Blood Bond (24 page)

Aidan sighed. “We got back together. Did you know that?”

“What?” Despite the fear that had taken hold of her, Marva was incredulous. “You and Gail?”

“Don't sound so surprised,” Aidan rebuked her. “It was bound to happen.
She
came on to
me,
in case you're wondering.”

Marva could guess how it must have gone: a party where Gail wasn't getting enough attention. When Bryce wanted to leave, Aidan offered to bring Gail home after they finished their drinks.

And Gail was lonely enough, for once, to make do with him.

It was, possibly, her sister's most selfish act. For Gail, Aidan represented only a marginally more compelling dalliance than all the others; maybe there was even something genuine, some longing for the past, some element of affection or even—was it possible?—love for him, but mostly he was just a warm body on a lonely night.

But for Aidan it must have been everything, all over again.

For a moment Marva almost felt sorry for him.

Aidan accelerated. The engine purred as it surged; it was a far smoother ride than Marva's Subaru. All that money, she thought unexpectedly, her father's money, and she bought a sensible car. A
used
car. What had she been thinking? Gail had the Acura, and even Aidan had this. And Marva kept buying herself modest things, as though she had to provide the ballast for Gail's extravagant tastes.

“You're taking me to the mountain, aren't you?” she said quietly. “Just like Gail.”

“I never intended to take her there,” Aidan said, an edge to his voice now. Irritated. At
her
! The injustice of it stung. “She forced me.”

“Oh really, all hundred twenty pounds of her?”

Aidan shot her a look. “You of all people should know how stubborn she could be. She wouldn't listen—wouldn't accept what she had to do.”

“What was that?”

“Leave him,” Aidan said with conviction. “She had to leave Bryce. She went on and on about how she couldn't jeopardize his campaign. Some campaign—did you know he can't even declare until next year? By the time voters got to the polls, a divorce would be old news. As if anyone even cares about that here! For fuck's sake!”

“She refused to be with you because of
Bryce
?” Marva didn't bother to keep the derision from her voice.

“Well, and the kids.” He made a dismissive gesture with his wrist. “But they're young, they adapt. Hell, mine did. And besides, I know the best fucking lawyers around; we would have had custody locked down.”

“You thought she'd bring the kids and come live with you.” Marva said it more for herself than for Aidan: the idea was too outrageous to take seriously.

“In a
new
place. We would have gotten a new place, mine's too small. Marva, do you realize, the kids would have been like
this
.” He crossed his fingers tightly to illustrate. “Lainey's going to be five, and my girls are seven and eight.”

“Gail would never have come to you,” Marva said, suddenly angry. “And not because of Bryce. Because of
you
. She left you once already. And you haven't exactly become more impressive since then, have you?”

“She loved me,” Aidan said, jaw tense, accelerating, going faster and faster down the four-lane road. “And when we got back together, it was better than ever.”

“She
fucked
you,” Marva clarified, feeling her own rage escalate in response to Aidan's. “Along with Tom Bergman and Bryce and probably half a dozen other men. She couldn't resist, you know that. Gail needed to know every day that she was pretty and special, and that's all you were to her, just a little more proof.”

The blow was so unexpected that Marva felt her head bounce off the passenger window before she registered the impact. And then it hurt: a hard hit to her temple, and his USD class ring must have cut her because she felt a warm trickle of blood seeping down her jaw.

“Shut up,” he said. “We can do this easy or hard, Marva. I told Gail the same thing. She picked hard.”

Marva put her fingers to her head, felt the cut and the lump and the throb. “What did she do, laugh at you?”

Aidan gripped the steering wheel even more tightly as he took the turn into the park entrance—took it too hard, and hit the scree at the side of the road, fishtailing. Marva thought of the cops who patrolled here sometimes, looking for teenagers getting high and drinking; the trails were perfect for that.

But the cops looked for parked cars at the base. Aidan had no intention of stopping there.

“The park closes at dusk,” Marva said.

Aidan gave a grim laugh. “They don't man the gate after Labor Day, Marva,” he said. “Come on, give me a little credit.”

Marva shut her eyes and remembered: bringing the kids up for a picnic last year, Gail wearing Italian sandals and laughing as she picked her way up the smooth rocks; Marva unwrapping sandwiches and putting the sunscreen on Lainey and Marshall. No, there had been no guard, just a self-service kiosk where you were supposed to put your six dollars in an envelope and write your license plate number on the outside.

