Fatal Scandal: Book Eight of the Fatal Series (7 page)

“I’ll take it sooner if you can do it.”

“We’ll try. I’d rather be thorough than fast.”

Sam held back the snapping retort that lingered on the tip of her tongue and slapped her phone closed. “What the fuck?” she muttered under her breath as she went into her office and closed the door to call Gonzo.

He answered on the first ring. “What’s up?”

“Tell me something.”

“Sure.”

“Have you had any contact with Lori since that day in court when you won custody?”

“I’ve left her a couple of messages about seeing Alex, but she never called me back. I was trying, you know?”

“Yeah.”

“Why do you ask?”

“Crime Scene found a slip of paper with your name and address under the floor mat of the car.”

He was silent as he processed the new information.

“You gotta help me out here, Gonzo. Who else would have motive to kill her?”

“How the hell should I know? I barely knew her!”

“Think, Gonzo. Think long and hard. Give me a thread to pull.” She could almost hear him thinking over the phone.

“Rex Connolly. He’s the dude she was with when I first found out about Alex. Supposedly she’s not with him anymore, but he might know something about her life. He’s in the system—drugs, B&E, sealed juvie record if I’m remembering correctly. Lori was in the system too. Drug charges.”

“This is good.”

“The social worker who oversaw the custody case, Justine Travers. She recently got married, and that’s her new last name. She works for the courts and spent a lot of time with Lori during the case. And my friend, Mark Angelo. He was with me the night I met her, and he knew her before. His sister, Sara, was close with Lori. I could give him a call.”

“No, you won’t. I’ll call him. Text me the number.”

“All right.”

“This helps a lot. It gives us somewhere to start.”

“When are you going public with Lori’s name?”

“Not until we absolutely have to. Where are you?”

“Almost to my parents’ place in Harper’s Ferry.”

“Stay there until you hear from me. You understand? Do not move from there.”

“I won’t.”

“We’re going to figure this out. I promise.”

“I’m counting on that.”

“I’ll call you later.” Sam stashed the phone in her pocket, grabbed her keys and coat and headed for the pit. “Cruz! With me.”

“Coming.”

“McBride!”

Jeannie McBride popped up from her cubicle. “Yes, ma’am?”

“Find me Rex Connolly.” She passed along the information Gonzo had given her about Rex’s record. “Text me a current address.”

“I’m on it,” Jeannie said.

“Everyone else, report in to Cruz in the next fifteen minutes with where you are.”

Murmured replies of “Yes, ma’am” and “Got it, LT,” from the subdued group followed her command.

Chapter Seven

Freddie donned his ever-present trench coat and ran after her, his mouth full of something. His mouth was always full of something, usually donuts or other junk that never added a single pound to his lean physique. “Where we going?”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full. It’s gross.”

“If I didn’t talk with my mouth full, I’d never talk.”

Sam snorted out a laugh at that truth. “We’re going to Bowie to talk to George Phillips, owner of the car that Lori was driving.”

“Are we going to tell him she’s dead?”

“I want to know who he is to her before I tell him anything.”

“Does the brass know who the vic is to Gonzo?”

“Yep and they’re bringing in the Feds to babysit us to make sure we don’t step over any lines.”

“I feel like the Feds are underfoot a lot lately.”

“So do I, and I said as much to them, but I was overruled.”

With Sam at the wheel and Freddie punching the address into the GPS on his phone, they headed out of the parking lot and into midday traffic in the District. “Why can’t we do something about the gridlock in this city?” Sam asked.

“Is that a rhetorical question?”

“No, I’m serious. If we can put men on the moon, why can’t we figure out an efficient way to move cars through a modern, cosmopolitan city?”

“You raise a good question.”

“Why is it even like this today? It’s a freaking holiday.”

“Caps are playing at home this afternoon.”

“Awesome. It’s going to take us an hour at this rate to get to Route 50. While we’re stopping and going, see if you can track down a social worker named Justine Travers. She works for the District Court. Try Faith Miller. She’ll know how to reach her.”

“You do remember it’s a holiday, right?”

“Of course I do. I’m supposed to still be in bed with my husband right now.”

“Ew.”

“Oh my God! Like you’re one to talk, Mr. All-Sex-All-The-Time.”

Snorting with laughter, he said, “It’s not
all
the time.”

“Whatever you say.”

While she dealt with the aggravation of trying to get anywhere in D.C., he took to the phone, working their network to locate Ms. Travers.

“Hi, Faith, sorry to bother you. This is Freddie Cruz. Do you have a second?” After a pause, he said, “We’re trying to get in touch with a social worker named Justine Travers. Do you have a number for her?” Another pause and then he began writing. “Thank you so much. Sorry again to bother you.”

After he ended the call, Sam said, “She didn’t ask you why you wanted to know?”

“I think she was going to, but I bailed out before she could.”

“Good job. Call the social worker.”

“That’s what I was doing before you started quizzing me.”

