by Kara Lennox
Beth nodded. “I suppose so.”
Claudia’s gaze slid to Billy. There, she caught a microexpression of satisfaction. Did that mean he wanted to pursue this case as badly as she did? If so, he’d changed his mind from that first day.
“Wasn’t Eduardo Torres a crime boss or something?” Mitch asked.
“He was alleged to be some kind of kingpin in the Rio Grande Mafia drug cartel,” Claudia said. “He could easily have been a murder target. Someone could have shot Eduardo in his bed then buried the body where no one would ever find it. No body, no murder charge. If Mary-Francis is innocent, that’s the most likely scenario.”
“Is that what you believe?” Daniel asked.
“The one thing I’m certain of is that Mary-Francis didn’t kill her husband. I suspected so before, but now that I’ve interviewed her again, and with this business of valuable coins and the assault on Theresa…”
“We only have her word that her daughter didn’t previously know about the coins,” Beth observed.
“Maybe. But something is seriously out of whack,” Billy said. “To use the technical term.”
Everyone in the conference room looked at the video screen, which made it almost appear as if Daniel was in the room with them.
He made his decision quickly. “Raleigh, Mary-Francis has already signed the necessary papers to make you her attorney of record, correct?”
“Yes, that’s all taken care of,” Raleigh replied.
“Good. Request an immediate review of all physical evidence. Beth, see what you can find out about how the blood evidence was collected and analyzed on that case.”
“Okay. I have a friend I can call at the Montgomery County lab. She’ll give me the unofficial lowdown even before I get my hands on the evidence.”
“Good. Mitch, try to find Eduardo. If not him, then his associates.”
“I have a list of his friends, relatives and employees.” Claudia dug into her briefcase to find the piece of paper Mary-Francis had given her at the end of their visit.
Everyone started gathering their belongings, eager to get to work. The meeting was over.
Claudia should have felt elated, or at least pleased, but instead she felt a slight letdown, like someone had just stuck a pin in the balloon that lived inside her chest.
She glanced at Billy, hoping he would seek her out. Hoping he would want her to continue investigating with him. She could play the body-language card, insist that her skills could help him sort fact from fiction as he worked in the field.
But since Billy didn’t believe in her “voodoo,” as he called it, her argument wouldn’t carry much weight.
“Claudia, I’d like to talk to you privately, please.”
Claudia jerked her attention back to the video screen. Apparently Daniel wasn’t finished with her yet. Alarm bells went off in her head. What was this about? Had he seen something, something in the way she dealt with Billy, that he didn’t like? Next to her, Daniel was the most observant person she knew. Having successfully proved his innocence after spending six years on death row, he knew a lot about human nature.
But he wasn’t opposed to office romance, so if he suspected some chemistry growing between her and Billy, he wouldn’t care.
She would know soon enough.
Once the room cleared, Claudia smiled at Daniel. “Now, what’s this all about?”
“Billy seem okay to you?”
“Okay, how?”
“Does he seem comfortable working in the field? Is he making appropriate decisions?”
Her answer should have been a flat-out no. Twice in one day he had committed illegal acts in the name of getting at the truth. But Daniel wasn’t exactly a choir boy himself, so his definition of appropriate might be different from hers.
“I feel uncomfortable discussing Billy behind his back this way,” she said.
“It’s important. If I’ve pushed him out the door before he’s ready, the consequences will be on my conscience. Does he seem unduly stressed?”
Daniel’s reasoning seemed sound, so she answered truthfully. “No, not at all. He seems to be enjoying himself.”
“Good. Just the same, can you keep an eye on him?”
Claudia laughed, until she realized Daniel was serious. “You want me to babysit Billy?”
“You’re already part of the investigation. And unless I miss my guess, you’d like to continue. Billy isn’t the only one enjoying himself.”
Busted. “I’m not sure Billy will want me around, cramping his style.”