Gail had laughed and told Marva not to be such a damn saint when she stuffed the bills in the envelope.

They passed no cars as they began the twisting ascent. Only a faint glimmer of pink and orange remained in the sky off to the west, and as they rose above the foothills and the towns below winked on their evening lights, it was as beautiful as Marva had ever seen it.

“YOU KNOW
what they say about Girl Scouts,” Aidan said conversationally as he pulled to edge of the empty gravel parking lot. The car jounced over rocks and exposed tree roots; the only light came from a weak moon and his headlights. Marva could make out the dark shapes of the rocky outcropping that made up Paintbox Point. “Be prepared. Or maybe that's Boy Scouts, I don't know. Now sit tight,” he cautioned her. “You won't move very fast and I'm pretty fit for my age.”

She knew she had only seconds; she could hear him open the trunk and felt the car shake as he moved things around. She hit the locks, sealing herself inside, then flipped up her phone and raced through the screens—calls made, and there he was, she recognized the number: Joe. As she hit the green button, Aidan had his hand on the door handle. When he found it locked, there was a rapid-fire burst of clicking, he was hitting the unlock button on the remote over and over, and even though Marva reached across the seat and slammed her hand down on the lock, she was too late, it didn't work, the door was yanked open. Worse, she dropped the phone on the floor and it skittered under the seat.

Panic flooded her body as she saw that Aidan held lengths of orange ribbon looped around his palm.

“Come on out now, Marva.”

“No!”
The volume of her voice surprised them both. “No,” she repeated, and ignoring the pain in her head, the strange dullness along her arm, she pulled on the door handle with all her might.

She nearly got it shut again. But Aidan was stronger. He wrenched the door open and grabbed her. His fingers hurt on the soft skin of the underside of her arm, and he reached across her and unsnapped her seat belt as though she were a child, as though she was helpless. She fought and clawed and kicked, but Aidan wrapped one hand around her hair and dragged her from the car.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

WHEN JOE AND BERTRISE
arrived at the Englers' house, it looked like a party was in full swing. The house was well lit, but not too bright; candles sparkled strategically amid trays of food, people stood in small clusters or sat in the living room and salon and library, drinking cocktails. The presence of a bar startled Joe; he'd never seen one at a wake.

Bryce greeted them near the front door. “Good of you to make it,” he said, as if the visit were a social one.

Joe stepped close enough to have a word that wouldn't be heard by anyone standing nearby. “With your permission, I'd like to take a quick look through here for Aidan McKay. We need to ask him to come talk to us. I can assure you we will be very discreet.”

Bryce waved a hand clutching a crystal glass wrapped in a cocktail napkin. “Please. Detective. Make yourself at home.” Then he frowned. “McKay? Thought he was in the hospital.”

“He, uh, was released early, but we need him to review the report we took at the scene.”

A thin excuse, but Bryce barely seemed to be paying attention, already drifting back to his other guests. Joe nodded to Bertrise, and by tacit agreement they split up to search for McKay. Joe moved quickly through the crowd, trying not to draw attention to himself, excusing himself with murmured words of courtesy. A few minutes later they met again in the same room where they'd assembled the night Tom Bergman died.

“Didn't see him?” Bertrise asked.

“No. How many people do you think are here, anyway?”

“Sixty, maybe seventy. Half a dozen caterers.”

“There's the bathrooms . . .”

“I checked the powder room,” Bertrise said. “There's someone in there. Why don't I stay down here and you take a quick look upstairs?”

“Okay.” Joe's uneasy feeling about McKay since the start had grown to a full-scale buzz of dread. He'd searched for Marva, too, as he walked through the house; her absence only added to his sense that something was wrong.

The upstairs doors were all closed, except for the French doors to a room containing comfortable overstuffed furniture and shelves of games and toys and a television, on which an animated movie played softly, though the room was empty.

Joe knocked softly at the first door. He continued, peering into empty rooms, until he found the nanny in the playroom changing the Englers' little boy's diaper on a pad on the floor while the daughter slept curled up in the crook of a sectional sofa, covered with a soft blanket. A single lamp lit the room with a soft glow, revealing shelves full of books and toys, a train set on a low table, a toy kitchen.

“Have you seen Marva?” he asked. “Or Aidan McKay?”

