Vicki Pettersson - The Given

And the phone rang again. Kit answered before she could even think what she was doing. There was a moment of silence after she put the phone to her ear, when Grif and she both held their breaths, and Kit was trying to work out how the irascible Barbara McCoy would answer the call. She finally answered with a terse, “What?”

Silence, and Kit’s eyes flashed on Grif’s. She’d blown it.

“Hello?” came the tentative response. Male, Kit mouthed to Grif.

“Yeah?” Kit said immediately, pitching her voice lower than her normal tone. Grif shot her a dead-eyed stare, as if to say, That’s what she sounded like? Kit just shrugged.

“Is it done?”

Kit just bit her lip. Barbara was dead, though, so something had definitely been “done.”

“Barbara, I asked if it was done. It’s been crickets over here. I’m going crazy.”

“Uh-huh,” Kit said, wordlessly trying to draw more out of the caller.

But apparently Barbara hadn’t been a reticent woman. A long silence passed, then the man’s voice dropped low as well. “Who is this?”

Slapping a hand to her forehead, Kit tried to think fast, but the line went dead before she opened her mouth, and her answer swerved into a growl. Squinting at the phone, she began pushing more buttons.

“What are you doing?” Grif asked.

“Working the home button before the screen times out. She’s got it set so you can’t get into this thing after you hang up, but once a call is answered you can work the functions.” The first thing Kit did was remove the password protection. Then she clicked over to the contacts. It was growing chilly in the car, but both the cold and her fatigue were well-forgotten. “Still carry your Moleskine with you?”

Grif pulled the notebook from his inner suit pocket.

“Okay, we’re going to write down every number in her contacts just in case we can’t get into this thing again, starting with our mysterious caller.” There was no name displayed on the incoming screen, just an uppercase X, but Kit rattled it off anyway, then did the same with the rest. Grif scribbled fast, but was barely keeping up until she paused. “How the hell did Loony Uncle Al get in Barbara McCoy’s address book?”

Grif’s pencil fell still. “That’s what she named her contact?”

“Nope. But that was his pet name around the paper back when he was chasing bylines.” She flashed Grif the screen long enough to show the name, and this time Grif jolted in his seat.

“Al Zicaro,” he said, suddenly wide-eyed as well. He circled the name and number after writing them down on his pad. “How does Barbara know that old newshound?”

Zicaro had worked at Kit’s paper in the sixties and seventies, even though any mid-century bookie worth his salt would’ve laid odds on Zicaro getting rubbed out before Grif. The man had covered the crime beat, and was a thorn in the side of the boys, including and especially the DiMartinos. Kit had combed through the archives and knew he’d even tried to intimate that Grif was made after he’d brought back Sal DiMartino’s niece, but it wasn’t anything that would stick. Especially once Grif disappeared shortly after.

“God knows he was around,” Kit said now. “And he certainly had his hands in the DiMartinos’ affairs.”

But why keep up with Barbara after all this time? The boys’ time in this valley had long passed.

Kit rubbed her eyes. “Your past is beginning to resemble a thousand-piece puzzle.”

Grif snorted. “And we’re missing all the corners.”

Kit nodded. They’d had few leads on his cold case: first, Mary Margaret, the child he’d once saved, now a recovering addict in her sixties. She’d given them the Barbara lead, now a literal dead end.

But then there’d been Zicaro.

“He’s gotta be, what? Seventy-six years old?”

“Around there. He’s been at the Sunset Retirement Community for years,” she recalled. It was knowledge she’d let slip away after Grif had disappeared from her life. Unfortunately, as they both knew, ignoring wasn’t forgetting. “Last I heard he was still scribbling far-fetched pieces about alien abductions and conspiracy theories and pasting them around the old folks’ home.”

Kit flipped screens on Barbara’s phone, leaving the address book to dip into the voice mails. Grif’s gaze was steady on her as she scrolled, but he remained silent until she sat up straight. “What?”

“Bingo.” Flashing him the screen, Kit then flipped it back around and pushed the speaker button. Seconds later, a shaky, reedy voice sounded in the cold shell of Kit’s car.

“Barbara, it’s Zicaro. I don’t know what the big idea is showing up here like that, but you’re going to get me killed. You don’t fool no one with that fake name either, so don’t give me that bullcrap. Once a DiMartino, always a DiMartino.”

Kit locked eyes with Grif.

“I don’t know why you’re back, but listen good. Stay away from Sunset and stay away from me. I ain’t lasted all these years just to get rubbed on your account. Besides, whatever you’re into, whatever you want, I ain’t got it. You lived the life, remember? I just reported it.”

The message cut off, and Kit immediately brought up the address for the Sunset Retirement Community.

“When was that call made?” Grif asked, voice no more than a whisper.

“Friday.”

“So Barbara visited Zicaro the day before she died.”

“Which is what we’ll be doing first thing in the morning,” Kit said, and flashed him Zicaro’s address. He began writing again without another word, and they emptied out the rest of the phone book as well. When they’d finished, it was with a start that Kit looked up and realized they were still seated in her car. Just like the old days, she thought. Working together, finishing each other’s sentences, losing track of place and time. Kit reached for the handle.

Grif didn’t move.

She glanced back. “You coming?”

“I’m waiting to be invited.”

Invited where? Kit swallowed hard, but Grif was gazing at the front of the home they’d shared . . . briefly but passionately.

“And if not,” he said, refocusing on her with the same intensity, “I’ll sleep outside.”

“You think I’m in danger.” She’d already seen it in the way he studied the bushes and pockets of darkness the streetlights didn’t reach. He just shrugged, confirming it.

Fine, she thought, narrowing her eyes. You keep your secrets. I’ll keep mine.

“Come on,” she said, breaking the silence and the stare. She’d allow him in her house because the best chance to get through this individually was by working together. But that was all.

Because even if working together felt right, they’d be doing so for a future they would never share. Kit had walked this world in love with Griffin Shaw for six whole months—and they’d solved two major crimes along the way—but then she’d spent another six trying to forget that he’d ever lived. After all of that, Kit thought, she’d learned to hold a little of herself back. She now knew how to hold herself together.

And she knew exactly what she could and could not survive.

It turned out the Sunset Retirement Community was aptly named. Not just a nirvana for those living out their golden years playing golf and cards, the facility was set up for end-of-life needs. It provided medication and full-time nursing care, and for most residents, these were the last walls they’d ever call home.

Of course, Kit and Grif didn’t learn this until Kit’d pulled her pretty, purring convertible into the front parking lot, and she used her smart phone to research more while they waited another twenty-five minutes for visiting hours to begin. The late-morning hours gave the caregivers a jump start on the daily grooming and medical needs of the residents before breakfast, and time to get them settled again after. So even though it was Sunday for the rest of the world, it was just another day for the Sunset residents.