“Maybe he’s not here for her,” I whispered to Candice, but we both knew why Murielle’s favorite pet had just arrived at our bureau offices.
“My client?” Zane said when no one greeted him or inquired why he was there. “Rachel Tibbons? I’m here to see her.”
“You sure get around,” Dutch said, coming to stand next to me before he spread his legs in a powerful stance and crossed his arms, flexing his biceps, which strained against his dress shirt.
My husband, the caveman, ladies and gentlemen.
Zane didn’t seem to notice the flexing and posturing. Or pretended not to notice. “I do get around, don’t I?” With a shrug he added, “It’s work.”
“She’s in the same room as your last client,” I said. God, I hated the smugness of that man.
“Wonderful,” he said, turning sharply on one heel and heading off to find Rachel.
Brice walked back to poke his head inside the conference room with the monitors. “Webber, cut the feed. We’ll wait on Maldonado to let us know when she’s ready to talk to us.”
Zane was in with Rachel for only twenty minutes before he popped out and said, “We’ll talk to you now. Oh, and if you wouldn’t mind bringing in my client’s iPhone, which I’m sure you confiscated along with the other contents of her purse.”
Oscar moved to his desk and handed Brice Rachel’s cell; then he and Dutch began to move toward Zane, but the attorney abruptly held up his hand. “Oh, I’m sorry, gentlemen, but Mrs. Tibbons has expressly requested to be interviewed by the women.” For emphasis he made a sweeping motion toward me, Candice, and Nikki.
My lie detector went off as he’d spoken, though, and I subtly shook my head at Dutch. It wasn’t Rachel who wanted us in there. It was Maldonado. Probably so he could try to get a peek down our cleavage again.
“Tell your client she’s not in charge,” I said loudly, glaring hard at Zane. “We make the rules here, Counselor. Not you, and not her.”
A sly smile spread across Maldonado’s face and he looked at me wolfishly. I glared back and tilted my chin up. Fuck him and his intimidation tactics. I wasn’t playin’.
“As you wish,” he said at last, and disappeared back inside the room. Brice and Dutch squared their shoulders and walked through the doorway. The rest of us bolted back to watch the monitors.
“Turn the sound up!” I said to Agent Webber, who was working the feed. I didn’t want to miss a word.
Brice and Dutch were just taking their seats. “My client has informed me that you intend to charge her with fraud, grand larceny, and possession of stolen property.”
Dutch opened the same folder that Candice had carried into the first interview. “That’s true,” Dutch said, holding up Robin’s credit card. “But we’re about to share our discovery with APD, and I have a feeling the charges will extend to murder in the first.”
Maldonado chuckled like he thought that was very funny. When the smug son of a bitch collected himself, he said, “As my client has already explained to you, Agent . . . what’s your name again?”
“Rivers,” Dutch said. “And that’s Special Agent, Counselor.”
“Ah,” Maldonado said, placing a hand on his chest like he was aghast he himself had been so rude. “Special Agent Rivers, what my client has already explained is that her sister gave her that credit card with the express order to use it as she saw fit. After suffering the unbearable loss of her sister just days ago, my client set about to honor what were some of the last wishes of her dearly departed sibling by using the card to ensure her mother’s care was paid for, and to retrieve some cash to be used on flowers for the funeral of Andy and Robin Roswell.”
Brice leaned forward, placing his laced hands on the tabletop. “See, here’s where it gets tricky, Counselor. We think your client’s lying. We think that Robin never gave her the card. We think she stole it.”
Zane nodded gravely. “I see. Can you prove that?”
“As a matter of fact,” Dutch said, pulling the same pieces of paper out of the file that Candice had, “these tell us that Robin still had physical custody of her credit card in the minutes leading up to her murder.”
Zane turned his head so that he could peer at the evidence being presented, then used his hand to swivel it around to face him. After a moment he said, “All this tells me is that Robin Roswell knew her credit card’s number by heart, and she entered it along with the expiration date and security code into the computer when she made her online purchase.”
