The FBI Thrillers Collection (159 page)

“The thing is, I really don’t want to leave Tara. Maybe Chappy will kick off soon and Tony will inherit all this.”

“Don’t hold your breath. I’d give him another twenty years. You and Tony should move to Richmond. Tony could head the bank there, hire a manager for the bank here in Maestro, and let Chappy torment him. When Chappy’s out of the picture someday, you can move back to Tara, if you like.”

Cynthia strolled over to the front windows, pulled back the heavy brocade curtain and looked out. Cold air flooded the room. She closed the window as she said over her shoulder, “Tony’s afraid to leave, afraid he’ll fall on his face if he does, or that Chappy will disinherit him.”

She shrugged. “Christie could have talked him into leaving, but I can’t. I wish she wasn’t dead, Dix, I really miss her.”

“You didn’t appear to appreciate her all that much when she was here, Cynthia. Why the change of heart now?”

“I know better now, I guess.” Cynthia turned away from the window and paced the full length of the twenty-five-foot library before she turned back again. “Are you here for lunch? Mrs. Goss didn’t say anything to me.”

“No, we’re not here for lunch. For one thing, I wanted to ask you some questions about Chappy’s whereabouts last Friday night.”

“Goodness, that was when you found Ruth, wasn’t it? Chappy was here late, that’s all I know. What did he tell you?”

“That he was here, working in his office,” Dix said. “How about Tony? Where was he?”

“Making me a very happy woman, at least after about ten o’clock Friday evening. He was at the bank all day, I suppose. He usually is. He left for a couple of hours after dinner. He didn’t say where he was going and I didn’t ask. When he came back, he had a bottle of champagne under his arm, a big smile on his face. He wanted to be with me right away, so we went upstairs to bed. I remember Chappy was home because he knocked on our bedroom door about eleven o’clock, demanding to know what I was doing to his son. I was glad I’m always careful to lock the door. That wasn’t the first time he did that.”

Dix didn’t think Chappy had been interested in sex since his wife died so many years before. “He probably wanted to give the two of you grief. Tony didn’t tell you where he went after dinner?”

“He probably went back to the bank. He tries to be anywhere his father isn’t. I’d had another fight on the phone with my mother and I was fuming, not really paying attention to anyone.” She yawned. “Fighting with Chappy always exhausts me. Maybe I’ll drive to Richmond, do some shopping; it’ll help me forget.”

“You’re not going to Erin’s memorial?” Ruth asked.

“I really didn’t know her all that well, now did I?” Cynthia yawned and rose.

 

“I DON’T KNOW why I bother,” Dix said some minutes later as they walked to the Range Rover. “Oh yes, Tony did work late at the bank last Friday evening, according to the security guard, and he was there all day, according to the employees and Tony’s secretary. As for Chappy, Mrs. Goss claims he was gone during the day on Friday, but she doesn’t know where he went. He never explains anything to anyone. I’ll ask him about it directly.”

“Have you heard anything from Richmond about who might have hired Dempsey and Slater to kill me?”

“Not a thing from either the field agents or the Richmond PD. I’ll give Detective Morales a call, maybe promise him you’ll have dinner with him if he comes through. You like Italian, don’t you?”

Ruth grinned. “It’s a toss-up, Dix, between your stew and spaghetti Bolognese.”

 

ERIN BUSHNELL’S MEMORIAL was held in the large auditorium in Gainsborough Hall. A dozen lavish wreaths were set up around the stage, and a two-by-three-foot color photograph of Erin playing her violin hung from the ceiling. She looked so young, Ruth thought.

The auditorium was filled to capacity. Dix would bet every student and professor at Stanislaus was there. Those who couldn’t find seating were huddled against the walls and sitting on the steps in the aisles. He saw a lot of townies, too, sprinkled throughout the auditorium.

He and Ruth got lots of looks, some of them frowns, some tentative greetings. Erin’s parents were a conservative-looking couple, pale and silent, unable, he imagined, to come to grips with their daughter’s violent death. He’d met them, expressed his sympathy, when they first arrived. He had lost his wife, but he couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose a child. He thought of Rafe and Rob, and losing them would be the biggest hit life could dish out.

They would never find out exactly what was done to their daughter, if he could help it. Drugged and stabbed, that was horrible enough without adding the rest. Dix could only hope the half dozen people who knew the truth would never have to let it out.

