Exposed fury, p.3
Exposed Fury, page 3
Her cell phone rang again. Celia was calling.
“Can I come out to your place this afternoon so we can drive in together?” she asked.
Annie couldn’t recall what she was talking about. “What?”
“Joey’s birthday.”
“Oh shit.” Annie had completely forgotten about her brother’s birthday.
“You forgot, didn’t you?”
“No. Yes. Crap. I’ve got to go. I need to go shopping.”
“Okay, so I’ll see you at five.”
“Sounds good.”
A few minutes later, Annie was driving past the alley on the way to pick up a gift for her brother. Several police officers were still working the scene, and she tried to ignore the sudden longing to be among them.
CHAPTER FOUR
Friday Evening
That afternoon, Annie and Celia listened to WTOP on the radio as they drove east on the Greenway toward Arlington. Any glimmer of hope for good traffic on a Friday was quashed by the weather, which persisted in vacillating between rain and sleet. Annie sighed. She hated driving east—or any direction, really—in rush hour. Even though they were technically going against traffic, a lot of cars were still on the road, and the weather wasn’t helping. To add insult to injury, they were on the Greenway with its exorbitant toll. The Greenway would dump them onto the Dulles Toll Road, which would cost her even more money.
“So how old is Joey now?” Celia asked.
Annie thought for a second. “I’m thirty-one, so he’s thirty-three.” She was struck by the fact that so much time had passed. Playing Red Rover with Ford and his cousins in her grandparents’ backyard seemed like just yesterday.
“Wow, I can’t believe he’s that old.”
“We’re lucky he’s that old. Down Syndrome can really shorten your life expectancy. It’s a lot better than it used to be, but still...”
“I know,” Celia said sympathetically.
Annie tried not to be irritated about having to drive in rush hour to go to a party she had no interest in attending. She understood why her father did it, but sometimes she wished they could celebrate as a family, just the three of them, on a weekend, like reasonable people. She sighed and chastised herself for thinking that way. When they’d been kids, she’d resented all the attention Joey received. Every little thing he did was treated like a major accomplishment even though she had quickly outpaced him in milestones. Those memories made her feel selfish and guilty when she thought about them.
“Is Joey still working at the recycling center?”
“Oh yeah. He loves it there,” Annie said, adjusting the windshield wipers to deal with the road spray kicked up by the cars in front of her.
“Isn’t it a hassle for your dad to drive him out to Fairfax every day?” Celia asked.
“It’s only three days a week, and it’s not such a big deal now that Dad’s retired. I think he kind of likes it—gives him a reason to get out. Besides, that’s where we found Chester. So the whole family is big on the recycling center.”
Celia smiled. “Fair enough.”
“How was your day?” Annie asked.
Celia sighed. “Ridiculous horse drama. I swear this time of year, they stand around thinking up ways to make me crazy and cost me money. What have you been up to?”
Annie tried to decide how to answer that. She and Celia had been fast friends since having been randomly paired to share a dorm room in college. She knew that, like Annie’s father, Celia was concerned about her working as a private investigator. Annie didn’t want to worry Celia, but she didn’t like keeping things from her either.
She sighed. “A guy I’ve been investigating died.”
“What? And you’re just telling me now? Way to bury the lead. What happened?”
Annie recounted the events of the morning.
“Wow. That’s crazy. So what do you think happened?”
Annie paused. “This is going to sound weird, but it feels like murder. It hasn’t been officially declared a homicide, though, as far as I know.”
Celia grimaced. “When was the last time someone was murdered in Leesburg, especially in the historic district?”
Annie shrugged. “In any part of Leesburg, it’s been a few years. As for the historic district, never that I know of. I’m sure it’s happened. I should go on one of the ghost tours and find out.”
“But you’re not going to do anything, right?”
