Trust No One (Devlin & Falco), page 32
Deep, deep breath. Kerri looked to her partner. “We need to take this to the LT.”
“Like he’s going to listen, especially since it’s her word against theirs,” Falco pointed out. “Thompson would likely say she was a jilted lover trying to get back at him.”
“But he hasn’t dumped me,” Jen interjected. “I’m dumping him.”
“Your word against his. We need evidence, Jen. Something we can use to physically link them to that house on that night.”
Kerri rubbed her hands over her face. She was tired. So damned tired. “We have to find a way to use this. This could make all the difference.”
Falco looked at Jen a moment before turning back to Kerri. “She could confront Thompson about that night while wearing a wire.”
Kerri shook her head. “It’s too risky.” She looked at her lifelong friend. “As much as I want that bastard, I don’t want to put her in danger.”
“I’ll do it,” Jen asserted. “I’ll do whatever you need me to do. I swear. Anything.”
Kerri stared pointedly at her. “You feel guilty. You want to somehow make this right. What Falco is suggesting isn’t going—”
“I’ll do it.” Jen nodded frantically. “I’m so sorry. I’m an idiot, but I can do this.”
“No.” Kerri shook her head. “I will not let you get yourself hurt or maybe killed. I’m not sure you understand how ruthless these people are.”
Tears filled the other woman’s eyes again. “Please, let me help. For Amelia and her friend—that Sela Abbott.”
“This could make the chief and the LT see this case the way we need them to,” Falco reminded her.
As much as Kerri didn’t want to admit it, he was right. “When are you supposed to see him again?” Kerri’s tone was harsher than she’d intended. Calm and cool wasn’t exactly handy right now.
“We haven’t made plans, but I can call him.” Jen looked from Kerri to Falco and back. “I can do this. He trusts me.”
Kerri’s cell vibrated in her pocket. She checked the screen, couldn’t identify the caller. “Devlin.”
“Kerri Devlin?”
Kerri put a hand over her ear in an effort to hear the caller better above the noise in the pub. “Yes.”
“Ma’am, my name is Eleanor Gonzalez. I’m at the Delta counter here at Birmingham-Shuttlesworth. Your daughter, Victoria, is here.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Why is my daughter at the airport?” Uncertainty washed over Kerri.
“She’s attempting to exchange an airline ticket to New York from her scheduled flight on Monday to one today. Unfortunately, since she’s only thirteen and not the purchaser of the ticket, we can’t make the change for her. I called Nicholas Jackman, the purchaser of the ticket. He asked me to cancel the ticket and to call you to pick up Victoria.”
Outrage bolted through Kerri. “I’ll be right there.” She slid her phone into her pocket as she stood. “I have to pick up Tori.”
“Call him,” Falco said to Jen as he pushed back his chair. “Try to see him tonight if possible. As soon as you have a time and place, let us know. We’ll help you prepare.”
Jen nodded. “Okay. I can do this. I really can.”
Kerri still didn’t like this. Not one bit.
“Is Tori okay?” Jen asked, worry and fear and no small amount of pain etched on her face.
“I don’t know. She’s at the airport, trying to leave for New York.”
Jen’s hand went to her mouth.
“I have to go.” Kerri hesitated. “Do not do anything without talking to one of us first. Got it?”
Jen nodded. “Got it.”
Kerri hurried for the door. She had to get to Tori.
Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport
Kerri stood just beyond the automatic doors for a long moment. Her daughter sat in a seat directly across from the airline desk. Her backpack and a small suitcase sat at her feet.
Kerri had no idea why the son of a bitch had canceled the hearing—though she was glad he had. But she had a feeling something more had gone down. Tori wouldn’t have come to the airport trying to use the ticket he’d emailed her otherwise. Something had happened to upset her.
Deep breath.
Kerri walked over to the row of chairs. “Tori, what’s going on?”
She wouldn’t look at Kerri; she kept her gaze glued to her phone and her scroll of Instagram.
