The Off Season (20 page)

But Christina was already opening the door to let him in.

“Christina,” he greeted her, his expression sharpening as he looked over her shoulder to fix her sister with a hawklike gaze. “And Annie Wallace, I thought we’d
never
get the chance to catch up. You’ve been dodging my calls.”

“I was—I was just about to head out.” Growing pale, Annie dug the key to the rental car from her pocket. “To the grocery store to pick up dinner.”

“And miss the big surprise?” asked Harris, sliding a wry grin Christina’s way. A grin that had warmth blossoming low in her belly with the memory of his lips on hers.

Annie was stammering something else, but it was lost as Harris turned his head and nodded to a uniformed officer—the tall, dark-haired young woman with the impossible last name. She was smiling, too, holding a strap of some sort in her hands, which was attached to a wriggling, wagging Max, who yelped and pulled away the moment he caught sight of Christina.

“Maxie! Oh my gosh!” Christina pushed halfway through the door and dropped to her knees as the greyhound bounded up the concrete steps. Surging past Harris, eighty pounds of what had once been track-hardened muscle bowled her over onto her butt. But she only squealed and hugged him with her good arm and let him lick the side of her face.

“That’s one lucky boy,” Harris said in a low voice that snapped Christina’s gaze to his eyes. “Damn lucky he finally let Officer Zarzycki and me corral him before he ended up getting run over.”

“Thank you! Thank you both so much,” Christina said, allowing Harris to help her to her feet, and laughing as she realized her dog was wearing a navy sweatshirt with
SCPD
in white block letters across the back. “What’s he got on? Is that yours?”

Harris shrugged. “He was shivering so hard. And starving. Wolfed down a couple of plain hamburger patties I had ’em grill him at the drive-through like they were nothing.”

Knowing Max, he might well bring them both up later on the carpet, but Christina was too relieved that he was alive to care. “Thank you again. Thank you both.”

As the dog ran, wagging his tail, to greet Annie, Christina invited both officers inside.

“You’re more than welcome, Dr. Paxton,” Officer Zarzycki called. “I was really glad Chief found him. But I need to head back over to the station now.”

“Thanks again for your help,” Harris told her with a nod. A moment later, he shut the door behind him, sending a look toward Annie that made it clear he had no intention of letting her escape.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Harris heard movement on the second floor, followed by the sound of Lilly’s laughter. Turning toward the sound, the greyhound wagged his strong tail so hard that Annie said, “Ow, dog,” as she fended off a whipping from it.

Max bounded for the staircase, looking faintly ridiculous in the sweatshirt. Judging from the happy squeals Harris heard moments later, Lilly was as excited to see her dog again as Max was to see her.

“I’d better go check on those two,” Christina said as a series of thumps and squeaks followed. “Promise or no promise, I hear Lilly jumping on the bed.”

“Why don’t you let me?” asked Annie, looking all too eager to escape.

“You stay here,” Christina said, giving her sister a look that said she meant business. “I’ll be right back, and then we’ll all talk.”

Jaw set, Annie flipped her wheat-blonde hair over one shoulder in a gesture Harris read as defiance, maybe even resentment that Christina had played the big-sister card. Gesturing toward the ivory sofa and two coral-colored wingback chairs that made up the living-room seating area, he suggested, “Why don’t we sit in here?”

“Whatever,” Annie said, clearly in the mood to play the part of thirty-year-old teenager in all her petulant glory.

A faint smell caught his attention, and he surreptitiously sniffed. Apparently, he wasn’t quite as subtle as he’d figured.

“Dead mouse, we think, or maybe one of the contractors accidentally left behind his lunch,” Annie explained as she pulled out the piano bench, which was nearer to the escape routes of the stairway and the outside door. She perched on its edge, then folded her arms beneath her full breasts in a way that lifted them into view.

Keeping his gaze above her neckline, Harris turned one of the chairs to face her. “So, you gonna tell your sister, or would you rather we talk about it back at the station?”

The question was part guesswork, part bluff, but from the deer-in-the-headlights stare she gave him, it was clear she didn’t know that.

“Yeah,” he said, answering the question she seemed unable to find the courage to ask him. “I figured it out. Like anybody else could, if they asked the right questions.”

Thanks to a few tips from Annie’s ex-boss, Harris had gotten his first inkling that the Wallace sister whom longtime residents still referred to as
the fun one
might be hiding an issue that was definitely no laughing matter.

He saw he must be right about it, for Annie’s face went ashen, and her right foot jerked to life, tapping out a nervous rhythm.

