by Kelly Irvin
“The report says—”
“If you saw the police report you know all of this.”
“I also talked to the traffic investigator on the scene. I want to hear it from your lips, señorita.”
“Don’t señorita me. I’m tired. I’m in pain. Go reread the report.”
“Are you refusing to cooperate? I could arrest you for impeding an investigation.”
“I could sue you for harassment.”
“It doesn’t help your cause to be snippy with me.” A thoughtful expression on his face, he leaned back in his chair. “There has to be a connection. And there’s something you’re not telling me.”
“Nina.”
Aaron’s voice held a note of warning. He would explode any second, and it would all come cascading out of him. He didn’t dissemble. He didn’t lie. That was what made him so lovable.
She froze. No, no, no. Yes. He was lovable. So much more so than that fledgling politician in her life. She didn’t want to love anyone, but the barriers were weakening.
Drive-bys and intruders weren’t the only dangers in her life.
“Nina?” King had bags under his bloodshot eyes. He rubbed his five-o’clock shadow with both hands. “Are you planning to share, or should I get out the handcuffs?”
“Fine—”
Pounding on the door.
Again.
Shaking her head, Pearl marched by. “Like a train station around here.”
A second later Rick bounded into the room.
30
The living room was getting too crowded. The men in Nina’s life were crowding her space. She rubbed her temples and stared at the floor. Maybe they would go away. Rick stormed across the carpet to the couch where he plopped down next to her and grabbed her arm. His gaze bordered on frantic.
“Why didn’t you call me, mi amor?” He swore in Spanish as he touched her face. His fingers grasped her chin and moved her head from one side to the other. Horror registered. More swearing. “I will kill the hombre who did this to you.”
“I don’t recommend that.” His expression neutral, King intervened. “Did you drive here?”
“Why?” Rick’s fingers tightened on her chin. Nina pulled away. His hands shook. His gaze darted from her face to the ceiling and back. “It has nothing to do with you.”
“It seems to me you might have been drinking.” King’s tone didn’t change. “That would have something to do with me.”
“I’m fine.” Nina could take care of herself. As she had told Aaron and King—repeatedly. She couldn’t tell King about the box of receipts, the stolen newspaper articles, or the neon notebooks in front of Rick. He had nothing to do with her dad’s death. She’d swear to that. But his firm did. CG&P was mentioned in every 266 article. Serena had died over that safe-deposit box key. “You do smell like a brewery. Uber home and get some sleep. I’m beat and I’m going to bed.”
She stood. The three men in the room stayed put. She sat. “What would it take to get the three of you to go home and save the inquisition for tomorrow? When we’re all fresh.”
The warring emotions in the room tired her more than the letdown from the car wreck. Unconditional love from Aaron. Rick’s version of love. Similar to what he felt for his BMW or his fancy sound system. Impatience from King. Trying to be patient but not quite making it.
“This can’t wait.”
“Whatever it is, it will have to wait.” Her jacket slung over one arm, Grace marched into the room. “Pearl tells me my daughter was in car accident today. She needs to rest. If you want to talk to her, make an appointment with her lawyer for tomorrow.” She cocked her head toward the foyer. “All of you. Now.”
“Fine. Miss Fischer, 10:00 a.m. at headquarters. That will give you time to recuperate. Bring your lawyer.” His expression morose, King stood. He jerked his head toward the door. “Mr. Zavala, I’d like to talk to you outside.”
Rick scowled. His hand covered Nina’s and squeezed until it hurt. “Do I need a lawyer?”
“That’s totally your call.”
His hand slipped away. Nina rubbed her fingers over the white indentations. He’d cut off the blood circulation for a split second. She’d never seen him so riled up, so jittery. “He’s tired and he’s been drinking. Let him set up an Uber. He’ll come downtown tomorrow. Won’t you, Rick?”
“I’d rather get it over with now.”
