Читать книгу For Just Cause - Kara Lennox - Страница 11
ОглавлениеCHAPTER THREE
EDUARDO AND MARY-FRANCIS Torres had lived in a solidly upper-middle-class neighborhood in Conroe, a Houston suburb. Their subdivision wasn’t quite uppity enough to be a gated community—but close. Tall limestone-brick walls flanked the subdivision entrance with a carved stone sign that read Pecan Grove. The cookie-cutter houses, built in the ’90s, were all too large for their tiny lots, but the saplings planted by the neighborhood developers had grown into mature trees and the homes were well maintained.
The Torres house was on Apple Blossom Court, a peculiar name for a street in a climate where apples couldn’t grow.
Out of habit, Billy paid close attention to the configuration of streets so he knew the fastest way to the nearest exit.
Claudia thought he was being macho, but he wasn’t kidding about the danger. Angie was a drug-addicted woman in a dramatic family situation who undoubtedly felt stressed and could erupt into violence at any time. He stood a better chance of surviving unscathed if he didn’t have to worry about a companion’s safety before his own.
But he couldn’t deny it felt great to be back out in the field.
When he’d first hired on with Project Justice, he’d told Daniel he was no longer comfortable facing danger on a daily basis. Daniel had responded by saying he wouldn’t require anything of Billy that he wasn’t ready to deal with.
Somehow, after three years on the job, Daniel knew Billy was ready. Billy could have said no to this assignment. But though he’d made a few token objections, he’d eventually accepted the responsibility of unraveling the puzzle.
Claudia’s onboard GPS found the Torres home with no trouble. The house was tan brick, just like all the others, but the lawn was yellow and scraggly and the landscaping hadn’t been tended to in months. A for-sale sign featuring the photo of a smiling female Realtor advertised that the property had four bedrooms and a pool.
Claudia pulled up to the curb just as a woman stepped out the front door, her cell phone wedged between her ear and shoulder. She frowned as Billy and Claudia climbed out.
“If you’re here about the car, it’s already sold,” she said. She was tall and painfully thin, with toothpick legs sticking out of her cutoff shorts. She had stringy, shoulder-length hair clumsily streaked with reddish-blond stripes. Her skin was pasty, and overall she had a look of ill health about her. Billy would have pegged her as a crack addict even if he hadn’t already known she had a drug problem.
She returned her attention back to her caller. “Sorry, I was talking to someone.” She opened the mailbox and pulled out a wad of envelopes that looked an awful lot like bills. Billy could just make out the FINAL NOTICE in large red letters on one envelope. Angie riffled through the mail and picked out one envelope to rip open. She turned her back on Billy and Claudia and headed back indoors.
“Excuse me. Ms. Torres?”
“I’ll have to call you back,” she said into the phone as she paused and turned to narrow her eyes at Billy. “What?”
“I’m Billy Cantu with Project Justice. This is my associate, Claudia Ellison. We need to talk to you about your mother.”
“Are you those people who get criminals out of jail?”
“We free innocent people who have been unjustly imprisoned,” he corrected her.
“Please don’t tell me you think my mom is innocent.”
“We have some questions, that’s all,” Claudia said. “Could we go inside and talk for just a few minutes?”
“I’m kind of busy here.”
“Busy selling all of your parents’ stuff?” Billy said. “Because I’m pretty sure you don’t have the legal right to do that, and in about five minutes I could get a court injunction and a locksmith over here to change the locks.”
Angie folded her arms, looking scared for a moment before she decided to brazen it out. “How am I supposed to pay the bills on this place without any money, huh?”
“Nice deal for you,” Billy said as he strolled up the walkway toward the front door without invitation. “Living here rent free and getting all the drug money you need listing stuff on Craigslist or eBay. Bet your mom had some nice jewelry. That was probably the first to go. Am I right?” He took the two steps to the front porch and headed inside the house.
“Hey!” Angie was right behind him. He turned to see Claudia bringing up the rear, looking perplexed by his high-handedness. But he suspected Angie wouldn’t give them the time of day unless they strong-armed her.
The inside of the house was stripped—no furniture, no pictures on the walls. But the air-conditioning ran full blast. Billy made his way to the kitchen, which was piled high with dirty dishes and empty pizza boxes. The trash can overflowed.
He whipped around to face Angie as an uncomfortable thought occurred to him. He’d just made a stupid mistake; he hadn’t cleared the house before assuming Angie was here by herself. “Are you living here alone?”
“None of your business. Get out before I call the cops.”
“No, you don’t want to do that.” He took out his cell phone. “I’ve got Judge Thomas Wilkes’s number on speed dial. He’ll issue the injunction on my say-so. You and whoever else is sponging off you will be out on your asses in a matter of an hour, maybe two.”
