To Trust a Cop

by Sharon Hartley

  “What are you going to do now, Merl?” D.J. asked.

  “Follow Pat around and see what she’s up to.”

  D.J. sat back in his chair and caught her gaze. “Tell me something, Merl. Do you believe Pat Johnson could have murdered her husband? What I’ve done here is perhaps prove opportunity,” he said, placing a gnarled hand on the files. “But murder takes a hard woman. A real hard woman. Is she that kind of person?”

  Merlene considered. “Maybe. She was awfully insistent that I never stop surveilling her husband.”

  “Desperation is another motive,” D.J. said. “But I don’t know what the woman has to be desperate about.”

  Two hours later, driving a rented Ford a safe distance behind Pat Johnson’s white Cadillac, Merlene sung the words to an old country-and-western song about being back in the saddle again. She planned to keep tabs on Pat for a few days, learn her habits, determine if anything unusual was going on in her life. See if she made any visits to her husband’s new grave in the Pinecrest cemetery.

  Did her client have any reason to be desperate?

  Pat maneuvered the Caddie into a parking space near Sunset Place, and Merlene logged the time Pat entered the upscale shopping center. Ninety minutes later, Pat returned to her car with several large shopping bags.

  Lagging far enough behind so she wouldn’t be spotted, Merlene tailed her subject for three hours. Mostly shopping, two hours in the beauty salon. Nothing out of the ordinary occurred.

  Merlene’s stomach did a blackflip when Pat pulled into the parking lot of South Dade Insurance Group late in the afternoon. Did Jeff Kinney, the agent that handled the Johnsons’ life insurance, have his office inside this building?

  As she snapped several photos of Pat entering the glass front doors, Merlene wondered if Pat was checking on her claim. Not in itself suspicious but why not a phone call? Or maybe she hoped to pick up her money. Fat chance. It was way too soon. Besides, Cody had likely requested the insurance agent to “cooperate” and not issue a check anyway.

  Merlene itched to follow Pat inside but knew even with a red wig and glasses she’d be recognized. Best to wait a few minutes, then check names on the directory inside for clues as to what Pat’s purpose could be in this building.

  With the melody to “On the Road Again” now humming in her brain, Merlene noted the time and cautioned herself to be patient.

  * * *

  CODY STOOD AND shook Jeff Kinney’s hand. “Thanks for your cooperation.”

  “We just need a few days,” Jake said, rising from another chair.

  Kinney straightened the manila files on his desk and also came to his feet. “Believe me, detectives, if there’s a chance Dr. Johnson’s wife was involved with his murder, I’m happy to hold up the check. She called at ten this morning, however. I expect her any minute.”

  Cody glanced at his partner. Pat Johnson was coming here?

  “Tell her there’s been a screwup at your headquarters,” Jake said. “Then tell her you have another appointment to get rid of her.”

  The agent sighed. “She’s a good client.”

  “We appreciate your cooperation,” Cody told the agent again, thinking the man probably regretted the loss of future commissions. Yeah, money really did spin the world on its axis, and sometimes allowed people to die.

  “Oh, of course,” Kinney said, frowning. “Insurance fraud is something we take quite seriously.”

  In the corridor moments later, Jake punched the elevator call button. “Kinney’s probably glad to have an excuse not to pay out a large claim.”

  “Just hope he doesn’t tell the Johnson woman we’re onto her,” Cody said.

  “Or she’ll be on the next flight out of town.”

  Cody thought about Merl. Had she blown town because of his warning? Had he given her the information so she could make an escape? No. He’d told her because he believed she was innocent. And he still believed that now that he’d calmed down. Greedy, yes. Murderer, no.

  “We need to find hard evidence,” Jake said.

  “Assuming it exists.” Cody ran a hand through his hair. “Pat Johnson might not be involved at all.”

  Jake shrugged. “Since when is Montoya ever wrong?”

