Jose came back into the living room fully clothed. She should have told him about the back door. He walked up to her mother. “I apologize from the deepest part of my heart for what you saw.”
“It must be awkward for you.” Janet patted his shoulder. “But don’t worry, by the time you hit my age, you’ve seen a lot of things.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Sofia.” He ducked his head and darted out of the front door without meeting Sofia’s eyes. She wondered if she’d ever be able to convince him to come back. It was hard to find somebody as easy to be with as Jose, and she would miss him. All it took to get him to give her a massage with benefits was a text message.
“That’s the guy at the top of your checklist?” Aidan reached for his coffee cup.
“I don’t believe in checklists.” She moved out of reach and took a long sip of his coffee. “I want a real relationship.”
“That walking penis is a real relationship?” Aidan looked genuinely shocked.
“Why do you care?” She finished off his coffee, because he deserved it. Now, all she needed was to get a new phone, and her addictions would be topped up for the day.
“Aidan isn’t your dealer?” Sofia’s mom glared at him. “Is he?”
“The only thing he brings me is coffee,” Sofia said.
“I didn’t bring you coffee. You stole it from me.” Aidan took the empty cup out of her hand and shook his head. “I came to check up on you, and take you with me to a work meeting.”
Janet handed her a clear plastic cup with a lid. Sofia recognized its purpose immediately.
“This is for me to pee in?” Like she hadn’t done enough of that lately.
“Please.” Janet’s eyes were big and worried. “For me.”
“But then you have to let this rest, OK?” Sofia said.
Her mother’s lower lip trembled, and she nodded.
Sofia took the cup and headed to the bathroom by the master bedroom.
“Emily!” Janet called. “Go with her.”
“Really?” Sofia asked.
“You get used to it,” Emily said. “I haven’t peed in private since Violet was born.”
“It doesn’t matter whether it’s clean or not,” called Jeffrey. “You blew a big opportunity here. You could have resurrected your career, made us both some money, and you threw that away. As your agent—”
“You’re not my agent, remember?” Sofia wanted to throw the pee cup at him, but decided to wait until it was full.
“I know you don’t really mean that,” Jeffrey said. “You’re having an awkward day.”
That last part was definitely true.
A loud squawking came from the porch.
“Where do you keep the bird food?” asked Gray.
“In the fridge,” said Aidan. “Top shelf. Bologna and organic whole-wheat bread.”
“Just bologna,” Sofia called. “I need to go shopping.”
She stalked back to the bathroom with Emily in tow. “It’s for a case. I explained the whole thing to you when you came for the kids.”
“I tried to tell Mom that, but when she saw your butt on the Internet at that rehab place, she kinda flipped.” Emily laughed. “You should see the expression on your face when your shoe landed on that dog.”
“Really?”
Emily held out her phone. Sofia saw a picture of herself hanging onto the top of the gate and staring down in horror.
“I liked that shoe.” She started to laugh.
“The dog’s name was really Muffin?” her sister asked.
“Mm-hmm.” Sofia couldn’t talk, she was laughing so hard.
“Muffin, the Shoe Killer?” Emily giggled.
“He was a lot scarier than he sounds now.” Sofia couldn’t stop laughing.
Emily reached out and took her hand. “Muffins have carbs. Of course they’re scary!”
Sofia punched her lightly in the shoulder, and they leaned against the sink, still laughing.
Finally, Emily pulled herself upright. “Let’s get this test out of the way.”
“Do you think I’m an addict?”
“If I thought there was even the slightest chance of it, I’d never let you take the kids for the weekend.” Emily looked fierce.
“Thanks.”
“If I’d known you were going to teach them to build rubber-band guns out of everything in the house, I’d have thought twice, too.” Emily unscrewed the lid of the cup.
“So, why is everyone here?”
“Mom. She’s going through some weird overprotective phase all of a sudden. She said I had a suspicious mole on my arm and ought to see a doctor.” Emily held up her arm. “It’s been there as long as I can remember. Now pee so we can get out of here.”
