The Girl in the Moss (Angie Pallorino Book 3)

by Loreth Anne White

  A beat of silence. Rain ticked against the windows.

  “What are you thinking about that close-protection job?”

  “I … I’m just considering options right now.”

  “Fuck it, Angie,” he whispered. Another soft curse. “Is this what you want? D’you want to take a break? From us, from our relationship? Because it sure as hell sounds like it.”

  “No, of course not. It’s—”

  “I think it is. I think you were getting cold feet before we even went on the Nahamish trip. Or claustrophobia or commitment phobia or whatever it was that you were getting, and then I went and mentioned kids, and on top of that I gave you the ring and pressured you for a wedding date and spoke about moving in together … It spooked you, didn’t it? It scared the stuffing right out you, and now you need to think about it all because you don’t know if you can spend the rest of your life with me.”

  “Maddocks—”

  “Christ, Angie, I’m not a fool. Give me some respect, here. This is not about your employment opportunities; this is about us.”

  “Listen, come on up. We’ll talk. I’ll buzz the parking gate open—”

  “No. Forget it. Have your break.”

  “Wait, Maddocks, I—”

  “Maybe I really need one, too. I don’t want a one-sided relationship. I don’t want to be the one doing all the pushing.” His voice grew husky, then hitched. The sound of his emotion gutted her. She began to shake.

  “Please, Maddocks, don’t do this now.”

  “Now? Angie, I’ve been trying to talk to you for the last four weeks, ever since the fishing trip.”

  “It’s the job hunt. It’s—”

  “It’s that you need time. I know, you’ve been telling me for weeks. You need time to think it all through. Well, take your time, Ange. Get your space, whatever in the hell you want. Take the bodyguard job. Fill your boots. Sow your oats. I’m done trying to prop you up and support you and tiptoe around your emotions without getting anything back. I know you’ve had a ton to deal with, and PTSD doesn’t just go away, but I want your love. I want it honest and full, and I want acknowledgment that you know I’m there for you, that you trust me. Maybe I just have to face the fact you don’t love me back. Maybe I just need to face the fact you’re not into the same dreams as I am. Maybe you don’t need what I need.”

  “Maddocks, please—”

  “No, don’t talk. I’m done talking. You figure it out. Just know one thing, Angie—I love you. If you want to stay engaged, if you want what I want, to get married—I’m here. I’m yours. But it’s your call. You pick up that phone only if and when you’re good and ready. Until you make that call, we’re over.” Her phone went dead.

  Angie stared at her phone and realized her hands were trembling.

  She’d done it. She’d pushed the man she loved too far. Deep down she knew she’d been doing it. She’d seen this coming, and she’d not been able to stop herself from sliding. Perhaps she’d even wanted it.

  But now he’d drawn the line.

  He’d lobbed the ball squarely into her court. If they were going to get married, she had to be fully on board. She had to make that move. Angie had to respect him for that. Maddocks was not some mat to be walked over. Right at this moment, she hated herself for even having tried to take for granted that he’d always be there for her.

  He knew her well. Too well. Well enough to know this was what she needed if they were ever going to make a relationship work.

  CHAPTER 13

  SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 18

  “Who the fuck let you in here?” Jock Brixton’s face turned florid as he stood rooted to the spot in his doorway at the sight of Angie awaiting him in his office.

  Angie surged to her feet. She’d been waiting for Brixton since 8:00 a.m. She knew he liked to come into his office and work quietly, catch up on admin on Sunday mornings, and that there would be a skeleton staff along with someone to admit her. “One of your staff let me in,” she said.

  “I thought I told you we were done here.” He strode to his desk and depressed the buzzer on his phone. “Debbie! Get security. I want this woman out. Now.”

  “Wait,” Angie said, raising her hands, palms out. “Please, just wait. I have a proposition.”

  “Jeezus, Pallorino, you have effing balls coming in here like this, I’ll hand you that, but—”

  Two burly security guys appeared in the doorway. “Sir, you called?”