“How much is it, Annie?” he asked. “How much are you into Reg Edgewood for?” He stared hard, feeling a muscle in his jaw tighten. Because he’d love another excuse to arrest the man, to get him removed from the city council for his shady dealings.

She shook her head. “What are you talking about?”

“He’s loaned you money, hasn’t he?”

She shrugged a shoulder. “He’s helped me out a few times. You know, a fill-up for my car when I was running on fumes, and he paid the vet bill for me after my old cat got out and a car hit him.”

She sighed and shook her head before continuing. “I was a wreck that night at the bar when I found out poor Smokey hadn’t made it. When Reg heard what’d happened, he went by the office, without a word to me about it, and paid off my vet bill—all twelve hundred dollars of it.”

“That was nice of him,” Harris said. Except that Edgewood didn’t do nice. The guy wouldn’t loan his grandmother a postage stamp without expecting to be repaid with compound interest. “So what did he want in return?”

“He wouldn’t take a dime, if that’s what you’re thinking. He
did
ask me to go out to dinner when his wife was in the hospital recovering from some heart procedure, and he was missing her home cooking.”

“You went?”

“Just the once,” she admitted. “But I told him it would have to be just dinner. I don’t do married men. Not ever.”

“So how did he take that?”

“If he was disappointed, he did a fantastic job of hiding it. We’ve talked a few times since then. That’s all.”

“And just how much of that talking has been flirting?” Harris asked, though it wasn’t a fair question. From what he’d heard and seen of her behavior, teasing, joking, and provocative behavior came to her as naturally as chomping down on a hunk of raw meat did for a shark like Edgewood. Only when he deigned to share his dinner, you could be sure there was a buried hook.

Annie rolled her eyes. “I’m friendly with him, that’s all.
Pleasant,
like everybody is who counts on tips to pay the bills. But he’s given me some good advice about going back to school and all that—I reenrolled part-time and switched over to a business major.”

“You pay for that yourself?” he asked, already knowing there was no way, not on the seasonal unemployment she drew this time of year.

She shrugged off the suggestion. “I couldn’t score financial aid, and my mom’s cut me off, not that I can blame her after I quit showing up for classes last time. Back when I was still wasting my time pretending I was ever going to make it through the nursing program. The anatomy class alone—” She sighed. “I’ve never had Christina’s head for all that gobbledygook.”

“So you took a loan out for the business classes?”
Let me guess.
“From Reg Edge?” The high school dropout and
selfless
mentor of big-breasted blonde bartenders. While his poor wife was in the hospital, no less.

Dropping her gaze, she tightened her jaw.

“Sorry that took so long,” Christina told them as she trotted down the stairs, “but I’ve got Lilly started with a movie on Mom’s iPad upstairs, and poor Max is out cold on the bed beside her. I’ll take your sweatshirt off him and wash it—”

Reaching the bottom of the staircase, she stopped and looked back and forth between her sister and Harris. “What’s going on here?”

“Your sister was just telling me how she got the money for tuition this semester.”

Christina gave him a fierce look. “I thought we were waiting until I came back down to talk.”

“
You
might’ve thought that,” he said, “but your sister’s an adult. And I have a murder investigation to get on with.”

Christina’s cheeks went red. “Annie has nothing to do with Officer Fiorelli’s death.”

“If I thought she did, believe me, she’d already have the cuffs on,” he said, wishing Christina had stayed upstairs so he could get this out of the way without her running interference.

“Well, anyway, our mom paid her tuition. Didn’t she, Annie? Tell him.”

When she said nothing, Harris rose to face Christina. “Thing is, she’s told me already. It wasn’t your mother at all. Turns out your sister’s gotten chummy with—”

Annie shot up from the piano bench. “There was nothing, nothing at all wrong with that loan. We have a written contract, and the interest rate he’s charging me is cheaper than I could get from anywhere else.
If
I could convince any bank to lend me money.”

“Wait a minute,” Christina said. “The interest
who’s
charging you?”

“It was Reg, Reg Edgewood. He’s just a friend, that’s all.”

Christina flicked an anxious look toward Harris, clearly recalling his warning about the man. “Why wouldn’t you have asked me? I would’ve gladly helped out.”

“You were just moving in and talking to Mom every day when I had to pay it. So I just assumed she’d told you all about her plan to make me straighten up and fly right.”

From Christina’s grimace, Harris suspected Annie had that right. It was clear, too, that her sister was conflicted, caught between two family members who were clearly at odds.

“Anyway,” Annie continued, “the loan from Reg is no big deal.”

“Sure, it isn’t,” Harris put in, “until you miss a payment. Is that where you went Tuesday night? To settle up your interest?”

