Dead Wrong

by Mariah Stewart

  “Aidan, I don’t know how to thank you. I know that coming here, staying . . . well, I know you didn’t want to be here.”

  “I promised Annie. I couldn’t turn her down.”

  “I don’t know too many people who can.”

  He lifted his bag as a means of averting his eyes. “You know, the last word that my brother spoke before he died was her name. I’ll always be there for her.” He hesitated. Mara’d been a good sport all week, in spite of the strain.

  “I appreciate your being here for me this week.”

  He acknowledged this with a nod, then started toward the door. He stopped suddenly and turned around, and without thinking about what he was doing, leaned over and kissed her low on her cheek, close to the corner of her mouth. “Come see me in Rehoboth sometime. Bring Spike. He’d like the beach. You have my number.”

  “I just might do that.” She wondered if she ever would.

  She walked with him to the car, Spike racing ahead, then stood back while he dropped his bag into the trunk.

  “Thanks again for keeping the demons at bay.”

  “My specialty.” He unlocked the car and slid behind the wheel.

  “Spike, come here. . . .” Mara picked up the dog, then stepped back onto the grass. She smiled and waved as he backed the Vette out of the driveway, waved again when he beeped the horn as he pulled away. She stood until the car disappeared around the first corner.

  She cradled the little dog in her arms and walked slowly back into the house, where the silence seemed almost overwhelming. Funny, she hadn’t noticed it last week or the week before.

  Or the month before, or the year before . . .

  She poked through the mail and considered returning a phone call before deciding she didn’t really feel like talking to anyone right then. She poured a glass of iced tea and took it and Spike out onto the deck.

  She looked over the flat of red and white flowers that he’d left near the bottom step and wondered if he’d really been thinking about planting them. He hadn’t struck her as the gardening type.

  She sat in the same chair she’d sat in the night before. She put her feet up on the deck railing and watched Spike pounce upon a stick that was twice as long as he was.

  She sipped her iced tea and, for the first time in years, felt something akin to loneliness—something apart from what she felt when she missed Julianne—settle in around her. She figured it would pass soon enough. After all, Aidan had been there for less than a week.

  With the fingers of her right hand, she touched the place on her cheek where he’d kissed her. A kiss, no doubt, to celebrate his liberation.

  She leaned back and looked upward, waiting for the first star to appear, and tried to recall its name.

  Vince Giordano had been surprised when the guard appeared at his cell door and announced that he had visitors.

  “My lawyer’s not due till next week,” he’d said.

  “It’s not your lawyer,” the guard told him as he cuffed the prisoner’s hands behind his back.

  “Who then?”

  “don’cha wanna be surprised?” The guard grinned, showing severely crooked teeth.

  “Oh, sure. I love surprises.” Giordano shrugged and followed the guard through the maze of hallways.

  They stopped in front of one of the visitors’ rooms, and it occurred to Giordano before the door even opened that something must be up, since it wasn’t visiting hours. He shuffled into the room to find two county detectives seated at the beat-up plastic table, waiting for him.

  “Hello, Vincent.” Evan Crosby rested his elbows on the table.

  “Detective Crosby. Always a pleasure.” Giordano smiled and took a seat opposite the officers. “Detective Sullivan. Good to see you again, as well.”

  “We’re both delighted to see you, too.” Evan Crosby nodded, his mouth a grim line that barely mimicked a smile.

  “To what do I owe the visit, gentlemen?”

  “We just thought we’d stop by and offer our condolences.”

  “Condolences?” Giordano raised one eyebrow. “Someone die?”

  “Your mother-in-law. Former mother-in-law, I should say,” Joe Sullivan told him.

  “No shit. What happened? Heart attack?” Giordano looked surprised and almost concerned. Almost. “I always told her those cigarettes were no good for her.”

  “It wasn’t cigarettes that got her, Vincent.” Crosby leaned forward and dropped his voice. “She was shot through the head two nights ago.”

  “No shit,” he said again, this time genuinely shocked. “You sure it was Flora Esposito?”

  Detective Sullivan nodded.

