Hey, Mom, Jane sent a message upward. You were right. Miss you.
But today was about Tuck. “So you didn’t know your real name? Before?”
“Well, yeah. I did. That’s one of the weird things, and tell you about it in a minute. But anyway, my-adoptive mother, I guess I’m supposed to call her-told me the agency always said my birth mother-” Tuck stopped mid-sentence, slumped her shoulders. “It’s impossible. ‘Real’ mother? ‘Birth’ mother? ‘Adoptive’ mother? I mean, the woman I called my mother took care of me and changed my diapers and let me stay left-handed and yelled until the softball coach let me be the pitcher. She’s kind of a whack job, at times, but what mom isn’t, right? My biological mother, who conceived me, carried me for nine months, gave birth to me-she left me at the Brannigan.”
Jane’s eyes widened, she couldn’t help it. How would it feel to take something from yourself, a helpless new human, and give it away? That child was now twenty-eight. Twenty-eight, bitter and confused. And, somewhere, was a woman grieving the loss?
“I’m so sorry,” Jane almost whispered. “But your poor mother. It must have been horrible.”
“Not so horrible she couldn’t dump me at-well, whatever. My life has turned out fine. Even after the shit hit the fan, Laney and I are okay. He insists everything will work out.” Tuck fiddled with the fringe on the chocolate-and-cream afghan draped over the chair. Jane’s mother had crocheted it in her hospital bed, the last afghan she made. “Not feelin’ it so much today, you know?”
Today was turning out to be quite the Sunday. Jane needed to get this talk back on track. Whatever that track was.
“So, Tuck. What is it you want me to do? You got a call from the Brannigan. They said they found your birth mother. You drove to Connecticut, and then what?”
“Long story short.” Tuck folded the afghan over the arm of the chair. “I go to Connecticut. We meet at Starbucks. She’s great, she’s terrific, I’m in a Hallmark card or a Lifetime movie. I’ve never been so happy. I’m crying, she’s crying. We each order a triple venti nonfat latte-exactly the same thing!-and we start crying again.”
Tuck pressed her lips together, closed her eyes briefly.
“‘Audrey Rose. You’re so beautiful,’ she says. ‘I knew you’d be a knockout.’ She said that, ‘knockout.’ ‘You have my dark eyes,’ she says, ‘so skinny, and my crazy hair.’ We spend two days together. I’m thinking-I have a biological family. I have a history. I have a story.”
“Well, that sounds wonderful, Tuck. It sounds like-”
“No.” Tuck slugged down the last of her wine. The timer behind the couch clicked on the bulbs of the brass lamp beside her. Jane was shocked to realize it was almost dark outside. February in Boston. It wasn’t even five.
“I’m telling you, Jane. She’s not my mother. She expected her long-lost daughter. But I’m… I’m not her.”
“You’re not-why would you think that? Come on, Tuck, why would they-?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m here. You’re the reporter. My only-you’ve got to find out for me.”
Tuck stood, tears welling, tumbling a throw pillow to the floor. Coda opened her tiny green eyes at the sound, looked up, then dropped her head back into her paws.
“Imagine how she’ll feel? When she finds out?” One tear rolled down Tuck’s cheek, and she swiped it away. “After all the plans? The calls? She looked so happy. But I know it. I do. They sent that poor woman the wrong girl.”
4
The crime scene cleanup people would have quite a job on their hands. Not as bad as some Jake had seen, but murder was never good. They’d arrive soon enough, whoever the landlord hired, see it for themselves. Jake closed his eyes briefly, making a promise to the woman on the linoleum floor. “We’ll find this asshole,” he muttered. Hennessey was right. Poor kids. Poor woman.
There’d been nothing on the stairway. He’d kept his gloved hands off the banisters and walls, hugging the wall to avoid possible suspect footprints, was careful walking up the three flights to the top floor. The wooden front door of apartment C stood open, leading to a threadbare living room, cheap couch with haphazard pillows, then a dining room with an oval table, white tablecloth, three twisty metal candlesticks in the center, no candles. Clean. No family photos, no keepsakes. No sign of forced entry, exactly as Hennessey had reported.
“Yo, D. What you got?” he called toward what must be the kitchen, but DeLuca had gone out a back door. Left it open. A spotlight glared from one outside corner of the minuscule back balcony, and Jake saw his partner’s lanky silhouette leaning over the wooden railing. Three floors up. No escape that way, probably. Unless the bad guy could fly.
It was four steps across the living room to an archway into the kitchen. Jake paused, getting a read on the place. Sniffed, as he always did. No gas, nothing burning, a sweet fragrance of-maybe some cleaning thing. He surveyed left to right, cataloging the elements, typing notes without looking at the keyboard. Dented white refrigerator, seen better days, but clean, no grubby smudges around the handle. He’d have to check inside it. Two saucepans on a gas stove. Open box of Quaker Oats on the drain board. An open box of Cheerios, on its side, a few pieces spilled on the floor. Cereal. Jake looked at his watch. Five in the afternoon. Huh.
No dishes in the sink, a stack of multicolored sponges in a plastic dish, some generic green soap on the side. Kitchen table. A high chair, aluminum and plastic, not new, the molded pink serving tray wiped clean. A little pink bowl with a rabbit decal.
And that body on the floor. One side of her face against the once-ivory linoleum, the other revealing an angry red welt. More than a welt. The skin had already turned purple. Her eyes were open. A trickle of blood made a jagged seam across the yellowed floor, the dark seeping into the cracks between the tiles. Blunt trauma? Jake typed. Weapon?
White female, approx 30, eyes brown, hair blond, he typed. It spilled across her back, clean, shiny, cared for. Arms splayed. Hooded sweatshirt. Levis, bare feet. If you ignored what seemed the cause of death, it looked like the woman simply decided she needed a nap. Or been dropped from the ceiling. Had she-tripped? Hit her head on the stove? Or floor?
Jake stood, assessing. A siren wailed in the distance, the sound keening through the open back door. All the streetlights had popped on, and the interior lights in neighboring triple-deckers. People would be gathering below, the neighborhood disaster irresistible. Photog should get snaps. Sometimes the bad guys did return. Yellow crime scene tape should be up. Where the hell was the new ME? Maybe she was the siren.
It wasn’t suicide, anyway. If the woman had been clonked with a frying pan, like Hennessey said, it wasn’t in sight. No sign at all of a murder weapon. The woman looked poor. Had a family. But the place was-same as her hair-cared for. She’d be sad to see her kitchen messed up this way. Blood and Cheerios.
Jake never got used to that first moment. The first glimpse of the victim. Murder was the consequence of greed or fear or drugs or anger or frustration or money or whatever made someone explode and decide their needs were more important than whoever was in their way. Jake and DeLuca had seen their share. Solved their share, too. Plenty of bad guys owed their current long-term residency in MCI Cedar Junction to the work of Brogan and DeLuca.
Her ID was somewhere in the shabby little apartment. They’d find it, then find who she knew, then figure out who had a problem with her. This was a domestic, Jake predicted. They’d close it fast.
“Yo, Harvard.” DeLuca stood at the back door, his sport coat open, black hoodie underneath, no hat. His hatchet nose red from the cold, he swiped the back of his gloved hand across it. “You ready to join us on this planet?”