Capitol K-9 Unit Christmas: Protecting Virginia
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“You doing okay?” Officer Forrester asked as he approached.
She nodded, because her throat still felt tight with fear, and she was afraid her voice would be shaky.
“I followed your guy to the bus depot. Samson lost the trail there. I think the perp might have gotten in a car, but it’s possible he made it onto a bus. We’ll check the security cameras in the area. See if we can figure out who he is and where he went.”
“Good,” she managed to say, her voice stronger than she expected it to be.
“You want to sit in your car while you wait?” he suggested, his gaze focused and intent, his eyes a bright crisp blue that reminded her of the summer sky.
“I’m fine.”
“I’m sure you are, but you look pale, and Gavin asked me to keep an eye on you until he and Cassie get here.”
“You called Gavin?”
“He’s my supervisor,” he responded as if that explained everything.
“Well, call him again,” she said, because she didn’t want her boss to come all the way from All Our Kids to help her. Not when there were two—she glanced at a tall blonde female officer getting out of the second cruiser—three police officers nearby. “Tell him that I’m fine and I don’t need Cassie to come.”
“How about you do that, Virginia?” he suggested. “I’m going in the house.”
He was gone before she could respond, striding across the yard, Samson beside him.
She would have followed, but the female officer approached and began asking dozens of questions. Virginia answered the best she could, but her mind was on the house, the man she’d seen, the name he’d called her—Ginny. As if he’d said it a thousand times before.
No one called her Ginny. Not since Kevin had died.
No one in her new life, none of the new friends she’d made, the people she worked with, the kids she took care of knew that she’d ever gone by Ginny. For eight years, she’d been Virginia.
Whoever the guy in the house had been, he’d known her before. Or he’d known Kevin. She didn’t like either thought. She didn’t want to revisit the past. She didn’t want to relive the weeks and months and years before she’d nearly died.
What she wanted to do was go back to her safe life working at All Our Kids. She wanted to forget about her inheritance, her past, all the nightmares that plagued her.
The front door of the house opened, and Officer Forrester appeared, the responding officer right behind him. They looked grim and unhappy, and she braced herself for bad news as she followed the female officer across the yard and up the porch stairs.
* * *
Virginia looked terrified.
John couldn’t say he blamed her. Finding someone in a supposedly empty house would scare the bravest person. From what Gavin had told him, Virginia wasn’t exactly that. As a matter of fact, Gavin had said Virginia tended to panic very quickly. Which was why he and Cassie were on their way to the house.
He wasn’t going to call and tell them not to come, but Virginia seemed to be holding it together pretty well. No tears, no screams, no sobs. Just wide blue eyes, pale skin and soft hair falling across her cheeks.
“Did you find anything?” she asked, directing her question to the other officer.
Leonard Morris was a DC police officer. Well liked and respected, he knew just about every law enforcement officer in the district. “Nothing to write home about, ma’am,” Officer Morris responded. “I’m going to dust for prints, but I thought you could come in, see if there’s anything missing.”
She hesitated for a heartbeat too long, her gaze jumping to the still-open front door, her skin going a shade paler. “I... Is that really necessary?”
Morris frowned. “If there’s something missing, only you’ll know it. So, yeah, I guess it is.”
“I... Don’t you want to dust for prints and look for evidence before I go in and contaminate the scene?”
“I think,” John said, cutting in, taking her arm and urging her to the door, “it’s been contaminated. You were already in there, remember?”
“I’m scared,” she responded. “Not senile.”
“Anyone would be scared in these circumstances.”
“Maybe I didn’t state my position strongly enough,” she muttered as they stepped into the house. “I’m terrified, completely frozen with fear and unable to deal with this. Plus, up until today, I hadn’t stepped foot in the house in eight years. I have no idea what Laurel had.”
“You know what she had before. Maybe that will help. And you seem to be dealing just fine,” he said, because she was. He’d seen people panic. He’d seen them so frozen with fear they couldn’t act. Virginia didn’t seem as if she was any of those things.
