Justice Betrayed

by Patricia Bradley

  Rachel knew exactly what Monica was talking about. Her husband had that gift. It was one reason he won so many court cases. And probably why she married him against her better judgment. People just didn’t tell Corey no.

  The fumes from Monica’s cigarette made it difficult for Rachel to breathe. “Any chance you can put that out?” she asked. “Or open a window?”

  “A little hot to open a window. How about finishing your questions and leaving?”

  “How about we take this downtown?” she said evenly, not bothering to take the hard edge off her voice.

  Monica shot a glare toward her, but she knocked the glowing end off the cigarette. “Cost too much to throw away,” she said, putting it in the ashtray. “What else do you want to know?”

  “Do you know a woman named Lucinda Vetch?”

  “Lucy? She was a groupie then, and she still is.” Monica shook her head. “If I had her money, I’d be on the French Riviera with a good-looking man instead of running after these fake Elvises.”

  “Do you have an address for her?”

  “No, but you can probably catch her at Blues & Such tonight—she never misses a show during Elvis Week.” She rolled her shoulders. “Are you done? I didn’t get into bed until almost three.”

  “One more question. Where were you the night Foxx was murdered?” Boone asked.

  “At home asleep, just like I was when Vic Vegas died. And I had no motive to kill either of them.” She cocked her head. “I heard Randy used the wrong insulin, and that’s something he would not do. If I were the police, I’d look at who had the most to gain from getting rid of their competition.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Randy was the odds-on favorite to win the Supreme Elvis this year. Twenty thousand dollars is a good incentive. Not to mention Harrison was really hot the year he was murdered.”

  “That doesn’t explain Vic Vegas’s death,” Rachel pointed out. “He certainly wasn’t in the running.”

  “Maybe he knew too much. He said he’d solve Harrison’s death one day. Maybe he discovered who killed him.”

  “We’ll check that out.” Boone stood, and Rachel followed suit. “Will you be at Blues & Such tonight? In case we have more questions.”

  “Sure.”

  Rachel inhaled a breath of clean air as they walked back to the truck.

  “What do you think?” Boone asked.

  “She’s still not telling us something.” It might be a good idea to come back and interview the event planner without Boone.

  The sense that Monica was watching them followed Rachel as she climbed into Boone’s truck. Only after she fastened her seat belt did she allow herself to glance toward the condo. Yep. One of the slats in the blinds was raised just enough for someone to peek through them. Then it abruptly slid back in place.

  Boone started the motor and turned to her. “You know it would help if we had a list of the performers from that event seventeen years ago. Do you think your grandmother might have a program from that night in one of those boxes she has?”

  Adrenaline stabbed her heart. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she’d known he was going to ask this. Her throat tightened, choking off the words she needed to say.

  23

  IF BOONE COULD SNATCH BACK the request he’d just made, he would. How could he be so stupid? He might as well have asked her to jump off the Mississippi River Bridge. From the looks of her pale face, she’d probably rather do the jump than go through her mother’s effects, today of all days.

  He wanted to bang his head on the steering wheel. Not only that, he’d sent her to the house where she’d found her mother dead on the anniversary of that morning, when he could have asked another judge to sign a search warrant. No wonder she’d been so quiet earlier.

  And what if he ended up having to take her off the case? If the Culver and Vegas cases linked to her mother’s, he would have to remove her, and that’d be like bathing a cat. On second thought, Boone believed he’d rather bathe the cat.

  He let the truck idle. “Can you handle dealing with your mother’s death in this case? Because, like it or not, we’ll be rooting around in her life and around events she was involved in.”

  She gripped the seat belt strap and pulled it away from her chest. “I can handle it.”

  The grim expression on her face and white knuckles on the strap told a different story. He’d seen shell-shocked soldiers, and she had the same look. “Look, it’s Sunday afternoon. Why don’t you take the rest of the day off and regroup? We can get the list tomorrow, and tonight I’ll question the performers at Blues & Such.”

