Rite of Wrongs (24 page)

F
IFTY
-T
HREE

Wednesday, 11:00 a.m.

This time it was Kurt Hathaway and not José Diaz who met Miriam and the others in the Caring Hands lobby. As usual, Dorothy was in the common room in front of the midday news on Fox. According to Kurt, she was having another very good day.

Funny how Miriam had yet to find her having what her caretaker or nurse called a bad one. Yet every visit left Miriam wondering if the older woman was exhibiting a true demented state. She seemed nothing more than lonely and bitter.

And about things other than her station in life.

After reminding his charge who Miriam and Melvin were and introducing her to Augie, her caretaker perched on the arm of a club chair, staying close. Miriam sat beside Augie on a sofa next to Dorothy’s wheelchair. Melvin chose a club chair opposite Kurt’s.

It struck Miriam then that they’d never arrived to see her interacting with other residents.

No chattering over a thousand-piece puzzle or a game of bridge. No discussing what passed as news with a friend holding dissimilar views. No sitting quietly and praying together, or Dorothy just listening while someone with better eyesight read from the Holy Word. No knitting.

On the drive over, she and Augie had briefly discussed his taking the lead and getting a feel for the religious fervor her son said had driven her throughout her life. So with his hands folded piously in his lap, he said, “Good morning, Mrs. Lacey. You look well today. I hope we haven’t come at a bad time.”

Her gaze flicked from the television to Augie, and she gave a quick shake of her head.

“That’s good,” he said, sitting on the edge of the cushion and leaning close.

Like Melvin, he’d always been so much better than Miriam at questioning people. She had zero patience, diving in headfirst, never beating around the bush. Augie was a people person. Melvin, too. A better cop would’ve learned a thing or two from her partners.

“Your son Edward told us he visits on Sunday and shares his notes from the morning sermon at First Baptist with you.” Augie paused, as if waiting for an acknowledgment. When Dorothy did no more than blink, he went on. “He also mentioned that you’re no longer able to attend services, and miss hearing the sermon firsthand—”

Dorothy cut him off with a snarl. “He needs to mind his own damn business.”

Miriam started to say something—she thought her questions must surely be visible, hanging overhead, waiting to be plucked from their bubbles—but Augie didn’t miss a beat. “If you should ever need spiritual counsel, please don’t hesitate to have Kurt or José give me a call—”

“You’re not Baptist.” She spit out the accusation as she looked over.

“No, ma’am—”

“And you’re a cop.”

Huh. Miriam wondered what exactly had given him away.

“I was a detective for many years, yes,” he told her. “But I’m not any longer.”

Dorothy took him in, her frown deepening. “Then what are you doing here with her?”

“I’m
her
spiritual advisor,” Augie said, which almost had Miriam laughing.

Instead, she opened her notebook on her knee and got started.

“I know you’ve told us that you haven’t seen the children you fostered since they left your home, but can you think of anything that may have happened, an event perhaps, that Gina wanted the others to keep secret?” She was stretching. This top-secret
whatever
could’ve happened at any time during the last forty-odd years. “Maybe it had something to do with money? Did Gina steal from you?”

At that, Dorothy snorted. “Only all the time. She wanted money for soda. Money for cigarettes. I told her if she wanted to ruin her health to get a job. I paid for what food she didn’t get at school. I put a roof over her head. She was still a greedy little bitch. She’s been the same all these years.”

Miriam glanced over at Melvin, who had already started to speak. “What do you mean, all these years? Had she been asking for money from you recently?”

“Not asking.” Dorothy looked back at the TV. “She never asked.”

“But you just said—” It was all Miriam got out.

Dorothy fairly growled. “I damn well know what I just said.”

Her heart racing, Miriam took a different tack. “Do you mind telling me how long you’ve lived here at Caring Hands?”

“Why would you want to know that?” Dorothy’s expression grew sour as her tone.

Miriam ignored the attitude and the question, and pushed on. “Was it your decision to come here and bring Gordon? Was the move prompted by a doctor’s recommendation?”

Dorothy began kneading her lap pillow, her hands unsteady. “I don’t see that my private life is any of your business.”

“Did Edward arrange for you to live here?” Melvin asked before Miriam could. “Are you paying for both your and Gordon’s accommodations?”

“Of course I am,” she told him, her sarcasm thick. “It’s not like they’re giving away the rooms.”

Miriam ignored Augie clearing his throat. He was telling her to back off, to go easy. But she couldn’t. She needed the older woman to know she’d met her match. “Do you have an accountant handling your finances?”

“My attorney does that for me.” That was all Dorothy said.

Miriam clicked the end of her pen and pushed again. “Did you sign over a house or other property to the center to cover the charges?”

“You are a very nosy girl,” Dorothy said, letting go of her pillow and reaching for the chair’s wheels. “You need to leave.”

