Mischief 24/7 (30 page)

Jade looked down at Leslie’s inert form as they pounded up the winding staircase. “Graduated top of your class, I bet. Where do you think they are?”

But Court didn’t have to answer, because they only needed to follow the sound of Joshua’s loud, tortured voice as he confronted Cliff Brainard in one of the bedrooms.

“It was you. It had to be you. Nothing else makes sense. They thought it was me, but it was
you.
My own father. You killed Tarin? Melodie? You murdered
my son?
Why?
Why?”

Cliff Brainard was in bed, sitting up against a small mound of pillows, the cream-colored sheets and his navy blue silk pajamas only accentuating his pale, stricken face. “Your
son?
Your
mongrel,
you mean.”

Joshua was standing at the bottom of the large four-poster bed, swaying where he stood, looking as if he might pass out. “My God, I went to his funeral, sat in the pew next to you, played the whole thing for some damn photo op you said we had to do—and didn’t know he was my
son.
He was my blood. He was
your
blood.”

“No. He was the end of any political ambition you had. I didn’t want to do what I did. It destroyed my health. Look at me—I’m nothing but a sick old man now. But I don’t regret what I did. I did it for you, Joshua, then and now. I did it all for you, son.”

“No,” Joshua said, slowly shaking his head as he backed out of the room as Matt walked in, his pistol drawn, his gold lieutenant’s shield visible on the pocket of his jacket, and walked to the head of the bed. “No, old man, you did it all for
you.
Officer, please. Get him out of here.”

J
ADE ROUSED
herself reluctantly when she heard Jessica call out Matt’s name, having fallen asleep with her head on Court’s shoulder as they’d waited in Sam’s living room for Matt to return to the house. Ernesto and Jermayne were both upstairs in guest rooms, asleep.

“So?” Jessica asked Matt as he collapsed onto the facing couch. She handed him a cup of coffee. “You said he’d waived his right to legal representation and wanted to make a statement. Did he?”

Matt rubbed the back of his neck. “As far as I know, he’s still talking. He’s one of those guys who doesn’t shut up, even when the people listening to him just want to go to the can and vomit. I had to get out of there, and since Brainard’s who he is and the top brass are falling all over each other to have their names connected to the bust, they let me leave.”

“Oh, my poor baby. It was bad?”

“It wasn’t good. And the guy still thinks he was justified. I see an insanity plea in Clifford Brainard’s future, I’m sorry to say. Even refusing a lawyer could be seen as being nuts, a smart guy like him.”

Jade took the cup of coffee Court had poured for her and leaned forward on the couch. “Can you tell us what happened? I think we’ve got most of it, but some things still don’t make sense.”

“Let me give you what I’ve got,” Matt said, and Court took Jade’s hand in his as if to help her through the rough parts that would come when Matt told them exactly what had happened to Teddy.

Matt filled in the history, beginning with the day Joshua Brainard had informed his father that he was leaving Melodie to be with Tarin. Clifford Brainard had gone to Tarin, explained that she would be ruining his son’s bright political career and he’d one day hate her for it. He’d given her enough money to go somewhere and finish her degree, and because Tarin loved Joshua, or for the money—no one would ever know the real truth, probably—she immediately left town.

But once her son was born she came back. Again, whether it was because she felt Joshua should know he had a son or to blackmail him with that son, no one would know. Cliff Brainard said she’d come back for more money, but as Matt said, who was going to believe him?

Cliff was already on the mayor’s task force, knew the details of how the Fishtown Strangler operated, and saw his chance to be rid of Tarin. He met with her at his penthouse condo, just to talk, he said, and drugged her drink.

He’d planned to strangle her while she was unconscious, but while he was in another room drinking up some courage, Tarin woke up, grabbed the infant and tried to get away, tried to escape through the kitchen of the penthouse.

“She fell down a flight of cement service stairs while holding the baby. The baby died in the fall,” Matt told them. “Again, this is what Brainard says. He swears he had planned to leave the baby on a doorstep, but do I believe him? Anyway, he strangled Tarin, then did his best to simulate the rest of the Fishtown Strangler’s MO postmortem, the bastard.”

“The simulated rape,” Jade said, nodding. “We couldn’t figure that one out, Matt, remember? And the drugs in her system?”

