“Hi, Luis,” she said, relieved. “Cold night for a walk.”
“Not too bad,” he said. “You closing alone?”
“Yeah. I let the others go home early. It was extremely busy tonight, and I felt bad for them.”
“That’s nice of you,” he said. “Have a good evening.”
“You too, Luis,” she said, giving him a quick wave.
As he passed her, his phone went off, playing the beginning notes of a song that she faintly recognized. He pulled it out of his pocket. She saw something glittering catch on the corner and fall out of his pocket. He didn’t seem to notice. She hurried forward and picked it up off the ground.
“Hey, Luis, you dropped your…” She trailed off as she realized what she was holding. It was a gorgeous diamond necklace. She remembered her conversation with David earlier that day: “No one got hurt, but he stole an expensive necklace from one of the employees.”
When he turned and saw her holding the necklace, their eyes met for a split moment. In that moment, Moira knew that she had made a very, very bad mistake. It seemed so obvious now, looking back. Luis had been there the morning of the robbery. He had probably been checking to make sure she was back and working that day. He had also been at the cafe a few days before the most recent robbery; she remembered saying hi to him as she left with her friends. He was familiar enough with the deli that he would have been able to describe where the security cameras were, and had probably been so careful about covering his tracks because he had been afraid that she would recognize him.
“I’ll take that,” he said, holding out his hand. She saw his other hand move slowly towards his jacket. She was sure that he was hiding a gun underneath.
Thinking fast, Moira held out the necklace as if she was going to hand it to him. When he reached for it, she flung it as far away as she could. It landed in a pile of snow at the edge of the street. Luis’s head turned automatically to follow it, and that was when Moira ran for it.
With the deli already locked up, she knew she didn’t have a chance of getting inside before he caught up. Instead, she made a beeline for her vehicle. She pulled open the closest door and jumped in, slamming it shut and then hitting the lock button on her key fob. The locks clicked down reassuringly. She breathed a sigh of relief, but knew that she wasn’t safe yet.
Luis pounded on the rear window hard enough to shake the whole SUV. “Come out,” he yelled.
She ignored him and instead climbed onto the front seat and slid in front of the steering wheel. The engine started without fuss, but by then Luis had made it around the car and was standing by her window. His gun was pressed to the glass, and was pointing directly at her face.
“If you put it in gear, I will shoot you,” he said, loudly enough that she could hear him through the window.
Moira froze. She fully expected the gun to go off at any second. She felt a pang at the thought of leaving David and Candice behind, but at least she knew her daughter was safe.
“Roll down the window,” he said, motioning with the gun.
She did as he said, seeing no other option. She stopped the window halfway down.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.
“Then just put the gun away,” she begged. “I won’t tell anyone.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” he sighed. “You need to convince me you won’t talk. What’s going to keep your tongue tied when I’m not holding a gun to your head?”
She opened her mouth, then shut it again. Her mind was completely blank. The truth was, and he knew it as well as she did, if he let her go, she would tell the police.
“Why did you do it?” she asked instead. “Steal from me and kill Edna? I think we both know how this is going to end, so it can’t hurt to tell me.”
He shifted on his feet, looking uncomfortable. “Look, I didn’t mean to hurt anyone, all right? I needed the money, and my girlfriend works for a jewelry store. She told me how expensive all that stuff was — your ring, the necklace, the earrings I took from the first lady, Edna’s watch… I mean, I’m going to make about ten grand in all when I sell it. Maybe a bit more if I can get good prices.”
“So, you decided to become a criminal just because you could use a little bit of extra cash?” Moira asked. “How could you steal from people you know?”
“It’s just stuff,” he said. “I figured I needed the money more than you.” He wouldn’t meet her eyes. She felt some satisfaction at the thought of causing him emotional discomfort. At least if he killed her, he might feel guilty about it afterward.
“Why did you kill Edna? Even if you were desperate for money, ending someone’s life is going too far.”
“I know,” he said, surprising her. “I didn’t mean to. That… that was in self-defense. She attacked me with a bat. It wasn’t murder!”
He was getting agitated, so Moira decided not to point out that the only reason Edna had attacked him was because he had been pointing a gun at her in the first place. The fact that he was getting emotional was promising. It meant that he was capable of empathy. Maybe, if she was lucky, she could play to his good side and get out of this without getting shot.