“I still have several questions—”

“I’ve answered all that I’m going to. Now get out,” she said, and wheeled her chair around, as if she didn’t need help from her nurse or her caretaker or either one of her sons.

F
IFTY
-F
OUR

Thursday, 8:30 a.m.

As Miriam was pulling into the station parking lot, wheel in one hand, latte cup in the other, her phone rang through the Bluetooth in her Juke. She managed to thumb the
A
NSWER
button and bark out a distracted and quick, “Rome,” as she seated the coffee in the cup holder.

“Have you seen the keys to my Jeep?”

She rolled her eyes, slamming on the brakes as she made the turn into her spot, only to find it occupied.
Seriously?
“They should be where you last left them.”

She had no idea where Thierry might have left the keys. As far as she knew, he tucked them into the front of his sock drawer so this wouldn’t happen.

He rarely got the Jeep out of storage, but with his shift giving him a four-day weekend, he’d made plans that included the four-wheel-drive vehicle, a big cooler of ice and beer, a tent, a portable grill, burgers, hot dogs, and two of his best buds from college.

“Dammit, Miriam. If I knew where I left them, I wouldn’t be calling,” he said, and she heard him shuffling through and slamming the kitchen drawers. “You didn’t move them or anything? From my bureau?”

“Nope,” she said, backing up to circle the lot. “I know better than to mess with your stuff.”

His sigh was heavily frustrated, and she knew it was about more than the keys. They’d been going through a lot of that lately: irritation, anxiety, impatience. Most of it with each other.

She pictured him rubbing his forehead above his left eyebrow. It seemed that’s where all his questions were stored.

“Any idea where I should look?” he finally asked.

She thought about giving him the same answer but decided this was as good a time as any to tell him what she had on her mind. “There’s always the ring you left hanging in the garage at your place. You could grab those and get another set made.”

“I suppose so, yeah. Thanks. I’ll do that.”

Then, before he could realize she hadn’t been much help at all, she dove in, her heart slamming hard as she said, “While you’re there, you could talk to your renters, see if they’re amenable to moving out before the lease is up. You could give them an early termination bonus or something.”

His delay in answering gave her time to find a parking space. Time to finish off her coffee. Time to gather her crossbody and the pastry bag with her muffin. Time to sit and try not to jump out of her skin while waiting for his response.

When he finally spoke, his tone was devoid of emotion. “Why would I want to break the lease?”

“So you can move back in.” She blurted it out before she started hyperventilating. No candy-coating. No second thoughts.

This time, he laughed. “Really? We’re doing this now? Over the phone?”

She swallowed hard, then twisted the screw. “Hard to do it in person since we rarely see each other for more than fifteen minutes at a time.”

“Fuck that. Fuck you. Just . . . fuck you.” And that was all he said.

She couldn’t blame him. He deserved better than being blown off from a distance. The fact that she couldn’t take the time to make that happen said more about her than about them.

She really was a shit.

Even so, as she walked into the station, regret made it hard to breathe, and she left her sunglasses in place as she headed through the squad room to her cubicle, wrapped in a bewildering sadness when she’d expected relief.

A quick glance at the deputy chief’s office showed Chris Judah pacing as far as his phone cord would allow. He was rubbing his head and looking down, and she scurried into the warren of cubicles. Half were occupied. Half were empty.

Melvin was doing a partial day of firearms training, leaving her on her own. She’d see if there was anything in her e-mail, then dig into Van Lacey’s missing-person’s case. And subpoena Dorothy Lacey’s financials. Also look at the Prestons for more links to the three victims.

There had to be something out there hinting at this big secret the couple was left to carry. Sameen Shahidi’s bank account hadn’t revealed any additional funds being doled out to the fosters, though Miriam wasn’t sure how far back Ballard had searched, and she stopped to ask.

Or she stopped, at least. The asking had to wait.

Ballard and Seth Branch were deep in conversation about a dognapping they’d responded to weeks ago in the Bend. The address wasn’t too far from where the Dickeys lived, which is why Miriam stayed to eavesdrop. Another dog. Same area. Yeah. She was interested.

“I’m pretty sure that’s near the place from where those two men disappeared back in . . . the seventies, I think it was? Sixties, maybe?” Branch was saying.

“I wouldn’t know.” Ballard turned to his partner, catching Miriam’s gaze. “And I don’t think Miriam was out of diapers until 1980.”

She leaned against their shared cubicle wall and gave him a smirk.

“Pep Kincannon would know,” Seth said, looking over. “Ask him about it next time you’re down in Evidence.”

“Wait a minute.” Miriam frowned, finally catching up to the conversation. And not the part about dogs. “What are you talking about? What two men disappeared?”

