Annette Dashofy - Zoe Chambers 03 - Bridges Burned

by Annette Dashofy

  His eyes shifted toward the room across the hall for a millisecond. “I can’t explain. Not now. I have something I need to take care of.” His face grew hard. Dark.

  For a moment, Zoe thought back to the mental picture of Holt threatening his wife. It was so hard to imagine. “What do you need to take care of?”

  “Something I’ve put off too long.”

  She really didn’t like the sound of that. “Then leave Maddie here,” Zoe said, hearing the desperation in her own voice.

  He gave his head a quick shake, and Zoe thought she caught a glimpse of tears in his eyes. “I can’t.” He took a deep breath. Blew it out. “Look. I really appreciate everything you’ve done, from saving my life to helping my daughter through losing her mom. But the best thing I can do right now to repay you is to get out of your house.”

  “But Maddie—”

  “Stays with me.”

  Zoe could tell there would be no arguing with him. Besides, maybe it was for the best. Bringing the Farabees into her life and into her house had all but destroyed her relationship with Pete. And yet, the idea of never seeing them again, especially Maddie, left a yawning ache in her heart. “Can you promise to let me know where you are? That you and Maddie are okay?”

  A sad smile crossed Holt’s lips. “Promise? I can’t promise anything. But I’ll try.” He reached out and brushed her cheek with his fingertips before turning and disappearing into the guest room with his daughter.

  Zoe retreated into her room and closed the door to the second-floor hallway. If only she could shut the door to her fears as easily.

  “Chief.” Pete’s secretary called out to him before he could make it out of the station. “Wait.”

  “What is it?”

  Nancy waved her personal cell phone at him. “My sister just called me.”

  “Let me guess. Her husband and father are duking it out again with hedge clippers.”

  “Huh?” Baronick clearly wasn’t up to speed on the local hedge feud.

  “Not exactly. She’s worried to death about Ryan, though. Said she hasn’t seen or heard from him since Saturday.”

  The trashed house. Ryan Mancinelli passed out on the couch. “Did she try going over and knocking on the door?”

  “No one answered.”

  Pete closed his eyes with a sigh. Opening them again, he turned to a perplexed Baronick. “I need to check on this guy. It’s on the way.”

  “Need backup?”

  “I don’t think so.” He nodded to Nancy. “Tell your sister I’m on my way.”

  The secretary was already thumbing her phone’s screen. “Thanks, Chief.”

  Pete and Baronick stepped out into the suffocating heat. Pete paused in the shade of the building before venturing into the broiling sunshine. “Tell me what your detective found.”

  “A wheelbarrow.”

  “It’s a farm. There have to be a half a dozen wheelbarrows around the place.”

  “This one happened to be leaning outside the basement’s exterior doors.”

  Pete remembered the day he’d had the confrontation with Zoe outside those doors, and the vintage wheelbarrow leaning against the foundation. “Yeah. So?”

  “It also appears to have some…leakage on it.”

  “Leakage? You mean blood?”

  “Not really. Let’s just say body fluids and leave it at that until the lab gets a look.”

  Body fluids. On the ancient wheelbarrow. Pete pressed his fingers into his left eyebrow, behind which a killer headache lurked. “Wonderful. You heading back out there?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Pete nodded. “I’ll catch up to you after I make sure Ryan Mancinelli hasn’t crawled into a bottle and drowned.”

  From the outside, the Mancinelli house looked no different than it had in recent days. When Pete had stopped by to check on Ryan on Sunday, the kid had met him on the porch. Red-eyed and pale-skinned, he’d insisted he was fine.

  Today, one day later, no one responded when Pete pressed the doorbell. Pounding on the door didn’t help either.

  Pete backed away from the house to look around and spotted Ashley Mancinelli standing on her parents’ porch next door. She waved and headed his way.

  “Thanks for coming. My folks are ready to write Ryan off, but I’m worried about him.”

  “I understand. Do you have the key?”

