Valley of Ashes (30 page)

The woman was holding a bag of bagels from Moe’s. Still warm, as I discovered when she smiled broadly and handed the bag to me.

I got the feeling they hadn’t had a whole lot of practice with actual homicide investigations.

“Hi there,” I said. “You guys are probably from Boulder PD, right?”

The guy badged me, then, blushing a little.

The chick stuck her hand out. “I’m Diane.”

She was pretty, but just a teeny bit goofy-looking: mess of curly golden hair, wide-set blue eyes, big smile that brought out dimples in her cheeks and showcased a charming little gap between sparkling white front teeth.

Granted, goofiness probably had something to do with the fact that she was wearing Teva sandals on her very tanned little feet.

Not an unexpected fashion move in Boulder, but they did rather cancel out the professional intent of her prim blouse and beige pencil skirt. Or maybe she’d just nipped out of the office for a quick rappel down the Devil’s Thumb. On her chai-soy-latte break.

She did seem a little bit out of breath.

I shifted the bag of warm bagels to my left arm and shook her hand.

“Madeline Dare,” I said. “But I bet you guys knew that already.”

Diane nodded, elbowing her partner guy. “Introduce yourself, Wes.”

“I’m Wes,” he said, blushing again as he stuck his own hand out toward me. “Nice to meet you.”

He was a head taller than his partner. Just as blond, though. Just as blue-eyed.

“Nice to meet
you
, Wes.” I shifted the bagels again so we could shake on it. “And I know that this is Boulder and we’re all friendly here and stuff, but would you guys mind telling me your
last
names?”

Diane said, “Um, Bryant.”

Wes said “Wyckoff.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate your sharing that information with me.”

Then we all just stood there, on my front porch.

Both of them smiling at me, now. Dimples all around.

“So,” I said. “You guys want to come inside? I have bagels.”

I pointed at the Moe’s bag, figuring they might need a visual aid.

Their corn-fed grins were undimmed, but they didn’t laugh.

I would’ve gladly given my right arm to trade these guys for a couple of New York City cops—somebody smart and snarky, like my old pal Skwarecki from Queens.

This was going to be a very, very long morning. I could already tell.

I turned away from them and walked back inside my house. Hoping they’d realize they were supposed to follow along behind.

At several points during the interview that followed, I was sorely tempted to rip the notepad out of Wes’s hands so I could just write down my answers in large block-capital letters.

It would’ve been so much faster than sitting there trying to look patient while he struggled to think up actual
questions
for me.

“Bittler,” I said, for the third time. “B-I-T-T-L-E-R.”

“Okay.” He struggled to write that out on his pad.

I could’ve carved it into a block of marble more rapidly—with Diane’s Teva and a toothbrush for hammer and chisel.

“
Two
t’s,” said Diane, looking over her partner’s shoulder.

Dude, seriously?

We’d been at this for over an hour already.

I shoved half a bagel into my mouth. In lieu of shrieking.

My phone started ringing.

“Guys?” I said. “I have to get that. It’s probably my husband, calling back from Tokyo.”

The pair of them were still intent on Wes’s notepad progress, but Diane waved a hand at me without looking up.

I closed the office’s French doors behind me and picked up the phone.

“Bunny?”

“Dean,” I said. “Thank
God
. Look, I’m sorry I was such a bitch, before. So,
so
sorry.”

“I’m sorry I’m not there with you. When things are so awful.”

“They are,” I said, closing my eyes. “Really awful.”

I sucked in my breath and held it, not wanting to cry again. Just wanting to pretend he was standing next to me.

“I tried to change my flights home,” he said. “As soon as I heard from Mimi last night. But they want an extra five hundred bucks, this late in the game. I just can’t swing it.”

I reached my hand up to my throat, then realized I wasn’t wearing my pearls anymore. Couldn’t remember when I’d taken them off.

When we got home from the business dinner?

Crap. I just hoped the clasp hadn’t worn through the silk again. They could’ve fallen off anywhere.

And then I felt a bolt of shame rocket through me.

Really? Cary’s dead and you’re worried about your fucking
jewelry,
Madeline?

“Bunny? You still there?”

“Yeah,” I said.

Still here. Still an undeserving asshole.

“Was it really cops at the door?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Not exactly rocket surgeons, either of them. They’re making me miss the hell out of Skwarecki.”

“How are the girls?”

I looked through the French doors’ panes of glass, out toward the playpen. “India appears to be sending herself a letter in the Little Tikes plastic-garden-thingie’s mailbox. Parrish is inspecting the rear wheels on a Tonka dump truck. Making sure they spin properly.”

“I miss them,” he said.

“I miss
you
,” I replied.

He cleared his throat. “I’ve called the office. Cary’s parents have planned a funeral. Wednesday afternoon.”

I closed my eyes again, tempted to cross my fingers for luck. “You’ll be home?”

“My plane gets into Denver around seven Tuesday night. I’ll be back at the house as quickly as I can.”

It was still only Sunday, I realized. Even though Saturday felt like it happened five years ago.

Longer
.

Tuesday afternoon seemed so far away I couldn’t imagine it actually ever happening. I’d probably turn eighty before Monday deigned to show up.

“Do you think I should talk with the cops while they’re there?” asked Dean.

“Totally useless,” I said. “They make Inspector Clouseau look like a goddamn genius. And that’s
if
Clouseau had been an illiterate Department of Motor Vehicles employee with a lifelong fondness for airplane glue.”

Dean groaned.

“Yeah,” I said. “Exactly. But you need to talk to
somebody
about Bittler. I’m not getting the vibe that anyone’s taking me seriously on that score. They might listen to you.”

“I could call your friend Mimi.”

“That would be great.”

“And what should I be telling her about Bittler, exactly?”

