Cold Cold Heart (26 page)

“No,” Dana said again, anger rising. “I know I look like a freak show, but I'd rather not be on public display. Thanks anyway.”

Roger's face flushed red. “Sue, could you give me a moment with Dana, please?”

“Of course. I'm sorry if I seemed presumptive, Dana,” she said, backing away a few steps.

Roger tried to block her view with his shoulder. He looked down at Dana, angry with her interruption.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded in a harsh whisper.

“Well, my father owned half of this business,” Dana said in a normal tone of voice. “So I feel like I should be able to come here and walk around if I feel like it.”

“You know what I mean,” he said. “We're busy here.”

“I'm sorry. I'm busy too,” she said. “I just have to ask you a question.”

“Then ask it and go. Your mother is probably beside herself wondering where you are.”

“Okay. The day that Casey disappeared, you stayed home because you had a migraine. Were you there when Casey went back to the house to get her things?”

“What?”

“She left here, and that was the last I saw her, but we know she went back to the house at some point to get her stuff, because we don't have it. Were you there when she picked it up?”

“Dana,” Wesley Stevens said. Looking nervous, he tried to wedge himself between her and Roger. “This really isn't the time or the place for this conversation.”

“He told me to ask my question,” Dana said.

“You need to consider whether a question is appropriate or not before you ask it.”

“Screw you,” Dana said too loudly. “Who are you to tell me anything?”

“Can we discuss this over here?” he asked, looking at some point far away from the gazebo. He reached out and took hold of her arm, his grip unnecessarily strong.

Dana wrenched away from him. “I asked you not to touch me!”

Stevens jammed his hands at his waist, looking exasperated and angry. “I'm sorry. Can you please keep your voice down?”

“Oh, for God's sake,” Roger muttered. He climbed over the
railing to stand too close to Dana. He was in dark jeans and a leather bomber jacket over a blue sweater, trying to look like the slightly rugged but elegant everyman.

“Is your mike live?” Stevens asked in a harsh whisper.

Without waiting for an answer, he stepped behind Roger and lifted the bottom of his jacket to check the switch on the battery pack of the microphone that was clipped to the V-neck of his sweater. “You're clear now. We don't need anybody overhearing this.”

“To answer your question, I never saw Casey that day,” he said, his words terse. He was very angry. Dana imagined she could see the anger rolling off him in waves. He lowered his voice to a barely audible whisper. “You need to go now, Dana. Right now.”

“But how can that be?” Dana asked as half a dozen more questions popped into her head. “If Casey—”

His face darkened to a deeper shade of red. “Go home. Now. Or I'll have Wesley escort you off the property.”

He turned away before she could say anything and walked around to the gazebo steps, going with a smile to smooth things over with Sue Peralta. She could imagine what he was saying.
So sorry, Dana isn't herself. The head injury changed her. We're coping as best we can. Her poor mother. Such a tragedy. Blah, blah, blah . . .

All true.

The woman glanced over at her, brows knit with concern or interest or both.

Wesley Stevens took a step toward her. Dana stopped him with a look.

“If you lay a hand on me, I will scream like you've never heard in your life,” Dana said. “And I won't stop. How good will that be for the campaign?”

His jaw worked from side to side. He looked like he wanted to throttle her. “Nothing you've done since you got home has been good for the campaign.”

“Really? I got you the lead on the local news two nights in a row. Free face time for Roger. You should be happy.”

“Dana, you can't persist with this Casey Grant business. She's been gone for seven years, for Christ's sake. Wait until the election is over. People could get the wrong idea, draw the wrong conclusions. This race is too close to call. We can't afford to lose votes because of this nonsense.”

“A missing girl is nonsense to you?”

He closed his eyes against the need to shout at her. When he opened them he spoke in a carefully measured tone. “Please go home now, Dana. Please.”

“I'm going.”

“Do I need to see you to your car?”

“You'd better not think so.”

