by A. J. Aalto
“That’s going to lead to heartache,” Gillian warned, signing the sales papers and taking her credit card back from the salesman. “Or at the very least clogged arteries.”
“Worth it,” Bruce said cheerfully. “Where to now?”
“I promised you dinner,” she said, “though it’s a bit late.”
“Better late than never,” he said, offering to take the lamp. She handed it over, pulling her purse strap up over her left shoulder and cupping her right arm. Her shoulder was still throbbing, but once they got to Mrs. Blymhill’s house, she could take one of her pills, or maybe a cocktail of them with a coffee to make sure the pain didn’t blossom into a migraine.
They struck out into a blustery winter night; the temperature was dropping fast, and the flags outside the store snapped loudly, casting shadows in a parking lot lit by street lamps. The asphalt was uneven, but Gillian watched her step carefully most of the way. When they hit the truck, though, a patch of ice lurking around the corner near the passenger side door caught her heel and her foot went out. She threw out her dominant right hand without thinking and grabbed the truck for support. The bad angle was too much for that shoulder and she went down with a high-pitched shriek. Pain tore through her arm, and tears instantly blurring her vision.
Bruce ditched the lamp in the truck bed and ran to her side, his boots loud on the asphalt. “Oh, God, Gills, what happened?” His big hands hovered, waiting to help her but wary to touch the wrong spot.
She couldn’t speak. The pain was incredible. Her breath whistled in and out of lungs constricted by agony. She rolled onto her back and held her right arm tight across her torso, her left hand cupping her injured shoulder. The sky was velvet black nothingness pricked with broken glass, an endless hole filled with bitter shards above her. Pain swallowed her thoughts and then mercifully receded enough for her to form thoughts and words. She found her voice at the same time as her breath came easier.
“Slipped. Grabbed the truck with the wrong hand,” she said, her voice husky through shock. She hated that she was so easily injured and reinjured over and over. Nothing to doctors had tried had helped; physiotherapy, cortisone shots, it had been useless. She tried to sit up and Bruce’s hands again hovered close.
“What can I do?” he asked, close enough that when his breath fogged, it clouded her vision.
“Give me your arm,” she said. When he held out one massive slab of muscle masquerading as an arm, she used her left arm to hook under and around, and pulled herself up as he rose smoothly from a crouch to standing, easing her up slowly with him. His strength was reassuring, his closeness a comfort. He reached past her to open the truck door and maneuvered his body so she could use him to get herself where she needed to go. He moved to reach for her seatbelt to help her when she looked up and noticed for the first time what a lovely shade of hazel his eyes were, and how kind and gentle, and before she knew what she was doing, she leaned forward and captured his mouth with hers.
Bruce made a surprised little noise into her mouth but did not pull away; he froze for the second that the kiss lasted, and when she broke contact, he did not attempt to reconnect. Instead, he blinked rapidly at her, and arched one eyebrow.
“So, that just happened,” he whispered playfully. “Did you hit your head, too?”
Gillian’s jaw dropped. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”
He chuckled and buckled her seat belt for her, making sure the belt fell well clear of her injured shoulder. “Do you hear me complaining?”
He shut her door and crossed in front of the truck, giving his beard a scratch as he came to the driver’s side and got in. As soon as he was settled, she said, “I mean it, Bruce. I shouldn’t have done that. We’re not… I mean, we don’t…”
“It doesn’t have to mean anything,” he said. “It’s only a little interesting thing that took place on a Sunday night for no reason whatsoever.”
“Right,” she said. Then she nodded and repeated, “Right.”
He started the car, turned the heat up to maximum, and cast a huge smile at her. “I hope you don’t mind if I wear this smug grin all the way home, though, because that’s also a thing that’s happening.”
She groaned but couldn’t help but laugh with embarrassment. “Bruce, don’t tease me about this.”
“Oh, I’m teasing you,” he said. “For sure. A lot. Forever.”
“Bruce!” If her arm didn’t hurt so badly, she’d have slugged him.
“Severe pain makes Gillian kiss me,” he noted aloud, and mimed drawing this on an imaginary chalk board in the air. “Documented for future reference.”
“Bruce!” she scolded through a laugh.
