Grain of Truth (Innocence Unit Book 1)

by V. J. Chambers

  I didn’t realize this would make you so upset.

  God. Why couldn’t he get Harley’s stupid voice out of his head?

  Liar, he wanted to say to her. You realized, because if you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have kept me out of the upstairs that night I brought you home from the jail. You didn’t want me to see him then, so you realized.

  He drank more coffee.

  “Yes, they were happy,” said Cleo. “They were very happy. They had a lovely new house and a beautiful daughter. Everything anyone could want.”

  Elke nodded slowly.

  “Why do you ask this?” said Tobias.

  “Just following up on some other leads is all,” said Elke. “I heard from a source that Tempest spent the weekend before the murder here with you. Is that true?”

  “Yes, actually,” said Cleo.

  “Why did she come?” said Elke.

  “Well… to be honest, I’ve never really been quite sure about that,” said Cleo. “I did think maybe something was wrong at the time. It was strange for her to come alone. She didn’t even bring Saanvi with her.”

  “She was quiet,” said Tobias. “She came to meals with us, but she didn’t have a lot to say. And she took a long walk out in the yard on Saturday. I offered to walk with her, but she said she wanted to be alone.”

  “I was worried,” said Cleo. “But then after…” She swallowed. “Well, after she was taken from us, I was only grateful that I’d gotten that last weekend with her, you know. I told myself that maybe it was God working through her, bringing my little girl back to me for just a bit.”

  Tobias nodded. He reached over and grasped his wife’s hand.

  They exchanged a look, their eyes brimming with tears.

  Iain drained his cup of coffee. “You say she took a long walk? In the yard?”

  “Yes,” said Tobias, turning to Iain.

  Elke glared at him.

  “That a normal thing to do? Walking in the yard?”

  “Well, I suppose,” said Cleo.

  “Most people walk on the road or on a trail or something. She just walked around in your backyard for no reason?”

  “Hudson,” muttered Elke, shaking her head at him.

  He ignored her. “Can we see your yard?”

  * * *

  Elke grabbed Iain by the arm. She spoke in a low voice so that only he could hear her. “Do you really think this is significant?”

  He glanced at her. He nodded, but didn’t speak.

  All four of them were out in the Austins’ back yard, which was sprawling, dotted with trees and bushes, and decorated with a lot of metal garden stakes in the shape of roosters and tractors.

  She kept talking. “You have any idea how painful this is for these people? You were completely disrespectful—”

  He pulled away from her and started walking across the lawn.

  Elke groaned inwardly. Maybe it had been a bad idea to bring him along. He wasn’t a great interrogator on a good day, and with his lack of sleep and personal issues, he seemed even less on his game today. She turned to Tobias and Cleo. “I’m sorry. He’s… a little eccentric, but he’s a good detective. He’s not always very, um, considerate—”

  “It’s fine,” said Tobias, smiling at her. He started after Iain. “I wonder where he’s going.”

  They all trooped after Iain.

  Iain walked across the lawn and stopped next to a pine tree. Underneath there was another garden stake, but this one was in the shape of a butterfly. He pointed at it. “This. Where’d it come from?”

  “Well, Cleo put it there,” said Iain.

  “No,” said Cleo. “I didn’t. It doesn’t really match.” She cocked her head. “I honestly don’t think I’ve noticed it before. It’s so far under the tree.” She turned apologetically to Elke. “I don’t work in the yard as much as I used to. I used to do a lot out here, but after Tempest passed, I sort of lost interest. We pay a nice young man to do the mowing and landscaping. We don’t come out here that often.”

  Iain turned to Elke. “You remember the crime scene photos? That picture propped up next to the couch. It was a butterfly.”

  “So?” said Elke.

  “Oh, Tempest loved butterflies,” said Cleo. “She had her whole bedroom done up with butterflies. You think she left this here?”

  Iain scratched the back of his neck. “Do you have a shovel?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Elke was horrified. She assured the Austins that they weren’t going to dig up their yard for no reason, but they seemed to have become excited by the discovery of this butterfly stake. Tobias went and got Iain and shovel, and Iain started digging.

  Tobias and Cleo exchanged breathless conversation about how they couldn’t believe that this had been here, right under their noses, all this time.

  The stake was hard to see, with all the low-hanging, needle-laden branches of the pine tree obscuring it. Elke had to grant them that. But she had to admit she was skeptical that it could be related. Twenty-five years out under a tree? Marked by a butterfly stake? What could possibly be buried out here? She figured Iain would dig and dig and there would be nothing there.

  But after about twenty minutes, Iain dug up a plastic bag. When he opened it up, it was full of money.

  “What?” said Cleo, who was startled at the sight of it.

  “Well,” said Iain, “that’s where the money she took out went.”

  “This is Tempest’s?” said Tobias. “Why would she take out money? Why would she bury it in our back yard?”

  Elke shook her head. “I have no idea.”

  “No way to know for sure,” said Iain.

  Elke licked her lips. “Well, we do know that Tempest wasn’t as happy in her marriage as she might have let on.”

  “Really?” Cleo was still staring at the money. “How do we know that?”

