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Chapter 12

I
really don’t have an agenda.

Agenda. Such a stupid phrase, coined by those who follow trends, and I suppose the world should be glad I don’t inspire trends. It was entirely personal, so the speculation on the news just irritated me.

It might be more aptly said I wanted it over. You know, like once something is set in motion it is just easier to let the flame lick up the fuse and ignite the blast. Like sex, the climax is what it is all about anyway, right?

Son of a bitch. How I wished it was over and done.

Maybe it would be better to let it go. I knew it would be easier to handle it that way, actually. Walk away. Nothing forced me do this. But, honestly, I was really looking forward to the inferno.

As far as I can tell, that’s been my problem my entire life. If I could walk away I would never have started this in the first place.

*   *   *

Ellie didn’t usually
play hunches. She had them occasionally, but Bryce was right. Police work required a perfect balance between instinct and fact: It did not allow supposition and yet relied on it. The law was the law. Figuring the rest of it out was up to human beings, and they were fallible, which was tricky when they were pitted against each other.

And she did have a hunch. If you could even call it that. She had a lingering feeling that Michelle Tobias was a dead end … but maybe a hypothesis and a clue could be in there somewhere.

Nothing more.

Yet she still had driven over to Cedarburg again.

The door opened slowly and she didn’t miss it as Dr. Canton regarded her presence without even a pretense of enthusiasm.

Fine. If he wasn’t happy to have her there it didn’t hurt her feelings.

“Dr. Canton.”

“Detective.” A tense muscle bulged in his jaw. The open door drafted out the scent of cheeseburgers and chocolate cake.

Just the same, she hadn’t gotten the sense of a warm family home. “Is your daughter still here?”

“I think we’ve been through this, and this is a bad time. We just finished dinner.”

“No offense, sir, but finished means I’m not interrupting. And a better time would be … when?”

“Not now. She’s been humiliated enough.”

“Her husband died and someone was incinerated in her house,” Ellie pointed out. “How is that humiliation? I understand it is extremely upsetting, but humiliating?”

To him,
she thought as they stared at each other. It humiliated
him
that his son-in-law had committed such a public suicide—it had been in the papers—but she didn’t give a rat’s ass about his perception of the situation.

She thought he was a jerk and obstructing justice, but she’d tell him that later if he didn’t allow her to see Michelle. “I’ve got a couple more questions … I told her that might happen when we last talked.”

He didn’t stand back but blocked the doorway, and all of a sudden she actually wished she’d talked to Santiago about this. That was a revelation all by itself. Had Jason Santiago been there, she had no doubt they’d be inside the house at this very moment. This was different than the first time. The bulldozer tactics weren’t pretty, but they worked. No finesse, all muscle and attitude.

But, he wasn’t there.
Lesson learned, maybe?

Tonight, though, it didn’t matter. Well, it mattered, it was just not a topic for discussion. Ellie said succinctly, “I have two questions. She answers them and I am on my way. It will take minutes … maybe even seconds.”

“What questions?”

“As they are for her, sir, I’d rather direct them to Michelle.”

“She’s asleep.”

Ellie glanced at her watch. “It’s seven-thirty.”

“Maybe you can concede, Detective, that it has been a trying past few days.”

At that point, she shrugged. It always amazed her how even people who weren’t criminals distrusted law enforcement. “I concede quite a few things, Dr. Canton. I concede that someone was burned in her house. I concede that right afterward her husband either killed himself or was murdered. I concede she is probably tired, because, you know what? I’m tired too. I concede all of that. Can I see her?”

He was going to stand there, the troll under the bridge, she saw, until maybe something in her expression changed his mind. He finally nodded, but he said on a cautionary note, “She’s fragile. I just hope you take that into consideration.”

Note to self:
fragile.

Already on the radar.

“You do realize what I am here for is to help, correct?”

That set him back a little anyway. It took a second, but he grudgingly nodded.

She said persuasively, “Then give me my five minutes with Michelle, and I am going to say ahead of time, we need to be alone.”

