Crash & Burn (Tessa Leoni, #3)(26)

I know who made this quilt. I miss her.

And just for a moment, I feel it again. That sense of hollowness deep inside my chest. Yearning.

“You can sleep here if you want,” Thomas says quietly.

“Okay.” I don’t even look at him. This room is mine; the master is his. He can tell me whatever he wants. I know better.

Thomas wonders if I’m hungry. Actually, I am. We return downstairs, where he whips up two cheese omelets. I slice up a cantaloupe, admiring the fine edge on the knife’s blade. If this kitchen is my domain, clearly I take my equipment seriously.

We sit at the parlor table and I realize I’m moving automatically, already following rhythms that must have developed over the past six months we’ve lived here. A party of two, banging around twenty-four hundred square feet, with cozy taste in furniture and surprisingly few pictures, knickknacks or personal decorations on the wall.

I wonder if we finished unpacking all the moving boxes. Or if we’re simply people who prefer a very clean approach to home décor.

After dinner, Thomas suggests we watch a movie. But I can tell he’s fading again, clearly dead on his feet. In contrast, I finally feel awake, curiously wired, as if the fog is lifting and if I just focus long enough, try hard enough, all the secrets of the universe will be mine.

I tell Thomas he should go to bed. He tries to protest. I shoo him away, and finally, with a frown, he takes the hint.

As he disappears upstairs, I pick up the remote and determine I have no problem running the system or finding all my favorite channels. As long as I don’t think too much, just act, I have no problems at all.

I tune in to TV Land. Watch old episodes of Gilligan’s Island, which seems a safe enough show for a woman with multiple head injuries. Not too exciting, no threat of violence. Well, other than the Skipper smacking Gilligan with his hat time and time again. I draw the line at Golden Girls, though. I’m not that desperate.

I turn off the TV, roam the family room. I discover a pile of books, mostly paperbacks. Apparently I like to read Nora Roberts, while Thomas favors Ken Follett. I reenter the kitchen, and then, because I simply have to know, I go through all the cabinets and then the pantry.

Sure enough, no alcohol. Not a single can of beer, not a single bottle of wine. Let alone a decent bottle of scotch.

For a moment, I’m disappointed. Terribly, dreadfully. Because wouldn’t a nice glass of single malt be perfect right about now?

I leave the kitchen, head upstairs. My breath grows ragged in my chest, but I survive the hike. Back to the little room with the lovely butter-yellow quilt.

There, I lie down fully clothed, my legs straight, my hands folded on my chest. Like a girl in a coffin.

And then, I inhale.

Vero.

She is little again. Small and bubbly with chubby cheeks and fat fists. Airplane noises as she runs around the tiny room, leaping over pillows, willing her body into flight.

I love you, I love you, I love you.

Vero flies. Vero falls.

Ominous footsteps down the hall.

I’m dreaming, I tell myself.

I’m still dreaming, I remind myself.

As I watch Thomas burst into the room.





Chapter 11




THE FRANKS LIVED in a relatively new gray-painted Colonial. Black shutters, covered farmer’s porch, a winding brick walkway that curved through an attractive front flower bed. This late in the season, the bed still offered up some ragged pansies and those cabbage-looking things Wyatt never knew what to call. Meaning someone had taken the time and effort to update the plantings in the fall. Nicky Frank? Her husband, Thomas?

Many things to learn, which was why Kevin and Wyatt decided to start the morning with a personal house call.

Tessa’s comments from yesterday were still weighing heavily on Wyatt. How much did they really know about Nicky Frank, having never talked to her directly? Including but not limited to, how much did she remember from her past three “accidents”? Because cars rarely went sailing off the road while in neutral. Coulda happened, he supposed. Driver falls asleep, knocks the car out of gear while coasting down a steep grade, but it didn’t feel probable. Which made Wyatt wonder about the scotch as well. Had Nicky been drinking of her own accord? Or had someone been doing their best to make sure a woman with a known brain injury and doctor’s orders not to imbibe didn’t wake up at the wheel?

Sometimes when working a case you had a strong lead, and sometimes you mostly had a hunch. Good news about being the sergeant—Wyatt got to follow his hunches. Countywide search for a girl who still had no record of even existing notwithstanding. Yeah, the sheriff had had words with him on that one. But even the boss agreed, something about this couple, the wife’s series of accidents, the enduring delusion of a missing girl, seemed off.

Wyatt did the honors of knocking. Front door was dark cranberry and appeared freshly painted. Looked to him like when the Franks bought the home six months ago, they’d spent some time and energy sprucing up the place. A sign they were finally settling down? Because Kevin had run the couple’s background last night, and to say they moved a lot would be an understatement. Two years was the longest they’d stayed in one spot. Otherwise, their MO seemed to be here today, gone tomorrow.

Chasing business, a husband covering his tracks or a couple that was just restless? More questions to consider.

Wyatt liked a challenge.