Kerri moved around to the other side of her and sat down. “I’m really sorry, but your father canceled the tickets, so you’re going to need to come home with me now.”
“You’re not sorry. You’re glad. Don’t pretend to be something you’re not.” She shoved her phone into a pocket on her backpack.
Kerri leaned forward and braced her forearms on her thighs. “It’s true I don’t want you to spend the entire summer away. I’ll admit that much, but I was okay with four weeks, remember? I would never have wanted anything to happen to hurt you. I’m sure we can call your father and work out a new schedule for you to visit. Whatever is going on—”
“She’s pregnant,” Tori cried. She swiped at her eyes. “She found out today she’s having a baby, and Dad said they would be too busy this summer for me to come.”
The dirty rotten bastard.
Kerri pulled her daughter into her arms. “Baby, I am so very sorry. I don’t even know what to say.”
“I thought if I just showed up, he would change his mind. I could help them get the baby’s room ready. I could do lots of things.”
Her thin body quaked in Kerri’s arms, and her heart fractured.
“He’ll never have time for me now.”
Tori cried for a while, and Kerri let her. She said nothing more. To say anything more was unnecessary. Her daughter had just learned the hard way what a dick her father could be. Kerri wished she could have protected her from this. Nick should have called her and explained the situation. He should never have just canceled on their daughter.
“I want to go home,” Tori whispered between sobs.
“Come on. We’ll stop for ice cream on the way.”
She grabbed the small suitcase, and Tori shouldered her backpack. Kerri draped an arm around her, and they exited the airport. Falco’s car sat at the curb. He was leaning against it, waiting for them.
“Hey, pretty girl.”
Tori stopped and faced her mother. “Can Falco stay with us for a while and play video games with me? We could order pizza like last time.”
Kerri laughed and looked to her partner. “I don’t know. Can he?”
“Sure thing, girlie. But I have to warn you”—he opened the rear passenger door—“I’m the best at just about any game you name, so prepare for a beatdown.”
“It’s on,” Tori said as she launched into the back seat.
As they prepared to get in, Kerri mouthed the words thank you across the top of the car to her partner. He gave her a wink and slid behind the wheel.
She wasn’t always a great mom, but Falco was wrong. He would make a good dad.
57
6:30 p.m.
Devlin Residence
Twenty-First Avenue South
Tori and Falco had just gotten settled in front of the television with their ice cream and a fierce game Kerri couldn’t name, much less understand, when the doorbell rang. She hoped it was Jen with news of a rendezvous with Thompson. Falco was right. With Jen’s help they could tie both York and Thompson to that murder scene . . . maybe.
The sooner they finished this and found Amelia, the better. If she was in hiding and her cell was dead, Kerri wasn’t sure how they would get in touch with her.
As long as she was safe, the rest would work out.
In the meantime, Kerri had decided to talk to Tori about staying the night at Diana’s so she and Falco could move forward with their plan to surveil Thompson and York tonight. Whatever was going down with this case, it was starting to move faster. They couldn’t risk following orders. Not tonight for sure. Kerri’s instincts were humming.
She walked to the door and checked the peephole. Diana and Robby.
Kerri’s heart rocketed into her throat. She almost ripped the door off its hinges getting it open. “Have you heard from Amelia?”
Diana shook her head, the weariness in the move squeezing Kerri’s chest.
“We need to talk to you, Kerri.” Robby glanced at the racket on the television, then at Tori and Falco on the sofa.
“Sure. Come on in. We can talk in the kitchen.”
Tori shouted “Hey!” to Diana and Robby but never took her eyes off the game. Falco gave one of those jerks of his head that guys used as a form of greeting.
In the kitchen, Kerri gestured to the island. “Pull up a stool, and I’ll get the beer. So not even a text from Amelia?”
“No.” This from Diana. The icy fear in the single syllable tore at Kerri’s soul.
Robby didn’t say anything; he just stood there staring at Kerri.
