Читать книгу Closer Than Blood - Gregg Olsen - Страница 16

CHAPTER EIGHT

Kitsap County

Cooking dinner in the Stark household was the kind of communal endeavor that artists so charmingly sketched for the Saturday Evening Post and that modern-day advertisers with buckets of guilt and products to sell still employed to remind people that the family that ate their meals together stayed together. Kendall and Steven alternated the roles of sous chef and head chef. On days when she was up to her neck with criminal investigations and the people who populated the files of her in-basket at the sheriff’s office, Kendall liked the feel of a sharp knife in her hands as chief chopper. She enjoyed the way carbide made its way through a potato or an onion. The cut felt good.

A release.

The day had been consumed by thoughts of the reunion, Lainie, and, of course, Tori. That her partner Josh Anderson was coming to dinner might drag the day to a new low. She pulled herself together.

Focus, Kendall. Good things. Happy things.

She looked around the kitchen. Things didn’t get much better than what she saw. It was—her son, her husband, her home—what she had dreamed about as a girl in Port Orchard.

The Starks had recently remodeled the kitchen, with Steven doing most of the work except the fabrication of the limestone slab countertop. Kendall sanded the cupboards before Steven lacquered them with a creamy white, but quickly learned that there was no glory in sanding. Increasingly, it was clear that the kitchen had been designed with Steven’s preferences in mind, anyway. Kendall didn’t care. The backside of the new island had, by default, become her domain. She prepped the salad—a mix of arugula, romaine, and fennel—and looked at the clock.

“You don’t mind, do you?” she asked.

Steven stirred the contents of a saucepan.

“You mean an evening with To-Know-Me-Is-to-Love-Me?”

“I felt sorry for him,” Kendall said.

“Josh almost cost you your job. But, no, if you can forgive him, I can, too.”

Kendall turned to Cody, who was sitting at the kitchen table working on arranging dried pasta into an intricate design that suggested both chaos and order. Kendall was unsure if it was a road in a mountainous landscape or something else. Pasta was linked up, one piece after another, and fanned out into a kind of swirling shape. Cody had always been adept at puzzles—sometimes putting them together with the reverse side up, using only shapes and not imagery to fit each piece together.

“You doing okay, babe?” Kendall asked.

Cody looked up, a faint smile on his round face. Whatever he was thinking about at that moment was a pleasant thought. It might have been dinner. It could have been the stars in the sky. Cody spoke, but not often. He was not an alien like some spiteful people consider those with autism, but a gentle spirit who had an awareness of everything around him—even when it seemed he let no one inside.

“Good. I’m good,” he said.

“I know you are,” she said.

Cody had become more verbal in the past few months. And while his responses weren’t exactly lengthy, they did get the point across, and they gave his parents and doctors hope that his particular form of autism might not be as severe as once thought. It was true that he’d likely never be able to function without continued support and guidance; he wasn’t going to end up in some hospital somewhere. He was only nine, of course, but the Starks feared the day that they were gone and what their son would face in life without the love of those who knew him.

“Lasagna’s ready to come out,” Steven said.

Kendall squeezed a lemon into the salad dressing she was mixing with a wire balloon whisk in a small glass bowl. She dropped in a little Dijon, some minced shallots, and a sprinkle of cayenne. With the tip of a spoon, she tasted the dressing, made a face, and added another squeeze of honey from a plastic bear-shaped bottle.

“Perfect timing,” she said, catching the sight of a BMW as it moved into the parking area behind the house. “Josh is here now.”

Josh Anderson had been an infrequent guest in the Stark residence for the past year. He’d heard about the remodel and had even offered to help out, but his proposal was halfhearted and the relationship was somewhat strained following their last major case, the so-called Kitsap Cutter, and subsequent media brouhaha. He stood at the doorway, bottle of Oregon pinot noir in hand and a somewhat nervous smile on his face. At fifty-two, Josh no longer looked like he was trying so hard to be the ladies’ man that he’d once been. The gray at his temples was more pronounced, as though he’d given up on coloring it to “just a touch of gray.” His jacket, an ill-advised tweed with elbow patches that seemed a little more “professor” than “detective,” was a little tight around the middle.

