Last Run (31 page)

‘No,’ she said. ‘Nothing.’

She tried to sound normal as she thanked him – poor man, already beleaguered enough, and now being asked to take on weird-sounding nanny checks for her. But as she ended the call, Grace
felt quite dizzy with confusion, struggling to make some kind of sense of it all.

Lucia had always talked so
much
about Phil’s niece. Tina, the wonderful, happy young nurse in Naples. But if –
if –
Grace was right about this, then surely that
had to mean there was no such person as Tina Busseto. That she was some kind of invention of Lucia’s, perhaps because the bereaved mother had needed a replacement for her poor drowned little
girl so badly that she had made up a perfect niece.

Or maybe the reality of her
actual
niece, Kez, had been too hard to cope with.

‘Guesswork,’ Grace said, out loud. ‘Nothing but conjecture.’

She knew though, with sudden certainty, that what she had to do now, as Lucia’s friend, was to find her and speak to her.

Because if by chance she was right, then poor Lucia must be desperately in need of a friend. Because if she did turn out to be the aunt who Kez said had
‘helped’
her in the
past, then Lucia must have been through the most unimaginable hell on earth. And now, after all that horror, to be so brutally bereaved.

If she even knew yet that Kez was dead.

Terri had been suspended from duties pending further investigation into her actions, but was now free to leave Naples, and though she knew that some time down the track the
possibility that she might have wrecked her precious career might break her heart, for now all she cared about was getting back to Saul.

‘Anything you need,’ Sam had told her hastily in a corridor between interviews, ‘any time.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ she had told him.

‘I doubt anyone in Internal Affairs is going to pay any attention to anything I have to say,’ Sam had added quietly, ‘but I guarantee I’ll do my best for you.’

‘Somehow,’ Terri had said, ‘I can’t see your best being quite good enough.’

Grace had accepted that she
had
to call Sam to share her thoughts with him, and had tried to do so before hauling herself back into the Toyota and heading west over
Broad Causeway. But his phone had been switched to voicemail, which had tempted her momentarily to leave no message, anxious that if she worded it badly Sam might send in the troops – or at
least the Village of Key Biscayne police – to deal with Lucia without giving her a chance to speak to Grace first.

Sins of the niece.

The injustice of that rankled, but then so did the risk of making Sam feel yet again that she had not trusted him. And hurting him was a far worse prospect than hurting Lucia, much as she
sympathized.

She kept the message simple. ‘I’ve gone to see Lucia,’ she told him, ‘who may just possibly turn out to be Kez Flanagan’s aunt by marriage.’ She paused, then
added: ‘Ask Martinez.’

And now, her conscience less cluttered, she was turning south on to Biscayne Boulevard on her way to Key Biscayne, trying as she drove to gauge how she really felt now about Lucia, and to work
out what she planned to say when she found her.

To reassure her, if possible, that she could not be blamed for her niece’s crimes.

If
she was right about Kez being the niece.

Yet Grace’s instincts told her that she was right, and she’d trusted to them more often than not in the past – though they had certainly been appallingly off when it had come
to mistrusting Terri.

Play it as it comes.

Best thing to do when she got there, look the other woman in the eye and take it from there.

The real best thing to do might be to turn the car around and go home.

Grace went on driving south.

Cathy didn’t know how much more she could take.

The questions were still going on and on, everyone being kind and polite and considerate, and she’d volunteered for it,
wanted
to get it all out and finished with. But each word
stabbed at her, at her heart and at her psyche, her character, her pitiful lack of judgment.

All she wanted now was to go home, lick her wounds and be allowed a little time to grieve for Kez. But returning to Miami would mean going to see Saul, witnessing his pain again, knowing that
her
friend, her lover, had done that to him.

So how
could
she contemplate grieving for that person?

She really didn’t know how much more she could take.

Chapter Thirty-one

Though Dora Rabinovitch had once told Grace that Phil Busseto had left Lucia well provided for, the dainty white waterfront house on a Harbor Drive corner plot –
Lucia’s scarlet Audi coupé in the driveway as confirmation – still came as a surprise.

