Distortion (Moonlighters Series)

by Terri Blackstock

  “The sooner the better. Today.”

  Juliet wanted to beg for another day, another year, another life, but another part of her longed to get this over with.

  “When we questioned her,” Blue said, “she didn’t admit to the affair or any involvement outside the office. Let her know you’re not in the dark about what Bob was doing. Tell her you want to give them what they want so they’ll leave you alone.”

  At least that was true, Juliet thought.

  “Remember she’s probably connected to some pretty scary people,” Blue said. “Don’t say anything that might make them think of you as a danger. Tipping her off that you’re working with us would be dangerous.”

  “Great. Just what I wanted to hear.”

  “But if anything goes wrong, we’ll move in. We’ll be listening to all of it, only seconds away.”

  “Just remember,” Juliet said, “there’s a baby in that house. I don’t want to do anything that hurts the baby.”

  “We don’t expect anything to go wrong,” Darren said. “The baby will be safe.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Amber Williams had a patio home with a French-style courtyard at the front, closed off by a decorative iron gate that probably stood open all the time. Plants in colorful pots dotted the stained concrete surrounding a wrought-iron table.

  Juliet stood at the front door, staring at the brass knocker, trying to decide if she was doing the right thing. She glanced back toward her car. She had driven Bob’s BMW, so that if she had to follow Amber later, her van wouldn’t be recognized. Somewhere nearby, FBI agents waited to rush in if she ran into trouble. She hoped they wouldn’t let her down.

  Gritting her teeth, she knocked hard on the door, then rang the bell twice. A dog barked, and she heard a woman’s voice, then the lock being unbolted.

  The door came open. Their eyes met. Juliet forgot to breathe.

  Amber looked startled at first, but quickly seemed to get her bearings. The little dog kept yapping, staying back as if afraid of her. Juliet’s lips felt dry.

  “Hello,” Amber said, her voice low, raspy, seductive even now. She raked her fingers through her platinum hair. Of course it was platinum. The woman was a walking cliché. Size zero designer jeans, four-inch heels, enhanced cheekbones, plumped lips, caked eyelashes. Her grief hadn’t put a dent in her personal grooming.

  “I’m Juliet Cole.”

  Amber lifted her chin. “I know who you are.”

  “Bob Cole’s wife of fifteen years.” She had to say it, had to let the woman know that he had chosen to stay with her all these years.

  “Got it. What do you want?”

  “I want to talk to you about your relationship with my husband.”

  The woman stood frozen for a moment, then she exhaled loudly and stepped back from the door. “Might as well come in,” she said.

  Juliet stepped over the threshold. As Amber closed the door, Juliet glanced back at it, realizing that she was committing to this. The dog sniffed around her feet, tail wagging, as she entered the living area. Funny thing. Her family had a Yorkie too. Bob had been in love with the breed and had insisted on one for the kids. Brody was now a member of their family. Of course he would choose one for his other family as well.

  A baby sat in a Pack ’n Play in the living area, chattering and banging on a toy. Juliet stepped closer. The child looked about nine months old, and yes, he was the spitting image of Abe, who was the spitting image of Bob.

  She felt suddenly dizzy. “Can I sit down?”

  “Sure,” Amber said in a dull voice. “Whatever.” She picked the baby up out of the play yard.

  Juliet fought the rabid feelings escalating about her husband. “How old is he?”

  “Nine months.”

  She counted back. Where was Bob nine months ago? Nine months before that?

  “I don’t guess I need to ask . . .”

  Amber’s face grew tighter. “He’s Bob’s.” The words were delivered with a knife’s edge. “Bob was with me when he was born. He was a great father.”

  Juliet couldn’t speak.

  “So you were with him when he died?” Amber asked.

  Juliet’s chin stiffened. “When he was murdered.”

  Amber bit her lip and pressed her forehead against her baby’s head. “So . . . how did you know about me?”

  “I know a lot of things.” Juliet wanted to wilt, to run out, to burst into tears. But she wouldn’t show this woman any weakness.

