Bailey stared at me with such shock and anger, but I could also see the terrible regret in her eyes. I’d nailed it. I’d nailed exactly what she’d told Kendra.
I continued my accusations. “It was your story that sent Kendra storming over to Tristan’s office that night, and when he lost his temper with her, you were the one who tried to get her to leave him, plaguing her with doubt, sending her to see Velkune. You wanted Kendra to leave so that you could move in on Tristan, comfort the heartbroken divorcé, am I right, Bailey? But Kendra began to see through you, didn’t she? Maybe she poked holes in the story by talking to some of the other guys at the bachelor party? Maybe she began to doubt your story, realized you were the one who had tried to get him into bed, and that’s what your falling-out was about!”
Bailey’s eyes welled up and waves of guilt poured off her. “I never thought she’d actually go off and just leave Colby alone in the house like that!” she said defensively. “But, I mean, that should show you what kind of a person she is! She just took off and left her little boy in his crib without a backward glance!”
It was my turned to stare at her in shock. “You think she’s still alive, don’t you?” Bailey’s brow furrowed. “You think she left that house on her own. You have no idea about what’s really happened to her, do you?”
“She took off,” she said, swiping her tears away with shaking fingers. “I know it. She took my advice, grabbed some cash from the bank so that Tristan couldn’t trace where she went, and she’s getting even with me by pulling this stunt!”
I shook my head. I was dumbstruck at the ocean of denial this stupid girl had created.
“She’s alive!” Bailey insisted, hitting the table with the flat of her hand. “She is! I can feel it. She’ll show up soon, and then y’all will see that she’s not the sweet little angel everybody thinks she is.” Obviously, Bailey hadn’t seen the news about the discovery of Kendra’s car in Decker Lake.
“You disgust me,” I told her, and I was about to tell her exactly how much when my radar gave a quick warning and my head snapped to the door just as Bailey’s soon-to-be-ex appeared in the doorway. “Uh-oh,” I said the minute his eyes locked onto the back of his wife’s head. Chase then charged right toward us. “Look out!” I yelled, pushing myself to my feet.
Bailey, who had her back to her approaching husband, appeared startled but remained seated, staring at me in confused alarm. Meanwhile Candice came out of her seat so fast her chair shot back and hit the wall. Still, she was hampered by a group of patrons at another table, which prevented her from getting to Bailey’s husband before he could get to his wife.
Grabbing Bailey by the hair, he pulled her violently backward, causing her to fall hard onto the floor. Her legs kicked up and pushed the table directly into Candice, who was shoved back against the wall and nearly went down herself. I reacted reflexively, grabbing my coffee before it was knocked off the table and throwing the hot liquid directly into the man’s face. He yelled and stumbled back, but not before I took my cane to his head. This time, the cane held strong and I gave Chase three good wallops before he too fell to the floor, where one of the male baristas tackled him and put him into a choke hold.
Around us there was a kind of pandemonium as customers and employees scattered for the exits, toppling tables and chairs and coffee as they dashed out of the place. I heard someone yell to call the police, but I was still too amped up on adrenaline to focus. Instead, as Bailey’s husband struggled to get free of the barista’s choke hold, I edged forward and gave him a hard crack across his shins. “You move and I’ll break your damn legs!” I shouted, hovering over him with my cane raised. I was so angry that I seriously wanted him to give me another excuse.
“What the hell, Chase?” Bailey shouted as Candice helped her to her feet. She was covered in coffee stains from her own drink and maybe a few others littering the floor.
“You bitch!” he replied. “You drained my savings account!”
Bailey stood there shaking from head to toe. “It was our savings account, you son of a bitch!”
“Who put all the money into that account, you whore?” he demanded. “It sure as hell wasn’t you!”
“Most of that was from our wedding, you asshole!” Bailey shot back, and I could see this was gonna be one bitter divorce.
Strobe lights on the wall pulled my attention away from the shouting match and over to the parking lot, where no less than three patrol cars had slammed to a stop. Six cops bolted out of their vehicles, their guns drawn, and they approached the Starbucks warily but in a hurry.
I lowered my cane and stepped closer to Bailey and Candice. As the first cop came into the building, all three of us pointed to Chase and yelled, “He did it!”
Chapter Fourteen
It took the cops about two hours to take all the witnesses’ statements and finally release us from the scene. As Candice and I pulled out of the lot, we could see Chase sitting in the back of a squad car yelling at a cop in the front seat. “I hope he gets Tased,” I said, glaring at him as we passed.
“Oh, I think that’s a given,” Candice told me.
It was then that I noticed she was grimacing. “You okay?”
“Fine,” she said. “Just a touch of indigestion.”
“Still?”
“I’ll get some Tums when we’re done for the day.”
“Aren’t we done for the day?”
“No.”
I waited, but Candice didn’t elaborate. “You gonna fill me in or should I just turn on my radar and…”
“We’re going to see Velkune,” Candice told me.
“Why?”
“I’m following through on a hunch.”
I blinked. Usually I was the one with the hunches.