She grabbed two beers and walked back to the island, set both on the counter. “You guys are making me nervous. What’s going on?”
The two looked at each other before turning back to Kerri. Robby swallowed hard and seemed to struggle drawing in a breath. “We think something bad has happened to Amelia, and it’s my fault.”
“No.” Diana shook her head. “It’s our fault.”
Kerri put the brakes on the emotions that started to twist inside her. “Have you heard something from one of her friends?”
There had been nothing on Amelia’s laptop or social media. Her friends claimed not to have heard from her. Bellemont claimed Ramsey had only been watching her to see if she would lead him to Sela. Though Kerri didn’t trust the guy to be telling the whole truth, they damned sure couldn’t find Ramsey to question him.
Diana and Robby shook their heads in answer to her question about Amelia’s friends.
“Okay,” Kerri said. “Sit down. Drink the beer, and tell me what you mean.”
Robby waited for his wife to sit, then pulled out a stool for himself. He opened a beer and downed it. Kerri glanced at Diana; she shook her head, then pushed the other beer to her husband.
“Take it a little slower this time,” Kerri suggested.
Robby sipped the beer, then took a big breath. “You remember when my dad died?”
Kerri nodded. “Of course. It was rough for you guys for a while.” His father had left the books at the shop in a mess. But Robby had turned it around.
“There’s a reason I was able to turn it around so quickly.”
“You’re good at what you do.” Kerri eased up onto a stool on her side of the island.
He shook his head. “The bank was foreclosing. I had no idea what I was going to do. All I could think about was how Di and I would lose everything. Amelia was only three and . . .” He shook his head again. “I was desperate.”
“Been there, done that,” Kerri assured him. Most everyone experienced hard times at one point or another.
“No.” His gaze collided with hers. “You would never do what I did.”
“Now you’re really freaking me out. What did you do?” When he hesitated, she said, “Robby, this is just me, you, and Diana. Whatever you say, I’m not telling anyone.”
His face crumpled, and for a second she thought he would cry. “You have to, Kerri. There’s no way around it. I should have done this a long time ago and maybe . . .” He closed his eyes and shook his head.
Kerri looked to Diana, who seemed to have drifted into a coma. She shifted her attention back to Robby. “Okay. Why don’t you start at the beginning?”
He downed the rest of his second beer. “I think you should probably get your partner in here for this.”
Oh hell. “If you’re sure that’s what you want.”
He nodded. “I’m sure.”
Kerri went into the living room. It took her a moment to convince Tori to release Falco from his promise. He swore he would make it up to her. Kerri decided her daughter sensed something was wrong when she said, “No problem. I have new clothes to hang up.”
She turned off the game and headed for the stairs.
Back in the kitchen, Kerri introduced Falco to Robby; then he took a seat on a stool at the end of the island. Kerri brought a round of beers.
“Right after my dad died,” Robby started again, “the bank had sent the loan to foreclosure. I had done all I could do.” He exhaled a big breath. “A few days later I was working late—”
“You worked late all the time,” Kerri reminded him. Poor guy. “Still do.”
He nodded. “Yeah. Well, this one night a man knocked on the door. It was maybe nine o’clock. He said he had a proposition for me. He showed me his car, where he’d had what he called a fender bender. It was a company car, he said, and he didn’t want any trouble. When I hesitated, he told me he could help with my loan problems if I could fix the car then and there. When I still hesitated—to tell you the truth, I thought the guy was nuts—he said if I made the repairs and kept my mouth shut that he’d make the whole loan problem go away. I laughed because it was a hell of a lot of money, so I knew he was pulling my leg. I was a little rattled since I wasn’t sure how he knew about my loan.”
Kerri refrained from asking questions. She didn’t want to stop his momentum. This was obviously difficult enough without her interjecting her thoughts. Questions or comments could come when he was done. Falco apparently had decided the same.
