I reached behind me and across the back seat to scratch Snowflake behind the ears. “Sorry, princess. Your daddy is on the lam again, so you’re stuck with us.” I filled Wallace in on Jack’s suspicious behavior.
“If you’re really concerned and he’s not talking to you, then get your answers from someone else.”
“Like who?”
“Well, you told me that you forgot to ask John about whether they’d found the guy you had them sketch.”
“Yeah?”
“So ask him.” He picked up my phone. “Geez, honey, let me do it for you.” He pressed and held down the button until the beep-beep. “Text John Burrows on his cell. John, did you guys find out the name of the guy that bothered me at Phil’s party? The one in the sketch?”
Siri repeated his message. “Would you like to send this message?”
“Yes.” He smirked at me. “Next problem.”
“Well, he said he’s working on an old case.”
Wallace gave a long, withering sigh. Again, he activated Siri. “Text Judith. Judith, Jack asked me to have you send me the file on the old case he’s working on. He’s decided he wants my help on it.”
Siri repeated the message through the car sound system and asked whether we wanted to send it.
“Yes.” He threw his hands in the air. “Next problem.”
“Nadine hasn’t let her boys stay with me. I keep offering.” That came out of nowhere. I hadn’t even realized it was eating at me.
Wallace put his hand on my knee. “Honey, you live in a big house with a rich lawyer. She loves you, but it’s hard to send her boys to that, then bring ’em back to what she’s got.”
“She told you that?”
“Not word for word, but she hinted enough that I got the gist.”
“I feel terrible.”
“Don’t feel terrible. Just get Phil off the hook. And I’ll talk to Nadine. Encourage her to let you help more.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“How’s your training going?”
He flexed. In an Arnold Schwarzenegger impression, he said, “I am the Ironman.” Then he relaxed and said, “I’ve got to get Ethan into it. I think he’s getting jealous of the time I spend away from him.”
Maybe I should take Ethan to coffee and we could commiserate with each other. “Don’t make the poor guy do that.”
“Well, maybe not.” Wallace ran his hand over the dash of the rental car. “I can’t believe you rented a car just to get the other cleaned.”
Wallace was germophobic, so much so that I was afraid he’d never get back in my car if he learned the truth about the chicken. I’d told him I was getting it detailed and left it at that. I crossed my fingers on my left hand. “There were some bad stains in it.” I’d driven by to check on progress that morning and found my seats and carpets out and undergoing treatment. When I asked how it was going, I’d gotten a frown and a noncommittal answer about multiple steps in an uncertain process.
“Not enough people take good care of their interiors.”
I thought back to the horrific smell that had knocked me over. “I couldn’t agree more.”
“Now, remind me how this little thing we’re doing today is a CPS matter, so it’s fresh in my memory when my boss calls to chew my ass out for not coming back from lunch.” Wallace had pulled a wet wipe from a mini-pack in his pocket and was disinfecting all surfaces in the rental car that he could possibly come into contact with.
“You’re taking a complaint from me about the Hodges, then doing some recon. I’d leave out the trip to Sanford, if I were you.”
He wrinkled his nose. “I’d have skipped the trip to Sanford if I’d had a choice.”
I shot him a look. “You did have a choice.”
“Not in the mood you’re in. Somebody has to keep you from doing something stupid, and I’m the only somebody around. Plus Jack made me promise to help him keep an eye on you.”
“What?”
“We’re worried. You . . . get into scrapes.”
“Oh, please. All I’m doing is going to interview a witness for Phil’s case.”
“Yeah, and what if I hadn’t come? Would any laws have been broken in today’s excursion?”
I squirmed a little in my seat. “Impossible to know in advance.”
He snorted. “Right.”
I turned left onto 687, blinkerless. Jack would have mentioned it. Wallace let it slide.
“How about you finagle Jack and me a visit with Betsy this Saturday? We’d love to take her to the park. There’s an Easter egg hunt.”
“Oh, honey. You know this never goes well.”