Just then another person showed up, a scrawny guy with the same kind of pasty complexion as Angie. But he held a gun in one shaky hand.
“Who the hell are you people?”
Billy broke a cold sweat as he stepped in front of Claudia, shielding her from the shooter. His carelessness had just come back to haunt him.
He needed to defuse this situation fast. “Put the gun down now, okay? We’re not cops, we’re friends of Angie’s mother.”
“For God’s sake, Jimmy, put the damn gun away.” Angie didn’t sound terribly nervous about the threat. “I can handle this. Go…go clean the pool or something.”
The man named Jimmy gave one parting snarl before he shoved his small handgun into the pocket of his baggy shorts and sauntered away.
Billy let out the breath he’d been holding, almost sick with relief. He stepped aside so he could look Claudia in the eye. “Not a dangerous situation, huh?”
“You’re the one who made the situation dangerous,” she countered, “by entering the house uninvited. We should go.”
“Go wait in the car. I’ll be out in a minute.”
Claudia folded her arms, obviously not budging. Billy wished she wouldn’t do that—it accentuated her breasts, which distracted him at a moment he needed all of his attention on Angie.
“What do you want?” Angie asked wearily. “They’re gonna show the house this afternoon. I need to clean up.”
That was an understatement.
“Who was that guy?” Billy asked.
“My boyfriend.”
Claudia watched with hyperalert eyes.
“Recently you visited your mother in prison. You asked her about some coins. What was that about?”
“My dad’s coin collection,” she answered warily. “Did Mom say anything about it? Did she say where she’d put it? It’s important that I find those coins.” Angie nearly salivated with eagerness.
“Your mother put them away for safekeeping.”
“They’re not valuable,” Angie said too quickly. “It’s just a few coins that have been in the family.”
“You know, Angie, you don’t seem like the sentimental type to me. Why do you want them? And how did you find out about them?”
She flashed a superior look at him. “I don’t have to tell you that. What matters is that the coins are mine. My father wanted me to have them. Mom has no right to hide them from me.” Angie thrust her chin out in a show of false courage.
“How do you know Daddy wanted you to have the coins?”
“He told me so.”
“When was that?”
“Right before he was murdered. He said he and Mom were going to split up and he wanted to give me some things before the divorce lawyers got it all. But he never got the chance.”
“So why did you wait all this time to ask your mother about the collection?”
“I…didn’t think about it until now. Like I said, it’s not that valuable.”
Claudia shared a look with Billy, then shook her head slightly. She obviously thought Angie was lying. Though Claudia had clearly been unnerved at having a gun pulled on her, she was still doing her job. His respect for her inched up another notch.
“You know what I think?” Billy was about to go out on a limb here, but he wanted to confront Angie with his suspicions while she was off balance—before she got the chance to get her story straight. “I think you killed your father and let your mother take the blame. Because they had money, and they wouldn’t share it with you.”
She did not appear disturbed by the accusation. “You can think whatever you want, but a jury says my mom did it. And if you know where those coins are, you better tell me. I know people, too. I have a lawyer.”
“You’re gonna need one,” Billy said. “If you didn’t kill your father, then maybe he’s not dead. Maybe he recently told you about the coins, and that’s why you took a sudden interest in them.”
Angie laughed, but it sounded forced. “If he’s alive, then how do you explain all that blood found at the crime scene?”
“There are ways,” Billy said, wondering if there really were. “I have evidence people working on that right now, taking a closer look at that blood.” Or he would, as soon as one of the lawyers at Project Justice officially became Mary-Francis’s attorney of record and made a formal request to the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department to review the physical evidence.
Billy wasn’t sure when he’d decided this case had merit, but there was something here. Something off-kilter. In good conscience he couldn’t wash his hands of Mary-Francis.
“It’s his blood,” Angie said stubbornly. “DNA proved it.”
“We’ll see. Meanwhile, if I were you, I’d be waiting for a knock on the door from the police. Until your father’s estate has been legally awarded to you, you don’t own anything of his—including that coin collection. Unless you’re using the proceeds to pay your mother’s legal costs…”
“That’s what I’m doing!” Angie said quickly, grabbing on to the lifeline he’d handed her.
“What does your aunt Theresa have to say about all this? Your mother gave her sister power of attorney. Not you.”
At the mention of Theresa’s name, a look of panic briefly crossed Angie’s features before she caught it. “She said it was fine for me to sell stuff. Hey, Jimmy! Get in here.”
Claudia tugged on Billy’s sleeve. “For God’s sake, let’s go.”
“I’m not lying,” Angie shrieked, though no one had accused her. “I’m not. I’m just doing what I have to do to pay bills, pay lawyers.”
