I was glad I’d taken the risk. This picture meant something to me.
My eyes grazed over Nicole’s desk setup, a simple wooden structure with an ergonomic chair. Colorful presentation slides, as usual, cluttered almost every inch of space, even covering most of our home laptop, which was closed. She worked in marketing—go figure. I felt the pull of wanting to somehow take half of the laptop with me. Of course, that was a ludicrous notion.
I shook my head and released a quiet, almost mocking laugh. How many times had I advised clients to protect themselves, not to let blind stubbornness direct their actions, to allow the process to play out?
Protect yourself? I must have sounded like a pompous, insensitive ass to my clients.
As I flipped around, my eyes spotted a small card on Nicole’s desk. The logo in the upper left-hand corner appeared to be flowers, something red and yellow.
I stopped breathing for a second.
Don’t be tempted, Oz. Once you go down this path, you’ll question everything.
“I already am questioning everything, dammit.” The sound of my voice startled me. I actually paused, somewhat expecting to hear Nicole ask me to speak up from the other room.
There was a note written on the card, but it faced her chair on the opposite side of the desk. My eyes studied the handwriting. She wrote like a schoolteacher. This handwriting had more flair to it, bigger loops. Like a kid about to dig into the proverbial cookie jar, I looked around to make sure no one was watching me. I knew it was nothing short of a paranoid move.
I picked up the note and read it.
My Dear Nicole,
The gleam of your beautiful smile is only eclipsed by the blaze of your red-hot passion. Every time you look at these flowers, think of my body against yours.
C
I don’t recall ever actually hearing the thump of my heart, but right now it felt like it was connected to an amplifier beating in my head like a bass drum. I slid the card into my pocket and turned to the window.
Almost immediately, I stopped. I couldn’t take the card with me. She would know I’d been inside the house—that I knew about her and this C person.
Nicole would never cheat on me, regardless of what kind of craziness we were going through. That had been my staunch position. It was what my old geometry teacher called a postulate—something absolute, unchanging. But I had been wrong about Nicole. So very wrong.
My thoughts were scrambled and irrational. I pushed out a slow breath. At the moment, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to learn more about Nicole and this C person. I’d seen enough to make me want to throw up. She and I were over.
My advice from earlier zipped through my mental haze: protect yourself.
I carefully set the card back where I’d found it, then scooted out the window and made my way back to my car, where I couldn’t help but notice the key scratches on the side panel.
This day, like the previous two, was off to a roaring start.
17
The outdoor façade to the Belmont had a new, brighter finish to it. Other than that, the iconic indoor-outdoor music venue in Austin looked just about the same as when I was here two months ago, when a bomb ripped through the complex, killing three and wounding twenty.
Similar to that night, white lights were strung across the outdoor space, glowing against the nighttime sky. With the club/restaurant on one side and the ivy-covered brick wall of an adjoining building on the other side, there was no wind. The place was only half full. No live acts were on stage; it was only recorded music tonight—currently an old tune from INXS. The place had reopened only in the last couple of weeks or so.
The waiter and the person I was meeting arrived tableside at the same time.
“I guess this is for you?” the waiter asked Brook, who wore a pair of fashionable boots over her denim leggings. She looked like anyone other than a cop, except for one thing. Really, it was two things. Two stress lines seemed to be permanently sculpted into her forehead.
She thanked the waiter and sat down. “I appreciate you ordering my drink in advance, even if I am sticking with a virgin mojito.” She had texted me twice earlier, once while I was still at the reading of my father’s will—that couldn’t have been any more dramatic—to say she wanted to meet and discuss her progress on the investigation, and then again about fifteen minutes ago, apologizing for being late.
I held up my drink, and we clinked glasses. I’d gone with my second-favorite drink: Knob Creek and Coke on ice, as opposed to Knob Creek neat.
“Tough day at the office?” she asked, digging through her purse. I thought I saw “Kate Spade” on the side of her bright-orange and hot-pink bag. She appeared to want to define herself, or at least her look, as the anti-cop, more like someone we’d run into at the country club. We. I needed to stop thinking of myself as part of a team with Nicole. I was on my own in many ways right now.
I crunched on a piece of ice. “If I had an office, maybe. I’ve got a desk. But, ohhh, the stories I could tell,” I said with what felt like a tired smile.
She pulled out her phone, checked something on the screen, then gave me her full attention. “I’m sure you’ve had a lot of fallout from your father’s death.”
With the background music in the air, my hearing was particularly limited, so I had to watch her lips as she spoke. “Not the least being the silent feud between my mom and my dad’s girlfriend.”
Her eyes got wide. “You have to deal with one of those triangles on top of everything else?”
“My brother and I have been dealing with it for about fourteen years, helping keep the peace, trying to make sure the wrong people don’t run into each other at whatever event.”
“Seriously? They put you in that position?”
