Close Call Page 5

10

  Sydney

  Sydney was practically skipping as she rode the escalator up from the Metro depths at two o’clock. With a delicious feeling of irresponsibility, she’d opted to play hooky instead of returning to the office after trying on the wedding dress. Instead, after D’won returned to the office, she’d done wedding stuff, hiring a photographer and a florist, both of whom were happy to accept commissions for the Thursday night Jason and Sydney had decided on after consulting via cell phone. Her hair swung gently against her shoulders and she smiled at strangers as she passed, surprising smiles out of some, suspicious looks from others. In one hand she clutched a bouquet of Gerbera daisies whose bright colors and open faces she’d been unable to resist. In the other, she had a bottle of Dom Perignon to replace the champagne they’d wasted last night. Humming, she passed the Marine Commandant’s house on the corner. Almost home.

  Crossing 9th Street, she spotted an ambulance parked in the middle of the block. Oh, no. Poor Mrs. Colwell! Had she fallen? Had a heart attack? Sydney sped up. A knot of police cars blocked the street and one’s light bar sent red and blue stripes flashing across the neighborhood. A clump of neighbors stood outside a perimeter of yellow tape, watching as two EMTs wheeled a gurney to the waiting ambulance. They moved without urgency, their load unmoving under a white sheet. Damn. Had anyone contacted Mrs. Colwell’s daughter? As Sydney moved closer, she saw Mrs. Colwell standing just off her stoop talking to a policewoman. What was—?

  The woman petted Indigo as she talked, breaking off to point. “There she is,” the old woman said. Indigo struggled to get free but Mrs. Colwell snuggled him tighter against her meager bosom.

  “Miss Ellison?” Someone stood at Sydney’s elbow.

  She turned to see a man in his late thirties, flanked by a short African-American woman. He had a commanding presence, although he was only medium height with brown hair cut military-short, brows that peaked rather than arched, and deep-set brown eyes. The woman was petite, dowdily dressed in a shapeless mud-colored suit, and had the air of a cat about to pounce on an unsuspecting mouse.

  “Miss Ellison, I’m Detective Benjamin West. This is my partner, Detective Graves. We need—”

  Just then, two men in utility overalls stenciled with Metropolitan Police Department emerged from Sydney’s open front door.

  “Oh, God, no,” she gasped. The truth began to sink in, shocking her cold like the first plunge into Wood Lake in May. “Jason! Where’s Jason?” She tried to push past West but he grabbed her arm. The roughness of his palm against her skin surprised her; maybe he was a do-it-yourselfer who wielded a hammer on weekends. She struggled against his grasp, but he held on.

  “You can’t go in there.”

  “What’s happened to Jason?” Sydney looked wildly from West to Graves.

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you, Miss Ellison,” the woman said, not sounding sorry. “Mr. Jason Nygaard is dead. Was he a friend of yours?” Sloe eyes set above sharp cheekbones watched for her reaction.

  “My … my fiancé. We were going to Indonesia.” A wave of dizziness washed over her and she would have fallen if West hadn’t tightened his hold on her arm. He saved the bottle of champagne as it slipped from her grasp. The daisies fell, splattering the sidewalk with red, orange, yellow, and purple. “What happened?”

  Could the shape on the gurney really be Jason? Sydney’s eyes followed it as the EMTs hoisted it into the rear of the ambulance. She needed to see him. Wrenching free, she ran toward the men with the gurney, losing one of her pumps and almost falling before kicking the other shoe off and limping the last couple of steps to Jason’s side.

  “Hey—!” one of the EMTs said as she reached the gurney, taking in jerky breaths.

  His partner shushed him with a gesture and, after a glance at Detective West, peeled the sheet down to expose Jason’s face and shoulders.

  His eyes were closed. His beautiful green eyes. Trying hard to block out the dark hole in his forehead, Sydney stretched one hand to caress the hair at his temple. It sprang away from her touch as if still alive. She didn’t realize she was crying until she tasted the saltiness of tears. She dashed them away with the back of her hand, then put her fingertips to Jason’s lips. The unfamiliar feel of cooling flesh jolted her back a step. The sympathetic EMT took advantage of her retreat to flick the sheet back into place and collapse the legs of the gurney so they could slide it between the open doors. Sydney stood in a vacuum of silence, not hearing the voices around her or the traffic noises or the rising wind in the leaves until the metallic clang of the ambulance door tore into her consciousness.

