by Diane Kelly
After introducing herself, Booth leaned casually back in her chair, her eyes on the inmate. “Agent Holloway received the card you sent.” She let that soak in for a moment. “Who mailed it for you? One of your former business associates?”
Mendoza said nothing, though his gaze shifted from Booth to me and back again. He didn’t even bother to deny her accusation. “You want to speak with me,” he said, “you get my lawyer.”
“We’re not charging you,” she said. “We’re just asking you some questions.”
“You’ll get no answers,” he said, “unless you get my lawyer.”
Booth and I exchanged glances. We both knew if his attorney were present we’d have even less chance of getting answers. She leaned forward across the table, getting in his face, knowing if he touched a hair on her head the guard standing outside the glass watching would be on him in an instant. “Know this,” she said. “If you’ve threatened a member of law enforcement, we will make sure you never get out of this place.”
He sneered and leaned in, too, leaving only an inch between their faces. “I’m serving a life sentence,” he hissed back. “No matter what I do I’m never getting out of here.”
Undaunted, Booth laughed and sat back. “Sucks to be you, huh?”
He sat back, too, looking small again, his posture speaking for him. Little bit. Yeah.
Mendoza was taken away and, minutes later, the warden returned with Don Geils. Geils stood only five feet five inches. His rounded belly, upturned nose, and body covered in coarse black hair made him look like an oversized potbellied pig. He took one step through the doorway, met my gaze, and stopped in his tracks. “You?” he spat. He turned back to the warden. “You only said I had a visitor. You didn’t tell me it was this bitch!”
The warden shrugged and slammed the door in Geils’s face just as he tried to exit. Geils’s forehead smacked against the glass, leaving a greasy smudge. He rubbed his head and turned around, skewering me with his look. “What the fuck do you want?”
Before I could answer, Detective Booth gestured to the chair on the other side of the table. “Take a seat.”
He scowled at her. “If you think I’m going to let some pussy cop tell me what to do, you’ve got another think coming.”
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll allow you to stand.”
His eyes narrowed, as if he weren’t sure whether standing would now mean he was complying with her orders or not. Being the obstinate ass that he was, he decided to neither stand nor sit, but instead put a foot on the seat of the chair and rested his arms on his crooked leg. Sheesh.
Booth stared at him for a long moment, assessing him before speaking. “Agent Holloway received an interesting greeting card recently.”
Befuddlement flickered across his face before he marshaled his features and treated us to a smirk. “Oh, yeah?” Don Geils was a disgusting, vile man, but he wasn’t entirely stupid. He could read between the lines and tell that the card had upset me, crossed a legal line. “The card contained a threat, huh?” He looked from Booth to me. “A death threat, maybe?” Though I tried not to react, he seemed to sense he’d hit the nail on the head. He let loose a vicious laugh. “So you two came here hoping I’d confess? Maybe slip up and say something to incriminate myself?”
“Sure,” Booth replied, matter-of-factly. “How about it? Did you do it? Have someone on the outside mail it for you?”
Though his brief confusion earlier had me doubting his guilt, he wasn’t above wanting to cause us trouble, have us waste our precious time chasing down rabbit trails. “I’ll admit this,” he said, leaning toward us and doubling down on the smirk. “Maybe I did, and maybe I didn’t.”
Booth pondered things for a moment before turning to me. “He didn’t do it.”
“Nah,” I agreed. “Not him.”
He stood up straight, the smirk morphing into a pout. “I said ‘maybe I did.’”
“We heard you.” I waved a dismissive hand. “But you’re just being a jackass. You didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“You don’t know that!”
“Yeah,” Booth said. “We do.” She stood and summoned the warden. “You can take Mr. Geils back to his cell.”
The warden took Geils by the arm. As he was led out, Geils turned and looked back at me over his shoulder. “I hope whoever sent that card follows through!”
Yep, he’d definitely just admitted something—his innocence.
