Putting the laptop aside, Caroline tucked her legs under her, getting comfortable. Though it wasn’t exactly a slumber party, the sensation of sitting on a bed, chatting, felt soothingly normal. She hoped the same was true for Lani. She needed the small woman to talk freely and hopefully provide some useful information.
“Tell me about the dorm,” Caroline said.
“There’s nothing much to it. Just a big room with a bunch of cots. Better than being on the street, I guess.” Lani shrugged. “There are a lot of girls there—we have a harder time on the streets than the men do.”
“Did you get to know anyone at the dorms?”
“Sure. I hung out with a few.”
“How about Patricia Amos?” Caroline asked. “I’m not sure that’s her real name, but she’s the CNA that cared for my grandmother. She went through the Oasis training program.”
“I don’t remember any Patricia,” Lani said. “What does she look like?”
“Red hair. When I met her, it was tied back in a long braid. She’s got a tattoo on her wrist,” Caroline added, pointing at her right wrist. “I think it’s Sanskrit. She told me it was her mantra.”
“Oh, that’s Rica,” Lani said, her eyes lighting up. “Federica Muller.”
Caroline’s heart hammered. A name. She had a name.
“I don’t know why she’d be going by ‘Patricia,’” Lani continued, “but that’s definitely Rica.”
“She used a fake name because she’s a murderer.” Caroline had wondered before whether Patricia Amos was a fake identity. Now she knew it was—and she knew why Federica had used one.
Lani’s eyebrows knit. “No,” she said, her tone decisive. “Rica would never kill anyone. I mean, the woman meditates and shit. She loves animals. When I knew her at the Oasis dorm, she had this little dog named Baby. Oasis wouldn’t let people have pets, so she had a homeless friend bring that dog by for her to walk so he wouldn’t forget about her.”
Caroline was far from convinced. Just because a person liked animals didn’t mean they weren’t capable of murder. Even criminals had pets, after all.
“How’d she end up on the street?” Caroline asked.
“I remember her telling me how she dropped out of school to follow some band. You know, traveling around, having fun. Except she got hooked on Oxy, and then the Oxy got too expensive, and so she ended up shooting up smack. You know how that shit goes.” Lani shook her head mournfully, as if she’d seen or heard about the trajectory numerous times before. “Rica was just a messed-up kid who went down a bad path.”
Caroline found herself growing angry. Patricia, or Federica or whatever her name was, had duped everyone. The proximity between Grandma Kate’s will and her death was unavoidable. Maybe Federica had been coerced into doing it, but Caroline had no doubt that she’d committed murder. And not just any murder. She’d killed Caroline’s own grandmother.
“Do you know where Federica Muller is from?” Caroline asked. She hated that she had to find Federica, not to bring her to justice but to try to get her to cut a deal to testify against Oasis. Much as she hated it, she couldn’t think of an alternative. Albert needed a witness.
“Desert Hot Springs. Her parents are still there, I think.”
“Hi, there,” said Caroline into the burner phone, “I’m on the Desert Hot Springs High School reunion committee. I’m putting together a list of alumni, and I’m just trying to track down a current address for Federica Muller.” Despite the anger coiling in her gut, Caroline kept her voice light and pleasant.
“Rica hasn’t lived here in years,” said Federica’s mother.
“Do you know her current address?”
“Sure, it’s 135 South Slauson Avenue. Apartment 12-B.”
Caroline thanked the woman and hung up.
Opening Google Maps, she quickly found the address.
Zooming in on the street-view image, she noted the property management company’s name printed on a large sign in front of the apartment building.
Finding Federica was going to be easy.
“If you see her, please let her know that the reunion committee is trying to get in touch with her,” Caroline said.
“No problem,” the property manager said before hanging up.
Placing the burner phone beside the laptop, Caroline turned to meet the expectant eyes of Lani, Hitch, and Jake.
