Spilled Blood

47

Chris watched Olivia from the doorway of Hannah’s bedroom. His daughter had a pencil in her teeth, and her brown eyes were serious and focused as she tapped on the keys of the computer. A long strand of her hair came loose on her cheek, and she brushed it back behind her ear. She wore a baggy pink T-shirt over her skinny frame and cotton boxers. Her feet were bare. Staring at her, he thought what any father would think. She was the prettiest girl in the whole world.

He didn’t say anything, but eventually she felt his presence, and the pencil dropped from her mouth. She gave him a smile. ‘Oh, hey, Dad,’ she said and went back to her work.

It was a nothing moment that felt like everything to Chris. If you didn’t pay attention to those moments, they were gone. He couldn’t believe he had missed out on three years of those smiles, and standing there, he swore to himself that he would never miss out on any of them again. He would never spend a day of his life where he didn’t tell his daughter how he felt.

He walked over and kissed her on top of her head. ‘I love you, kiddo.’

Olivia stopped typing. She looked up at him strangely. ‘You okay?’

‘Fine.’ Chris slid down next to the bed and took a picture of her in his mind, the kind of picture you deliberately tried to remember for years. ‘So what are you doing?’

‘Research.’

‘On what?’

‘Cancer.’

Chris frowned. ‘Oh.’

‘I don’t like doing nothing. I like to fight.’

‘Me, too.’

‘I’m trying to think of the best way to kick cancer’s butt. Like, do I become a doctor? Or a lab rat trying to find a cure? Or do I just get really rich so I can give away lots of money?’

He laughed. ‘I think whatever you do, you will kick butt.’

‘Unless I’m in jail, huh?’

‘That’s not going to happen. Don’t even think about that.’

Olivia got up from the chair and slid down next to him beside the bed. ‘Can I tell you something? I haven’t said anything to Mom, but I’ve been thinking about it.’

‘Sure.’

‘I’m scared,’ she said.

Chris put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. ‘I know. It’s okay. Remember, Mom’s a fighter, too.’

‘It’s bad, though, huh? She doesn’t talk about it, so I figure she’s trying to protect me. I wish she would just be straight with me. I know how horrible it can be. I saw it with Kimberly.’

‘Cancer’s never good, but your Mom is about the strongest person I’ve ever met. Except maybe for you.’

His daughter spoke softly, her head buried in the crook of his neck, her chestnut hair swishing over his shoulder. ‘You still love her, don’t you?’

‘Olivia,’ he murmured.

‘It’s not like you’re a great actor, Dad. I can see it in your face. So if you were in love with her, how could you let her go?’

It wasn’t an accusation. It wasn’t angry. She said it curiously, but there was another question in her voice. It was tucked behind the wall, unspoken. How could you let me go? She wanted the truth. She wanted him to be straight with her. He owed it to her to be straight with himself.

He thought about a million different excuses. A million different ways to rationalize the mistakes they’d made. It all boiled down to one thing.

‘I always thought she’d come back,’ he said.

Olivia said nothing for a long time. ‘That’s funny,’ she said finally.

‘How so?’

‘I think Mom always thought you’d come after her.’

Chris laid his head back against the soft blankets of the bed and did his best not to let his emotions spill from his eyes.

‘Guess we’re all pretty stubborn,’ she said.

‘I guess so.’

‘I suppose when this is all over, you go back home, huh?’ Her voice was light. Her fear was real.

He nudged her head from his shoulder and stroked her face. ‘Whatever happens, Olivia, I promise you this. I’ll always be there for you.’

‘That sounds good to me.’ She stood up again, and she stretched her gangly arms over her head. Her face clouded over. ‘It must have sucked for Ashlynn.’

‘How so?’

‘Knowing what kind of man her dad is. Knowing what he did.’

‘We don’t know exactly what Florian did or didn’t do, Olivia, but I’m sure he loved his daughter.’

‘Yeah, but she found something, right? That’s what got her killed.’

‘Maybe. I think she discovered something about this man who calls himself Aquarius, but I can’t figure out how she did it. She was researching Vernon Clay, but now it looks like he’s been dead for years. She was researching Lucia Causey, and she’s dead, too. If Ashlynn found something, she’s smarter than all of us.’

Olivia sat down at the computer again and limbered up her fingers like a pianist. ‘Well, let’s see if I can retrace her steps.’

‘I did that,’ Chris said, ‘but without her laptop or her notes, I don’t know what she found. She posted about Lucia’s death, but she didn’t leave much of a trail.’

Olivia grinned. ‘No offense, Dad, but this is a job for a geeky daughter, not a legal beagle. What did you do, run Google searches?’

‘Uh, yeah.’

‘What else?’

‘Well, I guess that was it.’

She rolled her eyes at him. ‘Okay. Lucia Causey.’ She opened up a screen and ten seconds later, she announced, ‘She’s pretty. I mean, for being old.’

‘You got a picture of her?’

‘Sure. She’s on Facebook.’

‘She’s dead,’ Chris said.

‘Yeah, well, it’s not like they go out and take the pages down.’

