Whatever Remains (7 page)

             
“That’s what I was
doing
,” she complained.

             
“Uh-huh.”
              “Mommy?”

             
Jade turned away from the arena and glanced down at Clara; she was sitting beside the bench where Jade perched, playing with a Breyer model appaloosa, sunlight dappling her dark hair with bright spots of honey. Her play clothes – jeans, soft white t-shirt – were dusted with barn dirt, her knees damp where she knelt in the grass. She pushed her hair back and glanced up at Jade, little face worked into the most serious of expressions.

             
“Mommy,” she asked in a voice innocent of the horror of her words,” are we gonna get murder-red too? Like Heidi?”

             
Jade’s heart gave a great leap and settled into a driving, shallow rhythm. Kids were curious, she knew that, and of course Clara wanted to know more about the “bad thing” the adults had stayed up all night discussing across the kitchen table, lamp throwing twisted shadows across their faces. But, stupidly, up till this moment, she’d thought of Heidi’s death as a singular event. It had happened; they were dealing with it. She hadn’t stopped to consider that Heidi could be just the first knocked down in a grizzly game of dominos.

             
She felt her expression devolving and caught herself, forcing a tight smile for her daughter’s benefit. She wasn’t going to start thinking serial killer until she had a reason to.

             
“No, baby,” she assured, “we’re not.”

             
Seemingly satisfied with that answer, Clara returned her attention to her model horse, moving him in what was supposed to be a canter through the short brush of grass.

             
The day had turned out warm, the autumn sun pouring over them in thick molten waves, a dozen varieties of songbirds calling on and on in what had become a wedge of trilling, formless sound. The barn was clean, the old smells of shavings and sweet hay lifting through the breeze, and the horses were beginning their mosey to the pasture gates; Jade saw her dressage gelding, Atlas, nudging Merry the pony away from the water trough. It was a typical, beautiful afternoon…but it was tainted. As she watched Jeremy’s boot heels strike through the sand, a picture from the night before – Heidi on her back in the arena, arms outstretched – slapped across her mind and she shuddered. She couldn’t blame their lessons for canceling. This place she loved – her home – was giving her the creeps; she couldn’t ask outsiders to come here willingly so soon after…

             
A car door shut with a metallic thud on the other side of the barn, on the parking pad, and she scooted to the end of the bench, craning her neck to peer through the back barn doors and down the aisle to the bright square of light that was the front entrance. A moment later, a silhouette appeared, moving down the aisle toward her, tall and male and wide-shouldered. Ben, she knew, without seeing any of the details. She knew the way he moved, the way he carried himself.

             
He didn’t know it, but she’d stopped hating him some time ago. Now, he filled her with an empty sort of regret. And today, in the wake of what had happened, he sent a shot of assurance through her chest; however badly he’d wrecked her head, she could trust him with their lives. She knew that.

5

B
en had had plans for his day: get a full history from Alicia Latham, begin pulling in potential witnesses, establish an official timeline for the murder. Instead, he’d spent most of his day talking to the press, arguing lead detective status with Woods and trying to bribe Harding into bumping up the autopsy; no such luck: the autopsy was tomorrow at eight a.m. Firm. Trey
had
managed to get more out of Alicia: Heidi’s father was no longer in the picture – he’d split five years ago – and Alicia worked at the hospital as a billing and coding specialist. Heidi had been a straight A student; Heidi had gotten along well with all her friends; Heidi had never backtalked or disobeyed…etc. And Asher McMahon had liked watching her when he was at Canterbury. That last tidbit wasn’t much of a lead, but given his useless day, it was better than nothing.

             
He didn’t even bother going up to the house when he got to Jade’s; the moment he was out of the car down by the barn, he heard Jeremy’s voice floating up from the arena, which meant Jade was on dinner duty. As he started down the aisle, he saw a flash of movement, a bright wedge of face that slipped out of sight when his boot heels struck concrete; she knew he was here, but wasn’t giving up her hiding spot.
Fine
, he thought sourly,
be a stubborn…

             
They were sitting at the little spectator bench tucked against the back of the barn, the one with the view of the arena beneath the flickering leaves of a paper birch. His girls. Clara was in the grass, playing with a toy horse, dark hair brushed and gleaming and tumbling over her tiny frail shoulders. Jade was on the bench, reclining back against the red barn wall, one leg drawn up, the other swinging below. She was in tan breeches, tall socks and short boots, a loose green tank top with a smudge of dirt on the swell of one breast. She’d been riding; her hair was French braided and she wore no earrings, only a faint touch of makeup, another dirt streak on the high regal line of her cheekbone. Whatever their differences, their bitter misunderstandings, his physical attraction to her had never been an issue. He’d wanted her always, and he didn’t suppose that was ever going to change.

