“Point taken.” I leaned in and kissed him. I thought about the key to the cottage around Ava’s neck and my own hand went to the wedding band around mine. It was time to try something I’d been avoiding.
“I want to try and find my mother.”
Garrett watched as I removed the pendant from around my neck.
“I don’t think this is such a good idea because—”
“I just want to try,” I interrupted him. “I need to do this.”
He’d watched me discover bodies using my divining rods but he’d never watched me pendulum dowse before. It wasn’t something I did regularly. It had helped me once when Katie’s life was in danger, but it never worked on a single case since. When I researched the topic I realized it might only work if I have a strong attachment to the person I needed to find. I looked at the wedding ring on the gold chain in my hand. Was there still enough attachment to a mother who’d tossed me to wolves?
I was about to find out.
Holding the chain up above the kitchen table, I stilled the band with my hand and waited until it no longer moved.
“Show me your yes,” I whispered.
The ring began to swing ever so slowly in a pendulum fashion from left to right, east to west, in a deliberate sway. I stopped the movement with my free hand and waited again for it to become motionless.
“Show me your no,” I whispered.
The ring swung north away from me and then south toward me, back and forth, back and forth, gaining momentum with every sway.
“Thank you,” I said and, again, stopped it with my hand.
I drew in a deep breath and exhaled loudly. Garrett’s eyes were on me and Wookie had taken up residence on my feet. I had all the love and support I ever needed but I still needed to know.
“Is my mother, Molly Arsenault, dead?”
The ring swung on the chain up and down giving me a vigorous no answer. I felt tears burn my eyes.
I stopped it from moving and took in another deep breath.
“Is she still in Washington State?”
Again, the ring began to move and this time it swung left to right to show a positive answer.
I turned to Garrett. “Could you tell me the names of all the cities where that big drug bust happened?”
“Well, sure, but are you going to ask that thing about every city and then every street in that city?” He rubbed the back of his neck nervously. This flew in the face of every kind of hard fact a federal agent relied on and I knew it was a lot for him to swallow.
“If I have to, I will.”
He nodded and got up to retrieve his phone. When he got back, he tapped a couple minutes and then rattled off a few town names.
“Wait a second, did you say Marysville?”
He glanced at the list. “Yes, there was a known drug house just a few blocks down from where that Ted guy used to live with your mother.”
I held up the ring on the chain again.
“Is my mother in Marysville?”
Immediately, the answer was a wild swing from left to right. The answer was yes.
A few minutes later we were on the road. I was jittery and anxious in the passenger seat of Garrett’s sedan. He was silent and stoic as he drove down the highway. A half hour later we pulled up in front of the white bungalow with bright blue trim.
“You ready?” Garrett asked.
“Give me a second.”
I closed my eyes and focused my thoughts on my breathing to relax my anxiety, then I ran my hand across the worn denim of my jeans. Feeling the texture so I could focus on the moment and not on my thumping heart. I looked over at the house and saw Fluffy the cat sitting in a window staring at me, and a memory hit me so hard it knocked the breath out of my lungs.
“You okay?” Garrett placed a hand on my leg.
“I remember.” I swallowed thickly. “I remember living in an apartment. It was dirty. I slept on a mattress on the floor and there were cats. Two of them...white and fluffy. Mom always had cats.”
It was the first time I’d ever remembered anything of my life before the day that my mother dropped me at my grandparents’ place.
“You don’t have to do this,” Garrett said quickly.
“Yes, I do. If I don’t do it right now, I never will.”
I swung the passenger door open and climbed out. Garrett was at my side in a heartbeat and we walked together up to the front door. I didn’t even have to knock before it was opened by the same woman, Ted’s old girlfriend.
She looked from me to Garrett. “I figured you’d be back.”
“I never got your name.”
“Jia,” she replied, stepping aside to let us in.
I didn’t wait for permission and I didn’t take off my shoes either. I just walked down the hall toward the bedroom. Jia and Garrett both followed but nobody tried to stop me. I flung the door open and there sitting in an overstuffed chair that almost swallowed her sat my mother with Fluffy on her lap.
A low moan escaped my throat as I froze in the doorway. My mother got to her feet, placed the cat on the ground and took a tentative step toward me.
“Delma?” she asked, pushing a strand of her waist-long hair behind her ear with a frail hand.
“Yes,” I murmured.
She opened her arms wide and I went to her. She was all jagged bone and cocaine withered. As I pressed her against me I felt like I could crush her with too strong a hug so I only lay my head on her shoulder and let my tears dampen her stained T-shirt.
She patted my back and whispered, “I’m so sorry, Delma. I’m so very sorry.”
A few minutes later we were all sitting in Jia’s living room. Iced teas in our hands while Molly Arsenault told the tale that was every addict’s story. She chatted about addiction and recovery and more addiction. She talked about the lifestyle that brought her from one bad relationship to another and one flophouse to another.
“I did come back for you after I went to rehab but my mom told me you’d been adopted out,” she whispered, her deep set eyes meeting mine.
“I know.”
“Your grandma and gramps...”
