Perilous Curves Collection (BBW Romance) (8 page)

That was all the prompting the kid needed. He hopped back in his car and sped away. Already in danger of being late, I didn't waste a second trying to compose myself, but eased my way out of the car and inspected the rear bumper. The damage looked to be just a few dollars shy of my deductible.

Wincing from the pain in my shoulder, I crawled back into the front seat, found my phone and shut it off before pulling the car back onto the street.

I made it to Alex's arraignment a few minutes before the bailiff brought him in. He had a black eye and a split lip. Dante caught sight of Alex. I put a hand on his shoulder to keep him in his seat.

"Stay calm," I pleaded quietly. "He doesn't need you throwing a fit in front of Judge Enders."

His hands had curled into fists. I placed my hand over them hoping it would calm him. "This isn't optional."

Dante shook his head but said nothing. His hands clenched madly beneath mine and I gave a little squeeze at the same time I smoothed my palm along his shoulder. He caught my gaze for a second, a question flaring in his eyes.

My heart stopped. Had he found out about my conversation with Gabriella? I forced a relaxed smile, doubtful that she had said anything to him. It wasn't the kind of information Gabriella was likely to divulge. I'd never gotten the impression she liked me. She wanted her grandson saved from jail and her son saved from some (not so) little "uptown princess."

Hearing a small shuffle behind us, I glanced to the side. My heart restarted, kicking into overdrive as one of the columnists from the
Masonville Times
slid into the row a few feet behind us. It was the same guy who had interviewed me for my "homecoming" and had written up Dante's trip last night. I had the sinking feeling that my status as the "unidentified woman" who had dropped Dante off at the Jackson House was about to come to an end. If anyone at the
Times
went looking for a connection between me and Dante from before the murder, it wouldn't take long for them to find it. Then the tabloid hounds would descend, the lure of murder, money and sex too much for them to resist.

I let go of Dante's hand and focused on the attorneys. Arnold Crane, Alex's defense counsel, was losing points with Judge Enders by the second. The judge slammed his gavel down for the third time in as many minutes.

"Save it for the preliminary hearing, counselor."

Crane gestured in my direction. "But, your honor, Ms. Miller has found--"

This time the gavel came down so hard, I was certain I heard the wood splinter.

"The law does not care what Ms. Miller has found at this stage."

I suppressed an eye roll. Truth was, the law seldom cared at any stage after the arrest -- only the jury did, unless I could convince the prosecutor to drop the case before then.

I turned to get a better view of the prosecutor, grimacing as a fresh burst of pain flowered along my neck and shoulders. Corbin was relatively young, somewhere in his early 30s, and was clearly ambitious. With Dante's late night trip to the cemetery and the presence of a bona fide columnist from the
Masonville Times
in the courtroom instead of one of their beat reporters, he likely thought this was turning into the kind of case that could earn him his boss's job in the next election.

In front of me, Crane switched tactics, hoping for a combination of high bail and trading on Dante's position in the business community. "Your honor, the defendant and his family--"

"I know all about the defendant's family," Enders responded, finishing with a small chuckle. "I do read the
Times
."

Enders emphasized the newspaper's name with the exact tone momma had used that morning. I dropped my gaze to the ground, unable to stop an eye roll that sent my eyes so far back into my head, I could see the
Times
columnist behind me.

Enders cracked the gavel one last time in the arraignment of Alexander Serrano. "No bail. Next!"

********************

Dante watched stunned as they led Alex away. "What does this mean?"

Dante was looking at me but Crane answered. "He'll go to county jail while he waits for trial. You'll finally be able to visit him." He said the last bit like he was delivering good news, when the kid should have been out on bail.

"County?"

I knew that Dante was thinking about the black eye and cut Alex had picked up. "He'll be segregated," I told him. He didn't need to know that meant nothing more than Alex would now be with both convicted addicts and domestic abusers and, even worse, defendants of crimes as serious as the one for which he stood accused -- some of them actually guilty.

I caught Crane by his sleeve before he could leave. "You need to find out what happened," I said, referencing whatever attack had produced the black eye. I dropped my voice so Dante wouldn't hear. "And see if you can get him put in isolation."

"This is Masonville, not Miami, Ms. Miller."

Crane blinked once, slowly, and I knew then that he was far more a politician than a legal strategist. The next time he talked to Alex, the word "deal" would start popping up. I'd seen it before. Without a civil rights violation or my finding a smoking gun (or, in this case, an axe) with the killer's hand still attached, there was nothing Crane, however highly lauded, would do.

I let him go with a hard stare and turned to Dante just as my phone started to vibrate. It was Craig. Stepping out into the corridor with Dante hot on my heels, I answered the call.

"Got a lead on the nest rat," Craig said before I could offer him a perfunctory hello.

I grabbed a pen from my bag and told him to give me the address.

"Already texted it to you. Hearing over?"

"Yes." I felt Dante hovering over my left shoulder and turned to shoo him back a few paces.

"How'd it go?"

"Didn't." I took a few steps away from Dante when he wouldn't budge.

"So, I'll see you in about 30, then?"

"Yeah." I ended the call and checked the text. The address was for a men's homeless shelter. The location looked familiar, but I plugged it into my GPS.

Dante fished his keys from his pocket. "I know where that's at--"

I reined him in with a raised hand. "You're not going." Seeing a familiar spark of obstinacy in his gaze, I poked him in the chest and whispered fiercely. "No! Alex doesn't need any more fuck ups, Dante."

I was thinking about my own mistake with Claire Epps, but I wouldn't hesitate to throw his little midnight trip into the mix if he dared to argue.

"Liv, I've got to do something..."

