by Nancy Bush
“Where we go to?” Tucker asked.
“Great-Grandma isn’t well, so you and I are heading to my house until she feels better,” Callie said.
“You got horses?”
“No.”
“Cats?” he asked hopefully.
“We’ll come up with something.”
Their food arrived and while they ate, West said, “I’d like to ask this Andre a few questions, but if he’s still around, it’s going to have to wait. Luckily, Talia can handle things. Not that I want anything to do with the ranch,” he added quickly. “But without Victoria . . .” He shrugged.
Tucker lifted his shoulders, mimicking West and grinning as he tried to cut his flapjacks and mangled them miserably. Callie helped him and soon he’d worked his way halfway through the stack.
Just as they were finishing up, the front door opened and a tall man with a shock of nearly white hair, wearing jeans, boots, and a green flannel shirt, came through. He noticed Callie immediately and stopped dead, looking like he’d seen a ghost. West glanced over at him and said, half-apologetically, “You’re going to probably get that a lot.”
“Who is that man?” she asked.
“Edmund Mikkels.” West lifted a hand to him in greeting, adding in an aside to Callie, “Victoria said he was crumbling. I just saw him a month ago and don’t remember his hair being that white.”
Mikkels had to be told twice to follow the hostess to a table two over from theirs. He couldn’t seem to rip his eyes from Callie. She murmured, “It’s pretty clear I remind him of Teresa.”
“Teresa is mine maman,” Tucker stated positively, which brought both West and Callie’s attention back to him with a bang.
“You overheard us talking?” Callie asked.
He nodded. “She dieded, but Aimee is not mine maman.” He slid Callie a sideways glance. “You is.”
Callie felt her throat tighten. “Thank you, Tucker, but you know that’s not true.”
He lifted his shoulders again, shrugging off her denial as if it were expected but not believed.
West said, “I want to say a few words to Mikkels before we leave.” He got out of his seat and headed toward Mikkels’s table just as Teddy Stutz entered the restaurant. Spying him, Tucker clambered out of his seat to chase after West.
“Tucker!” Callie half-stood, whispering harshly. The little boy ignored her, but Teddy Stutz strolled her way.
“Took the little man out for breakfast, huh. How’s Victoria?”
“I thought you might know better than I, from your father.”
“Cal doesn’t talk to me about things that matter,” he said with a short laugh. “So, that’s West Laughlin talking to Mikkels, huh? Wonder why Victoria called on him. He’s more persona non grata than I am.”
“Excuse me.” Callie hurried after Tucker, touching his shoulder to get his attention as he was staring unabashedly at Edmund Mikkels.
“Your hair is tres blanc,” he said.
Mikkels, who’d been asking West about Victoria, first turned to Tucker, then Callie. His eyes were red-rimmed, but she didn’t think he’d been crying. He just didn’t look well all over.
“I’m sure you’ve heard it before, but you look just like Teresa,” Mikkels said. His voice was scarcely louder than a whisper.
“Doesn’t she?” Teddy Stutz said, coming up to them.
Tucker said loudly, “Knock, knock!”
“No, Tucker. Not again,” Callie said, trying to pull him away.
“Knock, knock!”
Callie managed to wrangle him away from the table, but Tucker resisted, trying to escape her grasp by twisting his body. “Tucker, we need to let them talk,” she said urgently.
“Pourquoi? I want to be there!”
She grabbed his hand and practically had to drag him outside. He was pouting a few minutes later when West joined them after settling the bill. His expression was intense and she could tell he was bothered about something.
“What is it?” she asked as she buckled a recalcitrant Tucker into his booster seat. His arms were crossed over his chest and he looked straight ahead in protest.
“Mikkels started to shake. Seeing you must’ve hit some chord. He wanted to apologize. Said he didn’t mean for it to happen. If Teddy Stutz hadn’t jumped in and changed the subject, he might’ve broken down completely and told me exactly what happened the day Stephen died.”
