Whatever Remains (14 page)

             
Ben nodded.

             
Further off the trail, under leaves, was the primary crime scene. The blood on the ground had dried almost black, and the wet copper smell of it was unmistakable.

             
“She bled out here,” Ben said. “This is where he stabbed her.”

             
Trey frowned. “Wait. Whoever did it had fresh clothes for Heidi. We forgot to ask Alicia if someone broke in.”

             
“I already thought of that.” Ben went back to the house, to the small concrete patio, and crouched by the back door. He waited until Trey caught up with him and flipped the welcome mat back. Winking up at them in the last bit of sunlight was a house key.

             
Trey whistled. “So he didn’t break in.”

             
“He might as well have been invited.”

10

             
“
I
think it’s a really sweet thing you’re doing,” Shannon said as she sliced a cucumber. “I do.”

             
“But?” Jade asked, and her mom lifted quizzical brows across the kitchen’s center island. “There’s always a ‘but,’ Mom. What is it this time?”

             
They looked just alike. Jade had a little dimple to the right of her mouth that had been her father’s (or so she’d been told), but otherwise, she was the spitting image of her mother, with better, non-eighties hair. There, though, the resemblance ended. Jade had never learned to perfect the big-eyed, innocent look her mom tipped up to her: the twinge of injury, the dash of confusion.

             
“What do you mean?” Shannon asked, in a voice that matched.

             
Jade sighed. “I’m not playing that game. You think it’s sweet…but?”

             
Her shoulders slumped, expression resigned. She cut a glance toward the entrance to the kitchen; a soft murmur of voices down the hall indicated that their guests had arrived and Jeremy was seeing them in. “Fine. You want the ‘but’? I don’t think you should let crazy grieving murder victims come over and be around your daughter. That’s the ‘but.’”

             
“They may be grieving, but they aren’t crazy,” Jade said, and dumped sliced carrots into the salad bowl.

             
“Someone
murdered
Heidi,” Shannon said in an indignant hiss. “What if whoever it is wants to finish off the whole family? And they’re
here
? Clara doesn’t need to be around that.”

             
A shiver went down her back, leaving her cold and dizzy, but she shook her head. “Alicia doesn’t have anyone to lean on right now. She’s not that different from me, and if I were in this position –  ”

             
“Don’t compare yourself to that woman,” Shannon cut her off, tone sharp. “You would never have let this happen to Clara.”

             
Jade’s hands stilled in the process of gathering celery on her cutting board. She locked eyes with her mom and was taken aback by the certainty she found there.

             
“Never,” Shannon averred, and pasted on a smile as Alicia and Grace entered.

Ben’s house was really his brother’s; he’d had a one bedroom apartment up until Chris had married and moved out of his own place. It wasn’t a huge step up, but the three bedroom ranch allowed him quiet and privacy, and his brother hadn’t done anything obnoxious with the builder-grade late-eighties interior of the home. It had all the charm of a Holiday Inn, and most of the time, that didn’t bother him in the least.

              Tonight, as he pulled a beer from one of the two six-packs Trey had brought over, he sat back in the tattered recliner and wished for even a modicum of hominess. He thought of Jess slicing cheesecake for Chris and wondered, of the two of them, which was the stupid brother. He still couldn’t figure that out.

             
“I didn’t know what you’d want,” Trey explained as he set a pack of Heineken alongside the Budweiser.

             
“Domestic,” Ben said, and reached with a socked foot to shove the Heineken toward his partner. “You can keep all that German shit for yourself.”

             
“Nationalist?”

             
“Set in my ways.” He twisted the top off his Bud, took a swig, enjoyed the moment while it lasted, then sat forward and reached for his yellow legal pad and the timeline he’d been sketching when Trey arrived. It was dark out, and his handwriting was nearly illegible in the lamplight, but he wanted his own accounting of things that was separate from the official white board map at the precinct; he wanted one that Woods and Riley and Rice weren’t privy to, just for his partner and himself. “So, let’s see where we’re at.”