“I’m not, which feels really odd, but murder isn’t my purview anymore,” Annie said, moving the car into the E-ZPass lane. “It’s not like I’m a detective anymore. I’m a private investigator. The Commonwealth of Virginia says the term ‘detective’ is reserved for the police. I handle stuff like divorces and insurance fraud now, not murders.”
“Good,” Celia said firmly. “Then you’re done. Let the cops deal with it. That’s for the best anyway. Like you need that on your plate.”
Annie sighed. “Yeah.”
But not being part of the investigation didn’t feel right. She felt oddly connected to the Carltons—not exactly responsible but definitely involved—and she didn’t like the implication that she couldn’t handle a murder investigation. Just because she wasn’t a cop anymore didn’t mean she wasn’t capable. She was on partial disability because of the limp and because she couldn’t quite pull a trigger yet, but she still knew how to investigate.
WHEN they finally pulled into Annie’s father’s neighborhood, cars were parked on both sides of the street in front of his house. Because it was an older area with mostly brick, Foursquare-style houses built in the 1930s, the streets were tight. Annie had to thread her way through to park several houses down. They walked on a narrow sidewalk past lawns with mature oaks and maples. In the spring, all the yards would be bursting with color, but now everything was buttoned up for the winter. The large azaleas and forsythia looked ragged and wet.
“Big turnout this year,” Celia said.
“Isn’t it always?” Annie asked, picking her way carefully over the sidewalk, where roots had lifted many of the bricks. Arlington hadn’t received as much snow last night as Leesburg had, so most of it had disappeared in the rain, which was too bad. Joey loved the snow. Having more of it would have been nice on his birthday.
Despite the fifty or so people milling about, Joey spotted them immediately when they walked in the door. “Annie!” As people made way, he ran over, all smiles, and hugged her tightly. “It’s my birthday!”
“I know, Joey. I brought you a present.”
He’d recently had a haircut. Annie hated it when her father had his hair cut so short. It made Joey’s head look like an egg.
“Hey, Dad, Annie brought me a present.”
Tall and slim, her father slipped through the crowd and kissed her on the forehead. He had the same buzz cut her brother had. Her father seemed to have found the only crappy barber in all of Arlington and appeared to go there exclusively. “Good to see you, kiddo. It’s been a while.”
“I know. I’ve been meaning to come out, but I’ve been working.” She caught the grimace that appeared on his face for a fraction of a second.
“Work is good,” he said, smiling.
Annie knew her father hated her job, though. He hated her being a private investigator even more than he had hated her being a cop, and he’d hated that plenty. Before he retired, he had been an aerospace engineer with Boeing. Her mother had been a nurse practitioner before she’d died in a car accident when Annie was seven. Her father thought being a private investigator was kind of seedy and that she could do better, safer work. She was sure nothing would make him happier than to see her ensconced in an office somewhere, but to her, that sounded like torture.
Across the room, Ford was standing with his parents. He raised his glass toward her and winked, which improved her mood considerably. He was right. She needed a drink.
“Celia, how are you?” Annie’s dad said while Joey gave her a big hug.
Annie slipped away to the living room, where Ford was talking to his parents.
Annie loved Ford’s parents. They were fabulous. His father could not have been more old-money Southern, and his mother could not have been more exotically eastern European. Ford’s mother, Olga, whom everyone called Ollie, wore a deep-red woolen dress that set off her dark hair and eyes. Ollie was tall, slender, and beautiful, clearly where Ford got his good looks. His father, called Boo, was a couple of inches taller than Ford, with a booming voice and a big belly to match. He was in a three-piece, single-breasted navy suit with a white shirt and a golden tie. The suit was tailored perfectly and did what it could to disguise his belly. Officially, Boo was Buford Lee Otley, Jr., while Ford was Buford Lee Otley III. She smiled to think of Ford as Buford. He hated the name and had christened himself Ford by age seven. His grandfather was Big Boo to close friends and family. His father was Boo, so as a child, Ford had been called Booboo, which he hated even more than Buford. Annie had supported the switch to Ford, and eventually everyone else had come around except his grandmother, who still referred to him as Booboo.