“I’ll tell him it’s my idea. I feel it’s important to have a second set of eyes looking out for liars, since there’s a lot of deception surrounding this case. That’s the truth, by the way. But you already knew that.” He grinned.
“I’ll see what I can do. Why is he so reticent to work in the field? When he told me he was tired of chasing down bad guys and getting shot at, I believed him. But now I’m not so sure.”
“I’m not at liberty to say.” With that, the video screen went blank, as if Daniel was afraid he might give away secrets if he remained face-to-face with her for too long.
* * *
“I HOPE YOU DON’T MIND my tagging along,” Claudia said as she climbed into Billy’s truck later that day. She’d spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon squeezing in a few patients, the ones who really needed her. Others, she had rescheduled, clearing her calendar to work with Billy.
“I’m gettin’ used to having a sidekick,” he drawled. “But even if I objected, Daniel wants you here. Why is that, do you suppose?”
She didn’t answer right away as she fumbled with the seat belt and silently cursed the two men who were putting her in the middle of their machinations. She couldn’t tell some things to Daniel because she didn’t feel it was her place. Billy wasn’t her patient, but he trusted her on some level, or he wouldn’t have opened up even a little. And she couldn’t tell Billy of her conversation with Daniel, because Daniel was her client, to whom she owed confidentiality.
“Daniel said he thought my expertise would be of value, since clearly a lot of people are lying,” she finally said.
“People are always lying, on all of the cases the foundation takes on,” he countered as he whipped out of the parking lot. “You know what I think?”
“I’m sure you’ll enlighten me.”
“I think Daniel wants to hire you on full-time. None of this retainer B.S. He thinks by giving you a taste of how we work, and what your day-to-day job would be like, you’ll be more interested.”
She was relieved Billy hadn’t guessed the real reason for her presence. But what if he was right? What if Daniel had overstated his concern for Billy, and his real motivation was to get her onboard at Project Justice full-time?
Considering motive was one of the things she was trained to do, and she couldn’t help look at all the possibilities.
“I’m not sure I’d want to give up my private practice,” Claudia said. “I like helping people, one-on-one. When you help a client through a crisis, and you mark their progress and see them come out on the other side, it’s very rewarding.”
“Yeah, but it’s also rewarding to get people out of prison who don’t belong there. Save their lives, sometimes.”
“Is that what you like about the work? The end result?” She was far more comfortable turning the conversation back on him.
But he spotted her trick too easily. “Nah-ah, none of that what-do-you-think garbage. We were talking about you.”
“I’m content with the status quo. I like being on retainer, but I also like running my own business. I don’t want to be an employee.”
“Daniel treats his employees really well.”
“I’m sure he does. He seems to attract and keep some brilliant, capable people.”
“With me being the exception.” He said this with a good-natured laugh. “That’s what you said the other day. I’m an idiot ’cause I’m not a disciple of your body-language—”
“Do not call my work voodoo again.”
“I was gonna say theories. Don’t get all bent out of shape.”
“They’re not just theories,” she huffed under her breath. But the twinkle in his dark brown eyes soothed the irritation she wanted to feel. He was deliberately teasing her. “You know, teasing is a sign of affection. Among junior-high boys, anyway.”
“Now you’re saying I’m socially stunted.”
“I was saying you secretly like me, or you wouldn’t give me so much grief.”
He didn’t deny it, which pleased her no end. She couldn’t remember the last time any man challenged her the way Billy did. Even Raymond hadn’t really challenged her. He’d said what she wanted to hear; he’d played the part of the perfect boyfriend at a stressful time in her life.
Billy had rolled his sleeves up in deference to the heat. He wore his shoulder holster, his gun tucked under his left arm, but he’d laid his jacket in the backseat.
Her hands itched to touch Billy’s tanned biceps, to connect somehow on a physical level to let him know she was teasing, too. She didn’t think he was dumb. Or socially stunted. He was at least smart enough to get the best of her.