Smelling of alcohol and barbecue, he leaned in close. She jerked back. The kiss landed on her cheek. His frown smoldered. He shrugged and stomped over to Grace. “If you need anything, just say the word. I’m your man.” His glance traveled to Aaron, who hadn’t moved. “She’s tired, man. Give it a break.”
Aaron didn’t respond. He looked dead on his feet. His gaze traveled to Nina. She nodded. “Go home. I’ll call you in the morning.”
He stood and squeezed around the table. His lips brushed her forehead. His fingers touched her cheek for a brief second. He nodded to King, said good night to Grace and Jan, and then all three of them were suddenly gone.
“What was that all about?” Grace put her hands on her hips and glowered. “What aren’t you telling the detective? What aren’t you telling me?”
Daffy hopped up on the couch and climbed daintily into Nina’s lap. She wrapped her arms around the purring ball of fur and breathed. “Did Dad ever talk to you about resigning from the bench? Going into private practice?”
“Never.” Grace drew the two syllables out with all the southern flair she could muster. And soaked them in scorn. “He loved his job.”
“So we thought. But what if he got so entangled in gambling debt that he needed to make more money, a lot more money?”
Frowning, Grace plucked at her skirt. “He should’ve talked to me. I’m his wife. And I had money.”
“Then he would’ve had to admit he had a problem.” Nina laid her head on a pile of pillows. “I don’t think Dad wanted to quit gambling. I think he wanted to gamble more.”
Like any addict, he was willing to do whatever it took to satiate the ever-growing desire, even if it meant giving up his job. His wife. His family.
Even if it meant breaking the law.
Geoffrey Fischer was no better than his sister.
* * *
King’s cool stare didn’t bother Nina. Not this time. She was an old pro. A veteran. She should bring her sleeping bag and jammies to the police station next time. She wrapped her hands around the cup of water he’d brought at her request and stared at the wall behind the detective. Fred Teeter was getting his exercise representing her.
“Detective, what am I doing here?”
“I thought we were waiting for your attorney.”
“That doesn’t mean I can’t ask you questions, only the other way around.”
“I’d rather not have to repeat myself.”
“Suit yourself.”
A few more minutes passed in silence. Nina used the time to surreptitiously study her aggressor. He seemed even more tired than he had the previous night. Bags under his bloodshot eyes. A wrinkle or two in his shirt. His doodles on the yellow pad lying on the table that separated them suggested impatience. And a love of ice cream cones. Nina longed for her camera. They’d taken her bag at the door.
He dropped the pen and leaned forward, both elbows on the table. “How did the reunion with your mother go?”
“How do you know about that?” The man who drove her off the highway wasn’t the only one following her. “Don’t you have anything better to do than follow me around?”
King looked momentarily confused. “I saw you talking at the funeral.”
“Right.” She was losing it. “And I saw you talking to her. What did she—?”
Fred Teeter burst into the room. Using the word burst loosely. His elegantly old-fashioned leather briefcase under one arm, he patted Nina’s shoulder as he squeezed behind her chair. “Detective, we’ve been patient with your shenanigans, but it’s time to stop. This amounts to harassment of
my client.” He slapped the briefcase on the table and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. “We have every intention of lodging a complaint with the chief. We’ll go to the city manager if necessary.”
“Do what you have to do.” King leaned back in his chair. His yawn displayed a set of perfect teeth with nary a filling. “But first I’d like to ask your client why she had breakfast with Serena Cochrane on the day she died.”
“We’re back to that. You have something against breakfast?” Nina straightened in her chair. Good posture was everything. “It’s the most important meal of the day.”
“What was in the safe-deposit box?”
“What box?”
“You really want to lie to a police officer?”
She didn’t. Lying was never a good ploy. “How do you know about the box?”
King pulled a manila folder from underneath the notepad. “Emails exchanged by Mrs. Cochrane and your father’s court reporter. She found his behavior odd and said so in an email to Tabitha Rainier.”
