Pool Of Lies Part 26

I didn't ask. I didn't ask. "Oh, thank you. I'll be here. Tell Stephen I'm home for the day." Dummy! It's night. It's ten o'clock in Miami.

"I will. It's good to talk to you, Mrs. Esposito."

"Thank you. Nice to meet you..."

"Callie."

"Of course. I'm just a little slow on the draw...it's been a long day. I...uh...just realized the time. Stephen can call me tomorrow. Okay?"

"Sure, Mrs. Esposito. Bye now."

Who the h.e.l.l is Callie? Somebody important. Hopefully, Stephen wasn't having casual s.e.x.

Who the h.e.l.l are you kidding? Stephen is a healthy twenty-four-year-old male.

That's not you, Grandma?

Rae buzzed around the kitchen, hoping sustenance would clear her head. There was morning coffee left in the Krupps and leftover lasagna in the fridge.

Two minutes in the microwave should make the lasagna palatable. While it was nuking, she played the phone message that had been left on her machine: Mrs. Esposito, Sam's voice, the bank has returned copies of the checks to Deidre. I'll have them available for you tomorrow.

Rae picked up the phone. Her first reflex was to call Veronica. But what if Veronica wanted her to wear a wire? Rae replaced the phone in its cradle. What to do? Sleep on it. Fat chance she'd get any sleep tonight. Might as well warm up the coffee.

Chapter 49.

Rae heaped her entire Bayfield audit file on Veronica's desk the next morning. "Here's everything I have to date. There is no evidence of misappropriation of funds. The only screwy things are the page of checks, which we won't revisit, and the GST tax which I've estimated. If Deidre's disburs.e.m.e.nt checks went to Camacho, you'll soon know that. If she cashed the checks and gave him the cash, you're back to square one."

"I'm back to square one? Wait a minute. What're you doing? Quitting on me?"

"When I pick up the bank copies of the disburs.e.m.e.nts to Deidre and examine them, my work will be finished."

"You've got a contract. You're finished when I say you are," Veronica said.

"Not when you trash my conclusions. I don't need that." Rae turned toward the door.

Veronica grabbed her arm. "I was needlessly rude to you yesterday. I had no right to take out my frustrations on you."

"That's true," Rae said. You acted like a roaring b.i.t.c.h.

"I still haven't made contact with Nate Farris."

"Are you worried something might've happened to him?" Rae's anger softened, replaced by her usual curiosity. If she left the case in a huff, she might miss something besides billable hours.

Veronica shook her head. "They wouldn't be that stupid. He's checked into a Holiday Inn in Arvada. We've had surveillance on him."

"You think he's having second thoughts?"

"I do." Veronica sighed. "About those checks? You're probably right. It makes sense, but there's nothing the D.A. can use. There are too many ways they can neatly explain it away. Nate's story seemed solid. If he recants, I don't even think we can use the Demerol."

"Why not?" Rae asked.

"Because the information that it might be in her purse came from Nate. With him recanting, the worst we'd have on Morgan is possession of a controlled substance. That is, if his recanting doesn't also shoot down our probable cause for seizing her purse. There's nothing on the packets or syringes that identifies where they came from. Her prints aren't even on the packets."

"She was wearing gloves when I met her," offered Rae. "Like my mother used to wear when she got dressed to go to church or something. People don't dress like that for every day."

"None of it matters if we don't have Nate's testimony." Veronica thumbed through the doc.u.ments Rae had deposited on her desk. "I see there was a stop-payment put on the check to Kevin. The second check. And the stop is dated after Kevin's body was discovered."

"Yes. Sam is meticulous. I would have been surprised if he'd overlooked that."

"Rae, I owe you." Veronica looked her straight in the eye. "I'm going to try to keep you in the loop from now on. Starting with Reggie's autopsy. He died of a myocardial infarction."

"A heart attack."

"I didn't order a tox screen. Why waste the taxpayers' money?"

Rae suppressed comment on that one. "What about IAB? Have they taken any action?"

"Too early, but I'm sure they will."

Veronica paused and seemed to be searching for the right words.

To say what? Rae twitched in her chair.

"All this talk about wires," began Veronica.

I knew it! Here it comes. I won't-- Veronica cut her off in mid-thought. "I was wearing a wire when I brought Morgan into Wehr's apartment. She's been our primary focus from the beginning. Since Deidre's death."

Rae gaped. "What about JJ Camacho?"

"We suspected he might have been acting on her orders."

"Raping her daughter? Taking her money? Give me a break!"

"No," Veronica's voice rose in pitch. "Of course not. That was before we knew Deidre was her daughter. But the whole bit about Sam sending Beth and Josh away without her knowledge. Claiming she thought Beth was missing. All smoke and mirrors."

"You never suspected Danny?"

"I'm a realist, Rae. Danny had the least to gain from Deidre's death, and nothing to gain from Kevin's. My idea was to get Morgan away from her lawyer. She wasn't officially a suspect, so we could do that. I had no idea what was on the tape. Just that it was bound to be emotional. Then when I saw it, I hoped that when she saw it, she would crack and admit to killing Kevin."

"I guess she didn't."

"As a matter of fact, she did crack. But not in the way I'd expected. Her face just crumpled up and she kept repeating 'My baby, my baby.' She rocked back and forth till I thought she was going to have a seizure. But she never shed a tear, and she never said a word that might implicate her in either murder."