I pressed my lips together and gripped the steering wheel with both hands.
Wallace shook his head. “Fine.” He pulled out his phone and a minute later he was speaking. “Hello, Mary Alice. This is Wallace Gray with CPS. How are you?”
A series of sounds came from the phone, but I couldn’t distinguish her words.
“I’m sure they do keep you very busy, and we appreciate all you do. Listen, I was calling to arrange a date to the park for Betsy this weekend with Jack Holden and Emily Bernal.”
The sounds grew louder, and he held the phone away from his ear, his eyes closed. “Well, you canceled the last several visits without notice. I was hoping that if I chaperoned we could make it happen this time.”
More sounds, shrill.
“I understand you have reservations, but let’s say I pick Betsy up at ten a.m. See you then.” He clicked off.
“Was that a yes?” I eased off the accelerator as we came to the Sanford city limits.
“Sort of.”
Joe’s Liquor and Smokes wasn’t hard to find, since it was on the main thoroughfare. I hadn’t been sure why a town with a population of 181 needed its own liquor store until we got there. It was desolate, despite its proximity to the popular Lake Meredith recreation area and Canadian River bottoms. Most of the buildings bore signs for businesses that had long since vacated their premises. The residential area—if you could call it that—was bleak. A few scraggly trees and scrubby lawns were the only vegetation around boxy houses that had seen better days, and sagging mobile homes that had never had any.
Sanford wasn’t like most small Texas towns with their town squares anchored by imposing courthouses/municipal buildings surrounded by lawns and trees. Businesses or ghosts of businesses past usually rimmed the square facing in. The smallest of towns at least had a central business district with a strip of old brick or stone structures lining both sides of the main drag. Not Sanford, though. Sanford had a few scattered buildings, several wooden and dilapidated, two brick and crumbling, and some metal and barnlike.
Joe’s building fell into the barnlike category. It was eleven o’clock and there was some meager light visible through the glass front door, so I pulled to a stop in the dirt lot in front of it.
“Wow.” I put the Mustang in park.
“Ugh,” Wallace said.
We got out with Snowflake on a leash with Wallace. I saw immediately why the light from the store was so dim. A heavy film of dirt and disintegrating stickers obscured the door, broken up only by a few streaks where rain or some other liquid had hit, spattered, and dripped. I scanned the offering of reading material on the door quickly. Standard liquor store fare about drinking responsibly and criminal penalties for buying for minors, interspersed with T&A beer ads.
Wallace opened the door. “After you.”
I curtsied, holding out a pretend skirt over my boots and holey jeans.
The lights in the store blinded me, and I shielded my eyes. Fluorescents buzzed like bug zappers and neon flickered in a cavernous interior. A checkout stand stood to the left of the front door, and nearly empty coolers lined one-third of the wall to the right, with colorful twelve-packs of Bud Light, Coors Light, Miller Lite, and Lone Star looking lonesome except for a few boxes of wine and bottles of MD 20/20 and malt liquor knocking around. Six or seven
aisles of half-filled shelves stretched down the middle of the space, with plenty of room leftover to ride a horse down the empty left side of the building. Or three Clydesdales abreast.
“Good morning,” I chirped, searching for a human presence.
Wallace leaned in to my ear. “This place makes me long for my old Prozac prescription.”
I elbowed him.
“Can I he’p you?” a woman’s voice said. It sounded like she’d missed her morning coffee or woken up on the wrong side of the bed. Or both.
I turned toward the checkout counter, and the source of the voice. A tiny woman with waist-length white-blonde hair sat on a stool in the shadow of the wall, filing her talons, and she didn’t look up at us.
I walked to the counter. An array of energy shots and herbal male enhancement remedies vied for prominence. I smiled in the woman’s direction. “Hello, yes, I’m looking for Cecilia.”
She rolled her eyes up to look at me without lifting her head. “Why?” She had so much eye shadow on her lids I was surprised she had the strength to hold them open. Luckily, she’d propped them up underneath with a heavy stripe of black liner.
