Fool Me Once (8 page)

A
re you okay?”
Kierce asked.

“Fine.”

“I know this is a lot to take in.”

“Don’t patronize me, Detective.”

“I’m sorry. You’re right. Let’s go through this again, okay?”

Maya nodded. She stared straight ahead.

“We need to look at this in a whole new way now. The two murders seemed random and unconnected, but now that we know the same gun was used for both . . .”

Maya said nothing.

“When your sister was shot, you were deployed in the Middle East. Is that correct?”

“At Camp Arifjan,” she said. “In Kuwait.”

“I know.”

“What?”

“We checked. Just to make sure.”

“Make sure . . . ?” She almost smiled. “Ah. You mean like to make sure I didn’t somehow sneak home and shoot my sister and then go back to Kuwait and, what, wait four months and kill my husband?”

Kierce didn’t reply. He didn’t have to. “It all checked out. Your alibi is rock solid.”

“Super,” she said.

Maya flashed back again to Joe’s call. The tears. The shock. That call. That damn call had been the end of Maya’s life as she knew it. Nothing would ever be the same after that. It was remarkable when you thought about it. You travel halfway around the world to some hellhole to fight a crazed enemy. You’d think that was where the danger would originate from, that the real threat to her would be from an armed combatant. You’d think, if your life were about to get blown apart, that it would come from an RPG or an IED or a fanatic carrying an AKM.

But no. The enemy had struck, as enemies often do, where she had least expected it: back home in the good ol’ USA.

“Maya?”

“I’m listening.”

“The officers investigating your sister’s murder believed it was a home invasion. She was . . . Do you know the details?”

“Enough of them.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I asked you not to patronize me.”

“I’m not. I’m just being a human being. What was done to her . . .”

Maya took out her app again. She wanted to see her daughter’s face. She needed that anchor. But she stopped herself. No. Not now. Don’t bring Lily into this. Not even in the most innocuous way.

“At the time of the murder, the cops also took a good look at Claire’s husband, your brother-in-law . . .” He started searching through his papers.

“Eddie.”

“Right, Edward Walker.”

“He wouldn’t do it. He loved her.”

“Well, they cleared him,” Kierce said. “But now we need to take a closer at the home life. We need to take a fresh look at everything.”

Maya saw it now. She smiled, but there was no humor or warmth. “How long, Detective?”

He kept his head down. “Excuse me?”

“How long have you known about the ballistics report?”

Kierce kept reading the file.

“You’ve known about it for a while, haven’t you? About the same gun killing Joe and Claire?”

“What makes you say that?”

“When you came to my house to check out my Smith and Wesson, I assume it was to make sure that it wasn’t the murder weapon—to make sure it didn’t match either murder.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“No, but you said you no longer suspected me. Remember?”

He said nothing.

“That’s because you already knew I had the perfect alibi. You knew that the same gun had been used to kill my sister. And you
knew that I was overseas when Claire was shot. Before then, well, you hadn’t found the two guys with the ski masks. I could have made that up. But once you had that ballistics report, you only had to double-check my whereabouts with the military. You did that. I know the procedure. That’s not one phone call. So how long have you had the ballistics report?”

His voice was low. “Since the funeral.”

“Right. And when did you find Emilio Rodrigo and Fred Katen and get confirmation I was in Kuwait?”

“Late last night.”

Maya nodded—just as she had thought.

“Come on, Maya, don’t be naïve. Like I said, we looked hard at your brother-in-law when your sister was murdered. Here’s one time when there’s no sexism. Think about it. You’re the spouse. You’re alone in a park. If you were me, who would be your number one suspect?”

“Especially,” Maya added, “when that spouse served in the military and is, in your eyes, a gun nut?”

He didn’t bother defending himself. Then again, he didn’t have to. He was right. You always suspect the spouse.

“So now that we got all that out of the way,” Maya said, “what do we do now?”

“We look for connections,” Kierce said, “between your sister and your husband.”

“The biggest being me.”

“Yes. But there are more.”

