Blood Bond (2 page)

Joe accepted the flashlight Odell offered and crouched low, careful not to step in the black pool of blood. He saw what Odell was talking about—just out of sight under the curve of Bergman's skull, what might have been a broken place with a white outcropping of bone and a red-black crust of blood. It didn't look like much—not the work of a claw hammer, for instance, or a baseball bat.

Joe stood, considering. “It's a stone wall . . .”

“Yeah, I thought that, too. Fell, pushed, whatever.”

“Pushed, you're thinking.”

“No doubt.” Odell knelt down and touched the surface of the decorative ledge.

“That's not really stone, Odell,” Joe said. “That wall. Places like this—half the stuff you see isn't real.”

“I hear that, I do.”

“Might as well lay down a few rubber plants . . . plastic grass . . . hell. Cut down on the watering.”

Odell glanced at the lawn, glistening in the gentle spray of the sprinkler system, then up at the sky, where a pale freckling of stars was visible.

“They might just do that, they think of it. These crazy-assed Californians.” Odell had followed a woman to California half a dozen years earlier, but the girlfriend got homesick and hightailed it back to the Lake of the Ozarks. Odell liked California enough to stick around, though he had never completely adapted to the culture.

Joe took a last look and shook his head. The guy's legs were tangled together awkwardly as though he'd gone down trying to dance, white guy style, bobbing from side to side and waving his hands in the air, maybe stumbling on his date's shoe.

 

CHAPTER TWO

INSIDE, THE HOUSE WAS
too cold, the air conditioner humming. In Montair, thirty miles East of San Francisco, scorching September days were followed by beautiful, cool evenings, and Joe wondered why the Englers hadn't opened up the windows and let the breeze in. Maybe the rich lost their taste for unfiltered air.

He heard voices farther inside the house, and passed through the mosaic-tiled entry and the two-story living room to find a knot of people in what might have looked more like an office if there were any books on the shelves besides the old cloth-bound volumes stacked next to vases and framed photos. Joe would bet money that a designer had arranged those books, and that no one in this house had ever turned their pages.

Bertrise sat on the edge of an overstuffed armchair, tapping a pen against a slim notebook open to a blank page. A woman of imposing posture and stature, she managed to look regal even when seated. Tonight she was wearing a long, silky jacket the color of a honeydew melon, buttoned to reveal just a fraction of her smooth brown cleavage. Platform sandals—Bertrise never wore flats, even though she was almost six feet tall. Her hair was swept into a short, sculpted style.

A handful of attractive, shaken-looking men and women clustered around a fireplace with a huge marble mantel. Bertrise barely glanced at Joe, her steely gaze fixed on the two women facing her on a cream love seat. One, a striking blonde, patted the arm of the other as she sobbed softly. Something about the gesture seemed proprietary, and Joe figured this was the lady of the house.

Joe cleared his throat and got a curt nod from Bertrise in return. “This is it?” he asked. “Anyone else?”

Bertrise inclined her head toward the kitchen. “Caterer,” she murmured softly, her eyes never leaving the women on the couch. It was unsettling to watch Bertrise work people; she said little, and revealed even less. While on the job, all but the faintest trace of her Jamaican accent disappeared from her voice. She was tireless; Joe had never seen a witness or suspect outlast her in an interview. Joe had wondered from time to time whether people gave up their stories just so Bertrise would stop staring at them.

Of course, she was the single mother of two teen girls; that had undoubtedly built up her endurance.

The most junior detective in the department, Bertrise had been forced to take some time off when her husband left her and again when her girls ran wild and got into some trouble a number of years earlier, which hadn't pleased her past bosses. The posting to Montair was an effort to start fresh and untarnish her image, and she took her job very seriously. She had been promoted only six months earlier; her interview skills were one of the things that made Joe push hard on her behalf.

Joe made his way down another hall, this one tiled and appointed with cabinets and sinks and rows of glistening upside-down stemware. Butlers' pantries: yet another suckhole of money and space.

In the kitchen, the caterer worked at the sink, her back to Joe. She was scrubbing at a crusted oven rack, black grime and suds wetting her turned-back shirt cuffs. Too-curly dirty blond hair was secured haphazardly by a tortoiseshell clip, but much of it had come undone, looping its way past her shoulders.

