“Four weeks ago is when she made the big announcement. The bickering was at that time, the demand for money about two weeks ago.”
“Right before she came here looking for Danny.”
“I guess. Look, sorry, I need to get going or I’ll be late.”
“Okay, one thing real quick. First, guard those phones—somebody knows about these communications and could come around, trying to destroy the evidence.”
“I can stick them in my computer bag so they’re with me all day.”
“We need to get this evidence to someone who can make a difference.” Sam thought about Evan, but the argument with him still hung over her. More than ever she wondered if he would let the phones and the messages get lost in the shuffle of evidence so he and the prosecutor could get a swift trial for Danny? “Can you get to a FedEx or UPS office?”
“Sure, after today’s classes.”
“This is important, Patsy. I want you to send the phones to Danny’s attorney. She’ll know what to do with them. Package them up, and send them to …” She rummaged for the lawyer’s card and read off Delia Sanchez’s address. “Include a note saying you were Lila’s roommate and you found these in the apartment. I’ll reimburse you for the shipping cost.”
“He’s my brother, Sam. I’ll do whatever I can to help him.” Clearly, Patsy’s belief in Lila’s innocence and goodness had flown straight out the window.
“Thanks. If you’ll send me a quick message with the tracking number, I’ll get with Delia and let her know what’s coming. I’m excited. This definitely proves there was someone else out there with a motive.”
If only she had a clue who it was.
She looked up to see Riki standing in the doorway at Puppy Chic, a forlorn look on her face, eyes a bit red. Sam got out of her car and walked over.
“I’m sorry if I upset Evan,” she said. “I shouldn’t—”
“Forgive him for his tone,” Riki said, seemingly unaware of the argument her husband had with Sam. “It’s this whole … pregnancy thing, and the fact we can’t seem to do this, and now we’re talking IVF, but that’s horrifically expensive, and every time we talk about it, we both get upset, and—”
“Riki—it’s okay. I’m so sorry about your struggles, really I am. It’s going to be okay, no matter how it goes.”
Each woman had her own journey in the baby game, Sam realized. She’d gotten pregnant when she least wanted to, thirty-odd years ago, but everything had turned out fine and she couldn’t ask for her life to be on a better track. Now, here was a friend who desperately wanted this and it wasn’t happening for them. And then there was Lila—what was her story?
She shook off the thoughts, gave Riki an extra-long hug, and wished her well. As far as her own words with Evan, that was another subject for another time. Riki dabbed her eyes with the cuff of her shirt and thanked Sam, ready to get back to her day.
Sam looked around. Jen had said everything was under control at the bakery, Riki seemed back on firm ground, and the only one in the neighborhood she hadn’t checked in with was Ivan at Mysterious Happenings. She walked down to the bookshop.
“Miss Samantha, happy to be seeing you again. Rumor say you were in Texas.”
“Rumor?” Oh, right. Becky would have brought the treats for Ivan’s Chocoholics Anonymous book club while she was away. “You are right, Ivan. And I must say it feels good to be home again. I need a book for Ana.”
“She is ready for War and Peace now?” Ivan laughed.
“Not quite. I’m thinking along the lines of The Boxcar Kids. She has discovered a love of mysteries.”
He waved her toward the children’s section, although Sam knew exactly where to find everything in the inventory she had nearly memorized.
She was staring at the lower shelf when the bell at the front door chimed and she heard a familiar voice. Rising, she peered over the top of the shelving units. “Hey, Rupert, how’s it going?”
He ambled down the aisle between the stacks and stopped to see which book she’d chosen for Ana.
“By the way,” he murmured, “the love potion …” He gave a thumbs-up. “Tres magnifique! Jimmy and I are … an item.”
“Very good. I’m happy for you.” Sam wondered if the potion itself was still causing this effect or if it had provided the needed spark and the two lovers had started their own fire. She would probably never know.