  “Jason—” She took a step, wanting to follow the ambulance, but a hand on her elbow stopped her. Confused, she looked into West’s not unsympathetic face. It was a strong face with cop’s eyes, firm lips, and a nose that had been broken more than once.

  “Sit down.” West guided her to the open door of an unmarked police car and she sank onto the edge of the seat.

  “Someone shot Jason,” she whispered. The import of that dark hole in his forehead sank in. “Why?”

  “Don’t you know?” Detective Graves asked, arching thin brows. “Where were you today?” Her pen hovered over the notepad she held in one hand. Her hands were square, short-fingered, with nails bitten past the quick.

  “No! How would I—? I was at work, at Winning Ways, then I was shopping with my deputy in the afternoon.”

  “Winning Ways? Is that a sports bar, a betting parlor?”

  “No, it’s—” Sydney turned away from the snide woman and concentrated on West, trying to read the neutral planes of his face, the trace of concern in his eyes. “What happened?” she asked. “Where are they taking him?” Her voice broke and tears welled. Jason was gone. Not to Indonesia. Gone. Forever.

  “Mr. Nygaard was shot twice, execution style, in your home, Miss Ellison.”

  “Oh my God.” The word “execution” bit into her. The cell phone. The hit man had used her phone to track her down. He’d shot Jason. She looked around. “My briefcase … where’s my briefcase?”

  West made a calming motion. “Over there.” He pointed.

  “I need it now!” She tried to get out of the car but he restrained her, directing his partner to get the case with a nod of his head.

  Grudgingly, Graves retrieved it from the sidewalk, crushing a red daisy underfoot. She opened the case and scanned the contents before handing it to Sydney.

  She pulled out the manila envelope with the cell phone inside. She tried to pry open the metal clasp but her trembling fingers couldn’t do it. She thrust it at West. “Here. I was going to mail this to you.” She pointed at the police department address inscribed on the front.

  “What is it?” West ripped open the envelope and the phone fell into his hand in a shower of gray fuzz. “A cell phone?” He looked at her from under his brows, turning the phone over in his hands.

  “It belongs to a hit man.” Semi-coherently, Sydney told them about the phone mix-up and the call she’d answered. “I wasn’t really sure it was about a … a contract,” she finished, “and I was afraid of the publicity, so I decided to mail it to you. And now Jason … ”

  “You’re saying this hit man you supposedly talked to came here and killed your boyfriend?” Detective Graves asked, her voice dripping with disbelief. “Give the lady this week’s prize for creativity, Ben,” she said with a harsh laugh. Her eyes never smiled. “What time did you say you left work?”

  Her tone drilled through Sydney’s grief. Willing away tears, she met Graves’s eyes, staying silent for a full thirty seconds. “You think I had something to do with this?” Not for nothing was she the daughter of one of the country’s most powerful lawyers. “I want a lawyer.”

  West shot his partner a look that said, “Way to go.” The female detective shrugged, but Sydney caught a glimpse of satisfaction in her eyes.

 
“Do you have someone you can go to? Someone you want us to call?” West asked. “You can’t stay here.” She turned back to him, not fooled for an instant by the concern she knew must be fake. He was only playing good cop to his partner’s bad cop.

  “Don’t worry about me,” Sydney said, standing. The heat clubbed her, made her sway. West caught her arm again, his fingers tight around her biceps, until she steadied. She arched her brows and his hand dropped away.

  “We’ll need a number where we can reach you,” West said, his voice cooler. He rubbed a curled forefinger over his eyebrow. “You’ll need to make a statement.”

  “I’ll be with my mother, Constance Linn.” Sydney reeled off the number. “Hilary Trent will be in touch. I presume you’re familiar with her.”

  From the look on West’s face, she knew he recognized the name of the city’s most prominent, successful, and acerbic criminal defense attorney. She also happened to be one of Connie’s tennis partners.

