Question of Trust

by Laura Caldwell

  “What are you talking about?”

  He drained some more of his drink, then pushed his glass away. “You’re always coming after us on the stand, acting like we snatched a suspect out of the air and then tried to stick it to them.”

  “You guys have been known to do that.”

  “Hey, maybe some CPD have been known to do that. But I don’t do that.”

  “Oh, really?” Now I was irritated. “What about when my fiancé disappeared and you made it very clear you thought I had something to do with it? Or when Jane died, and you made me Suspect Number One.”

  “You were a person of interest. You were never a suspect.”

  “Please spare me a lecture on the difference here.”

  “Yeah, I’ll spare you. I’ll spare you altogether.” He got up.

  “Well, don’t get pissy and stalk off.”

  “I don’t stalk, McNeil.”

  “You seem kinda stalky.”

  He laughed, sat back down, then nodded at my beer can. “Want another?”

  I thought of going home to an apartment where a woman had died, and to a boyfriend who… God, there were so many questions. “I do.”

  51

  When I finally got home, someone was in my kitchen. I flinched—who is that?—before I remembered. Theo.

  Through the doorway, I could see his shoulder muscles move in his sweater and hear a hard slice-slice-slice sound as he cut something.

  I closed my front door, but didn’t step any farther into the condo, letting my initial surprise die away. But when Theo turned around, he held up something in his hand. And it looked like a handful of flesh—maroon and wet, like blood.

  I sucked in a sharp breath of air. What’s going on? I shot a glance to Theo’s face, which although thinner than usual looked calm. Which freaked me out all the more.

  “What is that?” I said. Still I didn’t go farther into the condo.

  He laughed. Why is he laughing?

  “C’mon,” he said, “can’t you tell?”

  I squinted and looked closer, leaning my torso into the room.

  And then I felt a wave of relief. “Blood oranges?” I said.

  He nodded.

  I walked up to the bar dividing the living room from the kitchen and stood at it, liking somewhat the barrier it put between us. “We haven’t had blood oranges since…”

  Theo smiled as he cut more oranges. “I know. Since the first night we went out.”

  “You brought them over to make drinks. It was delicious.”

  Theo nodded toward the counter across from him where a bottle of vodka sat.

  “If I recall correctly,” I said, “we never actually made it out that night.”

  Theo smiled big at me, and I was happy for a moment that he appeared happy, despite all that was going on.

  “That’s right,” he said. “Thought maybe we could do the same tonight.”

  I sat on one of the high bar stools and put my elbows on the counter, still watching Theo slice oranges and extract the wine-colored flesh. Theo walked around the corner, then used his hands to scoop orange chunks from the cutting block and put them into a pitcher. He washed his hands then at the sink, the bloodlike water dripping away.

  “I have to tell you what I just learned from Vaughn,” I said.

  “You talked to Vaughn?”

  “I saw him.”

  He turned, raised his eyebrows.

  I wondered if that would make him jealous, as he had been of Sam, but he only wiped his hands on a towel and crossed his arms.

  I told him about Kim being an apparent drug user and dealer.

  “What kind of drugs?”

  “Cocaine mostly.”

  I told him about the different theories Vaughn and I ran through as to why Kim was in the condo and why she had been killed here.

  It made me stop and shudder just thinking of Kim crumpled on our floor. So wrong. So sad. So unnecessary.

  Theo came around the counter and wrapped his arms around me. “It’s been stressful and scary. I know. And I’m sorry for that.”

  After a hug that lasted, quietly, for about a minute, I lifted my head from his chest. “Why are you sorry?”

  Theo sighed. “Because my getting arrested has caused such problems.”

  “But you getting arrested doesn’t have anything to do with Kim getting killed, does it?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  I thought of something then. “Remember the morning we found out Eric had tried to kill himself, when we went to the office?”

  Theo closed his eyes for a long moment, then opened them and nodded.

  “You were telling me about different things as you came across them, but then you looked at one document in particular, and you kind of stopped. You said it was legal or something like that. And you put it in your pocket. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought to ask you about it before.”

  “Because we found someone dead in your apartment soon after.”

  We both looked, silently, toward the spot where we’d found Kim.

  “It was an investor list,” Theo said, “like the one I emailed you after we were at the Gage. I still don’t understand why the Feds are looking at our initial private offering or what they hope to see in the names of the investors. I just wanted to make sure they were the same as the one I had in my office, the list I’d emailed you. Because, Iz, ever since Eric tried to kill himself, I’ve had a sense about it.”

  “What kind of sense? Like that he’s guilty of something?”

  Theo shook his head. I missed the way his hair used to rustle back and forth when he did that. “When I first realized HeadFirst was in trouble, yeah, I thought Eric was guilty of something. And after I got arrested, I definitely suspected he was, because he’d worked with the Feds. I thought he was throwing me to the wolves. But the more I thought about it, the more I believed he couldn’t deal with the guilt that someone else had caused this. Someone he’d worked closely with.”

  “Your dad.”

