The Color of Death (38 page)

He turned toward the floor-to-ceiling windows and watched Tessa cross the parking lot. He could almost hear the authoritative click of her heeled shoes on the pavement. Watching the irritated swish of her hips under the sage green business skirt, he smiled.

She was pissed.

“You’re supposed to be a salesman, boss. Not drive prospective clients out the door.”

Luke turned to look at the man who had silently entered the office from a connecting doorway behind him. MacBeth, as a potential future partner in Novak International, was being trained in how to handle clients and had been observing the meeting behind a two-way mirror.

“What can I say? It was too much fun watching her try to control her temper. What did you think of her?” He gestured toward the woman backing up her Honda sedan with a jerky motion.

“Not what I expected from a junior prosecutor with the D.A.’s Office. She’s a pistol under the cool surface.”

“Seems strange to have all that fire wrapped up in an Ann Taylor suit with matching suede shoes,” Luke agreed. “I was half-tempted to take the case just to see what has her in a lather.”

“Sledge Aiken had better look out,” MacBeth noted.

“Yeah, but there’s something wrong with the setup. How does an eighteen-year-old kid fresh in from Colorado score a date with LA’s newest celebrity, especially when she supposedly doesn’t have any friends here? And how the hell does she end up with almost ten thousand cash and half a dozen credit cards belonging to other people in her purse?” Luke asked.

“I thought the story sounded odd. That’s why I passed Ms. Jacobi on to you.”

“And why I passed, period. A celebrity case is hard enough without having
to deal with the shattering of innocence, too,” Luke said.

“Whose innocence? The girl who was raped or Tessa Jacobi’s?” MacBeth asked.

“I think they’re uncomfortably linked, my friend.”

“Then it’s just as well she didn’t hire us. I’d hate to watch someone as nice as the deputy D.A. figure out the hard way that not everyone is as honest and straightforward as she is.”

“Yeah. Watching good people get manipulated and chewed up by the system is never fun,” Luke said.

And I ought to know it.

Downtown Los Angeles

Friday, February 26

“I
’m sorry to drag you into this, Ed. As soon as I can find another investigator to look into the credit cards, I’ll stop bugging you to come along and hold my hand every day,” Tessa said.

Ed Flynn snorted and followed her through the early-morning pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk. They were headed to a popular local coffee shop where Ed would meet Kelly Martin for the first time.

“Luke Novak is one of the best investigators in Southern California. He’s got a list of informants that any active cop would kill to have. I still don’t understand why you wouldn’t hire him.”

“He didn’t have the right personality,” Tessa said vaguely.

“What the hell does that mean?” Ed asked.

“I need someone who can help me work within the system, in Kelly’s favor. Novak doesn’t want to work with the system, he wants to burn it down.”

Ed coughed at the edge in Tessa’s voice. She glared at him.

“Luke Novak is a cowboy. I need someone a little more…” She searched for the right word.

“Tame? Obedient, even?” Ed suggested.

“I don’t require obedient,” Tessa shot back. “But housebroken would be nice.”

Ed laughed out loud. “So he pissed on your case, did he?”

“He basically said he didn’t believe Kelly’s story. He told me I had blinders
on and might not like what I saw when reality unceremoniously ripped those blinders away.” Her pride still smarted at that one.

There was a long silence. Finally, Ed said with a sigh, “Let’s go meet your victim, Tessie. I want a chance to understand this girl who’s got a hold on your tender heart.”

She let out a relieved breath, thankful he hadn’t agreed outright with Novak’s analysis of the situation. “Come on, that’s her in the corner booth.”

They greeted Kelly—who barely looked up from the coffee she was stirring—and sat down across from her. Tessa frowned as she saw the girl was wearing a high-necked sweater despite the mild day. She had also stuffed her long, platinum blond hair under a large-brimmed hat.

When Kelly felt Tessa’s eyes on her, she glanced up briefly, revealing oversized black sunglasses. The room was bright, but not enough to need them. She quickly looked back down at the table and continued stirring the cup in front of her.

