No way out

Chapter Sixty

Kate stayed in the car when I got out.

“You coming with me?”

“Go ahead. I’ll be there as soon as I make a call.”

It was the second private call she had to make today. She wouldn’t tell me what the first call was about and I didn’t think she’d tell me about this one either, but I leaned in the open car door and asked anyway.

“Is everything okay at home, I mean with Brian and Alan and your father?”

She smiled. “Never better. I’ll only be a minute.”

Kate prided herself on maintaining a cool exterior, but the flicker in her eyes and the slight tremor at the corners of her mouth betrayed her. I’d waived my right to pry, reserving only my right to be concerned, knowing that, whatever it was, she wouldn’t tell me until she was ready, if she would tell me at all. I’d learned the hard way that pressing would raise her wall, not lower it.

Making my way up the walk, I imagined the night Vivian Chase shot it out with her partner. I flashed forward to this week, seeing her granddaughter Martha sitting motionless in her wheelchair in the morning room, and her great-granddaughter Roni taking aim at Frank Crenshaw at LC’s Bar-B-Q, Terry Walker’s words echoing in my head, It’s as much about blood as it is about time and place, the front door opening behind me, bringing me back to the moment.

“I saw you coming,” Roni said.

She was standing in the doorway, wearing black jeans and a body-hugging black turtleneck. I was so glad to see her that I grabbed her by the shoulders before I realized what I was doing-squeezing her harder than I intended, making her wince-but that’s what I do when I find someone I was afraid I had lost.

“Where the hell have you been?”

“What do you mean, where have I been?” she asked, pulling my hands off of her, her tone sharp, her mouth screwed tight. “I’ve been living my life. I go to work, and I come home.”

“You had me scared.”

“Of what? I don’t know what your problem is. I told you, it’s over.”

“I stopped by your office this morning. You weren’t there.”

“So,” she said, arms crossed, one hip aimed at me, “you naturally assumed the world had ended.”

“You left the door unlocked. It looked like you’d left in a hurry.”

“I did. My mom fell when Grandma was giving her a bath this morning, and I had to come home and help get her up. Grandma can’t do it by herself. I guess I forgot to lock up.”

“Is she okay?”

“Yeah, the world is safe for another day. Okay?”

I ignored her sarcasm. “Where’s Brett?”

She backed up a step, her face coloring. “Why can’t you leave him alone?”

“His father was murdered last night.”

Her hand flew to her mouth, her other arm clenching her middle like she’d been gut-punched. “Oh, my God!”

“He was shot to death in his store sometime around midnight. A Mexican kid named Eberto Garza was also shot to death in the store early this morning, around dawn. Odds are whoever shot Nick stayed in the store and killed Eberto. So, like I told you before, this thing is a long way from over. Now where’s Brett?”

She staggered to a white wicker bench on the porch, falling onto it, bent over, covering her face with her hands, crying. I gave her a minute, then sat beside her.

“The police think he’s killed three people, and I think he may come after you next.”

She sat up, wiping away tears with the back of her hand, rocking back and forth. “He wouldn’t do that. He’d never do that. He’s not that kind of person.”

“A week ago you were probably right. But things he never thought would happen did happen. It spun out of control, and now he’s in way over his head.”

“What things?”

I told her about Crenshaw’s gun, about Cesar Mendez and about Brett trying to rob his father’s store. She stopped crying, her face hardening, defiant.

“You’re wrong. He couldn’t have done any of those things,” she said, not convincing me that Brett was innocent but confirming for the first time how much she really loved him.

“Where is he?”

I heard Kate’s car door slam before she could answer. I looked at her, her head cocked to one side, asking me a silent question-what should she do. She knew what I was going to tell Roni, had seen her reaction, and was waiting for me to signal whether to join us or give us room. I waved her toward us when Lilly Chase appeared on the porch. Terry Walker was right behind her.

Roni turned toward Lilly, crying again. Lilly hugged her without knowing why, giving me a look that said she blamed me for whatever had happened, shepherding Roni inside. Kate followed them.

“What happened?” Terry asked.

He’d neither lent a hand nor offered sympathy. He was flinty-eyed and calm in the way of men who’d seen enough sorrow not to be moved by it, knowing that others were better suited to the task of giving comfort. He was, like me, more interested in the how and why, more focused on cause and consequence than passion.

“Somebody killed Nick Staley, shot him to death inside his grocery store.”

“That’s it? That’s all you know?”

I had shared with Roni my answers to those questions but saw no reason to bring Terry into the loop until I knew more about him and whether his questions were born of natural curiosity or whether there was a more useful purpose to his inquiry. He’d said that he had come back to Kansas City to see who was left from the old days, that he’d seen Lilly on the porch and remembered her red hair. That was enough to get him into Lilly Chase’s house but not into my business.

“All I know for certain.”

“And you know better than to flap your lips to somebody you hardly know. Don’t blame you, but you can’t blame me for asking.”

“I don’t. Roni is in pretty bad shape, but I’ll let her tell you about it when she settles down.”

“She won’t know anything. If I’m going to find out what happened, I’ll have to get you to tell me.”

“Why do you think I know so much about it?”

He snorted. “Let’s cut the crap. Lilly told me about Roni shooting that fella at the barbeque joint and the rest of it, how somebody finished him off at the hospital. And Roni told me how you’ve taken such an almighty interest in her welfare, which she says was kind of sweet at first but is really chapping her ass right about now. So, I figure if anybody knows what’s what, it’s you.”

“Chapping her ass? She said that? Doesn’t sound like something she’d say.”

“My translation. She also says you’ve got something wrong with you that makes you shake. Is that so?”

The tics arrived on cue, a quick flurry ricocheting from my sternum to my chin and back again. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Maybe not when you and I are just passing the time, but I’ll wager it’s tough in a crunch. How’d Roni say you put it, that you shake when you should shoot? Now that’s a rough way to be when a bad man is coming after you. All of a sudden you’re jumpin’ and jukin’ and the next thing you know, you’re down and out. No wonder the FBI let you go. Can’t count on a man that can’t count on himself. Too bad, I say, but all we get is the chance to play the game, not make the rules.”