They chatted for a few more minutes before Rupert headed toward the section of blank journals and Sam for the register where she paid for her book. She arrived at Kelly’s as her daughter was making sandwiches for lunch.
“Can you stay? It’s easy to put two more slices of bread on the production line. You only have to say peanut butter or ham.”
“Absolutely. Ham, please.”
“Did someone say peanut butter?” came Scott’s voice as he walked in through the dining room door.
“Yay, peanut butter!” Ana shouted, zipping past him to be first in the kitchen. “I want strawberry jam on mine.”
“You got it.” Kelly reached for the jar that was standing at the ready.
Ana had already turned to Sam, noticing the bookshop bag in her hand. “A new book—yay!”
“After lunch. Peanut butter and pages don’t go together too well.”
“Jam and paper, even less so,” said Scott, taking the bag and stashing it on top of the fridge.
“Are you happy I brought your mommy back home?” Sam asked.
Ana responded by grabbing Kelly around the legs.
“I take that as a ‘yes’ and now we’d better let her finish the sandwiches.” Sam found napkins and two bags of chips in the pantry and told Ana to put them on the kitchen table.
Scott poured iced tea for the adults and fruit juice for his daughter. “So, Kel says there were some interesting interviews in your case?”
Sam waved off the question. “Yes, but enough about that. How’s the new book coming along?”
Set an author onto the topic of his own writing and an entire day can be filled with details. Scott said he had turned in the manuscript and his editor was thrilled. “She’s already got the illustrator working on the key moments, you know the little drawings at the beginning of each chapter. Maddie Plimpton is at Taos Pueblo in this one, and she’s learning some valuable Native American beliefs at the same time she solves a mystery.”
“Your fans will love it.”
“Let’s hope so. Ten-year-olds can be amazingly worshipful or amazingly cruel in their comments.” But Scott seemed to have them hooked. “And now I’ve started outlining the next one in the series,” he said as he picked up his sandwich.
Ana chewed through half her sandwich, nonstop, her eyes darting to the top of the fridge every few moments. By the time she finished her lunch, she was nudging her father to talk less and eat more. Sam had to laugh. Her granddaughter’s words sounded so much like her own to Kelly at age four.
Five minutes later, Scott carried his plate to the sink and retrieved the book bag. “Okay, little miss, we are off to have a story and then a little nap.”
Ana’s look said Good luck with that.
Kelly and Sam watched them leave. Eliza remained near the table, staring up at Sam with her wise green eyes. “What he really meant was, ‘We’ll read a story and then daddy wants a nap.’ But I’ll go in the living room later and find them both cuddled up asleep on the big sofa.”
Sam nibbled at the last of her potato chips.
“Okay, Mom, I have a feeling there’s more you want to say.” It wasn’t a question.
Sam filled her in on the visit to Danny, the call from Patsy, and finally the argument with Evan.
“Wow. Busy morning.” Kelly stacked their plates. “You know you need to make up with him, right?”
“Evan? Yeah … I suppose I do.”
“Well, it’s not likely he’ll come to you. Reach out, Mom. You’ll feel better about it.”
Not to mention that she’d never learn any more inside i
nfo on this case or any future one if she wasn’t in the good graces of the sheriff. And there was one crucial fact she needed to know right now. Was Lila actually pregnant at the time of her death?
“I’ll stop by the station on my way home.”
Chapter 37
The make-up talk with Evan went well. She apologized for her sharp tone; he apologized for letting a personal mood sneak into his policing work. They shook hands, turned it into a hug, and left as friends. And, most importantly, Sam was able to ask the question on her mind. According to the autopsy, Lila Contreras was not pregnant at the time of her death.
Sam pondered the answer. It seemed Danny and whoever else Lila had been texting were both off the hook. Unless she had terminated the pregnancy and hoped to keep bluffing the men. But, no, Sam decided. The medical investigator’s report would have surely picked up the fact of a recent pregnancy. She arrived home, still thinking about it.
