Blue Steele Box Sets 2

by Remington Kane

  “What’s wrong, Blue?”

  “Let’s sit. There’s something I need to show you.”

  Carol looked down at the file folder I was holding.

  “Is this about the case?”

  I nodded.

  After giving me a worried look, Carol waved for me to follow her, and we were soon seated at her kitchen table. Her townhouse was of a good size with plenty of room to raise a child. I hoped that what I was about to reveal wouldn’t destroy her.

  “I just came from seeing Holly.”

  “Why?”

  “I needed her help. I asked her to draw me a picture.”

  “A picture of who?”

  “On the day her mother was murdered, Holly told us that she and Shannon had run into an old woman who was there to visit Billy Barr, remember?”

  “Of course I remember. She was talking about Pam, the neighbor.”

  “That’s what I thought too. And later, when Pam told us that she had seen Holly and Shannon at Billy’s place, we thought that we had confirmed that.”

  “We did, didn’t we? Pam said that she had seen Holly and Shannon and also that she had gone over to Billy Barr’s home that day.”

  “Yes, but we had it wrong. I spoke to Pam on the way here. She did see Holly and Shannon that day, but only from her window. She said that she never spoke to them, and she had gone over to Billy’s home earlier in the day, before Holly and Shannon ever arrived.”

  Carol looked at the file folder in my hand again.

  “What do you have there?”

  “It’s the drawing Holly made of the woman she saw that day. Pam has very curly white hair. The woman in the drawing has straight white hair.”

  Carol held out her hand. “Let me see.”

  I hesitated, I could guess what seeing the drawing would do to her. As I handed it over, I whispered three words.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  Carol gave me an odd look, and then she opened the folder and stared at the drawing. I saw the recognition in her eyes. It was immediate and was followed by a look of shock, then, there came the face of disbelief that was accompanied by the shake of her head. When tears began to flow, I reached across the table and tried to take the file back, but Carol held on to it tightly.

  “Blue… that’s my mother.”

  “Yes.”

  A sob escaped Carol along with several words that she managed to choke out.

  “When she was young… my mother… was a, a redhead.”

  “I remembered that you told me that you caught her going through your purse. She likely read your notes on the case and found Billy’s address. I contacted the oncologist you told me she was seeing. The doctor said that she has no idea who your mother is. I’m guessing that your mother came up with the story of her illness so she’d have a credible reason to suddenly reconnect with you after so many years. When that newspaper story appeared about Donna Weaver, the article mentioned that you were the lead detective.”

  Carol broke down and cried great tears of grief and pain. As she did so, I sat there quietly and thanked God that my own mother loved me dearly. I could only guess how much pain the betrayal of her mother was causing Carol, along with the knowledge that the woman was likely a cold-blooded murderer.

  When the tears ceased, anger replaced them. Carol opened the file and began reading the report on her mother that I’d had my federal contacts send me. Several times I heard the words, “Lying bitch,” escape in a whisper. After finishing the file, Carol looked up at me.

  “Mother or not, if she’s guilty I hope they fry her.”

  “We’ll bring her in tomorrow morning and get to the bottom of things.”

  Carol shook her head. “I know her, Blue. She’ll lawyer up and won’t say a word.”

  “Maybe, but now that we know who the mystery redhead was we can look into her past. Eventually we’ll connect her to Tommy Frugazy. Once that connection is established she’ll have trouble making a jury believe she’s completely innocent.”

  Carol moaned as she stared up at the ceiling.

  “Oh, Mother, what sort of monster are you?”

  I rose from my seat, walked over, and hugged Carol where she sat. I kept holding her as tears once again returned to her eyes.

  Chapter 43

  I was halfway back to my hotel room when Carol called and told me that she was going to see her mother.

  “That’s a bad idea and you know it,” I said.

  “I can get her to talk, Blue. I know I can. I just have to push the right buttons.”

  “Will she even be awake? It’s nearing midnight.”

  “So much the better. My mother stays up late and she’s always been a drinker. She’ll be far from drunk, but she’ll be lubricated and the booze might loosen her tongue.”

  I tried to talk Carol out of the idea but soon realized that I was wasting my time. So when she told me she had a plan, I listened.

  Sometime later, Carol and I were entering her mother’s house through a rear door by the use of a spare key. As I hid from sight, Carol called out to her mother. It was a large home and I realized that Carol must have grown up with wealthy parents. She would have been much better off having a loving mom than a rich one.

  Carol’s mother, Margaret Olson, came downstairs wearing a white silk robe and an angry expression. She looked so much like the drawing Holly had made that it caused me to marvel at the young girl’s talent.

  Margaret Olson was furious with daughter for entering the home without calling. She demanded that Carol return the spare key she had.

  “You should have returned that key when I told you that I never wanted to see you again.”

  “Maybe, but I still hoped that we could stay in contact. I also rushed out of here in a state of emotional distress after you told me that you didn’t need me anymore. I even left some of my things behind. But you gave me this key along with the alarm codes. Remember, Mother? I was to help you through your illness.”

  “You can give it back to me now. As I told you, the doctor said that I’m perfectly fine.”

