Blame It on Texas (23 page)

Tyler leaned back in his chair, which produced a loud groan of springs. He felt the sentiment echo in his chest. “Zoe doesn’t believe they could have hurt a kid.”

“So she wasn’t abused in any way?” Ellen asked from the back of the room.

Tyler had forgotten she was there. So, it seemed, had Austin and Dallas. They all looked back at her at the same
time. But her question ran around Tyler’s head. Physically hurting a kid was only one type of abuse. His dad had managed to hurt his kids without ever raising a fist to them. Not that his mom had been so lucky.

“Uh, I’m sorry,” Ellen said, obviously thinking she’d done something wrong. “I guess you just want me to file and keep my mouth shut. It’ll be hard, but I can do that.”

“No,” Dallas said. “You’re welcome to toss out ideas. This is how we work, put our heads together and come up with answers or at least leads to follow. However, this office is like Vegas—what happens here stays here.”

“I pretty much figured that out all on my own.”

“Ahh, good looking and smart,” Austin said in his come-on tone, and he winked at Ellen.

“Thank you,” she said in such a nonflirting manner that the message, “Not interested,” was tacked onto the line loud and clear. Tyler even saw the look of surprise on Austin’s face. And when Dallas turned away, a smile was pasted on his lips.

Tyler picked up a pencil. “I asked Zoe if they’d ever mistreated her. She insists they were never anything but upstanding parents.”

Austin leaned his elbows on his knees. “It could have been an accident and they were afraid it might look intentional.”

“That, and some kids block out the abuse,” Ellen said. “Or they just don’t want to talk about it.”

“I know,” Tyler said. There were a hell of a lot of things he preferred not to talk about. “But I don’t think that’s the case here.”

“You’re probably right,” Dallas said. “But maybe she
might be more apt to tell another woman. Maybe Ellen could talk to her and just see if she gets anything.”

“She talks to me,” Tyler said, insulted they thought Zoe wouldn’t tell him something. But then he remembered his sisters sharing things with each other before they came to one of their male siblings. “But I don’t see how it would hurt,” he amended.

He looked back at Austin. “But the whole accident angle… I don’t think so. It just doesn’t seem logical that they would go as far as kidnapping a high-profile child. Or any child to cover up an accident. Law-abiding citizens don’t usually commit a crime without some serious motivation.” He paused and realized an error in his thinking.

“But maybe they weren’t law abiding,” he said. “Maybe they were good parents but bad people. I need to get all the information I can on the Adamses.”

“I’ll take that one,” Dallas said. “What county was Zoe Adams born in? I’ll start looking there first. Maybe I can ask Tony or Rick to run a check and see if they were in any trouble with the law.”

“Shadows County.”

“Do we know who the officer was that headed the kidnapping case?” Austin asked.

“I have that.” Tyler started looking through his notes. “A John Phillips. I read he retired shortly after the case went cold. If he’s still alive, he’d be in his eighties now.”

I’ll see if I can run him down,” Austin said. “If he’s still breathing, maybe we can get something from him.”

“Good idea.” Bud came over and started sniffing on Tyler’s leg where Lucky had rubbed against him. “Is Bud cat-friendly?” Tyler asked Dallas.

“The lady I got him from when he was a puppy had cats, but I don’t think he’s been around them since.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and he’ll finish the poor thing off,” Austin added.

Dallas looked at Tyler. “Is something wrong with the cat?”

“He was in an accident, but he’s fine.”

“He lost more parts than he kept,” Austin said.

“He’s fine.” Tyler defended Zoe’s cat. “But we should keep them apart.” He refocused on the notes and started making a game plan for the day. And first on that list was stopping himself from making more out of this thing with Zoe than there was. He was a PI and she was a client. He had an obligation to solve her case.

Dallas’s chair squeaked when he leaned back and cupped his hands behind his head. “Now that we all have our jobs on this case, how are we on the Drake and Smith cases?”

Tyler started to say he didn’t give a damn about them but caught himself. They still had a business to run, so he dug through the files on his desk to find his written questions on those cases. Then he opened the computer to his case files where he’d started inputting the data electronically.