  “Get this woman outta here.” Brixton rounded his desk and dumped his briefcase on top. “She’s trespassing.”

  “Hold it,” Angie instructed the guards. “Jock, you’re gonna want to hear this.”

  The guards moved in and took her by the arms. Brixton opened the Tim Hortons bag he’d brought with him and took out his breakfast sandwich. He set it on his desk, ignoring her.

  “Just hear me out, and then I’m gone. I swear.”

  “You’ve done your begging. I’m done listening. I’ve already had a nervy, media-shy, and extremely wealthy client back out of a contract because of all the publicity you and that damn body in the moss have gone and heaped all over CI. Frankly, I’d like to kill you, Pallorino. I can’t even begin to tell you.”

  “See that?” She jerked her chin to the check she’d set on his desk. “It’s a retainer. There’s a fee of three hundred dollars per hour coming on top of that. Plus a bonus. Plus expenses. All yours, apart from fifty percent of the bonus, which goes to me if the client is satisfied.”

  He looked down. Confusion chased across his broad features as he read the amount on the check. “What client? What is this?”

  “It’s yours—it all goes to Coastal Investigations if you allow me to take this case under your agency umbrella. Client wants me specifically, no one else.”

  “What in the hell are you talking about?”

  “Call your guards off me, and I’ll explain.”

  He jerked his head to the door. “Let her go. Give us a minute. Wait outside and shut the door.”

  Angie waited until the security guys had departed Brixton’s office. Once they were alone, she said, “I’ve been offered a case. High-profile client. Like I said, the money is all yours, minus expenses and part of the bonus. But only if you hire me back purely on a contract-by-contract basis.”

  “Three hundred per hour?”

  “Yup.”

  He snatched the check off his desk. “And this retainer is against the hourly fee?”

  “On top of.”

  “Who’s the client?”

  “Connected in the right places. If we do good by this client, the client will recommend us. There’ll be more work like this coming in.”

  “Us? There’s no freaking us, Pallorino.”

  “Fine.” She reached across his desk for the check in his hand. But he snatched it out of her reach.

  “What kind of case?” he said. “Is this going to get us in more trouble?”

  “Cold case. Old one. Nothing suspicious so far as I can see. Client just wants information about the victim leading up to an accidental death. Victim is a family member. It’s a personal, closure thing.”

  He looked dubious. He rubbed his chin hard, then flicked a glance at the window as if seeking a way out while still hanging on to that fee. He inhaled deeply.

  “I’ll tell you something else, Jock. My exposure in the media, my notoriety, is exactly what brought me this case.” Angie slowly took a seat, expanding her presence in his office, taking up his space, projecting confidence, a relaxed demeanor. She felt anything but. It had an instant calming effect on Brixton. She’d learned how to work him.

  “Meaning?”

  “Some people are actually pleased I took a serial killer off the streets. They sympathize with my history. They can see I got a raw deal as a kid and that I fought against it every step of the way to become a cop and fight for justice. Thanks to the media coverage, they’re aware of the dogged way in which I worked my own cold case. And they see all of this as a pl
us for a private investigator. They want me to do the same for them and for their loved ones.” She bent forward. “See? My notoriety—my so-called abrasive pit-bull personality—can actually bring you contracts. Certain kinds of contracts. You could benefit from keeping me on the side. If you do hire me back, I will not have CI on my business cards. I will not even mention Coastal Investigations. I will just be your quiet Pallorino Special Investigations arm. No commitment on your end other than allowing me to work on your firm’s books and giving me access to the CI databases and tech support staff.”

  “You just want CI as an umbrella under which you can earn your under-supervision hours.”

  “Yes. So? You get the bulk of my fee for it.”

  “And then when you’ve banked all the requisite hours, you’ll walk. After using our name.”

  “No, Jock, you’re not hearing me. I won’t use your name. It’ll be my own name. New business cards. I just work through your infrastructure. Sure, if CI wants to throw additional cases my way, we can discuss.” She leaned back. “Why are you even worried about me walking? You wanted me out, remember. Now you want to tie me down?”

