Protection for Hire

by Camy Tang

  “What do they want?” Alicia shouted to her as she got out of the car.

  “I don’t know.” But Tessa’s words were drowned out by the sound of the men shuffling around her, grabbing her arms and handcuffing her.

  “Tessa Lancaster, you’re under arrest for the murder of Dan Augustine.”

  Chapter 20

  Charles never thought he’d be doing this, never thought he’d ever agree to do this. Something twisted inside him when he went up to the desk at the San Francisco county jail where Tessa was being held and identified himself, “Charles Britton, here to visit Tessa Lancaster.”

  The woman whose case he’d researched, the woman whose crimes he knew more intimately than anyone else other than the federal prosecutors. The woman connected with a Japanese crime family.

  Mama and Elizabeth had insisted. Naturally. They couldn’t see how Tessa could have done what they said she did.

  But had she really changed? Or had Charles only lulled himself into thinking that she had?

  He entered the jail’s visiting area and immediately saw her sitting at a table. Her eyes looked sunken into her face, but her back was straight and her expression stoic. She looked like a samurai warrior about to commit suicide by her sword.

  Her eyes brightened when he sat down across from her, and for a moment, he wanted to forget what had happened and crush her in his arms.

  But then she registered the expression on his face, and her jaw hardened. “Go ahead,” she spat. “Just ask me.”

  “You know I’m not going to do that,” he said, mindful of the people around them.

  “You obviously think I killed him.”

  “The police showed you the crime photos?”

  She gave him a dark smile. “Déjà vu, isn’t that what you’re thinking?”

  Just like the murder she’d been arrested for seven years ago, Augustine had been stabbed several times, brutally and viciously. His throat and also his eyes had been slashed in the exact same way that Laura Starling’s had.

  He tried to erase the image from his mind. “They said they arrested you because your fingerprints were on a carafe in the conference room.”

  “That and the fact that my uncle is Teruo Ota,” she said acidly. “They must have been salivating.”

  “I explained about the deposition and the glass of water you poured for Elizabeth.”

  “They said he was killed yesterday. I was home with Elizabeth, Daniel, and your mom.” Her hands had been resting on the table, but she suddenly pressed the palms flat. “Does Elizabeth have to come down here to testify that I was with her?”

  “No.”

  “Would they use this arrest to try to get to her?”

  He realized he hadn’t considered that. “I’ll make sure she won’t be exposed to any danger.”

  She gave him a hard look. “Like you protected her by agreeing to that deposition?”

  Acid bubbled in his gut. “What do you mean by that?”

  “I was against the deposition from the start, but you insisted. You’re the one who put her in danger.”

  “Excuse me, who has the law degree here? You don’t know anything about the legal ramifications.” Except she was right. He could have continued to fight the motion to compel. Even if he’d been sanctioned for failing to comply, it would have been just a fine.

  But at the time, he had obeyed the lead attorney on this case. He hadn’t known that Mr. Greer had probably arranged to hire that assassin and had needed Elizabeth to make the deposition so she could die. Charles had just been a stooge. And that thought made his anger burn against himself.

  Tessa’s eyes sparked. “Oh, so it’s those ‘legal ramifications’ that made you put on hold the hiring of the private investigator?”

  “It’s complicated —”

  “Everything is complicated with you,” she accused him. “What’s the problem?”

  He tried to rein in his temper and remain calm and detached, but the woman was trying to make everything so simplistic. As if he didn’t know what was at stake here. “The firm didn’t approve the expense right now, but —”

  “Forget the firm. Forget the expense!”

  “You can say that because it’s not you forking over the cash.”

  “Can’t you just go against your boss or something?”

  As if it was just like baking a cake. “Again, you’re not the one deliberately disobeying the senior partner who’s the lead on this case.”

