He wiped his hands against his slacks and looked for a likely place to sit. He had to admit, the thick clutter of the place explained a lot about how fastidious Kazmaroff always was. Jess seemed nice, though. Probably loved the hell out of him. And the sister obviously adored him. Doesn’t look like the guy had too many barriers to overcome.
He sat down on the couch in front of a coffee table with more books and magazines, catalogs, mail and a few dishes. He drummed his fingers on his knees, wondering how long it takes to drink a cup of tea and get gone.
She came in with a tray and set it down on the cluttered coffee table. “I’m afraid Mia took the last piece of pecan pie,” she said, smiling as she handed him a plate with a large wedge of angel food cake drizzled with chocolate ganache. “The water takes a minute to boil.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said.
“Please call me Jess,” she said, handing him a paper napkin.
“I know I didn’t get a chance to tell you personally…Jess,” he said, trying to hold her gaze but desperately wanting to look anywhere else, “but I’m so sorry about what happened to Dave.”
“You were his partner,” she said.
“That’s right.” His stomach lurched thinking Dave had probably talked plenty about what a loser partner he had.
“So you knew him better than most.”
“I guess so.”
“And you believe his death was accidental?”
“I…well… the autopsy… I mean… the ruling was accidental.”
She didn’t answer but he was keenly aware he hadn’t responded to her question.
“I don’t have any more information than anyone else,” he said, wondering how he was going to choke down the cake when he felt his mouth was so suddenly dry.
“I see. I suppose not. Please, Detective, eat your cake. I’ll check on the water.”
When she left, Burton felt a nearly irresistible desire to stuff the cake under the cushion of the couch, believing it probably wouldn’t be discovered for years. He tore off a piece with his fingers and popped it in his mouth. The overt sweetness obliterated any flavor the cake might have had and seemed to serve to make his mouth even more dry.
Jess came back into the room with another tray, this one with a teapot and two teacups with saucers.
I’m in hell, Burton thought as Jess silently poured their tea and added milk and sugar to both cups. She handed him his teacup but before he could set it down on the coffee table, her fingers wrapped around his hand. Startled, he spilled tea on both their hands but she didn’t disengage.
“Uh, Mrs. Kazmaroff?”
She released him and picked up her own teacup as if nothing had happened.
What the hell was that?
The front door swung open suddenly and as Mia Kazmaroff entered the room, Burton was surprised he hadn’t heard her car drive up. It also occurred to him that she was probably blocking him in.
“What’s this?” she said, dropping her car keys on a table by the door that Burton hadn’t noticed.
“Oh, darling, Detective Burton came to drop some of David’s things off and we’re just having tea. Let me get you a cup.” Jess jumped up and walked to her daughter to give her a brief kiss before disappearing into the kitchen.
Burton stood up but she waved him back down and dropped into an armchair facing the couch.
“I just had a phone call from Detective Kirkland’s wife, Carol,” she said. “She said you quit the force.”
“That is true.”
“Did your quitting having anything to do with my brother’s death?”
“No,” he said.
She bolted out of her chair and grabbed him by both arms, knocking his cake plate to the carpet. “You’re lying,” she said.
He broke her grip and stood up just as Jess came back in the room with another tray with tea and cake.
“What’s happening?” Jess asked. “Mia, please sit down.”
“He quit today,” Mia said. “Dave dies and two weeks later, his partner quits. How much sense does that make?”
Burton scooped up the cake and plopped it back on the plate. He set it on the coffee table. “Mrs. Kazmaroff,” he said, forcing his voice to sound steady and controlled. “Again, I’m sorry for your loss. I’m afraid I can’t stay.”
“Why did you quit, Detective?” Mia said, her voice rising. “Explain to me the very bizarre timing of why you would do that—dropkick a fifteen-year pension.”
Burton edged between the coffee table, hoping the girl wouldn’t attempt to bar him from leaving.
