by Kara Lennox
She listened a moment, then hung up. “Apparently you were expected,” she said as if she hadn’t believed their story and was surprised to find it true. “Mr. Hyatt will be here shortly to escort you back.” She handed each of them a visitor tag. “Wear these in plain sight while you’re here, or you’re apt to be thrown out on your tushies. And don’t wander the building without an escort.”
Robyn resisted the urge to click her heels and salute.
She was relieved when Ford appeared from behind the screen a few moments later, offering them a brief, welcoming smile. Today he was casual in a Rice University football T-shirt that accented his wide shoulders, the soft cotton draping over his pecs. Faded jeans hugged his thighs, and his beat-up Converse All Stars made her think of pickup basketball in the park, playing Shirts and Skins. Mostly skins.
But he looked like he’d been putting in long hours. He hadn’t shaved, and his somber expression meant he probably hadn’t made any more progress.
She longed to reach out to him, to touch him, connect with him on some physical level. When had she let herself get so obsessed with Ford and his delectable body? It was a dangerous preoccupation, one she needed to shelve. She couldn’t allow Ford to become distracted by misplaced sexual urges. She needed him one hundred percent focused on this case.
A man’s life depended on that.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SHE HAD TO FORCE HERSELF not to lock gazes with him.
“Thank you for coming on such short notice.” He opened the almost-invisible door in the glass screen. “This way. Do you want a quick tour of the offices?”“I’d really like to get started,” Trina said. “I have a dentist appointment at three.”
This was the first Robyn had heard about an appointment. She was annoyed that Trina hadn’t mentioned it, but she didn’t want to argue with the woman, so again she said nothing.
“I’ll just point things out as we pass, then,” Ford said coolly, but he gave Robyn a look that said the comment wasn’t aimed at her.
“What’s the deal with that woman out front?” Trina asked as they followed Ford down the hall, apparently unaware of her own rudeness. “She’s offensive.”
“Ah, Celeste. She’s our resident pit bull. Fiercely protective. She discourages casual visitors, who only waste our time.”
“She could discourage the National Guard,” Trina mumbled. “How much do you pay her to sit out there, read magazines and scare the hell out of people?”
“You’d have to ask her. But whatever her salary, she earns it. She has a sharp mind, wasted during forty years as a Houston patrol officer. She wanted to be a detective but couldn’t get herself promoted.”
“Sexism?” Robyn asked.
“More like Celeste-ism. She always managed to piss off whoever was doing the promoting.”
Robyn could see that.
“Any news on the case?” Trina asked. “It’s such a shame Eldon doesn’t have an alibi.”
Robyn wanted to smack her. She was fishing for in formation she already had, testing Ford to see if he would tell her.
“We can talk more when we get to the boiler room.”
True to his word, he pointed out things as they passed. “That’s the bull pen,” he said as they walked by a large, open area of cubicles. “Project Justice employs a handful of senior investigators who oversee all of the cases, with offices upstairs. Each senior investigator has four to six cases at a time, which is a much smaller load than most city detectives. The foundation has more manpower and money devoted per case than most police departments can afford, which means every lead gets investigated.”
Robyn noticed that he did not include himself in his explanations—as if he was no longer a part of Project Justice, but more of a guest. Apparently he hadn’t changed his mind about his resignation.
They peeked in the door of the foundation’s small laboratory, where several white-coated employees worked at microscopes or other futuristic-looking machines.
The company had a nicely appointed lunchroom, where a catering company was setting out a sandwich buffet.
“If I worked here I’d be big as a house,” Trina said, eyeing a huge bowl that contained packages of MM’s for the taking.
“Help yourself to anything. The fridge is full of any kind of drink you could want. Coffee’s over there in the corner. Daniel believes his people can’t think clearly if they’re hungry, so he makes sure they aren’t.”
“Wow, nice boss,” Trina said.
The boiler room was a large, open room with a U-shaped table practically filling the whole space. On the table were at least a dozen telephones, blank legal pads, pens, clean, empty glasses and pitchers of ice water.
Two women sat at one end, working the phones, speaking in quiet, businesslike voices.
“This is where we’re going to work?” Trina asked, wrinkling her nose.
“I warned you it wouldn’t be glamorous. I need each of you to take a seat and grab a phone.” He placed a packet of papers stapled together on the table in front of each of them. “These are all the wig shops within a hundred-mile radius of Green Prairie.”
“That’s a lot of wig shops,” Trina murmured, leafing through the papers.
“I’ve also included every place I could find that sells wigs over the internet. What we’re looking for is a shop that was open eight years ago and that carried Brandenburg wigs in the Allure line. So you’ll want to talk to a manager, or an employee who’s been there a long time.”
He continued with the instructions—what to ask, how to follow up, what to write down, where to ask the shops to send receipts or forward computer records. Robyn took notes while Trina fidgeted.
“What are the chances?” Trina asked. “I mean, don’t most businesses throw out that stuff after five years?”
“An astounding number of people keep everything. Yeah, the chances are very slim that this will pay off. However, until we have something better—”
“This is it, then?” Trina asked. “Saving my husband’s life rests on this very slim chance that we can find out who bought that wig? What about the witness? Why can’t you find this Roy guy?”