  “There was…” Elke cleared her throat. “Another man.”

  “Oh, no. That doesn’t sound like Tempest.” Cleo shook her head.

  “He says that there was no physical relationship,” said Iain. “He says they just met for coffee and talked periodically.”

  “Well… maybe…” Cleo reached out for Tobias. She looked like she was drowning.

  Tobias put his arm around her. “She was a grown woman, Cleo. She wasn’t a little girl anymore.”

  “Anyway,” said Elke, “he did seem to think that she wanted to leave Abeer. Maybe she buried this money here so that she could have it free and clear.”

  “Free and clear?” said Cleo. “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, she had her own bank account,” said Elke, “but the money deposited there was from Abeer, and he had control over the account. If she left him, she would have had nothing until she could have possibly gotten alimony from a divorce settlement or found a job. So, she might have taken money a little bit at a time and hidden it somewhere so that she could take care of herself if she left.”

  “We would have taken care of her,” said Cleo.

  “She was proud,” said Tobias. “She wouldn’t have wanted that.”

  “She could have told us!” said Cleo.

  Tobias sighed.

  “What?” Cleo pulled away. “She could have. We would have understood.”

  Tobias turned to Elke. “We’ve always been proud of our marriage. Lots of our friends who got married at the same time as us, they went through divorce after divorce, but we stuck together. And we always told Tempest that a marriage isn’t something you throw off easily. We said that it’s worth it to stick it out and work things out. Lots of times, people end up in some other marriage, and they find out that the amount of problems don’t change, just the kinds of them.”

  Cleo licked her lips. “Oh, Tobias, maybe she wouldn’t have told us.”

  “Maybe not,” said Tobias.

  Cleo let out a noisy breath. “I don’t understand. What does this mean? Is this a clue? That other man. Who is he? Did he kill her?”

  �
�We don’t think so,” said Elke. “He seems to have a strong alibi.”

  “So… then what?” said Cleo. “It doesn’t mean anything? You dug up our yard for nothing?”

  “We…” Elke looked at Iain for guidance, although why she did, she didn’t know.

  “It wasn’t for nothing,” said Iain. “We’ve proved your daughter didn’t hire a contract killer to kill Abeer. She’s innocent.”

  Tobias and Cleo both turned horrified faces on Elke.

  Elke cringed.

  * * *

  Amos popped back through the offices to make sure that no one else was there that night. Iain Hudson had a tendency to stay late, and he was always so quiet back there in his office that Amos never knew if the guy was there or not. But Iain must have slipped out at some point, because his office was quiet and dark.

  The boss, though, Elke Lawrence, was coming out of her office and closing the door.

  When she saw him, she jumped. “Oh, Amos, I didn’t realize you were there.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “I was on my way out. Just getting ready to lock up.

  “Great,” she said, smiling. “See you tomorrow.” She gave him a little wave and then strode down the hallway and out of the place.

  Amos watched her go. He liked her fine. He liked all the people who worked at the CRU, although Iain was a little brusque. Overall, though, it was a good place to work, and he was glad to have the job. He had to admit it was different here, though. He’d been working at a law office in town for years. He’d gotten the job right out of school. He had his associate’s degree and wanted to take a year off before going back to school.

  Executive assistant jobs paid well and he had the qualifications, so he took the job. He ended up there for longer than a year. But he liked it there, because it was a big place and a lot of people worked there. He and the other assistants would all eat lunch together every day, and he missed the social aspect of his job. This new position, it was great and all, but it was a little lonely.

  While working for the other law firm, he’d taken classes at night, and now he was a full-fledged paralegal. It was those new qualifications that had landed him this job, and the higher salary that came with it. He was grateful for the opportunity.

  But the place was so solemn, and he didn’t know how to liven it up.

  Amos knew that a lot of people struggled with their place in the world. People would ask all sorts of existential questions like, “Why am I here? What is my purpose?” But Amos had sort of always known with an innate certainty that his purpose in life was to bring light and joy to whatever situation he found himself in. Knowing that didn’t mean that it was any easier to make big decisions in life, like what he should be when he grew up, because he’d sort of floated into this career, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to do it forever, but it did mean that—wherever he found himself—he usually made that place a happier place.

  He hadn’t, however, quite figured out how to do that here at the CRU.

  He’d assessed the situation fairly quickly. He could tell that there was some sort of tension between Elke and Frankie. Iain was a robot. So, he was up against a good bit of resistance to happiness and joy, even if you didn’t count the fact that they were doing serious, solemn business here, and that people’s lives were in their hands. They had the ability to save people from a life behind bars, but also the power to cast suspicion on others who had been free for years. So, it wasn’t exactly a carefree sort of job.

  He sighed as he walked back up the hallway to his desk at the front. He’d tried bringing in donuts, but that hadn’t done much. He’d left them in the conference room, but people hadn’t stayed and eaten and talked to each other. Instead, they’d gone in separately and taken the donuts back to their desks, none of them so much as acknowledging each other. He wondered if he could invite everyone out for a drink some night. Frankie had a family, so she might not come, though. He wanted them all to be there, considering there were only four of them.

