Thicker Than Water (10 page)

A
s Sean drove them back to the station, Julie replayed Lieutenant Jackson's words about the killer being a woman—the makeup left behind at the crime scene. She recalled vividly those moments in the hotel bathroom—the way the tears had made her mascara run. The way she'd angrily thrown the tube into the wastebasket. No, not
into
it, but
at
it, like a spoiled child having a temper tantrum. She'd missed her target. Her fingerprints were on that mascara tube. Maybe even an eyelash or two. Could they extract DNA from an eyelash?

She'd been so careful to remove every trace of her presence from that room, yet like a rank amateur, she'd left the mascara for the police to find. And her key ring. Let's not forget the damned key ring.

She'd gotten it back, true enough, but her house keys were missing. Nothing else. Just the keys to her house.

“Hey, it's not that big a deal,” Sean said, pulling into the station parking lot. “If it worries you that much, just have the locks changed.”

She shook herself out of the fear that had gripped her, glanced his way, tried to hide it. “Who said I was worried?”

He lifted his brows. “Your face says it, Jones. You look like you just saw a ghost.”

She shrugged, going for nonchalant. “I'm in the public eye. I'm less than thrilled with the idea that some lunatic might have the keys to my house.”

“You sure they were on that key ring?”

She nodded.

He frowned. “Could you have dropped them anywhere else in the hotel?”

She racked her memory. She'd gone straight from the parking garage to Harry's room, then straight back down to the parking garage. She hadn't set foot in the hotel—lobby or anywhere else, for that matter—until after she'd discovered the keys missing. “I suppose there's a slim chance I could have dropped them in the elevator.”

“That's probably it, then. Someone picked them up and left them at the front desk.”

“And removed my house keys on the way?” She shook her head.

“They could have fallen off.”

“Back door
and
front? I don't think so, MacKenzie. That would be a damn big coincidence.”

“You're right, it would.” He sighed, pulling the SUV into its assigned spot in the station parking lot. “Call a locksmith. Hell, at least Dawn's in school all day. You don't have to worry about her.”

She swallowed hard, getting out of the car and hurrying into the building, Sean keeping pace. Then, halfway down the hall, she went still as her blood chilled. “Staff development meeting,” she croaked.

Sean frowned at her. “What?”

“That's what it says on the school calendar. Staff development meeting. Jesus, there's only a half-day of school today. Dawn will be home in—” She twisted her wrist to look at her watch. “She's home now.” And someone—maybe the same someone who'd slit Harry Blackwood's throat—had the keys to her house.

She opened her purse, rummaged for her cell phone, but her hands were shaking, and she thought she might vomit.

“Julie, get in here, pronto!”

She lifted her head fast, saw Allan Westcott's head poking out from the newsroom door. “I can't—I have to go get my daughter. She's—”

“She'll have to wait. We've got an anonymous caller who'll only talk to you. Move it!”

Her breath came too fast, and she opened her mouth to argue, but a solid hand on her shoulder made her pause and look up. Sean gave her a nod, a reassuring squeeze, so reassuring that she didn't take the time to analyze how ridiculous that was.

“Easy,” he told her. “You go take the call. I'll go get your kid.”

She blinked in surprise. Surprise that he would offer, and surprised that no objection flew to her lips. She didn't like Sean MacKenzie, but she
did
trust him—where Dawn was concerned, at least. She hadn't realized it until that very moment. But the knowledge was there, deep down in that intu
itive place that grows in the soul of a mother throughout the lifetime of her children. Sean was no threat to her daughter. In fact, he would probably go out of his way to protect Dawnie. It was a stunning revelation that unfolded in the space of a single heartbeat. Swallowing against the dryness in her throat, she nodded and said, “Hurry, Sean.”

He frowned, maybe a little puzzled at the urgency in her eyes. “I'll take my car—it's faster. Give her a call when you get a minute. Tell her I'm coming, or she might refuse to come back with me.”

Julie nodded even as Sean turned and rushed back out the doors they'd just entered through. She hoped Dawnie would be wise enough to refuse to go with a man she barely knew without prior word from her mom—but part of her figured that if Sean showed up in the Porsche, parental consent wouldn't be an issue.

“Jones, let's go!” Westcott barked.

She swallowed hard and walked into the newsroom.

* * *

Dawn got off the school bus, rolling her eyes and mentally counting the days before her road test appointment. Eight, not counting today. After that, the bus would be a thing of the past. Unless her overprotective mother thought the roads were bad due to a passing snowflake or errant raindrop. She smiled, shaking her head as she fumbled for her house key and reached for the door.

It opened when she touched it, wasn't even closed all the way, much less locked.

“Gee, for supermom, she sure messed up this time,” she muttered, pocketing her key and walking inside. Then she felt a little guilty. It wasn't like her mom to be this forgetful. She'd
been really upset last night. Partly, Dawn suspected, because of her own antics. Getting caught had been really irresponsible of her. She knew how her mother worried. Should have been sneakier.

But there had been something else bothering her mom last night, too. That phone call Dawn had overheard. Her mother had been upset when she'd come downstairs a couple of minutes later. Pale and shaky. Distracted. Not at all herself, though she'd done a hell of a job of trying to hide it. It probably would have fooled anyone else. Anyone but Dawn.

Dawn was pretty sure her mom was in some kind of trouble, but as many times as she'd asked if everything was okay, if anything was wrong, her mother had denied it. Protecting her just like always.

Dawn wished she could return the favor. She'd never quite understood her mother's lionesslike attitude when it came to watching over her, but she thought maybe she got it now—at least a little bit. If she ever found out who was causing her mother so much anguish, Dawn thought she would be capable of doing some major damage.