We arrived at Garrett’s office and headed inside, rushing a little because it was just a minute or two before five now and we didn’t want to miss him. We found his perky secretary packing up and looking like she was just about to leave. “Oh!” she said when we came through the door, a look of annoyance flashing briefly across her face. “Can I help you?”
“Sorry for the last-minute intrusion,” Candice said, “but by any chance is Mr. Velkune available to see us for a few quick questions about Kendra Moreno?”
The girl’s eyelids fluttered as she took in Candice’s request. “Actually, I believe he and his wife were just about to leave,” she said.
At that moment we heard a woman’s amused laughter waft down the hallway and we all turned to see Garrett Velkune and a woman holding his arm come down the corridor. I was a little taken aback by Mrs. Velkune because she was a bit of a mismatch. Dressed smartly in a beautiful chocolate suede jacket with a cream silk blouse, paisley scarf, black leggings, and riding boots, she looked incredibly well put together. Especially when I took in the Chanel leather handbag and elegant jewelry, I figured her outfit alone cost at least ten grand. But although her hair was cut and styled in soft ash blond waves, it couldn’t hide a most unattractive face. Mrs. Velkune had puffy round cheeks, a weak chin, small beady eyes, and an unfortunate underbite. The poor woman looked like a Pekinese.
Still, Velkune was looking at her like he’d never seen anyone so beautiful, and that moved me. Most guys as good-looking as Velkune would’ve gone for a model type like Bailey, but he’d obviously fallen in love with Mrs. Velkune the person, and I gave him big props for it.
When Velkune and his wife saw us, they both were brought up short. “Hi,” he said awkwardly. “Are you two here to see me?”
“Yes,” Candice said before stepping forward to extend her hand to Mrs. Velkune. “I’m Candice Fusco, a private investigator working on the Kendra Moreno case,” she explained.
Mrs. Velkune eased her arm from around her husband’s and shook Candice’s hand. “Oh, that poor girl,” she said. “I know Garrett’s been so torn up over her disappearance. I’ve been following the story on the news, and I can’t imagine what her poor family must be going through! I hope you’
re helping the police make a case against the husband?”
My eyes flashed to Garrett, who seemed surprised by his wife’s statement. Candice, however, handled it with ease. “We’re just following the truth wherever it leads us. We all want to know what happened to Kendra.”
Mrs. Velkune nodded like she and Candice were totally on the same page. “I can wait out here, Garrett,” she said, moving over to take a seat. “You help these women and we’ll go to dinner when you’re done.”
For a moment Velkune seemed reluctant, but in a flash that was gone and he pushed a smile to his face and invited us into his office. “How can I help you?” he said when we’d all gotten comfortable around his desk.
As usual, after subtly turning on the recording app on her phone, Candice took the lead. “Mr. Velkune, we just met with Bailey Colquitt and she said that she is also represented by you.”
He nodded. “Yes, I’ve been retained by Mrs. Colquitt.”
“She told us that even before she filed for divorce, you had advised her to take out as much money from any joint accounts she shared with her husband as she could get away with.”
Velkune’s face flushed and he laughed nervously. “She told you that?” he said, shifting in his seat. “I think she may have misinterpreted what I said. As I remember it, I asked her to start saving as much cash as she could before she officially moved forward with divorce proceedings. And I might have suggested that she keep that cash in a safe place so that she would have it handy when she moved out of the home she shared with her husband. I knew she’d need some money for living expenses and the like.”
“And your retainer, right?” Candice pressed.
Again, Velkune blushed. “Yes. I do require a retainer to begin divorce proceedings.”
“How much?” she asked him.
“It varies, but usually I ask for twenty thousand up front.”
My brow shot up. Twenty grand? Man, divorce was expensive.
“Were you aware that Bailey drained one of the Colquitts’ joint savings accounts?”
Velkune’s eyes widened, but my radar pinged. “No,” he said. “I had no idea.”
I tugged on my earlobe and I saw that Candice caught the move. Velkune was lying. He knew all about what Bailey had done.
Candice then told him about what’d happened at the Starbucks. “That’s terrible!” he said. “I’ll call Mrs. Colquitt as soon as we’re finished and check on her.”
“When we left her, she was shaken but unhurt,” Candice assured him. “Still, that incident got me thinking about something else Bailey said when we sat down with her.”
“What’s that?” he asked.
“She said that you had given the same sort of advice to Kendra before she filed.”
Velkune flushed red for a third time and cleared his throat. “Ms. Fusco, can I speak frankly?”
“Of course.”
“When clients come to me suggesting that they might be in some sort of physical danger from their spouse and talk to me about the necessity of moving out of the family home, I do on those rare occasions suggest that they have access to any resource they can use to see them through the many months or years it may take to get divorced. While frowned upon by many courts, in making that kind of a suggestion, I have done nothing legally, ethically, or morally wrong.”
