Close Call (12 page)

Sydney

Two hours later, Sydney
stood outside the emerald green door to Reese's Falls Church house, unable to make herself knock. She wiped sweaty palms down her skirted thighs. After spurning her sister's offer to help yesterday, she was now in the position of asking for assistance and she wasn't sure she could make her mouth form the words. She'd spent the better part of an hour tucked into the corner of a coffee shop, trying to think of a way around it, but had failed.

She focused on her surroundings. Reese's house was un-Reese-ish in her eyes, bright and welcoming. It was two stories, painted white with black trim. The green door made her think of Oz. The wraparound porch was made hospitable with a two-person swing, a small seating area, and masses of ferns and flowers in hanging baskets and ceramic pots. Bees buzzed. According to Connie, the profits from Reese's hugely successful true crime books had paid for this historic home, set apart from its neighbors by an acre of yard surrounded by a belt of trees.

Sydney dragged her thoughts back to why she was there. Asking Reese for help was the smart thing to do. No question. She had zero investigative experience and would waste too much time trying to figure out how to unearth the secrets in Montoya's life and locate an enemy—political or personal—willing to pay to have him killed. Reese, on the other hand, was a crack investigator. Even so, Sydney wasn't sure she could have brought herself to her sister's doorstep merely to help Montoya. She was here for Jason, to find the man who'd shot Jason in cold blood.

The question was: could she trust Reese to help and keep it quiet?

Reese wasn't a reporter anymore, she reminded herself, and she couldn't see any advantage Reese would gain by giving the story to someone at the
Post
. After the scandal, and then Dirk, Sydney had had trouble trusting her instincts about anyone, but years of working with the women at Winning Ways had gradually renewed her faith in her instincts. She could usually tell after half an hour which of the women were sincere about wanting to turn their lives around, which were going to fall back into the clutches of addiction or abusive relationships, and which were going to look for the easy way to make a buck or get ahead. She was afraid her instincts were off in her sister's case, scrambled by their history, but she didn't have a choice.
For Jason
, she told herself, stabbing the doorbell before she could change her mind. A
bong
worthy of a monastery bell resonated inside the house.

Barking and the tapping of doggie toenails on wood raised her brows. Since when did Reese have a dog? The door opened and Reese stood there, casual in shorts and a Hoyas T-shirt, smears of paint or caulk on her hands and one thigh. The dog, black and white with a pushed-in nose and bat ears, frisked around Sydney, sniffing her feet and then putting his paws on her knees. His stumpy tail wagged so hard his whole body shook.

“Off, Earl,” Reese said.

The dog immediately sat. Trust Reese to have a well-trained dog.

Sydney bent to pat him, unable to resist his doggie grin. “Earl?”

“He was already Earl when I got him,” Reese said, offering no further explanation. She gave Sydney a cool look. “To what do I owe the honor?”

Sydney straightened. Her sister wasn't going to make this easy. “I—” She cleared her throat. “I need your help.”

“With?”

“Figuring out who put out a contract on Montoya.” She rolled her neck to release the tension. “Look, can I come in and tell you about it?” She hefted the box she held in the crook of one elbow, hoping curiosity about its contents would break through her sister's reserve.

Reese hesitated a moment, long enough for Sydney to think she was going to turn her away, but then she pushed the screen door wider and said, “Why not?”

Sydney crossed the sanded, refinished oak planks of the entryway and followed Reese and Earl into the small living area on the left. The Boston terrier went to a dog bed by the open window and curled up on it. A cloth covered the floors, and stacks of tile stood neatly near the fireplace where two lines of square tiles had been affixed to the right of the opening. Reese had been refinishing the place since she'd bought it five years ago, according to Connie, who made a point of keeping Sydney updated on her sister's whereabouts and activities.

“Talk while I work,” Reese commanded, sinking cross-legged in front of a bucket of mastic. “This'll dry out if I don't keep at it. I think better when my hands are busy anyway.”

Sydney perched on the top of a step ladder. “It looks great,” she said, delaying the need to talk about Montoya for a moment. “I love those tiles.”