  Amber set the baby down, stood slowly back up, and crossed her arms. “What kind of things?”

  “All sorts of things,” Juliet said. “But I’m not here to tell you what I know. I’m here for you to tell me what you know.”

  Amber’s eyes narrowed, as if surprised at her tone and her attitude. Had Bob told her that she was a wimp? A weeping willow? A doormat? “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, I think you do.”

  Amber stared at her for a long moment. When she didn’t speak, Juliet tried again.

  “I want to give them what they want so they’ll leave me and my kids alone. Tell me what it is they want.”

  Amber’s plump lips parted. Juliet wondered if Bob had paid for the filler. “Again . . . I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Juliet’s heart pounded so hard her sternum hurt. Of course Amber wasn’t going to spill her guts, but all the feds needed was proof that she’d lied to them. “So . . . just tell me. His trip to the Bahamas. Was it with you, or was that someone else?”

  Amber breathed a laugh. “No, no one else. There was only me.”

  “And me.” Juliet tried to focus on the satisfaction of knowing she’d opened a crack, rather than the rage at Amber’s amazing arrogance. She hoped her admission was enough for the feds, but Amber’s attitude still stung.

  “True,” Amber said. “Too bad that wasn’t resolved before he died. He was going to ask you for a divorce.”

  Again, it was the Fourth of July in Juliet’s brain. Shock and awe. Bombs bursting in air. “How many years did that keep you hanging on?”

  Amber didn’t like that. She pulled her chin up and stiffened her lower lip. “You should have seen him in the Bahamas with me,” she said. “He was so relaxed. We spent every minute together when we went away. It was great for him to have a break from the mediocrity. And the noise.”

  Juliet let out a slow, controlled breath. How dare she refer to the noise? Did she mean her children? Bob’s children?

  As if Amber had summoned that noise, the baby began to cry. Amber didn’t respond right away. Juliet looked uncomfortably at the child, wishing his mother would pick him up. Finally, Amber clomped over to him and swept him back up. “I need to change his diaper. I’ll be right back.”

  Juliet waited, wondering if she was going into the back to call someone. Would Amber’s cohorts sweep in and execute Juliet—the same way they’d had Bob executed—before the FBI could respond?

  Her heart racing, she looked around the room. Her gaze fell on the pictures on the mantel. Amber and the baby. Amber alone, striking a Kardashian pose. Bob and the baby. He was smiling like a proud daddy.

  Juliet wanted to throw up, but she forced herself to take a deep breath.

  On the coffee table in front of her lay a photo album. Leaning forward, she opened it and flipped quickly through.

  Toward the back of the album, she found a picture of Bob and Amber at a party somewhere, Amber’s shoulder thrust forward as if she’d taken the picture herself with her phone. On the next page, Amber again in a group of people, wearing the same outfit. No Bob this time. She scanned the faces, looking for anyone she knew. Who else knew about this affair?

  And then she saw another familiar face.

  Leonard Miller.

  Juliet sucked in a breath so hard that she coughed. Rallying, she pulled out her phone and snapped shots of both pictures, then stuffed her phone away and studied it again. No, it couldn’t be Miller. Bob would never have
been at a party with that man—or if he had, he’d have told Michael. He knew that Miller was a murderer and drug dealer. That he had killed Joe—Cathy’s fiancé. That they had been searching for him since he vanished after his acquittal.

  She heard Amber’s heels clicking on the hardwood, so she closed the album and sat back. Amber came back in, this time without the baby. “It’s time for you to go.”

  Juliet couldn’t wait to get out. “Tell them I want to work with them. I’ll give them whatever they want.”

  Amber straightened, and her eyebrows lifted. Juliet would have bet money that the woman couldn’t move her forehead. She waited for Amber to say something else . . . anything that the FBI could use.

  But Amber said nothing. Juliet’s mind raced, searching for some comment that would needle her, make her talk. But that picture hammered in her mind. She couldn’t think of anything else.

  “Will you tell them?”

