Death of an Irish Diva (4 page)

When Annie opened the door, Detective Bryant stood there with a six-pack of imported beer and a bouquet of spring flowers. She smiled. “C'mon in. Mike's all set up.”

“These are for you,” he said sheepishly.

“Thanks,” she said, walking into the living room, where Mike was firmly planted in front of the TV. “Look, Mike. Adam brought me flowers.”

Mike barely looked up from the pregame basketball show. “That's nice,” he said, distracted by the game on the television.

Bryant sat on the other end of the couch.

Annie had fixed trays of lunch meats, bread, and cheese with some veggies and dip. The coffee tables were spilling over with snacks. Mike and Bryant had struck up a Sunday friendship, watching whatever sport was on TV together, commenting, cheering, and so on. It was unlike Mike. When they dated, he had never mentioned football, or any sport, really. Suddenly, he was interested. Well, maybe not so suddenly. Maybe just since they had become parents to boys.

She cracked open a beer for herself and sat on a chair near the couch. Both of the boys had gone to a friend's house for the afternoon, otherwise she wouldn't be drinking a beer. She didn't like drinking in front of them.

“How's the case going?” Annie asked.

“Huh? Oh yeah. Not bad,” Detective Bryant said.

“I'm just back from over at Vera's place,” he said a few minutes later, when a commercial was on.

“Why?” she said after she took another drink of beer.

“There was an incident.”

“Incident?” She sat up on the edge of her chair.

He told her what happened. “Before I left, her mother, Jon, Sheila, and Elizabeth were all there. Someone had called her mother when they saw police cars. Same old story.”

He leaned back into the couch and wrapped his lips around the bottle. Annie looked away.

“So everything is okay?” Mike said.

“I think someone is trying to set her up,” Bryant told them.

“But who even knew she was being questioned?” Annie asked.

“Maybe nobody. Maybe it's the killer, wanting to keep us occupied. Away from him,” the detective said.

Annie thought a moment. “Must not be anybody from around here.”

“What makes you say that?” Bryant asked.

“Vera and her family are highly thought of in this community. If the killer really wanted to frame someone, it should be someone like me, an outsider,” she said.

“Obviously, the killer isn't that bright,” Mike said.

“Excuse me. I told my boss I'd give him a call.”

He left the room, and Annie's eyes went directly to the TV. But she knew Bryant was looking at her.

“How did you get to be so smart, anyway?” he asked.

She ignored him and continued to watch the game.

“Why are you being like this?”

She looked at him. “Like what?”

“So standoffish.”

“I don't want to lead you on,” she said with a lowered voice. “There's nothing between us, and you need to stop pushing.”

She was hoping he'd sink back even farther into the couch and look crestfallen. Acquiescent.

Instead, he sat on the edge of the couch, leaned toward her. “I wish I could believe that. How do you think this makes me feel?” He glanced toward Annie's bedroom, where Mike was still on the phone. “Do you think I want to be lusting over my friend's wife?”

Annie leaped up out of her chair and slammed her beer bottle down on the table.

“I'm leaving,” she said. “You can tell Mike I'm at Vera's place.”

“Don't,” he said, following her to the door. “Annie, I tell myself it's going to be okay. That as long as I'm in your life, it's going to be okay. I don't need anything else from you. I don't have to touch you. Nothing. But then I think about that kiss. And I know it's not all me. I need you to open up and tell me what you're feeling.”

He was less than six inches from her, and she could so easily lean into him and test that theory. That it was more than a kiss. But she held her breath as she felt a tear stinging.

She took it all in: There he was, in her home, which she shared with Mike and their sons.
Their home.
And yet there he was, standing in their entryway, professing his feelings for her, wanting her to do the same.

It was just so wrong on every level she could imagine. Yet, unreasonably, her body responded to him as she remembered the way his lips felt on hers, his breath on her neck, the way their kiss had shot sparks through her.

She turned away from him, and he grabbed her. “Please. At least give me some explanation.”

“Adam,” she whispered. “I am married.”

“Are you . . . happy?”

Damn. She knew it was coming. How dare he stand in the home she shared with her husband and ask her that?

He dared because he was, after all, the arrogant detective Adam Bryant. She had despised him when she was investigating Maggie Rae's death. Then they had worked together again on the New Mountain Order case. It was then that he had become approachable to her. The first time she realized she was seeing him in a different light was when she was sitting on the floor of Cookie Crandall's vacant house. And he had brought her the remnants of Cookie's scrapbook of shadows, which Annie had refused to even look at because she was so angry with her.

“We are fine,” she managed to say. “Now, let me go. Oh, damn. Let me get the keys,” she said, reaching around him to the key rack, brushing against his shoulder.

“I wish I could believe that,” she heard him say as she walked out the door.

“Now, Vera, you need to settle those nerves,” Beatrice said to her. “Maybe you should see a doctor, you know?”

