“You’ve got to be kidding,” Gin gasped. “You mean, he could have access a to Civil War uniform?”
“I don’t know if I’d go that far,” Tuck said, taking another page from the sheaf of papers. It showed a group photo that had run in the newspaper, two dozen men—and a few women—posed on a field in costume, holding replica weapons and flags. A man kneeling in the front row was circled, but the quality of the photograph was poor enough that it was next to impossible to make out his features. “All I could dig up for sure is that he was present in two events, and only because he was listed in the captions. I couldn’t even say for sure that it’s the same Marvin Morgensen, though I didn’t turn up any others in a three-county area. He wasn’t on the official rolls of any organization I contacted. So maybe he was an occasional participant, or the guest of a member.”
“Interesting,” Gin said, suppressing a shudder. “So you’re saying he’s the guy who ran me off the road? Some—some creepy mechanic who occasionally liked to dress up and play soldier?”
“Maybe. But that isn’t even the weirdest part. Morgensen disappeared in 2013. He just didn’t show up to work one day. His car was in his garage, there were dishes in the sink. He didn’t even take his phone, left it lying on the kitchen table. The case went nowhere. He hadn’t been in any trouble—squeaky clean record.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense. Why would he come back now?”
Tuck picked up the folder from the desk and fanned out the contents, mug shots of four different men. “Especially when there’s a good chance he’s been lying in the ground for the last three years.”
“Wait.” An electric shiver of excitement and fear raced through Gin. “You’re saying you think that the body buried up at the worksite could be Morgensen?”
Tuck tapped the closest photo—a man with greasy dark hair falling over his brow. “I’m saying it’s a hell of a coincidence. On the other hand, I’ve got four possibles, if I go back five years and focus on a thirty-mile radius. If we open it up beyond that and look at men aged twenty to fifty who disappeared anywhere in the county—well, then we’re back in the dark all over again.”
Gin felt her hopes slipping away. “When I was at Cook County, we’d get cases like this once in a while—where because of the conditions of decay, we were never able to figure out the identity of the body. There’s only so much you can do with bones, for instance. People think that the potter’s field is an outmoded concept, but the truth is that hundreds of people die every year whose identities will never be known.”
“And a lot of them aren’t ever even found. If your boyfriend hadn’t decided to build right there—if someone hadn’t decided to come along and torch it—if, if, if. You get my drift.”
“Have you had any other leads on the arson?”
“Nothing new. With no data from the security system, all the investigators can do is look at what was left after they got the fire put out, which isn’t much. I’ve checked on all the firebugs the department knows about, but the record keeping around here . . . I’m not trying to criticize Chief Crosby. Folks here clearly have a lot of respect for him. But I will say that paperwork wasn’t his strong suit.”
“Wait—why wasn’t there any data?” Gin asked. Jake had installed security cameras as soon as they broke ground.
“Someone turned the cameras off,” Tuck said, holding her gaze.
Was he implying that it was Jake? Was that possible? And if Jake had shut off the cameras . . . why?
“We’ll be talking to Crosby and his crew about that, obviously,” Tuck said, leaning back in the chair and setting the sheaf of papers back on the desk, apparently satisfied that she hadn’t known this detail already. “Of course, it could have been the arsonist. The cameras weren’t exactly hidden, and they weren’t hardwired.”
Gin winced, knowing that the battery-operated cameras had been the more economical choice. She wondered if Tuck was aware of the financial pressure Jake was under.
“I just . . .” Gin thought fast. “I thought I could give you a little insight into how folks think around here,” she said, latching onto something he had said in an attempt to change the conversation. “It’s true that Chief Crosby was old school. It doesn’t surprise me that he didn’t keep up with his records, not to mention technological advances in law enforcement. And maybe, as the town continued to change and the problems facing Trumbull changed too, that was a mistake. But you have to remember that people here still think of this as a small community. Relationships matter. Tradition matters.”
“Try telling that to the drug dealer who sets up shop across from the high school or the crooks from the city who’ve been hitting houses during the day when people are at work. I hate to break it to you, Gin, but the twenty-first century’s well under way even here. Trumbull’s already got its fair share of the plagues of modern society—heroin, meth, gangs . . .”
“And I don’t think people are trying to ignore that,” Gin said. “I just think that you might want to make sure the community knows you care.”
Tuck grimaced. “You mean I have to have coffee with every old lady who calls in a suspicious stranger in the neighborhood? Ride in a convertible in the Fourth of July parade? Sorry, that’s not going to happen.”
Gin allowed herself a small smile. He had a point: she couldn’t picture Tuck Baxter with a bib around his neck at the annual Lions Club spaghetti dinner and doubted he’d be receiving an invitation any time soon to the parks department poker game. “Maybe there’s a happy medium in there somewhere,” she said. “Rome wasn’t built in a day. Maybe Trumbull—the new Trumbull—can’t be built in a day either. You might want to talk to my mom,” she added impulsively.
“I’ve spent a fair amount of time with your mom already,” Tuck said drily. “She was nice enough all through the interview process, but once I was hired, she read me the riot act on my first day. She told me I didn’t have to like her, but I’d damn sure better respect the authority of her office.”