  Rachel jutted her jaw and stared straight ahead, not blinking. Slowly a calm came over her face and color returned to her cheeks. She took out her phone and dialed a number. “Nana,” she said, her voice steady. “Do you still have Mom’s Elvis stuff?”

  She listened for a few seconds. “Good. Can I come over and look through it?” A minute later she ended the call. “I’m pretty sure Mom saved the programs from the tribute events she was involved in, and after she died, Nana took charge of the mementos. There are several boxes, and I imagine that program is in one of them. If you’ll drop me off at the parking garage, I’ll grab my car and drive to Nana’s and find it.”

  The strain in her voice pierced him. He was asking a lot of her to go through those things today. “Why don’t I go with you and help?”

  “Nana will be there.”

  He doubted Rose Lee wanted to go through her daughter’s things any more than Rachel did. “There may be other items pertaining to the case, items your grandmother wouldn’t recognize as evidence. And two of us can get through the boxes twice as fast.” If he were with her, he’d know if the memories were too much.

  “Uh . . . are you sure you want to do that? I mean, it’s a lot of Elvis stuff.”

  Maybe she needed space and didn’t want him to go. He glanced toward her. Rachel’s knees bounced and she still had that shell-shocked look. Boone put the car in gear and backed out of the space. “I like Elvis.”

  “O-kay. Just don’t pay any attention to Nana.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll see.” The knee bouncing resumed.

  “Does she still live at Trinity Meadows?” The gated, condo-style complex was in East Memphis.

  “Yes. I keep trying to get Gran to move there too.”

  Rachel had two very interesting grandmothers that she talked quite a bit about. One from England, the other a Southern belle with Irish roots. “Did I ever tell you that before I met Rose, I half expected to meet Miss Daisy?”

  “Nana . . . a Jessica Tandy clone? That is hilarious.”

  It was after he met her. The first time he’d met Rachel’s maternal grandmother had been on his and Rachel’s third date and she’d asked him to stop by Trinity Meadows so she could drop off something. Rose had been dressed for tennis with a sweatband keeping her red hair away from her face. While she still held to her Southern heritage, she also fit very well in today’s world. As her texting and Facebook page attested to. And like Rachel’s other grandmother, she’d quickly told him she didn’t want to hear any of that Mrs. Lee stuff, to call her by her given name.

  “If she’d been Miss Daisy, Gramps would have been her Hoke. He kept her grounded,” Rachel said with a laugh. “And since he died, Gran thinks she inherited the responsibility.”

  He pictured Adele with her chin-length silver hair. “It’s hard to believe either of them are in their eighties.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “It’ll be good to see Rose again. Was she at the party last night?”

  “Yes, and I was surprised she didn’t come outside and join us like the others. She did call early this morning to get the details on what happened.”

  Boone wished he had memories of his grandmothers. His dad had been orphaned in his teens, and he barely remembered his maternal grandparents, missionaries who had died in South Africa in a car wreck. “You have an int
eresting family.”

  He was glad to see a tiny smile cross her lips.

  “You might say that.”

  He showed his ID to the guard, then drove through the gates and turned to the right. Rose’s condo was on the backside of the complex, near the tennis courts.

  A wide smile spread across Rose’s face the minute she opened the door. “You didn’t tell me you were bringing Boone. Come on in.” She practically dragged him through the doorway and gave him a hug. “I don’t know what my granddaughter meant, breaking it off with you. Being a Callahan, you’d make a fine grandson-in-law.”

  “Now you know what I meant,” Rachel muttered.

  “What can you tell me about that present you received last night?” Rose asked as she led them to a sunny room that looked out on a lake.

  “Not much,” Rachel said.

  Rose turned expectantly to Boone.

  “She’s right,” he said. “There’s not a lot we can tell you other than it’s being investigated.”

