by Tim Green
"This isn't much of a favor."
"She's an old German," Paige said, wrinkling her nose. "Her husband is the Cavanaugh. One is one with her."
"I'm sorry," Casey said.
Paige patted her hand across the table. "No, don't be. I just wanted to make sure you really needed it, honey. You know there's nothing I wouldn't do. Especially now, with that so-called senator and don't even get me started about Taylor Jordan. He'll be passed over on some holiday parties if I have anything to do with it. You can believe that."
"Mandy Chase needs to know this is totally private," Casey said. "Everything is confidential. I'd like to talk with her in a little more detail about some of the things she told Jose."
Paige frowned and clutched Casey's hand again. "And I am so sorry about that. And me the one telling you to sleep with a Mexican, my God. The men last night after you left? My God, you should have heard them carry on about it when I told them I encouraged you. Told me we both got just what we asked for, and I'm supposed to be your friend."
Casey clamped her lips tight, stared at the table between them, and said nothing.
Paige sighed and finished her burger, urging Casey to at least take a bite from her own.
"I'm not really hungry," Casey said. She'd told Paige that before she ordered the sandwich, but her friend insisted on buying it anyway.
After wiping her mouth, Paige took out a small mirror and touched up her face before putting in a call to Mrs. Cavanaugh's personal assistant and arranging for an emergency meeting to discuss the favor.
Casey rode with Paige in her little green Aston Martin at Paige's insistence that it would look better when they arrived at the Cavanaughs' great stone mansion. A butler showed them into a sitting room with lush satin curtains and what looked like a genuine Renoir above a white marble fireplace. A maid brought them a silver tray with a pitcher of iced tea and small sandwiches, which they both simply looked at. It took another half an hour before a young woman came through the double doors in a pin-striped charcoal suit, tortoiseshell glasses, and her dark hair pulled into a tight bun.
Paige craned her neck to see into the hall. When the young woman closed the doors behind her, Paige frowned. The woman introduced herself as Shelly Frye, Mrs. Cavanaugh's personal assistant, and sat down across from them with her back to the broad windows overlooking the garden.
"You'll need to tell me exactly what it is you need from her," Shelly said, poising a Montblanc pen above her clipboard.
"I said on the phone," Paige said, thrusting out her chest so that it strained against the cream linen dress, "I'm here about the favor."
"Yes," Shelly said, blinking. "What favor? She'd like to know."
"The one favor she promised me in the French Room Bar at the Adolphus Hotel the afternoon before the Bovine Ball. She said not to ask for two, so this is the one. You can write that down."
"She'll still want to know what it is," Shelly said. "I'm sorry, that's my job."
"I'm sorry, she'll have to hear it from me," Paige said.
Shelly looked at Casey, but she gave away nothing.
"So," Shelly said, looking down at her pad, "the favor you want is to talk with her without telling her what the subject is."
"No," Paige said, her red nails digging into the embroidered armrest of her chair, "the favor isn't to talk to her. I want to talk to her about the favor."
"You'll have to make an appointment to do that," Shelly said, apologetically, but with great comfort. "She has a full schedule today."
Paige looked at the woman for a moment and Casey thought she heard a low growl from her friend's throat.
"Don't you even try to do this with me," Paige said, her voice lower and softer than before. "You go tell her I'm here to talk. You tell her that trashy little columnist from the Star has been after me for three years to confirm the rumor about that Bovine Ball and her daughter ending up with the Hunt fortune. You tell her I don't go back on my word, unless someone else goes back on theirs. Then you check her schedule."
Shelly peered at Paige for a moment through her dusty glasses before nodding and leaving the room. Paige exhaled and fanned her face and drank some tea.
"Wow," Casey said.
Paige set her glass down on the tray. "Damn right."
The door opened several minutes later and without looking at either of them Shelly said, "She'll see you, but you'll have to talk while she works."
