by Nan Sampson
Kate gave her an apologetic. Borchard glanced back and forth between the two of them, then scribbled more notes. When he looked up, Ellie could see his conclusions about the case in his eyes. With his bored cop eyes on Ellie he asked, "So why call you? Are you with law enforcement? Are you a P.I. like Charlie?"
Ellie shook her head. "No. I run a coffee shop. I don't know what she thought I could do." The coffee still smelled bad, but her mouth was dry and she needed something to do with her hands. She pulled the cup towards her again, took a sip, tried not to grimace. "I... I made a promise to her, years ago."
"A promise?" he prompted when she didn't continue.
"Yeah. It was..." She looked around the small room, trying to find something to focus her attention on, but it was utterly blank, devoid of life. As she scanned around, Charlie caught her eyes, gave her an encouraging smile. "It was one of those stupid things you do when you're in college. I promised I'd always be there for her, no matter what. That she could always count on me. I meant it then, I really did." She wouldn't mention the blood bond, not for anything in the world.
"Apparently she was going to hold you to it."
Ellie turned the coffee cup around and around in her hands. Having to share the promise she’d so clearly broken made her feel exposed, violated. "I still don't know what she thought I could do. She should have gone to the police. If she had..."
With a firm shake of his head, Borchard pushed his chair back. "No. This is not your fault." He leaned back in his chair, pursed his lips. His eyes flitted over to Charlie and Ellie watched as one eyebrow raised.
Charlie’s expression didn’t seem to change and Borchard straightened in his chair and put down his pen. "Okay. Can you think of anything else that might be of help?"
"No. I wish I could."
"Okay. This is good. I really appreciate you coming down."
It was a brush off and Ellie felt her hopes sink. "So what now?"
"I'm sorry?"
"What now? Now that you know someone was trying to kill her, how will you find them?"
He didn't have an answer to that. Or at least not one he was willing to share. "It definitely gives us a new avenue of leads to pursue." He stood up and stuck out his hand. "Ms. Gooden, thank you so much for coming down. Do we have your contact info in case we have any additional questions?"
"Yeah. I gave my address and phone number to Detective Kowalski."
"Good. Good. Then it'll be in the file." He gave Kate a smile and shook her hand as well. "Ms. McCallum. Thanks to you as well."
Kate shook his hand automatically. “Thank you for seeing us. We really appreciate your help.” With a smile and a glance at Charlie, moved towards the door, seemingly satisfied.
Ellie was not. She stood, but remained behind her chair, unwilling to leave without some kind of plan of action. "Wait, just hang on. I really need to know what you plan on doing next."
Charlie took a step toward her, and she met his eyes. To her surprise, he stopped. In a casual voice, he addressed his friend. "So, Terry, do you think you'll start with the co-workers?"
Borchard's nostrils flared, but to his credit, he didn't show his irritation otherwise. "Probably the logical place to start. Still, I'm not primary, so it's not my place to say." He opened the interview room door, a clear signal their time was up. "I'll, uh, make sure you all are kept informed when we learn anything new."
There wasn't much point in provoking the cop, or she'd never get anything from him again. She'd learned that the hard way during the investigation into her parents' murders. So she moved out into the hallway, with Charlie on her heels.
The two men made boy-bonding noises as they all walked towards the elevator together. There was a buzz of chatter from other detectives and uniformed officers, and plenty of foot traffic as they stood there, waiting for the elevator to arrive. Ellie found herself scowling, frustrated, knowing there was nothing more she could do.
Just as the elevator doors opened, she turned to Borchard again. "Thanks for seeing us today. Do you know when we’ll be able to claim Lacey's body? We'd like to arrange for the cremation and a memorial service."
"Yeah. Charlie mentioned that. I'll put in a call to the M.E.'s office, see what I can do."
Great. "Thanks."
Borchard held the elevator doors as they got in then waved as they closed. Charlie waved back then sagged against the back wall as the doors shut. "Christ."
"What do you mean?"
