“Only thing I know is, she was cut up about Angie Maroni,” Julie said. “Then again, anyone would be, knowin’ that person for awhile and them endin’ up murdered.”
Dead fucking end.
New direction.
It was a risk. Word about Marie was undoubtedly making the rounds. Word about Denny would be close on its heels. Soon, Julie McCall would link their chat to the murders and she’d talk, he had no doubt and he didn’t have the inclination to make any deal she would open to him to stop her mouth from running.
People were dying so he had no fucking choice.
“Do you know Denny Lowe?” he asked.
Another eyebrow raise then, “Um… yeah, sure. He’s a customer.”
“He come in a lot?”
“Sometimes Saturdays. He works.”
“He seem partial to Amy’s station?”
She shook her head, now confused. “Not really,” she was thinking, trying to recall, “actually, thinkin’ about it, can’t remember him ever goin’ to her station at all,” she focused on him again, “though I can’t be sure.”
“They ever talk? She ever mention him?”
She kept shaking her head.
Christ, she was all he had and she was giving him nothing.
“‘Cept…” she started.
“Yeah?” Colt prompted.
“Amy had a bit of a flip out not long ago. It was on a Saturday and it was when he came in.”
Colt felt a spiral of exhilaration in his gut.
“What kind of a flip out?”
She waved her hand. “Well, Amy wasn’t prone to flip outs and it wasn’t a big one. She just said she needed a break early and took it but that’s not her style. When she came back, she looked like she’d been crying. Didn’t have to do with Mr. Lowe, though. I just remember that he was in when it happened. And I only remember because he took a big withdrawal and that doesn’t happen often. Most folks can get their money from the cash machine, have to come to a station to withdraw that kind of dough and it’s still unusual. Usually folks come to us to deposit, move money around, check balances, ask about or pay on their line of credit or mortgage. Stuff like that. You always remember a big withdrawal.”
Colt reckoned you did, especially when you didn’t have thousands of dollars in your own account which he guessed she didn’t considering she wasn’t wearing wedding rings but she was wearing clothes that were too expensive on a teller’s salary. Envy and curiosity about how the other half lived likely baked those memories into your brain.
“You did his withdrawal?” Colt asked.
“That day, yeah.”
“He talk about what it was for? Takin’ a vacation? Buyin’ somethin’ special?”
She shook her head.
“He seem to have a preference in tellers?”
“Nope, there’s just one line, folks come up to whichever one of us is open. Only Angie Maroni waited for Amy.”
“That day you know why Amy was cryin’?”
Julie shrugged. “Sure, I asked after work if she was okay. She said she was it was just that she was thinkin’ about her boy.”
It took everything Colt had not to jerk back at this news and that cold circled his chest, tight and vicious.
“Her boy?”
“Yeah, she had a kid, years ago. Put him up for adoption. She thinks about him a lot, she told me, but she doesn’t get upset. She just got upset that day, somethin’ struck her and she got sad wonderin’ where he was.”
Colt didn’t reply.
Amy Harris had a child. He had no idea.
And she’d got upset about it when Denny walked in, probably not a coincidence.
She was petite but nicely rounded. Very pretty but dark-haired. She had dark brown eyes. That and her curves were the only thing she shared with Feb. Feb was tall, blonde and her curves were more attractive considering the length of her frame and the way she held herself.
Denny Lowe wouldn’t get it up for Amy Harris.
Unless while he was doing it, he was doing something else that would get him off.
Fucking hell.
Poor Amy.
“You would,” Julie said, taking Colt from his thoughts, “you know, think about the kid you gave up. It’s natural.”
“She tell you about the kid’s Dad?”
“Yeah,” Julie was now a font of information, “she knew him but she never told him about the kid. I wasn’t around but she told me she took a sabbatical from work so no one would see her showin’ and came back after it was all done.”
“Why didn’t she tell the Dad? Weren’t they together?”
“Nope, she said it was a one night stand, if you can believe that of Amy, which I couldn’t at first. Thought she was jerking me around when she told me, tryin’ to seem more interesting. But you could tell it was genuine. Said she didn’t want him to know or anyone to know it was him. She was protectin’ him from something, I reckoned. Thought maybe he was married but didn’t ask. She wasn’t big on talkin’ about it and didn’t for years. Most of the girls, though, know now, even though none of us were around when Amy started here and it all went down.” This was, Colt knew because Julie McCall had told them, the bitch. Colt focused as Julie continued. “Only some of the bank officers were around back then but only because, between most of ‘em, they own the bank,” she finished.
Colt leaned forward in order to pull out his wallet, which took him closer to her. Instead of leaning back as anyone would, she leaned forward too and he just caught another lip curl.
He sat back, flipped out his wallet and gave her a card.
“You hear from Amy, you can tell her I want to talk to her, see she’s all right. Or you could just call me.”
She’d call him, she heard from Amy or, he reckoned, even if she didn’t.
She took the card and smiled, back to suggestive. “Sure, Lieutenant Colton.”
He stood, pushing his wallet in his back pocket and grabbing his coffee. “Thank you, Ms. McCall.”