“He told me he was a lawyer at the firm who was working the foreclosure. He kept telling me he could make it go away. Finally, I said okay. He sat down in my office to wait. It took me hours because I couldn’t go for parts or paint. I had to use what I had on hand and mix colors to make it match.” He shrugged. “But I was really good at that kind of thing, so I kept at it until I got it just right.”
He scrubbed his hands over his face. Kerri had never seen him so exhausted and shaken. Diana looked lost, defeated. Kerri’s chest hurt. She hated seeing her sister suffer so. Amelia couldn’t possibly understand how she was hurting her parents, or she would come home.
Unless someone wouldn’t allow her to do so.
“Before he left,” Robby continued, “he gave me his card and said that as long as I kept my end of the bargain, he would keep his. I figured I had just been screwed, but what the hell—I had been screwed before. The next day one of those messenger guys stopped by the shop and delivered the paperwork on my loan. It was stamped ‘Paid in Full.’ I thought it was a joke, so I called the bank. But it was true. The loan was paid in full.”
Robby’s gaze shifted full on to Kerri’s. “In fifteen years, not a day or a night has gone by that I haven’t worried that he’d come back and want something else. I knew what I’d done—whatever he had done—was bad. Really bad.”
Falco asked, “Did this man ever approach you again?”
“Before you say more,” Diana said to Robby, her hands up in a sort of surrender, “let me talk.”
Robby didn’t look happy about it, but he nodded for her to go ahead.
She cleared her throat. “Around that same time, maybe a few months later, a man approached me at the little studio I leased when I first started out.”
“I remember the one,” Kerri said. Little was a generous description. Her sister had worked really hard to move up from there.
Diana nodded, drew in a shaky breath. “He was widowed and had a little girl. She was four at the time. She was very shy. He said she just hadn’t been the same since her mother died. He wanted me to give her private classes. At first I refused because honestly I couldn’t afford to spend the time with just one child. I needed at least ten students in each class to make it financially feasible.”
She looked to Robby, and he took her hand in his before she continued. “He offered me two hundred dollars per session. All I had to do was work with her one on one for one hour each week.”
Kerri made a surprised face. “Wow.”
Diana shook her head slowly from side to side. “He was so nice, and his little girl was so sad. God knows I needed the money, so I said yes.” She moistened her lips. “These private lessons continued for the next several years, and I put aside most of it. I really wanted to be able to one day buy a studio of my own. As luck would have it, the place I’m in now came available. But I didn’t have enough for a proper down payment, and the interest rate was insane. This man offered to give me an interest-free loan. I refused, of course.” She drew in a big breath. “The next thing I knew, he’d bought the studio and handed me the deed. He said I could pay him back in whatever way worked for me.” She turned to her husband. “I never told Robby. I didn’t want him to worry that I was getting in over my head or that there was something else going on.”
Robby put his arm around her. “Because I had kept my mouth shut, she had no idea that the man who’d been bringing his daughter to her all that time was the same one who showed up at my shop late that night wanting his car repaired.”
Kerri suddenly felt sick to her stomach. She knew where this was going.
“Have you,” Falco asked Robby again, “heard from him since that first time?”
“Not until just over two weeks ago. He came to my shop and said he had another job for me. This time he was going to give me cash. All I had to do was damage the braking system on a car so that the brakes would fail. He would see that the car was brought to me, and I would never know who it belonged to or anything.”
Kerri held her breath. But she knew Robby. He wouldn’t do anything to hurt another human. Neither would Diana.
“I told him no way. I couldn’t do it. He reminded me that I owed him a big debt of gratitude. That I still had my business, and it was flourishing because of what he did for me. I told him that was payment for a service I provided. He said it was more than that; it was tampering with evidence, and if I didn’t do what he needed me to do, the police might find out. I figured he had as much to lose as I did, so I stood my ground.”
“Did he let it go at that?” Kerri had to ask. Deep down she knew there was more. What Robby had said about Amelia when he and Diana first arrived kept echoing in her head.