“Yeah, whatever.” Billy ushered Claudia toward the front door and out into the still, late-morning heat, having no desire to face Jimmy and his shaky gun hand. Neither of them said anything until they were back in the car with the air-conditioning on.
Then Claudia started to tremble—violently. Probably a delayed reaction to the gun.
“Hey, it’s okay.” Billy put a hand on her shoulder. She reminded him of a scared bird vibrating beneath his hand. “We’re safe now.”
“He wouldn’t have shot us,” Claudia said. “I could see it in his face. It was all bravado, an empty threat. Still…”
Billy wasn’t so sure.
“He would have been justified, you know,” Claudia continued. “We practically committed a home invasion. It’s legal to protect your domicile with deadly force.”
“It all turned out okay.”
She turned toward him, suddenly fierce. “Don’t ever do that again. Not when I’m along for the ride.”
“Now you see why I didn’t want you to come with me?”
“You shouldn’t be allowed to roam around loose without a handler. You’re dangerous.” She took a deep breath, started the car and pulled away from the curb. “Angie was lying.”
“No kidding. I don’t have to be a body language expert to figure that out. Maybe she did kill her father and frame her mother. She’s clearly a sociopath.”
“No, not a sociopath. Sociopaths are better liars.” She said this with such assurance, it made Billy wonder if she had more than just clinical knowledge to back up her claim.
“Still, she’s a bad seed,” he said.
“I’ll agree with you there. Not a pleasant person.” Claudia paused, weighing her words. “She didn’t kill her father—she was telling the truth about that. But she was definitely hiding something. Maybe it’s just her drug use, but maybe it’s something else.”
“If I could get her in an interrogation room, I could break her. Your body language tricks only take us so far. A confession would be a whole lot more useful.”
“Can we get her arrested?”
Billy thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Doubtful. If we’d seen any obvious evidence of drugs sitting around, we could call the cops and have her hauled in. But we didn’t.”
“She’s stealing from her father’s estate.”
“Unless Theresa really did give her permission to sell the stuff. If she’s mad at her sister, she might have.”
“She didn’t. I’d bet my career on it.”
Billy wasn’t so sure, and the police wouldn’t take Claudia’s word for it.
“Let’s go talk to Theresa and see what she knows about the estate, or old coins, or whatever.” Claudia seemed recovered now from her fright. The pink had returned to her cheeks, and she had the gleam of excitement in her eyes. Billy knew that gleam. She was on the hunt.
He glanced at his watch. “I should get back to the office.”
Her shoulders slumped with disappointment. “It’s your call.”
He grinned. “I’m kidding. I am dying to find those coins now.”
“Damn it, Billy.”
“What? Why are you mad?”
They were still in the Pecan Grove subdivision; Claudia had been turning on streets randomly. Now she pulled over to the curb again and reached for her Day-Timer, flipping pages of her notes. “I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at me for not catching on that you were teasing. It should be child’s play. Ah, here it is, Theresa’s address.” She plugged it into the GPS. “It’s not far, only a couple of miles.”
“It really bugs you that you can’t read me like a book, doesn’t it?”
“Frankly, yes.”
“Did it ever occur to you that some people don’t like to be read?”
“Only people who have things to hide.”
Maybe he did have things to hide. Or at least, things he didn’t want every random stranger to know about. Was that so wrong?
“So no one is allowed to have a secret?” he argued. “Everyone has to be completely up-front about every single part of their past, every single thought that goes through their heads?”
“I believe in honesty,” she said.
“You don’t have any secrets, then.”
She hesitated a beat. “No.”
“Nothing in your past that you’d prefer people didn’t know about.”
“I’m not ashamed about anything I’ve done.”
“How many men have you slept with?”
“Billy! Good God, that is none of your business.”
“Wow, must be a lot.”
“I don’t believe you! How could you even— That is so inappropriate—” She sputtered to a stop.
“I’m just trying to prove a point! Everyone is allowed privacy—in their homes and inside their heads.”
“And I say if it’s on their face or in their gestures or their posture, and I’m adept at figuring it out, then the information is fair game. Everyone reads expression and body language. I just happen to be better at it than most people.”
“And I’m better at not being read than most people. So that means I’m dishonest? Lady, where do you get off?”
“There, right there. That is the first honest emotion I’ve seen from you. You’re in perfect congruence—chest thrust forward, arms splayed to take up as much room as possible in a classic male territorial display—”
“Stop reading me!”
“And you just crossed the line from irritated to really angry.”
“Ya think? And yet you don’t stop.”
“I can’t help it.” Her eyes inexplicably filled with tears.
“Here,” he said gruffly. “Read this.” He leaned across the gear shift, pulled up the parking brake and kissed her.