“The property manager hasn’t seen Federica,” she told them. “He says no one has. Her mail’s been piling up for weeks.” Caroline considered the timing. “She must’ve dropped out of her life around the same time she quit her job at The Pastures.”
“But why?” Lani asked.
Caroline just shook her head. The caregiver’s behavior made no sense. Even if Federica had been rattled by her encounter with Caroline at the nursing home, she had to know that Oasis would protect its own. The CNAs were valuable members of Oasis’s operation, as Caroline understood it. That Federica had gone missing was inconsistent with Oasis’s modus operandi.
As the questions piled up, Caroline realized Albert was right—she was functioning almost entirely on suspicion. The pattern of wills and transactions was circumstantial evidence of something, but she had no direct proof of anything. Even Lani, who’d lived at Oasis, had only heard rumors—she wasn’t a firsthand witness to any of Oasis’s crimes.
But Federica was. If Caroline was right, she’d even committed some of them.
The fact that Federica had disappeared hinted at a deeper story—one that Caroline’s instincts insisted she discover.
And yet, looking for Federica would mean leaving the sanctuary of the residence hotel—and risking capture by the police.
Exhaling, Caroline confronted an unavoidable conclusion: She had to find a way to exonerate herself of the paletería accident. Problem was, there’d been no witnesses to the accident. Plus, the cascade of news reports Caroline had seen since arriving at the hotel room had mentioned only one suspect—her. How could she find the identity of the person who’d driven the Mustang into the front of the paletería?
Pulling her laptop to her, Caroline considered how to begin.
She closed the useless tab showing the Google Maps image of Federica’s apartment building. That had been another dead end. She’d hit so many . . .
But then her eyes fell on the frozen image that now filled the screen of her laptop. Gregory Parsons. The man in pinstripes that Albert had identified from the surveillance footage.
Suddenly, Caroline knew exactly what she needed to do to prove her innocence.
CHAPTER 25
Caroline began the next morning at a pawnshop.
Ten minutes and twenty-six dollars later, she had what she needed in her pocket. The binoculars weren’t new, but they’d be powerful enough for her purposes.
She ran a hand through her hair. The short strands were a surprise to her fingers.
If things went well, she’d exonerate herself of having had any involvement in the destruction of the paletería. But to find that exoneration, she’d need to spend hours in the open. Even worse, she’d have to walk the streets near her apartment. The haircut and cheap sunglasses gave her confidence she’d accomplish her mission without being detected. She’d get the hack job she’d done on her hair fixed once she wasn’t being hunted by the law.
When she reached Traction Avenue, she stopped.
A quarter of a block ahead, in the late-morning sunshine, she could see the brick facade of the building that housed her apartment. She was close enough to see her kitchen window. Close enough to imagine her couch. Her clothes. Her bed. She’d slept better the previous night than she’d slept in the previous week, but it was still a hotel bed. She longed for her own.
Turning her back to her apartment, Caroline began walking toward the paletería. She took the shortest, most direct path.
As she moved slowly down the sidewalk, Caroline scanned the buildings on either side of her. Every once in a while, she’d stop and use the binoculars to bet
ter study the tops of fences and shops, scouring them for the one thing she knew would conclusively establish her innocence.
She finally found what she needed at a bar on the corner of Fourth and Crocker.
Replacing the binoculars in her pocket, she stepped inside the bar.
The proprietor sat on a stool by the door, watching television. His generous backside drooped over the edges of the wooden perch. In his hand, he held a glass of flat Coca-Cola.
He looked up at Caroline, who stood blinking in the doorway.
“Can I help you?” he asked, not bothering to rise from his stool.
To see anything in the dim light, Caroline removed her sunglasses.
The bar was empty except for a wrinkled woman cleaning highballs with a rag.
“I see you have an AngelView cam outside. I was hoping you’d let me take a look at your footage from Sunday, September 25. Around 10:00 p.m.” Caroline knew that unlike bank security footage, footage from personal security cameras was not warehoused in a single, commonly used server. Businesses contracted with any number of smaller cloud-based services to record and save footage—footage that was accessible only on the account holder’s phone or computer. Hence, her house call to the owner of one such camera.