“I know.” I put a hand on her knee. “I know.” I didn’t want to talk about the past and didn’t want the quicksand to swallow me if we talked about Grandma and Gramps.
“How did you end up here?” Garrett asked her.
“After my last round in rehab I came back here to see if Ted would put me up but, thankfully, Jia has a heart of gold and didn’t put me out on the street.”
“I figured she needed a break,” Jia said and then added apologetically to me, “I didn’t tell you she was here when you came to visit because she asked me not to.”
I looked hard at my mother, taking in her emaciated form that looked so much older than her late forties. “How sick are you?”
“Well, I got the Hep C and my liver is shot.” She wrung her bony hands nervously. “I don’t have too long left so that’s why I asked Jia not to tell you I was here. Didn’t think you’d care to meet me now when it’s too late.”
“Better late than never,” I replied and wondered inside if that was true.
We didn’t stay much longer. There was a lot of exchanging of information. Mom didn’t have a phone but she got my number and Garrett’s and we got Jia’s number as well. When we were leaving I saw Garrett slip a wad of bills into Jia’s hands and tell her it was to help with groceries. It was a kindness that made me love him even more.
A couple days later we packed up my mother’s one bag and her cat, Fluffy, and brought them both back to my house. Wookie was enthralled with my mother but less than impressed by her furry companion. That dislike between the fur-kids was mutual and there was a lot of woofing and a scratched nose before a tense truce happened.
Garrett went back to his own place because he had lots of work to do but I suspected he just wanted to give me time with my mother. I appreciated having her in my house, but we were polite strangers afraid to say anything much for the first coupl
e of days. Her skin and eyes were leaning more and more toward a sickly yellow, and there was hardly anything she could eat that would stay down.
“Would you like some chicken noodle soup?” I asked.
“That would be nice,” she replied. “Thank you.”
She sat at the kitchen table wrapped in my thick housecoat, her hands gripping a cup of coffee as if for the warmth even though the house was too warm for me.
I brought her the soup and Wookie sauntered over and sat next to her. He placed his large head in her lap and she obliged him by stroking the top of his head with one hand and spooning soup into her mouth with the other.
“Wookie is a funny name for a dog,” Molly mused. “Like those characters from Star Wars, right?”
“I didn’t name him. I got Wookie from a friend and since he already answered to the name I didn’t think I could change it.”
She ate a little more soup and then put her spoon down and turned to me.
“Your dad loved Star Wars. I used to watch the movies a lot because they made me think of him.” She closed her eyes and a faraway smile played on her lips. “One time you and me were staying at a crummy fleabag motel and a couple next door were fighting real loud and you were scared. I made us some microwave popcorn and got a couple Cokes from the vending machine and we—”
“You turned the TV up real loud so I couldn’t hear the fighting and we watched Star Wars and ate popcorn in the bed.” The memory washed over me and took the air out of my lungs. I gasped as a flashback brought me the smell of microwave popcorn and the feel of thin motel sheets and the heady recollection of her arm around my shoulder and my head nestled into the crook of her arm. I blinked back tears as I finished. “I dumped some of the popcorn in the bed and you said it didn’t matter because spills happen when you’re having a party and we were going to party all night.”
“Can’t believe you remember that.” She smiled and reached to give my hand a brief squeeze. This was the second time I ever remembered anything besides the back of her head as she drove away leaving me with my grandparents.
“It was only a day or two afterward when I made the call to get into rehab.” She gave my fingers a brief squeeze before letting them go. “I left you at the farm because I had nowhere else to keep you while I went away, but I came back. Your grandma said you were adopted out and I hated it but knew it was for the best because who needs an addict for a mom, right?”
Over the next few weeks she told me stories of when I was little and told me things about my dad like how he snorted when he laughed and cried during movies. We didn’t talk about the bad. My grandparents. We let the dead lie where they couldn’t hurt either of us anymore.
Chapter Fifteen
We buried my mom on a rainy Friday morning. Her plot was at a small, peaceful cemetery near my home, far away from the place where her own mother and father were laid to rest.
Garrett and I both took some well-needed time off then. We rented a cottage on the Oregon coast that was okay with a large, energized Rottweiler and a fuzzy white cat that were still getting used to each other.
We slept until noon and Garrett cooked and fattened me up on big morning breakfasts of omelets and hash brown potatoes and late evening cookouts on a deck overlooking the ocean. We’d end our days wrapped in each other’s arms listening to the sound of the waves crashing against the beach.
Forty-nine days without a drink.
Starting over seemed to be part of life.
One evening on the deck, snuggled on a porch swing, Garrett asked me, “So you’ve decided then, to change your first name back to Delma?”
“Yes, I think I have.” I snuggled in closer against a cool breeze drifting in off the ocean. “What do you think of that idea? Think you can get used to calling me Delma?”
“Sure, I could do that but...” He shrugged.
“What? You don’t like it, do you?” I sat up and frowned. It would be nice to go back to the name my mother gave me.
“I think,” he said, pulling me tight against him, “you should consider changing your last name as well. To Pierce.”
It was a suggestion that ended in a kiss that was long and slow and made me breathless.
“You want me to be your wife.”