“Ninety-two points on this one,” he said.

Steven took the bottle. “I’d probably like it if it had sixty points.”

Kendall motioned for Josh to come inside. She looked at Steven and rolled her eyes. It was a playful gesture, not to repudiate him for a lack of knowledge.

“My husband, the wine connoisseur,” she said.

Steven, however, took the bait. “It isn’t that I don’t like a good bottle of wine,” he said, “I just don’t usually know the difference between the notes of this or that.”

“It was twenty bucks,” Josh said, hanging his jacket over the back of a chair. “I buy by price, not points.”

“Something we have in common besides Kendall,” Steven said.

Josh ignored the sarcasm, intended or merely the result of Steven’s attempt at making a quip.

“Hi, Cody,” he said.

Cody looked at him, but said nothing.

“How’s he doing?”

“He’s doing better. Every day is better,” Kendall said.

“Wish I could say that about me.”

Josh Anderson may have been knocked down a peg in the past year, but he was still surprisingly adept at putting himself back into any conversation as its focus.

Steven uncorked the wine and poured it into the bulbous globes of Kendall’s grandmother’s stemware—the only thing they had in the house that was reserved for company. Josh somehow rated. Steven almost said something about that, but thought better of it. He kind of liked a kicked-to-the-curb Josh.

“Cheers,” Steven said, swirling the syrupy red liquid in his crystal wineglass.

Three glasses met in the clinking sound that comes with the promise of a good evening.

They went into the living room with its windows taking in glorious nighttime views of Puget Sound. The choppy waters had been sliced by a passing boat, leaving a foamy V from its engine to the rocky shoreline. They had a few moments before dinner and they chatted about the weather, the view, the things that they were doing around the house.

“How’s that class reunion coming along?” Josh asked.

Kendall set down her wine. “Don’t get me started.”

Steven looked at Josh and grinned. “Don’t get her started.”

Kendall laughed. “Since you brought it up, Josh, I’ll ask you to remind me never to get involved in another committee.” She glanced in Steven’s direction. “Someone here could have saved me a lot of trouble.”

“Don’t get me involved in this. You’re a Wolf through and through,” he said, invoking the name of the South Kitsap High School mascot.

“So, really, how’s it going?” Josh asked. It seemed that he wanted to talk about something other than himself or the gossip around the sheriff’s office, which was fine with Kendall. There was a subject she really didn’t want to get into, though she knew the conversation would go that way eventually.

She talked about the process of selecting everything with a group of people who had nothing in common other than they came from the same graduating class.

“Ask me about napkins sometime and I can bore you for a good two hours.”

“Napkins can be tricky,” Josh said. “Not that I’d know much about that.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” she said. “You seemed more the kind of guy who’d use your shirtsleeve to wipe off your mouth.” She paused. “Not that there’s really anything wrong with that.”

They laughed a little. It was always fun to zing Josh. Zinging the pompous was always a good time.

With a lull in the conversation, Steven spoke up. “You did have one thing worth talking about today. Tell Josh about your old schoolmate, Tori.”

“She was your old schoolmate, too,” she said. “I told him.”

Josh looked at her. “What’s up with your old pal? Win the lotto or something?”

Kendall shook her head. “Not hardly. I mentioned it today in the office. Tori’s husband was shot and killed in Tacoma. She was shot, too. Her sister Lainie’s on the reunion committee.”

Josh narrowed his brow and Kendall’s demeanor had changed. If Kendall had mentioned it, it had been so fleeting that he’d missed it. He could have called her on it, but there was no point in that.

“What’s up with Tori?” he asked. “I’m getting the vibe here that she’s not in your top ten.”

Years on the job had allowed Josh and Kendall to understand each other only too well. He could read her and she didn’t like that. Not at all.

She set down her wine. “We had our moments. I won’t lie. But really, I was better friends with her twin.”

Kendall seemed uncomfortable and that made Josh dig a little deeper.

“Twins?”