“Leslie, loyal Leslie, moved Tarin’s body to a dump spot in Fishtown. But Leslie wouldn’t touch the child’s body, so Brainard put it in the bottom of an extra freezer in a basement storage room that belonged to him. The freezer, one of those deep, horizontal ones, was supposedly only used to store deer meat during hunting season, so his housekeeper never went into it. Somebody already went over to check it out, but it’s long gone by now, I’ll bet. Anyway, he left the body there until he could figure out what to do with it.”

“And the Baby in the Dumpster was the result,” Jessica said, wiping her moist eyes. “What a ghoul.”

“I can’t wrap my head around something like that. Your own grandchild, packed away in a freezer for months, and then dumped like garbage. Brainard said the whole thing nearly killed him, which it damn well should have. He hadn’t planned on the Dumpster. He’d planned on the Delaware, figuring what the freezer didn’t do the water would, but he started to feel sick and had to dump the body quick before he drove himself to the hospital, where he had his first stroke. He hasn’t been a well man since.”

“My heart bleeds for the bastard,” Court said, pouring himself another cup of coffee. “So all right, years pass, Brainard thinks he’s pulled off the perfect crime and saved his son’s political career. But then Teddy entered the picture.”

“He’d always been there,” Jolie said, sighing.

“He worked those old cases twice a year, isn’t that right?”

“More often lately,” Jade said as Court squeezed her hand. “He was a man on a mission, I think. When he found Tarin’s dentist and discovered who’d paid for her implants, all the pieces started falling into place for him, just like they did for us, and he went to see Joshua Brainard.”

“And Melodie Brainard,” Matt said as he continued his story. “Where, according to Clifford Brainard, he found a vengeful, vindictive woman who was more than happy to hurt her husband. And gosh, after all the Brainards had done for her. Cliff chose her friends, her clothes, the charities she could support. He did everything for her to make her into the perfect candidate’s wife. But she wasn’t grateful, you understand, she didn’t appreciate all his efforts. So in case you’re wondering, the bit the shampoo girl heard and told us about the bruises, Melodie saying she wasn’t going to take it anymore? I think we can be pretty sure who was responsible.”

“Again the father, not the son. Why on earth did she stay?” Jolie asked, clearly confused.

“Maybe she loved her husband,” Sam suggested, and Jolie glared at him. “Hey, don’t look at me like that, it’s just a theory. More likely, it was the glory of being the candidate’s wife.”

“Mayor today, governor in four years—two terms, the limit—and then the White House,” Matt told them. “Good old Cliff had it all figured out.”

Jade sighed. “Everything but one determined, retired cop.”

Matt took up the story once more.

Teddy had been convinced he had his murderer in Joshua Brainard, and worked on Melodie to help him. Her mistake was telling Cliff about Teddy’s visits, asking his advice. So Cliff had made a visit of his own to Teddy’s house to try to talk him out of ruining his son’s life with false accusations. But Teddy wouldn’t play ball, and over the course of the next two weeks Teddy had either pretty much convinced Melodie that his theories were correct, or else she’d given him the hairbrush to help prove him wrong.

But Melodie, through fear, feelings of revenge—who knew?—had also felt some pressing need to tell Cliff everything Teddy told her. She’d signed her death warrant, and Teddy’s, when she told Cliff she’d given Teddy Joshua’s hairbrush so he could get DNA from the hair on it.

“Cliff knew where the security cameras were located and how to disable them, and he knew Melodie took a swim every night, like clock- work,”

Matt told them as Jade curled up closer to Court, because the worst was coming, soon.

Cliff entered the estate, his former home, through the cut in the fence and approached Melodie as she swam laps in the pool. He kept her talking, her back to the trees, as Leslie advanced on her, grabbed her, strangled her and tossed her into the pool.

Then they drove to Teddy’s house to get the hairbrush.

“Was the door locked? Was the security code set?” Those two questions had been driving Jade insane since the night Teddy died.

Matt told her that the alarm had been active, but that it had also been active that afternoon, when Cliff first confronted Teddy, and Teddy had grumbled to him that his daughter was always nagging him to use the damn code and he couldn’t be bothered remembering useless numbers, so he just used his birthday, which drove his daughter crazy.

“Why did Teddy even talk to the man?”