             
“The lab has the key and the bloody leaves,” Trey said. He sat back on the couch and got comfy, toeing his sneakers off.

             
“Right.” Redding had refused to give his prints for elimination purposes. Ben was hoping Rice would finagle them a warrant. “Let’s go back to the beginning.”

             
“Heidi was found at nine sharp. Dr. Harding set time of death as an hour or two before, which puts her out the back door and looking for mystery snakes between seven and eight.”

             
Ben nodded. “Alicia was already down with her migraine.”

             
They stared at their respective beer bottles a moment.

             
“Redding is looking super fucking guilty,” Trey said. “That’s my official opinion.”

             
Ben wanted to smile. It had been a long time since he’d worked with a rookie, much less one this young. For every inconvenience, there was an unexpected note of brightness.

             
His phone rang and they both sobered; Ben could sense the anticipation across the coffee table. He picked up on the second ring. “Haley.”

             
“It’s Jason,” their CSI said. “I got a hit on the prints from Heidi’s coin purse.” There was something in his voice that might have been excitement. “They flagged a match to a closed juvie file.”

             
Ben’s stomach turned over as he listened.

             
“Asher McMahon.”

Alicia looked like hell. “I brought brownies,” she said as she passed the pan into Jade’s arms. Her eyes were red from what had to be near-constant crying, and her face had aged ten years in the past two days. Jade had thought about leaving her alone, maybe taking over a casserole, but had decided that it was a healthy Southern tradition to get out of the house and put on a brave face for a while. Sometimes the very thing the bereaved
needed was what they weren’t always given; a night of semi-normalcy would be better than crying at home. Alicia twitched a smile that she couldn’t hold.

             
“You didn’t need to do that,” Jade said as she set the brownies on the counter. She laid a hand on her neighbor’s shoulder and felt the sharp point of bone. “I told you I’d do all the cooking. All you and Grace have to do is eat.”

             
Alicia patted her hand. Her eyes glittered. “Bless your heart, honey. But I needed something to do. I scrubbed my house top to bottom.” She glanced away and shook her head, emotions getting the better of her.

             
“Well,” Jade said. She’d decided to play it upbeat, if for no other reason than she felt too awkward doing anything else. “You should be hungry, then. Jeremy worked his magic on the pork tenderloin.”

             
“You’re so sweet,” Alicia said in a thin whisper. “Both of you. And your mom. So sweet.”

             
“That’s what neighbors are for.” With a final, firm pat, Jade stepped away to check her rice on the stove.

             
“Your fella, too,” Alicia said behind her. “He’s been wonderful.”

             
She set the pot off the burner and reached for the butter dish. “Fella? Who, Asher?”

             
“Your detective. Detective Haley.”

             
The knife slipped off the butter and clattered against the glass dish. Jade twisted a look over her shoulder, pulse fluttering at the base of her throat. “How did you –  ”

             
“Oh, I didn’t mean to pry, but I couldn’t help but notice. The other night, when Clara went to him…” Her eyes looked dryer, and color popped in her cheeks; thinking about something besides her own personal nightmare was putting some life back into her. “She called him ‘Daddy,’ so I assumed…”

             
Jade sighed and turned back to the rice. “You assumed right. He’s Clara’s father; but he’s not
my
anything.” The melting butter smelled rich and warm; she added a palmful of salt.

             
“I know you’ve been seeing Asher.” Alicia sounded hesitant. “So I know you two aren’t together anymore; it’s only that…he’s been nice, is all. Detective Haley. I appreciate the way he’s looking after Heidi like this.”

             
If only he looked after his own child that way
, Jade thought sourly. “Can you hand me that bowl over there?” she asked, and when Alicia complied, and she had her eye-to-eye at the stove, she said, “Please don’t mention Ben being Clara’s dad to anyone. It could throw off the investigation.”

