The Missing Piece

by Sala, Sharon

  Charlie shrugged. “Jason broke up with a woman he’d been seeing and that happened about two hours before he was shot. I asked him how she took the breakup, and he said she was screaming and cursing him when he disconnected.”

  “But that wouldn’t tie her to Carter, because all his attacks happened way before the breakup.”

  “I have a theory,” Charlie said. “If it pans out, I’ll let you know.”

  “Oh...what was her name?”

  “Miranda Deutsch.”

  Bruner looked up from his notepad. “As in Johannes Deutsch’s daughter?”

  “Yes,” Charlie said.

  Detective Bruner sighed. “Let’s both hope your theory falls flat. The chief is already on us to catch whoever’s been after Carter, and no way do I want to tell him that a member of the second-richest family in Denver has become our main suspect.”

  Charlie’s phone signaled another text. “It’s from Wyrick. She says Rey Garza and Miranda Deutsch went to the same high school, same graduating class.”

  Bruner stared. “I am officially in awe of your assistant.”

  Charlie’s phone dinged again. “She also says Buddy Pierce and Wilma Short were once married, but Wilma’s mother had the marriage annulled because Wilma was underage.”

  Bruner shook his head.

  “What’s wrong?” Carter asked.

  “I’m just waiting for your assistant to divulge the name of the killer,” he said.

  Charlie grinned. “That might take a bit longer. However, as I mentioned, she did uncover a half-million-dollar cash deposit into the account of Wilma Short’s mother, who’s in a memory care facility. It was made four months ago, which was right before all the incidents with Carter began. Wilma has been using it to pay for her mother’s care.”

  Bruner stood up again. “I am really impressed. How did she even think to look in that direction so quickly?”

  “I already had her researching both Wilma Short and Miranda Deutsch for some time, but there’s no explanation for how her mind works.”

  “I’ve covered everything I came to ask,” Bruner said. “I thank you for the added information. I’m assuming you’ll stay in touch?”

  “Absolutely,” Charlie replied.

  “I’ll see you out,” Carter said and walked the detective to the lobby as Charlie went upstairs to where Wyrick was working.

  “You rocked Detective Bruner’s world, and I’m not even going to ask what made you check high school records. Oh, and remind me to give you a raise.”

  Wyrick ignored him. “The new info really points a finger at the Deutsch woman.”

  “Yes. Now see if you can find payoffs between her and the three murder victims. If you can, it links her to the cases on both Carter and Jason.”

  Wyrick nodded. “I’ll get started on the money trail.”

  * * *

  Miranda Deutsch was in her private office, going through a drawer she kept locked, shredding invoices and paid receipts, wondering why the hell she’d kept them in the first place. After all the breakup stuff with Jason, it felt good to rid herself of the last connections she had to him.

  She stopped once, thinking she heard footsteps in the hall, but then they were gone, so she continued shredding documents, one by one. If only it was this easy to get rid of memories, but what was done was done.

  She’d just fed the last paper through the shredder when someone knocked at the door. Then she heard her father’s voice.

  “Miranda, it’s me.”

  She jumped up and ran out of the office into the sitting area. “Come in!”

  Johannes opened the door but didn’t enter. “I’m leaving for a meeting and won’t be back for dinner. I wanted to tell you in person. Will you be okay on your own?”

  “Of course. And may I say, you look very handsome.”

  Johannes smiled. “Thank you, my dear. Remember, if you have an emergency, I will always take your calls.”

  She crossed the carpet in her bare feet and stretched up to give him a kiss on the cheek.

  “I know that. You are the best father ever. Now, go do your thing. I have no plans for this evening and am looking forward to a night in. Popcorn in bed and one of my favorite movies. You know how I love to do that.”

  “Just like your mama,” Johannes said. “I’ll probably be late, so I’ll see you in the morning,” he said.

  “See you then,” Miranda said and walked out into the hall, knowing he’d look back. When he did, she waved at him once more, and then he was gone.