The big man shifted in his seat.
“Why do you need it?” he asked.
Caroline had prepared for the question. “I got into a car accident the other night, and I was hoping your footage might show that I wasn’t at fault.”
The man squinted at Caroline.
“Aren’t you that girl they keep showing on the news?”
Caroline’s heart froze rock solid in her chest.
She considered denying the accusation. But the tone of the proprietor’s voice and the expression in his eyes let her know it would achieve nothing. He’d spent hours in front of a TV. He knew exactly who she was.
“I didn’t do it,” Caroline said, dropping the act. “Someone stole my car and crashed it into that shop.”
She braced herself for the next question and the judgment that would inevitably follow. He’d ask why she hadn’t turned herself in and then, like Lily, he’d treat her failure to do so as an admission of guilt.
“You think my video’s gonna show the guy?” The man raised his eyebrows.
“Yes. That’s exactly what I think it’s going to show.”
“Cool,” said the man, rising from the stool. “Let’s go see if you’re right.”
“You got this from a bar?” Albert asked on the phone.
In the hopes that his trial broke for lunch each day around noon, Caroline had taken the risk of calling the prosecutor in the middle of the day. Fortunately, he’d answered.
“Yes, they had a camera trained on the sidewalk,” she explained. “The top of the frame included the intersection.” As she spoke, Caroline watched the footage she’d just sent to Albert. A blond man drove her black Mustang GT down East Fourth Street. He stopped at the stoplight at Crocker Street and then drove onward. The scene was commonplace and innocuous but utterly incriminating with the license plate on the car, plus the date and time stamp on the video.
“Nice trick.” Albert whistled appreciatively on the line. “Once the investigating detective at LAPD sees this, they’ll definitely call off the search for you. It shouldn’t take long for them to verify the provenance of the footage.”
“I’ve tried to expedite that process. Check your e-mail. I’ve sent you a declaration from the bar owner, attesting to the chain of custody of the video footage and authenticating it. His number’s on there, too. He’s happy to talk to the detective or you or anyone else.”
“Really?” Albert asked.
Instead of answering the obviously rhetorical question, Caroline waited while Albert looked at the short declaration she’d scratched on the back of a bar menu. She was glad the proprietor had been so willing to help. Everyone wanted their fifteen minutes of fame, apparently, and his would surely come now. When the police dropped their search, the news trucks would follow. The publicity would probably elevate the bar’s profile and make the proprietor a local celebrity for a news cycle or two.
“I’ll make sure this doesn’t fall through the cracks over at LAPD. They’ll be embarrassed enough that they didn’t already obtain this footage themselves. They won’t want to sit on it. Just give me a couple of hours.”
“Hurry. I need to go to Desert Hot Springs, and I’d really rather not be arrested.”
“You really think that caregiver’s parents are going to tell you where she is?”
“No, but I’ll think of something.”
“I’m sure you will,” Albert said. There was a smile in his voice.
Caroline found herself smiling, too.
“What are you going to do if you find her?” Albert asked, his tone growing serious.
“I don’t know, but I’ll think of something there, too,” Caroline said, and it was true. She knew they needed a witness. Someone Albert could use to build a criminal case against Oasis and Simon Reed. That’s what they’d been missing all along—an informant who might be willing to testify against Simon. But she dreaded the moment when she would meet Federica Muller.
The sun outside the hotel room was still high in the sky, but she had much to do.
Hanging up with Albert, she got to work.
The 1983 Cadillac Eldorado wheezed as Caroline stepped down on the accelerator as she headed east on the I-10, into the dusk.
In the passenger seat, Lani sat with her feet up against the dashboard. With ninety-eight thousand miles on it, the car rattled and hummed, which was why it had cost Caroline only $1,800 at the used car lot—the most she could allow herself to spend of the Western Union funds she’d wired to herself.