It had the
works –
a pretty backyard, deck and mooring complete with a pale blue speedboat, all just visible through palms from the road – and it had to be worth a small
fortune in today’s market. Though all the money in the world, Grace thought, could never have made up for what this woman must have –
might
have – gone through.

She took her cell phone off its hands-free cradle and hesitated – she’d told Sam where he could find her, after all. She turned it off, dropped it in her bag and got out of the car,
walked slowly up the path, took a breath and rang the bell.

Three seconds later, the door opened.

‘Grace,’ Lucia said.

Grace had the sense, instantly, that she had been expected.

‘I hope you don’t mind,’ she said.

Lucia wore a black linen trouser suit, her curly, silver-threaded hair as kempt as ever, but her face was drawn and tired, her eyes bleak.

Grace’s heart went out to her.

Lucia opened the door wider, stepped back to let Grace in and closed it quietly.

‘You know,’ she said.

‘I’m so very sorry, Lucia.’

Grace put out her arms and the other woman, almost a head shorter, allowed herself to be held for a moment or two before she drew away again and moved ahead of her visitor towards the rear of
the house.

Everything was white and graceful except for the greenery, which seemed the overwhelming feature throughout. Plants everywhere of all shapes and sizes, a glasshouse visible through the doors at
the back of the sitting room – and no surprise to Grace there, given Lucia’s gift for indoor and outdoor gardening.

Yet in spite of the flowers and herbs, there was an absence of the cosiness Grace might have expected in this woman’s house, which only seemed to compound her new sadness for Lucia,
emphasizing her solitary state, her lack of family. Everything neat and in its place, the antithesis of the Lucca-Becket household, making Grace more thankful than ever for the rich overcrowding of
home.

‘Tea,’ Lucia said, leading the way into her kitchen. ‘My special.’

‘Let me help.’

‘No,’ Lucia said. ‘I’m better keeping busy.’

‘I know that feeling,’ Grace said.

She looked around at more white surfaces, softened only by herbs, the air lightly fragranced with their myriad scents, and she recognized a few, those she used in her own cooking: rosemary,
sweet basil, mint, thyme, and saffron perhaps, though she was less sure of that, and coriander and . . .

She shook her head, cut away from the compelling aromas back to Lucia, who had filled an old-fashioned white enamel kettle from a spring water dispenser; Grace was accustomed to Lucia insisting
on using bottled, not tap water to make her herb teas when she was at the office.

‘The first time I’ve been able to make you a true
tisanci
,’ she said, turning on the gas beneath the kettle. ‘Very simple, of course, if you’re using leaves
or seeds or flowers; just pour boiling water over and steep.’ She nodded towards a white cooking pot standing on a low light beside the kettle. ‘If you’re using harder seeds or
berries, or sometimes bark, it takes longer to release the oils.’

‘So many scents,’ Grace said. ‘I’ve been trying to identify them.’

‘Some you never could,’ Lucia said, ‘unless you were a herbalist yourself.’

‘I hadn’t quite understood – ’ Grace looked around, took in the shelves of small white porcelain apothecary jars, the mortar and pestle on the worktop, the scales –
‘how important this was to you.’

‘It’s just a hobby.’ Lucia indicated the white table and chairs. ‘Please, Dr Lucca, take the weight off your feet. I’ll bring the tea across in a moment.’

‘I thought we’d got past this,’ Grace said gently. ‘Please call me Grace.’

‘Old habits,’ Lucia said.

It was a relief to sit down, though Grace felt that the tension still building inside her would only begin to be eased once they started talking properly.

She knew, already, that she would not have to push hard.

‘
You know
.’

That had said it all, or had at least begun the process.

However much Lucia might or might not know about the things Kez had done, whatever the
help
Kez had spoken of to Cathy might have involved, Lucia was almost ready to talk.

Needed to talk.

All Grace had to do was wait.

Saul was awake and agitated again. His drug levels had been decreased, partly to prevent future dependency, but his stress levels were inevitably rising again, and he was
running a slight fever.

‘Nothing to be concerned about,’ Lucy Khan had told David when he’d come in a while ago, and had peered at him critically. ‘You’re looking very tired, Dr Becket.
Couldn’t one of the others take over for a while?’

