Sweet Dreams Boxed Set (158 page)

Once his sister and mother joined him in the bedroom, Jason told them about Angela, and the computer, and how he had proof that the key witness at his trial had been bribed.

His mother was appalled by it all, but he saw hope in her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Tracy said, “but you can’t possibly stay here.”

“Of course, he can,” his mother cut in. She grabbed hold of Tracy’s arm. “Your brother needs us.” She looked at Jason. “What can I do, son?”

“I want to help Jason as badly as you do, but not to the detriment of all else. You could be thrown in jail for helping him.” Tracy looked at Jason. “How could you do this to your own mother?”

“Stop it!” his mom said, her face red from exertion. “You two need to talk this through and make nice. I’m going to heat up some water for tea.”

“Why are you so angry?” Jason asked his sister the moment his mom disappeared.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve put her through since you decided to break out of prison? She’s aged ten years in the past few days. She’s a nervous wreck.”

He grabbed his sister by both shoulders. “What is your problem? I’m your brother and I’m innocent. When are you going to get that through your head?”

For a moment, she looked terrified. He let go just as his mom walked back into the room. “Come on,” he said. “I want you to meet Angela.”

The three of them trudged quietly up the stairs.

“I got the computer booted up,” Angela reported. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you weren’t alone.” Angela came to her feet.

After introductions were made, Tracy merely shook her head in dismay. The tension between him and his sister was palpable.

Downstairs, the teakettle whistled and his mother went to tend to it.

Meanwhile, his sister was making her way around his bedroom, her fingers brushing over trophies and pictures of Jason playing baseball and football. “They thought you walked on water.”

Jason sighed.

Angela glanced his way.

An awkward silence floated around the room.

“Mom and Dad loved us both equally,” Jason said.

Without a word spoken, and a crooked smile on her face, Tracy left the room.

Angela was still looking at him. “Is she okay?”

“I really don’t know. She’s always been jealous of me. I had hoped she’d grown out of it by now. Apparently not.” Noticing the illuminated screen of the laptop on the small desk where Angela sat, he said, “It looks like it’s working.”

“There’s a lot of information on here. All you need is time.”

“Come on,” he said. “First we need to get you something to eat.”

Chapter Sixteen

A hand touched his shoulder, jolting him awake. He had fallen asleep at the desk. He looked upward, squinting, and tried to focus. “Mom. What is it? What’s wrong?”

She leaned over and kissed his unshaved jaw. “It’s past noon. Your sister and I are running to the store. I wouldn’t bother going, but yesterday I had told one of the men watching the house that we were going out this afternoon. I’m afraid if we don’t stick with the plan, they might grow suspicious, especially after last night.”

“Good idea.” He straightened in the chair and glanced around the room. Papers and files were scattered around his feet.

“Angela is downstairs.”

He relaxed.

“She’s a sweet girl. She seems to be very fond of you.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“I’m sorry about last night…you know…the things your sister said. You know how prickly she can be. She’s been worried about me.”

“I know, Mom. It’s okay.”

“I’ll let you get back to your work. Don’t peer out any of the windows or move around downstairs too much. They might see you.”

“We’ll be careful.”

“I have another box for you—all the mail I’ve been collecting for you over the years. I brought it in from the garage. It’s downstairs.”

He stood so he could gather her in his arms. “I love you, Mom. You know that, right?”

She gave him another long squeeze before pulling away and walking out the door. She was trying to be strong, but he could see that his sister was right. Grayish circles framed her eyes. She was worn out.

A few minutes after he heard the door open and close, Angela joined him upstairs.

“Any luck?”

“The good news is, I got in.”

“But?”

“But there are more transactions than I imagined. This might take a while.”

She sat on the edge of the bed. It was clear that Angela was troubled by something. “What is it?”

“Your sister wants us to leave.”

“Yeah. She made that pretty clear last night.” Jason narrowed his eyes. “Did she say something to you?”

Angela nodded. “She was angry, Jason. She thinks it’s best if we were gone before they come back.”

