The Burden of Desire

by Natalie Charles

  “I could have killed her,” he said. “I could have killed someone else.”

  He thought about that each morning when he woke up and decided not to drink. He’d spent his life prior to that night thinking about time in terms of weeks and months, sometimes years. Now life was one day at a time.

  “Are you going to the wedding?” Sally’s voice sliced through his thoughts. “You said your friend was getting married, so I thought...I wondered if you were going.”

  She kept her eyes on the road, her face inscrutable. People had heard him talk about the accident and then asked him questions in voices tinged with condescension, pity or judgment. Sally’s voice was clear and quiet. Beautifully untainted with anything but curiosity.

  “Yes,” he replied. “I was invited, and I said I would go.” He sighed. He could focus on their happiness to get through the event. Pretend he wasn’t watching his chance at forever walk down the aisle.

  If he’d been a betting man, he’d have wagered that answer didn’t satisfy Sally, but she had the decency to not ask a follow-up question. His disaster of an engagement wasn’t high on his list of favorite conversation topics.

  She swung into the parking lot at the office and dropped him at his unimpressive car. At least the tires appeared to be fully inflated. “Thanks for the ride, and for dinner,” he said as he climbed out of the warm BMW into the crisp October night. “You’re officially off the hook, no more obligations. I hope you don’t have a long drive home.”

  “It’s not too bad. I live out in Avon, on the lake. I need to live on the water,” she added as if that was a natural thing to say. “I’m a Pisces.”

  He knew little about astrology. “What’s Pisces, the fish? I’m a Scorpio.” He paused. “Where do scorpions live? Under rock ledges? Creepy places? I may need to find some new real estate.” He stood looking at her, one hand clasping the car door. James Kruger’s warnings played over in his mind. “I should follow you, make sure you get home safely.”

  She waved a hand dismissively. “I’m fine, really.”

  “But James—”

  “It’s nothing, believe me. I have a top-of-the-line alarm system.” She adjusted her seat belt. “It’s late. We both need to go home.”

  He hesitated. “Be careful, Sally. Call the police if you see anything strange. Anything at all.”

  She gave a small smile and a wave as he closed the door. Ben checked to make sure that his car had four inflated tires. Then he climbed inside and blew his breath into his hands, waiting for Sally to leave the parking lot and drive safely away into the darkness. He turned the key in the ignition and turned on the radio, flipping the station to a late-night talk show. He didn’t know how long he sat there, waiting for his heart to calm its rapid pulse. So much for keeping his head down and making a fresh start. So much for proving he was a better man than the one she’d known in law school.

  His gut churned as he backed the car into the evening, kicking himself for his honesty. He’d made a mess of his life, and he’d just stirred that mess up and shown it to Sally. So much for trying to settle their past. Some people were beyond redemption, and the sooner he accepted that about himself, the better.

  Chapter 8

  Mitch was angry again. Ronnie could tell from the way his boots struck the kitchen tile. Mitch was as transparent as lake water. No, not lake water. Sunlight penetrated lake water at an angle, and the murkiness stopped it before it got too deep. Lakes held secrets. Mitch did not.

  She sighed and flipped through her magazine. It was the new issue of her favorite celebrity gossip rag, and she’d been looking forward to it all week. Funny how attached to particular magazines she’d become while living in Vegas, mostly isolated from the world. Sure, she’d talked to people at work, but she’d needed to maintain a distance, and that meant she’d hidden herself away each night instead of going out for social gatherings.

  Her ritual had been to finish her shift, which usually ended around ten, stop at the convenience store for a cup of burned coffee, a pack of cigarettes and a gossip or fashion magazine, and walk the three blocks to her motel. She’d smoke and read, dozing off after midnight. The ritual that had begun as the pathetic act of a lonely woman soon came to possess meaning and its own comfort, because walking to a convenience store, buying a magazine and reading in bed for hours was the first ritual she’d claimed for herself since she met Mitch.

