“No.”
That was all she said.
She wasn’t being rude.
She was Malorie’s mom and probably only had that syllable in her to give.
“Okay,” I said quietly.
Bobby was reaching out to the couch, face now nearly purple and wet, nose running, without much coordination trying to pull himself up off the floor.
I moved swiftly to the kitchen where there was a box of tissues.
“He’s fucking this up, Cade,” I heard the man say as I was on the move. “He’s relieved Harry of his duties. He fired him.”
Great.
Bobby carried on.
“He’s fired Polly. We went to the station after we went to the fucking morgue. It’s bedlam there. Half the men are packing up their desks. Leland took us into his office and told us he has it all in hand. Like we didn’t see what we saw out in the bullpen. Then Pete storms in, and he’s shouting, because some deputies came over and demanded permission to search his house. Saying some shit about how they’re building a case against Polly for obstruction.” His voice was rising. “What the fuck is going on, Cade?”
There was no table close to set it on, so I approached, arm extended, to offer tissues.
Bobby turned to me like he forgot I was there, startled and jumpy.
Bohannan took the tissues, murmuring, “Thanks, babe.”
He then offered them to Bobby, and Bobby snapped out half a dozen, using the lot to run them over his face then blowing his nose in that wet wad.
Bohannan ignored the information dump and instead remarked with studied nonchalance, “I thought Malorie was at Berkeley.”
“I thought so too,” Bobby bit off.
“She wasn’t home for a visit?”
It looked like things were going to get emotional again as Bobby groaned, “I wish she was. I wish she’d been home. We haven’t seen her since parents’ weekend in September, except her face on a fucking phone doing FaceTime. She was heading home soon. Soon.” His voice dipped with his anguish. “We were excited to have her back for Thanksgiving.”
Bohannan handed Bobby the box of tissues and reached into his back pocket.
He pulled out his phone, engaged it and extended it to me.
“Find Polly in my contacts, Larue. Phone her and reiterate what she knows. They need a warrant to search her house. They also need a warrant to arrest her. No judge has had time to sign off on either yet, and no judge in this county would do it anyway. She hunkers down. And if they try to do something stupid, she does not waive her right to an attorney.”
I took his phone and nodded, stepping back and bending to it to find Polly in his contacts.
So I didn’t miss it when he addressed Bobby.
“Now this seems to be the thing, Bobby,” he began. “If she was at Berkeley, then it might be, he went there to get her. Which means he took her over state lines. Which means this is no longer Dern’s case. This is now under the jurisdiction of the FBI.”
The woman made another noise, a kind I’d never heard, was unlikely to hear again and wished I hadn’t heard it at all.
Extreme relief and immeasurable sorrow.
For Bobby, his breath burst out of him like a bullet.
I found Polly’s contact, retreated to the kitchen and hit go.
Thirty-Four
A Wife
Once I’d surfaced from my call to Polly—who had gone from misguidedly taking responsibility, to being livid, which of course meant she indulged in a mini-rant with me, and this made me feel better, at least for her, because she held no responsibility, and she should be angry—I had a decision to make.
Bohannan was in the foyer, murmuring on the phone.
Bobby was on the couch, bent with head in hands, elbows to his knees.
And the woman had stepped outside on the deck.
She was smoking a cigarette and staring fixedly at the pier decorated in yellow police tape.
So, I guessed not a choice because what I had to do next was obvious.
I went out on the deck.
The day was cold.
The mist was thick.
And she had her forearm crossed at her ribs, her elbow resting on her hand, the cigarette held up into the air.
A defensive posture.
And a rebellious one.
I stopped at her side.
“Why don’t you come back inside?” I suggested gently.
“He’d do it, you know,” she said, bent her wrist, took a drag, lifted her hand and exhaled a precise plume of smoke from pursed lips, not taking her gaze from the pier.
“Who would do what?” I asked hesitantly.
“Fuck Dern up the ass. It’d be an intriguing twist for him. He likes it up the ass. That’s what Audrey gave him that I didn’t.”
Oh boy.
I’d heard the name Bobby before.
He was Bobby of Bobby and Lana, the first couple Audrey tried to break up.
Therefore, this must be Lana.
“To get him back, I learned how to do that.” Another plume. “I even learned that I like it.” She looked at me and everything about her was a dare. “I don’t have to bother with him anymore. I haven’t let him touch me in years. So I do it to my new guy. The minute I suggested it, he rolled over. Men love it. I don’t even have to touch his dick. Hold him down, fuck his ass, he comes into the sheets.”
She was lashing out.
And she was a sister.
So although I didn’t want to hear this (at all).
I stood there for her.
“We have a club.” She told me. “Me and Annie and Wendy and Sarah. Audrey did it all. She was a full-service whore. Jay, she dressed up as his secretary and he spanked her, or she dressed up as his teacher, and she spanked him. Dwayne, he likes pain.” Her lips peeled back from her teeth in a vicious grin. “Dale is like Bobby. He’s all about ass. He comes over now, and he’s Pavlov’s dog. He walks in Sarah’s back door, undoes his pants and drops to his hands and knees. He lets her shove whatever she wants up there. I’ve given her toys the size of which you wouldn’t believe. She knows he’s punishing himself. He cries half the time, even as he begs for more and covers her floor in spunk. But she’s there for it.” Another plume. “She’s totally there for it.”
