Bones and Roses (8 page)

A jolt goes through me at his words. Because now I
know
he's lying. A minute ago, he claimed he didn't know my mom was dead. If that was true, how had he known I was motherless?

CHAPTER FIVE

“Are you all right? What happened? What did he say?” Ivy peppers me with questions as I climb back in the Explorer.

“I'm fine,” I answer in a surprisingly calm voice as I start the engine and shift into reverse. “Nothing happened. We just talked.” I recount my unnerving conversation with Stan as the cabins recede in my rearview mirror. “Don't you see? It proves he was lying if he knew all along she was dead.”

“You think he killed her?”

“Why lie if he was innocent?”

“Okay, but somebody else had to have been in on it, or at least known about it. Stan wouldn't have arranged for you to find the remains. It makes no sense. Why put himself at risk?”

“Good point,” I reply, mulling it over.

“What I don't get is why this other person, if he exists, wouldn't have just gone to the police.”

“Maybe he was an accomplice.” I turn onto the main road, where ranchlands give way to strawberry fields in which day laborers toil, their shadows stretching over the neatly planted rows in the late afternoon sun.

“Why would Stan have an accomplice? If it was a crime of passion, it means it wasn't premeditated.”

“All the more reason. What would you do if you killed someone by accident? You'd freak out and call me, of course. And me being the loyal friend I am, I'd help you get rid of the body.”

“You'd do that for me? Gee, I'm touched,” she remarks dryly.

“So, anyway,” I go on, warming to my theory, “let's say he calls his buddy in a panic and the buddy comes through. Then years later they have a falling out. Maybe he slept with the guy's wife or screwed him out of some money. At any rate, Stan figures he's safe because the guy can't go to the cops without implicating himself.”

“But the friend is crafty.” Ivy picks up where I left off. “He fixes it so the shit will hit the fan without any of the shit landing on him.” Starfish Enterprises, the entity to which the storage unit was leased, had turned out to be a dummy corporation with no physical mailing address, to no one's surprise.

“It's the only explanation that makes sense.” I wonder how I can find out if this hypothetical friend exists.

“Are you going to share this theory of yours with Spence?” Ivy's voice breaks into my reverie.

“No way. He'd only accuse me of interfering.”

“Well, you kind of are,” she points out, not so helpfully.

“True, but at least I'm getting somewhere, which is more than I can say for him.”

“I doubt he'd see it that way,” she remarks wryly.

“Even if I went to him with this, what good would it do? He wouldn't follow up on it.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“For one thing, it's not officially a murder investigation, which means he'll go through the motions, but he won't knock himself out. He told me himself the chances of his making an arrest, without a single witness or DNA evidence that'd hold up in court, are slim to none. Add the fact that he has it in for me, and you've got a recipe for my butt getting kicked out the door. I'm telling you, he hates me.”

“Because you torched his Camaro? Don't tell me he's still holding a grudge after all this time? Over a little thing like that?” Ivy never misses an opportunity to make me regret having confided in her about my brief and inglorious career as an arsonist. “Though, in hindsight, maybe you should've slashed his tires instead. You know guys and their cars. They'd sooner lose a nut.”

I shoot her a dirty look, then heave a sigh. “I would've told him I was sorry if he'd given me the chance.” Or if he'd ever made amends for what he did to me.

“You'd go to him if you had actual evidence, though?” Ivy's jocular tone gives way to a serious one.

“Of course. I'm not authorized to make an arrest, so I wouldn't really have a choice.”

“Well then, we'll just have to find some. Evidence, that is. What's our next move, Sherlock?”

“I'll let you know when I've figured it out. In the meantime I'm keeping my eye on Stan.”

“You mean spy on him?” she asks excitedly. When I glance over at her, her eyes are glowing and her cheeks pink at the prospect of some covert activity. Now I'm talking her language.

“Sorry to disappoint you, but I think it's best if we leave any spying to my brother's imaginary cohorts,” I reply archly. “I'll see what McGee can come up with. He's got more connections than a Mafia don. The kind that are on the right side of the law, that is,” I hasten to add.

“Whatever, count me in.”

“Are you sure? It could get dangerous.” I realize who I'm talking to—the kind of person who takes pleasure in bungee-jumping and packs a derringer—only after the words have passed my lips.

Ivy laughs. “Please. It's the least I can do, if you'd help me dispose of a dead body.”

