Look Before You Jump (13 page)

I had no idea what all Zeke had told them
when he called to clear the path for me to visit. Wouldn’t put it
past him to have me booked on drunk and disorderly for some past
infraction. Was there a statute on slapping a cheating
boyfriend?

With dark circles under deer-in-the-headlight
eyes, Bobby looked like death warmed over. Blond hair stood at all
angles like he’d spent the night fisting it in frustration. His
tall frame slumped into a chair on the other side of the glass,
while the accompanying guard held the wall up behind him like he
had a rod up his – er, spine. If the situation weren’t so dire, it
would’ve made me laugh to think the squat guard could’ve stood a
chance against his charge. Physically Bobby was present, but I
couldn’t say the same for his mental state.

“I’m at a loss, Vic,” Bobby mumbled into the
two-way speakerphone. “Why is this happening?”

“Don’t worry, Bobby,” I soothed. “I’m here
for you. So is Zeke. He’s checking into all this right now.”

That brought Bobby’s glazed eyes to mine.
“Zeke’s helping me?”

I nodded. “Neither of us believe the charges
against you. Zeke said it’s probably some overzealous anti-religion
idiot at the DA’s office, especially if all they’ve got is that
empty medicine bottle from your curbside trash.”

“I’ve been sitting here all night wondering
if this is how Jesus felt when He was wrongly accused.”

Leave it to Bobby to tie circumstances to the
spiritual. Just as long as we didn’t have a crucifixion or a giant
earthquake that loosed his chains and opened the jail doors, we’d
be fine.

“When do you go before the judge for
preliminaries?” I asked.

“Sometime later this morning.”

“No worries then. Your parents will cover
whatever bond is set, and you’ll be out of here by noon.”

“
If
they will,” Bobby responded.
“After the phone call in the middle of the night, I haven’t heard
or seen hide nor hair of them.”

“Wait,” I said. “They haven’t even visited
you?”

“Nope. Likely they’ve spent the night in
conference for damage control.”

“Damage control?”

“For the ministry. The media’s gonna have a
field day you know.”

The shock of realization hit me like a bucket
of ice-cold beer on wet t-shirt night. “Damn the media. You’re
their son.”

Bobby sighed. “Now you see why I’ve rarely
seen eye-to-eye with them. It’s their ministry expectations above
all else…including me.”

“Then I’ll take care of your bail.”

“With what?”

“I’ll…I’ll…,” I started before I could bring
myself to say the words. “I’ll go into hock. Sell my soul. Grovel
at my dad’s feet if I have to.”

“Can’t let you do that, Vic.”

“As long as you show up for court he’ll get
his money back. Or when they drop these ridiculous charges.”

“Still can’t let you do that,” he said. “You
and your dad are like warriors with endless supplies of hand
grenades. One of you would end up dead and the other in here with
me before I even went to trial.”

He had a point. “Then we gotta get them to
drop the charges.”

“Easier said than done. Unless…”

I could almost hear the wheels loosen and
begin to turn in Bobby’s brain as thought processes ramped back up
from the stresses of a night in the slammer. A light gleamed in his
eyes. His jaw set.

“Yeah?” I prompted.

“There’s a key to my house hidden in a clay
pot near the garage. Do you think you could get inside?”

“Sure. What do you need me to look for?”

“Those boxes in the spare bedroom where you
changed. Some of them were from Amy’s mom that we never sorted
through.”

“I thought you dragged them all to the
curb.”

“Not those,” Bobby murmured. “I hadn’t
returned for them yet.”

Ah-ha. The half-hearted greeting. The
makeshift football. The bad attitude. “Was that what had you all
upset when I got there yesterday?”

Bobby nodded. “There’s something in there you
need to see.”

Mom always said a lady never sweats. She
glistens. Seems God forgot that tidbit when He hardwired my
endocrine system because I can sweat just as much as Pastor Dennis
during a holy roller revival. I read somewhere once it’s not the
heat but the humidity. That moron apparently never visited central
Texas in June – and was probably male.

