by Natasha Deen
A smile flashed across his face, lighting his features. “Bet you never thought you’d say that about me.”
I caught myself grinning at him. “Bet you never thought you’d want to stay to help me.” I opened the door and stepped out.
“Were you talking to someone?”
“Just the air.”
The wrinkles on her forehead didn’t smooth out.
“Nancy, you know I didn’t send the email.”
She sighed and the muscles on her face relaxed. “I know, sweetie.” She led me to her desk.
I sank into the black plastic chair.
Serge hopped on the desk.
“Mikhail’s making a big stink—claiming harassment, and”—she blew out a breath and sounded like a bull about to charge—“he’s being an idiot.” She looked at me. “But you didn’t make things easier for yourself.”
“Me?” It came out as a squawk.
“Kid, you’ve led the charge to get him to give his son a proper burial—”
“Which he still hasn’t done. Flippin’ Serge’s been sitting on ice.”
“That’s because we can’t release the body until the investigation’s done.”
“You know that’s just an excuse for them.”
“Doesn’t matter. You’re a thorn in their side and you had an altercation with the reverend.”
“The dead should be respected in principle. It’s about transitions and moving on. You can’t ignore that.”
“And you happened to be there when Debbie-Anne’s trailer exploded.”
I raised my hands. “How’s that—”
“She told me you were asking about Serge.” Nancy glanced at the deputy standing by the file cabinet. She rose and went around the end of the desk. Folding her arms, she leaned against its side.
Basically, she sat on—through—Serge.
His arms spread out behind her and made her look like a four-armed goddess.
“Well,” he said and poked his head through her chest. “This is a little weird.”
“You think he murdered his kid.”
I lifted my gaze to Nancy’s face and tried to concentrate.
Serge pulled back, then poked his head through again. “Hey, if I concentrate, could I see her blood vessels? ’Cause right now, when I stick my head inside her, all I see is dark.”
I ignored him.
“Let me try again.” He disappeared.
“Fact is, I think he did it, too.”
Serge’s head exploded out of her chest. He craned his neck to look up at her. “Excellent deduction, Sherlock!” Shooting me a pointed look, he said, “She’s hot but she’s no genius.”
Dad always complained about the amount of spirits that lingered at our house. I think it was practice for this moment right here: when the juxtaposition between ludicrous and intense intersected in the image of a ghost, cop, smart-aleck remarks, and me, pretending I saw nothing but Nancy.
“Tell her to arrest him,” said Serge.
“Arrest him,” I told Nancy.
“I can’t.” She stood.
“Almost.” Serge gave her a wistful look. “I’m sure I almost saw her blood vessels.” He froze for a moment. His face slackened, his eyes went blank. A couple seconds later, light crept back into his features, a human computer shut down and restarted. His spine straightened. He stared at me, then jerked his head in Nancy’s direction.
Dead or alive, a man’s hormones never stop. I sighed and started an internal count down: 5…4…3…2…
“What do I want to see organs for?”
He stuck his tongue out in what I could only assume was intense concentration.
Then he closed his eyes and flung his hand out in her direction. “Come on.” His eyelids snapped open. “Give me boobs.”
Seriously, if he wasn’t dead, I’d be tempted to kill him. “Why can’t you arrest Mr. Popov?” I stood and, as stealthily as possible, pushed Serge off the desk.
His limbs flew out in a perfect belly-flop position and he landed on the floor.
Nancy grimaced. “Evidence.”
“But he was beating his kid.”
Her scowl deepened and made her forehead pucker. “Do you know what his wife said to me when I asked her about it?”
“That he was a bad kid and they did the best they could.” I grimaced. “She said the same thing to me, more or less.”
Nancy let her breath out in a slow, long hiss. “That family.” She scrubbed her forehead with the back of her hand. “I never liked that kid, but the more I know the parents—”
“The more you understand him.”
She looked at me. “Yeah.”
“I didn’t send that email, Nancy.”
“I know, honey. I have to find out who did. Our technology’s basic. I can tell it came from your computer, but figuring out who really sent the email and hid behind your IP—”
The front door crashed open.
We whirled.
Dad stormed in. “What the—Nancy, what’s going on?” His head swivelled from me to his girlfriend.
I edged out of his view. “I’ll let you talk to him first,” I said. “You can calm him down better than me.” Better for her to deal with him when he was like this. She had a Taser.
Nancy moved to him. “Come here, babe. Let me explain.”
“All I got from Don was something about Popov, and Maggie in jail—”
“She’s not in jail.”
“Since I’m not in jail—” I jerked my thumb toward the door. “Can I go home? You know where to find me.”
“We need to talk, sweetie.”
Oh, I did not like the way she said that. It was a mix of mom and cop, and that couldn’t be good.
“Meet me at home?”
She watched me for a minute, then nodded.
“Be there, Magdalene,” said Dad. “Because you and I need to have a long talk.”
Crap. Just what I was afraid of.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Serge climbed in the passenger seat.