Sofia peed, handed her sister the cup, and washed her hands. Emily dunked a white strip into the pee.
“How long?”
“Four to seven minutes.”
Sofia went into her bedroom and got dressed in slacks and an Oxford shirt. She wasn’t going back out there in a robe.
“How long?” she called to Emily.
“Three more minutes.” It sounded as if Emily was straightening up the bathroom.
“You don’t have to clean.”
“I just found some Lego pieces. Are they yours?”
Sofia laughed. “Take them to Van.”
Emily put them into her pocket.
Sofia combed her hair and did a quick tooth brushing. “Is it ready now?”
“You’re clean.” Emily waved the drug kit’s testing stick around. “Let’s go announce it.”
She took Sofia’s hand, and they walked out to face the room.
“Clean?” Janet leaned forward, eyes on the strip in Emily’s hand.
Sofia felt weird about everyone looking at it.
“As a whistle,” said Emily. “Now everyone can go home.”
Janet hugged Sofia so hard her ribs creaked. She didn’t care.
“Nothing to see here,” Emily said. “Everyone move along.”
CHAPTER 21
Sofia slid into Aidan’s car and shut the door. Her mother had made her promise to come home for an I’m-sorry-I-didn’t-trust-you dinner. Jeffrey had continued ranting until Emily had physically pushed him out of the door. Even by agent standards, he was persistent, which was saying something. The car seemed like the safest place she’d been all morning.
“You look as eager to leave here as you did last night when you broke out of rehab.” Aidan tapped his empty coffee cup against the steering wheel.
“I expected to have to run away from that,” she said. “This ambush caught me by surprise.”
Aidan put the car in gear and headed up the steep road to the PCH. She rolled down the window and breathed in the smell of sea air and eucalyptus.
“Please stop at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. I really need coffee. Preferably via an IV drip, but I’ll settle for a cup.”
“You remind me of your seagull right now. It’s a little scary.”
“And a croissant. I definitely need a croissant.”
He didn’t say anything rude until after they’d pulled into the Malibu Country Mart, and she had her coffee in her hands. His instinct for self-preservation was stronger than she’d thought. In appreciation, she bought him a coffee to replace the one she had stolen.
“Ready to talk now?” he asked.
“Fill me in on the case.” She handed him his coffee and they went out to the car again. LA was all about time in the car. She didn’t remember the part of her childhood that she’d spent in Indiana being like that. They drove, sure, but it was a small part of their day. Not like here.
“While you were gathering human intelligence, I was looking online.” He flipped out the holder and set his coffee cup in it.
She wasn’t going to let go of hers until she’d drunk every delicious drop. She bit into her croissant and nodded for him to continue. Aidan preferred information he could find with a computer. He claimed that people lied, but data didn’t.<
br />
“It was a tricky bit of detecting,” he said. “I had to look through—”
“Bottom line.”
He grimaced, probably mad he didn’t get to show off his intelligence gathering. “It looks like Polly Coggins founded Waves not long after she received a large bequest from a patient she nursed, Rocky Hannaford. We have an appointment to meet with his son who inherited almost nothing in the will. Rocky left it all to Polly.”
Sofia swallowed the last bite of croissant and took a long swig of coffee. “But she seemed kinda nice.”
“She’d have to. Otherwise she’d never convince people to leave her everything in their wills.” Aidan zipped along the PCH.
The ocean slipped by Sofia’s window, and a flock of seagulls whirled and dove over the water. Fred’s hungry cousins. Aidan was right about Polly, although she wasn’t going to say that aloud. Instead she finished her coffee.
He turned left, and they headed up a bumpy road. Scrubby bushes and yellow grass passed by on both sides. The house at the end had once been red, but it had been a long time since its last paint-job. A battered VW microbus was parked next to a wooden ramp that ran up to the front door. It was the most decrepit car she had ever seen. Rust showed through the flowers painted on the sides, the front bumper hung at a weird angle, and a series of dents ran down the side.