While Zeke spent the day in his cool
comfortable office poking around the periphery of a Dallas PD case,
I spent the afternoon parked up the next street behind a row of
boxwood waiting for a chance to enter Bobby’s modest home. Quite a
far cry from the Vernet estate across town, that’s for sure. I got
a good look at it this time too. Tan siding. Brick façade on the
lower half. Standard two-car garage we’d successfully made a dent
in the day before. What I’d seen inside the house was pretty
cookie-cutter for this subdivision.

‘Cept for the view through the big picture
window. Officers crawled around inside and ducked under yellow
crime scene tape wrapped around the outside like a package
expressed from Santa Claus.

All this for an empty bottle of sleeping
pills? Talk about overkill.

“Are you okay, dear?”

The question from the neighbor startled me in
my half-sleep state. It’s really hard to stay conscious when your
day starts way too early and the heat sends you into a catatonic
state. That and the fact I really had to pee after downing my third
coke.

I blinked then recognized Nosey Nana from
yesterday’s adventure of unpacking with Bobby. Coifed gray hair was
teased high like a coil of cotton candy at the state fair. The
bright pink nylon wind suit sold the appearance of an afternoon out
for a walk, but seeing it just made me sweat all the more.

“I’m fine,” I mumbled, wiping sleep-induced
drool from the corner of my mouth.

“Oh, I recognize you now,” Nosey Nana
proclaimed. “You were over yesterday helping out the young pastor
who lives next door.”

“Yeah, I’m a family friend.”

Nana shook her head. “Such a sweet thing, his
wife. Sure is a shame what happened.”

She gave me the
look
. You know, that
direct stare with eyebrows raised in expectation and a mouth
crossed between a smile and surprised shock. So fake. So earnest
for information she could spread around like the ranking member of
Gossipers ‘R Us. I was so not in the mood.

“Well don’t believe everything you hear,” I
said. “There’s more to the story than what the Neighborhood Watch
and Gossip Committee is probably saying.”

The comment got me a purse of orange-red lips
and a sniff before she took up the trot again, arms swinging and
butt jiggling like two trapped cats fighting for supremacy. Told
you I could be bitchy when I didn’t get enough sleep. I rubbed my
forehead, took another sip of warm and watered-down pop, then
punched in Zeke’s number on my cell.

“What now, Vicki?”

“Why’s Bobby’s house been crawling with cops
all day?” I asked.

A pause. “Please tell me you’re not
attempting a stakeout.”

“I thought those were at night. What’re they
called in the middle of the day?”

“Stay away from his house,” Zeke
commanded.

“It’s not like I meant to hang here all
afternoon, but the cops won’t leave and Bobby asked me to check on
something.”

“Don’t tell me you have a key to his house
now.”

I hesitated. “Maybe.”

The sigh came out more like a growl. “Look,
I’m only going to say this once,” Zeke grumbled. “Stay away from
the crime scene.”

“But no crime was committed here. Why’re they
blocking it off?”

“They found evidence there that may have been
used in a crime.”

“It was on the curb,” I countered.

“Which leads a good investigator to dig
deeper and check the house.”

“Whose side are you on?”

“It’s what I’d do in their shoes,” Zeke said,
“especially considering the extremely weak evidence they’ve
collected so far. They’re going to need more than an empty bottle
found at the curb to make the DA’s case against Bobby stick.”

“But what about when Bobby gets home?” I
asked.

“That might be awhile. His bail was set
pretty high.”

“For a bottle of sleeping pills? What about
his parents?”

“No one’s shown up to bond him out yet,” Zeke
confessed. “It’s going on four o’clock, so without a miracle he’ll
probably have to wait until tomorrow.”

The thought of Bobby spending another night
in jail about made me sick. Or maybe it was the heat. I wanted to
drive right over to the Vernet mansion, blast through their gates,
then grab Mary Jo by her skinny little neck and wring it like a
chicken. How dare a mother abandon her child. May as well have
sentenced him to death.

The image of a pregnant Amy splayed out in a
parking lot popped into my mind. Ouch!

“So what now?” I finally asked.

“There’s nothing else to do today. Now go
home, clean up, and get ready for work tonight.”

