My Brother's Keeper Read online

  Walker stood in the gaping opening to the club’s large

  garage.

  There was a clank and a clatter and then a rolling

  sound as someone pushed out from under a van to their left

  that was marked with the club’s simple, classy logo.

  Daniel Grace lay on his back on the mechanic’s dolly.

  His hands and his blue work coveralls were covered in

  grease and grime. He squinted up at them from where he lay

  on the dolly, his hand resting on his stomach and still

  holding the wrench he’d been using. “Officers,” he greeted

  dryly.

  “Detectives, actually,” Morgan corrected as Sam

  restrained a smirk.

  “Well, come back when you’re a captain, Detective

  Morgan, and we’ll celebrate,” Grace drawled as he sat up and rested his elbows on his knees.

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  “Captain Morgan. That’s original,” Sam returned in the

  same dry tone Grace was using. He moved further into the

  hangar-like garage and looked around idly. “We’ve never

  heard that one before. Next you’ll be calling me Johnny, I

  guess?”

  Instead of another smartass comment like Sam was

  expecting, Grace simply stared at them expectantly,

  unmoving as he sat on the dolly. His patient demeanor was

  unsettling, and Sam found himself torn between liking him

  and disliking him. Disliking him quite a lot.

  Morgan cleared his throat and glanced at Sam. “Do you

  have time for a few more questions, Mr. Grace?” he asked as he looked back down at the club’s head of maintenance.

  Grace shrugged negligently and set his wrench aside. He

  hefted himself smoothly to his feet. Sam noticed with a

  certain sort of admiration that the dolly upon which he’d

  been sitting didn’t even slide on its rollers as Grace stood away from it. Nothing about the man was wasted or

  unintentional, it seemed. Sam wondered if it was his military background or if it was just a quality that was ingrained in the guy’s nature.

  Either way, it was a little unnerving.

  “Anything you want to know, Detectives,” the man

  offered as he walked over to a mechanic’s workstation and

  reached for a bottle of Lava soap. Sam watched him wash his hands and slowly followed along. He didn’t like that the man was moving, guiding them and forcing them to tag along as if he controlled the interview. From the look on his expressive partner’s face, neither did Morgan.

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  Morgan moved around to Grace’s other side and they

  flanked him as he washed the grease from his hands

  methodically.

  “Don’t you have mechanics who do this sort of thing?”

  Morgan questioned curiously.

  “Some things you just have to do yourself,” Grace

  observed in answer.

  “What kinds of things?” Morgan asked with a cock of his

  head.

  “All kinds of things, Detective,” Grace answered

  neutrally.

  Sam and Morgan shared a bemused look. Sam wouldn’t

  want to have to drag Grace into an interrogation room. The

  guy might like it too much.

  “How well do you know the Bainbridge brothers?” Sam

  asked Grace. He reached to fiddle with a pencil sitting in a coffee mug. It had a troll doll with pink hair where the eraser should have been. Sam fluffed the hair up and shook his

  head, not even finding it odd that the thing was in here.

  “I know them well enough not to call them that.” Grace

  chuckled as he turned off the water and dried his hands on a cleaner rag than the one he had hanging from his back

  pocket. “What do you want to know?” he asked obligingly.

  “How long have you worked for the club?” Morgan

  inquired.

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  “About ten years,” Grace answered, his voice that

  strange combination of gravel and silk that Sam found so

  unusual.

  “So you started during the period while Addison

  Satterwight was gone,” Sam observed in a seemingly

  distracted voice.

  “Yep,” Grace answered shortly.

  “Anything strike you about him when you finally met

  him?” Morgan prodded.

  “That kid was sharp as a carpet tack,” Grace answered

  wryly. It seemed to Sam that everything Grace said was some sort of private joke. The tone of his voice made him sound

  perpetually amused. “Don’t get me wrong,” Grace continued.

  “Brayden Bainbridge is a smart guy; observant, methodical,

  kind of stressed out all the time, though,” he murmured, his eyes never leaving the rag and his hands as he dried them.

  “But Addison,” he shook his head and hummed. “There’s a

  mind that never stopped working. You could see it behind

  his eyes when you looked at him, little hamster on a wheel, always running. He used to play chess with the members,

  sometimes, before he got too strung out to sit still that long.

  Not one of those old bastards ever beat him. Kid could use a pawn like I’d never seen,” he mused.

  Sam frowned and met Morgan’s eyes again. If Grace was

  trying to tell them something, he was being very vague about it. A straightforward guy like this, Sam didn’t think he’d use subtlety to get his point across. He was probably merely

  relating to them the only story he knew about Addison

  Satterwight firsthand.

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  “Chess, huh?” Sam asked as he leaned against the

  sink’s counter.