“It was a bullet from his gun that killed Stephen, right? That would make anyone feel guilty.”
“That, and for getting involved with Teresa in the first place. I don’t know at what level, but the guy’s eaten up with guilt. When I talked to him before he was morose and drinking a lot, but when he saw you . . .”
His cell phone rang and he pulled it from his pocket. “Talia,” he said aloud, answering the call.
Callie could tell Talia wasn’t happy about them leaving, but West fended her off by changing the subject. “We ran into Edmund Mikkels at the BBQ. He looks like hell.”
Her response was so loud that West pulled the phone away from his ear and Callie could hear every word.
Talia was saying, “. . . feels damn guilty for killing his friend, and who can blame him? Probably wishes he’d never introduced him to Teresa in the first place. We all wish that, don’t we? Except for Tucker, of course.”
“Stephen met Teresa in a bar in Los Angeles,” West corrected her.
“Who told you that?” Talia asked. “It was Edmund who introduced them because Teresa was hanging around the BBQ. He thought she was into him, but it was Stephen, and we all know why that is . . . the mon-eeee . . .”
“Teresa was living in LA before she married Stephen,” West said, clearly processing unexpected information.
“So? Yeah? I’m telling you, she met him here.”
West shook his head and said, “Investigating Teresa’s death is one more reason I’ve got to leave.”
“Fine.” Talia snorted. “At least Cal’s here, although he’s got the whole damn company to run. I’ll stick around as long as I can, but don’t forget I have a life, too.”
The hospital in Coalinga was a few miles south of Laughlin Ranch and West was in and out of it in less than an hour. The doctor said there was no change in Victoria’s condition and there wasn’t much for West to do other than ask the staff to keep him in the loop. On the drive to LA he called Victoria’s lawyer, telling a still-rattled Gary Merritt about his plans to take Tucker to Los Angeles and keep him in his and Callie Cantrell’s care in the interim. Merritt said he would talk to Talia, as the child’s grandmother, and make sure that worked with her, but if she agreed that everything was copacetic, then that was legally fine. Again, West requested to be kept in the loop and Merritt assured him he would.
The last call he made was to the San Joaquin sheriff ’s department, asking if they knew any more about the brown sedan that had run Maya and Victoria down. “What about people in the building?” West asked, knowing he was overstepping his bounds a little. In his experience, police officers of any kind didn’t like being pressed by outsiders, even sometimes other officers. But the deputy he spoke to simply said there was nothing new so far. Once more, West asked the man to make sure he was kept informed.
He was inside the Los Angeles city limits when Dorcas called and told him a homicide suspect had been brought in that he wanted West to sweat.
“I haven’t even gotten my badge back,” West protested.
“It’s a woman,” Dorcas told him. “Shot her boyfriend in the back and now’s claiming self-defense.”
“Doesn’t sound even close to credible,” West said, knowing Dorcas wanted him to do the interview because Dorcas was big and intimidating and West, though over six feet himself, had a leaner build and a face that seemed to appeal to the ladies.
“Said he drugged her and held her down, and she was kind of woozy when she was brought in. Supposedly picked up his gun and thought he was comin’ at her.”
“I’ll be there in th
irty,” West said. He really wanted to spend his time concentrating on Teresa, but she wasn’t even truly his case, and now that he was going to be back on the force, he would need to work on whatever cases were assigned to him.
Andre had watched the two-car brigade leave the ranch. He’d swallowed enough Advil and aspirin to knock out a horse, and had brought the pain in his head under control. This all started with Teresa, he decided. The headaches are her fault. They’ve been a bitch since that last trip to Martinique.
A stray thought struck him.
Maybe this was manufactured. Maybe one of the handmaidens did this to me. The one who killed Teresa!
He hadn’t wanted to know which one had done it. Had told himself he didn’t care, but now . . .
It was all a plot. A plot to get rid of him.
