by Laura Scott
“No. Absolutely not.” Her instant denial seemed to come from loyalty rather than certainty.
“I need you to think carefully about this,” he pressed. “Cocoa’s life depends on it.”
She met his gaze head-on. “I know what you’re thinking. Drugs, right? What else could be in a missing package?”
“Drugs, stolen goods such as precious gems or cash itself,” Finn pointed out. “But yeah, those are the three main possibilities floating through my mind at the moment.”
Eva shook her head. “I just can’t imagine Malina being involved in anything like that. It’s surreal. She had a loving husband and a beautiful son. I can’t believe she’d risk her family for something like that.”
“Yet the two men who assaulted you obviously believe that you know something about their stolen package.”
She fell silent for a long moment. “I know. But she may have got the package by accident. Like they think she stole it, but someone set her up.”
He levered one eyebrow skeptically. “Doubtful.”
“But possible. I’ll search my brother-in-law’s house, see if I can find anything.”
“Good plan. I’ll help.” Finn glanced back at the window. “It’s interesting that the vandal knew which window to target. Are you sure you haven’t noticed anyone lurking around outside? Not just today but over the past few weeks?”
“I’m positive.” Again there was no hesitation in her tone. “You know as well as I do that there are always people coming and going. I had no reason to believe I was being watched, no reason to notice anyone in particular behind me.” Her expression turned grim. “But you’re right about the window. It freaks me out that they know so much about me. I guess I’ve been a bit clueless, huh?”
“Hey, it’s okay.” Finn reached over and took her hand in his, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “We’ll figure it out.”
“I hope so.” Her crystal-blue eyes were troubled. “I can’t bear the thought of anything happening to Cocoa. And what about my roommates, Alecia and Julie? I hate to think they may be in danger.”
Finn didn’t much like it, either. “You’ll have to warn them, encourage them to stay someplace else for a few days.”
“I will.”
It was clear to him that the perps had decided to use the dog as leverage against Eva as a way to get their precious package back. What if they weren’t able to find it? If the package contained drugs, and if Malina was a user, it was highly likely the package no longer existed.
Except...he kept coming back to the hit-and-run that had taken Malina’s life. What if the accident that had turned deadly had been intended as more of a scare tactic? A way to get her to turn over the stolen goods? He imagined the driver could have been a bit overzealous in an attempt to appear to be a distracted driver, hitting Malina with more force than was necessary.
The end result had been that she’d died, making it impossible for the perps to get the location of the missing package.
Warming to his theory, he decided to go back to recanvass the area around Malina’s accident to see if he could resurrect any witnesses the original officers might have missed.
First, though, he needed to get this rock logged into evidence. Fingerprints would go a long way in helping them identify the perps and what they might be involved in. And he wanted to stop by the training center again to talk to Yost. He’d fired Malina for a reason and Finn wanted to know the details.
“I have a few stops to make, and then we can pick up Mikey from preschool and I’ll take you home.” Finn turned, hesitated and glanced back at her. “Do you have anything in the basement that I can use to board up the window?”
She nodded. “I think there are some odds and ends down there. The previous owners had done some renovation work.”
“Good.” He hurried to the basement and found a board large enough to nail over the broken window. When he finished the task, he made a call to Wade Yost.
“I need a few minutes of your time,” he told the manager of the guide dog training center. “I need to ask you about Malina.”
“Okay, but not in front of Eva.”
Finn glanced at Eva, who was scratching Abernathy behind the ears. “She already knows something is up with her sister,” he told Yost. “I don’t think you need to worry.”
“I can’t afford to lose her as a trainer,” Yost argued. “She’s the best I have.”
“I understand, but you need to trust me on this. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“Fine,” Yost agreed in a resigned tone.
“Don’t forget I have to pick up Mikey by five thirty,” she reminded him.
He nodded. “Okay.”
Eva was quiet as he drove to the training center and Finn knew she was likely thinking about her sister and the missing package. He hoped he wasn’t making a mistake including her in the conversation with her boss, but he needed Eva to think hard about what her sister might have been up to.
Wade looked distinctly uncomfortable when they walked into his office, as if he was dreading what was to come. “Hey.”
Finn greeted him with a nod. “We have reason to believe that Cocoa was taken by someone Malina was acquainted with.” He was being vague on purpose, not wanting to give too much away. “I need to understand what happened before she left your employment.”
“Uh, sure.” Yost cast a furtive glance at Eva. “Uh, Malina worked as a receptionist and also did some of the bookkeeping for me. But I, uh, noticed she’d made several mistakes and that her behavior had grown erratic. She was late or left early or didn’t show up at all.”
“For how long?” Finn asked.
The manager shrugged. “A couple of months.” Yost glanced at Eva, his gaze pleading. “Please don’t be upset with me, Eva. I’m really sorry—I had no choice but to let her go.”
Eva sucked in a harsh breath. “You fired her?”
“I had to!” Yost looked distressed. “I didn’t want to because I respect you so much. But Malina changed. She messed up my bills, caused me to be overdrawn at the bank. I was getting pressure from the owner to take control of the finances or I’d be fired. I needed to do something, so I let her go and took over doing the books and being the receptionist myself. Please, don’t quit. I need you.”