She turned her gaze to the pier.
And kept talking.
“That’s all we have. And I know how spiteful it sounds. It sounds sick. Like we’re the ones who are sick. When what did we do but fall in love? Fall in love and get married and make babies and think life would happen the way it was supposed to. There’d be bumpy times, and hard times, but we had him. We made a family. We’d be okay. He’d be there. But we were so wrong. We didn’t realize we’re the untouchables.”
She huffed out a husky laugh, swung her cigarette in, another plume of smoke, she swung it out and kept going.
“Like, how hard is it to say, ‘Hey, let’s do something different. Let’s play.’ That’s not hard. I said it to Dean, my current fuck, and he was all in. We both get off on it. We love it. But no. We’re the wife. You never stop being the right type of girl. The marrying type. The wifely type. The motherly type. The other type stretches over your thighs with her ass bare or uses some apparatus that hangs off your balls. Not your wife. Incidentally, I love it when Dean spanks me. I fuck him until he comes into the sheets, he spanks me, and I come in his lap.”
Suddenly, her lazy drawl turned snide.
“Christ God, I’m so sick of it. So fucking sick of it. I’m not a wife or a mother. I’m a fucking woman.”
Another plume and she turned to me.
“You know what’s hilarious? He’s not gay. He actually isn’t,” she shared. “But after I quit fucking him, he found some other bitch so he could get his pussy, but he found some guy to take him up the ass. That’s funny. Hysterical. Because he’s so goddamned weak, he can’t ask her to do it. But he got a taste of it, and now he needs it. So there you go.”
I did my ver
y best to find a delicate way to get us off this subject, but onto a different, more delicate one.
“Do you think that maybe this person who did this to—?”
“She’s not mine,” she declared, and I tensed, because the anger was leaking, the snide was evaporating, and another emotion was coming. “His wife before me died in a car wreck. We got together when Mal was three. I raised her.” She turned to the pier, and whispered, “I raised her.”
Suddenly, she dropped her head, the cigarette held up still burning in her fingers.
“I’m not sure you should be out here,” I remarked.
She whipped her attention to me.
“You think?” she asked. “His girl…our girl…my girl’s found dead out there,” she pointed with her cigarette at the pier and the ash dropped to the deck, “and I say, ‘Bobby, do not drive me to that fucking place.’ But does he fucking listen? No? Because I am not a woman. I am not a person. I am a wife.”
“Please come inside with me.”
She ignored me.
“You’ll note, he’s listening to Cade. He’s ranting and raving in the car on the way over here. Ranting when he gets in your house. Cade says to shut the fuck up, he shuts the fuck up. I beg him in the car to calm down because he’s driving, it’s like I’m not even there.”
She needed to get this out.
So I stood there and let her get it out.
“We have other babies. Two boys. One’s a freshman. One’s in seventh grade. They won’t be next. You know why?”
I shook my head. “No. Why?”
“Because they’re not girls. Those sick fucks, all of them, all of them,” she twisted at the waist and stabbed a finger toward the house, indicating her husband, “they punish the girls.”
With that, she lost it, broke down, and I moved in and gathered her in my arms.
Her body heaved, her tears wet my neck.
This went on for some time.
She was much more adept and elegant at getting herself together, pulling away, and she had her own tissues in her purse.
“Sorry,” she said to the slats of the deck as she wiped her nose. “I’m being awful.”
“No judgment here.”
Her gaze came to me, timid now, embarrassed.
“To answer your question, yes. The club, me and Wendy and Sarah and Annie, the day after they took Alice, we got together, and we wondered if it had something to do with Audrey. When they came around…when they…when…” She took a second, then carried on, “When they came to the house today, and Bobby was calling on my phone, and I knew, a part of me wasn’t surprised. And it figures, don’t you think? It isn’t Bobby in the lake. It isn’t Dale in the ground. It’s Alice.”
She swallowed, sniffed, took a shuddering breath and turned to the pier, and her voice was guttural when she finished.
“And my Malorie.”
Thirty-Five
Sweet and Cute and Wonderful
We weren’t quite done with the drama of Bobby and Lana.
Though the finale was brilliantly crafted by Lana.
Because, while I was on the deck with her, she took out her phone and sent a text, received one, and we stood in unsettling silence for a spell before she said, “No offense. You’re being really kind. But can I be alone for a little while?”
I didn’t like it, with the way she kept looking at the pier, but I nodded and left her as she was lighting another cigarette.
When I stepped inside, Bohannan’s warm gaze came to me.
Bohannan was still on the phone.
I didn’t want to, because I wasn’t his biggest fan, because he’d broken his wife’s heart, and I knew what that felt like, but I asked Bobby if he wanted a drink.
“No. Thanks. I…”
He gave me the once over, it wasn’t creepy, or inappropriate, even as it was both.
Mostly, it was habit.
So, yes.
Confirmed.
I did not like Bobby.