“Most of that falls on my dad’s shoulders. Then again, as we crossed that threshold into adulthood, my brother and I…well, we could have stopped. We were enablers.”
She sipped her drink and glanced at her phone again. “I hope I didn’t pull you away from anything important.”
“Hell no. I just got done attending the reading of my dad’s will. And, man, that event might be one for the ages.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“Yes, it was that memorable.”
“Lots of drama?”
“Let’s see… First, my dad’s girlfriend shows up. My brother begins to freak out. I wasn’t there yet.”
“She came uninvited?”
“No, she was invited. I’ll get to that chapter in a second. Then, my mom shows up.”
“Good Lord, I’m starting to sweat, and it’s fifty-something degrees. Did she lose it?”
I sipped before speaking. “Not exactly, but she had her own way of getting even…well, until the will was read.”
She moved her phone to the side and clasped her hands on the table. “I’m all ears.”
“I’m glad my misery is so entertaining,” I said with a sarcastic chuckle.
She shrugged and took a drink. “We all need distractions; at least I do. I recently stopped smoking. So don’t stop now.”
“Mom walked in with a friend. I’d never met her before. Her name was Hilda.”
“And?”
“They were arm in arm, kind of how you might have seen me and Nicole a couple of months ago.”
“Are you saying that Mom and Hilda are…?”
I held up a hand. “Stop. I don’t want to envision it.”
“Is that too out there for you?”
“Hardly. I’ve got friends of all kinds. But when it comes to your mom, you don’t want to think about that stuff. Would you want to think about your mom and anyone doing—”
“I get it.” She closed her eyes for a moment.
“Mom’s act didn’t last long. When Arie read the will, I thought she was going to jump across the table and grab him by the throat.”
“What made her so pissed?”
I huffed out a breath as I relived the anxiety of that moment. “She was almost br
agging at the funeral reception that she was going to receive five million on an insurance policy. Turns out that was only half right.”
That eyebrow of hers lifted again.
“Yep. Dad gave half to Mom and the other half to Bianca, who actually pumped her fist like she’d just won the Super Bowl.”
“Ho-ly shit.”
I raised my glass and took another gulp. The waiter came by, and we ordered seconds.
“How have you been dealing with this?” she asked.
“It’s been exhausting, and up until today, it almost felt normal. Well, normal for our family.”
She snickered and held up her drink. We clinked glasses again as she said, “Here’s to the new normal.”
“I love it. That’ll be my new mantra. ‘The new normal.’”
18
A couple walked in from the street entrance, and for just a moment, I thought the woman affixed to the side of a man was Nicole. Her dark-brown hair was up in a bun on top of her head, wispy ringlets draping down either side of her face. She had the same high cheekbones and walked with a confident grace that drew your attention. I could actually feel my pulse quicken as I wondered if the man looked anything like the C person who had sent my wife flowers and written her that love note.
“Do you know that person?”
Brook had seen me gawking. “Oh, no.” I scooted my chair forward for no particular reason. I had this urge to get up and walk around, or just leave. I felt lost. Maybe I’d go walk the streets and try to figure out what I should do next. “So, you called this fun meeting.”
“Right. I appreciate you meeting me outside of the precinct office. It’s kind of stuffy in there. For me, anyway.”
“Sounds like there’s a story there.”
“Eh. It’s just breaking into rituals and cliques of a new department, especially the detective pool. Everyone is very judgmental, and there are a lot of old-timers.”
“They’re not used to having a woman around?”
“Oh, they want women around…to get them coffee, file reports, do menial research work. You know, anything to make sure we understand that the glass ceiling remains.”
“That sucks.” My mind went to how Nicole would handle a situation like that. Well, the old Nicole. She would have broken the glass ceiling, but in the process won over about ninety percent of the good-ol’-boy clan. For the remaining ten percent, she’d probably ignore their requests until they treated her as an equal.
“Yeah, it’s basically taking every ounce of self-control to avoid a shoot-out—and I mean that figuratively, of course...well, sorta—with a couple of the alphas. But right now, I’m knee deep in these two investigations, so I have no time. Which is probably a good thing.”
“I’ll drink to that.”
She laughed. “Cheers.” We sipped our drinks to seal the toast.
She turned the discussion to my dad’s case and started by saying that she’d gotten a warrant for his cell-phone records.
“Are you saying you think he was murdered?”
“No, I’m not saying that. In fact, the cardiologist was very convincing in explaining how your father’s heart was weakened and how he could have suffered a second heart attack that killed him.”
“You said could.”
“She didn’t use that term. I did. I have to leave the possibility open that something more sinister could have happened.”
“So you went for his phone records. Why?”
“Well, for starters, we need to identify who he was interacting with, especially recently. Beyond that, in looking at the logs from the hospital, we see where there are gaps when no one was in the room with your father. Between the nurse on duty, the hospital cleaning crew, the person responsible for taking food orders, and family and friends, there are still periods of time when he was alone.”
