Blood Bond (21 page)

“Have you spoken to her neighbor? Is that why you think that, Mrs. Mentis?” Joe asked gently.

“I—”

He sensed that she was considering telling a lie. And that if she did, it would be a rare event. He didn't want her to lie, wanted to let her keep that one bit of dignity.

“If you do know anything about that trip, you can help her best by sharing your information with us,” Joe said. “Where she stayed, who was with her, if she stopped at any restaurants or businesses, if there are people who can vouch for her whereabouts.”

“My daughter doesn't need an alibi,” Carl muttered, but the defiance had left his voice. “Why would she—even if she was a killer, which she never in a million years would be—why now? Why kill Gail all these years later, when it doesn't even make any difference?”

Joe knew what he was saying: Nothing would get Deanne back into San Diego State, into the life she'd left behind. Nothing would undo the marriage she'd made to a man she never loved, or unmake the decisions to act out her frustrations in violence. Even if she'd nursed a grudge all those years, something would have had to happen—something big—to make her act now.

“Did you ever threaten Marva Groesbeck? Gail's sister? Or Aidan McKay?” Joe asked, keeping his voice without inflection.

“Now, you listen here—” Carl Mentis was out of his chair, blocky face flushed with indignation. “Deanne could barely keep herself going from one day to the next. Why would she go dragging up the very reasons for her misery? Why would
we
?”

Joe shrugged; it seemed obvious enough to him. “It was her friend who died. Maybe Deanne feels Jess's memory should be kept alive. Contacting Marva Groesbeck and Aidan McKay could be a reminder that someone still remembers Jess, still cares about what happened to her. That could be seen as a compassionate gesture, one victimized girl trying to do the right thing for another one.”

Dorothy said nothing, but when Joe took his leave a few minutes later, she barely said goodbye. He could tell that the idea—of her daughter as compassionate victim, even all these years later—had lodged itself and taken the woman on a new path, one that promised faint hope, no matter how illusory.

OF COURSE,
everything he'd told the heartbroken mother was a lie. Because of the panties.

You didn't have to be a cynic to realize that no lost, wounded girl mourning the disappearance of her own childhood would choose such a sexualized token.

But what about an enraged adult who'd been on the jilted corner of a love triangle a little too often?

Was it possible that all that anger could be mixed together—the ruined college days, the loss of her marriage—into a cocktail of rage that made Deanne Mentis lash out indiscriminately?

He needed to check in with Keith Oberlin and see if he'd received any recent threats or visits from his ex. Back in Deanne's neighborhood, he drove slowly past her townhouse. There was no car in the drive, and the front porch was swept and neat.

Joe rang the neighbor's door, three units down. This porch was decorated with a leering witch sitting on a pumpkin.

The door was answered by a woman in her early forties, hard miles evident in the creases around her eyes and mouth, into which makeup had settled and caked. Her smile was inviting, though, and she offered a soft hand to shake.

“Don't mind the kids,” she said. Behind her, two toddlers pushed a small plastic grocery cart at cross-purposes. One would make a little headway, only to have the other push it back in the other direction. In a playpen a big baby held itself upright with chubby hands on the rails and laughed. “I watch these three while their moms work.”

“No problem,” Joe said. He remembered when Taj and Madiha were this age, the round clumsiness of their arms and legs, the smiles punctuated by only a couple of teeth. “We can talk here, if it makes it easier.”

They sat on a pair of overstuffed recliners. One of the toddlers immediately came over and clambered into Raquel Seavy's lap and began playing with the buttons on her shirt. Seavy didn't seem to mind.

“I always help Deanne out when I can,” she said. “She's had such a hard road. And with the . . . you know.”

“I'm sorry, I don't—”

“The
violence,
” she said in a near whisper. “I'm not a stranger to that myself. My first husband . . . but that was long ago.”

Joe found it odd that Deanne would be open about the attacks, especially since she made no mention of them when he talked to her the week before. “So Deanne told you about the attacks on her ex and his girlfriend?”

Seavy looked at him carefully, eyes widening. “You mean on
Deanne,
” she said carefully. “How Keith attacked her.”

Joe paused.
Oh
. Before he could respond, his phone rang, and he checked the screen: Bertrise.