This time Steven jumped in. “Yes, exactly the same, but completely different.”

Kendall looked at her husband, quietly acknowledging what he said was true, then turned her attention back to Josh.

“I like Lainie,” she said. Her tone was surprisingly defensive, as if she needed to back up the so-called good twin. For some reason or another. “And honestly, I have no idea how she could share the same genes with her sister.”

Kendall stood to go to the kitchen.

“Dinner’s ready,” she said. “Be prepared, Josh, to have the best lasagna made by a non-Italian. My husband’s a pretty good cook.”

She faced the lasagna pan and started cutting, the sharp knife slicing through layers of pasta and cheese, clear, distinct strata of white and amber. Each piece came from the pan in a perfect rectangle. There would be no messy, ill-shaped portion served for the cook or his wife.

“So what’s the prognosis for Tori?” Josh asked.

Kendall handed him a plate. As steam curled from the food to the ceiling, he breathed in the garlic and oregano as if it were a drug and smiled.

Steven beamed. He knew he was a pretty good cook.

“I don’t know,” Kendall said. “I really don’t know much more than what I’ve told you.”

“Did you call Tacoma PD?” Josh asked.

When Kendall didn’t answer right away, Steven echoed the question. “Did you, Kendall?”

She looked at her husband. It was a hard look, the kind of expression meant to shut down that line of questioning before it went too far.

Josh picked up the subtext of the conversation and pounced. “I didn’t know you were that close,” Josh said.

“Tori and I were schoolmates,” she said. “End of story.”

“We all were,” Steven said, taking a bite. “But then so was Jason Reed.”

Jason Reed. Kendall let out a quiet sigh at the mention of his name. She really didn’t want to discuss Jason in front of Josh Anderson. Talking about Jason always brought back a flood of sad memories. Sometimes it brought tears, and with tears came too many questions.

Steven spoke up. “Tori was driving a car that killed the guy. Back in high school.”

“Parm? I have some shredded in the kitchen,” Kendall said, in a completely ungraceful attempt to alter the direction of the conversation.

“Killed the guy?” Josh said, putting down his fork.

“It was an accident,” Steven said. “Wreck on Banner. At the Jump. Tori actually did some time for it in juvenile detention. Some people thought she did more and deserved more time. Not all accidents are accidental, you know.”

“Some class you SK Wolves must have had back then,” Josh said.

“I guess so. Jason’s death hit us hard,” Kendall said, putting herself back into the conversation, seeking control. “He was so young and it was so final.”

“So, are you going to look into Jason’s case?” Steven asked.

Kendall shook her head, a rote response to a question she’d already considered. “No,” she said, watching her son slide into a chair next to her. “Of course not. But I am worried about Lainie.”

The shift in conversation interested Josh. It was like the second half to an ongoing dialog that Steven and Kendall must have engaged in earlier.

“Why dig into it now?” he asked.

Again, Steven answered for Kendall.

“You cops like the word hinky, don’t you? Something about the case that bothered people. Rumors. Gossip, whatever. There’s always a lot of time for speculation in Kitsap County. Not a lot of other things to do.”

Kendall didn’t want to cause an argument at dinner, but she was irritated with her husband.

“There were some rumors, yes,” she said.

“Look,” Josh said, leaning closer to her, “I know you. You’re gonna dig.”

Kendall knew he was right. They both were.

“All right. Probably. Four deaths around one person, that’s pretty remarkable odds.”

Josh knitted his brows as he swallowed his 92-point pinot—a number he’d exaggerated when he presented the bottle at the front door. It was only an 88. He held out his fingers and wiggled three of them.

“Four?” Josh ticked off two of them. “Jason Reed and her husband in Tacoma? That’s two.”

Steven nodded as he prepared to drop the bomb. “And the husband before that. Never knew the guy. None of us did. And her mother—that was quite a few years ago. A suicide.”

Josh nearly spilled his wine. “You’re shitting me.”

Kendall looked over at Cody, who was happily enjoying the gooey top layer of his lasagna.

