I like that Uncle Cal doesn’t fiddle fuck around. “Anything for family.”
“It’s related to Detective Ramos,” he says, pouring Belvedere Citrus vodka, my favorite, into the shaker. He’s the only one who makes martinis at his party. “I assume his invitation relates to the murdered woman?”
“Yes,” I say. “Belina was a friend.”
“I didn’t realize.” He pauses but only for a beat. “I’m sorry.”
“Alec is a friend too, as you know.” I pushed for Alec to get an Economic Development Council grant, the first given. It was right before we moved to Providence, and it meant I owed Uncle Cal a big favor, which he more than collected.
“Alec is my problem,” he says. “One you gave me.”
“We’re hardly even,” I say. Uncle Cal’s “favor” for Alec’s nomination started with my investigating some information he’d gotten about the Rhode Island Speaker of the House, who had been tired of Uncle Cal’s strong-arm in the state. Phillip joined me, and that was our first case together, leading to the Speaker being thrown in jail. Phillip and I kept working the information from Uncle Cal, exposing corrupt members of the statehouse. Until Phillip got his own information on Uncle Cal. And they nearly blew each other up.
“I can’t have that clod sullying the Council’s name,” he says. “You need to get a handle on the situation and fix it.”
“I don’t think he’s guilty,” I say but can tell that’s not the issue. “What do you want me to do?”
“I need to know about his business,” he says. “Alec blew through that grant like a frat boy on a bender. He was taking money from questionable places. We didn’t renew and cut all ties. But we’re still connected.”
I rub a tense knot in my neck, feeling unsurprised but deeply disappointed in Alec. Loyalty has always been a blind spot for me. Something I craved in every relationship, often giving it too freely because I felt it so rarely as a child. But loyalty is not free, and often, you pay for the sins twice.
“I’m sorry about Alec,” I say. “I shouldn’t have recommended him for the grant. But I’m out of the excavation business.”
You don’t want to be.
You won’t be satisfied until you’ve ruined everything.
“I have the file already. You only need to fill in what’s missing.” He takes his time spraying my glass with vermouth and shaking the vodka, the ice cracking loudly.
I showed my hand by asking the detective to come, so he thinks I owe him. Maybe I do. “I’ve got a good start,” I say. “I don’t need to get into his financial history.” Even as I say it, I hear the lie.
“Is Phillip helping you?” he asks in the tone that says he knows the answer.
“Yes.”
“Then you’re hardly retired. If you can work with him again, you can certainly do me this small favor.” He pauses and stops the shaker to stare me down, which after all these years and many stares still rattles me. “Everything you’d be reviewing is legally obtained.”
“Is it?” I don’t hide the flash of temper. “We got close to serious trouble last time.”
“From what I know of this case, you’re headed in the same direction. That’s a certainty.”
“What does that mean?”
He gives me a pitying look and turns on his Italian loafers toward a fresh rack of glasses. Done with our conversation for now, he’s certain to be redrawing battle plans. I decide to table a talk about Cynthia’s application.
He knows you can’t do this right.
He’ll use you again like you deserve.
He pours a second martini into a glass.
“The detective isn’t a pushover,” Uncle Cal says. “I’d play it straight.”
“Thank you,” I say, meaning it, as he hands me the drinks.
He looks over my shoulder at the next person in line. The detective is watching us. He’s close to the wall, awkward beside an antique chair not meant for sitting. His bosses are nearby, the police chief and captain. That’s normal this time of year for them, working the room for future bond ballots and budget line items now that the election is over. But I’ve never seen a detective at one of these parties.
“Detective Ramos,” I say brightly. “Thanks for joining on such short notice.”
“I do what I’m told,” he says with a tight nod.