  “Well, you watch after her, Boone Callahan.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He shifted his gaze from Rachel to the room as a grandfather clock chimed the two o’clock hour. He noted ten boxes on the floor against the wall paneling. Ten? That was a lot of memorabilia.

  “You should have waited and let us get these out for you,” he said.

  Rose dismissed him with her hand. “Why would I do that? The weights I lift every day are heavier than those boxes. Now, if you two don’t mind, I have a tennis date.”

  “In this heat?” Alarm flared in Rachel’s face.

  “Of course not. I’m not an idiot, in spite of what Adele thinks. Did you forget we have an indoor court with air-conditioning?”

  Rachel grinned. “My bad. Go have fun. Do you want us to lock up when we leave?”

  “If I’m not back. We only have the court for an hour.”

  “Who are you playing with?”

  Blue eyes glinted mischievously. “Gerald.” She walked toward the front door and stopped. “Do be sure to tell Adele that since he’s met me, he’s working out and playing tennis.”

  “Do you think I’m an idiot?”

  When the door closed behind her, Boone said, “What was that all about?”

  “My grandmothers are like water and fire. Gerald is a man they met at church, and Gran thinks Nana is throwing herself at him, says that Gerald is only interested in Nana’s money.”

  “What do you think?”

  Rachel laughed. “As flighty as Nana appears, she’s an excellent businesswoman. She had Gerald checked out after their second coffee date. He is very well set and has a great reputation. Of course she’s told Gran none of this, instead lets her believe what she wants to.”

  “Why don’t you tell her?”

  “And ruin Nana’s fun? You met Gran. Nothing ruffles her. Besides, if it wasn’t Gerald they were fighting over, it’d be me.” She picked up one of the boxes. “And believe me, I’d much rather it be him.”

  “Well, I like your grandmothers.” Boone scanned the boxes. Some of the boxes had “Elvis” written on them, and the first box he sorted through had photo albums and high school yearbooks. He set it aside to return to later. By the time he opened the third box, he feared the program hadn’t been saved.

  He checked to see how Rachel fared. It was hard to tell. She sat cross-legged on the floor, chewing on her bottom lip as she pored over what looked like a journal. “You okay?”

  She looked up, her face flushed. “Yeah. This is my mother’s diary from her year as a deb.”

  “A deb?”

  “Debutante. I was one too.”

  Rachel had mentioned being a debutante before. A term not unfamiliar to Boone, but it’d been a while since he’d heard it. Mostly he remembered it from when the Cotton Carnival had been more of a high-society event than a party to raise money for children’s causes. And as a kid growing up in the part of town he had, he certainly had never been part of the Carnival set. “So exactly what does a debutante do, other than attend parties?”

  Amusement lit her face. “Well, first of all, it’s almost a way of life. I knew from the time I was four and Mom got me started in dance lessons that I would have a debutante season.”

  “Four? You’re kidding.”

  “Serious as a mortician. Terri was my dance teacher, by the way. I don’t know that it starts that early now since I’m not in those circles, but Nana could tell you. She still champions the cause.”

  “Why would you do that? Spend all your life preparing for one year?”

  “It never occurred to me to question it. It’s just what one did if you had a grandmother like Rose Lee.” A strand of blonde hair had slipped loose from the band that held it in a ponytail, and she hooked it behind her ear.

  “In my mother’s family, it was a tradition. Nana was presented to Atlanta society at the Piedmont Driving Club because her grandparents lived there, and she saw to it that my mother was presented as well. They had the honor of being double debs by also being presented to Memphis society during Carnival week. When it was my turn, Nana and Terri took over after . . .”

  He hoped she didn’t stop her story, because he was seeing a side that Rachel kept hidden. She stood and walked to a bookcase, returning with two framed eight-by-ten photos.

  “This is me, the night I was presented.” She handed him one of the photos. “With the Judge.”

