Gooch for saving my ass tonight. I appreciate you delaying the inevitable. Bye, Whit.’
He got up, slammed the door shut. He didn’t want her to go. Found and lost, all in the matter of an hour. Her face was still, blank. Waiting.
‘Do you have a plan?’ he asked. ‘On how to get the money?’
‘I have a couple of ideas on how to nail Bucks, prove he’s betrayed Paul. Get evidence that Paul will believe. But I can’t do it alone.’
‘Here’s the deal, Mom.’ He let the little odd word settle between them. ‘We nail Bucks for Harry’s murder. Then you come with me to Port Leo to see my father and my brothers. And if you trick me or run out on me again, I’ll give you to the Feds myself in two fricking seconds and you can fry in hell for all I care.’
‘Deal,’ she said.
17
Friday morning in Port Leo was gorgeous, the air clear and the sky the color of pearl. When the light filtered in through her window and awoke her, it didn’t bother Claudia Salazar that she had gotten barely five hours of sleep. Last night the Port Leo police department, working with the sheriff’s departments in Encina and Aransas counties, had busted a burglary and fencing ring. Arrests and interviews had kept Claudia up until 2 a.m.
But the sun, even in winter, beckoned.
Claudia went for a leisurely run on the smooth flat of beach along St Leo Bay, the sand wet beneath her sneakers. The fishing boats already sailed the horizon, out past the thin barrier islands that guarded the Texas coast. The morning air was February-cool but she pulled off the windbreaker she’d worn down to the beach, tied it around her waist, turned around and ran back the length of the beach and the park, letting the warmth sift through her body. Her sweat was light and she felt good.
She walked back to her small apartment, stopping for a bottle of grapefruit juice and an egg-and-potato breakfast taco at a small convenience store up from the harbor. She sipped at the juice and ate her taco as she headed past Port Leo’s shopping and arts district and the courthouse square, watching the tourist birders heading out with the cameras and binoculars from the bed-and-breakfasts near the square, eager to spot the coast’s famed, precious whooping cranes. At home she stood under the shower’s hot spray, then turned the water icy cold for a deliciously long minute, then hot again. When she got out and toweled off, she went into her bedroom to dress. The message light on her answering machine was blinking and she frowned, hoping it wasn’t work calling since she’d put in well over sixty hours this week.
She listened to the message. ‘Ms Salazar? This is Barbara Zachary at Chyme Investigations. Please call me as soon as you get this message. Please.’ The voice was shaky.
Claudia dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, and dialed the phone. She knew Barbara Zachary slightly, a single mother who did occasional support work for Harry. If there was a break in Whit’s case, she couldn’t imagine why Harry would call her with that news first instead of Whit.
‘Chyme Investigations.’
‘Barbara Zachary, please.’
‘This is she.’ The woman’s voice sounded wooden.
‘Hi, this is Claudia Salazar. You had left a message for me?’
‘Yes.’ Then silence. ‘Harry is dead.’
Claudia’s nice warm muscles turned to jelly. She sat on the edge of her unmade bed. Her breath seemed frozen in her chest. ‘Oh, my God.’
‘He was shot in Houston. Down near the port. Yesterday afternoon. It took them a while to ID him. He didn’t have any ID on him, but his rental car was parked nearby. The license plates were taken off. That slowed them down until they traced the VIN number.’ Barbara’s voice broke again. ‘I cannot believe Harry is gone.’
‘My God.’
‘I know he had a case in Houston he was working,’ Barbara said. ‘For Whitman Mosley, and Harry told me you were the referral.’ The barest hint of accusation tinged her voice, as though Claudia bore a terrible share of responsibility. ‘There’s no answer at Judge Mosley’s house. Can you contact him for me? The Houston police will want to talk to him.’
‘I’ hunt him down right now. Who’s the investigating officer in Houston?’ Claudia grabbed for a pad.
‘His name is Arturo Gomez.’ Now Barbara broke into sobs. ‘I’m sorry. This is… difficult. He was so sweet to me.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘I’d worked for him from the beginning,’ Barbara said. ‘He never took any dangerous cases.’
‘I want you to tell me,’ Claudia said. ‘Everything you know.’
‘They found Harry in an insurance office near the Port of Houston with some man, I don’t know his name. I don’t know anything about him.’
Five minutes later, Claudia was at the door of the guest house where Whit lived, behind the main Mosley house. No answer at the door, but Whit’s Ford Explorer sat in the driveway. She hurried back up to the main house, rapped on the door, rang the doorbell.
Irina Mosley answered the door in a cotton robe, hair looking disheveled, like she’d had a long night. She was a beautiful woman but the sudden weight of Babe’s illness had thinned her already waifish face. Claudia didn’t particularly like Irina, thought of her as the trophy wife who’d seen a rich old man as a passport out of Russian poverty, but the thought that her husband was dying softened Claudia’s heart.
‘Claudia, hello,’ Irina said. She always spoke so quietly, as though an eavesdropper lurked nearby. She looked exhausted, dark blotches under her eyes.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you so early. Where’s Whit?’
‘Off to Houston.’ Her voice hardened.
‘Why?’ Some man, Barbara had said. They found Harry with some man . Claudia’s skin prickled beneath her windbreaker. Oh, Jesus, Whit.
‘He didn’t tell me,’ Irina said. ‘He left right after court yesterday.’
‘Did he fly? His car’s still here.’
‘No,’ Irina said. ‘He went with that Gooch person.’ She frowned in distaste.
Claudia thanked Irina. She went back to her car, tried Whit on her cell phone. No answer on his. Please, not Whit, too.
She drove home and called Barbara Zachary. ‘Apparently Whit’s in Houston.’
‘Oh, my God. What if Judge Mosley’s the man with Harry?’
‘I’m sure Whit’s okay,’ Claudia said. She thanked Barbara, gave her sympathies again, and hung up. Then she called Whit’s cell phone again. Got his bright drawl on his voice mail, asking her to leave a message. She did, asking him to call her. Hung up and lay back down on the bed, a sick twist in her heart, her back, her throat.
She called her police chief, said she was going to Houston for the weekend. He wasn’t happy but she was quietly insistent and told him that a friend had been murdered. She did not say that possibly two friends had been murdered. Then she left a message for Arturo Gomez at HPD headquarters, explaining that she had information on the Harry Chyme case and asking him to call her as soon as possible. Then she packed her gun, her permit, two extra clips, her badge – although, of course, she had no jurisdiction in Houston, but she felt she needed it – and her clothes, called her mother to tell her she was going out of town for a couple of days, and headed for her Honda.
Whit is okay, she told herself. He is okay. Repeat as needed.
Claudia drove fast, a steady twenty miles above the speed limit.
18
‘Don’t bother talking to the hit men,’ Bucks said. ‘Let me. Best that you don’t know who’s doing what in case