“For now. Let’s see what happens if Kevin jumps out of a closet,” she responded with a shaky laugh.
“Kevin?” Officer Morris asked.
Virginia frowned. “My husband. He died eight years ago.”
“I guess he’s not going to be jumping out of any closets, then,” the female officer said, her gaze focused on the opulent staircase, the oil paintings that lined the wall leading upstairs. They screamed money. The whole place did.
“No. I guess he wouldn’t, Officer...?”
“Glenda Winters. You want to tell me why you’re worried about your dead husband jumping out of closets?” she asked.
John had worked with her before. She was a good police officer with a knack for getting the perp, but she was straightforward and matter-of-fact to a fault, her sharp interview tactics often getting her in trouble with her supervisor.
“I’m not,” Virginia replied, walking into a huge living room, her gaze drifting across furniture, paintings and a grand piano that sat in an alcove jutting off from the main room. “It’s just that the man who was in the house looked a lot like Kevin.”
“They say everyone has a twin,” Officer Morris commented.
“He called me Ginny. Just like Kevin used to,” Virginia said, and for the first time since she’d come screaming through the bushes, John could actually see her shutting down and freezing up.
“Did Kevin have a brother?” he asked, and she shook her head, her eyes a little glassy, her skin pale as paper.
“No.”
“How about cousins? Uncles? Extended family?” Officer Winters asked. “Because I have a cousin who looks so much like me, people think we’re twins.”
“If he does, I never met any of them.”
“This was Laurel Johnson’s place, right?” Officer Morris walked through the living room and into a dining area that could have seated twenty people comfortably.
“Yes. I’m her granddaughter-in-law.”
Morris nodded. “She left you the property. Interesting, huh?”
Something seemed to pass between them, some unspoken words that John really wanted to hear, because there was an undercurrent in the house, a strange vibe that Virginia had brought inside with her. He wanted to know what it was, why it was there, what it had to do with the guy she’d seen in the house.
“I guess it is.” Virginia took one last look around the living room. “As far as I can tell, nothing is missing,” she said, then hurried into the dining room, the kitchen, up the back stairs and onto the second floor. With every step she seemed to sink deeper into herself, her eyes hollow and haunted, her expression blank.
Officer Morris whispered something in her ear, and she shook her head.
“I’m fine,” she murmured, opening the first door and stepping into a nearly empty room. A cradle sat in the center of it, a few blankets piled inside. Pink. Blue. Yellow. There was a dresser, too. White and intricately carved, the legs swirling lion claws. No mementos, though. Not a picture, stuffed animal or toy.
“Everything looks okay in here,” Virginia said, and tried to back out of the room.
Only John was standing behind her, and she backed into him.
He grabbed her shoulders, trying to keep her from toppling over. He felt narrow bones and taut muscles before she jerked away, skirted past him.
“Sorry.”
“No need to apologize,” he said, but she was already running to the next door to drag it open and dart inside.
THREE
Laurel had kept the nursery just the way it had been the day Kevin died. Being in it brought back memories Virginia had shoved so far back in her mind, she hadn’t even known they were there—all the dreams about children and a family and creating something wonderful together, all the long conversations late at night when she and Kevin had shared their visions of the future. Only every word Kevin uttered had been designed to manipulate her, to make her believe that she could have all the things she longed for, so that he could have what he’d wanted—complete control. She’d believed him because she’d wanted to. She’d been a fool, and it had nearly cost her her life.
She wanted out of the house so desperately, she would have run downstairs and out the door if three police officers and a dog weren’t watching her every move.
The dog, she thought, was preferable to the people. He, at least, looked sweet, his dark eyes following her as she moved through Laurel’s room.
This was the same, too. Same flowered wallpaper that Virginia had helped her hang, same curtains that they’d picked out together in some posh bohemian shop in the heart of DC. Same antique headboard, same oversize rolltop desk that had been handed down from one generation to the other since before the revolutionary war.
It had always been closed before, the dark mahogany cover pulled down over the writing area and the dozens of tiny drawers and secret hiding places that Laurel had once shown her.