  She went back to her room, thinking about her father’s life and how hard he’d worked to get where they were today. She’d grown up in the back of his butcher shop, but by the time she was twelve, Deutsch Sausages had gained national recognition. She was no longer the butcher’s daughter. She was the daughter of Johannes Deutsch, the Sausage King.

  She went to the windows overlooking the front of the estate to watch her father leaving in the limo. Then she smiled, her pulse already racing as she ran across the carpet to lock the door.

  She looked in her office to make sure she hadn’t missed anything, then hurried to her bedroom and locked herself in there as well, then stripped and headed for the nightstand by her bed.

  “Rubber Dicky, Rubber Dicky, come out, come out, wherever you are.”

  To hell with popcorn and a movie.

  * * *

  Lunch was long since over and Wyrick had changed out of her yellow leather and spike heels into jeans and a lightweight long-sleeved shirt that hung almost to her knees. She was back at work in her bare feet, and with a glass of Pepsi at hand.

  Charlie was at the same table fielding calls and emails. He’d just received a phone call from Detective Bruner, confirming the ballistics test they’d run on the weapon from Rey Garza’s car. It was the one used to shoot Jason Dunleavy.

  And the fact that Wilma intimately knew Buddy Pierce, who drove a car like the one that had cut Carter off on the freeway, tied the two of them together in the attacks on Carter.

  There were still reasons to suspect that Miranda Deutsch was behind Jason’s shooting, but there was a big gap in the theory. According to both Jason and Carter, Miranda had never been inside the Dunleavy home or met the family, so they lacked a motive to connect her to Carter. What was the missing link between the cases? Who had reason to want both of them dead?

  Charlie was still typing when he realized Wyrick wasn’t. The silence was startling. He looked up. She was sitting in front of her laptop, staring at the screen.

  “What?” Charlie asked.

  “Miranda Deutsch did a DNA test on one of those ancestor sites.”

  “What made you go there?”

  “Just double-checking her expenditures. It was the only purchase that stood out as different from everything else, so I got curious.”

  “And?”

  “And I’m not going to tell you how I found this, but Johannes Deutsch is not her biological father, and if she didn’t know it before she got the test results, she knew it afterward.”

  Charlie pushed his laptop aside and leaned forward. “Okay... That’s a big deal, for sure, but how does this play out with the cases we’re working on?”

  “Less than a month after she got the test results, she had an abortion.”

  “Whoa! Didn’t see that coming,” Charlie muttered, but he felt the pieces were beginning to fall into place.

  “Was she dating Jason Dunleavy at that time?”

  “Yes.” Wyrick looked over her laptop at Charlie. “Why would a woman who wants to marry a specific man and professes to love him suddenly need to get rid of his child?”

  “If it wasn’t his child,” Charlie said.

  “But what other reason is there for aborting a fetus, other than a life-saving procedure or just not wanting to have children?” Wyrick asked.r />
  Charlie narrowed his eyes. “You already know the answer. You’re trying to lead me to it so I’ll think I figured it out myself. This isn’t what I pay you the big bucks for. Spit it out.”

  “What if the mother and the father of a baby were blood relatives? What then?” she asked.

  Charlie slapped his hand on the table so hard it rattled the ice in her glass of Pepsi.

  “Are you shitting me? But who? Wait. Jason’s deceased father was also her father? Half brother and half sister?”

  “No. Not the Reed side. The Dunleavy side. Because of that DNA test, she found a connection on the ancestor site to a Dunleavy in Ireland. And that Irish woman, who would’ve been a great-great-aunt to Miranda, was already linked to Dillon Dunleavy, who was father to Edward, Dina, Carter, and Ted. So Miranda had to know she was somehow related to them, but she obviously wanted to learn more. I began searching in her credit card records and found she’d paid a private lab to perform two more DNA tests. Another one for her and one for Jason,” Wyrick said.

  “She could easily have collected a sample for Jason while they were still dating. Did you find out the results there?” Charlie asked.