My gaze drifted to Rachel. She’d stopped trembling and was now sitting next to her attorney with a mean smug smirk of her own.
“Could be,” Dutch said, agreeing with Maldonado. “But it could also be that your client was there at the time of her sister and brother-in-law’s murder.”
Zane shrugged one shoulder. “Again, gentlemen, there’s the question of proof. I’ve offered our version of events and as far as I’ve seen, you cannot prove otherwise, so . . .”
“She still made unauthorized purchases against a financial institution,” Dutch insisted. “We’ve still got her on fraud.”
Zane rolled his eyes. “Mrs. Tibbons will be granted custody of her sister’s estate Monday morning. I’d like to see a judge hold her accountable for using money and property a few days before it was officially awarded to her.”
“Dammit,” Candice muttered.
My thoughts mirrored hers. Zane had us and he knew it. Everything could be explained.
“Still,” Brice said stiffly. “We’d like to hear Mrs. Tibbons tell us where she was last Saturday afternoon, say around one p.m.?”
Rachel opened her mouth, but Maldonado placed a hand of warning on her arm. Pointing to her cell phone, which rested in front of Dutch, he said, “May I?”
Dutch slid it across the table and Maldonado handed it to Rachel. She quickly began tapping at it and then showed her attorney the screen. He in turn swiveled it around so that Brice and Dutch could see. “Rachel was grocery shopping across town at the time her family was murdered. Completely unaware of the course of events taking place at the Roswell residence. She was buying a long list of groceries, and she used these seventeen coupons, which were each redeemed with a time stamp on this handy little coupon app she downloaded.”
We couldn’t see the screen, but we could see Dutch and Brice squint at it, and frown. “Security footage at the HEB supermarket on Interstate Thirty-five should give you all the verification you need as to my client’s whereabouts.”
“Just because she wasn’t there doesn’t mean she doesn’t know something,” I said. The more I looked at Rachel, the more convinced I was that she had a hand in all this. She’d lied about the card—I knew that—and the only reason to lie was to hide something.
Later, after Rachel and her attorney had gone (Matt Hayes refused to file the fraud charges, given the alibi Rachel had provided and the fact that she’d have her hands on Robin’s estate in a matter of days), we gathered once again in the large conference room to talk about what to do next.
“I’m out of ideas,” Nikki said. She appeared tired and stressed. And then I realized that we all looked that way. “If she’s got the shopping alibi, then there’s no way to prove that she got the card at the time of the murder.”
“Someone could’ve given it to her,” I suggested. “The killer could’ve given it to her to use.”
Oscar rubbed the top of his head and yawned. “You think Hekekia and Gudziak gave it to her?”
I had to shake my head. No way would either of them have given up access to an Amex Black Card.
“Even if they had, we’d still have to solve the puzzle of why,” Candice said. “Why give Robin’s sister the card?”
That one really stumped me. I was absolutely convinced that Robin had used her credit card in the minutes leading up to her murder, and that it’d been stolen from the scene, but th
e only ones we were fairly certain had been there were Hekekia and Gudziak, and they weren’t talking—albeit for different reasons. Still, we’d gotten all we could out of Hekekia, especially now that Maldonado represented Rachel too.
“The common link in all of this is still Murielle,” I said. “She’s the center that everyone pinwheels out from.”
“Through Maldonado,” Candice said, picking up on what I was thinking.
“Yes.”
Brice stood up and stretched. “So, Murielle hires Gudziak and Hekekia to murder Andy and Robin, but she couldn’t have been there, could she? Wouldn’t that be too big of a risk for her to take?”
“It would be,” I had to concede. “But maybe they were too afraid of her to disobey a direct order.”
“What’re you thinking?” Nikki asked me.
