Family Ties (Flesh & Blood Trilogy Book 2)

by Morgan, Christina

  “And you think Ms. Baker’s death may have something to do with your investigation?”

  “Well, I don’t know that for sure. I just thought you should know I had met with her the morning she was murdered. You would have found out anyway, I’m sure. And if you did find out about it later, it would look very suspicious of me not to have brought it to your attention sooner.”

  “Probably true.”

  “But I do think it’s too much of a coincidence to just dismiss it, don’t you?”

  “It is rather bizarre timing,” he admitted, nodding his head. “But what I can’t understand is why would anyone want this woman dead? By all accounts, she was a decent human being. No criminal history. No enemies. She recently married her girlfriend of twenty years right after the big Obergfell decision came down. She never bothered anybody that we can tell.”

  “I was thinking about that,” I said cautiously. “And I was wondering if it’s possible that someone was watching me, saw me with her, and killed her to shut her up.”

  “Okay, but who would be following you? Do you have any enemies?”

  “Well, if it’s even remotely possible that my father is innocent, as he claims, that means someone else killed those women. That someone may have somehow learned I’m investigating Randy’s case and killed Jo when they saw her talking to me.”

  “But why not just kill you?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought of that. That’s a good question. But who really ever understands why killers do the things they do?”

  “True.” He steepled his fingers and touched them to his lips briefly, then leaned forward on his desk. “Did Ms. Baker say anything to you that might give us any idea who would have done this? What exactly was the information she shared with you about your father from high school?”

  “No, nothing. All she told me was some old gossip about a girl my father apparently knocked up in high school. I tried to locate this girl, her name is Annie Larson, but she’s nowhere to be found. That’s when I decided to go interview her parents, who eventually told me about my brother.”

  “Annie Larson,” Detective Webster said as he scribbled down the name in his small spiral notebook.

  “Good luck finding her,” I said. “She’s apparently vanished into thin air.”

  “If she’s out there, we’ll find her. Thanks for the information, Libby.”

  I took this as my cue that the conversation was over. I stood and held out my hand toward the detective, secretly hoping for a little more body contact. To my delight, he grabbed my hand again and shook it firmly. His hands were warm, but dry, and his grip was firm, in a confident sort of way.

  “If there’s anything else I can do to help, Detective…”

  “Web,” he said with a smile.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Call me Web. All my friends do.”

  “Web?”

  “As in Webster…Web for short.”

  “Oh!” I said, feeling a little slow on the uptake. “I get it. I like that. For a name, I mean. Web. Very unique.”

  I turned to leave, sad that my encounter with the gorgeous detective was now over, but he stopped me before I reached the door.

  “Oh, and Libby?”

  “Yes?”

  “Please be careful out there. I know you’re a PI and you know what you’re doing, but on the off chance there is another killer out there and he’s watching you…well, you never know. Here. Take my card.” He fished into his pocket, retrieved a business card, and handed it to me. I took it and tucked it into my back pocket. “Call me if you need any help.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  “Good luck finding your brother,” he added as I exited his office.

  “Thank you.”

  I left the police station a little light on my feet. It was the first time since meeting Ryan all those years ago I had felt butterflies around a man. Detective Sebastian Webster was not the type of man I usually went for. My husband Ryan was my type—a man’s man who works with his hands and comes home dirty and sweaty. The detective was clean cut and taller than Ryan had been. I felt an instant twinge of guilt for even thinking of another man in that way, but I had to remind myself Ryan was gone forever and I was now a widow—free to look at any man that caught my eye. And Sebastian Webster had definitely caught my eye.

  I shrugged away my teenage-girl anxiety over the handsome detective and turned my attention back to the task at hand—finding my brother.

  ***

  When I arrived home, Harper was not at the house. She’d left me a note on the fridge saying she had some errands to run and would be back later in the day. This was perfect. Not that I didn’t enjoy Harper’s presence, but I wanted—no, needed—some time to myself to not only process the latest developments in my life, but to see what information I could possibly find regarding my brother.

