3 Fat Chance

by Rhonda Pollero

  Neither would I if I had a fiancé who came with hundreds of millions in banks all over the world that could and would buy me anything and everything. “I didn’t mean to keep you. Enjoy the event.”

  She was almost to the door when I said, “Perhaps I could discuss this with you at a more appropriate time?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said, then regally removed herself from the room.

  I felt a little feisty after being dissed by that woman. So she’d hit the marriage lottery, but geez, she acted as if it had been her birthright instead of some freak occurrence. Just to make myself feel superior, unlike Terri, I tipped the attendant.

  I ARRIVED HOME TO find a sealed manila envelope tilted against my door. I recognized the bold, masculine handwriting as Liam’s, so I picked it up and carried it inside.

  Knowing him, it was probably full of dry-cleaning coupons or some equally stupid thing that, in spite of my best efforts, would charm me right out of my thong. God, I was starting to wonder if I had some sort of superpower when it came to picking a man to obsess over. Of course, that’s minus the ugly tights and a silly cape, since everyone knows a cape makes a woman my height look even shorter. Why was it I kept falling for the wrong men? Not that I was admitting I’d fallen for Liam. I was starting to believe that if I was dropped into a room full of eligible, handsome men, I would find the worst possible match before I downed my first Cosmo.

  I looked around my apartment and reassessed my opinion of myself. Here it was a beautiful Friday night, and what were my plans? Microwave popcorn and channel surfing. Topped off by some possible internet time. I was getting closer and closer to the bleak future of an unmarried, unhappy woman with sixty-four cats as company.

  I fell face-first onto my never-made bed, stifling my groan in the pillow. I had half hoped to see Sam’s car in the lot, but apparently, he had plans as well. Rolling over, I winced as the skin pulled around the itchy stitches.

  “Enough,” I told myself, getting up on my elbows. “Do something.”

  I slipped off my still-damp dress to discover that the wine had seeped through and discolored the white lace that trimmed my new bra. Thank you, Liam. The irony that the man had ruined my bra without ever touching me wasn’t lost on me. I changed into jeans and a cute baby T with rhinestone accents. Barefoot, I took my stained clothes into the kitchen, plugged the sink, tossed the dress and bra in, and dumped a couple of liters of club soda over everything.

  I made a pot of coffee. Once I had a nice steaming mug, I settled into the couch and powered on my laptop and the television. After a few minutes, I muted the TV. Liam’s package sat on top of my skeleton files, so I debated which to tackle first.

  “Who are you kidding?” I asked myself as I slipped my nail under the flap and broke the seal. Patience is a virtue, just not one I possess. Clipped to the top page was a short note apologizing again for making me spill my wine. A nice person would call him and say all is forgiven. A naughty person would add, “Come on over.” I couldn’t trust myself, especially when the mere sound of his voice raised my blood pressure several degrees.

  The first few pages were documents from the North Carolina Department of Corrections. The more I read about all the horrible things Carlos had done—and knowing that they were probably just the tip of the iceberg—the less I was able to muster any sadness at his passing.

  Earlier, while browsing through the stuff for the class I’d yet to attend, I’d read a statistic that on average, criminals got away with four crimes for every one they got caught committing. If that was true, Carlos committed his first felony in vitro.

  While I was perusing Carlos’s criminal record, I was half-heartedly watching an eBay auction for a pair of killer Jimmy Choo ankle boots. They retailed for six twenty, and the bidding was already up to three hundred with more than six hours to go. Too rich for my blood.

  Blood that stilled in my veins when I reached a report from the Florida authorities that conclusively matched Carlos’s fingerprints to the 1996 robbery and my break-in. He’d been positively identified as Doe96-5. There was a memo attached to the report stating that a clerical error had resulted in a failure by North Carolina to enter Carlos’s prints into the AFIS system. Had they done that, Carlos would have been identified the night I’d come home to find the resin skeleton hanging in my closet.

  The next item was the ME’s report on Carlos. I tossed it aside unread. He was dead. That was enough.