  “They’re first cousins.”

  “Carter? Carter Dunleavy is her biological father?”

  She shrugged. “One of them is. Carter, Edward or Ted.”

  “I don’t say this often, but I feel like throwing up,” Charlie muttered. “What’s her mother’s name? How old was she when Miranda was born? Find a link to her with one of those three and we’re closer to a motive.”

  Wyrick nodded. “Her mother’s name was Vivian Morrow, and I’ll dig deeper into her life, but I need candy.”

  “Candy?”

  “Yes. The stuff with sugar, and chocolate would be an added bonus,” she said, then went back to work.

  Charlie picked up the house phone and buzzed the kitchen.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Dodge. How can we serve you?” Ruth asked.

  “Wyrick is in need of something sweet. Preferably with chocolate. Would you have anything remotely like that available?”

  “Of course. Would you prefer a slice of Sacher torte, a wonderful chocolate mousse or possibly some fine Belgian chocolates?”

  “So nothing like a Hershey’s bar?” he asked.

  Ruth giggled. “I’ll have one of the girls bring up a tray for both of you. Would you care for coffee, as well?”

  Charlie sighed. “Coffee would be great.”

  “We’ll have it right up,” Ruth said.

  Charlie replaced the receiver. “Chocolate is on the way.”

  Apparently unaware he’d even been on the phone, she paused. “Really?”

  “I’m a PI, remember? I can find stuff, too. I need a good old-fashioned stakeout. Or a standoff somewhere. This sitting around looking at computer screens is likely to affect my sanity,” he muttered.

  “Well, Mr. Cranky Pants, I hope they bring enough chocolate for both of us. Sounds like you’re running low on sugar, too.”

  He glared. “You sound like that candy bar commercial.”

  “What candy bar commercial?”

  “The one where... Oh, never mind. And I’m not cranky.”

  Wyrick stood. “Excuse me. I’m going to wash up. Get the door for me when they bring up the chocolate, will you?”

  Charlie watched that oversize shirt billowing out around her as she walked out and shook his head. It made her look like she’d had to set sail before leaving the room.

  Damn woman.

  A few minutes later there was a knock at her door.

  “I’m getting the door!” he yelled, knowing it would tick her off.

  Louise was there with a small tea trolley and promptly pushed it inside. “Don’t worry about the trolley when you’ve finished. Just push it into the hall and give us a ring. We’ll remove it for you.”

  “Thank you, Louise. It all looks very good. Pass on my thanks to the chef.”

  She smiled. “I will.”

  Charlie shut the door, studied the assortment of sweets and then stuck his finger in one before pouring himself a cup of coffee.

  Wyrick sailed back into the room. “I smell fresh coffee.”

  “And an assortment of chocolate desserts.”

  She leaned over the trolley, admiring the array, and then saw a hole punched right in the middle of a serving of chocolate mousse. She looked at the hole, then at him.

  “Did you just put your finger in that mousse?”

  “Back when we were kids, that’s how my brothers and I staked our claims. So yes, I claimed the mousse.”

  He watched her eyes widen, and then she threw back her head and laughed. Still grinning, she leaned over the trolley and stuck her finger in the slice of Sacher torte, then poured a cup of coffee, picked up the torte and a fork to eat with, and carried it all back to the living room.

  “Well! Don’t just stand there looming,” she said. “Get your mousse and a spoon and come sit. You loom when you’re standing.”

  Charlie stuck a spoon in the mousse and went to join her, but he couldn’t look at her without revealing what her laughter had done to him. He didn’t want to see her that way. He needed her to be prickly and short-tempered.

  “How old is Miranda?” Charlie asked, then put a spoonful of mousse in his mouth.

  “Twenty-nine,” Wyrick said as she licked the chocolate from her fork.

  Charlie looked up just as she licked the fork, then immediately looked away. “I need to know details about her mother. What do we have?”