  She held up a loaded key ring with one of them singled out.

  Pete took it and unlocked the door. Pushing it open, he called out, “Ryan, it’s Chief Adams. Are you in there?” Pete’s words reverberated through the spacious entryway, the slight echo the only response. He stepped inside.

  Ashley followed. “Ryan, honey? It’s me.” Still no answer. She caught sight of the smashed painting and the hole in the wall. “Oh my God.”

  “It was like this Saturday night when I looked in on him.”

  She sniffed and wrinkled her nose. “He started smoking again.”

  “The rest of the place isn’t any better. Stay behind me.”

  “Okay.”

  Nothing else inside the house had changed, either. Except for the couch in the living room. The blanket Pete had covered Ryan with was lumped at one end.

  Ashley only made it as far as her kitchen. Or what remained of it. She covered her mouth with one trembling hand and surveyed the shards of her dinnerware scattered across the counter and floor. A sob broke through.

  “I’m going to check the rest of the house,” Pete said.

  She nodded without meeting his eyes.

  From what Pete could tell, Ryan hadn’t taken his trail of destruction upstairs. The rooms there—a vacant bedroom with the beds made and another one set up as an office—were spotless. The basement likewise appeared unharmed.

  And no potato bin with a body in it.

  Ashley stood in the spot where Pete had left her. “He’s not here.”

  She looked up at him. “Is his truck in the garage?”

  “Let’s check.” Pete escorted her outside and around to the three-bay industrial-sized garage which doubled as Ryan’s workshop.

  Ashley punched in a code for the garage door opener. They stood back as the door clanked and rose to reveal an empty bay.

  Pete swept both arms open toward the void. “See? He probably slept it off and went to work this morning.”

  She nodded, but looked unconvinced. “I hope so. But it’s never been that easy. The PTSD, I mean. And the accident didn’t trigger it. The explosion did.”

  “Explosion? You mean the Farabee house?”

  “Yeah. He got pretty weird when he saw it on the news. I guess because he’d dealt with that sort of thing so much.”

  Pete’s gut started gnawing at him. “What ‘sort of thing’ do you mean?”

  “I thought you knew. Ryan was an EOD Specialist.”

  Twenty-one

  Even before Holt and Maddie were packed, Zoe had been on the phone to Franklin Marshall. She learned he and Doc Abercrombie were setting up to do the autopsy on Stephen Tierney. She also learned she wasn’t welcome. No surprise. She already knew she was still technically a suspect.

  Welcome or not, the minute the Farabees drove away from the farm, Zoe jumped into her truck and headed to Brunswick. Forty-five minutes later, she stood in the morgue’s office with Franklin, who was decked out in his scrubs.

  The coroner planted his fists on his narrow hips. “Good lord, Zoe. Every time I’ve tried to get you to assist with an autopsy, you pull every trick in the book to get out of it. This one I can’t possibly allow you to be anywhere near, and here you are.”

  “I don’t want to assist. I just want to know what you find.”

  “I’ll call you.”

  “I’ll save you the
trouble.”

  “Zoe…”

  “I found him in my basement.”

  “Precisely.”

  They stood nose-to-nose. Zoe wasn’t backing down. Especially when she noticed Franklin’s eye twitch.

  The coroner sighed. “I’m serious, Zoe. I can’t let you in there. A defense attorney would have a field day throwing out any evidence we might provide.”

  “Then let me sit here. I won’t set foot inside the autopsy room.”

  “You could sit upstairs in the hospital’s snack bar. I’ll call you as soon as we finish.”

  “C’mon, Franklin.” Zoe let a touch of a whine creep into her voice for effect. “This guy died in my house. I need to know why.” And who did it, but “why” would be a start. “The cops won’t let me work on the case. I get that. But I can’t just stand back and be an impassive observer.”

  He shook a bony finger in her face. “You don’t have a choice.” But he dropped his hand to his side and huffed at her. “Fine. You can sit here. But do not set foot through that door.”