  “He’s always been there since the beginning. He set everything up. He did the venture capital work and dealt with the formation of the company.”

  “I thought Eric did all that?”

  “We always talk about how Eric is the business side, and that’s true, but we didn’t know how to raise funds like that or how to incorporate us. My dad did that for us.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before? That you suspected Eric. And then your dad.”

  He said nothing, just looked at me. Then, “Should we start talking about dads now?”

  I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “No, I guess I get it. Fathers can be completely complicated.” Mine sure was. The latest I’d heard from him was that after turning Tatum Reynolds over to the bank for what he’d done, my father had pleaded with Mayburn to tell the bank not to prosecute.

  He did it for love, my dad kept saying. The fact that my father was still clearly connected to his own life choices touched me. And had possibly spared Tatum Reynolds a criminal record.

  I put the drink on the counter. I reached up and drew my hands over his bald scalp, feeling as if I were touching an as-yet undiscovered depth of Theo Jameson.

  He dipped his head down and put his face in my neck, breathing in. And even with all that was going on—even with that—I wanted him in that moment.

  “Have you gotten ahold of your dad yet?” I asked before I was past the point of rational discussion.

  Theo lifted his head, shook it to say no. “LaBree hasn’t seen him, either, but she’s checking some places they go.”

  And then I made a mistake. “Does your dad do drugs?”

  “What?” His voice was an irritated lash. “No.”

  “Are you sure? He hangs out in all those clubs. I mean, it wouldn’t be too far of a stretch.”

  Theo put his glass on the counter, pushed it away, liquid lapping over the sides. “What’s the next stretch, Iz? Huh? That he bought drugs from Kim? That he killed her?”
<
br />   “I don’t know, I just…”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t want to take this out on you. This has nothing to do with you.”

  Theo went into the bedroom. I heard the scrape of keys from the top of the dresser. Then he walked past me through the living room and left.

  52

  To Brad Jameson, it was so strange, and so goddamned unfair, that something—someplace—could turn so ugly when it had started out as incredibly unique, so full of wonder and riches.

  Their initial falling-in-love with the place didn’t just happen because of the palm and the surf and the fact that it was gorgeous, the stuff of a boy’s dreams. And not just the ability to hide money. And make more on top of that. Rather, the charm of the place had more to do with the fact that they had found the place together. It was theirs.

  The manner in which the place had caused such pleasure and yet now was causing so much harm, so much pain, was baffling. There was also the fact that he had worked for this. And so there was much that was his—rightfully his, not just his kid’s. Now everything was being undone with his own work.

  53

  “Again,” his father demanded. “Again!”

  José Ramon watched his brother, Vincente, sag forward. His father had not touched Vincente all day as Vincente told the story—over and over and over—of the money he’d invested, the money that appeared to be gone. That amount of money would cripple their usual operations. And if the Feds kept charging forward, it could kill them all. His father had long ago decided that the U.S. was the future. He had gambled and not only invested his money and his people and his product, but also his sons. So far the gamble had been a boon for everyone. But they had gotten lax. They had placed too much trust in Vincente.

  And so now his father wanted to hear the story again. He was poking holes in parts of it, screaming and berating Vincente. And Vincente continued to lose steam, his shoulders hunched forward. At one point during the day, he began to sob, claimed to be having a heart attack, asked for his wife, Carol.

  His father ignored his claims, kept pushing.

  “Tell us!” his father screamed. “Why did you keep throwing our money away? I want the entire story, Vincente. I want the whole truth.”

  His mother came into the room. She’d taken a few breaks from the day, unable to watch the abuse, although José knew she supported her husband above all.

  Vincente sucked in air, kept going with his story. “I began to put more money in… I believed—”

  He cut himself off then. This was part of the story that had brought on their father’s rage before.

  “I let myself believe,” he corrected, “in their promises that this would lead to even bigger gains.” He held out his hands and looked around at all of them, his fingers still outstretched and straining for something invisible. “Truthfully, if you think of it, I had no reason to doubt them.”

  José groaned, let his own shoulders and head sag. Vincente was refusing to take complete blame for the situation. Again. And he didn’t seem to understand that his father would accept nothing less.

  “You had no—” The words exploded from José’s mouth, but Vincente stood up and shouted over him.

  “Aside from the few months!” Vincente said, panting, forcing himself to take a breath. “Aside from those months where they weren’t making payments, they had always been true to their word. For years. And that has been very, very much to our benefit. So yes, I gave them more money. But it didn’t help. The payments to us were missed. Not always, though, and—”

  “And so you stupidly kept believing,” his father said.

  No one said anything for a moment, because they had all felt the shift. His father had gone suddenly calm, was now using a patient, placid tone, almost as if he were telling the end of the children’s story he used to read to them when they were little. And then I was home, although I dreamed of my friends in the orchard.

  But Vincente seemed determined to finish his tale—his decidedly sordid and decidedly adult tale. “I felt that they were able to regain control. I felt—”

  His father smacked the head of his walking stick on the floor, the sound a sharp crack that vibrated through the room. Both José and his brother flinched. They recalled that sound. It always heralded bad things.

