Cut and Run

by Allison Brennan

  There had been several times when Lucy helped with criminal cases, even though she had no legal authority or jurisdiction. There had been times when she’d broken the rules because someone was in danger.

  She looked at the timeline that Max had written on the board. She wanted to dismiss the coincidence, but she couldn’t. Victoria was killed the same day that the Albright bones were found, and Stan changed his plea the Monday after the Albrights’ identities were revealed. He must have seen a news report on it, but no … he couldn’t have. The information wasn’t released to the media until Monday afternoon.

  “Who told Stanley Grant that the bones we found were the Albrights? That wasn’t information we released until yesterday, but he planned on changing his plea over the weekend.”

  “Very good question,” Sean said. “Maybe he always knew.”

  “In a perfect world, Max would give me everything she has and walk away.”

  Sean smiled. “I don’t think she would agree, but I understand what you mean.”

  “For the record, Sean, I don’t like this. I can see a hundred ways this can go sideways. But … I want her information. I guess I’m stuck.”

  “No, you’re not. No one’s stuck. This is a win-win.”

  Lucy wished she felt that way.

  “Bring her back in. I’ll lay out some ground rules she won’t like, but at least tomorrow we’ll both know exactly what we need to learn.”

  * * *

  Max had sent Ryan a good-night message when she was still at Sean and Lucy’s house because she knew she wouldn’t be back at the hotel until close to midnight, which made it one in the morning in New York. So she was surprised when her cell phone vibrated as soon as she slid between the sheets. She almost ignored it.

  But she never ignored her phone if she didn’t know who the caller was.

  She looked at caller ID and saw that it was Ryan. She answered.

  “I told you I wouldn’t call because it was getting late.”

  “I appreciate that. But I wanted to hear your voice. And make sure you’re in one piece.”

  “A very tired piece.”

  “You’ve had a long day.”

  “You might get a call tomorrow from someone in the FBI.”

  “I get a lot of calls from people in the FBI. What did you do?”

  “Not funny.” But she was smiling. “Well, let’s say I convinced Agent Kincaid that she could use my help. My investigation into Victoria Mills’s death is directly connected to her investigation into a three-year-old cold case.”

  Ryan laughed. “Shouldn’t you be working the cold case?”

  “Yes, I should, and fortunately, Agent Kincaid recognized that my experience in these matters will come in handy.”

  “She did?”

  “You sound skeptical.”

  “I know you, sweetheart. You would withhold information from an active investigation if the police didn’t play nice.”

  “You make me sound awful. And yes, I wouldn’t share if I didn’t think they would do anything with my information, but I would never obstruct justice.”

  “You’re right, I didn’t mean to insult you.”

  “Truth is, I thought she was going to block me. I thought she was going to put her foot down and I already knew I would have given her everything.”

  “And walked?”

  “No. But I respect Lucy too much to withhold what I know. I gave her the timeline and the connections between the two cases and asked her to let me work with her on this. Within reason, of course.”

  “That’s … almost surprising. So is Agent Kincaid calling me? For what, specifically? It would be nice if I had some background.”

  “It may not be her, but I pointed out that you already offered to help, and this is your strength. Whatever scam is going on has to do with a lot of land and a lot of money. And a deep understanding of embezzling, which in this case according to Sean Rogan would also include a talented hacker. One reason I’m so late is because Lucy confided in me that she doesn’t think that Denise Albright actually embezzled the money from her client. She thinks the money was taken after she was already dead, that she may have been pressured into changing the accounts the day she died and then someone else actually took the money and moved it from company to company until it disappeared.”

  “I love shell corps. They’re so much fun.”

  “You’re crazy, you know that.”

  “You love me for it. But seriously, I am happy to help, and I’m not going to tell you not to get involved, but I looked up Agent Kincaid’s file. First, a lot of her file is sealed. Even I don’t have the clearance to see it.”

  “I don’t want to know.” She did want to know, but she had promised Sean and Lucy that she wouldn’t dig into Lucy’s background.

  “I was only going to say, she’s been involved in several high-profile and dangerous investigations over the last couple of years. I need you to be careful. For me and for Eve. We worry.”

  “This isn’t a dangerous case.”

  “Stanley Grant was shot and killed this afternoon. You could have been with him at the courthouse instead of Rogan, and you could have been shot. I can’t help it, Max, you take risks, and I need you to be extra careful.”

  “I will be. I want to come home just as much as you want me home.”

  “I’m glad you recognize that.”

  “I am tired, though.”

  “I wish I was there.”

  “So do I. I need a massage.”

  “I feel used.”

  “You love it when I use you.”

  “Use me whenever you want, Maxine Revere. I am yours. Sleep tight.”

  Max ended the call and closed her eyes, smiling.

  I love you, Ryan.

  Chapter Eighteen

  WEDNESDAY MORNING

  On the drive out to the Youngs’ house in Kerr County, Lucy filled Nate in on what Max had learned. He was silent for several minutes.

