by J. R. Rain
“She okay?” I ask.
“Yes. Everyone’s fine. I…” Mary Lou lets out a long sigh. “S’pose I’m just bein’ hormonal or something.”
“It’s all right.” My boss didn’t seem to think this gang had the resources to figure out exactly who I am and target my family, but still, I’m not ready to dismiss that so easily. “Well, that burglar I mentioned hasn’t been caught yet. Keep alert, and make sure your doors are locked.”
“I will. Oh, I guess you’re still at work now, huh.”
“Yep. How’re Tammy and Anthony doing?”
“Oh, perfect. Got ‘em all plopped down watchin’ Disney.” Mary Lou chuckles.
“You’re a lifesaver. Thank you for watching them so much.”
“Aww, it’s nothing. Least I can do since I don’t gotta work. See you in a couple hours.”
“You bet. Later.”
Chad raises an eyebrow. “Bad news?”
“I don’t know. I think my sister just had a bad nightmare last night and needed to talk about it.”
He grins. “Good. You want me to drive back or did you need to run over another bike to beat your high score?”
I smirk and slam my door a little too hard. “One bike wouldn’t do it. I need two, plus a crossing guard.”
Chad laughs.
The whole ride back to the office, I grumble to myself about this investigation going in circles. No armor is perfect. No liars are without vulnerability. All I need to do is to find the crack.
And wedge it wide open.
Chapter Fourteen
Hunting Phantoms
We arrive back at the office a touch past four in the afternoon. I can leave at five, but my urge to uncover who this Marty guy is clashing with my need to have my children close. Despite Nico’s opinion, something doesn’t feel right to me. Maybe it’s merely my frustration at this investigation. So far, I’ve had about as much luck as trying to crack open a coconut with a toy plastic sword.
“Moon, Helling,” says Nico from the end of our row, leaning to the right in preparation to walk back to his office. “Got a minute?”
Dammit. Now what? Our boss vanishes around the cube wall as soon as I nod, and by the time I reach his office, he’s already sitting behind his desk. Chad follows me in, and we sit in the two facing chairs.
“Good news this time.” Nico smiles. “The shooter from Super Burger turned up in LA Community Hospital, along with two buddies. Evidently, they initially claimed to be victims of an unprovoked gang shooting, but the LAPD traced one of them to a beetle-green Accord that matched your description. They’re running ballistics now on slugs recovered from the car and the suspects. I expect they’ll match your weapons.”
I slump with relief. “Finally, some good news.”
“Wow. They’re all alive?” Chad blinks.
“That’s what the police are saying.” Nico grins. “Though, one is in pretty rough shape. Even better, the FBI has been all over this. The gang’s quite a bit smaller than we initially thought. They picked up another four individuals with connections to the three amigos in the Accord. You can probably stop looking over your shoulder now.”
Lucky… for both of us. I chose HUD because I thought it offered the best opportunity to be a federal agent with the least chance of winding up in a life-or-death situation. And here I’ve had two inside of two weeks. Though, with the last remnants of that gang in custody, maybe I can finally breathe easy about someone trying to hurt Mary Lou or my kids.
“My sister called me earlier and said someone had been prowling around her house last night. Think you could get the FPD to keep an eye on the place for a couple days ‘til we get this gang sorted out?”
Nico looks sympathetic, but shakes his head. “Do you have anything more concrete than you think they might go after her? Did she get a good look at the guy?”
I sigh. “No. She just saw a shadow move and got spooked.”
“Damn.” Nico cringes. “I’m sorry, Sam, but I’d need more than that. The police are going to want something concrete before they throw budget at security detail. I hate to make it sound so mercenary, but there are only so many cops.”
“I understand.” I do, but understanding and gracefully accepting aren’t the same thing. “When do you want us to go ID the shooter? I got a brief look at the kid with the gun, but the driver had a bandana over his face, and the third guy must’ve been in the back seat. I didn’t see him at all.”
“Same here,” says Chad. “I can peg the shooter, but never saw the other two. They didn’t get out of the car.”
