by Lisa Jackson
She drove as if she were heading straight through town, just in case he had any idiotic ideas of following her. When the lights of Bad Luck had faded behind her, long after she’d crossed the bridge out of town, she took a side road, doubled back and came through Bad Luck from another angle.
Her hands grasping the wheel in a death grip, she eased through the back streets of town and eventually wound her way to the old building where her father spent most of his days.
The parking lot was empty. No sign of Etta Parsons or the Judge’s secretary’s vintage car, if she still owned the thing. Nor was Red Cole’s Mercedes anywhere in sight. The office was dark. Silent.
Good. Using the back streets and alleys, Shelby swung past the office one more time. Still no one. “Just do it,” she grumbled. Convinced that no one was going to show up, she parked four blocks away, on a side street behind the laundromat and dry cleaner, catty-corner from the building where Doc Pritchart had once housed his clinic. Unfortunately, there was always the chance that someone would spot her car and mention it at the diner, or coffee shop or even the White Horse tomorrow. The way gossip passed around this small town in two days, the entire population of Bad Luck might know that she’d been in town tonight, but it was a chance she had to take.
Quickly she locked the car, then started jogging through the sultry, sticky night. The air was thick and pressed hard against her chest—a far cry from the brisk, salty atmosphere of Seattle. It seemed like years since she’d left the West Coast, and yet it hadn’t quite been two weeks.
Time flies when you’re having fun, she thought as she veered through back alleys, trying to avoid the main street and hoping to draw no attention to herself. Never in her life had she willingly broken the law. You can do this, she told herself. Smaller minds broke into houses and offices every night of the week.
At the street running behind her father’s office, she hesitated behind a hedge, just long enough to see that the coast was clear. No one had pulled into the lot in the ten minutes since she’d driven by. It’s now or never.
Avoiding the pools of light cast by the streetlights, she ran directly to the back door of the building. Her fingers were sweating as she inserted two keys that wouldn’t budge. The third one turned as easily as if it had been oiled.
Click.
The dead bolt gave way. She worked on the knob with another key and the lock sprang open. A twist of her wrist and the door swung open.
Within a split second a security alarm started softly beeping, telling her she had only a few seconds to shut the damned thing off before it began blasting an alarm that was probably loud enough to wake the dead or, worse yet, silently dialed the local police, who would arrive en masse along with screaming sirens and flashing lights.
Oh, God, where is it? She took two steps, bumped into a desk and swore under her breath.
Beep! Beep! Beep!
Sweating from every pore in her body, she snapped on her flashlight, swung the beam through the small reception office, along the wall, over a calendar, past a light switch and finally spied a control panel mounted near a closet. Whispering a quick prayer, she walked around Etta’s desk and directly to the alarm.
What were the code numbers? Her father’s birthday. She pushed the buttons and pressed enter.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Oh, damn! What now?
Frantic, she tried her mother’s birthday. After all, the Judge did keep the Birds of Paradise on the table and flowers on Jasmine’s grave.
Beep—beep—
Oh, hell! She was rapidly running out of options. Out of desperation, she punched in her own birthday, and the beeping suddenly stopped. The office was still aside from the hammering of her own heart.
Thank God. Her heart quieted, but sweat still ran down her nose and her knees weren’t all that steady. Giving herself a swift mental kick, she walked unerringly to the pebbled glass door of her father’s office and opened it. The room smelled faintly of cigars.
Shelby quickly drew the blinds. A hat tree stood in one corner, one of the Judge’s trademark black Stetsons hooked over a curved wooden arm, a forgotten golf sweater slung over another hook. His desk was functional. Metal topped with Formica. A humidor filled with cigars, ashtray and telephone graced one corner. On the opposing side were three snapshots, including a small wedding photo of the Judge and Jasmine, a picture of Shelby at eight and her graduation photograph.
So her father seemed to care—had even used her birthday as his security code. She never would have guessed. She stared at the pictures for a few seconds, then reminded herself that she couldn’t, wouldn’t be blind-sided by some meaningless nostalgia. Driving unwanted emotions from her mind, she went to work.
The drawers of the desk were locked, but she found a small key on her new ring that slid easily into the lock. Pencils, paper clips, matches, letter opener and such were in the first drawer. Big deal. The second drawer in the stack offered up recent paper work, mostly having to do with the ranch and none of which looked interesting; the third housed a partially consumed fifth of Jack Daniels and an extra stash of cigars.
So far she’d used up ten minutes and found nothing. Wiping the sweat from her forehead, she started with the credenza. It opened easily and was much like his cabinet at home, everything neatly marked and, not surprisingly, some of the names she’d found at the house were duplicated here.
Bingo.
She found Dr. Ned C. Pritchart’s file and eased it open with anxious hands. The manila folder was thin, only a few notes, nothing significant except that his last known address and date of death had been written in. So the Judge had known Pritchart was dead but had let her go on looking for him, running down blind alleys and wasting precious time.
“Oh, Dad, you snake,” Shelby said, disappointed, though she knew she was being foolish. Her father was and always would be the grand manipulator. For reasons of his own, he didn’t want her to find Elizabeth and would put up every road-block he could to stop her. The man who had denied his own illegitimate daughter would do the same with his granddaughter. “Damn you, Dad,” Shelby whispered as she forced herself back to work.