“He said okay, if that’s the way I wanted to do things, but he warned I would regret turning him down. Then he left.”
“Like he’s going to listen, especially since it’s her word against theirs,” Falco pointed out. “Thompson would likely say she was a jilted lover trying to get back at him.”
“But he hasn’t dumped me,” Jen interjected. “I’m dumping him.”
“Your word against his. We need evidence, Jen. Something we can use to physically link them to that house on that night.”
Kerri rubbed her hands over her face. She was tired. So damned tired. “We have to find a way to use this. This could make all the difference.”
Falco looked at Jen a moment before turning back to Kerri. “She could confront Thompson about that night while wearing a wire.”
Kerri shook her head. “It’s too risky.” She looked at her lifelong friend. “As much as I want that bastard, I don’t want to put her in danger.”
“I’ll do it,” Jen asserted. “I’ll do whatever you need me to do. I swear. Anything.”
Kerri stared pointedly at her. “You feel guilty. You want to somehow make this right. What Falco is suggesting isn’t going—”
“I’ll do it.” Jen nodded frantically. “I’m so sorry. I’m an idiot, but I can do this.”
“No.” Kerri shook her head. “I will not let you get yourself hurt or maybe killed. I’m not sure you understand how ruthless these people are.”
Tears filled the other woman’s eyes again. “Please, let me help. For Amelia and her friend—that Sela Abbott.”
“This could make the chief and the LT see this case the way we need them to,” Falco reminded her.
As much as Kerri didn’t want to admit it, he was right. “When are you supposed to see him again?” Kerri’s tone was harsher than she’d intended. Calm and cool wasn’t exactly handy right now.
“We haven’t made plans, but I can call him.” Jen looked from Kerri to Falco and back. “I can do this. He trusts me.”
Kerri’s cell vibrated in her pocket. She checked the screen, couldn’t identify the caller. “Devlin.”
“Kerri Devlin?”
Kerri put a hand over her ear in an effort to hear the caller better above the noise in the pub. “Yes.”
“Ma’am, my name is Eleanor Gonzalez. I’m at the Delta counter here at Birmingham-Shuttlesworth. Your daughter, Victoria, is here.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Why is my daughter at the airport?” Uncertainty washed over Kerri.
“She’s attempting to exchange an airline ticket to New York from her scheduled flight on Monday to one today. Unfortunately, since she’s only thirteen and not the purchaser of the ticket, we can’t make the change for her. I called Nicholas Jackman, the purchaser of the ticket. He asked me to cancel the ticket and to call you to pick up Victoria.”
Outrage bolted through Kerri. “I’ll be right there.” She slid her phone into her pocket as she stood. “I have to pick up Tori.”
“Call him,” Falco said to Jen as he pushed back his chair. “Try to see him tonight if possible. As soon as you have a time and place, let us know. We’ll help you prepare.”
Jen nodded. “Okay. I can do this. I really can.”
Kerri still didn’t like this. Not one bit.
“Is Tori okay?” Jen asked, worry and fear and no small amount of pain etched on her face.
“I don’t know. She’s at the airport, trying to leave for New York.”
Jen’s hand went to her mouth.
“I have to go.” Kerri hesitated. “Do not do anything without talking to one of us first. Got it?”
Jen nodded. “Got it.”
Kerri hurried for the door. She had to get to Tori.
Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport
Kerri stood just beyond the automatic doors for a long moment. Her daughter sat in a seat directly across from the airline desk. Her backpack and a small suitcase sat at her feet.
Kerri had no idea why the son of a bitch had canceled the hearing—though she was glad he had. But she had a feeling something more had gone down. Tori wouldn’t have come to the airport trying to use the ticket he’d emailed her otherwise. Something had happened to upset her.
Deep breath.
Kerri walked over to the row of chairs. “Tori, what’s going on?”
She wouldn’t look at Kerri; she kept her gaze glued to her phone and her scroll of Instagram.
