Page 85 of Take Your Breath Away

I had no answer ready. Now that I was here, I honestly didn’t know. “Going over old ground,” I said. “Still looking for answers. Still looking for Brie.”

“Sure you are,” he said.

“I know it was a long time ago, and that you’ve talked to Detective Hardy probably a dozen times, but is there anything you held back, anything you wish you’d told her?”

He shook his head. “Can’t think of anything. I talked to her a lot.” He grinned. “I was thinking, at one point, that maybe she thought I did it. They even came out here to my place, searched around, looking for anything, but they didn’t find a damn thing. I guess that’s when they started zeroing in on you.” He shook his head and grinned once more. “Guess you beat them on that one.”

“How did Brie seem that day? Was she anxious? Did she seem like she was worried about anything?’

His grin faded. “Well, first of all, when people call me, they’re worried they’ve got mice or rats or God knows what, so it’s fair to say they’re a little on edge. And your wife was like that.”

“You think it could have been something other than mice?”

“All these years later, what makes you ask?”

I didn’t want to get into the events of the last two days. “Just asking, is all.”

“Well, I’ll tell you this much,” he said. “She struck me as a woman who was just waiting for something bad to happen. That’s not something I ever told the police because it was a little too vague.”

“What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “I think she was worried about what you were going to do when you got home.”

“She had nothing to worry about from me,” I said.

Another shrug, and then a grin. “Now can I ask you something?”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“Like I said, I’m dying. I’m wondering if you’d be interested in taking any one of these rescue animals home with you? I need to off-load them as soon as possible.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I can’t help you there.”

Charlie nodded and smiled. “Never hurts to ask.”

On the way back into town, I glanced at the gas gauge and noticed the Explorer was running on fumes. I pulled into a gas station, and used a credit card to get the self-serve pump operating, started to refill the tank. When I was done, I couldn’t get the pump to print out a receipt, so I went into the building and got one from the guy sitting at the cash register.

I didn’t notice, until I was actually back in the Explorer, that there was someone sitting in the passenger seat who hadn’t been there before.

A woman, late thirties. Smiling.

“Surprise,” she said. “I thought that was you.”

“Natalie,” I said. “I’ll be damned.”

Thirty-Four

The four of them were there, at Elizabeth’s bedside.

There was Albert and his wife, Dierdre, who had put aside their differences to be here at this difficult time. Isabel and her husband, Norman, were present, too, the four of them ringed around the bed, the siblings near the head, on either side, and the in-laws by the foot.

Isabel was leaning over, rubbing her hand gently across Elizabeth’s forehead, stroking her almost as if she were a pet in need of comforting.

“I love you, Mom,” she said.

Albert, on the other side, had a tear running down one cheek. He was holding Elizabeth’s hand.

Elizabeth’s eyes were closed, her breathing so shallow as to be almost undetectable.