Now You See It (10 page)

Gemma lifted a case and a liner. “The police said it was quick-in-smash-and-grab,” she said, “but this took time. They weren’t in a hurry.”

“No. They were selectively thorough. Even the drawers are upside down to check for taped papers, or photos, maybe. Somebody thinks you have something. Whatever it is, they want it enough to break into your house, rip into everything, dump out every box, every drawer. First, they thought it would be in the computer. So at least part of it is information. If they’d gotten what they needed, they wouldn’t have come back tonight for another pass.” He gave her a straight look. “Did you tell anyone about the break-in night before last?”

She nodded. “I told the police yesterday when Mike and I went to Seattle. Can I start cleaning up?”

“Go ahead. They’re not going to take any more prints.”

He watched her look over the wreckage. He could see the moment she decided where to start. “What’s first?” he asked.

“Let’s get the empty boxes out of the way, and we’ll be able to see better what’s up.”

Gemma began dragging boxes over closer to the foyer, and Brady set to work breaking them down and stacking them. It only took a few minutes, but the difference was significant.

“Okay,” Gemma said. “That’s better. Not a lot better, but some. Like we’ve been hit with a 6.5 instead of an 8.0.”

“Just how long did you live in San Diego, Gemma?” Brady asked.

Her laugh was short and humorless. “Long enough. It was good to get back to Seattle. We just missed the Nisqually quake. Perfect timing.”

She reached down and righted a tipped-over packing box and cried out.

“What’s wrong?” Brady asked, coming immediately to her side.

She didn’t answer him. Beneath the oversized carton, broken chunks of wood and shards of shattered glass surrounded and mingled with the brass inner workings of an antique regulator clock. Gemma picked up a carved bird’s wing and stroked her fingers over the delicate detail.

Gemma’s birthday clock. Years ago Mike had told him how much it meant to her. Odd that he could remember so clearly. Mike had been feeling homesick, wishing he could be home for Gemma’s birthday. What year was that? They’d been on the
Kennedy
, heading somewhere or other. Brady didn’t really get the whole birthday thing. His dad had been the only one who even remembered them. Once he was gone, Brady had just let it all slip under the radar. Mike was telling him how important they were in his family, and started talking about that clock. It had belonged to their great grandma Eileen, and she had given it to Gemma as a fourteenth birthday present.

Thirty inches long and topped by a fearsome screaming falcon, it had been carved from dark oak in the depths of some German forest a hundred or more years before. It had come to Donegal soon after the Great War, there to be purchased as a gift for Gemma’s great-grandparents’ wedding. Brady couldn’t imagine why the vandals had destroyed it, except out of sheer malice. Or maybe checking to see if anything had been hidden inside.

* * *

Gemma felt as if her heart was breaking. The clock was always the first thing put up in a new home. In houses, apartments, on-base duplexes on four continents, Gemma’s clock had chimed the hours of her life. As teenagers, Gemma and Mike had spent hours working and reading in whatever room the clock was hung, reassured by the hollow
tonk, tonk
of its brass and white enamel pendulum and by its soft, resonant chime.

“Gemma?”

“This was my grandmother’s and my great-grandmother’s—it was mine. There’s this space between two of the big front windows in the new house that was just the right size for it. I was going to take it over there and hang it tomorrow.” She couldn’t hold back the tears any longer.

Brady knelt beside her and took her in his arms. She snuggled close to his warmth and strength and shuddered. He stroked her hair, holding her firmly, as if she were a frightened animal. “Breathe, Gemma,” he told her, and she did as he said, breathing in the scent of him.

Spice, male, warm skin. Gradually her shuddering stopped, changed. She caught a breath. “They didn’t have to destroy something so beautiful.” She gave a prodigious sniffle.

He wiped a tear off her cheek with the back of one index finger. “They were probably making a point before they went on to other, de rigueur vandal-y tasks.”

In spite of her grief, she felt a distant spark of amusement. “De rigueur vandal-y tasks?”

“Like rooting through your lingerie and dumping cornmeal all over the kitchen.” His arm tightened around her in a quick hug and then he stood up and offered her a hand. “Look, why not leave all this stuff and let me take you back to Mike’s?”