  Before Cody could voice a response, the elevator doors opened. Dressed in a stylish black suit, blond hair lacquered into place, Pat Johnson stepped into the hallway. She smiled in a practiced manner and moved between Cody and Jake, leaving behind an expensive floral-scented trail.

  Cody watched her enter Kinney’s office.

  “She doesn’t appear grief stricken,” Jake muttered.

  “At least she’s wearing black.”

  Cody’s thoughts again drifted to Merlene on the ride down. He shook his head. He’d disobeyed a direct order from his lieutenant by telling Merlene both she and her client were under investigation.

  Cody stepped from the elevator ahead of Jake—and halted midstride. Merlene stood ten feet away, scrutinizing the lobby directory, notebook and a pen in hand.

  He cursed under his breath. Here to snag her portion of the insurance, no doubt. No matter how bad the evidence, he’d wanted to believe she was another victim.

  “Merlene,” he called out.

  She whirled. Her cheeks flamed as if she’d been caught with both hands in the cookie jar. “Cody.”

  Oh, yeah. Here was just another coincidence that she’d showed up at Agent Kinney’s office at the same time as Pat Johnson.

  “I don’t need to ask what you’re doing here,” he said, a sick feeling twisting his gut.

  “Relax,” Jake murmured in his ear. “Are you going to introduce me to this lovely lady?” he said in a louder voice.

  “Jake, meet Merlene Saunders.” Cody uncurled fisted fingers. How could she look so damn beautiful, so innocent and so guilty at the same time? “Merlene, this is my partner, Jake Steadman.”

  Merlene transferred the pen to her left hand and extended her arm. “Detective Steadman,” she said, her voice husky.

  “Jake will do.”

  “Pat Johnson is upstairs,” Merlene said, glancing back to Cody. “I think she’s gone to see Jeff Kinney, the agent for—”

  “We know who Kinney is.” Cody folded his arms. “You’ll have to wait for your cut. Pat won’t get her check today.”

  Merlene flinched.

  Jake said, “Why don’t I wait in the car?”

  Merlene lifted her chin but didn’t speak.

  “So tell me, Detective Warren,” Merlene asked when Jake was out of earshot, “if Pat Johnson killed her husband, how did she get from Miami back to Blowing Rock so quickly? I spoke to her myself the next afternoon.” She narrowed her eyes. “I dialed the number—a landline.”

  Cody didn’t answer. She had a point. They’d run a check on commercial flights but had come up empty. His request for the manpower to check general aviation airports hadn’t yet been approved.

  “Or do you think I’m lying about that, too? Well, come to think of it, I could be lying about what time I made the recording. Or maybe I tampered with the date stamp.”

  “I know you didn’t alter the video.”

  She offered a half smile. “Because the lab says so, right? Not because I do?”

  Hearing sadness behind the anger in her words, Cody searched for something to say.

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Detective,” she said when he remained silent. Still holding the notebook and pen, she placed both hands behind her. She lifted her chin higher, exposing the arc of her creamy white throat.

  “For the police’s information,” she said evenly, “I’m conducting surveillance on Pat Johnson. I’ll try not to interfere with your investigation.”

  Reaching into her shorts pocket, she withdrew her car keys. She threw them up a
bout two inches and caught them with a jangling clank. “With any luck, we won’t run into each other again.”

  * * *

  LEAVING CODY IN the rearview mirror, Merlene angrily brushed aside a tear. Why did she always let him get to her? At least he knew she hadn’t altered the video. That was something. That ought to keep her out of jail for a while.

  Merlene turned right at the first intersection, drove out of Cody’s sight and parked. She could see him beneath a tree limb, but a large car between them blocked his view of her vehicle.

  He stared after her for a moment, then walked toward his partner on the sidewalk. The two had a brief conversation, then climbed into Cody’s police vehicle. Jake rode in her seat.

  She shook her head. No, that had been Jake’s seat long before hers. And she’d probably never settle her rear in it again.