I caught the soft shine of tears in his eyes and had to look away. I'd only seen Dante Serrano close to crying twice before. The first time was when he had asked me to marry him and I'd been a little too shocked and elated to answer him quickly enough. He had thought I was going to refuse him. The second time was at the first and only rehearsal for the wedding -- when I had finished saying the lines that promised I would be his through this life and the next.

I turned my back to him and wiped away my own tears before I looked at him again. "Listen, I need a list of everyone -- employees, vendors, delivery guys -- everyone who was on the site over the last week. Contact numbers, too, if you can get them."

Nodding, Dante pulled his cell phone out and started texting. "I'll have them all today."

It was busy work for the most part, something to keep him sane while I did my job. If I actually had to resort to contacting people on the list, Alex was in a hell of a lot more trouble than I thought. Shouldering my bag, I lingered one last second. "Find Alex another attorney. Immediately."

Dante offered a solemn nod, shocking me with his lack of protest. Crane was big game in at least half the state, but I'd just gotten him kicked off Alex's case inside of two seconds. Even if Dante seemed determined to drive the investigation half the time, it showed me that he really did value my opinion.

That made me happy in ways it shouldn't have.

Chapter Eight

The shelter was on the corner of Harlow and Grimsby. Like Dante, I had recognized the address. Standing alongside my parents, I had served three shifts of Thanksgiving dinners for more than a decade at the adjacent soup kitchen. Run by the Lutherans, the shelter had fifty beds, all of them in a single open bay that had once been a high school gym.

The witness, Owen Briggs, had signed in that morning when one of the beds had finally opened up after the previous occupant had smuggled a pint of whiskey into the shelter. We found Briggs in bunk number eighteen.

Craig gave the bunk's metal frame a hard kick. "Wake up, Briggs."

The pair of eyes that opened were shot through with red.

"Long night smoking, hey?" Craig asked as he flashed his PI card at Briggs.

Briggs wiped at his eyes, blinking rapidly while he mouthed something like "I'm clean."

"Sure ya are," Craig grinned, looking at me. I nodded and he reached into the folder he was carrying and pulled out a picture of Justin Bieber.

"Know him?"

Briggs smacked his lips and squinted as he leaned closer to Diamond. Getting a good sniff of the wit's street perfume, Craig took a step back and flipped the picture over to show the Serrano construction logo.

"Yeah." Showing half a mouth full of teeth, Briggs smiled. "That's the guy killed the other guy."

"You fucking liar, Owen."

I turned to bunk seventeen. It was occupied by a black man, somewhere between his middle sixties and the century mark. Pins from at least three wars decorated his frayed BDU jacket. Recognizing World War II, Korea, and Vietnam pins, I smiled at the old man. "What do you mean, sir?"

The man's head bobbed with sarcasm as he answered. "I mean Owen J. Briggs is a liar, lady. Ole Max aint killed nobody."

"Max?" Craig jumped in. "Max who?"

"Max Twenty-Two," the old man answered, head still bobbing side to side like a world-class boxer.

Figuring the guy wasn't talking about what kind of weapon Max carried, I left Craig playing a game of "Who's on First" with our new informant and casually wandered over to bunk twenty-two. There, snoring loudly, was an even older (as best as I could tell) man asleep on his side. A denim jacket warmed him, the fabric sporting the Serrano logo on it and faintly speckled with what I'd bet was blood.

Giving a soft whistle, I crooked a finger at Craig and he came over.

"I'll be damned!" he smiled.

I studied the sleeper for a few seconds. He was rail thin and too short to be Ray's killer. From the lung-clearing hacks that occasionally punctuated his snoring, I was pretty sure he was too frail to be anyone's killer.

I rounded the bed and knelt down in front of his head.

"Max." I started softly then a little louder when it didn't rouse him. He opened clear blue eyes. Trying to keep things friendly, I smiled. "Nice jacket."

The blue eyes narrowed instantly. "It's mine. I found it."

I nodded and stood up to whisper in Craig's ear as I passed him a fifty dollar bill. "Goodwill's across the street. Find him another jacket."

I turned back to Max. "I was just wondering where you found it?"

Max started buttoning the jacket up and then wrapped his arms around himself. "I said it's mine. Don't matter where I found it. Them's the rules!"

"Yeah, but I was hoping I could go back and see if there was another I could have."

Max seemed to weigh my answer carefully. He poked one finger in my general direction. "You got a jacket."

Nodding, I unbuttoned it and gave him a view of how thin the material was. "No good at night."

Ceding the point, Max frowned and then relented. "Found it back of Arby's in the dumpster."

"The one on Packard?" I couldn't imagine that the old man traveled much further than a few blocks from the shelter.

"That's the one." The vigor of his nod triggered a spell of coughing.

I waited until he settled back down. "You remember when?"

"Friday, round midnight." He gave a little whoop at the memory. "Boy was I glad! Didn't make it to the shelter before curfew."

I smiled, sharing the story of his lucky find. "What day is it today, Max?"

The old man's eyes narrowed again. "Tuesday. You aren't on the pipe or anything, are you girl?"

I shook my head, still smiling.

I knew Briggs had been in the drunk tank after the murder, sobering up some so the detectives could get a legible signature on the witness statement. That meant sometime between eight P.M. and midnight, Ray's killer had likely visited the Arby's on Packard long enough to at least dump the jacket. If Alex was lucky, the killer dumped the phone there, too, and left his prints behind this time.

Craig came back in with a heavier denim jacket and I quickly filled him in. Taking the jacket, I showed it to Max. "I need to trade jackets with you, my friend."

When he shook his head violently and wrapped his arms around himself again, I wrinkled my nose. "Max, your jacket stinks and I'm afraid Pastor might make you leave if you keep wearing it."