CHAPTER 2
“
Y
our son or daughter did not attend one or more classes today. . . .”
Detective Regan Pescoli felt her blood boil as she listened to the dreaded prerecorded message from the high school where Bianca was supposed to have attended class. “Well, why the hell not?” she whispered aloud and clicked off her cell. She'd dropped her kid off at school herself, and Bianca was too young to drive.
Dialing Bianca's cell, Regan was put through to voice mail. Of course. Neither of her kids ever picked up. She texted: Where are you? The school called and said you were a no-show. Call me!
“Great,” she muttered, sliding her chair away from her desk at the Pinewood County Sheriff's Department. She glanced at her watch as she walked to Selena Alvarez's cubicle, where her partner was huddled over her desk, her telephone cradled between her ear and shoulder as she sorted through neat stacks of paper on the desk. Alvarez's black hair was scraped into a thick knot at the base of her skull and shining blue under the overhead lights.
Glancing up, she held up a finger as Pescoli approached.
“Yeah, I know, but we've been waiting for those test results for a couple of weeks now,” she said, her voice tight, her lips twisted into a frown. If there was one thing Alvarez couldn't stand, it was incompetence. “Uh-huh . . . yeah, well, we're all shorthanded. I get it. . . . What? If that's the best you can do . . . okay ... Tomorrow's fine.” She hung up, fuming. “What do you bet that tomorrow comes and I still don't know what was in Donna McKinley's bloodstream?” she said, leaned back in her desk chair, and scowled at her computer monitor, where the picture of the woman in question was visible. “I'd just like to get this off my desk, y'know.”
Pescoli did know. They both wanted to be assured that Donna McKinley's death was a stupid accident, that she'd fallen asleep at the wheel and run off the road. That her death was not the result of something nefarious by her excon of a boyfriend, Barclay Simms, who just happened to take out a hundred-thousand-dollar life insurance policy on Donna three weeks earlier. This while he was collecting unemployment.
Alvarez sighed loudly. “Sorry.”
“No problem. Just letting you know that I'm outta here. Gotta track down my kid.”
“She skip school?”
“Looks like,” Pescoli said with a shake of her head. Until a year ago, Bianca had been an A student, always on the honor roll, proud of being “the good one,” as she'd referred to herself often enough, until her grades had started slipping the year before, in junior high. She'd promised to work harder again in high school, “when it really counted.” So far, she wasn't keeping to her word.
“I've got things covered here,” Alvarez said, which was true enough. A serious workaholic, she rarely clocked in during normal work hours. Alvarez was single and dedicated, and it appeared to Pescoli as if the younger woman had no social life whatsoever, which was a shame. But today she didn't have time to think about it.
“I owe ya one.”
Alvarez snorted. “I'll remember that.”
Along with about a hundred other times,
Pescoli thought as she found her jacket, scarf, and hat, then hurried out the back and past the lunchroom, where Joelle Fischer was opening boxes filled with all kinds of holiday decorations. Silver stars, glittering tinsel, fake candy canes, and strings of lights, even a slightly salacious-looking Santa, which had, year after year, given Pescoli a case of the creeps, were being placed on empty tabletops as Joelle plotted where to put up her “little bit of Christmas” around the department. Why Sheriff Dan Grayson put up with her nonsense, Pescoli had no idea. But Joelle, forever bubbly with her short blond hair, oversized earrings, and three-inch heels, never seemed to notice that the rest of the department didn't get into the spirit of the holidays with the same fervor and sense of enthusiasm as she did.
“Regan! Hey!” Joelle called, clipping after her to stand in the doorway to the hall. She was already wearing a Rudolph broach with a blinking red nose. “You know we're having the drawing for the Secret Santa on Monday morning?”
“And you know that it's not Christmas for nearly six weeks.”
“It sneaks up on you,” she said solemnly. “Next Thursday is Thanksgiving, and why not celebrate the season for as long as possible?”
“Count me out for Christmas in July.”
“Don't be such a crank!” She pretended to frown, but the edges of her Kewpie-doll lips twitched. “You'll be here at eight, then? Monday?”
“With frickin' bells on,” Pescoli muttered. She couldn't really get into the spirit when she didn't know where her daughter was.
“Make sure they're jingle bells!” Joelle tittered at her own joke and gratefully returned to the lunchroom and her decorating.
Insane,
Pescoli thought as she pushed open the doors and strode along a path that intersected the brittle grass. If the clumps of snow didn't remind her that it was already winter in western Montana, the icy wind that rattled the chain on the flagpole certainly did.
She found her Jeep, slid inside, and didn't search for the pack of “emergency” Marlboro Lights she kept in her glove box. She'd officially given up the habit last January, after a homicidal maniac had nearly killed her, but once in a while, when things got too hard to deal with, she'd sneak a cigarette. And she told herself she wasn't going to feel guilty about it.
She didn't think her kid cutting class was enough of an emergency to break down, but the day wasn't over yet. Maybe Bianca had gotten herself into more trouble. Closing her mind to the horror she often saw in her work, victims of horrendous accidents, furious husbands, or out-and-out psychos, she threw the rig into reverse and somehow avoided Cort Brewster, the undersheriff, as he wheeled in. Brewster and she weren't exactly cool with each other, never had been, and when their kids had been hanging out, her son, Jeremy, had been blamed for every bit of trouble that Brewster's perfect little princess, Heidi, had gotten into.
