Bellemont squared his shoulders. “Ben bought the place because Sela found it and fell in love with it. She wanted a home in that exact spot. Ben balked at first, but Sela could be persuasive. He purchased the property and set her dream in motion.”

  “Theo Thompson’s wife was not happy about this,” Kerri said. “She wanted her husband to take legal action against Ben.”

  “Whatever she wanted to do was pointless. The buy was a perfectly legal transaction, and barring any issues with the permitting office, he could do as he pleased with the property.”

  “But he hadn’t hired anyone to build the new house,” Falco said. “No architect or contractor. I checked, and Creaseman and Collier don’t build; they only do demo.”

  “He may have a friend back in San Francisco who’s doing the building plans for him. I don’t know the answer to that question.”

  Kerri had a feeling Marcella Gibbons would have known if that were the case.

  “Why would Suzanne Thompson call Sela a gold digger?” Kerri watched his expression as he digested the question.

  “Well, Suzanne is like that. She is not a particularly nice person. She dislikes those who make their own way in life. If your money is too new or you married into it, she thinks you’re beneath her. She is not a pleasant person, Detective.”

  Kerri watched him for a moment longer.

  “Is there anything else? If not, I would really like to get home to my wife and children.”

  “Thank you for your time. I’m sure we’ll have more questions.” Kerri pushed to her feet.

  “If your questions help find who did this, I am more than happy to oblige.”

  Kerri held his gaze for a moment before walking out of the man’s office.

  Falco had caught up with her by the time she hit the alley.

  It wasn’t until they reached his car that her partner said, “You let him off damned easy, Devlin. But I’m down with your strategy. What do you think he’s hiding?”

  Kerri stared at Falco across the top of the car. “Everything he knows.”

  16

  8:30 p.m.

  The call went to voice mail.

  Neal Ramsey gritted his teeth and shoved his phone back into his pocket.

  Where the hell was she? Why wasn’t she answering her cell?

  He sent a text message, for all the good it would do.

  Call in now

  Neal stared at the house. He’d parked halfway down the block and watched for the past two hours. She had not come home. His last visual on her had been early that morning.

  He hadn’t been so worried, since he had heard from her last night. But everything had changed today. She’d stopped responding.

  His cell vibrated with an incoming call.

  He checked the screen.

  The boss.

  Great. Reluctantly, he accepted the call. “Yeah.”

  “Has she contacted you yet?” Bellemont demanded.

  Neal hated to pass this update along, but he had no choice at this point. “No.”

  A span of silence went on for too long. He knew better than to try and explain. When things went this far south, it was best just to listen and follow orders.

  “Do you have any idea where she is?”

  “No,” he admitted. “She has evaded my surveillance since early this morning.”

  “Jesus Christ.” Bellemont exhaled a worried breath.

  Until recently Keith Bellemont had been Neal’s sole employer for more than five years. He had worked for several attorneys in the Birmingham area, but Bellemont was the only one who made him want to stay on. Most of the others rubbed him the wrong way eventually.

  Still, as much as he liked Bellemont, sometimes a man had to do what he had to do. As long as his boss didn’t find out before it was all said and done, Neal could live with what happened after that.

  “I will get eyes on her again,” Neal assured him. “No need to be overly concerned for now.”

  “What about—”

  “I will locate her as well. You have my word.”

  “This has gone to hell, Ramsey. I don’t think we can find our way back from this.”

  “Let’s not go there just yet,” he suggested. “Whatever it takes, we’ll get the situation back under control.”

  “What if we’re too late?”

  The absolute fear in Bellemont’s voice warned that he was close to the edge. Never a good place. Not even for an attorney who had more integrity than most.

  “Give me more time before you do anything that can’t be undone,” Ramsey advised. He did not want Bellemont going to the police. That move would ruin everything.

  “You have until Monday,” Bellemont warned. The connection ended.

  Neal had to keep the man calm. Until this was done, Bellemont had to keep his mouth shut.

  Neal’s phone vibrated again. This time it was a text from his other boss. The new one. The one who paid the big bucks.

  Meet me. You know the place.

  It wasn’t that he was planning to leave Bellemont in the lurch. Neal didn’t have a problem going back to their exclusive arrangement when this was over. But the money for this side job was too good to pass up. Loyalty was vastly overrated and woefully underpaid.

  He drove straight to the agreed-upon location. She was there already. He parked against the curb several yards behind her. This street was always poorly lit. Went with the territory. You came to this neighborhood, you didn’t expect the ambience of the better areas in the city.

  Emerging from his car, he scanned the area. No other vehicles. No lights in any of the run-down businesses. He walked to the passenger’s side of her sedan. The door unlocked as he reached for it. He glanced inside before sliding into the seat.

  The scent of her perfume immediately filled his lungs. Sent an entirely different sort of tension coiling inside him.

  “We have a new development?” he asked. She didn’t usually request a meeting unless there was something urgent that required his attention.

  Suzanne Thompson turned her blonde head in his direction. “Theo is getting nervous. He’s overreacting. How close are you to finding her?”

