Leave Me Love (12 page)

ASH HAD SOME
meetings that afternoon, and I used that time to drive to the Beaumonts’. The entire drive there I questioned whether this was the best course of action, but I knew I wouldn't turn around. I had to know what the picture meant, if anything.

I felt a pang of sadness when I pulled up to their house. They had to live
with the daily knowledge that their daughter was missing. It weighed heavily on me, but I couldn't imagine being a parent and losing a child like that. And once again I felt guilty for what happened to Bridgette.

Mrs. Beaumont answered the door, dressed in her customary pearls and a cream cashmere dress. Her face paled when she saw me. "Oh
, Catelyn, I don't think it's a good idea for you to be here right now."

"I just need to ask you and Mr. Beaumont a few questions. I'll be very fast. I'm trying to help find Bridgette, I swear."

At the name of her daughter, Mrs. Beaumont's face collapsed.

Mr. Beaumont stormed
in. "What are you doing here, young lady? How dare you come to our house after all you've done? Get out! Right now!" He was screaming in my face, his spittle hitting my nose, and Mrs. Beaumont shied away in fear or grief, I couldn't tell which.

I backed up, my heart pounding, fear coursing through my veins. "I'm sorry. I'm leaving. I'm just trying to help."

"You've helped enough," he screamed. "Your whole family has helped quite enough!"

I didn't know what he meant by that, bu
t didn't think this was the time to ask. Instead, I drove away as fast as I could, still shaking from the confrontation, and wiped my face with my sleeve.

Just as I pulled onto the freeway my cellphone rang. "Catelyn, it's Mrs. Beaumont. I need to speak with you. Can you meet me for coffee?"

We met thirty minutes later at a coffee house near Harvard, a place Bridgette and I liked to meet when I had the money.

I secured us a table outside, under the sun
, which had come out today and made me feel like spring was coming soon.

When she sat down her eyes scanned the place like she might get caught doing something illegal.

We ordered coffees and, when they arrived, sipped our drinks for a few minutes before I spoke. "Mrs. Beaumont, I didn't hurt Bridgette. I swear."

She patted my hand. "I know you didn't, dear. That's why I'm here. My husband is an angry man and can let past hurts blind him."

"What did he mean when he said he'd had enough with my whole family?"

"It's nothing," she said, but I could tell she was lying. "What did you want to ask me about?"

I pulled out the photo of Alice and Mr. Beaumont and laid it between us.

She sucked in her
breath and picked up the picture. "She was a beautiful woman." She laid it down again and looked at me. "You look so much like her."

"What kind of relationship did your husband have with my mother?" I asked, wondering if she would answer the question honestly or not.

She surprised me.

"Alice used to work with us on legal disputes
from time to time. She consulted with us and helped our company out of a few binds. We had some legal problems with the Davenports’ business and Alice was supposed to help us, to be on our side. Instead, she threw her lot in with the Davenports, and we lost a lot of money and clients. Henry's never forgiven her. Unfortunately, his hatred for your mother extended to you. He was upset with Bridgette for being your friend, but she told him he either needed to be nice to you or lose her. Henry loves Bridgette more than anything, so he agreed to her terms."

I felt like I'd been hit in the stomach. Everything they'd done to help me, all the kindness they'd shown me. It was all because of Bridgette's threats.
They'd never cared about me at all, this family I'd considered my own.

Mrs. Beaumont held my hand. "That's not how I feel. To me you are part of our fam
ily and are always welcome. I never wanted you to know about this, but with Bridgette…” her voice caught, "…missing, things have changed. I'm sorry."

Across the street, something caught my eye. Jon stood in an alley talking on the phone. He looked angry
, and I could almost hear what he was saying, he was talking so loud.

Mrs. Beaumont followed my eyes and frowned as Jon punched the brick wall after hanging up.

She shook her head. "That poor boy, he's always had a temper."

I looked at her, unsure if I should speak, but knowing I would. "Did you know he was dating Bridgette?"

Her mouth dropped open. "No."

"They started seeing each other right before she disappeared."

WE DIDN'T BOTHER
calling first, but drove straight to the police department. Mrs. Beaumont followed me in her Cadillac, likely still shocked that Bridgette had a boyfriend she didn't know about. A Davenport, no less.