  The truth was she’d have settled for sitting in the hallway. “Okay. Thanks.”

  The coroner muttered something she couldn’t quite make out as he shuffled from the office to the autopsy room.

  Zoe walked to the window and peered through the slats in the blinds. Stephen Tierney’s body lay on the stainless steel table. She could make out the marbled discoloration to skin stretched too tight from bloating. The forensic pathologist looked up as Franklin approached and nodded. As Doc Abercrombie prepared to make the first incision, Zoe let the slats close and turned to sit in one of the worn vinyl chairs that graced the office. No, she definitely did not want to be in the autopsy room for this one.

  “Ryan was an EOD specialist?” Pete echoed Ashley Mancinelli’s words. EOD. Explosive Ordnance Disposal.

  “Yes.” She turned away from the empty garage bay. “He’d blown up so many devices in the war, any kind of loud noise would send him into a panic attack.”

  Pete scanned the contents of the garage, looking for—what? The makings of a bomb? So far the person he was looking for hadn’t needed one. Natural gas. Hay. A lighter. Who needed an incendiary device when materials abounded? “Don’t suppose you know where Ryan’s working today, do you?”

  “No.” She nodded toward the house. “But he keeps his schedule on his computer. Do you want me to look it up?”

  “Please.”

  Ashley led the way back inside, keeping her head down to avoid looking at the mess. Upstairs, she pressed a button to power up the computer. As it hummed and whined, she looked around the room, hugging herself as if she was cold. “He should be home soon.”

  Good. Then Pete wouldn’t have to track him down to ask him a few questions.

  “It wasn’t always like this. We used to be so good together. And Ryan and my folks used to get along great. Ryan and Dad would sit for hours and talk about the wars. Dad had been in the Gulf War. The first one. He wouldn’t talk to Mom or me about it. Only Ryan.”

  “When did things start changing?”

  Ashley shook her head. “It happened gradually. I can’t really put a date on it. But this business with the hedges…” She sighed.

  The computer played a short ditty as a white bar appeared, asking for a password. Ashley slid into the leather swivel chair and typed a few strokes. The computer binged and a new screen appeared. Within a minute, she’d pulled up an appointment book. “That’s odd.”

  Pete leaned down to look over her shoulder. “What?”

  “There’s nothing here. It’s blank.”

  “For today?”

  She scrolled down. “For the last week. I don’t understand. He’s been going to work everyday.”

  Pete touched her shoulder. “Do you mind?”

  “Not at all.” She vacated the chair so he could take her place.

  Pete scrolled further back through Ryan’s calendar. There were a number of small jobs. New roof. Room addition. Replacement windows. The man had kept busy. Pete was about to quit when he spotted a block of months marked only as SHE. “Um. Who is she?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Pete hoped he wasn’t about to drive the final nail into the Mancinelli marriage’s coffin as he pointed to the screen. “She. Who is she?”

  Ashley laughed. “Those are initials. His shorthand for Scenic Hilltop Estates. He worked up there on and off for almost two years.”

  Pete left orders with Ashley Mancinelli to call his cell phone as soon as her husband returned home and headed to Zoe’s farm, currently known as the crime scene. The crowd had thinned out considerably. The crime scene boys appeared to be packing it in. Baronick was engaging one of the investigators in conversation next to the county CSU truck. Obvious by their absence were Zoe’s and Farabee’s pickups.

  Pete parked next to the detective’s unmarked sedan and climbed out. “What have we got?”

  The crime scene investigator gave a short laugh lacking amusement. “A truck full of evidence that’s probably nothing more than a century’s worth of garbage.”

  Baronick flashed his too-big smile. “Maybe you’ve bagged the next big Antiques Roadshow find and don’t even realize it.”

  “Right.” The CSI didn’t sound optimistic. “We’ll start sorting through everything as soon as we get back to the lab. I’ll let you both know if we find anything of importance.”

  They shook hands, and the crime scene guys piled into their truck.

