Kara Lennox - For Just Cause

He lied with perfect assurance. If Claudia had been called upon to spot his lies, she would have failed miserably.

The woman, though obviously the suspicious type, didn’t even ask to see a badge.

“Of course they did,” the woman replied indignantly. “I live next door and I know everything that goes on in this neighborhood. We all watch out for each other here.”

“Did you see what happened that night?” Billy prompted.

“It was late at night. I was asleep.” She dared him to contradict her. “It’s all in the statement I gave. Patty Dorsey is my name.”

“We saw you stealing Theresa’s vegetables,” Billy said.

Patty whipped off her sunglasses. Her eyes narrowed dangerously. “Theresa wouldn’t want her vegetables to go to waste. We share all the time. I give her peaches from my trees. What did you say your name was?”

“Sergeant Billy Cantu. You wouldn’t happen to be digging around because you know something valuable is buried out here, would you?”

She shifted from angry to curious. “What kind of something valuable?”

“Coins, maybe?”

Her eyes widened with surprise and delight. “Her brother-in-law’s coins? Theresa told me he’d stolen a pirate’s treasure, gold doubloons or some nonsense. I didn’t believe it at the time.” She surveyed the backyard with new eyes, perhaps seeing something a lot more valuable than a few filched potatoes.

“Don’t be digging around here anymore,” Billy warned her. “I don’t want to bust you for trespassing, but I will.”

“Humph.”

“If you discover the location of any stolen pirate’s treasure, it’s your civic duty to turn it over to the police—or become an accessory. Have a nice day, Patty.” Billy tipped an imaginary hat and turned to head back inside.

Claudia followed, her heart pounding, until they were safely inside. “Lying to that woman goes against everything I believe in. Isn’t it a pretty serious crime, impersonating a police officer?”

“She doesn’t suspect. And even if she does, she’s too busy thinking about buried treasure to report me. Maybe we’ll luck out, and she’ll find the coins for us.”

“You just like playing games with people’s heads.” Another thought occurred to her. “You’re obviously a skilled investigator, good at teasing information out of people. How come you don’t like field work?”

He froze. “How do you know that about me?”

“During your original evaluation. You said you didn’t want to work in the field. You told me then you were tired of it. And because Daniel asked me if there was any reason, in my professional opinion, that I thought you weren’t fit for active duty, so to speak. At the time I didn’t know you were a lunatic, so I said no, no reason, that you were just ready for a change.”

“We almost got our heads blown off today, and you want to know why I don’t like field work?”

They ended up back in the living room. Claudia spotted a bloodstain on the carpet, probably from Theresa’s assault. Her stomach turned, and their earlier confrontation with a loaded gun barged back into her mind.

What she recalled most clearly was how Billy had again put himself between her and danger.

She wandered back to the fireplace and noticed something she hadn’t seen before. Lying on the bricks was a hunk of ceramic material, about the size of a poker chip but curved. It bore a bright blue glaze. She picked it up and studied it.

“Watcha got there?”

“A fragment of something. It doesn’t belong to anything in the vicinity.”

Billy studied the area where the fragment had lain. “Hey, look at this. There’s a spot here on the hearth that’s not as dusty as everything else.”

Now that she looked more closely, she realized the arrangement of statues was unbalanced. “You think another statue used to be here?”

“Could be.” He picked up the statue of St. Francis and flipped it upside down, examining the bottom. He did the same with the angel. “These statues are hollow inside.”

“A good place to hide coins?” Claudia ventured.

Billy nodded. “It’s an old drug-smuggler trick, hiding stuff inside statues.” He thought about it some more. “I like it. But why wouldn’t Mary-Francis just tell us that?”

“Maybe she didn’t know exactly where her sister put the coins. Or she doesn’t trust us. She’s still hoping to keep the coins for herself when—if—she gets out of prison.”

“And the robbers beat Theresa until she told them where the coins were hidden.”

Claudia shivered at the thought of what that poor woman must have gone through—the terror, the pain. “Let’s just get out of here, okay?”

“A woman’s life is at stake,” he reminded her. “We owe it to her to be thorough. Why are you so nervous? You told me you face down violent offenders in your work pretty often, right?” Billy checked the contents of two drawers in the coffee table that had been overlooked.

“That’s different. That’s in a controlled setting, when I’m squarely on the right side of the law. This is breaking and entering, and I for one don’t relish explaining to Daniel how we got ourselves arrested.”

Billy didn’t seem bothered by their straying into unlawfulness. “Hey, Claudia, check this out.” He held up a small white box that she at first thought was a pack of cigarettes or a deck of cards.

Claudia looked longingly toward the front door. “Billy, please.”

His face softened, probably sensing her distress. She didn’t make any attempt to hide it. “Okay.” He tucked the item into his pocket.

Claudia didn’t take a full breath until they were back in her car. She started the engine, again turning on the A/C full blast.

“You okay?”

She waved away his concern. “I’m fine, considering I just committed my first felony.”

“Misdemeanor trespassing, tops.”

“How comforting. What was that thing you found in the drawer?”

“Probably nothing important. It was one of those Flip video cameras. You ready for some lunch?”

How could he act so normal after all they’d been through? After seeing the visceral evidence of a violent crime? Then again, he was a former cop. She knew some homicide cops could literally eat a sandwich while standing over a bloody corpse.

“I could at least use something cold to drink,” she said.

She hadn’t planned on sharing another meal with Billy. Last time, she’d spotted Tubby’s and gotten all sentimental, probably revealing more about herself than she’d intended. But Tubby’s did make her think about one of the happier times in her life. At age thirteen she’d been placed in a foster home with another girl close to her age, and they’d become inseparable. One of their hangouts had been Tubby’s. Marlene, who’d been pretty and popular, had shared her clothes and makeup and had made sure Claudia was accepted into her “in” group of kids.

For the first time in her life Claudia had felt like an accepted member of a peer group. She had belonged.

After about six months, Marlene’s real mother had regained custody, and the friendship had ended abruptly—along with Claudia’s acceptance. It turned out her “peer group” had only been putting up with Claudia for Marlene’s sake.

“You like Mexican food?” Billy asked. “I saw an El Fenix on the way over here.”

“Sure, that’s fine.”

Billy gave her directions, and five minutes later she was pulling into the parking lot, the lunch crowd thinning out by now.

Once they were seated in the blessedly well air-conditioned restaurant with a basket of chips and hot sauce between them, Billy took the tiny video camera from his pocket.

Claudia couldn’t bring herself to order an actual meal, so she requested an iced tea. Billy gave her a disapproving frown, ordered a plate of beef enchiladas, then returned his attention to the camera, fiddling with the buttons.