“That’s too bad. We’re not going anywhere.” A tic began to leap in his jaw. “Anything else?”

“I overheard your mom trying to calm her down. She asked her to take a seat and concentrate on taking calming breaths. They counted to ten together.”

“Tracy always seemed a bit off growing up. I need to talk to her and find out what’s going on.”

Angela nodded. “Your breakfast is downstairs and your mom left a box of mail for you to sort through. Why don’t you go eat while I take over for a while, okay?”

“I think I’ll take you up on that offer.”

Jason stood.

Angela made her way to the chair in front of the computer and asked, “I’m just looking for any deposit or withdrawal over fifty thousand dollars, correct?”

“That’s right.” He kissed her on the top of the head, then headed downstairs. As he looked around the house, every object in the room flooded him with recollections: the bronzed statue on the coffee table, the tiled vase he’d broken and then secretly glued back together, the pictures lining the mantle.

He picked up one of the photos. Jason and his dad were sitting in a boat, fishing poles in their hands. Seeing the grin on his dad’s face made him smile. He missed him. His dad had passed away from heart failure before Jason was convicted of murder. For that Jason was thankful.

He ate a bowl of cereal, then settled into his dad’s favorite chair and began to look through the box of mail. His first inclination was to toss it all. But as he sorted through the envelopes at the top of the pile, a bank statement caught his eye. He opened it and pulled out the statement. It was for the account he’d set up before he left for prison. ACCOUNT CLOSED was stamped across the middle of the page in bold red letters.

Odd.

He sifted through the rest of the box, pulling out every bank statement he could find. The earlier statements, around the time of his imprisonment, reflected the correct balances. While Jason was incarcerated, Colin had made deposits just as he’d asked him to do. Jason had also given his mom full access to his account, so her name was listed beneath his.

Jason gave the most recent statement another look: ACCOUNT CLOSED. Zero balance.

He ripped open the rest of the envelopes, examining each statement hastily until he finally found one that showed a withdrawal of fifty thousand dollars. After putting the statements in order by date, he saw that the withdrawals were made every few months after that first one. It wasn’t until two years after the first withdrawal that another name was listed beneath his mom’s name: Tracy Caldwell.

His insides twisted.

Nothing made sense.

Without putting much thought into what he was doing or where he was going, he made his way up the stairs and into his sister’s bedroom. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he didn’t like the questions running through his mind.

Why was his sister’s name on his bank statement? What happened to millions of dollars? Who closed the account?

He found Tracy’s Smith & Wesson in the nightstand next to her bed. What was she doing with a gun, anyway? And why had she seemed so fearful this morning? Given her state of mind, he shoved the 9mm into his back pocket. He then went through every drawer and shelf in her room, rifling through her things.

Nothing. Not until he reached deep into the back of a bottom dresser drawer and pulled out a notebook. The pages were blank, but when he went to slide it back where he’d found it, a picture slipped out from the middle pages. It was a three by five photograph that had been cut at weird angles, so that only two people were left in the picture: Dirk and Tracy.

Jason remembered that day. It had been their first company picnic: Hot dogs, hamburgers, music. He and Colin had been posing next to them while Sophie took the snapshot.

Why would his sister cut him and Colin out of the picture?

He turned every page.

Stuck into the back of the notebook was an x-ray of some type. Upon closer examination, he realized it was a sonogram. The name Tracy Caldwell was printed on the upper left-hand side.
Tracy? Pregnant?

His heart raced.

Dropping everything on the bed, he looked around, then headed for the closet, his mind whirling with speculation. He searched through coat and sweater pockets, then pushed clothes on hangers to the side so he could see if anything was on the floor. He glanced inside boots and shoes. On the shelf above his head were more clothes. He pushed them to the side, too. Shoved so far back on the shelf he could barely reach it was a shoebox. He brought it down and set it on the bed next to everything else. When he saw what was inside, he felt nauseated.

It was a portable voice synthesizer.

It took him a moment to find his breath.