A Bosch dishwasher purred softly and water ran in the sink, and the woman herself was humming—if you could call it that, her soft voice tuneless. Not a cheerful sound.

“Excuse me,” Joe said.

The woman froze, then slowly and deliberately rinsed her hands before tugging off her pink rubber gloves. She turned and looked Joe full in the face. He was surprised to see something defiant in her expression.

He stood a little straighter, wondered if he should go for the shield. “I'm Detective Joe Bashir.”

“Marva Groesbeck,” she said, and extended her hand. Her skin was surprisingly hot—from the dishes, Joe supposed. The hair around her face corkscrewed in the humidity from the steam.

“You were working tonight? The dinner party?”

Marva Groesbeck raised her eyebrows and her expression changed: cloudy, bleak, almost angry. “Is that what Gail said?”

Joe studied her more closely, got it. The same fine nose, the same lovely straight jaw and smooth-planed cheekbones. On her sister, they were flawless. On Marva, they didn't quite gel. A bit too much space between the eyes, maybe. Too many freckles. An uneven mouth, tugging down more at one corner than the other.

He smiled, trying for disarming, regretting his gaffe. “I'm sorry. I thought you were the caterer.”

“Gail won't have them. Caterers. She does it all herself.” Marva gestured at the expanse of pearly granite, dishes stacked neatly. “At least, she plates and presents the food after they drop it off. She likes to take credit.”

“And yet here you are, doing cleanup duty.”

Marva picked up his thread. “I get anxious—I had to get out of the room once . . . you know, Gail went out there and found him. Tom.”

Joe laid a hand on the round kitchen table, its bare wood surface gleaming. “Would you like to sit down? Maybe I could get you a glass of water?”

Marva nodded, her thin arms hugging her body, and sat down in one of the carved-back chairs. Joe found glasses and filled them from the tap. He sat in the chair across from Marva and slid a glass toward her.

“Your sister seems to be holding up well.” It was a question. There was something here; with sisters there generally was.

Marva kept her gaze focused on her nails. They were pretty, short and shiny and pink, healthy-looking. No acrylic, no dark paint. After a moment she looked him in the eye and said only, “She does.”

“So she's maybe what you'd call stoic, in stressful situations. Calm.” Thinking of her hand on the other woman's quaking shoulder, the soothing tone of her voice.

“Yes . . . I suppose you might call her that.”

There was more to it, he was sure. The way Marva glanced away when she spoke of her sister, subdued by the ghosts of old slights and unsettled arguments. But Joe sensed it was too soon to press her.

“And she's the one who found the body?”

“Yes . . . she said she saw all that blood and she knew he was dead.”

“The wife of the victim wasn't with her?”

“No. Just Gail.” Marva bit her lip, her face paling. “I just met the Bergmans tonight. Tom and Elena. They live up the street. I think they have kids the same age as Gail's.”

“Were your sister and her husband close to them?”

“No, they . . . I don't think they were more than friendly acquaintances, really. Gail was repaying an invitation from a few months ago, a barbecue or something.”

Joe watched as Marva's eyelashes trembled. She really wasn't very good at half-truths; her features betrayed her.

“The other guests?” he prompted.

Distaste flashed across Marva's face, but she quickly recovered. “Political friends. Of Bryce. Harold—the one with the hair gel? He's got pretty deep pockets, and Bryce is thinking of a run for the Monte Vista County Board of Supervisors and he's lining up campaign funding. Though we're all sworn to secrecy.”

These last words were laced with a sneer. Marva evidently didn't care for her sister's husband.

“When Gail came in with the news, what happened next? Did she call the police right away?”

Marva shook her head. Her fingers went to her necklace, a silver pendant slippery between her fingers—a curved form that might have been a leaf. “She asked me to. She came into the dining room and told me she thought Tom was dead—I mean she whispered, so no one else would hear—she said call nine-one-one and tell them. And after I got up she told the others there had been an accident and they all went outside.”

“Everyone?”

Marva nodded, then brushed her hand across her forehead, pushing the wayward curls aside only to have them spring back immediately. “Bryce was kind of holding on to Elena's arm—I don't think they should have let her go. She started screaming. I could hear it from in here. Gail said Bryce had to hold her back. Because, because of the clues, you know . . . he thought of that.”

