by Lis Wiehl
“Criminal law is way more interesting, that’s for sure,” Eli said.
“I can honestly say I enjoy every day at work.” Mia pointed her fork at him. “How many people can say that? Every case is different. And the facts can be exciting or bizarre or tragic. But they are always interesting. And they are never the same.”
“I totally get where you’re coming from.” Eli nodded as he spoke. “I could never work for a white-shoe law firm. For them, everything is the bigger, the better: the bigger house, the bigger car, the bigger salary.” That’s the way Lydia had looked at the world. She had thought it was a waste for Eli to pour himself into his cases, working harder and harder even though the money would never get any better.
Mia snagged a home fry off his plate, and he mock swatted at her. After popping it into her mouth she said, “This might sound sappy, but I kind of like causes.”
Eli thought of Rachel, who would be going to college in a year. He still wasn’t sure how he would be able to afford that. “Still, there’s something to be said for money.”
“I should have told you”—Mia gave him a smile—“I’m paying for my half. Wouldn’t want anyone to accuse me of a conflict of interest.”
“So you’re saying you could be bought for a Dutch Baby?”
“When you put it that way, it really sounds wrong. And besides, you’re forgetting the home fries.” She snatched another one from his plate. “And the coffee.”
A single blond curl framed her blue eye. Eli suddenly wanted to lean forward and kiss her in the worst way. Right here in the restaurant.
Maybe she sensed it, because she sat back and said, “How long have you been divorced?”
“Lydia left a little over a year ago,” he said, which was mostly the truth. “She thought we got married too young.”
“Did you?”
“I was nineteen, she was eighteen. So, yes, we were both too young.”
Eli had volunteered for the army after high school graduation. The army, in its infinite wisdom, had trained him to be a paralegal, which actually turned out to be a pretty good fit for him. On one of his leaves, Lydia got pregnant. She was still in school. She graduated, but she was four months along when she walked down the aisle of her high school auditorium in a cheap green satin graduation gown. And five months pregnant when she married him, this time wearing a cheap white satin gown.
Lydia had always complained that she had just moved from one house to another. She had never gotten to live on her own, never gotten to be independent. She had gone from being a child to being a mother.
“You must look at Rachel and think about how young you guys really were. I mean, she’s, what, only a year younger than your wife was when you got married?”
Eli did think about it, but he still felt defensive. “At the time, it seemed like the right solution.” He didn’t spell out the pregnancy, figuring Mia could read between the lines. “But Lydia always felt she missed out on being a teenager. So she started acting like she could still be one. The summer she left I would come home from work and find her hanging around the pool with our daughter and her friends.” In a bikini, no less. “Rachel was embarrassed, but I think the boys thought it was cool. One day I caught Lydia smoking pot with two of them.” His face flushed as he remembered.
Mia winced.
“I had already realized that Rachel was getting off track. But it wasn’t until that day that I realized it was my wife who was the one leading her down the garden path. She’d practically whisper in Rachel’s ear: ‘You’re young, you need to go out and have fun while you still can.’ ” He blew air through pursed lips, remembering. “I asked Lydia to go to counseling at our church. She refused, and then she stopped going to church.” He had pleaded, begged, promised—but it hadn’t done any good. And then she was gone. “And that was pretty much it.”
Mia was silent for a long time, cradling her coffee cup in her hands. “Did you love her?”
He was surprised. “Of course I did. You can’t live with someone for seventeen years and not love them. Of course, you can’t live that long with someone and not hate them too. And find them annoying and boring and wonderful and surprising and funny. I finally gave her a choice. Me or her new lifestyle.” He bit his lip. “She chose the lifestyle.”
“So how’s Rachel dealing with it?”
“She doesn’t say much, but it’s been hard. When her mom left, she didn’t just leave me, she left Rachel too. And the poor kid can’t help thinking it has something to do with her. When it’s really all about her mom. When we were still living in Portland, Rachel started getting into trouble, hanging out with a bad group of kids. So I decided to move up here, get a fresh start.”
“Has it worked?”
A heaviness settled in his chest. “Maybe. I don’t know.” He spoke before he had a chance to consider whether it was a good idea to tell the truth. “The other day I’m pretty sure she was high. Her eyes looked swollen and she couldn’t stop giggling. Then she tried to put her plate in the upper rack of the dishwasher even though it obviously wouldn’t fit.” He had watched her keep trying, though, while his dinner turned into a leaden lump in his stomach.
Mia leaned forward. “Gabe’s had his problems too. A few months ago he was with a group of kids that robbed a convenience store. He didn’t take anything, and he came forward afterward, so he wasn’t charged. I just worry which way his life is going to go. What other choices he’s going to make.”
Eli felt relieved. There were times when he talked to other parents, even other single parents, and he felt like a loser. Their kids, at least according to them, always got good grades, never got into trouble, and volunteered to clean up without being asked. They even did real volunteer work.
“It’s hard to be a single parent. And it’s hard to be a kid and not have two parents.” He hesitated. “You told me earlier that you thought your husband might have been murdered.”
“Charlie has a theory,” Mia began.