  It was lunchtime, so I grabbed a granola bar and sweet tea and headed up to the office. I sat down at my desk and powered on my laptop. I sat there drumming my fingers on the top of my desk, trying to think of where even to begin.

  Begin at the beginning, of course. So I pulled up a new Google search page and typed in Sacred Hearts, Grundy Virginia. Sure enough, the first result was a link to a website for a school for teenage girls. When I clicked on the link, a pretty, colorful website came up. The home page was a picture of what I assumed was the building which housed the school, a large white Colonial-era house with large white columns and a wraparound porch. There were a few young ladies sitting on porch swings, but the picture was taken from such a distance so as not to reveal their facial features. It oozed caring and comfort, and I could easily see how a parent may be drawn to a place like this if they were desperately trying to search for a refuge for their unfortunate daughter.

  I looked at all the links across the top of the page and found one entitled Contact Us. When I clicked on that link, a new page appeared with contact information for the school. I picked up my cell phone and immediately dialed the number.

  A cheery female voice answered.

  “May I speak with your headmistress?”

  “May I say who is calling?”

  “My name is Libby Carter. I’m a private investigator and I just have a couple of questions.”

  “Hold, please.”

  A few seconds’ worth of pretty classical music went by until the line picked up again and a very authoritative but mellow female voice answered.

  “This is Headmistress O’Connor. How may I help you?”

  I introduced myself and advised her I was working on a case for a client looking for a long-lost relative—not entirely a lie. I apologized for bothering her and told her I would only need about five minutes of her time.

  She sighed. “Go ahead, ask your questions.” Not overly enthused about the prospect, obviously. But that wasn’t going to stop me.

  “Great. Thank you. Now, my client believes her relative might have been born there in 1972. I know that’s a long time ago, but do you by chance keep records from that far back?”

  “Yes, in fact, we do. However, I can tell you now that we hold our girls’ privacy in very high esteem here at Sacred Hearts. I couldn’t divulge that kind of information to you. I’m sorry.”

  Great. Just what I was afraid would happen. I had to think fast or this lead would blow up in my face at any moment.

  “Listen, Mrs. O’Connor, I have to be completely honest with you.”

  “I would appreciate that,” she said firmly.

  “I don’t really have a client. I’m asking for myself. Yes, I’m a private investigator. That part’s true. But I just recently found out I have a half-brother who was born there in 1972 and I desperately want to find him. Our father passed away recently and I thought my brother should know. There’s an inheritance…”

  So I fibbed a bit. All right, I fibbed a lot. But it worked. The headmistress sighed again and asked, “I wasn’t here then, but I’ll give it a try. What was the mother’s
name? I’ll see what I can find for you.”

  “Annie Larson.”

  “So you believe Annie Larson gave birth to a son here in 1972?”

  “I’m pretty certain of it.”

  “All right…hang on.”

  She placed me on hold for another few minutes and returned to the line quicker than I had thought.

  “Okay, I found a file for Annie Larson. Let’s see…” I could hear her rustling through pages. “Hold on…well, I found Annie Larson…but this is strange.”

  “What is strange?”

  “It appears Annie was scheduled to give her child up for adoption, but the day the adoptive parents showed up to pick up her baby, both mother and child disappeared.”

  Disappearing seemed to be a favorite pastime for Annie Larson, I thought, but did not say out loud.

  “Is there a birth certificate for the baby?”

  “I’m really not supposed to give out this information…”

  “Please? I understand your predicament. But I won’t tell a soul you gave me this information. I promise. I just need to find my brother. All I need is a name and date of birth.”

  “All right. Looks like the birth certificate lists his name as Brian Randall Larson. Date of birth is August 24, 1972.”

  Randall. Annie had named her son after my father, the boy who had humiliated her publicly in high school. But she had loved him too. Apparently, she carried a torch for him, as well as his child.