  “Okay, what?”

  “I’m just glad she’s not on a damn ride-along with us,” he muttered.

  “Then I would have to clear this with Rachel.”

  Nate glanced over at her. “I don’t want her in this car. I don’t trust her. I know you and Sean are friends with her, but we’ve already been run off the road, we have unknown people tracking our progress, and we can’t trust the original investigators.”

  He sounded unusually passionate. “Nate—I wouldn’t do anything without your consent.”

  “You should have called me last night. So I could hear the woman firsthand. Ask her some questions.”

  “I didn’t know she was coming over until she got there—but you’re right. I should have had you there.” She hoped Nate wasn’t too angry with her. “I’m already going to be in hot water when it comes out, but I want to keep it between us for at least today, until Max can connect Harrison Monroe to Denise Albright and give us a viable reason to talk to him. I went over all the files that Laura gave us and his name is nowhere.”

  “He may not be connected to her at all.”

  “They went to college together. All of them. Max doesn’t think any of them are innocent, that they were all involved in some sort of white collar scam.”

  “She thinks they all knew about Victoria’s murder? About the slaughter of an entire family?”

  “I don’t know. The way Max explained it—Victoria, and possibly the others, believed that Denise left the country. But when the bones were uncovered, they would figure out that she hadn’t—and then possibly go to the police with information that could lead to the killer. It’s a bit convoluted right now, to be honest, but I see what Max is getting at. And consider this: If you and your friends were involved in a scam and you were the only one with a family and children to protect, you were the weak link. The one most likely to turn state’s evidence or balk at doing something that crosses a moral line. I don’t know.”

  “I think I follow.”

  “If Stanley Grant wasn’t
lying to Max, Victoria was working on something with Harrison Monroe. When she was murdered, who took over that job? Mitch Corta? But none of that connects to Denise Albright, not yet. Last night I went through her client list again and none of them are associated with MCG or Monroe or his business or his wife or her law firm. So until I get a thread that I can take to Rachel and have a damn good reason to insert myself in an SAPD investigation, I can’t pursue it.”

  “Yeah, SAPD doesn’t like us right now.”

  “Why?”

  “After last year? When they were forced to clean house because of a couple corrupt cops? The FBI is the one that cleaned their clock.”

  “I hadn’t really thought about that. Tia and I are still friends.”

  “I have friends over there, too, but the atmosphere is definitely colder.” He paused. “I’m glad you filled Laura in on the situation, though. Now that she knows what we’re looking for, she’s better positioned to find it. Also, did you get my email last night?”

  “Read it this morning. No security video of Denise Albright going into the bank the day she disappeared.”

  “Just a screen shot from a video. And it could be anyone, the quality was awful. As is all the video and photo evidence that Kerr County sent to us three years ago.”

  “The manager said he spoke to her.”

  “Maybe,” Nate said. “The manager doesn’t have a record, but that’s all we know about him. I asked Zach to run him, everything we can get without a warrant.”

  “Is that excessive before we even talk to him?” Lucy said.

  “All we have is his word that Denise Albright went into the bank with a signed authorization from Kiefer to make her the sole signatory on the escrow account. He went on about how it was just to move the funds from the escrow account to the payroll account because Kiefer was leaving town, and because he knew her he didn’t think twice about it.”

  “Yet it’s suspicious. Laura didn’t think it was three years ago.”

  “She said it made sense at the time because they believed that Albright embezzled three million dollars and left the country. On the surface, that’s what she did—photos, evidence of packing, the whole nine yards. Which is also suspicious, because why? She had three kids, a husband, a good job—why would she take the money and leave? And if you listen to Max, it was because she didn’t want to turn in her best friend so she decided to commit a major felony and put her kids on the run for the rest of their lives?”

  Nate had a good point.

  Lucy thought about Stanley Grant embezzling the money from MCG. “The methodology is very similar to Stanley Grant embezzling money after Victoria Mills was killed. Sean and Max think that whoever threatened Grant embezzled the money—essentially hacked into the MCG accounts—to give Grant a viable motive to have killed her. What if Denise never stole the funds? What if someone else did and framed Denise so that the police would have a clear motive for her skipping town?”

  “And she was killed for a completely different reason.”

  “Exactly.”

  Lucy’s cell phone rang. It was JJ Young. She put him on speaker.

  “Why do you want to talk to my kids again? They’re in school.”

  To the point.

  “We have reason to believe that Ricky is alive and has been hiding out in Mexico, and we have a general region—the greater Tamaulipas area. In the process of reviewing all the evidence found at the Albright house, we have reason to believe that Ricky arrived there safely after he left your house, then left at some point that night or in the morning on his bike. His bike has never been found. It wasn’t at the house—we double-checked photos and the inventory list. His backpack was also missing—but his schoolbooks were in his bedroom.”

  “That’s good news, right?”

  “Yes, but we still need to find him.”

  “What do my kids have to do with it?”