He didn’t offer his hand, he should have but he had what he wanted from her and he doubted there was any more to be had. Now she needed to know the limits to his friendliness.
She didn’t take the hint. “Call me Julie.”
He wasn’t going to have the opportunity to call her anything and he found this a relief.
He just smiled and threw his arm toward the door, inviting her to precede him. Interview over.
She walked in front of him deliberately slow, drawing out her time with him and likely away from her job. She moved and he knew she wanted him to watch her ass while she was doing it. He did and almost laughed. He’d been watching Feb’s ass move around her bar for the last two years and Julie McCall? No fucking comparison.
At the top of the stairs he thanked her again, turned and gave Dave a nod. Dave was in his office with customers he was now ignoring as his eyes were glued to Colt. Before he could give his customers excuses and hightail it to Colt, Colt gave him a wave and took off.
He walked to Amy’s and thought about her pregnant, having a baby and giving it up for adoption. He had no idea when this happened but he’d find out. She was working at the bank so it was after high school maybe while Denny Lowe was in Northwestern or even later, when Denny married Marie. Like most kids whose parents didn’t leave town, Colt remembered Denny came back during summer breaks and for visits before he moved home with Marie. It could have happened anytime.
There were lots of reasons women gave up kids but Amy didn’t seem the type, not if she’d be crying about it years later. She was shy but she was sweet, responsible, close to her kin, she’d likely make a good Mom. Something made her give up her kid and Colt worried it was something not good for Amy.
If it was because of what he worried it was, Denny had raped her or courted her and then forced rough, weird sex on her, then what this had to do with Feb and Feb’s reaction to Colt being around Amy, Colt had no fucking clue. Except if Denny called Amy February and demanded she call him
Alec in return. He could see how that’d freak Amy enough to stay quiet a long while. Enough to take some time to get the courage to come forward, head to the bar, get ready to share then lose your courage when the time was right and get the fuck out of Dodge.
Still, none of this explained Feb’s extreme response to seeing Amy with Colt.
He made it to Amy’s to see her car still in her drive. He knocked then waited then knocked again. And repeat. Nothing and no movement at her draperies this time. He stood around long enough, checking the quiet neighborhood and letting the quiet neighborhood have the opportunity to see him again at her front door. He scanned the windows of the houses he could see, looking to see if some nose was watching just so he’d have another lead, he’d take anything. He stood around long enough for someone to come out, go to their car or come to him and ask him if he needed something.
Nothing.
So he went hunting, knocked on a few doors, both sides of her house and across the street.
No one home.
He gave up and as he walked back to the Station, his cell rang. He yanked it out of his pocket and the display said “February calling.”
When Morrie gave him her number and he’d programmed it into his phone several days ago, he’d been uncertain how he felt about doing it. There was no uncertainty about how he felt about it being there now.
He flipped it open and put it to his ear. “Feb.”
“List is ready. Mom’s bringing it down to the Station once we get into the bar.”
She hated doing it he could hear it in her voice.
That’s why he made his voice soft when he replied, “Okay, honey.”
“You call Costa’s?”
He could see she was rabid for Costa’s but then again Feb liked to eat, always did. He’d noted in the last two years she still did the amount of times he saw her, Morrie, Ruthie or Darryl take off with orders and they got Reggie’s or take out from Frank’s or a delivery came from Shanghai Salon. You didn’t get the kind of curves she had, curves he’d now seen naked and touched with his hands, from eating salads. The vision of her sliding off his bed to stand naked at its side this morning was pleasantly seared to the backs of his eyeballs and he hoped to God that burn never healed.
“Not yet.”
“They get busy on a Tuesday.”
They were busy every day.
“Baby, I’ll call.”
“They give you a song and dance about being booked, throw your police detective weight around,” she advised.
He bit back his laugh and smiled into the phone. “We don’t tend to do that.”
“Colt, you get called out to see dead bodies for a living, you gotta get somethin’ good outta that badge.”
“We’ll get a reservation,” he told her and they would. Costa’s was in another town but Stavros Costa knew Jack and Jackie from way back, Feb, Morrie and Colt too. They’d all been going there together for years, Feb’s birthdays, Colt and Feb’s first official date, when Colt made All-State the first time and the second, when they took sectionals, when they took regionals, the time Jackie won five hundred dollars in the lottery. Stavros knew all about Feb and Colt. If Colt called and said he and Feb were coming in for dinner, Stavros would build a table for them with his bare hands if he had to.
“All right,” Feb said.
“How’s your head?” Colt asked.
“My head?” Feb asked back.
“Yeah, you exhausted yet at how busy it’s been in there?”
She was silent a second then he heard her soft, husky laughter and he felt that laughter slide through his gut straight to his dick. “Nope, not yet.”
“Good.”
“Gotta jump in the shower.”
Now that was a pleasant thought to leave him with, he’d have to find a way to thank her.
“All right, later.”
“Later.”
He was walking down the sidewalk, the Station in his sights when he saw Sully walking Marie Lowe’s parents to a car parked on the street. He shook the mother’s hand and clapped the father lightly on the back. Sully was uncomfortable with their grief and didn’t try to hide it. There was an art to dealing with victims. You needed to show empathy while at the same time displaying professionalism. You had to say your pain means something to me and I’m going to do something about it at the same time.
