Hell to Pay (What Doesn’t Kill You, #7): An Emily Romantic Mystery

by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

  “Absolutely. Wallace and I will pick you up.”

  “And I thought I’d go home Saturday, if you don’t mind me staying that long. I’ve scheduled workouts with some of the local triathletes on Thursday and Friday.”

  Better her than me. “You go, girl.”

  The doorbell rang. I pulled my phone away from my ear and squinted at the tiny characters in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. 7:49 a.m. “Holy mother of pearl. Michele, someone’s at the door.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Someone’s at the door.”

  “No, before that.”

  “Oh, mother of pearl?”

  “Yeah. That. Oh, you were cussing. Wow. Okay.”

  “Got it,” Jack yelled from the bathroom.

  I never understood why it was such a shock to people that I didn’t take the Lord’s name in vain or say the F-word. “Well, I really do have to go.”

  “I’ll email you. And see you soon. Bye,” Michele said.

  “Bye.” I put the phone down.

  Jack flashed by toward a pile of yesterday’s clothes on the chintz armchair.

  I was still smarting a little from his dissing my “I love you,” but he was too cute to stay upset. I sang, “Oh yes, they call him the street. Boogiedad boogiedad.”

  He stopped. “Huh?”

  “You know, that old song about a guy who runs around naked in public.”

  He laughed and grabbed his jeans. “The Streak. They call him the Streak. Because he was streaking.”

  I crossed my fingers under the sheets. “I know that. My braces just make me hard to understand.”

  Jack grinned at me like he knew I was lying and hopped into his jeans, commando, and pulled on a T-shirt. He was out the bedroom door and trotting toward the front door before I was out of bed.

  I rose and stretched. What kind of person showed up before eight o’clock, anyway? Maybe it was a neighbor bringing Snowflake back, if she’d escaped again. Jack had let the little Pomeranian out to do her business before we got down to ours, so to speak. We’d installed a nanny cam so we could monitor her from our phones and computers—which was usually only footage of the little red fox who’d staked a claim to our yard—but I hadn’t checked on her yet.

  I heard the front door open and shut and voices talking as I walked to my closet through the bathroom. I loved my closet there at the house we’d dubbed Shangri-La, a nod to Jack calling our community west of Amarillo “Heaven” because it was closer to his beloved New Mexico. Before Jack bought Shangri-La, I’d lived in my childhood room in my parents’ smallish three-bedroom house. And before that, I’d lived with my ex-husband in a Dallas condo that was fancy but compact. At this house, I had a walk-in closet of my very own with pegs for all my boots and floor-to-ceiling shoe racks. I twirled as I entered, then threw on some clean underclothes with a fresh pair of leggings and a soft tunic with deep, low pockets.

  I walked into the great room. Jack was sitting with Margaret Fletcher, the woman who had conducted the home study for our adoption application. My hand flew to my hair, but it was too late to do anything about my bed head. Or my unbrushed teeth. Jack could have warned me. Margaret looked poised and put together in tan pants and a tan jacket with a pink shell top. She was a small woman, and Jack’s brown leather chair dwarfed her; her black ballet flats didn’t quite touch the ground.

  I managed to glare at my fiancé and smile at Margaret at the same time. “Good morning. I wasn’t expecting you, but welcome.” Ruff. Ruff. Wham! Ruff. I glanced at the French doors leading out into the backyard. Snowflake was standing on the brick pavers, alternately barking and launching her white fluffy body at the glass. All five pounds of her. “Excuse me one second.” I opened the door and let her in.

  Snowflake danced around me on her hind legs like a circus monkey, then sprinted to Jack to do the same. She finished up by dashing quick circuits around the living room. I didn’t try to stop her. We’d gone through doggy obedience school together the month before, and one of the things I’d learned was that I had to let her work off her joy before her brain re-engaged with her body.

  Margaret furrowed her brow and her thin, high eyebrows came together to form an almost invisible blonde line across her forehead. “But I got a message that you requested a follow-up today. That’s why I’m here.”