“Okay. But what makes you think she gave the key to me?”
“Because you had breakfast with her and fifteen minutes later she was dead. Melanie Martinez knew about it. You went to see her and voilà, she’s dead. Why else?”
King could turn why into a four-syllable word. It was an art form created in East Texas.
“How do you know Melanie knew about the key?”
“Texts between her and Mrs. Cochrane. The fact that you don’t want to tell me about it makes me think there was something really important in that box and you don’t want anyone to know about it.”
“It’s a private matter.” One that would destroy her family’s reputation and decimate her mother.
“How about I just arrest you for three counts of homicide?”
“No GSR on her the night of her father’s murder or the day of Melanie Martinez’s death.” Fred managed to get a word in edgewise. “You’ve seen the video of the intruder who killed Ms. Martinez.”
“That doesn’t mean Miss Fischer wasn’t in on it. She might not have pulled the trigger, but she had something to do with it. Her presence in these three related cases was no coincidence.”
“I—”
“Don’t answer.” Fred waved his stubby fingers like a frenetic fan.
“I want the murderer caught and held accountable.” Nina gripped her hands to still their shaking. “Newspaper clippings and a letter. That’s it.”
“Elaborate.”
Nina ran through every detail she could remember from the seven articles.
“High-dollar settlements in your father’s court, clients all represented by CG&P.” He tapped the pen on the folder, his gaze fixed over her shoulder. “Where are the articles?”
A shudder ran through Nina. She took a breath. “Gone.”
“Gone?”
“Someone took the envelope from my car.”
“Someone?”
She explained in as few words as possible.
“A perfect example of why civilians should not meddle in murder investigations. Did you not think to bring that key to me? Did you not think to bring the envelope directly to me?” With each question, King’s voice rose. He stood and began to pace. “Obviously not. Did you see why I’m so tempted to arrest you even if the DA’s office says I don’t have enough evidence to make it stick?”
“I would have, eventually. My concern was with protecting my dad’s reputation.” And her mother and her family’s reputation. And Rick’s reputation. What did he have to do with her dad’s death? Nothing, surely. He cared about her dad. He cared about Nina. “He was a good man with a long record of public service. He deserves the benefit of the doubt.”
“Which is why you failed to divulge his gambling addiction, that Grace Fischer planned to divorce him, and that he planned to retire from the bench to become a partner in CG&P.”
“My father was a judge for twenty-plus years. Maybe he was ready for new challenges. That’s not a crime.” Nina’s voice rose to match his. She took a breath and reined it in. Staying calm was half the battle. “My father loved being a judge. He loved lording it over others. As a partner in CG&P he would’ve been a great lawyer with huge resources at his fingertips.”
More money for gambling.
King marched to the table, leaned over, and stabbed his finger in her face. “But you don’t deny he had a gambling addiction.”
“I don’t deny it, no.” Nina leaned away. “I’d appreciate if you didn’t spit on me.”
“Sorry.” He whirled and began to pace again. “There’s nothing you know that we don’t already know. You need to understand that. We have your father’s computer and access to all his emails and his search history. We have access to the texts on his phone and all his phone records. We have his financial records. Our IT folks are combing through them right now. Including the accounts in a bank in Las Vegas.”
The technology age had made solving crimes easier and harder. “Did it occur to you that maybe he had gambling debts he didn’t pay so some debt collector came looking for him?” Nina stared at King. He stared back. A game of chicken in which both refused to give. “They fought and he ended up dead.”
King shoved a yellow notebook at her and a pen. “Write down everything you can remember about those articles. Everything.”
She did as she was told, but only after giving him her most withering glare.
“Your father had almost a million in his Las Vegas account. He could afford to pay up.” A million dollars. The penny-pinching Prius driver who constantly turned off the AC was a millionaire. “More likely his daughter wanted the money for her art gallery and photography business and didn’t want to wait until he died of old age.”