It was open now, and Virginia walked to it, ignoring the officers who walked into the room behind her. At least one of them knew her story. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She’d refused to speak with reporters after the attack. It had taken a while, but eventually they’d lost interest and the story she’d lived through, the horrible nightmare that so many people had wanted the details of, had faded from the spotlight.
Eight years later, there were very few people who remembered. Those who did, didn’t associate Virginia’s face with the Johnson family tragedy. She’d never been in the limelight anyway. Kevin had preferred to stand there himself.
The older officer knew. He’d whispered a couple words that he’d probably thought would be comforting—It’s okay. He can’t hurt you anymore.
Only the words hadn’t been comforting.
They’d just made her want to cry, because she was that woman. The one who’d met and married a monster. The one who’d almost been killed by the person who was supposed to love her more than he loved anyone else.
She yanked open one of the desk drawers, staring blindly at its contents.
Something nudged her leg, and she looked down; the huge German shepherd sat beside her, his tail thumping, his mouth in a facsimile of a smile.
She couldn’t help herself. She smiled in return. “Are you in a hurry, Samson?” she asked, and the dog cocked his head to the side, nudging her leg again.
Not a “hurry up” nudge, she didn’t think. More of an “I’m here” nudge. Whatever it was, it made her feel a little more grounded, a little less in the past and a little more in the moment.
She rifled through the drawer. Laurel kept her spare keys there. House. Car. Attic. She took that one, because she was going to have to check up there. The entire space had been insulated and made into a walk-in storage area filled with centuries’ worth of family heirlooms.
She opened another drawer. This one had stamps, envelopes, beautiful handmade pens.
It took ten minutes to go through every drawer, to open every secret compartment. She took out a beautiful mother’s ring that Kevin had presented to Laurel years before he met Virginia. Laurel had worn it every day, and as far as Virginia knew, she’d never taken it off. Not when Kevin had been alive.
She set the ring on the desktop and took a strand of pearls from another secret compartment. The jewelry piled up. So did the old coins and the cash—nearly a thousand dollars’ worth of that. Laurel had liked to have cash on hand. Just in case.
“That’s a lot of money, right there,” Officer Forrester said quietly. “I’d think if the guy were here to steal, he’d have left the desk empty.”
“Maybe he didn’t have time to go through it.” She rolled the desktop down, leaving the jewelry and money right where it was. The words felt hollow, her heart beating a hard harsh rhythm. She wanted to believe the guy had been there looking for easy cash but the sick feeling of dread in her stomach was telling her otherwise.
“That’s a possibility,” Officer Winters said, her voice sharp. “It’s also possible he found other valuables and took off with them. You said you hadn’t been here in a while. He could have left with thousands of dollars’ worth of stolen property.”
I don’t really care if he did. I never wanted any of this. I still don’t, she wanted to say, but she didn’t, because there wasn’t a person she knew who wouldn’t have celebrated the windfall Virginia had received. The few friends she’d told had given her dozens of ideas for what she could do with the money, the house, the antiques. Most of the ideas involved quitting her job, going on trips to Europe and Asia, traveling the country, finding Mr. Right.
She hadn’t told anyone but Cassie that she didn’t want the inheritance. Even Cassie didn’t know the entire reason why.
Or maybe she did.
She was her boss, after all. There’d been a background check when Virginia had applied for the job. If the information about Kevin had come up, Cassie had kept it to herself. She’d never questioned Virginia, never brought up the life Virginia had lived before taking the job at All Our Kids.
That was the way Virginia wanted it.
No reminders of the past. No questions about why and how she’d ended up married to a monster. No sympathetic looks and whispered comments. She didn’t want to be that woman, that wife, that abused spouse.
She just wanted to be the person she’d been before she’d fallen for Kevin.
It had taken years to realize that wasn’t possible. By that time, keeping quiet about what she’d been through had become a habit. One she had no intention of breaking.
She walked to an old oil painting that hung between two bay windows and pulled it from the wall, revealing the built-in safe that Laurel had shown her a year after she’d moved into the house, a day after Kevin had shoved her for the first time.