Dealing with victims was the hardest part of the job, it didn’t matter if their cars stereo was stolen or their daughter was hacked to goo with a hatchet. They all got that lost look in their eye, their belief in the good of the world shaken. Difference was, you had your car stereo stolen you got another one and moved on. No way to replace a daughter.
He waited for Sully at the foot of the steps and had to wait awhile because Sully watched long after their car drove away. What Colt saw in his glance of Marie’s parents had sent a surge of rage through him. Sully had spent a morning visiting with them in that pit of grief and even though he could walk out and they were there for eternity, it always took you awhile to shake off the feeling of that place.
Sully caught his eye when he turned toward the Station.
“You all right, Sul?” Colt asked when he got close.
“No,” Sully’s gaze moved away, “Denny Lowe is a goddamned cock sucking motherfucker who I’m glad’s gonna burn in hell.”
There you go, that pretty much said it all.
“Wanna walk down to Meems’s and get a coffee?”
“I wanna hunt down Denny Lowe with a hatchet,” Sully said then sighed and looked at Colt’s hand. “You already got a Meems.”
“It’s empty.”
Sully nodded. “Don’t think even Meems’s ginormous chocolate chip cookies would make me feel better but it’s worth a try.”
They walked to Mimi’s and she didn’t try to rib him. She took one look at Sully and was all business. They got their order, Colt shoved more money in the tip jar and they sat at Feb’s table which was in a corner, wall to one side, back to another short wall that led to an opening that allowed staff to get around the glass-fronted counter, space all around for ordering customers to stand and wait for the coffees, no table close. Feb chose it, he knew now, to build that invisible wall around, keeping out townsfolk she thought had lost respect for her. That table worked for him and Sully to keep their conversation quiet, though the morning rush was long gone and only a guy with a laptop and a mug at the table by the front window was company.
He put his coffee mug down and saw etched into the table, “Feb’s Spot, sit here and die.”
Meems’s kids were terrors.
Still, how Feb thought the town had lost respect for her was beyond him. She may have shocked some, disappointed others but that was a long time ago and she’d always be Feb. The woman who took her time to make Angie laugh, who told Sully she’d make him hot, honeyed whisky to soothe his cold and meant it, who kept Darryl employed when he was more burden than boon – that part of Feb had never changed and nothing she did back then could erase all that.
It was something to add to their list of things to talk about, after they got what was going on between them straight, but close after. He didn’t like that she thought it and it was time to disabuse her of that notion.
“You get anything?” Colt asked after Sully had two big bites of his cookie. Colt had had several of those since Meems opened and it might be wrong, but Meems’s baking helped brighten any shitty day, no matter why it was shitty. She was that good.
“Marie’s Dad, Mr. Todd, liked the guy. He’s feeling like a schmuck. Thought Denny was ‘sharp as a tack’. Said so. Was pleased his daughter found a man who wouldn’t lean on her for money but pull his own weight. They’re loaded, you know,” Sully said.
Colt nodded, he knew.
“Mrs. Todd didn’t say much around about this time, didn’t want to make her husband feel more a schmuck but, glances he gave her, guilty ones, made me think they’d chatted in the past and she disagreed.”
“They
give you anything else?”
Sully shook his head. “Tried to get the mother talkin’ but don’t think she had much to say. I’m guessin’ her daughter didn’t tell her that her husband liked rough sex and made her call him by another man’s name. Still, they were close, easy to see, doted on Marie. They have another daughter. She and her husband are flyin’ in from Houston. They’re off to the airport to pick them up now.”
“Get anything from the house?”
“Nothin’.”
“The office?”
“Nope, clean. No files on his computer tracking Feb or you or any sick shit. Though his boss is stunned. Loved the guy. Said he was a genius. Said Denny got head hunted two, three times a year but was loyal to the company. Said Denny could be makin’ double, even triple, but he never left. Thought it was because he liked his job. Had no idea it was because Denny wanted to be close to anything Feb.”
That turned Colt’s stomach but he shook it off and kept questioning.
“Colleagues?”
“The Feds are hittin’ them this mornin’, as we speak.”
“More from the neighbors, any other friends?”
Sully shook his head.
“Anything else? He use a credit card? Called family, a friend, anyone been in touch with him since he did Marie?”
Sully took a drink from his coffee and another bite of his cookie. He did this while studying Colt.
Then he swallowed and said, “Nothin’ so far, we’re askin’ though. But apparently, he’s vanished.”
Colt sat back in the chair Feb always sat in and looked out the window, taking a drink from his own mug.
“Colt,” Sully called his attention back to him, “I know this is frustrating but we’ll get this guy. He’s fucked up, he’ll fuck up again.”
Colt knew he didn’t have to remind Sully but he did it all the same. “He fucked his wife pretending he was me and pretending she was February.”
“I could see that’d make you impatient for us to find him.”
“What makes me impatient to find him is, he gets word Feb’s in my bed, he’s likely to get gripped by another rage and anyone could get in his way.”
Sully changed the subject. “You been in that bed with Feb?”