“What’s wrong?” Tessa asked gently.

Kelly shrugged, then lifted her thumb to her mouth and started chewing the ragged cuticle.

Tessa slowly reached across the table and pulled Kelly’s sunglasses away from her face. The girl said nothing as Tessa gasped out loud.

“Your face! Who did this to you?” Tessa carefully turned Kelly’s head toward the sunlight, revealing raw looking bruises around her left eye, cheekbone, and the corner of her mouth.

“I tripped getting out of the pool,” Kelly said, pulling away from the gentle touch.

“What did you trip on?” Tessa asked angrily. “Someone’s fist?”

Ed put his hand on Tessa’s arm to silence her, then held it out to Kelly. “I’m Ed Flynn. It’s very nice to meet you. I understand California hasn’t been too kind to you.”

Kelly looked down at the weathered hand he offered her, then up into Ed’s warm brown eyes. He looked like such a dad, with an expression of concern and gentleness that made tears well up in her eyes. Instead of latching on to his offered hand like the lifeline it was, Kelly snatched the sunglasses off the table and put them back on her face.

Ed knew she was trying to put distance between them, and he let her. If she felt safer with the Jackie O glasses on, maybe she’d relax enough to tell them what had happened.

“I won’t let anything happen to you now, Kelly. Neither will Tessa. But you have to trust us,” Ed began. “Can you do that?”

Kelly resumed biting on the thumbnail she had been mauling. “I just want to go home,” she said with a break in her voice.

“We’ll take you there. Is home in Colorado?” Ed asked.

Kelly hesitated, then nodded jerkily.

“Then why don’t you have a driver’s license issued from that state?” Ed asked.

“My family didn’t have a car for me to drive,” Kelly mumbled.

Tessa’s eyebrows shot up. She knew that even when an individual didn’t have a driver’s license, it was customary to get a photo identification card from the state. “What about your birth certificate? The state of Colorado doesn’t have a record of anyone named Kelly Martin being born on January 12, 1985.”

Kelly shifted in her seat. “I don’t know. Maybe my mom lost it. Maybe I wasn’t born in a hospital, so they never got a birth certificate.”

Ed caught Tessa’s glance and shook his head slightly. “You’d need one to enroll in school, child.”

Kelly thought for a moment, then said “My mom home-schooled us.”

Ed had to give her credit for quick wits—or for remembering a story she’d rehearsed before. “Tessa told me that you had an envelope with a bunch of cash and credit cards in your purse, but that you hadn’t known the cards were in there. She said you were going to talk to your cousin about it.”

Kelly’s shoulders hunched even more. “I did. He said they belonged to friends that he had dinner with. They all forgot their cards at the restaurant I work at, so I returned them to my cousin when the manager asked me to.”

Same story. Ed sat back and raised an eyebrow at Tessa, silently asking what she wanted to do next.

Kelly saw the exchange, then shot to her feet. “I’m out of here. I don’t need this.”

“Wait—” Tessa began.

“You don’t believe me,” Kelly said accusingly. “After everything I told you. I trusted you.”

Tessa’s heart sank at the hitch in Kelly’s breath, at the beginnings of a sob in her voice. “We do believe you were attacked, Kelly. We just need to understand the rest. But that can wait. Right now my priority is to get you to a safe place.”

“What do you mean?”

“You can’t go back to your cousin’s house. Why didn’t you tell me what happened when we talked yesterday?”

“I tripped and fell after I talked with you,” Kelly said, refusing to meet Tessa’s eyes even through her sunglasses.

“Yeah, right.” Tessa shook her head. “You’re still not going back there.”

“I have to. I have, um, things there. I can’t just leave. Jerry would worry about me,” Kelly said.

“We’ll call your cousin—”

“No! You can’t talk to him. I have to go now, I don’t want to cause any trouble.” Kelly began to edge away from the table.

Tessa had had it. “Listen to me, young lady. You will not be going back to that house. Clearly there’s not enough supervision for you there.”

