Chapter Twelve
Val overslept Sunday morning. Maybe it was staying up into the early hours last night. Maybe it was the pressure of her first-ever fashion show, one being televised across the country. Maybe it was being questioned by the police about a murder.
Whatever it was, she rolled out of bed at ten fifteen, feeling nearly as tired as she’d been when she’d finally closed her eyes. As she grabbed her robe and pulled it on, then walked out into the hall, it took a moment to remember that Ethan Brodie had spent the night on the sofa.
When she saw him standing in the kitchen with his phone against his ear, bare-chested, barefoot, and wearing only his jeans, the shock hit her like a hot flash twenty years too early.
Oh my God! She knew she shouldn’t be staring at all those beautiful muscles, at a chest carved in granite and a set of bulging biceps that made her mouth water, but she couldn’t force herself to look away.
“You’re up earlier than I expected.” He reached for the pot of coffee sitting on the counter and poured her a cup. When she didn’t walk over to get it, he carried the cup into the living room and pressed it into her hand.
Fascinated, Val turned as he walked past her and watched the view from behind, the broad back and slim hips, the long, jeans-clad legs and big, manly feet.
She didn’t look away as he pulled a clean dark blue T-shirt out of an orange canvas duffel and dragged it on over his head, making all those gorgeous muscles flex and tighten as he moved.
Once he was covered, she seemed to regain her wits enough to take a drink from the steaming cup in her hand.
“Sleep okay?” Ethan asked mildly as he started back to the kitchen, unaware—thank God—of her former near-catatonic state.
“Yes, thank you.” Knowing he was close by, feeling safe and protected, she had fallen deeply asleep and hadn’t stirred till morning. But she didn’t tell him that. He was in her space too much already.
He folded his blanket and set it on the sofa, placed the pillow neatly on top of it. She watched as he zipped his orange duffel closed and set it on the floor next to the couch.
“I see you came prepared,” she said with a trace of irritation. She didn’t like being ordered around, no matter the reason.
“I keep a go-bag in my car—a couple of T-shirts, a razor, deodorant, enough underwear to last a few days. I dropped by my apartment yesterday during the rehearsal and packed a suitcase to take with me to Dallas. It’s in your hall closet.”
“If you’re planning to stay here that long, you must not think they’re going to catch the killer any time soon.”
“I hope they do. I was on the phone with Lieutenant Hoover when you walked in. I was hoping the cops would find fingerprints, footprints, DNA—something useful at the crime scene. But the place was clean. This guy knew what he was doing. That makes finding him a whole lot harder.”
She glanced down at the laptop sitting on her mahogany dining table and wandered in that direction. She and Mom had hit local yard sales to furnish the duplex. They’d stumbled on the Duncan Phyfe drop-leaf table and four matching chairs, and Val had instantly fallen in love with the set.
“So you’ve been working,” she said. The silver apple on top of his open computer dubbed him a Mac user. She was a PC girl herself.
“I’m collecting background information, trying to find out if any of the girls who got notes had contact with the killer at some point in their lives. A guy one of them might have pissed off, someone who might want revenge.”
“Lieutenant Hoover questioned me about that when I talked to him. He asked if there was anyone I might have known, someone I had a run-in with who might want payback.”
“Was there?”
She shrugged. “Not that I know of.” She glanced down at the screen, saw Carmen Marquez’s high school transcripts, and uneasiness crept through her. Carmen was one of the models who’d received a note.
She pointed to the screen. “How did you get that information?”
Ethan’s dark eyes searched her face. “A lot of it’s public record. You just have to know where to look.”
“So that’s it? You’re just looking at what’s in public records?”
His gaze seemed to sharpen and she wished she had left the subject alone.
“Does it matter where the info comes from? We’re trying to catch a killer before he kills someone else.”
He was right. Finding the killer was more important than her personal privacy. He won’t find out, she told herself. Her juvenile records were sealed. No way could he get into sealed police records.
“What is it, Val?” Ethan asked softly. “If there’s something in your past, I’m going to find it. If it’s important, be easier if you just told me now.”
Her unease turned to worry and her chest clamped down. It was none of his business. Not anyone’s business but her own. “It isn’t important. I was just a kid back then.”