My Craftsman bungalow is a welcome sight when I pull into my driveway after dropping Ivy off at her house. I glance around me, to make sure no one's lurking about, before getting out. But it seems the press has moved on. It's been days since I've seen or heard from a reporter. The only eyes peering out at me are those of my cat, from the hydrangea bushes that border the porch.

Hercules streaks past me into the house when I let myself in the front door. Normally he comes and goes through his cat door, and as soon as I enter the kitchen, I see he was up to some mischief while I was out. He's gotten into the African violet again. Potting soil is scattered over the windowsill and sink below. Typically he's accomplished this feat without disturbing the plant itself or the ceramic pot it's in—he's nothing if not fastidious. “Bad kitty,” I scold him as I clean up the mess, but my heart's not in it and he knows it. He purrs loudly, rubbing against my ankles.

I pop a frozen pot pie in the oven and shake some premixed salad greens into a bowl. Hercules's dinner is a more elaborate affair: a mixture of dry and canned food and diced chicken livers. The house is quiet. The only sounds are the rhythmic clinking of my cat's bowl against the fridge as he licks it clean and the soft tinkling of the wind chimes outside—one of Ivy's creations, made from bits of sea glass and seashells strung on lengths of fishing line. Normally I'd be unwinding, but instead I feel unsettled. A feeling that in the old days could only have been remedied by a belt of something stronger than the Fresca I'm sipping. I pick up the phone and call my sponsor, a no-nonsense older woman named Ann Petty who used to practice family law and now runs the garden center where I buy my gardening supplies—annuals and varietals are less likely to drive her to drink than combative husbands and wives, as she's fond of saying. “Go to a meeting,” she advises in her clipped, New Englander voice. “Then get your butt over here. Haven't seen you in ages.” She attends the Early Bird morning meetings, so we don't see each other as often as we had in the early days of my sobriety when I went to two meetings a day. I promise to stop by for a visit and, after we've chatted a few more minutes, I hang up and call McGee.

I tell him my theory about Stan. “He's hiding something, that much I know. What I don't know is if he acted alone or he had help.”

“Let me guess—this is where I come in,” he replies in a flat voice. I hear the muted clink of a dead soldier joining the ranks of its fallen comrades followed by the
pop siss
of a fresh recruit taking its place. I refrain from commenting. “You remember the part where I told you I was retired? I wasn't kidding. I'm done with all that, and not just because I turned in my badge and service revolver. I'm fucking tired of all that shit. Peace and quiet, that's all I want. Is that too much to ask?”

“You can't let a murderer walk free.”

“You know for a fact he's a murderer?”

“He wouldn't look me in the eye, and he contradicted himself after claiming not to have known she was dead until he read about it in the paper.” I use my shoulder to hold the phone to my ear as I set the table—placemat, napkin, cutlery.
When ones lives alone, it's easy to let one's standards slip.
I hear Grandmother Ladeaux's voice in my mind.
All the more reason to observe the niceties.

“That's some ace detective work there.” McGee's tone is mocking. But what had I expected, a gold star and pat on the back? “Sorry to burst your bubble, but you'll have to do better than that.”

“What if I can prove he's lying?”

“Knock yourself out. With any luck you'll find another body or two buried in his backyard. Or you'll sweet-talk him into submitting to a lie detector test—which, by the way, wouldn't be admissible in court.”

“No need to be sarcastic. I'm not an idiot. I know there's no smoking gun. But there could be circumstantial evidence. And if this hypothetical accomplice exists—”

“This ain't no Nancy Drew mystery.” He cuts me off.

“I
know
that,” I reply irritably. “And if you don't want to help me, fine. For some reason I got the impression you missed the action, but I guess I was wrong. I'll leave you to your Reader's Digests and your rocking chair. And your Coors,” I add pointedly. My dig is met with silence.

“You're something else, Ballard,” he growls, at last.

“I'll take that as a compliment.” I press on while I have the advantage. “Look at it this way: Your being retired could work in our favor. When you wore a badge, you had to play by the rules. That's no longer the case—we can bend the rules without breaking them, go places cops can't.”

“Yeah, like the county jail.”

“I'm not talking about doing anything illegal or even unethical. We'd just be thinking outside the box.” I argue my case. “‘By any means necessary.' Isn't that a term used in law enforcement?”

“Actually, it was Malcolm X that said it. And as you may recall, things didn't turn out so good for him.”

“This isn't about staging a revolution. What's the harm in doing a little digging? Anything we find, we turn over to the cops. All we need is enough evidence to justify their launching a full-fledged investigation.”