Sam took her eyes off the road long enough to glower at him. “You got any more of those donuts?”

While he waited for Justine to answer the phone, he pulled an unopened pack of white-powdered donuts from his coat pocket and handed it to her.

“I hate you for this.”

“You don’t hate me. You love me.”

“Right now, I hate you.”

“Saint John said, ‘Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness.’”

“That’s me. Empress of the dark. I do my best work in the dark.”

He rolled his eyes at her. “Hi, Justine? This is Detective Cruz from the Metro PD. I wondered if you might be available this afternoon to answer a few questions about one of your clients?”

Sam held her breath while she waited to hear what Justine had to say.

“Lori Phillips,” Freddie said. “Yes, I understand that her custody battle was with one of my colleagues. It’s important or I wouldn’t have bothered you on a holiday.” He glanced at Sam. “We’ll get a warrant. I’ll call you back when we have it.”

Before he’d ended his call, she was on the phone with Malone to get the warrant moving. “This might be a tough sell,” Malone said.

“She has more information about Lori’s life today than probably anyone else. We need her, Cap.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

“Let me know.”

Forty-five minutes after they left HQ, they finally took the exit for Route 50, heading east toward the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. They arrived in Bowie twenty-five minutes later. “Who has ninety fucking minutes to spend battling traffic so they can do their goddamn job?” Sam asked as she pulled up to George Phillips’s residence.

“Language, Lieutenant,” her Bible-thumping partner said disapprovingly.

“I agree that
traffic
is a dirty word.”

“That’s not the dirty word I was referring to, as you well know.”

“
Job
. That’s another dirty word on a holiday that I was supposed to be spending with my goddamn family.”

“Sam! Come on.”

“Oh, sorry,” she said. “I got carried away.”

They headed for the front door of the white ranch house. Sam rang the bell. “I hope he’s home after we came all this way.” She pounded on the glass storm door.

The inside door swung open, and the man went from annoyed to pissed off when they showed their gold badges. “What do you want?” he asked through the door.

“A few minutes of your time,” Sam said.

“I ain’t got a few minutes. I gotta go to work.”

“We can take you into custody, which would ensure you’d miss work.”

He gave her one of those looks that would be deadly if looks could kill. She got a lot of them during a good day on the job. The door was pushed open, narrowly missing Sam’s face. “Hurry up about it.”

“Are you George Phillips?”

“Yeah, so?” His greasy hair was combed over his mostly bald head and tattoos covered his forearms. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in days, and the house smelled stale and musty.

“I’m Lieutenant Holland, and this is my partner, Detective Cruz. Metro PD.”

“You’re the vice president’s old lady.”

Freddie snorted and then covered it with a cough.

George looked around them, trying to see outside. “Where’s your Secret Service?”

Sam gritted her teeth and pressed on. “How’re you related to Lori Phillips?”

“Is she in trouble again? I told her after the last time not to call me. I’m through with her and her nonstop drama.”

“Answer the question.”

“She’s my sister. My younger sister.”

“When was the last time you saw or talked to her?”

“She was at my ma’s house on Christmas. But I didn’t really talk to her. She was all pissed off about losing custody of her kid, so I kept my distance. Why? What’s she done now?”

“Can you tell me how she happened to be in possession of a car you own?”

“What’d she do to my car? I swear to God—”

“She’s dead, Mr. Phillips. She was found strangled in your car this morning.”

“W-what? She’s
dead
? Lori’s dead.”

“Yes. I’m sorry to have to tell you the bad news.”

He seemed to stagger backward before he recovered his bearings and moved to a sofa in the front room. With his head in his hands, he said, “How?”

“She was manually strangled.”

“Who would’ve done that? What about that cop she was battling with over the kid?”

“He has an alibi.”

“Of course he does. That guy hates her guts. Who else would benefit from her being dead more than him?”

“That’s what we’d like to know.”

“It’s him! It has to be him! She was making trouble for him! It was all over the news. He was in bed with that judge, and he cheated her out of her baby.”

“Mr. Phillips, Detective Sergeant Gonzales is a decorated police officer. We have no reason whatsoever to suspect him.”

“Sure, you don’t,” he said bitterly. “My sister never had a chance against that decorated police officer who used his connections to steal her baby away from her.”

Sam glanced at Freddie, who gave her a look that told her his thinking matched hers—they were wasting their time here.

“I’d like to know who else Lori had problems with.”

He shook his head. “No one that I know of.”

“Would your mother know?”

Shrugging, he said, “Doubtful. Lori didn’t air out her troubles with us. We went for months without even knowing where she was. Turns out she was in rehab.”

“Why did she have your car?”

“I let her borrow it while hers was in the shop. I have a truck from work, so it was no problem to let her have it for a few days.”

“We’ll need someone to identify and claim the body after the autopsy is completed. Would you be able to do that?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” he said with a sigh. “Better me than my ma.”

Sam handed him the notebook she carried with her. “Can you write down your phone number so we can notify you?”