“Right.” Nico taps a pen on the fingers of the left hand. The repetitive click-click-click gets annoying fast. “Probably a few days, though if the ballistics match, your not getting a look at the other two won’t matter that much. If anything changes, I’ll let you know. Do you have anything for me?”
“Not yet.” I give him an overview of the Marty situation and the VOIP line. “Kondapalli’s house turned out to be a dead end. There’s a woman living there now who claims the house was sold at auction, but our system’s got nothing about it.”
Nico groans. “Let me guess, roughly three years ago?”
I nod.
“One name. Donnie Vento. He left a swath of grade-A shit through our system in the short year he worked for us. Montoya’s good, but it’s quite possible he missed one of the cases Donnie twisted up. Took him six months to un-fuck everything. Say the name ‘Donnie Vento’ to anyone who’s been here four years or more, and they’ll probably throw heavy objects at you.”
Chad blinks. “Guy half-asses it that bad and he lasts a whole year?”
“Oh, he worked just hard enough to bury his trail. He was clever, and didn’t overdo it so much that his case resolve rate stood out as too good. Out of every five cases he pulled, he just closed three as fixed without doing anything. Anyway, ancient history.” Nico gestures at me. “Uhh, Moon, would you mind fixing that case record since you’ve already got your hand on it?”
“Sure.”
I tromp back to my desk, hiding my anger in all ways but for how hard my feet hit the carpet. Between not being able to get a police detail on my sister’s place and having an old mess dumped in my lap fifteen minutes before I can walk out the door, I’m ready to bite someone’s head clear off. It’s not Nico’s fault. The guy who half-assed it originally was fired before I ever got here. Not like I can make him fix it.
Back at my cube, I send a text to Danny, asking him to pick up the kids from Mary Lou’s since I’m going to be late. That done, I dive into the computer system and go on a hunt. By 5:08 p.m., I’ve found a record of the foreclosure sale. Chris McCoy and his wife Angie are listed as the current owners, and they’re not on any program with us. HUD kept sending assistance payments after Kondapalli no longer lived there, but they only represented about forty percent of the monthly mortgage. In fact, we’re still sending them. Ugh. I already want to shove Vento’s head in a toilet and flush it a few times. Calling the bank now would be pointless since no one who works in any capacity to address this is going to be there at this hour. I’m going to have to get someone on the phone, hope the bank has been keeping this money in some kind of escrow, and have them send it back to HUD. Stopping future payments though, that I can do.
I’m finished with cleaning that record up at 5:42 p.m., and since I’m already late, I run the name ‘Haresh Kondapalli.’ It comes back with over a hundred hits. Ugh. Screw this.
“Wow. That’s a lot of entries,” says Chad, leaning on the entrance to my cube. He’s got his coat draped over his back on two fingers, ready to get out of here. “You sure you’re not wasting time?”
“Maybe, but I got a feeling there’s something here… and I’m going to find it.” I stand and lock my workstation. “Just not tonight.”
Chad laughs. “Hey, well at least they got that jackass from Nick’s.”
“At least there’s that.” I snug my coat on and grab my purse. “You dig up anything e
lse on Rosa’s house?”
He shakes his head. “Not really. Saw an email about the DEA recovering enough product in there that Villero’s looking at so much time they’re going to keep his cremated remains in Leavenworth for a few decades after he’s gone.”
“Heh. Thanks. I needed to smile.”
And now, I need to get home to my family.
Chapter Fifteen
Family Tradition
The powerful fragrance of spaghetti sauce saturates the house when I walk in the door. Tammy springs off the sofa and darts across the living room, leaping into my arms.
“Mommy’s home!” she shouts.
Anthony rolls over onto his chest and slides feet first off the sofa before wobbling up to me. “Hi, Mommy. Late.”
I toss my purse onto the coffee table and pick him up with my free arm. “I know, hon.”
“Did you catch the bad guy?” asks Tammy.
“I’m working on it.” I kiss them both on the head… then do it again.
Danny peeks in from the kitchen archway. “Everything okay at work?”