  “So what? You’d get reprimanded or something —”

  “It’s not just a reprimand. It’s my entire career. It’s throwing away the seven years I’ve worked to make partner.” His voice was rising but he didn’t care. Didn’t she understand? Was she trying to make him destroy his entire life?

  Tessa threw up her hands. “Your career? Why is making partner so important to you?”

  “Because my father said I couldn’t do it!” he roared.

  It had come out of nowhere. He hadn’t even been thinking about his daddy, about his childhood, but the words bubbled up with his rage and frustration.

  How many times had his daddy beat him and said he would never amount to anything? But every step of his career, from the moment he’d escaped his home, he’d heard his father’s voice telling him, “You can’t do this,” and felt the blows of his fists. And Charles used that pain and those words to spur him to work harder to prove his father wrong.

  Was that what making partner was all about for him? Because of Daddy?

  Boy, a shrink would have a field day with him.

  Tessa had backed down, her eyes large and solemn. As if she understood that dark place inside that he fought to escape from.

  Some people on nearby tables glanced their way.

  Get yourself together, Charles. He cleared his throat. “Right now, we need to find a way to get you out of this situation. If you didn’t kill Mr. Augustine —”

  “If I didn’t kill him? I didn’t do it.”

  This murder, at least.

  But in the past few weeks, he’d been starting to doubt whether she’d killed Laura Starling. Or maybe that was what he wanted to believe?

  There was a beat of silence. Charles knew he needed to say something, but his mind could only see pictures of Laura Starling and Dan Augustine’s bodies.

  “Charles.” Tessa’s voice was low and firm. “I’ve never killed anyone. Ever.”

  He had a flash of memory — the parking garage, fighting to get his breath back and struggling through the blinding pain in his throat, stumbling toward the figures of Tessa and the court reporter on the ground. He’d seen Tessa grab the switchblade, swing it wide … and stop. Stare at the woman’s throat. And toss the blade away.

  His panicked brain had remarked on it at the time, but he’d forgotten about it in everything that had happened after that. But he remembered it now.

  All those years ago, he’d been so sure she’d killed Laura Starling. She’d been arrested right next to the garbage dump where the knife was found, although the knife had been wiped clean, as had her hands. The other evidence had been circumstantial and she’d plea-bargained for manslaughter.

  And he’d seen other murders that her cousin Ichiro had been suspected of, but never convicted. He’d researched her reputation on the streets, which had been fearsome — people knew she was violent and ruthless. She accomplished whatever her uncle wanted.

  Was it possible she had never killed anyone despite the people who said she could break a man’s arm without blinking an eye?

  Tessa turned her face away from him. “You don’t have to believe me.”

  But he wanted to. He just … everything in his head was a muddle right now. Mr. Greer, Elizabeth, Tessa …

  She took a deep breath, then turned back to look at him again. Her face was cool, controlled. “Can you get me out of here? I have to get back to helping Elizabeth and Daniel get out of town.”

  “I’ll make sure the detectives talk to Mama and Elizabeth about your ali
bi.”

  She nodded, looked at her hands. Then she said, “I’m sorry I accused you of not protecting Elizabeth. I know you were only doing your job.”

  He didn’t answer her. There was an ugly place in his soul he didn’t want to look at right at this moment. He rose to his feet.

  “Well, you know where I am,” she said.

  “I’ll get you out of here,” he replied before he headed to the door.

  But her last look at him clearly said she didn’t believe him.

  When he came home, he was attacked by a frantic Mama and the smell of cannoli shells frying.

  “Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine, Mama.” It wasn’t the first time Tessa had been arrested. “Where’s Elizabeth?”

  “Daniel was distraught that Tessa didn’t come home, so she’s with him in the room right now.” Mama bustled into the kitchen, and Charles followed.

  She started filling one of the cooled cannoli shells with sweet cream. “Poor Tessa. People assume she’s guilty of all kinds of things when she hasn’t done any of it.”

  Charles sat on a wooden stool at the island in his kitchen. “She has done some of those things, Mama.”

