The Off Season (5 page)

Fiorelli gave a bark of scoffing laughter, his breath rising like smoke in the frigid air. “Yeah, like Alphabetty never heard that back when she was a big, bad, broad-ass marine.”

“I’ve asked you not to call her that name,” Harris ground out. “Repeatedly.”

“It’s no big thing.” Zarzycki shrugged, her half smile contrasting with the narrow-eyed look she gave the sawed-off Italian. “I’ve been called worse, by better people.”

Fiorelli grinned at her, something that looked surprisingly like real affection plastered on his ugly mug. “Betcha have, at that. She’s all right, Chief.”

Harris backed off, reminding himself that Aleksandra Zarzycki, whose A-to-Z of Polish names had inspired the nickname Alphabetty a half hour into her first shift, was up for whatever the department’s good old boys could dish out. A former MP just as he was, she’d proven tough and smart enough not to let anybody run her over.

“And, anyway,” Zarzycki continued, “this stuff with the car, it feels more directed to this particular resident. For one thing, look at the rest of the garage.” She gestured toward a ladder hung on hooks and neatly arranged shelves containing cans of paint and boxes of lawn tools, a treasure trove for vandals, all untouched. “Besides, in my experience, this is the kind of word a woman gets called when she’s not up for whatever some man has in mind.”

“A piece of ass, you mean.” Fiorelli rubbed the roll beneath his chin, clearly warming to the theory. “Could be a jilted lover, maybe, or some guy who wants to do her.”

“Dr. Paxton only just moved back from Texas last month.” Harris couldn’t imagine she was settled in yet, much less thinking about allowing a new man into her life. Not a woman like Christina. “And she’s a recent widow, with a little kid.”

“Rich widow, from the looks of her ride,” Fiorelli pointed out. “You know one of these things costs way over a hundred grand? More than my damned house, some of ’em.”

“You’re kidding.” Zarzycki’s blue-eyed gaze swept over the big car, a new respect in her expression. “Guess I should’ve studied harder, gone the med-school route instead of running off to the recruiter.”

“Cost her a pretty penny to get that shit buffed out and repainted, too, I can tell you,” Fiorelli went on, reminding Harris how the guy drooled over car magazines at his desk and rode around in a vintage muscle car with a shaggy black doofus of a dog on his days off. Because everyone should have a hobby besides being an annoying little bastard.

“Or her insurance, anyway,” Harris said before changing the subject. “You see a security camera out here?”

“Nope. Must’ve figured the garage was safe enough since it was kept locked. You see the keypad out there?”

He made a mental note to ask Christina whether she’d secured it earlier. “Camera on the back door might’ve caught it if it’s working.”

“Maybe,” Zarzycki said. “Unless it’s the kind dependent on the phone line. Speaking of which, you might want to have a look at this, Chief. See what you make of it.”

While Fiorelli stayed behind to take cell photos of the damage to the car—and slobber over
that fine Nazi engineering
, as he put it—Zarzycki led Harris to the rear corner of the house, where a cable rose from the ground to connect with a metal utility box. Shining her flashlight just beneath it, she steadied the beam, giving Harris a few moments to study the partly stripped, corroded wiring.

“Before we found the car,” she told him, “I would’ve said it had been rusting for a long time before it finally gave up the ghost. But considering the c-word, I’ve gotta go with Option B. Some bastard yanked out the loose wire because he meant to scare her.”

“Except there must be some kind of system backup that automatically triggers a call from the monitoring company when it detects a cut line,” Harris said, thinking that Christina’s frantic activation of the panic alarm might have been beside the point. “And I’m not sure you’re right about this being some frustrated lover. She tells me there was a voice over the baby monitor. A female’s.”

“A woman, hmm?” Zarzycki frowned. “Somebody not liking the attention the pretty new doc’s getting from her man?”

Harris murmured in agreement, thinking that could be right, whether or not Christina had welcomed any of it. Or Fiorelli, who knew this town and its inhabitants as well as anybody, could have a point, too. Maybe their vandalism-prone burglars had switched up their MO a little, but they could still be getting off on sticking it to randomly selected rich folks.

“So, this dead husband of hers,” Zarzycki continued. “We know anything about him?”