  The photographer had captured Rachel and her father waltzing. Dressed in a flowing white gown, she appeared to be nineteen or twenty and was the picture of understated elegance. “He looks very proud of you here.”

  “I think he was. Said I looked like Mom.”

  She leaned in and touched the photo, and a light fragrance enveloped him.

  “It’s the only night I ever remember having his undivided attention.”

  The wistfulness in her voice startled him. When he glanced up, longing reflected in her face as she stared at the photo. An urge to take her in his arms, to make her world right, caught him off guard.

  Rachel turned and caught him staring at her. Their gazes locked and her pupils dilated as electricity arced between them. The pounding of his heart silenced all other sounds, even the seconds ticked off by the grandfather clock. Abruptly, she stepped back, breaking the spell.

  “This is my official portrait,” she said, her voice husky as she handed him the other photo.

  He almost dropped the picture. What was wrong with him? She had made it plain she wasn’t interested in him. But that wasn’t what her eyes had just said. Get a grip. She hadn’t exactly fallen into his arms. Besides, he was Rachel’s supervisor, and as long as she was in Homicide, he had to remember she was hands-off. Period.

  Time to refocus his attention elsewhere, maybe get interested in someone else. Not that he hadn’t dated and had relationships before Rachel came along, but those had always been casual, usually ending for lack of commitment on both sides. His feelings for Rachel had been new territory for him, and he hadn’t been sure how to handle it. Evidently that hadn’t changed.

  Rachel’s voice broke past his thoughts. “The original is hanging in the library at Dad’s.”

  The lightness in her voice sounded forced. Everything was awkward. He muscled his attention to the picture. She wore the same gown as in the other photo, but in this one, her golden hair had been swept back in a loose bun. The elegance he’d noticed earlier emanated from the photograph. “Wow. You are . . .” He caught himself before he said beautiful. That would have really made things worse. “Looking really good there.”

  She propped her hand on her hip. “And I’m what, chopped meat now?”

  And just like that, everything was back to normal. “Maybe chopped sirloin.”

  Rachel ducked her head, but he could see the grin on her face.

  “The pearl necklace and earrings I’m wearing were my mom’s. Dad had just given them to me before the photo shoot, just like Gramps had given them to Mom before her debut, and my great-gr
andfather to Nana.”

  It suddenly dawned on him that she was way out of his league.

  24

  RACHEL DIDN’T KNOW how it happened, but a few minutes ago, Boone almost kissed her. And she would have welcomed it.

  Thank goodness neither of them acted on the impulse. And that’s all it was. An impulse that would not happen again. She had too much to lose and so did Boone. Besides, as much as she wished she could fall in love with him, something held her back. It wasn’t that he didn’t make her heart pound—he did. But until she could give him her whole heart, there was no need to encourage him. It would only end up making it difficult for them both. Like it wasn’t already.

  “I can see why your dad wanted you to stay with the law firm,” Boone said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  He glanced at the portrait again. “If I had a daughter like this, I wouldn’t want her putting her life on the line every day.”

  “You have to be kidding.” She stared at him. “You’re not, are you?” When he didn’t answer, she shook her head. “But I love being a cop. Maybe I joined the department to find who was responsible for my mother’s death, but it didn’t take me long to find out some crimes just aren’t solvable—not enough leads or the leads are dead ends. By then I’d discovered I loved investigating, figuring things out and bringing closure to victims and their families.”

  “If you couldn’t do it for yourself, you would do it for others,” he said.

  The image of her mother, lying on the floor, her body cold, whipped through Rachel’s mind. If she knew what had happened that night, she might be able to put that image to rest. “Nothing is more important than closure. The not knowing drives families crazy. I can’t bring the murdered victims back, but if I can get justice for them, the family can sleep easier. It’s why I want to work in Homicide. If I make sergeant next year, I’ll be eligible to be here permanently.”

  And one day she would discover her mother’s killer. Rachel palmed her hands up. “I’ll get off my soapbox now.”