Candice sat back in her chair and studied Velkune for a minute before commenting. “Yes, Mr. Velkune, I know you haven’t done anything illegal, and I’m on your side, I swear, but what worries me is that Kendra might have taken your advice and drained one of the joint savings or checking accounts, and that could have triggered a violent reaction from her husband just like what nearly happened today between Bailey and Chase Colquitt. And if he in fact isn’t responsible for his wife’s disappearance, the minute a prosecutor figures out what you told Kendra to do, he’ll have even more evidence to send Tristan away for murder. What you advised Kendra to do really complicates things. Do you see where I’m going with this?”
Garrett leaned his elbows on the desk and ran his hands through his hair. “Do you think that’s what happened?” he asked. “Do you think that Kendra drained one of their accounts and Tristan reacted violently when he found out?”
“I don’t know,” Candice told him. “But we have to research every possible scenario. And when you said that Kendra came here the very morning she went missing, I’m quite positive that you were one of the very last people to see her alive. Did she come here with your retainer and can you think of anything that might help us figure out what she was thinking or planning to do next?”
Velkune sat back in his chair again. “Yes,” he said, “that morning she did have some cash on her. It wasn’t nearly enough for my full retainer, but it was enough to get us started. To be honest, she was in such a state of distress that I didn’t press her on it.”
“What was the state of distress about again?” Candice prompted.
“Well, she was of course worried for herself physically, but I believe her biggest fear was that she and her son would be separated. She had a sort of premonition and she felt strongly that Tristan would end up with Colby.”
“So she was worried about custody?” Candice asked.
“Yes. She was intent on leaving her husband and the home, but she was very worried about what people would think by her doing that. She knew they’d talk and gossip and speculate, and she was concerned about how that might affect what people thought of her long term.” Velkune then sighed and shook his head sadly back and forth. “She appeared to me to be very worried about everything, Ms. Fusco. I know I should have taken her fears more seriously, or given her more time that morning, but I had a wedding to get to. Still, I know I should have advised her to go to her parents’ house or the police, but when she came here she had worked herself up into hysterics, and I wasn’t sure how much of what she was saying was fact or fabrication. I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that her visit to my office that morning left me confused and upset. I didn’t quite know what to think.”
I listened with an intuitive ear to everything that Velkune had said and found that it all rang true. But I still wasn’t convinced that Tristan was responsible, and none of it told us who the man in the baseball cap was.
Candice looked at me then and said, “Anything you want to ask?”
At first I almost said no, but then I thought back to that mysterious woman who had come to my office and first presented the case to me. I had a sudden desperate need to find her and attempt to convince her to tell us who had abducted and killed Kendra. She alone knew who was responsible, and while I could understand her situation and need to protect the attorney-client privilege, I wanted to find a way around that, a loophole that would allow her to hint at who’d done it so that we could bring Kendra home and never again allow this man to tear another family apart. “Mr. Velkune,” I said, “can you tell me a little about the attorney-client privilege as it relates to keeping the secrets of someone you know to be guilty of a felony?”
Velkune pulled his head back and seemed confused by the change of topic. “I’m not sure I understand your question, Ms. Cooper.”
I didn’t want to reveal anything about the woman who’d come to see me. If I was going to protect her and her career, then I had to make sure I didn’t even hint that we’d been visited by this female attorney. I decided to speak in hypotheticals. “Say you’ve been retained by someone you know has committed murder,” I began. “But the police don’t know that your client’s done anything wrong, and you suspect that your client may do something violent in the future or even repeat that same crime again. Do you have the ability to break privilege and go to the police if you suspect the public at large is in danger?”
Velkune scratched his five-o’clock shadow. “That’s tricky,” he said. “You’d have to be more than just suspicious that the person was a threat to the public. And you’d need to have some sort of proof to back up and justify breaking the privilege, like a psychiatrist’s a
nalysis, or a letter from your client making threatening statements. Something concrete. It couldn’t be subjective.”
I frowned. That’s what I was afraid of. “So if I was an attorney, and someone came to me, retained me, and said that they’d murdered someone but gave no concrete evidence of the crime and I had nothing factual to show the authorities, there’d be nothing I could do to alert the police to investigate the crime?”
Velkune shook his head. “Right,” he said. “That’d definitely get you disbarred.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to word my next question just right. “What if you mentioned it to a friend, like, what if the attorney told someone they trusted and that friend went to the police. What would happen then?”
Velkune appeared amused by my hypothetical attempts to get around privilege. “That would still get the attorney disbarred and would definitely send the whole case into mistrial if it ever got out. I know it seems unbalanced and unfair, but our laws were created to protect the few innocent people caught up in the system. To protect the innocent you’ve also got to protect the guilty by extending everyone the same ironclad attorney-client privilege. Lawyers must be bound by that oath—to keep their clients’ secrets and reveal them to no one—in order for the system to work. Otherwise, clients would never be able to trust their attorneys, and then they couldn’t be assured the best defense.” Velkune then subtly checked his watch and I knew he was anxious to get out of there and go to dinner with his new bride, so I stood up and thanked him for his time.
We passed Mrs. Velkune in the lobby and she wished us a good evening. “They’re an odd couple,” I said when we were outside and safely out of earshot.