“Annie!” Boo said and pulled her into a big hug. “How are you, darlin’?”
Ollie took Annie’s hand. “How are you, dear?” she said in a voice still laced with a Russian accent despite decades of living in the US.
“I’m fine. I’m good.”
“I’m so glad to hear it. You look good, not limping so much, and your speech is quite clear. You seem as good as new.” Ollie said warmly.
“You do, baby doll,” Boo added with a sympathetic smile that made Annie cringe inside.
“Thank you.” Annie smiled and glanced at Ford, who looked mortified.
“We’ve, of course, been keeping up with your progress through Ford, but it’s nice to see for ourselves how well you are doing.”
“We don’t see enough of you, Annie,” Boo added.
“I know, but you know how it is when you first start a business,” Annie said, happy to get off the subject of her health.
Boo nodded knowingly. “I know, girl, but you’ve got to take time for yourself too.”
“You shouldn’t push yourself so hard,” Ollie added.
“We’ll try to get out to the house soon,” Ford said, draping an arm across Annie’s shoulder. “How about we get you a beer?” He steered her away from his parents. “I am so sorry,” he whispered in her ear. “Why do they always do that?”
Annie choked back a laugh, which came out as a soft snort. “Don’t be. They mean well. It comes from the heart.”
Ford clasped a hand over his eyes. “I know, but they don’t need to be so specific.”
“Don’t worry about it.” At least he understood, even if no one else in their families did, that she didn’t want to talk about her recovery. For over a year, that had seemed like the only topic of conversation, so now that she was working again, she wanted to talk about something, anything else.
He reached into a cooler of ice her father had set up at the other end of the living room and pulled out a couple Port City beers. Her father was all about supporting the local brewery. Ford popped the cap off and handed it to her.
“Cheers.” She tapped her bottle of Optimal Wit against his Essential Pale Ale.
He pulled her in for a hug, and she rested her forehead against his broad chest as he kissed the top of her head. For a moment, she forgot about all the people talking over each other.
She was about to ask Ford how his day had gone when her eighty-year-old great-aunt Ginny put her clawed hands on their arms. “When are you two going to get married?”
Annie opened her mouth, but Ford beat her to it.
“Just as soon as I can catch her,” Ford said, patting Aunt Ginny’s hand.
“Oh, dear, don’t you think it’s about time you let him?” Aunt Ginny asked, squeezing Annie’s arm.
“He’s just going to have to run a little faster,” Annie said, rolling her eyes at Ford over her diminutive aunt’s head.
He grinned back at her. She extricated herself from Ginny’s grip and made her way through the crowd to the kitchen, which was slightly quieter than the living room. Her aunt Peggy was mixing punch at the sink.
“Do you need any help?” Annie asked.
“Oh, I’ve got this, sugar. Your Ford got here early and helped us set up all the chairs. He is so sweet and so handsome.”
Annie looked at Ford in the living room, still chatting with Aunt Ginny. He was handsome at six feet tall with broad shoulders and a trim waist, olive skin, dark-brown hair, and clear-blue eyes so like his mother’s.
“Yes, he is.”
“I thought you two would have gotten married by now.”
And this, thought Annie, is why I hate family gatherings.
AS the party progressed, a series of other friends and relatives all had something to say about her recovery. If they weren’t asking about her health, they wanted to talk about Ford or her relationship with him. All the compassion and curiosity was exhausting.
Annie did appreciate the well-wishes, but the last time she’d seen many of these people, she’d either been in the hospital or in the middle of rehab. She’d looked bad after the shooting. She’d been shot three times, the last of which was a glancing blow to the head, leaving her with slurred speech, balance problems, and some loss of hearing in her right ear. The other two shots left her with the limp and the difficulty with her grip, but all those things were vastly improved. Her hair had finally grown back enough to cover the long scar on the right side of her head, so she could look in the mirror without being reminded of what had happened. Even so, she sometimes felt as though she’d recovered as a stranger, someone similar but not quite the same as who she used to be. Gatherings like this just served as another reminder of that.