He backed away, raising his hands in surrender.

Dana backed up in the other direction, up the slope to the next terrace.

All around the gazebo, workers were being directed to arrange areas for the coming party. Her gaze caught on one man a few yards to her left as he hefted a bale of straw off the back of a flatbed truck. John Villante.

He was in an army-green T-shirt, jeans, and combat boots, sweating for his effort, the carved, bulging muscles of his arms on display as he hauled the straw bale into place. His expression was the same one he had worn every day she'd known him: serious—brows a straight line over narrowed eyes, mouth set in a semi-frown. He set the bale down on a pile of others, straightened his back, and looked right at her. Dana imagined she could feel his gaze hit her, full of anger and resentment. She walked toward him anyway.

“John.”

He turned away and kept his head down, pretending not to hear her.

“John, can I talk to you?”

“I'm working,” he said, reaching for another bale.

“Just for a minute.”

He shook his head. “I already lost one job on account of you, Dana. I can't lose another.”

“What does that mean? How did you lose a job because of me?”

He stacked the bale and reached for another. “Your mama called Paula Tarantino the other night and got me fired.”

“Oh God,” Dana said, shocked and embarrassed her mother would do such a thing. “I'm sorry, John. I never meant for that to happen.”

“Why not?” he asked. “You never liked me.”

“It's not that I disliked you,” she said. “I didn't think you were right for Casey. Is there anything I can do? I can have my mom call Anthony's and try to fix it—”

“Please don't. What can you do? You can
not
talk to me right now. You can
not
get me fired from this job.”

“I'm the boss's daughter. I think it's okay if you talk to me.”

“You can't get fired from being the boss's daughter,” he said. “But tomorrow morning when the foreman comes to the parking lot at Silva's, he will look past me and pick a Mexican dude who can't speak English. So please go away.”

“I just want to ask you a couple of questions about Casey—”

“I don't want to talk about Casey.”

“Do you get a lunch break or a coffee break or—”

He cut her a glare. “Girl, this ain't no union job. We're lucky if we get to take a piss, pardon my language.”

“When do you get off?”

“When the boss man says so.”

“Will you talk to me then?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don't see the point.”

“Well, you won't know the point if you won't talk to me.”

“I'm good with that. You already accused me of killing her.”

“I didn't mean that,” Dana said. “The wrong word came out. I have a head injury. I sometimes have trouble like that now.”

“So you don't think I killed her?”

“I don't know what happened to her.”

“So you don't think that I
didn't
do it.”

“I'm just trying to figure it out, John.”

“You can do that without me.”

“Is there a problem over here?” the foreman called, rounding the front of the flatbed truck.

John swore under his breath and grabbed another bale of straw.

“No, sir,” he barked like he was answering a drill sergeant.

“Hey, Mr. Kenny,” Dana said. “I was just saying hello. John and I went to school together.”

Bill Kenny stopped short, carefully managing his reaction to the sight of her face. “Miss Dana, I'm sorry. I didn't realize it was you.”

“I don't mean to disrupt John's work,” she said.

“He can take a minute or two.”

“I don't want to find out later he lost his job on account of me. That won't happen, will it?”

“No, ma'am,” Kenny said. “John's a hard worker. We could use more like him.”

“That's good to hear,” Dana said. “Thanks for the time, Mr. Kenny.”

“He's all yours,” the foreman said, backing away. “But not for too long. We have to get this place shipshape for your stepdad's party tonight.”

Dana forced a smile and nodded.

“What do you want from me, Dana?” John asked, head down.

“I'm trying to put that day together in my head,” she said. “I saw her here that morning. This is the last place I saw her. I keep thinking if I can just remember all the pieces . . .”

“If you can remember all the pieces, what?” he challenged. “You can't change the past.”

“It's not really the past, though, is it? We don't know what happened. How can it be the past if there's no end to the story?”