  She waited for Cody and Jake to drive away, then started her car and repositioned so she had a clear view of Pat’s Cadillac. Merlene planned to follow Pat the rest of the day at least, maybe into the evening. What else did she have to do except worry about being arrested?

  As she raised her digital camera to focus on the glass doors Pat would exit, Merlene wondered what Cody would be doing. Searching for evidence to convict her or exonerate her? Well, he’d never discover any evidence against her because there wasn’t any.

  Unless Pat had created some.

  Merlene lowered her camera at this unexpected thought. She’d never considered that sinister idea before. But why not? If Cody was right, Pat had, in essence, manufactured evidence against Neville Feldman. Why not frame the unknowing private eye accessory at the same time? A great way to eliminate any possible witnesses.

  Maybe Cody had found something that made her look dirty and that’s why he acted so damn judgmental.

  Feeling less and less charitable toward her client, her thoughts again drifted to Cody. So what would he do tonight? Surely he didn’t work all the time. Did he ever take the evening off and kick back? She was out of the safe house now. If things were different, they could spend the night together. Merlene squirmed in her seat and pushed away the delicious thought of Cody’s strong, naked arms wrapped around her own bare shoulders.

  She needed to forget about him. Too bad her treacherous mind always betrayed her when it came to Detective Warren.

  She tensed as the insurance building’s glass doors swung open, then relaxed when a twentyish man in a Dolphins T-shirt exited. But right behind him was Pat Johnson stomping forward in a manner that spoke volumes about her mood.

  Pat jerked open the driver’s side door, threw her purse inside as if she were tossing a softball and collapsed behind the wheel. Merlene clicked frame after frame of Pat pounding a closed fist on the Caddie’s dashboard.

  “Temper, temper,” Merlene murmured, lowering her camera.

  When Pat started the car and drove away, Merlene stayed with her. Where to now? she wondered. Home to nurse her wounds?

  Merlene followed Pat to a low-income neighborhood in Little Havana. Rusted, obviously abandoned cars crowded swales. Bicycles and other children’s toys, their color faded from baking in the hot Miami sun, littered yards full of more weeds than grass. Many of the houses were for sale or rent, too many with foreclosure notices. Merlene shook her head. Not exactly a slum, but a long way from the affluent surroundings of Pat’s home in Coral Gables. Why had she come here?

  Merlene waited at the end of the street while her client parked in front of a residence slightly better maintained than its neighbors. Merlene videoed Pat exiting her Cadillac and using a key to enter the small home.

  Interesting. Merlene drove by the home and made a note of the exact address. Either Pat owned this house or was on intimate terms with whoever lived here.

  Very intimate. She hadn’t even knocked.

  At the end of the block, Merlene turned around and searched for a safe place to wait for dark. She parked her rental next to a wrecked Camaro with a good view of Pat’s Caddie. If Pat left the house before dark, she’d never recognize this Ford. Merlene could hunker down behind the wheel and not be spotted.

  But Pat’s Cadillac didn’t move and the neighborhood remained quiet the entire time Merlene waited. She played a little solitaire. She read. Her thoughts drifted to Cody too damn often.

  Every hour she created video test footage to prove how long Pat remained inside. Surprising how no kids came outside to play in the street. No one returned home from work. Nobody worked in their yards. This area had been hit hard by the recession.

  When it was dark enough that she couldn’t be easily spotted, Merlene slipped a black hoodie and loose black pants over her clothing and made her way toward the residence. Beneath her top, she slung her video camera on one shoulder and her still camera on the other.

  Her heart pounded inside her chest as she moved. Approaching the targeted structure without someone seeing her and calling the police was always the tricky part. She used to get a thrill out of this kind of work. She’d felt good catching those cheating husbands, doing her job and making money in the process.

  But not this time. And likely never again. After tonight, she was done with this work.

  Strolling casually, head down, when she reached the property she stepped onto the grass and hurried into the backyard. No alarm sounded from a neighbor.

  Experience told her which window would likely peer into a bedroom.

  No curtain. Excellent.