“Wait a minute,” Christina said. “I thought you were meeting the woman from the—”

“I went over to a friend’s. That’s all,” Annie admitted. “I just needed some time for myself. Was that too much to ask after taking care of Lilly all day?”

“What friend?” Harris asked. “I’m going to need a name and address.”

“Then why lie to me about it?” Christina demanded of her sister. “It’s not like I was keeping you chained up, Cinderella.”

“I—I thought it would sound better to tell you I was working for a sick friend instead of just saying I wanted to go by Kym’s place, maybe have a drink or two.”

“This is Kym Meador?” Harris asked, remembering one of the waitresses whose witness statement he’d taken after that fight at the Shell Pile. An attractive young woman with straight black hair, thick eyeliner, and a silver nose ring, she’d loudly insisted that the behavior of female employees was in no way responsible for the offending men’s behavior.

She’d only simmered down after he’d pointed out that the men had been the ones arrested—and her boss had finally told her to
put a sock in it, why don’tcha?

Annie smiled. “Yeah, that’s her. We’ve been best friends forever. You go and ask her, and she’ll tell you. She’ll tell you I was there.”

Harris had no doubt Kym Meador would tell him anything she figured would help Annie. Whether or not it happened to be true.

Christina frowned at her sister. “I thought you weren’t drinking, so you could focus on your classes. And you told me Kym was sick. I guess those were lies, too?”

“Come on, Christina. Cut me some slack. It’s been a tough week.”

Her sister lifted her left arm, still in its sling, toward Annie. “Tell me about it.”

“I mean, I adore Lilly. Don’t get me wrong, but you’ve even said yourself that she can be a handful.”

“If you didn’t want the job, you shouldn’t have insisted.”

“I
did
want it. I still do. And it wasn’t just Lilly, anyway. I had my course work and those weird calls from—” Annie darted a look toward Harris and abruptly shut down.

“Go on,” he urged. “Who called you?” Though he still didn’t believe she could be the killer behind Fiorelli’s death, it occurred to him that Annie could be something else entirely: the intended victim of the fire that destroyed the house that she, too, had moved into.

Could the previous vandalism of Christina’s car have been a message meant for Annie? Or was he reaching, aching to attribute these crimes to Reg Edge solely because he wanted the bastard to be guilty? Especially since he couldn’t imagine Edgewood going to such extremes when it sounded a lot more like he was angling to maneuver Annie into his bed with his checkbook.

“You might as well tell him about the calls, too,” Christina told her sister. “After all, it was you who told him about
Katie
, wasn’t it?”

When Annie dropped her gaze, Christina pressed, “Oh, come on. Who else could it have been?”

“I couldn’t help it,” her sister blurted. “He said I’d go to jail for some stupid parking tickets if I didn’t—”

Christina zeroed in on Harris, her gaze as sharp as broken glass. “You
threatened
my sister?”

“If you ever sit down for a hand of poker with me,” Harris said, trying to break the tension with a half smile, “consider yourself forewarned. I play a mean bluff.”

“No surprise there,” she said, reminding him she’d already pegged him for a cad and a liar. Or at least she wanted to believe it—when she wasn’t kissing him back or trusting him to catch her child.

But that wasn’t fair, was it? Reading anything into actions she’d taken while desperate or drugged. Telling himself not to be pathetic, he shoved the memories aside . . . or tried to.

Instead, he remembered holding her hand up on the jetty while pointing out the stony hulk of the abandoned lighthouse on Willet’s Point. Hearing her ask, “You’re not the same man, are you?”

I sure as hell don’t want to be.
It was a thought that left him aching. Left him realizing he not only wanted her safe, but just plain
wanted
her, God help him.

And there was not a damn thing he could do about it.

Drawing a deep breath, Christina told herself her that coming clean with Harris—as much as she dared, anyway—was the right thing. Still, her voice shook as she asked, “You know how I told you I heard a female voice, back on that first night when the garage was broken into and the alarm disabled?”

“Sure,” he said, “the one we’ve been thinking must have come through the hacked baby monitor.”

“Well, Annie got an anonymous call on her cell a few days back from some woman claiming she’s our mother.”

“So you really want me to tell him everything?” her sister asked, uncertainty in her eyes.

Nodding, Christina fought to steady her voice, to radiate a confidence she wasn’t feeling, as well as the faith that they could trust him. “My daughter could’ve died in that fire. An officer
did
die, and for all we know, it’s related to this woman somehow.”

“Why don’t we all sit down?” Harris waved them toward the sofa.

Annie meekly went to one end while Christina claimed the other. Harris took one of the two upholstered chairs, which he angled to face them.

Looking at her sister, he asked, “So, what was it this woman wanted?”