Buried (Detective Ellie MacIntosh) (12 page)

“Where?” she asked simply.

He gave her the name and address and walked into the restaurant exactly half an hour later—and though he had one of those brief moments when he wondered why he was doing someone else’s investigation while on leave, it passed pretty quick.

The apartment. Those close walls. It was a relief to be out of there for a little while. He wasn’t anything apparently without the detective part of Jason Santiago. Maybe Kate was right, maybe he was a case study someone could get a Ph.D. analyzing if they wanted to bother with it, but he wasn’t positive he was that complicated.

His job was the machine that drove the man. Hmm. Sounded like a bad movie.

He’d chosen a steak place that had the advantage of not being so noisy a person had to shout across the table, but wasn’t dressy either. Good thing, as Danni arrived wearing shapeless slacks that he was sure she thought hid those few extra pounds, and a summer blouse over a camisole top.

There was decent atmosphere. Low lights, nice booths, vague piped-in music. There was also a bar with a polished top and racks of bottles. Nice but not expensive. Waiters in tuxedos were not his thing, no matter how good the food they served might be.

“Hi,” she said, sitting down. “I’m … here. I guess that’s it, I’m here … thanks for asking me out. I mean, I know you aren’t asking me out…”

The first sentence sputtered to an end and he got the sentiment right away from the gloss of tears in her eyes.

Problem one: he was not the world’s most sensitive guy, but he tried. “Hey, we’re friends, right? I tell you what, let’s catch up on what’s going on in the department and order our food, and after we eat, we’ll talk about more serious stuff. Sound reasonable?”

Her tremulous smile spoke volumes. “Sure. I’ve had enough serious to last a lifetime.”

Normally he would have thought to himself that Grasso owed him, but this was as much about friendship as anything he could do for the lieutenant. She ordered a rib eye—medium—cottage fries, and a salad with oil and vinegar—on the side—and he got basically the same thing, except he opted for blue cheese dressing. He also asked for a glass of Merlot. Hey, he was taking a cab. Next week he saw the doctor and should be cleared for driving, especially when he told his physician he wasn’t taking the pain meds any longer.

Having his autonomy taken away had been probably the most difficult thing about his recovery. Besides, he drove a sweet vintage Mustang, fully restored, and that of itself was a pleasure, pure and simple, he’d been denied for weeks.

“You come here much?” She asked it as if she was actually interested in the answer and he appreciated the effort, since he doubted she was.

“No.” He and Kate had, once or twice, but this wasn’t the time to think about that. “The food is good, you don’t have to wear a tie, and it isn’t a chain. I have no idea why I have such a problem with that.”

“Meaning?”

“I don’t enjoy knowing I am going to be served the exact same thing each time.”

“It’s the job. Different every single day.” Her amber eyes filled with tears again. “You just don’t know what to expect when you get up in the morning.”

No doubt she was referring to Chad’s death and the call they’d answered. Thank God, the salads came in time so he didn’t have to respond.

Jason speared a leaf. “You doing okay?”

“Not so much.” She ate a grape tomato. “I’m trying. The shootings and two cop funerals sort of trump everything else.”

“I’m not officially on the case and won’t ever be as I understand it, but I have a lot of time on my hands right now. I might poke around a little. I’m pretty pissed about Chad.”

He’d debated whether or not to tell her about the phone call to Grasso, but decided against it.

Call it a personal flaw, but he didn’t trust a lot of people. Maybe it was his crappy childhood. That could, Kate had pointed out with the wisdom of someone studying earnestly the human psyche, give a person trust issues.

Or, he’d countered, it could prepare them to be self-sufficient by instilling a healthy knowledge of survival of the fittest.

She never really did agree with him on that point.

But he had to acknowledge that the result was he was suspicious and not a fan of the integrity levels of some of his fellow human beings. Danni Crawford, who had just finished every scrap of her undoubtedly tasteless salad except for those lonely croutons, was probably like she seemed. A pretty, nice young woman with a job where she served her community by risking her life—no one would argue that in light of recent events—by helping to control crime and keep the peace.

Their steaks arrived and he asked a few general questions as they ate. Jason was just glad he wasn’t sitting in front of the television with a plate balanced on his knees at least one night this week.

