My knees knocked a little as I stood there flipping through manila folders. Something about being in a dead man’s storage unit spooked me, as if maybe his ghost was camped out here, contemplating its next move. Lucky for me the living Anthony had made things so easy: Serena Flores’s personnel file was right where I’d expected it to be, halfway into a row marked DOMESTIC HIRES.
According to the paperwork, Serena was in her late twenties, just five feet tall, single, or had been when Anthony hired her. Previous address: a town in Mexico called Tecomán. A note penciled in the margins said Tecomán was a drug-smuggling hotbed midway down the West Coast. Maybe Anthony thought Serena would be amenable to more than housework. Maybe he’d offered her a lucrative little sideline, then pressed too hard when she said no. I wondered if that was a motive I could sell to Vincent. Something to get him off Sarah’s tail. And mine.
Serena’s next of kin—Símon Flores, older brother—lived in the Bowman Heights section of West Tampa. He was a vet tech. The file gave no info beyond his occupation, address, and work number. With any luck, at least one of the three would still be valid. I jogged back to my car, took out the burner phone, and started dialing. A woman answered. I heard barking in the background.
“I was hoping I could talk to Símon Flores,” I said, cranking up my slight southern accent. A little charm never hurts.
“Sorry,” the woman said, “he’s in with a patient. Can I take a message?”
“No, thank you. I’ll catch him later.”
She’d already told me what I wanted to know: a) Símon still worked there, and b) he was on duty right now.
Fifteen highway miles and a stretch of side streets later, I arrived at Ybor City Animal Hospital. The receptionist was busy handling a small backup of incoming and outgoing customers, some straddling carrying cases, one with a cockatoo perched on his shoulder. I slipped into the waiting room, picked up a magazine, kept my eyes open for a Mexican male in scrubs. An elderly woman sat down opposite me and started weeping at full volume into a floral handkerchief. I figured things weren’t looking good for Fido.
I’d called in a background check during the drive over. Símon had come to the US in 2005, applied for and received citizenship in 2014. Nothing on his record said he was anything other than hardworking and upstanding. The kind of guy a sister with a conditional visa might lean on when her employer turned up DOA. Especially if she was the one who’d killed him.
I didn’t have long to wait before a Latino in blue scrubs pushed his way through a set of double doors and sat down next to the old woman. The name tag above his breast pocket confirmed he was Símon Flores. I looked him over. North of thirty, tall, hefty. Not hefty like Anthony, but large enough to get noticed on the street. The way he carried himself—shoulders back, chest out, eyes full of compassion—you’d have thought he was the vet instead of the tech. Maybe he’d been promoted. Maybe he’d put himself through canine med school and was now Dr. Símon Flores. I hoped it was true. The more he had to lose, the easier my job became.
He set a hand on the weeping woman’s back, called her Carol, spoke to her in hushed tones. His best guess was that her cat had eaten a poisoned mouse. The news was more than Carol could bear. Her weeping turned convulsive. She seemed to want to say something but couldn’t find the breath. I understood what she was going through. I’d seen the look on her face—equal parts remorse and sorrow—countless times before. Símon, without meaning to, had just accused her of killing her cat. He leaned in and draped an arm around her shoulders. For a second I thought he was going to kiss her forehead.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so, so sorry.”
I could tell he meant it, and that made me glad. Símon had the kind of bleeding heart that would never turn away—or turn in—a sister. It was clear now what course I had to take. Confronting him would be the same as warning Serena off, but tail him and chances were I’d be talking to her before sundown.
“Can I get you anything?” he asked Carol. “Anything at all?”
I thought, Yeah, a new cat.
He gave her a card, told her to call day or night. If you took away the accent, his English was better than mine.
“Thank you,” Carol sobbed. There was a tear in Símon’s eye, too.
I thought, Better your sister than my wife.
CHAPTER 9
SARAH ROBERTS-WALSH
October 12
11:30 a.m.
Interview Room C
“THE JEWELS,” Haagen said. “You stole Anna Costello’s jewels.”
“I didn’t steal them,” I said. “I mean, I did, but I didn’t mean to. I didn’t even know I had them until it was too late.”
“Really?” she said. “You accidentally walked off with six figures’ worth of your employer’s jewelry?”
Her grin was pure gloating, as if now she’d pinned down my motive, as if she was looking forward to watching me squirm out of this one. I just stared at my fingernails, refusing to take the bait.
“All right,” she said, “let’s back up. I don’t want to miss any of this. You’re in the kitchen. You know Anthony reached out to Vincent before he expired. So what next?”
I shrugged.
“For a while,” I told her, “I just froze.”
I stood beside Anthony’s body and couldn’t muster a single thought. I couldn’t make my feet move. Then the spell broke, and I grabbed my purse and ran for my car. I floored it down that mile-long driveway, desperate to get off the property before Vincent’s men could stop me.
“No time to call 911?” Haagen asked.
I thought about it—I did—but Anthony was dead, and if Vincent heard that I’d called the cops, then he’d know it was me who’d found his nephew’s body. At the very least he’d want to talk to me. The kind of talk where I was tied to a chair. And if he didn’t like what I had to say, there’d be a well-fed alligator somewhere in the Everglades. If Anthony had been wounded, if there’d been any chance of saving him, then I’d have made the call. But he was gone, and there was no point in risking my own life.
“Heroic,” Haagen said.
“I’m not claiming to be a hero.”
“No, but what you are claiming doesn’t make any sense. How did you come by those jewels if you ran right out of the house?”
“I’m getting to that,” I told her.
I needed to pull over, collect my thoughts. I was shaking uncontrollably. And bleeding. There was blood leaking from the gash in my pants. I could feel it spilling down my calf. But the only place to pull over was a narrow shoulder, and that would have left me sitting out in the open.
I rounded a bend, saw a cop car idling in a small clearing. My blood really started pumping then. I thought for sure he was waiting for me. I couldn’t say if I was speeding or not, but I yanked my foot off the accelerator. Sean taught me never to hit the brake: It only makes you look guilty, he said. My eyes shot to the rearview mirror, but the cop didn’t budge. At first I felt relieved. Then I figured he was radioing ahead, setting a trap. I braced for a fleet of squad cars, but they never came.