Annie was thrilled when her father finally announced that the time had come for Joey to open his gifts, if only because all the attention would shift to him and people would stop talking so much. Following a conversation in a crowd was difficult for her. Everyone gathered in the living room. Elderly relatives occupied all the seats except one wing chair, where Joey sat like a king. He was even wearing a paper crown. Everyone else crowded into the room to watch. Joey opened every gift with such excitement and such gratitude that no one wanted to miss it. Annie smiled when he squealed as he opened the big paint set she’d bought him. Joey loved to paint. His easel was permanently set up in the sunroom at the back of the house. Annie watched as he pulled the next present toward himself, then her phone vibrated in the back pocket of her jeans. She glanced at the number. Gunnar was calling. She slipped out of the crowd and answered the call once she was in the hallway.
“Hey, Gunnar, what’s up?”
“I was talking to Mrs. Carlton this afternoon. She showed me the pictures you took. You put a black bar across all their faces.”
“Of course,” Annie said. “That’s PI 101. I can’t show a distraught woman the actual faces of the women her husband is sleeping with. What if she knew one of them and went crazy and shot someone? Normally, I don’t show them anything and only deal with the lawyer, but she paid extra for direct access to the evidence.”
“Okay, sure. I get that. But did you ID any of the women?”
“No. I would only do that if her lawyer requested it for some reason.” She continued walking down the hall toward the sunroom, which was quiet and out of everyone’s earshot.
“Right. Then I need to see the unaltered pictures so we can ID them. The ME officially declared Nick Carlton’s death a murder. Someone clubbed him in the back of the head with a rock. I need to see all of your photos, and I want to interview you. I need to know everywhere he went while you followed him.”
“Sure, of course, no problem. When do you want to meet?”
The sunroom was covered in Joey’s paintings. He loved cars, so cars were in almost every picture along with other things he loved, like their dad and Chester and Annie.
“How about right now?”
“Come on, Gunnar. I’m in Arlington at my brother’s birthday party.”
“I’ve got nothing on this, Annie. You know how it is. Every hour out from the crime, the chances of solving dwindle. It also doesn’t help that the wife’s lawyer was sitting in her kitchen when we made the notification. Help me out here.” Gunnar was clearly desperate.
Annie chuckled. “Yeah, talk about lawyering up fast.”
“It’s not funny,” Gunnar said.
Annie was still trying to wrap her head around the idea of someone being killed just a couple blocks from her apartment. “I can’t believe there was a murder downtown.”
“Yeah, I know,” Gunnar said, “but the ME’s preliminary report finds force consistent with a blow to the head, not a fall. There was also a small piece of rock and rock dust in the wound, but he was lying on brick.”
Annie blew out a slow breath. She ran her fingers over a painting of her whole family standing in front of her father’s old Mustang. It was one of her favorites and obviously one of Joey’s too. He’d painted the same picture many times. Another one was on her fridge.
“Yeah, okay,” she said. “Can you swing by my place in an hour? I keep the photos on my laptop, and I don’t have it with me.”
“Sure. See you then.” Gunnar hung up.
ANNIE STARED OUT AT the backyard. Since the house had been built in the thirties, the plot was larger than the ones typically seen in new neighborhoods in Northern Virginia. She thought about the swing set they used to have back there and wondered what had happened to it. She remembered planting the dogwood tree on the first anniversary of her mother’s death. Dogwoods were her mother’s favorites. The tree was now twenty-five feet tall and flowered beautifully in the spring, but at the moment, it looked spindly and bare.
“Hey,” Celia said from the doorway. “What are you doing out here? You’re missing the best part.”
