Hell to Pay (What Doesn’t Kill You, #7): An Emily Romantic Mystery

by Pamela Fagan Hutchins

  I still wasn’t ready to pretend I didn’t know the police had searched and trashed Phil’s house, though. “No, it’s okay.” I declined the call, switched the phone to silent, and put it in my pocket, where it couldn’t taunt me. “Tell me about the kids.”

  Laura licked her lips and dug her spoon in again. “The kids, great. The adoptions, mezzo e mezzo.”

  I had a mouthful but I didn’t let that stop me from asking, “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, on the Farrah front. It’s been less than four months since we started the process, and it looks like it could go through any day now. I’m told that’s miraculous.”

  My gut clenched and I saw green. “Yeah. It’s been over six months now with Betsy.”

  She patted my hand. “I know, and I feel guilty that it’s going so well.”

  “Don’t. Farrah deserves it. She’s a great kid.”

  Laura set her bowl between us on a small round black metal table. She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, setting her chin on her knees. “She is. She’s great. They both are. It just turns out that something Greg told us wasn’t quite true, and it was something big.”

  I scraped the last of my peach cobbler from my bowl. All the ice cream had melted, but I made sure to get some of the liquefied cream in my spoon, too. “Uh-oh. What about?”

  “He’s not eligible for adoption.”

  “What?” I set my spoon and bowl beside hers and swung my legs to sit sideways on the chaise and face her.

  “Yeah. He’s not an orphan. He’s just”—she scraped her teeth over her top lip—“embarrassed, I think.”

  “Why?”

  “His mom is in and out of residential treatment for mental illness. She’s schizophrenic.”

  “Oh no. Poor Greg.”

  “Yeah. But she’s in touch with reality some of the time and she doesn’t want to give up parental rights. She had been visiting him. Now he’s too far away and she’s demanding time.”

  I leaned toward her. “And?”

  “He clams up when I raise the issue.”

  I thought about all the years I’d missed with my father. Learning he’d killed a man and had been in prison. The shame I carried now. Would I have felt like Greg, embarrassed and not wanting to see him, if I’d known he wanted me to visit him in jail? Maybe. Probably. But, oh, I had missed him so. I wished I could have had the chance to at least decide whether to write to him. Wouldn’t Greg feel that way someday, maybe even now? “Could he write to her? Talk to her on the phone?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe . . .”

  “What?”

  She looked down at her bare toes and wiggled them. “Maybe he should move back to be near her again.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. Oh.” She let go of her legs and kept them bent but leaned against her seat back. “I just think about what if I were his real mother, how would I feel, and, well, Mickey says he’ll do whatever I think is best, so I’ll just have to sit on it a little longer. We’ll figure it out.”

  “You’re awesome, to be able to see it from her perspective.”

  She flapped a hand. “I don’t know about that. But it’s somewhat related to an idea I have for me, for maybe you and me.”

  There was a lot more to say about Greg, but I let it go for the time being. “What is it?” Beetles had started gathering at the lights by the back door. They buzzed, clicked, scrabbled, and—some, at least—sizzled.

  Laura recaptured my wandering thoughts with my favorite subject. “Remember a few months ago you told me about the effect that Thunder had on Betsy?”

  Thunder was the horse Betsy and I had ridden when I rescued her from Paul Johnson and the human traffickers that had brought her and her family over the border from Mexico and killed both her parents. When things were at their scariest, Thunder had calmed her and given her confidence. Unbelievably, unexpectedly, but undeniably.

  “I remember. Horses have had a similar effect on Farrah, right?”

  “They have.” Laughter erupted from inside the house, and we both turned toward it for a moment before she continued. “I told you that we’d donated some of our retired horses for equine therapy, where they help disabled or emotionally traumatized kids, right? I’ve seen them used for speech therapy, too.”

  “Yeah, it sounds amazing.”

  I watched her profile, backlit by the lights from the house. She nodded. “I’m enjoying having the kids, but honestly, they’re occupied with school and activities so much of the time that I find myself at loose ends.” Laura had retired from two decades as a jockey only three months before.