Maya nodded. “They worked together.”

“Exactly. Joe hired your sister for his equities firm. Why?”

“Because Claire was smart.” Just saying her name stung.
“Because Joe knew that she was hardworking and reliable and trustworthy.”

“And because Claire was family?”

Maya considered this. “Yes, but not in a nepotistic way.”

“What way then?”

“The Burketts are big on family. It’s old-world clan-like.”

“They don’t trust outsiders?”

“They don’t
want
to trust outsiders.”

“Okay, I get that,” Kierce said, “but if I had to work every day with my sister-in-law . . . ugh, shudder. You know what I mean?”

“I do.”

“Of course my sister-in-law’s a world-class, Olympic-sized pain the ass. I’m sure your sister—” He caught himself now, cleared his throat. “So their working together, Joe and Claire—did it cause any tension?”

“I worried about that,” Maya said. “My uncle, he had a business. Very successful. But then other family members wanted in and he let them and it all went to hell. Family and money is never a good mix. Someone is always going to feel resentful.”

“But that didn’t happen here?”

“Just the opposite. Claire and Joe had this fun new connection. Work. They’d talk business all the time. She would call with ideas. He would remember something that needed to be done the next day and text it to her.” She shrugged. “But then again . . .”

“Then again?”

Maya looked up at him. “I wasn’t around a whole lot.”

“You were deployed overseas.”

“Right.”

“Still,” Kierce said, “none of it adds up. What would make someone kill Claire, hold on to the gun for four months, and then give it to this Katen guy to kill Joe?”

“Yo, Kierce?”

It was another cop in the station. The younger man stood across the room and beckoned for Kierce to come toward him.

“Excuse me a moment.”

Kierce headed over to the cop. The young cop leaned in, and the two men started whispering. Maya watched. Her head was still spinning, but her thoughts kept returning to something that didn’t seem to concern Kierce in the least.

The nanny cam video.

That was natural, she supposed. He hadn’t seen the actual images. He was preoccupied with the facts, and while he didn’t completely dismiss what she said as the ravings of a delusional nutbag, he probably figured that it was the work of an overactive imagination or something in that realm. To be fair, even Maya had to consider that possibility.

Kierce finished up the conversation and came toward her.

“What’s wrong?”

He grabbed his suit coat and threw it over his shoulder like Sinatra playing the Sands. “I’ll drive you home,” he said. “We can finish this conversation on the way.”

*   *   *

Ten minutes into the ride,
Kierce said, “So you saw me talking to that cop before we left, right?”

“Yes.”

“That was about your, uh, situation.” He kept his eyes on the
road. “I mean, what you said about the nanny cam and the pepper spray and all that.”

So he hadn’t forgotten. “What about it?”

“Well, look, I’m going to ignore for now what you said about the contents, okay? Until I see and we can both analyze the video, there’s no reason to discredit or, uh, confirm what may be on that . . . What was it again, a USB drive?”

“An SD card.”

“Right, the SD card. There is no reason yet to deal with intangibles. But that doesn’t mean there is nothing we can do.”

“I’m not following.”

“You were assaulted. That’s a fact. Check that: You were clearly hit with pepper spray or some agent in that family. Your eyes are still red. I can see that you are still dealing with the residual aftereffects. So whatever else we want to believe, clearly something happened to you.”

He made a turn, sneaking a glance at her as he did.

“You said that it was your nanny, Isabella, who assaulted you, right?”

“Right.”

“So I sent a man out to her house. You know. To check out your claim.”

Her claim. Nice lingo. “So did your man find her?”

Kierce kept his eyes fixed on the road. “Let me ask you a question first.”

She didn’t like that reply. “Okay.”

“During this altercation,” he began, speaking with more care now, “did you threaten or choke Isabella Mendez?”

“Is that what she told you?”

“It’s a simple question.”

“No, I did not.”

“You didn’t touch her?”

“I may have touched, but—”

“May have?”

“Come on, Detective. I may have touched her to get her attention. The way two women might.”

