The Dragon Tree Legacy

by Ali Vali

  “No, we had words, but the furniture stayed put during our talk,” she said, technically not lying. “I know you don’t like her, and it’s time to move on if you and Mom don’t mind helping us out for a while. Tanith deserves better than this.”

  “So do you, baby girl,” Peter said, and finally came closer and hugged her. “Your mom and I’ll be happy to have you with us until you’re ready for whatever comes next.”

  She leaned against him, trying to act like there weren’t a bunch of dead people upstairs. “Thanks, Daddy. That’s Maria’s car out there, so try to stay calm.”

  “You got it.”

  “Come on,” she kept hold of his hand, “let’s go grab some stuff and leave.” Following Wiley’s instructions, she called for Maria a few times as they climbed the steps.

  “What the hell?” Peter said when he opened the door to the master bedroom. “Stay here but in sight.”

  He walked ahead, calling for Maria like she had, but gave way to retching, caused, she knew, by whatever he’d found in the bathroom. “Aubrey, stay there. Don’t come in here.” He came out wiping his mouth with his handkerchief with a haunted expression that made Aubrey feel guilty. “We need to call the police.”

  “Is Maria in there?” she asked, walking into the bedroom and stopping when her dad held her back. The two men who lay dead on the floor appeared so surreal with the rug as their backdrop she wanted to close her eyes and will them gone.

  “Aubrey, let’s get downstairs,” Peter said, standing behind her with his arm wrapped around her waist. “I don’t know what’s going on, or what happened, but we need to get the hell out of here.”

  She couldn’t stop staring at the two bodies. The kill shots had landed, from what she could tell, in exactly the same spot on their foreheads. Wiley might’ve been retired, but her skill set was still intact, and for once she was thrilled that Wiley took her job so seriously. These killers had never stood a chance and barely saw it coming, from what she’d heard in the attic. They were dead by Wiley’s hand at her urging, and she didn’t feel bad about it.

  “Come on, we’ll call from the car.” She let herself be led away. “It’s not safe to be here.”

  In the car Aubrey allowed all the feelings she’d bottled up to come out, and her dad had to finish the emergency call since the operator was having trouble understanding her because she was sobbing. The more she reviewed all the things she should’ve done to avoid this, the harder she cried. Maria never wanted to make changes in her personal or business life, so she should’ve left months ago. She’d put it off, and now she’d endangered Tanith’s life by exposing them to the people who’d killed Maria.

  Peter gave the operator the address and summary of what they’d found. He was still on the phone, but Aubrey could hear the sirens getting closer. She held her hand out and felt better when her father immediately took it and squeezed her fingers. His presence comforted her, but she’d have true peace of mind only if Wiley was sitting next to her. Only Wiley could keep her and Tanith safe from the goons Maria had invited into their lives. These guys would keep coming until they got what they were after.

  “They’re on their way,” Peter said, putting his phone against his chest.

  “Oh, God, Daddy,” she said, leaning back until her head fell against the seat back. “How did they kill her?”

  “Not now.” He squeezed her fingers again and placed his phone against his ear. “Yeah, we’re still here. Tell them I parked on the street and have my engine running. If anyone but the police show up, I’ll have no choice but to get my daughter to safety.”

  A few minutes later the driveway was full of squad cars, and the rest boxed them in place. They were as trapped as she and Tanith had been in the attic.

  “Mr. Tarver.” A middle-aged man tapped on the driver-side window lightly with his badge. Aubrey studied his face to make sure she hadn’t seen him with Maria. He and the woman standing behind him didn’t match any face in her memory. “Sir, could you please step out?”

  “We’ll be okay,” her dad said, waiting for her to open her door before getting out and introducing them.

  “I’m Detective Barry Smith and this is my partner Detective Glenda Mazerac,” Barry said, holding out his hand in greeting. “Do you live here, Ms. Tarver?” he asked when she shook his hand.

  “Yes,” she said softly.