“Well,” I said, trying to puzzle it out, “Murielle would definitely have had someone else do her dirty work, and Hekekia and Gudziak are good for the job, but maybe she tells them to bring her everything after they’re done. Maybe they were under orders to bring her all the loot they took.”
“But where’s all the money?” Candice said. “Where’s the millions of dollars that were taken from Andy’s panic room? We only found fifty grand at Hekekia’s house, and that was probably what remained of what they stole from Chris Wixom.”
“I don’t know where all that money went,” I said on a sigh.
“And what happened to Dave?” Dutch said.
I wanted to slap myself. In the complicated fallout from this terrible case, I’d all but put him out of my mind for the day. “I don’t know that either,” I said, closing my eyes against all that guilt. In my mind, however, the vision I’d had the day before returned. I saw the photos from Murielle’s Instagram scroll quickly across my inner vision, and then I saw that key emerge from the mirror before flying out and around the back of the house again.
“Abby?” I heard my name called.
I jumped and opened my eyes. Everybody was staring at me. “What?”
“You okay?” Dutch said. “Brice asked you a question three times and you didn’t respond.”
“Oh, sorry. I’m . . . distracted.”
“Want to share?” Candice said.
“Not really. I keep having this same vision and I can’t figure it out. It’s like I’m on the verge of putting it all together, but connecting the dots isn’t happening.”
“I repeat, wanna share?” Candice said with a kind smile.
I shook my head. I didn’t feel she’d be able to make any sense of it either. It took an expert in the lingo to be able to puzzle it out. What can I say? It’s an intuitive thing. “I’ll work on solving it tonight.”
Brice looked at his watch. “It’s already night.” When nobody said anything else, he added, “Okay, gang, here’s the plan. Everybody go home, get some dinner, and meet back here in the morning with ideas for a plan. We’ve only got Hekekia for another eighteen hours and we’ll need to make good use of that time. We’ll hunt down any lead we can to make his connection to either Murielle or the Roswells.”
“Or Rachel,” Candice said. “Even though it’s a long shot, let’s not forget about her.”
“Deal,” Brice said, and we headed out.
Chapter Twenty-one
At two a.m. the next morning I was ready to wave the white flag on making it to Snoozeville. Next to me in bed, Dutch’s soft snores let me know I was alone in my struggle.
Easing out of the bed as gently and quietly as I could, I grabbed a sweatshirt and headed to the living room. Eggy roused from his doggy bed and came over to cuddle in my lap as I sat on the couch staring listlessly off into space. He gave the only comfort I’d found in the past several hours. I just couldn’t get my mind to settle down, or really to focus the way I needed to. I could feel Gwen’s and Dave’s lives hanging in the balance, and in my gut I knew that we were at the very end of the time we’d been granted by fate to find the both of them.
I was nearly insane with worry that it might already be too late. And all of it rested on my shoulders, because I also knew in my gut that I had everything I needed to solve this case if only I could connect that one crucial dot. “What the hell am I missing?” I said softly.
Eggy lifted his chin and I stared down into his soulful brown eyes. I could see his faith in me. His love. I wondered, if he knew why I was so troubled, would he still look at me that way?
“Where’s Dave?” I said to him almost absently.
Eggy’s expression perked up and I realized that my sweet pup knew Dave by name. They went way back and were very good friends. His tail began to wag too, and it nearly broke my heart. “I know, boy,” I said, pulling him close for a hug. “I’m trying.”
As I held Eggy, my eye drifted to a photo of me and Dutch taken on our wedding day. We were standing with our arms around each other’s waists with our foreheads touching and enormous smiles on our faces. I’d been blissfully happy that day, and judging by the look of him, he’d felt the exact same way.
And then something sort of pinged in my mind. It wasn’t so much a realization as it was a sense that I needed to get my ass down to the office to take yet another look at those Instagram photos, pronto.
Lifting Eggy away to hold him up in front of me, I said, “Want to go on a field trip, buddy?”