  “I can only imagine.”

  “Sooo,” she turned to me with a big grin. “I want to do it. I want to get certified and do equine therapy here. For kids like Betsy and Farrah and Greg.” She started talking faster. “And I’ve seen you with Jarhead. We could do summer camps. School holiday camps. We could remodel one of the buildings into a bunkhouse. You could do it with me, or just help me talk Mickey and Jack into it.”

  “Wow!”

  “So what do you think?”

  I was smiling so hard my face hurt. “I think it’s the coolest thing I’ve ever heard and I want to help.”

  She jumped off her chair and both her arms shot in the air. “Yay!”

  I did it, too. “Yay!”

  She laughed and threw her arms around me. “I’m so excited. You have no idea.”

  “Me, too.”

  She stepped back but held onto my upper arms. “Just one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You have to come clean with me about what’s eating you, because I know something is.”

  To the wife of Jack’s cousin and closest friend? Somehow that really didn’t seem like a good idea. As I stared at her, trying to think of a response, the back door onto the patio opened.

  Jack stuck his head out. “Sorry to interrupt, you two, but I’ve got some news for Emily.”

  “Good or bad?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  I took three running steps toward him, panic rising in my throat. Betsy—had something happened to Betsy? “What is it?”

  My phone vibrated in my pocket. I stopped and pulled it out, afraid to look at it, to guess what Jack’s news was. Wallace. Oh God, Wallace—just as I’d feared. “Betsy?” I said to Jack.

  “No, no, Betsy’s okay. It’s Phil. They’ve arrested him for murder.”

  “Of Dennis?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s crazy. I don’t understand why they aren’t looking harder at the weird guy that I IDed for them. Poor Phil. Poor Nadine.” I exhaled the breath I didn’t know I’d been holding and saw that I’d accidentally hit Answer on my phone.

  “Emily? Are you there?” It was Wallace. The connection stretched his voice thin by the time it met my ear.

  I held up one finger to Jack. “Hey, Wallace. Gosh, I feel terrible. I saw Nadine had called earlier and I didn’t call her back.”

  “What?”

  “I heard.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah, it’s terrible.”

  “Um, yes, it is. Are you okay?”

  “Oh, sure, just sad for Nadine that she’s going to have to go through this again.”

  “Nadine? What are you talking about?”

  “Phil being arrested. What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, honey, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but the Hodges put in an application to adopt Betsy this afternoon.”

  “What?” I shrieked. I shook my head and kept shaking it. “Those, those, those . . .”

  “Bastards?”

  I wracked my brain for the biggest gun in my cursing arsenal. “Mother truckers,” I yelled. “Well, I’m not going to let the Hodges have her. I’m not. I applied first.”

  The connection ended in a series of shrill tones that sent me jerking my head away from the receiver. I put one hand over my ear for a moment then turned back to Jack and burs
t into tears just as it hit me that the Hodges had filed on the same day we’d settled the wrongful death suit that would result in Betsy receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars.

  Mother truckers indeed.

  Chapter Six

  “All rise for the Honorable R. Charleston Herring,” the bailiff called out. She sounded listless, which was unusual for her. Usually she was like the flipping Gestapo. “All rise, all rise.”

  Chairs rolled and squeaked over carpet behind the counsel tables, clothing rustled, and an “achoo” rang out. The bailiff grabbed a tissue from her pocket and covered her nose. Judge Herring’s private entrance door swung open. He paused in the doorway as he surveyed his domain, his tall, thick figure drawing every eye in the courtroom. He had stern eyes, a wide squared gray mustache, and a shaved head. I imagined the smell of cigar smoke every time I saw him, ever since I’d once accompanied Jack to meet the judge in chambers and found him puffing away. Herring thundered to his bench over his wood floor, an earthquake atop two boots. The rest of the courtroom was carpeted in a drab “government neutral” grayish-greenish-tan, and I suspected he used the hardwoods to up his intimidation factor, although he didn’t really need to. Herring was a former District Attorney, a terrifyingly good one, according to local legend. As a judge, he was fair to the attorneys that appeared before him, but tough as the hide of a feral boar on the defendants. You didn’t want to be found guilty before Judge Herring.