  “Do we have your permission to go in?” Glenda asked gently, but Aubrey could see the anticipation in her face. Both detectives were half turned in the direction of the house, poised as if waiting for someone to fire a starter pistol that would kick off the race to try to convict her for what they found inside.

  “Yes,” Aubrey said as she wiped her face.

  “Mr. Tarver, would you show us what you found?” Barry asked.

  “Ms. Tarver.” Glenda swept her arm toward the house. “If you think you can, we’d like for you to come too. That way you can point out anything that’s missing.”

  “Is that really necessary?” Peter asked. “From what I saw, robbery wasn’t the motive.”

  Glenda hesitated, but gave in after directing one of the uniformed officers to keep an eye on Aubrey, as if to make sure she was all right.

  That’s wishful thinking, Glenda, Aubrey thought as she watched the three of them walk away. I won’t be okay until this nightmare is over.

  *

  “How long has your daughter lived here?” Barry asked as he stepped ahead of Peter.

  “Her partner Maria owns the house, Detective,” Peter said, and stopped walking. “Look, what you’re going to find is pretty goddamn horrible, but my daughter didn’t have anything to do with it. The truth is I don’t know who’s capable of doing something like what’s up there.”

  “No one’s accusing anyone of anything, sir,” Glenda said. “Let’s go in and assess what we have.”

  Peter stayed by the back door as directed while Glenda and Barry walked through the first floor with their guns drawn. It was a waste of time, but cops didn’t appreciate advice on how to do their jobs. The danger that had visited the house was dead, alongside Maria. He was sure of that when he saw the dead guy with the chain saw clutched in his hand.

  But who had killed the pack of wolves? He kept that thought to himself as he looked around the kitchen. This was his daughter’s home, but they had seldom come to see her here. When they got together to enjoy time with their granddaughter, it was mostly at their house across the lake.

  They’d had only one conversation about Maria, and he’d been totally honest about the woman who’d help raise Tanith. After that long talk he hadn’t seen any reason to belabor the point of how neither he nor Karen liked Maria. The decision had been Aubrey’s, and it’d be up to her to change it. It didn’t look good that Aubrey had made up her mind on the day Maria received a dramatic visit from the thugs she was involved with.

  “It seems clear,” Glenda said, and waved him in. “Let’s go upstairs.”

  Peter pointed them toward the stairs and allowed them to go ahead of him. He’d left all the lights on, so the first guy was easy to spot. Seeing him again made Peter realize he’d never checked out the other side of the upstairs, which was what Barry was doing now, his gun pointed and ready.

  “It’s clear,” Barry said, loud enough for Peter and Glenda to hear him.

  “Are you okay to do this?” Barry asked Peter with his hand on his shoulder.

  “Just so you know, the fresh pool of vomit on the floor is mine. I don’t recognize those guys, but what they did in there was inhuman.”

  They didn’t linger, and Peter sat with Aubrey in the den while the forensics team started processing the scene. Barry and Glenda did a good job of limiting the people in the house and had left them alone to supervise.

  “Ms. Tarver, we’d like you to come downtown after we’re done so you can answer some questions,” Barry said, bringing them a couple bottles of water.

  “Can’t we do it here?” Aubrey took his hand along with the
water. “I don’t want to be away from my daughter too long.”

  “Where is she?” Glenda asked, sitting next to Aubrey.

  “I left her at my parents’ house since I was coming back here to pack.”

  Barry wrote in a notebook as she spoke. “Where were you going?”

  “Maria owns the bar in the Hilton Riverside, but she makes most of her money selling drugs. From what she told me recently, she was acting as the middleman between suppliers and sellers. After finding out, I wanted to leave so my daughter, Tanith, and I would be safe.” The answer wasn’t as simple as Wiley probably wanted, but it was basically the truth. The only white lie was how long she’d known. Three months was an eternity to live with the situation, and she hadn’t moved fast enough to leave, but she’d add that failure to her list of mistakes once she cleared the police’s radar.

