Never Tell (Detective D.D. Warren #10)(70)

I nod. I never heard my father dismiss another colleague’s ideas or talk down to a student. As professors went, I always thought he was ahead of his time. Or maybe, simply that secure in his own brilliance. But I hadn’t known this aspect of the poker nights and it only makes me miss him more.

“There was a TA,” she says abruptly. “Aarav Patil. Very promising, your father said. But a loner. He rarely attended the poker nights, no matter how many times you father invited. And while your father wasn’t one to go into detail with me, I could tell he was getting frustrated with Patil. I’m not sure the boy would’ve been his TA much longer.”

“Okay.” Belatedly, I realize I should be writing this down. Ugly purse to the rescue. I have my pad and paper. “Did this Patil know where we lived?”

“They all did. Your father was just as likely to have students over to his home office as the one on campus.”

“What about professors?”

She takes her first sip of her martini but is contemplative now, less emotional. “I’m not sure. I never heard your father say a bad word, but that didn’t mean others weren’t jealous. There were things your father could just … comprehend. His mind …” She looks as me abruptly. “There was no else in the world like your father,” she whispers. “No one else.”

For the first time I get it, truly get it. She loved him. Probably as much as I did. We both loved him. And neither one of us has been the same since.

“I miss him, too,” I say.

She just smiles, but there are tears on her cheeks now. I think I should stand up, give my mom a hug. But I’m too afraid she’ll turn away. So I remain seated. She drinks her vodka. We both wait.

“You should talk to Dr. Martin Hoffman,” she says abruptly, “the department chair. He’s retired now, but sixteen years ago, he would’ve known everyone and what personalities might have had issues with others.” She pauses a moment, then concedes: “And who might’ve been more ambitious. When your father died, that left a vacancy, of course, which had to be filled.”

“Who got his job?”

“Katarina Ivanova.”

“A woman?” It shouldn’t surprise me but still catches me off guard. “Did my father know her?”

“Yes. He’d been mentoring her for the past year. He was … impressed.” My mother’s face shutters up, and in her expression, I learn a few more things about Katarina Ivanova: She was very beautiful and my mother hated her.

“I don’t remember her from poker night.”

“Not everyone could always make it.” Or my mother hadn’t wanted her around.

“But she’d been to Dad’s home office?”

“Of course. That was how he worked.”

“Thank you.”

My mother looks at me. She still has tear tracks on her cheeks, and her fingers on the stem of her martini glass are trembling. “What good will come of this?” she asks me softly.

“I don’t know.”

“He’s dead. We both paid the price. And as for what happened Tuesday night … How can the circumstances of your father’s death matter? You were a child. The records were sealed.”

“The police are reopening the case.”

“Because you stirred the pot.”

“I have to know, Mom. I can’t keep … being the same person, telling the same lies. Just once, I want to know the truth.”

My mother smiles sadly. “You know what they say, dear: Be careful what you wish for.”





CHAPTER 23


    D.D.


“SO WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY know about this guy?” D.D. asked.

They’d taken over the FBI’s meeting room. Not D.D.’s favorite location, as she felt she was ceding more and more of her homicide investigation to the feds. Then again, she had two feebies at the table to her one BPD self. Add to that a rogue CI and a civilian true-crime buff, and this was getting to be the craziest investigative team she’d ever seen.

She didn’t approve of crazy. Or the fact that she didn’t know what to do next. She always knew what to do next.

Dr. Keynes did the honors: “Flora, did you ever see the man—Conrad or, I suppose, Conner—at another bar? Or perhaps meeting up with Jacob at one of the truck stops?”

“No. But Jacob would often take off on his own …”

There was a slight hesitation and D.D. caught it.

“What?” she demanded.

Flora wouldn’t make eye contact with any of them. “It was shortly after that, Jacob returned to Florida with me. Where he became … involved in other business. Whatever he may have been doing previously, I think once he hit Florida, that became his full-time focus.”

D.D. understood what Flora wasn’t saying. Dr. Keynes and Kimberly Quincy should as well, meaning Flora’s oblique reference had to do with the new guy in the room. Fair enough. Everyone was entitled to their privacy, and God knows a survivor of a sensational kidnapping case had to fight to keep hers.

“So Jacob had definitely made a connection with Conrad. Everything about what you described was hardly a coincidental meeting,” D.D. stated.

“But Conrad’s own intentions are unclear.” Quincy spoke up. The FBI agent wore a frown similar to D.D.’s own. Clearly, she didn’t approve of crazy either. “Was he there as a second perpetrator, or as some kind of self-appointed savior? Do you think he recognized you from TV?” she asked Flora.