“You keep saying ‘we.' It's making me uncomfortable.”

I ignore him to go on, “You helped me once already, and not just because you're a good guy. You miss the action. Admit it.” He's quiet, which I take as a positive sign. “Let's say I'm right about the accomplice. Suppose we were to track him down and convince him to testify against Stan in exchange for immunity.”

“You watch too much TV,” he scoffs.

“And you drink too much.” I don't miss a beat. “Which is why we'd make a good team. We can keep each other honest.”

“Jesus. You're like stray cat, Ballard. I toss you a scrap and now I'm your meal ticket?”

“If you won't do it for me, then do it for the sake of justice. You can't let a killer go free.”

The silence that ensues is so lengthy I wonder if the connection's been broken. Then he growls: “Just so you know, I'm holding you personally responsible if another dead body turns up on my watch.”

“Even if it's mine?”

“
Especially
if it's yours.”

I smile. “I'll take that as a yes. Oh, and by the way, I'm saving you a chair.” It's an AA expression. And judging by his muttered expletive, you don't have to be an AA'er to know what it means.

CHAPTER SIX

“It's … um … very avant-garde,” observes the big-haired lady to my right, diamond earrings flashing like hazard lights as she leans in for a closer look at the diorama on display in front of us. It's my personal favorite from Ivy's current collection—a daddy long legs spider and monarch caterpillar exchanging vows under a bridal canopy fashioned from twigs and dried flowers—titled “Midsummer Night's Dream.” Though I get the feeling the artistry is lost on Big Hair.

It's Tuesday evening of the following week, the opening of Ivy's show at the Headwinds Gallery. A nice turnout, I'm pleased to note. Invited guests and walk-ins alike mill around the loft-like space where each of Ivy's pieces is showcased by a blown-up photo mounted on the wall above. Ivy, resplendent in an ankle-length batik halter dress made of lightweight cotton that flutters around her when she walks, her hair spilling over her shoulders in a torrent of dark curls, looks every inch the woman of the hour. At the moment she's being squired around by the gallery owner, Rick Swannack, a short, energetic man with clipped salt-and-pepper hair, wearing what appears to be a velvet smoking jacket. He's introducing her to the VIPs in attendance, which I pray will lead to bigger and better things. Not that Ivy cares about fame or fortune; she's content as long as she's earning enough to pay the bills. I watch her break away from Rick and the well-dressed older man with whom she'd been chatting to greet my brother. He's just walked in with his friend and fellow computer nerd, Ray Zimmer (hacker name: “Zorro.”) It may have cost her a sale, but she'll always go with her heart before her head, and I love her for that.

My brother's face lights up. He adores Ivy—she's like the nicer sister he wishes I was. I'm pleased to note he's wearing a sports coat for the occasion, never mind the shirt it's paired with hasn't been ironed and has a button missing. “Did you know a high-density image has four thousand eight hundred pixels per inch?” she says to me when I catch up to them. She gestures toward the photo on the exposed-brick wall above a diorama of line-dancing caterpillars. “Your brother—” she gives Arthur an affectionate nudge with her elbow—“is a walking factoid factory.”

“Actually, your usage of ‘factoid' is incorrect,” Arthur instructs her. “By definition it's a piece of information that becomes accepted as true because it's repeated often.”

“Dude. That is so random.” Ray regards Arthur with the admiration of a mere mortal in the presence of genius. He may be a gifted hacker, but with him it's one of those savant things—he's just a regular guy in every other respect. His most endearing quality is that he doesn't see Arthur as crazy. “Did he tell you about the video game we're working on?” he says to Ivy and me. “Aliens from cyberspace take over the Earth. Can't you see it?” He makes a picture frame with his hands. “Arthur came up with the idea. It's gonna be awesome. Dude's a freaking genius.”

Ray is as short and round as Arthur is tall and reedy, sporting a beard two shades redder than the curly ginger hair on his head. He has so many freckles on his face, he looks as though he's been hit by a paintball through a screen door. They met online a few years ago, two hitchhikers on the virtual highway who'd randomly encountered each other and struck up a friendship, despite their having little in common besides a talent for writing and cracking code. Ray shares a house with three other guys, has an eye for the ladies, and works as a T-Mobile salesman when he isn't pursuing his hobby of hacking, which he does merely for the fun of it and not for profit or to wreak havoc.

“That he is.” I tuck my arm through Arthur's. “Thanks for coming, bro.” Only I know what a sacrifice it was. This is so not my brother's thing. He'd sooner be abducted and anal-probed by aliens than attend a social gathering. He's here only because he didn't want to let Ivy down.