  Theo Thompson was quickly becoming a pain in Neal’s ass, and he didn’t even know the man other than what he read in the papers and saw on the news, especially lately with both him and his father in pivotal political races. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He knew a few particulars from Bellemont, but those were superficial details related to Abbott’s purchase of the Whisper Lake Circle property.

  In this instance, Neal’s business was strictly with Thompson’s wife—his new temporary employer.

  Frankly, he didn’t know how the man survived being married to such a cutthroat bitch. He imagined that she could be a good fuck if she felt the urge. Though he doubted she depended on anyone else to please her. Most likely she took care of that herself. Still, he would be willing if the offer appeared on the table.

  “I’m getting closer. I’ve got eyes on her contact. It won’t be long now.”

  “What about the laptop?”

  This was something else she wasn’t going to like. “There was self-destruct software. Anything on the laptop is gone. Irretrievable. Keep in mind, this guy was the best.” Did she really think a software genius would be that stupid? “I’ve already disposed of it.”

  “I’m paying you a tremendous amount of money, Ramsey, and so far I’m not seeing the sort of results I expected. Do better. Work faster. If you had completed your initial assignment, we wouldn’t be in this position.”

  Assignment. Right.

  Neal waited for her to meet his gaze before he spoke. As heartless and cold as the woman was, he didn’t miss the frustration in her eyes. “This is not like planning a shopping trip to New York or Paris,” he warned. “There are variables. Sometimes those variables go against you. The end result doesn’t always happen the way you expect.”

  Her smooth, perfectly sculpted cheeks hardened as those surgically enhanced lips tightened into a firm line before she spoke. “I always get what I want when I want it, Mr. Ramsey. If I don’t this time, you will sincerely regret ever having claimed you could handle the job.”

  “You’ll get what you asked for, Mrs. Thompson. Just keep your husband in line until then.”

  Neal exited the car and walked back to his own. That was the problem with working for rich people. They never appreciated what they had.

  They always wanted more.

  17

  9:00 p.m.

  Devlin Residence

  Twenty-First Avenue South

  The case file was scattered over the kitchen island. Kerri and Falco had gone over every page, reviewing all that they knew up to this point. “We need to hear back from the San Francisco PD,” she said, frustrated.

  She had read the interviews twice. There was nothing useful. Nothing that gave them anything at all. How could people live in the same neighborhood and know nothing about each other? She knew the names of each of her neighbors. Where they worked or if they were retired. The names of their kids. There was a time when she wouldn’t have bothered, but once Tori was born, everything changed. Kerri had needed to be aware of those living around her child.

  “A place the size of San Fran probably has a lot more to worry about than answering questions from a cop down in Birmingham, Alabama,” Falco reminded her.

  “At this point the only info we have on the missing wife’s history,” Kerri went on, ignoring his reminder, “is that her father died in a car accident when she was ten, and her mother was a secretary in her younger days. Sela went to San Diego State University. She graduated and was eventually hired by a legal firm in San Francisco, where she met Ben Abbott, and the rest is history. No other next of kin. Nothing.”

  “Yeah.” Falco scooted over next to her and tapped the page Kerri was reviewing at the moment. “Don’t you think it’s kind of weird that she studied criminology and became a paralegal for that San Fran law firm?”

  “Frankly, I can’t see either one as the sort of thing a woman who excels at fundraising would do. I guess when she married into the Abbott family, she decided she’d rather talk other people into giving their money away than earn her own. It wasn’t like she needed it as Mrs. Ben Abbott.”

  “We need to find out what she did after graduation,” Falco said. “There’s no employment record before she started with that law firm in San Fran.”

  Kerri frowned. “Which leaves us with a major gap we can’t account for. Like two years.”

  “Maybe she traveled.” Falco glanced at the fridge.

  Could he be any more obvious? “If you want another beer, you don’t have to ask.”

  “Thanks.”

  He swaggered over to the refrigerator. Kerri shook her head. Men were not born walking like that. Did they take lessons? She blinked to clear her mind, stared at the pages in front of her. The better question was, Why did she even notice? Exhaustion did that. Your mind grabbed on to the strangest things.

  Beer in hand, Falco closed the fridge door. “The carrier still hasn’t provided her cell phone records.”

  Cell phone carriers resisting and putting off responses to warrants was far too common. “I’m hoping we’ll have them by tomorrow.”

  Though they had Sela Abbott’s phone, her call and text history had been deleted. Learning whom she’d communicated with could provide additional insights into the final days before the murders and her disappearance.

  “We’ve called every herbalist in the city,” Kerri grumbled, exhaustion catching up with her way too fast. “We didn’t find anyone who had Jacqueline Rollins as a client.”

  Though herbalists weren’t legally allowed to diagnose, treat, or prescribe to patients, they could certainly provide advice on various herbs and herbal remedies to clients. It was a fine line and one not necessarily monitored as closely as it should be.

  Her partner removed the top from his beer and tossed it in the trash can. “Maybe she took her mother to Huntsville or some other place.” He sipped the beer.