  Still suffering under the annoying suspicion that I was missing something parked right under my nose, I decided to make a bulleted list. It needed to be done, and besides, the Jimmy Choo bids had climbed to five fifty.

  “You people are fools,” I admonished the unseen eBay bidders. “They’re listed as slightly worn and you’re bidding the price to near-full retail. Amateurs.”

  I took a big gulp of coffee and tried to decide how best to organize my thoughts. “Start with what you know.”

  (A) I knew the skeleton was Jill Burkett, even if I couldn’t tell anyone until I found a way around exposing Melinda’s insurance fraud.

  (B) I knew Terri Semple wouldn’t help me, and now that I was over being snubbed, I didn’t blame her. I couldn’t. Not when I had that big, glaring, totally not my fault blight on the record of my own past.

  Speaking of which, I opened my email and sent Patrick yet another request to stop with the flowers. I would never know, or care, if he replied: I’d put the lying bastard on my Blocked Senders list. Any emails from him would go rot in cyber hell.

  (C) I knew Carlos had been involved in at least one of the robberies in Palm Beach during the nineties. Chances were good he’d been involved in all of them.

  I tried to remember some of what Abby had told me. What I remembered most was that Jill and Carlos had been tight. It wasn’t a huge leap in logic to assume that Jill might have been his accomplice. Tapping my fingernail on the edge of my in-need-of-a-refill coffee mug, a question repeated in my brain.

  Maybe the recent reduction in my caffeine consumption was screwing with my problem-solving skills. Okay, so skills was a bit of a stretch. When it came to solving a murder, I did some of my best work accidentally.

  As I went into the kitchen, I vocalized the question, hoping that hearing it aloud might shake an answer free. “How did Carlos and/or Jill know what to steal?” A third accomplice, maybe? Someone with a knowledge and appreciation of the finer things?

  I was just about to go back to my bulleted list when someone knocked on my door. Probably Sam; he often dropped in after a date when he saw lights blazing.

  Couldn’t have been much of a date. Not if he was home a few minutes after nine. Getting up on my tiptoes, I was surprised to see Melinda on the other side of the door. And she didn’t look happy.

  I undid the locks and opened the door. “Hi,” I greeted her as she breezed past me, leaving a trail of perfume in her wake. “Please, do come right in,” I muttered.

  She stood in the center of my living room, arms crossed, Dooney & Bourke dangling off her forearm. Her face was scrunched, and her eyes narrowed, making it perfectly clear that she was pissed. “I thought we had an agreement.”

  “On…?”

  Huffing out a sharp breath, she answered, “About the skeleton thing. Terri called me, terribly upset after you accosted her at the charity benefit.”

  It was my turn to get a little huffy. “First off, I didn’t ‘accost’ her. I accidentally ran into her in a public bathroom. Secondly, if anyone has a right to feel put down, it’s me. During our brief—and I’m talking maybe sixty seconds interaction, she was quite the statuesque snot.”

  “Because she has a lot to lose if you keep poking around in the past. You’ve changed. The Finley I used to know as a child was much more considerate.”

  Anger gurgled in the pit of my stomach. I felt like Jan Brady, only instead of “Marsha, Marsha, Marsha,” my concerns were overshadowed by Terri, Terri, Terri. Screw that. Planting my hands on my hips, I met and matched M
elinda’s steely blue eyes. “Tell Terri I said to pull up her big girl panties and get over herself. As for you,” I added, my voice quivering with fury, “you’re hardly in a position to cast stones about being considerate. Thanks to me, Tony made sure you didn’t end up in jail for shooting Carlos. And I haven’t told anyone about your little insurance scam. Yet.”

  My not-intended-to-be-subtle threat effectively wiped some of the antagonism off Melinda’s face.

  I stepped to the side. “I want you to leave. Now.”

  Silently, her spine straight, she headed to the door, slamming it hard enough to cause a mini earthquake inside my apartment.