Her forty-three-year-old daughter was pale and shaken. Was someone trying to frame her for murder? And was that person a dangerous killer? Oh, bother. This would wear on Vera. Beatrice knew she was taking it personally, as if this person didn't like her. “What have I ever done to anybody in this town but be friendly and kind?” she had said earlier. It was the worst thing in the world for some people to feel unliked. Beatrice really didn't care if anybody liked her. In fact, it always surprised her when someone actually did.

“I don't know, Mama. I don't like the idea of taking medicine, let alone nerve pills. You know what happened to Flossy,” Vera said.

Sheila spoke up. “Well, that's Flossy. You're you. I'm sure you wouldn't get addicted. I'm sure you wouldn't let that happen.” She looked at Beatrice. “We couldn't let that happen.”

“Besides,” Beatrice said, “that was years ago. They've come a long way with antidepressants and things.”

Jon came back into the room, carrying a tray with a teapot filled with chamomile tea. It had always worked to soothe Vera, even when she was a teenager. Beatrice couldn't remember if it was Ed or her cousin Rose who had first told her about the calming effects of chamomile. She'd always wondered how much of it was psychological. Whether it was or not, it worked for Vera. Beatrice always grew some chamomile in her herb garden and kept some packaged chamomile tea, just in case. She loved the fresh, sour scent of it.

Beatrice leaned back onto her chair as Jon poured the tea in Vera's beautiful blue willow cups. At least Vera was able to bring most of her dishes with her. The family that had moved into her house didn't need them; they had brought most of their own dishes and pots and pans. But they'd left their furniture behind in North Carolina, at their home. Beatrice was dying to meet the family but hadn't had the opportunity yet to take them a pie or some muffins and introduce herself.

She watched as Vera's still unsteady hand lifted the steaming cup of tea to her lips. She blew on it, the way she always had. Her daughter had very predictable movements. Always had. But these days, Beatrice knew she was troubled, and to witness the old familiar habits of tea held some comfort for her.

“Antidepressants? First, you're talking about antianxiety drugs, and now antidepressants. I don't know,” Vera said, looking uncomfortable on her dilapidated couch.

“Well, just talk to a doctor and see what he recommends,” Sheila said. “In the meantime, I think you need to break down and get a burglar alarm.”

“So expensive,” Vera said, waving the subject off with her hand.

“Let me buy it for you,” Beatrice said. “Land sakes. Let me help.”

Vera smiled and sighed. “Okay.” She looked over at Elizabeth, who was stacking up blocks to create a tower.

Beatrice tried to place positive spin on all of it, but she was dismayed to hear that Vera, her only daughter, who was the mother of her only grandchild, was sleepwalking again. She hoped and prayed it wouldn't happen again, let alone while Elizabeth was in her care. God only knew what could happen. Once, when Vera was twelve, they caught her walking down the middle of the street. Betty Hawthorne beeped her horn, woke the poor child up, and she became hysterical.

“Maybe I should have told the police about my sleepwalking incident. I mean, you know how tricky sleep and dreams and all that is. I wonder if I might have heard something and that's what set me off.”

“Unless there's a reason to tell them, I'd keep it to yourself,” Sheila said. “Next thing you know, they'll have you strangling Emily in your sleep.” She laughed and rolled her eyes.

Beatrice glared at her. Honestly. Why would she say that when Vera was so upset? She looked back at her daughter, who looked startled.

“What if I did?” Vera sat up on the edge of her chair. “What if I killed her and don't remember it? I mean, my purse was there. And we all know I despised the woman.”

“Vera! C'mon!” Beatrice said, setting her cup down. “That's nonsense. You never hurt anything—not ever—when you sleepwalked before.”

“Yes, I can't imagine,” Sheila agreed. “It's ridiculous.”

But Beatrice saw a faraway, almost haunted look in Vera's eyes. It was exactly what she feared, and Vera would obsess about it and dwell on it, until something else caught her attention. Beatrice needed to change the subject. And fast.

“Did I tell you that the Department of Historic Resources is coming to my place sometime this week?”

“Why?” Vera asked.

“I told you about the contractor finding bones and maybe an old foundation in the backyard. We called the police, and they came by and looked, said if it was a crime site, it was too old for them to do anything about. They called the history folks in Richmond. The Department of Historic Resources. Who knows what they are going to find?”

“Very exciting,” Jon said. “I love American history, and to have bit of it in the backyard? Extraordinary!”

Beatrice loved this man. She looked at his dark eyes gleaming and didn't know how it happened, given that she had always just been in love with one man, Ed, her whole life. Suddenly, there was Paris and Jon. And Jon tracking her down in Cumberland Creek. Life was surprising. You just never knew about the human heart and its capacity to love.

“So now, unfortunately, our pool construction has come to a standstill until they see if there really is any historical significance to it.”

“I wonder what they will find,” Sheila said. “You ought to scrapbook it, Bea. Take pictures as they're doing their thing. And then create a scrapbook about it.”

Beatrice took a long sip of her tea as she looked over at the Scrapbook Queen. A long look was exchanged between them. Beatrice didn't have to say a word. She lifted one eyebrow, and Sheila looked away.

