Annie shut her eyes and took a deep breath. A pause. Almost a prayer. It was obvious that Olivia had fought for her life. The defensive wounds on her hands had been proof of that. But she hadn’t fought long. Annie wondered if the tangle of the slip and sheets was the impediment or was it something else? Was someone holding her steady while someone else stabbed her? There was one weapon, but had there been two attackers?
One thing Annie knew for sure: even with one beer in her, with each plunge of the knife, Olivia had known exactly what was happening.
And she had had no chance.
BRIAN AND SHELLEY CONNORS LOOKED WORSE for the wear, despite the golden tans they’d acquired while sipping rum drinks from coconut shells in Acapulco. Brian, in his late fifties, had a deeply etched face and alert blue eyes. Shelley, his second wife, was a good ten years younger, a brunette with a short, sassy bob that made her look even more youthful than her years. They met Annie in her office. It was two days after Olivia’s murder, and neither had a warm greeting for the police chief.
It was easy to see where they were headed.
“I’m sure you must be exhausted,” Annie said. “I appreciate your being here.”
She pointed to a pair of chairs, but neither took her up on the offer to sit.
Brian folded his arms across his barrel chest. “Here’s the deal. We’re here to tell you that we understand the dire circumstances of Sunday night’s tragedy and the importance of interviewing Brianna.”
“I appreciate that,” Annie said, feeling a chill in the air.
“And we are not going to make any complaints about the county’s handling of the matter, nor your role in it.”
Shelley looked down at the floor and said nothing.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Annie said.
“I’ll get to the point. No more interviews with our daughter. She’s done.”
Annie didn’t want to give up. She needed Brianna. “She might know something that could help the investigation. Something that could lead us to Olivia’s killer.”
“I seriously doubt that, Chief Garnett,” Brian Connors said. “Bree is just a girl. She doesn’t know a damned thing.”
Outside in the 7 series BMW that was Brian Connors’s proof to the world that he’d made it—much like his house—Brianna sat slumped in the backseat. She texted Drew, who was out doing whatever it was he did:
DAD AND DUMB-DUMB ARE TELLING THE GIGANTOR COP TO TAKE A HIKE. THEY ARE SO LAME. GLAD I RUINED THEIR VACAY.
Chapter 11
OLIVIA GRANT’S PARENTS HAD TRAVELED ALL night and yet the dark circles under their bloodshot eyes owed more to too many Bloody Marys on the flight from London to Seattle than to actual jetlag. Edward Grant, normally an effusive man in his fifties with a suspiciously perfect head of sandy hair and blindingly white teeth—a kind of perfection that suggested veneers—crumpled in the sofa in the Lee’s living room. The fireplace crackled, and Kim Lee had set out tea, milk, sugar, and some cookies, but everything went untouched. Edward Grant could barely get a word out.
Winifred Grant looked a good twenty years younger than her husband. While she had a lovely figure, her face, Beth thought, was indeed as Olivia had once described her mother—a little horsey. Her hair was thick and black and could only be termed by any reasonable person as a mane. Her teeth, also impossibly white, looked a bit large for her mouth, like a row of old-school refrigerators in the Bremerton appliance dealership that Beth and her mom shopped at when their dryer’s element had burned out in July.
Olivia had called her mother Winnie, rather than Mum, and her name resonated in Beth’s mind as the equinely ironic “whinny,” her name as horsey as her face.
“My husband adored our daughter,” Winnie said, before offering a correction. “We both adored our Olivia.”
Beth highly doubted that. Olivia hadn’t exactly been a fountain of information about her family life, but she’d never indicated a deep devotion to her mother. Nor did she mention her with even the slightest trace of affection. The way Olivia saw it, everything Winifred Grant did was for herself and the advancement of whatever her agenda was at the moment. She’d been nurturing to Olivia when she was a toddler, but after a time it appeared that Winnie—whom Olivia occasionally referred to as “Winnie the Loo”—was a climber. Her husband had a chat show on British television, and she’d wormed her way into his life first as an assistant producer, back then with a hook baited with sex appeal and promises of devotion. A family life too. Edward was a surprisingly easy target: a workaholic with an ego the size of Buckingham Palace. He needed constant reassurance, and Winnie was extremely efficient in that endeavor. She showered Olivia with attention in the early years of childhood, all the while biding her time for the freedom that came with boarding school. The program that brought Olivia to study in America had been Winnie’s idea.
“We are so sorry for what happened,” Kim said, holding up a plate of orange jack-o’-lantern and white ghost-shaped cookies that had been left over from the mill office’s Halloween potluck.
As the four of them sat in the living room, the Lees on one side, the Grants on the other, the mantel clock over the fireplace ticked like a bomb. The air could not have been any heavier. Heartbreak and grief had returned to house number 25. Indeed, it had returned with a vengeance.
“Liv was everything to me,” Edward finally said. “I didn’t want her to come here. America is dangerous. There are shootings and sex scandals all the time. This was no place for our daughter. Perugia would have been so much safer.”
“She wanted to go, darling,” said Winnie, who somehow managed to eat the heads off two ghost cookies. “The biscuits are charming, Mrs. Kim. A traditional recipe, I imagine.”
Kim nodded, but didn’t say that the cookies were traditional only if one shopped at Safeway’s bakery department. “Thank you. Lee is my last name. Kim is my first name. Please call me Kim.”
Winnie patted her husband’s slightly quivering knee to stop it from vibrating the deep red velvet camelback sofa. “Of course, Kim,” she said. “Sorry.”
The clock ticked some more.
“Edward used to have a TV show in the UK,” Winnie said. “You’d never know it right now, of course. He’s let himself go, I’m afraid. And what’s more, he’s just so devastated by what’s happened. I hope you will forgive him. He’s normally not nearly this rude.”
Beth, who had remained mostly silent while the adults struggled to make polite conversation, didn’t know what to say. But in her mind, she hurled insult after insult at the stuck-up woman.
YOU are the one who’s rude, Mrs. Grant. Your daughter has been brutally murdered. You expect him to be a charmer right now? I can see why Olivia never said a freaking nice word about you, she thought.
“I love your bracelet,” Beth said, just to fill the gap in the conversation. She thought it was hideous.
Winnie jangled the loose chain around her wrist and murmured a thank-you.
Kim pointed to the teapot, but there were no takers for a refill. She tried to give her guests the benefit of the doubt and connect with them in the only way she thought she could. “It is beyond devastating. Years ago, I lost a daughter, too.”
Winnie looked up from her cup. “I’m very sorry to hear that,” she said. “At least you have another.”
Stunned into silence, Kim held her tongue. Without knowing exactly how much alike she and her daughter were at that very moment, she mentally picked up the teapot and dumped the hot liquid all over Winnie’s matching travel outfit. Imagining her guest drenched and in pain, Kim churned an internal response: Beth is not a spare for Christina!
Beth watched her mother for a reaction but saw none and chalked another notch on her belt of disappointment. The sixteen-year-old was certain that Christina had been her mother’s favorite daughter. It wasn’t that Beth didn’t think her mother loved her. She knew she did. Her mom showed her love every single minute of the day. Deep down, however, Beth was sure that if given the choice and the biggest do-over in the history of the world, her mom would have put her, not Christina, on that bus for the Girl Scout Daisies picnic that ill-fated day.