Through the binoculars he saw the Explorer and the Lexus turn down the oak-lined drive. He got in the Xterra and took after them, keeping a fair distance behind. Laughlin was in the black SUV and Callie and the boy were in the Lexus.
Maybe she poisoned him, he thought. She was there on the island at the time. She’d sought out Tucker, made herself look like Teresa, plotted with West Laughlin . . .
A jab of pain in his head. He nearly swerved onto the shoulder.
“Careful,” he told himself, keeping the Lexus just in view. As ever, there was a ton of traffic barreling toward the City of Angels. The thought made him smile. Angels were looking out for him. “I am The Messiah,” he whispered.
His cell rang, sitting on the console, and he glanced over at it angrily. Naomi. Shit. He couldn’t talk now. Didn’t have fucking Bluetooth and couldn’t risk being pulled over. He let it go to voice mail, knowing she wouldn’t leave a message. A few minutes later he was proved right when he heard the buzzing ringtone that said he’d gotten a text.
Cautiously, he touched the screen and read her missive:
ditched the car
He grunted. At least that was good news. He didn’t trust her as far as he could throw her but she was definitely the most reliable one.
In an act of pure kindness, he decided he would wait till the end to kill her . . . after the Cantrell woman and the boy and that fucking, big-mouthed bitch, Talia Laughlin.
West signed paperwork that took him off administrative leave and put him back on the force. He was issued his badge and gun, a Glock, and practically before he entered the squad room Dorcas was on him. “She’s in number three,” he said, meaning the third interview room down the hall.
“You gotta be kidding. I need some time. I’m not up on this case,” West said.
Dorcas slapped a thin file in his hands. “There ain’t enough there to care. Read it and talk to her. You’re good with the women.”
“Then I need something from you,” West said. “Everything you’ve already got on Teresa Laughlin and everything you can find. I mean everything. I want a complete murder book. The autopsy report. Fingerprints. DNA. Everything. I want to know what brand of toothpaste she used, you got that?”
Dorcas grinned and slapped West on the back. “Good to have you back, man.”
“Whatever,” West muttered, but he smiled at his partner. It was good to be back.
The minute Callie entered the house she decided she never wanted to come back here again. There were only bad and sad memories associated with it. She’d hung on because of Sean. Because this was where she’d lived when he was born. Because this was the only home he’d ever known.
But Sean was gone and her memories of him were inside her heart. There was nothing about the house that meant anything to her any longer, and apart from the satisfaction she felt in thwarting the Cantrells, there was very little reason to hang on to it.
Tucker ran past Callie and tore through the rooms much as he had at Laughlin Ranch. “We staying here?” he asked.
“For the time being,” Callie said distractedly.
“I like this place,” he yelled. “It loud!”
Callie half-smiled. Jonathan had always complained about Sean’s lack of volume control. He had one setting: high.
For a moment she got that same niggling sensation of a memory just outside her reach. Did it have to do with Sean? Jonathan? It tantalized her and she struggled to grasp it, but it was gone too quickly.
Idly, she picked up her cell phone and examined it for new calls or texts, hoping to have missed a message from West. Diane Cantrell’s number popped up again, but she ignored it. There was no voice mail or other attempt at communication, so she assumed it was just another attempt by Diane to harass her.
Thinking of Diane, the Cantrells, and the house reminded her of the charge from Security One. Pulling the statement from the bottom of her shoulder bag, she called the number again, not expecting to be put through, so she was pleasantly surprised when a woman with a tired voice picked up. When Callie explained about the charge, the woman said it was company policy to bill accounts by automatic payment and that whoever had set up the account had asked to be billed annually.
“My husband set this up,” Callie told her, “but we don’t use you for our alarm system.”
“We’re not that kind of company. We rent out security boxes, kind of like safety-deposit boxes at a bank, but we’re a private company and you have twenty-four-hour access. Just sign in and use your key.”