  I’m sure my mouth hung open to my shoulders—I was that surprised. “I’m sorry. I didn’t contact you.”

  I sank into the couch beside Jack. Snowflake jumped into his lap. On the wall, the cuckoo clock that had belonged to Jack’s grandparents chimed eight o’clock. It nested against bamboo weave wallpaper that I hadn’t had time to strip and replace with a good coat of paint yet.

  “How odd. It was a voice mail from a woman. She said she was you.” Margaret clutched a small brown purse in her lap with both hands, a clipboard under it on her legs. “Well, do you have any questions for me, since I’m here?”

  My insides burned. Someone impersonating me? The only woman who had a reason to do so and make me look bad in the process was Betsy’s foster mother, Mary Alice Hodges. I shook my head. “I’d love a status report, although I don’t want to keep you. I’m sure you have to get to work, and I know we do.” I put my hand on Jack’s knee. Snowflake licked it. “But we do keep hoping to hear we’ve got a court date to approve an adoption soon.” Some of my hair was sticking to the corner of my mouth. I smiled and pushed it behind my ear, casual-like, trying to give the impression I was a woman who would have been up and had breakfast on the table an hour ago for a six-year-old before taking her to school. I hoped Margaret noticed I was at least the woman who’d decorated for Easter with cheery eggs, chick and bunny figurines, and a “He is Risen” framed needlepoint my mother made and foisted on me, insisting we hang it together.

  “No news.” She set her purse on the arm of the chair. “I’m sure you know that there is active opposition to your application from the foster parents, Trevon and Mary Alice Hodges.” She glanced down at her clipboard and continued almost under her breath, “Wonderful people. So devout. Such giving foster parents.”

  I took a deep breath. Jack’s hand lowered onto mine and Snowflake nuzzled them both. “Yes, we’re aware. We had agreed with the caseworker from CPS that we could have biweekly visits with Betsy, but they’ve managed to prevent that three visits running, and they won’t even make up for them with a Skype visit.”

  She pulled a pen loose from the clip holding her papers, and started tapping it on the board. “I had an email from them just this morning saying you were at a party last night at a swingers club.” Her lips pressed thin and white.

  I jumped to my feet, dislodging Jack’s hand and our canine ball of fluff. “What? We were at an engagement party for a client of the law firm where we work. It was held at a building downtown. Not a swingers club. Not a swingers party.” Margaret was staring at me, a little wide-eyed, so I smiled and sat down. Snowflake moved to safety on the far side of Jack’s lap. “No swingers.”

  “Was that the party in the news this morning where a hooker was murdered in the parking lot?”

  I started to jump up again, but Jack squeezed my knee and pressed down.

  He spoke in his best imitation Amarillo accent, persuasive and reassuring. “Ms. Fletcher”—(Fletch-uh)—“I don’t know where you get your information, but it seems to be from a very biased source. There were no hookers at this party. A man did fall and was found deceased there, but the police didn’t say he was murdered.”

  She sniffed and patted her sandy-haired bun. “An engagement party. That reminds me of one little item I needed to follow up on. Have the two of you gotten married?”

  Jack gave her his lopsided grin. His left dimple pulled up the corner of his mouth. Snowflake cocked her head and sat up straighter. “Not yet, but soon.”

  “Can I have a date for my notes?”

  I started to protest. “Bu—”

  “Ms. Fletcher, you’re going to make me spoil the s
urprise for Emily.” I turned to Jack, and his left eyebrow rose in a perfect arch. The right one stayed straight and dignified. He patted my knee. “No use begging, Emily. You’ll thank me later.”

  Margaret looked back and forth between the two of us, and I pasted on the appropriate smile for a woman learning that her fiancé was planning a secret wedding. “Please do let me know when you’ve made it official,” she said.

  “Of course,” Jack drawled.

  “And in the meantime, I take it from your”—she wrinkled her nose—“state of undress that you are cohabiting in the home?”

  Jack drew back as if in shock. “I just came over for breakfast. I live in my office downtown, like I have for the last five years.”

  Margaret nodded. “Uh-huh. And that’s the office where Ms. Bernal works for you?”