Eva didn’t say anything, but he knew she wasn’t happy about what she’d learned.
Finn put a reassuring hand on Eva’s arm. “Don’t take this out on him. It’s not Wade’s fault.” He kept his tone soft and soothing. “He cares about you. And Malina, too. But your sister must have got herself in trouble, doing something she shouldn’t have been.”
Eva bit her lip, her eyes filling with tears. As if sensing her distress, Abernathy nudged her with his nose. “I don’t blame you, Wade, but I wish you’d confided in me! Maybe I could have done something to help her.”
Understanding she had a right to be upset yet doubting that there was much Eva could have done to rescue her sister, Finn kept his hand on her arm. “And Malina could have come to you, too.”
Eva didn’t have a response to that.
Finn glanced back at Yost. “Anything else? Did she have her own office?”
“No. She sat up front or used mine.” Yost’s face was pale, and he sent worried glances at Eva. “I’m really sorry, Eva.”
“Yeah. Me, too.” Despite the slight edge to her tone indicating she was still angry, at least she hadn’t quit.
Erratic behavior, bookkeeping errors and not showing up for work all pointed to one thing in particular.
Drugs. He was fairly certain Eva’s sister had got herself hooked on drugs. Worse, she’d likely stolen some from her supplier.
The impact of her poor choices had not only caused Malina to be killed but had reached Eva, as well.
He needed to figure out who Malina had taken the package from, and soon.
Before anyone else ended up hurt or, worse, dead.
* * *
Reeling from hearing the truth about her sister, Eva struggled to hold herself together. She didn’t want to believe the things Wade claimed Malina had done. Didn’t want to consider the fact that her sister might have got involved in something nefarious.
Still, it was impossible to ignore the truth staring her in the face. Wade had fired Malina. Her sister had lied to her. And now Cocoa was missing. All because of a stupid package.
Looking back, she had to admit that Malina had seemed distant a couple of months before her death. Preoccupied. Sometimes excited and other times depressed. At the time, Eva had assumed that Malina’s diminishing eyesight was the reason for her behavior. Even when it came to the accident, she’d thought that Malina must not have seen the car swerving toward her until it was too late.
What if she was wrong? What if the accident had been deliberate? Eva shivered.
“Do we have time to drop off the evidence before picking up Mikey?” Finn’s voice broke into her thoughts.
“I don’t think so,” she said, glancing at her watch. She wore one with a large face with the numbers in bold. “The traffic seems to be picking up and we’re closer to the preschool than we are to your headquarters.”
“Okay, we’ll pick up Mikey first.” Finn took the next right, toward the preschool. “How are you doing? I’m sure this hasn’t been easy for you.”
She let out a heavy sigh. “I’ll be fine, although it’s hard to believe Malina would have got mixed up with drugs.”
“It can happen to anyone,” Finn said. “Try not to hold it against her.”
Eva hadn’t told Finn about her retinitis pigmentosa or about the fact that Malina had suffered the same progressive disorder. Was her impending blindness the reason her sister had turned to drugs? It didn’t jibe with what she knew about Malina. How her sister had worried about her ability to take care of Mikey and whether or not Pete would continue being supportive.
Pete. Surely, if Malina was using drugs her husband would have known? Granted, the same thing could be said about Eva, but Malina and Pete were living in the same household day in and day out. It would have been much harder to hide something like drug abuse from a spouse.
At least Mikey’s reference to a bad man-made sense now. She’d tried to pooh-pooh Finn’s concern, but clearly the little boy had been exposed to something.
Why, Malina? Why would you risk your husband, your son, your life for something like drugs? Why?
Her desperate questions remained unanswered.
“Hi, Officer Finn!” At least Mikey seemed to be oblivious to her somber mood. “Hi, Abe!”
Abernathy licked Mikey’s face, making him laugh. Upon returning to the car, Eva quickly buckled Mikey into his car seat and then slid in beside him.
Finn headed back toward the K-9 headquarters. Eva knew he was anxious to find fingerprints from the paper or the rock itself. She wanted the same thing, hating to think about what the raspy guy or the stinky guy might be doing to Cocoa.
Finn left them in the SUV with the engine running. He returned less than five minutes later. “They’ll call me as soon as they get anything off the rock.”
She nodded, exhaustion weighing heavy on her shoulders. Not just from the lack of sleep the night before, but from the most recent developments.
What else hadn’t she known about her sister?
“Officer Finn, I’m hungry.” Mikey’s voice broke into her thoughts.
“We’ll order dinner once we’re home,” Finn promised. He glanced at Eva as if half expecting an argument.
“If you’re tired of ordering out, I can make grilled ham-and-cheese sandwiches,” she offered.
“I love grilled ham and cheese, but ordering something might be easier. Not only do we need to do some searching, but I’d like you to look at the video tape. There’s only one brief moment where a man in black comes into view, and I need you to tell me if he might be the raspy guy or stinky guy.”