  “But she doesn’t do them anymore.” Mama handed Charles a filled cannoli.

  He took a bite, but it turned glue-like in his mouth. He set the cannoli down, struggling to swallow. “Mama, she said she never killed anyone, ever.”

  “She told me that her aunt Kayoko protected her from the more ‘serious’ jobs,” Mama said. “I thought that might be what she meant by ‘serious.’”

  “But I was involved in her murder trial.”

  Mama spread her hands wide. “Charles, I don’t know what you want to know. She has never talked about it with me. I don’t know if the memory pains her, or if she doesn’t want to implicate herself …”

  Or maybe she didn’t want to implicate someone else. One person the police interviewed had mentioned a rumor that Laura Starling had been girlfriend to Fred Ota, Tessa’s cousin. Teruo’s son. But there had been nothing more substantial than that third-hand remark.

  “Seven years ago, I believed she killed Laura Starling. I believed she killed other people before her arrest. I recommended to the judge …” He had recommended to the judge that her sentence be extended beyond the maximum in the plea deal. Had Charles been horribly wrong?

  But she’d gone into that trial knowing nothing good would come of it, knowing she’d be sent to prison. She hadn’t even tried to plead innocent, nor had she ever insisted on her innocence at any point.

  “Even if she did kill that woman,” Mama said, “she’s not the same person today.”

  “Because she says she’s a Christian?”

  “She hasn’t done anything to prove she isn’t.”

  He knew that, and a part of him wanted to believe wholeheartedly in her, but he just didn’t trust himself anymore. Not where she was concerned.

  “She’s like Paul,” Mama said.

  “Paul who?”

  “Paul the Apostle.”

  And he suddenly understood where she was going.

  “He had been a pretty violent Pharisee himself, and then he found Jesus. Just like Tessa. And people were afraid of him, just like Tessa.”

  Charles remembered the story from Sunday school. Back then, he’d felt sorry for poor Paul, trying to overcome a dark past.

  Since when had he become so self-righteous, so hypocritical?

  “Jesus gave Paul a second chance,” Mama said. “So I figured I should too.”

  Did it really matter if Tessa had killed Laura Starling or not? He didn’t have the right to stand in judgment over her seven years after the fact. He didn’t have the right to determine what God had or hadn’t done in Tessa’s heart.

  Charles was such a Pharisee.

  What did God think of him?

  “Mama, I thought of Daddy today.”

  She bent her head, staring at her two broken fingers.

  “I think … because of him, I’ve become just like him.”

  “Oh, Charles, no —”

  “I’ve done everything I can to escape him, to be who he didn’t want me to be. But I don’t like who I’ve become.”

  He’d allowed the deposition that put Elizabeth’s life in danger. He’d accepted without a whimper when Mr. Greer refused the application to hire a P.I. He hadn’t wanted to jeopardize his career — a house of cards built on a boy’s pain, a father’s malice. “Mama, even when I try to escape him, I can’t.”

  “You won’t escape him,” she whispered. “I can’t, even though I finally divorced him.” She raised a hand to her lips, closed her eyes for a moment. “But you can rise above him.”

  “I don’t know how to do that.”

  “When you took on Elizabeth’s case. When you offered your home to her and Daniel.” She looked at him then, and her blue eyes smiled at him. “You’re not just your daddy’s son. You’re God’s son too. And he raised a fine man.”

  And there was the answer to it all, to the thicket his brain had been since walking away from Mr. Greer at the restaurant. He was his Father’s son. Rather than being driven by one father, he had forgotten the One whose approval he should have been seeking.

  He knew exactly what he needed to do. He’d hire the P.I. About his career — he didn’t want to think about it. He’d just keep walking, with Jesus beside him.

  “I’m not just God’s son.” He walked over to her, wrapped an arm around her, and kissed her on the cheek. “I’m my mama’s son. And she raised a fine man.”