  I had a good view of the back of Jack’s brown hair from my leather seat behind the defense table. There were a few curls at his hairline, and my fingers itched to fuss with them. Time for a haircut. Phil sat beside him, sweat running down his neck, his hand shaking on the back of Jack’s chair. He turned to catch Nadine’s eye behind me every few seconds, alternately looking plaintively at her and glowering at everyone else. He worried me. His skin had an odd cast to it. Like he hadn’t slept or had eaten something bad. Or was scared out of his pants.

  The judge was directly in front of Jack and Phil, his court reporter between them, but offset. To the left of the judge along a curved wall was a witness stand and empty jury box. The room itself was an odd shape, like a quarter of a circle, with the judge and his retinue on the straight vertical line; the counsel tables and the public gallery behind them were on the horizontal.

  Judge Herring took a seat, as did the bailiff to his right, and I sank back into my chair, too, in the front row, right behind the wooden bar separating the spectators from the business end of the courtroom. The plastic fold-up seats in the gallery were barely big enough for someone my size, and Nadine was squinched into hers between the unforgiving metal armrests in the row behind me.

  She tapped me on the shoulder. I turned my ear toward her.

  “I have to leave. I just got a message that Eric is vomiting at school,” she said, referring to the older of her two boys, who was in kindergarten. “Text me as soon as you can.” Her whisper barely stirred the air, and I could only just make out her words. She’d logged many an hour in this courtroom during Phil’s burglary trial, and she knew better than to draw Judge Herring’s ire.

  My guilty conscience over ignoring Nadine’s messages all weekend was like needles pricking my skin. Yes, I would keep her updated. I would probably repave her driveway by hand if she needed it done in the next year, too. I’d been a terrible, selfish friend. I nodded slowly, carefully. I heard Nadine stand and her soft “’Scuse mes” as she worked her way down the row.

  The judge picked up a stack of papers and files and tapped the bottom of them against his large desk, shuffling the edges until the stack was neat and tidy. “Mondays. I hate the damn things. And I hate repeat visits in my courtroom.” He glared at Jack and Phil. “But I get them both today as we consider the charges against Mr. Phil Escalante and his possible bail.” He set the stack of papers down, hard. “ADA Stafford, are you ready?”

  Across the aisle to Jack’s left, the hated, skeletal form of Melinda Stafford shot to its feet. “Uh, prosecution is ready, Your Honor.” She was dressed in steel gray, chin to toes, and buttoned up tight. She looked like she would blow away in the wind. Dear God, if we have a natural disaster in the next five minutes, please let it be a tornado.

  I realized I was humming the chorus to Carrie Underwood’s “Blown Away” when the woman next to me cleared her throat and I stopped.

  The judge nodded. Melinda sat. No buttons popped, to my disappointment, but she almost fell from her platform pumps on her way down. I pictured the tornado steamrolling through the courtroom, and all that remained of the Wicked Witch of West Texas was her high heels protruding from under the fallen roof.

  “Counselor Holden, I don’t have to ask if the defendant is present.” Jack stood, pushing his chair back and putting both hands in front of him at his waist. Judge Herring shook his head, and turned the full intensity of his gaze on Phil. “Mr. Escalante.” His voice boomed as he said Phil’s name, and I jumped a little in my chair. “I can’t say I’m pleased to see you again so soon. Not here, not under these circumstances.” He shook his head. “Counselor Holden, are you ready?”

  Jack dipped his head. “Yes, sir, Your Honor.”