“Sure.” She nodded and then glanced out her window, knowing that it was highly unlikely she’d be able to see the man’s features clearly enough to identify him.
Mikey’s chatter filled the silence as they fought the traffic back to Pete’s house. Finn ordered food while Eva kept busy providing Mikey with a snack to hold him over until dinner arrived.
Finn opened his laptop computer and showed her the screen. “Here’s the video,” he said, hitting the play icon.
The clip was so brief she almost missed it. A man dressed in black stepped out from behind the dumpster, stared at the building for a moment and then disappeared from view.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t recognize him.”
“I was afraid of that,” he said wryly. “But I had to ask.” He put the video in reverse and paused it when the man’s face was on the screen. It was a profile view, and grainy due to the distance. “How about now?”
The guy had a unibrow thing going on, but she hadn’t got a clear view of his facial features. “Maybe,” she hedged. “The unibrow is similar, but I wouldn’t be willing to testify in a court of law.”
“Okay, I understand.” Finn shut down the video. “Thanks for trying.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to confess about her limited vision, to tell him everything, but she just couldn’t do it. Besides, her issues didn’t matter one way or the other. She wasn’t dating Finn. Being together like this was temporary.
Her impending blindness wasn’t.
“Do you think Malina’s purse might be here somewhere?” Finn asked, changing the subject.
Grateful for something to do, she jumped to her feet. “I’ll check.”
Leaving Finn and Abernathy to keep an eye on Mikey, she went up to the master suite. The closet was split in half, and one side held Malina’s things. She rifled through them, searching for the black purse her sister favored. Finding it near the back, she pulled it out, her heart pounding. It was bulky, and heavier than she’d expected.
Was it this simple? With trembling fingers she unzipped the main pocket and drew the edges apart to see what was inside.
No package. Her shoulders slumped in defeat. There was a thick black wallet inside, which accounted for some of the weight, along with a variety of other things, including a hairbrush and makeup kit. Opening the wallet, she found the usual credit cards and several receipts. Her eyes widened when she saw there were five crisp one-hundred-dollar bills tucked inside.
Cash and a missing package didn’t bode well. She wondered if the cash alone would be enough to satisfy Cocoa’s captors but doubted it. She suspected the value of the package was much, much more.
Where was the puppy? And what would the men do if she couldn’t find the missing package?
SIX
Finn kept an eye on Mikey playing with Abernathy while he subtly searched the playroom. Although he didn’t believe Malina would hide drugs in the place where her son spent time playing, he wasn’t about to make any assumptions. If she had been using, she might not have been thinking clearly. So he’d do what was needed to check this room off the list.
Maybe he should get one of the drug-sniffing K-9s here to see if they could find the drugs. That, of course, would only work if the package was actually drugs and not cash or other stolen goods.
By the time he finished with the playroom, Eva had returned from the master suite carrying a large black handbag in one hand and a wallet in the other.
“This was all I found,” she said, holding up the wallet. “Five hundred dollars in cash. If the package contained drugs, it’s likely gone.”
He raised a brow and came over to see the crisp hundred-dollar bills. “I don’t know, to be honest, five hundred doesn’t seem like enough to risk a dognapping. In the world of drug dealing, it’s chump change.”
“She may have spent mo
st of it,” Eva said, her eyes full of sorrow and resignation. “Maybe this five hundred was all she had left. I don’t want to admit that she was involved in anything criminal, but even I can see this doesn’t look good.”
Finn glanced at Mikey, making sure the little boy wasn’t listening. He was still playing with Abernathy, who was good-naturedly taking the hugs and tail tugging without protest.
“I was thinking of arranging for one of the drug-sniffing K-9s to come sweep the house, just in case.”
Her brow furrowed. “It doesn’t feel right to do that while Pete’s not here. It’s his house, not mine. Can’t we just look ourselves?”
There was a bit of logic in what Eva proposed. Bringing in a K-9 meant he should go through official channels and have a judge sign off on a search warrant. Since Eva was living here, taking care of her nephew with Pete’s permission, she could search her sister’s things without going through the legal system.
“Yeah, okay. For now.”
Eva’s face relaxed with relief, and he found himself wondering if she didn’t really want to find the package her sister had taken. As soon as the thought formed, he brushed it off. From the very beginning, Eva was an innocent bystander in this mess. She’d brought Malina’s purse down to show him the cash, something she could have hidden easily. He also knew she wanted very much to find Cocoa.
And the more he thought about the cash, the more he believed Eva might be onto something about the package being gone. Where else would Malina have got that much cash? Five hundred wasn’t much for a drug dealer, but it was to your average citizen. Malina hadn’t been working. If she was a drug user, the money wouldn’t have lasted long.
“I’ll take a look through the kitchen,” Eva offered, interrupting his thoughts.
“Sure.” He forced himself to concentrate on the issue at hand. “I’ll check the living room.”
They went their separate ways. Fifteen minutes later, when the deliveryman from Gino’s Italian Ristorante arrived with their lasagna, he discovered they’d both come up empty-handed.
“I’m sure it’s gone,” Eva said morosely. “How will we get Cocoa back if we can’t find it?”