  “I’m sorry about your fiancé,” he said, giving her ringless finger a pointed look.

  “Thank you,” she said, cursing inwardly as her cheeks warmed. “Did he … was he in pain?”

  “He died instantly,” West said in a gentler voice. He started to say something more, but then stopped.

  Sydney kept her eyes fixed on him, hoping for—what?—but realized he had no more to offer. She thought about asking if she could get some clothes from the bedroom but couldn’t face the idea of entering the house, maybe seeing Jason’s blood. Instead, she turned away from West and groped for her cell phone, not caring that the briefcase dropped and spilled files, pens, and business cards onto the sidewalk. With a trembling finger, she punched in the familiar number. While she waited for her mother to answer, her gaze landed unseeingly on the daisies, their vibrance already wilted and browned by the griddle-hot sidewalk.

  11

  Sydney

  Sydney sat at her mother’s kitchen table, clutching a mug of tea liberally laced with honey and bourbon; Connie’s panacea for everything from sore throats to career disasters to murder, apparently. The lowering sun streamed through the windows, warming the cream-colored walls and the brick tile floors of their Mount Vernon–area home. It highlighted the gouges and indentions on the oak plank table that had been in her mother’s family for generations. In a rare burst of sentimentality, Connie had refused to replace the table when she’d had the kitchen redone five years ago. Sydney scraped at a purple mark with a thumbnail; probably a stain that had been there for years.

  Without looking up, she knew her mother was studying her. She sniffed, grateful the tears had finally stopped. For now. She knew there’d be more when she was alone. Her eyes felt swollen, puffed up like ping-pong balls, and her nose was raw from where she’d kleenexed it repeatedly. She took a long swallow from the mug, both hands cupped around it. Despite the sunshine flooding the kitchen, she was cold.

  The last time she’d felt so cold was a year ago March when she and Jason had gone hiking in the Poconos and been caught in a freak snowstorm. Jason, raised in upstate New York, had known what to do, fashioning a shallow snow cave to shelter them from the wind. He was good at practical stuff like that; could fix his bike or replace a broken window, too. They’d huddled together, legs intertwined, testing each other for hypothermia, until the wind died down and they could see where they were going. That was the first time Jason had told her he loved her, whispering it in her ear as the wind howled. Sydney pushed away the memories, took another swallow of tea, and topped up the half-empty mug from the Wild Turkey bottle sitting within arm’s reach. Connie had abandoned tea for straight bourbon half an hour earlier.

  Silence lingered between mother and daughter, more noticeable now that Sydney had stopped crying. Connie and her younger daughter had never been on the same wavelength, as the saying goes, and Jason’s death hadn’t changed that. Something about the situation—Sydney’s grief, the fact that Jason was murdered?—was making her antsy. Her foot tapped against the table leg and she sprang up to put more hot water on to boil. Sydney watched her fill the copper teapot, her knuckles gleaming white from her grip on the handle, and then switch on the gas burner.

  She stared into the flames for a moment, clearly not wanting to return to the table in the breakfast nook where Sydney sat. Then, grabbing a sponge, she sopped up a water dribble from the granite counter. She looked incongruous, Sydney thought, holding a sponge while dressed in tennis whites with a platinum Patek Philippe watch on one bony wrist and a courtesan’s nest egg in diamonds encircling the other.

  “I think Jason was killed instead of me,” Sydney said into the silence. The raspiness of her voice surprised her. From the crying, she guessed.

  “That doesn’t sound very likely.” Connie’s gaze fastened on her daughter momentarily before she carried the sponge to the sink and rinsed it.

  “I’ve been thinking about it,” Sydney said, the words coming slowly. “No one would want to kill Jason. It was me.” She told her mother about taking the wrong cell phone, listening to the caller who wanted to make the Montoya job look like an accident. “The killer must think I can identify him or something. He killed Jason by mistake because he was at the house. I told the detectives, but they didn’t believe me.”

  Connie came to the table and sank into a chair with the perfect posture Sydney had always envied. Pulling a cigarette from a pack on the table, she fiddled with it, turning it over and over between her fingers. She’d quit smoking a decade ago but still carried a cigarette with her wherever she went. When one wore out, crumbled to tobacco flakes, she’d appropriate another. One pack could last weeks.