  Amber didn’t answer. She just wet her puffed lips and headed for the door. Juliet followed her. Did the woman always wear heels when she was at home alone, taking care of her child? Did she dress up like this when she was in grief?

  Maybe she did. Maybe that was why Bob was attracted to her. Suddenly Juliet felt frumpy and abandoned.

  Amber opened the door, and Juliet stepped out.

  “Thanks for coming by. I’d always wondered if you were like he said. Glad I had the chance to see for myself.”

  “You were exactly what I expected too.” Unflinching, Juliet met her eyes, noting the strain of deep insecurities and failed expectations, the biting misery. Juliet reached to the back of her heart for forgiveness, because she knew it was required of her. But she couldn’t quite grasp it. She turned and walked away.

  CHAPTER 25

  Tears blurred Juliet’s vision, but she managed to drive to the convenience store parking lot where the agents had told her to meet them. Their van wasn’t there yet, so she sat for a moment, waiting. People walked in and out of the store, and an employee stood outside smoking. She didn’t want them to see her fall apart, so she went inside, cut through the store, and hurried to the restroom.

  She locked the door and stood at the mirror. No wonder Bob had sought out someone else. She hadn’t been taking care of herself. She was getting old. She didn’t look twenty-five anymore. After two kids, her body wasn’t as tight and fit as it had once been. She’d been way too consumed with busyness and church work, and she hadn’t given her husband the attention and adoration he needed.

  She ripped the wire off her back and untangled the microphone cord. Gripping it in her hand, she backed against the wall and slid down it as grief overtook her. How had Bob justified cheating on his wife? Had he told himself that she didn’t understand him? That they had grown apart?

  If they had, it was because of his frequent trips away, trips that hadn’t been what he’d told Juliet they were.

  And now his possible connection with Leonard Miller, who’d murdered her sister’s fiancé, Michael’s brother. Leonard Miller, the archenemy of their entire family. Had Bob known where he was all this time?

  Oh, God, what are you doing?

  On the bathroom wall, someone had written in a black Sharpie “Romans 8:28.” Ironic, she thought, that someone who wanted to spread God’s Word had used vandalism to do it.

  But the words of that verse were written on her heart: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

  All things. She certainly qualified as someone who loved the Lord and was called according to his purpose. But how was God going to pull anything good out of a cheating, murdered husband with a criminal history and underworld connections? Out of killers who were bearing down on them? How would she protect her children when she could barely think?

  He cheated on me. He lied about everything. I don’t even know who this man was.

  Had some part of her known that there was someone else? She searched through the dark chambers of her mind and heart, looking for any sign. But there wasn’t one. She had trusted him because she believed him to be a man of God.

  Was anything how it seemed? Was everything a lie?

  She pulled her knees to her chest and buried her face in her arms, letting out her grief. What was she going to do? How would she survive this?

  After a long while, someone knocked on the bathroom door. “Just a minute!” she called out. She got up, pulled in a breath, bent over the sink, and washed her face. She wiped it on a paper towel, then opened the door.

  Special Agent Blue stood there, her gray eyes sharp. “I thought you might be in here. Are you okay?”

  The humane question struck Juliet as funny, but she couldn’t manage to laugh. “Yeah, I’m fine. Here.” She thrust the microphone pack into Blue’s hands. “We need to talk privately. I know it sounds like I didn’t get much, but I saw something important.”

  Blue glanced back into the store. “All right.”

  “Let’s meet at Michael Hogan’s office.” Juliet gave her the address. “I’ll head there now.”

  “We’re right behind you. And, Juliet? You did fine. It helped.”

  Juliet got back into her car and tried to pull herself together. Before turning the ignition, she texted Cathy and copied Michael on it.

  Important news. Meet me @ office ASAP.

  As she drove, her mind worked the puzzle. Was it possible Bob had been at a party with Leonard Miller and not recognized him? Miller had a shaved head with a tattoo on his skull when he was arrested for Joe’s murder. Maybe Bob hadn’t recognized him with hair. But Bob wasn’t stupid. Miller’s face had been all over the local news for months during the trial. If Bob was at a party where Miller was present, he had to know it was him.

