She looked so wrung out, so fragile, like she was hanging on by a thread.
Her husband was nowhere to be found. Mendez and Hicks had cruised past Morgan’s office where he was allegedly working late. No sign of him. They knew him to frequent O’Brien’s Pub, but he wasn’t there either. Nor had there been any sighting of his black Trans Am in any hotel parking lot. Just like there was no sign of Gina Kemmer’s car anywhere.
He would bag it for the night, but not before swinging past the Morgan house to see if Steve Morgan had ever gone home.
There was still no Trans Am in the driveway, but a light burned bright in the garage. It was 1:41 A.M. The house was dark.
He didn’t like that. Sara Morgan was depressed, her marriage was failing, she’d just lost a friend to a violent death.... It wasn’t beyond reason that she could be in that garage with the minivan running, putting an end to her pain.
He parked at the curb, got out and drew his weapon. This was a nice neighborhood—all the more reason for a thief to come calling. Quietly he made his way around the side of the garage where the windows were full-size. Without revealing himself, he peeked inside.
Sara Morgan sat on a tall stool in front of what was apparently the sculpture she had been working on—a tall contraption made of iron and wire and steel mesh. But Mendez didn’t think she was even seeing it. She sat with her arms wrapped around herself, and a thousand-yard stare haunting her eyes.
He could have just left. It was none of his business why Sara Morgan was sitting in her garage at one forty-five in the morning. But if she was sitting there contemplating turning that minivan on and sucking down some carbon monoxide ...
Instead of walking away, he went around to the front of the garage and knocked on the service door.
“Mrs. Morgan? It’s Detective Mendez. Are you all right in there?”
It took a moment, but she opened the door and stood back.
“Still looking for my husband?” she asked wearily.
“I was driving by and saw the light,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”
She smiled to herself, a small, slightly bitter smile.
“Thank you,” she said. “I would say I’m fine, but I think you probably won’t buy that.”
“No, ma’am,” Mendez admitted, following her back into the garage.
Her Dodge Caravan was parked on the side of the garage nearest the entrance to the house. The far stall was taken up by an artist’s nest of tools and materials and hand torches, with the sculpture at the center of it.
“I wanted to say I’m sorry,” he admitted.
“For what?”
“I’m sorry you have to be stuck in the middle of another investigation. It’s not your fault, but you have to deal with it. I’m sorry for that,” he said. “I don’t really know you, but I think you probably don’t deserve to have to go through all of this.”
She put her head down and her wild mane fell around her face. She swept it back with both hands and looked up at him.
“I don’t know anymore what I deserve,” she said. “But thank you. I know it’s not part of your job to feel bad for me.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?” he asked, not sure what he could possibly do to make her life easier, but he wanted to offer—needed to offer—just to let her know she could have some support. “Is there someone I can call to come stay with you? A friend?”
But instead of helping, his offer of kindness seemed to be her undoing. She pressed her hands over her nose and mouth, and squeezed her eyes shut hard. The tears came, nevertheless. A dam had broken somewhere inside her and the pain came rushing out.
Mendez went to her just to put a hand on her shoulder and steady her—or steer her toward the stool she had been sitting on earlier. But at his touch Sara Morgan turned to him, and then she was in his arms, crying her heart out on his shoulder.
He wasn’t quite sure what to do with that—what was proper, what was not; what was procedure and what was human. He went with his gut and held her, and let her release the pain and the sadness. He couldn’t help but feel compassion for her. And when she looked up at him through those impossibly blue eyes magnified by tears, he couldn’t help but feel something more.
He wanted to lean down and kiss her. The invitation was on her softly parted swollen lips. Instead, he pulled a clean handkerchief from his hip pocket and pressed it into her hand.
“You should try to get some rest,” he murmured.
She nodded as the moment slipped away.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, embarrassed, dabbing the handkerchief against her cheeks.
“No, don’t be. Don’t be,” he said softly, resting a hand between her shoulder blades. “Come on. You’re going to bed.”
“And what are you doing?” she asked as they walked toward the door.
“I’m spending the night on your sofa.”
38
“Would you like a cup of tea or coffee or something?” she asked him as she led the way through the house to the kitchen.
“No, thank you, ma’am,” Mendez said, taking in the surroundings: cream-painted cupboards and a hand-painted border of grapes dripping from vines around the ceiling. Her handiwork, he imagined. Down along a right-angled crease where a cabinet met a wall, she had painted a bright-eyed mouse peeking out of a hole in the baseboard—so realistic he almost startled when he first saw it.
“Please, call me Sara,” she said as she filled a mug with water and stuck it in the microwave oven that seemed to take up half the counter. “I’ll feel less embarrassed about having a nervous breakdown in front of you.”
“Sara, then,” he said, thinking it maybe wasn’t such a good idea to blur that line. “Do you have any family nearby?”
“I’m from the Seattle area. My parents are there. And my sister.”
“Are you close?”
“We used to be,” she said. She hit the Cancel button on the microwave before the timer could go off. “She’s got a family and a career. She’s busy. I’m busy.”
“You know, it’s none of my business—what’s going on in your marriage—but it just seems to me you shouldn’t try to go through it alone,” he said, then felt like an ass. “I should have stopped at ‘It’s none of my business.’”
She shook her head and dunked her teabag—something herbal by the scent of it—into the mug of water as she took a seat at the breakfast bar. “It’s okay. I’m sure I would say the same thing if I was watching from the outside. From the inside ... it’s not so simple.”
“I’m sure it’s not.”
“I come from a perfect family,” she said. “I’m supposed to have a perfect family. I thought I did. What did I do wrong?”
Mendez felt a rush of anger. “You didn’t—”
“You don’t know that.” She smiled at him as if he were a sweet but dimwitted boy. “Nothing happens in a vacuum.”
He wanted to say at least ten derogatory things about her husband, but he bit his tongue.
“Maybe I’m too insecure,” she said. “Maybe I wasn’t paying attention. Maybe—”
“Maybe your husband is a son of a bitch.”
So much for his self-control.
“That too,” she said, and took a careful sip of her tea. “It’s hard on Wendy. I feel guilty for that. I’m the mom. I’m supposed to make her life ideal and shelter her from life’s unpleasant side. Instead, her father and I are wallowing there.”
“Then you need to change that.”