by Dana Mentink
And now that this case it almost over, you’re settled, too, she reminded herself.
But she didn’t feel settled just then.
Marco guided her out the door with a hand on the small of her back. Maybe meeting Anna Tooley would let her put things to rest and she could ease back into her life with Tracy and her memories of Rick.
Unless Rico wasn’t really dead. Candace couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow the case was not quite closed. The only lead they hadn’t followed to the end was Rico’s unusual protectiveness of Kevin Tooley, and she felt the answer lay just out of reach. Was that the root of her unease? Just a case unfinished? Or was it the knowledge that she would soon have to say goodbye to Marco?
Brushing the feelings aside, she climbed back onto the bike and crammed the helmet over her curls, wondering if the next stop would bring answers or simply more questions.
EIGHTEEN
It didn’t matter what her reasons were, particularly. Marco was content to accompany Candace to Anna Tooley’s apartment, though he wasn’t convinced it would provide any further clarity. After nearly getting caught in the middle of a gang shootout, a quiet ride along city streets was good for their nerves, however. She needed to follow through and he was pleased to be the one standing next to her when she did it. He’d savor that privilege.
They arrived at a well-tended apartment building, not close to the beach but near enough that he could hear the crash of the distant waves. There was no front desk help, so they found Anna Tooley the old-fashioned way, by locating her initials on the stacked mailboxes.
“A.T., Unit 114, first floor,” Marco read. He hurried to keep up with Candace, who was setting a quick pace. His body had not yet recovered from the earlier situation at the clinic. His muscles reminded him he wasn’t a twentysomething anymore. As usual, he ignored them, and caught up with her when she knocked on the door. After several moments she knocked again.
The door was eventually opened by a young girl in a T-shirt and jeans, who looked them over with a suspicious eye.
“Yeah?”
“Hi,” Candace said, introducing herself. “I’m looking for Anna Tooley. Is this her apartment?”
“It was.”
“Was? Did she move?”
“Uh-uh,” the girl said, chewing a piece of gum. “She died.”
Candace let out a breath. “Oh no.”
“When?” Marco said.
“Two days ago.” She flicked a glance at him. “Who are you two, anyway? Family? Bill collectors?”
“No, we are investigators. We’re looking into her daughter’s death,” Candace said.
The girl raised an eyebrow. “Yolanda died a long time ago. Got run over, I heard. Mrs. Tooley didn’t like to talk about it ’cuz it made her cry.”
“Are you family?” Candace asked.
“Nah. I work here at the apartments. I’m supposed to clean and help pack up. Her nephew was here yesterday, starting to box everything, but then he had to leave. Boss wants to rent out the unit as soon as he can.” She blew out a breath. “Guy’s got no love for anything but the dollar.”
“Would it be okay if we took a quick look around?” Candace said.
The girl shook her head. “Mrs. Tooley was a nice lady. She used to bake cookies for me sometimes. I don’t think it’s right to let people paw through her stuff.”
“We won’t, I promise,” Candace said. “We won’t touch anything.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Mrs. Tooley lost her daughter,” Marco said, “and they never punished the person who killed her. Don’t you think she would want us to keep looking for justice?”
Two more chews on the gum and the girl stepped aside and opened the door.
“Okay,” she said. “Fifteen minutes and you don’t touch a thing. I’m going to stay here and watch, too.”
“Thank you,” Candace said, stepping into the apartment.
He followed her into a tiny front room with an adjoining kitchen. Cardboard boxes were stacked on the sofa and the walls were bare of any adornment except for an old eight-by-ten photograph of a woman he recognized from his research as Yolanda Tooley. She was dark haired, with a confident grin that he liked. It was probably her high school graduation picture, so she was maybe eighteen. So much promise, then to be murdered by someone who hadn’t even stopped.
He turned away.
Candace walked down the hall to the bedroom, which was no more than a closet-sized space, almost full due to the twin bed. He didn’t want to squeeze his bulk in with Candace already there, so he stayed in the doorway.
She stopped to look at a dusty dome of glass, under which was a dried flower and Yolanda’s funeral notice. He heard Candace pull in a long, shaky breath, then her body slumped, head bowed, and he realized she was fighting tears. The day had caught up with her, or maybe the whole month.
“Hey,” he said softly, pressing forward in spite of the tight space. “Is this too much right now? We can go.”
She turned and buried her face in his chest. “It’s just that I know how she felt. I have the pressed flowers from Rick’s funeral.”
He didn’t have words, so he rubbed circles on her back.
“They’re just old flowers, dried up petals, but you hold on to them because they remind you of what you lost.” She sniffed and looked up at him with tearstains on her face. “Why do I do that? Remember the sad things? Rick and I had so many amazing moments, so much happiness. Why can’t I just remember the joy and be glad for it?”
Marco cradled her close. “Seems like joy always has a little pain mixed in here on earth. I’ve always thought...” He trailed off. “Never mind.”
The tears gave her irises the shimmer of ocean water before a storm.
“Thought what?”
He felt suddenly uncomfortable under her gaze. “That God gives us only a taste of joy to show us what’s ahead, to remind us He’s got something better.”
