The Mia Quinn Collection Page 21

  But instead he had pulled away. By the time he died, the gulf between them had seemed unbridgeable.

  And now Mia had to run in place just to keep up, work longer and longer hours while her kids were either in daycare or raising themselves. But she couldn’t keep pretending that it was all right, that she was coping just fine, that she had worked through her grief and anger and fear. She couldn’t even make sure Gabe had clothes that fit. And what if there was something seriously wrong with Brooke?

  Scott was dead, and Mia could never fix what had broken between them. And now Colleen was gone too. Her husband and her best friend.

  As the service began, Mia bowed her head and wept.

  “If somebody killed Colleen, and killed that guy Stan, then why are you still working there?” Gabe hissed as Mia drove home after the funeral. “Quit and go do some other kind of law. Boring law. Not prosecuting killers and crazy people and drug dealers.”

  After the service he had overheard enough to realize that Colleen wasn’t the first King County prosecutor to have been murdered. He had stormed out to the car ahead of her, barely waiting until she had gotten behind the wheel before he started fuming.

  Mia tried to speak calmly. “We don’t know that the same person killed both Colleen and Stan. And we don’t know that their deaths had anything to do with their jobs.” She was gripping the steering wheel so hard it hurt. “Besides, I’m working with Detective Carlson. He’ll make sure I stay safe.” Charlie could do no such thing, but she didn’t want Gabe to be consumed by fear for her. “Of course, if you ever see someone acting suspiciously or think something is wrong, call me or call 911.”

  “Like that would have done Colleen any good,” Gabe retorted. “She was on the phone with you when she was shot.”

  There was no way she was going to win this argument, so Mia kept silent. Her eyes ached like fresh bruises. In the past few hours, every negative emotion had coursed through her: fear, anxiety, anger, sadness, hopelessness. Now she just felt empty, like a big hand had reached down and scooped out her heart, leaving a hollow space in her chest.

  Once they got back to the house, Gabe stomped inside without saying anything. Mia walked into the family room, where her dad was watching some history show. “Where’s Brooke?”

  “Oh, she’s taking a nap.” He muted the sound. “How was the service?”

  She had to press her lips together and take a deep breath before she could answer. “It was tough.” How could she put into words the despair that had gripped her? “It all just started feeling so useless, Dad. I mean, I know this sounds melodramatic, but we’re all just going to die. We run around and try to keep busy and try to fool ourselves, but in the end doesn’t it basically all add up to nothing?” She was aware that she sounded like a teenager, some kid who had just taken his first philosophy class and felt himself enlightened, but what she was saying still felt true and real. “I mean, what’s the point?”

  Her dad met her gaze with unshadowed eyes. “It feels like that sometimes, doesn’t it?”

  She waited, but he didn’t say anything more. “You’re not going to talk to me about our reward being in heaven?”

  “Nope.”

  Mia surprised herself by laughing and then plopping on the couch next to him. “I kind of wish you would. So we could have a big knock-down, drag-out fight.”

  “Sometimes it feels really good to yell, doesn’t it?” Her dad had done plenty of yelling back in the day. “It’s great stress relief, at least as long as you’re not the person being yelled at.” He put his arm around her.

  After a moment, Mia melted against him. “It just feels so empty. I feel so empty.”

  “I don’t think you can fill yourself up with big things, big concepts, big philosophies. What matters are the little things. What we do today. How we treat each other this very minute. It’s how we live our ordinary days that matters. Because today is all we have.” He gave her a hug. “Now go over to Colleen’s and I’ll hold down the fort.”

  In the car Mia thought about what her dad had said. Something had definitely changed him, because the dad she knew would never have thought about how he treated others.

  At Colleen’s, Mia parked across the street in front of the house with its listing For Sale sign. It looked sad and closed off, with all the blinds closed tight.