He made a rare decision to let it go to voice mail. It wasn't like a few minutes would make a difference, considering he was all the way out in Lodi. He slipped the phone in his pocket.

“Let's back up. Tell me what Deanne told you about her relationship with Keith Oberlin.”

“Well now, I've only known her about a year. And not well, mind you; she's so busy with her job, and her parents live nearby. She's a good daughter, Deanne is, always doing things for her mom and dad. But I see things, and we got to talking.”

“When you say you ‘see things,' what do you mean?”

Seavy's eyes flared. “How about that poor woman coming home sobbing? And I've seen her hold Monica tight to her after she's been at her father's, like she's scared to death for her safety. And to think that man is trying to get custody of that little girl—”

That was news; if Deanne's ex was trying to take her daughter away from her again, it would certainly raise the emotional stakes.

“And did Deanne talk to you about this?”

“Not at first, no, but she'd come over here for a cup of coffee now and then, and of course I watch Monica in the evenings if Deanne has plans. After a while she told me all about everything. Like I said, I know how it goes. Keith was good to her when they first got married. But after a while, when things weren't perfect anymore, he started to take things out on her. Men get frustrated, you know.” She looked at Joe as though she was sorry to have to reveal an ugly truth. “They can't seem to help it.”

“Deanne told you Keith hit her?”

“Yes. And not just when they were together. He's done it a few times since then, if he found out she had a date or something like that. I always tell her to report it, but Deanne, she doesn't want any more trouble. She's worried it could complicate a custody battle, if it comes to that, but I ask her, how can it complicate things? No court would give a young child to a violent man, even in these messed-up times.”

Joe was certain that Deanne had deceived her friend, and that it hadn't been difficult. But it wasn't cold calculation, he thought; Deanne was protecting herself. Every lie she told helped her to believe her fiction a little more strongly: that she'd only been defending herself when she attacked the man whose real crime was not wanting her anymore. That the woman he now loved deserved to share in Deanne's pain—which Joe believed was very real.

Another woman might have gone through the incident thirteen years ago and come out unscathed. Picked up the pieces and chosen a new direction, set out without looking back.

For Deanne, it seemed to have triggered a cancer of shame and anger that had been brewing all these years, until she learned to cover it seamlessly and justify her actions to herself. Was it enough to make her go after Gail? With the added pain of rejection and the potential loss of her child, could it have pushed her to the kind of rage it would take to claim a life?

“Tell me about her trip.”

Some of the anxiety in Seavy's taut expression relaxed. “Well, she met a new man a while ago. A nice man, too, to hear her tell it. Works in banking, good-looking, a widower.”

“You've met him?” Joe tried to keep his voice neutral.

“Not yet. My husband Bill and I want to have them to dinner, but he has to travel a lot for his job. But we're going to, soon.”

“Mmm. So Deanne and her boyfriend went to Napa?”

“Yes. And she was so excited about the trip, they were going to have a spa day and go wine tasting, all the romantic stuff.”

“So she left Saturday. The twenty-ninth.”

“Let's see . . . yes, that's right. She dropped Monica off here with her things.”

“The boyfriend picked her up?”

“No . . . no, she was going to leave her car at his place.”

“Do you know the boyfriend's name?”

“No. Steve, that's his first name. I don't know that Deanne ever told me his last name.”

Joe nodded. “All right. And when she returned?”

“Monday morning. They got up and drove straight back. Deanne looked tired. She came and picked up Monica, oh those two were happy to see each other. Couldn't have pried them apart for anything. And Deanne brought me a huge box of See's chocolates. She pays me, too, you know, same rate as my day kids, but Monica's so easy, she's my little helper when she's around, setting the table and cleaning up after herself like a girl twice her age.”

“What did Deanne tell you about her trip?”

For the first time Seavy looked unsure of herself. “She didn't say much. Detective, this is a big step for a woman. A trip with her boyfriend . . . that's
private
. I mean she said they went to some wonderful restaurants, drank wine—I didn't pry.”

Joe got out a card, handed it to Seavy, who held it just out of the toddler's curious grasp.

“Look, I'd appreciate it if you'd call me if anything at all changes. If Deanne . . . looks upset, or if she plans any more trips.”