“Good question, Court,” Matt said. “Brainard says it’s because he’d come to him, father to father, to ask that he not jeopardize his son’s bright future with an old scandal, a youthful love affair that couldn’t possibly mean anything anymore.

Anyway, later, it was simple enough for Brainard to find out Teddy’s birth date and let himself, and Leslie, into the house after Jermayne left. They saw him leave—Jermayne—and then waited about an hour before they made their entry.”

“Giving Teddy enough time to fall off the wagon after Jermayne told him what he told him.”

“Right, Jade,” Matt said, looking to Court as if for permission to continue. “According to Brainard, Teddy was pretty drunk when he and Leslie opened the door to his office. Teddy managed to grab his service revolver out of the box on his desk, but Leslie was too strong for him. One shot into the floor, the other shot… well, Brainard admits he gave Leslie stage directions.
In his mouth,
he said, so it would look like suicide. Oh, and if I said Clifford Brainard is talking, it isn’t any more than Leslie’s talking, trying to cut himself a deal. Leslie’s story varies a little, as in, he killed nobody, just cleaned up after the boss.”

“You okay?” Court asked Jade quietly.

“No, Court, I’m not. Teddy never brought out his gun except to clean it. If he had the gun out, it was because he expected trouble. But even then, he couldn’t fight the bottle when he took a hit of bad news.”

“Jermayne’s confession,” Jolie said, resting her head on Jade’s shoulder. “But would things have turned out differently if he and Jermayne hadn’t had that last healing talk? If Brainard and Leslie were intent on killing him, getting back that hairbrush, framing him for Melodie’s murder—would the ending have been all that different?”

Court walked out
of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist, to see Jade sitting cross-legged on the bed, watching the DVD Jessica had made and they’d watched earlier—a lifetime ago, when Jade first had seen Jermayne’s silhouette outlined against the trees at the cemetery.

“Jess is going to talk to Father Muskie tomorrow about another ceremony at the cemetery,” she told him as she hit the power button, turning off the television. “And Matt says he thinks the department will agree to some sort of tribute. After all, Teddy not only died in the line of duty, but he died a real hero. Jess even wants a wake at Teddy’s favorite watering hole. Jokes, stories, Irish songs, laughter, toasts to Teddy’s memory. What do you think?”

“I think the word is closure, and I think it’s a very good idea,” Court said, sitting down on the side of the bed. “I don’t even mind putting off our second trip to Elvis-impersonator land until we’re back from visiting Morgan in England, since the Jade Tower isn’t quite ready for us to occupy the honeymoon suite just yet.”

“How did you know I’d want to go back to that same awful wedding chapel?”

“I took a wild guess,” he said, sliding more fully onto the bed so he could nuzzle her neck. “You’re a bit of a traditionalist, you know.”

She tipped her head slightly, to give him better access. “Mmm, I think you’re right. In fact, maybe we could go visit our friendly Elvis impersonator once a year, just so we have an excuse to stay in the honeymoon suite. Is it still pink?”

“If it is, David’s fired,” Court told her, easing her back against the pillows. “The entire time I was in that suite I felt like I should be wearing a blue bow so I could remember I’m a man.”

“And I know just what we could have tied it around for the best effect,” Jade said teasingly, snuggling into the pillows as she drew him down to her. “Love me, Court. Hold me, make love to me. Please.”

He knew what she needed. She needed to be held, to feel alive, to go someplace that took her away from all the ugliness she’d lived with since the night Teddy died.

There was a time for talk. Later. There was a time to plan for their future. But not now.

Now, she needed him. Now, he needed her.

He kissed her hair, her cheeks, her soft, willing mouth. He eased her nightgown over and off her shoulders, his mouth following where his fingers blazed the way, driven on by her soft moans of pleasure.

She reached for him, but he only caught up her hand and kissed her palm, each fingertip. His pleasure would be found tonight in her pleasure. Her release, her escape, her tumbling climax.

He worshiped her small, perfect breasts, glorying in her response, in the soft, hesitant way she said his name over and over again as he captured her nipple in his mouth and suckled her, circled her hardening bud with his tongue.

Fly away,
he told her inside his mind,
fly away to the clouds, dearest Jade, where there is nothing but this, nothing but us.