by Brenda Novak
“Six works.”
“Great.”
Gabrielle’s call-waiting beeped, and she felt the same unease she’d experienced earlier. Who would it be this time? David? Hansen? Anyone else she didn’t want to talk to? “I’ll see you tomorrow—” She hesitated, not knowing what to call Naomi, and was rescued from the awkwardness of the moment by her mother’s smooth interruption.
“Hal and I can’t wait.”
Twisting her fingers through the phone cord, Gabrielle said goodbye and switched lines. “Hello?”
“Gabrielle?”
It was Tucker. She could tell by the immediate tingle that swept through her body—followed by fear. Had something happened to him? Was he calling to say he was in trouble? “Is everything okay?” she asked.
“Yeah, fine.”
Traffic whizzed and rumbled in the background and she guessed he was using a pay phone.
“How’s Landon?” he asked.
“He’s…” She wondered how much to tell Tucker. His son was miserable, but she didn’t want to make Tucker’s burden any heavier. Surely she could figure out some way to reach an eight-year-old boy, keep him happy for the day. “He’s doing great,” she lied. “I’m thinking about taking him and Allie to the community pool in Chandler.”
“Why Chandler?”
“Because I just called in sick. I’d rather not be spotted in Florence.”
“That would be a problem.”
“Do you want to talk to Landon?”
“No, I said my goodbyes this morning. If he’s doing that well, I’ll just see him tonight.”
Gabrielle waited for him to give his reason for calling, but he said nothing further. “Are you worried I won’t take care of him or something?” she asked.
“No.”
“Then what? Why’d you call so soon?”
A long pause. “I just wanted to tell you I’m thinking of you,” he said.
Gabrielle caught her breath in surprise. “What does that mean?” she asked, but he’d already hung up.
TUCKER TURNED HIS FACE away and moved to the side as a Mexican woman who’d come up behind him while he was talking to Gabrielle used the pay phone. He doubted she’d recognize him, or call the police even if she did. He suspected she didn’t speak English. But he saw no point in taking chances.
Keeping his face averted, he leaned against the hood of his old Datsun while listening to her rapid Spanish and wondered what had possessed him to call Gabby. He needed to distance himself from her emotionally and to concentrate on salvaging what was left of his life, not negate everything he’d established last night by eroding his own resistance.
The woman abruptly ended her call and hurried into the gas station without sparing him a glance. He moved back into the booth. Ever since his escape, his brother, Tom, had been out of town—on a Caribbean cruise according to some woman who had identified herself as his housekeeper. He was supposed to get back yesterday, and Tucker had hoped he’d be able to reach him this morning. His brother hadn’t written or visited for over a year, but Tucker had no doubt Tom would help him.
Since high school, Tucker had taken care of his big brother, bailed him out of scrapes with the law, included him in real estate transactions that made them both good money. Tucker had brought Tom in on the biggest opportunity of his career, the one he’d been working on when he’d gone to prison, with the understanding that Tom would help his partner Robert finish the deal, then split his share of the profits with Tucker. Tucker hadn’t seen a dime yet, but turning raw land into finished lots often took several years. He didn’t expect to see any money for another twelve months or so. But things had to be going well for his brother, judging by the fact that he now had a house big enough to require domestic help.
The persistent ringing on the other end of the line made Tucker curse. Come on, dammit. Somebody pick up.
The morning was only a few hours old, yet the sun beat down on his back, making him damp with perspiration. As he gazed off into the distance, the Superstition Mountains looked hazy. It was going to be another scorcher. Too bad his little car had no air conditioning.
Nine rings…ten…Tucker was about to hang up when the housekeeper he’d spoken to earlier finally answered.
“Tucker residence,” she said with a heavy Spanish accent.
Tucker gripped the handset more tightly. “Is Tom there?”
“I’m afraid he’s still sleeping. He and his wife got in very late last night.”
Wife? His brother had married and never told him? Tucker still received weekly letters from his mother, but she’d never mentioned it, either.
“Can I take a message?” the housekeeper asked.
“No, I need to talk to Tom. Tell him it’s urgent.”
“I’m sorry, he got in very late last night.”
“I understand that. Just tell him his brother is on the phone. He’ll take the call, okay?”
A pause. “One moment,” she said with a deep sigh. He heard some shuffling and then a thump that told him she’d set the phone down.
While he waited, Tucker stared absently at a sea of saguaros jutting up from the Superstition Mountains into the pale blue sky. Apache Junction. There was a stark beauty about this lonely little outpost, but it had a melancholy feeling, too.
“Come on, Tom. It’s me,” Tucker muttered, growing impatient.
After another few minutes, the housekeeper returned. “I’m sorry. Mr. Tucker says he’ll have to call you back. Can I get your number?”
Tucker stared at the pay phone with its metal face glinting in the sun, feeling as though someone had just landed him a good right hook to the chin. Call him back? “He can’t call me back, dammit. I’m in trouble and I need his help. Go get him!”
“I’m sorry. He’s given me strict instructions that he and his wife are not to be disturbed. But thank you for calling,” she said, and hung up.
