Rite of Wrongs (25 page)

F
IFTY
-F
IVE

Thursday, 3:15 p.m.

Back at her desk that afternoon, Miriam was staring at the missing-persons’ reports on Van Lacey and Orin Hollis when Melvin shoved his chair from his cubicle into hers and dropped to sit.

“How was your morning?” she asked before he could ask about hers. She was still holding her discovery close, trying to fit the pieces into the rest of the puzzle.

He harrumphed. “I came out of training knowing exactly what I did when I went in.”

“And here I was certain you’d be a better shot, you know, since you keep missing me.”

“Ha-ha.” He laced his hands behind his head and swiveled in his chair. “What’s new with you?”

Besides having ended my relationship with Thierry?
She took a deep breath. “According to Pep Kincannon, Dorothy Lacey’s second husband, Van, came into a huge family inheritance before he went missing.”

“That so,” Melvin said, no longer quite so relaxed, his chair coming to a stop. “And you’re thinking that’s the money Gina Gardner had Sameen Shahidi throwing around like confetti?”

She’d been thinking so many things since talking to Pep. “Carolyn said Gina was the one who saw what happened. Darius said they’d promised Gina to keep her secret. It may be a stretch, but it’s the first mention of money that actually exists, or money that once did, and not just our speculating, so yeah. That’s what I’m thinking.”

Leaning forward now, Melvin braced his elbows on his knees and looked up at her. “So what do you imagine Gina saw that the Prestons aren’t willing to let go of?”

She pushed her notebook across her desk, then slid it close again, repeating the motion as she thought. “I keep coming back to it being something they don’t want to get in trouble for.”

“Criminal trouble?”

She met Melvin’s gaze with a nod. “Why else involve an attorney?”

“You going to bring them back in?”

“I need to dig deeper into this money thing first. I was thinking . . . Monday would be a good time,” she said, breaking into a smile.

Her partner’s smile was even wider. “Fifty bucks says they show up here voluntarily before Monday ever arrives.”

F
IFTY
-S
IX

Friday, 7:00 p.m.

For no reason that made any kind of sense, Miriam parked around the block on the backside of Saint Mark’s rather than in the church parking lot. She walked down the street to the front of the building. Then she kept walking, taking the sidewalk that led to the cemetery but crossing the yard toward the rectory entrance before she reached the gate.

When Augie had texted her last night, she’d been in bed with her laptop, working a free—and lame—jigsaw puzzle while the pieces of her case tried to fit themselves together into a finished whole. One she’d hoped to be able to look at and process and understand as fully as she did the picture of the cow standing in the pasture she’d put together online.

The text was an invitation to dinner. At the rectory. Tonight. He was going to cook. All she needed to bring was her appetite. She’d stared at his message. She’d looked for subtext. It had taken her nearly thirty minutes to respond. Okay, fifteen. After the Del Pueblo fiasco, she couldn’t imagine he’d want to have dinner with her except to discuss the case.

She hadn’t asked him. She’d just said yes.

That was then. Now, she was all anxiety and nerves, thinking maybe she had it wrong. Maybe he didn’t want to talk about the murders at all, but about the two of them, which was ridiculous, because the two of
them
hadn’t existed for years.

Whatever. She’d never find out if she didn’t knock, so she tapped out two quick ones before pulling back her hand and wrapping her palm over her knuckles as if burned. Of course, that metaphor would imply that she was walking into hell, and she couldn’t imagine Augie being very happy to hear she’d been thinking that very thing.

Sitting down with him for an intimate dinner . . . she shivered with the thought. Not that his text had said anything about intimacy. Hell, for all she knew, the whole CID gang could be here. Though since there wasn’t a single car in the lot . . .

She laughed, but not so loud that Augie or someone listening could hear. She didn’t need anyone, even her host, knowing she was a crazy person.

Moments later, he opened the door. He stood in the entrance, backlit, a silhouette, while the porch bulb shown down on her like a spotlight. It didn’t seem to bother him at all. As if he didn’t care who might see she was coming over, coming into his house, coming for dinner with no one to chaperone.

He wore black dress pants, black dress shoes, a black button-down shirt left untucked with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He held a white dish towel in one hand. Embroidered. Linen. She wondered if a congregant had gifted him a set. A lonely, widowed congregant.

She handed him a bottle of wine. “I think this was the one you liked.”

He arched a brow. “You’ve forgotten already?”

Nope. Not biting. “You’re lucky I didn’t bring tequila.”