             
He wished he’d changed into street clothes. He shoved his hands in his pockets and watched her eyes – dappled with sunlight and blue as old worn denim – move deliberately over him. They were hard to read. “Hey.”

             
His voice snatched Clara from her imaginings and she came to her feet light as a fairy, face exploding with delight. She was too young to hate him for his absences. “Hi, Daddy!”

             
“Hi, love.” He picked her up, because she wasn’t too cool for that yet, and because he’d spent his day talking about a dead girl. “What are you up to?”

             
“Watchin’ Uncle Remy teach.” She slipped one small arm around his neck and twisted so she could see the arena and her “uncle.” “He’s a good teacher.”

             
“Yeah. And it’s nice that he gets to be the one doing the riding sometimes.”

             
Jade cleared her throat; over Clara’s shoulder, her slender dark brows were lifted in silent censure, expression that strange blend of neutral and peeved that still eluded him. “Clara-baby, how ‘bout you run down and ask Remy when he’ll be finished up so I know if I have time to go pop the chicken in the oven.”

             
Ben put her down, reluctantly, and she went scampering off, a wood sprite flitting through her magical kingdom. He supposed if a kid had to grow up somewhere, he couldn’t hand pick anyplace better than a horse farm.

             
“Are you here about the case?” Jade asked. She straightened from the wall, the curve of her spine pulling her shirt tight across her breasts, highlighting the slim dip of her waist, the flare of her hips.

             
He gave her a flat look, trying to keep his eyes on her face. “You told me to make some time for Clara.”

             
She frowned, and glanced away to cover it. “You could have called.”

             
“I could have. But in case you didn’t notice, I’m smack in the middle of a murder.”

             
“God,” she sighed. “Can you not do that?”

             
“What?”

             
“Pretend to be this injured guy whose kid I’m keeping from you.” He didn’t respond. “The only thing that ever came between you and your daughter was your own black heart and your string of bimbos.”

             
“I don’t date bimbos,” he countered, leaning back onto the wall and propping a boot against it.

             
“No.” She snorted. “You don’t ‘date’ anyone. That would be too chivalrous.”

             
Down at the arena, Clara scrambled onto the rail and Jeremy said something to his student; walked over to meet her, smiling. In a minute, she’d come flitting back to them and Ben would have to either invite himself to dinner or abandon his mission for the day.

             
“I need to ask you something,” he said, “relevant to the case.”

             
From the corner of his eye, he watched Jade stretch – the shift of lean muscle and bone beneath her clothes, the spill of shadow between her rounded breasts as they squeezed together – and relax again. One corner of her mouth curled downward in what might have been a frown; he got the impression she was disappointed. “Okay.”

             
She made him wish he smoked, so he had something to do with his hands in moments like these. “How close are you to Alicia Latham?”

             
She put her hands on the bench and shrugged. “We’ve been neighbors for about a year now. She and her girls moved in right after old Mr. Mitchum’s kids had him put in a home. Alicia came over the first day; she brought a pan of overdone brownies and asked if she could bring the girls and have dinner with us.”

             
Ben felt his eyebrows twitch. “She just invited herself over right away?”

             
“She couldn’t find her pots and pans,” Jade explained, watching Jeremy and Clara, “and she’d given the last of her cash to the movers. It wasn’t weird or anything. She’s just one of those super friendly people who you feel like you’ve known forever. She said we were both single moms and we had to stick together.”

             
“So the father was already gone?” He wanted to check for holes in Alicia’s story.

             
“Yeah. Apparently he was a real loser – wouldn’t pay child support, couldn’t hold down a job. I got the impression she asked him to leave.” Her eyes cut over to him, a fast flicker of blue. “And he didn’t put up a fuss.”

             
He made a face at her intimation. “Yeah, well, there’s lots of losers out there.”

             
She snorted.

             
“So you were close then.”

             
She turned to him, sun skimming golden down her profile; somewhere, way back in the irrational part of his brain that ran off instinct, he thought about shoving his fingers in her hair and tipping her face up to his. He’d done that before, back before this strange, prickly distance that separated them further than time or walls or miles.