  He scratched the back of his neck. “Let me think about it, okay?”

  “Nope.” She started to rise from the chair. “There are other firms who’ll be interested in this kind of deal with me. Client wants me on this right away.”

  Justice Monaghan had opened Angie’s eyes to a hot possibility—where her notoriety, her past, could be a commodity and not a millstone.

  “Okay, okay. Just … sit.”

  She reseated herself. Waited.

  He looked once more at the check. “Okay,” he said. He met her eyes. “We have a deal.”

  “Good. I won’t need office space or anything, but like I said, I’ll need to avail myself of some of your systems and personnel for vehicle registration searches, criminal record and background checks, that sort of thing.”

  She reached into the inside pocket of her jacket and extracted a document she’d prepared during the night. A sleepless night after the call from Maddocks. But this was Angie’s way forward, her only way of coping right now. She would focus on the Jasmine Gulati case. Sure, she might be providing Justice Monaghan with a diversion, a form of entertainment in her twilight years, but Justice Monaghan was providing Angie a similar service in return—distraction from her own problems. Plus a path toward her goal of opening her own firm. Which in turn was a path back to Maddocks. It made Angie feel better about taking the judge’s money.

  “So who is the client?” Brixton said. “What’s the job?”

  Angie unfolded the document and slid the sheaf of papers over his desk toward him. “First, the contract. We need to sign it.”

  His eyes narrowed. “I’ll need our lawyer to—”

  “No, Jock. No time. It’s simple. I work for CI on this case. I call all the shots on this case. The fee goes to Coastal, minus expenses, which I expect will be minimal. And minus fifty percent of the bonus if I earn it. At no time do I use your company name. Whether or not you want to mention my name or offer my individualized services to your clients—that’s up to you. This contract is solely in connection with this one job. We can go case by case in the future if you like. Or if this arrangement ends up meeting your satisfaction, we can write up something longer term.”

  He inhaled deeply, then pulled out his chair and took a seat. He dragged the document over to his side of the desk. The old clock on his filing cabinet ticked as he read the contract draft carefully. Rain fell outside, and a siren sounded in the distance.

  He reached for his pen, signed his name next to Angie’s.

  “And sign the copy underneath, one copy each.”

  He signed the duplicate, looked up. “So who’s the client?”

  “Retired justice Jilly Monaghan.”

  “Senator Blackford’s widow?” he said, a dark gleam beginning to light his eyes.

  “Yes. The human remains discovered along the Nahamish River have been identified as Jasmine Gulati, a UVic master’s student presumed drowned in 1994. She was Justice Monaghan’s granddaughter. Monaghan wants me to fill in some missing pieces around the final months of Jasmine Gulati’s life leading up to the accident.”

  His gaze dropped to the check. “For this kind fee?”

  Angie gave a shrug. “She saw me on the news. She knows I was on that same river and that I saw her granddaughter’s grave and remains with my own eyes. She’s also followed my past in the news. She wanted to make sure she got me. See? My being on the news brought me that case.”

  He grinned and leaned back in his chair. “I might get to like you yet, Pallorino.”

  “Feeling’s mutual, Jock,” she lied with a smile.

  “I’ll take the case,” Angie said into the phone. “At the terms discussed.”

  “I thought you couldn’t. What changed?” Justice Monaghan’s voice boomed into Angie’s ear. Angie moved her cell farther away from her head to save her eardrums. She’d called the judge from her car outside Brixton’s office, wasting no time.

  “I got my old job back. I’m working this case in conjunction with Coastal Investigations.” She hesitated, then said it anyway. “Your check did the trick. Thank you for that.”

  “Hah, glad to hear I’m still worth something! I like that you don’t mince your words, Angela. That’s exactly what I want, for you to say it like it is, no matter what you find out about my granddaughter.”