“Ah, yes,” he said, taking it from her and reading the label. “Margaritas with everything.”

“What can I say?” she asked, then added a shrug, and a reminder: “I have pedestrian tastes.”

“Good,” he said, his smile comfortable and indulgent. He was safe here. He was home. “I won’t have to worry about you liking my lasagna. Now, do you want to come in, or just pretend the smell of garlic and onions doesn’t have you drooling?”

She couldn’t believe how hungry she was. Augie was a phenomenal cook. “Are you sure this is a good idea?” she asked as he closed the door, then gestured for her to follow him through the house.

“Me cooking for you?” He tossed the question over his shoulder. “Or you eating what I cook?”

You and I being alone in your house, which is attached to your church, after dark and behind closed doors.
That’s what she wanted to say. But she didn’t. “Socializing.”

He chuckled.

She wished she didn’t like the sound of his laugh as much as she did. “You were the one who set the rules the day you came into the office.”

“This isn’t the office,” was his response, leaving her to wonder if his rules applied only to police work, and if so, why he’d kept his distance all this time.

Nope, nope, nope.
Not going there, she told herself, passing what appeared to be his study, all rich wood and dark leather and Persian carpet, and the living room, which was just as opulent. Opulent, and not Augie. Saint Mark’s must be doing very well.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said, as they turned from the living room to the dining area. “The place was decorated like this when I got here. I had nothing to do with choosing any of the furnishings.”

“Uh-huh.”

The kitchen made her envy those born with the domestic-goddess gene. It was warm and homey, with a redbrick accent wall to match the redbrick floor, and a backsplash behind the stove that made her think of Tuscany. Tiles of grapes and greenery and raffia-wrapped Chianti bottles and sun.

The cabinets were stained a rich hickory or walnut. The countertops were a marbled, creamy gold. She could’ve almost taken a bath in the stainless-steel sink.

“This is some kind of kitchen for a priest.” She climbed onto a stool at the island—it was topped with the same marble as the counters—and set her crossbody on the seat at her side.

He placed the wine bottle on the island and challenged her with a look she knew well. “Because priests need to cook over an open flame in a cave?”

She remembered his previous apartment, the utilitarian look of everything. Like something institutional. A prison or a hospital ward. “Austerity never did become you.”

“It wasn’t austerity,” he said. “It was me being too exhausted to do anything more than making sure I had clean sheets on the bed.”

Even though his mattress had been on the floor. “I remember. A weird phobia to have. Especially when you were the only one sleeping there. Well, mostly.”

His expression grew grim, and he turned to pull a bread knife from the wooden block on the counter, staring down at the serrated blade as if studying his reflection. “Gabriel used to put things in my bed.”

Gabriel. The angel. His brother. The good son. His tone of voice sent dread trickling down her spine. “What kind of things?”

He turned toward her and shrugged. “Grasshoppers. Toads. Worms. Cockroaches.”

“Ugh.” It was a stupid response, but if she gave in to the ugly things she was thinking about his family, they would argue, and she didn’t want to ruin what so far was a perfectly normal night.

He emptied an Italian round loaf from a brown bakery bag and began to slice it. “My father didn’t believe me when I told him. He said I was making it up. That I was a tattletale. That I wanted to get Gabriel in trouble. That Gabriel would never do such a thing.”

He was so calm. So matter-of-fact. So accepting. She couldn’t look away from him. She couldn’t stop wondering why he’d never told her any of this before. “How old were you?”

“When it started? Because it never stopped.” He retrieved a ramekin of melted garlic butter from the microwave and used a pastry brush to spread it over the bread. “Later, it was other things. Cigarettes. Pills. Roaches of another sort.”

All this time she’d thought his memories of his brother were happy, things to look back on when he wanted to remember the good times the two had shared. Man, had she been wrong.

“What did your father say about that?” she asked, snitching the heel from the bread loaf.

“I didn’t tell him.”

“And your mother?” she asked, her palms sweating, her stomach too tight to eat. She tore off a bite of crust, anyway, and popped it into her mouth.

Augie bent to dig into a cabinet on his side of the island for a baking sheet. “She knew. She found things several times, after Gabriel had left them and before I’d crawled into bed. When she was washing the sheets or bringing clean clothes to be put away.”

“And she didn’t do anything?”

“What was there to do?” He arranged the bread on the pan, then slid it into the oven on the rack beneath the lasagna. Then he wiped his hands on the embroidered linen towel. So proper and stilted and unlike the Augie she’d known. “Dad was infatuated with his oldest son. Nothing Mom or I said against Gabriel could possibly be the truth.”

