by Sharon Sala
Charlie pushed his laptop aside and leaned forward. “Okay... That’s a big deal, for sure, but how does this play out with the cases we’re working on?”
“Less than a month after she got the test results, she had an abortion.”
“Whoa! Didn’t see that coming,” Charlie muttered, but he felt the pieces were beginning to fall into place.
“Was she dating Jason Dunleavy at that time?”
“Yes.” Wyrick looked over her laptop at Charlie. “Why would a woman who wants to marry a specific man and professes to love him suddenly need to get rid of his child?”
“If it wasn’t his child,” Charlie said.
“But what other reason is there for aborting a fetus, other than a life-saving procedure or just not wanting to have children?” Wyrick asked.
Charlie narrowed his eyes. “You already know the answer. You’re trying to lead me to it so I’ll think I figured it out myself. This isn’t what I pay you the big bucks for. Spit it out.”
“What if the mother and the father of a baby were blood relatives? What then?” she asked.
Charlie slapped his hand on the table so hard it rattled the ice in her glass of Pepsi.
“Are you shitting me? But who? Wait. Jason’s deceased father was also her father? Half brother and half sister?”
“No. Not the Reed side. The Dunleavy side. Because of that DNA test, she found a connection on the ancestor site to a Dunleavy in Ireland. And that Irish woman, who would’ve been a great-great-aunt to Miranda, was already linked to Dillon Dunleavy, who was father to Edward, Dina, Carter, and Ted. So Miranda had to know she was somehow related to them, but she obviously wanted to learn more. I began searching in her credit card records and found she’d paid a private lab to perform two more DNA tests. Another one for her and one for Jason,” Wyrick said.
“She could easily have collected a sample for Jason while they were still dating. Did you find out the results there?” Charlie asked.
“They’re first cousins.”
“Carter? Carter Dunleavy is her biological father?”
She shrugged. “One of them is. Carter, Edward or Ted.”
“I don’t say this often, but I feel like throwing up,” Charlie muttered. “What’s her mother’s name? How old was she when Miranda was born? Find a link to her with one of those three and we’re closer to a motive.”
Wyrick nodded. “Her mother’s name was Vivian Morrow, and I’ll dig deeper into her life, but I need candy.”
“Candy?”
“Yes. The stuff with sugar, and chocolate would be an added bonus,” she said, then went back to work.
Charlie picked up the house phone and buzzed the kitchen.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Dodge. How can we serve you?” Ruth asked.
“Wyrick is in need of something sweet. Preferably with chocolate. Would you have anything remotely like that available?”
“Of course. Would you prefer a slice of Sacher torte, a wonderful chocolate mousse or possibly some fine Belgian chocolates?”
“So nothing like a Hershey’s bar?” he asked.
Ruth giggled. “I’ll have one of the girls bring up a tray for both of you. Would you care for coffee, as well?”
Charlie sighed. “Coffee would be great.”
“We’ll have it right up,” Ruth said.
Charlie replaced the receiver. “Chocolate is on the way.”
Apparently unaware he’d even been on the phone, she paused. “Really?”
“I’m a PI, remember? I can find stuff, too. I need a good old-fashioned stakeout. Or a standoff somewhere. This sitting around looking at computer screens is likely to affect my sanity,” he muttered.
“Well, Mr. Cranky Pants, I hope they bring enough chocolate for both of us. Sounds like you’re running low on sugar, too.”
He glared. “You sound like that candy bar commercial.”
“What candy bar commercial?”
“The one where... Oh, never mind. And I’m not cranky.”
Wyrick stood. “Excuse me. I’m going to wash up. Get the door for me when they bring up the chocolate, will you?”
Charlie watched that oversize shirt billowing out around her as she walked out and shook his head. It made her look like she’d had to set sail before leaving the room.
Damn woman.
A few minutes later there was a knock at her door.
“I’m getting the door!” he yelled, knowing it would tick her off.