Seeing the boy, Josh Anderson’s face went a little red. Despite what everyone thought about him, he knew better than to curse in front of a kid.

“Sorry,” he said, lowering his voice. “But you’re kidding, right?”

“Afraid not,” Steven said. “Husband number one bit the dust on a Hawaiian vacation a few years back.”

Josh leaned across the table toward Kendall. Clearly, he was enthralled by the conversation. “Nice. That Tori seems like trouble.”

Kendall didn’t respond and Steven poured more wine into each of their glasses.

“Yeah, as I recall, that Tori was like a whirlpool,” Steven said. “She can suck everyone down in her misery.”

“I guess,” Kendall finally added. “Like a whirlpool.”

Kendall Stark rinsed the dinner plates of the sticky residue of pasta and ricotta before aligning them just so into the open grate of the dishwasher. The breeze had kicked up a little and the flowering plum by the window had lost most of its petals, sending a creamy pink drift across the patio. Josh had gone, and Cody was tucked in down the hall of the old house. She slid the dishwasher shut with her hip as she dried her hands on a white-and-red checkered towel.

The evening had not been bad. Not one hundred percent bad, anyway.

“Look,” Steven said after Josh left, “I know you cared about Jason. I get that. He was special to you and he’s gone. I’m not threatened by that.”

His words were undeniably heartfelt, yet they made Kendall feel uncomfortable. There were areas that had been off limits even in a marriage as good as theirs had been. Jason Reed was one of those areas.

“I know,” she said, lying a little to make him feel better. The minute she said it, she questioned it.

Why do I do that? she thought. Why do I care about making someone feel better all the time?

As the dishwasher started to hum and Steven went to turn off the lights, Kendall thought of Jason and how she’d been so haunted by his death more than fifteen years ago. The dinner that night. The talk about Tori’s latest tragedy, if that’s what it was, had released old feelings.

Feelings she avoided.

She wondered what her life might have been like if Jason hadn’t died. She wondered what everyone’s life might have been like.

Most of all, she felt sad that those thoughts hadn’t evaporated over time. Not as she’d been told they would. Not as they should have. Fifteen years, she assured herself, was long enough to grieve.

With Cody already asleep, Kendall turned off the red, white, and blue tugboat lamp by his bedside. She brushed her lips against his straw-colored hair and kissed him good night. She lifted the always-sticky double-hung window a crack to let in a little night air. Not too much. Just a trickle of cool. Cody was one of those kids who slept hot, often kicking off the covers by morning.

Sleep, my baby, she thought.

By the time she got to their bedroom, Steven was already in bed, smelling of toothpaste, and looking at his sales call sheet for the morning. Kendall had a visit with her mother in mind for the next day, but given the late hour, it was the next day.

“Don’t you ever take a break?” Kendall asked as she undressed.

“When you’re on commission,” he said, “there’s no such thing as a break. Particularly in this day and age.”

The publishers of the magazine Steven represented had made a big push to focus on electronic advertising. Steven had gamely gone along with the change. The results were not as encouraging as he’d hoped. It appeared that hunters and fishermen didn’t necessarily take their laptops when they went out in the sticks. It appeared that Wi-Fi had not caught up with the great outdoors. Sales were down sharply and he was feeling the pressure.

“Tomorrow’s a busy day all the way around,” she said, slipping into a chambray blue pair of pajama bottoms and an oversize T-shirt. “I’m going to see Mom. Run some errands. Solve a crime.”

“Sexy look, girl,” he said, eyeing her as she crawled next to him.

“I’ll show you sexy.” She kissed him. That was all the cajoling Steven needed. He set down the paperwork that had held his attention. His hands found the softness of her skin underneath the T-shirt. She let out a sigh. They were tenderly entwined, tangled in the bedsheets.

“Didn’t take much,” she said. “Did it?”

Steven’s stubbled face skimmed the surface of her breast as he slid lower into the bed.

She still felt the excitement that came with the touch of her husband.

“No, baby. Not much.”

Neither one said another word about Jason Reed. If his ghost had hovered around the dining room only a couple hours ago, he’d vanished once more.