Blood Strangers: Behind Closed Doors: Family Secrets

by Hinze, Vicki

  It was strange. Of course, he could have met someone during the day or when he went away on trips or after she went to bed at night. She had no idea. “I can’t speak to his reasons, Agent Bain. I just know I never saw another woman in his life. If there was one, I’m unaware of it.”

  “What about his work habits?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did he go to his home office every evening?”

  “When I was growing up, he did.” She thought back, pictured him in his chair beside the fireplace, which she’d never seen him light. It was just a dark, empty hole in the wall. “Mostly, he’d read.”

  “When he worked, did you see him make extra copies or anything like that?”

  Bain thought he’d stashed backups somewhere in the house. “I didn’t see anything like that. If I had, I wouldn’t have known what he was doing.” Clearly Bain had no idea what it was like to live with a distant father. She was glad he’d been spared, and she envied him his innocence.

  “What do you think they were looking for then, in the rest of the house?”

  “I have no idea.” She’d been asking herself that same question over and over. But she had no answers. “Until his stroke, in the last five years, I’d seen my father nine times. I wish I could answer your questions, Agent Bain. I wish I could answer my own. But I honestly just don’t know anything about him or his life.”

  Bain’s look said he wasn’t certain if he believed her.

  Unless she wanted to sow more seeds of suspicion in him, she needed to explain. “Look, the truth is my father worshiped my mother. She died having me. So, it was my fault she was dead. My father and I lived in the same house until five years ago, but I didn’t know him. He couldn’t stand to look at me. He was there, but he avoided me. I had a roof over my head and food to eat. Otherwise, I was pretty much on my own.”

  “Who took care of you?”

  Gabby lifted her chin. “I had a nanny until I started middle school, then it was just me. If I needed a doctor, I made an appointment. If I needed clothes, I had a card and a limit. I went and bought them.”

  “What about parent-teacher meetings?”

  “I showed up. He didn’t.”

  “And holidays? Birthdays and Christmas?”

  She swallowed. “What about them?”

  “Did you celebrate?”

  This was utterly humiliating. “We sat in the same room together for an hour. We didn’t talk, we didn’t even look at each other.”

  “No parties or gifts?”

  “No parties. Token impersonal gifts at Christmas.”

  “How about graduation? That’s a huge milestone.” Bain said, looking for something, anything. “Did he go to your graduation?”

  “No.”

  “Not for high school or for college?” Bain frowned. “Surely he went to your college graduation.”

  “No on both.” She looked Bain right in the eye. “He was not there.”

  “I’m confused.” Bain looked perplexed, and appalled. “He treated you like he did and yet, when he had the stroke, he had the hospital call you.”

  “Yes.”

  “I understand he asked you to help him.”

  “He did. Yes.”

  “So did you? Help him, I mean.”

  “No. The day he was to explain what help he needed, he was murdered.”

  “Then you have no idea what he wanted you to do, do you?”

  “None.”

  Baffled, Bain sat silently a long moment, absorbing. “Growing up, you must have been very lonely.”

  She still was, though not so much as she always had been since joining Troop Search and Rescue. “Being alone has always been normal for me, Agent Bain. When something is normal, it’s just normal. You don’t know anything different.”

  “But your mother had a sister. Wasn’t she there for you, growing up?”

  “Janelle Reinhardt,” Gabby said, realizing he’d been doing some homework on her family. “She lives somewhere in New York. I’m not sure exactly where. I only saw her once when I was twelve.”

  “Once—in your whole life?”

  Gabby nodded. “She said she was coming back, but she never did.” For months, Gabby had dreamed of going to her aunt’s house for the summer. But summer had come and gone without a word from her. Rejected again, Gabby had put her aunt out of her mind.

  Agent Bain nodded, then passed Gabby his business card. “The authorities have released your father’s house. You’re free to return to it. We don’t think you’re in any immediate danger—even the CI knew you and your father were estranged—so you should be safe. But keep your wits about you, just in case. And if you find anything of interest at the house, let me know right away.”