  His footsteps halted in the kitchen below, and she heard the refrigerator swing open. Mitch. Everything was always about Mitch, and had been since the day they’d met. What does Mitch want to eat for dinner tonight? What does Mitch want to do this weekend? Does Mitch like this blouse on her? How about that skirt? She’d been devoted to him, and she’d never questioned his devotion to her. She’d been a damn fool.

  No more.

  Ronnie calmly turned the page. She liked this feature, the one where they compared pictures of celebrities in the same clothes and asked which one looked better. I could do this. I could follow celebrities around and take their pictures. How did one get to be a member of the paparazzi, anyway? She’d need a good camera, and from there it was probably a matter of knowing who liked to frequent which frozen yogurt stand or bistro. Those photos sold for thousands of dollars.

  In high school, she’d won an award for her photography. At one point she’d dreamed about going to art school. Then she’d met Mitch and gotten pregnant. By the time James was old enough for her to return to school, art school was out of the question. Not that being a school nurse was the worst career in the world, but it wasn’t her first choice. She’d done a lot of settling.

  The refrigerator door slammed shut. A year ago, Ronnie might have jumped at the sound, but not today. Not anymore. She wasn’t afraid of Mitch. She sighed and turned the page as his angry footsteps plodded up the stairs. If James wasn’t out at a friend’s house right now, she’d have reminded Mitch that he wasn’t the only person who lived in this house and to please be considerate. But since James wasn’t around, she didn’t care how much noise Mitch made.

  “Thought you’d at least have made dinner,” he snarled as he entered the bedroom.

  He was wearing that stupid green polo shirt the hardware store required him to wear. She supposed he was lucky his old boss had been gracious enough to offer him his job back after he’d been released from prison.

  I told you, she’d said. I told you to trust me, and that everything would be all right.

  And it was all right, just as she’d promised. He was upset about spending so much time in jail, and that was fair. She’d had no idea, really. She would’ve come back sooner if she’d known. They didn’t think the police would move that quickly. He didn’t believe her, though. He thought she’d stayed an extra long time in Vegas out of spite. He still thought she was punishing him.

  Maybe he was right.

  “I didn’t have time,” she replied with calculated indifference and a flip of the page. “Anyway, I had a late lunch. You know I can’t cook when I’m full.” Never could, and the handful of times she’d tried, the food came out limp and unseasoned, and Mitch had complained.

  If Mitch revealed his moods in his footsteps, he wore them on his face with even greater transparency. She could see out of the corner of her eye that it was awash with shadows—cloudy and cold, as if a storm could erupt at any moment. “You contact the school yet?”

  He wanted her working again, now that she was home. Earning her keep. But Ronnie had decided she’d earned a vacation. She still had some savings from the job in Vegas. “I was so busy.” She sighed. “Must’ve slipped my mind.”

  She kept her gaze pinned to the magazine. Some controversy surrounded the celebrity adoption of a child from an impoverished nation she’d never heard of, but her eyes stopped short of registering the images. Her muscles were pulled tight, her entire body preparing a fight or flight
response as Mitch stood stock-still, looking as if he could kill her with his bare hands. He’d be sorry if he did. She’d given her attorney a letter to open in the event of her death, and Mitch knew it.

  His lips barely moved when he spoke, the words filtered through clenched teeth. “You can’t sit around the house all day. We can’t afford it. I thought I made myself clear.”

  “Perfectly,” she chirped. “But I’m just getting back to my old life, and I need to ease into things. Don’t you think it would look strange, in light of my recent amnesia, if I simply walked back into the high school and asked for my old job? Besides, I don’t care what you say anymore, Mitch.” She closed the magazine and laid it in her lap, folding her hands demurely on top of the deodorant ad on the back cover. “And I thought I made that clear.”

  He wasn’t the only one who was angry. She should’ve known better than to trust him with her dog. Poor Pookie. She’d been looking forward to seeing him, and all Mitch would tell her was that he was gone. Got sick, he’d said, though that was clearly a lie. Had he let him out the back door? Dropped him off along the highway somewhere? She couldn’t even think about it.