“No problem,” he murmurs, blushing furiously. He's been better since Dr. Sandefur upped the dosage on his meds. I haven't heard any talk lately of top-secret government projects; I'll take aliens from cyberspace any day over that, as long as it's rooted in reality. “The show appears to be a success.” He points toward the red “sold” dot on a diorama of badminton-playing beetles.

“I've sold six pieces so far,” Ivy announces delightedly. “Can you believe it?”

“Why wouldn't I?” he answers as though it weren't a rhetorical question.

“Any luck at the Fontana?” she asks me after the men have gone off in search of refreshments.

“Total waste of time,” I report. I paid a visit to my mom's former place of employment, thinking, if I could get the names of the people she'd worked with, it might yield some leads. At least one of those people had to remember the hunky construction worker who'd been on the crew building the new wing at the time and who'd been so enamored of the pretty, blond Ava Ballard. I told the office manager, a scarily efficient woman named Mrs. Bouchard, I was planning a memorial service for my mother and wanted to invite any of her former coworkers who still lived in the area. She was pleasant enough but told me she wasn't authorized to give out employee contact info. She'd offered to send out the invitations on my behalf instead. “Looks like the only way I'll get that information is by having Arthur and Ray hack into the database.”

“I'm sure they'd love nothing more. But they'd get into trouble if they were caught.” It's my brother she's worried about, not Ray. Arthur's psychotic episodes have landed him in hot water on more than one occasion—most recently when he accosted a fellow pedestrian whom he'd mistaken for a CIA operative—the last thing he needs is for me to create more problems for him.

“There might be another way,” I say when I spy Joan Trousdale. Every year in July the Trousdales host a gala fundraiser at the Fontana for one of the charities on whose board Joan sits. If I could score a ticket to this year's, it would provide a golden opportunity to do some sleuthing. Because it wouldn't be just wealthy donors in attendance. One of the employee perks at the Fontana, I know from when my mom worked there, is an invitation to its annual summer gala. The same goes for former employees of long standing who enjoy lifetime privileges.

I hurry over to Joan after Ivy has rejoined Rick Swannack. “Joan, hi! Glad you could make it. I didn't know if you'd be in town.” Her visits have become infrequent since she and her husband split up, so I didn't expect to see her. I'd sent her an invitation more as a courtesy than anything.

She greets me warmly. “You caught me at a good time. I'm here visiting with my son. He should be along any minute, in fact,” she says with a glance at her slim, gold Piaget wristwatch. “We have an eight o'clock dinner reservation at Bouche.” She names a popular restaurant down the street.

“It must be nice having him back,” I remark.

“Yes, and thankfully in one piece.” Her light tone doesn't mask the relief in her voice. I know from our previous conversations she worries about him all the time. How could she not? His job has him in war-torn countries where he's exposed to constant risk. “If it were up to me …” She catches herself, saying on a more upbeat note, “But I'm not one of
those
mothers. Heaven forbid.”

She looks perfectly put-together as usual in fitted charcoal trousers and a pale pink silk blouse that show off her trim figure, a pair of pearl earrings, and matching pearl necklace. If I had to choose one word to describe Joan's style, it would be timeless. In her mid-fifties, she's one of those women who's comfortable looking her age and dresses accordingly, in beautifully cut clothes that show off her figure without flaunting it. Her layered, chin-length hair is silver-blond, its natural color, and she hasn't had any face work as far as I can tell. Not that she needs it with her classic bone structure.

“It was nice to finally meet him.” I feel my cheeks warm as I recall the circumstances.

“Yes, he mentioned you'd stopped by.”

“Yeah, about that, I sort of barged in on him.” I have no way of knowing how much he's told her, so I decide to play it safe. “I wasn't aware he'd gotten in a day early so I didn't think to knock.”

“Oh dear.” She makes a wry face. “Well, no harm done.”

My mind flies immediately to the broken vase. Clearly she hasn't yet become aware of it. Not that I don't intend to come clean; I'm only waiting until I can find a suitable replacement, which is proving to be a bit of a challenge—it seems the vase was vintage Waterford. “Nope. It's all good.” I must look like a bobble-head doll as I stand there nodding my head and grinning like a fool.

“Are you all right? You look a little flushed.” Before I can answer, she's pulling me off to the side away from the crush of other guests. “It's that ghastly business with your mother, isn't it?” We haven't spoken since the news broke, though she left a message on my voicemail expressing her condolences. “And here you are putting on a brave face for the sake of your friend.” She gives me a motherly pat on the arm, holding my gaze in a look of wordless sympathy.

