My Sister's Grave (13 page)

“I’ll have you know it shows?” she said, groaning at the sound of it. “Way to look needy.”

When Tracy stepped out of the shower, her limited choice of clothing became even more frustrating. She left her blouse out instead of tucking it into her jeans to create a different look and pulled her hair back into a ponytail, her crow’s-feet be damned. She applied mascara and eye shadow, added a touch of perfume to her wrists and neck, and headed downstairs to the smell of bacon and hamburgers wafting from the grill, announcers providing the play-by-play of a college football game on the flat-screen.

Dan stood at the counter beating the contents of a glass bowl with a whisk. A pie crust with lemon filling sat on the counter.

“Are you making a lemon meringue pie?”

He muted the volume on the TV. “Don’t make fun. It was my mother’s recipe and it happens to be my favorite. And if I can ever get the damn egg whites to fluff, you’ll know why.”

“You’re using the wrong bowl.”

Dan gave her a skeptical look. “How could there be a
wrong
bowl?”

She stepped to his side of the counter. “Where do you keep your bowls?”

He pointed to a lower cabinet. Tracy found a copper bowl, transferred the egg whites into it, and took the whisk. In no time at all, she whisked the egg whites into foam. “Mrs. Allen would be appalled. Don’t you remember anything from chemistry class?”

“Isn’t that the class I cheated off of you in?”

“You cheated off me in every class.”

“And look how well it’s done for me. I can’t even beat egg whites.”

“It has to do with one of the proteins in the egg whites reacting with the copper of the bowl’s surface. A silver-plated bowl will do the same thing.” She poured in the sugar Dan had in a measuring cup to finish the meringue, spooned it on top of the filling, and slid the pie into the oven, setting the timer. “Didn’t you promise me a glass of wine?”

He poured two glasses, handed her one, and raised his. “To old friends.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“We’re the same age,” he said.

“Haven’t you heard? Forty is the new twenty.”

“The memo hasn’t reached my back and knees. Fine.” He raised his glass again. “To good friends.”

“That’s more like it.”

She moved to the other side of the counter and sat beneath an incandescent light, watching as he turned the onions he’d added to the grill. She smelled their sweet scent. “Can I ask you something?”

“I’m an open book.”

“It’s just you here.”

“Just me and the boys,” he said. The two dogs sat at the edge of the tile between the rooms, watching as Dan walked to the fridge.

“So why did you go to the trouble?”

He opened the fridge. “You mean the remodel?”

“Everything. The remodel, the furnishings, two dogs. It must have been a lot of effort.”

He grabbed a jar of pickles and a tomato and set them on a plastic cutting board. “It was. That’s why I did it. I went through the ‘woe is me’ period, Tracy. Finding out your wife is cheating on you isn’t exactly confidence building. I felt sorry for myself for a while. Then I got angry with the world, with her, with my ex-partner for sleeping with her.” He fished out a pickle and sliced it as he continued talking. “When Mom died that put me into an even deeper funk. One morning I woke up and decided I was tired of looking at the same damn walls. I went into the toolshed, got Dad’s sledgehammer, and started knocking them down. The more I knocked down, the better I felt. Once the walls were down, the only thing I could do was rebuild.”

“So this was your diversion.”

He washed the tomato at the sink and began to cut it with precise strokes. “All I know is, the more I rebuilt, the more I realized that just because things hadn’t worked out as I’d planned didn’t mean things couldn’t work out at all. I wanted a home. I wanted a family. Getting another wife was not on the horizon, and frankly, I wasn’t looking. So I went and got Rex and Sherlock and we created a home.” The two dogs whined at the mention of their names.

“How’d you start?”

“One swing of the hammer at a time.”

“Do you ever talk to your ex?”

“Every once in a while she’ll call. Things with my partner didn’t work out.”

“She wants you back.”

He used a spatula to transfer the burgers to a plate. “I think she was fishing about the possibility at first. What she probably really misses is the country-club lifestyle. She figured out pretty quick that the guy she married didn’t exist anymore.”

Tracy smiled. “I think the finished product looks pretty good, Dan.”

He stopped transferring the sliced tomatoes and pickles from the cutting board to a plate. “Oh no.”

“What?”

“Did that sound like a middle-aged man fishing for a compliment?”

She threw a crumpled napkin at him.

Dan had set the table while she was in the shower. He placed the plate of hamburgers on it beside a tossed green salad. “This okay?” he asked.

“Fishing for another compliment?”

“You know it.”

“It’s perfect.”

As Tracy made up her burger with condiments, Dan said, “Okay, my turn. Do you still compete in those shooting tournaments?”

“I don’t really have a lot of free time.”

“But you were so good.”

“Too many painful memories. The last time I saw Sarah was the 1993 Championship in Olympia.”

“Is that why you also never come back to Cedar Grove? Because the memories are too painful?”

“Some,” she said.

“And yet you’re about to dig up those memories all over again.”

“Not dig them up, Dan. Hopefully bury them for good.”

CHAPTER 22

A
fter dinner, Tracy walked into the den and picked up a golf club leaning against the wall. At the other end of a narrow strip of Astroturf was what looked like a tin ashtray.

“Do you play?” Dan stood in the kitchen drying the last of the dishes and stacking them into the cupboards.

She lined up a golf ball, tapped it, and watched it roll down the Astroturf. It hit the ashtray, rolled over the top, and kept going, rattling along the hardwood to the baseboard, drawing Rex and Sherlock’s attention from where they’d been lounging on the rug. “Like I said, not a lot of time for hobbies.”