‘Sam and Cathy are both still out of town,’ David had said. ‘And I’ve told Grace to take things a little easier for a while.’

He liked Lucy Khan a lot, but he didn’t know her well enough to share their new family emergency.

‘What about Saul’s girlfriend?’ Lucy Khan had persisted.

‘Terri called me an hour or so ago,’ David was glad to tell her something positive. ‘She’s on her way back to Miami.’

He had given Saul that piece of good news as soon as he’d come into his room, and it had certainly helped, but David could see in his eyes that nothing less than Terri’s
and
the rest of his family’s physical presence in his room would convince him that they were all truly safe and well.

Given that David felt much the same himself, he couldn’t blame Saul.

It had begun, Lucia was telling Grace, with a cat.

‘You hear, don’t you, that these things start out with animals.’

These things.

The words alone made Grace feel abruptly sick, brought the reality of what she now realized she was going to hear sharply, horribly into focus.

‘Kez was staying with me here in this house,’ Lucia was saying, ‘when it happened. She was very upset – I’d never seen my niece so upset. Yet the fact that she
blamed the
creature
rather than herself should have been an early warning – what they call a wake-up call these days.’

They had moved, with their teacups, into the sitting room, where Grace had noticed a group of photographs on a lamp table in the corner, some of Phil Busseto, and some of a baby girl with curly
dark hair. Not Kez.

Christina, the daughter, she supposed.

‘Why did you never tell me that you had a child?’ she asked gently.

‘Because I’ve never been able to bear the pain of talking about Christina.’

‘And was your niece named for her?’ Grace saw no purpose in prevaricating. ‘Was Tina your pet name for Kez?’

Lucia shook her head. ‘Kez was born Kerry, as you probably know, to Phil’s sister Gina and her husband Joey Flanagan. Kez was what she called herself as a small child, and after that
everyone used it.’

‘And Tina?’ Grace was fascinated now.

‘Tina – ’ Lucia’s small smile was sad – ‘was my fantasy.’

The candour of her admission both surprised and impressed Grace.

‘Tina Busseto.’ The first hint of tears had sprung to Lucia’s brown eyes. ‘My “good” niece. A fine young person.’

‘The kind of person,’ Grace ventured, ‘Christina might have become.’

‘Perhaps,’ Lucia said.

‘You used to say that Tina lived in Naples.’

Lucia nodded and sipped her tea.

‘The photograph,’ Grace said, ‘that used to stand on your desk in the office.’

‘Yes,’ Lucia said. ‘That was taken in our apartment in Naples.’

‘Of you and Kez?’ Grace wanted to be certain.

Again, Lucia nodded. ‘She grew up over there with Gina and Joey. And then after Joey died and Gina didn’t really want to be a mom any more, Phil and I took over the payments on the
Naples apartment, and paid for a housekeeper, and had Kez over to stay with us as often as was practical.’

‘Lucky for Gina to have you,’ Grace said. ‘And wonderful for Kez.’

Or maybe not,
went through her mind.

‘So that was how you found out,’ Lucia said, ‘about my being her aunt. From the photograph.’ She paused. ‘You opened my drawer – you must have, to see it.
You’d never have remembered, otherwise.’

‘No,’ Grace said. ‘I’m sorry for invading your privacy.’

Lucia shrugged. ‘I should have taken it away. I wonder why I didn’t.’ She paused again. ‘Maybe I wanted you to know.’

‘Maybe you did.’ Grace looked down at her shoulder bag. ‘I brought the photograph with me, in case you wanted it.’

‘You keep it,’ Lucia said. ‘You never know, you might find a use for it.’

They sat for a few moments in silence.

‘It went on from there.’ Lucia returned to the past. ‘You know how it can be; the more you do for some people, the more they expect. Gina was like that. We put Kez through
school and encouraged her with her running, and then later, when she went to Trent, I helped her get her own place in the Grove because Gina had gone off with another man by then and Phil was
dead.’

‘But you still kept the Naples apartment.’

‘Because I knew by then,’ Lucia said steadily, ‘that Kez needed it.’ She paused. ‘She always went there afterward. Like a creature going to a burrow to lick its
wounds.’

Afterward.