Isabel bent down to her task, not meeting his gaze. “No,” she said. “But I have been up here, with the children. I went down to make a plate for them maybe two hours ago, but since then, we are here.”

“Has anyone come up here during that time?”

“One or two ladies. To use the bathroom. I guess the ones downstairs were in use.”

Joe was about to leave when he noticed something that surprised him: Isabel was crying.

Not hard, not sobbing. But her dark eyes welled with tears and her cheeks were streaked with their tracks, as though she'd given up trying to keep them dry.

“Isabel,” Joe said formally, “I am very sorry for your loss. If I was insensitive . . . I regret intruding.”

It was hardly an adequate apology, considering he'd come into her domain, the closest thing the woman had to privacy in this place that had been her home.

“It's all right,” she whispered, but it seemed to Joe that she started crying harder.

Joe sighed; as long as he'd upset Isabel he might as well ask her a few more questions. If nothing else, she seemed to have known Gail in a way others didn't.

“You worked here a long time, haven't you?”

“Yes. Ever since Lainey is born. Four years.”

“And the Englers, you . . . enjoy working for them?”

“Oh yes.” Without hesitation. “Gail was very good boss.”

Joe noted that she didn't mention Bryce, but let that pass. “If you don't mind my asking, Isabel, in what ways?”

Having finished the diapering, Isabel lifted Marshall into her arms. The little boy was sleepy; he nestled against the crook of her neck, and she rocked him and rubbed his back while she talked. “She is very nice, very good to me.” When Joe didn't speak for a moment, she added, “She is so busy, but every day she likes to come up here and talk.”

“Talk? You mean, to you?”

“Oh, yes, we talk a lot. We play with the children and she helps me with laundry. Folding, you know.” She pointed to the corner, where a white wicker basket was overflowing with blankets and cloth diapers.

Joe tried to keep the surprise out of his voice. He couldn't picture Gail being the sort to cozy up to her staff. “What sorts of things did you talk about?”

“Oh, everything. Gail is, I don't know how to say it. Not shy, she has lots of friends, but she is
private
.” Isabel tapped her heart with a fist for emphasis. “Not easy to open up with strangers. But we talk about our families, things we are worried about, things that are bothering her.”

Like, for instance, Jess Bartelak and the reminders that came every year? Like the affairs Gail used to distract herself? Joe wondered if Marva had any idea that she wasn't the only person who'd helped carry Gail's burden. Or whether Isabel, living right here inside the house, saw things that no one else did.

“You knew Mr. McKay, Isabel?” he asked.

She glanced up at him, her expression troubled. “Detective, Gail was a good person. Whatever happen to her, it doesn't help anyone if people find out stories about her.”

“Are you saying . . . you were aware of an intimate relationship between them?”

Isabel didn't answer, but her lip trembled and she brushed at her eyes with the heel of her free hand.

“Isabel, I can promise you I'm not trying to embarrass Mrs. Engler in any way. I'm only asking because we are trying to find out who hurt her.”

“Mr. McKay would never hurt her,” Isabel whispered. “He
loved
her.”

Joe was taken aback. Evidently Gail had shared the secret she'd managed to keep from her sister and her husband. “If there is anything you can tell me—a disagreement between them, an argument, if you heard Mr. McKay making threats of any kind—”

Isabel shook her head. “No, nothing like that. Detective, I will show you something. Wait here.”

She set Marshall gently on the opposite end of the sectional sofa from his sister and left the room. The little boy shifted and sighed. His eyes fluttered open and he looked around the room. Seeing Joe, he sat up and began to cry. By the time Isabel got back a moment later, his face was red and he was working himself up into full-scale wailing.

Isabel she was holding a white gift box, the kind that held gloves or scarves. She set it on the couch and picked Marshall up, bouncing and hushing him.

“Gail had boyfriends,” she said while he continued to fuss. “She was so lonely. I tell her not to, I say she should just leave Bryce, is better to be happy than rich. But she was afraid. I worry so much about her, I say, don't go with these men. I say, you don't know them, is dangerous, but she always say she can handle herself.”

“Did she ever express any concerns about Mr. McKay?”

“No, that is what I am telling you, he just wanted to take care of her. Here, take these,” she said, handing him the white box. “Please. I don't want them here.”