Louise was there with a small tea trolley and promptly pushed it inside. “Don’t worry about the trolley when you’ve finished. Just push it into the hall and give us a ring. We’ll remove it for you.”
“Thank you, Louise. It all looks very good. Pass on my thanks to the chef.”
She smiled. “I will.”
Charlie shut the door, studied the assortment of sweets and then stuck his finger in one before pouring himself a cup of coffee.
Wyrick sailed back into the room. “I smell fresh coffee.”
“And an assortment of chocolate desserts.”
She leaned over the trolley, admiring the array, and then saw a hole punched right in the middle of a serving of chocolate mousse. She looked at the hole, then at him.
“Did you just put your finger in that mousse?”
“Back when we were kids, that’s how my brothers and I staked our claims. So yes, I claimed the mousse.”
He watched her eyes widen, and then she threw back her head and laughed. Still grinning, she leaned over the trolley and stuck her finger in the slice of Sacher torte, then poured a cup of coffee, picked up the torte and a fork to eat with, and carried it all back to the living room.
“Well! Don’t just stand there looming,” she said. “Get your mousse and a spoon and come sit. You loom when you’re standing.”
Charlie stuck a spoon in the mousse and went to join her, but he couldn’t look at her without revealing what her laughter had done to him. He didn’t want to see her that way. He needed her to be prickly and short-tempered.
“How old is Miranda?” Charlie asked, then put a spoonful of mousse in his mouth.
“Twenty-nine,” Wyrick said as she licked the chocolate from her fork.
Charlie looked up just as she licked the fork, then immediately looked away. “I need to know details about her mother. What do we have?”
Wyrick cut herself another bite of cake. “We don’t. But I do. As I said earlier, she was Vivian Morrow before she married Johannes Deutsch. She was twenty. If she’d lived, she would be fifty now. And, in case you’re about to ask this next, she had to have been pregnant when she and Johannes married, because Miranda was born eight and a half months after the ceremony.”
“How old would the Dunleavy brothers have been thirty years ago?”
“Hang on a sec.” Wyrick got up. She returned with her notes and a pen. “Let’s see, Carter is fifty-five now, so he would’ve been twenty-five. Edward is sixty, so he would have been thirty, and Ted’s forty-six, so he would only have been sixteen. One of those three is her father.”
“Even if she knows—or believes—that Carter is her father, why want him dead?” Charlie asked.
Wyrick took another bite, chewed and swallowed before she answered. “Maybe she freaked out because of the cousin aspect of being pregnant. Or maybe she thinks her birth father rejected her mother because of the pregnancy, which would also be a rejection of Miranda.” Wyrick sighed, then waved her fork in the air. “We’re doing too much guessing. I need to check out her mother’s background to see if I can link her to any of the brothers. Eat your pudding.”
“It’s mousse, not pudding, and it’s good,” Charlie said. “And we still need to connect Miranda to Rey Garza in some way other than graduating together.”
“Why?” Wyrick asked.
Charlie was surprised by the question. “When there are hundreds of people in your grade level, it’s entirely possible to go all through high school together and never meet.”
“Really?” Wyrick said.
Charlie frowned. “Why don’t you know that?”
“Because I never went to school,” she said.
“Ah...homeschooled,” Charlie said.
“After the age of five, I did not have a home, and was not homeschooled. I grew up at UT, cared for by technicians.”
Now Charlie was past curious. “Then how in the hell did you learn how to do all that you do?”
Wyrick looked away for a moment, then back at Charlie, locking straight into his gaze.
“I didn’t have to learn anything. I was born knowing how. I need to take a break. I’ll be in the back gardens.”
Charlie was speechless as she made her exit. He got up, put his empty dessert dish on the trolley, then went back to his suite.
Sometimes Wyrick almost scared him, and sometimes he thought she was a genius, but he damn sure didn’t understand her or how her life worked.
He did, however, know how his life worked, and he needed to reconnect with it, so the first thing he did was call Morning Light to check on Annie.
