Deserves to Die Part 11

Taking a bite, she let out a contented sigh. I hope you're satisfied now, she thought, mentally communicating with the minuscule baby growing inside her. A part of her was worried sick about having a child this late in life, another part was a little giddy at the idea. Three children with three different men. Who woulda thunk? Not exactly brilliant family planning nor how she'd expected her life to play out twenty-odd years ago when she was desperately in love with Joe Strand. But there it was. And d.a.m.n it, the new little addition to her unconventional family would be worth every gray hair she would undoubtedly grow.

She just had to convince her existing near-grown teenagers of the fact. She tossed her pencil onto the desk and noted that the ring on her finger caught the light. She'd finally decided to wear the diamond Santana had given her. She was going to get some guff from her coworkers. So what? She was engaged and that was that. She'd show the kids tonight, not that it would be a big surprise; they'd already had many discussions about moving into the new house and the very real possibility of their mother remarrying.

With one foot out the door, ready to move out and get on with his life, Jeremy hadn't said too much, but Bianca had thrown a hissy fit, taking the opportunity to turn the whole thing around so that Pescoli's involvement with Santana was all about her. Pescoli thought about that drama-infused argument at the dinner table.

"You're only marrying him because Dad's married to Mich.e.l.le!" Bianca charged.

"My relationship with Santana has nothing to do with that."

"Oh, come on, Mom. You've been jealous of Mich.e.l.le from the minute she and Dad started seeing each other." Bianca reached up and fiddled with the rubber band holding her hair on the top of her head in a curly, seemingly careless knot that Pescoli figured took a minimum of fifteen minutes to create.

"Jealous?" she repeated with a derisive snort as Jeremy had reached for the bowl of spaghetti on the table and spooned out a second huge portion. "I don't think so."

That, of course, had been a lie. Any bit of envy she felt for his second wife at the time Lucky had taken up with her had rapidly disappeared. The more she knew Mich.e.l.le, the less she cared. As for him, Pescoli realized how lucky it was that they'd split. Not that he still didn't have the ability to push all of her b.u.t.tons. As long as they were parents, they would always have to deal with each other whether she liked it or not, so she tried to get along with him, even though most of the time she would have preferred to hit him alongside the head with a two-by-four. Not to do any permanent damage. Just hard enough to get his attention.

"Lay off Mom, Bianca." Jeremy defended her as he p.r.o.nged two meatb.a.l.l.s with a long fork and dumped them unceremoniously onto the mound of pasta on his plate. At their feet, Cisco whined for a treat while Sturgis regarded them from his dog bed in the living room. "She's ent.i.tled to her own life, you know." From a pitcher on the table, he poured a liberal amount of sauce over his plate while Bianca pursed her lips, her eyes flashing rebelliously as she picked at her dinner.

"Like you have it all figured out," she muttered.

"More than you." Jeremy had forked a huge wad of saucy pasta into his mouth, then met her churlish stare with his own as he'd chewed.

"You're an animal, y'know?" she declared.

He shrugged.

"Enough," Pescoli intervened. "This is dinner time. Family time."

Bianca's head snapped up so fast that her oversized bun wobbled. "Right. The three of us." Using her fork, she made a circular motion to include them all. "We don't need any more."

"Tell me that when you want to get married. Or have a kid," Pescoli rejoined, thinking of the baby again. "Or Jeremy does. Families evolve, Bianca. That's why we count Mich.e.l.le as part of ours. And now Santana will be."

"Awesome," Bianca said sarcastically. "So what if Jeremy and Heidi get married? Huh? What about that kind of evolution? Will she be part of the family?"

"They're broken up and Heidi's in California," Pescoli said.

"Like that means anything," Bianca muttered.

Pescoli's gaze flew to Jeremy, who was suddenly paying his undivided attention to slicing a meatball. "Right, Jeremy? You and Heidi aren't together anymore."

"We're friends," he mumbled, not meeting his mother's eyes. "She's in California," was his unsatisfactory answer.

Pescoli saw Bianca's smirk and wondered what she'd missed.

Thinking her mother wasn't looking, Bianca slid part of a meatball from her plate toward the floor where Cisco gobbled it up. "Heidi's thinking about coming back to Montana to go to college after she graduates high school in San Leandro."

"Is that true?" Pescoli asked as Sturgis stretched out of his bed and wandered over to the dining area.

Jeremy dropped his fork and glared at his sister. "Maybe."

"Hasn't she applied to University of Montana?" Bianca put in sweetly.

Pescoli's stomach lurched. "Jer?"

Jeremy snapped, "Pre-applied."

"What does that mean?" Pescoli asked.

"It's an option. That's all. She's still got family here. One of her sisters is going there." Jeremy tried hard to act as if nothing was the least bit out of place.