“Older surgeon. Part of a thriving practice in Dallas when he went out for a swim with a bum ticker.” Or at least that was what Renee had told him.

“Back when I was in Iraq, I had this uncle die,” Zarzycki told him. “He’d been married to my aunt forever.”

“And this is relevant because . . . ?” Harris prompted, impatient to get back inside, partly for the coffee. But mostly because he had a boatload of new questions for Christina.

“Turns out he had another kid. Some kid from an affair that nobody in the family knew of. Thing is, he’d put this kid’s name on his insurance papers. Made him a beneficiary right alongside of his own wife and my cousins.”

“That must’ve come as a shock.”

“Oh, yeah, and not a happy one, even though that little policy was hardly worth the squabble. Or the legal fees and the bad feelings. But my point is, when someone dies, their secrets ooze up to the surface. And a lot of ’em create hard feelings. Especially when there’s money on the line.”

Harris nodded, wondering what the hell a bright young woman like this was doing wasting her time in a backwater department so small it had only one dedicated detective—currently out, recovering from back surgery—and no room for advancement. And wondering whether she could be right about something from Christina’s past coming back to haunt her. Something that had followed her all the way from Texas.

Before heading back into the house, Harris tapped at the oversize front door, painted to match the house’s trim in a shade he suspected had one of those fancy, historically inspired names that women and antique nuts went for but that he would just call blue. When Christina didn’t answer, he stepped inside, closing off the chatter of the surf behind him.

He called her name, thinking that as nervous as she’d been, she’d probably run back upstairs to check on the kid or something.

Instead, he found her at the kitchen table, exactly where he’d left her. Except she’d slumped forward in her chair, her head resting on the arm partly wrapped around her half-full mug. With her eyes closed and her breathing heavy, she looked so damned peaceful.

Hard to believe she’d conked out like that, but sometimes stress hit people that way. Unable to cope with a situation, they simply shut down. Especially at—his glance touched on the microwave clock—4:23 a.m.

Wishing he could spare her this bad news, he laid his hand on her shoulder. “Christina.”

With a murmur of complaint, she stirred. The silky texture of her hair sliding beneath his palm drove a fragment of memory like a splinter beneath his flesh. He heard the summer waves outside the screened window of his uncle’s rental cottage, felt the warmth of damp air heavy with the smells of salt and fish and seaweed. Saw her big eyes looking up at his, her light-brown hair fanned out on the pillow. “I think—I think I love you, Harris,” she whispered, “as much as it scares me.”

He jerked his hand away and stepped back from the table, pulse throbbing at his temple. He had to get his head straight, put the past behind him. Or at least remember that whatever pain he’d caused her had come back on him a thousandfold.

“Christina.” It came out gruffer this time. “I’m gonna need you to wake up now.”

“What?”
She straightened abruptly, brown eyes flaring in alarm.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you,” Harris said. “You okay? You need some more coffee or—”

She pushed her hair behind her ears, her eyes snapping into focus with impressive speed. “What was it the officer found in my garage?”

“Your car.” He grimaced. “I’m sorry to tell you somebody’s vandalized it.”

“
Doug’s
car?” A deep flush rose from her neckline. “Why would anybody—I should go see.” Pushing back from the table, she stood, looking unsteady and uncertain.

“You don’t—there’s no need to go out there.”

She frowned at him. “What is it? What did she—what did this person do?”

She,
she had said. “Four slashed tires,” he told her. “And some carving on the driver’s-side door panel.”

“Carving?”

He nodded. “Obscenity, I’m afraid. The kind directed at a woman.”

“I’ve heard the word
bitch
, Harris.”

He winced. “Not that. The, um . . . the other one.”

“
That
one? Really?” Christina’s eyes sparked with indignation, her cheeks flushing. Shaking her head, she said, “I don’t get any of this. The woman on the monitor, the damage to the car. I can’t think of anybody who would—”

“Can’t you?” he asked, deliberately giving the question a little hang time. “Are you sure about that?”

“Of course I’m sure. I have no idea, unless somebody has a grudge against the kind of people who own places like this one. But this house isn’t even mine. I’m only staying here because my mom arranged it with her rich clients.”