"He totally gave us the run around. I don't think he bought one word you said."
Ellie nodded, thankful Charlie saw it the same way. “Got that right.”
Kate looked confused. "Why do you say that? He seemed very nice. Very concerned."
"Bullshit." He crossed his arms in front of him. "I know Terry Borchard. He was stonewalling us."
Ellie gave Charlie a smile. "I sure didn't get the sense that he was going to race back to his desk and start making phone calls."
They reached the ground floor and exited the building. Charlie steered them down the sidewalk, and around the corner. "Here, there's a coffee shop a couple of blocks down – let's go grab a decent cup and we can talk." He stressed the word decent and Ellie’s opinion of him rose another notch. She didn’t think she could be friends with someone who couldn’t recognize a good cup of Joe.
He shepherded them a half dozen yards down the busy sidewalk before Ellie had to stop. She jammed her hands in her pockets, stepped out of the traffic flow and looked around. Someone was watching them. She could feel it, as sure as she could feel the icy wind whipping through her hair.
Traffic crowded the streets and sidewalks for as far as she could see. Shoppers, mothers with children, people waiting for buses, business people with briefcases heading to and from meetings, and a host of other people on their way to doing a host of other things she either couldn't or didn't want to know about.
Taxis honked their horns and buses roared by, belching out a cloud of fumes. Cars idled at corners or swooped in on parking spots. Somewhere not too far away she heard the clatter and roar of an El train.
So many people, so much activity. Her senses on overload, she staggered back, found the wall of the building with her back. This was one of the reasons she'd moved, to get away from all this. It was too much. Her chest tightened, and there didn’t seem to be enough oxygen in the air for her to catch her breath. Despite it being bright daylight, the edges of her vision darkened and she stared fixedly down at her feet, trying to focus on her breathing, trying to keep the darkness at bay.
The worst part of all was that she knew with dead certainty that awash in that sea of uncaring humanity that was sucking up all the oxygen and light was a pair of eyes fixed on her.
Slowly, as she counted the black circles of old chewing gum staining the sidewalk, her breathing eased and the tunnel vision passed. She looked up, slowly, scanning the crowd around her, the windows of the buildings that loomed over here, but there was no one she could see watching her. It was impossible anyway, there were just too many people.
"Ellie!"
She looked towards the shout, saw that Charlie and Kate were nearly half a block away, stopped at the corner.
She waved then joined the stream of pedestrians again, reaching them quickly, almost unconsciously slipping back into the habit of weaving in and out between the slow movers to get there. "Sorry. Got held up for a second."
Charlie was scowling. "Do I have to put a leash on you?"
Forcing a laugh, she gestured at the crosswalk light. "We gonna stand here, or cross?"
Settling herself in the window seat of the booth at the diner, Ellie focused on breathing and grounding herself, while Kate slid in across from her. Pulling back her honey blonde hair with unconscious elegance, she turned a sympathetic gaze on Ellie. “You okay, hon?”
Ellie nodded, feeling Charlie’s intent gaze on her. “Fine. Just still really hate crowds.”
Fortunately, Kate didn’t push it although Ellie was aware
Kate had now recognized the signs of one of Ellie’s attacks. Instead, like a good friend that she was, she covered. “You must have seen something cute in a pair of jeans."
Ellie forced a laugh. "No, just..."
"Just what?" Charlie sat down next to her, watching her closely.
"I thought I saw someone I recognized." Why hadn't he sat with Kate? Now she felt boxed in.
He let his gaze linger on her a little longer but finally looked away as a waitress slumped up. They spent a minute ordering then all fell silent as the waitress walked away.
Charlie stretched out his long legs under the table and crossed his arms. "So. What, if anything, do you want to do from here?"
The spoon was dirty. Ellie rubbed at the bowl of the utensil with her thumb. "First things first is to get Lacey’s cremation taken care of. After that..."
Kate pressed her lips together. "Charlie, you're implying there's something more that we can do. Or that we should do."
"I'm not implying anything. I'm just putting it out there."