Rae nodded, remembering Morgan's behavior the day before. "Everybody has a breaking point. Yesterday may be the closest Morgan's come to hers." She got up from the chair, preparing to leave Veronica's office.

"Any other questions?"

"Why did you keep Wheat Ridge out of the loop?"

"Are you forgetting the Wheat Ridge/Stan Eisley connection?" Veronica said.

"Oh, right. The fathers and their frat brother sons."

"Anything else?"

There was one more nibbling at Rae's brain. A biggie. She already knew the answer Veronica would give. "When you and Morgan left Wehr's...was Reggie..."

"I didn't even see Reggie. I told you, it was the next day, when I went in with the Wheat Ridge guys--"

"Oh, right, I forgot," Rae lied.

Sam Garvin met Rae at the door of Bayfield Enterprises. His craggy face looked like parchment drawn over bones. Rae felt her heart lurch, trying to imagine how he felt.

As she followed Sam past the picture of the groundbreaking, she took another look at young Sam. Doing the math from the date on the picture, she realized that he was younger than he appeared, even on good days. More likely early sixties rather than seventies. Not that much older than Morgan. They'd just had really s.h.i.tty timing.

"I have the check copies laid out in the conference room, the one you used before," he said.

No niceties this morning, thought Rae as she followed him down the hall. She wanted to ask how Morgan was holding up. And it wasn't just curiosity. Somehow the face of crime wasn't coming through in black or white. It was weird how something in her was now rooting for the geese. That's how she'd come to think of Sam and Morgan.

How could this be when they had probably killed at least one person and maybe planned to do in Nasty Nate? She guessed it fell into the cla.s.s of emotion that let your heart bleed for a trapped coyote when you knew it would bite your hand off if you tried to help it.

In the conference room, Sam stood at an appropriate distance while Rae examined the checks drawn on Deidre's trust. The first two appeared to have been cashed by Deidre. The next three, each for $50,000.00, were endorsed by Deidre to the order of James Joseph Camacho. Under Deidre's writing, Camacho had endorsed the checks and apparently received the cash.

"A hundred and fifty thou is hardly enough to retire on," Rae said.

"My count exactly," replied Sam, apparently ignoring the gist of her comment.

"I mean, this looks like just a start."

"As soon as I found out what was going on, I called the police. We didn't know Dee was turning her monthly disburs.e.m.e.nts over to him until she tried to double up on January's. That's when she first called me." The muscles in his jaw began to quiver.

"You did the right thing," Rae said. The sight of pain in his usually stoic face sent tears br.i.m.m.i.n.g. She blinked them back.

"I did the right thing, and it got her killed." There was a catch in his voice. "Do you think these checks will make any difference? Now do you think the police will finally go after this sc.u.mbag?"

"I think they've been looking for him all along."

"We know he was an informant. The police and the DEA considered him more important than my daughter."

So, he'd finally said the words. My daughter. Rae saw the blood rush into his face from the effort. Or the pain. Or the pride that might have been, had things been different.

Then she realized Sam had spoken of Camacho in the past tense. Did he just mean that Camacho was no longer an informant?

"Morgan Bayfield is not a murderer," said Sam.

So, he's leaving off the Farris.

"I'm in the process of preparing the supplemental Form 706 to pay the GST tax," he continued. "That was my error in judgment, and I'll pay for it. There's been no other crime on our part."

Our? "I'm sure you had no idea Kevin was dead when you voided that first check to him." Rae ventured out on the thin ice of her theory, but this time Veronica knew where she was and had a man stationed across the street in front of the p.o.r.no shop.

She'd never seen Sam caught off guard. This time, he blinked.

"Of course we didn't know he was dead. What check are you talking about?"

"The first one on the page with Fredricka's check and the other check to Kevin."

"There was only one check to Kevin."

"Could I see the check book again? I'll show you what I mean."

"Check stubs over thirty days old are shredded. Do you want to see the ledgers again? Or the bank statements?"

Rae shook her head. Period. End of story. That's all you're going to get, Rae.

"Can't say that I would've blamed you."

"Morgan and I have quite enough to blame ourselves for during Deidre's lifetime. We're taking steps to see to it that our daughter's death doesn't go unpunished."

Don't say it, Rae.

Too late, Grandma. The words were already in motion. "Kevin's death was a step in that direction."

Sam's next words glided smoothly over Rae's comment, never acknowledging it. "Since the police have chosen to ignore Deidre's murder, we're employing other means to get the justice she deserves. Legal means."

"You're suing the city?" Rae blurted.

Sam cracked a smile, but there was no humor in it. "Mrs. Esposito, I'm disappointed. You appeared to have more imagination than that."

Enough, Rae. "I'll just take these check copies and be on my way." Rae placed the evidence in her briefcase. I'm not playing any more games with you, old man.

But there was one more thing, since their paths were unlikely to cross again: "Why didn't you and Morgan just run away?"

As he looked at her, Rae saw his eyes brim, then he blinked. "A pregnant teenager and an adult male?"

"I mean ... later. After Deidre was born."

"Once Morgan reached majority, Deidre's ident.i.ty had been fixed. Morgan was so cowed by Jerome that she dared not take a breath on her own."