Kerri moved around to the other side of her and sat down. “I’m really sorry, but your father canceled the tickets, so you’re going to need to come home with me now.”
“You’re not sorry. You’re glad. Don’t pretend to be something you’re not.” She shoved her phone into a pocket on her backpack.
Kerri leaned forward and braced her forearms on her thighs. “It’s true I don’t want you to spend the entire summer away. I’ll admit that much, but I was okay with four weeks, remember? I would never have wanted anything to happen to hurt you. I’m sure we can call your father and work out a new schedule for you to visit. Whatever is going on—”
“She’s pregnant,” Tori cried. She swiped at her eyes. “She found out today she’s having a baby, and Dad said they would be too busy this summer for me to come.”
The dirty rotten bastard.
Kerri pulled her daughter into her arms. “Baby, I am so very sorry. I don’t even know what to say.”
“I thought if I just showed up, he would change his mind. I could help them get the baby’s room ready. I could do lots of things.”
Her thin body quaked in Kerri’s arms, and her heart fractured.
“He’ll never have time for me now.”
Tori cried for a while, and Kerri let her. She said nothing more. To say anything more was unnecessary. Her daughter had just learned the hard way what a dick her father could be. Kerri wished she could have protected her from this. Nick should have called her and explained the situation. He should never have just canceled on their daughter.
“I want to go home,” Tori whispered between sobs.
“Come on. We’ll stop for ice cream on the way.”
She grabbed the small suitcase, and Tori shouldered her backpack. Kerri draped an arm around her, and they exited the airport. Falco’s car sat at the curb. He was leaning against it, waiting for them.
“Hey, pretty girl.”
Tori stopped and faced her mother. “Can Falco stay with us for a while and play video games with me? We could order pizza like last time.”
Kerri laughed and looked to her partner. “I don’t know. Can he?”
“Sure thing, girlie. But I have to warn you”—he opened the rear passenger door—“I’m the best at just about any game you name, so prepare for a beatdown.”
“It’s on,” Tori said as she launched into the back seat.
As they prepared to get in, Kerri mouthed the words thank you across the top of the car to her partner. He gave her a wink and slid behind the wheel.
She wasn’t always a great mom, but Falco was wrong. He would make a good dad.
57
6:30 p.m.
Devlin Residence
Twenty-First Avenue South
Tori and Falco had just gotten settled in front of the television with their ice cream and a fierce game Kerri couldn’t name, much less understand, when the doorbell rang. She hoped it was Jen with news of a rendezvous with Thompson. Falco was right. With Jen’s help they could tie both York and Thompson to that murder scene . . . maybe.
The sooner they finished this and found Amelia, the better. If she was in hiding and her cell was dead, Kerri wasn’t sure how they would get in touch with her.
As long as she was safe, the rest would work out.
In the meantime, Kerri had decided to talk to Tori about staying the night at Diana’s so she and Falco could move forward with their plan to surveil Thompson and York tonight. Whatever was going down with this case, it was starting to move faster. They couldn’t risk following orders. Not tonight for sure. Kerri’s instincts were humming.
She walked to the door and checked the peephole. Diana and Robby.
Kerri’s heart rocketed into her throat. She almost ripped the door off its hinges getting it open. “Have you heard from Amelia?”
Diana shook her head, the weariness in the move squeezing Kerri’s chest.
“We need to talk to you, Kerri.” Robby glanced at the racket on the television, then at Tori and Falco on the sofa.
“Sure. Come on in. We can talk in the kitchen.”
Tori shouted “Hey!” to Diana and Robby but never took her eyes off the game. Falco gave one of those jerks of his head that guys used as a form of greeting.
In the kitchen, Kerri gestured to the island. “Pull up a stool, and I’ll get the beer. So not even a text from Amelia?”
“No.” This from Diana. The icy fear in the single syllable tore at Kerri’s soul.
Robby didn’t say anything; he just stood there staring at Kerri.
She grabbed two beers and walked back to the island, set both on the counter. “You guys are making me nervous. What’s going on?”