Shocked and enraged, Tucker whirled toward his car. Then he jammed a hand through his hair and pivoted back to the pay phone. There had to be some sort of misunderstanding. Maybe the housekeeper had garbled his message or Tom didn’t understand his situation. Maybe Tom had been gone so long he’d missed all the news reports.
Tucker fed the phone another few coins and called his brother again, but the housekeeper only reaffirmed what she’d said earlier. When the dial tone buzzed in his ear a second time, he pinched the bridge of his nose and wondered what he was going to do now. He had some money of his own in a savings account at a local bank, what little he hadn’t spent on his defense. But he dared not access it, since the police could trace the transaction and pinpoint his whereabouts. He needed some cash, he needed a place to hide, and he needed both right away.
Glancing over his shoulder to make sure his lingering at the phone wasn’t raising any suspicion, he dialed another number. He’d purposely not contacted his parents since his escape. He hadn’t wanted to drag them into the line of fire. He knew they’d be worried but letting them worry was better than giving the police any reason to harass them. However, Tom had left him no choice. He had to find out what was going on before his luck ran out.
“Hello?”
In prison, he’d been allowed two five-minute calls each week to anyone on his “ten” list; he’d generally used them to phone Landon. He’d spoken to his mother a handful of times, but Dee Tucker sounded older now, frailer than he remembered.
“Hi, Mom. It’s me.”
“Randall! Are you okay?” she asked. “We’ve been worried sick about you.”
“I’m fine, considering the situation,” he said.
“And Landon?”
“He’s good. He’s with me.”
“You shouldn’t have taken him, Randall. You’ve got to turn yourself in. The police have been coming by here and calling us all the time, asking if we’ve heard from you. They’ve been saying terrible, frightening things.”
His mother’s voice broke, which made Tucker’s stomach tense. God, he hated the
shame and unhappiness his imprisonment had caused everyone he knew—his family, his in-laws, his employees and friends, his business partner, his young son.
“They say you could get the death penalty for this,” she went on. “You’ve got to turn yourself in right away, before it goes any farther. I couldn’t bear it if they—”
Tucker squeezed his eyes shut and interrupted before she could say what it was she couldn’t bear. “I’m not turning myself in, Mom. It’s too late for that.”
“Then what? What are you going to do? What can you do?”
“I’m going to figure out a way to get my life back.”
“How?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But the truth is out there somewhere. I thought I’d start by trying to trace Andrea’s movements during her last few days. The police spent all their time and resources trying to pin her death on me. They never bothered to look for other suspects. Maybe I’ll hire another private detective.”
“You tried that once.”
“I’m thinking about doing it again. There’s got to be someone who can help me find the truth.”
“How are you going to avoid being picked up by the police?” she asked.
“I was hoping Tom would help me out with that. I thought maybe he could find someone willing to rent me a place. But he wouldn’t accept my call this morning. You have any idea why?”
“Tom…” She sighed. “Between what’s happened to you and the way he’s been acting, I don’t know what to think.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sometimes I worry that he’s never going to grow up. He did well on that last land deal of yours, the one you were working on when you were arrested, remember?”
The one he was supposed to split with me? “I remember.”
“Well, he hasn’t been up to much since he cashed out of that.”
Tucker’s blood ran cold. “He cashed out? Why didn’t he see it through?”
“I don’t think your partner wanted to continue working with him. Much as we love Tom, he isn’t like you. He doesn’t have the same mind, the same work ethic. Robert offered to buy him out over a year ago.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Tucker asked. His parents didn’t know the specifics of the arrangement he’d made with Tom, so they wouldn’t realize that Tom had cheated him. Still, his coming into a lot of cash would be significant news, considering his brother’s history of going from one job to the next.
“I knew it would only upset you to see your work wasted that way. Developing that land was your dream, and Robert offered Tom far less than he would’ve received in the end.”
Tucker had met Robert in college when they were both business majors. While they were too different to spend much time together socially, they’d clicked on a professional level. During their senior year, they’d started buying duplexes around A.S.U., which they’d rented to other students. They’d sold when property values went up and rolled their profits into other investment properties, each one bigger and better than the last until they became one of the most successful young real estate companies in Tempe.
A no-nonsense achiever who rarely let anyone or anything stand in his way, Robert had been a fair partner and, in certain ways, a friend. When Tucker was first arrested, Robert had fronted thousands for his defense and had worked hard to liquidate some of their joint assets so Tucker could continue to pay for representation. Robert had also carried the brunt of the workload through the months that Tucker was awaiting trial. Of course, at the time, he and Tucker had both firmly believed that after Tucker was acquitted, they’d be able to get back to business as usual—back to the high life, back to making money, back to being on a roll. Then Tucker was sent to prison instead of being acquitted, and Robert did the only thing that was practical: he moved on without him. He’d visited Tucker once in prison, and Tucker had called him a few times. But after the first month or two, they’d rarely communicated. There hadn’t been anything to say. Still, Robert had been kind enough to lend Tucker the money for the car, and Tucker knew he could count on him not to call the police.