“You're not telling me what this is really about, are you, Detective?” Seavy gave him a look that was part reproach and part mistrust. “What's really going on? Is Keith up to something, something he can use in that custody battle?”

Joe avoided the question and thanked Seavy for her time. In the car, he listened to the voice mail from Bertrise. The news couldn't have surprised him more.

Aidan McKay had been attacked in his own garage.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

ODELL WAS HALFWAY OUT
of the car before Joe pulled the Charger to a complete stop in front of Aidan's Walnut Creek townhouse.

“Wait, Odell, if you fall out and get run over you'll contaminate the scene.”

Odell cursed him colorfully.

Aidan was being treated at Monte Vista Regional Hospital. The wounds weren't life-threatening, a mild concussion and several dozen stitches, but he'd be out of commission for a while. It would be tomorrow before the doctors would let anyone interview him. Joe had sent a uniform to pick Marva up and take her to the station; he wanted to be the one to tell her about Aidan, to see how she reacted.

Gervais held up a gloved hand and gave them the finger as a greeting. “Where's Bertrise?”

“She's talking to some more of those enviro-whackos,” Odell said with disgust.

“Hey, I donate to the Sierra Club,” Gervais said. “Got to do the right thing by this planet. You know, it's the Mother Ship. Ship of fools.” He began to sing, bending back down next to Paulette Huang, who was kneeling with her nose mere inches from a brownish pool on the concrete garage floor, about a foot behind the Volvo S60 parked there. “Ship of fools on a cruel sea . . .”

“Dang, you are one freaky fuck,” Odell said. “What the hell's that racket you're making?”

Gervais glanced up with a wounded look on his narrow, weathered face. Gervais's twin passions were hiking and birding with his equally leathery-skinned wife, Lisa. You'd think neither of them had encountered a bottle of sunscreen in their fifty years.

“That, my friend, is the Grateful Dead. Where did you sprout from again? Redneckvania?”

“Missouri, asshole,” Odell said, lowering himself in an ungainly fashion to kneel. “That blood?”

“Nah, brown gravy,” Paulette said. It was the first time she'd spoken. She was generally soft-spoken, but the smile playing about her lips reflected her enjoyment at being part of the exchanges among the team.

“Cat shit,” Gervais suggested.

“Your mother's lip gloss.” Paulette giggled.

“Ah, fuck you all,” Odell said, straightening painfully. He ignored the hand Joe offered him. “What happened, anyway?”

Gervais stood. “Well, McKay took a knock on the head. Fair amount of blood, obviously, but from what he looked like when they hauled him out of here, he'll heal right up. He'll have some stitches, though. Headache.”

“He was standing here?” Joe asked.

“Yeah, said he parked and was getting ready to get something out of his trunk. Garage door was up, since he just got home. Didn't see the guy, just went down. Said he was out for a few minutes and luckily he had his phone on him.”

“You got all that from him?” Joe said. “Chatty guy.”

“I got most of it from the medics,” Gervais admitted. “They had him strapped down pretty fast. You know how it is when they have to haul a lawyer. Scared to death of getting sued.”

“Edward,” Paulette chided. Besides Lisa Gervais, Paulette was the only other person who dared call him by his given name.

“All right,” Joe said. “Let's stick to what you know. Have you checked around outside?”

“I made a quick tour,” Gervais said. “I'll get back here in the morning. These guys of yours keep getting smacked around at night, it makes it tough on us.”

“Okay. Stands to reason the guy had been waiting, probably hidden behind something. Bush, tree, planter, like that.”

“On it,” Gervais said, nodding, his attention back on the blood pool. Paulette was scraping blood flakes onto a square of paper.

“What was in the trunk, anyway?”

“Water, mostly. Costco brand—you know, fifty bottles or whatever. Beer, Diet Coke, cat food. Guy likes to buy in bulk.”

“You put it away for him?” Odell asked. “He probably won't be lifting much for a couple a days.”

“Yeah, why don't you get on that, Odell.” Gervais gestured to the trunk of the car, where fingerprint powder was visible on the flat surfaces. “Got a few good prints, probably all McKay's.”

“What about the rest of the garage?” Joe asked. “See anything interesting?”