“Two women.” He almost smiled. “So now you’re playing the woman card with me?”

“I didn’t hurt her or anything.”

“Did you grab her?”

Maya saw where this was going. “So your man found her?”

“He did.”

“And she, what, claimed that she pepper-sprayed me in self-defense?”

“Something like that. She said that you were acting irrationally.”

“In what way?”

“She said you were ranting about seeing Joe on a video.”

Maya tried to think how to play this. “What else did she say?”

“She said that you scared her. She said that you grabbed her by the shirt, near the throat, in a threatening manner.”

“I see.”

“Is she telling the truth?”

“Did she mention that I played the video for her?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“She said the screen was blank.”

“Wow,” Maya said.

“She said that she worried you were delusional. She said that you served in the military and that you often carry a gun. She said when you add all that up—your background, your ranting, your delusions, your assault of her first—”

“Assault?”

“By your own admission, Maya, you touched her.”

She frowned but kept still.

“Isabella said that she felt threatened, so she used the pepper spray and ran.”

“Did your man ask about the missing SD card?”

“He did.”

“Let me guess. She didn’t take it and knows nothing about it.”

“Bingo,” Kierce said. He hit the turn signal. “Do you still want to press charges?”

But Maya could see how this would play out. A gun nut with a controversial past in the military screams about her murdered husband playing with their daughter on a video, grabs the nanny by the lapels—and then accuses the nanny of, what, unjustified use of pepper spray? Oh, and stealing the video of her dead husband.

Yeah, that’ll play.

“Not now,” Maya said.

*   *   *

Kierce dropped her off
at the house. He promised to stay in touch about any new developments. Maya thanked him. She debated picking up Lily at day care, but after one quick look at her new phone app—it was story time, and even from the odd angle of the camera, Maya could see that Lily was riveted—she decided that it could wait.

Dozens of messages and texts were on her phone, all from Joe’s family. Oh, damn. She had missed the reading of the will. She didn’t much care for her own sake, but Joe’s family must have been livid. She picked up the phone and called Joe’s mother.

Judith picked up the phone on the first ring. “Maya?”

“I’m sorry about today.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Maya said.

“And Lily?”

“Fine too. Something came up. I didn’t mean to worry you.”

“Something came up more important than—”

“The police found the shooters,” Maya interrupted. “They needed me to identify them.”

Maya heard Judith gasp. “Were you able to?”

“Yes.”

“So they’re in jail? It’s over?”

“It’s more complicated than that,” Maya said. “Right now, they don’t have enough to hold them.”

“I don’t understand.”

“They wore ski masks, so I never saw their faces. Build and clothing isn’t enough.”

“So . . . so they just let them go? The two men who killed my son are free to walk the streets?”

“They have one on a weapons charge. Like I said, it’s complicated.”

“Maybe we can talk about it when you come by tomorrow morning? Heather Howell felt it best if we wait until all parties are present before we read the will.”

Heather Howell was the family attorney. Maya said her good-
byes, hung up, and stared at her kitchen. Everything was sleek and new, and God, she missed that old Formica kitchen table in Brooklyn.

What the hell was she doing in this house? She had never belonged here.

She walked over to the nanny cam picture frame. Maybe the SD card was still inside it. Maya couldn’t imagine how that would happen, but she was pretty much open to any interpretation. Had she really seen Joe on that video cam? No. Could he somehow still be alive? No. Had she imagined the whole thing?

No.

Her dad had been a big fan of detective fiction. He used to read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to Maya and Claire at that Formica kitchen table. How had Sherlock Holmes put it? “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

Maya picked up the picture frame and looked in the back.

No SD card.

“When you have eliminated the impossible . . .”

The SD card was gone. Ergo, Isabella had taken it. Ergo, Isabella had lied. Isabella had used the pepper spray to incapacitate Maya so she could take the SD card. Isabella was part of this.

Part of what?

One thing at a time.

Maya started to put the frame back on the shelf when something made her stop. She stared at the frame, the digital pictures Eileen had preloaded shuffling by, when the thought hit her anew.