She was checking the supply of eggs in the fridge, thinking about making an omelet for dinner, when the phone chirped with an incoming message. Patsy had shipped the two cell phones to the lawyer, and her message contained the tracking information. Sam phoned the attorney and they set an appointment to go over this new evidence together the next afternoon.
* * *
The small firm of Sanchez, Miller, and Sanchez occupied a suite of offices in an unimposing one-story adobe on a side street near the courthouse. Sam carried a small box of chocolate chip, sugar, and peanut butter cookies and walked into her meeting with Delia. The receptionist was eyeing the box and promised to put them in the break room.
“Have you gone through the messages on the phones yet?” Sam asked, once she and Delia were alone.
“Beyond plugging each of them into a charger, I haven’t had a spare moment. They’ll be new to both of us.” The lawyer handed Sam a pair of latex gloves and one of the phones. “I don’t want our prints muddying up the picture when the prosecutor talks about these. Jurors can get easily confused.”
“Patsy said each phone has only one person listed in the contacts. I’m hoping once we get into the text messages themselves, it becomes apparent who they are. What do you think? Take them in chronological order or start with the most recent?”
“My brain works better in sequence,” Delia said, “I’m going to scroll to the beginning.”
“Okay, me too.” Sam opened the inexpensive flip phone and found the contact list. She found ‘S’ and a phone number. “What would happen if I called the number?”
“Give it a try.”
The phone rang several times before going to a generic voicemail message. Sam hung up. No point in alerting him that someone in Taos was looking for him. When Delia did the same with the other phone, she got a recorded message: “You got Rich—speak.”
“Cute. I assume this is Richard Potter?”
“Maybe the number can be traced to him. Just because Lila bought these disposable phones, it doesn’t mean the men at the other end of the call weren’t using their regular ones, something with an account registered to their name.”
“That’s a good point, Sam.” Delia drummed her fingers on her desk for a moment. “It’s going to take a warrant or subpoena to get the cell provider to let go of that info. If we can’t get it, though, most certainly the sheriff can. I’m adding that to my list of official items we’re asking for.”
“Um, wait a second. My son-in-law said something a while back … I think there’s a way.” Sam pulled out her own phone and called Scott.
He started to go into a spiel about how to do a reverse number lookup, but must have sensed her confusion. “I’ll do it for you. Give me the number.”
She read the two numbers off to him and he said he’d get back to her.
“It might not be admissible in court,” Sam said, “but it could be a lead for our own peace of mind.”
“Right. Okay, on to the text messages,” Delia said.
“I’m going to write these down. Once these phones are out of our hands, it would be smart to have a record.”
“Better yet, let’s get them on my computer.” Delia handed the second phone over to Sam and reached for her keyboard. “Okay, start with R and read each message aloud to me.”
Sam wondered briefly if Delia was billing at her regular rates while she typed. This could get costly. But she decided to go with the moment. They needed to get the evidence compiled quickly so the attorney could turn the phones over to Evan on the same day she received them. Receiving something unexpectedly in the mail was one thing—holding it was another.
“Okay, here goes. ‘Lila: Hey R. New phone. Use this one for me now.’ He responds back, ‘ok.’ Are you sure we want all this?”
“Yes. There’s a chain of evidence. We can’t skip around. Give me the dates, too.”
Texts and calls between Richard and Lila had started more than six months ago. It appeared she erased her recent calls now and then, but the text thread kept going. It took a few minutes to hit a rhythm, but soon Sam was reading the messages and Delia transcribing them at a fast clip.
The pattern began to feel familiar. Lila was feeding this R guy a lot of the same talk she’d used with Danny. Last October she’d been madly in love with him, wanted to take things to the next level, and at the end of most messages she would wish him sweet dreams. Sam nearly choked at the first one, pausing to tell Delia about Danny’s having received the same message.