“They're vintage, made by the Trent Tile Company, and they match what was originally here. I got them at an auction and it was a bitch sanding them clean enough to install. I'm trying to be true to the period, but it's hard to find original fittings and tiles these days. I've had to use reproductions in a few places. I got lucky with the tiles.”

Sydney got the feeling Reese was talking about tiles to ward off the silence and the awkwardness between them, which had expanded over the last decade and a half like foam insulation. Insulation was a good analogy, she decided. Conversation about unimportant things kept them insulated from feelings, from talking about the elephant in the room that they'd been studiously not talking about since one ugly, accusatory shout-fest fifteen years ago. Tiles were easy. While Reese troweled the thick glue onto the wall and pressed tiles onto it, Sydney finally told her about being summoned by Montoya and his “deal.”

“Some deal,” Reese said, looking up briefly. “Extortion, more like.”

“Yeah, but he's right when he says we both benefit from ID-ing the man behind the killer. Montoya gets to live, and I get to find out who killed Jason.”

“And not go to prison,” Reese pointed out.

“That, too.” Funnily enough, Sydney wasn't that worried about prison. Hilary said the case wouldn't go to trial, and she believed her. She was more worried that the damage to her reputation would be irreparable and that she'd permanently lose Winning Ways. The thought hollowed her stomach.

Reese worked in silence for a few minutes, and Sydney watched, thinking her sister had beautiful hands: slightly squarish, long-fingered and short-nailed, with strong bones. Not beautiful in the conventional sense of soft skin and manicures, but useful, competent, capable of creating beauty.

Using a level to check that her tiles weren't slanting, Reese said, “So, you want me to do what? Track down a hit man and ask him who hired him?”

Sydney flushed. “Help me figure out who might have. You have sources, research expertise.” She shrugged. “I don't. I can analyze these”—she tapped the box of threatening letters—“but I don't know where to
start with Montoya's personal life. He contends he has no enemies—”

Reese choked.

“I know, right?” Sydney said, smiling back. It felt surprisingly good. She couldn't remember the last time she and Reese had shared a laugh. “Anyway, I was thinking on the way over that the way to go at this might be to figure out who had both a grudge against Montoya—a worth-killing-for grudge—
and
access to a contract killer. I mean, there might be any number of cheated-on husbands out there, or spurned lovers or political rivals who would gladly run Montoya down if he stepped in front of their car, but how many of them have a hit man on speed dial? It's a Venn diagram.” She made two circles with thumbs and forefingers and overlapped them slightly. “This one”—she pointed with her chin to her right hand—“represents everyone with a motive to kill Montoya. The left”—she touched that hand with her chin—“is people with the kind of connections to hire a contract killer. The space where they join is the pool of people we need to investigate.”

Reese gave her a slightly surprised but approving look. “Good thinking.”

“Don't look so surprised. I do have a brain, you know, and I didn't totally waste my time in college, even though I had to spend way too much of it guarding the graded term papers and exams people wanted to steal and post online to prove they knew the Manley Trap, or make fun of me, and ducking every time someone with a camera came within range. Forget about making friends. Sorry.” Sydney stopped herself. “I'm sorry. I wasn't going to drag all that up again.” She was dismayed by how easily she'd fallen into a rant about Reese ruining her life.

Her sister swiveled on her butt to face her, eyes narrowed. “Get out right now if you're going to throw ancient history in my face every time you open your mouth.”

Sydney reared back and the stepladder rocked. “I—”

“You think you were the only one who got mud splattered on you from that story?”

“You wrote it. It was your choice—”

Reese rose. Her nostrils flared. “In J-schools around the country, ‘pulling a Linn' is synonymous with a reporter who goes to any lengths to get a story. I pretend to be proud of it, but it makes me squirm. You think I like having the whole world think I'm a Benedict Arnold?”

“Dad thought you were a rock star.”