  “Maria was into drugs?” Glenda asked, and Aubrey could tell she was trying not to laugh. “How’d you find out? Did she suddenly blurt it out over dinner one night?”

  “I dropped an earring in my closet last month and it rolled under Maria’s shirt rack. After getting on my hands and knees I found a large, packed duffel.”

  Since Aubrey stopped there, Barry stopped writing and looked up at her. “Did you look in it?”

  “I did only because I was curious about being suddenly single. Our relationship hasn’t been great, and I thought she was leaving long enough to allow me to find a new place.”

  “You didn’t want the house?” Glenda sounded as if she were asking more about a personal matter rather than trying to advance their investigation.

  “I watch enough television to know right now I’m the prime suspect,” she said, and Barry and Glenda nodded. “This house and all the bank accounts except for a household account are in Maria’s name. I own none of it, I will inherit none of it, and I don’t have any large insurance settlement in my future.”

  “What about your daughter?” Glenda asked.

  “I already had Tanith, and she was the compromise Maria had to make to get me to agree to move in with her. Our relationship failed not only because of what she was hiding from me, but primarily because of the way she treated my child. She was interested in me only, but my daughter comes before anything or anyone. Since neither of us was willing to bend, it was time for me to move on.”

  “Understandable,” Barry said as he started to jot again. “Back to the duffel. If it wasn’t a weekend bag, what was in it?”

  “This was more of a full-size bag you’d use on a long vacation, Detective, and it was packed to the top with bundles of hundreds. Each pack contained ten thousand dollars, and that’s as far as I counted.”

  Barry held his hands out about three feet apart. “Was it this big?” Aubrey nodded. “How much total, if you had to guess?”

  “Three and a quarter million.”

  “That’s an interesting guess,” Glenda said.

  “It’s not an estimate. When I confronted Maria with it, that’s how much she said was in there and the two others she had. The bar has always been successful, but not that much. Except for the month she was closed after Katrina, the place cleared about fifteen thousand after expenses.”

  “Three million plus is a lot of motive,” Barry said.

  “The money was only in the house overnight. I don’t know where she took it or where it is now. If you want, search the house, my parents’ place—anywhere you want.” Aubrey stopped and covered her face with her hands. “I was desperate to get out of here, and Maria was threatening me to make me stay. I picked today out of panic. A large supplier had a problem and requested a meeting with her. When I saw how nervous she was, I wanted to put as much distance between us as possible.”

  “So you think this is drug-related?” Glenda asked, and Aubrey wanted to scream at how stupid she found the question.

  “I was scared, but I never imagined this. My dad wouldn’t let me in the bathroom, but marines don’t have reactions like he did. Whatever happened isn’t something I could do under any circumstances, and I don’t know anyone who could.”

  *

  Aubrey was being too long-winded, but she sounded believable. At least until that last line, Wiley thought. You do know someone capable of that, and worse.

  The call had gone out describing what the responding officers had found, so police cars lined the street. Aubrey’s neighbors were also standing in small groups talking and keeping a vigil. All the extra police weren’t necessary, but everyone was eternally curious about the macabre.

  So far, though, they’d been barred from the house, but they weren’t leaving, which gave whoever ordered this the perfect opportunity to come back and observe. They’d have to, since Maria hadn’t given up her secrets, and even if she had, the interrogation squad was dead.

  From her perch in the tree, Wiley watched the crowd through the night scope she’d brought. “I know you’re here,” she whispered, searching for the anomaly in the group gathered.

  She’d bypassed him twice in her constant sweeps, but even the cops milling around hadn’t noticed the one thing wrong with his uniform. The guy standing alone in Aubrey’s front yard was about five-ten; judging from his eyebrows the light-blond hair was his natural color, and the scar along his right cheek that reached his jaw was recent.

  Everything about his uniform was perfect except for the badge. It appeared authentic but was pinned on the wrong side of his chest. Not even a rookie would’ve made that mistake.