As Aidan pulled up next to it, a man in a wheelchair came out of the front door with a black Labrador at his side. The wheelchair looked as battered as the VW. It had rusty spokes and a strip of duct tape ran along one armrest. She compared the scene in front of her to the costly perfection at Waves and started liking Polly less.
“I’m Rocky!” said the man in the chair. “Rocky Junior. And this is Rex.”
She stepped out of the car, self-conscious about staring at his chair. She’d never seen one in such bad shape, but that was no excuse. “Nice VW. It’s a classic.”
Rocky threw back his head and laughed. “Diplomatic way of putting it. It’s an old beater, but it’s been in more movies than you have, Miss Salgado.”
“How so?” She’d only been in a handful.
“I get approached by prop departments to use the old beater for films. That bus was in Lost Boys, Goonies, and Speed. Recently it was in one of the X-Men movies.”
So LA. A car with a better resume than most actors.
“Does it have its own IMDB page?” Aidan asked.
“It ought to. Come on in.” Rocky popped his wheelchair backward, spun to the side, and shot through the front door. It was a slick maneuver, and Sofia felt like applauding. Rex followed, with a stately stride.
Aidan walked up the stairs next to the ramp. The paint had peeled away, revealing gray wood underneath.
Inside, the house was in better shape than the VW, but not much. A threadbare orange couch and chair sat next to a high coffee table. A surfboard with a half-finished tile mosaic of a palm tree on the front lay on it, with several colorful glass tiles.
“Wow,” Sofia said. “Do you do commissions?”
“Yup,” he said. “What do you want?”
“Something like this.” She could already see the board in her living room hanging on the wall. “Maybe with some more blue.”
“I have a design for a black palm tree against a moonlit background that might work for you.” He wheeled out of the room. Rex stayed, and his brown eyes never left them.
Sofia clicked her tongue, but Rex didn’t budge from his position. “He’s as disciplined as Muffin.”
“Let’s try to stay focused,” Adrian said. “We’re not here to shop.”
“No harm in shopping.” Rocky was back already. He handed Sofia a three-ring binder. “Surfboards are in the back.”
She flipped through the pages. He’d done a lot of boards—some with waves, others with surfer chicks in silhouette, a couple of palm trees. He was an amazing artist.
“As you know from our phone conversation,” Aidan plowed ahead without her, “we’d like to talk about a former employee of your father’s, Polly Coggins.”
“Ah, Polly,” he said.
“My understanding is your father left his entire estate to her?” Aidan asked.
“Most of it.” Rocky shrugged. “She’d probably have this house if it hadn’t been in escrow when he made the will. It was a pretty thorough will.”
“Why would your father do something like that?” She looked up from the book. She’d already decided on the palm tree at night that he’d initially recommended. It was perfect.
“I think it was because she did the one thing I couldn’t do for him.” Rocky picked at the duct tape on the arm of his chair.
“What was that?” Sofia asked.
“She killed him.” He picked a green tile off the table and flipped it across the back of his fingers. Rex nosed his leg.
“Why didn’t you go to the police?” Aidan sat up straight and paid attention now.
“Didn’t want to. And there’s no proof I’m right.”
“She murdered your father and you didn’t want to tell the police?”
The tile moved across his knuckles from index finger to pinky and back.
“My father had bone cancer. Excruciatingly painful disease. No hope of recovery. He was in his house down on the water, and Polly was taking care of him. He didn’t have long, maybe a few months. But they were going to be hell on earth.” Rocky kept the tile moving with little flicks of his fingers. “She was in charge of his morphine, and I think she had the courage to do what I couldn’t—end his suffering once and for all. Far as I’m concerned, she earned every penny of that money.”
“When exactly did this happen?” Aidan asked.
“The night he died. I had him cremated, so there’s no evidence. He was up at the old house with her and her husband.” Rocky pointed at the book in Sofia’s lap. “See anything you like?”