They were headed to the sheriff’s office in Conroe, the Montgomery County seat, on the northern edge of the Houston metroplex. Sergeant Hudson Vale wanted to meet with them; he had quickly run out of leads on the Theresa Esteve case, and he was hoping Project Justice’s investigation might reinvigorate his own.
The mention of valuable coins had piqued his interest, too.
The criminal justice center was north of town in a flat, featureless, semirural area with clumps of trees here and there, but mostly parched pastures. The one-story white building didn’t call attention to itself. Its one redeeming feature was a parking lot with plenty of spaces.
Hudson Vale met them at the front desk. If Claudia had seen him anywhere besides the sheriff’s office, she would have pegged him as a California surfer boy rather than a seasoned detective. He wore his sun-bleached blond hair a little longer than regulation, and the tails of his loud Hawaiian-print shirt were untucked and paired with a disreputable pair of khakis.
“Sorry for the ultracasual look,” he said after the formalities. “Just got back from doing a little undercover sting operation.”
In an unusually unguarded moment, Billy’s eyes lit with interest. “Narcotics?”
Hudson shook his head. “Vice. Personally I hate working on stuff like that, but when the working girls start getting too thick downtown…” He shrugged. “I drew the short stick, had to play bumbling college boy looking for a good time.”
The working girls probably flocked to get a shot at him.
“Anyway, come on back. I’m happy to show you what I have if you can come up with fresh ideas.”
Hudson’s office was a cubicle in the detective division. Large by cubicle standards, there was room for an L-shaped desk, credenza and three chairs. He indicated they should sit down, then offered them cold drinks from a dorm fridge in the corner.
“Handy,” Billy commented as he popped the top on an orange soda. Claudia already had her own bottle of water.
“Makes my office real popular on a hot afternoon,” Hudson said with a smile. “For whatever reason, the staff break room and vending machines are all the way on the other side of the building. Since I have an incurable Mountain Dew habit, I worked out this system.” He opened a bottle of his beverage of choice and took his own chair. “Here’s the file on the Esteve case.” He pointed to a pitifully thin folder at the end of his desk. “Have a look, if you like.”
“Thanks.” Billy started reading the incident report, but Claudia couldn’t resist the crime scene photos. Although most police departments had gone to digital photos, they almost always made prints right away as a more permanent, tangible way to store evidence. Digital pictures could be tampered with, altered or erased, by accident or on purpose.
The crime scene looked much messier than when Billy and Claudia had visited two days ago. The floor was covered with stuff that had been swept off tables and shelves. Furniture was knocked over, pictures ripped from the walls. Someone had obviously come in and cleaned up after the cops got done.
The cops wouldn’t have tidied up. Nor had a professional service, or they would have done something about the bloodstain on the carpet.
“Where are Theresa’s children?” Claudia asked.
“She has just the one son, divorced and living in Arizona. He came for a couple of days when notified of his mother’s situation, but he had to get back—kids, a job, you know.”
“Could he have tried to have her killed for the inheritance?” Billy asked.
“I pretty much ruled that out. Theresa doesn’t have much, and the son isn’t doing bad financially. Plus, this didn’t appear to be the work of professional killers, unless they were particularly inept.”
“You keep referring to ‘them’ and ‘they,’” Claudia noted. “Why do you think there was more than one perpetrator?”
“No fingerprints or DNA, that’s for sure. But two sets of shoe prints in the mud below the broken window.”
“Shoe prints?”
“Unfortunately not enough detail to even determine what kind of shoe. Just enough to get an approximate size. One guy was size thirteen; the other about a ten and very wide. That is the sum total of our physical evidence.”
“At least you know it was two males. That rules out the niece, although her boyfriend could have gotten a buddy to help him do the deed. Angie and Jimmy are selling off everything that’s not nailed down. Maybe Theresa was getting in the way of that profitable enterprise.”