  Angie let the judge’s misuse of her name slide this time, especially after hearing Gudrun’s explanation that Jilly Monaghan was losing her memory. “But I’ve got a few questions before I proceed,” she said. “We can do it over the phone if that works?”

  “Fire away.”

  “There’s a photograph among the files you gave me. On the back it says, ‘The three amigas.’ Who—”

  “Jasmine’s closest friends. Those three were tight. Mia Smith went all the way back to grade three with Jasmine. Sophie Sinovich made a threesome of the group from their first year in junior high. The three attended UVic together.”

  “Are Sophie Sinovich and Mia Smith still around?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t thought about them in years.”

  “So you wouldn’t know if they married and whether they’re using married names?”

  “No.”

  “What about the other women on the river trip? Anything you can tell me about them or their whereabouts before I start a search?”

  “Rachel Hart lives in Metchosin with her husband, Doug. I don’t know where their daughter, Eden, is, or where any of the others are now. There was a septuagenarian on the trip. She’s probably dead by now.”

  “So Eden is Rachel Hart’s daughter?”

  “Yes.”

  “And to confirm, the documentary was quashed by sponsors and never aired?”

  “Correct. My son-in-law, Rahoul Gulati, threatened to sue the sponsors if they aired the footage in any way, which resulted in them spiking the project. Rahoul did not want Rachel Hart or her sponsors sensationalizing Jasmine’s death or capitalizing on it. I figure Rachel would’ve turned it into some adventure drama doc if she’d had half a chance.”

  “So what happened to the raw unedited footage Rachel Hart shot? Did you ever see any of that?”

  “No. Rachel offered to compile a montage of Jasmine’s final days along the river for her parents, but my daughter, Kitt, declined. She felt it would be too painful. Kitt had a really rough time of it all.”

  “How did you come to have such an old granddaughter?” Angie said. “Jasmine was twenty-five years old twenty-four years ago. That would have made you—”

  “Kitt was my husband’s daughter from his first marriage. I married my husband, Logan Blackford, after he’d been widowed for some time. He was quite a bit older than me. I was thirty-one on my wedding day. Kitt Blackford was twenty-three years old when she technically became my stepdaughter. It was a rocky period for both Kitt and me. But we grew closer ov
er the years. Even more so after Logan died.”

  “So for the record, Jasmine was not a blood relative of yours.”

  “She was my granddaughter, blood or no. I doted on her as a baby. She was the child I never had, never could have. I’m the only family Jasmine has left. It falls to me to ensure she’s laid properly to rest in memory, with her parents.”

  “I understand.” Angie started her car and put on her windshield wipers as rain came down more heavily. “Two more questions, if you don’t mind. To your knowledge did Jasmine ever dislocate her left shoulder?”

  “Not to my knowledge. I saw the mention of shoulder scarring in the pathologist’s report, and I feel I would have known about such an injury if it had been at all serious. The coroner did ask me about it. But no, I cannot recall any shoulder injury.”

  “Okay, and did Jasmine ever give birth?”

  “I also saw the mention about the post parturition scars. No. She’d never given birth.”

  “Would you have known if she had?”

  “Of course. I was close to Kitt. She was close to Jaz. Kitt would have known.”

  “Would Kitt have told you? Even if it was something Jasmine might have told her mother?”

  The judge hesitated. “Possibly not. But you know, I’ve thought about it, and I can honestly recall no period in Jasmine’s life where she looked pregnant or where she disappeared for any great length of time that would have allowed her to have a baby and give it away. But people keep secrets, I know this. I’m also aware from the pathologist’s report that post parturition pits are not unequivocal evidence that a woman gave birth. This is in part why I hired you, Angie. I don’t know those answers, and I need you to find it all out and tell me.”

  “And if I find nothing suspicious? If Jasmine was leading an ordinary life and simply had a terrible accident?”

  “Then I will know that, too. Then I can bury her feeling I’ve done right by her.”

  Angie killed the call, put her head back, and closed her eyes as Maddocks’s words from last night looped through her brain yet again.