I do my best to ignore her touch and slip forward the piece of paper. “Can you check these names against your records?”
With another fleeting glance Gracie’s way, Chelsea accepts the slip of paper. “Give me a few minutes, okay?”
I wait until she’s out of earshot. “Fourth cousins, twice removed? Is that a real thing?”
“I have no idea, but the look on her face was totally worth it.” Gracie’s arm slips away, and I miss it instantly.
“These kinds of searches normally cost money and take days, if not weeks. And she knows I’m not here for work. This information isn’t available to just anyone. She’s doing us a huge favor.”
“She’s not doing me the favor,” Gracie mutters, studying her fingernails.
And it clicks. I can’t help my grin at even the possibility.
She looks up in time to catch it. “What?”
“Nothing. Just, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you were jealous.” I brace myself for a punch or a kick.
She lets out a derisive snort instead. “Whatever. I’ll be in the restroom.” She wanders away, but not before I catch the flush of her cheeks.
* * *
“There’s no Betsy or Elizabeth Richards in the system with that birth date, or even that birth year.”
“And you checked Nesbitt, too, right?” Gracie asks, citing Betsy’s father Brian’s last name.
“I checked them all,” Chelsea explains with an overly sweet smile.
Gracie’s face crumples with disappointment.
Chelsea turns her attention back to me. “This isn’t a bad thing. It means she’s alive, right?”
“Or she died in another state.”
“Well . . . I could put in a call for you with the national registry office. It’ll take a bit to hear back, though.”
I was hoping she’d offer that, and that I wouldn’t have to ask. “Thanks, Chelsea. You’re the best.”
She grins, flirtier this time. “Don’t you know it. See you soon?”
“Definitely.” I trail Gracie out, keeping my forced smile on until I’m past the doors. “Don’t worry, we still have plenty of places to check. Real estate records, voter records, the DMV, the IRS . . .”
“How long will that take?”
“A while,” I admit reluctantly. Weeks. Months.
“Aren’t there any cute girls you can bat your eyelashes at to speed that up?” she mutters sourly, walking ahead of me, her hips swinging with each step.
I struggle to smother my smile. “You hungry yet? We could grab food and then, I don’t know, drive around Austin and—”
“Track down this Mantis asshole?”
A flashback of those hard, beady eyes hits me and Dina’s plea to keep Gracie safe, to not let her get herself into trouble by being her usual bullheaded self, fills my head. “How about we do the opposite and stay far away from him?”
“Fine,” she mutters reluctantly. She purses her lips. “Do you remember where my house was?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Because maybe there’s a chance my dad hid this video there and it somehow got missed.”
“Gracie, it’s been fourteen years! There’s no way—”
“It’s worth checking!” She throws her arms out to the sides. “What the hell else do we have to do anyway?”
“Well . . . I could turn the heat on in the pool and—”
“Really, Noah? Let’s take a break from figuring out who murdered my dad and go swimming?”
I heave a sigh and mutter, “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
CHAPTER 35
Commander Jackie Marshall
April 25, 2003
“Alright, Gary Bird. Time to go inside!” I holler, grasping the young dandelion by its base to give it a good yank. This time next week, our front garden will be overgrown with them again.
“It’s Larry Bird, Mom,” Noah corrects with annoyance. “And it’s Friday.”
“And too late for bouncing balls. Respect the neighbors.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He tucks his basketball under his gangly arm and trudges up the pathway. At eleven years old, he’s just inches shy of meeting me in height.
“You spendin’ the night, Jenson?”
“If that’s okay with you, ma’am.”
I give Jenson’s ginger hair a muss. “You know you’re always welcome. Go on, now.”
“Yes, ma’am,” they chirp in unison.
But Noah lags behind, a frown zagging across his forehead.
“What’s the matter?”
“Did Abe say if he was gonna stop by tonight?”
My stomach knots at the mention of Abe’s name. I haven’t talked to him since he came here looking to tear my head off. “He’s workin’ tonight.”
“Oh, okay.” He looks so crestfallen, it makes my chest ache. “He hasn’t been around much.”
“I promise you, he’s just been busy with work.”
“What’s got him so busy all of a sudden?”
“A special project,” I lie quickly. If “project” means lurking around every slum in Austin, looking for his prostitute sister-in-law. “You go on. You have a friend waitin’.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I leave a peck on his cheek. “And just because it’s Friday night don’t mean y’all can be playin’ that Nintendo ’til the sun rises.”
With a sheepish grin—because that’s exactly what those two boys will do, and then they’ll sleep half the day away—he trudges down the hall.
I suck back the last mouthful of whiskey from my glass and welcome the familiar burn. It’s too tempting to go for a refill, especially after how hard these last few weeks have been. I decide there’s no harm in one more.
I’m turning to go inside when headlights catch my attention. A car pulls into our driveway. I know it’s not Blair; he’s in Denver at a sales conference. For a split second, I hold out hope that it’s Abe, coming to tell me that he gets my side of things, that he sees what a difficult position I was put in.
That hope is dashed quickly enough, though, as Mantis steps out of the driver’s seat.
“Wonderful,” I mutter, wishing I had that refill already so I could suck it back. I need a drink to deal with this asshole. And after that latest big bust—coincidentally, at the same motel I followed Betsy to—he’s strutting around like Canning’s prize peacock. “What do you want?”
“That’s how you greet visitors?” The porch steps creak under his weight.
“When they arrive uninvited on my doorstep and their name is Dwayne . . .”
“We need to talk.”
“About that God-awful cologne you’re wearing? Seriously, it should be banned from production.”
He flashes me a cold smile. “Wilkes has been shooting his mouth off, making accusations he shouldn’t be making.”
Dread slides through my limbs, even as I steel my expression, not wanting to give my panic away. “Shooting his mouth off about what?”
Mantis drops his voice. “What he thinks he saw at the Lucky Nine bust last week.”
I let out the softest exhale of relief. This isn’t about Abe and me. “And what does he think he saw?”
“Nothing that he should be nosing around the evidence logs and then questioning me about.”
There’s only one reason I can think of for Abe to be doing either of those things—Mantis and his guys didn’t turn something over. I don’t have to ask what. This bust is the topic of the week around the department. I doubt I’m the only one who wondered why there was no money mentioned in the haul, along with the drugs and guns. With a bust like that, there’s always money.
But everyone knows that dirt-bag dealer is guilty and deserves to be behind bars, so even though people might be wondering, no one’s saying it out loud.
No one except Abe, it seems. Because he always does the right thing.
If Abe is nosing around and has said something to Mantis, then he’s likely going to bring it forward, and if he goes to Internal Affairs with this, it’ll be hard to ignore his accusations. And if it gets out in the press that Canning’s star drug hounds are pocketing drug money?
The department’s reputation will be smeared, Canning’s valiant war on drugs in this city will be tarnished, and his drug task force will be dismantled. All of their busts may come into question.
In the end, who would win besides a bunch of criminals?
Mantis knows all this as well as I do, which is why he’s on my doorstep, rattled.