Robyn sighed quietly. So far, Trina had proved herself more of a liability than an asset.
“I’ve been going over the handwritten notes of the responding officer. There was, in fact, a Roy mentioned there who was not later interviewed.”
“Do you have a last name?” Robyn asked excitedly.
“Actually, yes. Roy White. Ring any bells?”
Trina looked blank, and Robyn shook her head. “I don’t remember that name ever coming up. There was a White family that lived on Cherry Street. His father drove a cement truck, I think.”
Ford scribbled notes. “That could help. It’s possible this man saw something that didn’t gibe with Eldon being the guilty party, so the police quietly removed it from the file. I’ve seen stuff like that happen.”
“That’s awful,” Trina said. “But White is such a common name. Do you think you might actually find this guy?”
“I’ll try.”
“We better get to work, too,” Robyn said. She didn’t really like talking on the phone, asking people to do things for her. She once volunteered for a charity fund drive where she had to call dozens and dozens of people and ask them for money. It had been excruciating.
But she would do what she had to do.
“Make notes about every single call you make,” Ford said. “If they don’t want to help you, appeal to their sympathies. Tell them you need them to save an innocent man’s life. Tell them they could help put a child killer behind bars. Hell, tell them they’ll be on a reality TV show. Wheedle, cry, whatever it takes to get their cooperation.”
Ah. Robyn saw now the real reason he’d asked them to perform this particular task. It would be much harder to say no to a woman who was about to be a widow, or another who’d lost her child, than to deny some anonymous employee of a foundation they’d never heard of.
Whatever worked.
TWO HOURS INTO HER TASK, Robyn was ready to admit defeat. Her back hurt, her ear was sore and she was going hoarse. She’d been cursed out in three languages, hung up on and generally treated like a low-life telemarketer interrupting someone’s dinner.
So when she actually got a sympathetic person on the phone, a woman who’d owned her wig shop for twenty years, who had sold Brandenburg Allure wigs and who had kept all of her sales records, Robyn almost fell out of her chair.“I remember that trial,” the woman said. “I watched it on truTV. Such a tragedy. And you’re…the wife?”
“The ex-wife, actually,” Robyn said. “But I know in my heart that my ex-husband did not harm our son. The police rushed to judgment. Evidence was overlooked and clues weren’t followed. You would help me so much if you could just send me copies of your sales receipts from that year.”
The woman chuckled. “Truth be told, I was just getting ready to clean out that storeroom and throw out all those old papers. I’ll just send ’em your way, how about that?”
“Great. Thank you so much.”
“What’s your address, honey?”
Robyn was so shocked by the woman’s cooperation that she forgot to give the Project Justice mailing address, and instead rattled off her home address.
She started to correct herself, then figured, oh, well, she could give the package to Ford when she received it. When she hung up, she realized Trina had been listening to the exchange.
“How many is that for you?” Trina asked.
“Actually, that’s the first shop that’s offered to send me receipts. How about you?”
“I’ve got three,” Trina said. “Try crying. It really works.”
“I’ll remember that,” Robyn said dryly. “But this isn’t a competition.”
Trina instantly sobered. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be frivolous. But this is the most god-awful boring job. I was just trying to make it a little bit fun.”
Robyn couldn’t help it—she smiled at Trina, who was sometimes very childlike. Eldon had described her as exuberant, full of life, funny. Robyn hadn’t seen that side of her, but maybe there was more to Trina than met the eye. Maybe she was one of those people who had to warm up to you before you could see their best qualities.
“You’re right,” Robyn said. “There’s no reason we have to treat everything so deadly serious.”
“Next yes I get, I’m going to reward myself with another package of MM’s.”
“Unless I get there first.”
Robyn decided to try the internet wig shops. Most of them, she discovered, had not had an online presence eight years ago, so it was easy to eliminate them. She found one that had been selling wigs in cyber space for twelve years. All of their records were on computer, and the man she talked to agreed to send the pertinent receipts. Robyn didn’t resort to crying, either, though she would have.
“Score one more for the home team,” she said.
“Good work,” Trina said. “Oh, crap, I gotta leave for my dentist appointment. It takes months to get an appointment with this guy, but he supposedly does the best crowns in all of Houston.”
“Oh…”
“Don’t tell me you want to stay and do more of this.”
“Well, someone has to. I was just hitting my stride. I finally figured out what to say and how to say it so that I don’t get hung up on.”
Ford walked in just then, and Robyn drank in the sight of him. Did she really want to keep making these uncomfortable calls, or did she just want to hang around Ford? She was pathetically transparent, even to herself.
“How are you ladies doing?”
“We’re kickin’ ass,” Trina said.
Robyn shrugged. “We’re making some progress.”
“Good.” Ford rubbed his hands together with relish. “You’ll both be happy to know, I found Roy White, thanks to your tip about the cement truck, Robyn. He’s living in Bozeman, Montana. He said the police interviewed him that night. He saw something he thought was important, but no one followed up on it. Then his army reserve unit shipped out to Afghanistan, and he didn’t think anymore of it.”