Detective Gray didn't make us wait long, probably because of the grieving mother angle, and we shuffled to his office and closed the door, his face grim as he sat behind his desk. "What can I do for you ladies?"
His jaw worked his nicotine gum as he spoke, making his words sound muddled.

Mrs. Beaumont wiped a tear under her eye. "Did you know Bridgette was dating Jon Davenport? Secretly?"

She said the last word like it was a scandal, despite the fact that they'd had the Davenports over many times for their fancy parties. It must have galled her husband to have them in his house, but societal pressures being what they were, it would have caused too much tongue-wagging to not invite them.

"I didn't know that, no." He looked at me like I had a murder weapon hidden in my purse.

"I didn't know either," I said. "Jon told us recently."

"Us?" he asked.

"Me and Ash." I told him about Bridgette signing my name for the car and how Jon was with her.

Mrs. Beaumont sniffed. "He could have written things in her journal. That's possible."

Gray wanted to roll his eyes; I could see it in the way his face twitched. "It's unlikely he became a handwriting expert at Harvard. Writing like Bridgette would have been beyond his skill set."

She dropped her head. "Oh. Of course."

I knew she was trying to exonerate me and I appreciated it. "All those pictures of Ash and Brig, what if Jon was collecting them? Maybe he was jealous and was trying to frame me? He wanted to date me at one point, but it didn't work out. Maybe he manipulated Brig somehow." It was a theory that had been rolling around in my brain for awhile.

Gray stood. "Sure, that's possible
, I suppose. We'll look into it. Thanks for coming by, ladies."

Dismissed.

I stood, muscles tense from anger. "You have to do something. I'm being framed and you don't seem to give a shit. This isn't justice, detective. You're not doing your fucking job!"

"Catelyn, you need to calm down before I put you back in that cell. Take your medication and let us handle this case. If you're innocent, the evidence will prove it."

He spit the gum he'd been chewing into the trashcan by his desk, giving the room the faint scent of spearmint and nicotine.

Mrs. Bea
umont hugged me, telling me to keep in touch as she drove off in her car. As I walked to mine, holding my jacket over my head to keep the rain from soaking me, I spotted Ash's private investigator and changed direction toward his car, ready to give him a piece of my mind, even if it was drugged-up and crazy.

"Shouldn't you be looking for Bridgette?" I asked.

He sucked in his cigarette and exhaled. "Ash likes to keep an eye on you."

"I'm fine. Tell him I'm fine."

"It won't matter." He flicked ash out of his window, and I had to step back to keep from getting it on my shoe.

"Why not?"

"Love is as love does," he said, echoing his words from before.

I dropped my jacket and let the rain soak my head. "The day Bridgette disappeared, were you following me?"

He nodded.

"Did you see Jon around her house?"

He shook his head. "I had other errands to run that day."

A dead end. "Have you looked into Lucky's contacts?"

"He had a few cell mates back in prison."

"Great. Have you tracked them down yet?" Lighting stuck in the distance
, and I wondered how long until the thunder. Somewhere in the back of my mind I started counting, remembering an old scary movie I'd seen as a kid.
Poltergeist.
Even the memory made me shiver.

"Yeah. They're still in prison."

So they couldn't have done it.

Jim
continued. "I talked to them. They said Lucky was really messed up. Some serious trauma shit. He…"

"He what?"

"He ran his own kid over in his driveway. Was too drunk to notice."

"Shit. Does he have a wife?"

"She died young. Poor bastard had it hard."

I remembered the night he kidnapped me. The way he held the knife to my face. "He wasn't a poor anything."

"Catelyn, don't feel sorry for the man who hurt you. Feel sorry for the kid he ran over, the wife he lost. Feel sorry for the man he was
before
he turned hard." He breathed out smoke. "A hard life makes a hard man. Who's to say which one's to blame?"

I sighed, frustrated and lacking any sympathy or empathy for criminals at the moment. "So do you have any leads?"

"Whoever kidnapped Bridgette was close to Lucky. Someone who would have visited him, maybe even at his kiosk.  Likely, they were both behind the Midnight Murders. You know anyone like that?"