“I can’t believe I’m saying this myself,” Gin admitted. “Until recently, I never thought I’d come back to Trumbull. I thought I’d miss city life—not to mention the state-of-the-art facility where I worked. And as for my mom . . . well, I know firsthand how tough she can be. But the thing is, Mom really believes in this place. If you show that you care about Trumbull’s future, she’ll be your best ally.”
“I’ll take that under consideration.” He leaned back in his chair, drumming his fingers on the armrests. “Now that you’ve told me how to do my job, Gin, how about a piece of advice for you?”
“I’m listening.”
“That little trick we pulled up in Squirrel Hill—smart people don’t try to get lucky like that too often. Keep breaking rules, and it’s going to come back and bite you.”
“Says the guy who got forced out of his last job . . .”
“I never said do as I do,” Tuck said. “Just do as I say.”
“Is that an order?” she snapped, her irritation tempered by other, confusing emotions. “Or a suggestion?”
Tuck’s eyes narrowed, and his lips parted as though he was going to make a retort. Instead, he clamped his mouth shut and glowered at her.
“I’m sorry,” Gin said. “But I’ve always had trouble being told what to do.”
“That’s abundantly clear. Unfortunately, your stubborn streak only adds to your appeal.”
“My . . . appeal?” Gin faltered.
“Come on, Gin. There’s . . . something . . . between us, and you know it every bit as goddamn much as I do. Now, we can ignore it, and that’s probably a good idea, and I can keep things professional every day of the week. But I’m not going to stand here and pretend that you don’t drive me crazy every time I see you. Even when you’re being a pain in the ass. Especially when you’re being a pain in the ass.” He leaned forward and gently pushed a lock of her hair back from where it had fallen over her eyes. “I know you’re taken. But the day that changes—hell, the
minute it changes—all bets are off between you and me.”
For a moment, Gin could only gape at him, barely remembering to breathe the charged air between them. Then she staggered to her feet and pushed back her chair, backing toward the door. “I—I have to go.”
Tuck stood too, his eyes on her, not a shred of apology in his gaze.
Gin put her hand on the doorknob and realized she’d nearly forgotten her coat. She grabbed it off the chair and flung open the door, rushing down the hall with her face flaming, hoping to make it to her car without running into anyone else.
She welcomed the rush of cold air when she got to the exit, pulling on her coat and keeping her head down. She hurried to her car and slammed the door behind her, pausing to catch her breath as she started the engine. For a moment, she waited for the car to warm up, watching her breath cloud the frigid air as her pounding heart finally slowed.
Tuck Baxter, who had the power to threaten everything Jake cared about, wanted her.
And she couldn’t deny that there was a part of her that wanted him back.
17
When Gin was halfway home, a thought that had been nagging at the back of her mind came to the fore.
She’d been trying to banish thoughts of Tuck Baxter, the way his gaze seemed to go straight to the core of her, by focusing on Jake: going over their interactions over the last few days, trying to figure out what she could have done differently, where the two of them had gone wrong to allow distance to come between them.
And she’d gotten stuck on the dinner party. It should have been the perfect evening for the two of them—a chance to relax with friends, for Jake to let go of his worries for a few hours. And for a while, it had seemed to be just that, the two men avoiding dwelling on the building site and sharing wine and laughter. Until the end of the dinner, when talk turned to the presence of solvents as a possible source of the fire—and Gus’s presence on the site during the wee morning hours of the fire.
He hadn’t said anything about the cameras.
She went over the conversation in her mind: Gus describing seeing the smoke, his insomnia, and his habit of going on site early to guard against copper theft. It had seemed reasonable at the time—but as she replayed it in her mind, she couldn’t help remembering the way Marlene had watched her husband as he spoke. If it wasn’t fear on her face, it was something close. Did she know her husband was lying? Had he cautioned her not to say anything to contradict him?
And what might he have been asking her to cover up?
The couple was expecting a baby, a baby that it sounded like had been a long time coming. How far would Gus Sykes go to provide for it?
Or . . . Gin felt tendrils of unease as she remembered an old case, when a body of a woman who was seven months pregnant was brought in, beaten nearly beyond recognition, the baby’s life extinguished along with her own. What if Gus had threatened his pregnant wife—or worse? If he was involved in something illegal on the building site, he’d managed to convince Jake otherwise. Domestic abusers were often charming, successfully hiding the violence they committed behind closed doors. If Gus was such a man, and he took out his frustrations on his wife, the loss of a job could be disastrous. Which would also give him a motive for the copper thefts that he seemed to know so much about.
Gin pulled over to the curb and did a quick search on her phone. Gus and Marlene Sykes were easy enough to find; their address was over in the Galleria, a newer subdivision of affordable townhouses built on the site of the former steel company headquarters that had been one of her mother’s key redevelopment efforts.
Before she could change her mind, Gin headed over to the neighborhood, unsure what she was looking for. She had a ready-made excuse—the pan in which Marlene had brought homemade banana bread to the dinner party was in a bag in her car. If she could strike up a friendship with Marlene, maybe she could learn more—specifically, whether Gus had any reason to want to burn the project down.