He was taking his last bite when she set down her fork and gazed somberly at him across the table. In the low lighting her eyes looked gold. “It’s possible I know who killed David Fielding and Chad.”

Grabbing his glass of wine, he washed down that last piece of steak and said, “If you are serious, start talking.”

Chapter 11

She knew nothing.

He’d asked, sitting on the sofa in the front room, pointing out they were friends, weren’t they? If something had been said … could she please tell him?

She couldn’t tell him anything, unfortunately.

All along he’d never really been quite handsome. Wide shouldered, no doubt of that, and with a slightly rugged air, but maybe that was just his occupation. He was very physical. It was what a woman noticed first about him.

What just about every woman in town had noticed.

But he’d chosen Vivian.

Lucky girl.

Or maybe, as it all turned out, not so lucky.

*   *   *

The house smelled
like old cedar with a faint overtone of coffee. In Ellie’s memory there was almost always a pot brewing in an old electric pot, the kind with the clear top that showed the water and grounds shooting up and had a red light that went green when it was done.

Ellie poured the coffee, took two cups out onto the screened porch, handed one to her grandfather and the other to Bryce, and then went back to get hers. They were at least talking in an offhand way—she could hear the murmur of their voices—and when she joined them, they were both looking out over the lake, discussing the fishing. Through the screen showed a picture of water with woods on the shores around, and the hint of autumn color in the sheen of the reflection of the water.

For two men without much else in common, it was a good thing that fish appeared to be so fascinating.

“… some decent largemouth.” Her grandfather pointed. “Right in that little cove. I used to go out there with night crawlers. Right as the sun was coming up, I could almost always take at least a four-pound fish.”

The view was really scenic, Ellie thought as she settled into a handmade wooden chair, the screens a buffer against the notorious Wisconsin mosquito, affectionately named the state bird. The sunset reflected in a scarlet haze above the tree line, the pines in dark formations and the birches ghostly shadows.

Bryce nodded, looking out over the water. “Eighty feet deep? I bet you’ve got lake trout in there.”

“DNR stocked it years ago, but no one catches them. I have a neighbor who claims he’s seen ’em, though. However, he can be a bit of a blowhard.”

“Is that right? I wonder if—”

Ellie cut in. “As fascinating as lake trout can be, I wouldn’t mind talking about why we’re here. The skeleton is of an indeterminate age.” She hadn’t really meant to interrupt Bryce midsentence, but the neutral avoidance of the subject was starting to irritate her. “The medical examiner was not able to give me any specific information. A female, most certainly, and not a child. They can carbon date, but it takes time and I’m not sure they’ll spend the money on it.”

The breeze was a light sigh. Her grandfather just looked resigned. “She’s been there a long while then?”

“It depends on the definition of a long while. Right now we have no idea.”

“At my age, that seems to be defined by the generation. What I think is long, Eleanor, and what you think is long, is probably not exactly the same thing.”

Bryce coughed a little into his coffee, no doubt because she’d told him once that if he ever called her Eleanor, she’d strangle him. He hadn’t either, so the threat was effective, but her grandfather was another story.

Even when she was a child, he’d never called her Ellie. That had been her grandmother’s nickname for her. “We are going to try and match old records of people being reported missing.”

No reaction except a contemplative look from her grandfather. “I’ve heard that works.”

It did if given a fairly specific time period. Otherwise it was just damn tedious.

Whatever happened next, she noted, as she finished her coffee, the reaction she’d picked up on that morning when he’d showed her the grave was utterly gone. He was no longer that shaken man.

What has changed?

She was overanalyzing this. It felt that way on the serene porch with the view of the water, the birds making soft calls as the dusk thickened. Wisps of chimney smoke floated by like tired ghosts. Robert MacIntosh had simply been an old man startled by finding a skeleton on his property and she’d maybe seen too much in it thanks to a jaded knowledge of how human beings sometimes dealt with one another.

That conclusion lasted until she got into the car to drive them to her house, only about thirty miles south, still unsold though she’d moved months ago, and Bryce said succinctly, “He
is
lying to you.”

Startled, she looked over, the vehicle straying for a moment on the county road before she jerked it back across the line. “What?”