"I never saw him with friends."

"Anyone kind of older? Got coffee from him often?"

"No one comes to mind."

"Keep thinking about it." He leaned back in his seat.

I turned to leave. "You can go now."

"Hey, I'm following you."

***

I ignored Mr. P.I. and drove to the address Ash told me to meet him at for our first gun and fight club lesson. He kissed me when I arrived and escorted me into a shooting range where we spent the next two hours. Ash trained me in how to hold a gun, how to shoot without stumbling back from the recoil, how to load the gun, and how to turn the safety on and off. By the end of our time, I could successfully hit a target 60% of the time, which I thought wasn't bad at all, all things considered.

He just smiled and kissed my head. "We'll keep working on it, sweetheart."

When he showed me how it was done, I knew I had a long way to go. As he pulled the target toward us, I only saw one hole, straight through the heart, but he'd shot five times. And then I realized all his shots had gone through that one hole. I whistled. "You're like that dude in
Lethal Weapon
."

Afterwards, he took me to the gym and we sparred. And by sparred I mean he knocked me on my ass a l
ot. I got a lot of bruises and in the end I learned, A: how to disarm someone who came at me really slowly from one very specific angle, and B: how to fall into my attacker to throw him off balance in order to get away. I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to duplicate either of those lessons in real life, but Ash assured me it was a start and we would keep at it until I was one “badass motherfucker." That was my goal.

Ash was holding a punching bag and making me beat on it as he corrected my form, over and over, when his phone rang. I sighed
with relief when he frowned. "Time to meet Maxwell. Game on."

MAXWELL MET US
at our house—I still had to remind myself it was
our
house and not just
his
house—and we settled in the living room with coffee.

"Good news and bad news on the investigation into Bridgette's disappearance," Maxwell said.

"Good news first," I said.

"It's actually the same news. The good and the bad is that the police are now investigating Jon as a suspect in her case." Maxwell sipped his coffee and waited for one of us to speak.

Ash clenched his teeth. "How is this good news?"

"It means they
're finally considering suspects other than your girlfriend," he said. "And we need that, otherwise, they'll put everything they have into pointing the evidence at her and that won't bode well for any of us."

Ash stood and paced. "So it's better my brother is set up for this? He didn't do it."

I kept my mouth shut, not sure what to say.

"If he's innocent, then he'll be fine," Maxwell said. "The evidence isn't stack
ed up against him like it is against Catelyn here. Now, that's
my
news, what did you two have to tell me?"

"I found the book," I said.

Maxwell's eyes widened and he put his coffee cup on the table in front of him. "The second book Alice was working on?"

I nodded.

"Where? How? What did it say?" He could barely stay sitting in his excitement—or was it agitation? I couldn't tell.

"It's safe. I can set up a meeting with the killer. I'm going to make a public statement, let the world know I have it and know who killed my mother, and wait for that person to contact me."

Maxwell shook his head. "Absolutely not. It's too risky, and there are too many legal ramifications to consider. Why not go straight to the police?"

"Because I don't trust them." My voice wavered and Ash squeezed my hand. "I want the information out. I have details about high-profile people who were, and are, corrupt, people my mother knew and had gathered evidence on. This needs to be made public before they can make this information disappear again."

"I don't like it," Maxwell said.

"You don't have to." I sipped my coffee and ignored my shaking hand. "It's my decision and I've made it."

He stood, reaching for his briefcase. "Fine, I'll set up a press conference. I just hope you know what you're doing." He walked to the door and let himself out.

After he left
, I leaned against the wall and exhaled. "So do I."

Ash
trapped me with his body, his breath hot against my mouth. "We don't have to do this, you know. There are other ways."

"None that make as much sense as this. If he's the killer, he'll act before the information goes public."

"And what if he's not the killer?" Ash asked. "What will you say if you're forced to go ahead with the conference?"

I took a deep breath. "I'll say I found the book."

He squinted his eyes at me.

"Because I have, Ash. I know where it is."

"What?" Ash stood back and stared at me. "When? How? Where is it, Catelyn? You have to tell me."

"I can't, Ash. Bridgette's life might depend on no one else knowing."