She took his hand and shook her head as she rose. “I can’t. I need to see what’s left.”

“You’ll be able to do it better in daylight, after a night’s sleep.”

“I couldn’t sleep with all this chaos. I’d better call him, though.” She dug in her pocket for the phone. “Besides, putting things to rights will help me wind down. I’ll get some people to help, tomorrow. Promise.” Just the thought of repacking all the boxes made her stomach tremble.
I’ll never get it all back the way it was
. Her throat closed and tears started again. Why was she making excuses to him? It was her house, after all. She was doing it again. Letting some guy boss her around. Just because he was warm and sympathetic and smelled like mortal sin...

“I’ll stay a few minutes,” he said. “Maybe I can help.”

She scowled at him, but couldn’t think of a reason to protest very hard. The extra muscle might come in handy. Besides, she wouldn’t say it out loud, but she felt safer with Brady there, knowing the pushy bastard could kick major butt if she needed him to. She had never felt so vulnerable, so alone. All this stuff was hers. It was her, her life, her choices, her needs, all strewn in the open for anyone to see and paw through. She closed the front door as much as she could. With a deep sigh she reached for a piece of couch stuffing.

“Nikki does this with her toys. Disembowels them. Strings the stuffing all over. It’s part of her prey drive.” She crushed the handful of fluff in a tight fist. “I hate feeling like prey.” She picked her way down the hallway, turning on lights. “Want some coffee, if I can pull some together?”

“Is your coffee anything like your tea?”

Gemma smiled for the first time since she got back home. “Mike says my coffee is a blunt instrument.”

Brady winced. “Tell you what. I’ll make the coffee. Then let’s see what we can do.”

Four hours later, Brady came quietly down the stairs. After a quick look around, he went to the front door and stepped out, swinging the door a couple of times, scrutinizing the lock and framework. No way it would hold—a ten-year-old could push it in. The bastards really did a job on the place this time around.

“You ready to go?”

Gemma didn’t answer. Her compulsive sorting and straightening had worn her down, and she lay curled on the floor, her knees bent, fast asleep. She looked absolutely spent, lying there. He lifted a nubbly woven throw from on top of a box of rescued linens, draped it over her, and looked down, deciding what he was going to do next. He dumped out the contents of a small cardboard box and wandered silently over to clean up the pieces of the broken clock. A fleck of color showed on one of the shards of glass. Blood. One of the bastards had cut himself through his gloves.

Brady drew in a deep breath and collected his dwindling
touch.
The glass fragment was small, maybe a half inch across, roughly triangular. He reached down to brush a finger against the red smear on one sharp point, cautiously at first, and then with his
senses
wide open.
Gotcha!
Just as he’d thought, this was thug-work. Brutality without intent. The only goal had been to do a job and get his reward. Joy in destruction. Whoever had cut himself on this little glass sliver had been enjoying himself. Definitely a male—no surprise—and not a terribly smart one. Ditto. Following orders from someone else. Boss was just a shadow. A source of money, not a personality, someone who inspired feelings of greed but not of respect.

And there was the motive behind it. Not the motive of the men who’d done the damage, but in the orders they’d been given. So, definitely not random vandals. Not kids, either. The man he
sensed
was probably thirty, not too bright, but enough to follow directions.
Sean
. The name popped out and then drained away, with the last of his
touch
. Well, he would know the asshole if he ever found his traces again. Carefully, he put the brass and wood pieces into the box and carried it out to the trunk of his car. There was no need for Gemma to have to face that unhappy reminder in the morning.

Whoever had done this probably wouldn’t be back tonight after all the police activity, but he freed the .38 revolver from his ankle holster, just in case. Then he sat on the floor with his back against the wall, and settled in to guard her sleep.

Chapter Eight

Abernathy scrubbed his hand over his face and the crown of his head, hoping for a glimmer of insight, but it didn’t help. His eyes refused to move from one line to another anymore. He tossed the file he was supposed to be studying onto the table with an irritated snort.

“Got you whipped?” Olsen said.

Abernathy made a rude noise. “I could do this, or I could stay married. But this case is draining me, and Terri’s starting to fray around the edges.”