He spent the memorial studying the faces around him, and knew Ruth was doing the same thing. There were half a dozen eulogies, including a very moving one by Gloria Stanford, and another by Gordon, who looked barely able to control his tears. The Presbyterian minister from Maestro focused on God’s providence and his belief in God’s own justice for Erin, an idea that seemed to resonate with the six-hundred-plus people in the auditorium.

Dix saw Tony and Gloria Stanford sitting on either side of Gordon, Gloria holding his hand. He saw Milton Bean from the
Maestro Daily Telegraph.

No one acted unexpectedly. The fact was, Dix felt brain-dead. He was tired of seeing everyone as potential suspects, and though he mourned Erin Bushnell’s passing, he grew tired of hearing her praised beyond what most human beings would justly deserve at the age of twenty-two.

He thought of Helen, her body released by the coroner to her brother, who finally agreed to a memorial at Stanislaus the following week, and of old Walt, seemingly not important enough for a formal memorial, buried now in the two-hundred-year-old town cemetery on Coyote Hill. Dix had been surprised to see a small crowd of townspeople, his real friends, at the graveside service. Walt would have been pleased by that.

After the memorial Dix drove to Leigh Ann’s Blooms for All Occasions and bought a bouquet of carnations. He and Ruth drove to Coyote Hill, and together they walked to Walt McGuffey’s grave, a raw gash in the earth. Dix went down on one knee and placed the carnations at the head of the grave. “I ordered a stone to be carved for him. It should be here next week.”

Ruth said, “I would have come to his funeral with you yesterday if you’d only asked me.”

“You were on the phone to Washington. I didn’t want to disturb you. And you’re tired, Ruth, we both are. You’ve been through an awful lot. Now, it’s cold out here. I don’t want you to get sick. Let’s go home.”

She nodded, and it struck her that he’d called it
home—
for both of them. That was odd, and a little scary, yet it made her feel very good. She’d lived with him and his boys for a week now, and it felt more natural every day. Dix was an honorable man, and he cared—about his boys foremost, about his town, about doing the right thing. As for how that long, fit body of his looked in low-slung jeans, she didn’t want to think about that.

She wanted to talk to him more about Christie, but knew now wasn’t the time. Not yet. She might not have known him for all that long, but she knew in her soul that if Christie was at all like her, she would never have left him or the boys. Not willingly. Something very bad had happened to Christie Noble, and everybody knew it.

As they walked back to the Range Rover, Dix felt her looking at him, but he couldn’t see her eyes through the opaque black lenses of her sunglasses. She huddled in her bulky black leather jacket next to him on the front seat, her purple wool scarf around her neck, and pulled her matching purple wool cap nearly to her ears. Dix noticed she was wearing her own socks, not the nice thick ones Rafe had loaned her. He turned up the heat.

THEY GOT HOME just before six o’clock. As Dix unlocked the front door, Ruth’s cell phone rang and she turned away to answer it. After a couple of minutes, she punched off. “That was Sherlock. Things are coming together. She and Dillon are going to stay in Washington, unless, she promised me, we needed them in any way. I told her we’re fine here.”

He hurried since Brewster’s nails were scraping madly against the front door.

“Brewster, hold on! Don’t forget, Ruth, if he jumps on you, hold him away.”

“Nah, Brewster won’t pee on the person who fed him some hot dog under the kitchen table last night.”

When Dix opened the front door, Ruth grabbed Brewster before he could climb her leg. She held him close, laughing and kissing his little face. He never stopped barking or wagging his tail.

“Oh dear,” she said. “Brewster, how could you?”

Brewster looked up and licked her jaw.

“We’ll get the coat to the cleaner’s tomorrow. They’ll be able to get the smell out—I happen to know this for a fact. And the leather won’t stain.”

Ruth laughed. “You little ingrate, what did you want that I didn’t give you? A bun with your hot dog? Some mustard, maybe?”

“Well, hang it up,” Dix said, pulled her against him, Brewster between them, barking his head off, and kissed her.

Dix pulled back almost immediately and pressed his forehead to hers. “Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to—Well, yes I did.”

He pulled Brewster away from Ruth, hugged him, then set him on the floor. To his surprise, Brewster didn’t take offense. He sat looking up at them, his head cocked to one side, tail wagging.