Work – oh, crap. In all the distractions I’d
almost forgotten what day it was. Janine would be out of classes
soon and calling again for an update if I didn’t catch her first. I
could come back to Bobby’s house later tonight after I got off
work. When it wasn’t invaded by cops. When it was quiet. Dark.
Didn’t Zeke say stakeouts were usually at night?

Oh yeah. That was me.

***

Yellow crime scene tape glowed under the
muted cast of streetlights like a specter screaming to stay away
from a haunted house. ‘Course I don’t believe in spooks, so I
ignored my imagination and crept in the shadows around the side of
Bobby’s garage then plucked the key from the fake rock nestled in
the terra cotta urn.

I’m not sure why people do that. You know,
put a key to their house inside an obvious fake rock right out in
the open. It’s fooling nobody. Instead it’s almost an advertisement
to thieves like a billboard publicizing a free-for-all inside
someone’s house. If I ever owned a house I’d just bury the key in
the garden. Then again I’d probably forget where I buried it.

Sneaking around to the rear porch, I spied a
strip of yellow tape at the back door. One end was floating like a
streamer left over from a backyard barbeque. As I entered the
house, I reminded myself the whole walk across the living room that
I had permission to be there. All Nosey Nana had to do if she was
up at this hour for a pee run was to ask Bobby – well, once he was
bailed out of jail.

After shutting out the late night cicada
serenade and making my way upstairs, I stood at the top of the
staircase and listened to the silence. What was once on its way to
being a happy home felt heavy and oppressive without life pulsating
between the walls. No husband snoring down the hall. No pregnant
wife up emptying her overwrought bladder or for a three A.M.
feeding. No baby’s cry. Maybe Bobby was better off spending another
night in the slammer than here with the memories of what should’ve
been.

With the dark piece of plastic bag secured
over the flashlight, soft illumination revealed the spare bedroom.
Once neatly stacked blue t-shirts were scattered. Box contents were
dumped across the bed and on the floor. A slashed mattress propped
against the wall with box springs askew. It didn’t look so much
like police had searched for anything – more like they’d released a
Texas-sized tornado. My job just got harder.

I sighed, tipped a box upright then shoved in
t-shirts until they were out of the way. After setting that box in
the hallway, I grabbed another and sat down on the floor to begin
the real work.

“The things I go through for friends,” I
grumbled.

An hour later I wished for my bed. Which made
me wish for Nick. Which made me remember in whose house I was.
Which made me think of Ford F-150s.

Which woke me up enough to realize what I
held in my hand.

“Well hello,” I murmured. “Where’ve you been
all night?”

The hand-carved humidor was beautiful even in
the diffused light, the patina at the edges caused by the oils of
skin touching it over years of opening and closing. A cache of
envelopes yellowed with age spilled across the lined interior while
the faint scent of tobacco tickled my nose. It reminded me of
visits to Louisiana with Janine when we were girls. It smelled like
her grandfather when he’d hug us. If my olfactory memory served,
we’re not talking just any cigar. The best of the best. This
humidor once contained Gurkha’s His Majesty’s Reserve. At nearly a
thousand dollars a stogie, we’re talking some serious coin.

How did Amy’s mom come to own a humidor that
contained some of the most expensive cigars in the world? The only
reason it was still here was because the police who’d searched this
room earlier probably had no clue how much the humidor alone was
worth. They could’ve cared less about the letters too.

The envelope on top appeared disturbed, the
letter peeking out from beneath the fold as if haphazardly shoved
inside. Unsigned love notes from an admirer. The officers had
likely had a good laugh after perusing the first few. The ones
underneath remained undisturbed until I got to the bottom.

The flap was cracked. I unfolded the missive
to discover the lone letter with a signature, a name Bobby hadn’t
dared speak aloud over the jail phone. Amy’s father wasn’t just any
Tom, Dick, or Harry. I stared at the signature of one Julio Benito
Juarez – the Mexican Ambassador to the United States.

My whistle of surprise changed to a squeak
with the press of metal against the back of my skull and an
unfamiliar male voice in my ear.

“Hands up.”

There’s something to be said for having
friends in high places – in this case, law enforcement.

“Victoria Bohanan. Any relation to…”