* * *
CLAUDIA’S SENSES SWAM as she leaned in to the kiss. Billy might have thought he was unreadable, but she’d seen the kiss coming a split second before he’d carried through with his intention.
And she’d welcomed it.
That was just crazy; she was mad at Billy. They were having an argument. And yet she’d felt this insane need to connect with him. He’d shown her only a tiny sliver of his true self just then, the self he wanted to protect from her prying eyes, and all at once she’d felt simultaneously guilty and turned on.
She believed very few people had seen what she’d just seen—the real Billy Cantu. And she wanted more.
He reached up to tunnel his fingers through her hair, settling his hand on the back of her head so he could hold her a willing prisoner.
She inhaled sharply as his tongue invaded her mouth. Of course his kiss would not be tentative. Billy didn’t have a tentative bone in his body.
Or maybe he did; what the hell did she know? He was a mystery she desperately needed to unravel. How could she feel such a profound attraction to someone she didn’t even know?
Though she would have been happy to make out in the front seat of her car for the rest of the morning, Billy gradually pulled away, ending the kiss with a series of gentle nibbles. They separated, but only by an inch or two, and she studied his eyes, trying to figure out his motive here.
Was this a display of dominance? Or had he really wanted to kiss her?
His pupils were dilated. She thought she saw desire there, but maybe she was seeing only what she wanted to see.
“Can you read me now?” he demanded.
“No.” The word came out a whisper.
He released her and sat back in his seat, and she almost whimpered at the loss of his touch. “Good. ’Cause you’d probably slap me.”
“Are you going to tell me what that was about?”
“No. You need to be off balance once in a while. For your own good.”
He was wrong about that. She’d spent the first half of her life off center, shuffled into the care of one ambivalent adult after another, never sure if the new place would be a safe haven or a house of horrors.
Off balance wasn’t where she cared to be.
And yet…the excitement generated by her uncertainty felt good in a deeply visceral way.
She pulled herself together, straightened her hair, blotted away the smeared lipstick with a tissue and added fresh. Finally she got back to the business of driving, following the instructions of the by-now-impatient GPS.
“Destination on the left,” the bland voice informed them as Claudia cruised slowly past.
Theresa Esteve obviously hadn’t achieved the level of wealth her sister had. This nameless neighborhood wasn’t nearly as grand as Pecan Grove. The small ranch houses had probably been built in the 1960s, and the residents here likely mowed their own grass and trimmed their own bushes.
But there was something wildly askew about Theresa’s house. The front window was boarded up with plywood.
Claudia double-checked her Day-Timer. “That’s the house, 1642 Baxter Avenue. What do you suppose happened here?” She turned the car around, pulled up to the curb and stopped.
“Stay in the car.” Billy manually unlocked his door. “I’ll check it out.”
Claudia ignored him. “It’s a vacant house. I doubt we’ll face any gunmen here.”
As they approached the front porch, Billy took a detour to examine a flash of yellow he saw on the picket fence that separated the house from the one next door. “Hey, Claudia, look at this. Crime scene tape.”
“Oh, my God. This might explain why Theresa won’t answer Mary-Francis’s calls.”
“I’m going to call a buddy of mine that works for the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department. Maybe he can tell us what happened here.”
Claudia nodded and sat down on the edge of a brick planter filled with thirsty-looking azaleas. What was going on here? What had started as a simple request from a condemned woman had turned into a crazy scavenger hunt featuring a drug addict, her gun-toting boyfriend and a lost million-dollar coin collection. And now another possible crime victim.
She did not envy Billy his job right now.
Maybe it was time for her to wash her hands of this mess. She had dutifully turned over the information she had to Project Justice. She could write up her final report tonight, including data from both interviews. Once she finished that, the ball was in their court.
Except…except she was still the only person who was sure Mary-Francis didn’t kill her husband or know of his current whereabouts. The poor woman had no one to fight for her now. Certainly not her daughter, and now it appeared something had happened to her sister.
Antsy, Claudia stood again. She walked to the driveway, which was empty except for a few oil spots. The garage door had no windows, so she couldn’t look to see if there was a car. She ambled to the side of the house, where a short section of weathered wooden privacy fence guarded the backyard. But one of the slats was broken, and she peeked in.
A woman dressed in a bright pink track suit was busy digging around in a parched, overgrown garden. Could that be Theresa? It would explain why no one had answered the door.
“Hello, there!” Claudia called out.
The woman froze, then hightailed it to a back corner of the yard and disappeared through a gate.
Claudia rejoined Billy just as he was finishing his call. “You’re not gonna like this.”
“What?”
“We’re too late to warn Theresa. She was the victim of a home invasion. Someone broke in, roughed her up, then tore the house up, but no one knows what they took because the only person who could tell them—Theresa—is in a coma.”