             
Her eyes widened; they were bloodshot in the corners and uneven in the way they opened. Her blinks were irregular. But the shock in them was fresh. “Oh, God.”

             
“It’s fine,” Jade assured, needled with guilt for even planting that seed of doubt. “No one knows that Ben and I have any history and it doesn’t matter anyway because I’m not involved in the case in any serious way. But it might slow things down if our connection got dragged into things.”

             
“Oh, God I had no idea,” Alicia whispered.

             
“Nothing’s been dragged anywhere yet,” Jade said, spooning the last of the rice into the serving dish with a decisive rap on the edge of the bowl. “So
it’s fine
.”

             
“I won’t say anything.”

             
“Good.” Suddenly, Jade wished like hell she’d listened to her mother and kept at arm’s length from the Lathams. She had no real reason aside from the prickles going up the back of her neck, but she wished it all the same. “If you’ll take that to the table, I’ll go get the girls.”

             
“Okay. Sure.”

             
Grace looked like a too-pale, creepy ghost kid from a horror movie; Heidi’s death had slapped her across the face and left her silent and shaking. She’d gone upstairs to visit with Clara at Jade’s behest, her blank stare and shuffling gait straight out of
The Grudge
. Clara was so bright by contrast – the thought of the neighbor girl being “murder-red” hadn’t affected her the way it would an older child – and Jade hoped some of that would put a little life back in Grace, for her mother’s sake if nothing else.

             
She climbed the steps barefoot, without making a sound, and tiptoed to Clara’s door, trying to sneak a listen into whatever conversation they were having, if any. She wanted to know if Grace was any less sullen away from her mother and that constant reminder of grief; what she hadn’t been looking for, or expecting, were the low hisses of whispers. Fast, hurried, scared-sounding whispers, rustling like the pages of a book. Jade lingered in the hall, ears arrested, with a view of the end of Clara’s bed, the lavender comforter and white lace dust ruffle. The girls were on the floor, close, their voices distinguishable from one another, but the words blurred.

             
“…but,” Clara said, and then there was a shuffle like bird wings.

             
“…No.” That was Grace: “…not supposed to…”

             
Dread skimmed like a finger down her spine. Girls traded secrets and gossip all the time, but there wasn’t a chance in hell Grace was chatting about secret crushes.

             
Jade cleared her throat in a too-loud, obvious way, and waited for their startled gasps to fade before she poked her head in the door. The girls were on their knees on the floor, a sheaf of coloring pages fanned before them, crayons everywhere. Clara looked a little startled, but she smiled. Innocent. Grace ducked her head, eyes feral, pallor moving into geisha territory. Terrified.

             
Jade tried to keep her voice from shaking. “You girls ready to eat?”

“What’s Alicia Latham doing at your house?”

              On the other end of the cell pressed to his ear, Jade’s sigh had a surprised, gaspy quality to it. “What are you doing
stalking
me?”

             
“Someone murdered a girl and dumped her in my daughter’s yard. I can stalk.”

             
“You have got to stop pumping the ‘my daughter’ excuse. You’ve never used it before; don’t start using it now.”

             
He was parked down by the barn, in the writhing shadows of the oaks, watching the warm panels of light that fell through the windows onto the lawn, counting slim black silhouettes as people stepped out onto the walk. “Why’s she here?” he repeated, fingers drumming on the wheel.

             
“She –  ” There was a sharp crackle as the phone was muffled. “Let us know if you need anything,” Jade said, not to him, but to someone else, Alicia probably. Her voice sounded thin and faraway and much too sweet to have been meant for him. It had been, five years ago; she’d been sweet for him then. There was a rustle, a whispering sound. “I’m so sorry,” he thought he heard Jade say, and then two of the silhouettes up on the walk disengaged and one started down toward the garage, towing something waist-high: Alicia and Grace. The phone was unmuffled. “What do you want, Ben?”