“You can’t make me leave,” Kelly insisted. But it was said in a tone of voice that was almost hopeful, as if she wanted the responsibility to be taken off her tiny shoulders.

Tessa jumped into the opening. “Right now, you are the only witness to a crime that’s being investigated. I can have Ed take you into custody for your own protection. So you can tell your cousin you don’t really have any choice.”

Kelly felt her stomach muscles relaxing for the first time in days. “Whatever,” she said, working hard to sound sullen.

Tessa looked at Ed, glad that he hadn’t called her bluff. He stood up. “Kelly, why don’t you order yourself a big breakfast. I need to talk to Tessa alone.” He handed the girl a menu and steered Tessa out of earshot.

She looked back over her shoulder and saw Kelly reading through the menu with what looked to be real enthusiasm.

“That was pretty tricky, lady. She was damned relieved to have you take the decision out of her hands,” Ed said.

“Comes from helping to raise Kevin,” Tessa smiled, referring to her much-younger half brother. “Teenagers act like they want independence and responsibility, but when things get tough they’re happy to find a way out of being in charge of their own lives while still saving face.”

Ed smiled briefly, then grew serious as he thought of what he had to do next.

“Kelly’s lying, you know. She’s got a pretty, well-rehearsed story, but you could grind it up and use it as fertilizer,” he said.

“I don’t know what’s going on, but I do agree there’s something, er, fishy-smelling about her story,” Tessa responded. “Still, someone could be intimidating her, and that’s why she’s afraid to tell us the truth. We need to get her into a safe environment, then she’ll begin to trust us.”

“You can’t build a legal case on a foundation of lies.”

“She’s not lying about being raped,” Tessa insisted.

Ed looked over her head at Kelly, who was watching people pass by the front windows—as if she were looking for someone and afraid to see him at the same time. “Something happened to her, there’s no question. And I don’t like the bruises on her face. Slipped on the pool deck, my ass.”

“So you agree that she needs our support right now, not a bunch of questions that imply we don’t believe her?” Tessa asked.

“You have to stop making excuses for the child, Tessie. Try to understand what she’s lying about and
why
she’s doing it, and I bet you’ll uncover the truth about what happened to her.”

“I know. I was thinking that we could have her take a polygraph test. That way we’ll know what to focus on and be able to weed out the unimportant stuff. And you’ll know for a fact that she’s nothing more than a scared teenager who needs our help.”

“Hell, I can see that right now. But I worry about how to figure out the rest of it,” Ed said.

“I know. But can we do it my way?” Tessa reached out and laid her hand on Ed’s forearm. “Please. It’s important to me that we do this right—and slowly. I think it’s even more important to Kelly.”

Ed looked down into hopeful blue-gray eyes and felt it happening—felt himself being sucked in against his better judgment.

What the hell.

At least he’d be there to watch over Tessa if things started spinning out of control. He wouldn’t let her throw away her career on this case.

“I’ll call and set up a polygraph for this afternoon, off the record. Then we should talk to Sledge Aiken,” he said, checking his watch.

“I’d love to,” Tessa replied. “He’s been traveling with his team for off-season appearances, according to his agent.”

“Ah, but I checked the official web page of the Waves before leaving this morning. The team returned to LA last night.”

“So while you are monitoring the polygraph with Kelly, I’ll find a place for her to stay. Then we can go see Aiken,” Tessa said.

“Where are you going to put her?” Ed asked.

“Well, she can’t stay with me. I don’t want any accusations of conflict of interest or malicious prosecution. I think I’ll talk to TSS—Three Sisters Shelter. They take in battered women and children, and they have a residency program for at-risk patients who have graduated from their drug rehabilitation programs. The security there is decent, and they have good supervision. Kelly might even meet some girls her age.”

“Okay. But first, we’d better get that girl some breakfast before she starts eating the place mats,” Ed said as he steered Tessa back to the table. “Poor kid probably hasn’t eaten in days.”