Hot Contact (9 page)

“I'm so sorry,” Arianna said, real sympathy in her voice.

She looked at Arianna oddly then simply said thanks.

“Was the liquor store in his patrol area?” Joe asked.

“I would assume so.” She plucked at some lint on the chair arm, smoothed out her face and waited.

Something's off, Arianna thought. Either Mary Beth remembered more than she was telling or she was lying about something.

“Did you go back to work there?” Joe asked.

“Of course not.”

“Were you mad that the case never went to trial?”

“Mad? Why would I be? The bastard got what he deserved.”

Arianna's throat closed. She didn't look at Joe, but she could guess how he was reacting to that bit of news—the same way she was. “Got what he deserved?” Arianna managed to ask.

“Well, yeah. He killed a cop. He shot me. He deserved to die.”

When Arianna couldn't formulate a question, Joe took over.

“Can you tell us what you know about that?”

The woman crossed her legs, bounced her foot. “Like you can't read about it?”

A tough side of her had emerged. Arianna wondered how much she'd changed herself to fit the world she lived in now.

“I'd like to hear what you know,” Joe said.

“I don't know much. They found him. He was shot dead.”

“They?”

“The cops.”

“The cops shot him?” Joe pressed.

“I don't know who shot him. I'm just glad he died.”

“What was his name?” Arianna asked.

“No one ever told me.”

“You didn't ask?”

“I saw no need to. I danced a jig and that was that. Look, is that it?” She glanced anxiously toward the front door. “Sometimes my sons come home for lunch. I don't want to explain who you are.”

Arianna didn't either, and she knew the one boy could identify Joe. She needed to get out of the house and try to make sense of what she'd just learned. She gave the woman a card with her cell phone number on it. “If you think of anything else, please call me.”

“Sure.” She tucked it in her pocket without looking. At the door she stopped Arianna from leaving. “I was sorry about your dad. He was a nice man. You were just a little girl. I'm sorry for my part in it.”

“Thank you,” Arianna said, grateful for her kindness.

“Do you remember my father?” Joe asked.

She nodded. “You look a lot like him. He was okay, too.”

“Thank you for your time,” Arianna said.

She and Joe didn't speak. They drove until Joe pulled into a grocery store parking lot and turned off the engine.

“The case is solved,” she said, fury and pain squeezing her throat, knotting her stomach. “They lied. Everyone lied. Even my mother. The case is solved. Why wouldn't they tell me? What's going on? What is in that file that they didn't want me to see?” When Joe just stared out the
windshield, she pushed on, struck by something Mary Beth had said at the end. “Something's off with Mrs. Horvath. What did she mean she was sorry for her part in it?”

After a minute he looked at her. “I agree that something's off. There's more to the story. Maybe more with your dad. But with mine, too.”

“Like what?” Although she knew what he would say. She knew. She just didn't want to say it first.

“I think my father might have been involved in a cover-up.”

“A
damned cover-up,” Joe repeated, stunned. He couldn't wrap the possibility around what he knew about the down-to-earth man of integrity who had raised him.

“Don't jump to conclusions,” Arianna said, sounding a little shell-shocked herself.

“Right.” He let go of his death grip on the steering wheel and sat back. “I need to find out who the gun in Dad's safe belonged to.” He studied her. Color was returning to her face. “I don't know what to say. I hadn't anticipated anything of importance coming out of that interview.”

She nodded. He slipped a hand under her hair, along her neck and brushed his thumb along her cool skin, as much for his comfort as hers.

“So many lies, Joe.”

“There must be a reason why.”

“If that's true, then today would just be tip-of-the-iceberg lies. How many more are there?”

Because it was a rhetorical question, he didn't answer. She closed her eyes and tipped her head forward, giving him better access to rub her neck and shoulders. “Want to go home?” he asked after a minute.

“No.” She lifted her head, ending the massage. “I want to see the crime scene, then my mother.”

“All right.” He started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot. Neither of them spoke. What was there to say?

He found the address of the liquor store and pulled to a stop in front of it. Not a liquor store anymore but a video store. The sandwich shop where Mateo Alvarado's partner, Fred Zamora, had been buying lunch during the shoot-out was half a block away and was now a cellular phone outlet.

“It's conceivable that Zamora didn't see the shooters, except maybe their backs,” he said, mentally calculating the distance between the two stores. “By the time the shots registered and he hauled himself out the door—who knows?”

“The employee in the sandwich shop corroborated Zamora's statement,” Arianna said.