“Take her out to dinner. Someplace nice. She like Italian?”

“Yeah, and Pizza Man delivers.”

“No wonder she’s pissed off. You’re such a fuckin’ romantic.”

Abernathy gave a lopsided smile. “Yeah. So, what’ve we got?”

“Nada.” Olsen picked up his notebook. “Vic goes to his friend’s cabin. Alone?” He flopped his hand from side to side. “He gets chopped into stew meat by person-or-persons unknown.”

“Never seen anything like that. I think the rookie that walked into the mess is still puking.”

“Probably is. Meanwhile, up north in Microsoft City, somebody sneaks into the vic’s house and messes with the computer. Couple days later, house is trashed. We assume it’s the same doers—didn’t find whatever they were looking for the first time so they came back to finish the search.”

“You like the wife for this? The murder?”

Olsen made a face. “Naah.”

“Maybe she hired somebody to kill her sleazeball husband, didn’t pay them, so they’re sending her a message by breaking into the house, stealing stuff. She’s definitely hiding something. So’s the paralegal, what’s her name? Debbi?”

“Dori”

“I think the paralegal was in love with Carrow.”

“No points for that one.” Olsen said, remembering color bursting and paling in a pretty brunette face.

Abernathy gave him a speculative look. “Think he was doing her?”

“She says not. He was too noble, blah, blah, never betray his wife, blah.”

“Yeah, I heard that. The photos had to come as a shock.”

“A woman in love is capable of infinite self-delusion, my lad. She’ll have thought up some excuse for him by now. Something she can live with.”

“Which brings us back to Ms. Cavanagh.” Abernathy leaned back and crossed his ankles. “She’s gotta know more than she’s telling us. Lotta guilt there.”

“Yeah, but for what? Divorcing his ass or chopping it into stew meat?”

“Gobbets. Chopping him into gobbets.”

“Where’d you get a word like that?” Olsen asked.

“Something my son was reading. It’s what a wizard was feeding his pet falcon. He asked me what it meant and I didn’t know, so we looked it up together. Gobbets. Has kind of a ring to it.”

Olsen breathed out hard through his nose. “How’re we coming on the financials?”

“Weird. Every account she has access to has a low balance—not just now, but as far back as we’ve tracked, which is two-plus years. No more than a couple hundred dollars at any one time. All the big money was in his accounts in his name only. There’s no evidence at all that she even knew about them. If she has a secret stash somewhere, it is seriously dark.”

“Let’s keep after that.”

“On it.”

“And let’s get the partner in here.” Olsen sounded as frustrated as Abernathy felt.

“He’s not a bad guy for a politician.”

“He’s also a fuckin’ lawyer. If he knows anything, we’ll never get it out of him. But we better cover all the bases on this one.”

* * *

Abernathy registered Doug’s confidence as he walked into the interview room.
All one big, happy family, upholding the law together
.

“Mind if I take off my jacket?” Wheeler asked.

“No,” Abernathy said. “I got rid of mine a couple hours ago. Some summer. Want coffee? Water? We got soda in the machine.”

“Thanks, I’ll pass. What can I tell you?” He took a bottle of designer water out of his briefcase.

“Can I tape this?” Olsen asked.

Doug made a “go ahead” gesture and Olsen set a small digital voice recorder on the table between them and stated the date, time, location and names of those present.

He turned toward Doug. “Can you tell us your whereabouts last weekend?”

“Last weekend? He was dead that long before they found him?”

“Mr. Wheeler, please,” Olsen said.

“It had to have happened late Saturday, then, or sometime Sunday.” Doug propped his elbows on the table and sank his forehead into his upturned palms. A neat lock of blond hair fell forward over his hands. “I can’t believe it. Ned and I were together at the campaign office until five or six Saturday afternoon. We had a drink afterward at Fergie’s, then he said he had an appointment and left.”

“Alone?”

“Yes. I stayed for another hour or so, as I remember. I had dinner there with a colleague.”

“Anyone confirm that?”

