mysterious grooves. They all led to her office.
A white-haired man sat in a wheelchair facing her as she entered. The thin hands that held the arms of the chair trembled violently. Although his head wobbled a bit, he eyed Jo steadily. Two men flanked him, standing respectfully with their hands folded in front of them. They all wore dark, tasteful suits.
“Good morning, Mrs. O’Connor,” the white-haired man greeted her. Coming from such a shaky body, his voice was surprisingly clear and strong. “My name is Vincent Benedetti. I believe we should talk.”
Whether it was simply the surprise of finding strangers in her office so early or something about the strangers themselves, Jo wasn’t sure, but she didn’t like the situation or the feeling that gripped her gut.
“Do you have an appointment?” she asked.
“Appointment?” One of the standing men-a huge, broad-shouldered guy with blond hair and an idiotic smirk on his face-gave a horsey laugh.
“Hush, Joey.” The white-haired man studied her eyes. “You’re afraid. Someone told you to be afraid of Benedetti.”
The door was open at her back. Jo calmly turned and closed it. “I’m not afraid, Mr. Benedetti. Should I be?”
“Of me, no. I’ve come a very long way and I’m very tired. I’m here to save your husband’s ass.”
Jo moved to the coffee machine so that he wouldn’t see her surprise. She emptied the pot of water into the reservoir, then faced Benedetti. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Husbands have secrets,” he said. He looked at her dead on, like an animal he had in his sights. “I know you understand that.”
Suddenly, she wanted only to be rid of them. “What exactly can I do for you?”
“It’s what we can do for each other, Mrs. O’Connor.” The white-haired man motioned with his head and the big blond guy moved the wheelchair nearer Jo so that Benedetti spoke to her as if in strictest confidence. “I have information that will help save your husband’s life. In return, you’ll help save my daughter.”
“Your daughter? Do I know your daughter?”
“Everyone knows my daughter. Her name is Shiloh.”
Except for the fact that the man regarded her as seriously as an undertaker, she might have assumed he was joking. “Am I understanding you correctly? You claim to be the father of Shiloh- the Shiloh-the country singer?”
“I just said that, didn’t I?” he replied with annoyance.
“I’m sorry if I seem a little slow on the uptake here, Mr. Benedetti, but that’s quite a claim.”
Benedetti reached inside his suit coat and brought out a shiny leather wallet, from which he extracted a photograph. He handed the photo to Jo. The picture was of a little girl, maybe eighteen months old, in a pretty white dress, posed in a photographer’s studio. “Read the back.”
Vince-Our little girl. She’s walking up a storm. Has my hair and skin, your eyes and temper. Marais.
She studied the photograph, then looked at the white-haired man. Despite the trembling in his body, she thought she could detect in his eyes the same insolence she’d seen in the eyes of the woman in the video. She handed the photo back.
“Does she know?”
He shook his head. “Marais never told her. As far as Shiloh’s concerned, Willie Raye is her father.”
“Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
“Promises. To Marais. To my wife, Theresa.”
“She knew? Your wife knew?”
“Oh, yeah. I never understood how, but she knew. She threatened to leave me for good if I ever tried to do anything about Shiloh. After Marais was murdered, it seemed best just to let Raye take that little girl back to Nashville. He’s queer as a purple dog, but there are worse kinds of fathers.”
“What does all this have to do with my husband?” Jo asked.
Benedetti waved forward one of the men at his side. The man was good-looking in an obvious sort of way. Dark brown hair, curly and expertly razor cut. A strong jaw. A beauty mark on his right cheek. A diamond stud in his left ear. He wore an emerald tie that matched his eyes perfectly. Green eyes. Confident. She’d been aware of his eyes. They’d followed her every move. Men often watched her that way. Even when they respected her abilities, spoke to her as a colleague, their eyes were hiking up her skirt.
“My son, Angelo,” Benedetti explained to her. “Tell her, Angelo.”
“Your husband went into the Boundary Waters yesterday, Ms. O’Connor,” Angelo Benedetti informed her. “He was accompanied by several men. Two of them your husband believes to be agents of the FBI. They’re not.”
“No?”
The coffee machine gurgled suddenly at her back and Jo jerked, startled. At the same moment, the office door opened and Fran, her secretary, came in. Fran halted abruptly, surprised at the gathering, and glanced at her watch.
“It’s okay, Fran,” Jo said. “An early unscheduled conference. We were just moving to my office. Would you do me a favor? When the coffee’s done, bring some in for us?”
“Sure, Jo.”
“Gentlemen, if you’ll follow me.”
Jo led the way into her office. It was a large room lined with shelves of books and dominated by a big cherrywood desk that she’d brought with her from Chicago. The desk had been in storage during Jo’s first two years in Aurora as she struggled to establish a practice. In those years, she worked out of her small office in the house on Gooseberry Lane. She was the first female attorney ever to hang a shingle in Tamarack County, and it had taken a long time to become something more to the people of Aurora than Cork O’Connor’s wife. She’d made a name for herself by taking impossible cases, cases no one else wanted-those of the Anishinaabe, for example. Her success in court gave her the professional recognition she sought, but she still felt as if she were waiting for some door in the town to open for her that maybe never would.
“Would you care to sit down?” With a gesture, she offered chairs to the two standing men. They declined and remained at Vincent Benedetti’s side like palace guards. Jo sat at her desk and leaned forward. “You said the men who are with my husband aren’t FBI.”
“That’s right,” Angelo Benedetti said.
“Who are they, then? And why are they out there?”
“One of them, Dwight Sloane, is a big man with the California State Police. The other, Virgil Grimes, calls himself a security consultant. Both men were involved in the investigation of the Marais Grand murder fifteen years ago.”
“Involved in what way?”
Angelo Benedetti tugged the cuffs of his shirt into place. “Grimes was one of the detectives in charge of the investigation for the Palm Springs Police Department. Sloane investigated on behalf of the state. There is one legitimate agent of the FBI here in Aurora. His name is Booker T. Harris. He’s out of the Los Angeles field office. Fifteen years ago, Harris represented the FBI in the murder investigation.”
He tilted his head slightly to one side and gave her a moment to consider. It was a gesture that struck her as calculated, disingenuous, something he might use on women after he’d propositioned them.
“If you don’t believe me,” he said simply, “check it out. And while you’re at it, check with the FBI on the official status of this investigation. You’ll find that there is no official investigation, Ms. O’Connor. Booker T. Harris, the only legitimate representative of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is officially on personal leave.”
“These men are out to cover their asses,” Vincent Benedetti broke in. “I’d bet my own ass they were paid off when they investigated Marais’s murder. Now they’re running scared that Shiloh might have remembered something that will finger them.”
“Paid off by whom?”
Benedetti began to cough, a fit that racked his withered body. Angelo drew a clean white handkerchief from his coat pocket and stuffed it into his father’s hand. Vincent Benedetti shoved it over his face as if it were a mask.
“Paid off by whom?” Jo asked when the coughing was well past.
“Marais was smart. She always told me she’d cultivated friends in high places.” He managed a smile.
“What’s so funny?”
“Marais didn’t have friends. Everyone was just a step on a ladder to her.”