“Just the rock the perp used to pound on McKay's skull,” Gervais said.

“And his bloody gloves.” Paulette grinned shyly.

“Oh, and his address book.”

“And a note, ‘Dear Detective Joe, I'm guilty—' ”

“Okay, okay,” he said. “I get it, you got nothing.”

“Yeah, but at least we get to play with the toys,” Gervais said.

BERTRISE MET
him in the hall. It was almost nine; she'd had a day as long as his own, and it showed on her face. She'd just put on fresh lipstick, and the stroke of bright plum looked garish against the backdrop of fine lines and dark circles under her eyes.

The door to the interview room was closed. Marva was inside that room. The knowledge gave Joe an uneasy feeling, a heaviness in his shoulders.

He took a deep breath and pushed open the door.

Marva sat straight and still in one of the half-dozen chairs ringing the conference table. She was wearing a loose tunic of indigo blue, a subtle pattern of vines embroidered down the sleeves. Underneath she wore a tight-fitting top that hinted at the shape of her breasts.

To Joe, she had an almost ethereal beauty, even though—or maybe even especially because—her face seemed to have been chiseled with her grief, her features stark against her pale skin. Her eyes, more aquamarine than blue tonight in contrast with the deep hue of her clothes, were wide and her gaze was unfaltering.

“Ms. Groesbeck,” he said, torn between extending his hand to her and keeping the distance between them. He knew he needed to stay objective. If Bertrise hadn't been there, he wasn't sure he could have.

He settled on pulling out a chair for Bertrise; if she was surprised by the gesture she didn't show it. Joe ended up at the head of the table with the women on either side of him.

“Aidan McKay was attacked tonight,” he said. “He's going to be fine, and he's receiving treatment at Monte Vista Regional Hospital, where he's being kept overnight.”

Marva made a sound, a quick intake of breath accompanied by a thin moan, and her hands clutched at the neckline of her shirt. “Where did it happen?” she asked, her voice little more than a whisper.

“In his home.” Joe didn't elaborate, watching Marva carefully.

“Were you at home all evening?” Bertrise asked. She had a pen poised in her hand, a fresh notebook on the table.

Marva nodded faintly. “I was going to take dinner to Bryce and Mother . . . and the kids.”

“But you didn't?”

“That's right. I . . . well, I just didn't. It got to be close to dinnertime, and I was going to stop at Pasta Primavera, get something to go, but suddenly I just felt tired. So tired.”

“Your sister's service is tomorrow,” Bertrise said. There was no emotion in her voice, no accusation or commiseration. “Did Mr. Engler expect your help tonight, with anything?”

Marva shrugged. “The kids . . . but Isabel's there. And Mother.”

“Did you call to tell them you weren't coming?”

Marva looked down at the table. She rubbed at the edge with her thumb, a gesture Joe remembered from the night Tom Bergman was killed, the night he first met Marva. “I meant to,” she said softly.

Bertrise glanced at Joe. She narrowed her eyes; Joe read her suspicion.

“The officer tells me that he had to ring your bell several times before you came to the door.”

“I think I might have fallen asleep,” Marva said. “I was sitting on the couch. I remember there was still some light in the sky when I sat down.”

“So there's no way you can prove where you were all night. You didn't call a friend, go out for cigarettes, anything like that.”

Marva laughed shortly, a surprising sound, and glanced up sharply at Bertrise.

“If you're thinking I attacked Aidan, you must be thinking I killed my sister, too. The one I'm burying tomorrow.” She turned to Joe. “Do
you
think I killed Gail?”

With the question out like that, Joe felt he'd lost any scant advantage he'd had coming into the room. There was no fear in Marva's expression, no accusation, no anger. But there was something else, that thin blurred connection he'd felt from the first time they'd met, and it was alive with energy now, the current between them charged and, it seemed to him, dangerous.

“The night Mr. Bergman was killed,” he said, watching her carefully, “you told me that you were at the dinner table when your sister went outside and discovered his body.”

Marva raised one eyebrow but said nothing. After a moment Joe cleared his throat.

“That is not true.”

“No,” Marva said. “No, I suppose it isn't.”

“Why did you lie?”