  “Mother of the deceased Diane Esposito Giordano. Grandmother of the late Matthew and Vincent Giordano the third.” Crosby couldn’t help but get a lick in. He’d been on the team that had investigated the killings of Giordano’s wife and two little boys. His disgust was obvious.

  “So Flora got whacked, eh? For real?” Giordano shook his head. “Who’d want to kill that miserable old bitch?”

  “We thought maybe you’d have some thoughts on that.”

  “Nah. I can’t think of anyone. . . .” He looked up at the two detectives, his eyes darting from one to the other, realizing the scrutiny he was under. “Oh, give me a fucking break, will you? You can’t be serious. Yeah, right, I slipped out of here, whacked Flora, and sneaked back in.”

  “You could have arranged for someone to do it. It was very obvious at your trial that there was no love lost between you and the mother of your murdered wife.” Another dig from Crosby.

  “Arranged how, through a psychic?”

  “You could have contacted someone. . . .”

  “I haven’t had contact with anyone except for my lawyer since I got here. Early on, I had a couple of requests for interviews, but I wasn’t interested. I never contacted no one about them. No one calls, no one writes, no one comes to see me. You can check with the warden. I get no mail, I send no mail. I ain’t had any visitors and I ain’t used the phone in months.”

  “Not even family members?”

  “Especially not family members.” He snorted. “I’m one of them . . . what do you call ’em . . . persons not grata’d.”

  “I can see you studied Latin,” Crosby noted dryly.

  “Ah, that’s right. You’re the funny one.” Giordano’s eyes went back and forth between the two men who sat across from him. “Is there anything else, now that you’ve delivered the sad news?”

  “You don’t seem as broken up as I thought you might.”

  “Kiss my ass, Crosby.” Giordano turned toward the door and called for the guard, then stood as the door opened.

  “If I find out that you had anything at all to do with the murder—”

  “Good luck, Detective. I mean that. I hope you find the killer and prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law. Isn’t that what the D.A. said he was gonna do to me?” He was openly sneering. “And you know where that got you, don’t you? I’ll be out of here before another coupla weeks have passed. Thanks to your good buddy Officer Caruso. And I do thank him. Every day. You let him know that, hear? Let him know that Vince Giordano owes him big-time for planting that evidence and then having the stones to brag about it. Tell him I remember him in my prayers every night . . . and that I’ll be seeing him real soon. . . .”

  Giordano was laughing as he was led away, but he still could hear the curses of the two detectives as the door closed behind him.

  He walked back to the cell in silence, standing calmly while the guard removed the cuffs, let him into his cell, and locked the door behind him. Giordano sat on the edge of his mattress and covered his face with his hands and laughed until he cried.

  This latest news confirmed something he had begun to suspect when he’d heard about the first Mary Douglas killing.

  He did it. The crazy bastard really did it. . . .

  At first, he’d thought it was some crazy coincidence. But from subsequent news reports, it be
gan to dawn on Giordano that maybe Channing had gone through with it. That maybe he’d gotten the wrong Mary Douglas the first two times, but hey, he’d have had no way of knowing how many women there were in Lyndon with the same name. What were the chances of that? It was okay. Giordano could probably have been a little more specific.

  Channing, wherever you are, my man, I owe you big-time. . . .

  Of course, there’d been that news report earlier that day identifying the Douglas slayer as the son of one of the victims, but Giordano seriously doubted that could be true. After hearing about Flora’s untimely demise—he loved that expression, as if dying was ever timely—there was no doubt whatsoever in his mind who was behind it all.

  And even better, it was obvious that the police had not made the connection between the Mary Douglas slayings and the murder of his former mother-in-law.

  Channing, you slick bastard, you’re a real one-man crime wave.

  He wondered then if Channing remembered the name of the judge.

  He fervently hoped that he did.

  That bitch deserved whatever it was that Channing would do to her. Damn, but he’d give anything to be there, to watch her get what was coming to her. After all, everything was her fault. Diane and the boys would still be alive if it hadn’t been for her. Who did she think she was, that bitch judge, telling him that he couldn’t see his boys no more? That he couldn’t so much as set foot on the property that he’d worked his ass off to buy?