Those five words sum up Detective Ramos’s ethos as far as I can tell. He’s had a nearly perfect career, according to media coverage and another detective I worked with during the Uncle Cal days, whom I spoke to on the phone earlier this week. Detective Ramos does his work, keeps his head down and his name mostly out of the paper. He closes cases at a high rate but isn’t assigned many outside the standard low-level drug offenses and breaking and entering. No high-profile political stings. No homicide investigations except open-and-shut cases with suspects arrested at the scene.
He’s been on the force for twenty years, the last fifteen as a detective. This case is a career anomaly with one exception. He was almost fired his first year on the job. He made some connected guys mad about the crooked (but effective) ex-mayor’s downtown land deal, tying a murder back to them. He was yanked off the case, thrown on parking ticket duty, and eventually returned to the detective desk.
“You need a drink. Otherwise, it looks like you’re working,” I say.
He frowns at me but takes the martini. “Not my kind of party.”
“Sorry for bringing you here.”
He draws back an iota. “You?”
I let him sit with that a moment. To most people here, I’m Jack’s wife, Uncle Cal’s niece by marriage. But he needs to understand I am much more. “How’s the murder investigation going?”
He stares at me in a way that says he’s not giving in that easy.
You can’t do this.
Go hide behind your husband.
“Belina Cabrala?” I pause. No response. “She’s your first murder case that’s not open and shut since you caught your first body. So, yeah, that one.”
He scowls and clears his throat. “What do you want to know?”
“As much as you can tell me.”
His lips thin as he glances around. He tries to readjust the martini in his hand, but he’s not holding it right. He pinches the bottom of the delicate stem, and a few drops slosh. “It’s an ongoing investigation. I can’t tell you anything,” he says with some annoyance. “Good Day RI had a special with some blogger.”
“Phillip Hale,” I supply.
“Yeah. Plenty to keep housewives of the East Side busy.”
“I’m not rubbernecking, Detective. She was my friend.”
He sticks out his wide jaw. “First I’ve heard of it.”
“We hung out while she watched Emmett. Alec is a friend of mine going back to freshman year at Georgetown. This case is personal.”
“Continue.”
“I know you suspect Alec. The DNA fibers at the crime scene are a good lead. Misha says the blood is from an accident. Not airtight, but a jury might want to agree. More than that, he doesn’t fit. It’s clearly not a crime of passion.”
“Clearly?” he mocks.
“She wasn’t sleeping with him,” I continue.
“That so?” he says. “You girls like to giggle and gab about him?”
I smile at him, the really shiny one as if he were the smartest goddamn guy in the whole world. I lean over and whisper, “What would your wife say if you spoke to her like that?”
He clears his throat, the smirk disappearing. “She’d tell me to go fuck myself.”
“Then we’re in agreement.”
He glances at his martini, trying to keep the drink from sloshing again. “Why do you think they weren’t sleeping together?”
“I have her day planner,” I say and steel myself for a bluff. “It doesn’t read like an affair took place.”
“Excuse me.” He steps close to me. “You have her planner? Alec mentioned she kept notes, but we hadn’t found it.”
“I saw her in the afternoon on the day she died,” I say. “She left it behind for me. I don’t think it was an accident. She knew she was in danger. She kept staring toward the river.”
His lower jaw works a few circles. “You withheld this evidence, Ms. Burges?”
“More of an interlude,” I say. “Don’t you want to know who she met with that night?”
“She names them?” he says, too loud. Several people turn in our direction.
“She was meeting two people at Swan Point. There’s an A with a circle—not how she indicates Alec. The second person is labeled CF, who she’d been meeting with since she started nannying.”
At the second initials, I see recognition in his eyes, but he shifts, and his martini sloshes again, and he curses. He wants to smash the glass. I can see the rage. I know it.
You’re screwing this up.
Everyone is whispering about you.
They can’t believe you’re here failing again.
I slip the martini from his fingers, raising an eyebrow toward a waiter who immediately hurries over, taking it from me. Detective Ramos is seeing me now, for the first time.
