by Jane Graves
Alex wanted to go in there and drag her out of that house by her hair, then slap her senseless for even thinking of breaking in. But he couldn’t. The last thing he needed to do was get caught inside the house of the woman he supposedly murdered. He’d just have to sit here and hope that she came out of the house before Reichert went in.
And then, faintly but distinctly, from inside the Reichert house, he heard a woman scream.
chapter ten
Alex flung his car into park and killed the engine. He leaped out, sure that the worst had happened, just as he’d feared. Reichert had found Val. He’d caught her in there. He had her cornered in his house, and God only knew what he planned to do with her now.
Alex ran up to the gate leading to the backyard and found it locked. He leaped up, grabbed the top of the fence, and pulled himself over. He hit the ground on the other side at the same moment another scream came from inside the house.
He raced around the swimming pool, leaped over a low hedge, and ran up to the plate-glass patio door. He yanked on it and found it locked. He spun around, picked up a clay pot full of red geraniums, and hurled it through door. The glass shattered, flying in a wild spray in all directions. He kicked the remaining shards away from the frame and stepped through the scattered soil and smashed flowers into the house, his gun drawn.
More screams.
“Val!” he shouted. “Val, where are you?”
When she didn’t answer, fear raced through him. If Reichert had hurt Val, he’d kill him. He’d drop him right where he stood and not think twice about it.
Just then a woman came around the door from the kitchen, a short, stout Hispanic woman with a cordless phone pressed to her ear. She took one look at him and screamed.
What the hell …?
“Alex!”
He spun around to see Val standing at the doorway between the hall and family room. In a rush of understanding, he knew what he’d walked into, and it wasn’t good. The screams hadn’t been from Val.
The screams had been because of Val.
The woman chattered wildly into the phone in Spanish, her eyes wide with fear. Alex couldn’t understand a thing she was saying, but he got the gist of it in a hurry. She was probably Reichert’s housekeeper. And she was calling 911.
He just stood there, absolutely dumbfounded. What in the hell was he supposed to do now?
Val rushed to his side. “Come on. We have to get out of here!”
She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him toward the patio door, dirt from the flowerpot and broken glass crunching beneath their feet. Alex could hear the woman still prattling on to the 911 operator in a wild flurry of Spanish, which meant they were only minutes away from having the entire Tolosa police force at the door.
He stopped and looked back. Val yanked on his arm. “Alex! Let’s go!”
He stepped through the broken patio door behind Val. She started around the swimming pool. He caught her arm and spun her back around.
“Wait! We can’t run away from this!”
“What?”
“We have to stay. Explain what happened.”
“Explain? Are you out of your mind? Your explanation will include the fact that I broke into that house!”
“That’s your problem, not mine!”
Val swept her windblown hair away from her face. “Listen to me, Alex. The last time you hung around and tried to explain, you got arrested for murder. If they find you here now, you’ll be thrown right back in jail until your trial and have no chance of proving that Reichert is guilty. Is that what you want?”
“Did you find something in the house to nail him?”
“Maybe. Eventually. But nothing we can hand the cops right now. We have to go!”
He looked back at the house. He shouldn’t have any reason to run. All he’d been trying to do was save Val from being a victim. But would anybody believe that?
Hell, no.
He’d never be able to come up with an explanation for why he’d hurled a flowerpot through that glass door and entered Reichert’s house. Nobody would believe that he thought Val was in danger, because nobody thought Reichert was a threat in the first place.
Sirens wailed in the distance.
“Alex! Let’s get out of here! Now!”
In a split second, a series of images flashed through his mind. Henderson’s face, leering at him, secretly thrilled to be able to throw him in jail again. The cold faces of the jury members, turning the mountain of evidence against him into a guilty verdict. Prison walls surrounding him, closing in so tightly that he couldn’t breathe. And the second they snapped cuffs on him again, prison was exactly where he was going to end up.
“Get in your van,” he told Val. “Meet me at the abandoned drive-in movie theater just off Highway Four. Don’t speed or run any lights, or you’ll get picked up for sure. Now move!”
He gave her a leg up and over the fence, then climbed over it himself. Val took off toward her van. Alex got in his car. He started the engine and drove down the alley, then turned onto the street. The sirens grew louder. He went the opposite direction.
He clasped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles whitened. For one of the few times in his life, he felt truly angry. Not just pissed off, or annoyed, or even infuriated. He felt a soul-deep anger reserved for only the most monumental of injustices. First he’d been arrested for murder when all he’d done was try to save the victim’s life. And now, because he’d tried to save Val, he’d ended up getting burned again.
Hell, not burned. Incinerated.
And as of right now, he had absolutely no idea how to put out the fire.
It was almost ten-thirty before Dave and Brenda managed to locate Henderson. He was taking his usual hour-long morning break at a diner near the station, eating a doughnut.
Make that four doughnuts.
When they came into the diner, Henderson’s gaze snapped up. He looked at Dave questioningly. He looked at Brenda as if he wished he were wearing riot gear. They sat down next to him at the table.