  Her brows rose in skeptical arches. “Don’t you think the simplest explanation is that Jason surprised a burglar? Maybe he tried to stop him.”

  “Look at the timing. I get a strange phone call that sounds like someone setting up a hit, and the next day Jason is killed? Shot? Isn’t that a bit too coincidental?” Sydney’s voice gained strength as she talked. She needed her mother to believe her.

  “The whole thing is strange,” Connie hedged. “But the most important thing is to keep the story away from the media and convince the police that you had nothing to do with his death.”

  Sydney suspected most normal people would have reordered those priorities, but she didn’t quibble with them. “You believe me, don’t you, Mom? About the phone call?”

  Connie buried her face in her mug, swallowing the last of the bourbon. Then she pushed back from the table. “We shouldn’t speculate too much before talking to Hilary tomorrow morning. She wants to go over your statement with you before you talk to the police. She’s set up an interview for you tomorrow at nine. Her office.”

  Sydney kept her eyes fixed on her mother for a long moment, hoping for more. “I’ll need some clothes,” she said finally, when it was clear Connie had nothing more to offer. She set down the mug of bourbon tea and considered her crumpled blouse and skirt. Her soiled suit jacket was draped over a chair. A smear of blood on the sleeve made her swallow hard. “This is all I have. I couldn’t get any clothes from … I didn’t … ” Tears threatened again.

  “Reese is bringing some clothes over,” Connie said hastily. Her petite-size clothes would never fit Sydney; her wrists and ankles would poke out.

  Sydney stiffened. “You called Reese? Isn’t she in Oklahoma?”

  “She got back two weeks ago,” Connie said testily, responding to the hostility in Sydney’s tone. “She can help.”

  “I don’t want her help.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Sydney, it’s time you got over it.” Connie snapped the cigarette she was fiddling with in half and flung it onto the table. “It was fifteen years ago. Reese admitted she made a mistake and said she’s sorry. You’re sisters.” The way she said it made it clear that she thought the genetic bond should trump any betrayal or difference of personality.

  “That
’s what made it worse.”

  Reese’s “mistake” was breaking the story of Sydney’s relationship with George Manley in order to jump-start her lackluster reporting career. At twenty-three, she was three years older than Sydney and working for a weekly rag in central Virginia when she capitalized on Sydney’s sisterly lack of discretion, writing a five-part exposé about the Speaker of the House’s affair with a girl young enough to be his daughter. She had plenty of photos, since all she’d had to do was follow Sydney to their rendezvous. She’d ended George’s career, wrecked his relationship with his kids (although his marriage survived after a fashion), ruined Sydney’s life, and landed a job with the Washington Post.

  Everyone had expected more political exposés from her, but she’d ditched DC after a year to be a war correspondent. She’d spent most of the next ten years out of the country, reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan, Israel, Syria, Darfur, Georgia, Congo, Nigeria, and India, earning acclaim and a Pulitzer—all before thirty—prior to abruptly leaving the news business to write true crime books. Those books took her to wherever the crimes and their stories had happened, and she’d spent months in small towns in California, Louisiana, Maine, and Bermuda, and almost a year in Chicago, making it easy for Sydney to avoid her.

  In the years after their initial confrontation—a confrontation replete with tears, name-calling, and Reese’s lame apologies cancelled out by rhetoric about the public’s right to know—Sydney had only seen her sister a handful of times. There’d been Nana Linn’s funeral five years after the scandal broke, where they’d stood on opposite sides of the grave and didn’t exchange a word. Then they’d collided at a cousin’s wedding where some well-meaning fool, probably Aunt Rose, had seated them at the same table. Reese had spent the evening in the bar, seducing the bartender, and Sydney, recently divorced, had pleaded a headache and left before the cake-cutting. Finally, they’d met at their father’s funeral three months ago, where they’d managed a few chilly civilities. Reese hadn’t shed a tear at the service, but then neither had Sydney. Her sister was the last person Sydney wanted to see now.