  Carol must have flung the key at her mother because I heard it land on the marble floor and bounce away. Carol then began asking her mother about her early years.

  “You know very well that I came here from Boston.”

  “Liar, I know about your past. You’re from North Carolina and your father wasn’t a college professor like you always claimed, he was a cheap hood who died in prison.”

  I peeked out from where I stood and saw Margaret Olson turn a bright red, but then, a smile played at the corner of her lips and a twinkle entered her eye.

  “You always were a smart one, Carol. You got that from me. Your father was a good businessman, but he wasn’t that bright otherwise.”

  “Don’t talk about Father. Tell me about Donna Weaver.”

  “That dumb bitch Donna. I can’t believe all this trouble started because of her, and she’s been dead for almost four decades.”

  “What happened, Mother? Tell me what happened.”

  “Yes, I should tell my daughter the cop.”

  “You might as well. It will still be your word against mine.”

  Carol’s mother released a sigh and began walking in my direction. I held my breath from where I stood in the hallway. While it was true that Margaret Olson didn’t know I was there, I was in plain sight. Carol’s job was to keep her mother talking and away from my position.

  “You think you’re so smart, don’t you, Mother?”

  The footfalls stopped, and then I heard them go back the way they had come from.

  “I am smart. I was smart enough to walk away with most of the money and the drugs when Tommy and Frankie Frugazy were killed. A stupid woman would have taken everything and had the cops on her trail. By leaving a little behind, I gave the cops a story they could close the books on.”

  “But the books weren’t closed, because Donna Weaver went missing.”

  There was silence, but then I heard a
whisper.

  “Speak up, Mother, I can’t hear you.”

  “I said the stupid girl wanted to call the cops. All that money and she wanted to call the cops.”

  “You killed her?”

  Another pause, and then the words. “I don’t know what happened to her.”

  “She was wounded, wasn’t she?”

  “It was nothing; the bullet barely broke the skin on her arm.”

  “You killed her. You killed her for the drugs and the money and now you’ve killed her daughter too, along with Billy Barr. Damn you, Mother. You’re a monster!”

  I heard a slap, it was followed by the sound of soft footfalls. I realized that Carol’s mother was walking off toward the kitchen. As she made it past the doorway, I heard a shriek.

  Two young female police officers walked out of the kitchen holding cans of soda. One of them was black, and she chuckled as she looked at the shocked expression on Margaret Olson’s face.

  “If I knew you and your mother were going to get into an argument I wouldn’t have agreed to hang out with you, Carol. Still, what she said was interesting.”

  I stepped out of my place of concealment as well. After spotting me, Margaret Olson jabbed a finger at her daughter.

  “This is entrapment!”

  “Entrapment?” Carol said. “No, Mother, I just invited a few friends over, that’s all.”

  Margaret rushed to a roll top desk and grabbed a letter opener. When she held it up like a weapon, I nearly laughed.

  “Get out! All of you, get out!”

  “Someone will be here in the morning with a warrant for your arrest,” Carol said.

  I noticed that she no longer referred to the woman standing before her as Mother.

  Chapter 44

  Weeks later, I learned that Carol’s mother agreed to a plea bargain after damning evidence surfaced. Someone had captured Margaret sitting in her car down the street from Billy Barr’s home. The man had been filming his kids at play in his living room.

  The street in front of his home was in the background and visible through a large picture window. The young father recognized Margaret as the woman in his video once her face was shown on the news. The time and date stamp on the video placed her near the murder scene and gave the lie to her alibi.

  In exchange for pleading guilty to three counts of murder and leading police to Donna Weaver’s body, Carol’s mother received a sentence of only twelve years. There would be no chance of parole. She would eighty-one by the time they set her free.

  Ramón and I celebrated with Carol and Holly on the day that Carol was given custody of the precious girl.

  I was definitely showing and had to wear maternity clothes. Ramón and I had our own reason to celebrate. The baby was coming along perfectly and we had learned that we’d be having a girl.

  Holly laid a gentle hand atop my stomach and smiled as she felt the baby stir.

  “What are you going to name her?” Holly asked.

  “We’re thinking of naming her Azul,” I said.

  Carol smiled.

  “That’s Spanish for blue, so she’d be named after her mother.”

  “It’s even better than that,” Ramón said. “The baby will have my last name, which is Acero.”

  Carol looked back and forth at us.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Acero means steel in Spanish,” Ramón explained. “And so Azul Acero would be Blue Steele.”

  “That’s cute,” Carol said. “And men have named their sons after themselves forever. It’s time we women did the same.”

  “We’ll see,” I said. “We’ll see.”

  But I had to admit, I liked the idea, as well as the name Azul.

  Across the country, a woman who had gone by many names during a career as a con artist was scheming to escape to freedom.

  Sigrid Talbot, who was best known as Prophet, smiled as she walked around the grounds of the Senator Richmond J. Peterson Correctional Institute in Maryland.

  It was a beautiful day and Prophet thought that she might even go for a swim once her food settled. She had just eaten a scrumptious meal of steak and lobster while talking to a real estate broker who was doing time for tax evasion.