Eli nodded. He hadn’t been too impressed with Charlie, with his slouch and long hair.
Mia explained it to him while Eli tried to look like he was keeping an open mind. Maybe homicide detectives started seeing murder everyplace they looked. The whole thing seemed complicated. Newton’s first law of motion? Plus, Eli had a feeling there might be parts Mia was glossing over. Still, she was an open book compared to Lydia.
“If Charlie’s right and Scott was murdered,” he pointed out, “then whoever did it is not going to be happy that you’re trying to figure it out.”
“I’m thinking it’s related to something Scott did. Not me.” She bit her lip. “I’m wondering if this restaurant owner who was one of Scott’s clients was involved. I was kind of sneaking around yesterday, talking to one of his employees, and then I actually saw the owner hit the poor man. He didn’t know I was there. I’m thinking of calling the state department of labor, only I’m worried I’ll just make this guy lose his job.”
Sneaking around trying to solve Scott’s murder? This was exactly the kind of thing Eli was afraid of. “But, Mia, don’t you see that this can be—”
Her phone rang, interrupting him. She looked at it, her finger hovering over the button to dismiss it, then she took a closer look and picked it up instead.
“This is Mia.” As she listened, the smile fell from her face like a plate from a shelf. Eli felt himself tense as she asked a series of questions.
“How did she die? . . . In her own blood?” Her voice was filled with disbelief. “What was the number?” Then she repeated, “Nine three seven oh. That doesn’t mean anything to me either . . . Okay, I’ll talk to you soon.” She ended the call and then looked up at Eli. “Sorry about that.”
“I couldn’t help overhearing. Did someone you know die?”
The look she gave him wasn’t easy to decipher. Embarrassment, anger, fear? A little of everything? “My late husband’s girlfriend.”
CHAPTER 57
TUESDAY
Mia
had spent the last few days in a blur. Everyone was still adjusting to having two more people in the house. Charlie was keeping her up-to-date on his hunt to find Betty’s killer, but so far it was coming up empty. Today was the election, and tempers were running high at the office as everyone wondered whether they would wake up to the news of a new boss.
On her way home from work, Mia started sneezing. Great. She was getting a cold. Leaning forward, she rummaged through the glove box for a packet of tissues, careful not to take her eyes off the road. Instead, her fingers touched the black jewelry box that held the engagement ring Scott had planned to give Betty. She had put it there after meeting with Oleg, not able to bring herself to bring it back into her house.
But what if one day Gabe rummaged for a tissue or a pair of sunglasses? Even though it was so small, it felt like the box gave out a toxic glow, like something radioactive that would slowly poison bones and blood.
When Oleg had told her the truth about the ring’s value, Mia had originally thought she should keep it to remind her of Scott’s bone-deep perfidy. Not only to her, but even to his mistress.
But really, what was the point of that? Every day she was reminded of how he had lied to her, how he had already begun to abandon her and their children. She was reminded when she worried about whether she could afford new tires for the car. When she wished that her kids would stop growing out of their clothes. When she had to pay a bill that Scott had run up. For all she knew, this ring had been put on one of the many credit cards he had left behind.
Mia hadn’t yet gotten on the freeway, so she pulled over and Googled “jewelry stores” on her phone. There was one only a half mile away.
Located in a small shopping area with stores on three sides of a parking lot, Streeter’s Jewelry wasn’t nearly as nice as Oleg’s Jewels and Gems. But it had a sign in the window that said, “We pay cash for your jewelry,” and that was all she cared about. Oleg had told her Scott had paid seven or eight hundred for the ring, that the setting was 18-karat gold. She thought of the heft of it. Once you pried out the cubic zirconia, the rest could be melted down.
A bell jingled overhead when she walked in. It was a small store, with glass cases on three sides of the room. A man stepped out from the back. He was older, Hispanic looking, with a dark suit like a banker’s and long silver sideburns to show that he also had an artistic side.
“May I help you?”
“I’d like to sell this ring.” She held out the black box. It was a relief to put it in his palm.
“Oh?” He raised an eyebrow.
She said evenly, “It reminds me of a past relationship.” Just not hers. “Could you tell me how much it’s worth?”
Screwing a jeweler’s loupe to his left eye, he snapped open the box, then plucked the ring from inside and leaned down to look at it under a light.
Even though it would be a relief to be rid of it, realistically, how much could she expect to get? Oleg had probably exaggerated the value, trying to help a widow in need without embarrassing either of them.
Then again, even a couple hundred dollars would be welcome. And it would be out of her life, which was even more important.
He lifted his head and took the loupe from his eye. “It’s a beautiful piece,” he said slowly. “The cut, the clarity, the color. Of course, we can only offer you the wholesale value, not the retail.” His eyes were a very light brown with gold flecks. “To be honest, you might try selling it as a private party. You might be able to get more for it.”
“I’d feel kind of strange about that,” Mia said. “I mean, I would tell them right up front that it’s a fake, but I’d still feel like one of those men with the watches hung up inside their raincoats.”
His eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about? This is no fake.”
“What?” The room seemed to be rotating around her, and she put her hand on the counter to steady herself. “Are you saying it’s real?”