Pescoli tried to sort out what it all meant. She'd hoped that Heidi Brewster was out of her son's life. Beautiful and manipulative, Heidi had twisted Jeremy around her little finger for the past several years. When the decision was made to move from Montana to California, Pescoli had prayed that the two teenagers' fascination with each other would fade away.

"Why didn't I know about this?" she asked, only vaguely aware that Sturgis had seated himself next to her chair.

Jeremy turned to face her. "Because I knew you'd freak, Mom, and it looks like I was right."

"I'm not freaking."

"Don't worry," Bianca interjected. "Jeremy and Heidi aren't married . . . yet. They just can't stand to be away from each other. Besides, it's not really a big deal. Families evolve, you know."

Pescoli had wanted to wipe the "gotcha" grin off her daughter's face and send her to her room. Instead, she'd forced herself to remain calm. "Glad you understand. So, Santana and I are getting married and we're all going to move to the new house. Better start thinking about what you want to pack. And please, don't feed Cisco from the table. It makes him worse. Look, even Sturgis is getting into the act." At the mention of his name, Sturgis wagged his tail.

Like the lingering scents of garlic and tomato sauce from last night's dinner, the argument still hung in the air. This morning, Pescoli had left the house before either kid had bothered to get up and thrown herself into her work rather than dwell on the problems with her ever-growing family.

Heidi Brewster? Her daughter-in-law? No way. Angry at the thought, she bit into the energy bar. As she plopped the last bit into her mouth, she heard rapid footsteps in the hallway and Alvarez nearly slid into her office.

Pescoli looked up sharply.

"Taj might have something," Alvarez said. "Possible ID on our Jane Doe."

"About d.a.m.n time." Pescoli tossed the wrapper into the trash can near her desk and was out of her chair in one swift motion. They needed a break on this one.

In the missing persons department, Taj Nyak was waiting for them. She stood on the other side of a long counter covered in some kind of wood veneer that was popular in the 1970s. An exotic looking African-American woman with features that hinted at some Asian ancestry in her genealogical mix, she flashed them a quick smile. "That was quick."

Alvarez asked, "What've you got?"

Taj turned her computer screen around so that they could see the image thereon, a clear picture of a female who appeared identical to the woman they'd seen in the morgue the day before, the woman found on the creek at the O'Halleran ranch.

"Ladies," Taj said, "meet Sheree Cantnor."

I know how to handle death, Alvarez thought as she sat in the interrogation room.

Dealing with those who had died was all a part of her job. She made her living trying to find justice for the dead. Death was business as usual except in the case of those near to her. Dan Grayson's death had leveled her, made her question her decision to be a cop, caused her to lose sleep at night. There were no plat.i.tudes nor soft words of encouragement that would a.s.suage the pain she felt when she thought of the sheriff and how cruelly and needlessly he'd died. She'd toyed with quitting or transferring to another department, but she'd made this part of Montana her home, had a biological son with whom she'd recently been reunited, and had finally found a steady partner in Dylan O'Keefe, a man who had been in and out of her life for years.

He was back, and she felt centered for the first time in memory. Though the hole in her heart was painful, she had decided she would heal, given enough time and enough work. She worked as a cop because she loved it, and as she eyed the man seated in the interrogation room, she remembered why.

Heat flowed through the air duct overhead, whispering into the room little more than a cubicle. It was warm. Stuffy. A camera mounted in a ceiling corner recorded her conversation with Douglas Pollard, the man who had reported Sheree Cantnor missing. Slouched in the molded plastic chair on the other side of the table, he was sweating, dark circles evident beneath his sleeves, dots of perspiration dotting his high forehead.

Was he sweating from the heat?

Or a case of nerves?

Probably a little of both.

Though he had reported Sheree Cantnor missing, it wasn't inconceivable that he had killed her. Most violent crimes were committed by someone close, a "loved" one, and so Alvarez handled him carefully and wasn't going to take his story or his alibi at face value. It happened often enough that the person who murdered the victim, after he or she had come up with a solid alibi, was the one who also reported that their loved one hadn't come home. It was a tactic to throw off the police and to show innocence, but most of the time, it didn't work.

"So you and Sheree Cantnor were engaged?" Alvarez was seated at a table across from the distraught man. He was tall with a soft look about him, twenty-six years old with reddish-blond hair that was already starting to recede despite his efforts to comb it forward. His jaw was unshaven, at least for the past few days, and his eyes were a sad brown that matched his uniform. He drove a truck for a local delivery company.

"Are engaged. We are engaged." He frowned. "Do you know something?"

No reason to beat around the bush. "You probably heard that we found a body," Alvarez said quietly, then pushed a folder across the table.

He eyed it skeptically, not touching it, as if he expected something to jump out at him.

"We'd like you to tell us if you recognize the woman in the picture."