Paige winked at Casey and without a word she raised her chin and followed the young woman out of the room, down a long hallway, and out into an elaborate circular rose garden. At the garden's center, a marble fountain cascaded like spring rain. Four arched trellises, thick with roses, marked the beginning of four separate paths extending from the center toward each point on the compass. The stout old Mrs. Cavanaugh wore a sun hat and heavy canvas gloves. She sat sideways on a small marble bench next to the eastern trellis while she snipped away at the buds surrounding a single yellow rose. When she saw them, she stood and opened her arms.
"Why, Paige, you darling girl," she said in a syrupy drawl. "It's so good to see you. I'm sorry Shelly kept you waiting like this, you never have to wait with me, darling. Next time you just tell her to make sure I know it's you."
Shelly kept her lips tight, but gave a final little bow and receded beyond the trellis they'd come through before snapping open her cell phone and going back to work.
"She tries so hard," the old woman said, shaking her head. "You don't mind if I keep working, do you, darling? I am so busy, you'd think I didn't have single servant, let alone two dozen."
Paige smiled sweetly. "You just do what you have to, Mrs. Cavanaugh. I wouldn't even bother you, but you were so kind once to offer me a favor if I ever needed one, and I do."
"Helping people is one of my great pleasures," the old woman said, intent on her work, twisting a stalk in her fingers and snipping a tiny bud. "It's nothing to do with your husband, I hope. Marriage is the work of God, you know."
"No, not that," Paige said. "This is my friend, Casey Jordan."
Mrs. Cavanaugh looked up at Casey as though she had appeared from thin air.
"Oh, hello, dear. Excuse me for not getting up. An old woman's prerogative."
"Not at all," Casey said.
"I don't know if you've heard about some of Casey's problems," Paige said. "Things in the news."
"Certainly not my business," Mrs. Cavanaugh said, returning her attention to the plant.
"I only say it because I want to ask you to arrange a meeting between Casey and the senator's wife," Paige said. "She needs to see her right away. This afternoon. I don't think anyone but you could do that."
The old woman shook her head, softly clucking her tongue. "I have very little influence over others."
"You're so highly respected, Mrs. Cavanaugh."
"Well," she said with a palsied nod that jiggled the wattle under her chin. "I'd be happy if I could do a favor for a friend. Let me see what I can do. If I am able to, would the meeting take place here?"
Paige looked at Casey and Casey shrugged, but held up two fingers, nodding before she changed to three fingers, shaking her head no.
"That would be fine," Paige said. "As long as the two of them could talk privately."
"I'm sure I won't want to be there," Mrs. Cavanaugh said, drawing herself up straight and touching her breastbone.
The old woman raised a finger so slightly and so quickly that Casey wasn't sure she'd done it at all until Shelly appeared.
"Get me Mandy Chase, dear," Mrs. Cavanaugh said, "and show our guests back to the Renoir room. I don't want them to have to stand in this heat."
CHAPTER 54
MANDY CHASE ARRIVED IN A CREAMY YELLOW SUMMER DRESS, carrying a white purse that matched her shoes. Casey watched her approach from one of two decorative wrought-iron chairs beside the rose garden fountain, to which Shelly had escorted Casey fifteen minutes earlier. When Mandy passed through the trellis, Casey rose and extended a hand, surprised
to feel her firm grip returned.
"I don't know how much Jose told you about me," Casey said. "Will you sit down?"
Mandy sat at an angle with her knees and ankles pressed tight and her hands folded together on top of the purse in her lap. She offered Casey a wan smile and said, "Only about your lawsuit against my husband and your plans to cross-examine me. I didn't expect it to happen in Mrs. Cavanaugh's rose garden."
"This isn't a cross-examination," Casey said. She reached over to touch Mandy's arm. When the senator's wife went stiff, she retracted her hand. "Not even a deposition. Nothing official. I don't know if you saw the things they're saying about me."
"I watch TV," Mandy said.
"Hopefully enough to know that it's sometimes far from accurate," Casey said. "From what Jose said, I thought I might be able to count on your help."
Mandy narrowed her eyes. "I'm not interested in lawsuits or rebuilding your TV image."