Eggy’s tail wagged like mad.
Forty minutes later I was on the floor of the office sorting through the photos. Eggy was curled up in a ball on my coat, snoozing away and keeping me company. At last my mind felt able to focus in a way it hadn’t before. I could feel my intuition heightening, like a battery charging with energy, ready to offer up the current.
I allowed it to guide me as I sifted through the photos; at each one I paused to look at it, waiting to see if it rang any intuitive bells, and then set it aside. I was trying to keep my mind as blank as possible, holding back on the urge to roll my eyes at Murielle’s every pouty pose. And then . . . and then . . .
There was one photo that didn’t necessarily bang a gong of Eureka! But it sure held my attention.
Murielle was front and center, as per her usual photo pose, and to her left, carefully framed, were Andy and Robin, seemingly in deep conversation, but over to Murielle’s right was another couple, standing with their foreheads pressed together, holding each other in the exact way that Dutch and I had on our wedding day.
“That can’t be a coincidence,” I murmured. My radar was practically crackling with energy now.
And then I realized I recognized the couple. “No way . . . ,” I said, smoothing my hand over the profiles of Walter Abbott and Mario Tremblee.
Quickly I reached for all the other photos from that night, but only two contained the faces of Mario and Walter.
In those additional photos, both men were obviously in love. Besides Andy and Robin, they appeared to be the happiest couple in the room, and again that nagging sensation from my radar urged me to look deeper.
I studied first Walter, then Mario, noting that Mario was so much more beautiful than his driver’s license photo had indicated. He was breathtaking on the arm of Walter Abbott.
Drumming my fingers on the floor next to me, I started to gather other photos, searching for the couple and going back from most recent to least.
That’s when I finally heard my radar ping.
And boy howdy . . . what a ping it was. Because, in that moment, absolutely everything else from my vision slid neatly into place.
• • •
“Abby?” I heard from the other side of the door.
“Open up!” I said loudly, giving the door another good pounding.
The door was opened by a clearly disoriented and super-disheveled Brice Harrison. He took one look at me and said, “You can’t have dogs in here.”
“Get dressed!” I said, brushing past him as I walk
ed with Eggy into his condo.
“Morning, Sundance,” Candice said in that lazy drawl she likes to use when she’s amused. “Eggy,” she added when she noticed him wagging his tail at her. “What brings you by?”
I waved the photo I’d brought from the office and said, “Dutch is going to be here any minute. You guys need to get dressed and come with me!”
Brice rubbed his eyes. “It’s four in the morning, Cooper,” he said, annoyed.
“Four-schmore!” I said loudly. I maaaaaaaaaaay have stopped for a quick cup of coffee from the gas station on the corner on my way here. It maaaaaaaay have been supercharged with caffeine. And I’m pretty sure the Red Bull chaser hadn’t helped to chillax me either. Shooing them both toward the bedroom, I said, “Go! Now! Get dressed!”
Brice ground his teeth and sent a scathing look toward his wife. “Don’t look at me,” she said, then waved a hand in a circular motion toward me. “I had nothing to do with this.”
“I’ll make coffee!” I announced, turning my back to them. “Oh, and we should call Nikki!”
“I’m firing Abby the second she saves all our asses on this case,” Brice muttered.
“Oh, please. You fire me every other day. We all know you don’t mean it,” Candice said, and disappeared into their bedroom.
Dutch arrived just as the coffee stopped brewing. I’d thoughtfully combed the cupboards for every travel mug I could find, and laid out the cream and sugar on the counter assembly-line-style. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” I said, waving my mug toward everyone as they gathered once again in the living room.
Candice eased the mug from my rather shaky fingers. “How about we get you a cup of decaf?” she said.
“I love stimulants!” I yelled. “Man! I haven’t had coffee in ages! Why’d I give it up, Candice? Why?”
She raised her brow. “No idea, Sundance. But how about we not make up for lost time all at once, hmm?”