Rich
was a relative term, he’d learned. He remembered how he’d once thought of her and her parents—her dad a respected local pharmacist and her mom the owner of her own business—as rich, miles above a Creekside kid like him. Even Christina, who was living far better than what he now realized was an average, middle-class level, didn’t seem to see herself as wealthy, apparently oblivious to the fact that others would. “I understand, but whoever did it—they might have the wrong idea. After all, a car like yours . . .”

She crossed her arms and huffed out a breath. “That stupid car. It was Doug’s baby, never mine, and I meant to sell it after he—but my old Highlander’s transmission went out right after the funeral. Then things got so hectic, and I—”

He held up a hand. “You don’t have to justify driving a nice car. Not to me or anybody.”

She speared him with a look. “You wouldn’t think so, would you?”

“There was something else, too,” he informed her, “out behind the house. Phone line looks like somebody could’ve jerked it loose.”

She dropped back into her chair and crossed her arms. Her face going pale, she said, “Then s-someone really
was
here. Inside the house, with Lilly and me?”

“There’s no evidence of a break-in,” he reminded her, knowing he’d be just as rattled by the thought of an intruder inside his own house when his son was sleeping over. “Have you noticed anything out of place?”

She shook her head.

“That side door into the garage. Did you lock it tonight?”

“Usually, I try to,” she said. “But this evening, I was running late and in a hurry, trying to get some groceries in so Renee could get home. Then Lilly heard me and—so, no, I’m not sure. I’m afraid I’ve been a little scattered lately.”

She lifted her mug to her mouth.

He took a sip from his as well, meaning to give her a moment to regroup. Except that the dark, rich brew sent such a shock of pleasure through his system. “Understandable, but I’ll tell you one thing. You make a hell of a cup of coffee.”

She managed a faint smile. “Coffeemaker here’s amazing. And I found the owners’ secret stash of magic beans in the back of the freezer.”

“If you’re confessing to a crime—”

“Too late,” she said. “You’re drinking it. Which makes you an accomplice.”

“Accomplice, no,” he said before savoring another mouthful. “Accessory after the fact . . . maybe.”
Gladly.

“Don’t worry,” she confessed. “I already e-mailed the owners, begged forgiveness, and offered to replace the coffee. They just laughed it off and told me to enjoy it.”

“I don’t doubt it. You were always such a rule-worshipping good girl.”

Her smile faltered. “Yeah. But then, I learned early on about what happens when I—when I stray outside the lines.”

A strained silence poured into the space between them, a quiet so complete his breathing swelled to a roar. With the past pressing in around them, he forced himself to focus on the faint sounds from outside. His officers’ murmured conversation as they went about their work reminded him why he was here.

“So why would someone want to trash your car?” he asked, circling back to see if he could get a different answer. “Or scare you over the baby monitor? Because this kind of thing feels different, way more personal than the break-ins we’ve been dealing with around here these past few months.”

She looked down to her coffee. “Truly, I have no idea.”

Remembering her cut-off response earlier, he asked, “Any troubles at the new job? Somebody put out that you got the position?”

She gave a huff of disbelief. “Are you kidding? They’d been advertising for a while, everybody working tons of overtime. They practically had a party when I showed up, and everyone’s been friendly.”

“Any of them, well,
too
friendly?”

“You mean, like sexually?” She wrinkled her nose. “Nothing like that. Nothing. And, trust me, I’m still in survival mode, struggling to keep my head above water. I’m definitely not looking and don’t plan to be for a very long time. If ever.”

He nodded, understanding. Survival mode had been his life, both before and after Renee.

“Sorry, but I have to ask,” he said, thinking about Zarzycki’s uncle. “Your husband . . . I understand he was older?”

Her eyes rose to meet his. “What would that possibly have to do with—”

“How long were you two married?”

“Three years,” she said. “And before you ask, we met on this whitewater rafting trip another resident had talked me into. I’d never been before—I ended up in the river, half-drowned and freezing before Doug pulled me out. He was an avid sportsman, so he had one of those space blankets.”

Her eyes misted with the memory, and he could see that her loss was still a raw wound. That she’d married the guy for love, not money.