“Morning Light. This is Pinky.”
“This is Charlie Dodge. Is Dr. Dunleavy there by any chance?”
“No, sir, not at the moment. Would you like to speak to one of the nurses?”
“Yes, please.”
“I’ll connect you,” Pinky said.
The call went straight to music, which Charlie detested, but then everything about that place got on his nerves. Everything except Annie. He was still deep in thought when the call was finally answered.
“Matty speaking.”
He got an instant picture of the short middle-aged blonde with the big smile.
“Matty, this is Charlie Dodge. I’m out of state on business and just wanted to check on Annie. Dr. Dunleavy has already informed me of her decrease in cognizance. Can you give me an update on how she is?”
“She’s doing okay, Mr. Dodge. She’s eating when we feed her. Not a lot, but enough. And she’ll walk around for exercise if someone walks with her and holds her hand.”
Charlie was trying to imagine this and couldn’t. His Annie laughed and ran.
“The puzzles. Does she still try to put a puzzle together?” he asked.
“Not lately,” Matty said. “I’m sorry I don’t have better news.”
“She’s not in any pain, is she?”
“Oh, no! Not at all. She’s not fretting in any way.”
“Okay, thank you,” Charlie said and disconnected. He put the phone back in his pocket, then got up and went downstairs to the library and stood at the windows until he caught a glimpse of Wyrick walking along one of the garden paths. When no one was looking, her whole body appeared to be at rest. She paused near a topiary that had been clipped into the shape of a dragon. He watched as she put both hands onto the topiary, as if she was greeting someone. After a few seconds, she moved up a path bordered by purple heather.
Satisfied she was where she said she’d be and that she was safe, he went upstairs, picked up his laptop and went back to his suite to go through his email. Work was another way of filing away the heartache of Annie’s unstoppable descent. All he knew was that he felt off-kilter. This case needed to be over. It was already so convoluted, but it had to come to an end. He needed to go home and put his world back in order.
* * *
Wyrick walked until the truth of her existence was neatly put away again, then came back inside and went upstairs.
The door was still open between their suites, but Charlie was absent. Good, she thought and started pulling up everything she could find on Vivian Morrow Deutsch.
Nineteen
It was nearing dinnertime when Wyrick logged off and went to change. She switched from the jeans and the big shirt to a black long-sleeved jumpsuit. The neckline mimicked a priest’s collar, including the little white tab below her chin. The back of the jumpsuit was bare to her waist.
Her heels were red spiked Louboutins. They matched the bloodred color on her mouth, making her lips rather than her lack of hair the focus.
She was leaving her bedroom when someone knocked on her outer door.
“It’s open,” she said.
Charlie walked in and stopped. Damn!
She looked up long enough to indulge in one of her many fantasies about him, then frowned because he was still staring.
“What?”
Charlie blinked. “Trying to decide if I should confess my sins now or later.”
“I’m ignoring you. Are you going down to dinner?”
He nodded, then as she sauntered toward him, he caught a glimpse of red shoes. A priest collar, and hell-bent red on her feet. And then she passed him on the way out, giving him more than a good view of her bare back, and another piece of that dragon tattoo—this time a foot climbing up her body.
The dichotomy of piety and temptation was too much to ignore. He said nothing, but when he slammed the door behind him, Wyrick had one moment of satisfaction that, once again, she’d rattled his cage.
They went downstairs in silence and entered the dining room the same way, but once they crossed that threshold, Wyrick dialed herself down and she and Charlie cordially greeted the family.
“Good evening!” Carter echoed.
Dina was wearing a summer gown, a pale butter yellow, blinged out with an embarrassing amount of Swarovski crystals and something else—an engagement ring, finally—on her hand.
Wyrick immediately spotted it and smiled. “It appears congratulations are in order tonight. Best wishes to both of you,” she said.
“What did I miss?” Charlie asked.
Edward piped up from the far end of the table. “What’s going on?”