Beside Caroline on the Eldorado’s spacious front seat, the laptop sat uncharged. She didn’t have an adapter to turn the cigarette lighter into a USB port, but thankfully she didn’t need the laptop at the moment. Instead, she held the burner phone. Its glow lit the side of her face.
“You’re lucky you caught me,” said assistant DA Shaina Parker on the line. “I was actually just putting the finishing touches on the charging document.”
“What have you decided to do?” Caroline asked. She’d been eager to call the assistant district attorney handling the Hidalgo case. Now that she’d been exonerated of any involvement in the paletería incident, she finally could.
“We might add other charges later, but we’ve got Rogelio Gonzalez for money laundering for sure.”
“That’s great news,” Caroline said. Her money-laundering theory had been a Hail Mary, a desperate reach to keep Judge Flores from rubber-stamping the guardianship petition. And it had worked. That she’d come up with the argument in a distribution center while on the run made her feel like her trip to Desert Hot Springs, winging it as she went along, might not be a total bust.
“None of Gonzalez’s manifest numbers add up right, and there are a number of other suspicious transfers on top of the ones you’ve identified,” continued the assistant DA. Then she paused. “Wally’s been telling everyone in the office that he knew all along that you didn’t crash your car into that shop.”
Caroline doubted that Wallace Boyd had been convinced of her innocence until he’d personally seen the security footage from the bar, but she gave Shaina Parker a charitable, noncommittal hmm.
“I’ll send a courtesy copy of the charging document to the dependency court, just to let Judge Flores know the status of the case,” the assistant DA finished.
“Thanks so much. Please keep me posted.”
Hanging up, Caroline dialed the next number. She had one last task to complete to ensure Mateo’s safety.
“Mr. Castillo?” she asked when a man’s voice answered. “I’m the guardian ad litem for Mateo Hidalgo. We’ve talked once before, when Mateo was placed with you. I know you’ve run into some problems and wanted to check in personally to see whether you’re amenable to keeping Mateo in your house un
til his father is released.”
“If you are able to help us with our legal troubles, we are willing,” said Mr. Castillo.
“I am. I will stick with you until we get it all sorted out. No charge.”
“Mateo is a good boy,” Mr. Castillo said. “We are doing what we can to help him.”
“We all are,” Caroline said. “Thanks for taking care of him.”
Hanging up, Caroline released a long, slow breath.
She might be driving into Hell, but at least she’d left a patch of grace behind her.
That Mateo Hidalgo was in a safe home, where he’d remain, was a consolation as she entered the stretch of freeway where big-box stores mingled with warehouses and outlets. The monotonous urban landscape would continue until they reached the mountain pass that marked the divide between city and desert.
She glanced in the rearview mirror.
The headlights behind her were too numerous to identify, but she hadn’t seen any motorcycles. That, at least, was encouraging. Their errand would go much more smoothly if they weren’t also trying to avoid getting killed by a hit man.
Without Hitch and Jake along, the car was quiet except for the rattle of the engine. Both men had objected to being left behind. But Caroline had worried that her irascible uncle might throttle Federica Muller, and Jake had agreed that the least threatening way to approach the caregiver’s parents was for Lani to do it—someone who’d known Federica Muller from her days in the Oasis dormitory.
“I’ve never been to the desert,” Lani said, watching the landscape change in the twilight, growing drier and scarcer of foliage. “I grew up outside Oahu.” In thrift-shop blue jeans and a loose blouse, she no longer looked like she’d stepped off a party bus and lost her way home.
“What brought you here?”
Without turning from the windshield, Lani answered, “We were going to be in the movies, my ex-boyfriend and me. My parents hated him. They called him ‘that silly haole.’ ‘Big dreams in your eyes, what do you know?’ they told me. ‘You gonna come back here with big regrets.’” Lani parroted the words in a way that let Caroline know they were not her own.
Proof (Caroline Auden Book 2) Page 25