“But she wasn't out the door as fast as Zamora.”

“Are you saying that he saw the shooters, ID'd them but didn't tell anyone?”

“Could be. If this was his patrol area, he could've known them. Maybe he decided not to tell. To deal with it in his own way.”

“To avenge my father's murder?”

“I'm thinking out loud. It's one possibility.”

“What's another?” she asked.

“I don't know yet.”

“You think my mother knows?”

“I think it's unlikely that she doesn't know the case is solved. What else she knows is anyone's guess.”

Arianna nodded. “Let's go find out.”

Joe admired her ability to focus, to keep her emotions at bay, but he wondered when and how she would deal with the revelations.

 

Joe wasn't impressed by Hollywood mansions. He'd been in plenty during his career, and he knew that the wealthy and powerful had as many problems as anyone else, if not more. But money bought better attorneys, who made problems go away.

Paloma and Estebán Clemente's home interested him because Arianna grew up there. He pictured her in the Spanish-style house with its tile floors, heavy wood furniture, wrought iron trim, and bold, colorful paintings. The house was cool, elegant and quiet, and scented by huge vases of fresh flowers.

Had the teenage Arianna run barefoot in this house? Played her stereo too loud? Hosted huge, noisy parties for her friends? Hidden a boy in her room for a little necking—or more?

He watched her pace the living room floor, awaiting her mother, who was being summoned by a maid. He hadn't known Arianna long but he knew this mood—all business. She was mentally preparing her list of questions for the interrogation.

Paloma didn't come alone, however. She brought her husband with her. They were a regal looking couple, king and queen of their own principality, this royal mansion. Arianna made the introductions. No one smiled.

“You don't seem surprised to see me, Mom,” Arianna said.

“I didn't know when you would come, but I knew you
would.” She glanced at Joe. “Someone from the P.D. called to say you'd asked to see Mateo's file.”

“Then you were also told I wouldn't be granted access,” Joe said.

“I knew if you were anything at all like your father, you would get the information somehow.”

“Yes. From my father's personal files.”

“Ah. So you know everything.”

Arianna took over. “We just came from seeing Mary Beth Maxwell. Horvath, now.”

Paloma's eyes glittered, like Arianna's did sometimes, Joe realized. Banked emotion.

Estebán took her hand in his. “She spoke with you?” Paloma asked.

“I think she knew we wouldn't go away until we got some answers. We certainly got answers. And she even apologized for her part in it.”

“I'm sorry you found out,
mija.
”

Arianna's back stiffened. “Why?”

“Your mother was protecting you,” Estebán said. “Surely you can see that. Everyone at the department was protecting you.”

“Why would I have to be protected from knowing that my father's killer was dead?”

A curtain of silence dropped over them. Joe's heart began to thud. Even worse, he thought. This was even worse.

Paloma and Estebán exchanged glances. Paloma retreated.

“You said Mary Beth told you everything,” Estebán said.

“No. Mom said that. What's everything? What do you think I know?”

“Mija—”
Paloma bit her lower lip.

“Tell her, Dove,” Estebán urged his wife. “It's been a secret too long already.”

“As you've said for years,” Paloma said wearily.

Joe kept his eyes on Arianna.

“Your father and Mary Beth Maxwell were having an affair at the time he died.”

“No!” Arianna jumped up.

Paloma stood more slowly, extending her hands beseechingly toward her daughter. “Yes. I'm sorry,
mija.
It's true. No one wanted you to know. You worshipped him. You wanted to be a cop when you grew up. No one wanted his memory tarnished for you.”

“It's not true.”

“It's true.”

Arianna crossed her arms. “Why the other lie? Why wasn't I told that the case was solved? That the shooter was dead?”

“If they left the case unsolved, no one had access to the files, except those people they chose. We figured eventually no one would remember. The department closed ranks for me—for you. To keep your father good for you.”

“Was my father part of that conspiracy?” Joe asked.

“Yes, of course. In fact, it was his idea.”

His idea?
Joe tried to understand why. Maybe— “Who shot the killer?”

“I can't tell you anything about him.”

“You don't know anything about him?” Joe asked, clarifying her ambiguous words.

“Nothing. I was told only that they found him and he was dead. Shot. An eye for an eye.”

“Someone said that to you?” Joe pressed.

“No. Maybe. I don't remember. That's how I felt, anyway.”

“Yet he was cheating on you.” Joe wanted to put his
arms around Arianna, who stood so rigid he thought she might break.

