by Kara Lennox
“Being alone is not better. Trust me on that one.”
* * *
ON THE WAY TO THERESA’S HOUSE, Billy filled Ford in on the highlights of the case. “On her own, I don’t think Angie is dangerous,” Billy said. “And supposedly she sneaked off while her boyfriend was gone, so I’m guessing he won’t show up waving his gun again. But I’m not ruling anything out. You packing?”
“Can you think of any other reason I might wear a jacket in this heat?”
Billy nodded his understanding. Ford Hyatt was an all right guy. He’d been at Project Justice almost from the beginning. When Billy had first met him, he’d acted like his spine was forged of pure steel. Everything was by the book, and absolutely nothing was funny.
Since he’d met his wife a couple of years ago, though, he’d loosened up a lot.
“Do you think love can change people?” Billy asked suddenly. “Change their personality, I mean?”
“Um, I don’t talk about stuff like that with other guys. Sorry.” But the faint smile on his face said more than he intended. Maybe Claudia’s face-reading abilities had rubbed off on Billy.
When they got to Theresa’s block, David Blaire’s unmarked car was parked a couple of houses down, but he wasn’t in it.
“That’s interesting,” Billy said as they cruised slowly past.
They parked across the street, then approached cautiously on foot, taking cover behind the neighbor’s bushes until they were right up to the weedy front yard.
Even from this distance, they could hear shouting from the backyard—female shouting, shrieking, even, and not the happy kind of shrieking.
A man who could only be Officer David Blaire was standing at the top of the driveway where the fence cordoned off the backyard, and he stared intently through the cracks. Like a good cop, he kept a lookout over his shoulder, and he saw Billy and Ford approaching. He motioned for them to hurry over.
“So far they haven’t come to blows,” Blaire said. “But if the neighbor lifts that shovel any higher, I’m going to consider it brandishing a weapon and I’m going in.”
Billy stepped up on the edge of the planter and peered over the fence. Angie Torres and the neighbor, Patty, were squared off in the middle of the yard.
Obviously someone had been digging—it looked like every square inch of that backyard had been turned over—and since Patty was the one wielding the shovel, he guessed she was the culprit.
“This is not gardening,” Angie was saying. “You don’t have to dig holes to China just to harvest a few potatoes.”
“I wasn’t just digging potatoes,” Patty said. “I was taking out the weeds.”
“Looks to me like you dug up all the tomato plants, as well.”
“They were dead, anyway.”
“Look, if you found so much as one penny in this yard, you better turn it over to me right now, or I’ll call the cops.”
“The cops! Oh, that’s a rich one. You positively reek of pot. You probably got enough weed in your car to qualify as a felony.”
“And you got enough fat on your rear end to qualify as toxic waste!”
“Whoa,” Ford said under his breath. “That was uncalled for.”
“You’re just jealous because your rear end looks like the flat side of this shovel!”
Angie reached down and grabbed one of the dead tomato plants, which was about four feet tall, and began slapping at Patty with it like a whip.
“Ow! You can’t do that! That’s assault!”
“I can do anything I want in my own aunt’s backyard in which you are trespassing!”
“Okay, that’s it,” Billy announced as he vaulted over the fence. Blaire and Hyatt were right behind him, but Billy dropped back and let Blaire, the only one of them who carried a real badge, take the lead.
“Excuse me, ladies,” Blaire said. “Break it up now, okay?”
They both whirled around. Patty immediately dropped the shovel and took a step away from it, pretending it wasn’t hers, but Angie continued to clutch her dead tomato plant.
“Who are you and what the hell do you want?” She glared at Billy, recognition dawning. “Not you again. I checked, and you are not a cop and I do not have to do anything you say.”
“I’m not a cop, but he is,” Billy said, nodding to Blaire, who already had his badge out, holding it stiff-armed in front of him.
“What’s going on here?” Blaire demanded.