  Whoever he was, he’d been turned away from the door twice and hadn’t started a conversation with anyone since Wiley had noticed him. As the coroner arrived the guy took out his cell phone and made a call, but kept his phone to his ear long enough to make her think he’d gotten no answer.

  “Can you think of any names of people Maria mentioned doing business with?” Barry asked.

  “The only employees I know are those working at the bar. She kept all the rest of this to herself. She didn’t even mention who she was supposed to have a meeting with, and I didn’t ask.”

  From the questions it seemed Aubrey’s interview was almost over. The police wouldn’t have any reason to detain her longer so they’d let her go for the night, right into the arms of the fake cop waiting for her outside.

  More vehicles marked Coroner’s Office arrived, and the people in them started carrying out gurneys. The cop stood straighter at the sight, staring and seeming close to panic. The man made another call. Still no answer.

  “I realize how difficult this was, Ms. Tarver, but thank you for answering our questions while all this was still fresh in your mind.”

  Wiley heard Barry as well as some background noise, probably meaning that everyone was starting to stand. It was time to go, but she wanted to see fake cop’s reaction when Aubrey and Peter walked out. His panic probably stemmed from the police pressure that would come from the hit-team killings more than their intended targets. That was a rule Wiley broke only when she didn’t have a chance of getting out alive. Even if there were witnesses, they were so scared that ninety-nine percent of the time they couldn’t identify you if their lives depended on an accurate account.

  “If you need anything else, I’ll be staying with my parents,” Aubrey said right before the back door opened. When it did, the cop moved closer, took a look, then retreated to his tree.

  Peter opened the passenger-side door and helped Aubrey inside as Barry and Glenda watched. The fake cop spared them some attention, as if to notice what car they were driving, before he continued his surveillance of the house.

  Wiley waited to make sure Peter didn’t pick up a tail before he turned to drive out of the neighborhood and stayed put when he didn’t. Aubrey and Tanith weren’t safe yet, but until she had the chance to sit with Aubrey and ask her for the truth, she had to follow what few bread crumbs she had.

  “And this asshole is getting ready to drop bucketloads of them,” she said, meaning the fake cop.

  Chapter Six

  Freddie Buh
le was starting to get that twitch in his stomach that would ruin his night. It had begun when he’d had to put on the fucking police uniform to track down the idiots Mitch had insisted on for this.

  The only slight relief had come when he saw Maria’s girlfriend walk out of the house. He didn’t know what had happened and what Maria’s story was, since Peanut wasn’t answering his phone. If they’d killed the girlfriend and her kid as well as Maria, it’d be months before they could get back in there to find the missing cash. A splash across the headlines like that and the police would have no choice but to devote some serious time to the case.

  If Maria’s bitch was alive, though, what was with the multiple body bags and wagons? He was tired of waiting but Mitch would want an answer, so he leaned against the tree again, trying to appear busy by scrolling through his phone to keep the other cops away from him.

  He tried Peanut’s number again and turned to leave when it finally connected. “Where in the hell are you?”

  “Could I ask who’s calling?”

  “Cut the shit and tell me,” he said.

  “This is Detective Smith. Can you identify yourself?”

  “Fuck.” The word exploded in his head as he disconnected. No sooner had he done so when the phone started ringing, registering Peanut’s number.

  He broke his phone in two, dropped the battery in a drain on the way to his car, and removed the SIM card before tossing the phone too. The pain in his gut was excruciating now, but he’d have to ignore it. Not only had he dialed a cop from the front yard of a crime scene, but Peanut and his morons were dead.

  “And there’s no way that piece of ass did that,” he said about Aubrey.

  He had another prepaid cell in the car and took a deep breath before making his call. “We got problems,” he told Mitch when he answered. “And they’re fixing to get a whole lot more fucked up.”

  *

  Wiley was already on the ground and moving when the cop started walking and ripping his phone up. Her fake cop was most likely in charge of the guys she’d eliminated, but what would he do now that he knew they were dead?