Through the holiday season, things between Lila and R had warmed up considerably, on his part as well as hers. It must have been about the time the photo was taken, the one Sam had seen with the two of them embracing. And then, in January, she dropped the bombshell. She was pregnant—a photo of a test stick with a plus-sign was attached, and the words “congratulations, daddy!!!”
The man: Whoa, what? Thought you were on the pill.
Lila: They don’t always work.
Him: We gotta talk about this. I’m shipping out overseas.
Lila: I need money for expenses.
Him: Need to see you.
“I wonder if they got together and he gave her money?” Sam said. She scrolled through the next few messages, all from Lila, without responses from the man.
“Almost sounds as though he got out of there as fast as he could.”
Sam looked over at the other phone, sitting on the desk. “So, if she was trying to convince this R that he’s about to be a daddy … what was she saying to the other guy?”
“Check it out. I’m going to create a separate document for each of these.” Delia tapped a few more keys while Sam picked up the phone they had identified for someone called S.
Sam scanned the messages as she scrolled. “Okay, a lot more of the same … But, oh, wait—here’s the pregnancy announcement again. My god, this Lila is a piece of work.”
The wording was nearly the same—congratulations, daddy, followed by I need money—until it came to the man’s response. S was a lot less accommodating than R. He came right out and asked if she was sure the kid was his.
Delia had pushed her keyboard aside. “Piece of work doesn’t begin to describe this girl. What a scam. We already know she wasn’t actually pregnant, so what did she think she was pulling here?”
Sam gave a shrug. “Maybe both men are military and she knew they’d be deployed. With them gone for months at a time she could pull nearly anything—say she lost the baby, or just vanish from their lives? Maybe her move from Nuevo Laredo to San Antonio was part of that? Get a hundred-fifty miles away and hope he never came to check up on her?”
“And then what? I wonder if she was planning to pull the same thing on Danny. From what he says, she was angling for marriage with him. Neither of the others mention that. But …” Sam’s thoughts trailed off. The whole thing was becoming mind-boggling.
Sam’s phone rang and she saw Scott’s name on the screen. Delia reached for the S burner phone while Sam answered.
“Hey, Sam. I got a name. The first number you gave me—it�
�s listed to a Richard Potter in Nuevo Laredo, Texas. The carrier is Verizon. The other number didn’t give any result. Could be one of those prepaid types. Not sure.”
She thanked him for the effort, although his call hadn’t yielded anything new, and passed the information along to Delia.
The women spent another hour transcribing the full list of texts from the second phone, but it felt like duplicated effort, and the fact they couldn’t tie the phone to anyone made it all the more discouraging. Finally, Delia dropped both phones into the FedEx box in which they’d arrived, shed her latex gloves, and stood up.
“Time to get this to the sheriff,” she said, “while I can still claim ‘oh, look what was mailed to me.’ He may give me the stink eye but hey, that’s life. Sometimes one side gets first look at new evidence, sometimes it’s the other side.”
“Do you want me to work on comparing everything?”
“Absolutely. You’ve got a good eye for this kind of thing, Sam.” Delia leaned over her keyboard and hit a few keys. Within a few seconds pages began whirring off a printer in the corner of the room. She handed the sheaf to Sam. “Have fun.”
Chapter 38
The dining table had become covered with a mass of papers and notes right after Sam cleared the dinner dishes. Beau had settled in front of the TV with a basketball game on, and Sam couldn’t find the interest to join him; this was far more intriguing. After more than thirty minutes of flicking between the R messages and the S messages and trying to tie them to what she’d written in her notebook from Danny’s phone, she decided to create a timeline. It was the only logical way her mind could grasp it.
She started with a sheet of paper turned sideways and wrote the date of the oldest message, which had begun with R—Richard Potter. The series of messages had begun in October of last year. In January she had informed him she was pregnant. And by then she had begun dating Danny, shortly after she moved to San Antonio. Within two months, she was pressing for marriage to Danny, while she was stringing Richard along with notes about their baby.
Deadly Sweet Dreams Page 17