  “You play chess, Detective Walker?” Grace asked.

  “I’ve been known to, from time to time.”

  “Always thought of it as a rich man’s pastime, myself,”

  Grace responded with a negligent shrug as he scrubbed at

  his callused hands. “You might challenge Addison to a

  game,” he suggested evenly. “Him or Brayden; either one can beat a man with their eyes closed.”

  “When have you had occasion to play a rich man’s game

  with Addison or Brayden?” Morgan asked pointedly.

  “Even rich men get bored of losing,” Grace answered

  with a smirk.

  “Have you ever been involved with Addison Satterwight,

  Daniel?” Sam asked with a cock of his head.

  “Not exactly my preferred gender, Detective,” Grace

  answered with a wry smile. The man was completely

  unflappable.

  Sam nodded but didn’t continue the line of questioning.

  “How did everyone around the club react when Addison

  came back?” he asked instead after a long moment.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Lots of people were just surprised he

  hadn’t gone and got himself killed. Mr. Bainbridge…

  Brayden, that is, not his daddy, was especially… I wouldn’t say excited,” Grace murmured thoughtfully. “He doesn’t get

  excited. But he was desperate to keep Addison here once he got here.”

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  “What about their father?” Sam asked curiously.

  “What about him?” Grace asked as he finally set the rag

  down and turned to face Sam, turning his back completely

  on Morgan. Sam could not remember a person ever having

  intentionally turne
d away from one of them during an

  interview. If anything, it unnerved both detectives even

  further.

  Morgan twitched uncertainly but didn’t move, instead

  standing stubbornly behind the man and watching Sam over

  Grace’s shoulder incredulously. Sam was hard-pressed not

  to smile at the look on his face.

  “Was he happy to see Addison come home?” Sam asked

  as he cocked his head at Grace, dutifully ignoring Morgan.

  Grace actually laughed at the question.

  “Reggie was never happy unless he had control,” Grace

  murmured with obvious distaste for his subject. “And from

  what I hear, that kid was just like his mama. They were the only things Reggie could never get under his foot.”

  Sam pursed his lips and glanced over Grace’s shoulder

  at Morgan pointedly. His partner shrugged. What Grace was

  saying confirmed what several others had told them about

  Addison, his mother, and the elder Bainbridge.

  “Was he abusive?” Morgan asked.

  Grace glanced over his shoulder and then looked back

  at Sam with a raised eyebrow.

  “You knew who Reggie Bainbridge was. You seen

  pictures. He was a big man, and I’m not just talking his

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  personality,” he answered in his oddly soft manner. “Brayden Bainbridge is almost four inches over six feet and he still had to look up at his daddy when they stood toe to toe. The guy had to drive himself around in the golf carts ’cause his

  shoulders were too wide for another person to sit beside him.

  If that man had been smacking Addison Satterwight around,

  you’d-a been burying that kid a long time ago,” he surmised bluntly.

  Sam nodded almost unconsciously. He had met Reggie

  Bainbridge in person once. The man had been the size of a

  bull. Grace was right; if he had been physically violent there would be nothing left of Addison, whose wiry frame barely

  cleared six feet. But that kid was all kinds of fucked up.

  Something had to have made him that way.

  “What about the mother?” he asked Grace. “Did Reggie

  smack her around?”

  “Now that, I couldn’t say. That was before my time,”

  Grace answered with another shrug. “Rumor was she was

  fooling around on him and he found out. Next thing anyone

  knew, she was going for a midnight swim in the ocean after

  drinking one too many and drowned.”

  Morgan moved away thoughtfully, looking back at Sam

  with a frown. Sam met his eyes and nodded almost

  imperceptibly. He knew what Morgan was thinking. Natalie

  Satterwight was a bit of a thorn in their sides. To a man,

  everyone they’d spoken with remembered her as a sweet,

  caring mother and a wonderful, free-spirited woman. By all

  accounts, she had lived a full life, though it had been short.

  It wasn’t her life they were concerned with, though; it was her death that troubled them. Some people told them with all 85

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  confidence that she had killed herself. Most insisted the

  accident had been a tragic thing that had taken a mother

  from her children too early. Others hinted at the fact that she may have been helped along by her overbearing, evil-tempered husband.

  At a glance, it was easy to dismiss it as something that

  had happened more than twenty years ago and move on, but

  if Reggie Bainbridge had killed Addison’s mother when he

  was little, it could point to yet another motive. Even if Reggie hadn’t done it, all it took was for Addison to believe he had and they could pin it on him as a reason to kill his own

  father. The inheritance would never hold up if that was all they brought to court. Reggie’s treatment of Addison’s lovers was a step in the right direction but still flimsy when put in front of a jury that would be looking at Addison Satterwight’s big brown Bambi eyes as they made their decision.