  Gabby took the card, mortified to have her personal life so exposed, and devastated because the truth humiliated her. Unlovable. “If I find anything even remotely of interest, you’ll be the first to know.” She hesitated, then asked, “What are the odds of actually finding and bringing the killer to justice?”

  “Honestly?”

  She nodded.

  “We’ll do our best, but you said it yourself. Medros is slick. He never gets his own hands dirty. Even if we found who took the contract, the odds of us connecting it back to Medros are slim to none.”

  Gabby frowned, all too familiar with his type from her work with Troop Search and Rescue. “And the contractor could be anybody from anywhere.”

  “Frankly, yes.”

  What more needed to be said? They had little hope of catching a contracted killer, and no hope of getting Medros. “I’m sure you’ll do what you can.” She offered the platitude because Bain clearly needed it. What a thankless job he had. Gabby didn’t envy him after all. He too carried his burdens and, no doubt, his scars.

  “We will do everything possible.”

  Lip service. Her heart cried for justice he couldn’t offer, yet she couldn’t expect more from him than he was capable of giving. A lifetime with her father had taught her the futility in that. Accepting it, she stood up. “Thank you, Agent Bain.”

  He took the hint and departed.

  Gabby locked the door behind him then paced between it and the kitchen bar, empty, furious and sick inside. Sometimes life just threw too much reality at you. She’d felt vulnerable and fragile before Bain’s visit. Now she felt even worse. She felt hopeless.

  * * *

  9:45 p.m.

  “You still with Bain?”

  The Shadow Watcher text coming through startled her. How long had she been sitting, staring out the window at nothing? Long enough for the night to grow still and quiet and darkness to settle in. She reached to the table at her elbow for her phone. “He’s gone.”

  “You tied up with something or someone?”

  “No.”

  “Taking it the meeting didn’t go well.”

  “You’d be right.” She paused, considered deleting the message, then hit Send and immediately regretted it. Only a fool wouldn’t realize Shadow Watcher knew exactly who she was by now. The path from her father’s murder and the news stories made it easy for him to figure it all out. “Looks like a contracted hit ordered by your favorite mobster.”

  “And the angel?”

  “Collateral damage.” Gabby’s eyes burned. “That one is on me. Had I handled his care myself, she wouldn’t have been there.”

  “Had he not gotten mixed up with bad people, he wouldn’t have been there,” Shadow Watcher reminded her. “But what is, is. So, what’s next?”

  “I’m off all week. Tomorrow I’m going to start packing up the house. I’m selling it.”

  “Is there a rush? Maybe you should give yourself some time to think about it. You grew up there.”

  A normal person would feel that way, but her “home” had never been “normal” only normal for her. No sense in not being straight up about anything at this point. “I have never been happy in that house. Honestly, I’ve never felt comfortable in it. If I never had to see it
again, I’d be just fine.”

  “Isolated.” Shadow Watcher texted back. “I hate that, GK.”

  “Me, too. Always have, but like you say, it is what it is,” she whispered as she texted. “I need a fresh start.”

  “I’ve got time off coming. Want some help packing it up?”

  Did she? The offer overwhelmed her. The troops would all come if she asked. They’d drop what they were doing and help her. But she couldn’t do that, ask them to put their own lives on hold to help her sort out her own. More importantly, Troop Search and Rescue was the one thing she had that wasn’t tainted by her past and wasn’t a wreck. She didn’t want it messed up, too. It was her refuge. A place she felt valued and treasured and appreciated. Almost lovable. No way did she want to risk losing that. She had nothing else. Now, no one else. “No, but thanks, and thank the troops for me. I need to do this myself.”

  “Emptying the house requires heavy lifting.”

  “I’ve scheduled movers to handle that part. They’ll put what I keep in storage until I decide what I’m going to do.”