Reese nodded. She looked suddenly older. A gust of wind clattered the blinds behind her, but although she tensed, she didn't look around. “Everything I ever did—the grades, running track, Georgetown—I did for him, so he would be proud of me. I knew it disappointed him when I became a reporter instead of a lawyer, so I decided I'd be the best damn reporter there ever was. Well, there wasn't much scope for investigative reporting at the
Loudon Times-Mirror
. Two years of reporting on PTA meetings, city council elections, teen vandalism, and the occasional drug bust. Dad kept pressuring me to give it up, to go to law school—you remember.”

Sydney did. Dinner conversations had been rancorous whenever Reese came home, which she did frequently since her reporter's salary barely paid for her studio apartment. Howard Linn haranguing Reese about following him into the law, Reese flaring that she had a right to live her own life, Connie blithely talking over both of them, relating the details of some social engagement that day, or a morsel of gossip she'd picked up at the tennis club.

“So, when I caught on to what you and Manley were up to, I wrote the story. You know what Dad said to me when it broke?”

Interested despite herself, Sydney shook her head.

“He said, ‘You'd have made an outstanding lawyer. You've got the instincts of a shark.' He meant it as a compliment, but it didn't feel the way I'd always thought it would. I just felt … empty.”

For some reason, the word inflamed Sydney. She stood so fast the stepladder toppled with a clang. “‘Empty'? Better that than ‘betrayed,' ‘abandoned,' ‘abused.' You made me a pariah, and you didn't get the satisfaction out of it that you thought you would. Pardon me if I can't work up any tears for you.” She tried to steady her voice. “You made the choice—”

“So. Did. You.” Each word dropped with deadly precision. “No one made you sleep with George Manley. You might have been eighteen when the affair started, but you were twenty when it ended.”

Old enough to know better
, her tone said. The truth of it seared Sydney. It's not like she hadn't thought it a thousand times over the years. To drown out the guilt, she leaned forward, hands clenched at her sides, and almost yelled, “When
you
ended it!”

“Oh, please. The end was implicit from the beginning. Did you really think the Speaker of the House was going to ditch his career, his reputation, and his family to marry you? No twelve-year-old in this town is that naive.” Reese cocked one brow. “Since ‘choice' is your new favorite word, let me ask: did his wife have a choice?”

Sydney sucked in a breath, her mouth and throat dry. She felt like she'd inhaled talc. The air didn't reach her lungs and dizziness made her sway. Julie Manley. George's wife had come to see her after the story broke. Even now she couldn't make herself think about that meeting, Julie's scorn, hurt, disgust. Sydney had vomited when Julie left. Her legs trembled so hard she reached for the wall to balance herself. This was a bad idea, a putrid one. She turned to go, gaining speed as she neared the door.

“That was low,” Reese said. “I shouldn't have gone there.”

She sounded sincere, but Sydney didn't even slow down. Reese's footsteps sounded behind her, and then she was in front of her, blocking the way. Sydney stopped, glaring at her. Earl barked and frisked around them like he thought they were playing a game.

“Hit me,” Reese said.

Sydney's jaw sagged. “What?”

“Hit me. ‘Sorry' isn't enough. It never will be. Giving money to Winning Ways isn't enough. You need to hit me.”

“You never even said you were sorry, not and meant it!”

Reese's eyelids closed for a second. When she opened them, the futility in her eyes froze Sydney. “You never read my letters.”

The letters. Sydney took a shuddering breath. The first one had arrived on the anniversary of the article's publication. Recognizing her sister's handwriting, Sydney, two days shy of her twenty-first birthday, had burned it unopened, taking savage satisfaction in watching the envelope start to smolder, the corner blacken and curl up, and then the burst of flames that resolved too quickly into ash. Letters postmarked on the anniversary had arrived for ten years, and then they had stopped. She had disposed of the first eight in various manners, but had kept the last two, unopened. They lay in a shoebox tucked onto her highest closet shelf. She hadn't thought about them for years. An unfamiliar twinge of guilt pulled at her. “I couldn't make myself—”

“No matter.” Reese straightened her shoulders, abs tight and legs braced. Her arms hung loosely at her sides. She was still holding the trowel. When Sydney eyed it, she let it clatter to her refinished floor. “Do it.” She squinched her eyes mostly closed, crow's feet fanning from the corners.