The keys. Callie was standing in the kitchen, but she automatically looked toward the den where she’d left Jonathan’s keys in the box on his desk. The mystery key might very well open the security box. She almost told the woman that her husband was deceased but thought better of it at the last moment. Clearly she wasn’t a signer for access to the box account, which led her to believe that Jonathan had kept it secret from her on purpose. It didn’t take a huge leap of imagination to believe that, if there truly was money left over from the mortgage Jonathan had taken out, this was where he’d stashed it.
She asked the woman for the company’s address and found it was in Santa Monica, a block off Lincoln. As soon as she was off the phone she texted West, asking him to call her. She knew he was at work and preferred not to phone him, but she hoped he would get right back to her. When he didn’t she figured he was buried with work on his first day back. Frustrated, she glanced at the clock. One P.M. It might be hours before she heard from him.
Since there was nothing in the house to make for lunch, and she had time to kill, she rounded up Tucker and headed out to a sandwich shop she knew of that made sandwiches with croissants.
Whether it was because he was impatient and disinterested, or because he was fed up with the kind of woman whose every sentence is a lie, West didn’t respond well to Bonnie Burnham’s tears, wails, and clinging need. He didn’t play her friend. He didn’t invite confidences. He just laid out the fact that she wasn’t going to leave that room until she told enough of the truth to match the crime scene evidence already collected. Although it was counterintuitive, West’s distance worked like the proverbial charm and she broke in about an hour and a half, admitting that she basically shot her boyfriend in the back when he was walking away from their fight.
“He was leaving me for that fucking bitch!” she screamed as a defense.
West dropped her from his thoughts as soon as he left the room though she was still screaming. It was always about sex or money, he told himself again, his thoughts turning toward Teresa.
Dorcas swung away from his desk and computer as soon as West entered the room. “Good goin’ with Burnham,” he said admiringly. “New Laughlin record.” Then, “Diane Cantrell is on line two for you.”
“Don’t have time.” He sat down in his own chair and moved up to his computer screen. “You put together what I asked for?”
“She keeps callin’, and I’m done talkin’ to her,” he said. “I’m serious here. Pick up the goddamn phone. And I sent you the file. Hard copy’s on your desk.”
West had already spied the murder book and now he slid it his way. “Thanks,” he said. And then to show his gratitude,
he made a big show of punching the button for line two. Dorcas said, “Good luck,” then turned away as West answered, “Detective Laughlin,” fleetingly enjoying the sound of that again before Diane Cantrell’s strident voice jumped into his ear.
“Thanks for taking my call,” she said sarcastically. “You’re the one who ordered information on Callie Shipley. I’m just trying to give it to you.”
“I was looking for information about the accident that killed your brother and nephew and injured Mrs. Cantrell,” he corrected, sensing she’d used Callie’s maiden name purposely.
“She married my brother for money,” Diane snapped back, ignoring him. “And she’s still hiding funds that aren’t hers and living in the house my brother meant to leave our family. She’s no better than a thief. Jonathan was taken in by her. He collected conniving women like flannel collects lint. If I told you . . .”
West tuned out. He didn’t care why Callie had married Jonathan Cantrell. He knew she’d wanted a family and was still, and would always be to some degree, devastated over her son’s death.
His mind wandered back to Teresa as his eye traveled over the documents in the murder book. Where had she been between the time she and a partner had worked their con in Martinique? What had she been doing before she met Stephen at Laughlin BBQ? He’d assumed she’d been in Los Angeles because that’s what Stephen had told him. So, how come she’d been hanging around Castilla? It seemed an odd place to have her hunting grounds unless she’d specifically targeted the Laughlin family....
That made the most sense, the more he thought about it. Somehow she’d targeted Stephen after she’d returned to Los Angeles? She’d been living in LA before that last trip to Martinique as evidenced by her studio apartment she’d rented, so it seemed reasonable to assume LA was her home base. Was her male partner in Los Angeles, too? Maybe still here?