He looked at her like she was the stupidest creature on the face of the earth. He drew a big breath and blew it out. “What do you want from me, Dana?” he asked again.

“Was Casey going to make up with you? Was she going to take you back? Again,” she added, remembering how many times that scenario had played out back then.

He rubbed the back of his neck and laughed to himself. “You always did have your own version of history. You were the queen of Dana World.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“I was never good enough for Casey because she was your friend, and you were queen of the freaking universe. That's what that means,” he said. “Casey didn't break up with me. I broke up with Casey. And no, I wasn't taking her back.”

Dana stared at him, trying to absorb his version of the truth, every cell in her body trying to reject it. “You never said anything about breaking up with Casey. You never told the detectives that.”

“Why would I tell them that?” he asked. “Why would I tell them my girlfriend was cheating on me? Isn't that called motive? A bigger motive than they already thought I had. Yeah, let me double down on the motive. That's a good plan.”

“I don't believe you,” Dana said. “Casey wasn't cheating on you. I would have known. She would have told me.”

“Really?” he said. “Well, you might want to think about why she didn't. Maybe she didn't want to be imperfect in front of Ms. Perfect.

“I have to go back to work now.”

Dana stood there flat-footed as he walked away, half-afraid that if she moved the world would drop out from under her. Her head was swimming, overloaded. Because of that, it took an effort to find her way around the grounds and back to the parking lot where she
had left her car. Dan Hardy was waiting for her, leaning back against the hood of her car with his arms crossed over his chest.

Dana stopped in her tracks, quickly checking around for other people. But at midafternoon, employees were doing their jobs, not sitting in their cars behind the buildings.

“You followed us here,” she said stupidly.

“Did you think I wouldn't?”

“You need to go.”

“Why? Because West Point said so? He wants to make detective. If that boy was smart, he'd be happy to see me. He might learn something.”

“So far, I don't know anybody who would be happy to see you,” Dana said.

Hardy laughed, banding an arm across his stomach as if it hurt him. “What'd you see up there, little girl?”

“Nothing,” she said, not ready to share what John Villante had told her—not ready to believe it. She thought of what he had said about Casey not wanting to appear imperfect in front of her. Maybe she didn't want Casey to appear imperfect to the world. Was that so wrong?

“Nothing,” Hardy said. “Nothing at all? Nothing came to you?”

“Maybe there's nothing
to
come to me,” she said, looking away from him. “Maybe nothing that happened that day meant anything at all.”

“You don't believe that.”

“What does it matter what I believe? The only thing that matters is what's true. And I don't know what's true.”

“Every second of that day mattered,” Hardy said. “All of those seconds added up to Casey Grant being in the wrong place at the wrong time doing the wrong thing with the wrong person. All of the puzzle pieces matter. Are you gonna keep looking for the one we need, little girl?”

“Yes,” she said on a sigh as she pulled out her car keys. “After I have a nap.”

John watched Dana Nolan
walk away and disappear through a gate that led to the back parking lot. The possibility of running into her had been in the back of his mind all day—her or her stepfather or her mother. He needed the job too badly to turn it down, especially if his old man was truly going to pitch him out of the house. He couldn't live in his pickup forever. He needed to make as much money as he could to either get a room somewhere or get the hell out of Shelby Mills before winter.

Then there she was, Dana Nolan, like he had conjured her up by wanting to avoid her. And now that she had stirred the hornet's nest inside him, she walked away and left him buzzing, his nerves on edge. He glanced around to see if anyone was watching, if they could sense his anxiety.

To his left, the other day laborers were minding their own business. Straight ahead, Roger Mercer was wrapped up in whatever he was doing down in the big gazebo. To his right, Bill Kenny was watching him like a hawk. He was probably now putting two and two together and coming up with nothing good. The foreman walked toward him, hands on his hips.

“She took quite a beating,” Kenny said. “It's a wonder she's alive.”