He didn’t like it. She’d known he wouldn’t. “Why?”

“So she feels free to be honest with me about Matthew.” Ellie slightly lifted her shoulders. “Look, sir, let’s both admit that because she knows you didn’t like her husband, she is not likely to admit he had questionable habits or friends. Do you think she is going to tell me her husband was a poor choice in front of you? I would think she doesn’t agree with you since she married him, but if she does, I’d like to hear why and she’s not going to tell me with you in the room.”

That was frank and to the point. From their previous conversation she had a sense of Michelle Tobias and as it settled and became part of the investigation, she understood that an aggressive male made the woman nervous, probably because her controlling father was in her face all the time.

No wonder she’d chosen Matthew, who had seemed not precisely weak, but at least unassuming. The symbolism of the choice hadn’t escaped her. Maybe Santiago not being here was wise after all.

“Okay.” Michelle’s father grudgingly opened the door. “I suppose this is inevitable. I have no desire to be charged with obstructing justice.”

Ah, someone had been talking to a lawyer. “Thank you,” she murmured, entering the foyer.

Why
had
Matthew killed himself?

It needed to be answered, in Ellie’s opinion, before the investigation could go forward. The bodies were obviously not giving up the needed information and while she didn’t understand why the murders had occurred, she was much more confounded by the suicide.

There
had
to be a connection.

What was it?

She was shown to a deck that reflected heat and was overshadowed by a large oak in one corner. It looked out over clipped grass and a distant fence, rough-hewn on purpose, and on the slab below there was a hot tub and a stack of towels on a wooden bench.

Michelle came outside to join her with obvious reluctance, her eyes dry but bloodshot, her clothes not rumpled but not neat either, as if someone might have suggested the yellow sundress with the thin navy stripes, but had forgotten to mention shoes. It was hot enough it didn’t matter, but it did say something about the witness.

If she even was one. Ellie wasn’t convinced of that, not yet, which was why she was making a second sweep.

“Hi. I’m Detective MacIntosh … we met the day of the fire, remember?”

“God, was that only two days ago? I swear I feel like I’m in a tunnel.” Michelle brushed back her hair and dropped into a chair on the deck. “Sit, if you want.”

What Ellie would actually prefer is a cool glass of wine and a poolside chaise to prop her feet on, but there were those pesky murder victims out there …

Incinerated and left like a grim calling card.

“I am deeply sorry for your loss.” She really was. It complicated the hell out of the case and her restless need to understand it was what had brought her back. “Tell me something I would never know about your husband.”

Michelle Tobias blinked. She did look fuzzy around the edges, like she’d been given a sedative, which Ellie would guess was the case. “What?”

Ellie gazed at the trim yard to give her a moment, and then looked at her directly. “Something we can’t get from phone records and interviews with the staff at his former workplaces … Tell me a fact that is right off the wall. An idiosyncrasy, a quirk, a detail I would never guess. That is actually why I am here. Something was wrong. I want to know what it was. Did your dad give him his prescriptions?”

“No!” After a second, Michelle, set a trembling hand on the table and repeated. “No.”

“Was that part of the problem between them?”

“There wasn’t—”

“Come on, Michelle, there was. Just be honest.”

“Where’s the other detective? Santana?”

It was a desperate question, at a guess, to put off thinking about the answer. Did anyone actually
want
to talk to Santiago?

“Santiago,” she corrected gently. “Can you give my question a little thought? I’ll wait.”

“Okay.”

Michelle pursed her mouth and looked as if she was pondering, but Ellie thought maybe whatever she was taking had her too groggy to be able to really come up with a decent answer. The hum of the locusts was loud in the background, the air stagnant. Even a hot breeze would have been welcome. A trickle of sweat ran down her neck.

“Okay, fine. I don’t know if this counts, but Matt hated my dad.” Michelle’s eyes were glassy and she looked away. “They never liked each other. My father wrote him a few prescriptions in the beginning, right after he hurt himself, but then he cut him off.”