“Everything Cary thought he was up to.”

I related what I could remember about everything Cary himself
had told me the night of the neighborhood meeting: missing spares, fucked-up invoices, how he’d wanted to get into the warehouse. Bittler having the only set of new keys.

“And Mimi said Cary was locked into the place,” I said, “with no keys on him. He hadn’t broken in. Someone had to have been there with him. And who else but Bittler, right? If he had the only keys.”

“Jesus,” said Dean.

“Just tell Mimi. Tell whomever you can… people at work. They have to at least look him
over
then, right?”

“Give me Mimi’s number,” he said.

I did. Home and work. “Call her now, okay? Before you do anything else.”

“I will.”

We said our good-byes and hung up.

I couldn’t face the idea of more time in the living room with Tweedle-Dumb and Tweedle-Outright-Fucking-Idiot, so I called the main number at the
New Times
, instead, and asked if McNally happened to be in the office.

Sure, it was just after noon on a Sunday, but he was a newspaper guy. And we’re all pretty damn weird in the journo business.

“Sure thing,” said the chick who answered. “I’ll put you right through.”

There was classical music playing while she had me on hold. Some burbly Mozartian concerto.

India was bending the plastic flowers in her Little Tikes white picket fence. Parrish was still checking the alignment of her Tonka tires by spinning them around, repeatedly.

Gender-neutral, my girl. I felt good about that.

And I also felt pretty damn sure the Officers Tweedle weren’t going to make shit for headway on Cary’s behalf.

I knew if I stopped to let the full heft and weight of his death sink in—the
fact
of it—my resulting grief would be paralytic, literally. Full stop.

And I couldn’t succumb to that. I had to keep functioning. Until Dean came home, at the very least.

I had to keep it together—cook and change diapers and play “Itsy Bitsy Spider.” Tuck my girls in at night and get up with them in the morning.

If I squandered an ounce of momentum now, there was no fucking way I could get it back.

So don’t think, do. Gird your goddamn loins already.

The only way to keep myself from falling apart over losing Cary was to concentrate on figuring out how and why he’d been killed.

Mozart cut out mid-burble.

“McNally,” said McNally. “Who’s this?”

“Madeline,” I replied.

“What’s up with you, this fine Sunday?”

“There’s been another fire.”

“I heard,” he said. Serious, now.

“Friend of mine died in it.”

“Shit. I’m so sorry, Madeline.”

“I need your help.”

“You got it. Where and when?”

“My house, as soon as you can get away.”

“You’re on Mapleton?”

“At Nineteenth. House with the Christmas crap still up, all over the porch.”

“House number’s right here on your résumé,” he said. “You need me armed?”

I could practically hear the grin in his voice—like I’d just picked him first for my kickball team. But he wasn’t exactly kidding, either.

“No,” I said. “Or at least not yet. But I’d really dig it if you could get these
dopey
fucking cops out of my living room.”

“Names?”

“Wes Wyckoff and Diane Bryant.”

McNally snickered.

“Piece of cake,” he said. “Be there in ten.”

He made it in seven.

I
’m not exactly clear on how McNally managed to clear the cops out of my house so quickly. One minute he was standing in the living room doorway, grinning at Wes and Diane, the next he had them out on the front porch, an arm draped across each of their backs.

A couple of words at a time drifted back into the house, barely audible.

His tone was familiar, reassuring. I heard him say, “grieving,” and “keeping her chin up, for her little girls’ sake,” and, finally, “anything you need, anything at all… day or night.”

By which point they were waving good-bye from my front walk, grins still plastered across their goofy faces, each of them gripping a copy of his business card as though they’d just scored a Golden Ticket from the hand of Willy Wonka himself, for chrissake.

He didn’t leave the porch until they were driving away in their unmarked sedan.

“
Damn
,” I said when he sauntered back into the living room. “That was like watching somebody take down a couple of particularly dim-witted calves at a high-end rodeo. Zip-zip, all four hooves lassoed and then you just yank it tight and tip ’em right over.”

“Rope-a-dope,” said McNally. “Good thing they’re stupid.”

I collapsed onto my sofa. “And, as my farmboy-genius husband
would say, they’re going to be about as much use as tits on a bull, aren’t they?”

“Wes and Diane?” he asked, dropping into an armchair. “ ‘Tits on a bull’ garners them entirely too much credit.”

“Well, that’s just fucking great. My friend’s dead, Mimi won’t talk to me about it, and the cops they send over have about as much intellectual gravitas as inflatable Bozo punching dolls.”

“Pretty much the size of it,” McNally agreed.

“So what the hell am I supposed to do now?”

“You’re a
journalist
, Madeline. You’re supposed to go out and investigate.”

“I’m a
restaurant
critic, McNally. With toddlers.”

“And yet you seem to have a disturbing familiarity with arson, plastic explosives, and the Radio Shack parts one might require to successfully blow up a helicopter. From a remote location.”

“
Au contraire, mon brave
. I once tried to get a kid who knew how to do all that to read
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
and write a term paper about it. A task at which I failed, by the way, in rather spectacular fashion. And I’d hightailed it out of my job at that school before said kid had stolen the requisite C-4, much less duct-taped it to the fucking helicopter.”

McNally grinned. “That so?”

“Yes. That’s exactly so.”

“You seem pretty calm about it.”

“It was a shitty job at a shitty school and the guy who died was an evil asshole. Not that I condone murder.”

McNally cracked another grin in my direction. “All the same, you strike me as a resourceful woman.”

“Good thing, too. Since I’m going to be single-momming it with a couple of one-year-olds through Tuesday, the day after which I’ve gotta show up at a funeral. It’s going to be a goddamn miracle of resourcefulness if I can even find a
babysitter
by then.”