  Mitch’s breath came in loud huffs through his nostrils, and he stood facing her, hands clenched in large fists. He had massive strong hands. She’d found them attractive at one time, then she’d feared them, and now she regarded them as impotent. Her gaze narrowed. “I did some cleaning today. I noticed that you kept a picture.”

  His face registered surprise, then rage as his hazel eyes turned dark. “You went through my things.”

  “You’re a fool,” she snapped. “How many times did I tell you? Eliminate all traces of her. If anyone finds something, they’re going to ask questions.”

  “No one’s going to find anything.” He turned away from her and loosened his belt, sliding it through the belt loops with one slick movement. “The cops have given up.”

  “That prosecutor hasn’t.” Ronnie tossed the magazine on the bed and pulled her knees up, forming a tent with the sheets. “James said he spoke with her. She was asking him questions.”

  Mitch stiffened. “What kinds of questions?”

  “He wouldn’t say. Just that she made it clear she was still watching us. Watching you. He didn’t even want to talk about it, but he came back to the house looking like he’d just seen—” She stopped. She’d been about to say “a ghost,” but that seemed tasteless. She folded her arms across her chest. “This thing isn’t over. You’re risking your life by holding on to souvenirs. This is your problem, Mitch, and I’m not going to jail. Fix it.”

  He changed his clothes slowly, as if he’d forgotten he wasn’t alone. When he was finished, he dropped his work shirt and pants into the laundry basket and turned to her for the first time in several minutes. His tone had changed. “I’ll get rid of everything. I promise.”

  She lifted her shoulders and reached for the magazine. “Good idea. But you don’t need to worry about the photograph.” She flipped through the pages and found the place she’d left off. “I already burned it.”

  * * *

  “Big news,” Sally announced as she stepped into Ben’s office. “And I do mean big.”

  “Emphasis on big,” he said as he swung around from his computer. “I got it.” But he sent her a smile that lit up the office.

  Since last Wednesday night, when Sally had dropped him off at his car, they’d spoken only about the Kruger case, and even those conversations had been limited. She knew he was busy working on a report for Jack that would detail the strength of the forensic evidence, and Ben had led her to believe he saw this as a once-in-a-lifetime fluke of a case. The stars had aligned improperly, and investigators hadn’t had reason to examine other evidence. She’d been trying to leave him alone so he could complete his work quickly, and she’d focused on her other cases in the meantime. But she couldn’t quite explain why her stomach sparked at the thought that she finally had an excuse to speak with him. She smiled as their eyes met, and she saw that he felt it, too.

  Maybe this fondness was simply what partners felt for each other. A shared dependency on the other’s strengths, a shared mission. She told herself that it didn’t mean any more than that. They were working together and getting along. That was the arrangement, after all. He would share a draft of his report with her and give her an opportunity to respond, and she wouldn’t sneer at him. She was finding her promise easier and easier to keep.

  “I got a call from Dan.” She couldn’t contain the bubble of excitement rising in her voice. “He’s been trying to locate Mary Ann Hennessy, Ronnie Kruger’s sister. Well, that turns out to be a tall order. He called her brothers, and they said that Mary Ann left town a while ago.”

  “Let me guess.” Ben folded his arms across his chest and lifted an eyebrow. “Did she vanish about a year ago?”

  Sally nodded. “You got it. It was a planned departure. Apparently Mary Ann sold her house, quit her job and moved to Hawaii. With a mystery lover,” she added with inflection.

  “Who doesn’t have a mystery lover?” he said. “I’m waiting for the big news. You made some promises, so it’s time to deliver.”

  “You can’t interrupt me. It’s complicated.” She took a breath as he watched her with piercing blue eyes, and her heart scampered. His good looks helped nothing. “No one’s heard from her since. She hasn’t kept in touch, but then no one has reported her missing.”

  “Because her move was planned,” he said. “They just assume she’s lousy at keeping in touch, which doesn’t seem to be out of character in this family.”