She stared at him, a wistful expression on her face. “He’s given me plenty of joy, but sometimes I let the pain push it away.” She looked again at the desiccated flower. “Anna’s heart was broken. She lost her child. I think about Tracy...” The tears pooled again. “I’m not sure I could survive that.”
She cried for a while, the tears soaking his shirtfront, every one precious to him. He didn’t say anything, just held her and savored the moments spooling out between them.
The girl poked her head in. “Five more minutes and then you have to go. My boss is coming back and I don’t want him to find out I let you in.”
Marco let go of Candace and nodded. “Thanks.”
The girl’s look softened as she took in Candace’s tears. “I think it’s sad, too.” After a second of hesitation she added, “In the top drawer there’s an album that hasn’t been packed yet. You can look at it if you want to.” She retreated.
Candace opened the drawer and took out a small photo album of four-by-six-inch pictures, the pages brittle with age. She sat on the bed and he stood next to her, crammed against the wall in order to peer over her shoulder.
Moments of the Tooleys’ lives unfolded before him, starting with a young Anna Tooley smiling on her wedding day next to a tall man with the same dark hair as Yolanda. Then came the baby pictures, first a boy, then a grinning, roly-poly little girl with her fingers in her mouth. Those snapshots gave way to various elementary and high school pictures. Following that series there was a gap, until the photo of Yolanda holding her own baby, Kevin. That one brought Marco up short. What had happened to get this chubby-cheeked infant to the point where he would gun down another human being at a gas station?
Marco considered what his own book might look like. A serious child, he’d been told he’d always been quiet but active, more at ease doing any kind of physical labor
than staying still.
Fast-forward three and a half decades and he was a battle-hardened ex-soldier, and the softest, sweetest part of his world was sitting at his side. He craved more than anything to hang on to the moment, to keep her there beside him, the woman who made him try to be patient, sensitive, humble, compassionate. Candace Gallagher, the best part of his world.
She is not yours and never will be, his heart reminded him in brutal fashion.
He looked again at Anna’s book. She’d lost her husband, her daughter, and then her grandson to jail. Joy and pain were on display before them in the aging photos. Joy and pain.
The very last page held one more photo, torn at the corner. In it, Anna posed with Yolanda, both smiling at the toddler in the younger woman’s arms. The man standing next to Yolanda had his hand draped playfully over her shoulders with the affection of a sibling. Her brother, the man who must have raised Kevin after she died...
Marco looked closer, incredulous.
Candace stared in horror.
“I can’t believe it,” she whispered.
He took the photo album from her hands and returned it to the drawer before they hurried from the room.
“Did you find something?” the girl called.
“Oh, yeah,” Marco said grimly. “We sure did.”
* * *
Candace made sure she got into the PCI office a step before Marco. He’d been dangerously tense all the way back to Coronado and she knew his anger was rising from a simmer to a full boil.
Betrayed.
They’d all been betrayed and nearly killed, and Marco was not a person to take that kind of thing calmly. Her own hands were shaking as they burst into the office.
They found Baxter, the office custodian, emptying the recycle bin in the main office, where Donna was on the phone. JeanBeth poked her head out of the conference room at their arrival, Lon next to her, carrying a carton of copy paper which he immediately put down as he took in Marco and Candace’s expressions.
Marco rounded on Baxter. “You’ve been informing Jay Rico all along, haven’t you?”
Donna hung up and shot to her feet. “What’s going on?”
Baxter started. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do,” Marco snapped. “You’re Kevin Tooley’s uncle. You got the job here shortly after Kevin was arrested, and you’ve been feeding info to Rico about our every move so he could terrorize Candace out of testifying.”
“No, I would never—”
“You can’t lie your way out of this one,” Marco said, “so save the excuses. You listened in on the phone call about the courthouse, and when Dr. Dan was telling us about the clinic. You fed all that to your pal Jay Rico and it almost got Candace killed.”
Baxter suddenly came alive, mouth twisted in anger. “Jay Rico is not my pal. I had no choice. I was trying to keep Kevin out of prison.”
“Kevin deserves to be in prison,” Marco shouted, slamming his hand onto the desktop. “He’s a murderer, or doesn’t that matter to you?”
Candace put a calming hand on Marco’s wrist, feeling his thundering pulse. “Let him talk,” she said quietly.
Marco clamped his jaw so tight she could see the vein jumping as he worked for control. Hands fisted on his hips, he stayed silent.
“Kevin wasn’t a bad kid,” Baxter said. “He was a good boy, a happy boy, until his mother was killed and then everything unraveled. Mom and I did our best, but we lost control.” He rubbed his chin. “There was trouble in school, with the cops, everywhere, and we couldn’t pull him out.”
Candace thought the pain in Baxter’s eyes was too real to be faked, but then he’d been lying to them from the start. “Go on.”
“I almost couldn’t go through with it when I snooped in the desks to find Candace’s cell phone number to give to Rico. It felt like the last straw. I wanted to tell you the whole time but...” He heaved out a breath. “I didn’t want anyone to be hurt, and I’m sorry for what I did. I just didn’t see any other way to keep Kevin out of prison.”
“Tell us about him,” Candace said.