“I can’t explain it,” he said tersely. “I’m sorry.” And turning, he was out the door and down the front walkway, all the while praying she hadn’t parked behind him.
She had.
Crap. There was no way to get out short of mowing down ten azalea bushes lining the driveway. He heard the door shut behind him and the jangle of her car keys. When he turned, she was standing on the walkway, her weight resting on one hip, tossing the keys in the air. The image was so arresting, it nearly took his breath away.
Mia Kazmaroff was one gorgeous creature and until this moment, as she stood staring him down, the autumn breeze tossing her long dark hair about her shoulders, he hadn’t truly seen that. Maybe it had been the cast—which she wasn’t wearing now. Something had thrown him off before but he saw it now.
And it was very last thing he needed to see.
He licked his lips and walked back toward her.
“Why did you quit?” she asked.
He put his hands on his hips and looked down at his feet. He wasn’t sure he’d even satisfactorily answered that question for himself yet.
“It felt right,” he said, knowing there was no way she was going to let him get away with that.
“Did it have to do with my brother’s death?”
“I’m not sure.”
“But it did.”
Burton finally looked up into her eyes, flashing, intelligent blue eyes and now he couldn’t tear away. “Yeah,” he said hoarsely, “it did.”
She nodded and then took a step toward him. He took a step back and she let out an exasperated sound. “Detective,” she said patiently, “may I please touch you?”
This would make the third time she had wanted to physically connect with him for a reason he couldn’t imagine. But if the only thing standing between him and her moving her car was letting her touch his arm…
“Yeah, sure.”
She reached out and brought her hand to his face. So surprised that it wasn’t his arm like before, he nearly pulled away from her. This close to her, he could smell a light scent of flowers and cloves. He tried to remember if he’d ever stood this close to a woman he hadn’t been ready to pull into his arms. He noticed her eyes left his and focused on a spot over his shoulder while her hand cupped his jaw firmly. Finally, she let him go and turned to her car.
“Thank you,” she said to him over her shoulder.
***
Mia watched as the waiter added another Long Island Ice Tea to the place in front of her. Why in the world had she ever agreed to this? She looked around the upscale restaurant. This may have been Dave’s world, she thought, but I’m happier mucking out a stall in Alpharetta. The thought came back to her that her days of mucking out stalls or riding or even walking through pastures were over at least for awhile. She reached for her drink.
Her run-in with Burton this afternoon had knocked something loose in her mind. Touching him, feeling his guilt—and his honesty—had forged a connection between them that shocked her. How could she feel such a thing so quickly for a man she hardly knew? She’d sat in her car as he drove away and felt the tingling in her fingers from where she’d touched him.
It’s true he might have hurt Dave. Very well might have.
But he’d hurt himself worse.
Later, she spent an hour on her laptop trying to research various methods of investigating a crime outside of official jurisdictions. It wasn’t until after she’d aw
akened from a nap that the idea had come together and burst onto her mental scene as a full-blown brainstorm. Every time she thought of it, now manifested as a small grey card in her purse, she felt a little bit better, a little bit stronger.
“I’m so sorry your mother couldn’t come tonight.” Trish Barnes sat to Mia’s left. Mia didn’t know any of the detectives’ wives well and she was fairly positive that after this evening she’d never lay eyes on them again.
Maybe tonight was more for them than her?
“My mother’s kind of a homebody,” Mia said. She was glad Trish had been seated next to her. The other wives seemed a little crude to her. But Trish was different. She wore a gold cross at her neck and her iced tea was just spiked with extra sugar.
Mia thought she remembered Dave saying Trish, his best friend’s wife, was too good for any of them. Mia thought that was a sweet, but somewhat odd, thing to say.
“I am, too,” Trish said, as she reached for the plate of calamari they were all sharing. Mia couldn’t help notice she was trying to hide a large bruise on her cheek under her foundation makeup. She wondered how she got it. A friend of hers had walked into the feed shed at the barn one time and got whacked in the face by the door she didn’t realize was open.