“She didn’t meet Alec for a graveyard tryst,” I say. “I hate to blow up your theory, but it’s true.”
“Your husband’s boss would disagree.”
“The mayor has a budget to sign next week that did include a line item for increasing the police department’s discretionary budget. A high-profile homicide investigation that’s wide open suddenly closing would help. I get it. But it’ll be a short-term win because Alec’s not guilty.”
He sees through you.
“Why now?” he says. “Why withhold evidence until today? That’s a jailable offense in Rhode Island.”
I like the threat, even if there’s no way in hell a DA would bring that weak sauce in front of a judge. But the detective is listening.
“I honestly didn’t remember she’d left it,” I say. “I also almost died a few hours later. I went into labor, detached placenta.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, demeanor softening. “My wife is twenty-eight weeks.”
I half smile at him, the connection of children creating an understanding, realizing our passports have stamps from the same terrifying and wonderful country. “I didn’t remember Belina left the journal until recently. I analyzed the data. I have a theory.”
“I’m not interested in your theories, Ms. Burges,” Detective Ramos says. “I need you to come in right away to give a statement and hand over this crucial evidence.”
“I’m a lawyer who puts complicated financial cases together. I used to try violent crimes in DC. I can help you.”
He doesn’t seem impressed by the bravado. “I’m going to trust the evidence. Not a Real Housewife of the East Side.”
I smile at that. “Your wife makes you watch Bravo.”
“Nightly,” he says flatly. “Tomorrow morning, eight a.m.”
I hear the urgency. “How close are you to an arrest?”
“Very.”
You’re finished before you even begin.
My chest tightens. “Not until you see my analysis and the journal.”
“Be there,” he says, not hiding his annoyance. “Or I’ll send a cruiser.”
I hear his phone buzzing and step close. “Phillip Hale, the blogger you mentioned, he’s breaking that Belina met with a friend the afternoon of her murder. A friend who hasn’t been interviewed by the police. Yet. Reasonable doubt is like voting, Detective. Do it early, and do it often.”
He cracks his neck to the left, grinding his jaw. “You don’t want to do this. I don’t care who your husband works for. I don’t care who your uncle is.”
“If you arrest Alec, it will blow up in your face,” I say. “You’ll be dreaming of parking ticket duty when it’s all through.”
His mouth drops open before tightening. I turn on my heel and smile as if it’s been pleasant conversation number three. I pulled a cheap shot at the end, but he surprised me with how little time I had to help Alec.
He’ll be arrested within the week. I see Emmett crying in his mother’s stiff arms as another person he loves is taken away.
I stand in the hallway at the back of the house. It’s dark, and no one is around. I put my arms around my shoulders, breathing deeply, picturing myself calm and collected.
The detective sees what a worthless piece of trash you are.
He’ll never listen to someone like you.
The dark pull starts to swirl, a drain in the bathtub, offering to take me with it. It could all be over so easily. I close my eyes, picturing the hollowed-out chat mine down the road from where I grew up. The dark water that could swallow all my pain a hundred feet below. I chose to keep going.
“Too much too soon?”
Uncle Cal’s voice snaps me out of rural Kansas and back to the life I’ve built in Providence. “No,” I say. “I’m tired. Ester doesn’t sleep.”
“Makes two of us,” he says. “Or three, I guess.”
He sounds a bit awkward, which is unusual. I want to ask him if it’s a waste of time for me to try to help Belina. To hear that I’m strong enough and smart enough. But I’m not a twelve-year-old girl crying over the edge of an abandoned mine. I made it out because I am strong, and I am smart. “I promised Jack I’d give it up.”
“I know,” Uncle Cal says. “You sent over your files and boxes.”
After I stopped Phillip from writing about Uncle Cal and kept Uncle Cal from going after Phillip, I packed everything that led me to that place, pitting family against my partner. Not to mention most of what I’d dug up was through illegal sources and methods. “All of it belongs here, with you.”