“Because her ex-husband is in a coma, and I need to talk to her.”
She slid off the stool, which made her shorter. When she moved closer, I saw creases in her pancaked makeup. “What’s someone your age doing with braces, and who the hell are you?”
Not someone who’d ever buy beer from your rude butt. There was not much to like about this woman so far, and I heard Wallace cough behind me. “I’m with his attorney’s office. Williams and Associates. Emily Bernal.” I stuck out my hand and swung my head toward Wallace. “And this is Wallace Gray.”
She put cold, limp fingers in my hand. It was like shaking a partially thawed Mrs. Paul’s fish filet. “I’m Cecilia.”
I tried to act mildly surprised. “Oh, that’s great. Phil’s mother said I could find you here.”
“Yeah, well, I’m working.”
I cleared my throat, dangerously close to laughing. “I understand, and please feel free to carry on with that, and of course I’ll wait if you need to help the customers.” I waved around the empty store, widening my eyes in an attempt to look sincere.
She backed up to the stool and worked her way on, despite her tight jeans. She resumed filing her nails, nodding at me.
“So, I don’t know how much you’ve heard, if anything, about Phil’s situation—”
“That he killed Dennis and is close to dead himself?”
My eyebrows shot up almost to my hairline, giving my forehead a good stretch. “That he was arrested and charged with Dennis’s murder, but we don’t believe he did it. And he’s in stable condition, but still in a diabetic coma.”
“Yeah, well, I always told him that the diabetes was gonna kill him. He didn’t take care of himself, you know.”
I pictured Phil and Nadine, and what I’d seen of his lifestyle. Maybe he’d partied in the past, but he and Nadine were like an old married couple lately, albeit an old married couple that was in the sex business. I decided to change the subject. “The DA says a witness heard Phil and Dennis arguing the night Dennis died, and that it was because Dennis slept with Phil’s wife.”
She pursed her lips and stopped filing. “Isn’t Phil married to some heifer now?” She shook her head, rolling her eyes. “Dennis didn’t have any trouble getting women. Hot women. He wasn’t into big girls, if you know what I mean.”
The tips of my ears burned, and I turned to Wallace. He shook his head, and I knew he was right, even if I didn’t like it. I reined in my desire to defend Nadine. “Did you ever sleep with Dennis?”
She licked her teeth and her mouth smacked. “That’s none of your business.”
“Probably not. But Phil’s fiancée didn’t sleep with Dennis, and we’re trying to defend Phil on a murder charge. So it would help if we knew whether they could have been fighting over you.”
Her head tilted to the side. “Let me think.”
Wallace, who had moved forward to stand beside me, stepped on my foot long and hard. I felt his body shake just slightly and knew he was laughing.
“Take your time,” I wheezed.
Her lips moved while she concentrated. Snowflake sniffed around the base of the checkout counter. The hum and intermittent buzzing of the signs was the only sound. Finally, she shrugged. “Probably, but I can’t remember. What would Phil care, anyway? We both slept with other people, and it was never a big deal. It had to be over that new woman, what’d you say her name was?”
“Nadine.”
“Yeah.” Her eyes glazed for a moment, then she lifted a fist in the air. “Hey, you know, I saw Dennis with some skinny bitch last month, out at Lake Meredith. He was calling her honey and baby and shit, hanging on her, acting like he was real into her. Maybe it was the other way around. Maybe Phil slept with her.” She reached under the counter and pulled out a pack of Kools and a lighter.
“What was her name?”
“I dunno. We weren’t introduced.” She lit up her cigarette and dragged on it.
“Can you describe her?”
“Real skinny. Pale. Blondish-brown hair in a ponytail.”
“Short? Tall?”
“Dunno. She was sitting.”
I changed tracks. “How did Phil and Dennis get along when you were with Phil?”
“Great. They were tight. Had been since I’d known them, and we go way back, back to junior high. They always dreamed of going into business together someday. Said they were going to rise up.” She blew smoke.