He took the notebook from her, wrote the number and handed it back to her. “Did she suffer?”

Sam hated that question and never knew exactly how to answer it—truth, partial truth or outright lie? Of course she’d suffered. She’d been murdered. “Some, maybe, but we can hope it was over quickly.”

He nodded, seeming somewhat satisfied with that. “I hate to ask about my car...”

“It’ll be released to you as soon as it’s been fully processed.”

“Thank you.”

Sam handed him her card. “Please call me if you think of anything else that might be relevant to our investigation.”

“I will.”

“The first few hours of a homicide investigation are extremely critical, so we ask that you refrain from speaking publicly about your sister’s murder until we release her name.”

“I assume I can tell my ma?”

“Yes, but please ask her to refrain from any public statements, as well.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Sam and Freddie left the house and returned to the car.

“You think they’ll keep a lid on it?” Freddie asked.

“I certainly hope so. The longer we can keep the media out of this, the better our chances of figuring out who killed her before the press ruins Gonzo’s life.” Sam’s phone rang with a 202 number she didn’t recognize. “Holland.”

“Mrs. Cappuano?”

Sam winced at the rarely used salutation. “That’s me.”

“This is Lilia Van Nostrand.”

“
Who?
”

“Your chief of staff, ma’am.”

She sent a baffled glance to Freddie. “My chief of what?”

“Staff. At the White House?”

“
Oh
. Yeah. That.” After a long, uncomfortable pause, Sam said, “What can I do for you?”

“I’m calling about our staff meeting tomorrow at nine a.m.”

“We have a staff meeting tomorrow at nine a.m.?”

“Yes, I left a message last week about it.”

“Sorry, I didn’t get it.” She grimaced at Freddie, who hid a smile behind his hand.

“Can you make the meeting?”

“No, I’m sorry I can’t. I’ll be working at nine tomorrow morning on a homicide investigation.” In other words,
important
stuff, Sam thought.

“Oh, well, this is a dilemma indeed. Your staff is looking forward to meeting you and receiving direction from you.”

“How did I end up with a ‘staff’ anyway?”

“We worked for Mrs. Gooding, and Mrs. Nelson assumed you’d appreciate the guidance of a seasoned second lady staff.”

Mrs. Nelson assumed, did she? “Could I call you back? I’m right in the middle of something at the moment.”

“Yes, of course. I’ll look forward to hearing from you.”

“Right. Okay. Bye then.” She slapped the phone closed. “Oh my freaking
God
.”

“Sam.”

“What? Mentioning the name God is not taking His name in vain. That was my
chief of staff
at the freaking
White House
wanting to know if I’ll be at the nine a.m.
staff meeting
in the morning. I have a freaking
staff
.”

“Don’t you mean another freaking staff?” Freddie asked, pointing to himself.

“This is not a joking matter.”

“Oh, but it is. It really,
really
is.”

Glaring at him, she said, “Shut up.” She opened the phone and hit the name of the person who was usually number one on her list of favorites.

Nick answered on the third ring, sounding out of breath. “Hey, babe.”

“What’re you doing that has you breathing hard?”

“Working out,” he said with a laugh, “so get your mind out of the gutter.”

“My mind is nowhere near the gutter. It’s actually at the White House.”

“Huh?”

“I just got a call from a fancy-sounding dame with a fancy-sounding name who claims to be my ‘chief of staff.’ Know anything about that?”

“I heard they were retaining Mrs. Gooding’s staff for you in case you wanted an experienced team. I told you that.”

“Um,
when
did you tell me that?”

“I don’t know the exact date and time, but we had a conversation about this.”

“Was I asleep? Unconscious? In a sex-induced coma perhaps?”

“Ugh, jeez,” Freddie mumbled. “Young ears.”

Sam made a face at him while Nick laughed at her question. “You were wide awake and appeared to be listening.”

“Well, I wasn’t! And now I’ve got Lilly Von Noodle calling me about meetings at the White House! I don’t want to go to meetings at the White House!”

“That’s not her name, is it?”

“How the hell do I know what her name is? I’ve never heard of her until she called to tell me she’s my so-called chief of staff. Joe Farnsworth is my chief of staff—the only one I need.”

“Samantha, take a breath, will you please?”

“Don’t use that tone with me. I’m not a child.”

“Okay, don’t breathe then, but don’t call me when you pass out.”

“Nick, this isn’t funny! These people expect me to come to a meeting to give them ‘direction.’ What direction am I supposed to give them? And hello, I have a job and a homicide to contend with that indirectly involves one of my closest colleagues while my actual chief is fighting for his career.
I
don’t have time for this!
”

“I’ll talk to Nelson’s people and see what we can do, okay?”

“Yes, okay, as long as you get me out of any meetings over there.”

“I’ll do what I can, but we did talk about you taking on a minor role as second lady before we agreed to accept Nelson’s offer.”

“A minor role doesn’t include staff, Nick!”