"Ellie? What do you think?"
"I think that I've got about three more days before A, I lose my mind from not having anything useful to do and B, Marg screws up the shop so badly I won't have anything useful to go back to." Anger burned in her, years’ worth of anger. “Clearly the cops aren’t going to do anything, which is par for the course really. I don’t know why I let you talk me into coming down here to talk with them in the first place, I knew they weren’t going to believe me.”
Kate reached across and put a hand on her arm to calm her down. “Ellie...”
“No, Kate. I’m done. Let the cops do their bumbling thing the way they always do. I need to get on with my life.”
The waitress arrived with their drinks. Ellie passed on the coffee, opting for a diet soda. It wasn't diet, so she sent the waitress back with it. The waitress was not pleased.
Downing his water in nearly one go, Charlie took a long sip of his regular cola then sat back glumly. "So that's it."
She turned sideways so she could face him, putting her back against the window. "What is it that you want me to say? Or do?"
"I don't know, but something. Doesn't Lacey deserve justice?"
"Of course.” She met his gaze, her gaze dripping with sarcasm. “But isn't that the job of the police and the courts?"
He didn’t seem to register her snarkiness. "In a perfect world, yes." He balled up the wrapper from his straw, then flicked it across the table. "But it's not a perfect world."
She didn’t know what he wanted her to say, the same way she hadn’t known what Lacey thought she could do. "All facetiousness aside, what is it that we can do that the cops can't? Charlie, I'm a small business owner. I serve Frappuccinos and lattes to bored tourists and other shopkeepers, which is precisely what I told Lacey when she called. I couldn't help her then and I can't help her now. As everyone including you have hammered into me, that’s what the police are for."
"Really,” he spat back at her. “That coming from the woman whose parents' murder is still an open case? Where did all that righteous indignation go, Gooden?"
The attitude was so unlike easy-going, affable Charlie, it jolted her. She wondered, not for the first time she realized, what had happened to him over the past year that had hardened him even this much and caused him to quit the police force.
He held her gaze for an uncomfortably long time then rolled his eyes and looked at the window. "Fine. Whatever. I just thought maybe... whatever."
What was his problem? She looked at Kate, who was staring daggers at her, trying to impart some message to her. Again, she expected a kick under the table.
The waitress returned with another glass of cola. It still wasn't diet, but Ellie just didn't care anymore. She took a couple of sips, then sat back, aggravated by the by-play she just wasn't getting, aggravated by almost everything.
"Why don't we just give it a little time, Charlie?" Kate stirred her hot tea with her spoon. Hers hadn't looked dirty. "Then if the police don't seem to be making any progress, maybe we can give them another nudge."
"They don't need a nudge, Katie, they need a swift kick in the ass. If you --"
Ellie interrupted the rant she saw coming. "If you’re so hot to help, then do something useful for a change and light a fire under your pal Borchard."
His eyes sparked with anger. “If I had any leverage there, I’d do just that."
"Leverage? Hell, McCallum, he’s a cop and you’re some whiz P.I. Shouldn’t be that fucking hard."
He stood abruptly. "You know, I always wondered why you never hooked up with anyone, Gooden, but now that's pretty clear." He tossed a couple of bucks on the table. "I'll catch the train home. Later."
He stalked off, letting the diner door bang shut behind him.
Ellie watched him go with a shake of her head. "Sensitive little lad, isn't he?"
Kate rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Oh, Ellie, you're impossible."
Chapter 18
The rest of the day was spent in a search through all of Kate's old college stuff for pictures they could use in the memorial service for Lacey. Sitting in the storage area of the basement, they went through two or three boxes that had been buried so far back in the corner, Ellie was sure they'd find something living in them.
They’d spent an awkward hour in the car on the way back from the city. Ellie knew Kate was mad about how Ellie had pissed Charlie off, but she wasn’t going to back down. Charlie was a big boy. If he couldn’t take the honest truth, then that was his problem.