He looked at her, and there was something in his face. It was compassion, she realized, and it made her eyes sting. “It was a long time ago,” she said with a hint of panic. “The records are sealed. I told you, I was only a kid.”
Ethan walked toward her, reached out and tipped up her chin. “We all make mistakes, Valerie. Whatever you did back then isn’t important unless it somehow ties to the murder. I can find out. But I’d rather hear it from you.”
“You can’t find out.”
“I can, honey. If you tell me, whatever you say won’t go any farther than this room.”
She turned away, walked over to the window, stared out at the lawn she had paid one of the neighbor kids to mow. What did it matter? It was all in the past. So what if Ethan Brodie thought less of her because of it?
She released a shaky breath, resigned to telling him what he was so determined to know. “My parents were killed when I was ten. Car accident in Michigan.”
“I’m sorry, Val.”
She ignored him, kept talking; she wanted this over and done.
“I didn’t have much family, just a few distant relatives.
One of my older cousins was married. Alice and her husband, Ray, lived in Seattle.
They took me in. From the start they made it clear they didn’t want me.
They treated me like a servant, kept me cleaning and doing their dirty work from dawn till dark.
I didn’t mind the work so much. It was the attitude, the feeling that they were doing me a favor just letting me stay in their house. ”
She didn’t look at Ethan, just forced air into her lungs and kept going, desperate now to get it all out.
“The abuse was mostly verbal, but I took a couple of slaps I didn’t deserve and I started getting a bad feeling about Cousin Ray.
He came into my room one night and just stood there in the dark watching me. The next day I ran away.”
Ethan moved up behind her, turned her around to face him. “How old were you?”
“Fifteen.”
“You live on the street?” There was something intense in those dark eyes.
“For a while . . . only a couple of weeks. The cops picked me up and I went into foster care.” Sadness swept through her at the girl she had been.
“I was pretty much a hellion. I didn’t like my foster parents and they didn’t like me.
I went from one home to another, never seemed to fit in.
When I was sixteen, I sneaked out one night with a couple of the older boys in the house. One of them had a friend with a car.”
She glanced away, wishing she didn’t have to remember the rest.
“Go on, Val. Finish it.”
She forced her gaze back to his face. She was five nine, but Ethan was so tall she had to look up at him.
“The guy with the car was in a gang. He got into a fight with another kid, and suddenly everyone was shooting. Bobby Rodriquez—he was the boy in the home where I lived—Bobby got shot in the chest. He . . . he died in my arms.”
She didn’t realize she was crying till Ethan handed her his handkerchief. His jaw was iron hard, his body rock solid. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought he was holding himself back, forcing himself not to touch her, comfort her. But maybe he was just disgusted.
“I don’t like to talk about it,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I’m not proud of what happened.”
“You turned your life around, Val. You aren’t that young girl anymore. You’re a woman now. A beautiful woman who’s made something of herself.”
Some of the pain slipped away with his words. He wasn’t condemning her. Why had she thought he would?
“It was Mom and Pops Hartman. They took me in. They put their arms around me and walked me out of that police station, and I swear I could feel their love right then. They lived on this little farm in Bellingham. They raised chickens, had a couple of milk cows. It felt like home from the moment I stepped out of the car. I changed because of them, because I wanted them to be proud of me. I still do.”
She blew her nose, wiped a last tear from her cheek.
Ethan’s smile was gentle. “I know they’re proud of you, Val, and I’m glad you told me. I don’t think it’s important to the case, but you never know.”
She just nodded. He’d listened and seemed to understand. She shouldn’t have felt somehow lighter, but she did.
“I need to shower and get ready.” She smiled, the pressure gone from her chest. “Thanks for the coffee.”
He nodded. “Thanks for trusting me.”
She didn’t say more as she walked away and neither did Ethan, but she could feel his eyes on her all the way down the hall.
Ethan spent a couple more hours on the computer, but nothing in the files he had checked so far looked promising.
He was beginning to feel frustrated and restless when Val walked back into the living room.
“I’m going crazy sitting in the house all day,” she said. “Any chance I could talk you into taking me to the gym? Weekends are usually slow, especially if the weather’s good. What do you think?”
He smiled. “I’m feeling a little housebound myself. Let me give them a call, see if I can convince them to give us private access for a couple of hours.”
“Seriously? You think they might?”