“Does this mean I’m staying the night?” he asked, wiggling those massive eyebrows at her.
“No!” she insisted.
“Okay,” he said with a bobbing nod. “I’ll go home after the hubba-hubba sexytimes.” He purred in her general direction like a big jungle cat and growled.
Gillian promptly dissolved into a giggle fit, which she knew damn well was his intention all along; the laughter erased her embarrassment and relieved a good deal of pain, and when she tried to rotate her shoulder experimentally, it wasn’t as bad as she’d feared it would be.
“I feel I need to inform you that you’re incorrigible,” she said.
“You love it,” he said.
She snuck a side-long glance at him, starting to wonder if maybe she did.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Sunday, November 2. 7:25 P.M.
Bobby McIntyre stood at the curb on Red Maple Drive staring at Gillian Hearth’s dark, quiet house; it was the one logical place she hadn’t looked for Frankie, and it was clear that no one was here. It hadn’t been safe to show up here, she knew that much. She also knew that she was dying, dying inside, and if she couldn’t find Frankie, her whole life was meaningless. All her carefully laid plans, all her dreams of the future. A pit of churning acid gnawed in her belly. The pain was unbearable.
There must be a man.
Bobby’s heart lurched sickly and a cold bolt of jealousy stole her breath. Of course that was it. She’s not home because she’s with someone. On a date. Out to dinner. Maybe drinking again. Maybe letting him touch her soft, pale skin, or reach under her clothes to stroke her. Bobby’s fists tightened further and she took out her phone, knowing that was also not safe. She dialed Gillian’s number. When she didn’t pick up, she did it again, and again, and again. Finally, she let it go to voice mail.
“I told you that I always clean up everyone else’s messes. And I would have cleaned this one up, too, if you’d given me more time. I will get rid of him. I will fuck him up. Just stop running me off like an ungrateful bitch. Everyone’s always running me off. I’m just sick of it. After everything I’ve done for you two?” She paced at the curb, kicking through drifts of dried leaves, and ran a hand through her short red hair. “You don’t even fucking know. You don’t know!” She tried to keep from yelling, eyeballing the neighbor’s houses. “I’m all-in when it comes to my loved ones.” She started walking back around the rear of the yard where the cover of night was heavier, and lowered her voice. “There’s time. There’s still time. I can fix this. Whatever he’s done, he’ll pay for. I’ll make him disappear. Just don’t shut me out, Gillian. I—” Her anger turned to misery rapidly, and a sob escaped her. “I can’t—” Her breath hitched and she dissolved into tears, unable to speak until she got a handle on them. “I can’t believe you’d let her abandon me again. Again. Why do you make her do this to me? It’s so mean, you’re so mean! You and Barb, you just don’t get it. Always treating me like shit, when I do everything for you. You owe me everything. You’re not getting rid of me this time. I know your tricks. You throw a bunch of men at Frankie to make me feel like garbage, and she messes around in front of me, and then I leave. Well, I’m not leaving this time. You’re not running me off. And after I fix this one, you’re going to owe me again, and don’t you fucki
ng forget it.” She hung up, exhausted, wiped the running snot from her upper lip on her sleeve. There was a funny smell out back near the shed, copper and shit and something worse. A dead raccoon in the bushes, maybe. Or down closer to the lake.
Bobby McIntyre wouldn't have been the least bit surprised if she’d taken four more steps and tripped over Colin’s rapidly cooling corpse, but she did not take four more steps. She turned and picked her way in the dark down toward the lake, finding the easiest path down to the water’s edge, where there was the tiniest strip of driftwood-dotted sand mixed with the shells of zebra mussels and water-softened chunks of glass. Careful not to turn an ankle, she let the moonlight guide her down the shoreline, crouching slightly when she got close to private properties, and headed west toward Higgins Point.
The walk would take her an hour.
She imagined there was blood on the wind, and she was not wrong.