Nevada’s file was next.
She opened it on her lap, the beam of her flashlight racing over the pages. The folder was filled with dozens of notations, mostly about Nevada’s wayward youth, but there were other pages as well, pages with personal memos. Judge Cole didn’t pull any punches and was scathing in his remarks about the “half-breed hoodlum” who had been hell on wheels as a kid and yet the Judge had hired later. On one page there was a note that Judge Cole suspected his daughter was pregnant and that the “motherless son of a bitch Smith” was the father of his grandchild.
“So who’s the real bastard here?” she asked as she closed the file and with shaking fingers found her own folder. She glanced at her watch. Nine-forty-five. She’d been here twenty minutes, and each one that passed made her more edgy. A clock ticked from a comer bookcase, traffic moved slowly outside, but other than that the dark office was silent, eerily so. How many not-so-honest deals had been consummated in this room? How many lives changed forever?
Ignoring her case of nerves, she opened the thick file inscribed with her name. Her entire life seemed to spill out with the pages. Copies of the same report cards, employment records, medical reports she’d seen in the file at home, but there was more here. In the back of the folder was a handwritten diary, a listing of the significant events in Shelby’s life and little asides put in by the man who had sired her. She swallowed hard as she read each note, starting with her birth, going through her grade school and high school years, including her mother’s death, and yes, not only her pregnancy, but her rape, the latter being squeezed in as her father hadn’t learned of the act until he’d confronted her about her pregnancy.
Tears threatened her eyes, but she drove them back, refusing to cry. After the pregnancy there were other notations as well, her schooling and jobs, but the most interesting note was that with a
cross reference to Lydia Vasquez, the housekeeper.
Why?
Because Lydia had been the only mother she’d ever known? The woman who had taught her to sew, cook and arrange flowers and had brought home her first box of Kotex? Lydia had bandaged her knees when they’d been skinned, offered - advice that Shelby had rarely listened to and had filled the big house with laughter and funny stories about her family.
Yes, they were linked, but Shelby sensed there was more to her father’s hastily scratched notation. She only had to figure out what it was. Probably nothing. But then again ...
Shelby slapped her file onto the desktop, then searched for Lydia Vasquez’s folder, found it and wasted no time in dragging it from the drawer to lay it open on the desktop.
There were dozens of notes on Lydia, since she had worked for the Judge for years. Her legal papers had been copied and paper-clipped together and there were various pages mentioning all of her relatives, including Carla and Pablo Ramirez and their children. Each child was duly noted as well. There was even a cross reference to the Estevan family, who were also related to the Ramirezes.
Shelby stared at the file. Why would her father take such meticulous notes on these people? In the back of her mind, she felt a cold comprehension beginning to build. There was something more here ... something ugly.
She skimmed the names of the children again jotted down in the Judge’s cramped handwriting-Enrique, Juan, Diego and Maria. Four kids. Three boys, one girl. She’d known them all growing up. Maria was the oldest and the boys had come along later, stair steps. She’d not been allowed to play with Maria, though. It had been one thing for Lydia to practically raise her—the Judge had found that just fine—but when it came to actually making friends with the Spanish-speaking children, Judge Cole had drawn the line, which Shelby had often ignored.
She’d remembered Maria, a bright-faced, smart girl who had left school early on. Shelby couldn’t remember why.
She was about to turn the page, then stopped and gazed at Maria’s name again. Didn’t Lydia say that Maria’s daughter was giving her so much trouble? Her nine-year-old daughter? Hadn’t Lydia been crying on the phone with Maria? Shelby’s heart nearly stopped. So what? Don’t jump to any farfetched conclusions, she told herself. It’s just a coincidence.
But she twisted in her father’s chair and, holding the flashlight between her teeth, searched the file drawer until she found a folder for Maria. It was thicker than those of her brothers.
Holding her breath, extracting the folder, Shelby drew in a deep breath. The file fell open and there, shimmering in the flashlight’s pale beam, was a color picture of a child—one taken for school, Shelby guessed.
“Elizabeth,” Shelby said, tears filling her eyes as she gazed upon a girl with teeth too big for her small face, a blue ribbon sliding out of curling brown hair, freckles evident on tanned skin and turquoise eyes staring straight at the camera.
Shelby’s heart cracked for all the years she’d wasted, but she managed a tremulous smile through her tears. “Dear God,” she whispered, sobbing in relief.
After ten years of lies and deception, she’d finally located her daughter.
Chapter Seventeen
Shelby scraped her chair back, tucked the damning file under her arm—then heard a truck’s engine slow and stop in front of the office on the deserted street.
Great,she thought. Someone else who might recognize her. Not that it mattered, she supposed. Unless it was Ross McCallum.
Her heart nearly stopped.
Don’t panic, Shelby. Ross has no business here; you’re just over-reacting. Get a move on. Go to Lydia’s. Demand to know the truth.