Nothing Claudia said seemed to surprise Hudson. He was on top of things. “You mean because her aunt has power of attorney over her mother’s affairs? I questioned Angie and her boyfriend. Nothing stuck. They both have alibis, and I didn’t get a sense either of them was lying. Plus, neither has the financial resources to hire someone to do the deed.”
“Maybe Angie promised cash after the fact,” Claudia said. “She did sell her mother’s car.”
“I’m on it. She deposited the check into her account and didn’t make any large withdrawals. Instead, she makes small withdrawals from the ATM every couple of days.”
“She could be withholding payment because her aunt isn’t dead,” Billy suggested. “The job wasn’t properly done.”
“Honestly? I’m not seeing Angie as the guilty party here. She seemed genuinely shocked when told of the break-in. Cried real tears.”
“Any other suspects?” Billy asked.
“No one.”
“What about the neighbor? Patty Dorsey?”
Hudson rolled his eyes. “The neighbor from hell, apparently. Everyone on the street loathes her. Gladys Kravitz on steroids. She claims to ‘mind her own business’ one minute, and to know everything going on in the neighborhood the next. She’s the one who called in the crime. Saw her neighbor’s broken front window, went to investigate and found Theresa lying there. She probably saved Theresa’s life, so I’m not liking her for a suspect.”
“Unless they argued. Things got out of hand. Patty bashes Theresa with a lamp or something, did more damage than she meant to, so she calls the cops. Stages a home invasion.”
“The crime scene does look staged to me,” Claudia said as she continued to study the photos.
“Patty didn’t make those footprints,” Hudson reminded them. “Whoever did this came in through that window. Left a bit of mud on the sill and the carpet.”
Billy deflated right along with his theory.
“So tell me about the coins,” Hudson said.
While Billy recounted their interview with Mary-Francis, their conversation with Angie and their theory about the coins being hidden inside a statue of the Virgin Mary, Claudia continued to study the photos with her most critical eye, hoping to see something others had overlooked.
When she finally saw it, it was so obvious she laughed o
ut loud. How could she have not noticed immediately?
“Claudia?” Billy looked over, curious.
She handed one of the photos to Billy. “Take a look at the mantel. What do you see?”
“Holy cow.”
“What?” Hudson sounded anxious.
“The Virgin Mary statue. It’s still here, in the crime scene photos. The home invaders didn’t take it.”
CHAPTER SIX
HUDSON TOOK THE PHOTO and studied it. “Oh, yeah, I remember that now. I didn’t pay any attention to it, beyond looking at it briefly to see if it was the assault weapon. It did seem heavier than the others, but at the time that fact didn’t register as odd.”
“So your people didn’t collect it as evidence?”
“We collected a few things for possible DNA and fingerprints, none of which panned out. But not that statue.”
“Then where did the statue go? Who had access after you guys finished with it?”
Hudson thought for a moment. “The son. He’s not good for the assault, but I guess he could have taken the statue after we released the crime scene. Then there’s Patty, the neighbor. She had a key. I assume she let you in.”
Billy reached up and tugged his collar, which wasn’t tight to begin with since he didn’t wear a tie. “We, um, let ourselves in.”
Claudia gave him points for honesty.
Hudson laughed. “You’re lucky nosy Patty didn’t call the cops on you.”
“We almost called the cops on her,” Claudia put in. “She was digging around in the backyard when we arrived, and when I called to her she ran like she had something to hide.”
Hudson’s eyes widened with obvious interest. “Maybe I’ll question her again.”
“If you do,” Billy said, “she thinks we’re cops.”
Hudson laughed again. “You got a set of big brass ones, I’ll give you that.” Then he seemed to remember Claudia was there. “Not you, of course.”
Claudia shrugged. “I’d walk funny if I did.”
Hudson looked at his watch. “You guys want to go grab a bite?”
Claudia was about to say she’d love to when Billy abruptly stood. “I think we better get going, but thanks. Maybe we can catch a game, tip a few. Sometime.” The invitation was so imprecise, it sounded like a brush-off to her.