  She colored. “You’re just trying to charm me into letting you lick the bowl.”

  “You mean you weren’t going to already?”

  “Go eat your cannoli before it gets soggy.”

  He sat back down on the stool. “Mama, Tessa said she was with you and Elizabeth when Mr. Augustine was murdered?”

  Mama shivered at the word, but she nodded. “We were here together all day yesterday.”

  “I need to establish Tessa’s alibi so the police will release her.”

  “We didn’t leave the house. Poor Daniel’s getting a little stir crazy, but Tessa didn’t want to risk allowing them to go out. She said she almost had everything ready for them to leave.” Mama sighed. “I don’t want them to go.”

  “It’s not safe for them here.”

  “I know, it’s just …” She paused in the middle of filling another cannoli. “The UPS man.”

  “Huh?”

  “I ordered a propane torch —”

  “What?”

  “It’s a special one for making crème brulee. Anyway, the UPS man delivered it yesterday. Since Tessa answered the door, she signed for it.”

  UPS had online tracking. “You ordered it online? Do you have the shipping notification email?”

  “The what?”

  Charles headed to the living room, where the laptop that Mama used was sitting on the desk in the corner. He logged into her mail program — he should get her to change her password, it was too easy to hack — and searched through her email. There, the notice from the online cooking supply website with the UPS tracking number.

  Delivered yesterday at 4:47 p.m. Augustine had been seen alive by his secretary at 4:15 p.m., and found dead by the same secretary at 5:45 p.m. Without traffic, from Charles’s house it would take a minimum of forty-five minutes to get to Augustine’s law office, but 5:00 was peak rush hour. Even if Tessa had hopped into a car and driven to the law office right after signing for the package, she wouldn’t have had enough time to kill him before his secretary found him.

  Tessa really hadn’t done it. Someone was trying to set her up.

  And they’d be after Charles next.

  Chapter 21

  The look her mom gave her could have spoiled the fish at the sushi bar.

  “So,” Mom said as Tessa entered Oyasumi, her uncle’s Japanese restaurant, “you’re out of jail.”

  Tessa approached the reception desk. “T
hey dropped the charges. I had an alibi.”

  Charles made sure the police interviewed the UPS driver who delivered the package to Vivian, and the driver easily identified Tessa as the one who signed for the package. Further proof was her scrawl on the electronic signature pad.

  Praise God for Vivian’s love of flammable cooking supplies that required signature delivery.

  Another hostess at the restaurant passed by carrying a tray of drinks. She paused to titter at Mom in Japanese, “So this is your younger daughter, Ayumi? How happy you must be that she’s out of jail.” She minced off.

  Tessa’s head flamed as she glared at the woman’s back. “What’s that about?”

  “Do you know how embarrassing it is for me every time you get arrested?” Mom scowled.

  “It’s only happened twice.”

  “Most mothers would prefer it never happened.”

  She had a point.

  Mom frowned at the seating chart. “Maybe it’ll be better after this job is over and you move out.”

  She hadn’t expected it, but a pang twisted in her chest at her mom’s words. Tessa originally had been firing her engine in anticipation of getting out of her Close-Encounters-of-the-Mom-Kind living situation, but for the past few months she’d begun to wonder if Mom didn’t want her to move after all. And Tessa had begun to think it wasn’t so bad to live at home. To maybe show her mom that this “religion thing” had made a difference in her daughter.

  She must have misunderstood her mother. Mom’s tatami zori slippers were itching to give Tessa the boot.

  “What do you need?” Mom said. “One of my best customers has a reservation tonight and should be arriving soon.” As a hostess at this particular Japanese restaurant, Mom was required to take care of any and all needs for the customers, usually being prompt with drink refills or getting cigarettes or cigars for them. Certain customers preferred her over the other hostesses — Mom could be charming when she wanted — and she always made sure she was available. It kept the customers coming back to Uncle’s restaurant.

  “I have a problem —”