“The domestic you and Stonebridge had out in the Bend a couple of weeks ago?” Seth waited for Miriam to nod her understanding. “The house across the street. The family who lived there, the woman, both of her husbands vanished.”

Miriam reeled as if slammed into by a wrecking ball.
Both husbands?
“You don’t remember her name, do you?”

“I’m not that old,” Seth said. “I only remember because of Pep mentioning it one night at the True Blue. He worked CAPERS back then. He said what a shame it was that house had gone to shit.”

Miriam tossed her sunglasses and crossbody to her desk and spun for the elevator, punching the
D
OWN
button until the doors opened. Once inside, she punched the button for the basement, then punched it again as if her impatience would make it move faster. She couldn’t believe this.

Had some of the answers she’d been looking for been under her feet—literally—all this time?

The elevator dinged, and she stepped out and almost into two officers who’d been waiting. She pushed between them, ignoring their coarse remarks and rude laughter that followed. They could think what they wanted about her ass. She only cared about Pep.

Please, let him be here. Please, let him be here.

Reaching the door to Evidence, she took a breath and shouldered it open. The lobby area was small, tiled in chipped and stained black and white. The overhead bulbs flickered and buzzed. At least those in the storeroom behind the cage were in working order.

Pep looked up between the bars and over the rims of his reading glasses, smiling when he placed her. “Well, Miriam Rome. What brings you down to the dungeon? Besides getting a look at my gorgeous face?”

Pep Kincannon could easily have passed for a man ten years younger. Fifteen, even, though Miriam knew he was approaching seventy-five. There wasn’t a thing about him to give away his age, save for the white of his hair.

He rose from his chair with the grace of an athlete who’d spent a long career jumping to snag Hail Mary passes, not a wince or a moan as joints creaked or muscles complained.

Miriam’s muscles complained daily. She would love to know Pep’s secret. Unless giving up tequila was involved.

“Something Seth Branch said,” she told him. Then she remembered Karen Sosa so dutifully asking her how she was doing every time she called. “It’s good to see you, Pep. It’s been a while. I hope Yvonne’s doing well.”

“She is, she is. That dear heart of mine is perfect. Maybe a bit of arthritis slowing her down, but I’ve got plenty of that myself.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Miriam said, then the conversation fell because she was no good at chitchat even at the best of times.

“So, what did Seth Branch say about me that has you down here so early?” Pep asked, putting her out of her misery.

“Do you remember working a missing-person’s case in the late seventies? The house where the missing man lived is in the Bend. Deep Water Way, I think it is. His name was Van Lacey.”

“Sure, I do,” Pep said, leaning on his side of the counter while Miriam leaned against hers. “Hard to forget when a woman’s had two husbands go missing.”

So, Seth was right. Stunned, Miriam turned away, the wheels in her head spinning as she sat in the folding chair against the wall.

“You okay, Detective?”

Miriam nodded. “I knew about the second, but only just found out there had even been a first.”

Pep waved a hand. “Oh, I always thought she killed both of them, but since both were reported as missing and neither ever found, hard to prove.”

The hair at her nape sizzled. “Why did you think she killed them?”

He picked up his glasses by one earpiece and used them like a baton. “You ever see Nicholson in
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
? That Nurse Ratched character? That’s why. That woman . . . what was her name . . .”

“Dorothy Lacey.”

“That’s right. She had the Ratched personality down pat. Ice cold. Hateful. Unfeeling. And then with the second husband coming into all that money before he went poof—”

Hello . . .
Miriam got to her feet slowly, as if moving quickly would break this lead that felt too fragile to be real. “What money?”

“Lacey family inheritance,” Pep said with a nod, putting his glasses back on. “He’d collected a year or so before he went missing. Joint account. Community-property state. Properly executed will. Never any question that the wife got her hands on it.”

“Her younger son said he was sixteen when his father disappeared,” Miriam said, looking to motive besides the obvious greed. “The foster children were all still there, so she wouldn’t have taken them in for the state’s money if she had her own.”

“I’m not so sure about that.” Pep turned to his desk, frowning down at his computer monitor before looking at Miriam again. “Originally, I think that’s exactly why she did. That family was in pretty bad shape financially before the husband hit the proverbial jackpot.”

“But she kept them in her home. Even after he went missing.”
Why would she do that when her resentment for them was so ridiculously clear?
“The caseworker swears it was because of her big heart.”

At that, Pep gave a loud huff. “Are you talking about Warren Curry?”

She nodded. Pep knew him, too.

“He was a good man,” Pep admitted, settling into his chair. “But the sort of good that avoided things that needed seeing a whole lot closer.”

“Because he was overworked?” Miriam asked.

The look Pep gave her above the rims of his glasses felt like a fist to the gut. “And because that woman was the sort no one else wanted to deal with.”