I adjusted my chair and pulled on the belt. The weather, like my luck, had changed. Dark clouds dirtied the sky. “What did you say in the email?”
He reached for the seatbelt, caught himself, and flashed me a grin. “Guess I don’t need that.” His hand fell to his thigh. Scrunching his face together, he said, “I just got stuff off my chest.”
“Like what?” I put my key in the ignition and the car roared to life.
“Like how much I hate him and what a douche-bag I think he is.”
The clouds chose that moment to empty their chests of water. Rain pelted the windshield and made the glass fog.
“Here’s our problem,” he said, spreading his hands.
I glanced at him, incredulous. “Here is our problem? Like everything’s been so smooth ’till now?”
“There’s stuff in there”—he put his hands on his knees—“stuff you wouldn’t know…unless I told you.”
“Great,” I muttered. “Your maniac father thinks you confided in me.”
“He won’t think that.”
“Because why? He’ll decide he knows the truth: his dead son’s haunting my bedroom and confessing his life’s experiences to me?”
There was a brief silence. “Okay, maybe he’ll think I confided in you.”
“What did you tell me?” I glanced from the rain-darkened road to him.
Serge closed his eyes. “That he had affairs.”
I almost swung us into the ditch. “Are you kidding me? Holier-than-Thou Popov was screwing around on his wife?”
“For years. Ever since I was a kid.”
“But this town’s so small. How did he keep that quiet?”
“Lots of conferences in big cities.”
“Wow
.” My hand slid along the leathered bumps of the steering wheel. “Your family was really screwed—”
“Tell me about it.”
We came to traffic light. My foot let up on the accelerator as green gave way to orange. “Unbelievable. He was always going on about God and religion, and being such—”
“A pompous ass.”
“And the whole time—”
“Welcome to my life,” he murmured.
Silence filled the car.
The factors of his life piled on me, one jagged brick after another. “No wonder you were such a bastard.”
He laughed. Then he looked at me and regret dimmed the light in his blue eyes. “You have no idea how sorry I am about that.”
“I do. Don’t worry about it.”
“I do worry.”
“Well. Stop. It would be different if you were dead and gone, just some jackass who screwed with my life. But you’re not.” I smiled at him and pulled the car into the intersection. “You’re still here. And you’re sorry. I believe that. And since I believe it—” I shrugged. “We both need to move on.”
“Some of us more than others.”
I grinned. “You said it. Not me.”
The Golden Chicken Market sign appeared on the horizon. “I need some junk food.”
The doorbell chimed as we walked into the store. I headed to the chocolate aisle. Serge followed. I jerked to a stop as a shopping cart turned into the aisle and the person pushing it came into view.
Ice invaded my veins. “Mrs. Popov.”
Beside me, Serge blanched. His skin tightened, leaving his jaw and cheekbones standing out in sharp relief.
Mrs. Popov looked at me, but it was like she was looking through me.
“Maggie.”
“Mom.”
The anguish in Serge’s voice twisted my heart.
“Ask her how she’s doing,” he said.
He gripped my shoulder—hard—and instinct said he was holding on for strength, and not to hurt me.
“Ask her. She’s alone with him.”
I ran my fingers over my shoulder, to let him know I understood. “Mrs. Popov, how are you doing?”
Her unfocused gaze remained on me…I think.
“Funny you should ask.”
I winced. “I didn’t write that email—”
The fog cleared from her eyes. She blinked. “What email?”
“Oh, uh, I thought you knew—that Mr. Popov had told you.”
She brushed the hair from her temple towards her bun. The bracelet she wore caught the overhead lights and clicked against the metal of her watch. “Mikhail handles all my needs. He’s a good provider.”
Angry lines cut Serge’s face into diagonal slats. “She sounds like a robot. She always does.” He stepped toward her. Serge towered over his mother. He glared down at her. “Tell the truth. How much is he beating you?”
You liar. I knew he was beating her!
He flushed red but said, “Ask her. Ask her if it’s worse because I’m not around anymore?”
My tongue clung to the roof of my mouth. I wanted to say something, to really confront her, but she seemed so fragile, I didn’t have a clue how to broach the topic.
Serge rounded on me. “Ask her—make her tell you.”
“Um.” My hands did a chicken dance, fluttering to her then flapping back and hiding themselves in my back pockets. “Are you really okay? Losing a child is a hard thing—especially when he’s so young.”
Her gaze grew unfocused again. “He’s in a good place.”
Serge snorted.
“You don’t know it—you wouldn’t. But I know he’s in heaven looking down on me.”
Yeah. Right. At this moment, her son was glaring at her like a disgruntled ogre.
“Uh—”
“You don’t like my family,” she said. “You think you’re better than us—”
“Whoa, what?”
“I saw the way you watched us”—her face contorted—“judging us that night at the pool.”
“Me judging you—that’s nice. Your husband—”
“Is a man called of God.”
The venom in her voice made me recoil.