“Oh, Augie,” she said, her voice raw. “I’m so sorry. Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“Didn’t come up. Or seem important.”

“Of course it’s important.”

“Why?” he asked, that challenge again. “Because you can change how my father made me feel about myself when I was too young to know I wasn’t the one with the problem?”

“It’s important because . . .” She wasn’t sure what to say. She didn’t want to insult or patronize him, or make light of what he’d revealed. But neither did she want him to get away with blowing off what had been a defining part of his life.

“No. I can’t change anything. I know that about you. And about me. I just didn’t understand”—she took a deep breath—“that you’d gone through such abuse.”

His gave a brittle-sounding huff. “My father not believing me? Or Gabriel’s torment?”

“Both,” she said. The swath of sadness smothering her left her struggling for breath, as well as words, so all she was able to offer was, “I’m sorry. No one needs to go through that.”

The lines at his temples deepened with his frown. “We’ve both seen a lot worse.”

“Don’t discount your own suffering.” She was not going to let him blow off his experience, or what it meant to his past.

He laughed. Bitterly. “I don’t think of it as suffering.”

“But that’s exactly what it was.” He knew that. Surely, he knew that.

“No. Suffering is what Darius and Carolyn went through,” he finally said, turning away for a corkscrew and two glasses. “What Gina and Autumn and Frank went through.”

Gaze narrowed, she thought back on her conversation with the Prestons. “I don’t remember them saying anything specific about their time with Dorothy. Did they? Did I miss something?”

“Carolyn called me yesterday morning,” he said as he poured the wine. “She came to my office around five.”

What?
“And you’re just now telling me?”

He handed her a glass, then gestured toward the oven, where the smells of browned butter and garlic and tomatoes were strong. “It’s why I invited you over.”

F
IFTY
-S
EVEN

Friday, 8:00 p.m.

Of course. Her being here was about the case, not about the two of them. That’s exactly what she had wanted it to be.

She took a drink of the wine, anyway. “What did she say?”

Leaving his glass untouched, he turned to gather plates and cutlery, setting the stack on the island. He held her gaze. His pulse a tic in his temple. “It’s probably best that we eat first—”

“No. Tell me.” It wasn’t like she’d never wolfed down a sandwich on top of nonbloody crime-scene photos before. He couldn’t think her stomach weak. Then again, she wasn’t the only one eating. And he hadn’t been a detective for five years.

She swallowed more of her drink. “Or not. We can wait if you’d rather.”

He shrugged and returned to the oven, setting the bread and lasagna pans on one end of the island, then retrieving two salad bowls and a bottle of vinaigrette from the fridge. It was all so familiar, his being the one in the kitchen, whether cooking for the two of them, or divvying up takeout from brown-paper bags.

Yet he’d never been this . . . controlled. His actions, his emotions, they were all so reserved. As if his surroundings demanded the same reverence as his profession. Or maybe this was Augie now. Thoughtful. Taking his time. Weighing his words. Dealing with, not bolting from, tough times. Refusing to put himself in a position similar to the one that had ended his law-enforcement career.

“Dorothy was as abusive as you might have imagined from what the Prestons said.” His words cut into her musings, and she let them settle as he pulled the plastic wrap from their salads and tossed both in the vinaigrette. “What Carolyn offered were details none of the five ever told anyone outside of their circle. Not spouses. Not coworkers or friends. They were all as embarrassed as they were ashamed, even knowing none of what happened was their fault.”

Miriam picked up her fork and stabbed a cherry tomato. It didn’t matter how many times victims were counseled not to blame themselves. To some degree, every single one of them did. “I know we’re trained what to say to abuse victims, yet when I hear the words coming out of my mouth . . .”

She chomped down on the tomato and chewed. She wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t know.

“According to your notes, Edward said Franklin had been interested in Darius. Sexually,” he added, dishing up the lasagna and adding a slice of bread to both plates. Then he rested his wrists against the edge of the island and looked at her. “This has to stay between us, Miriam. Carolyn doesn’t want it in the case files. She agreed to let me share what she told me with you, but no one else.”

Damn him. “You know that means whatever she said won’t do me any good in court.”

“It’s anecdotal. It’s not relevant. But I know it will help you put the pieces together.”

She nodded. Because he was right.

The more you know about a person, the easier it is to figure out who killed him. Or her.

She was pretty sure she’d heard that line in an old movie. It had stuck with her as long as she’d been police.

