat. “I’m glad you realize that. I’m glad you see your decision was as much for her as it was for you.”
“Why’s that?” Marcus asked, turning toward Drew, shoving his hands into his pockets.
“Because she’s going to need to know that when you tell her.”
“When I tell her?”
“She knows I’m looking into the businesses and horses. She’ll expect some information. She could get it from me. But I think it might be better if she got it from you.”
As Marcus stared at him once again, Drew could practically hear the other man’s train of thought—moving from denying that he’d need to say anything, to protesting that he should, then finally to resigning to the fact that he would.
Marcus nodded.
“Soon?”
Marcus’s mouth tightened, “Yes, soon.”
“Good.” He rose then showed himself out, leaving Marcus to decide the particulars.
Taking long strides down Main Street as he left the police station and headed toward Frank’s Café, Drew made a mental note to mention Marguerite’s role in the movement of the property to the private facility to Mikaela—that was one good thing to come of the conversation he’d just had, at least they had an answer to that question.
But even with a new piece of the puzzle in hand, restlessness plagued his body. Working in intelligence, he should be used to the snail’s pace of an investigation, he told himself. This investigation should be no different. Only it was. There was so much more at stake than simply closing a case, and both his body and his mind seemed to feel the urgency.
Fifteen minutes later, he pulled up in front of Carly’s house and parked his car next to hers. Taking a breath that in no way reduced his disquiet, he grabbed his offerings and made his way to her porch. Before he’d even had a chance to knock, she opened the door. He paused, taking her in, then handed her a to-go cup of coffee.
“Thanks,” she said, taking it, but rather than stepping back to allow him in, she leaned against the doorframe and regarded him.
“Is everything okay?” he asked.
She tilted her head. “I think so.”
“May I come in?” he asked with only slightly exaggerated formality.
“Why don’t you like spending time with my friends?” she asked, not moving.
He drew back. “I beg your pardon?”
“Why don’t you like spending time with my friends?” she repeated. “The other night, when Matty and Dash and the twins came over, you couldn’t leave fast enough. Then again, last night, as soon as the update on the case was finished, you were out of there. And don’t tell me it’s because you had to write a report for your boss, because I know you did that before the meeting, and even if you wanted to update it, that wouldn’t have taken more than thirty minutes.”
Caleb’s comments from earlier echoed in his mind. But Caleb had only touched on half the truth. Staring down at Carly, Drew seriously considered lying—or not really lying, but throwing her a soft answer. But he only thought about it for a moment.
“Because I’m not good at making friends,” he replied. “I can count on one hand the number of friends I have that aren’t related by blood or marriage. It’s easier that way, in my line of business—there’s no one to notice my erratic hours, no one to ask how my last trip went, no one to ask where I’m going or when I’ll be back.”
She blinked at him and he could tell his bleak assessment of himself hadn’t been what she’d expected. Even he heard the dissatisfaction in his voice. And the honesty of that emotion gave him pause, making him question the true source of the frustration he’d been penning up—was it really the investigation, or was it his life?
“But you went to college, surely you have college friends or friends from growing up?”
He exhaled a deep breath. “I have acquaintances that were friends at one time. People I can go to dinner with once every few years or grab a drink with on
a random night here or there.”
Carly may have been forced to keep a big secret, but in her adult life, she’d managed to make friends—and good ones, judging by what he’d seen. He knew she saw some parallels in their two lives, and truth be told, he did too in some ways, but the fact was that they were different. A single big secret had put her life on a different track. But Drew, well, he switched tracks on a near-daily basis. Secrets and lies were a fluid constant for him, not a single defining event—and that lifestyle was clearly starting to take its toll.
“I see,” she said, giving nothing away in the steady gaze she’d locked onto him. But then her eyes shifted over his shoulder toward a sound coming from behind him. He heard it too. A truck.