  “Did the brothers blame their father for her death?” Sam

  asked Grace carefully.

  “I couldn’t say,” Grace answered with a careless shrug.

  “Never seemed like it.”

  “Do either of them ever mention their mothers?” Sam

  dug. “Have any pictures of them sitting around?”

  “They never mention them to their staff,” Grace

  answered with a wry smile and a shake of his head.

  “What about their chess partners?” Morgan asked

  pointedly.

  “I only play a losing game once, Detective,” Grace

  informed Morgan with the same amused tone he’d kept

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  throughout the interview. “I didn’t go back for a rematch.

  Besides, they don’t talk personal stuff with anyone.”

  Sam nodded and pursed his lips. That was just about

  the same answer everyone gave them. It was hard digging up

  dirt on a family that so carefully guarded its privacy. The only real friends the brothers had seemed to be fiercely loyal, like Micah Parrish. That, or they were all more scared of the Bainbridge brothers than they were of the policemen asking

  the questions.

  “What else can you tell us about Reggie?” Morgan

  questioned softly as he moved further away.

  Grace shrugged and looked away at the open garage

  door. “You think his boys poisoned him with antifreeze,” he observed softly.

  Sam raised an eyebrow in surprise. They hadn’t released

  that information, but he supposed the man they had

  questioned about the antifreeze would have figured that

  much out.

  “I know one thing about Reggie,” Grace continued as he

  looked back at Sam and met his eyes unerringly. “He hated

  his boys just as much as they hated him. More than that,

  though, he was scared of ’em. If one of them had handed him a drink and said ‘here daddy, I made you this’, ain’t no way he’d a drunk it. You’re barking up the wrong tree, going after those boys. You ask me who the evil bastard is here, I’d say to you it’s Reggie Bainbridge.”

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  THE doorbell rang at a time it didn’t usually ring. In fact, Addison wasn’t sure he’d ever actually heard the doorbell

  ring. He sat up and forced his eyes open, squinting against the bright light that streamed through the windows facing

  the beach.

  The sun coming off the ocean was something Addison

  hated with a passion. The moon was supposed to glint off the waves. The sun was supposed to mind its own business.

  He turned his head and stared at the time on the clock

  as the doorbell rang again. 9:08. On his day off.

  “Got to be the cops,” he muttered to himself as he

  pushed at the blanket that had wound itself around his legs.

  “What is it?” Micah muttered sleepily from under his

  pillow.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Addison advised as he pushed

  himself out of bed. He couldn’t quite remember how or why

  they had ended up at his place instead of Micah’s last night.

  He just remembered Micah bitching about wanting clean

  sheets.

  He grabbed the robe that hung on a hook near the door

  and shrugged into it as he trudged through the bungalow.

  The doorbell rang again. Addison shivered in the cool

  morning air and tied th
e robe around himself, moving toward the kitchen. He wasn’t in a hurry. At 9 a.m. whoever it was could fucking wait.

  He poured himself a glass of orange juice, taking a sip to

  test if it was still good as the doorbell chimed again.

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  It was an odd sound. Not the usual ding-dong. It was a

  little annoying, actually. If he thought he’d ever have to hear the sound again he might consider having it changed, but no one ever rang Addison’s doorbell. It wasn’t every day the

  cops came calling to sniff around for a motive for murder.

  He sighed and carried his glass of orange juice with him

  to answer the door.

  He wasn’t surprised when he opened the door to find

  Detective Walker standing there. He was surprised, however, to see that he was alone. His partner, whose name Addison

  was certain had been something to do with pirates but at the moment escaped him, wasn’t with him.

  “Detective,” Addison greeted drolly. “What can I do for

  you at this ungodly hour of the morning?” he asked politely.

  “I’m sorry; did I come at a bad time?” Walker asked

  knowingly.

  “No, I was just about to slip arsenic into Micah’s

  toothpaste,” Addison deadpanned. “You just saved his life.”

  Walker raised an eyebrow. “Funny,” he commented

  flatly. “May I come in?” he requested.

  Addison took a sip of his orange juice and pondered him

  for a moment. Sarcasm was an easy and sometimes

  entertaining way of testing people. If they returned it with sarcasm of their own, Addison tended to like them. If they

  took it literally, Addison wrote them off as idiots and went on his way without another thought about them.

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  The group that gave Addison trouble was the people who

  recognized the sarcasm as what it essentially was; a lazy

  man’s attempt at cleverness.

  Addison pursed his lips and nodded. “Do you need to

  come inside to surreptitiously observe my home and

  belongings, or can we take this to the patio and leave Micah out of it?” he asked seriously.

  “Is there anything I need to observe?” Walker responded

  without blinking an eye. “You could just show it to me and