“Well, what did he see?” Robyn asked. Surely if this mystery witness had implicated Eldon, Ford wouldn’t look or sound so animated.
“He wouldn’t say. I think he was angling to get paid for the information. He knows Eldon has money.”
“Had money,” Trina said sullenly. “The legal fees have eaten through most of his assets. And that house costs a bundle to maintain. I’ve already got a second mortgage on it.”
“What about his mother?” Ford asked.
Trina barked a laugh. “Ha. Tightwad Tillie? She quit giving money to the cause years ago—hardly even speaks to me. I think she believes her own son is guilty.”
Robyn nodded. Ever since Eldon’s father had died a few years ago, Tillie Jasperson had tried to sweep Eldon’s very existence under the carpet. It was like she wished it would all go away. She seemed embarrassed by her two daughters-in-law.
Trina looked at her watch again. “I have got to go.” She self-consciously gathered up all her candy wrappers and tossed them into a trash can.
“I can take this list home with me,” Robyn said to Ford, “and make more calls from there.”
“I’d prefer you keep working at the call center, so we have an official record of your calls, and you have the ability to record conversations if you need to. If transportation is the problem, I can run you home later.”
“Run me home? It’s forty miles.”
“I don’t mind.”
“He doesn’t mind,” Trina said. “I think you should stay.” Behind Ford’s back, she waggled her eyebrows at Robyn.
Oh, great. All she needed was for Trina to start playing matchmaker, or dropping hints, or gossiping about an imagined romance between her and Ford.
Still, if Trina sensed something…
Trina collected her bundle of papers and handed a much-scribbled-upon legal pad to Ford. “Let me know what else I can do. I can see myself out.” She strode out of the room, blatantly violating Celeste’s orders.
Ford watched her go, looking perplexed. “I’ll just make sure she gets out safely.”
“Afraid Celeste will body-tackle her?” Robyn was only half kidding.
Robyn made another fruitless call. When she hung up, she discovered Ford was standing behind her.
“I didn’t want to interrupt.” He took the chair Trina had vacated. “Was it a mistake including Trina?” He studied the mostly illegible notes.
“She actually had better luck than I did. She’s very persuasive on the phone. I mostly got cursed out and hung up on.”
Ford looked at Robyn’s list. “But you got a few of the shops to agree to send receipts?”
“A few.”
“That’s a few more than we had yesterday. Who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky. Did you eat lunch?”
“What time is it?”
“Almost two o’clock. And I’ll take that as a no. There’s a great Mexican place around the corner. Best carne asada you ever had in your life.”
Robyn realized she was starving. “Okay. Pardon me for bringing this up, but you seem kind of…chipper.”
His eyebrows flew up. “Do I?”
“Quite a bit different than the man I found in a dive bar, drowning his sorrows.”
Ford immediately sobered. “I was having a bad day.”
“Hey, didn’t mean to bring you down.”
Ford’s brows knitted in thought. “It’s the thrill of the hunt, I guess. When I’m on a case, I get kind of hyper. The fact that I drink way too much coffee doesn’t help.”
“I wasn’t complaining. Just…noticing.”
“Did you say yes to Mexican food?”
She hadn’t answered one way or another, but she had to eat. The sandwiches in the lunchroom were probably dried out by now, if they hadn’t all been eaten. And she couldn’t stomach one more bite of MMs. She’d almost kept pace with Tr
ina.
“Bring it on.”
Ten minutes later, they were seated at Casa Milagro, eating chips and spicy queso and sipping from tall glasses of iced tea while they waited for their lunches to arrive.
The waitress brought their meals, and for a few minutes they didn’t talk, they just ate. Despite Ford’s resounding recommendation of the carne asada, Robyn had ordered chicken sour-cream enchiladas.
She couldn’t remember the last time she had any kind of real appetite for food. Once the steaming platter was in front of her, the scent made her mouth water. She didn’t even wait for it to cool down. She cut off a bite of enchilada and blew on it a couple of times, then popped it into her mouth and sighed.
It was good. The food was so good, in fact, that twice she caught herself actually moaning softly in pleasure.
Lately she’d been noticing other things, pleasures that awakened her senses. Just this morning, she’d taken a good whiff of her bath gel and realized it smelled like raspberries. She’d picked it up haphazardly at the drugstore, never thinking much about the smell.
Then, she’d noticed how soft her new T-shirt was. It was something she’d never purchase for herself, pink with a picture of a kitten on it. But her aunt—the only blood relative Robyn still had contact with—had given it to her. Apparently she thought Robyn was still twelve years old. Robyn wore it because it was hanging in the closet and it was clean.
But it was also soft, a really soft cotton-silk blend.
It was as if her senses had been dead for years, and now they were waking up. Whether it was because she was doing something proactive to free Eldon from prison, or due to the man sitting across the table from her, she didn’t know.
All she knew was that she normally picked at her food, and today she was well on her way to cleaning her plate.
“Good?” Ford asked.
She swallowed. “Amazingly.” She ate several more bites, glancing up every once in a while to see Ford enjoying his carne asada—bits of thinly sliced steak, marinated, grilled and served with warm tortillas, grilled onions and guacamole.