  “No more,” his father said. “And no more discussions of your feelings.” He said the word feelings with undisguised revulsion. “Tell us what is here. Right now.”

  His brother straightened his shoulders and looked at his father. “They became unable to make any kind of payments. Then they stopped making excuses. I reported a problem to all of you.” He took a massive inhale, as if needing to marshal all possible oxygen before he continued. “We have now lost two hundred million dollars.”

  There was not a sound in the room. Not a cough or a scuff or shifting of any of the four bodies that sat facing each other, like actors on a stage, frozen at the end of a scene until the curtain falls.

  “I know that you tried to address this…problem,” Vincente said, “by pulling support from the other families, by putting all that product on the boat.”

  “And then that disappeared, too!” José said. “Was that because of you, as well? You have brought down this family!”

  “No!” his brother yelled. Then his shoulders rounded, his head hung. “The other families may have been wanting to get back at us. I don’t know.”

  José’s eyes dodged to his mother, then his father. They seemed to both be thinking. They looked at each other.

  Was this his last chance to say goodbye to his brother?

  For surely the punishment would be swift. Vincente had made too many mistakes, had failed to come clean too many times. He was a son, yes, a direct member of the family, but other family members had been killed for lesser offenses.

  His mother’s brother had been one of the men hanging, minus his head.

  54

  With Theo gone from the condo, I was antsy, anxious. I needed to do something, anything. But what? I was out of ideas for finding out what was going on with HeadFirst, figuring out who had killed Kim in my condo and why. I double-checked that Theo had locked the front door, then went around the condo inspecting all the window locks—even though someone would have to use a ladder to climb in one. What else? I suddenly felt very alone. And very scared.

  I decided to check the new downstairs lock on the front door. I took the three flights of stairs, pausing to look at the second-floor door. The last place Kim had lived. I fought off tears. Who was she really?

  Downstairs, I opened and closed the door. I stepped out into the cold, just to see if maybe Theo was standing outside, getting some air. I saw no one. I tried the new keypad, then again. Seemed to be working fine. Tomorrow an alarm company was coming to install an entirely new system that I was going to pay way, way too much for. And I was very happy to do so.

  I was about to go back inside when I glanced across the street and saw a surveillance camera high on the streetlight outside, to the right of our condo. Strange that I’d never really noticed it before. But then Chicago had the most extensive surveillance system in the country. Cameras were everywhere now. The ACLU had even sued, citing privacy issues. And yet, I’d apparently been walking in a blissful ignorance below one every day.

  Something occurred to me. Crossing my arms over myself, I stepped into the street and studied it. It was impossible to tell whether the camera’s eye included my building. I hoped it didn’t, because I didn’t like the thought that my day-to-day actions, my coming in and out of my house, were recorded occasionally or not. And yet, what if the cameras had caught whomever had killed Kim?

  “We have it,” Vaughn said, when I went back to my condo and called him. “It’s being analyzed.”

  “Analyzed meaning…”

  “Meaning the evidence techs have it, and it’s waiting to be looked at. They got a huge backlog.”

  I growled with frustration.

  “I know,” he said.
“I wish I could push it, but we got a bunch of high-profile cases that are at the front of the line.”

  “Can I get a copy of the tape?”

  “Let me go see what I can do,” he said.

  He called back. “Can you come into the station to look at it?”

  “Give me twenty.”

  Vaughn and I sat in an interrogation room. I’d taken one look at the white walls, the surveillance mirror and cameras and said, Hell no.

  But he told me the station was crowded. There had been a big gang fight. So if I wanted to see the video…

  “Fine, fine.” I sat at the table, next to a laptop he had set up. I didn’t like being in there. Not one bit. Vaughn had interrogated me in a room similar to that in the same station.

  “Are you freaking?” he said, looking at me, a slight curl of derisiveness in his words.

  “No,” I said, employing false bravado. “Take a seat, Tex.”

  Vaughn chuckled, sat on a stool that he pulled up to the table.

  “It could take us a while to see anything we recognize,” he said, turning the laptop to face me. “It looks like this thing is at least ten hours long.”

  “Can you speed it up a little?”

  Vaughn made a few adjustments on this laptop and there was my little neighborhood, moving just a little bit too fast, just like my life lately.

  “Want anything to drink?” Vaughn asked.

  “I’m all right.”

  He got up, left, came back with a Diet Coke for himself and one for me. “In case you want something later.”

  “Thanks.” I kept an eye on the screen. “Hey, look!” I said. There was my first-floor neighbor, leaving the morning of Kim’s death.

  We kept watching.

  “Theo!” I said.

  Even on the grainy footage, Theo was gorgeous, his hair still long. He had his work bag slung across his body, a silver coffee mug in his hand. He left the building then disappeared.

  “Hey, there’s you,” Vaughn said.

  But soon I was gone, too. No sign of Kim.