The two looked at each other before turning back to Kerri. Robby swallowed hard and seemed to struggle drawing in a breath. “We think something bad has happened to Amelia, and it’s my fault.”
“No.” Diana shook her head. “It’s our fault.”
Kerri put the brakes on the emotions that started to twist inside her. “Have you heard something from one of her friends?”
There had been nothing on Amelia’s laptop or social media. Her friends claimed not to have heard from her. Bellemont claimed Ramsey had only been watching her to see if she would lead him to Sela. Though Kerri didn’t trust the guy to be telling the whole truth, they damned sure couldn’t find Ramsey to question him.
Diana and Robby shook their heads in answer to her question about Amelia’s friends.
“Okay,” Kerri said. “Sit down. Drink the beer, and tell me what you mean.”
Robby waited for his wife to sit, then pulled out a stool for himself. He opened a beer and downed it. Kerri glanced at Diana; she shook her head, then pushed the other beer to her husband.
“Take it a little slower this time,” Kerri suggested.
Robby sipped the beer, then took a big breath. “You remember when my dad died?”
Kerri nodded. “Of course. It was rough for you guys for a while.” His father had left the books at the shop in a mess. But Robby had turned it around.
“There’s a reason I was able to turn it around so quickly.”
“You’re good at what you do.” Kerri eased up onto a stool on her side of the island.
He shook his head. “The bank was foreclosing. I had no idea what I was going to do. All I could think about was how Di and I would lose everything. Amelia was only three and . . .” He shook his head again. “I was desperate.”
“Been there, done that,” Kerri assured him. Most everyone experienced hard times at one point or another.
“No.” His gaze collided with hers. “You would never do what I did.”
“Now you’re really freaking me out. What did you do?” When he hesitated, she said, “Robby, this is just me, you, and Diana. Whatever you say, I’m not telling anyone.”
His face crumpled, and for a second she thought he would cry. “You have to, Kerri. There’s no way around it. I should have done this a long time ago and maybe . . .” He closed his eyes and shook his head.
Kerri looked to Diana, who seemed to have drifted into a coma. She shifted her attention back to Robby. “Okay. Why don’t you start at the beginning?”
He downed the rest of his second beer. “I think you should probably get your partner in here for this.”
Oh hell. “If you’re sure that’s what you want.”
He nodded. “I’m sure.”
Kerri went into the living room. It took her a moment to convince Tori to release Falco from his promise. He swore he would make it up to her. Kerri decided her daughter sensed something was wrong when she said, “No problem. I have new clothes to hang up.”
She turned off the game and headed for the stairs.
Back in the kitchen, Kerri introduced Falco to Robby; then he took a seat on a stool at the end of the island. Kerri brought a round of beers.
“Right after my dad died,” Robby started again, “the bank had sent the loan to foreclosure. I had done all I could do.” He exhaled a big breath. “A few days later I was working late—”
“You worked late all the time,” Kerri reminded him. Poor guy. “Still do.”
He nodded. “Yeah. Well, this one night a man knocked on the door. It was maybe nine o’clock. He said he had a proposition for me. He showed me his car, where he’d had what he called a fender bender. It was a company car, he said, and he didn’t want any trouble. When I hesitated, he told me he could help with my loan problems if I could fix the car then and there. When I still hesitated—to tell you the truth, I thought the guy was nuts—he said if I made the repairs and kept my mouth shut that he’d make the whole loan problem go away. I laughed because it was a hell of a lot of money, so I knew he was pulling my leg. I was a little rattled since I wasn’t sure how he knew about my loan.”
Kerri refrained from asking questions. She didn’t want to stop his momentum. This was obviously difficult enough without her interjecting her thoughts. Questions or comments could come when he was done. Falco apparently had decided the same.