“He has a hard life, a higher calling, and it is up to me to support him—”
“He beat your son—”
“No. He disciplined him.” Her mouth worked from one side to the other; her hands grasped the air. “Serge was difficult, and there are—were—things you don’t know about him. Mikhail did his best with him. He did his best with both of us. Serge was a bad—he couldn’t help it, but…” She trailed off.
My breath hissed through my teeth.
“And I will protect my family.” She drew herself up. “From the evil that comes our way—even when it cloaks itself in lamb’s clothing.”
Wow, I wanted to punch her. “I’m not the evil—your husband is. And you are, for never standing up to him. Your son is dead, Mrs. Popov and it’s your fault.”
She flinched as though I’d hit her. Curling her bony fingers around the cart handle, she jerked the carrier away. “We’ll all pay for our sins.”
I jumped back, pressing myself against the shelf of cereal as she wrenched the cart around me. My hand went to my stomach, where the muscles cramped and shook. “She’s crazy.”
“Don’t say that!” Serge’s words sparked with fury. “It’s not her fault. It’s his—he’s the one who did it all.”
I didn’t say anything—I don’t know enough about abuse to understand the psychology of pain and violence, but I couldn’t forgive Mrs. Popov for not protecting Serge. She could say what she wanted about him being difficult, but there was a point where he was nothing more than a toddler, a baby, who needed love and compassion, not fists and harsh words.
“She’s a victim too,” he said. Desperation stretched thin the words, made them more plea than a statement.
“I’m…sure—”
“She is.”
His gaze searched mine, looking for comfort? Agreement?
“Something’s wrong,” he said. “She looks different.”
I frowned. “Different? How?”
“I don’t know, but something’s wrong. Her outline…it’s all…edgy.”
“Edgy?”
“Can’t you see it?”
I shook my head. “She looks normal to me.”
“You gotta talk to Nancy—get her to put my mom under protective detail.”
I pushed away from the shelves. My legs felt like I had no bones in them and my feet seemed stuck to the floor. “I—” I want her to burn. “Let me process this and—”
“It’s not her fault—”
It is!
He winced and clutched his head as my words exploded in his mind. “Don’t yell!”
I took a breath, held it for a one-two count, then released it. She had a choice—you were her son.
You don’t understand.
I don’t want to. I stalked down the chocolate aisle.
You’re supposed to help me.
Yeah—you, not her. She doesn’t deserve anything. She’s your mother. She should have stuck by you. Instead, she abandoned you—
Are we talking about my mother or yours?
His words, softly spoken in my head, reverberated down my spine and hit their mark.
“We’re more similar than you want to believe,” he said, “but my mom didn’t have a choice. You don’t get my dad. None of us had a choice.” He stopped. His gaze softened. The smell of vanilla scented the air. “Maybe she didn’t either.”
My chest was tight, brittle. The topmost layer of my skin tingled with icy overlay. A hard stone of emotion stuck in my throat. Go home. I’ll meet you later.
“Maggie—”
Go.
I put my hand on the shelf and bent over, trying to get air back into my lungs.
“Maggie?”
Turning to my left, keeping my head down, I peered at the scuffed, black shoes. “Hey, Jason.”
His wrinkled face came into view. “You okay?”
“Yeah, just having a little trouble breathing.”
“You want me to call your dad?”
He had a high voice, but he was a soft-spoken man, and the pitch seemed to suit not only his personality, but his small, slight body.
“No, just give me a sec.”
“Saw what happened between you and Lydia Popov.”
“Great.” The town should have the news by six o’clock.
“She’s never been anything but Mikhail’s puppet.”
I stood and took a breath.
Jason straightened to his full height of four feet, ten inches. “I heard they’re going to have the funeral.”
“They have to—the body can’t stay on ice forever.”
“No.” He waved his right hand as though sweeping away the words. “A real funeral. Public.”
“Oh.” I blinked. That didn’t sound right.
Jason’s brown-white eyebrows pulled together. “You okay?”
“Um, yeah—”
He took my hand and pulled me toward the freezers. “Come on. Go out back. There are benches. Sit for a second.”
“No—” I leaned back, pushing my weight to my heels and trying to stop our forward momentum. Easier said than done. Years of stacking cans and lifting boxes of lettuce had made Jason strong.
“Amber’s out there—”
I stopped pulling. The sudden drop in opposing force set me catapulting to him. I stumbled but regained my balance.
“—she can keep you company.” He grimaced. “She had a run in with Lydia too.”
“Oh, okay. Thanks.” I pushed through the swinging doors that separated the employee area from the store. Flickering lights overhead gave the dank space a slaughterhouse vibe. At the sink, a grim-faced man in black rubber boots hosed down a deli-meat blade. Beside me, boxes of limp lettuce tottered on their skiffs.
“She’s over there.” Jason nodded towards the exit sign.
“Thanks.” I flashed a smile and headed outside. A cool wind tickled its way down my neck. Blinking, I looked around and saw Amber sitting on a wooden crate.