  There was a much smaller group here than at the funeral, but still the house felt crowded. She said hello to Frank, who was busy shaking hands and promising that they were making progress finding Colleen’s killer. She had been giving him daily briefings, so he knew exactly how much progress they were—or weren’t—making, but he appeared to be in full campaign mode. She nodded at a handful of her co-workers who were looking at a series of framed watercolors that Colleen had painted a few years ago.

  In the kitchen she poured herself a glass of red wine from one of the many freshly opened bottles. When she went back out into the living room, Anne gave her a sideways hug. They hadn’t talked since Anne had given her the advice about keeping her heart where her shoes were.

  “Doing okay?” Anne looked at her. Really looked. And for a second Mia felt less alone.

  “It’s not easy,” she said, and decided to leave it at that.

  Katrina came up carrying a plate filled with snacks. “How’s the list on that flip chart of yours going?”

  “It keeps getting longer, not shorter.” Mia drained the last of the wine from her glass, then held it up. “If you guys will excuse me, I’m going to go get some more wine.”

  Back in the kitchen she poured herself another glass, her hand shaking ever so slightly. She didn’t know much about wine, but this one tasted of oak and fruit. And it was making everything pleasantly distant. Making it so she could stand to think about how she would never see Colleen again, or Scott, or even Stan.

  Mia snagged an unopened bag of Trader Joe’s sesame seed honey cashews, an irresistible mix of sweet, salt, fat, and crunch, and then picked up an untouched bottle of wine. She slipped out the back door and went out into the side yard. She settled back against a maple tree, out of sight of the house. It was warm, nearly seventy degrees. If she didn’t look up at the scarlet leaves, she might not know it was fall. If she didn’t turn and look back at the house, she wouldn’t know she was at the wake for her best friend. Instead, Mia alternated sips of wine with handfuls of cashews. The two flavors didn’t really go together, but after a few swigs, she didn’t notice it as much.

  “I was wondering where you got to.” Charlie stood over her. She couldn’t see his expression because the sun was behind his head like a halo. Charlie an angel? She didn’t think so.

  “I’m still here,” Mia said, trying to enunciate her words. “Still here even if no one else is.”

  CHAPTER 34

  Mia Quinn. Tipsy. Well, Charlie supposed he couldn’t blame her. What with everyone she loved being dead and all.

  Taking off his jacket, he settled on the grass next to her. The ground was cool and slightly damp, but the air was warm enough to offset it. Warm enough that he could pretend summer wasn’t over. Mia’s short-sleeved black dress set off her golden skin. Earlier, her blond hair had been pinned up in a tight bun, but some of it must have snagged on the bark of the tree she was leaning against. Pieces now curled softly around her throat.

  “I talked to Vincent,” Charlie said. “He said that he was at home Thursday and Friday nights.”

  “Did you believe him?”

  “I’m leaning that way.” Which was about as good as it got for him. “I’m still gonna pull his cell site location records and look for any cameras that might have caught the guy you saw at the university or at the football game. The thing is, I can’t see why Vincent would have wanted to attack you before we even talked to him. And then there’s the matter of the locations. If I wanted to harm someone, the UDub parking lot after dark wouldn’t be a bad place. At a high school football game, though, doesn’t make much sense. Which makes me wonder if it was even the same
guy, or if we’re putting the wrong spin on things, seeing patterns that aren’t really there.”

  “Don’t you mean me?” Mia narrowed her eyes. “That I’m putting the wrong spin on things?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Charlie said mildly, although he had thought it. “And it would be natural for you to be a bit jumpy. A lot’s been going on in your life.” He looked around. “Where are Gabe and Brooke?”

  “My dad’s watching them.” She lifted the glass to her lips and took another sip. “I’m thirty-seven years old and I’m still relying on my dad to do things for me.”

  “Yeah, but you’re also lucky that you still have him in your life and that he wants to help you out.” Both of Charlie’s parents had been dead for years.

