Ties That Bind aj-2

by Phillip Margolin

  Up ahead, Megan had found a piece of driftwood and was calling to him to come see. Cindy smiled at him and squeezed his hand. If that warm pressure was all he got back for his ordeal, Tim decided that it was more than enough.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight.

  For two weeks, starting the night after she'd killed Manuel Castillo, Amanda's nightmares had been ferocious. She'd finally given in and used the pills that Ben Dodson had prescribed. The drugs made the nightmares stop, but taking them didn't feel right. She had stopped taking the pills three days ago, preferring to deal with her personal demons stone-cold sober.

  Killing Castillo had been awful, but the slaying was self-defense and she was not ashamed that she'd taken his life. Castillo was a terrible person. The police had told her that she had rid Portland of a psychopath who had killed without compunction. Sean McCarthy had even read her a list of murders in which Castillo was the main suspect. What calmed her most was the certainty that Frank would be dead now if she'd hesitated.

  The previous evening, Amanda had slept through the night for the first time. She had dreamed, but it was a normal dream. Today, during her weekly appointment, she'd told Dr. Dodson that she wasn't taking the pills. He was supportive, but he warned her that one good night did not mean that her problems were over. She knew she had a way to go, but she felt better than she had in months.

  Frank was still recuperating at home. He thought he might try working half days starting next week. Amanda wanted to move back to her condo, but she was still camped out in her old room because she didn't want Frank to be alone. His left arm was in a sling and he was limping badly. It was hard for him to get around, and cooking was especially difficult with one arm.

  A week ago, Amanda had driven to the Y for her first workout since the home invasion. By the time she walked onto the pool deck, several of the swimmers in the Master's program were in the lanes set aside for the team. She was walking to her lane when Toby got out of the water.

  "Amanda!"

  "Hi."

  "I couldn't believe it when I saw you on TV. Are you okay?"

  "Not completely, but I'm getting there. I thought I'd try to get back in my routine."

  "Good idea." Brooks shook his head. "It must have been awful for you."

  Amanda didn't answer. She felt uncomfortable talking about the attack on her father's home.

  "I actually thought of giving you a ring to see how you were doing," Toby said. "I almost called you twice."

  "Why didn't you?"

  Toby shrugged. "I didn't want to hassle you. I figured you probably had enough people calling. I know if something like that happened to me I'd probably want to be by myself."

  Toby hesitated. Then he looked into Amanda's eyes. "And I don't really know you. We only talked twice for a few seconds."

  Amanda tried to sound calm but her heart was going as fast as it did at the end of a race.

  "Next time, I could probably manage at least a minute," she said.

  "How about this weekend?"

  "I've got to check with my dad. He's out of the hospital, but he's still recuperating. Can I call you?"

  "Yeah." Toby grinned. "This'll give me time to figure out how to recruit you for the team."

  "Try bribing me. Dinner at a classy restaurant might do it."

  "I'll check my bribe budget and await your call," Toby said as he slipped back into the water.

  Amanda headed toward a lane. Somewhere during their talk she'd stopped feeling scared.

  The maitre d' led Amanda, Toby Brooks, Kate Ross, and Daniel Ames to their table in the back of the packed restaurant. Mephisto's was Portland's latest attempt to replicate New York hip. It was noisy, crowded with trendy dressers, and Amanda figured herself for one of the oldest people in the joint. Toby had suggested the place for their second date, because the food was supposed to be good and the people-watching great.

  An anorexic waitress introduced herself as their server and took their drink orders, which had to be shouted over the din.

  "If I lose my hearing I'm suing you," Amanda yelled at Toby. He grinned.

  "I'm going to the ladies' room," Kate shouted in Amanda's ear.

  Amanda told Toby where the women were headed and followed Kate's back through the crowd. As they passed the bar, which was three deep, someone touched her arm. Amanda turned and found herself face to face with Jon Dupre.

  "You here alone?" he asked.

  "No. A date and friends."

  "Point out the table and I'll have a bottle of champagne sent over."

  "That's not necessary."

  "Of course it is. If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be here, tonight, and able to treat you."

  Dupre's smiled faded and he looked serious. "You did a great job, Amanda."

  "You really should be thanking Ally."

  "Have you heard anything about where she is?"

  "She's in the witness protection program and has a new identity. They won't tell anyone where to find her. The only thing I did hear is that she has custody of Lori Andrews's daughter."

  "That's great. I hope she has a terrific life."

  "She deserves one. You'd still be in jail if it weren't for her. She must have loved you a lot to risk so much for you."

  Dupre looked puzzled for a moment.

  "You mean romantically?" he asked.

  Amanda nodded.

  "You've got that all wrong."

  Amanda looked confused. Dupre laughed. "You didn't know, did you?"

  "Know what?"