They discussed the two other cases: one a cheating spouse case and the other a missing person case. After a short discussion, Tyler assigned something for all of them to run down. Because Tyler wanted to stay close to Zoe, he agreed to do the Internet searches on the two cases. Austin was going to take over following Mr. Drake to see if his lunches with his secretary involved more than lunch. Last Friday, Tyler had done the honors, and it had
been as boring as watching snails race. Dallas was going to visit the two clients and give them updates.

“Have we heard from Roberto yet?” Dallas asked.

“He’s been calling in every Monday, but I haven’t heard from him yet today. Which is odd.” Tyler looked at the clock. “Usually he calls at eight o’clock on the dot.”

Roberto Campo was their biggest informant, working the streets to get information on Rafael DeLuna, the lowlife drug dealer who’d been responsible for framing the detectives for murder. Since the Feds had finally put the man on their wanted list, he’d slithered under some big rock. Although Tyler and the guys had managed to shut down several of his operations in the Houston area, all the leads had gone cold. Now they had Roberto looking into things in Dallas. Roberto hadn’t found anything in Big D yet.
Yet
being the key word.

Dallas looked back at Ellen. “If a Roberto Campo calls in, you make sure he speaks to one of us.”

“Roberto Campo,” she repeated. “I got it.”

“Have you given her all our info, cell numbers, home numbers?” Dallas asked Tyler.

“Not yet.” Tyler looked up from rereading his list of questions. “But I finished the list on Friday, so I’ll give it to her.”

“Good.” Dallas looked back at Ellen. “We have a desk, computer, and phone that’s being delivered for you. Tyler will help you get the computer up and going.”

“It may take a while to get everything set up,” Tyler said, wanting to focus on Zoe’s case.

Ellen looked down at the stacks of files around her feet and then up at the metal filing cabinets lining the back of the room. “I think I have plenty to keep me busy for a few days.”

“My plan is to set you up in the entrance room,” Dallas said. “We might have to lose the casket.”

“Darn,” Ellen said. “I was hoping to keep the casket. Makes for a good conversation piece.”

“It makes a good doggy bed, too.” Dallas patted Bud resting at his master’s feet. Maybe we can just move things around. We’ll see.”

“I was joking,” Ellen said.

“Yeah, but you’re right,” Dallas said. “It’s sort of become our trademark. The other day I got a call from someone who wanted to know if we were the PIs who had the casket in their office. Hey, it’s a gimmick, but if it works…”

Tyler leaned back in his chair again, only half listening to the conversation around him. When there was a pause, he spoke. “I’m getting with Rick and have him work on getting some DNA samples from Bradford.”

“You don’t want to wait and see what we get first?” Dallas asked.

“No, I don’t want to wait,” Tyler said matter-of-factly. “I want to get answers and put this case to bed.”

“I don’t think that’s all you want to put to bed,” Austin muttered, and shot him a shit-eating grin.

“Drop the wisecracks,” Tyler snapped.

Austin glanced at Dallas. “See, I told you he was in a piss-poor, didn’t-get-any mood.”

Dallas wadded up a piece of paper and tossed it at Austin. “Now might not be the time to mess with him.” But there was humor in Dallas’s voice, too.

Tyler’s phone rang. He checked caller ID and frowned. His older sister again. He’d told her that Zoe was someone he was working with on a case, but he knew his sister
thought he was holding back. And her way of getting people to talk was to hound them to death.

She was good at it, too. He stood to go take the phone call in the conference room. Then he stopped and looked back at Ellen. “Can you do me a favor? Call Rick—his cell number is in my Contacts folder—and ask him if he can swing by if he gets a chance.”

“Rick Clark?” she asked with some hesitancy he didn’t quite understand.

He nodded and walked out to deal with the first hounding session by his sister.

Ellen sat down at Tyler’s desk and accessed his electronic address book to find Rick’s number. Her stomach fluttered at the thought of calling him. But she’d already told herself that she just needed to pull up her big girl panties and grow a pair. Well, she couldn’t grow a pair, but she needed to just get over it. She worked here. Rick Clark was going to be in and out, and she’d have to deal with him.

She found his number and punched it in the phone. It rang once, twice. Maybe she’d get lucky and he wouldn’t—

“Hey, how are they hanging?” His deep male voice flowed from the phone.