Ruth felt a bit shell-shocked. She swallowed, cleared her throat. “Ah, I’m not sorry, either. Actually, I—”

“Dad!”

“What’s that smell? Oh, Brewster got you, Ruth?”

“Yeah, he did, Rafe. Hi, guys. What’d you make for dinner?”

Rafe and Rob looked at each other. “Well, we were sort of waiting for you.”

“Pizza,” Rob said. “I can put frozen pizza in the oven.”

“You mean,” she said slowly, looking back and forth at them, “you guys let your father do all the work?”

“Well, sometimes ladies bring us food.”

“We do laundry and clean our rooms.”

“He doesn’t have to cook so much, really. We’d be happy to eat pizza more often,” Rob said.

Dix said, “I’m going to broil some fish and bake potatoes. Rob, Rafe, finish up your homework in the next hour.”

“Oh yeah, sure, Dad.”

“I don’t have any.”

“Like I’m going to buy that one. I want you both in your rooms, studying. No TV, no earphones.”

“Dad?”

Dix heard a thread of something in Rafe’s voice he hadn’t heard in a long time. He wondered if the boys had seen him kiss Ruth. Better if they hadn’t; it was too soon. “What is it, Rafe?”

Rafe shot a look at his brother, then looked down at his sneakers. “Mrs. Benson, my math teacher, was crying today. You know, she knew all three of the murdered people.”

Dix picked up Brewster, stuffed him into his coat, zipped it halfway up, and brought both boys against him. “I know this is tough. You can bet it’s tough for Ruth and me, too. I told you straight last night—I will catch the person behind these murders, I promise you that.”

Rafe tried to smile. “By Tuesday.” He pressed his face against his father’s shoulder. “That’s what I told Mrs. Benson. She swallowed hard and said she sure hoped so since she voted for you.”

Dix said slowly, looking from one face to the other, “Is there anything else you want to talk about?”

Rafe hugged his father’s waist. Rob was slower, stepped back so he could look squarely at his father. Dix saw, to his shock, that Rob looked no more than two or three inches shorter than he. When had he shot up like this? He was filling out, too, his shoulders less bony, his chest and arms thicker. “Tell me what’s wrong, Rob.”

Ruth stood silently, knowing she probably shouldn’t be there, but that didn’t help her feet move. She held still and kept quiet.

Rob stole a look at her. “I saw you kiss Ruth, Dad.”

Rafe jerked back, stared at his father then at Ruth. “You kissed her? When?”

“A minute ago,” Rob said.

“Yeah,” Dix said, “I did. Maybe I didn’t plan it, but I did.”

“Well, if you really didn’t mean to—” Rob said, and looked closely at his father.

“That wasn’t exactly the truth,” Dix said. “I wanted to, although I knew I shouldn’t, but I did anyway. Either of you got a problem with that?”

There was a moment of charged silence, then Rob whispered, “It’s Mom.”

Dix had known this moment would come, sooner or later, when a woman finally came into his life. In the days after Christie disappeared, Dix had wandered around in a fog of pain, too busy trying to find her to try to sort things out with the boys. When his brain began to clear some weeks later, he realized the boys very much needed to talk with him about their mother. He also realized he needed them as much as they needed him. What he gave them was as much honesty as he could. In return they got into the habit of always telling him what they were feeling. At least he’d believed that was the case. As for himself, he’d let his own pain stay buried, for the boys’ sake, and they slowly adjusted, accepted what couldn’t be changed. Until now, when his kissing Ruth had finished their unspoken agreement.

Dix ran his hands through his sons’ hair, love, pain, and guilt sweeping over him, nothing new in that. But now Ruth was added to the mix.

Rob said again, “It’s Mom.”

Dix said, “I know, Rob, I know. But your mom’s been gone for almost three years now.”

Rafe said, “Billy Caruthers—you know, that jerk on the baseball team I beat out as pitcher—he was shooting his mouth off about how he bet Mom ran off with a guy she met at the gym. I don’t believe it—but if that’s true, maybe she’ll come back.”

Hard, raw anger roiled in Dix’s belly. “You know that didn’t happen, Rafe.”

Rob’s eyes blurred with tears, but his voice was steady. “Yeah, I know. I told him Mom wouldn’t do that, and that’s when we got into a fight.”