“I had to clean up a mess.”
Anthony shakes his head. “I didn’t do it!”
I squeeze him, nearly laughing myself to tears. It’s good to be home. “No, but you’d probably have made a better agent than the guy who made the mess.”
“I can be agent.” Anthony nods.
“No, you can’t,” says Tammy. “You’re two. Agent’s gotta be really old, like Mom.”
I smirk.
Danny stifles a snicker and ducks back into the kitchen. “Dinner’s ready.”
After carrying the kids into the kitchen and putting them down, I hug Danny while he’s trying to transfer a large pot of sauce from the stove to the table. “Give me a moment to change,” I say.
“Sure thing, babe.” He kisses me quick and sets the pot down on a thick cutting board.
I rush upstairs and trade my skirt suit, hose, and shoes for a t-shirt and sweat pants since my husband is a big fan of air conditioning. We could store meat in our hallway. By the time I get back downstairs, Anthony’s eating and Danny’s slicing a sausage for Tammy. Usually, he makes this sauce with hot Italian sausage, but since we had the kids, he always throws in a couple non-spicy ones for them.
My body melts into the chair and, despite being famished, I can’t find the energy right away to eat. Instead, I sit there watching Danny sectioning sausage into little discs, and simply grin. Tammy’s got an expression like a scientist working out the last few equations to make the Manhattan Project work, but she’s experimenting with that whole twisting-pasta-onto-a-fork thing.
Maybe I’m reaching my wits’ end with a frustrating case, I almost got killed twice in two weeks, and there’s probably a street gang out there still after me, but at this moment, I feel like the luckiest woman in the world.
Without Danny, I don’t know where I’d be or what I’d do with myself. Watching him make up some silly story about the Pasta King and his sausage farms for Tammy is so damn cute I wind up crying silently into my napkin. It’s mostly the stress of the past two weeks, but this fleeting moment is about as perfect as life can be.
He takes his seat, sending an ‘are you okay’ stare over the table at me. When I grin, he does too, and we eat while Tammy tells me all about her day. About halfway through dinner, she hits me with a low blow.
“I wish you could be home all day like Aunt Mary Lou.”
I lean over and ruffle her hair. “Me too, Tam Tam.”
Her hazel eyes widen with earnest innocence. “Do you have to work ‘cause Daddy doesn’t make as much money as Uncle Ricky?”
Danny coughs.
“Uncle Ricky’s been doing that job for a really long time,” I say. “Your father’s just started his own office. It takes a while for it to pick up.”
“Oh.” Tammy thinks that over for a moment. “Daddy should be a ‘lectric man like Uncle Ricky an’ not a lawyer.”
Said no mother ever. “There’s nothing wrong with being an ‘electric man’ or a lawyer.”
“If I play my cards right, maybe in a year or two, Mommy won’t need to work anymore.” Danny winks at me.
Being able to stay home with the kids all day would be like a dream come true… at least when they’re little. Eventually, they’d get tired of having me over their shoulder constantly. I chuckle, and lose myself in Danny’s spaghetti sauce. He’s ruined me for Italian food, since we have yet to find a place with sauce comparable to his.
After dinner, we squeak in a little more than two hours of family time, huddled together on the sofa watching a cartoon movie, Ice Age. Damn. Marty is the acorn and I feel like that poor squirrel-thing. Danny and I connect on an unconscious level and wind up letting the kids stay up about forty minutes late to make up for when I got home. They don’t seem to notice bedtime slip by, but once they start keeling over, we carry them down the hall. Anthony must’ve been as wild at Mary Lou’s as Tammy said, since he passes out before Danny’s even finished putting pajamas on him. Eventually, teeth are brushed, stuffed animals are clutched, foreheads are kissed, and lights go out.
Danny starts heading back to the living room, but I snag his arm and drag him three steps to our room.
“This is a relax in bed night.”
He kisses me. “All right. I’ll catch up in a few minutes… dishes.”
“You’re amazing.”