No, not a truck, a van, with Mikaela Marsh at the wheel and someone else in the passenger seat. Carly mentioned something about grabbing her shoes and within a minute she rejoined him in the driveway to greet the marshals.
“The storage locker with your personal belongings was better organized than had I anticipated, so it was easy to grab your things. I have nine boxes of yours, plus the fifteen filled with evidence that I want to get up to Albany quickly,” Mikaela said with a pointed look at the coffee and bag of pastries Drew still held.
“Let me run those inside,” Carly said, taking the bag and his cup. When she came back out, he and Mikaela’s deputy already had the van open.
“Mario will need to stay with the evidence, but the three of us can carry the rest of the boxes in,” Mikaela said as Carly joined them at the back of the van.
“Where do you want them?” Drew asked.
“In the living room,” Carly replied, eying the contents of the van. “I moved my couch and chairs this morning, there should be plenty of room,” she added, without a hint of concern about what he’d just told her—no pity, no attempt to make him feel better, no softness in her voice for him.
Fifteen minutes later, he and Carly stood on the porch and watched Mikaela and Deputy Mario Something-or-other back out and head up to Albany. When they’d left the drive, Drew turned to enter the house, but she held out her hand out to stop him.
“You should give it a try,” she said.
His brows came together. “Give what a try?”
“Having friends. I happen to know you’re a pretty good guy. A little elusive and maybe a little hard to read at times, but mostly a good guy.”
“Mostly a good guy?” he repeated. She didn’t seem to feel pity for him and his isolated existence—thankfully, since he seemed to be feeling enough of that for himself today.
She smiled at him. “Yes, mostly a good guy. If you were a completely good guy, there is no way you would have survived in the CIA for as long as you have. And since everything you’ve done is part of what has brought you here—and I happen to like that you’re here—I’m glad you’re only mostly a good a guy.”
He shook his head but smiled at her logic. He’d never imagined that only being “mostly a good guy” could be such a good thing.
• • •
Drew eyed the last box as dusk rapidly approached. They’d gone through the others and, along with more videos, they’d found lots of pictures, books, ribbons from Carly’s riding days, and a whole host of other things that would be found in a typical sixteen-year-old girl’s room.
“How are you doing?” he asked as he placed another DVD on the pile they’d started.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor, she looked up from the photo album laying open in her lap. “Fine. “
When he raised his eyebrows at her in doubt, she opened her mouth to say something, then shut it, and the album, and stood. After stretching out her back, she took a seat in the chairs across from where he sat on the couch.
“Okay, I’m not fine. I’m not terrible either. I know that’s what you’re worried about, but it doesn’t feel traumatic or anything like that. Honestly, it feels weird. Most people have a chance to outgrow things,” she said, waving to some of the items scattered around her living room, such as two stuffed animals and her old bedside lamp with a shade she’d covered in stickers when she was a little girl.
“I didn’t have that chance. It was there one day and gone the next. I feel dissociated from the person this girl was, so it feels a little like looking into someone else’s life. I mean, I know I’m not,” she said as she reached forward to pick up a photo in which a young version of herself stood beside a horse and held both a huge ribbon and a silver cup. “I know this was me. I remember the day this happened. But . . .” She let her voice trail off.
There were a lot of memories lying about her living room; memories she hadn’t let herself contemplate for years. It was going to take more than four hours for her to understand how she felt about it all—not the stuff, but what it represented, the extent of what she’d lost. “How about a break. And maybe a drink?” he suggested.
She smiled and put the photo back on the coffee table. “Perfect. And maybe a small snack too. I’m feeling a little peckish,” she added as she stood.
Once they’d settled in the chairs on the porch, with cheese and crackers between them and whiskeys in hand, they sat in companionable silence for several minutes—until both their phones rang almost simultaneously. Drew cast Carly a curious glance, which was answered with one just as curious. They both answered.
“It’s Marsh,” Mikaela said on the other end of his phone.
“Mikaela,” he said, to let Carly know who had called him.