“He told me he was a lawyer at the firm who was working the foreclosure. He kept telling me he could make it go away. Finally, I said okay. He sat down in my office to wait. It took me hours because I couldn’t go for parts or paint. I had to use what I had on hand and mix colors to make it match.” He shrugged. “But I was really good at that kind of thing, so I kept at it until I got it just right.”
He scrubbed his hands over his face. Kerri had never seen him so exhausted and shaken. Diana looked lost, defeated. Kerri’s chest hurt. She hated seeing her sister suffer so. Amelia couldn’t possibly understand how she was hurting her parents, or she would come home.
Unless someone wouldn’t allow her to do so.
“Before he left,” Robby continued, “he gave me his card and said that as long as I kept my end of the bargain, he would keep his. I figured I had just been screwed, but what the hell—I had been screwed before. The next day one of those messenger guys stopped by the shop and delivered the paperwork on my loan. It was stamped ‘Paid in Full.’ I thought it was a joke, so I called the bank. But it was true. The loan was paid in full.”
Robby’s gaze shifted full on to Kerri’s. “In fifteen years, not a day or a night has gone by that I haven’t worried that he’d come back and want something else. I knew what I’d done—whatever he had done—was bad. Really bad.”
Falco asked, “Did this man ever approach you again?”
“Before you say more,” Diana said to Robby, her hands up in a sort of surrender, “let me talk.”
Robby didn’t look happy about it, but he nodded for her to go ahead.
She cleared her throat. “Around that same time, maybe a few months later, a man approached me at the little studio I leased when I first started out.”
“I remember the one,” Kerri said. Little was a generous description. Her sister had worked really hard to move up from there.
Diana nodded, drew in a shaky breath. “He was widowed and had a little girl. She was four at the time. She was very shy. He said she just hadn’t been the same since her mother died. He wanted me to give her private classes. At first I refused because honestly I couldn’t afford to spend the time with just one child. I needed at least ten students in each class to make it financially feasible.”
She looked to Robby, and he took her hand in his before she continued. “He offered me two hundred dollars per session. All I had to do was work with her one on one for one hour each week.”
Kerri made a surprised face. “Wow.”
Diana shook her head slowly from side to side. “He was so nice, and his little girl was so sad. God knows I needed the money, so I said yes.” She moistened her lips. “These private lessons continued for the next several years, and I put aside most of it. I really wanted to be able to one day buy a studio of my own. As luck would have it, the place I’m in now came available. But I didn’t have enough for a proper down payment, and the interest rate was insane. This man offered to give me an interest-free loan. I refused, of course.” She drew in a big breath. “The next thing I knew, he’d bought the studio and handed me the deed. He said I could pay him back in whatever way worked for me.” She turned to her husband. “I never told Robby. I didn’t want him to worry that I was getting in over my head or that there was something else going on.”
Robby put his arm around her. “Because I had kept my mouth shut, she had no idea that the man who’d been bringing his daughter to her all that time was the same one who showed up at my shop late that night wanting his car repaired.”
Kerri suddenly felt sick to her stomach. She knew where this was going.
“Have you,” Falco asked Robby again, “heard from him since that first time?”
“Not until just over two weeks ago. He came to my shop and said he had another job for me. This time he was going to give me cash. All I had to do was damage the braking system on a car so that the brakes would fail. He would see that the car was brought to me, and I would never know who it belonged to or anything.”
Kerri held her breath. But she knew Robby. He wouldn’t do anything to hurt another human. Neither would Diana.
“I told him no way. I couldn’t do it. He reminded me that I owed him a big debt of gratitude. That I still had my business, and it was flourishing because of what he did for me. I told him that was payment for a service I provided. He said it was more than that; it was tampering with evidence, and if I didn’t do what he needed me to do, the police might find out. I figured he had as much to lose as I did, so I stood my ground.”
“Did he let it go at that?” Kerri had to ask. Deep down she knew there was more. What Robby had said about Amelia when he and Diana first arrived kept echoing in her head.
“He said okay, if that’s the way I wanted to do things, but he warned I would regret turning him down. Then he left.”