“They’re all saying you’re really nice. I guess they’re right,” he concluded, like only his own eyes and experiences could confirm this.
In other words, it was likely women who told him that.
I made myself smile and retreated to a stool at the kitchen bar where I could keep an eye on what was happening in the house, and out on the deck, and mentally explored my options.
Option one was going upstairs and telling Celeste what had happened that morning at the pier or finding a Celeste who had been talking to friends and had discovered it on her own.
This was what I should do.
Option two was staying there, because Lana was in a mood, entirely justifiably, and I wasn’t sure how that would go when she returned inside.
Which was what I decided to do.
Because Celeste had had an earful of it from Bobby, and that was not okay.
And I’d learned she really didn’t need to hear what Lana might have to say.
I fretted I’d made the wrong decision.
I found out it was right when Lana came in, and gently, even lovingly, but stupidly, Bobby said, “Sweetheart, you shouldn’t smoke.”
She didn’t even look at him.
She looked at Bohannan.
“Cade, someone is coming to get me. When he gets here, will you let him in the gate?”
That mystery was solved, even if I hadn’t yet thought about it. Bohannan went straight to the door because he’d gotten a call from Bobby to open the gate, so he knew he was coming.
“You don’t need a ride, honey. We’re going home,” Bobby told her.
She looked at him. “I’m not going home.”
He stood, starting, “Honey—”
“Mom has already got the boys,” she shared. “Dean’s coming over to get me.”
Oh dear.
I got off my stool and my gaze skidded to Bohannan.
Bohannan was watching Lana carefully.
“Dean?” Bobby asked, appearing genuinely perplexed.
“My boyfriend.” She shook her head. “At my age, that sounds idiotic, so…my lover. The guy I fuck who fucks me. The guy who, before we fuck, he makes me dinner a couple of times a week, when you think I’m having my hair done or getting a facial or playing tennis, or whatever you don’t really care I’m doing. He listens to me bitch about you and talk about my day, and he actually cares. I’m moving in with him. When we find a big enough place, the boys are moving in with us too. And I’m divorcing you.”
Bobby stood there, his chin in his neck, his mouth open.
“I got smart this time,” she continued. “My own job. My own money. Don’t get complacent,” she warned. “I’m going to take my share of yours. But I’m done with this bullshit game.”
“My daughter just died,” he reminded her.
“Our daughter was just murdered,” she corrected him. “And I’m going to need someone to help me navigate the grief, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, that someone will never be you.”
She turned her attention to Bohannan, then to me.
“I’m sorry this is happening here, and you have to witness it. But I can’t wait. I hope you understand.”
I opened my mouth.
And Bobby blustered, “Are you serious right now?”
I could tell by his face he was going to blow.
Bohannan could tell by something else because he was looking at the back of his head.
So he ordered, “Bobby, calm down.”
He whirled on Bohannan. “Now, are you serious?”
“You’re going to stay calm, and when Lana’s friend shows, you’re going to keep calm and she’s—”
Bobby blew. “You can’t be serious right now!”
“I warned you once,” Bohannan clipped out. “This is the worst day of your life, that gets you two warnings. But I won’t warn you again. You’re in my home. I’m not putting up with any more of that shit.”
Bobby’s face started getting red, for a different reason this time, bu
t he said nothing.
Lana turned to me in a non-verbal, See?
I gave her an understanding look.
“Now, before this person gets here,” Bohannan went on. “I had thoughts about what we spoke about earlier, and I called the FBI to put them on alert after the scene had been cleared. I just called to tell them, they’re up. They’ve already got agents heading out. I don’t know what shape the sheriff’s department is in, but these agents are trained to set up a field post anywhere, so it doesn’t matter. They’ll be in touch, and they’ll keep you both informed of what they can share.”
“That bitch is not Malorie’s mother,” Bobby bit out.
Bohannan let his gaze rest on Bobby a beat and then he turned it to Lana.
“They’ll keep you both apprised,” he told her.
“Thank you,” she said quietly.
“Fuck this shit,” Bobby decreed, and stormed to the front door.
Bohannan didn’t stop him.
He slammed the door behind him.
Bohannan sighed.
“How long will it take for Dean to get here? Are you sure you don’t want a glass of wine?” I offered Lana.
She was staring at the door, but she looked to me.
And she said, “He told me he’d hurry.”
He hadn’t lied. It wasn’t five minutes later when Bohannan’s phone chimed, and not long after that, we were waving her and her lover off.
Dean, incidentally, had burnished blond hair and a magnificent physique and was a couple inches taller than even Bohannan, and a good ten years younger than Lana.
He was also solicitous, his face haggard, angling out of his truck and jogging to where she was making her way to him, sliding an arm around her waist and holding her to his side as he escorted her to the passenger seat of his truck.
In other words, his puzzle came together quickly. Nice truck, he made money. Nice body, he took care of himself. Younger than his lover, he was confident in what he liked, who he was, and smart enough to find a woman who was also smart, but further mature enough to know the same. Ravaged expression when he’d probably never even met Malorie, but he knew Lana loved her like she was her own mother. All of that meant he was head over heels for this woman.
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