“Well, I’m taking care of Theresa’s garden while she’s in the hospital,” Patty said self-righteously. “This little snipe is here to steal whatever’s not nailed down and sell it for drugs.”
“That’s a lie!” Angie screamed, brandishing her tomato plants again.
“Whoa, whoa, let’s just everybody calm down.” Blaire came behind Angie and took her shoulders. He was merely attempting to move her back from Patty, put some distance between them, but Angie took that as her cue. She shook Blaire off and ran like a rabbit.
“Oh, hell.” Blaire took off after her.
She didn’t get far. He caught her before she could get to the back gate, cuffed her and half dragged her back to where the rest of them were standing.
“She is nothing but trouble, that one,” Patty said with a sniff.
“If you arrest me,” Angie said, “you gotta arrest her, too. She’s trespassing, looking for those coins.”
“Your father’s coin collection?” Billy asked innocently. “I thought it had only sentimental value. Are you looking for the coins, as well?”
Angie ignored the barb. “They weren’t anywhere in Dad’s house. I figure my mom musta given them to Aunt Theresa so my dad wouldn’t find them. After what happened to Theresa, I wanted to find the coins and put them someplace safe. Anybody could break into this house and steal stuff.” She gave Patty a pointed look.
It was a pretty good story. Angie actually sounded sane and reasonable.
“If I’d stolen the coins,” Patty interjected, “would I be digging up the whole backyard—” She caught herself, but it was way too late. “Look, now, I figured it was my civic duty to stop those coins from getting into the hands of a drug user. Can you imagine how much dope she could buy with a million dollars’ worth of—”
“Shut up!” Angie shouted.
“Guess your dad’s gonna be pretty disappointed you couldn’t find the hidden treasure,” Billy said.
“My dad’s deceased.”
“Sure he is. That’s why he keeps calling you from those throwaway cell phones. Eight o’clock every night.”
“If he’s alive, how do you explain the blood?” Angie said belligerently, but he could see the fear in her eyes.
“Give it up. The police already got your dad in custody.”
Blaire and Hyatt raised their eyebrows at Billy’s blatant lie, but they didn’t give him away.
“Right now you’re only looking at a breaking and entering charge,” he continued. “Plus whatever narcotics charges get added based on what’s in your car. But you’re just a little fish. You testify against your father, and maybe all those other charges against you will go away. Otherwise…” Billy shrugged, as if it didn’t make that much difference to him one way or the other “…you might be looking at conspiracy charges.” Conspiracy to what, he wasn’t sure, but plotting with your father to fake his murder and put your mother on death row had to carry some kind of stiff penalty.
Angie suddenly crumbled and burst into tears. “It was his idea.”
Everyone else went very still, even Patty.
“Whose idea, Angie?” Billy asked softly.
“Dad’s. He didn’t want to give her half his money. So I got him the medical stuff and showed him how to draw his own blood, and he kept it in the fridge in the garage until he had enough that it would look like he couldn’t survive. He said they wouldn’t give Mom the death penalty since she was a woman. He just wanted to sell everything and hide the money. Then he was going to reveal that he was alive. But when we couldn’t find th
e coin collection he got mad, said she’d stolen it and he wouldn’t ever let her off the hook.”
“You could have gotten her off the hook,” Billy said. “I asked you if your dad was alive, and all you had to do was say yes. Which means you were conspiring with your father to have your mother killed by lethal injection. That’s conspiracy to commit murder, huh, guys? Don’t you think?”
Blaire nodded. “Sounds like it to me.”
“Angie Torres, you are despicable!” Patty spat out.
“And you, neighbor-lady…” Billy pointed his finger at Patty. “Haven’t you ever heard about people who live in glass houses?”
“Huh?”
“You were trespassing, and you admitted you were looking for the coins. What were you planning to do with them?”
“I told you, I wanted to keep them safe. Until Theresa recovered.”
“And they wouldn’t have been safe enough buried in the backyard?” the ever-logical Ford asked.
“Are they here?” Patty’s eyes glittered with greed.
