Expecting to Die

party games, and gifts. Oh. Dear. God.
Before she could say anything else, quick footsteps in the hallway heralded
her partner’s arrival. “Hey!” Alvarez, looking fresh as a damned daisy, stuck her
head through the open doorway. “How’s Bianca?”
“She’ll live. Out of the hospital, now at home, nursing a cut on her chin, sore
shoulder, sprained ankle, and bruised ego.”
“Your daughter?” Joelle said with a small gasp. “What happened?”
Just check Facebook for the latest, Pescoli thought, surprised that the
receptionist, who was always first to know the local gossip, had missed any
news. “An accident at a party. She’s okay.”
“What accident?” she asked. “Oh . . . did this happen at the party where they
found the body of that poor girl?” From the outer reaches of the hallway, a phone
started ringing insistently. Joelle caught the noise. “Damn.” She hated to be left

---

out of the gossip loop but duty was calling. “Please, Detective, just think about
the shower.” Joelle maneuvered past Alvarez and started down the corridor.
“When you change your mind, just let me know,” she said with a smile as she
bustled toward the reception area of the department.
“I will,” Pescoli said, then, as the familiar clicks of Joelle’s high heels faded,
added, “Just after hell freezes over.”
“I heard that!” Joelle’s voice reached Pescoli.
Alvarez cast a final glance at the retreating receptionist. “What was that all
about?”
Pescoli finally settled into her chair. “Long story.” At the curiosity in
Alvarez’s expression, she rolled her eyes. “It’s the same thing she’s been
bugging me with ever since my pregnancy seemed to go viral around this
office.” She scowled. “Joelle wants to throw me a baby shower. Invite everyone
who works here. Can you imagine?”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“Yes, it’s a bad thing. I told her I’m not up for it. Pink and blue streamers and
balloons and a silly game or two? Come on.”
“So Joelle gave up without a fight?” Her voice was full of disbelief.
“Probably not. As I said, we’ve been having this discussion for months.” She
stretched out her back and heard it pop.
“Maybe you should just give in.”
Pescoli shot her a look. “I’ll think about it. Maybe.” She paused. “Then again,
maybe not. So, why don’t you bring me up to speed on the Montclaire case?”
“It’s the reason I’m here.” While Alvarez explained about meeting the
grieving parents as they’d ID’d their daughter’s body, then compiling a list of
possible suspects and evidence while waiting for the autopsy results, Pescoli
listened and sipped the so-called coffee. With zero kick, the decaf blend didn’t
have the desired effect that caffeine would have supplied to her bloodstream. She
really shouldn’t have bothered except that the scone she’d devoured on the ten-
minute drive had temporarily quieted the rumble in her belly.
Alvarez finished with, “Then the mayor called. Right after eight this
morning.”
“Did she?” Not much of a surprise. Pescoli was definitely not a fan, but, for
once, she tried not to show her distaste of the new mayor of Grizzly Falls.
Carolina Justison had once been a stockbroker in New York. About fifteen
years ago, after a scandal at the brokerage both she and her husband had worked
for, she’d divorced the “lying bastard,” packed up her son, who just happened to
be her ex’s namesake, and headed west. She’d landed in Grizzly Falls. Though
she had insisted she was in search of a simpler life, she’d fallen back on her old