Sighing, she slung her backpack onto the sofa, snatched up the remote and flicked on the TV. It was tuned to her mom's station, as always. Dawn started to flick it to MTV-2, then paused as she saw her mom's face on the screen.

It made her smile. Her mother was such a pro, and gorgeous to boot. Most of the time Dawn was the envy of her classmates for having a local celebrity for a mother. She thumbed up the volume, reading the line at the bottom of the screen that said this piece had been taped earlier; then she tossed the remote and headed into the kitchen for a soda.

But her ears perked up when she heard what her mother
was saying. Harry Blackwood, the senator's brother, had been murdered last night.

Harry.

A little knot formed in Dawn's stomach. Harry—that was what her mother had called the man on the phone last night. Just before she'd gone out.

Dawn licked her lips and gave her head a little shake. She was being silly. Of course her mom had gone out; she'd probably gotten called to cover that very story.

She wandered back into the living room, watching what the senator and the chief of police had to say at the press conference her mom had been covering. Then the cameras were back in the studio, aimed at the midday report anchor, a blonde who wasn't nearly as good as her mom. She said, “The police department says the preliminary medical examiner's report puts the time of death at around midnight last night. Cause of death has not yet been released, though the case has now been labeled a homicide, Syracuse's twenty-third of the year.”

Midnight. Her mom had been out
before
midnight. She'd left a little before eleven. Then she'd come back with that nice-looking MacKenzie guy and gone out again sometime later—in jeans and a sweatshirt that time.

Hell.

Sighing, Dawn left the channel where it was, turning the volume up a little higher, but they'd moved on to traffic and weather. She headed back to the kitchen for a snack. She reached up to the cupboard above the sink for a box of her favorite granola bars, took one out, left the box on the counter and the cupboard door open, then peeled off the wrapper and dropped it into the wastebasket on the way by.

Then she stopped, because the paper hit the top of the mound of garbage and slid onto the floor, and her mom's voice echoed in her mind. “I shouldn't have to tell you to take the garbage out when it's so full it's falling to the floor, Dawn. It should be obvious. It's one of the few jobs I ask you to do around this place, so the least you could do is—”

“All right, all right,” Dawn muttered to the imaginary voice. She wondered if anyone had ever researched whether it was possible for parents to bitch at their kids psychically and thought she might write to Nathan Z and ask him, since it was the kind of thing that ought to be right up his psychic, new age alley.

She set her granola bar on the counter, gathered the edges of the overflowing garbage bag together, knotted them and then tugged the bag from the wastebasket. She carried it through the door at the back of the kitchen, into the adjoining garage, and walked to the three neat, shiny aluminum trash cans in the back. She yanked the lid off the first one, but it was full already, so she slammed it back on and moved to the next.

Only one bag of garbage was in the second can. It was what lay on top of that bag that made her go still while her heart tripped over itself and then struggled to regain its rhythm.

A large knife lay on top of the trash bag. It was coated in something—something that looked an awful lot like blood.

Her mind was racing, jumping from the feeling that her mom was in trouble to her conversation with someone she called “Harry” to her out of character late night wanderings to the report of the murdered man on the news. What if…

The sound of a car pulling into her driveway made her snap her head toward the windows in the overhead garage
door. Sean MacKenzie's Porsche pulled to a stop out front. God, what if he—or anyone else, for that matter—came in and saw this?

Dawn didn't even think twice. She had to protect her mother, and that meant getting rid of the bloody knife. She reached into the wastebasket, yanked out the knife and shoved the trash bag into the can. Then she slammed on the lid and ran into the kitchen, snatching a small kitchen towel from the rack and wrapping the knife inside it. She took the disgusting thing to the living room and crammed it into the bottom of her backpack.

When she straightened and looked at her hands, there were dried pieces of the red stuff clinging to her fingers and palms. Her stomach lurched.

She heard the doorbell, then Sean MacKenzie's voice. “Hello, anybody home?”

“Uh—yeah, just a sec,” she called. Swallowing bile, she forced herself to move, hurried to the kitchen again, scrubbed her hands with soap, wiped them dry on her jeans and gathered up her wits. This didn't mean anything. Certainly not that her mother had somehow been involved in the death of Senator Blackwood's brother.

Never that. Her mother wouldn't hurt a fly—unless she thought that fly was a threat to Dawn. In which case, all bets were off.

But Dawn didn't even know the senator's brother.

She turned to answer the door, just as the telephone rang.

* * *

The girl opened the door with the phoniest smile Sean thought he had ever seen. “Hi, Sean. Mom's not here.” He heard the phone ringing and nodded toward it.

“I know. If you haven't heard from her yet, that'll be her on the phone. Go ahead, grab it.”

She frowned at him, but veered left into the kitchen, taking the phone off the wall mount. She leaned in the doorway, watching him as she said, “Hello?” Then she nodded at him. “You're right, it's her. Hey, Mom, what's up?” She listened to her mother, and her frown grew deeper. “But I don't see why I can't just go to Kayla's.” Then she rolled her eyes at Sean, as if to tell him how irrational mothers could be. “Right. I forgot, I'm grounded. Mom, are you okay? You don't sound—Yes, he's here right now. Okay. All right. Gee, Mom, ease up already. I'll see you in a few.”

She turned a little away from him as she hung up the phone and stayed that way for a second, as if gathering her thoughts or something. When she faced him again, she'd done her best to hide whatever was bothering her, but it wasn't a good enough job to fool him.

She seemed to search his face for a long moment.