No One Left to Tell (30 page)

‘When?’

‘Wednesday. Allie was in the car that time.’ So she’d gone to see Dr Theopolis. ‘Then last night the chocolates came. I haven’t worked with the client whose name was on the label in six months. There wasn’t any reason for them to send me a gift. So I threw them away.’

‘You think your old client did this?’

‘No. But anyone could get my client list. It’s on my website.’

His jaw squared. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because I sound crazy. I didn’t think you’d believe me.’

‘I believe you, Adele.’

There was something in his voice that filled her with new fear. ‘You do?’

‘Rusty was poisoned. I’d like to know why someone would want to harm you. You of all people.’

She thought of the black car cruising by the night before. Had she really seen that last night? Or was it just another hideous memory snaking its way out of the box in which she’d locked it? ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. Darren stood, waiting for her to say more. Finally she shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ she repeated.

Darren nodded once. ‘I see,’ was all he said. He went about choosing his clothes, his movements robotic. ‘I’ll get Allie from the neighbor and take her to the babysitter. My mother will pick her up this afternoon. You and I can discuss this more later.’

Adele nodded, bewildered. She’d known he’d be upset. She’d known he’d protect Allie.
I thought he’d be more concerned for me
. Instead he seemed hurt. Withdrawn. Even wary. ‘Sure,’ she murmured. ‘I’ll be waiting for you.’

Toronto, Wednesday, April 6, 12.45
P.M
.

‘Papa, I don’t like this place.’ Violet stood in the hotel room, her lips in a pout. She hugged her ratty old doll. ‘I want to go home.’

Silas shared a glance with his wife. Rose knew enough to be afraid, but not enough to hate him. Not yet anyway. She sat on the bed. ‘Come sit. We’ll watch some TV.’

‘I’ll be back as soon as I can,’ Silas said. He hoped. He gave Rose an ATM card. ‘I have an account at the bank next door.’ He told her the pin code. ‘Buy what you need.’

His wife studied the name on the card, the same name he’d given at the border stop. She looked back up at him. ‘You’ve been planning this.’

‘Yes. But I hoped I’d never need it.’ He held open his arms for Violet, but she turned her head. ‘Honey, I’m sorry,’ he murmured. ‘I know you’re confused. I’ll be back soon and we can do some real fun things together, okay? Like . . . horseback riding. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

She looked back at him warily. ‘Really?’

‘Sure. Where we’re going on vacation has horses all around.’ The vacation part was false, but the horse part was true. His cabin was near a working ranch. At least he didn’t have to lie about everything. ‘You’ll love it.’

‘If we’re going on vacation, why are you leaving? We just got here.’

‘Papa’s got a few things to do first. I’ll be back soon.’ He tickled her, making her giggle. She wrapped her arms around him and hugged hard. ‘Be good.’

‘I’ll try.’

He swallowed hard. ‘There is no try.’

‘There is only do,’ she said dutifully, then kissed his cheek. ‘Love you, Papa.’

He held on tight, wondering if Jorge Delgado had gotten that last hug before his wife had driven away with their child. ‘I love you, too. Always.’ He stood, kissed his wife goodbye. ‘Remember what I said.’ He’d told her where to find his stash of cash. Where to hide in the event he did not come back.

Her eyes were terrified. ‘I’ll remember. Be careful. Come back to me.’

‘I will.’ He would be careful. Whether or not he’d come back to her . . .

He returned to his car, allowing himself one last look back at the hotel. They were safe. It gave him the strength to get back in his car and start the long drive home.

Baltimore, Maryland, Wednesday, April 6, 2.30
P.M
.

‘This is weird,’ Paige said, blinking to bring the computer screen back into focus. She and Grayson had set up their situation room on the dining-room table of his townhouse. They needed space to work and secure internet. And snacks.

They’d arrived back at his home to find his refrigerator filled with food from Lisa and Brian’s kitchen, ‘leftovers’ from the party they’d catered the night before. Paige had been so nervous this morning that she hadn’t been able to stomach the thought of food, but her appetite had returned with a vengeance and her workspace at Grayson’s table was cluttered with empty bowls. The computer monitor she stared at was huge, taken from the desk in his home office. Which smelled like him.