He shoved the picture and the sonogram inside the box, tucked it under his arm, and headed downstairs. As he approached the landing, the front door opened, and Tracy walked in. His mom was right behind her. She quickly shut the door and said, “I hope they didn’t see you.”

Tracy was staring at the box under his arm. “Have you been going through my things?”

“Were you in love with Dirk Taylor?”

Tracy did her best to look horrified. “No!”

“I saw the sonogram. You were pregnant with his baby.”

His mom paled. “What’s going on, Jason? What are you talking about?”

“Remember the key witness and the attorney I told you about? The two people who were bribed?”

“He’s insane, Mom. Don’t listen to him.”

His mom went to Jason’s side, confusion in her eyes. “I don’t understand.”

“Both the lawyer and the key witness at my trial told me that they never met the person who paid them off. Whoever was trying to frame me used a voice synthesizer.”

Mom shook her head. “I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s a voice changer like the one I found in Tracy’s room.” He handed her the box.

She looked inside, but pulled out the picture and the sonogram instead.

“I also found my bank statements in the box of mail you left for me. Millions of dollars are missing and the account was closed. Tracy’s name was on the account.”

“But how?” Mom asked. “I never pulled out any money.”

“I gave Tracy power of attorney to sell my condo. She must have used it to get access to my account.” He looked at Tracy.

“Is that what you did?” Mom asked. “Did you steal your brother’s money?” Her eyes widened. “That’s how you and Benjamin were able to buy that big house in Granite Bay.”

Tracy stiffened. “Why would you listen to a convicted killer, Mom? He’s a fugitive. He’s putting us all in danger by being here.”

“Why did you kill him?” Jason asked Tracy.

Tracy whipped about and rushed toward the stairs.

“If you’re going for your gun, don’t bother.”

She looked over her shoulder, saw the gun in his hand, then sank down onto the step and buried her face in her hands. “He told me he loved me,” Tracy finally managed. “He said that we would be together forever. I didn’t care about the other women because I thought he would eventually come to his senses. But then I found out I was pregnant with his baby.”

Mom stared at her daughter in horror.

“Don’t look at me like that. The bastard wanted me to have an abortion! He wanted me to kill your grandbaby. I refused, but in the end, I lost the baby anyhow.”

A phone inside Tracy’s purse began to ring.

Behind Tracy, Angela stood at the top of the stairs, holding the cell phone he’d taken from the man who had tried to kill him after he’d met with his sister.

Everything was beginning to make sense. He’d always written off his sister’s aggressive behavior as just the way she was. His friends had always considered his sister to be peculiar. Jason put a hand to his temple. “It wasn’t good enough that I spent eight years in prison. You wanted me dead, too. Why?”

Mom inhaled an unsteady breath.

Tracy came to the bottom of the stairs and set an accusing gaze on Jason, her chin lifted high in defiance. “Dirk was the best thing that ever happened to me. He understood me. He said I wasn’t the oddball everyone else made me out to be. He told me he loved me.”

Jason’s insides were in turmoil. Of all the scenarios he’d thought up over the years, this was one he’d never imagined. “So you killed him?”

The wild look in her eyes caused a chill to work its way through his body.

“Didn’t you hear a word I just told you? He wanted me to kill our baby! He said he loved me, but it was a lie. I started following him, and watched him having a great time with a perky little blonde. I wanted to kill her, but in the end I decided to kill Dirk instead.”

“And pin the murder on me, your own brother?”

“What was I supposed to do? I was at your house. You had just set the knife on the kitchen counter, and that’s when my idea began to take on a life of its own. So I figured you’d go to jail.” She sneered. “Mom and Dad’s perfect little boy. In jail!”

Mom pointed a trembling finger at Tracy. “Your father and I loved you both the same. You were always so, so…hard to please, though.” She put a hand over her heart. “I should have kept a better eye on things. How could I have been so blind to it all?”

“It’s not your fault,” Jason said as he slipped his arm around his mother, worried as she fought to catch her breath.

“Please tell me you didn’t hire anyone to kill your brother.”