  "About Ally. It's why she took Lori's kid. She wasn't in love with me. Lori was her lover."

  "But she told me that you and she . . ."

  "What? That we screwed?"

  Amanda nodded.

  "We did, once--a threesome with Lori, actually. But it was clear that they were a lot more interested in each other than they were in me, so . . ." Jon shrugged.

  But Amanda had stopped listening moments before. Ally and Lori had been lovers . Suddenly everything made sense.

  "What's wrong?" Dupre asked.

  "Ally must have been furious with you for sending Lori to Senator Travis."

  "Jesus, was she ever. Ally went off the deep end when they discovered the body."

  "She forgave you, though, didn't she?" Amanda asked.

  "After I was busted. She came to the jail and told me she'd do anything to get me out. I guess she meant what she said."

  Amanda felt so stupid. Suddenly, a heavily made-up redhead in a skintight, low-cut dress pushed through the crowd and latched onto Dupre's arm. Amanda noticed that her pupils were the size of wagon wheels. Dupre saw her checking them, and colored.

  "Who's this?" the redhead asked suspiciously.

  "Maggie, meet my attorney, Amanda Jaffe."

  Maggie nodded and flashed Amanda a proprietary glare.

  "Nice meeting you," Amanda said. "See you around, Jon."

  Kate Ross was waiting for Amanda outside the door to the restroom.

  "What did Dupre want?" she asked.

  "Just to say hello."

  "That pencil he's with had a cocaine mustache when she left the little girls' room."

  "I'm his lawyer, Kate, not his mother."

  "Touche."

  "I want to run something by you," Amanda said. There were no other women waiting, but she checked around her to make certain that no one could overhear them. "Jon said something that got me thinking. Did you know that Ally Bennett and Lori Andrews were lovers?"

  "No shit!"

  "Maybe The Vaughn Street Glee Club wasn't responsible for Senator Travis's murder. They had the motive to kill him--he was out of control and putting the conspiracy in danger--but think about the MO."

  "You're right. It wasn't the same."

  Amanda nodded. "The club sedated its victims to fool the police into thinking that a murder was a suicide. But there was never any question that Travis was murdered."

  "And look at how he was murdered," Kate said, more to herself than to Amanda. "The p
erson who killed Travis hated him."

  Kate was quiet for a moment. "Are you thinking that Ally killed Travis to avenge Lori Andrews?"

  Amanda nodded. "Carl Rittenhouse told Tim about a phone call that Travis got the night he died, telling him that Jon Dupre wanted to make it up to him for the incident at the Westmont. A police report says that a call was made from Jon's house to the senator's house that evening. We know that Ally was the only person with Jon after Joyce Hamada and Cheryl Riggio left, and Hamada said that he had passed out."

  "So you think Bennett made the call, lured Travis to the A-frame, drugged him, and beat him to death?"

  "It's possible. I mean, it all makes sense. Even Wendell Hayes's attempt to murder Jon. Hayes and the others thought that Dupre had murdered one of their own. Maybe they were trying to kill him to avenge the death of a member of their secret circle."

  "Wait a minute. What about the earring? Dupre's earring was found at Travis's cabin. How did it get there?"

  "Ally blamed Jon for sending Lori to the senator after the way he beat her the first time. I think she doped Jon, too, then took the earring from Jon's house and planted it to frame him. But once he was arrested, she regretted what she'd done and tried to save him."

  "I guess it's possible," Kate said. "But can you prove it?"

  "I'm not even going to try. My job was to clear Jon. I don't have to find Travis's killer. That's a job for the police."

  "And you're not going to help them, are you?"

  "Travis was scum. He murdered Lori Andrews and he got what he deserved. Whether it was Jon who killed him, or The Glee Club, or Ally Bennett, it can remain a mystery, as far as I'm concerned."

  "What if Grant or Kerrigan or someone else is convicted for killing Travis?"

  Amanda remembered how she felt when Castillo kidnapped her and the terror that had almost paralyzed her in Frank's basement. Castillo had been acting on Grant and Kerrigan's orders. They wanted to break her, to kill her. And it wasn't just her. How many other people had they murdered? If they went to death row for a crime they didn't commit, so be it. Justice would be served when The Vaughn Street Glee Club failed to exist.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine.

  Pedro Aragon was sunning himself on the patio of his hacienda when one of his men brought him the phone. A nubile, brown-skinned woman in a thong was lying beside Pedro. The woman looked a lot like the fantasy woman in the dream that he'd awakened to on the day he met Harvey Grant, Wendell Hayes, and William Kerrigan so many years ago.

  "It's Senor Kerrigan."

  Pedro had been expecting the call but he had hoped it would never come. He was sad that Bill had made it.

  "There's a lot going on, Pedro."

  "I know. I get the papers here. Poor Harvey and Stan. It doesn't look so good for them. How are you doing?"