  Amos was a sunny person, and he liked to work in a sunny environment.

  Also, he was gay.

  He thought the gay part made it easier to be sunny. After all, they hadn’t name gay people “gay” for no reason, now had they? He didn’t know why that was, but he thought it was a testament to his sexual preference, that while going through the worst kind of prejudice and hate, they could come to be known as a word that was synonymous for happiness and playfulness. That made him proud.

  Not that he was always happy or anything. He was a regular person. He had his ups and downs. Lately, he’d been through a bad breakup that had gutted him. If he was truly honest, part of the reason he’d stuck around at that job at the law firm hadn’t been only because it was a great working environment. It was also because he wanted to stay close to Paul, who was still doing undergrad at the local college. Paul was one of those guys who made undergrad take six years by strategically changing his major four times. Paul liked school.

  Amos guessed that he should have realized Paul wasn’t going to get a job after graduating. That obviously Paul was going to go for a masters. It was what Paul did.

  And maybe he’d made the relationship into more than what it was. They were always insisting to each other that it was casual. They never moved in together, and they never made hard and fast rules. They were allowed to make drunken mistakes, as they called them. That meant that if either one of them got trashed and ended up in bed with another guy, he would just keep that to himself and not tell the other. Both had been in previous relationships torpedoed by their own cheating, and neither felt it was fair when the accident meant absolutely nothing and was fueled by alcohol.

  Funny thing was, as near as he knew, neither he nor Paul had ever had one of those accidents during their relationship. They pretty much never went out and got drunk without the other one. They’d been attached at the hip.

  So, when Paul said that he was going to New York for grad school, Amos had offered to come along.

  But Paul hadn’t wanted him to.

  Amos kind of got it. He knew that running off to some new place and remaking yourself was a thrilling proposition. You couldn’t remake yourself with your boyfriend tagging along. But at the same time, they weren’t kids anymore. There was a time when you stopped remaking yourself and accepted yourself as your portion—to half-ass quote Ralph Waldo Emerson, who Amos liked, but not well enough to remember the real quote. Anyway, it meant that. Eventually, you just had to be you. It was what you did when you grew up.

  Obviously, Paul was not ready to grow up.

  His loss.

  Amos lifted his chin and squared his shoulders and strutted the rest of the way out of the office, stopping to lock up on his way out. Yes, that was right. It was Paul’s loss. Amos was a catch, and if Paul couldn’t see that, then screw him.

  Amos sashayed down the hall, telling himself that everything was going to turn out just fine. Sure, he’d been having trouble finding anyone else he was the least bit interested in, and sure, his new job was like going to a funeral every day, but things were going to look up, because he was strong, and attractive, and smart. He sucked in his breath and smiled.

  He arrived at the elevator and hit the button for down.

  The elevator door opened immediately.

  Amos grinned. Good sign.

  There was another man in the elevator. He saw Amos’s smile and grinned back.

  Amos stopped grinning. He couldn’t explain what it was, but there was something about the man’s smile he didn’t like.

  “Hi there,” said the guy.

  Amos considered waiting for the next elevator, but then decided he was being stupid. He stepped inside, nodding at the guy, but not saying anything. He wanted to turn his back on the man, but found he couldn’t quite do it. Instead, he flattened himself on the opposite side of the elevator and watched him warily.

  The elevator doors slid closed.

  The other man was in a gray suit with a checked tie. The colo
rs of the checks were magenta and jade green. His shirt matched the jade green checks, only it was a lighter shade. The guy had purposefully disheveled hair, moussed into place. He should have been attractive, but there was something about his eyes that just… weren’t quite right.

  Amos wished he could back away further.

  The man was still smiling. “Hey, don’t I know you?”

  Amos shook his head.

  “Do you ever, uh, go to The Rainbow?” The Rainbow was a club in town that catered to gay men. It was actually Amos’s favorite hangout, but he’d been staying clear lately, what with all the stuff about the serial killer.

  “No,” said Amos, lying.

  “Are you sure? I could swear I’ve seen you there.” The elevator started moving. The man looked startled, but he was faking. He stumbled and somehow ended up on Amos’s side of the elevator.

  Amos shrank from him.

  “What’s your name?” said the man. “I’m Dick.” He raised his eyebrows suggestively.

  Amos wanted out of the elevator now.

  “You know,” said Dick, lowering his voice, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen an ass as tight as yours.”

  Amos pressed himself against the wall. When had Dick seen his ass?

  “We should hang out sometime,” said Dick. “We could meet at the club or you could give me your number.”

  Amos shook his head. “No, thanks. I’m, uh, just getting out of a relationship.”

  “That’s the best time,” said Dick.

  Amos shook his head again. How much longer could this elevator ride last?

  “Hey,” said Dick, “do you work for the new CRU thing? Is that where you were coming from?”

  Amos didn’t want to admit anything. But he didn’t want to tell this guy it was none of his business. Something told him not to be rude to Dick. Something told him that Dick wouldn’t like that, and he didn’t think that he wanted to make Dick upset. He hated that feeling, but his survival instinct was taking control now. “Yeah, I work there.”