  Who did she think she was talking to? She was gonna tell him what he could and could not do with his own family?

  He shook his head. No one told Vince Giordano what to do. No one.

  As far as he was concerned, she had been the one to push Vince past his limits, forcing him to do what he’d done. Diane’s blood, the blood of his children . . . it was all on her hands.

  Restless anger grew within him. He got off his cot and looked up at the barred window, wondering where Her Honor was at that very moment, and if she had any idea of how little time she had left. Hours? Days? A week?

  It put a smile on his face, just thinking about it.

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  IT WAS COOLER BY THE OCEAN THAN IT HAD BEEN IN Lyndon, and Aidan dug out an old blue sweatshirt to layer over the thermal shirt he’d planned to wear during his walk. If he’d been running, the thermal would have been too much. But it had been a year since he’d run, and he doubted he’d be doing it again anytime soon, if ever. But he could walk. Over the past week, he’d walked more than he had in months. He grudgingly admitted he’d almost enjoyed it.

  He’d have enjoyed the walk along the water more if he’d had that little dog with him, though. He’d forgotten how much he liked dogs. Maybe he’d pay a visit to the local SPCA and get a dog of his own. Still, that was a commitment he wasn’t sure he was ready to make. He wasn’t sure he was ready to be steady company for anyone, man or beast.

  And then, of course, there was Mara.

  When he’d promised Annie he’d keep an eye on her sister, he’d had little memory of Mara but he’d somehow expected her to look like Annie, blond and blue-eyed, soft, round, feminine to the core. He hadn’t been prepared for Mara, petite and dark, with wide green eyes, her face beautiful despite its leaness. She’d been a surprise to him in every way, but he’d found that he liked her, in spite of himself. Mara was a real no-nonsense kind of woman, like her sister, and he’d appreciated that. He gave her credit for trying to make the best of the situation, for being hospitable when he knew she’d been uncomfortable with him living under her roof. Of course, he’d been uncomfortable, too. She’d just dealt with it better than he had.

  In his defense, he reminded himself, it had been a long time since he’d spent any time with any woman who wasn’t a nurse or a therapist, and even that contact had been months past. One might excuse him for being less than charming.

  Aidan’s thoughts drifted to Mara’s ex-husband. The bastard. What kind of man would steal a child from her mother?

  Aidan walked along the waterline, his feet sinking into the cool sand as the tide began to come in. He couldn’t imagine how that must feel, to know your child was out there, somewhere, but not know where.

  Hell, he thought, after seven years, Mara doesn’t even know what her daughter looks like.

  Aidan wished he could do something to help, something that would take that haunted look from those green eyes. . . .

  The old Aidan Shields could have helped, he knew. He’d have moved heaven and earth to help Mara locate her daughter. After all, there had been very little that the old Aidan Shields could not do.

  He slowed his pace and fought against a wave of self-pity. Being at Mara’s, with other things to occupy his mind, had taken his focus off himself and his own problems for the first time in months. As a consequence, he hadn’t spent quite so much time dwelling on what he’d lost. Now that he was back home, he was going to have to try to get his life back on track. He’d never forget what had happened in the alley that night, would never stop grieving for Dylan, but over the past week, he’d come to understand that maybe the time had come for him to stop grieving for himself.

  He would call the therapist when he got back to the apartment, he’d go every time he was supposed to, he’d do his exercises at home. He’d lose those extra pounds and he’d gain back what strength he could. He’d been a ninety-pound weakling for long enough.

  Okay, make that a two-hundred-and-thirty-pound weakling, but it was all the same, wasn’t it? Weak was, well, weak, inexcusable. And over the past five or six days, he’d realized just how tired he was of being weak.

  He’d seen pity in Mara’s eyes when he couldn’t keep up on their walks, and he’d hated it. It had angered and embarrassed him and had kept him in a foul mood when he was around her. He hadn’t wanted it to be that way, but there it was. He couldn’t help but wonder if, every time she looked at him, Mara was wondering just what kind of a bodyguard this wreck of a former FBI agent could possibly be.