  “Oh yeah, Charlie, I feel lucky. Real lucky.” Her eyes skewered him. “My best friend is dead and my husband is dead and I’m broke. Scott was always promising me that we would spend more time together. But it turns out the reason he was so busy was that he was juggling our finances. And then when he died, all the balls got dropped. I’m just trying to pick up the pieces.”

  He pointed at the bottle. “Mind if I share that with you?” Mia certainly didn’t need any more.

  She shrugged. “I don’t have another glass.”

  “That’s okay, I don’t need one.” Charlie picked the bottle off the grass and took a swig. Shifting his weight, he tugged his shirttail free, then wiped the neck before passing the bottle back to her.

  Mia gave him a cockeyed smile, then raised the bottle to her own lips, forgoing her glass, and took a long swallow. So much for keeping some of it out of her system, Charlie thought. Now she seemed bent on competing with him. But she didn’t have his leathery liver to protect her.

  “And meanwhile”—she raised the bottle toward him in a mock toast—“I’m teamed up with this homicide detective who wants to go riding off like some cowboy. And I’ve got to keep reining him in.”

  “So you’re saying I’m really the horse?”

  “All right, I’m mixing my metaphors.” She poured a handful of sesame cashews into her palm. “I’m just saying he’s just not interested in doing everything by the book. Like almost getting in a fistfight with a suspect at the victim’s funeral is probably not on anyone’s list of proper investigative techniques.”

  “I was breaking up that fight, not starting it.” Charlie pushed away the memory of how his vision had narrowed until all he could focus on was Reece’s face. And how all he had wanted to do was see it bleed.

  “And didn’t you tell me you took home Stan’s murder book? I’m pretty sure those aren’t supposed to leave the office.”

  “Every homicide detective would be in trouble if we really got dinged for that.”

  Mia finally cut to the chase. “Okay, then what about the last time we worked together? When you screwed up my case?” Grabbing another handful of cashews, she began to chew furiously.

  Charlie had wondered when she would bring this up. Before answering, he tossed a cashew in the air and caught it in his mouth. “That was a long time ago. Donny Jackson has been dead for years.” Donny had died from an overdose after making a career, if you could call it that, of burglarizing small businesses. “Things have a way of taking care of themselves.”

  “Taking care of themselves?” Mia sat up, eyes narrowed, jaw clenched. She didn’t look so soft and pretty—or even so tipsy—anymore. “What, so you thought it didn’t matter that you screwed up my case, because eventually karma would take care of it?”

  “Why don’t you tell me what you think I did that was so awful?”

  “You know what you did.” She gritted her teeth and exhaled. “We knew Donny was behind the burglary of that computer repair place. We got a search warrant for his house, and we found the computers he had stolen. And then Donny said he had seen you take something, and you wouldn’t say what it was, only admit that you had taken it. And of course the case was thrown out. Everyone always said you must have helped yourself to a laptop or two. If the union hadn’t stood behind you, you would have been out of the force. But no, pretty soon all was forgiven and forgotten. But I never forgot.” Mia spit the words at him. “When I saw you eating Colleen’s candy the other day, I was reminded of that all over again. About how you never think about the consequences of your actions. You just think about yourself.”

  Her misplaced anger slipped past his guard. “Is that what you really believe? That I’m some petty thief no better than Donny? Okay, Mia Quinn, you want to know so badly, I’ll tell you. Not that you need to know. Not that you deserve to know. When we went through Donny’s house, I found the computers he’d taken in the robbery. I also found a bunch of pictures of a girl. Let’s call her Liz,” Charlie said, which was actually the girl’s name, although she went by Elizabeth now. “You can imagine the kind of pictures they were. But since those pictures had been taken, Liz had gotten off the street and out of the life. She was respectable, and no one in her new life knew about her past. She had a responsible job at a bank, a husband, and a new baby girl. And I knew if those photos got entered into evidence, the cops would track her down, and it was possible she might lose everything. So I took them. And then when Donny said what he did, I told the truth. I said I had taken something from his home that wasn’t directly related to the case. I didn’t do it knowing the case would be dismissed. But I figured tomorrow was another day, and Donny was for sure gonna steal again, but that girl, when was she ever gonna get another chance?”