Paloma went stiff. “Mateo and I had our problems, but he was still mine. And he was the father of my daughter. Did I want him avenged? Yes.
Yes.
” She turned to Arianna. “Please sit down,
mija.
We can talk about it.”

“It's too late. Let's go,” she said to Joe as she stalked past him.

He followed without a goodbye. She flung open the car door and was inside before he reached it. He climbed in, put the key in the ignition, then turned to her.

“Just start the car and go,” she said, her jaw hard, her eyes almost black, her lips compressed. “Please. I want to go home.”

So he took her home—to his home—prepared to argue if she wanted to go to her apartment. She shouldn't be alone right now. Hell, neither should he. What they'd learned about their fathers in a few short hours was a lifetime's worth of shock.

And undoubtedly there was more to come.

 

Arianna was grateful that Joe seemed to know when to talk and when not to. As soon as she got to his house she distracted herself by calling Sam and asking if he'd tracked down Fred Zamora yet, which he hadn't. Then she asked her assistant to reschedule her late afternoon appointment. Arianna had no interest in going into the office.

She sank into the living room sofa. Joe joined her there, passing her a bottle of water.

“Too early in the day for a beer?” she asked.

“Up to you.”

She twisted the cap off and took a swallow. “No. I don't drown my sorrows.”

“What do you do?”

She eyed him as he sat beside her and leaned toward her, his arms resting on his thighs. “Yoga. Or book a one-on-one with my tae kwon do instructor. Or I go running, although that's my least favorite thing to do. Something physical, anyway.”

Unlike most men she knew, Joe didn't turn her comment into something sexual. He certainly was different from other men. Quiet, but not someone she could push around. Deliberate, but not one to drag his heels. He knew how to be a partner, too. How to share information. When to let her take the lead. His ego didn't demand he be the one in charge or the center of attention. That was rare.

“My parents fought,” she said, opening the discussion.

“Constantly?”

“No. I think it had started shortly before he died—or maybe that's all my memory recalls. They tried to hide it from me, but every once in a while I would wake up at night and hear them, or I would walk into a room and interrupt them. Mom told him to leave once. It couldn't have been too long before the shooting, because I have a vivid picture of the moment.” She drank some more water. “Did your parents argue?”

“They would get short with each other, but I can't remember them arguing.” He pointed to his bookcase. “See the glass horse-head bookends?”

She nodded. “They were on your parents' bookcase in their living room. I noticed them the day I was there because they were so unusual.”

“When one of my parents was mad at the other, he or she would turn the heads to face the other direction.”

Arianna smiled. It felt good. “Did that constitute a fight?”

“I guess so. In their world.”

“Amazing.”

“The time I told you about when my dad was so hard to live with, probably right after your dad was killed, those horses were turned around more than they weren't. But I didn't hear a cross word from either of them.” He moved across the room and picked up one of the bookends as if holding it gave him a connection with his parents. “I told my mom once that she and Dad should've argued in front of me. That it was like growing up in Disneyland. When Jane and I had our first argument, I figured the relationship was over.”

“How did your mom respond?”

“She said they hadn't intentionally not argued in front of me, that she could count on one hand the number of serious differences of opinion they'd had. They'd gotten good at knowing what mattered to each of them, and who it mattered more to, so the other one would back down.”

“That's friendship, as well as love.”

He set the horse down, aligned it again with the books. “That's what she said, too. I didn't have that with Jane. I didn't realize it until afterward. It's good that things worked out as they did.”

“I can't believe my dad had an affair.” There. She'd said the words.

“I can't believe my dad was involved in a cover-up.” He sat beside her and took her hand. “It's been a helluva day.”

“Yeah.”

“Your mom said you worshipped him,” Joe said. “That you'd wanted to be a cop.”

She squeezed his hand and nodded.

“My dad was high on my list, too,” he said. “I can't see him agreeing to a cover-up, much less instigating it.”

Arianna heard the pain and shock in his voice. “We don't know that for sure. All we know for sure is that he
thought the file should be kept from me. That's not the same thing.”

“True. Does Sam have a lead on Fred Zamora yet?”

“No. He'll find him, Joe.” They sat in silence for a minute, then she stood. “Let's look at the notes again, knowing what we know now. Something else may jump out at us.”

Late that night when they finally went to bed, she reached for him. He wrapped her in his arms, kissed her hair, then he didn't let go. She fell asleep listening to the steady rhythm of his heart, feeling the comfort of his arms, and knowing he would be there in the morning, strong and steady.