JOE TOOK
the box into the hall bathroom and locked the door. Inside the box was a folded sheaf of brittle, expensive paper. Joe lifted the one on top and unfolded it; bold, heavy handwriting canted downward across the unlined page.

“Dear Gail,” he read and scanned to the bottom of the page, to the signature.

The letter was from Aidan.

Joe felt his heart quicken as he focused on the top of the page, where Aidan had written the date, March 15. Then:

Dear Gail,

If I say nothing else to you about yesterday, I want to say thank you. You've made me feel more alive in one afternoon than I have felt since we were first together. I think you've always known that you have that effect on me. And if you're really honest with yourself, you have to know that it's right for you, too. You're different with me. I see the change in you. In your eyes. In your smile. I can't stop you from trying to fool yourself into thinking it doesn't mean anything, but how can you deny what it was like yesterday between us? Sex like that, love like that, doesn't happen every day. Gail, I know you're scared, and so I'll wait for you to come to me. But don't wait too long, you know you belong with me, even if it's just an afternoon here and there when we can pretend the last thirteen years didn't happen.

With all the love I ever had for you, and then some,

Aidan

Joe turned the sheet over, saw how worn the creases were, as though it had been folded and refolded several times. He reached for the next letter.

He read quickly. There were seven letters in all, dated from March through September of this year, and they grew more confident but no more demanding, as though Aidan had stepped completely back into his role as Gail's lover and felt secure enough there not to push.

The last one was dated September 21, after Gail had already started seeing Tom Bergman. Though evidently Aidan hadn't known that. It read, in part—

Every year when the sycamores begin to lose their leaves I think of the last fall we were together. Remember how we used to walk across the quad and you liked to kick the leaf piles? I always told you that the poor landscapers had worked hard to rake them up, and you laughed. Everything used to make you laugh, Gail, remember that? You don't laugh as much anymore, but you smile when you're with me. You may not know it but you smile in your sleep sometimes. I watch you when you're napping; you've always liked to sleep after we make love.

Joe folded the letters back together and replaced them in the glove box, already on his feet. Aidan had never given up on Gail, not during his two marriages, all those years knowing Gail was so close, having to see her at holiday open houses and June luncheons and summer barbecues, on the arm of Bryce, the man who'd won her with a fraction of Aidan's intellect, of his passion.

Why had Gail given in to him—now, after all those years? Could it have been that Gail was beginning to see the years reversing the aggressive beauty she'd cultivated for so long? At thirty-five, had she begun to doubt the thrall in which she held men—had Bryce begun to turn away from her, sending her inadvertently back to the man who'd made her feel adored?

And, most important, what did Aidan know? Had he found out about Tom Bergman? Perhaps others?

Joe was headed for the stairs when his phone rang. He glanced at the ID field on his phone: Marva Groesbeck. “Hello?”

There was a noise on the line, a combination of a grunt and a thud and a wrenching metallic sound.

“Marva?” Nothing for a moment, then a yelp, a pained cry.

“God damn it!” Joe heard the voice, muffled, obviously some distance from the phone: could it be McKay's? Maybe. He wasn't sure.

He started to say her name, then stopped himself. Marva was in trouble. She had managed to dial his number, and she needed help. Was there another explanation? Possibly, but if it really was Aidan who had an affair with Gail, obsessed over Gail—and when he was dumped,
killed
Gail—then Joe had no doubt that it was Aidan McKay who was hurting her.

Marva must have figured out what he'd done. And now he was trying to shut her up. And if Aidan heard Joe's voice on the phone, there was no telling what he might do—cut the connection, at the very least.

It hadn't even occurred to him to worry about Marva's safety at her sister's wake. Half a dozen cops at the funeral, and then he'd left her wide open. He cursed himself and strained to hear, the phone pressed tightly to his ear as he raced down the stairs and through the house, dodging the milling guests and knocking down a tray of small sandwiches as he went. In the foyer he spotted Bertrise watching the gathering with her arms crossed.

There were more sounds: mewling—and the thought of McKay hurting her caused full-blown panic to bloom in Joe's chest.

Then—“Hold still”—yes, it sure sounded like McKay—but the sound was so muffled, he couldn't make out what Marva said in response.

“Come
on,
” McKay said with enough force that Joe heard it clearly. “
Move
. Have a little dignity, for Chrissakes. You gonna make me carry you? Gail at least walked across the parking lot by herself.”