  This is where things got dicey, and Lucy had to be careful because JJ was protective of his children. But she also believed that he would encourage them to do the right thing.

  “Denise’s parents hired a private investigator. The investigator interviewed Mrs. Durango, who saw Ricky on Friday night riding toward your house. She wasn’t certain it was Friday, but she’s almost positive, and Nate and I don’t think that a nine-year-old would have been allowed out at night on that road.”

  “No, he wouldn’t have. He had to be home by dark, just like my kids.”

  “We looked at a map and realized that she lives on the far end of your street. Ricky would have had to have taken his bike through the fields, not the roads, for her to see him.”

  “It’s a shortcut,” JJ said. “The kids always go that way. They have dirt bikes.”

  “The point is, if it was that night, Ricky was going to the one place he felt safe—your house.”

  “I told you he didn’t come back. I asked Joe flat out and he said no.”

  “Did you ask Ginny?”

  “Of course, and—” He stopped, and Lucy continued, “Ginny had some odd questions about the detectives who came to your house. I didn’t think about it much at the time because kids process information different than we do, but in hindsight I think she was saying, in her own way, that she didn’t trust them. Why would she not trust cops? Have you had a run-in with law enforcement? I’m not saying it wasn’t justified, just that in general kids who have a parent or relative in trouble with the law often have a negative view about law enforcement.”

  “Neither Jill nor I have been in any sort of legal trouble, nothing that would necessitate police involvement. I served my country for nine years, my kids respect people in uniform—the military and law enforcement.”

  “I didn’t mean to offend you, Mr. Young, we’re just trying to figure out what Ginny was thinking. And with her being a girl, I don’t think the detectives asked her specifically if she saw Ricky after his family disappeared. I think they questioned Joe, assuming that Joe was Ricky’s friend.”

  Young didn’t say anything.

  “I’m not saying that Ginny lied,” Lucy quickly added. “I’m suggesting that she was never asked, and I want to ask her directly. Firmly, but I’ll be kind.”

  “I’ll pick them up at school at lunch. We’ll be at the house at twelve fifteen.”

  A little later than Lucy wanted, but she wasn’t going to push it.

  “Thank you.”

  She ended the call and let out a long sigh. “I thought he was going to block us.”

  “So did I, at least at first. So the bank now?”

  “Yes. According to Laura, the manager is the same as three years ago. Frank Pollero.”

  “And if we’re right, he’s part of whatever conspiracy killed that family. And if he is, I want him on accessory to murder.”

  So did Lucy.

  * * *

  Lucy and Nate walked into the quaint bank in Kerrville. It was a small chain, with fourteen branches throughout central and southern Texas, and it specialized in small-town service. The corporate bank had an excellent reputation, but each branch was run separately.

  Frank Pollero had been the branch manager for fifteen years. He was in his early fifties with a receding hairline, cherub face, and kind smile that reminded Lucy of a younger Clarence from the classic film It’s a Wonderful Life.

  “Thank you for taking the time to meet with us,” Lucy said.

  “I’m happy to help in any way I can,” Pollero said as he led them to his office. It had a glass wall that looked out into the bank, which was designed in a way that clearly distinguished it from modern banks. Paintings of cattle ranches and a famous Alamo scene decorated the pale green walls; two separate sitting areas provided comfortable couches and neatly arranged finance magazines; a coffeepot and water cooler for customers; and the tellers were behind a high counter without bars or plastic shielding. It was a warm, homey environment with the stately colors and cleanliness that said, You can trust us with your money.

  Lucy and Nate sat in
the chairs across from Pollero. He closed the door behind them and sat down at his desk, which was immaculate. Behind him on the credenza was a wedding photo—it looked recent, and Pollero was standing with a woman next to the bride. Next to it was a photo of the bride and her husband with a toddler.

  “Your daughter?” she asked, nodding toward the photos.

  He glanced over and smiled. “Penny. The joy of my life. And her daughter, Gracie. She just turned two.”

  “Adorable,” Lucy said. “Again, thank you for agreeing to meet with us on such short notice.”

  “I assumed it was because of the news reports Monday night—that you found Denise Albright’s remains. I’m stunned.”

  “Her, and her family,” Lucy said. “They were murdered.”

  She said it in a calm, reasoned voice—just like she asked about his daughter—and it threw him a bit.

  “It’s awful,” he said.

  “Based on forensics and our investigation, you may very well have been one of the last people to see Mrs. Albright alive.”

  “I—I’m sure that’s not true.”

  “According to your statement, she came into the bank on Friday, September 21, at ten fifteen a.m. She made changes to the Kiefer account, of which she was a signatory, and you indicated that she wasn’t under duress.”

  “I honestly don’t remember the details, but if she was acting odd, I would have noticed. I knew Mrs. Albright for years. We gave her the loan on her home, when they only had one child. She had her business account with us, when she had a new client she always referred them to our bank. She was meticulous, which I appreciated. If there was a discrepancy in any of her accounts, we worked on finding it together.”