He leans back and strikes a pose that says ‘yes, I know,’ but only holds it for a second before a sincere smile replaces the cockiness. “So are you. It’s tight now, but there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. A couple of judgments go my way, word goes around, more clients… we’ll be set.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I say.
Of course, I’ll probably stay on with HUD. The money is only part of it. I didn’t spend years working my ass off to get in the door there only to walk away.
While he goes off to clean up the kitchen, I change into a nightgown and sprawl on the bed. It’s so damn soft I’m tempted to surrender to sleep right away. Twenty or so blessed minutes of comfort later, Danny walks in. I scoot back to sit up against the headboard while he undresses to his boxer briefs and climbs in next to me under the covers.
We lean against each other and grumble about how stressful our respective days were. Danny’s worries about the law firm sound like he’s focusing on his partner Jeff’s ‘flakiness,’ but I’m sure he’s mostly upset that he’s still not making as much as I do. While I don’t believe he’d ever actively resent me for that, his personality and upbringing don’t sit well with a woman out-earning him. Danny’s mother is one of those people who still believes women don’t belong in the workforce. Of course, if his law firm does take off, he stands to make insane amounts of money.
Eventually, I’m half-watching the little TV past the foot of the bed and he’s somewhat engrossed in a novel―The Da Vinci Code.
“Thanks for making dinner. I really, really, really love your sauce.” I smile to myself, and swish my feet side to side. “When I’m a little old lady, I’ll still crave it.”
Danny grasps my hand. “Mama made sure I knew how to make it before I moved out to college. You know, the whole ‘shunned by my ancestors’ thing if I couldn’t get it right.”
I shift my weight and lean against him, my head on his shoulder. “Are you going to teach the kids how to make it?”
“Not if Mama’s still around when they want to learn. She’s a much better instructor.” Danny kisses the top of my head.
It’s so easy to close my eyes. “I’ll not be having your mother threatening our children with ancestral doom over lackluster tomato sauce.”
He laughs. “You know, we should really visit my parents at some point soon. They haven’t seen Anthony since he was an infant.”
“Sure. As soon as life gets sane.”
“Hey.” Danny pokes me in the side. “If you never want to see them again, they’ll be crushed.”
As if. Despi
te my degree and being a federal agent, I’m still ‘that hippie girl’ who’s not good enough for their precious little Daniel. Also, my not believing in the whole religion thing is a major issue. Icicles practically form on the walls when I’m in the same room with his mother. His father’s not quite as bad. After an hour of talking to me, he realized I’m not like my parents, but he still thinks I’m going to Hell.
I say, “I didn’t mean actually sane. I meant as soon as I don’t have a hot mess of an investigation on my plate.” For Danny’s sake, I can tolerate an afternoon of torment… eventually.
He strokes my hair. “Is that why you look so exhausted?”
“Yeah. I spent half the day trying to find a man who doesn’t seem to have existed.” I ramble on about the forwarded phone, the prepaid cell, and this ‘Marty’ guy. “That phone account’s probably set up with a fake name. Tomorrow, I get to spend hours going through data, and I still don’t even know exactly what I’m investigating.”
Danny chuckles. “How’d you wind up investigating if you don’t even know what it is?”
“Two HUD properties, both had drug use going on there, both had a business card for a guy supposedly named Marty who’s trying to hide himself. That’s not something a legitimate handyman does.”
One thing about Danny’s air conditioning fetish, it makes snuggling in bed awesome.
“Sounds like he’s probably a big-time dealer. They call that number when they need a delivery.”
I yawn. “That would explain why everyone’s got the same story when I ask who he is.”
“Leave the drug stuff to the FBI or the LAPD, and stop driving yourself crazy.”
“Maybe… I might just wind up frustrated to the point I don’t have a choice. Oh… there’s something else.”
He stops stroking my hair. “What? That’s a scary tone in your voice.”
I sit up straight, let out a deep breath, and tell him about the shooting at the burger joint.
“Jesus effing Christ, Sam.” Danny grabs me by the shoulders. “You sat on that the whole time you’ve been home? You could’ve been killed!”