“You mean because of the evidence. Bryce was concerned that she might disrupt evidence?”

“Yes, that's right.”

Joe nodded. He wondered if he should offer Marva comfort, and was surprised at the impulse. Ordinarily detachment was not a problem for him. “He did the right thing. The less the scene is disturbed, the better.”

Marva didn't seem to be listening. “I don't think Sheree and Harold should have gone outside, either, really. Who needs to see that? And we're all practically strangers to each other. I mean, except for Gail and Bryce.”

“Does your sister often do that—have people to dinner who aren't intimates . . .”

“And then add me.” Marva took a drink of her water and set the glass down carefully. She licked her lips as though they were parched, as though no amount of water would help. “I shouldn't complain; at least they invite me. I could be home with Netflix.”

Joe was surprised. Marva struck him as the sort of woman who'd have no shortage of invitations, although it wouldn't be the first time he'd found that his tastes ran outside the mainstream. Marva was certainly attractive, but it was a quiet intensity, a directness in her gaze, that made her exceptional. Granted, the circumstances were unusual, so it was hard to get a fix on what she was really like, but he still had trouble seeing her in the role of a lonely-heart.

“And so when the others went outside, were you alone in the house?”

“Yes. I was on with nine-one-one, and then I just, I started clearing. I mean I suppose that sounds heartless, but I needed something to do. With my hands. It helps with the anxiety.”

Even now, he could see her slim fingers moving, pressing the fabric of her pants into pleats.

“Before it happened. You didn't hear anything, see anything—”

Marva was shaking her head before he got the question out. “No one did. Tom said he was going out for a smoke. I could tell Elena didn't like that.”

“She said something?”

“No, she just—you know how husbands and wives are. She, like, looked at him, not exactly angry but—” Marva paused, made a gesture with her hands, squeezing the air. “Tight, I guess I would say. He turned the other way, so he could pretend he didn't see it.” After a moment she added, softly, “My ex used to do that.”

Something, Joe thought, to remember for later. Though why, he wasn't sure; Marva was telling the truth when she said she didn't know anything. He'd bet on it. If Bertrise's gift as a cop was excavation, getting to the bottom of things, his own was these little blips of certainty. Not psychic, nothing like that; he was just a good reader of people.

“And everyone remained at the table?”

“Talking, yes. Tom went outside, then after a while Gail went to get the dessert. I would have gone with her to help, but Harold was talking about the school redistricting and I thought it would be rude of me to leave.”

“How long was she gone?”

“Oh. Maybe ten minutes. She came back in here and . . . took me aside to tell me to call nine-one-one, and then she told everyone.”

“So she said she was going to get the dessert, but then she went outside instead?”

“There's a door in here. See—three steps down, the mudroom, then the door.” Marva pointed to the corner of the kitchen; another tiled nook leading to the outside. “She must have gone out that way.”

“But why would she go outside?”

Marva's eyelashes fluttered and then she wasn't looking at him anymore, but at the table, caressing a dark groove in the wood with the pad of her thumb.

“Well, to call Tom for dessert, of course. She wasn't about to serve with guests out of the room.”

“Of course,” Joe echoed softly, certain she'd just told him a lie.

BY ELEVEN
Joe was ready to leave. Evidence had come and done what they could without daylight; they'd be back in the morning. He would take formal statements tomorrow: there wasn't much point in going beyond what Bertrise had already managed, given the hour and the guests' exhaustion.

He'd left Amaris only a couple of hours earlier. There was still time to go back. She'd said she'd be up late. She usually was, tweeting and answering email and whatever else she did. But her mood was a gamble that Joe was too tired to take.

Joe let himself out and waved to Odell, who'd pulled watch duty until the evidence guys came back to finish with the scene in the morning. He was sitting in what looked like a deck chair from the backyard, and he yawned and gave Joe a weary peace sign.

As Joe reached for his car door his phone rang. He checked the ID: Amaris. Thought about not answering. Did anyway.

“Lelakek et Ha'etzba'ot,”
she whispered into the phone, practically purring. The little bit of conversational Hebrew she knew was only sex talk; it amused her. “Come over here and remind me why I like you.”