“If you shoot me right now, it will definitely be murder, plain and simple,” she said. She raised her hands. “I’m not threatening you. I’m not going to attack you. I just want to go home to my family.”
“Look, I said I don’t want to shoot you,” he said. “But I also don’t want to go to jail. This has all gone too far. I just want to start over.”
While he was talking, something in the rear-view mirror had caught Moira’s eye. Movement. Someone was sneaking up on them. She felt a surge of hope. If she could just keep him talking a little bit longer…
“If my promise not to tell anyone about this isn’t good enough, then what is?” she asked. “Just tell me what I need to do to be able to go home tonight.”
“I don’t know, let me think!” He kicked at her tire, his face pinched with stress. He wasn’t pointing the gun at her any more, which was an improvement. It hung limply at his side. “Your daughter,” he said after a moment. “You’ve got one, right? I think you mentioned her before. Give me her address. If you tell anyone, I’ll kill her. If you keep your promise, she’ll be fine.”
“Not a chance,” Moira said flatly.
“If you’re telling the truth about keeping your mouth shut, she’ll be fine,” he said, sounding annoyed. “It’s the only thing I can think of.”
She hardly heard him. She was focused on the shape of a man coming around the corner of the deli. Detective Jefferson. She didn’t know what he was planning, but she knew she had to keep Luis’s attention on her.
“I’m not going to put my daughter in danger,” she said. “There must be something else. You’ve been coming to the deli for years, Luis. Why can’t you just trust me?”
He was opening his mouth to respond when he collapsed as suddenly as if he had been shot. His body convulsed, and Moira followed two wires with her eyes back to the taser in Detective Jefferson’s hands. Next to her, the passenger side door opened and a pair of familiar hands grabbed her by the shoulder and guided her out of the car. David wrapped her in a hug, and she clung onto him for dear life.
EPILOGUE
* * *
“How did you know I needed help?” she asked him. They were sitting together in the deli, which she had reopened to give them somewhere to get out of the cold while the police went over the crime scene.
“Well, some of the last words I heard from you were about a man with a gun at the deli. I figured something must have been going on, even though you mentioned Ewan — the man who owns the pawn shop — instead of Luis.”
“He was here earlier and, well, I overreacted,” she said. “What happened, why did the call drop?”
“I dropped my phone,” he admitted, giving a dry chuckle. “I was getting in the car and it slipped out of my hand. The screen shattered, and something inside must have been damaged. I’ll
have to pick a new one up tomorrow.”
“You told me that the pawn shop guy wasn’t the killer. How did you know?”
“The kid who spray painted your cameras came clean and told us everything,” he said. “At first, he denied knowing anything, but I had a feeling he was lying. This evening, Detective Jefferson and I took him to the county jail and showed him what happens to people who grow up to be on the wrong side of the law — with his mother’s permission, of course. He ended up admitting that he knew the name of the guy who had hired him to black out the security cameras. That’s how we knew it was Luis.”
“Hopefully that kid learned his lesson,” she said. “Is he going to get in trouble for what he did?”
“He’ll probably get community service or probation,” David told her. “We don’t think he knew that Luis was planning on an armed robbery. Luckily for him, Edna didn’t have any security cameras. If she had, and he had helped Luis black them out, then he might have been looking at accessory to murder right now.”
“Well, I guess that’s lucky for the kid,” she said. “Though he sounds like he was old enough to know what he was doing was wrong anyway. What about Luis? Will he be okay?”
“He should be fine. He’ll be up and about to testify at his trial.”
“That’s good.” She shivered. “It’s still so hard to believe that it was him. He has come into the deli a couple of times a week since it first opened. He seemed so normal. How could things have gone so wrong?”
“One bad decision led to another, and this is where he ended up,” her husband said. “I’m just glad that he didn’t hurt you.”
“Me, too,” she said, giving him a faint smile. “I’m definitely glad about that.”
He gave her a gentle kiss, then rose from his seat. “I’m going to go see if Detective Jefferson needs anything else from us. You sit tight.”
She watched him through the window as he spoke with the detective. He was her rock. It was hard to imagine where she would be right now if she had never met him. He made her life better in so many ways, and she could only hope that she did the same for him. She was sure there would be bumps in their relationship in the years to come, but she knew that when it mattered, he would do anything he could to help her or Candice — and she, of course would do the same for him. They were family, after all, and that meant they would always have each other’s back.
A Quiche To Die For: Book 17 in The Darling Deli Series Page 7