  “Mom?”

  Kerri looked up to find her daughter at the door, looking startled. “I thought you were watching a movie.”

  “Hey there, little Devlin,” Falco said as he came back to the island to lean against it. “I almost didn’t recognize you without your weapon.”

  Tori cut him a look. “I’m not a Devlin; I’m a Jackman.” Then to Kerri, she said, “It’s late.”

  It was a few minutes past nine. It wasn’t that late. “We still have more work to do. Did you need something?”

  “Dad has been trying to call you.” Her arms went around her waist, and her chin jutted out defensively.

  Could they not have one evening without this discussion? “I’ll call him back in the morning.”

  “Whatever.” Tori spun around and disappeared.

  “I’m kinda getting a complex here, Devlin,” he said. “The LT doesn’t like me. Now your kid doesn’t like me.”

  “Don’t feel too bad. I don’t think she likes me either.” Kerri shook off the intrusion and focused on the case. It was sad when a homicide investigation was more appealing than a conversation with your daughter. “Let’s go over the old car thing again and that housekeeper we’re going to reinterview.”

  “The neighbors—the Chapins—specifically the wife, noticed an old car parked next to the Abbott driveway last week. She called it a jalopy. Old four door. Midsize. She couldn’t tell me the make or model. Just that it was old. Blue in color. Kind of rusty. Her housekeeper, Cowart, looked as if she wanted to say something but was afraid to speak up.”

  Oftentimes when a detective tried to follow up with neighbors, no one would be available. The longer an investigation went on, the more people would lean that way. Everyone feared being accused or somehow dragged into an investigation—even those who were smart enough to know better. Some would never shake the belief that the cops just wanted to solve the case even if they had to create a suspect.

  “Maybe the car belonged to someone doing yard work or household maintenance for the Abbotts,” Kerri suggested.

  He shrugged. “That’s very possible. Chapin didn’t know. I asked if she had noticed anything unusual, and that was her answer.”

  “We should talk to Ms. Jenkins about this too.” The Abbotts’ housekeeper would surely have noticed anything odd about someone parked right outside the gate.

  “Too bad none of the neighbors have security cameras that reach that particular spot.” Falco sipped his beer. “For such high-end neighborhoods, they’ve got low-end security systems.”

  Having security video footage might very well have made this investigation a lot easier. Luck like that rarely happened outside television. Kerri felt her frustration rising. “We need something to give the LT tomorrow before the press conference.”

  “You mean besides the truth that we have nothing significant?”

  “Besides that, yeah.”

  How could they have been at this for three days and have nothing?

  “What’s your daughter so upset about?”

  Startled by the sudden change of subject, Kerri met his gaze, held it for a moment. Reminded herself that he was her partner. A partner whom she had decided she might actually like. “She wants to go to New York and spend the summer with her father.”

  He held her gaze for a long assessing moment. “You don’t want her to go.”

  Kerri shrugged. “I’m torn. He lives with his fiancée.”

  “The other woman,” Falco guessed.

  Kerri nodded. “But the real problem is that he likes to play games. He’s not good at what he perceives as losing. My having primary custody is bugging him. He will use our daughter to make himself feel better, and then who knows what will happen?”

  Not exactly the sort of personal information you wanted to share. It was late. She was tired and aggravated. Running on empty.

  “Damn. No wonder you’ve been tense.”

  She glowered at him. “What does that mean, Falco? I haven’t been tense.”

  “Yeah, you kind of have been.”

  “Whatever.” She started to gather the pages back into the folders. “It is late. We should call it a night.”

  “Sometimes you’re better off without what you thought you needed.”

  She stopped, stared straight at him. Their working relationship had smoothed out more quickly than she’d expected, but the personal stuff was still a little touchy for her. Especially when it related to her daughter and her failed marriage. “Don’t pretend to know what I need.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about me.”

  Unable to keep her curiosity at bay, she surrendered and gave him her undivided attention.

  “I thought I needed a wife and kids,” he continued. “That’s what most people want, right?” He shrugged. “But some people shouldn’t have wives and kids. Some people are better off alone. They don’t have the goods to make people happy. If you can’t make people happy, you shouldn’t tie them to you. Maybe your ex was smart to leave. Maybe he did you a favor. He couldn’t make you happy, so he cut and run.”

  Obviously, she was too tired to be reasonable, or she would never in a million years have found logic in his words. “I’m not sure my happiness was ever his primary concern. Anyway, as soon as the press conference is over in the morning, we’ll talk to Cowart and then Jenkins. See if we can find out about this jalopy and whatever the housekeeper needs to get off her chest.”

  He tossed his empty beer bottle into the trash. “I’ll be here at seven thirty sharp.”

  She started to argue but decided against it. So far she had no complaints about his driving skills. As long as he continued that way, she could live with him driving. Gave her time to think about the case and to search for info.

  She followed him to the door. “Good night, Falco.”

  On the stoop he turned back to her. “Night, Devlin.” He took two steps and stopped again. “For the record, your ex is an idiot.”

 

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