“Actually, it's good for me to get out. It takes my mind off all that other stuff.”

“We must carry on, mustn't we?” she says with grim resignation, her expression clouding over. No doubt she's thinking of her own adverse circumstances. In addition to her legal woes, she's had to endure the gossip that comes with a high-profile couple's private life being made public. The most recent development was the announcement of Douglas Trousdale's engagement to the twenty-five-year-old actress/model he's shacked up with. But Joan is too ladylike to air her dirty linen, so composes herself and says with a smile, “If there's anything I can do, you have only to ask.”

“Actually …” Before I can broach the subject of the gala, her eyes dart past me and her face lights up.

“There you are!” she cries in delight. I turn to see Bradley walking toward us. On his arm is a tall, stunning brunette, wearing a teal, silk wrap dress that accentuates her slender curves, and who's a dead ringer for Kate Middleton: dark-lashed hazel eyes, flawless features in a peaches-and-cream complexioned face, and mink-brown hair that falls in loose curls over her shoulders.

“Sorry we're late. My flight was delayed—I only just got in,” she apologizes to Joan. She doesn't just look like Kate Middleton. She sounds like Kate Middleton with her plummy British accent that brings to mind tea at Buckingham Palace and riding the hounds at Balmoral.

Bradley makes the introductions. “Tish, this is Genevieve. Genevieve, this is Tish.” I'm grateful when he doesn't mention that I work for his parents. Bad enough I look like a commoner in the presence of royalty, wearing my flowered sundress held together with a safety pin in back—one of the straps broke on my way here—and high heels from five seasons ago; I don't need to be seen as the hired help. “Genevieve's visiting from New York.” Ah, yes, the girlfriend.

“Lovely to meet you, Tish. Bradley's told me all about you,” she says as we shake hands. Her manner is warm and relaxed, giving no hint she knows the circumstances in which Bradley and I became acquainted. Or that he almost received multiple lacerations courtesy of yours truly.

I soon learn she's smart and accomplished in addition to being drop-dead gorgeous, an orthopedic surgeon with a private practice in Manhattan who also volunteers for Doctors Without Borders. She and Bradley met at a hospital in Fallujah, where she was operating on bomb victims and he was covering a story. I wish I could say she was stuck-up because then I'd have a legitimate reason to dislike her, but in fact it's Joan who does the bragging while Genevieve blushes modestly.

“Your girlfriend's nice,” I feel compelled to remark to Bradley as we head for the bar a few minutes later, me to refresh my Diet Coke, him to get drinks for the other ladies, who were engrossed in conversation when we left them. Then, because it's too obvious to ignore, “Gorgeous, too.”

He doesn't comment. Out of consideration for my squashed ego, I realize with his next words. “You're looking very fetching yourself,” he says, smiling as his gaze travels lightly over me.

My cheeks warm. But I'm quick to deflect the gentlemanly compliment. “I clean up good.” It's not that I don't think I'm attractive, but I'm not in the same league as Genevieve. When men look at me, all they see at first glance is blond hair and big boobs. Which is why I used to get hit on a lot in bars.

“I didn't say anything to her, in case you were wondering.”

“You mean about the fact I saw her boyfriend naked, or that I assaulted you when you were coming out of the shower?” I respond unthinkingly, assuming the “her” in question was Genevieve.

He chuckles. “I was talking about my mom.”

“Oh.” Great. Now he knows I was picturing him naked. “Right. The vase.”

“She didn't even notice it was missing.”

“She will. But hopefully not before I've found a replacement.” We get in line at the bar.

“Either way, I meant it when I said I'd take the fall, so have no fears. I'm a man of my word.” He tips me a wink that goes through me like a shot of whiskey. He's even better-looking than I remembered, wearing jeans that hug him in all the right places and a crisp, white button-down shirt with a fitted dark-gray blazer. He smells of the outdoors and, faintly, of Genevieve's perfume.

“I'm not as worried about the vase as I am about her finding out I almost nailed you with it,” I tell him.

He leans in close, the light brush of his lips against my ear and husky intimacy of his voice sending a jolt of electricity straight down through the pit of my stomach as he murmurs, “It'll be our secret, then.” When we're headed back to Joan and Genevieve with our drinks, he says, “I was going to phone to see how you were doing, but Daniel said you weren't taking any calls.”