  Prophet’s cover story was that she too was incarcerated for evading taxes, while the other prisoners knew her as Susan Tyler.

  The so-called correctional institution had no guard towers, while the guards were dressed casually in khakis and polo shirts and carried only Tasers.

  The grounds were walled in, but the wall was just ten feet high with no barb wire. Beyond them was a city that an escapee could easily lose themselves in. Prophet had been planning to escape since her first day there, but knew that Lawson must have someone watching her.

  She had pretended to be the perfect prisoner in the months she’d been there and was convinced that Lawson had dropped his guard. She’d seen no signs that she was under extra scrutiny or surveillance and was planning to go over the wall when dawn came.

  She still had money and a fake ID stowed away at a location half a day’s drive from where she stood. She would gather them, head into Mexico, then disappear in South America.

  When she caught a momentary flash from up in the hills, Prophet wondered if someone was up there watching her with a pair of binoculars.

  The reflected flash hadn’t come from binoculars, but rather, from the scope of a rifle.

  The first round caught Prophet in the left hip and collapsed her to the ground. It was not an errant shot. It had delivered a message, one that Prophet understood immediately. She had demanded things from Thomas Lawson in exchange for her help and had been given exactly what she asked for. That didn’t mean that she had won.

  As she lay there feeling the agony of her wound and the terror of impending death, Prophet realized that she had not escaped justice after all. A moment before the second and final round caught her above the bridge of her nose, Prophet understood that she had underestimated Thomas Lawson.

  She was not the first person to make that error, only the latest.

  Up in the hills, an assassin named Tanner headed toward his escape route while walking at a casual pace. He would meld into the same city streets that Prophet had hoped to escape to. Unlike the late Sigrid Talbot, Tanner would have no one looking for him.

  Tanner climbed into a jeep and began breaking down the rifle he’d used. In the driver’s seat, Sara turned to look at him as she placed the vehicle in gear.

  “Mission accomplished?”

  Tanner sent her a nod. The two of them drove off together while knowing that there was a little less evil in the world.

  BLUE STEELE 7

  BLUE STEELE – DADDY’S GIRL - Book 7 & the Series Finale of the Blue Steele Series

  Chapter 45

  ENSENADA, MEXICO 2:17 a.m.

  I flew down a flight of wooden steps while blinking away the blood that ran into my left eye.

  The woman I had tracked for over a week was about to lock herself inside a safe room. If the room also contained a hidden exit, as some did, I would lose her, possibly forever.

  When I was six steps from the bottom I spotted my target as she moved toward a room with an open metal door. The cartel leader Juan Graboro was with her and Mia was urging the panting man forward.

  “Hurry, Juan!”

  The target, Mia Ortiz, couldn’t see me, but she knew I was on her heels. As she and Graboro entered the room I dived off the steps to land hard atop a tile floor. The impact was jarring, but my momentum was enough to send me sliding through the still open doorway.

  I hit Graboro hard from behind and sent him stumbling forward toward a cinder block wall. His head smacked hard against the unyielding surface and he fell to the floor, unconscious.

  Mia had been slamming the door shut. Once it was closed, I heard a snapping sound as the magnetic locks engaged.

  Mia swung her shotgun around as I did the same. Seeing that I had her in my sights, she took a step backward, tripped ov
er Graboro’s outstretched foot and fell on her ass.

  We were seated directly across from each other with only twelve feet between us while aiming shotguns at each other.

  Mia smiled. It was a beautiful smile from a beautiful woman. She had long dark hair, bronze-colored skin, and eyes that danced with mischief.

  “What do they call you?” Mia asked.

  I flicked my gaze toward Graboro for an instant. A lump was rising on his forehead and his mouth was slack. His exertion while running caused him to breathe hard. Despite the rapid rising and falling of his chest, Juan Graboro was definitely unconscious.

  “I’m Blue Steele,” I told Mia.

  “You’ve been chasing me, Blue Steele. How do you like having caught me?”

  “I don’t suppose that shotgun is unloaded?”

  Mia laughed. “No more than yours is. Back in the day they called this a Mexican stand-off. Well, at least one of us is Mexican.”

  A sound penetrated the thick steel door that sounded like an explosion. Outside, on the grounds of the villa, a battle raged between a joint DEA/Policia Federal task force and the minions of Juan Graboro’s cartel. When I ventured inside Graboro’s home to search for Mia the task force still had a fighting chance, although they were outnumbered.

  “Hey, Blue Steele, when my people come through that door you’ll be a dead woman. Why not put down that shotgun? I’ll let you live.”

  “Your people would still kill me.”

  “There are slow ways to die and quick ways to die. Besides, you’re a beautiful woman. I could keep the men from… using you.”

  “My people will come through that door first, Mia. I won’t have to keep them from raping you. The thought would never enter their minds.”

  Mia sighed. “It’s going to be a long night, Blue Steele.”

  I said nothing, and the small room grew silent. I was pointing my shotgun at Mia, and Mia aimed her shotgun back my way. I hoped she wasn’t foolish enough to pull the trigger, and I assumed she was wishing the same about me.