  Guess I was off her Christmas card list. Melinda’s overreaction lent credence to my lingering feeling that something about her wasn’t quite right. Nothing else explained her odd behavior. Throwing herself between Terri and me made no sense. Her actions were too over-the-top to qualify as a de facto mother protecting her child. Especially since Terri wasn’t a child but rather a woman creeping up on her midthirties.

  In a very lame imitation of Jack Nicholson, I went to my computer and said, “You just screwed with the wrong marine,” as I logged into the Dane, Lieberman mainframe.

  Melinda might have attitude, but I had unfettered access to vital records and could run credit and background checks. I had the skeleton file, police and medical reports, at least a dozen other information sources, and internet search skills that would make Bill Gates proud. I switched to a Scarlett O’Hara impression, taking a bit of license with the famous movie quote. “With God as my witness, I will find whatever it is you don’t want me to find.”

  In less than an hour, I had addresses and phone numbers for two more of the former foster children—Ava Patterson and Hilary McMasters.

  Ava answered the phone on the second ring. I heard children and music in the background and spoke loudly as I introduced myself. Stretching the truth just a bit, I told her that she could either speak to me, or my law firm would ask a judge to issue a material witness warrant for her as part of the investigation into the murder of Jill Burkett.

  “What does that mean?” Ava asked.

  “It means you’ll sit in a jail cell until it’s time for you to give testimony.”

  “How long would that be?”

  “No way of knowing, well beyond the legal one-eighty, eighty rule.”

  “What’s that?” Ava’s hardened tone was gone. Now she sounded panicky.

  Another tidbit I’d read in my continuing ed course materials. “A criminal defendant must be prosecuted within one hundred days of being charged. Ever heard of the right to a speedy trial?”

  “Sure. I’ve got kids and no husband. No way I can go to jail. When do I have to come give my statement?”

  For effect, I shuffled some of the papers Liam had delivered. Thanks to my internet snooping, I knew Ava had a job as a receptionist at an insurance agency in West Palm, a position she’d taken less than a month ago. Using that knowledge to my advantage, I said, “I’m available Monday at eleven.”

  “I’m at work then.”

  “You’ll have to take some time off. My schedule is completely booked. Since you’re refusing to cooperate, I guess we’ll have no choice but to contact that judge.”

  “I’m not refusing,” she said, her voice choked with emotion.

  I winced. I was bullying the poor woman.

  “Can’t we work something else out? I can come on my lunch break or during the evening.”

  “Again, Ms. Patterson, my schedule is quite full. Unless…”

  “Unless what?”

  “I suppose I could make an exception and meet with you this evening.” I held my breath waiting on her answer.

  “I can’t leave my kids here alone.”

  I made sure to sigh into the mouthpiece. “My firm doesn’t make house calls.” I paused for effect. “Okay, I’ll break with policy and come to you.”

  “Thank you,” she fairly gushed. “Do you need directions?”

  MY THIRD OUTFIT OF the day was the über-conservative navy and white Chanel suit normally reserved for mandatory brunches with my mother. My hair was pulled back in a no-frills ponytail, and I’d completed the all-business look with a pair of simple navy pumps.

  The rental was equipped with a navigation system, so I had no trouble finding the small, single-story house on the dirt road in Greenacres. The car rocked as it lumbered along the rutted driveway until I parked next to an assortment of toys littering the lawn. Okay, lawn was a stretch. It was mostly sand with a few lonely patches of grass.

  A floodlight partially pulling away from the wall lighted the crumbled sidewalk leading to the cracked step in front of the house. Slimy green moss blanketed much of the stucco around the door. I heard the clunk and hiss of a window air conditioner as I knocked.

  I fully expected Ava to be a clone of Abby. I was wrong. She was a tall, heavyset woman with clean, coiffed hair and a layer of careful, if imperfect, makeup.

  She wore shorts, a faded black shirt from a Metallica concert, and no shoes. She greeted me with a smile that was equal parts warm and weary.

  Shooing two boys who looked to be about ten to twelve years old to their bedroom, she moved a game controller to the top of the television and offered me a seat on the sofa. The house was clean and tidy. The faint scent of chili hung in the air.