“Very much so. I could give you maybe twenty thousand for it, but if you sold it as a private party, you could probably get thirty.”
“But I was told by another jeweler that it was a fake. He said it was a very good fake, but still a fake.”
He snorted. “He was right about it being very good. Just not about it being fake. Let me ask you something. Did he offer to take it off your hands?”
Mia remembered how alarmed Oleg had looked when she had started laughing at the news. “He told me he could buy it back if I was having a problem with money.”
“Buy it back?”
“He has two shops. One sells gems, the other costume jewelry. He said my husband had bought the ring from the costume jewelry one.”
“He lied to you,” he said flatly. “He was trying to cheat you. You should report him to the Better Business Bureau.”
Mia felt off balance. What else might Oleg have lied about?
CHAPTER 58
Charlie sat at his desk staring at a photograph of the number: 9370. Betty had used her last few heartbeats to leave a message, a message so vital that she had chosen to write it in her own blood.
But he had no idea what it was.
He typed 9370 into Google.
It was a BlackBerry model number. So had Betty been trying to hint they needed to look at a phone?
But it turned out to also be the model number of a radar detector, an International truck, and an IBM mainframe computer released in 1986. In addition, it was the name of a gene that was involved with metabolic and hormonal processes. None of these seemed like anything Betty would care about.
Remembering Doug’s theory that it might have only been a partial number, Charlie Googled 937 to see if it was an area code. It was—in Ohio. 937-0. So had she wanted them to call the operator in Ohio?
The number was the only real clue he had. As for Betty herself, there was no yellow brick road to follow. She had no family and had grown up in a series of foster placements. The clothes she had been wearing when she died were expensive, but not exclusive enough to be traced back to a single buyer. The last friend she’d had seemed to have been Jared. And according to him, Betty had dropped out of sight the day Scott was murdered. April was also the last month she seemed to have had a cell phone contract, a job, any activity on her credit cards, or gone to school.
So something must have happened to Betty around the same time, or even the very night Scott died. Both airbags had been deployed, so if she had been in the car and wearing her seat belt, she could have survived in much better shape than Scott had. Especially assuming no one had taken a club to her head afterward. Had someone caused the accident, taken her, and then gotten tired of her?
With a groan Charlie pushed himself back from his desk and walked over to the break room. He came back with a cup of sludgy coffee that smelled like it had sat on the burner since Monday. His grandma would have said it was the kind of coffee that would put hair on your chest.
He walked around his desk to get back to his chair, his eyes still on the photo.
And suddenly Charlie saw what Betty’s last message had been.
He pictured Betty, her heart pumping erratically, lying on her back, not strong enough to get to her feet. Not even strong enough to sit up or roll over. Dipping her finger in her own blood, reaching back, writing her note with the last of her strength. Her brain already affected by a lack of oxygen before it finally shut down altogether.
She had written it so that it was right side up for her.
It wasn’t 9370.
It was OLEG.
CHAPTER 59
Vin waited for the three men to emerge from the workroom. As required, they had stripped before they walked into the room as naked as the day they were born. Inside the room, his boss supplied everything they needed: the bunny suits, the gloves, the breathing masks. As well as the hammers, the gaudy necklaces, the scales, the packaging.
Even with the masks, when they were done they would still stagger out of the room with pupils so wide they looked like those J
apanese cartoon characters that he thought were called anime. Then he would search them, put his own gloved hands on their sweating, trembling bodies to make sure they hadn’t hidden any of the precious commodity in an orifice.
From inside the room the rhythmic tap, tap, tap still echoed. Each of the men gently striking one of the huge necklaces shaped like hearts and covered with rhinestones. The necklaces that had been chosen not for any sense of beauty, but solely for how much they could hold.
There was a cracking sound as one of the necklaces finally yielded. Revealing its own white, powdery heart.
Pure cocaine.
Then his phone rang.
In the old days everyone knew if you wanted something done right, you went to Vin. A bank robbery that happened minutes after the casino made a deposit? He was your man. Did you want someone dead but no one to be suspicious? Let Vin take care of it, and no one would even guess it was a hit. He had been responsible for five “accidents,” two missing persons, and one businessman who was believed to have run off with his mistress.
The key to being successful, to keeping out of prison, was to plan everything in advance. Before you did any kind of job, whether it was a hit or a robbery, you began by familiarizing yourself with the routine you planned to disrupt.
You figured out one quick escape route, but you also had another, longer one, in case some Joe Citizen looking for a merit badge decided to follow you and you had to shake him loose. You mapped and timed both primary and secondary routes. You stole license plates from parked cars. You stole parked cars. You rented garages to park the stolen cars with the new stolen plates.
When you did a job, you never carried anything that if dropped could later be traced back to you. No cell phones. No scraps of paper with your girlfriend’s phone number. No nothing, up to and including your wallet. And you never touched anything with your bare hands.
The last time he had done a job in haste, it had gone wrong. Terribly wrong. Nineteen years of prison wrong. He had gone in a strong man, a man in the prime of life, a man who could scare people just by looking at them, and had come out an old man.