  “Mm,” he grunted.

  Margaret turned to me. “I don’t think we’ve talked about your father yet, Ms. Bernal. What role would you anticipate letting him have in Betsy’s life, given his—”

  Jack’s phone rang and Snowflake broke into a frenzy of barks. Out of the blue the month before she had decided that ringing phones were advance warning of alien invasion. Jack glanced at his screen. “My apologies, ladies. It’s the office.” He moved the yapping Snowflake aside, stood and walked out. His voice rang out from the hallway, and I heard him say, “Jack Holden speaking.” Snowflake whined and ran across me to the far side of the couch, nearest where he’d gone, but close enough to provide assistance to me should another cell phone commence an attack.

  Margaret strained to hear Jack on the phone, her whole body leaning toward where he had gone, giving me the opportunity to ignore her previous question, even though my blood was boiling. She’d hit a nerve. I tried to pretend I didn’t have my own worries about my dad. He’d never been violent around me as a child, but what was inside him that he could kill somebody with a beer bottle? For that matter, what had prison done to the man I’d known? If he hadn’t been a true killer before, didn’t being around all those other violent criminals do something to a person? And that was on top of my pain from not hearing from him for nearly ten years—even if the hidden letters from him were my mother’s doing—or dealing with what other people thought about him. Emotional baggage. I was still carrying more of its weight than I liked with regard to him.

  In a raised voice, I said, “Well, if there’s nothing else, I need to finish cleaning up our breakfast dishes so I can get to the office.” I rose and reached toward her, offering my hand to shake.

  “Search warrant? What for?” I heard Jack say. He sounded tense, and my stomach clenched.

  Margaret gathered herself up, but I could tell she’d heard it, too.

  “Jack has a very interesting job.” I gestured toward our glass-paneled front door and walked to it, opening it for her. Just then, I heard my phone ringing in the bedroom, which I’d left open. Snowflake’s yips pierced the air and nearly my eardrums as she flew down the hall toward the intruding sound, her feet barely touching the carpet. My pulse pounded in my ears now, between Margaret and her questions, Snowflake’s racket, Jack ignoring my ill-advised love talk, and too many early morning phone calls.

  “I’m on my way,” Jack said into his phone, and he jogged past us to the bedroom. When he got to the door, he turned back. “Emily, we need to be out of here in five minutes.”

  “Aye, aye.” Margaret hadn’t moved, but I needed to. “Have a blessed day,” I said to her. I trotted off after Jack.

  “Well, alrighty, then,” she said, and slammed the door behind her.

  ***

  Jack rocketed at thirty-two miles per hour past a speed limit sign that said 30 on the way out of our neighborhood to Phil’s place, which is how I knew he was worried. Jack usually navigated like he was driving Miss Daisy, and he never broke the law, on the theory that police officers and judges lie in wait for defense attorneys to screw up. I’m hoping they don’t feel that way about paralegals who work for defense attorneys, too, or I’m toast.

  Our normal route was blocked by a wreck, and Jack swore, and backtracked, making several turns before swinging his Jeep Wrangler onto a street I had never driven, in all my years in Amarillo. There weren’t even street signs, at least not at the corners we’d passed. A wooden church loomed on the right.

  “Not a good omen,” Jack muttered.

  “What isn’t?”

  He pointed at an enormous Jesus painted on the front of the church, his beating heart outside his chest, his arms outstretched with palms down and fingers extended like claws. Jesus only had one eye, which seemed to track us as we passed him. He was strangely terrifying, in a kitschy way that was obviously a custom paint job, albeit one peeling with age.

  “We came to visit Clyde when I was nine. We drove past this, and I had nightmares for weeks.” Clyde Williams was the name partner of Williams & Associates, Jack’s law firm, and a dear friend of Jack’s father. He’d provided Jack a safe place to hide and lick his wounds when he was fleeing the pain of losing his wife and kids.

  I put my hand over my giggle. “Sounds scarring.”