It wasn't the question he meant to ask—what was important was to get to the truth—but it was what he wanted to know. How her mind worked. What she'd been considering in the moment when she had the choice, tell him what really happened, or not. Was she protecting Gail? Herself? Were there vulnerabilities he didn't know about, dangers only Marva perceived?

Marva blinked once, slowly, and moistened her lips with her tongue. Joe watched and realized that stirring in his gut wasn't just curiosity, or empathy, or even the drive to prove Marva innocent—there was desire there, too, thick and muddy and unbidden.

“I suppose I lied to keep things from getting more complicated,” Marva said, not so much defeated as distant. Not indifferent—but well on her way. “But that never works, does it?”

Bertrise looked between the two of them; from her quizzical glance Joe knew she sensed something. “What would work now,” she said crisply, “is to tell us exactly what happened. In the order it happened. And don't leave anything out.”

“All right. Gail went to get the dessert started, and I listened to Harold Gillette go on about some aspect of water rights. To be honest I wasn't really paying attention. I'd already decided he was an arrogant prick and I'd had about enough. So I went to help Gail.

“She had a chocolate cake she was going to serve. We put it on a cake stand, and we garnished it, she had some edible flowers—pansies I think—and mint leaves and raspberries. It really was pretty. That's what Gail did best; she wouldn't bake the cake but she'd make it look perfect.

“She said she wanted to check on Tom. He'd stepped out a while before, maybe ten minutes . . . and I know she was thinking it doesn't take that long to smoke a cigarette.

“You said you wanted me to tell you everything.” Marva looked directly into Joe's eyes, and he was startled by the frank, unguarded look.

“Yes. Please.”

“What I was thinking was that Gail was having an affair with him. With Tom. So when she went outside, I figured they were . . . I don't know, making out, or something, and that made me angry.”

“You were angry that your sister was having an affair?” Bertrise asked.

“No.
No
.” Marva was emphatic. “Not the affair. That's just Gail—she couldn't stay away from the, I guess the excitement of someone new. I don't—didn't—expect her to resist.”

“So what were you angry about?” Joe asked.

Marva's expression shifted almost imperceptibly. “I was angry,” she said slowly, “that she was willing to risk getting caught. That she thrived on it. That there was a part of her that just wanted to—to burn everything down and take everyone with her—Tom, in this case, and Bryce and eventually the kids.”

After a moment Joe said: “And you.”

Marva fixed him with the bitterest smile he'd ever seen. “No. Not me. I may be the one person in the world that Gail didn't care to provoke.”

“And that makes you . . . angry?” Bertrise guessed, but Marva didn't spare her even a glance.

“So I went outside and I did see Gail, but she was standing there looking at Tom, only I didn't know it at the time because I couldn't see him, I couldn't understand why he'd gone around to the front of the house—but there's a little more light out there. It's pitch dark in back unless you turn on the landscape lights, and Gail hadn't. Anyway she was standing still . . . so still. I went up to her, as close as I'm standing to you now, and I was going to say something, say her name or something, and then I saw what she was looking at.”

“You saw Tom Bergman's body,” Joe clarified.

“Yes. And Gail saw me and she grabbed my arm and she squeezed it hard and she started to shake and she said ‘he's dead, he's dead,' and I knew it was true.”

“How could you know it was true?” Bertrise said skeptically.

“It was the way he was lying. It wasn't—
natural
. It wasn't a way you would fall if you were . . . aware. And there was all that blood, too, and of course we didn't know it wasn't his. It was . . . the blood was still spreading out, the puddle was getting bigger and bigger.”

“What did you do next?”

Marva didn't say anything for a minute. Joe could see her chest rise and fall very slightly as she breathed. “What I did was drag Gail back toward the house, and I took her arm and I squeezed back, as hard as I could. I would have slapped her if I thought I needed to. I've seen my sister fall apart before.”

Joe knew she was referring to Jess Bartelak's death; he also knew she was speaking only to him, indifferent to or even insensible of Bertrise across the table from her.

“And you thought it was your job to keep her from falling apart,” Joe said. He was barely breathing himself. “Did you think she killed him?”

Marva laughed harshly, an abrupt, ugly sound. “Of course not. She couldn't—but you have to remember, I know from experience how easy it is to end up with the wrong person taking the blame for things.”