Maybe Laurel had thought seeing all the beautiful jewels that would be hers one day would keep Virginia from going to the police.
It hadn’t.
Love had.
She hadn’t wanted Kevin to be arrested. She hadn’t wanted to ruin his reputation and his career. She’d believed his tearful apology, and she’d believed to the depth of her soul that he would change. She’d been wrong, of course. Sometimes, she thought that she’d always known it. Even then. Even the first time.
She knew the lock combination by heart, and she opened the safe. It was stuffed full of all the wonderful things that Laurel had collected over the years. Her husband had been generous. He’d showered her with expensive gifts.
She pulled out a velvet bag and poured six beautiful sapphire rings into her palm. Seeing them made her want to puke, because they were the first things Laurel had pulled out the day she’d opened the safe and shown Virginia everything she would inherit one day.
She gagged, tossing the rings into the safe and running to the en suite bathroom. She heard someone call her name, but she wasn’t in the mood for listening. She slammed the door, turned the lock, sat on the cold tile floor and dropped her head to her knees.
If she’d had one tear left for all the lies she’d been told and believed, if she’d had one bit of grief for what she’d longed for and lost, she’d have cried.
She didn’t, so she just sat where she was, the soft murmur of voices drifting through the door, while she prayed that she could do what she knew she had to—face the past and move on with her life. It was the only way she’d ever find the sweet spot, the lovely place where she was exactly where God wanted her to be, doing exactly what He wanted her doing.
No more floundering around waiting for other people to call the shots. No more watching as life passed by. She wanted to engage in the process of living again. She wanted to do more than be a housemother to kids. She wanted to mentor them. She wanted to be an example to them. She wanted to be able to tell her story without embarrassment or shame, and she wanted other people to benefit from it.
That was what she thought about late at night when she couldn’t sleep and all she had were her prayers and the still, soft voice that told her she was wasting time being afraid, wasting her life worrying about making the wrong choices.
She needed to change that.
The problem was, she wasn’t sure how.
Someone knocked on the door, and she pushed to her feet, her bones aching, her muscles tight. She felt a thousand years old, but she managed to walk to the door and open it.
Officer Forrester was there, Samson beside him. The other two officers were gone.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just—”
“You don’t have to explain.” He took her elbow, leading her back into the room.
“I feel like I do, Officer—”
“John. I’m not on duty.” He smiled, and his face softened, all the hard lines and angles easing into something pleasant and approachable.
“You chased down the guy who was in my house.”
“Tried to, but only because I was in the right place at the right time.”
“Or the wrong place at the wrong time.”
He chuckled. “I guess that depends on how you look at it. I see it as a good thing. But, then, I love what I do, and I’m always happy to step in and help when I can.”
“That’s...unusual.”
“You seem awfully young to be so jaded, Virginia.”
“I’m not young.”
“Sure you are.” He opened Laurel’s closet, whistling softly. “Wow. This lady had some clothes.”
“She did.” She moved in beside him, eyeing the contents of the walk-in closet. Dresses. Shoes. Belts. Handbags. “I guess if the guy didn’t take a bunch of cash and jewelry, he probably didn’t take any of her clothes.”
“Do you think that was what he was here for?” he asked. “Money?”
“That’s what the police think he was here for.”
“I’m not asking about the police. I’m asking about you. Do you think he was here for money or valuables?”
* * *
It was a simple question.
At least in John’s mind it was.
Virginia didn’t seem able to answer it.
She stared at him, her face pale, her eyes deeply shadowed.
“Okay. You’re not going to answer that,” he said. “So, how about you tell me why it’s been so many years since you’ve been in the house?”
She shook her head. “It’s not important.”
“If it weren’t, you’d be willing to tell me about it.”
“Maybe I should have said that it’s important to me but has no bearing on what happened today.”
“You can’t know that.”
“The police seem to think—”
“I think that I already said that I’m not interested in what the police are saying. You know this house, you knew your grandmother-in-law. You knew your husband, and every time you mention that the guy who was here looked like Kevin, I can almost see the wheels turning behind your eyes. You’re thinking something. I’d like to know what it is.”