  “I thought he was chasing after little kids. That night I saw him coming after me. Fell and broke my arm. Everyone said it was just a shadow.” His hairline lifted on his forehead. “Maybe.”

  I looked back at Scary Jesus. He was still watching us, but now it looked like he was chasing the human-sized white Easter Bunny balloon tethered to the sign of a used car lot we’d just passed.

  “Every time I’ve driven past it, something bad has happened. Once I had a wreck. Another time I lost a trial.”

  “Maybe we should sacrifice a fatted calf.”

  Jack’s eyes darted over to me; his lips curved into a grin.

  “What?”

  “Lamb.”

  “What about it?”

  “The fatted calf was killed to welcome home the prodigal son.”

  I sighed. “Close enough.”

  He turned back to the right at the next corner, and in two minutes we’d found our way to Phil’s.

  Phil actually lived in a suite of rooms that ran from front to back on the far side from the Get Your Kicks store. From the outside of the red brick one-story building, you would never know there was an apartment in it at all. On the far right, a snazzy new Get Your Kicks sign had just been installed earlier that week. There was a center entrance to the main open space in the building—the area the party the night before had been in. And then there was the entrance to Phil’s living quarters, all the way around the left side of the building, nearly to the back. The building itself dated back to the 1940s. The building and the neighborhood were pretty industrial and busy by day, but the side-entrance apartment was isolated and a little scary at night.

  We parked in front next to a line of police cars and got out. Phil was standing outside waiting for us in a ripped and stained, red Cheap Trick T-shirt that said Live at Budokan over jeans with frayed hems and a pair of flip-flop sandals. Thick stubble covered his chin and climbed partway up each of his cheeks. Dark shadows sagged under his dilated eyes. He looked like a man coming off a serious bender.

  He stepped toward us. “Thanks for coming.” His voice jittered in a two-pots-of-coffee sort of way.

  “Of course.” Jack shook his hand. “Who’s in charge?”

  “That guy from last night. What’s-his-name, the redhead.”

  “John Burrows.” I hugged Phil, who was at least two inches shorter than me. It was like hugging a fire hydrant. Thick, unyielding, with hard, protruding edges of elbows and knees and hips.

  “Right here,” John said, coming around the corner. He nodded at us but didn’t smile at me. Cop friends are always cops first when something’s going down.

  Jack’s phone rang. He glanced at it and handed it to me, then herded John off a few steps, all business, leaving me with Phil. “Can you show me the warrant, please?” I heard him say. The phone rang again.

  John had tucked the folded paper inside
his waistband, and he pulled the warrant out and handed it over to Jack. Jack’s phone continued to ring. Jack read, lips moving silently, and John turned so that Phil and I were included, if we wanted.

  I hurried to answer the call before it quit ringing, without looking at the caller ID. “Emily Bernal for Jack Holden. May I help you?”

  Phil leaned back against the building. I walked away a few steps.

  In my ear, a crotchety old voice barked, “Where’s Jack?”

  “Good morning, Clyde. Jack’s with a client. We’re onsite for a search. Can I help you?”

  “Betty forgot my keys.” Betty was his beleaguered personal nurse, and somehow I didn’t imagine it was Betty’s oversight at all, but I wasn’t dumb enough to say so. “Can’t get in the office.”

  “I’m so sorry. You know, your name’s on the lease. The Maxor Building management office will probably let you in.”

  “Never mind.”

  It wasn’t like Clyde to be so grouchy. “Are you okay, Clyde?”

  “Family problems, and now this. Will you be in Monday?”

  “Unless a client needs us. How about we call you if something comes up that prevents us from being in the office?”

  “Or Betty can just bring my keys next time.”

  I watched Phil as he lowered his face into his hands. “Tell Betty hello. Have a nice day, Clyde.”

  “Not that nice so far. Good-bye, Emily.” He ended the call.

  I joined Phil against the building. He looked awful. “Where’s Nadine?”

  “Home with the boys.”

  “Want me to call her?”

  He shook his head so hard his lips flapped. “No, no, no. No Nadine. I don’t want her to know about this.”

  “Phil, she’s going to want to—”