She shook her head. It felt wrong to be ordering artwork from a man who talked so easily about his father being killed.
“She took your father’s money and used it to open a rehab center called Waves. Ever heard of it?” Aidan kept going.
“Good for her.” Rocky dropped the tile back onto the pile on the table.
“And one of her clients died under very suspicious circumstances.” Aidan gave Rocky a pointed look, but Rocky didn’t seem to care.
Sofia looked at a framed photo on the end table. It showed Rocky, Rex, and another man standing on the edge of a cliff. The other man was turned away from the camera, petting Rex. Something about the guy was familiar, even though Sofia couldn’t see his face. She filed that away for later.
“Where were you on the night your father died?” Aidan didn’t even try to sound casual.
“In a hospital in Thousand Oaks. I had pneumonia.” Rocky tapped his chest. “Happens to the wheelchair bound more often than to regular walking folk.”
She’d be willing to bet her lunch, which was getting more valuable by the second, that Aidan would be double-checking Rocky’s alibi.
“Do you think Mrs. Coggins manipulated your father into turning over his money to her?” Aidan asked. That was why they’d come here.
“I think he manipulated her. He got what he wanted, she got what she wanted. Everyone’s happy.” Rocky picked up the tile again, and Rex tapped his leg. This time Rocky put down the tile and petted the dog’s head.
Aidan looked around at the ramshackle house. “Everyone but you.”
“I’m happiest of all. I didn’t have to see my father suffer any more. At the end, he begged for death. She gave him peace, and I won’t have you hassling her. I invited you here today so you would understand that she did my father a good turn, not a bad one.”
That wasn’t what Sofia had expected. This man had lost a lot of money to Polly, money he clearly could have used, and she’d killed his father. She would have expected him to be angry with Polly, but he wasn’t. Polly was a murderer. Although if his dad had wanted to die because he had only agony to look forward to i
n his final weeks, was that really so bad?
“Euthanasia was illegal in California at that time.” Aidan sounded like the former cop he was. “If Mrs. Coggins assisted in the death of your father, whether for financial gain or otherwise, that’s a crime.”
Rocky pushed his wheelchair up next to Aidan’s legs. “I’ll have to ask you to leave.” Rex stood by his owner’s side. He wasn’t growling, but he didn’t look friendly.
Sofia stood up. Time to stop picking on the guy in the wheelchair. Aidan must have thought so, too, because he got to his feet and gestured that she go ahead of him outside. She cast one last glance back at the photograph on the end table. Something about it bothered her, but she couldn’t say what.
CHAPTER 22
By evening, her life was almost normal again. Sofia had transferred her info to an old phone she kept in a drawer in the kitchen and ordered a new one. Jacob Schmidt had fixed the broken window, again, and she’d cleaned the trailer from top to bottom. She’d given up on repainting the kitchen and had bundled away all the tools and newspapers. She’d even had lunch—Thai food that was delivered because she still hadn’t gone shopping.
And now she was thinking about Rocky. Aidan was going after Polly and maybe Rocky, too, but she wasn’t so sure that what they had done was wrong. Aidan said it was about the law, not her personal sense of right and wrong. She hadn’t been sure enough about it to argue with him.
She decided to concentrate on Craig’s case instead. Polly wasn’t the only one who had benefited from Craig’s death. What about Buster Taylor, the manager who’d said Craig was worth more dead than alive? She Googled his name, but the first result was an article about the rehab center Buster had found for his client. Naturally, that led with a picture of Sofia on top of the gate, Brandi staring up at her with a giant grin. Brandi looked like she was having fun, while Sofia looked completely demented. No wonder her mother had flipped out.
She skimmed the article. It was pretty much what she’d expected, but it also reported that Monaco had left the center today. Amber probably had, too, but she didn’t get a mention. This meant that Waves was empty—two released and two escapees. Somehow, the thought of the rehab center empty was worse than the thought of it full.
B is for Bad Girls (Malibu Mystery Book 2) Page 13