“Perfect, my ass,” Pescoli said under her breath, not giving Brewster so much as a nod as she pulled out of the lot. In Pescoli's opinion the guy was a supercilious hypocrite, and she prayed under her breath that she didn't pull his name out of the hat when Joelle hosted her ridiculous Secret Santa drawing in the morning. No way could Pescoli stomach buying him little gifts and hiding them around his desk or in his vehicle.
What was that tired Valley Girl saying? Gag me with a spoon? Well, in this case, she thought, it was gag me with a damned shovel.
Deciding she was being petty, she turned her attention to the traffic and, using her Bluetooth, tried to call her daughter again. Sure enough, voice mail picked up. “Come on, Bianca, answer,” she muttered.
Night was falling fast.
She called the house, as they still had a landline. It rang four times before being answered. “Hullo?” her son said without a drip of emotion, and Pescoli, slowing for a red light, felt a moment's relief. Although why Jeremy, who'd moved out over the summer, was at the house was a bit of a question, one for which she didn't have time. Not yet.
“It's Mom. Is Bianca there?”
“Yeah.”
Thank God!
“She okay?”
“Uh . . . yeah, I guess.”
“Put her on the phone.”
“She's sleeping.”
“I don't care.”
“Jesus! You don't have to yell.”
“And you don't have to curse.”
“Fine.”
As the traffic light turned green and she drove along Boxer Bluff, where the uppermost part of Grizzly Falls was sprawled, she heard a series of muffled voices and finally her daughter's sleepy “Yeah?”
“What's up?” Pescoli demanded.
“Me, now,” Bianca grumbled.
“The school called and said you missed class.”
“I didn't feel good.”
“Well,” Pescoli automatically corrected as she turned onto the street winding out of the town. “You didn't feel
well.
”
“Whatever.”
“How'd you get home?”
“Chris.”
The on-again, off-again boyfriend. “He doesn't have a license.”
“We were with his brother, Gene.”
The seventeen-year-old who already had been involved in a wreck. Pescoli knew all about that one; she'd seen what was left of the 1990 Honda Accord after it had hit a mailbox, then a tree. It was a wonder the kid had survived, let alone got away with only a broken collarbone and a few scratches. “Look, I'm on my way home. We'll talk then.” Checking her mirrors, she changed lanes to avoid a work crew that had dug up the street.
“I already âtalked' with Dad.”
More good news.
“And what did your father say?” she asked through gritted teeth. Luke “Lucky” Pescoli was hardly the epitome of parenthood.
“To get some rest.”
Perfect.
“I'll be there in fifteen. Now put your brother on the phone.”
“Your turn.” Bianca's voice was a singsong reprimand as she obviously gladly turned the receiver back to her son Jeremy.
Again, Pescoli considered lighting up but thought better of it as the storefronts lining the street gave way to homes.
“Uh-huh?” Jeremy said as his way of greeting.
“Just wondering, what are you doing at the house?” When he'd moved out of her small place, little more than a cabin in the woods and the only home he'd ever known, this past summer, his leaving had been a blessing as well as a curse.
“Uh . . . 'cuz it's home.”
“You moved out. I didn't want you to, but you insisted last summer,” she reminded him. “I thought you'd be at work.”
“They turned off the gas at my place. There's no heat. Guess they, um, didn't get the check in time. But that's bogus, 'cuz I mailed it yesterday. It's not my fault that one of my roommates didn't get the money to me.”
“And your job?” she asked with extreme patience.
Hesitation. “Lou didn't need me at the station today.”
“Is that right?” Jeremy had been pumping gas at Corky's Gas and Go for nearly nine months, while he “decided” if he wanted to go to school. “Jer?” she said when he didn't immediately answer. “Just tell me you didn't lose your job.”
“Okay. I won't.” He was defensive. Short.
Damn it all to hell.
If only Joe were still alive. Jeremy's father, another cop, had been great in a crisis. That is, until he was killed in the line of duty when his son was too young to really remember his father. So Pescoli had become mother and father to her boy, until she'd made the mistake of marrying Luke, who had tried to step in and had only made a worse mess of things.
“Wait for me. I'll be home soon. And before I get there, would you please make sure Cisco's had his dinner?”
“We're outta dog food.”
“Then get some.”
“I, uh, don't have any money.”
“Fabulous.”
“I gotta go. Heidi's texting me.”
“Jeremy! Waitâ” But the phone was suddenly dead in her hand. She hadn't even had a chance to warn him off Heidi Brewster again. God, she'd hoped
that
teen romance had died a quick death last year.
Looked like her prayers hadn't been answered.
But then, that wasn't a big surprise.
Maybe she'd made a mistake by not moving in with her boyfriend, but she hadn't thought it would be wise. Just because a man could turn her inside out in the bedroom was no reason to bring him home and slap the name tag STEPFATHER on him. As much as she thought she was in love with him, she'd decided not to go to that next level. Yet.
There was a good chance she was a commitment-o-phobe, or whatever you wanted to call it, but she'd been married twice and that might just be enough.
For a while.
Until her kids were raised.
Or until she was more comfortable with the situation.
You might lose him,
that nagging inner voice warned, and she scoffed. Then it wasn't meant to be.
She stopped at a small convenience store at the next crossroads, bought a small bag of dog food, a gallon of milk, and two Snickers candy bars to stuff into her glove box, along with the pack of Marlboros.
Just in case.
Then she hit the road again.
Twenty minutes later she was walking through the door from the garage of her little cottage. Cisco, her terrier of undeterminable lineage, shot off the couch, sped across the living room floor, and yapping excitedly, began doing pirouettes at her feet.