  He hadn’t wanted her to look at him that way. He’d wanted . . . hell, he didn’t know what he’d wanted. As close as he came to understanding that all week was when he was leaving, and he’d kissed her. As close to her mouth as he could get without, well, kissing her on the mouth, though he’d been sorely tempted to do just that. What if she’d pushed him away? Rejection wasn’t something he’d wanted to deal with right now. He had enough trouble accepting himself.

  So he’d gone for the buddy kiss, the kiss on the cheek. At least she hadn’t seemed offended. That was something.

  He walked until his hip threatened to give out on him, then he thought about sitting for a while on the sand, but figured since he’d have difficulty getting up again, he’d just as well stand. He tried to balance his weight on both legs, tucked his hands into his pockets, and watched an osprey dive headfirst into the ocean, wings folded to its sides, only to emerge seconds later with a good-size fish in its beak. The bird flapped off toward its nest with purpose. Aidan watched it until it was no more than a dot in the sky.

  Spring brought the migrating birds through the Delmarva coast, and this morning he’d seen from the deck off his apartment a flock of shorebirds. He knew that in another month or so, the shoreline all along the bay would be dense with birds stopping to refuel on their way from South America to the Arctic. He’d heard about the staggering number of birds that would pass through the area, but in all the years he’d lived there, he’d never been around to witness the phenomenon himself. Maybe this year, he thought idly. God knows he had nothing else planned for the next few months.

  His cell phone began to ring just as he was about to leave the beach.

  “How’s it going?” Miranda Cahill asked cheerfully.

  “It’s going,” he responded. “What’s up?”

  “Remember we talked about the Jenny Green killing? I said I’d follow up?”

  “You find anything?”

  “Well, I’d asked to have some reports sent to me
, and I just finished reviewing them. The case is still open, by the way, and the suspect I’d interviewed who’d given me the weird vibes was a guy by the name of Curt Gibbons.”

  “Anything on him in the computer?”

  “No, nothing. I put his name through every data bank I could find, but there were no hits. I tried tracking him through the social security number he gave us—nothing. The address he gave us? He’s long gone. The only thing I could find was a mention that he’d made of the school he’d graduated from. Lake Grove High in Lake Grove, Ohio. But there’s no current record of him anywhere. Strange, huh?”

  “Well, you know, people disappear for different reasons.” He thought of Mara’s husband. “I think we both know that a person who doesn’t want to be found can devise any number of ways to cover his tracks.”

  “Most people don’t just evaporate unless they are running from something, though.” Miranda paused, then added, “Makes you wonder what this guy left behind, doesn’t it?”

  “Maybe he’s dead.”

  “Maybe. Maybe I read way too much into him. Maybe he’s off the radar because he’s living a clean and quiet life someplace with a wife and a houseful of kids.”

  “Stranger things have happened.”

  “I guess. Well, I just wanted to pass that along to you. I wanted you to know that I did follow up,” she told him. “Just in case you were wondering.”

  “I appreciate that. Thanks, Miranda.”

  “That’s another call coming in. Gotta run. . . . Sorry I couldn’t come up with something better on this guy.” And she was gone.

  Aidan slid his phone back into his pocket and continued to stare out at the ocean, his curiosity piqued.

  He remembered Miranda talking about this suspect at the time she’d interviewed him. Curt Gibbons clearly had gotten under her skin. Funny that now he seemed to have vanished into thin air.

  Aidan wandered back to his apartment, thinking about all the ways in which a person could disappear if he wanted to badly enough, and all the reasons one might want to do so. Most of them weren’t good.

  He grabbed a cold bottle of beer from the refrigerator and went out onto his deck. From there he could see the ocean and the boats—fishing boats most likely, at this time of the year—and he tried to divert his attention to something other than Curt Gibbons. Finally, accepting that he wasn’t going to stop thinking about it until he did something about it, he went back into the apartment and dialed information.