  The chair next to the sofa squeaked when Ava sat down. “Would you like something to drink?” she asked.

  “Coffee?”

  While Ava went into the other room, I took a legal pad out of my tote; I retrieved a pen, balanced the pad on my knees, and crossed my legs at the ankles. The sleeve of my suit was irritating the stitches on my arm. The stitches on my leg were discreetly covered by a Band-Aid.

  “Milk or sugar?” she called.

  “Black is fine.”

  She returned, holding two mugs in one hand. Mine was placed on a veneered coffee table, while she kept hers with her as she retook her seat.

  “Who was murdered?” she asked.

  “Carlos Lopez murdered Jill Burkett,” I explained.

  Her brows drew together. “I saw on the news that he was killed recently by our foster mom. A justified shooting. Melinda walked away, so who is going on trial?”

  “Carlos had an accomplice after the fact.”

  “Who?”

  “Who do you think?” I asked. “You lived with him.”

  “Not by choice,” she said, pain falling like a curtain over her expression. “But then, we never had choices.”

  “What can you remember about your time at the Chilian Avenue house?”

  She blinked several times, and I wondered if it was her tell—an unconscious habit that indicated she was about to feed me some sort of lie. Too soon to know, but I’d be watching for it.

  “Melinda was an okay foster mother. I liked living at the beach.”

  I’ll bet you did. “Who lived there with you?”

  She sipped her coffee. “When I first got there, it was Carlos, Jill, Terri, Abby, and me.”

  “Tell me about them.”

  “Jill and Carlos ruled the place. Cross either one of them, and you paid.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “If you were lucky, Carlos would just smack you around.”

  Again, she did the rapid blink. I was right, it was a tell, but not the kind I expected. It was what she did when recalling something unpleasant. “And if you weren’t?”

  “He’d…mess with you.”

  Translation—sexual assault. My heart squeezed as sympathy for the woman settled in the pit of my stomach. “Where was Melinda?”

  “Around.” Ava’s shoulders slumped, and it was like watching a balloon deflate from a slow leak.

  “And Jill?”

  “She wasn’t as violent as Carlos, but she was often the instigator. I think they were doing it. If she got pissed, which happened practically daily, Carlos would act as her muscle.”

  “And Melinda did nothing?”
>
  Ava shrugged and blinked some more. “I guess you could say she tried. If you towed the line, she’d take you on one of her field trips. If you screwed up, like missing curfew, you had to study one of her stupid arty things.”

  “Coin books?” I asked.

  “Coins, statues, glass vases, paintings. I didn’t take it seriously the first week. Not until the Friday test.”

  “You were tested?”

  Ava nodded. “We’d all sit at the table, and Melinda would put color copies in front of us. She thought it was a unique family-type game and a way of teaching us about the finer things in life, but it was hard. I never did very well. Especially with the paintings. To this day, I get freaked out if I see a Maltese.”

  “Matisse,” I corrected automatically as I made notes.

  “Whatever. Besides, I couldn’t compete with Terri or Jill.”

  “Why?”

  “Jill studied those art books and auction catalogs all the time.”

  “And Terri?”

  Ava shook her head. “I never saw her do it. But she had one of those memories. You know. See it one time and remember it forever. She was the nicest of them all.”

  Not in my book. “What about Jill? Do you remember when she left?”

  “May of ’96. Thank God.”

  “Know where she went?”

  “Never heard from her again. Never wanted to. Jill might have looked like an angel, but she was pure evil. No conscience, no regard for others. Manipulative to the core. She’d glare at you and her eyes would turn almost black. Like a shark about to move in for the kill.”

  “Did she manipulate anyone other than Carlos?”

  “Hell yes,” Ava said, sipping her coffee. “When I first got there, I thought Jill and Terri were friends. That changed though, and Jill went out of her way to bust Terri’s ass. As time went on, Terri got really quiet and reserved. She spent hours lying on her bed playing with this token.”

  “What kind of token?” I asked.

  Ava made a circle with one hand. “About this big around, and it had trees on one side and I think something engraved on the other side.”