“Who the hell knows?” Angie said in disgust. “Wherever my mom hid those coins, she did a good job. And she’s not talking.”
“Actually, we know where she hid the coins,” Billy said. “In a statue of the Virgin Mary. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that statue, would you?”
Angie’s eyes widened, but she shook her head even as she glanced toward the house.
Billy had had enough. He was sweating like a mule and Officer Blaire’s fair skin was starting to turn pink.
“Take ’em both in,” Billy said, already thinking about returning to Daniel’s swimming pool, maybe a cold beer and Claudia.
Claudia. He couldn’t wait to tell her the good news. Angie had admitted her father was alive, in front of four people including an impartial Houston police officer. Surely that would be enough to sway Fitz and force him to get Mary-Francis’s conviction overturned.
“Wait,” Patty said as Billy attempted to cuff her. “I might know something about a statue.”
“Yeah, what?” Finding the coins would only be the icing on the cake at this point, but it was still an important part of the puzzle.
“Take the cuffs off, and I’ll tell you.”
Billy didn’t care one way or another if Patty went to jail, so he took off the cuffs. “This better be good or the cuffs go back on.”
“Late at night, after Theresa was attacked, a priest came to the house. He let himself in—I think he had a key.”
“Go on.”
“He didn’t stay long. When he came out, he had something big and heavy under his arm, about three feet long, covered in a blanket. It could have been a statue.”
* * *
CLAUDIA’S STOMACH CHURNED as she sat in the shade on the patio, waiting for word from Billy. The party was still going strong as more and more people arrived.
Daniel was known for putting on an impressive fireworks display over his small private lake. He got a special permit from the city and imported the finest, latest and greatest Chinese fireworks and the pyrotechnics experts to coordinate the ignition, and he brought in a symphony orchestra to play “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the 1812 Overture and a bunch of Sousa marches suitable for the occasion.
Robyn, Ford Hyatt’s wife, had been keeping close by, since it was her husband who’d gone with Billy to confront Angie Torres. Her year-old daughter, Annie, played with Tucker under their umbrella table.
“They’ll be fine,” Robyn kept saying. The tall, slender woman with long blond hair was an art teacher and one of the few in the Project Justice inner circle who had no law enforcement or professional connection to the foundation, other than being a former client. “It was hard for me to get used to at first, knowing Ford would sometimes put himself in dangerous situations. But you have to believe me when I tell you, these guys know how to handle themselves. They used to be cops.”
“You obviously haven’t been around Billy much,” Claudia countered. They watched the pool hijinks from a safe distance as the World Champion of Cannonballs was being determined. So far, Celeste was winning. “He skirts the law. He really puts himself out there, confronting people he shouldn’t, getting in their faces.” Claudia gave a delicate shiver. “He scares the pants off me.”
Robyn looked at her sympathetically. “You’ll get used to it.”
“I don’t plan to get used to it.”
“Oh? I thought you and Billy… Guess I got it wrong.”
Claudia didn’t know how her almost-relationship with Billy had become public knowledge so quickly. She didn’t think Billy had bragged, that wasn’t his style. Perhaps speculation had turned to certainty as people had seen them together. She’d done a poor job of disguising her feelings, and the way Billy had been so protective of her after the assault…well, she could see how people would draw conclusions.
“We’re not a couple,” Claudia said, feeling the weight of that statement, and also the wrongness of it.
“You want to talk about it?”
Claudia smiled at Robyn and squeezed her hand. “I already unloaded on Beth, and I don’t want to become known around here as that dreary woman who’s always whining.”
Robyn laughed. “No one would ever say that about you. I mean, you’re a psychologist. You spend all day listening to other people whine, and even when you’re off the job, you’re a very good listener.”
“You learn more by listening than talking.”
“I might be able to offer some insight. Ford and I had some rocky moments early in our relationship. I had a hard time adjusting to his cop mentality…you know, everything is black and white, everyone is good or bad, you’re either with me or against me.”