All kinds of things happen at the barn that could have you gimping around on crutches or wearing a sling before the day was out.
Less so in a suburban home in Midtown, one would think.
The hostess and organizer of the party, Carol Maxwell, stood up and held her martini glass in the air. Mia noticed she didn’t have to tap a water glass or raise her voice. There was just something about Carol that made people stop and notice. The table quieted and faced her.
“I’d like to raise a glass to Dave Kazmaroff,” she said, softly, pointing her glass at Mia as if she were Dave’s corporeal representative. “No one who knew you will ever forget you and we’ll none of us be the same after having known you.”
“Here, here!”
Mia sipped her tea and noticed that Dave’s girlfriend, Heather, was already drunk and the waiter hadn’t served their entrees yet. She was sitting next to Edie Johnson, who Dave used to say fancied herself as the self-appointed intelligentsia of the group. Mia watched her for a moment and figured the fact that Edie was black already set her apart. She had graduated from Spellman at the top of her class but then married a homicide detective. Elliot was good looking and smart, too, but he wasn’t ambitious. He wasn’t a Morehouse man, either. Dave used to say, after she had a few drinks in her, that Edie would go on and on—to Elliot’s obvious embarrassment—about how she’d never be caught dead dating a guy from Morehouse College, but everybody knew Morehouse men had style and Dave figured deep down she was protesting too much.
Tonight it looked like that’s exactly what Heather was doing. Openly weeping into her cloth napkin, her voice loud and strident, Heather knocked over her water glass and had to be escorted to the ladies room. Trish volunteered to take her and nobody was surprised. It was generally accepted that Trish was such a dear and wouldn’t worry about missing any of the party.
When the waiter put her fish tacos in front of her, Mia said a silent and covert prayer of thanks and, looking up, was surprised to see Carol doing so as well. Their eyes met and Carol smiled as if to say, Don’t tell anyone. It’s our little secret.
The arrival of the dishes pushed conversation aside for a few moments while everyone addressed their plates. Mia was hungry. She’d meant to grab a sandwich when she ran home to change for tonight but Burton’s visit and subsequent hour on the computer had derailed that.
He was such an odd bird. What she knew about him from Dave was that the two had never gotten along and it was all Burton’s doing. When she touched him at the funeral she’d gotten a strong sense of guilt from him but whether that was because of what happened to Dave or just Burton’s own, basically failed life, she didn’t know. The last time she’d touched him, out in the driveway, she felt him open up to her in a way she hadn’t expected.
Maybe he didn’t know why he quit the force, but a part of him was at peace now as a result, that much she had felt. Where Dave came into it, she didn’t know. But she would find out.
“Are those good? I’ve never been brave enough to try.”
Mia turned to see that Carol had slipped into Trish’s vacant seat.
“Trish is tending to poor Heather,” Carol said. “I’m sure she won’t mind. Are they good?”
Mia pushed her plate toward her. “Try one. If you like fish.”
Carol ignored the offer and took a sip of her martini. “Did I hear you’re moving into Dave’s place in Atlantic Station?”
Mia tried to imagine where Carol could have heard that from. As far as she knew only the trustee and her mother knew that Dave had left his condo to her.
“That’s right,” she said. “I’ve been living at my mother’s place ever since I lost my apartment.”
“I remember Dave saying something about you losing your job at Georgia State,” Carol said. Mia wasn’t sure what the woman wanted, but pretty clearly she had a point to get to. “You taught Archaeology or something?”
“Close enough,” Mia said, biting into her fish taco.
“Because you didn’t have a PhD? Am I right?”
Mia nodded, her mouth full of food, and reached for a napkin.
“I’m sure you could easily get six hundred for his condo. Even in this market.”
Mia shook her head. “No, I’ll keep it.” It occurred to her that Carol might be interested in buying it. Atlantic Station had never really experienced a downswing in the housing market. If you had the money, worked in Midtown and were under thirty, it was where you wanted to live.