  “Is there anything else in there that might help me find him?”

  “No, I’m sorry. I’ve already told you more than I should. But there really is nothing else. Miss Larson disappeared with her son and no one has ever heard from her since. The police came and investigated, since she was only sixteen at the time, but they couldn’t find anything either. It looks like one of our staff members reached out to her parents, but they claimed not to have any idea where she might be.”

  “I see. Well, thank you for your time.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  I hung up the phone and turned back to my laptop. I pulled up one of my favorite skip trace programs and entered in the name Brian Randall Larson and his date of birth. After a few seconds of watching an hourglass spin in circles, the results page popped up. To my astonishment, there was only one possible result.

  The only Brian R. Larson born on August 24, 1972, most recently resided in Nashville, Tennessee. But the strange thing was that the last known address was last confirmed two years ago. There was no updated address after 2013. I let out a frustrated growl. Once again, I had hit a dead end.

  Think, Libby. Think. Why would a person not have an address for over two years? Everyone lives somewhere. DMV records are updated every year when a person renews their vehicle registration and you have to provide an address. So why had Brian not renewed his registration, license, or other contact information in over two years?

  The realization smacked me between the eyes like one of those hammers that farmers used to use to kill a cow. Jail. Brian was in jail. That’s why he had no listed address for so long. I quickly pulled up another Google page and typed “Tennessee inmate search” into the search bar. Sure enough, the Tennessee Department of Corrections had a website. I searched Brian’s name, both with and without his middle name, but to my dismay, there were no current records of Brian being incarcerated anywhere in Tennessee. That left two options. He was either not incarcerated at all or not incarcerated in Tennessee.

  Unless…

  Why didn’t I think of this sooner?

  I pulled up the Tennessee Court Record database and entered Brian’s name. His criminal history yielded twenty-three results dating back to 1990 when he would have been eighteen. Drug possession. Petty larceny. Shoplifting. Cold checks. All misdemeanors. No felonies. His most recent conviction was for menacing and terroristic threatening. I opened the court record and scanned through the entries made by the court clerk.

  The very last entry, dated October 3, 2013, answered all my questions. My brother, Brian Larson, had been committed by the State to Pleasant Valley in Clarksville, Tennessee. Pleasant Valley, I knew, was a home for the mentally unstable.

  Chapter 13

  Harper was walking through the front door as soon as I made it to the bottom of the stairs.

  “Learn anything new today?” she asked as she set grocery bags on the kitchen counter.

  “I found my brother. Well, sort of.”

  “Already? How on earth did you manage that?” She poured herself a glass of sweet tea. “Want a refill?”

  “Yes, please. It wasn’t that hard, really. I’ll explain it all to you later. Right now, I have a job for you.”

  “I’m all ears,” she said as she topped off my glass.

  “I need you to contact Pleasant Valley in Clarksville, Tennessee.”

  “Is that where your brother is?”

  “I’m pretty sure. Call them and set up a meeting for me tomorrow afternoon.”

  “What do you want me to tell them? Are you a PI this time or a family member?”

  I thought for a moment on which was the better way to approach my brother. I didn’t know how stable—or unstable—he may be. On one hand, they may not let me visit him if I wasn’t family. On the other hand, I had to assume Brian did not know I existed and I wanted to be the one to explain it to him.

  “Investigator. Tell them I want to speak with him regarding a case, but be as vague as you can be.”

  “Can do. I’ll go take care of that now.”

  Harper took off up the stairs toward the office, leaving me alone in the kitchen with my sweet tea. I looked at the clock. It was already dinner time. I looked through the groceries Harper had just bought and found some pasta noodles, roasted garlic pasta sauce, and frozen garlic bread. I quickly threw together some spaghetti and within fifteen minutes, I had made the first real meal I had cooked in several weeks.

  Harper came down just as I was setting the table.