---

ways and opened her own investment firm before eventually running for mayor.
She’d squeaked by in an election that had been so close a recount had been
initiated.
So much for her supposed dream of the simple life.
“She talked to Blackwater and he relayed her message.” As a fax machine
screeched and burped in a nearby office, Alvarez balanced on the arm of one of
the visitor’s chairs. It was damned amazing how irritatingly thin and agile the
woman was. “Then, she called again. This time to speak directly with me.”
“Fabulous.”
“She wants to let us know that—”
Pescoli held up a hand. “Let me guess. This has something to do with her son
being caught and cited up at Reservoir Point.”
“Bingo.”
“Another stab in the dark: she’s not happy.”
That scared up a smile on Alvarez’s lips. Pescoli already knew her partner had
been up all night, but looked fresh and ready to take on the world. How was that
even possible? The room was hot and stuffy, the air conditioner rattling but
unable to compete with the heat from a glaring Montana sun.
“She’s not just unhappy, she’s ‘absolutely mortified’ and I quote, that her son
could be considered a part of this ‘difficult situation.’ And yeah, she called it
that. The ‘difficult situation up at Reservoir Point.’ I guess she heard herself,
though, because she did acknowledge that it was a tragedy, of course, but that
her Donny had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with what happened to the
‘poor girl,’ even though Donald Junior dated Destiny Rose for nearly a year
before he broke up with her. Destiny was a little brokenhearted, but ‘you know
how that is with teenagers.’”
“She wasn’t exactly empathetic.”
“No.”
“Trying to cover her son’s ass.” Pescoli leaned back in her chair. “You think
he’s involved some way?”
“Too early to tell. But Glenn Montclaire, Destiny’s father, mentioned Donny.
And he said the break-up was the other way around, that Destiny cut Donny
loose and he didn’t much like it, even started stalking her.”
“So Donny said he was the dumper, rather than the dumpee, but Glenn
Montclaire says otherwise.”
“And Helene Montclaire as well.”
“The Montclaires actually pointed at Justison?”
Alvarez nodded. “Said if there was any evidence of foul play we should take a
long, hard look at Donald Justison Junior.”

---

“Then I guess we will.”
“Already on the top of the list.”
The case was morphing into a true mess. The mayor’s son and a dead girl?
“And Carolina Justison was only the first parent to call.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“It started early.” Alvarez had made notes and checked a memo-taking app on
her cell phone. “Besides Mayor Justison, I had a pretty lengthy conversation
with Billie O’Hara. She’s actually a twofer.”
“Twofer?”
“Two-for-one. Assured me that both her sons, Alex and TJ, are totally
innocent.” Alvarez glanced up from her cell. “Of what I’m not sure. She wasn’t
specific, so I’m going with innocent in general.”
“Of all criminal activity or mischief or whatever,” Pescoli thought aloud.
“Sounds like her. Pretty high-maintenance and by the book. Rigid. Type-A
through and through, and a fitness instructor to boot. Participates in triathlons,
maybe even an Ironman or two, I don’t really know, but I think she hauls her
bike over to the West Coast every year and rides it all over the state in some
organized race.”
“Cycle Oregon?”
“You know it?”
“Heard of it.”
Pescoli nodded, her damned stomach rumbling again despite the protein bar
she’d devoured driving to work. “They ride over mountains and by the ocean
and across the desert, all across the state. Hundreds of miles. Route changes each
year. Takes like a week or something. I know because, when Joe was alive, he
was always trying to talk me into it,” she said, bringing up her first husband,
Jeremy’s father. “He took up bicycling for a while. That was twenty years ago or
so, but I think it’s basically the same,” she said a little sadly. Theirs hadn’t been
an even-keeled marriage, not by a long shot. They’d both been young and
bullheaded and, she had to admit, she’d been even more volatile then than she
was now. But Officer Joe Strand had been a pretty good man, a great officer of
the law, and a so-so husband. Both he and Regan had fought the bonds of
marriage and parenthood. Then, suddenly, just when she’d hoped the marriage
would straighten out, he’d been killed in the line of duty. Her heart still twisted a
bit. Survivor’s guilt never quite let go of you.
She took another sip of her now-tepid coffee and snapped herself out of her
melancholy thoughts. “Anyway, Billie O’Hara is into fitness in a big way,” she
said.
“Isn’t that a good thing?”

---

“The point is that whatever she does, whatever Billie focuses on, she has the
intensity of an eagle diving for a fish in a lake. Whether it’s an athletic event, or
a position on the school board, or her job at the athletic club, she makes certain
she wins. Always ends up on top.”
“And expects the same of her boys?”
“Yep.”
“Sounds like you know her. Personally.”
“I did. A while back. Before she got into the fitness thing. She was just
another mom at the preschool. A widow. Lost her husband to a logging accident
when the boys were still in elementary school. She’s always been fiercely
protective of her kids. Never saw that they did any wrong and I think, for the
most part, she’s right.” Pescoli shifted in the chair. “Is it just me or is it like the
middle of the Mojave Desert in here?” To cool off, she lifted her hair off her
neck.
“It’s you.”
Of course it was. She found the tiny fan situated on the far side of her
computer and pressed the switch. Air started flowing, blowing across her face
and ruffling some papers. She adjusted the direction and the pages settled back
down. “So the deal is that I know most of the parents of the kids that were at the