She’d ignored that fact as she’d gathered the equipment she needed. She’d ignored that fact as she’d sat across from him while studying naked, privileged college brats cavorting in Rex McCloud’s swimming pool.

Grayson had files spread in a semi-circle around him and had been making phone calls to the names on his old witness list while she reviewed video and tried to identify the faces in the pool from their society photos, Facebook pics. And mugshots.

They were a rowdy group, Rex McCloud and his friends. They’d gotten into more trouble in the intervening six years than she could fathom. Interestingly enough, not one had served any real time.
Money talks
.

Right now, money was screaming all around her. The dishes from which she’d eaten Brian’s Mac-a-Chee were antique Wedgwood. The furniture exuded the same kind of quiet wealth and breeding, leaving Paige more curious about Grayson than the naked people in the pool.

Unfortunately, the naked people could be key to keeping her alive. And one of the naked people had her frowning. ‘This video’s not right,’ she said.

He looked up from his notes. ‘Besides being bad porn, what’s wrong with it?’

‘This woman, Betsy Malone. Come see what I mean.’

He got up, wincing as he stretched, then came around the table, his expression grim. He’d been watching her, stealing peeks as they worked. She knew because she’d caught him several times. The rest of the time she could feel his gaze.

Combined with watching naked people for two hours, Paige found herself a little warm. Gripping the back of her chair by her left shoulder, he rested his hand on the table at her right, caging her in. He leaned closer to see the screen and for a second she had to close her eyes.
Okay, a lot warm
.

Definitely not one-sided, his head dipped lower until his jaw rubbed against her temple and he inhaled. For a moment they hung there, the air growing charged between them. She wanted him. For a moment she let herself wish.

I don’t do relationships
.

Abruptly she broke away. ‘Focus, okay?’ she snapped.

‘Okay,’ he said, his voice husky. His swallow was audible. ‘What’s not right?’

‘This woman. Betsy. She’s one of the names on Rex McCloud’s guest list.’

‘Right. I interviewed her before the trial. She verified Rex’s alibi.’

‘Of course she did. She was probably scoring crack from him. They got arrested together for possession at a party a year later.’

‘That doesn’t prove she was lying about that night.’

‘No. That’s not what wasn’t right. I’ve been watching the video on your laptop.’ Which she’d connected to the large monitor. ‘I’ve been going through the guest list pulling internet social networking pages and mugshots and running other searches on my own laptop. Look at Betsy the night of the party. It was mid-September.’ She expanded the frozen frame until Betsy filled the large monitor,
all
of her. The young woman was naked in the shallow end, being pummeled from behind by Rex himself.

Grayson cleared his throat. ‘Okay. Interesting choice of frames. What’s not right?’

‘Her breasts. They’re small. Maybe A cup, if she’s lucky.’

‘Are you fishing for compliments here? Because you’ve got her beat. In every way.’ His voice grew gruff. ‘I really hope you’re about to show me what’s not right soon, otherwise I have to leave.’

Paige brought up a screen on her laptop. ‘Look at Betsy on her MySpace page.’

She could feel him tense in surprise. ‘Whoa. Somebody had some work done.’

Betsy was wearing a tiny bikini in the second photo, her hand on her hip. Her smile for the camera was huge. As were her new breasts.

‘This MySpace photo is dated August 15 of the same year.’ Paige glanced over her shoulder to see if he was following. From the frown on his face, he was not. ‘She was a D cup in August, and an A cup a month later, in September. Either the date on the MySpace photo is wrong, which I don’t think it is because she’s at her birthday party, or the date on the video is wrong.’

‘This video isn’t from the night Crystal Jones was murdered,’ he murmured.

‘Exactly.’

‘That changes everything.’

‘It would mean the McClouds’ security men gave you the wrong tape. One could only assume they did so on purpose. To alibi Rex.’

He straightened, leaving her cold. ‘One could assume. One couldn’t say with certainty though.’ He looked at her shrewdly. ‘Was Betsy’s MySpace locked down?’