  "I'm sweating bullets. So far, they haven't given me up. Neither has Maria. You did a good job raising her. She's a great kid."

  "Thank you, Bill."

  Pedro waited. He knew that his old friend would get to the point soon. He could hear the strain in his voice.

  "We should get together, fast," Kerrigan said.

  "Sure. When can you come down?"

  "I was thinking that you'd come up here."

  Pedro wondered who was forcing Bill to make the call. Was it the FBI, or the DEA, or the Portland police?

  "It's all rain and gloom in Oregon, but the sun is shining down here. Visit me, amigo ."

  "That will be difficult."

  "I have a lovely young woman with me, Bill. She makes the best margaritas. I'll get one for you, too. You want a redhead, a blonde? Whatever you want."

  "It wouldn't be smart to meet down there. After what happened with Manuel, there's got to be a million eyes on you. Come up here, but we have to move. I'm not under suspicion for the moment, but that could change fast."

  The woman lying beside Pedro shifted from her belly to her back, giving Pedro a lovely view of her breasts. He especially liked her nipples, which stood up nice and straight.

  "What's that you said?" asked Pedro, who had been distracted by the nipples and had missed Kerrigan's last sentence.

  "I said you could fly up in your private plane. Use the landing strip in Sisters. We'll talk in my fishing cabin in Camp Sherman. No one will be watching it."

  "Good thinking. Let me check and get back to you."

  "When do you think you'll know?"

  "We got to move fast, right?"

  "Very."

  "Then I'll be back to you soon. Take care."

  Pedro hung up. He smiled sadly. Fucking Bill Kerrigan. There was no honor among thieves. Blood, that was a different story. Maria was holding up. Pedro stopped smiling. He worried about her. The lawyers said her case was tough, but they weren't giving up. Maybe they'd cut a deal.

  Pedro sighed. He stood up and walked to the edge of the patio. There was a swath of lawn, a large pool, more lawn, and then the jungle. Armed guards walked the perimeter.

  Pedro watched the guards for a moment before losing interest. He turned away. There were those breasts again. He felt himself getting hard. Better do something about that, he thought. He patted the woman on the rump and whispered in her ear. She giggled and got off her lounge chair. As Pedro followed her inside, he felt a moment of melancholy. The Vaughn Street Glee Club was no more.

  Then he cheered up. It had lasted longer than he ever thought it would--much longer. He felt sorry for Harvey and Wendell and Bill, but Pedro was a big fan of Darwin. Survival was for the fittest, no? He was the sole survivor and he was going to get laid as befitted the leader of the pack. He felt like he would live forever.

  Miss Sunny Day was peeling off her G-string on the main stage of the Jungle Club while its owner, Martin Breach, sat in his office at the back of the strip joint, waxing philosophical. The recipient of his musings was his only friend and chief enforcer, Art Prochaska, a giant with a bald, bullet-shaped head and no conscience.

  "I was at that Chinese restaurant on eighty-second yesterday, Arty. You know the one."

  "The Jade something."

  "Yeah."

  Breach handed a narrow slip of paper across the desk to his friend.

  "I got that in my fortune cookie. See what it says?"

  "'While we stop to think, we often miss our opportunity,'" Prochaska read slowly.

  "Exactly. That fortune got me thinking about how life can give us surprise opportunities, like the Jaffes, for instance. I do a favor for Frank, now his kid does one for us by chopping up Manuel Castillo. Such a nice kid, too. Who'd of thought she had it in her?"

  "That was sure a surprise, Marty; a girl making hamburger out of Castillo."

  "With Pedro's muscle off the street we're seeing a little anarchy in the drug business," Breach continued.

  Prochaska only had a dim idea of the definition of "anarchy," so he just nodded and hoped that Breach wouldn't ask him about it.

  "Aragon is weak right now, what with all the judges and lawyers and cops who are connected to him being arrested." Breach paused and fixed his beady eyes on his friend. "Do you see where I'm going with this, Arty? Opportunity is knocking. Like the cookie said, we'll miss it if we don't do something fast. What do you think?"

  Prochaska's brow furrowed for a moment while he contemplated the opportunity about which his friend spoke. Then he remembered that the gist of Marty's fortune-cookie message was that thinking too much could screw up everything. Thinking had never been Prochaska's long suit anyway. He was a man of action.

  "What's that anarchy mean?" Prochaska asked.

  "Everybody running around doing what they want. No order or nothing."

  "Order is good, right?"

  "Sure. Especially if the right guy is giving the orders."

  "Pedro's not just going to give us his territory, Marty. He'll make trouble."

  "Yeah," Breach said thoughtfully. "He's the type of guy who'd say we'd have to take it over his dead body."

  Prochaska grinned and
Breach stared at the wall in rapt concentration.