  “GK, you’re alone only because you want to be. We are here. I am here. Remember that. If you change your mind at any time, you let me know. Whatever you need.”

  Tears blurred Gabby’s eyes. “That means more to me than you’ll ever know, SW. Thank you.”

  Sniffling, she set the phone down on the table. How ironic is life? On the same day she buries the only member of her family she discovers, for the first time in her life, she is not alone . . .

  Ironic and twisted.

  Chapter Six

  Tuesday, December 8, 5:00 a.m.

  Gabby awakened at dawn, dressed in jeans, a deep brown sweater and sneakers, and then left the apartment. She stopped by the coffee shop for a Cinnamon Latte and snagged a Chipotle Chicken Panini sandwich for lunch. It’d save her a trip out to get something later. Then she drove over and parked the Mustang in her father’s driveway, fished the house keys out of her handbag and finally let herself in through the front door, locking it behind her.

  Emptying a house was not for the faint of heart. Emptying a house where you’d found your father and his caretaker’s bodies was even harder.

  The moving company had delivered ample boxes on Monday morning, which were neatly stacked in the living room against the wall. While Gabby worked steadily, she had barely made a dent in the upstairs. On edge about the murderer having gained access to the house already, she reminded herself often of Agent Bain’s assurances she should be safe here, and of Marsh’s CI being aware of her and her father being estranged.

  Life was just full of irony and gut-punches. The one thing she’d hated all her life now had become her protection.

  Stuffing that down, she turned her mind to the work. The guest room and two baths were done. Today, she planned to first tackle her old room or her father’s bedroom. Neither appealed.

  “Suck it up, Gabby,” she told herself. Sipping at her coffee, she stowed the sandwich in the fridge. Her room first. Then his—after she’d had the morning to steel herself. She hadn’t been in his room since . . . ever. It was an off-limits domain, and always had been. Even after his return from the hospital, she’d only knocked on his door and asked if he needed anything.

  “No,” he had answered. “Good night.”

  Being dismissed even then, she totally understood her reluctance to trespass into his private domain now. What else could she be, considering?

  Dropping her handbag on the kitchen counter, she fished out her pepper spray and stuffed it into her left back pocket, then her phone into the back right one. Not because she felt threatened, but if two murders could occur in this house in the middle of the day once, a murder here could happen again, regardless of what Bain or Marsh’s CI said. Daylight hadn’t protected her father or Lucy. Shadow Watcher had been right. Being alert and staying alert was just using common sense.

  Gabby taped up two boxes and then headed up the stairs. A short walk down the hallway, she stepped into her old room. Its closet doors stood open and the space was nearly bare. Spare pillows and blankets, and a small familiar floral box were stacked on the shelf above the hanging rod. Gabby pulled the box down and then removed its top and looked inside.

  A clothespin reindeer she had made in Kindergarten. A Mother’s Day card made in grammar school when she hadn’t wanted anyone to know she had no mother. A silver pin she had received from a computer club she never had joined in high school. Annual school photos, and one of her accepting her diploma from high school and then another from college. Both taken by strangers.

  Her heart twisted. Graduation days had been painful. All the other graduates had been surrounded by family. She’d stood apart, alone, and watched them. So many laughing people, proud parents, and so much shared joy. Many times in her life she had felt isolated, but never more so than on those two days. Well, except for Christmas. Every Christmas.

  “Where’s your folks, Gabby?” Charles Day, her science lab partner, had shouted out to her after the high school ceremony when families were meeting up with their students on the front lawn of the facility.

  “Over there,” she’d said. “See ya.” She’d nearly run to her car to get away, had fist-sized knots in her stomach before she’d left the parking lot. And, she admitted it, tears blurring her eyes.

  It was a full two weeks later before her father ever mentioned the event. He sat with his breakfast at the kitchen table, his face hidden behind his newspaper. Apparently, there was a mention of the graduation ceremony in the news because he asked her, “Did you graduate?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you going to college?”