  Her back plastered to the cool concrete wall, she stood on tiptoe and dared a peek inside. Sure enough, a naked Pat Johnson and equally naked man enjoyed each other so much they wouldn’t have noticed an army conducting maneuvers.

  So who was this new player in Pat’s little game?

  Merlene raised her camera.

  * * *

  FOUR MORNINGS LATER, a process server delivered Merlene a subpoena for Neville Feldman’s arraignment. The package also contained a brief note from the prosecutor, Rafael Alvarez, explaining that the Feldmans demanded to see the evidence against them. Mr. Alvarez wanted to meet with her to go over her testimony just in case.

  But was that evidence trustworthy? Still reading the newly delivered paperwork, Merlene lowered herself to the couch.

  She’d retrieved her copy of the video from under her bed and watched it at least a dozen times.

  Yeah, two men rushed from the house, one of them carrying an automatic pistol. What did that prove? She’d relived her own memory of the night so many times she wasn’t sure what she’d heard or seen that night anymore.

  And she hadn’t heard a word from Cody. She hadn’t expected to, but service from a stranger irritated her. He could have delivered the summons himself.

  If he had, she would have told him how much her surveillance had paid off. What would he say when she told him Pat Johnson had a lover? A much younger lover...

  A little detective work had told Merlene all she needed to know about Pat’s new boyfriend, Mr. Angel Vasquez. For one thing he was unemployed. Every afternoon the merry widow visited Vasquez’s Little Havana home, remained over two hours, leaving with her perfect hairdo smashed flat.

  God bless telescopic lenses. She’d managed to snap several revealing photographs of the happy couple.

  Imagining Cody’s reaction to this info, Merlene folded the subpoena in half. She longed to tell him but couldn’t bring herself to make the call. Not yet. What she really wanted to tell him was she’d declined the interview with Vanessa Cooper and that the media vultures would never get their hands on the recording. Turning down more money than she could possibly make in her lifetime ought to count for something.

  But she wouldn’t call him until she’d figured out everything.

  Refusing to think about Cody, she climbed into her rented Ford and hoped for better luck this afternoon in her search of general aviation ai
rports. There had to be a record if Pat had chartered a plane the night of the murder.

  So far she’d batted zero.

  With irrefutable proof that Pat wasn’t the devastated spouse she pretended to be, Merlene wondered what else her client hadn’t been truthful about. Yeah, Neville Feldman might be a bona fide thief, but no one deserved to be framed for murder. She certainly never intended to participate in something so... She shivered, unable to come up with a word that fit how much she hoped she hadn’t been manipulated into causing a man’s death.

  An hour later, she parked in front of a low-slung aluminum building with the name Old Cutler Airport across the entrance. A faded orange wind sock billowed next to the runway.

  When she entered the building, a dark-haired, fiftyish man stood up from a desk and approached the counter. He smiled at her, a toothpick dangling from his teeth.

  “Can I help you, ma’am?”

  “I hope so,” she said, deciding the up-front, head-on approach was the best way to get information out of this honest-looking man. She held up her P.I. badge. “I’m looking for some information.”

  “What about?”

  Merlene placed four eight-by-ten photographs of Pat taken during recent surveillance on the counter. “Have you ever seen this woman? She possibly flew out on a charter flight early in the morning of August twenty-third.”

  She waited while the man leafed through the photos. She’d asked these questions dozens of times in the past week, most employees at small airports laughing at the idea of anyone departing in the middle of the night, and no one recognizing the woman in the photos.

  “She do something illegal?” the man asked, removing the toothpick from his mouth.

  “I’m not with the police,” Merlene said, placing a hundred-dollar bill before him.

  The man glanced at a calendar over the counter. “Yeah, she was here that night,” he said. “Paid us five hundred extra cash to keep us open so late. She was real secretive like, but didn’t say nothing about keeping it quiet.” He tossed the toothpick in a wastebasket. “I remember the pilot. Nice guy, even if he was a Braves fan.”