Bryce, his dark hair casual and probably a little too long for her grandfather’s taste—she’d caught the look—just lifted his shoulders. “I am not a detective, but it seemed to me that maybe he’s had a chance to think about it all since he called you when the burial site was found and has come to the conclusion you are not going to be able to unravel this particular mystery.”

That could be absolutely true. She wasn’t sure she could unravel it either. “What makes you think so?”

“Ellie, how
are
you going to solve it? As far as I can tell, it isn’t going to happen, or at least the chances are low. He is no longer the panicked man you described to me, but he has settled.”

“Settled? What the hell does that mean?” She guided the car past a logging truck, picked up speed, and headed for 51.

“Settled down. Considered what might happen next and come to the realization that you are faced with an almost impossible crime to solve, if there was even a crime at all.”

“How can you possibly know that?”

“He was watching you the entire time.”

She blew out a breath of frustration. “Bryce … watching me? What the hell is that? He’s my grandfather and we were visiting. If he looked at me now and then, I should hope so. That’s polite. Just like you sitting out there talking about good fishing spots.”

“I actually care about good fishing spots.”

“Don’t even try and dare to be funny right now.” There was a definite edge to her voice.

He reached over and lightly touched her arm. “I’m not. And maybe I’m entirely wrong, but it just seemed like, from an outside point of view, as you began to describe your interview with the medical examiner I thought he relaxed. I am not giving you anything but an impression.”

And one hell of an impression it was.

“That body could have been there for decades. Long before our family bought the property.”

“But you don’t think so.” His voice was mild, nonconfrontational, but he was not often interested in an argument.

She stared at the road. Yes, some of the trees were really turning. It was almost full dark and she could still see the changing color, flashing red and deepening amber. It took a moment, but she admitted, “I don’t like that she was buried nude. That’s … not how people do things. Even poor people who decide to dump someone at the bottom of a hill in an unmarked grave. No clothes. Why? Even decades ago when forensics was just a baby science, criminals understood that what might not decay, might betray.”

“Might not decay, might betray? Fabulous motto to live by,” he said dryly.

“Depends on who you are.”

“I suppose it does.”

She shot him a sidelong glance. “Do you really think he was lying?”

“Tonight, no. You didn’t ask him a direct question that he responded to with less than honesty, but I think he was
relieved
. He seemed not nervous exactly—a man that stoic could never seem nervous—but I think he might have been afraid of what you might say. And whatever it was, you didn’t say it.”

God how she wished she didn’t agree.

Carl wasn’t a stranger to the seedier sides of the city. He’d done his time on patrol what felt like a lifetime ago. It really was an invaluable experience.

It actually sucked him in a little.

Not strip bars … no. He wasn’t that man. He didn’t like them loud either, or those smoky honky-tonks with half-naked girls in jeans and leather vests.

But a man didn’t have to slap down a bill on the bar and order a Bud Light to cross the line. Not hardly.

Neither did he pay for sex. He didn’t have to. Usually women took one look at the house, the car, the rest of it, which was not a measure of him as a man but just stuff … and they were interested.

It said a lot about how mankind worked in general. He was never sure whether or not to blame the male of the species, or the female. At the moment, he blamed his gender but decided to unashamedly exploit it.

He saw Lena’s long, sleek legs first as she slipped into the car. Walking around in heels gave her some excellent calf muscles and she knew it. Carl nodded. “Is it okay if I pull away right now, or should we seem to haggle for a minute or two?”

“This isn’t a street corner in New York. Pull away.” The woman next to him smoothed her skirt, if it could be called a skirt it was that short, and crossed her ankles. “Besides, if you think you weren’t made as a cop, you can think again. It amazes me how naive you all are.” She had long blond hair, which wasn’t natural if the much darker color of her finely plucked brows was an indication, and her blouse was unbuttoned enough to show a hint of a lacy black bra. Carl actually liked her, and they had an informal deal where he used his influence to cut the charges if she was brought in, which had only happened once or twice. She was very pretty and tended to work privately for some very high profile clients, but now and then she was on the street. If she didn’t dabble a little too often with recreational drugs, she could probably pull herself out of the life.