Inherit the Bones

Chapter Thirty-five

Frank Bellington’s funeral was a few days later. Like most funerals, the telling of the dead brought equal parts tears and laughter. Sorrow for the loss, joy for the life. I decided the measure of a life well lived must be how easily the tears and the laughter ebb and flow from each other. How the sweetness of a single memory is strong enough to push away, even for a second, the tragedy of it all. Terry Bellington and his sister, Hannah Watkins, both gave eulogies that were full of references to Frank’s quick wit, his love for his wife-their mother-and his fondness for the town.

I left the church halfway through the service and waited for my partner. He had taken a phone call from Avondale PD.

It was Thursday.

The skies were hazy, the breeze gentle. Across the street, in a neighborhood park, a man in an orange and purple Lakers jersey chased a little girl with tiny pigtails. She squealed as he caught her and then the two posed for an older woman holding a camera.

Nearby, a man in a wide-brimmed hat shuffled along with a German shepherd, their steps in unison. They had gray in their faces and weariness in their steps and it was hard to tell who was walking whom.

Finn met me outside. In the reflection of his mirrored sunglasses, I saw a weary-looking woman, heavy in the belly, her dark hair loose around her face.

“Anything?”

He shook his head. “Avondale’s a joke. They got very little, barely even a skid mark on the road. One good piece of news, they did retrieve a few shards of broken glass from a front headlight. No way to tell if it’s our guy, but the preliminary reports put it at a Toyota, late model. Whoever hit Sam did it nice and slow and hard. They interviewed Ferrari Man again, nothing else he can tell us. I called the hospital, too. Sam’s still in a coma.”

“So we’re looking for a late-model white Toyota. Great, only about a million of those in Colorado. It doesn’t make any sense, Finn. This guy’s a schizo, a real nutjob. He starts with homicide, downgrades to silly threats and tire slashing and a dead bird, and then bounces back up to attempted murder? I don’t get it.”

I followed him to the parking lot. At my car, we stopped and Finn cleared his throat. I looked at him over the roof.

“What?”

Finn said, “Are we even sure it’s the same guy? I mean Sam barely had a finger in the Nicky Bellington case. He wasn’t a player.”

He pulled a toothpick from his breast pocket and stuck it in the corner of his mouth and shrugged. “What if the one has nothing to do with the other?”

“You’re joking. Get in the car.”

We slid in and I continued. “You’re telling me you honestly think the two are unrelated? That in the midst of investigating a murder one of our partners randomly happens to be the victim of a hit-and-run?”

I started the car and checked my mirrors. The lot was clear; I figured there were another ten or fifteen minutes left to the service. Unlike the reverend at Nicky’s funeral, this minister was a real character. He worked the altar like it was a stage.

Finn talked around the toothpick, rolling it cheek to cheek and back again.

“I’m just saying, we’ve got nothing that ties the one to the other. We need to be careful.”

I peeled out of the lot, my brand-new tires taking the turn like a bastard. “Careful? I will tell you who needs to be careful. Our guy. I think he’s scared. I think we can’t see it yet, but somehow, we’re closing in on him.”

Finn listened as I told him what Sam had discovered, the necklace and poem found in Nicky’s bedroom.

“Yeah, yeah, I remember that. It was some kind of flower pendant, I think. But that doesn’t mean anything. He probably found the necklace at school. Maybe the poem was part of a love letter. You’d be shocked if you knew half of what kids are into these days, Gemma.”

“It wasn’t a damn love letter, Finn. Sam finds it and a few hours later, he’s nearly dead.”

I slammed on the brakes so hard the car spun to the side. Finn’s hand hit the dashboard with a thump. Behind me, a Volkswagen honked, long and loud. I released the brake and slid forward until I was parallel with the curb. “Son of a bitch. How did he know?”

“Don’t ever do that again. I know it must be real rare for you to get an epiphany but shit, my elbow feels like it’s in my shoulder,” Finn said. He massaged his arm and started rolling his neck in a slow, loose circle. “How did who know what?”

I stared out the window and talked to myself. “Three possibilities. Sam’s phone is tapped. My phone is tapped. Sam told someone.”

“Four. Sam was being watched,” Finn said, picking up on my train of thought.

Shaking my head, I said, “No, that doesn’t make sense. You said it yourself; Sam wasn’t a player in the investigation. Why watch him?”

I restarted the car and drove slowly. “If you’re our guy, you watch me. Or you-but not Sam.”

I ran through the sequence of events in my head. Sam finds the evidence sheet describing the piece of paper and the necklace. He calls me. Our call is interrupted-the guys are here, we’re going fishing. Sam is pumped. Maybe he talks, maybe it’s to Louis Moriarty. Sam asks Moriarty if he remembers finding the paper and the thin gold necklace tucked up high under Nicky’s bed. Maybe Moriarty does remember.

“Louis Moriarty was in the first truck, we know that for sure, right?”

Finn stopped rolling his neck and groaned. “Give it a rest, will you? It’s not Moriarty. And this isn’t the grassy knoll. He didn’t have a damn partner run Sam off the road.”

I parked outside of the narrow Victorian and checked the address. I turned to Finn.

“Okay, so maybe it’s not Moriarty. But you’ve got to admit, every damn thing seems to lead back to him,” I said.

I watched Finn gnaw on the toothpick. “I think you’ve got it backward. It all comes back to Nicky. He found something three years ago that made him run away. Then he came back. And someone, despite Nicky’s best intentions, recognized him and killed him. And now we’re on the same path Nicky was on, looking in the basement records, reopening old wounds. Only now, it’s us in the frying pan, getting picked off. One by one.”

Something about old wounds struck a chord in me. “It doesn’t all come back to Nicky. It all comes back to the McKenzie boys and the Woodsman. Without them, you’ve got Nicky alive and well, home for the summer from Yale or Harvard.”

“So what now?”

“We talk to the Kirshbaums.”