“Sir?” John said, turning to heft another bale of straw off the truck.

“You don't know what happened to her?”

Oh Jesus,
John thought. Was he going to get blamed for something new? He hadn't seen Dana Nolan in years.

“No, sir.”

“She was abducted by a serial killer up in Minnesota almost a year ago. It was big news. Where were you?”

“Iraq.”

“Oh.” Kenny frowned. “Well, she ended up killing the guy before he could finish her off. I wouldn't have said she had it in her. I guess you never know about people.”

“No, sir.”

It didn't surprise John that Dana Nolan could have killed somebody. He'd seen her temper. He knew firsthand how cold she could be if given a reason. Everybody thought she was so sweet because she was petite and polite and had a pretty smile. That girl had iron down her spine.

All the more reason to have nothing to do with her,
he thought.

“I'll find a place for you, soldier,” Kenny said.

“Sir?”

“I'll make room for you on a crew.” Relief ran through John like a cold flash flood. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“You're a hard worker,” Kenny said, slapping him on the shoulder like he was a horse. “And it never hurts to have the boss's daughter like you.”

“Yes, sir.”

The last John knew, Dana Nolan hadn't liked him at all, and that probably wasn't going to change after what he'd told her today. But he was going to keep that information to himself.

They worked past six, hanging strings of lanterns, setting up tables, and opening folding chairs. A uniformed catering crew came in and added to the chaos, scurrying around to drape the tables and place the centerpieces.

The party was to be some kind of fund-raiser for Dana's
stepfather, who was running for whatever. John had no patience for politics. All he'd ever seen from politicians were empty pledges and broken promises. The politicians were quick enough to send guys like him to war, but they ground out every bill to benefit veterans.

The politicians didn't give a shit that veterans couldn't get jobs or that their health care system was a train wreck. No politician was going to come and help him straighten out the red-tape nightmare of the meager veterans' benefits he was owed—of which he had yet to see one red cent. They didn't want to hear about how he couldn't navigate the frustrations of the system because he had a head injury incurred in the war they had voted for.

Fuck politicians,
he thought as he watched Roger Mercer walk around approving or disapproving of the work the day-labor grunts had bent their backs into all day. It had always been his opinion that Roger Mercer was a prick—even before he had become a politician. He was the kind of guy who would wear a sweater tied around his neck, the kind who complained about having to pay but was never willing to pitch in and help do the work himself.

Casey had always rolled her eyes and shuddered in distaste when Dana's stepfather was mentioned. He was one of those dads who mistakenly thought kids believed he was cool. John had never had to worry about anything like that with his old man. Kids had never come to hang out at his house. He had never wanted to hang out at his own house. The place was a depressing mess that stank of cigarettes and sour sweat and dirty dishes. Mack was always drunk and belligerent.

The couple of times John had brought Casey to the house, he had been embarrassed beyond belief by both the mess and his father. The old man had leered at Casey like a wolf looking at fresh meat. And he always managed to say something degrading or sexual or both. They had taken to climbing into John's room through the window if they knew that Mack was in the house.

John's bedroom had always been his sanctuary, always scrubbed
clean and as neat as a pin. He had devised all kinds of hiding places for the few possessions he had that meant something to him. Nothing could be left out for Mack to get hold of and purposely ruin or somehow use against him. He lived like a prisoner of war in his own home.

Only he wasn't living there anymore.

His hands still hurt from punching the old man in the face. He had a pretty good fresh cut on the big knuckle of his left hand from catching the edge of a tooth. He didn't regret doing it. He regretted the consequences.

The foreman paid them their day's wages and drove them all back to Silva's on the flatbed. The garage was long closed by the time they got there. Mack's truck was gone. He had already moved on to his evening bender.

John had parked his pickup at the back of the lot between a pair of long-idle Peterbilt tractor cabs, as hidden from easy view as possible. He doubted his father would expend the effort to go looking for it, but he for sure would have messed with it had it been easy for him.