  “Yes. I start classes in two weeks.”

  “Where?”

  “Tulane.”

  “I’ll arrange funding.”

  “I’ve taken care of it.”

  “Your trust has taken care of it?”

  She hadn’t touched her trust. It was the only thing she had of her mother. “Scholarship,” Gabby had told him.

  “For what?” He’d sounded utterly shocked.

  “Academics.” Her face had flamed. Even now she recalled the searing heat. “I’m studying computer science.”

  “Mmm.” He lifted the newspaper between them.

  It wouldn’t have killed him to congratulate her, to acknowledge that she had done well in getting a scholarship, or—what she’d hoped and prayed for—to show so much as a spark of interest that she was studying computer science, following in his footsteps.

  But he hadn’t. No reaction whatsoever. He’d given her nothing.

  Gabby mentally shook herself. It didn’t matter. She shoved the lid back onto the box and set it aside atop the dresser. None of it mattered. He didn’t care. He never had. At least, he wasn’t a hypocrite about it, pretending what he didn’t feel. In an odd way, that helped. She had never expected anything, not even a modicum of kindness from him, and on that, he had never disappointed her.

  She finished packing her room. The small floral box of childhood personal things, she placed near her handbag. The two filled boxes of non-personal items, she placed against the wall near the door.

  In the hallway outside her father’s room, she paused. Her heart beat fast and she steeled herself before walking inside. His room smelled like him. She glanced around and saw no personal items atop the dresser or chest on even on the nightstand. The absence of anything at all personal made the room look like him, too. She dragged in a jagged breath, felt the swelling of tears.

  He might not have been eligible for Father of the Year by anyone’s standards, but he had been her father. She’d loved him, and she’d hated that he couldn’t open his heart just enough to let her in. How different things could have been . . .

  But they had not been different. He’d made that call. They both had lived with it. A tear slid to her cheek. She slapped at it and began filling boxes.

  Finally, she finished the room proper and moved to the closet. She’d unloaded
nearly all of it before she spotted a small green leather box. Curious, she lifted it and walked with it into the bedroom. Until now, this could have been any man’s room. Nothing personal beyond his wallet, which purportedly had been stolen while he lay on the street waiting for someone to notice and call 911, and a laptop that looked brand new and untouched. Oddly, that personal-effect absence included his wedding band. He hadn’t worn it, but considering he missed her mother enough to never speak her name, Gabby fully expected to run into it. Yet she hadn’t.

  She placed the green leather box on the corner of his dresser and opened it. It was stuffed with letters still in their unopened envelopes. Dozens and dozens of them. Gabby thumbed through them, checking the return addresses. All of them were from her Aunt Janelle.

  Gabby’s heart raced. She opened the first letter. How many years will you keep Gabby from me? Why will you not let me see her or even speak to her on the phone? You’re heartless, Adian. Spiteful and cruel. Are you still ignoring her? Acting as if she doesn’t exist? I understand your hatred of me. I know too much and it terrifies you. But I will never understand how you can treat Helena’s daughter this way. Never!

  Gabby stilled. Her jaw fell slack. Her Aunt Janelle hadn’t forgotten her. She’d been forbidden from seeing or speaking to Gabby. Why? What too much did Janelle know? And why would her father hate her mother’s sister for it?

  Another realization slammed into Gabby. She hadn’t been unlovable.

  The knowledge washed over and through her. Janelle had loved her, and she had fought for Gabby. She’d failed, but oh what a difference it made to Gabby to know her aunt hadn’t abandoned her. She had tried.

  Gently, Gabby closed up the box and went down to the kitchen, eager to read the rest of the letters over lunch. Maybe in them she’d find out more. Maybe she’d learn something that could soften her heart toward her father. Because right now, she felt many things. Bitter and angry and confused. And she hated feeling any of those things.