“Were they in business together?”
“Not when Phil and me were married, but who knows.”
As she answered my last question, a potbellied man with thick hair on the sides of his head and none on top entered through the front door. He stared at us, then glanced at the counter, where no merchandise was displayed. Cecilia drew in a breath so quick it was almost a gasp. Wallace saw him, too, and we shared a glance. She stubbed out her cigarette in an ashtray she pulled from under the counter, hands trembling.
“Hey, boss, I was just telling them no dogs—”
In his best “straight” voice, Wallace said, “I think I’ll stick with Miller Lite.” He walked to the case and grabbed a twelve-pack. “Want anything else, hon?”
“No, dear, but thank you.” I picked up a bottle of something labeled Horny Goat Weed. “On second thought, maybe some of this?” I said to Cecilia.
Wallace set the beer on the counter by the horny goat weed. “I’ll slip out with the dog. Thank you.”
Cecilia rang us up under the watchful eye of the newcomer. As I exited through the door, I heard him ask, “Who were they?”
“Out-of-towners,” she answered, and then the door closed.
Wallace buckled himself in and I put Snowflake in the backseat and myself in the front.
Wallace said in his normal voice, “Nadine is one serious upgrade for Phil.”
“Cecilia was a piece of work,” I agreed.
I had received two texts. The first was from Judith: I’ll talk to Jack about whether I should send the file. It took me a second to remember that Wallace had sent her a text and what it said. Grrr. The second was from John Burrows. All it said was Burt Wilde. My blood boiled. Burt Wilde was the name of the man that had talked to me at Phil’s party, the one who had asked me to tell Jack he hadn’t done it, whatever “it” was. Jack said that the police hadn’t been able to identify them.
Was it possible Jack had lied to me?
“Check this out.” I handed Wallace my phone.
“The plot thickens.”
I pulled away from the curb with a little too much acceleration and drove a block to make a U-turn. As I wound the steering wheel, I hit the brakes. “Wallace, look at that!” I pointed to a sign that read MIGHTY IS HIS WORD, COME JOIN GOD’S ARMY WITH SISTER FURMAN, 3 MILES, with an arrow pointing down a side street. “Is that the same church as the one in Amarillo?”
&nb
sp; “What the hell?” he said. “I didn’t know there were more of them.” He grinned at me. “Potential foster parents.”
“Potential psychos, more like it,” I countered. I pulled out my phone and snapped a picture, then turned back toward Amarillo, passing Cecilia’s glaring boss standing outside Joe’s Liquor and Smokes as I did.
Chapter Fourteen
Screams of joy intermingled with shouts and laughter at Southwest Park. Kids dressed in every pastel in the rainbow sprinted around the grassy apron to the playground, swinging baskets and slinging out the colorful eggs they’d worked so hard to find. Parents snapped photos, grandmas and grandpas beamed, and organizers herded small bodies that strayed from the egg-hunting area. My traitorous mouth salivated from the delicious smell of the barbecue being unloaded from a delivery van and onto a long row of tables covered in pink, green, and yellow paper tablecloths; it was so easy to forget I was a vegetarian at moments like this.
Jack and I stood on the outside looking in, together, sort of. I’d brought him mostly up-to-date that morning on all that had happened during the week, and he’d listened, asked questions, and continued to be sweet and concerned about the horrible incident at Thompson Park, apologizing again about missing our class and being so distracted. But what he hadn’t been was forthcoming. I was stewing on it, and we’d stopped talking, which Jack treated like companionable silence and which I considered at best a stalemate.
A tall black woman with shoulder-length hair crouched to help a little girl with a spilled basket. Beside them, a dark-skinned man with a shaved head held the hand of a slightly older girl, while a bored tween fiddled with a phone behind him.
“Alan, Janelle,” I called out.
Hell to Pay (What Doesn’t Kill You, #7): An Emily Romantic Mystery Page 14