The dog stood up in the box of the truck, tail wagging as John approached. John shook his head. He had left the tailgate down, half hoping the animal would be gone by the time he came back from work.

And half hoping it wouldn't be, if he had to admit it.

He wasn't used to having anyone be happy to see him at the end of the day. The dog jumped down from the truck and ran a few steps toward him, then suddenly remembered to be afraid and stopped, tail down but still wagging, ears lowered, lips pulled back in a sheepish smile as it danced in place.

“I ain't gonna beat you,” John said.

The dog spun around in a circle and gave a little yip of delight.

“You're a funny dog, Trouble,” John said. “Why you'd latch onto me, I don't know. I got nothing for you or anybody else.”

Nothing except the day's wages, which would buy them both a sackful of ninety-nine-cent burgers.

“Come on,” he said, pulling open the passenger's door. “Let's go eat.”

Whatever else the night was going to bring, at least he wouldn't have to face it on an empty stomach. Or by himself. He had to admit there was some comfort in that.

The dog jumped into the pickup and settled itself in the passenger's seat, panting happily. John went around to shut the tailgate, then got behind the wheel and coaxed the truck to life. He rolled slowly to the road, looking over at the parking lot in front of the Grindstone for his father's Avalanche. No sign of it. But as he turned out onto the road, he could see the black truck tucked along the side of the bar across the way.

His father had to look like he'd gone a few rounds. John could still feel the impact of his knuckles on the old man's face. He could hear his father now, telling his cronies how they should see the other guy. It was debatable whether or not he would tell them the “other guy” was his kid. Knowing Mack, he would probably take some kind of perverse pride in telling people he had a fistfight with his own offspring. He'd probably be hitting the Maker's Mark pretty hard to fend off the full-on aches and pains of his beating and the sting to his pride.

If he had settled in at the bar, then this was John's window of opportunity to go to the house and get his stuff out. He swung through the drive-through for the burgers and shared them with the dog as he drove home. It wouldn't take him long. He ran through the inventory of his few possessions, ticking off each of his hiding places, making sure not to forget anything. He had a feeling once he left this time, he wouldn't be coming back until the old man had breathed his last breath. Maybe not even then. There was no guarantee Mack Villante wouldn't leave the property to the fire department to be burned to the ground rather than give it to John. He was that spiteful.

To be honest, John thought, it would probably be a relief to be free of it. It wasn't as if he had a head full of happy childhood memories growing up in this house. For the most part he had raised himself once his mother had left. The only memories he had of being nurtured and loved were memories of her when he was small. And those memories were so old and faded they were more like half-remembered dreams. After she had gone, his life had consisted of figuring out ways to stay under his father's radar. He hadn't been a child so much as a tenant, given no more real consideration than if he'd been the stray dog now sitting on the far side of his truck.

His memories of his mother were of a fragile beauty and gentle soul trapped by some bad fairy-tale twist of fate with the ogre that was his father. John had been far too young to understand how or why she had come to marry Mack Villante in the first place, or why she had stayed with him as long as she had. He had no memories of his father that didn't include drunkenness and cruelty. But he supposed they had to have been happy once upon a time, before it had all gone wrong, and the drinking had unleashed the temper, and the violence had driven her away.

John had never blamed her for leaving. He had only wished she would have taken him with her. He had spent many lonely, scary nights imagining why she hadn't. In some scenarios she had meant to take him, but something had prevented her. In other scenarios her plan had been to come back for him and snatch him away in the middle of the night, or to pick him up at school and take off for their new life in parts unknown. But in the back of his mind he always suspected she had left him because he was a burden and she didn't want the reminder of the man who had made her life a misery.

He couldn't blame her for leaving, he thought as he pulled into the driveway and looked at the little run-down ranch-style house with its weedy yard and ratty old shed out back. He was going to be glad to see the last of this place himself.

The sooner the better.