  “You’re not going to believe this, Libby,” Harper said as she sat down in one of the chairs.

  “What now?”

  “For starters, you were right, Brian was sent to Pleasant Valley in 2013. However, get this…he just left there a few months ago.”

  “What do you mean by ‘he left’? Did they release him?”

  “Sort of. He was supposed to be there for two years and he only had a few months left on his stay, but he just walked away in June. No one knows where he went.”

  “That’s just fucking great,” I said as I plopped the large pot of spaghetti on a hot pad in the middle of the kitchen table.

  Harper reached over and spooned out a good portion of the pasta onto her plate. “Smells delicious. So what are you going to do now?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, scooping out my own spaghetti. “Maybe I’ll still go down there and poke around a bit…see what I can find out.”

  “I thought you’d say that,” Harper said with a wry smile. “Which is why I went ahead and made an appointment for you at Pleasant Valley.”

  “See,” I said, pointing my fork at her. “This is why we work so well together. Great thinking!”

  “You’re supposed to be there at two o’clock. You’re meeting with Dr. Frank Detweiler, Brian’s psychiatrist. Need me to go with you?”

  “Nah. Stay here in case I need you to research anything. I’ll call you if I need you.”

  We finished up our pasta dinner, cleaned up the kitchen table, and headed our separate ways for the night.

  I had been so busy with work lately, I had not had any time to read for leisure, so I went to my bookshelf, picked up the latest Philippa Gregory novel, The Taming of the Queen, and read for a good three hours until I finally dozed off, dreaming I was a medieval queen dancing in a ballroom full of courtiers. Finally, a handsome stranger tapped me on my shoulder and asked for a dance. It took me a bit to recognize his face. It was Detective Webster. He twirled me around the ballroom until I was dizzy and then whisked me away behi
nd a curtain where he promptly ravaged me, completely ignoring courtly etiquette.

  I awoke feeling refreshed and ready for the day. It was the first time in weeks I had slept more than four or five hours. Since I was in such a good mood, thanks to my fantastic dream, I took extra time picking out my clothes for the day. I wanted to make a good first impression. I wound up choosing my favorite pair of dark blue Seven jeans and a black cowl neck cable-knit sweater. It was now October and the weather had turned on a dime, as it so often does in Kentucky. Residents like to joke—if you don’t like the weather in Kentucky, wait five minutes. I pulled on a pair of long black boots with short heels which I rarely wore, but they completed the outfit.

  In the bathroom, I pulled my dirty blonde hair back into a loose ponytail, dabbed on some light makeup, and finished the look with a pair of silver hoop earrings. This was the most effort I had put into my appearance since before Ryan died. I wondered if my attraction to Detective Webster had anything to do with my sudden attention to my appearance. Probably.

  Harper had written down the address for the facility so I could enter it into my phone’s GPS. Once I did, my phone advised me it would take three hours and forty-five minutes. Since I was leaving right at ten a.m., I would arrive just in time.

  On the long drive to Clarksville, I put Ryan’s favorite Scott Miller CD, Thus Always Tyrants into the CD player. Scott Miller, a singer-songwriter originally from Virginia, was our favorite musician. We had seen him live many times and his cover of the Statler Brothers’ folksy ballad, “I’ll Go to My Grave Loving You” was our song. We’d even played it in our wedding. Listening to the singer’s smooth, melodic voice brought tears to my eyes. Although Ryan crossed my mind nearly every day, I was usually so busy I could push away the pain. But all alone, in the car, listening to our favorite musician, I was overcome with nostalgia and sorrow.

  Rather than pushing away the sad feelings, I gave in to them. I let tears pour down my cheeks, down my neck, and between my breasts without wiping them away. I had loved Ryan with all my heart. Even when I learned of his affair, it did nothing to diminish the feelings I had for him. I was angry, yes, but I would always love him. Plus, I had more great memories than bad ones and I had forgiven him months ago.