Chris stared over Olivia’s shoulder at a photograph of Lucia Causey. His daughter was right. Lucia was pretty and not just for being old. She was probably in her mid-forties at the time the photograph was taken. She had jet-black hair, a hawk nose, and a big, teasing smile. Her features were slim and elegant. ‘She reminds me of Sophia Loren,’ he said.

‘Who?’

‘Never mind. I thought you had to be friends with her to see anything.’

‘That depends on your privacy settings. Most people don’t have a clue what’s out there for strangers to see. You can usually find out where people live, what they like, who their friends are, that kind of thing.’ Olivia’s fingers flashed on the keys. ‘Wow, she really liked Las Vegas. Tons of photos of the Strip. She stayed at the Bellagio and the Wynn.’

‘One of the guys on the chat site said she’d had gambling problems.’

‘Yeah, looks like she was a blackjack fiend. There are links to some sites about card-counting strategies and links to Atlantic City, Jackson, and a bunch of Indian casinos. She was pretty into it. Kinda weird for a brainiac, huh?’

‘Everybody has their weaknesses.’

‘Let’s see how bad it got,’ Olivia said. She typed again. ‘Here’s her address in Cupertino. Nice that she’s got a unique name. You can’t miss Lucia Causey, huh? She didn’t bother with unlisted numbers either. Anyway, let me get the county records for her house.’

‘I know how to do that, too, you know,’ Chris said defensively.

Olivia opened up a window with a maze of legal filings for the California property. ‘So what does this all mean?’

Chris studied the records. ‘It means she was on the verge of losing her home three years ago. The lender initiated foreclosure proceedings.’

‘And then?’

‘Then the loan was satisfied. The lien was removed.’

‘You mean it got paid off?’

Chris nodded. ‘Yup.’

‘She was so far behind they were going to take her house, and then she paid off her mortgage?’

‘You got it.’

‘Any idea how much?’

Chris reached across her to the keyboard and clicked on the lien satisfaction. ‘One point six million dollars.’

‘Son of a bitch!’ Olivia clapped a hand over her mouth. ‘Sorry.’

‘No, you got it right.’

‘Where’d she get the money?’

‘I’d like to know,’ Chris said, but it wasn’t hard to guess the truth. The payoff had occurred only weeks after the Mondamin litigation was dismissed on summary judgment.

Olivia opened up another window. ‘I can’t believe this woman killed herself. I wouldn’t kill myself if someone dropped a million bucks in my lap.’

‘Ashlynn thought she was murdered.’

His daughter frowned as she typed. ‘Well, the police sure don’t think so. They say she committed suicide a year ago in her garage. One year ago today, in fact. Can you fake it so that it looks like someone sucked a tailpipe?’

‘That’s not exactly my line of work,’ Chris said. ‘I suppose people who do that sort of thing can make anything look convincing.’

‘So why would Ashlynn think it wasn’t suicide?’

‘I don’t know. Unless she found something in her father’s files.’

‘’fraid I can’t help you with that, Dad.’

‘Yeah.’ He kissed her again. ‘Thanks for your help, kiddo.’

Olivia clicked back to Lucia Causey’s Facebook profile and opened up a listing of her fan pages. ‘Hey, here’s a reason to kill yourself. She liked Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Yikes.’

Chris laughed. ‘I prefer NCIS.’

‘Uh huh, but you’re also about a hundred years old, Dad. Let’s see, she also liked Keeping the House by Ellen Baker, Six Feet Under, the Bay to Breakers race, Luciano Pavarotti, Pink Ribbons Against Breast Cancer, sausage and peppers from Chiaramonte’s, the Geico gecko, wonder bras from Victoria’s Secret, and the Sunol Regional Wilderness.’

He pushed himself off the floor and headed for the bedroom doorway. ‘I kind of like that stupid gecko, too.’

‘Yeah, and I bet you’re okay with those wonder bras, Dad.’

Chris chuckled. He was out of the bedroom and halfway down the dark hallway when he stopped dead in his tracks. Cold air breathed up the back of his body, from his heels to his neck, as if he’d found his path blocked by a ghost. Maybe he had. Maybe Ashlynn was with him in the house, whispering in his ear. He spun around and marched back to the bedroom, gripping the door frame with both hands.

‘What did you say?’ he asked Olivia.

‘Wonder bras?’

‘No, no, before that. Something about a delicatessen that Lucia liked?’

Olivia checked the screen. ‘Sausage and peppers from Chiaramonte’s. Why, are you hungry?’

Chris didn’t answer. He knew. Ashlynn knew, too; it would have been simple for her to discover the truth. It had been laid out in front of him since the moment he arrived in town. Every conversation with his friend, his philosopher, should have told him what was going on. He’d been looking for a vast conspiracy, and the reality was so much simpler. The reality was about love and loss.

Is it better to do nothing in the face of injustice or do the wrong thing?

Aquarius had made his choice.

Chris realized Olivia had found something else, too, something that he had failed to notice as he ran searches in his car in the rain. Something terrible and important. ‘Did you say that Lucia Causey committed suicide one year ago today?’

‘Today,’ she repeated.

He didn’t say anything. He turned and ran.