  She thought back to that time after Joe’s murder two years before, when she had worried incessantly about her sister. Bob had seemed detached and disinterested as always, but she’d told herself that he was just busy, that it wasn’t his immediate family and that he was doing the best he could.

  But maybe that hadn’t been it at all. Maybe Bob had seemed detached because he was involved in the whole mess.

  The idea nauseated her. How could he have been close to that scum? How could he have stayed quiet all these months? If Bob knew where Leonard Miller was, and knew that he was still involved in drug trafficking and distribution, Joe’s murderer could have been arrested and finally taken off the streets.

  What did it all mean?

  Terror hammered in her chest, and she slammed her hands on the steering wheel as she drove. “God, are you listening? Are you watching? Do you see this? Do you care?”

  She had served him faithfully, even when her pastor father had abandoned their family to run off with his secretary when she was just a teen. The church that had previously been like family to them had evicted Juliet and her mother and siblings from the parsonage, leaving them homeless. During all that, she had been the one to remind her brother and sisters that God hadn’t changed. That Jesus was still faithful even when his people had forsaken them. That they couldn’t let their circumstances dictate their beliefs.

  For so long, she’d counted herself among the blessed, among those who had been granted peace for obedience, mercy for service, prosperity for generosity. God had rewarded her for serving him. But now the family curses seemed to be rearing their heads, and those blessings seemed as fragile as children’s bubbles. Maybe they weren’t blessings at all.

  For Bob’s crimes, he’d faced a bullet. Now his sins were being exposed. The consequences were sure to fall on his wife and children. Once again, the man she’d believed to be godly and faithful had turned out to be a traitor.

  “It’s not fair, Lord. My boys didn’t do anything to deserve this.”

  With that thought, she parked next to one of the defunct gas pumps in front of Michael’s converted office. Cathy’s car was already there, and the unmarked FBI van pulled in behind her. Juliet tried to rein in
her anger and grief. There was work to be done. She had to focus on facts, not emotion.

  Special Agent Blue got out of the van as Juliet locked her door. “Who else is here?”

  “Cathy, my attorney,” Juliet said. “And Michael Hogan. I want them both to hear this. What I learned impacts Michael too.”

  Blue didn’t comment, but she didn’t look happy as she and Darren followed Juliet in.

  CHAPTER 26

  Cathy could see that her sister was distraught, and it made her livid. They’d forced Juliet to do the unthinkable—face her husband’s mistress. Juliet was going to have a nervous breakdown if Cathy didn’t intervene. Immunity or not, enough was enough.

  But Juliet seemed stronger than Cathy had expected. “As you heard,” she was saying to Special Agents Blue and Clement, “I didn’t get much out of Amber. She didn’t concede to any of the trafficking.”

  “Then the trip was wasted?” Cathy bit out. “You had to suffer through that for nothing?”

  “It wasn’t for nothing,” Agent Clement said. “She admitted to the affair and the trip to the Bahamas. That proves she lied to us when we questioned her.”

  “She took the baby to change his diaper,” Juliet said, “and when she did, I looked through a photo album on her coffee table.” She looked at Cathy, then Michael, her eyes round with sorrow. “I saw a photo of her and Bob at a party, and another one taken at the same party. Bob wasn’t in that second one, but you won’t believe who was.”

  Cathy frowned. “Who?”

  Juliet swallowed hard, and her eyes welled. “Leonard Miller.”

  Michael sucked in a breath, and Cathy came out of her seat. “What?”

  “Yes. They weren’t together in the picture, but they were at the same party. Miller had hair covering that hideous tattoo on the back of his head, so he looked different, but I’d know that face anywhere.”

  Blue looked at Clement. “Hold on here,” she said. “You all clearly know who Leonard Miller is, but you need to clue us in.”

  “I remember who he is,” Darren Clement said.