Jesus! She grabbed the tumbler of Scotch off the kitchen counter and drained what was left, trying to remember how many she had drunk since getting home from the morgue. Then she decided if she couldn’t remember, it didn’t matter. Besides, the familiar buzz was preferable to that annoying hollow feeling she couldn’t shake off.
She poured another Scotch, this time noticing the wall calendar that hung alongside the small corkboard above the counter. The board was empty except for a few pushpins with nothing to hold up. Was there not one goddamn thing she needed to remind herself about? The wall calendar was still turned to September. She flipped the pages, bringing it to November. Thanksgiving was only days away. Had her mother been serious about cooking a dinner? Maggie couldn’t remember the last time they had attempted a holiday together, though whenever it was, she was sure it had been disastrous. There were plenty of holidays in her memory bank she would just as soon forget. Like four years ago when she spent Christmas Eve on a hard, lumpy sofa outside the critical care unit of St. Anne’s Hospital. While others had been buying last-minute gifts or stopping at parties for sugar cookies and eggnog, her mother had spent the day mixing red and green pills with her old friend, Jim Beam.
She stood at the window again, watching the fog swallow entire corners of her landscape. She could barely see the outline of the pine trees that lined her property. They reminded her of towering sentries, standing shoulder to shoulder, shielding her, protecting her. After a childhood of feeling lost and vulnerable, why wouldn’t she spend her adulthood looking for ways to be in control, to protect herself? Sure, in some ways, it had also made her cautious, a bit skeptical and untrusting. Or as Gwen would put it, it made her inaccessible to anyone including those who cared about her. Which made her think of Nick Morrelli.
She leaned her forehead against the glass again. She didn’t want to think of Nick. Her mother’s accusation that morning still stung, probably because there was more truth in it than she wanted to admit. She hadn’t talked to Nick in weeks, and it had been months since they had seen each other. Months since she had told him she didn’t want to see him until after her divorce was final.
She checked her watch, took another sip of Scotch and found herself reaching for the phone. She could stop at any second, she could hang up before he answered. Or maybe just say hi. What harm was there in hearing his voice?
One ring, two, three…She would leave a brief and friendly message on his answering machine. Four rings…five-
“Hello?” It was a woman’s voice.
“Yes,” Maggie said, not recognizing the voice. Maybe she had the wrong number. It had been months, after all, since she had dialed it. “Is Nick Morrelli there?”
“Oh,” the woman said, “is this the office? Can’t it wait?”
“No, this is a friend. Is Nick there?”
The woman paused as if she needed to decide what information a friend was entitled to. Then finally she said, “Umm…he’s in the shower. Can I take a message and have him call you back?”
“No, that’s okay. I’ll try back another time.”
But when Maggie hung up the phone, she knew she would not try back anytime soon.
CHAPTER 31
Reston, Virginia
Tully hoped his gut instinct was wrong. He hoped he was being an overprotective father who was simply overreacting. That’s what he kept telling himself, yet before he left the morgue he made a copy of Virginia Brier’s driver’s license photo and stuck it in his back pocket.
He had called Emma earlier to let her know he wouldn’t be home until later, but if she wanted to wait for dinner, he’d pick up a pizza. He was pleased when she asked for lots of pepperoni on her side. At least they would be sharing a meal together, perhaps one they could both enjoy. Between the two of them, their culinary skills didn’t extend much beyond grilled cheese sandwiches with soup. Sometimes when Tully was feeling a bit adventurous he’d throw a couple of chunks of meat on the grill. Unfortunately, he had never been able to figure out how to keep it from becoming a shrunken, charred hockey puck, and there wasn’t much treat in that.
Their small two-bedroom bungalow in Reston, Virginia, was a far cry from the two-story colonial they’d lived in in Cleveland. Caroline had insisted on keeping the house, and now Tully wondered if Emma would ever want to come back here after spending Thanksgiving vacation in her old room. Only recently had this house begun to feel like home, though it had been almost a year since they’d made the move. No matter how much he complained about this parenting stuff, he couldn’t imagine what this house, the move, the new town and new job-what any of it would have been like without Emma.
Thanks to his daughter, the house didn’t have that bachelor look or smell to it, though, as Tully weaved his way through the living room clutter to the kitchen clutter, he wondered if there was a difference between bachelor clutter and teenager clutter. Maybe what he liked was having some feminine things around, even if the pink lava lamp on the bookcase, the purple Rollerblades sticking out from under the sofa or the smiley-face magnets on the refrigerator were not his style.
“Hey, Dad.” As he stepped through the front door Emma appeared. He didn’t kid himself. It was the power of pizza that drew her, not his lovable presence.
“Hi, sweat pea.” He kissed her cheek, a gesture she tolerated only when they were alone.
She wore her headphones wrapped around her neck, a compromise that had taken much drilling and constant reminders, but was well worth it, although he could still hear the music blaring. The music, however, he couldn’t complain about, since he still enjoyed some head-banging rock ’n’ roll once in a while, only in the form of the Rolling Stones or the Doors.
Emma got out the paper plates and plastic cups that they had agreed long ago would be part of any take-out treat. What was the use of having someone else prepare the meal if you still had to wash dishes? As he scooped up pieces of pizza and watched her pour their Pepsis, he wondered when would be a good time to broach the subject about the dead girl.
“Kitchen or living room?” she asked, picking up her plate and cup.
“Living room, but no TV.”
“Okay.”
He followed her into the living room, and when she decided to sit on the floor, he joined her despite his thigh still being a bit tender. It reminded him that Agent O’Dell never once mentioned or complained about her scar, a memento from the legendary serial killer Albert Stucky. Although he had never seen it, Tully knew from rumors that the scar crossed the length of her abdomen, as if the man had tried to gut her. Now he and O’Dell had something in common. Tully had a scar of his own, a constant reminder of the bullet Albert Stucky had put into him last spring as he and O’Dell tried to recapture him.
The bullet had caused some damage, but he refused to let it stop him from his daily ritual run. Lately he hated to admit that it qualified more as jogging than running. That one bullet had messed up a lot of things, including his ability to sit cross-legged on the floor without feeling the muscles sting and pinch. There were some things worth a little pain, and having pizza on the floor with his daughter was one of them.