  “Where’s Zoe?” Pete asked Baronick as the CSU rig bounced down the lane.

  “She was gone by the time I got here. Farabee and the kid, too.” Baronick hoisted a thumb toward the house. “The old lady says the Farabees have flown the coop permanently. Packed their meager belongings and vamoosed.”

  “Did he happen to say where he was going?”

  “Not to the old lady. Maybe he told Zoe.” Baronick waggled a suggestive eyebrow. “Maybe she’s helping him move.”

  The thought chilled what had been a warm realization. Farabee no longer shared Zoe’s house. But had the change in address come too late to sever the bond that had developed?

  “Or,” Baronick continued. “She might be at the autopsy. Franklin called me a little while ago to say he and Doc were gonna get started on it…” The detective checked his phone. “Right about now.”

  “Zoe can’t assist with this one. Franklin knows that.”

  “But does Zoe?”

  Any other time, she’d have found an array of excuses to avoid the morgue. But under the circumstances…

  “How about you? Did you find your secretary’s brother-in-law?”

  “Not exactly.” Pete relayed the tidbit about Ryan Mancinelli’s work history at Scenic Hilltop Estates.

  Baronick whistled. “Any connection to Lillian Farabee?”

  “I intend to find out. One more thing. He was an EOD specialist in Iraq.”

  “Get out. An explosives expert who worked at a housing development where there happened to be an explosion. I think I want a long talk with that man.”

  “Me, too. His wife’s supposed to call as soon as he gets home.”

  “Don’t suppose he’s flown the coop, too, do you?”

  “I hope not.” Pete dug his phone from his pocket and checked the time. A little after five. Technically, he was off duty. He punched in Kevin’s number. “I’m going to update my officer and tell him to keep an eye out for Mancinelli,” he told Baronick before pressing send. “Then I’m going to check in on Tierney’s autopsy.” And he wasn’t sure if he hoped to find Zoe there or not.

  Zoe paced the small office. Stopped to peer through the blinds. Made another loop around the desk. Stopped and checked her phone. No call or text from Holt. Not that she’d expected one. But she’d like to know Mad
die was okay.

  Zoe pulled up his number from her address book.

  The call rang twice and went to voicemail. She hung up without leaving a message.

  The door swung open, and she wheeled, coming face-to-face with Pete. A blanket of regret settled over her when she met his icy blues. Until a few days ago, there would have been a sparkle in them. This evening, there was only guarded disappointment.

  She backed against the dented steel desk, half sitting on it, half leaning. “Hey.”

  “You aren’t supposed to be here.”

  “Nice to see you, too.”

  He heaved a sigh. “You know what I mean. This case is off limits.”

  “So I’ve been told.” She shot a glance at the closed blinds. “I haven’t gone near the body. In fact this is as close as I’ve gotten to it since I checked him for a pulse when he was just an arm among the eyes.”

  “Huh?”

  City boys. “His arm. The potatoes’ eyes. Never mind.”

  “I got it.” Pete cast a quick look at the same closed blinds. “Any idea what they’ve found?”

  “Nope. I’m behaving. Really. All I know is what I can see when I peek, which isn’t much.”

  Pete seemed to be pondering whether to leave her there to check their progress for himself or to stay where he was. He crossed his arms. “Your housemates left.”

  It was a statement of fact more than a question, so she saw no need to respond.

  “Where’d they go?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Pete raised a doubting eyebrow.

  “I don’t. To be honest, I don’t think Holt knew either.”

  “Why’d he leave?”

  Zoe figured Pete already guessed one possible reason—guilt—so she didn’t mention it. “He said he needed to take care of something he’d put off too long.”

  Pete frowned. “And you don’t know what he meant by that?”

  “He didn’t confide in me.” Zoe pushed away from the desk and hooked her thumbs in the belt loops of her uniform pants. She’d been off duty all day, but still hadn’t found time to change clothes. “Look, I owe you an apology.”