  Judge Herring’s eyes caught Jack in a withering gaze for several beats. Jack remained standing, chin up, until the judge released him with his eyes. As Jack stood there, our previous visits together to this courtroom flashed through my mind like a slide show. A happy image with Alan Freeman when his assault against a police officer charge had been dropped. A tense picture of Phil’s trial as the judge sent the case to the jury for deliberations, mainly because it was clear to anyone with half a brain that Phil had done exactly what he was accused of. Still the judge had allowed the jury to proceed to a not guilty verdict, though I wasn’t completely sure how Jack had pulled it off.

  From the looks Judge Herring was throwing Jack’s way now, it appeared his patience had worn thin with Jack and Phil. “Mr. Escalante, the charge against you by the state of Texas is first-degree murder. You have several important rights, which you may recall from your last trial.”

  I winced.

  “But duty and the law require me to repeat myself anyway.” His head tilted to the left. “If you’ll be so kind as to rise, I will remind you of them.”

  Phil stood, knocking into the table in front of him, and his shoulders heaved and bowed. His fists balled at the end of his sports jacket, but they were hidden from the judge by the wooden defense table.

  The judge cleared his throat and donned half-glasses. He waved a paper in front of himself then looked down to read from it. “Mr. Escalante, you have been accused of murdering Dennis Welch in the first degree. You have the right to retain counsel, which you have done, and you have the right to remain silent. You have the right to have your attorney present during any interview with peace officers and to terminate any of those interviews at any time.” He directed his gaze at Phil. “You’re not indigent or unable to pay for counsel, are you Mr. Escalante?”

  “No, Your Honor.” Phil’s voice sounded weaker than usual. Normally he was a bit of a loudmouth, to tell the truth.

  “Well, if you were, you’d have the right to request appointment of counsel. If you become so, you need to let me know so that we can see about getting counsel for you. Mr. Holden isn’t going to work for free, in my experience.”

  Jack’s head twitched just a little. Judge Herring seemed to be trying to get under his skin. He knew Jack worked plenty of cases pro bono or for services in kind. Our office flooring had been changed out twice in the last year alone in lieu of fees. Phil, aware of this fact, had offered us a truckload of “adult novelty items” in payment for his defense. Jack was holding out for cash, at least in part, but I saw that amazing swing from Get Your Kicks in my future, and I liked it.

  Judge Herring was still intoning Phil’s rights. “You’re not required to make a statement, but if you do, it can be used against you. You have the right to a hearing on bail, which I will conduct during our time togethe
r today.” Herring ripped off his glasses and tossed the paper aside. “I know these damn things by heart. You’ll have the presumption of innocence beyond a reasonable doubt through these proceedings as well as the right not to self-incriminate. And, unless you waive it, you can’t be prosecuted for the felony crime of murder in the first degree without a true bill indictment by a grand jury. Do you wish to waive your right to a grand jury?”

  Phil looked at Jack and nodded his head. Jack shook his. Phil looked around, searching for something or someone, and I realized he didn’t know Nadine had left. His eyes drifted over to me, and they seemed unfocused, confused. He turned back to Jack and shrugged.

  Jack said, “He does not, Your Honor.”

  “Very well, then. We should have your case before the grand jury tomorrow or Wednesday at the latest, Mr. Escalante. We’ll meet again for an arraignment if the grand jury returns a true bill for your indictment, and you can enter a plea at that time.” He cleared his throat. “You have the right to a copy of the accusation against you. Should you be indicted, you have the right to a speedy trial by an impartial jury, the right to confront the witnesses against you and to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses on your own behalf, and the right of appeal.” He sighed and his shoulders lifted and fell. “Do you understand these rights as I have once again explained them to you?”

  His heavy emphasis on “once again” was a whomp over the heads of Jack and Phil with a big stick.

  “Yes, sir, Judge Herring,” Phil said. His voice was steady, not beaten down, but he leaned on one hand on the table, and his other still quivered. Phil was a stiff backbone, chin up kind of guy; something was wrong with him. “Thank you,” he added. Even though his voice wasn’t strong, I could hear the tiniest tinge of sarcasm to it, which was more in character.

  “So, on to bail.” Judge Herring leaned forward, toward Melinda. “Go ahead, Ms. Stafford.”