Baxter seemed to age before their eyes. “He wasn’t even thirteen when the Pack started trying to pull him in. He loved it, the feeling of power, the family he was cheated out of. They gave him small jobs, money...made him feel important. And Jay Rico...” Baxter’s expression hardened into hatred. “He made it his personal mission to ensnare Kevin. Kevin thought Rico was a superhero or something. Nothing my mom and I could say made the slightest difference. We lost him to the Pack and to Jay Rico before he was even fifteen years old.”
The last piece of the puzzle fell into place. “Baxter, who is Kevin’s father?”
He blinked and rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “I don’t know. Yolanda got pregnant while she was in high school and wouldn’t name the father no matter how hard we pressed her.”
Candace shook her head. “I’m sure most of that is true, but you know who the father is, don’t you?”
He remained silent.
“You owe her the truth,” Marco said, “after what you’ve done. She almost died.”
He exhaled. “Rico started seeing Yolanda before he dropped out of high school. We tried everything to keep them apart, because Rico was already deep into the gang thing, but she loved him, or so she thought. They stayed together for two years.”
Rico’s words came back to her.
But she betrayed me. I decided a long time ago that no one gets to do that, so I didn’t have a choice. You gotta draw the battle lines in your life, you know?
Candace let out a sigh. “He abused her?”
“Yeah,” he said bitterly, “and all the while she made excuses for him. ‘Oh, he’s gonna change, Bax. He’s just got a hot temper, Bax.’ Even when he would hurt her, imagining she was interested in another man, she’d always forgive him. But she didn’t walk away until it was too late.”
“So you’re saying...” Donna prodded.
“That Jay Rico ran her down with the car,” he finished. “I never had any proof. It wouldn’t have mattered, anyway. Rico was untouchable. Any of his guys would provide him an alibi.”
“And Kevin doesn’t know about the murder?” Donna asked.
Baxter shook his head.
“Or that Jay Rico was his father?” Candace said.
“No. Rico kept it secret that he was even involved with Yolanda, and he made her promise not to tell Kevin until he was older. I don’t know why. He told her it was because he had a lot of enemies.”
“It’s the truth,” Marco said. “Best way to get to someone is through their loved ones.”
“We meant to tell him, someday, but it just never happened. But it doesn’t matter anymore. Word on the street is that Rico’s dead, shot down by the Cliffs, and Yolanda will never have justice. And Kevin doesn’t even know his hero is the one who murdered his mother.” Baxter’s mouth shut in a tight line. “So what happens now? To me.”
Marco was about to answer, but Candace cut him off. “Nothing. You go, leave this office and try to be an uncle to Kevin if he’ll let you.”
“After you lied to me?” a voice said from the office doorway.
Candace jerked in surprise. Marco leaped forward, standing between her and Kevin Tooley.
NINETEEN
In one fluid motion, Lon swept JeanBeth behind him and moved to flank Tooley. Marco saw no sign of a weapon tucked into the kid’s baggy pants or under his T-shirt, but that didn’t ease his mind. “Get out,” he snapped.
“I did,” Tooley said. “This morning. Strolled right out of jail after the case was dismissed.” His gray eyes swept everybody in the room. Waiting to make a move?
Try it, kid. It will be the last one you ever make.
“I under
stand I got out of jail because this chick here isn’t gonna testify.” He stared at Candace.
“That’s not a respectful term,” Lon said. His tone was mild and his posture outwardly relaxed, but Marco knew otherwise.
Kevin shot him a look of disdain. “And I come to Coronado to make sure that’s the straight answer and I find dear Uncle Bax here telling my life story.” The cords in his neck were taut with rage. “Is it true, then, Uncle Bax? Jay Rico is my father, and he killed my mom?”
Baxter swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t quite cut it.” Tooley’s voice sounded constricted, as if somebody had him by the throat. “You’ve been lying to me, along with Grandma and Rico and everyone else.”
“We didn’t tell you because we wanted to protect you. Rico was right about that part. Anyone close to him has a target painted on his back.”
His tone was bitter. “Jay Rico is the biggest liar of the bunch. You know, I always wondered why he took such an interest in me. I actually thought he figured I was special.”
“It doesn’t matter now, Kev,” Baxter said, taking a step toward him. “Jay Rico is dead, and you’re out of jail. You’re young, you can start over.”
Kevin laughed. “Oh yeah. That’s a great speech. You should write that down. I’ve got my whole life ahead of me, right?”
Marco edged forward. “Your family mess is not our concern. The trial is over, and the Gallaghers are out. We have no more business between us anymore, so I’m going to ask you again to leave and not come back.”
Kevin’s chin went up, fists balled.
Marco stayed loose and brought his hands up ever so slightly.
Kevin’s gaze flicked between Marco and Lon. Marco hadn’t seen Lon move, but somehow he was closer, the half smile still on his face, but now one hand was in his pocket.
Donna had the phone receiver, fingers ready to dial 911.
“Okay,” Kevin said after a pause. “I’ve got better things to do, anyway.”
Marco, Lon and Donna didn’t move. Kevin looked at his uncle. “I don’t want to see you ever again.”