She slapped the pen on the notebook and shoved it back at the detective. “I didn’t know Jan and I were the primary beneficiaries in his last will.”
“All things considered, I’m worried about your sister reaching old age.”
“You’re crazy. I’m done listening to these ridiculous suppositions.” She stumbled from her chair. “If you plan to arrest me, do it, and stop wasting my time.”
“All he has is circumstantial evidence.” Fred stood with more aplomb. “If he had enough to arrest you, you’d be behind bars right now.”
“Then why read me my rights?”
“It’s an intimidation tactic. Or in case his constant harassment and interrogation cause you to bless him with a confession.” Fred slipped his arm under hers in an elegant gesture. “Come along, my dear, you look tired.”
King slipped between them and the door. He put one hand on the knob. “Let’s be very clear, shall we? The second I find a piece of evidence that connects you to these murders, I’m throwing your bony behind in jail.”
“You, you, that’s just—”
“Let’s go.” Fred hustled her out the door.
“He did not just call me bony.”
“He’s trying to get your goat.”
“It’s working.”
She still hadn’t told him about the neon notebooks.
31
Internet search engines were a thing of beauty. Horror making a nasty nest in the pit of her stomach, Nina stared at her laptop screen. In every case mentioned in the newspaper articles, her dad had heard pretrial motions. The motions had gone the way of Coggins, Gonzalez, and Pope. The dates of the newspaper articles corresponded to the dates in the neon notebooks. CG&P had paid her dad to rule in their favor, paving the way for more firepower to force settlements or winning jury trials. Low thunder rumbled in the distance. The bushes scraped against the house. It creaked in the wind. She slapped the laptop shut, shoved her chair away from her dad’s desk, and stared up at Aaron.
“He was crooked.”
Aaron paced the length of the study, did an about-face, and marched back to the desk that separated them. “It’s circumstantial evidence, at best.”
She grabbed a pen and made check marks next to each case on the new list s
he’d made of what she was able to recall from the stolen newspaper articles. It was better than the list she made for King because she wasn’t under duress—much—when she made it. By searching the cases, she’d found the articles online and printed them. She and Aaron had been around and around about what to do with them.
Now it was ten o’clock at night, what was left of her family was asleep, and something had to be done about this newfound knowledge.
The connection had become apparent. The reason Dad had kept the articles in the safe-deposit box was also apparent. He needed money to pay his gambling debts and to finance more gambling. The money fueled his addiction. The money allowed him to create his alter ego in an alternate universe. Peter Coggins leveraged her father’s weakness to get favorable judgments. In exchange for favorable rulings on motions entered by Coggins on big-dollar cases, Coggins paid her dad a percentage of the final judgment. Simple. Beautifully evil. “To top it off, my father was planning to blackmail Peter Coggins into giving him a piece of the partnership. That’s what the letter of resignation was about.”
“You don’t know that for a fact.”
“Why are you defending him? He was a liar.” How would she tell Grace, who slept in the master suite upstairs, unaware of how far her husband’s treachery had gone? How would she tell Jan, who deployed to Afghanistan in less than two weeks? And Trevor. He’d already imploded and disappeared to Austin with his tattoo-artist girlfriend. “He was a criminal.”
“Because I know it’s killing you.” Aaron leaned over the desk. He slid his hand over hers and squeezed. “Which is killing me. Your father has let you down. He was murdered. You’re treated like a suspect. Your biological mother shows up. You have a half brother and a sister you didn’t know about. I don’t know how much more one person can take.”
She tugged her hand away. “I’m not a hothouse orchid. I can handle it.”
“Believe me, I know you’re one tough dude—”
“Aaron.” She stood and grabbed her coffee mug. After three cups of Aaron’s diesel-strength muddy brew, she should be able to leap buildings in a single bound. Instead, she felt like a wet dishcloth. “I need to talk to Rick.”