She parked in the development’s visitor lot next to the little pocket park overlooking the river, where the city had put in a play structure shaped like a barge. Half a dozen children played while their parents looked on.
Number nine was an end unit bordered by a hedge that had shed its leaves. A couple of spindly, bare trees seemed to cling to their support posts, waiting for the spring that was still months away. In the yard, a plastic bag had blown up against the fence. A single strand of Christmas lights hung from the porch rafters.
Gin walked to the door, pausing on the porch. Inside, she could hear the faint strains of country music and the sound of someone moving through the front room.
Seconds after she rang the doorbell, the music was turned off. The silence stretched until Gin started to think no one was going to answer the door.
But a moment later, it opened, and Marlene was standing there in an oversized sweat shirt and leggings, her hair pulled up in a simple ponytail. Even without all the makeup she’d been wearing the other night, she was a striking woman, but her face was puffy and her eyes were red.
“I thought you were the religious cult guy,” she said. “He’s been going door to door, trying to convert people.”
“I’m sorry,” Gin said. “I should have called. I just—I’ve had your pan in the car, and I was over on this side of town doing errands, and I thought I’d just bring it by. We had such a lovely time the other night.”
She held out the bag containing the pan. Marlene stared at it for a moment before taking it. “I’m kind of a mess,” she said. “But I could use the company, and I’ve just made another pot of coffee. Will you come in?”
“You’re sure I’m not intruding?”
“I promise you’re not. I’m going stir crazy here.”
Inside, the house was warm and pleasantly decorated, with framed inspirational sayings on the walls and colorful pottery lined up in a hutch.
“I was going to look for a job when we got up here—I’m a certified property manager. But with the holidays coming up, no one’s looking. So I’ve been trying to keep busy until the new year. But Gus is worried about money, especially now that the project’s been shut down, so he took some side work, and I hardly see him at all.”
Marlene’s appearance had suffered since the other night. Her hair was lackluster and straggly. Her nails were ragged, her skin sallow. Gin searched her skin for signs of a beating but didn’t see any; unfortunately, some abusers knew how to hurt their partners while hiding the damage.
“Marlene,” Gin said gently, knowing she would have to ease into the delicate topic. “A move can be a huge stress. I should know—I didn’t think I’d be here more than a week or two when I came back. And while I’ve loved being near my family again, it’s really hard to pull up roots so abruptly. And I have friends, a community, meaningful work. I’m sure you’ll have all of those things in time, but for now, it’s no wonder you’re feeling a little blue.”
“Oh, my gosh, that’s so true,” Marlene said. Tears welled up in her eyes again. “I really didn’t invite you in here just so I could feel sorry for myself. I thought—I mean, you were so nice the other night—I just thought maybe . . .”
She reached for a tissue and dabbed at her eyes.
“What is it, Marlene?” Gin prodded.
“I thought it would be so nice to have a friend here. Someone I could talk to—I mean, really talk. Not just to say hello, like I do with the other women around here.”
“I’m happy to,” Gin said carefully. “Is there anything in particular that’s on your mind?”
Marlene stared at her for a long moment before finally blurting, “Have you ever done anything you regretted so much that you can’t get a moment’s peace?”
Gin raised her eyebrows. This wasn’t what she’d expected. “I—I’m sure I have,” she said. “Feelings of guilt and regret are only natural when we make a mistake. But you’ve got to remember that you’re only human.”
“Oh. Well . . . I deserve to feel bad. I wasn�
�t raised that way—I’m ashamed of myself.”
“Would it make you feel better to tell me what happened?” Gin asked, wondering if it had been a bad idea to come here. “You truly don’t need to feel like you need to confide in me.”
“It’s not, like, illegal or anything like that!”
Gin gave her what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “I never guessed that it was.”
“It’s just . . .” Marlene stared out the window. “I don’t have anyone to talk to, I don’t have any friends here. Everyone I know is back home. And the worst part is that it’s my fault. Me and Gus didn’t come here because he got laid off. I mean, that’s what he told Jake when he interviewed. But the truth is that Gus left a good job to come here.” She took a deep breath. “I got mixed up in something last year. With—with a guy. One of our neighbors, him and Gus used to watch football together. Sometimes the four of us had dinner, only they had kids and we didn’t, which can be—well, you know, especially because we’d been trying for so long. The thing is, last winter when Gus was working overtime, and Max, he and Denise were fighting a lot and . . . Oh, God, I don’t even want to say it.”
“I see,” Gin said. It wasn’t her place to judge; she’d certainly done things that she wasn’t proud of.
“No, wait, that’s not even the bad part. I mean, not the worst part. Gus found out because he read my e-mails. And he said he couldn’t stand to stay in that house, not when he knew, you know, that Max was still right next door. He was so angry, you can’t even imagine. We decided to come up here, our counselor said we needed to treat it as a clean break. No more talk about the past, no blaming, no dredging it up again. And Gus agreed. I mean, he’s still mad, of course, but I deserve it after what I did.”
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