**
Dean Jagger sat at his desk thinking about pizza and Mike Deacon and a French fry truck by the canal and missing dildos and a vase full of roses and Freesia (“funeral flowers,” she’d said, the color in her cheeks vivid on her shock-paled face). He thought about Bobby McIntyre bringing Frankie Farmer carnations the morning that Mike Deacon disappeared. Gillian not seeing them in the kitchen that day. Gillian tripping down those long, hard basement stairs. The painkillers in her purse. The drug dealer who called her “Auntie.” The statement of the nurses of Gillian’s absolute silence after her injury. He thought about the gunshot wounds in Paul Langerbeins’ hip and the way he didn’t use a cane. He thought about Cheryl Broderick’s call regarding Bobby McIntyre slipping away. He thought about the package he received that morning; a green leather diary with no name inside and some of the pages missing, torn out messily. The brick through the window, the slight man in the baseball hat. Was it a man? He looked at the picture of Bobby McIntyre. Same height, weight. Short hair. Boxy shoulders. Could it have been her? He thought about the gully at Pleasant Pines Cemetery where he’d dropped a receipt-wrapped stick to see where it would fall. He wanted to go back and see if anything else was being dumped there, garbage, whatever. If so, his stick may be disturbed. He’d need a team. Late now, though. Dark. And besides, he felt it wasn’t a body hidden there. Something, but not a body.
That’s too close. It’s not there. But it would have to be close, he reasoned. How else would she move it? He couldn’t, try as he might, picture Gillian Hearth slicing up a body into more manageable pieces. It was far too gruesome, and just didn’t fit. But the ATV that the landscaping crew used, the one with the flatbed trailer on the back, he thought, made a lot of sense.
There must be a path elsewhere, a hole in the fence at the far end, perhaps, some place the ATV could get through.
For some reason, his brain showed him Gillian Hearth sitting in her kitchen, and his gut gave a telltale flutter of intuition; he listened to it, exploring the image, chewing the inside of his mouth absently. Over her head. The photographs. What of them? Roses.
So what? He figured there were a ton of roses in a cemetery. She’d likely planted some herself at the Red Maple house, and maybe she would at her new place at Higgins Point. Why did they matter?
They did, though. Because they weren’t just in her kitchen. The pictures were on the living room wall, too. And hadn’t there been one in her bedroom? The same rose, a single, open flower, the stem bristling with thorns.
He flipped through the green diary again, near the end, one of the more recent entries, dated October twenty-ninth. Light, looping script, very tidy. New project, very happy. Gillian wants pink roses. Of course. Not even the pretty ones, but those plain single flat-looking flowers. She doesn’t get it. I’m doing irises. It’ll look perfect in that bedroom. Can’t wait to get started!
The back of Dean’s chair tilted slightly on springs as he leaned back, bouncing a little, extending his muscles to stretch again. Flipped pages. Aubergine and vanilla cream for the second bathroom upstairs, fern accents. Should look perfect with the fixtures that are already there. Must find a better mirror. Big. Walnut, maybe. Two pages later. I can’t wait to open this place. I should have everything settled by May, June.
I should, he thought. Not we should. Dean lowered the diary and stared into the distance in thought. Does that mean anything?
He got a text from Cheryl Broderick; they’d found Bobby McIntyre’s car, a red Fiat with tinted windows that matched the car that Frankie Farmer drove, parked in Derby Harbor near the service road at the Gas N’ Goods. That was a five minute walk from the main strip where Alibi Alley was. No sign yet of Bobby. Barb McIntyre had contacted police about an hour ago; her kidney tests came back positive for oxalate crystals, confirming ethylene glycol ingestion. Antifreeze poisoning. Barb was adamant that she had not consumed antifreeze in a suicide attempt, but was hesitant to blame her sister outright, hopeful some other explanation could be found. Denial, Dean thought.
He began to go over the day that Mike Deacon disappeared one more time in his mind. But his belly gave a sick twist. He stared out the plate glass as the last of daylight disappeared into a thin, crystalline night, black as sin and twice as shady. What are the chances that Bobby McIntyre is still in town? The answer hit him like a punch. She isn’t leaving town until she gets what she wants. Which begat the question: what did she want?
She wants her sister dead. Why? Money? Vengeance? If she wanted her sister dead, the doctor had told him that it would have only taken a single large dose. Why had Bobby not done that? She wants Barb sick but not dead. Why? She wants to be needed.