“Darius caught Franklin watching him shower more than once,” Augie said, sliding a fork into his lasagna. “He finally got fed up and beat the crap out of him. Dorothy broke up the fight. Franklin needed stitches. She used a needle and thread from her sewing kit instead of taking him to the ER. And she locked Darius in the backyard’s chain-link dog run for a week.”

Miriam lowered her fork to her plate. She closed her eyes, breathed as deeply as her pounding heart would allow, then opened them again. But she said nothing. She just looked at him and shook her head.

He took another bite of lasagna, chewed, swallowed. “She fed him out of a dog bowl. She left him without so much as a blanket. When she caught Autumn slipping one through the fence, she locked her in the corrugated shed near the woods. She fed her out of a dog bowl, too. Dog food. And no blanket for her, either.”

She wondered if he was able to taste his food. If he had any appetite remaining. If he was just eating to distract himself from the images Carolyn’s stories evoked, because Miriam wasn’t sure if she’d ever eat again.

“Augie.” It was all she said, and he nodded, sopping up tomato sauce with his bread.

“Gina got the worst of it.” When he started in again, she almost stopped him, but she had to hear. She had to know. “Dorothy liked to lash her to the circular clothesline next to the dog run. Especially during thunderstorms. She said if Gina wanted to stir up shit and make demands, then she needed to know the power of a real storm to do it right.”

She dropped her fork against her plate and whispered, “Jesus Christ.”

Augie gaze remained on his plate, but he, too, had stopped eating. “Sounds like Gina really was the fosters’ champion. And suffered for it, though the rest suffered as well.”

“I would ask how no one ever saw any of this to report it, but the house they lived in is in the Bend.”

“Where nobody ever sees anything,” he said, then asked, “How did you find it?”

She tore a corner from her bread and let the garlic and butter melt on her tongue. “It was something Seth Branch said that sent me to Pep Kincannon.”

That brought Augie’s head up. “Pep’s still there? In the dungeon?”

Smiling softly, she nodded. “I don’t think he’ll ever leave.”

“I should go down and say hi. Next time I’m there.”

“He’d like that,” she said, reaching for her wine, then holding his gaze and adding, “They called themselves the Tatters.”

He cocked his head and frowned. “The fosters?”

“Gina wrote that in her diary. That tatting was a way to make lace. Lace. Lacey.” Miriam took a long swallow, then set down her glass and reached for her napkin. “She said their lives were in complete shreds.”

Augie emptied his glass, then refilled his and hers both. “Kinda gives you hope, doesn’t it? If they can make it out of that—”

“But they didn’t make it out, did they?” she asked, and he slowly set down the bottle. “Three are dead.”

Neither one of them had much of an appetite after that, but they did manage to eat. It was easier for Miriam to do that, to talk about Augie’s cooking, to ask how many meals he’d prepared for single women in his congregation, than to think about what a monster Dorothy Lacey really was. He didn’t mind her teasing and seemed to relax, which made the rest of the evening more pleasant.

Once they were finished eating and the dishes were done and there was no reason for Miriam to stay longer than she had, Augie walked her to the door. “Thanks for the lasagna. I think yours is almost as good as my dad’s.”

He rolled his eyes at that. “Sorry the conversation was such a downer.”

She wondered if he meant his revelation as well as Carolyn’s, but she didn’t ask. “Speaking of dysfunctional families, would you like to come to my mother’s birthday party tomorrow night?”

He laughed before he could stop himself. “Because you want them to see we have no problem being just friends? Or because you need me to keep you out of trouble?”

“Both?”

He hesitated a moment, then asked, “What about your roommate?”

She hadn’t even talked to Thierry since he’d hung up on her. “We never did do much together. When we
were
roommates.”

“That’s too bad,” he said, opening the door. “Togetherness is good for relationships.”

“It wasn’t that good for yours and mine,” she said with a snort.

He leaned a shoulder on the door frame. “Our
type
of togetherness was the problem. Too many dead bodies can spoil anything.”

She left
them
out of her response. “Are you happier here than you were as a detective?”

“I still protect and serve,” he said, his gaze focused over her head into the night. “It’s just different now.”

She stepped out, then turned back to look at him. “Because you don’t have to carry a gun?”

He stood with his hands in his pockets, finally bringing his gaze back to hers. He looked as if he wanted to say something he shouldn’t, but when at last he spoke, it was to answer her question.

“Because I know the people I’m serving. I understand the ones I’m protecting. It’s not random chaos. And I don’t worry about what I’m going to see when I walk out my door every day.”