‘You mean did I hack into it? I’m flattered that you think I could, but the answer is no. I’m no hacker. I got into Betsy’s account the old-fashioned way. Search and click. Betsy never locked her privacy settings. And this is an old account. There’s been no activity for about three years. She started her Facebook account about a year ago and the pictures there are a lot tamer. Apparently she was in rehab and has been clean for a year. But she never took down the MySpace.’

‘So anyone with her password could have posted to it.’

‘That’s true with any social media. Which is what I thought you’d say.’ Turning back to the large monitor, she moved the video to another point and froze the frame. ‘The night is clear, the moon is three-quarters full.’ She twisted in her chair to look up at him. ‘According to the charts, the moon was only a quarter full the night Crystal died.’

Grayson was clearly unhappy. ‘Goddamn. Why didn’t we see that?’

‘You weren’t looking to disprove the video. You were looking for confirmation of Rex McCloud’s alibi.’

‘You could have just told me the moon part,’ he said grumpily. ‘You didn’t have to flash Betsy’s boobs in my face.’

‘Possibly true. But I had to watch all this video of naked people behaving badly and it seemed a shame not to present my theory with a little pizzazz. So now what?’

‘Like I said, this changes everything. But I’m not optimistic about getting our hands on the real video, all these years later.’

‘But this, along with the photos Elena found, provide enough reasonable doubt to get Ramon a new trial, right?’

‘We might be able to get his conviction overturned without a new trial. That would be better. And faster.’

‘Faster is better. This Betsy woman looks like she’s turned over a new leaf. She’s volunteering at one of her old rehab centers. She might be more willing to tell you the truth about what happened that night now than she was five years ago.’

‘I’ll call her next.’

‘You don’t sound like you’ve been having a lot of success finding the old witnesses,’ she said carefully.

‘Not a lot, no. Some have moved. Some have died, including the security guard who provided the alibi video. But I did find Rex McCloud.’

‘Maybe we should see him first, in case he runs.’

Grayson shook his head. ‘No “we”. I’ll talk to him. You won’t go near him.’

She sat back in her chair. ‘And why the hell not?’

‘Because you’re not . . . officially on this case,’ he said, ending lamely.

‘And you are, Mr Fraud Division?’

He rolled his eyes. ‘Rex McCloud is not going to run. He was released to house arrest after his last conviction. Now that he has no alibi for that night, he’s first on the list of suspects. But I need to think of all the possibilities, not just Rex.’

‘Because he has a powerful family?’

‘That’s part of it,’ he admitted. ‘His family makes it very difficult to investigate, even with the mantle of the office.’

‘Maybe it’ll be easier without it,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to worry about stepping on the toes of wealthy campaign contributors. You can ask what you want.’

‘That’s true. But when I do start stepping on toes, I want them to be the right ones. Most of the people in that pool were kids of very rich parents. If one of them did it and the real tape shows that person interacting with Crystal Jones, the parents could have bribed the McCloud security.’

It was possible. ‘Then why not start with Crystal?’ she asked. ‘She went to that party for a reason. She used an assumed name and lied her way in. Once there, she didn’t party. Maybe somebody knew her intent. She lived with her sister at the time of her murder. Maybe she told her something.’

‘I talked to her sister five years ago. She didn’t know anything.’

‘Grayson, who’s to say that whoever convinced Jorge Delgado to keep quiet didn’t intimidate Crystal’s sister or any of the other witnesses, on both sides? Who’s to say that five years might not make a difference? We need to know why Crystal went to that party and right now the closest link you have to Crystal Jones is her sister.’

‘I called her house but she didn’t live there anymore,’ he told her.

‘When you called,’ Paige said gently, ‘you said you were from the state’s attorney’s office. I might not have been honest with you either, especially if I’d lied before.’ He was still hesitating and she thought she knew why. ‘If you’d had the right evidence, you would have gotten justice for her sister. You have nothing to be ashamed of.’

His eyes flashed, but he said nothing, so she stood up. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s find Crystal’s sister. If she’s moved, we’ll track her down.’

He nodded stiffly. ‘Does the dog need to be walked first?’

‘It’s been a while since he’s been out. I’ll do it.’

‘
No
.’ He bit out the word. ‘I don’t want you out in the open yet.’

‘Grayson, you looked the shooter in the eye last night. He’s gonna be after you too.’