“I do. More than anything,” he answered, trying to kiss me again.
“Garrett...” I lightly pushed him away. “We’ve had this conversation before. I want to be with you. I love how we are together but...” I sighed. “You want normal. I don’t do normal.”
“I don’t want normal.” He took both my hands in his, turned them upward and kissed my wrists. “I want you.”
“That’s what you say, but...”
“No buts.” He pulled me tight against his chest. “I want this. I want us waking up together and going to sleep together.”
Just then we heard Fluffy hiss and Wookie yelp like he’d been struck and we both laughed.
“And I want that.” Garrett pointed a finger in the direction of our fur-children. “I don’t just want it some of the time. I want it every day.”
And I could feel in my heart I wanted that closeness too but I also didn’t feel that pressing need to take another person’s name.
“I want that too but...marriage...” I licked my lips nervously as I chose my words. “Could we try you moving in? I know it’s a long commute into Seattle but Wookie needs the acres to run and, well, so do I. Or...” I sat up straighter and looked him in the eyes. “Or maybe I could sell the house and we could pick out a new place. Together. Somewhere closer to Seattle for you, but still far enough away for me. I know it’s not marriage but, can we try that first?”
He pulled me close again and kissed the top of my head. “Yeah, baby, we can try that first.”
Shortly after that time away, we went house hunting together and we found an older home with good bones that wasn’t too far a commute. I moved first, making room in the closet for dark suits and pressed shirts and the spare room became an office where Garrett spent a lot of time when he wasn’t in the field. As for my own work, I took a hiatus from finding the dead. My head and my heart needed time away from the turmoil of discovering bodies.
One thing I knew was true: there would always be more skeletons waiting to find their way home.
* * * * *
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LATTE, ESPRESSO, CAPPUCCINO & MURDER
Keep reading for an excerpt from GROUNDS TO KILL by Wendy Roberts, now available at all participating e-retailers.
Chapter One
There’s a superstition that says if the palm of your hand is itchy you’ll soon be receiving money. If that were true, I’d be a gazillionaire instead of an underpaid barista. Instinctively, I felt my itchy hand might one day bring me luck. So far, nada.
I rubbed my burning palm on the countertop while I concentrated on whipping up a large café mocha, no sugar, no whip, extra-dry, half-skim, half-whole milk, with chocolate syrup.
“Watch your back, Jen.” My coworker, Mitch, squeezed behind me to get to the cooler for more milk.
Mitch was tall and muscular with golden hair and eyes like hot espresso. When Mitch worked, Merlot’s Café saw a fifty percent increase in female clientele. The estrogen-enriched customers flocked to flirt with him. They tended to hang around too long and talk too much, but I didn’t mind. Mitch’s hundred-watt smiles had a direct correlation to how the tip jar overflowed, and we shared gratuities. I reaped the benefits without having to sell my own soul with plunging necklines and pushup bras.
My palm was itching even more, so I snagged a wooden stir stick and scraped it roughly against my hand.
“Eczema acting up?” Mitch asked, raising his eyebrows.
I merely shrugged. No sense in complicating our working relationship by telling him I was crazy.
> Mitch took a woman’s coffee order, then elbowed me good-naturedly.
“Hey, look.” He indicated outside the coffee shop with his chin. “It’s your pal, Mr. Stinky.”
He chuckled, but I didn’t. My teeth clenched as I glanced out the coffee shop’s window. A disheveled homeless man took up his usual sloppy stance on the sidewalk across the street.
“He’s not my friend.”
I took an order for a medium, extra-dry café mocha with raspberry syrup.
“You say he’s not your friend but I doubt you’ve bought anyone else on the planet as many coffees as that guy.”
Mitch was bent at the waist restocking the pastry case and looked up at me with a smarmy grin. He was trying to be funny so I resisted the temptation to send him flying into the lemon scones.
“Admit it,” Mitch chided as he got to his feet. “As far as coffee dates go, you and Mr. Stinky are on a roll.”
“Right. You caught me.” I tucked a wayward strand of brown hair back into my loose ponytail.
Normally, working with Mitch was a coaster ride of wit made even more fun because he was so easy on the eyes. But it was only halfway through my shift and my feet already hurt in my new espadrilles. Don’t mess with a girl with sore feet.
“Oh you li-i-ike him,” Mitch teased. He elbowed me in the ribs as he passed.
“You got me. I’m a pushover for skinny fifty-year-olds that smell like a Dumpster.”
“Fifty? You think he’s fifty?” Mitch straightened, tilted his head and stared out the window. “I’d say a hard sixty.”
A bouffant-blonde regular stepped up to the counter in thigh-high boots and an impossibly tight blue dress.
“What do you think, Molly?” Mitch asked her. “How old do you think Mr. Stinky is? Jen says fifty and I’m going with early sixties.”
“Who?” she asked, looking confused.
“The homeless dude who’s been sitting across the street every day the last month or so.” When Molly continued to offer him a blank stare, Mitch added, “You walk by him every morning to get your tea.”
Molly glanced quickly over her shoulder.
A Grave Search (Bodies of Evidence) Page 23