As the door swung closed, I turned to Booth. “We’ve got another shot here.” That shot was Joseph “Joe Cool” Cullen, the ice-cream-truck driver I’d arrested for selling drugs.
“I hope he’s the one behind the threats,” she said. “I’d like to make some arrests and get this behind you. Mostly for your sake, but also so you can focus on the rental-fraud case.”
“Me, too.” I couldn’t blame her for acknowledging the stake she had in solving the threats. So long as I was looking over my shoulder and spending time following leads on the death threats, I couldn’t be fully devoting my attention and time to tracking down the con artist who’d duped dozens of Dallas residents. How many more people might fall victim in the meantime?
A few minutes later, the door opened and Joe walked in. Like Geils, Joe was a short man, standing only five feet six. But while Geils was a porker, Joe was a string bean. He had the same acne-pocked face I remembered, the same goofy grin. But the outdated mullet had been replaced by a buzz cut, his swagger with a stoic stroll. He gave me a polite nod. “Hello, Agent Holloway.” He turned to Booth and gave her a nod, too. “Ma’am.”
Booth cut a look my way, a look that said This is the cocky twerp you described on the drive over?
I eyed him closely. “How have you been, Joe?”
“Never better.”
I found that hard to believe. I mean, living in a cage? Shared showers? No privacy when you pooped? “Really?”
He smiled patiently. “You did me a favor, sending me here. I’m on the straight-and-narrow path now. I’ve turned my life over to a higher power.” He raised his palms and looked up at the ceiling.
My thoughts slipped out. “Oh, Lord.”
Joe turned a beatific gaze back on me. “Exactly.”
“Are you for real?” the detective asked. “Or are you blowing smoke?”
“No smoke,” Joe said. “‘Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, but those who act faithfully are his delight.’ That’s Proverbs chapter twelve, verse twenty-two.”
“Okay, Mister Delightful,” Booth retorted. “Tell me this. Did you have anything to do with a card that was sent to Agent Holloway recently? A brochure that was left on her door?”
“No,” he said. “Someone looks over all of our mail before it’s sent out.”
“What about someone on the outside?” she asked. “Did you have a friend or family member do it for you?”
“No. The only person on the outside I keep up with is my mother, and she’s got no reason to send anything. Last time she came for a visit, she told me that for the first time in her life…” He paused for a moment, choking up. “She’s proud of me.” Tears welled up in his eyes.
Oh, for goodness’ sake! I reached into my purse, pulled out a small packet of tissues, and slid them across the table.
“Thanks.” He wrangled one from the package and dabbed his eyes.
Booth summoned the warden again. “We’re done with him.”
As Joe was led away, he, too, looked over his shoulder. “Have a blessed day!”
Once they’d gone, Booth turned to me. “Any point in speaking with the pastor?”
“Might as well,” I said. “We’ve come all this way.”
When the warden returned, I asked if he could bring Noah Fischer to the room. “This will be our last request.”
“I hope so,” the warden replied good-naturedly. “I’m wearing out my shoes going up and down these hallways.”
He left, returning soon thereafter with the disgraced pastor in tow.
Fischer’s face bore the burn scars he earned the night he’d broke into my place and I’d been forced to use a can of flammable extra-hold hair spray as a weapon. His skin appeared sallow, the lack of access to expensive skin-care products and a day spa having also taken its toll. He had the same fair hair that I remembered, though much less of it, his hair halo shrinking to accommodate an expanding bald spot. He dropped into the seat across the table, locked his livid gaze on me, and spewed forth. “Go to hell!”
While Joe had purportedly found God in prison, it looked like Noah Fischer had lost Him here. Then again, Fischer had never been a true believer. He’d used God for his own gain, executing a religious ruse that had fooled many, but not me.
“Good to see you, too,” I replied.
His eyes were lakes of fire, flickering with flames of fury.
Booth launched right in. “We know you’ve sicced your girlfriend on Agent Holloway.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he snarled. “Besides, I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Sure you do,” I said. “The pole dancer from Shreveport.”