“You’d pick it up quick; you were always a good athlete.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Nonsense. You just need the right instructor.”

“Yeah? Can you recommend anyone?”

He set down the bowl he’d been drying, walked into the room, and set another golf ball at her feet. “Stand over the ball.”

“You’re going to give me a lesson?”

“I paid a lot of money to be a member of a country club. I was determined to get something out of it. Come on, stand over the ball.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Feet shoulder-width apart.”

“You’re serious?”

“I’m a serious guy.”

“Not the guy I remember.”

“Yes, but I told you I’ve changed. I’m a hardened lawyer.”

“And I’ve had hand-to-hand combat training.”

“I’ll remember that if I ever need a bodyguard. Now turn around. Feet shoulder-width apart.”

She smiled and did as he said. Dan stepped close behind her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. He touched her hands, trying to adjust her grip. “Loosen up. Relax. You’re strangling it.”

“I thought you were supposed to keep your arms stiff,” she said, feeling suddenly warm.

“Your arms, not your hands. Soft hands. Light touch.”

He placed his hands over hers on the shaft of the club, his breath warm against her neck, his voice soft in her ear. “Bend your knees.” He touched the back of her knees with his own to make hers flex.

She laughed. “Okay. Okay.”

“Now, it’s a nice easy stroke back and forth, like a pendulum.”

“That I can relate to,” she said.

“I thought you might.”

He guided her arms back and gently forward. The putter struck the ball and sent it rolling slowly down the green carpet. This time when it hit the tin cup the sides folded and the ball rolled up and came to rest in the center.

“Hey,” she said. “I made it.”

“You see,” Dan said, his arms still around her, “I may not be any good in chemistry but I could teach you a thing or two.”

She’d closed her eyes, imagining what she might do if Dan were to suddenly kiss her neck. Her knees felt weak at the thought.

“Tracy?”

“Huh?”

He let go of her arms. “Maybe we should talk about your file?”

She let out the breath she had been holding. “Yeah, I think that would be good. But first, bathroom?”

“Beneath the stairs.”

Tracy found the bathroom, shut the door, and held on to the edge of the sink. In the mirror, her reflection stared back with flushed cheeks. She took a moment to regroup, turned on the faucet, and splashed cold water on her face. After drying her hands on a Boston Red Sox hand towel, she returned to the kitchen.

Dan stood near the table flipping through the pages of a yellow legal pad, each one filled with notes. He’d placed Tracy’s file in the center of the table and he’d also refilled their wine glasses. “Do you mind if I stand? I think better on my feet.”

“Be my guest.” She sat at the table and took a much-needed sip of wine.

Dan said, “I have to tell you, I was skeptical when you came in this morning. I really thought I was just humoring you.”

“I know.”

“Am I that transparent?”

“I’m a detective, Dan.” She set down her glass. “I’d be skeptical too. Ask me what you want.”

“Let’s start with the traveling salesman, Ryan Hagen.”

Vance Clark stood at the counsel’s table. “The State calls Ryan P. Hagen.”

Edmund House, seated beside his court-appointed defense attorney, long-time Cedar Grove resident DeAngelo Finn, turned for the first time since he’d entered the courtroom in handcuffs. Clean-shaven with his hair cut short, House looked like an East Coast prep student. He was dressed in gray slacks, the collar of a white button-down shirt protruding above a black V-neck sweater. His gaze locked on Hagen as he entered the courtroom, looking like he attended the same imaginary prep school in khakis, a blue sport coat, and a paisley tie, but then House’s eyes shifted across the packed gallery and came to rest on Tracy. It made her skin crawl and she reached for Ben’s hand, squeezing it tight.

“Are you all right?” Ben whispered.

Hagen pushed through the gate in the railing and took the witness stand. With thinning hair parted down the middle, Tracy thought Hagen had elfin features. Vance Clark walked the traveling auto-parts salesman through his job and how it required him to be on the road as many as twenty-five days each month, traveling throughout Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana.

“Is it unusual for you to not keep abreast of the local news?”

“Not unless it’s my Mariners or my Sonics.” Hagen had the easy smile of someone in sales and looked to be enjoying the spotlight. “I’m not much for picking up an out-of-town newspaper or watching the evening news when I get to my hotel. I usually look for a game.”

“So you were unaware of Sarah Crosswhite’s abduction?”

“I hadn’t heard about it, no.”

“Can you tell the jury how you did come to hear about it?”

“Sure.” Hagen turned to face the jurors, five women and seven men, all white. Two alternates sat in chairs just outside the railing. “I got home one night from an account at a reasonable hour, for a change. I was having a beer on the couch and watching my Mariners when a story came on during a break about a missing woman from Cedar Grove. I have a number of clients up that way, so I paid attention. They showed a picture of her.”

“Did you recognize the woman?”

“I’d never seen her.”

“What happened next?”

“They said she’d been missing a while, and they showed a photograph of her truck, a blue Ford, abandoned along the shoulder of the county road. That jarred my memory.”

“Jarred it how, Mr. Hagen?”

“I’d seen the truck before. I was certain it was the truck I saw one night when I was driving back home from visiting accounts up north. I remembered because not many people use the county road anymore, with the interstate, and it was raining hard that night and I thought, ‘Bummer of a night to have your truck break down.’ ”