             
“I never said ‘close,’” she said with another of those little frowns. “Alicia’s always liked the idea of us being close – we’re single mothers and neighbors and, in her words, ‘kindred spirits’ – but we never really got to the buddy stage. I have Jeremy and Mom and, to be honest, I wasn’t interested in pursuing close friendships.”

             
Because she didn’t trust people; because of him.

             
“What about the girls?” he asked. “Did Clara play with them?”

             
“Not unless they were all supervised together, which was almost never. Heidi and Grace are – were – home a lot by themselves. Alicia tried to get me to take Clara over, but
that
wasn’t happening.” Clara wasn’t even in preschool; with her unconventional job (and Jeremy’s, plus Shannon’s help when needed) Jade had been able to keep her at home and wasn’t going to enroll her until kindergarten. She’d dropped a half a dozen comments about the detriments of classroom environments and Ben hadn’t protested; the slower she got to grow up, the better. And to say Jade was protective was a massive understatement. “They were too old, anyway,” she continued. “Grace seemed to like playing the big kid, but Heidi didn’t want much to do with her, the few times they were around each other. Heidi didn’t want much to do with anyone, to be honest. She was quiet.”

             
Ben was taking shorthand mental notes. “Did Heidi and Grace come over here to ride?”

             
“No,” Jade said, immediately, voice relaxed; she didn’t even have to think about it. “Alicia was deathly afraid one of them would get hurt even getting
near
the horses. They were forbidden from riding. Sometimes they came to the edge of the property and stood at the fence to watch Jeremy and me ride, but that was it.”

             
The breeze was picking up, less gentle and more threatening; a low bank of clouds was building off to the west, thick and gray. Sunlight still danced over their heads, even brighter by contrast.

             
“Jade,” he said carefully. “What you just told me – it’s all true?”

             
She went stiff all over, muscles locking in place, hair flying as her head whipped around.

             
This wasn’t the first time he’d questioned her honesty.

             
“Yes,” she said through clenched white teeth. Her eyes were furious and gorgeous when she got like this. “Why in the hell would I make any of it up?”

             
Because someone’s lying
, he thought to her,
and I just don’t want it to be you
. But he said nothing because Clara was running through the grass, hair flapping flag-like behind her.

             
With masterful skill, Jade wiped her expression clean and found an easy smile for their daughter. “What’d he say?”

             
“Ten minutes,” Clara said, holding up all ten fingers to demonstrate that she knew how many that was.

             
Jade stood. “I’m gonna throw our dinner in before I come back down and feed the horses.” She held out a hand. “Come on.”

             
Clara – and Ben wanted to smile – skirted a glance his direction, eyes already big and pleading. “Can I stay here with Daddy?”

             
“I dunno. Can she?” Jade asked him.

             
He dropped down onto the bench and patted the seat beside him. He swore Jade called him an asshole under her breath.

There was a rhythm to the barn, a routine old as time. Jade led each horse up the dirt track from the pasture and into the barn, hooves clopping softly, their necks relaxed and heads bobbing. The shadows grew long and distorted and there was no rush, no urgency. The horses came in, stall doors thumped shut, latches clicked, feed rattled when it hit the bottoms of the buckets. Jeremy’s student dragged her horse up the hill, solemn-faced daughter following her as they went to their rig in the parking lot. Jeremy started toward the barn
, checking his watch. The clouds were tumbling in closer, but the last bright fingers of sunlight still shivered over them, flickering through the birch leaves.

             
This could have been his place, his home. He could have stayed here. Back when, Jade had been twenty-two and just renting Canterbury, she and her sissified friend. The farm had been shaggy, out of use, and there’d been something vulnerable and open about her; Ben could have slipped himself right into her life and stayed there. But he hadn’t. And he still thought that had been the best thing. And now Canterbury was Jade and Jeremy’s and they’d groomed it to their exact specifications. This place – just like the girl sitting next to him – was only his for snatches of time.

             
“…I made a painting of a pony,” Clara was saying in a high, chirpy, happy voice, legs swinging off the edge of the bench. “It looks like Merry, but his mane is orange!” She giggled; children found the most innocuous things delightful. Ben had never known what to make of that kind of innocence.

             
“Yeah?” He leaned forward and braced his forearms on his knees, head turned so he could watch her.

             
“Yeah. Remy put it on the refriger-ma-rator. He said it was really good. You wanna come see it?”

             
“Sometime I want to, but probably not tonight.”

             
Her face fell, went blank for a moment, but she recovered. She was, he realized, becoming used to his absence. That was a good thing, but it still sent a note of disappointment through him. He –