“The wait staff, certainly—until ten or so. Then we went back to my apartment. She left mid-afternoon, and I picked her up again around seven for Teatro Zinzanni. Sunday night, I was home alone, working. Monday morning I met with some clients for a working breakfast at Daisy Mae’s, trying to catch up with office work,” he said with a rueful little smile. “I’ve been putting in way too much time trying to get elected.”

“Want to give us a name for Saturday night?”

Doug shrugged. “Megan Castro. She’s a financial planner at McGill and Bledsoe. We’re both consenting adults, detective.”

“What time did you leave Daisy Mae’s?”

“I had a press conference around two, so it must have been one p.m. or so.”

“Monday night?”

“Home alone. I was there when Gemma called to tell me about Ned.” He pulled a phone out of his pocket. “I can give you a list of my appointments.”

“Thanks,” Abernathy said. “Appreciate it.”

“What was your relationship to Ned Carrow?” Olsen asked.

“Ned? We were friends, partners. We had been for years. Since Yale. We were college roommates. I was his financial manager, and I asked him to manage my campaign.”

“His financial manager?”

“Yes. He wasn’t very good at it, and was honest enough to ask for my help. Ned was a whiz with people, organizing them, motivating them, but he was a total loss with money.”

‘How well do you know his wife?”

“Gemma? Quite well. I’ve known her since Ned first started dating her, so, six years, maybe? About that.”

“She didn’t take her husband’s name.”

“That’s not so unusual these days, but as it happens, you’re wrong. She did take Ned’s name, but when they separated a few months back, she had her name legally changed almost as soon as the front door closed behind him.”

“Before the actual divorce? Okay, that is unusual.”

Doug’s voice darkened and he tipped his head to one side. “She’s an unusual woman.”

“You two close?”

“Not really. Ned kept her pretty isolated.”

“Why did they separate, do you know?”

Doug took a long sip of water and then took his time screwing the cap back on the bottle. “I understood from Ned that Gemma got fed up with his infidelities. Ned...slept around, to put it politely, and he was neither particular nor discrete. I was surprised it took her so long to do something about it.”

“But you knew.”

“It was an open secret. I was sorry for it. He was my friend, and my partner, but his private life was a mess. He’s been addicted to risky sex since college.”

“According to the Kirkland police, you and the widow were out on the town last night.”

Doug’s mouth tightened. “We were hardly ‘on the town,’ detective. I offered to take her out for dinner, rather than bring over the conventional casserole. I’m afraid I’m not much of a chef. It didn’t occur to me to have something catered in. Believe me, if I’d known what was about to happen to her home, I’d have done just that. But as I said, it never even entered my mind.”

“So, what did happen last night?”

“While we were at dinner, kids broke into the house and vandalized it. They stole a computer and TV sound system, some other things they could pawn easily. Made a huge mess. Broke furniture...” he looked up. “Maybe the casserole would have been a better option after all.”

“I’m interested in hearing more about this ‘sex addiction’ you mentioned,” Olsen said, and made a show of looking back through his notes.

“It was growing worse. When we were at school, it was girls—women. One after another, sometimes two or even three a day, or even at the same time, if he could manage to talk them into it. As if he were going for some world record. It escalated from there over the years. Lately he was beginning to miss work, spending inordinate amounts of time on the internet, going to orgies, or claiming he did. I had no reason to doubt him. He simply couldn’t get it under control.” His voice turned bleak. “What a horror. He was...Ned had his problems, but there was no real harm in him, except for his addiction to sex. He was a good friend. I miss him.” He looked at Olsen. “I even had Ned’s medical power of attorney. I didn’t tell Gemma, but he didn’t trust her not to pull his plug, if the time ever came. He wanted to live as long as possible, no matter what that meant.”

“I’d say he got his wish, counselor.”

When Wheeler was gone, Olsen turned to his partner. “You think there’s something between him and the wife?”

Abernathy dismissed the idea with a snort. “He wishes. But no. I don’t think so.”