Stuffing her own file into the cabinet, she flicked off her flashlight, slid the drawer shut, locked it as well as the desk. She didn’t want to tip off her father that she knew the truth, not yet. Not until she’d seen her baby, talked to her, decided what she was going to do. If the Judge caught wind that Shelby had discovered Elizabeth’s whereabouts, he might sabotage her efforts again.
“Bastard,” she said, rounding her father’s desk as her eyes adjusted to the darkness.
She couldn’t take any chances of being caught. Not yet.
A door slammed right outside the office.
“Blast it all,” she whispered.
Adrenalin sped her out of the Judge’s office and toward the back door that she’d used to enter. Headlights flashed against the window facing the parking lot.
Her heart nose-dived as she realized her avenue of escape had been cut off. Peering through the blinds, she recognized her father’s Mercedes as it ground to a stop near the fence. No! What was he doing here? Lydia had said he would be out of town the entire night.
Frantic, Shelby realized she had to take a chance and leave through the front door or confront her father on the spot, when the knob to the opposing door rattled. Then there was a sharp knock.
So the Judge wasn’t just stopping by to pick up something or make a late-night phone call or do a little paper work when it was quiet here. Nope, he was meeting someone. This was no time for a showdown.
Without thinking, Shelby ducked into a storage closet and clutched her precious file to her chest. The closet was close, shelves of papers and supplies nearly touching each of her shoulders, and the temperature inside seemed about a million degrees. Sweat ran down her forehead as she heard the back door open.
“What in thunder?” her father’s voice boomed. “Damned fool contraption.” Heavy, uneven footsteps crossed the reception area at the sound of pounding. Shelby heard the sounds of locks opening, saw a crack of light under the door as the overhead fixture was flipped on. “So you made it.”
“Been waitin’ for ya.”
Nevada? Oh, God, Nevada was meeting her father? Shelby couldn’t believe it. Didn’t want to.
“What was it you wanted to talk to me about?” Nevada demanded.
“You haven’t come inside yet?”
A pause. “The door was locked, Judge. You just let me in.”
For a second neither man said a word. “You didn’t see anyone come or leave?”
“I just got here.”
Shelby was dying inside. Somehow her father had divined that she’d been around.
“Goddamned Etta,” the Judge growled. “Doesn’t have enough sense to lock the damned back door or set the fool alarm. What’s the use of a security system if you don’t turn the fool thing on?”
Shelby’s heart pounded. Her palms were itchy with sweat. At any moment her father could fling open the door to the closet, snap on the light and expose her.
So what? Breaking and Entering is nothing in comparison with his crimes of falsifying records, fraud, kidnapping and whatever else.
“What was it you wanted to talk to me about?” Nevada demanded. “You said something about Shelby and McCallum.”
Oh, God. Shelby clenched her jaw so hard it ached.
“Come into my office where we can sit down.”
No! Shelby wouldn’t be able to hear either of them if they moved, but the sound of footsteps retreating indicated that they had, indeed, moved.
This was her chance to escape. She waited a few seconds, then eased open the closet door to a room awash with light. Etta Parson’s desk, complete with a vase of daisies and pictures of her grandchildren, was lit up like the proverbial Christmas tree. Shelby looked through the crack over the hinge in the closet door and saw the back of Nevada’s head and shoulders through the open door to her father’s office. Sitting opposite him on the other side of the desk was the Judge. His view of the reception area was complete.
She was trapped unless she wanted to expose herself.
“I know you railroaded McCallum into prison,” the Judge said, his voice surprisingly clear.
Shelby’s heart missed a beat.
“The evidence pointed his way.”
“Did it? Well, bell, it doesn’t really matter, does it? We both know the man deserved what he got.”
/> “He killed Estevan.”
“Did he?” There was a long hesitation. Shelby was sweating bullets. She saw the cords in the back of Nevada’s neck become more pronounced. “We don’t know that for a fact, but we do know that he raped Shelby, and for that he deserved what he got. Even more.”
What was this all about? Shelby’s fingers twisted the folder in her hands.
“That’s why you railroaded McCallum. You found out about the rape and got into a fight with him. Landed the two of you in the hospital and cost you some of the vision in that eye of yours. But that wasn’t good enough. The night Estevan was killed, you somehow figured out how to get Ross in your truck and claim that it was stolen. Your gun turned up missing. Estevan was shot with the same make and model.”
“And you think I did it.”
“Could be.”
“Why?”
“Convenience. To set Ross up. Besides, Estevan was a mean, uppity prick who roughed up his wife and daughter every once in a while. You were involved with Vianca at one time.” Shelby’s gut twisted. Was this all possible? Did Nevada manipulate the law as much as her own father did? All because of the rape?
“This is bullshit.”
“Conjecture.”
“The bottom line is that Ross McCallum killed Estevan,” Nevada said. “I didn’t set it up, Judge. That’s your kind of game, not mine.”
“Well, we’ll just see, won’t we? There’s a leak in the Sheriff’s Department, and I already heard a rumor that the murder weapon’s been found.”
Nevada didn’t so much as flinch. “The .38?”
“Your .38. It was registered to you. Uncovered in the rock quarry at the Adams place, the one you own now.”