"Do you care about Elijandro's family?" Casey asked.
Mandy considered her for a moment, then said, "I do. Them, and the other people being loaded into trucks in the middle of the night."
"And you know that's what I care about, too? Don't you?" Casey asked.
Mandy forced a sigh and said, "Ms. Jordan, I don't know anything these days."
"Would you talk to me about what you do know?" Casey asked.
"That's why you wanted to meet with me?"
"Jose said he thought you'd help."
"Jose, the dirty cop? Or was that all made up by the media, too?" she said. "If it is true, then maybe this is really more about some drug war, people coming and going. Mules."
"Women and kids?" Casey said. "I doubt that, and I bet you do, too."
"Come on, you know most mules are just that."
"Jose said you and Elijandro saw a truck being loaded at a stone quarry. Can you tell me about that? How you got in? A service road?"
"Why should I believe you?" Mandy asked. "Why should I trust you?"
"Use your instincts," Casey said. "Do you really believe the news reports? Your husband's press conference? Do I look crazy? Do you get the sense that I'm chasing your husband's money, or conning people? Stealing from my own charity? Do your instincts tell you that?"
Mandy studied her. "No, they don't."
"Good," Casey said. "Because I care about Isodora and her baby and the husband she lost. If I can show why your husband and Gage wanted him dead, then I can prove that he didn't shoot Elijandro by accident."
"I don't completely know why," Mandy said, shaking her head. "Only that it has to be because of those people in the trucks on their way to Mexico, but that's not enough."
"Help me find out more," Casey said. "Do you remember anything about the trucks? Any signage?"
"Do you have a piece of paper?" Mandy asked.
Casey took a legal pad from her briefcase and handed it over along with a pen. Mandy explained as she drew a map of the service entrance, the abandoned work trailer, and the place where they'd seen the truck full of people.
"You can go yourself and see. There could be a truck full of people there right now, for all I know," Mandy said, handing the map to her.
"How often do you think they do it?" Casey asked, studying it. "How many people in all do you think we're talking about?"
"No idea," Mandy said.
"Like some vigilante deportation?" Casey asked. "Is that what this is?"
Mandy started to say something, then closed her mouth before she said, "No. I honestly don't know what. Ellie heard something, but he wouldn't say until he was sure." Mandy shifted uncomfortably. "Who would think that being married can be lonelier than having no one?"
"Me," Casey said.
"That Jose," Mandy said, "did you know all that stuff about him?"
"No."
"And now you're doing this alone?"
"For the moment, it seems," Casey said. "I don't know where Jose is exactly. Evidently some of the things your husband said on TV are true and Jose needs to deal with it, but this case can't wait.
"This helps," Casey continued, holding up the map. "A lot."
"Good," Mandy said, standing up. "It didn't come from me, though. Don't prove my instincts wrong."
"I understand. Thank you. One other thing."
Mandy inclined her head.
"If your husband can whisk people out of the country," Casey said, "why didn't he just do that with Isodora and her baby? Why bother with ICE?"
"My husband didn't call ICE," Mandy said. "Once he found out Isodora was in custody, he made sure they got deported, but he didn't make the initial call."
"Gage?" Casey said, wrinkling her brow.
"Me," Mandy said. "As soon as I heard about Ellie, I used a favor to get ICE to go out there right away. Unfortunately, the person who helped made it into a bigger thing than I'd have liked-social services, taking the baby-but that's protocol and I wasn't in the position to be choosy. I figured if I didn't, they'd end up on one of those trucks."
Casey nodded with understanding.
Mandy started to go, then turned to Casey. "When the kids were little, we had an Irish setter. She had a litter with the Jack Russell from the barn and my husband had a fit because it was my job and the kids' to keep her locked up when she was in heat. He wanted to breed her for some bird dogs."
Casey furrowed her brow and tilted her head.
"My husband took the kids out back and put those puppies in a burlap sack and he whipped that sack against the big oak tree out there until the puppies went quiet."