Henderson looked at them warily. “What do you two want?”
Dave struck a nonchalant pose. “We want to talk to you about Alex.”
“Nothing to talk about.”
“Sure there is. He’s been accused of murder.”
“Look, Dave. I know it’s hard to swallow that your brother did something like this. The odds were that sooner or later one of the many women he seems to attract would get a little kinky and things would get out of hand.” He shrugged and took another bite of doughnut. “It happens.”
“I don’t know, Henderson. All that kinky stuff doesn’t sound like Alex to me.”
“Men do a lot of stupid things to get laid. You think he’s exempt?”
“Oh, give me a break,” Brenda said. “You think a guy like Alex has to work to find a willing woman?”
“Maybe he was losing his touch.”
“Maybe you’d like to lose a few teeth.”
Henderson turned to Dave. “You want to tell her to shut up?”
“Actually,” Dave said, “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. If you find out who shot Valerie Parker, I bet you’ll find out who killed Shannon Reichert. And I’m betting that person just might be her husband.”
“Yeah, Ford was yapping about that, too. Sorry. Don’t see the connection. People are shot in this town every day.”
“With a high-powered hunting rifle?” Brenda said. “Put two and two together, will you? Or is simple math out of the question?”
Dave gave Brenda a warning stare. She huffed with disgust and looked away.
“She’s a PI,” Henderson said. “Have you ever known one of those not to piss somebody off eventually? I bet she’s got a dozen people right now who’d like to blow her away.”
“A woman was murdered,” Brenda said. “Valerie Parker was watching the house at the time. Connect the dots, you moron!”
Dave looked at Brenda admonishingly. “Brenda? Let’s have a calm, ratio
nal discussion here, okay?” He turned back to Henderson. “Reichert knew his wife was cheating on him. There’s your motive.”
“He says he wasn’t even in town.”
“Can he prove that?”
“He doesn’t need to. He’s not a suspect.”
Nothing like a circular argument to really make a case, Dave thought.
“All I’m asking you to do is get a warrant,” Dave said. “If you don’t find a rifle that matches that bullet, we can all cross Reichert off our lists.”
“He was never on my list.”
“Hey!” Brenda said, rising from her chair. “Get the damned warrant!”
Dave put a hand against Brenda’s shoulder and pushed her back down. She folded her arms across her chest, fuming silently.
“Sorry, Henderson. Brenda’s just a little upset. Alex is family. You understand.”
Henderson’s gaze shifted nervously to Brenda, as if he expected her to leap up and bite the head right off his shoulders. “Yeah. Right.”
“There’s more. When Reichert hired Valerie Parker to tail his wife, she offered to set up a video camera in the Reicherts’ bedroom just in case Shannon brought a man home with her. Reichert refused. Just present that fact to the judge along with everything else, and let him make up his mind about probable cause.”
“I told you I’m not going after a warrant. Now the two of you get out of here!”
Moving with the stealth of a cobra, Brenda rose from her chair. She leaned forward, placing both palms on the table in front of Henderson and skewering him with a deadly stare.
“Dave,” Henderson said a little nervously. “Tell her to get out of my face.”
Dave leaned away and held his palms out helplessly, as if he’d tried his best but the matter was now entirely out of his hands.
Henderson shoved his chair away from the table and stood up. “If the two of you don’t clear out of here, I’m going to—”
“What?” Brenda said. “What are you going to do? Call the cops? We are the cops!”
“I don’t have to put up with this!”
Brenda leaned in again. “Yeah, I think you do. And do you know why?”
“Why?”
“Because I happen to know that it wasn’t just Botstein involved in that New Year’s Eve incident a few years ago.”
Henderson froze, his eyes widening. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do, you degenerate. The one with the hooker and the Doberman.”
Every ounce of blood seemed to drain from Henderson’s face. “Shit.” He wiped his hand over his mouth, glaring at Dave. “It was that brother of yours, wasn’t it? John couldn’t keep his big mouth shut!”
“You know, I think I do recall hearing something about that,” Dave said. “Interesting story. It’s been filed away in the DeMarco Family Blackmail Repository for quite some time now. And damned if it didn’t come in handy.”
“You wouldn’t say anything about that to the chief. You wouldn’t—”
“Try me.”
Sweat popped out on Henderson’s forehead, those dark, birdlike eyes of his shifting back and forth.
“I always liked you, Dave. You know? Your brothers can be such bastards sometimes, but not you. And now you go and give me shit like this.”
“You mess with one of us, you mess with all of us. Don’t you ever forget that.”
“Come on! You know that the judge will never buy the warrant! The guy supposedly wasn’t even in town. And what’s his motive for shooting at Valerie Parker, anyway? He hired her to follow his wife. Do you hire somebody to watch a person you intend to kill? The judge will laugh in my face.”
“Do it anyway.”
Dave grew hopeful at the sight of Henderson standing between a rock and a hard place. He knew the guy was only a few seconds away from giving in, because even though he was a degenerate, he really didn’t want the whole world knowing he was a degenerate.