* * *

Just a few more nights,
Gemma thought as she looked around Mike and Mary Kate’s guest room. Tomorrow Julia arrived in all her wilted glory. Gemma’s stomach knotted into a lump at the thought of facing the old woman’s hatred and open hostility. She was sure Julia had something up her sleeve. Ned’s mother never let an opportunity for melodrama slip past without exploiting every last nanodrop of theatrical potential. And now, the funeral of her “darling boy”? Gemma shuddered as possibilities flooded her. Fortunately the old harridan was scheduled to leave immediately after the service, to everyone’s mutual relief. Gemma had been half-afraid Julia would want to stay until Ned’s body was released, and drape herself tearfully over the casket all the way back to Sweetwater.

Gemma would move into the charming “mushroom” house in Wallingford on Saturday and start a new phase of her life. And maybe once she was settled and out of their hair, Mike and Mary Kate could get their household back to normal. With Gemma there, her problems took center stage. Understandable, but all the craziness and extra tension had to be hard on everyone. Even Timmy was feeling the stress. Earlier that morning he had thrown a prodigious tantrum, insisting he wasn’t going to school
ever again
—even though Gemma knew he loved school, enjoyed his friends and was totally enamored of his teacher.

Moving into her own place would give them time and some privacy to get back to normal. She wasn’t making a lot of progress getting ready, though. Her eyes didn’t want to stay focused. Because she was tired, dammit. Not because she couldn’t stop daydreaming about Tall, Dark and Taciturn.

Leave it to her to get all fluttered over a guy who’s obviously emotionally unavailable. Well, that wasn’t so surprising. The last two men she had relationships with died. Violently. And Ned was a—
don’t go there, Gemma
. She summoned up her little mental image of a wave-off, and drew a relieved breath when it worked. She wasn’t very smart about men, and she was pretty sure her physical attraction to Brady was swamping whatever sense she had left.

It had just been so long, was all. She had all but forgotten the rush, the heat, the way her whole body could become one big erogenous zone, waiting for him to touch her, take her. She’d forgotten this churning uncertainty, the jumpy nerves, roiling stomach, sweaty palms, palpitations.

She swallowed, her throat dry. She knew she could trust Brady.
Knew
it
.
But her gut didn’t settle.

As a Navy junior, she had grown up with stories of the bizarre ways some men reacted to combat service, especially SEALs. Lots of horror stories about them. That’s why the Navy only kept them in the field for a limited time, her dad had told her, and took such care to make sure they were safely decompressed before letting them back into the general population.

Maybe it was the constant state of wanting that he aroused in her. She’d thought that had died with Trevor. Never thought she’d find it again, would be capable of it again. Now that she knew it was possible, she wanted that, needed it. She didn’t want to lose it this time. But she didn’t want to chase it into a trap, either.

She gave her head a clearing shake.

Mike liked him. She just wished he didn’t seem so dangerous. A little more accessibility would be nice. Without the sudden personality shifts, even nicer.
Rats!

She looked over at the bedside clock. And he’d be arriving any minute. She could already smell the charcoal from the barbecue.

* * *

“Geez, Mike,” Brady laughed. “Couldn’t you have found a louder shirt?”

Mike looked down at the bright yellow Hawaiian shirt that sported huge brown-and green pineapples and bright red ukuleles. He spread his arms and turned from side to side to give his audience a better view.

“Like it?” he said. “I think it’s really me.”

Brady shook his head and ambled across the grass to the huge gas grill, beer in hand.

Mike unwrapped four thick porterhouse steaks from their pristine butcher paper and positioned them over the low flames between foil-wrapped potatoes. “Ancient ritual,” he said.

“Ah, yes. The Burning of the Steak. I know it well.”

They clanked beer bottles as Gemma and Mary Kate came out of the house. Mike cleared his throat. “
Slainte
.”

Mike and Mary Kate had built a strong marriage. The kind he’d like for himself, someday. They seemed happy, well-matched, but then, he wasn’t the best judge. His own relationship history had been less than great. It was hard to build anything lasting with the kind of
gift
he had. Women tended to end things once they learned what he could do, even if he’d never used it with them.

His gaze slid to Gemma. Would things be different with her? Would having something extra of her own make it easier for her to accept his
difference
? And if she ever got pissed at him, what would happen? Just how big an object could she zap away, anyhow? Now, that was worth putting some thought into.