  “They’re not close siblings, and there seems to be some bad blood. Something about an inheritance,” Sally agreed. “So no one has questioned her disappearance or her mystery lover. Just like they didn’t seem concerned when Ronnie vanished.”

  “There’s nothing like family,” Ben said with a grimace.

  Sally wondered whether he had firsthand experience with painful family dynamics, but now wasn’t the time to ask. Then again, no time was the time to ask about such a subject. Despite sharing stories about their failed engagements, they didn’t have a relationship outside this case and work, and there was no reason for her to take such an interest in strictly personal matters.

  She swallowed. “Anyway, this was a lead that was dropped during the investigation. We knew that Mary Ann had moved and that she wouldn’t return phone calls, but investigators weren’t interested because things were heating up around Mitch Kruger.” Sally shrugged. “He had disposed of a bloody area rug, and his son was set to testify against him. There didn’t seem to be any reason to pursue an estranged sister. Until now.”

  “Ah. Is this the big news I’ve been waiting for?” Now she had Ben’s undivided attention. He leaned forward in his chair and gestured for her to have a seat. “I’m listening.”

  She caught his eye dipping lower as she sat in the chair and crossed her legs. The look was over in a flash, but her pulse kicked again. “So Dan said that our meeting on Wednesday got him thinking about the sister for the first time. Mary Ann may not have returned our calls because she didn’t know anything, or didn’t want to be bothered. In either case, she wasn’t a person of interest, and we received enough information about the family from Ronnie’s brothers.” Sally gripped the chair seat and leaned forward. “Fritz called me this morning. He went back over the evidence investigators vacuumed from the rug after it was abandoned. Sure enough, your hunch was correct—they identified several long blond hairs that didn’t fit Ronnie Kruger’s DNA profile, but that matched a relative.” She arched her eyebrow at him and waited as the revelation settled.

  A smile slowly spanned his face. “Like a sister?”

  “Exactly.”

  “So let me get this straight.” Ben rose from his chair and wandered toward the front of his desk. “The crime lab has evidence that potent
ially places Ronnie Kruger’s estranged sister at the scene of the crime—a sister that no one has seen or heard from in almost a year.”

  Sally nodded. “You got it.”

  He ran a hand over his face. “So we’re looking at an investigative failure here,” he mumbled. “Dropped leads, unexplained evidence.”

  “It looks like that. The significance of the evidence was missed. Everyone was focused on the blood and the domestic dispute. But it gets better. Or worse.” She sat back in the chair. “On the night Ronnie Kruger vanished, Mary Ann boarded a plane to San Diego. The last anyone’s heard of her was when she used her credit cards. In Vegas.”

  “You don’t say.” Ben stood transfixed. Then a smile, slow as honey, spread across his face. “Okay, this...this is potentially big,” he agreed. “I think we have ourselves a real case, Sally.”

  She flushed with pleasure. “I know. Mary Ann could be the body we’re looking for, not Ronnie.”

  “Ronnie may have assumed her identity. Of course, to do so, she may have killed her.” He drummed his fingertips on the desk. “But can we prove it for a fact?”

  “Ronnie will stick with her amnesia story. She may claim it was coincidence that her sister has apparently been spending money in Vegas, and we don’t have anything stronger than that.” Sally looked at him. “But we have that hair. It places Mary Ann at the scene. And Dan is trying to gain access to her credit card statements for the past year, to see where she was spending her money. If our hunch is right that Ronnie was the one using it, that will tell us a lot about what she’s been up to.”

  “This is something,” Ben agreed. “Either Mary Ann gave her credit cards to her estranged sister—” he made a face as if he’d just eaten something sour, to indicate that this theory didn’t work for him “—or Ronnie took the money, and Mary Ann didn’t stop her.”

  “And if Mary Ann didn’t stop her, it’s because she couldn’t,” Sally said gravely. “That means that when James Kruger saw a body on the rug that he thought was his mother, he may have been looking at his aunt.”