Best Laid Plans(73)

“She is. And the FBI is looking for her. It just can’t possibly get worse than this.”

“I’ll find out what’s going on. I promise, Adeline, I will get at the truth.”

She believed him. She didn’t know why that mattered to her, but she did. He seemed just as confused and worried as she was.

“Everything is falling apart!”

“It’s not. You have to be strong now more than ever.”

She shook her head and said in a low voice, “Tobias sent me a picture of Harper, dead. Told me he would frame me for his murder unless I paid him back the money I kept when he lost the guns. I needed that money to pay back the buyers—why he didn’t just accept the loss—when it was his fault!—I’ll never know.”

“Pay him.”

“I tried to reach his people after the FBI left, but every number I have is dead. He’s going to destroy me.”

“He can’t.” But Rob didn’t sound confident. Now he was beginning to look as scared as she felt.

“I have to leave. Until this dies down.”

“You leave, that’s it. You’ll never win the election.”

“And I won’t win if I’m in prison or dead.”

“Give me forty-eight hours to figure this out.”

She was nervous, but she nodded. “Okay. But be careful.”

Rob left, and she turned back to the rose garden. She didn’t know if she could wait forty-eight hours.

The time that Tobias had given her to pay him back was almost up … and he wasn’t returning her calls.





CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE



After Lucy talked to Tia, she repeated the conversation to Barry. “Elise was found with two gunshot wounds near Guadalupe and South Laredo late last night. She’s still in recovery, we won’t be able to talk to her for a few hours. Tia said she’d let us know when Elise is awake.”

“Then let’s check out that area where Harper’s car was spotted the week he cancelled his business meeting.”

It was a good plan, though Lucy itched to go to the hospital. Elise was the key and she desperately wanted to talk to her. But they’d simply be standing around waiting, and Tia was already there.

As Barry drove, Lucy closed her eyes. “I thought you looked tired,” Barry said.

“I am, but that’s not it. I’m replaying the conversation with Adeline over in my head. She was lying about something, but now I can’t remember what it was.”

“She was lying about everything. She didn’t ask how Worthington was murdered. She didn’t seem surprised. She didn’t have a good reason for having so much security, and she was scared and angry.”

He was right about everything. Lucy said, “It was something else. Just give me a second, I’ll figure it out.”

Fortunately, Barry didn’t say anything. Lucy mentally reviewed the case in her head, at least the parts that directly related to Adeline Reyes-Worthington. History, marriage, being cut out of the will …

Jolene’s Southern drawl popped into her head. Those are parcel numbers.

Lucy jumped. Barry had parallel parked on a wide street in central San Antonio.

“I thought you’d fallen asleep. We’re here.”

“Adeline said she didn’t know what the numbers were.”

“And that means something?”

“She was in real estate for twenty-some years. She must have recognized that they were parcel numbers. Jolene did.”

Barry hit the steering wheel with his fist. “Dammit, I should have caught that. Remind me to let you have a cat nap more often.”

“I wasn’t asleep.”

“You snore.”

She stared at him wide-eyed, and Barry laughed. “Power naps work,” he said. “Definitely something going on with Adeline. But we need to tread very carefully. We need evidence, because there’s no way that the Bureau is going to let us formally question a sitting congresswoman without a pile of proof.”

“We may not be able to find the proof without getting a search warrant for her phone, computer, house—”

“Don’t say it. Because we don’t have enough evidence to get a search warrant. Not even if she wasn’t an elected official.”

The system sometimes frustrated Lucy, but Barry was right. They had nothing except the fact that Adeline had lied. And proving that she’d lied? Impossible. She could claim that she was distraught after hearing her husband had been murdered and hadn’t paid attention to the papers Lucy and Barry had shown her.

They needed more. Like a statement from Elise.

Barry and Lucy got out of the car. The narrow, squat strip mall certainly didn’t look like a place that someone of means would visit. Bars on the windows, graffiti painted over with several shades of beige or white paint. At least the businesses made an effort to paint over the graffiti. The tired apartment building across the street looked worse.

“Debbie’s husband must have been visiting his patient there,” Barry said. “Saw Harper’s car in front of this strip mall.”

“Bar,” Lucy said. “My guess is he met G.A. in the bar. But it could be the individual lived across the street, which is why they met here.”