Henderson’s cell phone rang. He yanked it off his belt. After a few moments of cryptic conversation, his expression slowly shifted.
He hung up the phone, then sat back down in his chair. “Well. Looks like a search warrant is pretty much out of the question now.”
“Oh, yeah?” Brenda said. “And why is that?”
“Because Alex just took an unauthorized tour of the Reichert house.”
Dave felt a stab of foreboding. “What?”
“The housekeeper caught him breaking and entering. He and Valerie Parker. They were in there together. Kind of interesting, don’t you think?”
“That’s impossible. Alex would never have—”
“Don’t tell me what he never would have done! Not when I’ve got an eyewitness who says he broke into that house!”
“Come on! That makes no sense! Would he be stupid enough to get caught inside the house of the woman he supposedly murdered?”
“Maybe he left something behind the night of the murder that he needs to retrieve,” Henderson said. “Ever thought about that?”
Brenda sneered. “Or maybe he’s looking for the rifle you won’t get a search warrant for!”
Dave could tell Henderson was trying to keep from smiling, but it was clearly a hard-won battle. Good thing he was keeping it in check, though. Brenda was skewering him with those bulletlike eyes of hers in a way that said that if his mouth so much as turned up a single millimeter, she was going to gnaw right through his jugular.
“I don’t give a shit what they were looking for,” Henderson said. “They were in there. I don’t know any judge who’s likely to consider the husband a stronger suspect than your brother in light of that.”
“Where is Alex now?” Dave asked.
“He seems to have fled the scene,” Henderson said. “Really racking up those charges, isn’t he?”
That sarcastic little smile finally made its way to Henderson’s lips, and Brenda started toward him. He recoiled, and Dave managed to grab her arm and yank her back before she actually made bodily contact.
“There’s more to this than meets the eye,” Dave told Henderson, as he dragged Brenda toward the door. “And you’d better not stop until you find out what it is.”
“Is that a threat, DeMarco? I mean, you could go to the chief with whatever you’ve got on me, but what’s the point?” He held out his palms. “My hands are tied.”
He sat back with a self-satisfied smirk, and Dave decided his advice earlier to Alex had been extremely faulty. He’d like nothing more at this moment than to see his brother beat the crap out of Henderson and leave nothing but a pile of broken bones behind.
He pulled Brenda out to the sidewalk in front of the diner.
“Smug little bastard,” Brenda muttered. “I ought to knock every one of those tobacco-stained teeth right down his throat. I can do it, too. One doubled-up fist in just the right place—”
“Forget him. He’s not going to be able to help us.”
“Wonder how he’d look with his nose shoved up into his sinus cavity?”
“We had him. He was going to get the warrant, or at least try. Damn it! I told Alex I’d talk to Henderson. So what was he doing in that house?”
“Maybe I could perform a little sadistic dentistry,” Brenda mused. “Like in Marathon Man. A highly underrated movie, in my opinion.”
“I’ve got to talk to Alex. Find out what’s going on.”
“Or maybe I’ll just rip out his tongue. I read once in Soldier of Fortune—”
“Brenda! Will you spare me the bodily torture fantasies for just a minute?”
Brenda sighed. “Well, Alex is in deep shit now, no matter what the answers to all those questions are.”
She was right. And there was nothing they could do now. All they could do was wait until Alex surfaced again, and hope to hell he had some kind of an explanation for all this that might keep him out of jail.
“By the way,” Dave said, “what was the deal with the hooker and the Doberman? I must have missed that one
.”
“Ask John to tell you about it. He can do the sound effects.”
Oh, that sounded entertaining. He’d be sure to bring it up at the next family lunch.
“Something else is going on here,” Brenda said. “There must be a reason Alex broke into that house.”
Maybe, but Dave couldn’t imagine what that might be. He had a feeling that as of right now, there wasn’t a thing he could do to help Alex. He was on his own.
Alex pulled into the abandoned drive-in theater, the tires of his SUV crunching against the gravel drive. He wheeled around behind the boarded-up concession stand and got out, trying to keep his cool. Val had done a lot of really stupid things since he’d known her, but this one topped them all.
With every moment that passed, his situation grew more dire. He’d committed a crime. Then left the scene of the crime. Throw all that on top of a murder accusation, and he was really sitting pretty.
And where the hell was Val, anyway?
A few minutes later he saw her van in the distance. She pulled into the drive-in. She got out of her car tentatively, as if she thought he just might snap her right in two. Good. It was about time she was afraid of something, and it didn’t bother him in the least to have that something be him.
She held up her palm. “Look, Alex. Before you start in on me, I had nothing to do with your ending up in that house. That was your doing.”
“I heard screams, Val! I thought it was you! What was I supposed to do? Just sit out there and let Reichert have at you?”
“That’s what you thought was happening?”
“Yes!”
“You came in to save me?”
“Yes!”
“Well, that was stupid as hell.”
“What?”
“For future reference, let me assure you that I can take care of myself. The last thing you needed to do was get caught breaking into the house of the woman you supposedly murdered.”
