At her desk, she reviewed Nikki’s file, but there wasn’t much to it. According to her daughter, Nikki had battled severe depression off and on for years. She was also a heavy drinker. She’d been divorced from Delaney’s father since the girl was five; he was out of the picture and not part of their lives. Nikki had run a catering business, and although their house had a sizable mortgage, they didn’t seem to be in serious financial jeopardy.
Delaney didn’t know where Nikki had gotten the gun. Serena’s research revealed that the gun had been stolen in Cincinnati years earlier, so it was likely that Nikki had bought it illegally. But there was no indication of when she’d bought it, or who she’d bought it from.
“Suicide,” Serena murmured again.
There was nothing suspicious about the scene. She had no reason to think that Nikki’s death was anything other than what it appeared to be.
Except Serena saw in the file that she’d written a note to herself two years ago: Delaney isn’t telling us everything.
Had she missed something?
She’d wrapped up the investigation in three days. Three days. That was fast. She noticed a comment from Nikki’s father that she’d circled in the file: Something was bothering Nikki, but she wouldn’t say what it was. Normally, that was the kind of question Serena would want resolved before putting a case to bed. If something had been bothering Nikki, maybe that was what had forced her over the edge to kill herself. Or maybe it was something else entirely. Regardless, it was an open issue in the midst of a death investigation.
And yet Serena had let it go.
She closed the file, but she removed two photographs as she did and put them on the desk in front of her. One was the violent picture of Nikki, dead of the gunshot wound. The other was a picture that Delaney had provided of the two of them together. In that photograph, Nikki looked untroubled by depression. Mother and daughter had arms around each other’s waists, both of them smiling. Nikki had golden-brown hair that matched Delaney’s, and Serena could see the family resemblance in their faces. They were pointing at T-shirts they wore with the logo of Nikki’s business: Catering by Candis.
Every suicide masked a complex family tragedy. This one wasn’t any different.
Serena hadn’t gotten pushback when she closed the case. Guppo had agreed with her. If she went back to him right now, he’d say what he’d said back then: Suicide, case closed. Stride had reviewed her findings, as he did on every case, and he’d asked no questions. It had been a busy time in the department, so she’d moved quickly. She and Guppo had been helping Abel Teitscher on the Fallon case, and a wrongful death investigation took priority over a suicide. She’d done what the circumstances required, and she’d made the right call.
But that wasn’t the whole story. Not for her.
She stared at the pictures of Nikki Candis and tried to sort through what she felt about this woman. Her job was to shut down any emotional reactions to a case, but she’d failed to do that with Nikki. She remembered exactly how she’d felt, because the same emotion erupted as she picked up the file again. Anger. She felt angry at this woman. That was why she’d closed the case quickly, not because she was busy, not because it was open-and-shut, not because she’d answered all the questions. She’d wanted the case done, put away, over.
Because the life and death of Nikki Candis pushed too many of her own buttons.
Alcohol abuse. That was the first hot button. She remembered now why the West Duluth bar on Grand had felt familiar to her. It was all over Nikki’s credit card records. She’d been a regular. There was also a note from a pastry chef who’d worked on catering jobs for Nikki: She was a blackout drunk. And another comment from a waiter: When the party was over, she’d celebrate hard. Really hard.
By itself, that didn’t bother her. Serena was an alcoholic, too, so she didn’t judge others who struggled with the same disease. No, what upset her was the toll it had taken on Delaney. Nikki had abandoned her daughter, not just by committing suicide, but by letting her demons overshadow her duties as a mother. Talking to Delaney, Serena saw everything she remembered from her own teenage years. Defensiveness. Denial. It was obvious to Serena that Nikki and Delaney had switched places in that household long ago. Mother became child. Child became mother.
Just like she and her own mother had done. Nikki and Delaney may as well have been reflections of Samantha and Serena. That was why she’d bailed on the investigation as soon as she could.
But reviewing the file reminded her that she’d felt off about the whole case from the beginning. Something was wrong about it. Something didn’t add up.
Delaney isn’t telling us everything.
Serena opened the file again and retrieved the phone number for Nikki’s parents. They lived ninety minutes south of Duluth in the small town of Mora. She dialed the number, which rang for a long time before an elderly man answered.
“Hello?”
“Is this Paul Vavra?” she asked, using Nikki’s birth name.
“Yes, it is.” His voice had a raspy, solitary quality to it, as if talking to anyone was a bother to his day.
“Mr. Vavra, this is Serena Stride with the Duluth Police. I interviewed you and your wife two years ago after the loss of your daughter.”
He was quiet for a while. Then he cleared his throat. “I remember.”
“I’d like to ask you and your wife a couple of additional questions.”
Again there was a long silence.
“My wife passed away last year,” he said.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Losing Nikki took the wind out of her.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“I’m not really anxious to revisit what happened, Detective. I’m trying to remember my daughter’s life, not her death. It’s taken me a long time to get to this point. Is there a reason you’re bringing this up again now?”
Serena chose her words carefully. She certainly wasn’t going to tell this man that she’d had a vision of Nikki outside a bar while she was dead drunk. “I’m going through some of my old case files. In reviewing the file on Nikki’s death, it seemed to me that there were questions that I didn’t fully answer.”
“That’s not how you felt two years ago,” Paul said.
“Yes, I know.”
“Two years ago, you couldn’t shut down your investigation fast enough.”
“You’re right about that, and I apologize. If you’d rather not talk to me, I understand. But if I made any kind of mistake two years ago, I’d like the opportunity to rectify it. Back then, you and your wife were convinced that Nikki did not commit suicide. You told me there had to be some other explanation for what happened. I don’t know whether that’s true, but I’d like to find out.”
She could hear the old man breathing on the other end of the line. She thought he might be crying.
“Nikki did not kill herself,” Paul reiterated. “Nothing about that has changed in two years. I know what I know.”
“If Nikki didn’t kill herself, that means someone else killed her and made it look like suicide. When we talked, you didn’t have any idea who could have done that, and you weren’t aware of anyone who had a motive to harm your daughter. Is that still true? Or is there something more you can tell me that might help with the investigation?”
The man made a little sigh on the phone. “I can’t imagine anyone who could have done this to Nikki. The whole thing makes no sense.”
“I made a note during our original interview that you and your wife thought something was bothering Nikki in those last few days.”