“I’ve gotten the impression from your father that he thought he was hooked on pain meds. What else? Surely you have an opinion on why he decided to jump off that roof.”

“He was clinically depressed at one time, but it was better.” Michelle stirred a little, restlessly moving her legs. “Or at least that’s what the doctor told him he thought was wrong back when it started. Depression. He couldn’t sleep, hated going to work, didn’t eat.”

“I’m not an expert, but that does sound like depression to me.” Ellie weighed her next question. “Do you think it was bad enough to make him do what he did?”

Michelle nodded, her throat rippling as she swallowed. “I think losing the house might have been a little too much. The back injury … I think he really
was
addicted to pain meds off and on. We argued about it. I practically got down on my knees to beg him to stop.”

A sob followed that confession.

That fit. Awkwardly, only though … Ellie wasn’t sure she bought it. “I realize you didn’t own the house and Mr. Helton is going to collect the insurance, but that really isn’t the end of the world, is it? More like renting, and at one time or another most people have done that. I’m doing it right now. It isn’t perfect, but you both were alive and well. Why the suicide?”

She lifted her head. Mascara had run to the corner of her eyes, giving her the look of a stage actress. “He loved Harry. That could have been it.”

“Harry?”

“Our dog.”

“As I understand it Detective Santiago brought the dog back.”

“He did … I was grateful.”

Ellie was still not quite sure why, after his mocking derision, her partner had spent the better part of his evening looking for a stray dog, but he had, and he’d gone up at least a small notch in her estimation.

Michelle went on. “Everything has been so
awful
. By then he’d already left.”

“Matthew? To go where?”

“I don’t know,” she said on a sob. “He didn’t tell me. He didn’t say anything except that he didn’t want to stay with my parents.”

“I’m sorry.” She meant it. “What else can you tell me? Do you know anyone in Bayview? Have you ever been to this address?” Ellie produced the card on which she’d jotted the apartment number and street. “Does it mean anything to you?”

Michelle looked at it but there was no guarantee anything registered. “No.”

“Do you know anyone named Kilmarten?”

“No.” She shook her head and she leaned back, her eyes drifting shut. “God, I’m tired. I’m just
so
tired.”

“Michelle, if your husband wasn’t getting his prescriptions or drugs from your father, where was he getting them?

“I don’t know,” she said, like a limp doll in the chair. “I really don’t. He has an old friend that is a doctor now. Maybe from him.”

“His name?”

Michelle looked dazed, as she had through the whole conversation. “I don’t remember right now … maybe I can call you.”

That was helpful. Well, perhaps. Ellie knew she was jaded, but she doubted it would ever happen. Just in case, she left another card and gratefully turned on the air-conditioning in her car full blast as she drove away.

Ellie’s desire to go out for dinner, even to Lulu’s, was utterly gone. Instead she thought she’d stop and pick up a couple of steaks. She wasn’t at all in the mood for lights and people; she just wanted a quiet dinner and a nice glass of wine at home.

Home
.

She still wasn’t sure, even as she took the turn for the expensive meat market downtown where Bryce preferred to shop, that her psyche was wired to program in his house as home. A part of her was practical enough to realize she spent very little time at her rented condo and by no means did she consider it to be a permanent arrangement. Another part of her rebelled against taking such a drastic life step.

And actually, he hadn’t asked her to move in either.

It did not help her small inner war that about five steps into the small store, the first person she saw was his ex-wife.

Well …
damn
.

They’d only met once before but there was no mistaking that perfect swing of dark hair, the elegant profile … and of course Suzanne Colgan-Grantham shopped in this particular location, she did everything from the top shelf, and besides, the loft she and Bryce used to share was not very far away.

Still, the encounter was unfortunate. If Ellie could have turned and run, she would have, but it was already too late. She’d picked up a basket and was about five feet away.

“Detective MacIntosh.”

Actually she was a little startled that the recognition was so swift considering they hadn’t seen each other since late last fall. She said warily, “Hello.”