“How did you adjust?” Claudia was curious.
“We each gave a little. The usual. He tries not to be judgmental, to give people the benefit of the doubt. And I’ve realized that his job requires him to have a certain attitude, that being suspicious keeps him safe.”
“I always recommend compromise when I do couples counseling,” Claudia said. “But I’m not very good at it myself, apparently.” She could tell herself all day and all night that pressuring Billy into revealing the most traumatic incident of his life had been wrong and unfair. But if he’d continued to stonewall her, she wouldn’t have been able to tolerate it.
“I need for him to trust me,” she said, giving her fears a concrete, tangible expression.
“That seems fair. Do you trust him?”
“Absolutely.” Did she? “Well, mostly. I could trust him one hundred percent if he trusted me.”
“Sounds like a chicken-and-egg problem. Maybe he can’t trust you unless you trust him. Unconditionally.”
Claudia’s head hurt from thinking about it. “It doesn’t matter. It’s over. We missed our window of opportunity.”
Robyn snorted. “Drink some more of that nice fruity drink. See if another window doesn’t open.”
When Claudia spotted Daniel approaching their table with a purposeful stride, she feared the worst—especially because Jamie was with him. By now, Billy and Ford had to have confronted Angie. Nearly two hours had passed.
Claudia jumped out of her chair and took a few steps to meet them. “Is there bad news?”
“On the contrary. Angie’s in custody, everything’s fine.”
“Oh, thank God.” Claudia hadn’t realized how truly worried she’d been until her knees nearly buckled with relief. She managed to make it back to her chair without falling, and she took a long draw on her frozen strawberry daiquiri. She didn’t normally indulge in such a sweet drink, but on this hot day, the icy, sugary concoction slid down easy.
“Billy says he has even better news, but he wants to tell you in person.”
“Did he find Eduardo?” she asked, because that would be the best outcome possible.
Daniel winked mysteriously. “All I’m saying is, I’ve got champagne on ice, if it’s needed.”
Robyn punched her lightly on the
arm. “That’s good news. Daniel only breaks out the champagne when a case is closed.”
Claudia was saved from pulling out Daniel’s fingernails one at a time to get the answers she craved; Billy and Ford had just exited the house through the French doors and were heading their way. Billy had changed into khaki shorts and a wild Hawaiian shirt with parrots and surfboards—something Hudson Vale would wear—looking much more in the party spirit than before. He’d even traded his cowboy boots for flip-flops.
Claudia didn’t think through what she did next. She jumped out of her chair, put her arms around Billy and hugged him for all she was worth. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
“Of course I’m okay,” he murmured in her ear. “I’ve faced off with drug kingpins and mass murderers. I wasn’t going to let one little strung-out junkie get the best of me. But thanks for worrying about me.”
Claudia remembered herself and pulled away, straightening her clothes and getting a grip on herself. What must everyone think? Even Robyn hadn’t greeted her husband with that much enthusiasm, preferring to give him a quick peck on the cheek and a smile full of intimacy, and Ford had been in just as much danger as Billy.
“Daniel says you have good news?” Claudia prompted.
He grinned. “Angie confessed. She blurted out that she and her father planned the whole thing from the beginning. There were four witnesses—me, Ford, a Houston police officer and the neighbor, Patty.”
“That’s fantastic!” She resisted the urge to hug him again. They’d done it. “So where is he?”
“Still at large.” Billy didn’t seem troubled by this fact. “But we’ll find him soon. Angie said she would cooperate. And even if we still can’t find him, I doubt Mr. Fitz can continue to argue that Eduardo Torres is dead.”
Everyone in the group standing near the umbrella table was smiling and giving each other high fives, with one exception. Jamie McNair stood there like a stone. She clearly didn’t want to share in the celebration. Of course she wouldn’t want to see a fellow district attorney forced to eat crow for prosecuting a murder that didn’t happen, but still…
“Jamie,” Claudia said. “Is something wrong?”