“So Tom took the money and ran.” No wonder his brother wouldn’t accept his call. Tom hadn’t passed on Tucker’s share, hadn’t even let him know that he’d cashed out.
“What?”
“Nothing. Does he still own the karate school?”
“Yes, but he’s too busy buying big houses and fancy cars and going on exotic vacations to run it. He’s turned the school over to his manager for the most part, but I doubt it’s still making a profit. I went by not long ago. There were only three students in the class I interrupted.”
His brother’s betrayal cut like glass. He knew Tom probably saw little point in giving him his share of anything when he was in prison for the rest of his life and couldn’t spend it. But Tucker had wanted that money for Landon, for his son’s college education. Throughout the past two years, it was the one thing Tucker had believed he could give Landon.
“His housekeeper said he’s married,” Tucker said.
“I wrote you about that, but it happened so recently you probably never received my letter. They eloped to Vegas just a couple of weeks ago. I don’t think they knew each other more than a month before they decided to get married. She’s a stripper from a local girlie show and likes to spend money as much as Tom does. It won’t last.”
Tucker heard his father’s voice in the background, first asking who it was, then demanding to speak to him.
“Your father wants to talk to you,” his mother said.
A car pulled up behind Tucker, and he shifted to keep his back toward the driver. “Tell him I’ll call again in a few minutes.”
He hung up, then waited in his car until the person who’d parked behind him had used the phone. When he dialed again, his father answered immediately.
“Son, how are you?”
He’d been better before he realized what his brother had done, but he didn’t mention that. “Hangin’ in there. You?”
“Ornery as ever. And still working to get you out of this mess. I won’t give up, you know.”
His father always said that. His efforts hadn’t made any difference so far, but the fact that he stuck by Tucker so devoutly felt good. “There’s nothing you can do, Dad. Just take care of Mom. How’s she doing, anyway?”
“Oh, she has her bad days, but she’s holding up.”
Then his father covered the phone and asked Dee to step out of the room for a few minutes so they could speak privately. Tucker fell silent, wondering what his father had to say that his mother couldn’t hear. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“I found something last week.”
“What’s that?”
“I was in the attic, trying to set a few mousetraps, and came across a shoebox shoved way out in the rafters.”
“What was in it?”
“An old warrant for Tom’s arrest—I guess he didn’t pay a speeding ticket or something—and some letters from a woman he used to date. None of that stuff looked like it was very important, but then I found an envelope with some pictures I think you should see. Any chance you can meet me somewhere?”
Tucker straightened. “We’d better not meet. You could be followed. Why don’t you put them in a manila envelope addressed to John Adams. Take the envelope to Fiesta Mall and leave it at ‘will call’ at Nordstrom. I’ll pick it up later, okay?”
“I’d like to see you.”
“I’d like to see you, too. But it isn’t wise, not right now.”
“Okay.”
“What are the pictures of, Dad?” Tucker asked. He could hear his mother again, saying something to his father, so if she’d ever left the room, she hadn’t stayed out long.
His father paused. “I’d rather not say right now. Tom’s been out of town, so I haven’t been able to ask where he got them. But I’ll call him right now. Just be prepared—they’re not pretty.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“LANDON?”
Gabrielle knocked on the door of her spare bedroom, hoping to elicit a response from the miserable little boy.
He didn’t answer.
“Landon?” She cracked open the door and peeked inside. He was lying on the bed, facing away from her, where he’d stayed for the past thirty minutes. She’d been trying to allow him time to deal with his emotions, but she didn’t want to let things go on for too long.
“I talked to your dad a little while ago,” she said, moving into the room.
Mention of Tucker made Landon turn toward her. She could tell from his red, puffy eyes that he’d been crying. “He’s not coming back, right?” he said, his voice sullen.
“Wrong. He’ll be back tonight.” Gabrielle said those words with such confidence, they were almost a promise—and she knew it. But the uncertainty in Landon’s eyes haunted her. She knew he was begging for something to cling to, something he could count on. And she couldn’t stop herself from doing everything in her power to give him that much. She understood too well what it felt like to be cast adrift. “He just wanted to know what we’re having for supper.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
Silence, then, “What are we having?”
“I don’t know. I’m thinking frog legs sound good.”
He made a face. “Ick.”
“No? Well, there’s always chicken gizzards.”
“Chicken what?”
“Gizzards. You know, those slimy things from inside a chicken?”
“They sound gross.”
She pretended consternation. “Boy, are you picky. Okay, we’ll have cow’s tongue, then.”
“No, way! My dad would never eat that,” he added quickly.
Gabrielle smiled. “But a brave boy like you would, I’ll bet.”
She sensed that her praise tempted him to agree, but ultimately he shook his head. “Nah, I wouldn’t eat anything my dad wouldn’t eat.”
“Then what does your dad like?”
“Pizza,” he answered immediately.
Gabrielle was willing to bet Tucker wasn’t the only one who liked pizza. “Does he?”
Allie had heard their voices and left the toys she’d been playing with in the kitchen to work her way down the hall. She rounded the corner to see them both in the room and instantly broke into a big smile at her accomplishment.