“Vivi,” Carly said into her phone keeping her eyes on him.
“I’m leaving the lab right now,” Mikaela said, “but wanted to update you on the final autopsy results on Marguerite.” Drew turned his attention back to the call.
“Vivi is talking to Carly right now,” he said.
“I know. Vivi is going to walk her through what we found in the boxes. We didn’t find any smoking guns, but there was a lot of data—Wyatt and Naomi are still culling through it. But I wanted to call you because the autopsy result isn’t pretty.”
“We didn’t think it would be,” Drew interjected.
“No, we didn’t. But I figured I would tell you so that you can tell Carly.”
Drew looked away from Carly, toward the north side of the pond, as he contemplated what Mikaela had just said. He’d had some idea of how bad the report would be, he’d seen the pictures. Apparently, it was only the tip of the iceberg.
“Talk to me,” he ordered.
“She was hit on the head first. Not hard enough to kill her, but hard enough to knock her out.”
“She must have fallen and picked up some trace evidence on her clothes at that point.”
“She did. But it’s not helpful. It was mostly dirt and gravel, and the chemical traces on it lead us to believe she was in a park about ten miles south of DC in Virginia. But where in that park, we don’t know, though we do have people looking. We also have people reviewing street cams and local security videos to see if we can get a picture of her car entering or exiting.”
“You haven’t found her car have you?”
“No, and since we’ve had a BOLO out on it since we first identified her body, I’m thinking it’s at the bottom of a lake or river somewhere.”
Unfortunately, he agreed with that. They might find it someday, but unless they put a ton of resources into diving all waterways in the metro DC area, that “someday” was probably a long way off.
“I don’t need to know the rest of the details. Just give me the highlights, anything new or different than what Vivi and Dr. Buckley found,” he said.
“Two things,” Mikaela started. “The first is that we think two people were involved. Based on an in-depth look at the faux gang markings cut into her skin, it looks like some were made by a person who was right-handed and some by a person who was left-handed.”
Interesting. During the meeting at Vivi and Ian’s the evening before, Naomi had said she thought only either Repetto or Franks was involved. Was she wrong? Or was yet another person
involved?
“And what else?” he prompted.
“Well, the second thing isn’t so much something we found in the autopsy, but a question raised by our examiner and seconded by Vivi. We know she was naked when she was tortured and killed. And before you ask, no she was not sexually assaulted. Surprisingly,” Mikaela muttered. That kind of surprised him too. Tying a naked woman up, torturing her, and not sexually assaulting her had to say something about the perpetrator. Definitely something to ask Vivi.
“And?”
“And she was dressed before she was moved.”
“Why go to the trouble of dressing the body before dumping it—if you’ve already mutilated it and shown no regard for it up until that point?”
“Exactly.”
“I don’t suppose we have any answers?”
Mikaela exhaled. “No, we don’t. But Vivi is working on it. She called her friend John Levitt again and I know they were scheduled to talk tonight.”
Drew glanced at Carly, he had no doubt that she and Vivi would make a plan to check in after that.
“Okay, so what are you up to now? Are you going back to DC tonight?” he asked.
“No, we’re checking into a hotel in Windsor. Vivi and I thought it would be best for Mario and me to stick around for at least another day while we finish going through the evidence at the lab, plus it’s possible Naomi will have something soon too. What about you? Did you two find anything in those boxes?”
“No, not yet. We have one more to go through, but for the most part, it’s pictures and lots of videos of Carly’s riding career—and things like books and yearbooks and mostly stuff you’d expect.”
“Yeah, I didn’t think you’d find anything, but it was worth a shot, and I’m glad she has at least some of her belongings back. Let me know if you find anything in the last box?”
“I will,” Drew confirmed.
“And, last but not least, any recommendations for dinner around here?”
Drew smiled and directed her to The Tavern. The place held good memories for him; it was the first time he’d had more than just a glimpse of Carly outside of her work.
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