“I’m thinking that I could have been wrong about what I saw. Maybe the guy didn’t look as much like Kevin as I’d thought.” She closed the closet door and walked to a fireplace that took up most of one wall. There were a few photos on the mantel. He hadn’t looked closely, but he thought they must be of Virginia’s family. She lifted one, smiling a little as she looked at the image of a young man and woman in wedding finery. Probably taken in the fifties, it was a little faded, the framed glass covered with a layer of dust. She swiped dust from the glass, set it back down, and John waited, because he thought there was more she wanted to say.
Finally, she turned to face him again. “My husband wasn’t the easiest man to live with. I have a lot of bad memories. I really don’t like talking about them.”
That explained a lot, but it didn’t explain who had been in her house or why he’d been there.
“I’m sorry. I know that’s got to be tough to live with,” he said.
“Some days, it’s harder than others.” She looked around the room, and he thought she might be fighting tears. She didn’t cry, though, just cleared her throat, and smoothed her hair. “I know you’re trying to help, and I appreciate it, but Officer Morris already knows everything there is to know. If he’s worried that this is connected to...my past. He’ll let me know.”
That should have been enough to send John on his way. After all, this wasn’t his case. Morris and Winters were calling the shots. He was just a witness who happened to be a police officer, but he didn’t want to leave. Not when Virginia still looked so shaken.
“Morris is a great police officer, and he’ll handle things well, but I’m your neighbor. If something happens, I’m the closest thing to help you’ve got. Keep that in mind, okay?”
“I will.” She hesitated, her fingers trailing over another photo. “The thing is, something did happen. I almost died eight years ago. Right outside the front door of this place. Not even the neighbors were able to help. That’s why I haven’t been back. That’s why I don’t like talking about it. That’s why I don’t want to believe the guy I saw today has anything to do with Kevin.”
The words were stated without emotion, but he read a boatload of feelings in her face. Fear, sadness, anxiety. Shame. That was the big one, and he’d seen it one too many times—a woman who’d done nothing wrong, feeling shame for what she’d been through.
“Your husband?” he asked, and she nodded, lifting another photo from the mantel. She was in it, white flowers in her hair, wearing a simple white dress that fell to her feet.
“This is my wedding photo. I guess Laurel cut Kevin out of it. We were married in Maui. A beautiful beach wedding with five hundred guests.”
“Wow.”
“I know. It was excessive. We footed the bill. I would have preferred to use the money to finish my doctorate, but Kevin...” She shook her head. “It was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to you,” he responded.
“It shouldn’t.” She replaced the picture she was still holding. “I should check the other rooms, see if anything has been disturbed.”
She walked into the hall, and he didn’t stop her.
He wanted to take a closer look at the photos on the mantel. The one of Virginia didn’t look as if it had been cut. He opened the back of the frame and carefully lifted the photo out.
It had been folded.
He smoothed it out, eyeing the smiling dark-haired man who stood to Virginia’s right. Not touching her. Which seemed odd. It was a wedding photo, after all. The guy had a shot glass in one hand, a bottle of bourbon in the other. He looked drunk, his eyes heavy-lidded, his grin sloppy.
He replaced the photo and looked at the others. Nothing stood out to him. They were all of the 1950s couple—marriage, new house, baby dressed in blue.
Kevin’s father? If so, there were no other pictures of him. No toddler pictures. No school photos. No wedding picture. That made John curious. There was a story there, and he had a feeling that it was somehow related to the man who’d been in the house.
It wasn’t his case, and it wasn’t any of his business, but he planned to mention it to Morris. See if he knew more about the Johnson family than Virginia did.
Or more than she was willing to reveal.
That was going to have to change. There was no way she could be allowed to keep her secrets. She’d have to open up, say everything she knew, everything she suspected, because John had a bad feeling that the guy who’d been in her house had been after a lot more than a few bucks. He’d been after Virginia, and if she wasn’t careful, he just might get what he wanted.