I nodded. “Since he wasn’t in intensive care, there’s no sign-up process for visitation, so it’s difficult to track who dropped by or didn’t.”
“You got it.”
She gave me the hospital’s regular visitation hours: 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. “But,” she added, “the staff admitted that those hours aren’t strictly enforced, not unless Nathaniel was on the pediatric or neonatal floors. Some patients have friends or family who spend the night in the room with them. Some visitors might stay later; some show up earlier. After questioning a lot of the staff, it appears that unless there is some type of emergency health situation or a visitor is creating a disturbance, they don’t usually question a person walking the halls.”
I scratched my face, felt the thick stubble. The razor I’d borrowed from Tito hadn’t done a very good job. My sights drifted upward to see a squirrel scampering along the wire of white lights to the next building.
“Three-quarters of the world seem to have a camera in place to capture video. Have you looked into the hospital surveillance?”
“I just got that warrant approved. Hospital security is working with one of the APD video techs. I’ve been told they don’t have the whole place covered. But you never know; it might turn up something.”
Her phone buzzed, and she asked me to hold on for a second as she read something. During the spare moment, I was able to spot two outdoor cameras. I was almost certain they’d been installed since the explosion.
She let her phone drop a little too hard on the table, but I had to ask her a quick question before addressing her phone message. “Do you have any inside scoop on authorities finding the people who bombed this place?”
She swished a lock of hair out of her face, then waved at the waiter. “I’ll take another one of these, but make it leaded.” She pointed a finger at me. “Don’t judge.”
I smiled, held up both hands like she had a gun on me. “I’m not saying anything. It’s what, nine o’clock at night? You’re technically off the clock.”
While we waited on the drink, she informed me that she had no real inside information on the bombing suspects. “Basically, I know what you know. They’re calling it ‘domestic terrorism.’” She used quote marks with her fingers on the last two words.
“What’s up with the quote marks?”
“Well, labeling it something like that only scares the public more, which if it’s truly terrorism in the classic sense, isn’t that their intent? To scare the public?”
She had a damn good point. “I like the way you think.”
“Not sure my male colleagues would agree with that notion, but I appreciate it.” She took in a breath, her eyes drifting away for a second. “For those of us who were here that night when the explosion occurred, it was horrific. Like something you’d see in a country on the other side of the world.”
I stared at her lips, wondering if what I’d seen her say matched what I’d heard. “You said us. You were here?”
We then discovered we’d both shared this tragic moment in Austin’s history and that we had a connection—Zahera Subzali. I’d known Zahera since college; we had a brief little thing while I was still attending UT. One of those college nights that went a little too far. But we’d remained friends throughout the years. Nicole and I were invited to The Belmont for the same reason Brook had been in attendance, to watch her friend, Cristina Tafoya, perform with a local Austin band, the Batistas.
The waiter arrived with Brook’s drink, and she immediately took a pull from the straw. “For this case, we at the APD are out of the loop. I just know the ATF and the FBI, and even the Department of Homeland Security, are involved. I realize the public is clamoring for information. The Feds are being really hush-hush on this one, which means they’re either really close to finding these nutjobs or not close at all.”
My hands felt a vibration running through the table. We both reached for our phones. I saw a text from Ray.
Just checking in. I’ve been working a couple of old sources at fed agencies. Other than that, can u get me access to your dad’s personal email?
I couldn’t recall seeing an email from Dad that didn’t go
through the Novak and Novak domain. Maybe he had one. I could ask Mom…or not. She had checked out on Dad and the firm business, on or off the books, long ago. She might be the last person who’d have any interest in getting involved in this investigation—unless it would lead to her prying the other half of Dad’s life insurance money out of Bianca’s fingers.
Maybe Arie was someone I could ask. I typed in a text to Ray letting him know that I’d do some digging of my own and get back to him.
He responded with: Have started talking to ur colleagues at firm and other old-timers ur dad knew.
I didn’t want to set off alarms and make people think they might be the target of some investigation. Word could start to spread, and if the wrong ears heard it, then any hope of staying quiet on the search for Dad’s mystery client might be forever ruined. I thumbed a quick reply. Be discreet.
He came back with: Discreet is my middle name.
I looked up to see the wrinkles on Brook’s forehead even more pronounced. I almost didn’t want to ask.
19
“Everything okay?” I asked.
She sighed. “If I start bitching, I might never stop. Real quickly, I want to tell you about the people your dad called or received calls from in the last week.”
“Good. What do you have?”
She scrolled her finger down her phone screen. “Okay, so we have Bianca Chastain.” Her eyes glanced up at me.
“That figures.”
She continued. “You, of course. And then there’s your brother Tobin, Arie, a handful of calls into the actual Novak and Novak office, your mother, a Cadillac dealership, and then one last one.” She swiveled the phone back and forth, as she studied me.
ON Edge (An Ozzie Novak Thriller, Book 1) (Redemption Thriller Series 13) Page 10