By everyone? He scratched that into his notepad, his pen digging into the paper more forcefully than usual, trying not to let his personal disgust cloud his perceptions. He was still missing something important, some link. He wrote his missing person’s name in the middle of a fresh page, then jotted down names around him: Frankie Farmer, the fiancée, Gillian Hearth, the sister, and Bobby McIntyre, the unstable friend. His eyes kept straying back to McIntyre; this was the one who’d proven herself to be harmful, and she had been at the Farmer house the day Mike Deacon went missing.
Before Mike Deacon’s visit. During? he wondered. What had Gillian said when he asked her about that? He referred back to his notes. I don’t know when Mike Deacon arrived at my sister’s house, but I know I wasn’t there when he came or left, were her exact words. That didn’t mean she wasn’t there at the same time as Mike, Dean thought.
His phone dinged, and the ringtone was the theme from Bonanza. He smirked; he’d changed it when Tombstone Jones started wearing cowboy hats to the shooting range. When he answered, Jones wasted no time with small talk.
“Broderick let me know that Bobby McIntyre has been using Barb’s ID to work out at a gym called Wilcox Wellness in Derby Harbor. Gave them a shout, and lo and behold, the Wilcox twins are a very cooperative pair. Yoga Boy has a record and he’s not too eager to run afoul of the law again.”
Sensing Tombstone’s gloating tone was the beginning of a rant, Dean prompted, “What’d you manage to dig up, Tommy?”
“They sent over a list of their other patrons,” Tombstone said, “and guess who else pinged on the client list?”
When Tombstone told him the name, Dean bolted out of his chair, grabbed his jacket, and hustled to his car.
Chapter Forty
Sunday, November 2. 7:55 P.M.
When Bruce pulled into the driveway at Hearth House, Gillian saw the big house with fresh eyes; its towering roof, its good bones, its long, floor-to-ceiling windows on the main level, its little round windows in the attic. Hers. Her and Frankie. Moneywise, technically hers. Frankie didn’t have much money of her own, and certainly what little alimony and child support she got from Henry went to supporting the kids. It was no matter. Gillian was comfortable with Frankie owing her a bit of money now and then. Greg had left her a fairly large chunk in life insurance, and spending it to make the Hearth sisters’ dreams come true was worth it.
Bru
ce pointed out the black SUV near the road and Gillian said, “Paul said he had a man watching the house. Someone named Beaner.”
“Then where is he?” Bruce asked. “Nobody in that car.”
“Maybe he’s doing a walk-around? Checking the yard?” Gillian carefully undid her belt and slid out into the night. “He'd better be careful. There are still three old bear traps in the herb garden. If he steps on those, he’ll snap his leg.”
She closed the passenger side door and came around to get her lamp from the back. The box was dusted with snow. Bruce popped out and came around the back of the truck. “I didn’t know you had a dog.”
Gillian spun around and blinked with disbelief; Doogie, Frankie’s mostly deaf yellow lab, was wandering down the front yard toward the shoreline, wagging his tail. She called his name and whistled, though she knew he wouldn’t hear her.
“How’d he get out?” Bruce wanted to know.
Gillian dug out her house keys, watching the house uneasily. “I don’t know. Maybe I forgot to lock up?” Not even possible, being as paranoid as I have been lately. “Maybe Frankie came home and left the door open and he slipped out? We’re the only ones with keys.”
Bruce sighed unhappily. “Maybe someone didn’t use a key, Gillian. Want me to grab the dog?”
“He won’t come without his leash, I’ll grab it.”
“Well, I’m coming in with you. There’s no way you’re going in there by yourself,” he said. “Better yet, give me your keys. Let me go in first.”
Gillian gazed up at him and opened her mouth to retort when he lowered his brow at her and said, “Seriously? You’re going to argue with me about this? Lady, you have a death wish. If something bad happens, let me take the brunt of it. I’m a big dude.”
She dropped her key ring into Bruce’s huge mitt and she followed him up. The porch lights were on a motion sensor, and she expected them to blink on when they approached. Still, when they did, she gave a nervous start. The wind blew the hanging lamp-style lights to and fro, casting shifting shadows around the wicker chairs and tables on the covered porch. The wood planks creaked underneath. Gillian remember how she’d been charmed the first time she’d heard that noise, but now it ratcheted up her nerves.