Love You More (Tessa Leoni, #1)(20)

Then, on the other side of the garage, she got to add skiing to the list. Six pairs of skis, three alpine, three cross country. And three sets of snowshoes.

“If Brian Darby was home, he was moving,” D.D. added to her mental profile.

“Wanting the family with him,” Bobby commented, gesturing to the wife and child sets that rounded out each trio.

“But,” D.D. mused, “Tessa already commented—she had work, Sophie had school. Meaning, Brian was often alone. No loving family to join him, no appreciative female audience to be dazzled by his manly prowess.”

“Stereotyping,” Bobby warned.

D.D. gestured around the garage. “Please. This is a stereotype. Engineer. Anal-retentive. If I stay in here much longer, my head will hurt.”

“You don’t iron your jeans?” he asked.

“I don’t label my power tools. Seriously, check this out.” She’d arrived at the workbench, where Brian Darby had arranged his power tools on a shelf bearing names for each item.

“Nice tools.” Bobby was frowning. “Very nice tools. An easy grand worth.”

“And yet he doesn’t fix up the house,” D.D. lamented. “So far, I’m siding with Tessa on this.”

“Maybe it’s not about the doing,” Bobby said. “Maybe it’s about the buying. Brian Darby likes having toys. Doesn’t mean he plays with them.”

D.D. considered it. Certainly an option, and would explain the pristine condition of the garage. Easy to keep it clean if you never parked in it, never worked in it, never retrieved any of the gear from it.

But then she shook her head. “Nah, he didn’t gain thirty pounds in muscle sitting around all day. Speaking of which, where’s the weight set?”

They looked around. Of all the toys, no dumbbells or free weight systems.

“Must belong to a gym,” Bobby said.

“We’ll have to check that out,” D.D. concurred. “So Brian is a doer. But his wife and child are also busy. So maybe he does some stuff on his own to pass the time. Unfortunately, he still comes home to an empty house, which leaves him restless. So first he cleans the place within an inch of its life …”

“Then,” Bobby finished, “he tosses back a couple of beers.”

D.D. was frowning. She walked toward the far corner, where the concrete floor appeared darker. She bent down, touched the spot with her fingertips. Felt damp.

“Leak?” she murmured, trying to inspect the corner wall where moisture might be penetrating, but of course, the cinder-block surface was obscured by more Peg-Board.

“Could be.” Bobby crossed to where she knelt. “This whole corner is built into the hillside. Could have drainage issues, even a leak from a pipe above.”

“Have to watch it, see if it grows.”

“Concerned the house will fall down on your watch?”

She looked at him. “No, concerned it’s not water from a leak. Meaning, it came from something else, and I want to know what.”

Unexpectedly, Bobby smiled. “I don’t care what the other staties say: Trooper Leoni is lucky to have you on her case, and Sophie Leoni is even luckier.”

“Oh, f*ck you,” D.D. told him crossly. She straightened, more discomfited by praise than she was ever riled by criticism. “Come on. We’re heading out.”

“The pattern of the water stain told you where Sophie is?”

“No. Given that Tessa Leoni’s lawyer hasn’t magically called with permission to interview her yet, we’re gonna focus on Brian Darby. I want to talk to his boss. I want to know exactly what kind of man needs to color-code his closet and Peg-Board his garage.”

“A control freak.”

“Exactly. And when something or someone undermines that control—”

“Just how violent does he get,” Bobby finished for her. They stood in the middle of the garage.

“I don’t think a stranger abducted Sophie Leoni,” D.D. stated quietly.

Bobby paused a heartbeat. “I don’t think so either.”

“Meaning it’s him, or it’s her.”

“He’s dead.”

“Meaning, maybe Trooper Leoni finally wised up.”





8



A woman never forgets the first time she is hit.

I was lucky. My parents never whacked me. My father never slapped my face for talking back, or spanked my behind for willful disobedience. Maybe because I was never that disobedient. Or maybe, because by the time my father got home at night, he was too tired to care. My brother died and my parents became shells of their former selves, using up all their energy just getting through the day.

By the time I was twelve, I’d come to terms with the morbid little household that passed as my own. I got into sports—soccer, softball, track team, anything that would keep me late after school and minimize the hours I spent on the homefront. Juliana liked sports, too. We were the Bobbsey twins, always in uniform, always rushing off somewhere.

I took some hits on the playing field. A line drive to the chest that knocked me flat on my back. I realized for the first time that you really do see stars when the breath has been knocked from your lungs and your skull ricochets against the hard earth.

Then there were miscellaneous soccer injuries, a head butt to the nose, cleats to the knee, the occasional elbow to the gut. Take it from me, girls can be tough. We dish out and man up with the best of them, particularly in the heat of battle, trying to score one for our team.