By the time they pulled in the driveway, though, Kate’s mood had thawed and her naturally sunny personality reasserted itself.
Ellie reached into one of the boxes neatly labeled "College Stuff" in black marker and started sorting through it. It contained much the same things Ellie's own box had – yearbooks, photo albums, some of Kate's old altar tools, papers, books, concert tickets, and other strange and interesting mementos from their four years at Crystal Park College.
Picking up an old knitted cloche, Ellie put it on. "I can't believe you kept some of this stuff."
Kate giggled. "You look ridiculous in that."
"It's the shape of my head. I don't look good in any hat."
"Give me that." Kate reached for the hat, put it on her own head. Somehow, magically, the hat looked fashionable again. Kate could wear anything.
"I’m seeing lots of pictures of the two of us, but not so much with Lacey.”
"I know I have some. They’ve got to be here somewhere, I can't believe I would have thrown them away. I told you, they were in a file, labeled ‘Lacey’."
"I can't believe you kept dossiers on us."
"They weren’t dossiers. They were profiles. In preparation for a psych project that I was going to work on in graduate school."
"Well, I’m not seeing them."
Kate blew her hair out of her eyes and grabbed another stack of papers and started leafing through them. "Damn it, it's got to be here."
"What do they look like?"
"I thought they were in plastic covers, but it's been so long. I'll know them if I see it."
Standing up, Ellie stretched then glanced at her watch. "It's nearly four. Shouldn't you be thinking about dinner for the hubby and offspring?"
"It's Saturday. Dan is doing the poker night thing, so he'll be grabbing something on the way.”
Convenient, Ellie thought, that Dan always managed to have a full social calendar anytime Ellie came to town. Probably for the best.
Kate continued, oblivious - or doing a good job being in denial. “As for the kids... maybe we should just go out and grab something too. Good heavens, our diet is going to hell in a hand basket this week."
"You want me to go? I could probably find my way to that hot dog place again. They had a veggie burger on the menu."
"Would you mind? I'd just as soon keep looking.”
"Sure." She didn't quite hold out her hand, but she did pause for a second, lo
ng enough for Kate to motion up the stairs.
"Purse is hanging from the hall tree. Just take my wallet."
"Cool. I promise I'll buy breakfast tomorrow."
Kate laughed. "Tomorrow is pancake Sunday, so maybe you'll have to spring for lunch instead."
"Right. Okay, you keep looking, I'll go forage for grub."
Ellie got halfway up the stairs when Kate let out a shout. "Hey! I’ve got them!"
Scrambling back down the carpeted stairs and back into the storage area, Ellie knelt beside Kate, who was holding a plastic pocket organizer filled with typed pages and piles of photos.
Kate pulled out the pictures and flipped through them, smiling, then passed them on to Ellie one at a time.
Ellie remembered most of them, although there were a few taken in places she didn’t recognize - places Kate and Lacey must have gone without her. There were even a couple of pictures of Lacey and Kate aboard the cruise ship - in the ship’s casino - that had to have been taken the night Ellie had gone on her date. She shivered at the thought of what might have happened.
“Kate... I’m sorry.”
Kate looked up abruptly. “Sorry? About what?”
“About... you know, what happened at the diner today.” She looked down at the pictures in her hand, then back up at Kate. “I didn’t mean to go off on Charlie.”
Kate placed a hand on her arm. “Oh, honey, I know that. This has got to bring back such awful memories for you.” She paused, as though considering her words carefully. “It’s hard on Charlie too. The last six months have been really tough on him. What happened today, with Detective Borchard, just brought back a lot of the frustration he’s been feeling.”
“Was Borchard part of why he left the force?”
Kate bit her lip. “No. But... I’m sorry, Ellie, but it’s not my story to tell. He’s almost as private a person as you are - the two of you are a lot alike, you know.”
Ellie nearly laughed at the absurdity of that notion but caught herself in time. Now was not the time to burn the bridge she’d just repaired. “Well, thanks for understanding. I promise, I’ll apologize to him later.”