  Mia bowed her head, put her hand over her eyes, and was silent for a long time. When she spoke, all the anger had leached from her voice. “Why didn’t you tell me what was really going on?”

  “I was trying to keep it a secret, Mia. The more people who know something, the less chance it will stay a secret.”

  Mia shook her head. “But then secrets just come back around to bite you, Charlie. Look at Scott. He thought he was protecting us by not telling me how bad things were. But he wasn’t protecting us at all. He let his life insurance lapse, and he didn’t tell me. He didn’t tell me much of anything those last few months. He didn’t have enough clients, and some of them were starting to look like they were never going to pay, but instead of talking with me about it, he just pulled away from me.”

  “He probably didn’t want to worry you,” Charlie said. “He probably hoped he could fix things and you would never know.”

  “I feel like the last year of our marriage was nothing but a big lie. He betrayed me in so many ways. He’d supposedly been sober for three years, and yet last weekend, when I was on the phone with Colleen, I found a bottle of whiskey hidden in the basement.”

  Charlie didn’t point out the irony of Mia’s wine bottle. “Was the seal broken?”

  “What?” She wrinkled her nose. “No.”

  “Look, people who are alcoholics hide liquor all the time. With my second wife, I used to find bottles hidden in the back of the bathroom cabinet, in her laundry hamper, in the bag of birdseed. Just because you found a bottle doesn’t mean your husband was still drinking. It might just have been one of his old backup cache bottles he’d forgotten about.”

  Mia’s shoulders relaxed a bit. Then she must have run back over his words in her mind. “Second wife?” She raised one perfectly arched eyebrow. “How many times have you been married?”

  “Three.” Charlie let his head hang down a little, as if he were embarrassed. But it seemed to him that each marriage had had good reasons for beginning and good reasons for ending. Too young for the first one. They’d both been nineteen, and it had lasted five months. The second had gone three years, three years of Charlie trying to save her, and her not loving herself enough to want to be saved. The third one had foundered when she realized that Charlie’s job came first and probably always would.

  “Three?” A little laugh spurted from Mia. “Scott and I were together for sixteen years. Things were rocky between us this last year, but I just figured things would come back around, becaus
e they always do. But I guess you never waited long enough to know that.”

  “None of the divorces were my idea,” Charlie said, which wasn’t exactly true. He hadn’t fought any of them. He would never make a woman stay if she didn’t want to. He had seen what happened when a man did that.

  And here Mia was acting like her relationship with Scott had been one for the ages, when just last night he was pretty sure he had caught her kissing that new public defender, Eli Somebody, under the hood of her car.

  Mia picked up the wine bottle and tipped it over her glass. Only a drop came out. “Looks like it’s time for a refill,” she announced and stood up. Charlie caught a quick glimpse of her thighs and looked away. Maybe a little slower than he should have.

  But Mia hadn’t noticed. Instead she was staring at something. Something across the street. He followed her gaze.

  It was the white house that was for sale. On the top floor, one of the blinds was pulled halfway up.

  CHAPTER 35

  Mia? What’s wrong?” Charlie asked. “Mia?” He swung his gaze back to the house across the street, the house that was for sale and obviously had been for some time. What was she seeing?

  Without answering him, Mia ran through Colleen’s yard to the front of her house. Charlie hurried after her until they both were standing in front of the boarded-up window, staring at the house across the street.

  “When I came here this morning to help set up, the blinds were all down.” Mia pointed. “Now that one’s half up. And I’m pretty sure I just saw a person’s face in the window.” She now sounded completely sober. “Charlie, I think someone is in that house.”

  He turned to look at the plywood and then back up at the window across the street. If anyone had been up there Sunday night, they would have had a clear view of Colleen’s murder. Then another thought occurred to him. Could whoever had killed Colleen have holed up just a few yards from where the murder had occurred?