The hot fury in his eyes seemed to cool and he shifted his gaze away from us, as if he didn’t want us to see the emotion there. “We’re no longer in contact,” he said, his voice quieter now.
“I don’t believe you,” Booth said.
His gaze moved back to us. “Check the visitors’ log. You’ll see. She hasn’t come to see me in months.”
“What about Amber Hansen?” I asked.
He scoffed. “You’re kidding, right? We’re not on speaking terms. She had the nerve to go on TV, publicly shaming me. Like she was so innocent, screwing around with a married man.”
“What about Marissa?” I asked. “Are you two still in touch?”
“No,” he said, his voice softer now. “My wife has never come here.”
“Marissa’s your ex-wife,” I reminded him. Sheesh. Did he really expect Marissa to come for a visit after she’d learned that he’d not only had an affair with a stripper, but also secretly fathered a child with one of the parishioners?
My words seemed to stoke the fire again. “Marissa should be in jail, too!” he snapped. “She spent as much money as I did. Maybe even more!”
“That’s true,” I agreed. During Fischer’s reign as head pastor of the Ark, his wife amassed an extensive jewelry and shoe collection. “But she wasn’t responsible for the fraudulent tax reporting and she didn’t break into my house and try to shoot me. That was all your doing, buddy.”
Rather than treating me to a smart-assed comeback, he simply stared straight ahead for a long moment before issuing a choking sound and breaking down completely. He put his head in his hands and sobbed uncontrollably, his shoulders shaking. Looked like life in prison didn’t agree with him. He should’ve thought about that before he ripped people off and tried to end my life.
Booth and I stood, leaving Fischer behind.
As we stepped out of the room, the warden heard the sobbing and peeked inside. “Is he crying?”
Booth nodded. “You might want to give him a moment to compose himself before you take him back to his cell.”
“Yeah. I take him back there with tears on his face and the other inmates will rip him to pieces.”
chapter fifteen
Such a Stronzo
Before leaving the prison, I turned to the warden. “Can we take a look at the visitors’ log?”
“Sure.” The log was kept digitally. He stepped over to the computer on the countertop and typed in Noah Fischer’s name and inmate number. When he finished, he turned the monitor toward me and the detective so we could take a look. We leaned in and looked over the information.
Booth pointed to a line on the screen and turned to me. “Leah Dodd was here in early August.”
In other words, Fischer’s claim that his former girlfriend hadn’t been to see him in months was untrue. “Do you think he intentionally lied?” I asked. “Or do you think it just seemed like a long time to him?” After all, according to the lyrics of “Unchained Melody,” time passes slowly in jail.
She shrugged. “Hard to say. But I’d keep Leah Dodd on your radar.”
With a good-bye to the warden, Detective Booth and I headed out of the prison. As we walked to the car, she asked more about Fischer’s former wife, Marissa. “So she didn’t know what was going on at the church? The financial improprieties?”
“She must have known her husband was paying their personal expenses with church funds,” I said, “and she certainly benefitted from the arrangement.” Besides filling the closets of their luxurious parsonage with designer clothing and their bellies with meals at the area’s most expensive restaurants, the couple had taken vacations all over the world under the specious guise of mission work. “Problem was, she had no responsibilities for the church’s accounting or tax reporting. Noah Fischer handled their personal finances and taxes, too. We’d have had a hell of a time trying to pin anything on her.”
It was frustrating to see the beneficiaries of crime profit from someone else’s dirty deeds, but often the best law enforcement could do was catch the big fish and hope the smaller ones would learn their lesson about swimming with sharks.
We climbed into the car and set course for Dallas. It was half past one when we passed the city limits sign. Home again, home again, jiggity-jig. The kolaches we’d picked up early that morning at Pokorny’s Korner Kitchen had long since been digested, as had the candy we’d eaten. Our vacant stomachs grumbled and groaned and growled.