As the week went by, Vera was pleased by the lack of incidents in her daily life. Everything appeared normal, with the same few dance classes, the same issues with Elizabeth, and she appeared to be sleeping the whole night. Just yesterday, she purchased an alarm system and made an appointment to see a doctor, just to be on the safe side. She had visited her mother and photographed the start of the archaeological dig occurring in the backyard of the home where she grew up. The exact spot where they found the human bones was where she had whiled away the hours, aboveground, swinging on a tire swing that hung from the majestic oak tree, listening to music, dreaming of dance routines.

But that tree had been cut down years ago, leaving behind a huge stump and a gnarly root system.

“Here it is,” Vera said, holding an old black-and-white snapshot of her younger self on the tire swing. “Here's the old oak tree. And there I am on my swing.”

“I remember that,” Sheila said. “And to think there was a dead person underneath.... Well . . . it makes me feel strange.”

“I know, but if you think about it, we are probably walking around over dead people all the time,” Vera said. “The historian explained to Mama that they probably would never know who the bones belong to, even though they will take a DNA sample. They need something to compare it to. What are you working on, Annie?”

“Here's a picture from when my mom and dad were married, the first time. And here's one from the wedding last month,” Annie said.

“I love that you're doing that,” DeeAnn said.

“Maybe we'll be doing one for Bea at some point,” Sheila said.

“Oh, I shouldn't think so,” Vera said. “They both seem content with the situation.”

“So what's going on with the dig?” Annie asked.

“They were pulling out a lot of things that just looked like pieces of rock to me. But there was this interesting piece of rounded pottery. Who knows if it was a cup or a bowl,” Vera said. “It's the only thing I saw that made any sense to me. And it's been raining for two days, so, of course, they stopped. Mom hopes they'll be back soon. Good God, she was right down there in the ditch with them.” Vera handed Annie a picture of her mother “supervising” the progress. Annie laughed.

“I'm so excited. I wonder if your mom would let me bring my class by sometime this week,” said Paige, the high school history teacher. She was supposed to retire last year, but they asked if she could stay on another year.

“She'll probably charge admission,” Sheila said with a grunt.

“She might really like that,” Vera said. “She's now on the board at the museum and really seems to be getting into history.”

“Speaking of history,” DeeAnn interjected. “I heard a rumor about Emily McGlashen's body.”

“What?” Paige said.

“They say it's still in the morgue.”

“What?” Annie said. “I thought they finally reached her parents.”

“We all thought that,” DeeAnn said, “but evidently, there was a mix-up with the names. It was the wrong people.”

“That's odd in this day and age,” Annie said.

Vera's stomach fluttered. “And sad,” she said. “I didn't like the woman, but someone should give her a proper burial. I mean, a life is a life, and death should be handled respectfully.”

“So,” Annie said to DeeAnn, “have they found her real parents?”

“I don't know. Annie, I was hoping you could find out,” she said. “My source doesn't know anything else.”

“Your source, DeeAnn?” Vera said and smiled. “Everybody knows your favorite customer works in the morgue.”

They all laughed. Shorty Swice came into her bakery every day and always ordered six blueberry muffins.
Where does the man put it?
DeeAnn often wondered.

The funny thing was that he had a bit of a crush on DeeAnn. It was harmless, of course. She was a big-boned, happily married woman, and he a tiny man with a big appetite, as henpecked as could be by his wife, Valerie.

Just then, there was a knock on the glass sliding door in the Sheila's basement, which was where she held her crops. She answered the door. “Why, Detective Bryant.” Her voice went up a decibel or two.

Vera's eyes shot to Annie, whose face reacted by coloring pink. Annie looked at her, then looked around the table at the other women sitting there. Some were looking her way; others were twisting their necks already to see the handsome detective as he entered the room.

“How do?” he said to the group of women. “How goes the crop this evening?”

They all murmured their separate answers.

Vera's heart felt like it sank into her stomach as she witnessed the discomfort of Annie. Vera was probably the only one at the table who knew about the kiss Bryant and Annie had shared and knew how tempted Annie was by this man. She had opened up to Vera one night, while they were sitting on Beatrice's front porch together. The woman was in some turmoil. Vera wanted to tell her to hang on to her husband, the father of her children, with all her might; that it was only human to be tempted, after all; to be kind and gentle to herself. But it didn't come out that way at all. In fact, she bumbled around the conversation. But she felt for her.

“Annie, we need to talk,” the detective said.

Annie's mouth dropped open, and she leaned back.

“It's business, of course,” he said quickly. “We've had a break in the Emily McGlashen case.”

“And?” Annie said. “I've filed my story about her. I'm not working on it anymore. You know that. And when I wrote about the other murders in Cumberland Creek, you were not forthcoming. So what gives?”

“Well, it turns out that Emily is not who we thought she was.... She, um, had these tattoos.”

“Tattoos?” Annie said.

“Rune patterns.”

Vera's heart leapt to her mouth, DeeAnn dropped her drink on the floor, and Annie gasped. In the rush to clean things up, Vera's mind ran a mile a minute.
The NMO? Again?
They were going to lose Annie, Mike, and their boys. Cumberland Creek was going to lose them. Just like they lost Cookie Crandall.