“By the way, Mia. I heard you gave Jack Burton a tongue lashing the other week.”
Mia glanced at her and frowned. “Oh, you mean at the funeral,” she said.
“Sorry I wasn’t there. None of us wives were. You know the force. They like to form a long impermeable blue line.”
“Yeah, no worries,” Mia said.
“I would totally love to climb on top of that bad boy,” Carol said. “But seriously, dear, how are you doing?”
“Good. Thank you so much for organizing this tonight, Carol,” Mia said, reaching for her iced tea. “Should we start coordinating drivers or taxi’s or something?”
Carol laughed. “Good point. I’m afraid it looks like Heather got started early. Trish isn’t drinking, though. I’m sure she’s good for a ride home.”
“So were you saying you’re interested in Jack Burton?”
“Well, of course I’m married, darling, but he is so dishy, all smoldering and dark thoughts.” Carol picked up a menu and fanned herself. “I declare, Miss Scarlet, I must admit I’ve had a few Burton fantasies here and there. But he remains untouched…as far as I know. Although there was that rumor right after his divorce about him and the Medical Examiner. Karen Sanders. Do you know her?”
“I don’t know anybody Dave worked with.”
“If it was true there wasn’t a repeat or the two of them are the sneakiest undercover lovers in the history of the force.”
Mia pushed away from her plate. All of a sudden she felt a little nauseated.
“I suppose you heard all about your brother and Burton’s ex?”
Mia turned to look at Carol. It took every ounce of her self-control not to reach out and grab Carol’s arm to see if the woman was for real. Or lying.
“What about them?”
“I’m afraid it was very recently,” Carol said, a sly smile ghosting her lips as she warmed up to the gossip. “Dave and Diane hooked up at a department softball game. Burton doesn’t play. Now why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“Dave had an affair with Burton’s ex-wife?”
“Well, that’s the question, isn’t it, sweetie? Was she an ex the first time they did it?”
6
Burton tossed the remote control onto the coffee table and glance
d at the Seth Thomas clock hanging on the wall, Diane’s design choices left over from a happier time. It was ten o’clock.
Had there ever been a happier time?
He glanced at his cellphone on the coffee table next to the remote. She’d only called twice today—both unanswered. Maybe she was getting the message. Maybe she was just trying a different tactic. The dog lay stretched out on the sofa, her chin on her front paws. Her round dark eyes followed him whenever he moved. He figured she was some kind of hybrid. He always assumed if he ever got a dog it would either be a big old mutt or a lab of some kind. This little bit of fluff looked like it had just crawled out of a sorority girl’s handbag.
He got up from the couch and walked to the large picture window overlooking Peachtree Creek. A mile past his backyard—mostly creek and a steep hill where nothing grew—he could see the lights from an outlier AT&T office building. If he stepped onto his back deck, he’d feel the rush of a Georgia autumn in full swing—and the roar of I-85 as if it were detouring around him.
The house had been built right after the Second World War. The rooms were small. There was a mudroom off the kitchen…he heard they were back in style again. He had a galley kitchen he had only stood in long enough to brew a cup of coffee before work.
Guess he’d have more time now. He could brew two cups.
He couldn’t help see the differences in how he and Kazmaroff lived. Could two people be more different? And doesn’t that account for why they didn’t mesh?
Except, where it counted, he knew they had meshed. In fact, they’d meshed so well they held the record of more cases solved in the history of the Atlanta PD in one calendar year.
He turned away from the darkened view of the creek below his window. At this time of night, with a waning moon, all he could see was the reflective glitter of the water as it channeled over the rocks and low banks. Not much of a place to bring a new bride, he reflected. Diane hadn’t seemed to care. In the beginning, she’d tried to plant annuals on the steep backyard slope before giving up. She even put a line of crepe myrtles in the front yard during those early years. Burton had a fondness for crepe myrtles.
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