Biting his lip, he reached forward to flip the folder open. Two pictures of the woman in the morgue were visible. One of her face, the second of the daisy tattoo on her ankle. Pollard's color drained and his chin wobbled. Squeezing his eyes shut, he shook his head and pushed the folder away. "No . . . no."

Alvarez suspected his denial was that she was gone, not her ident.i.ty, so she asked gently, "Is this your fiancee, Mr. Pollard?"

"Yes," he choked out. "It can't be true." He shuddered and when he opened his eyes, they glistened with tears. "Who did this? Huh? Who the f.u.c.k did this?"

"That's what we're trying to find out."

"We?" he repeated.

"My partner, me. Everyone in the department."

He glanced nervously at the mirror, behind which, everyone knew, was a darkened viewing room where Pescoli, the DA, and Blackwater were standing. "What do you want to know?"

"Let's start with when was the last time you saw Sheree?"

"Two days ago. In the morning. Before work." He closed his eyes and screwed up his face. "We fought."

Alvarez's ears perked up. "What about?"

"A stupid argument. Nothing really. She wanted to go visit her family. This week. Just pack up and go, but I couldn't. My job isn't that flexible. She wasn't happy about it as Janine, that's her sister, is due to deliver twins. Any minute." He paused and sighed. "She might even have had 'em by now. Anyway, we got into it and Sheree wanted to talk more, but I left. I was already late for work. We didn't . . . we didn't talk or text all day, which is weird for us, and when I got home, she wasn't there. No big deal, but then . . . she never came home that night and I figured she was just showing me how mad she was."

"She's done this before?"

"Once. Before we were engaged. About a year and a half ago."

"Can you tell me about it?"

He paused again, took in a deep breath, and launched into his story.

He and Sheree Cantnor were high school sweethearts who had grown up together in Utah, but had moved to Grizzly Falls when he'd been transferred to Missoula. They'd been excited for the move, ready to make a fresh start, away from their parents and siblings who inhabited Salt Lake City and the surrounding towns. He'd given her a ring about a year ago on Valentine's Day, and they'd moved the following June after she'd graduated from BYU in Provo. She'd found a job working as a receptionist and bookkeeper for a local insurance agency and they lived in an apartment on Boxer Bluff, located on the hillside. Their one bedroom unit had a peekaboo view of the river. Sheree's job was in a strip mall within walking distance from the apartments.

"She wanted it close by so she could walk to work," he said. "We have a cat and . . . and Sheree likes to get away from the office, you know, get a little exercise, eat lunch at home and play with Boomer. . . ." His voice lost all power as the weight of what was happening, that he'd lost his fiancee, settled over him. "Who would do this? Who?"

"Did your fiancee have any enemies?"

"None. Sweetest girl to walk G.o.d's earth." He slumped farther in his chair and eyed the folder as if it were malevolent.

"But you fought."

"Not that often. We . . . we're happy. Planned on getting married around Christmas time. In Salt Lake . . . Oh, Jesus." He seemed about to break down completely so Alvarez nudged a box of tissues closer to him, but he ignored them. "I want to see her," he announced suddenly, his face mottled and red.

"Mr. Pollard-"

"I want to see her," he insisted. "This . . . this could all be wrong." He motioned to the pictures and shook his head. "This woman. She could be like Sheree's twin."

"She had a twin?" Alvarez asked.

"No, no, but like a dead-ringer. And that tattoo. It's stock. Not a big deal." He rubbed a hand over his jaw, sc.r.a.ping the whiskers beginning to show on his jaw. Again he stated emphatically, "I want to see her." He was grasping at straws.

"I have a few more questions," Alvarez began, but he cut her off.

"Don't you get it? I have to see her. To be sure." His jaw was firm.

Alvarez saw that he was set on his plan, hoping that there had been a mistake, an error in the photography, a mix-up in the morgue, some ridiculous idea she knew she couldn't dislodge.

She said, "One more thing, then we'll take a break and drive to the morgue."

"What?"

"You said you and Sheree were engaged."

"That's right."

"Did you give her a ring?"

"Of course I gave her a ring. A diamond ring. Why? Why are you asking about it? Was the ring stolen?" His mouth dropped open. "Man, that thing cost a fortune. I'm still paying on it." He looked miserable.

"Did it fit her?"

"Yes."

"It wasn't too big? And might fall off?"

"No, of course not. I went to a jeweler and had it sized. It fit perfectly."

"What about her earrings?"

"I don't know. She had lots of pairs."

"Diamond studs."

"Well . . . cubic zirconia. She bought 'em herself. They're not valuable-" He cut himself off and held up both hands. "Doesn't matter. I don't give a d.a.m.n about her jewelry. I need to see her. I have to." He stood then as if it were decided.