“We didn’t get to speak with Tino Fabrizio,” I said, “but we could go visit his wife at her restaurant, see what she might have heard, and get some lunch. Kill two birds with one stone.” Or one stromboli.
“Works for me.”
Booth drove to the restaurant. Given that she’d looked into Tino Fabrizio’s security business, which had been located right next door to the bistro, she knew exactly where it was located. As we turned into the lot, it gave me no small pleasure to see that all evidence of Tino’s former business was gone. His wife had expanded her restaurant and taken over the space.
When we entered Benedetta’s Bistro, Luisa, Stella, and Elena looked up from their various places around the room. The three sisters were all dark-haired, dark-eyed, and olive-skinned young Italian beauties. Bellas.
“Tori!” cried Stella, the youngest, using the alias I’d gone by when I worked at the restaurant. That’s how she’d known me for weeks. It was probably hard for her to think of me as someone else.
She rushed over and gave me a hug. We’d grown close when I worked at the restaurant, but the fact that I’d saved their mother’s life would forever brand me as a hero in her eyes.
I hugged her back. “It’s good to see you, Stella.”
The others came over and we exchanged smiles and hugs, too. I held out a hand to indicate Booth. “You remember Detective Booth, right?”
They nodded. After Tino Fabrizio had been arrested, Booth and the FBI agent working the murder cases had interviewed the women to see if they knew anything that could prove helpful. They hadn’t. Tino had done a good job of keeping his wife and daughters in the dark where his dirty dealings were concerned.
The girls shook Booth’s hand and murmured greetings.
When they were done, I said, “I told Detective Booth about the chocolate cannoli here and said she had to try it.”
“It is the best in all of Dallas,” Elena said, extending a hand to show us to a table.
As I took my seat, I looked up at her. “Is your mother around? I’d like to say hi.” No sense telling them I wanted to discuss the death threats with their mom, see if their father might be behind them. It would be hard enough to come to terms with the fact that your father was a killer. They didn’t need another reminder from me.
“She’s in her office,” Elena said. “I’ll go get her.”
Booth picked up the menu and perused it. “What’s good here?”
/> “Everything,” I told her. I spoke the truth. God would be as delighted in me as he’d been in Joe earlier. “I gained ten pounds when I worked here. But I’d recommend Tara’s Mushroom Pasta.”
She raised a brow. “Is that named after you?”
I nodded. “I tossed a few fried mushrooms on top of my pasta one day and realized how good it was. Bendetta liked it, too, and added it to the lineup.”
She closed her menu. “I’ll give it a try.”
Benedetta, the parent from whom her girls had gotten their dark beauty, stepped up to the table. “Tara, how are you?”
I stood and gave the woman a hug. “I’m good.” Okay, so saying I was good wasn’t entirely true. But God would just have to forgive me, and we’d get to that subject in a minute. I held out a hand. “You remember Detective Veronica Booth from the Dallas Police Department?”
“Wonderful to see you again,” Benedetta said, taking her hand.
“Can you sit with us?” I asked, keeping my voice low so her daughters wouldn’t overhear. “I have something I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Of course.” She dropped gracefully into the seat next to me.
Elena returned. “Have y’all decided what you’d like?”
“We’ll both have Tara’s Mushroom Pasta,” I told her.
“Excellent choice,” she said with a grin. “Iced tea? Sparkling water?”
We opted for tea.
Once Elena had left the table, I turned back toward her mother. “I’ve received death threats, Benedetta. Someone tried to run me down in the street, too.”
“Che cavolo!” Her hand went reflexively to her chest as if to slow the beat of her heart. “Who would do such a thing?”
The detective flicked her cloth napkin to open it and settled it on her lap. “That’s what we’re trying to find out.”
Benedetta’s eyes ran between us, narrowing. Her mouth became a grim line, too. “You’re thinking it could be Tino, aren’t you? That stupid, evil, nasty—” Her eyes popped wide and her mouth curved up as her daughter stepped up to the table with our drinks.