“You could have destroyed them,” he says. “Says something.”
“It says I’m done.” I cross my arms, posturing.
“Jack will never know. He has you and me to work behind the scenes. Do what needs to be done. You’re good at this work.”
“At moral indiscretion?” I say.
“An understanding that justice is not a truth universal. It’s a side you choose to uphold and pursue at all costs.”
I don’t disagree with anything Uncle Cal says, and that’s the problem. I believe in my justice and my sense of right and wrong. But I can’t trust myself any more than I can trust him. “I’m choosing Jack.”
No better lies than the ones we tell ourselves.
“But what about your dead friend? Is one little promise to Jack worth injustice?” He steps closer. “I thought of a compromise.”
“How unusual.”
“I’ll consider Cynthia’s application fully. Get the right press involved. All aboveboard but with a touch of . . .” He waves his hand a few times in the air. “Finesse.”
“That would be appreciated,” I say, the relief sharp. “What’s the cost?”
“A simple review of Alec’s application for the grant and shoddy follow-up reports. Mostly public information and all freely given.”
“To the Council,” I say. “Not me.”
“He’s your friend. You’re the reason he got the grant.”
“I don’t owe you anything anymore.”
“Perhaps,” he says, “but you still owe me after your blackmail threat.”
I did that to help Phillip. Told Uncle Cal that if he went after Phillip, then I’d leak all the dirt on the Council. Then I made Phillip swear off Uncle Cal under threat of ruining his reputation about that college plagiarism. It cost me my relationship with Phillip. And I swore to Jack I wouldn’t work for Uncle Cal again. I did it to save Uncle Cal and Phillip both. Gave up work I was damn good at. These points mattered to me, though, not Uncle Cal.
“Click those shoes, Dorothy. No place like home that I gave you.”
A Kansas joke. He really is desperate. In fact, this is a full-court press. Close to begging, as far as Uncle Cal is concerned. “You’re that worried about your reputation?” I ask.
“Reputation?” He grimaces.
“That’s the wrong word. It’s my legacy. My Council is cresting right when I am. Alec is a buffoon, but that also makes him dangerous. I don’t trust anyone else to find out the truth.”
I hate to see Uncle Cal like this, his back against the wall. I also wonder, if it’s that important, perhaps it’s information I need to know too. To protect Alec or possibly find ties to Belina. “I will tell Jack I’m helping you,” I say. “And Phillip.”
His forehead wrinkles, then a smirk. “This is the game, you know. The one you wanted to play. The rules never change.”
“But I changed,” I say.
“Whatever you need to tell yourself.”
“The folder is already on my desk?” I guess.
“Gillian has a copy. Just in case.”
Of course she does. “I’ll get back to you.”
He waves his arms in a mock hallelujah and turns on his heel. I return to the party to hug Cynthia goodbye, whispering I’ve got good news so she knows I helped her with Uncle Cal. Finally. I give Jack the signal it’s time to go.
I need more information before meeting with Detective Ramos. It’ll take me the night to sort through the financial data and dig more into Alec’s life to be sure there aren’t any connections to Belina’s death.
And you know there will be.
Chapter 13
Saturday, December 10
There are three missed calls from Detective Ramos by the time I pull into the Newport Polo grounds. I text that I’ll come by the station this afternoon to give my statement. I had the journal couriered to his office. He has plenty to keep him busy until I get there.
One year ago, Belina wrote in her planner that she attended this charity match with Emmett to watch Alec play while Misha was on a spa-cation. Today, I texted Alec to confirm he was going again and asked to see him. He tried to push me off until tomorrow, but that’s not going to work. As Detective Ramos hinted, I am running out of time. It is now or never to get the truth about Alec’s business and any connections to Belina. And I don’t mind annoying Alec by crashing this party among his Newport set.
He needs to face this situation. To see everything that can be taken away if he doesn’t start helping me.
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