“Uh, they’re not.” She almost smiled, especially after having just told herself she needed to grow a pair.

“Sorry. I thought… Who is this?”

“Ellen Wise,” she said.

“Usually it’s Tyler who calls from there.”

“I figured that.” Ellen picked up a pencil. “I was just calling to—”

“To tell me you kicked the other guy to the curb and now you want to take me up on my dinner invitation,” he said.

“No.”

“A man can hope.” He chuckled. “So you need for me to change another tire for you?” he teased.

“I don’t think so,” she said, and laughed.

“Right, but can I call you if I have transmission problems?”

“I’ll give you the name of my dad’s shop.”

“Ouch,” he said. “So what do you need Ellen I-can-roar Wise?”

She laughed again. What did she need? Suddenly, all sorts of erotic things ran through her mind, and her cheeks brightened. “
I
don’t need anything.”

“Damn, you really know how to hurt a man,” he said.

She suddenly realized how much fun she was having talking to him. “Tyler—”

“What’s this guy’s name, anyway?”

“What guy?” she asked.

“The boyfriend.”

She chewed on the question, and for the life of her she couldn’t think of one man’s name. Then she recalled the joke she’d told Nikki and LeAnn yesterday. “Bob,” aka her battery-operated boyfriend.

“I already don’t like him,” Rick said.

“Tyler asked me to call you. He wants you to come by if you can today.”

“I’m on duty today, but I have to run out after awhile. I’ll stop by then.”

“Fine. I’ll tell Tyler. Bye.” She started to hang up.

“Ellen?”

She bit down on her lip and put the phone back to her ear. “Yes?”

“I enjoyed talking to you,” he said.

“Yeah. Me, too.” And this time, she hung up faster and felt a tightening low in her belly, the one that usually happened with a certain type of wanting. Time to bring out Bob again.

She sat there, frowning at the phone. How could the man affect her just by talking?

“Everything okay?” A male voice piped up.

She looked over and saw both Dallas and Austin studying her. She’d forgotten they were in the room. She started going through everything she said and hoped it hadn’t been anything too ridiculous.

“It’s fine.” She dropped the pencil. “He’s working but will be out on errands and will stop by then.”

“Good.” Dallas continued to look at her as if they’d read every naughty and private thought that had swirled around her brain. “Did he say anything inappropriate?”

“No,” she said… a little too loud.

“You sure? Because you’re a really nice shade of pink right now.”

She decided to rely on an old shut-a-man-up trick she’d learned in her serious dating years. “Oh, that’s… hormones. Monthly cycle stuff that you don’t want to know about.”

“Okay then,” Dallas said, and both men immediately commenced to working on their computers.

Good to know it still worked.

But still feeling antsy, Ellen popped up from Tyler’s chair, shot to the back of the room, and commenced her filing. She picked up her first file and then mentally
reached down, grabbed ahold of the elastic waistband of her big girl panties, and yanked them up to her chin.

By the time Tyler answered his phone, Lola had hung up. He debated not calling her back, then decided there would just be more hell to pay. So he popped into the conference room, sat down, and mentally prepared himself to be interrogated by one of the best.

“Hey, you called.” He settled back in the chair.

“And
you
didn’t answer.”

He sighed. “I did answer, but you had already hung up.”

“What, you too busy with Zoe to answer your phone?” There was a teasing tone to her voice, but he knew she was serious about pushing for information.

“I’m at work, Lola,” he said, hoping to cut her off.

“Is she married?”

So much for that plan. “No, she’s not married.”

“Are you going to introduce us to her?”

“It’s not like that.”

“So you’re just fucking her?”

He flinched at hearing his sister talk like that, then he flinched because while it had been different words, it was the same thing Zoe had accused him of wanting to do. “
Dios mio!
When did you start talking like that?”

“Since it seems to be your nephew’s favorite word.”

“Well, wash his mouth out with soap, the way Mom did us.”

“I have,” she said. “Today’s soap must not taste as bad. He just keeps on doing it.”

Lola’s husband Roger was in the Marines and deployed overseas, which didn’t give Roger Junior a strong male influence. “I’ll talk to him,” Tyler said.

“Thanks. But, I didn’t call you to complain about my boy’s potty mouth.”