  Wyrick cut herself another bite of cake. “We don’t. But I do. As I said earlier, she was Vivian Morrow before she married Johannes Deutsch. She was twenty. If she’d lived, she would be fifty now. And, in case you’re about to ask this next, she had to have been pregnant when she and Johannes married, because Miranda was born eight and a half months after the ceremony.”

  “How old would the Dunleavy brothers have been thirty years ago?”

  “Hang on a sec.” Wyrick got up. She returned with her notes and a pen. “Let’s see, Carter is fifty-five now, so he would’ve been twenty-five. Edward is sixty, so he would have been thirty, and Ted’s forty-six, so he would only have been sixteen. One of those three is her father.”

  “Even if she knows—or believes—that Carter is her father, why want him dead?” Charlie asked.

  Wyrick took another bite, chewed and swallowed before she answered. “Maybe she freaked out because of the cousin aspect of being pregnant. Or maybe she thinks her birth father rejected her mother because of the pregnancy, which would also be a rejection of Miranda.” Wyrick sighed, then waved her fork in the air. “We’re doing too much guessing. I need to check out her mother’s background to see if I can link her to any of the brothers. Eat your pudding.”

  “It’s mousse, not pudding, and it’s good,” Charlie said. “And we still need to connect Miranda to Rey Garza in some way other than graduating together.”

  “Why?” Wyrick asked.

  Charlie was surprised by the question. “When there are hundreds of people in your grade level, it’s entirely possible to go all through high school together and never meet.”

  “Really?” Wyrick said.

  Charlie frowned. “Why don’t you know that?”

  “Because I never went to school,” she said.

  “Ah...homeschooled,” Charlie said.

  “After the age of five, I did not have a home, and was not homeschooled. I grew up at UT, cared for by technicians.”

  Now Charlie was past curious. “Then how in the hell did you learn how to do all that you do?”

  Wyrick looked away for a moment, then back at Charlie, locking straight into his gaze.

  “I didn’t have to learn anything. I was born knowing how. I need to take a break. I’ll be in the back
gardens.”

  Charlie was speechless as she made her exit. He got up, put his empty dessert dish on the trolley, then went back to his suite.

  Sometimes Wyrick almost scared him, and sometimes he thought she was a genius, but he damn sure didn’t understand her or how her life worked.

  He did, however, know how his life worked, and he needed to reconnect with it, so the first thing he did was call Morning Light to check on Annie.

  “Morning Light. This is Pinky.”

  “This is Charlie Dodge. Is Dr. Dunleavy there by any chance?”

  “No, sir, not at the moment. Would you like to speak to one of the nurses?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “I’ll connect you,” Pinky said.

  The call went straight to music, which Charlie detested, but then everything about that place got on his nerves. Everything except Annie. He was still deep in thought when the call was finally answered.

  “Matty speaking.”

  He got an instant picture of the short middle-aged blonde with the big smile.

  “Matty, this is Charlie Dodge. I’m out of state on business and just wanted to check on Annie. Dr. Dunleavy has already informed me of her decrease in cognizance. Can you give me an update on how she is?”

  “She’s doing okay, Mr. Dodge. She’s eating when we feed her. Not a lot, but enough. And she’ll walk around for exercise if someone walks with her and holds her hand.”

  Charlie was trying to imagine this and couldn’t. His Annie laughed and ran.

  “The puzzles. Does she still try to put a puzzle together?” he asked.

  “Not lately,” Matty said. “I’m sorry I don’t have better news.”

  “She’s not in any pain, is she?”

  “Oh, no! Not at all. She’s not fretting in any way.”

  “Okay, thank you,” Charlie said and disconnected. He put the phone back in his pocket, then got up and went downstairs to the library and stood at the windows until he caught a glimpse of Wyrick walking along one of the garden paths. When no one was looking, her whole body appeared to be at rest. She paused near a topiary that had been clipped into the shape of a dragon. He watched as she put both hands onto the topiary, as if she was greeting someone. After a few seconds, she moved up a path bordered by purple heather.