Carter heard Edward’s question as he entered the room.
“Dina and Kenneth are officially engaged,” he said. “Kenneth asked for my blessing, which was unnecessary but very thoughtful, and of course I gave it on behalf of the family.”
“Wonderful!” Edward said, and clapped. “We should drink a toast to this. Congratulations, Dina and Kenneth. I am very happy for both of you.”
Dina gave Wyrick a teary smile for noticing while Kenneth beamed.
“I also asked Jason for his blessing, and he gave it,” Kenneth said. “We both want the same thing for Dina, which is to see her happy.”
Carter sat down just as Ruth stepped into the room.
“Ruth, we’ll be needing a bottle of one of our best champagnes for a toast.”
“Yes, sir,” she said and left to fulfill the request.
A few minutes later, she came back with a bottle of Dom Pérignon on ice. Carter eyed the label and nodded.
“A 2004 vintage! Excellent choice, Ruth.”
“Thank you,” she said, then skillfully opened the bottle as Arnetta came hurrying in with a tray of champagne flutes and placed one at each seating.
Ruth looked concerned. “If I’d known there was something special to celebrate, I would have had your sommelier come in.”
“No need,” Carter said. “This is a family event. We’ll save him for our large gatherings.”
Ruth filled the glasses and slipped out of the room as Carter stood and raised his glass.
“To Dina and Kenneth, and the ties that bind. We wish you both a long and loving union.”
“Hear, hear!” Edward said.
Dina was beaming.
Wyrick had one brief pang of longing for what she’d never had, and then it was gone as she lifted the champagne flute to her lips and took a slow sip, savoring the taste and the sparkle as she swallowed.
Charlie smiled in all the right places, and laughed at someone’s joke, and tried not to think of how this family would fare when the truth about the attacks was made known.
Once the celebration was finished, the meal began.
They went through the first course and then the second, and were waiting on the entrée to be served when the conversation rolled around to young love.
Carter was the first to menti
on his, and it was obvious the family knew the story well, because every time he tried to talk about the incident, Dina interrupted and corrected his version of the tale. Finally, Carter held up his hand.
“Dina! This was my girlfriend, not yours.”
“But I knew her,” Dina muttered.
“So did I, but you weren’t in the backseat with her, and I was!” Carter said, which made everyone laugh, even Dina. “Since Dina and Kenneth just got officially engaged, I don’t think we need revelations about past loves from them.” He looked straight at Charlie. “What about you, cowboy?”
The reference to Texas made everyone smile, including Charlie.
“My life is an open book. My wife was my first love, and she still is,” he said.
When Carter glanced at Wyrick, she stared back without comment. Carter quickly moved to Edward.
“Eddie, fess up! You’re five years older than me, so there’s bound to be someone from your past that we know nothing about.”
Edward smiled. “I did a little socializing when I was younger, but the only girl who stayed in my memory came along after I went blind.” At that moment, the room went silent, with everyone listening as Edward’s tale unwound. “It was New Year’s Eve and my friends had talked me into going to a party with them. I was hesitant, but they swore the guests would be people I already knew, so I gave in. I was having an okay time drinking spiked punch and listening to the sounds of a party without being an actual part of it. And then a woman’s voice was in my ear, asking me if I’d dance with her to ring in the New Year.”
“Oh, Edward, that sounds so romantic,” Dina said.
Edward managed a wry grin, but it was obvious he was moved by the memory.
“I told her I would be honored, but since I couldn’t see, it was very likely that I’d stomp on everyone’s toes. She said we’d go into the library across the hall so we couldn’t bump into anything but the furniture. She said we’d still hear the music from in there, and she promised to watch out for her own feet. She made me laugh, and so I went.”
He paused, silent for a moment, remembering. Then he sighed. “It was the first time I’d touched a girl since I went blind, and it was my last dance with one, as well. The night was... It was... She was... She was special, and that’s my best memory.”