Mandy's eyes welled with tears and her mouth assumed a cruel twist. She sniffed and said, "Don't let him catch you."
CHAPTER 55
THE SUN DROPPED BEHIND THE HOUSING PROJECTS ACROSS THE street from Jose's aunt's home, darkening the street. From an abandoned row house in the project, Jose watched the last police car pull away from the curb. He leaned back from the crack between the boards in what had once been the front window and let himself out the back door. To shield his face, he tugged down on the bill of the Astros baseball cap and turned up the collar of the sleeveless denim jacket he wore over his white tank top. With his tattoos and a pair of grubby jeans hanging low on his hips, Jose blended in easily in the barrio. He crossed the street, pausing for a broken-down Dodge Dart, its muffler scratching up sparks as it roared past.
When he came to the yellow crime-scene tape, Jose scanned the neighborhood. He noted a pack of punks on the corner, cigarettes slung low on their lips, sipping from drinks hidden in brown paper bags. A hooded banger sitting on a stoop slipped a vial to a hunched and sallow-eyed customer. A crooked old woman pushed a broken grocery cart full of potted plants.
Jose lifted the yellow tape and ducked under. He slit the police seal on the door and used his key to slip inside, pausing to survey the street before he completely shut the door. The reek of blood, urine, and excrement overcame the ubiquitous smell of mothballs coming from his aunt's coat closet. Jose swallowed and willed his legs to take him through the front sitting room to the kitchen, where pools of blood had congealed into a macabre pudding on the floor. Two human shapes in fetal positions had been marked in chalk where they had once lain.
He glanced around. Everything rested in its usual place. With no sign of a struggle, it made sense to Jose that the detectives had presumed the killer knew the women. On the floor, marked a and b, were the spots where the brass bullet casings would have lain before detectives tweezed them into plastic evidence bags. Dust from fingerprint powder coated the table and he could discern the chalk outline of the small snub-nosed.38, the same model as his own, the one that he'd given to his aunt for her protection.
He moved through the house slowly, carefully, examining details like a hunter in the woods, reading the story. As he worked, the light of day continued to fade until he needed to use the penlight from his aunt's kitchen drawer to finish his labor.
In the back laundry room he checked the door and saw the splintered wood where the killer,
or killers, had entered. That alone should have excited doubt in his old boss, but Ken Trent had acted as though there were little question as to Jose's guilt. Jose continued upstairs, where the beds showed nothing more than that they were the unmade resting places of four people. Yet Trent had acted as if he hadn't known about Isodora and the baby. Jose ground his teeth together, sensing an obvious frame-up. He doubted his old boss would do something like this, but the reach of a US senator went far and wide and deep.
Jose returned to the front sitting room where he could watch the street. He flipped open his phone and dialed the police captain.
"You're only making it worse on yourself," Trent said, his voice tight. "You hit a cop? You think I can keep that quiet?"
"You're keeping other things quiet," Jose said. He let the silence hang for a moment before he said, "Why would I break into my aunt's house? Did anyone tell you someone broke in the back? I got a key. Why would I leave my own gun on the table?"
"How do you know the gun was on the table?"
"I still have friends," Jose said.
"I've got a bump on my head like an egg and you think I'm going to listen to you?" Trent said.
"Maybe it's just sloppy work your people are doing on this murder investigation and not corruption," Jose said. "Who's the lead? Cartwright?"
"Gibbons."
"Gibbons?" Jose said, shaking his head. "So maybe it's just incompetence. Have you even seen the crime scene? There are two people missing besides the ones who're dead. You can see where they slept. The people I asked you about, Isodora and her baby, the woman whose husband Senator Chase shot and their little girl. You want to find them and really know what happened at my aunt's house? Go find the person who broke in here and left you two bodies. Go talk to the senator. He'll know."
"I knew you dealt it," Trent said, "but I never thought you'd start smoking it."
"You're wrong on both counts," Jose said. "That what you believed all these years?"
"I was never sure until all I've seen lately."