Emerald Blaze Page 11

  Munoz’s eyes told me he did.

  “I’ll start, in the interests of good faith.” I leaned back in my chair. “Ms. Duarte is a former client. She wanted to pursue a romantic relationship with Leon, and he declined. She attempted to send him several expensive gifts, which we returned, and showed some obsessive tendencies.”

  “How?” Giacone asked.

  “She sent numerous texts and made many phone calls even after being asked to stop.”

  “Have you reported this?” Giacone asked.

  “No, but we extensively documented it and consulted our attorney. I can make these records available to you upon request. The last contact Leon had with Ms. Duarte took place yesterday at 5:42 p.m. Ms. Duarte called his phone and indicated that she feared there was an intruder in her home. My cousin advised her to call the police and dialed 911 on her behalf.”

  “That part we agree on,” Munoz said. “Where was your cousin when he received the text?”

  Nice try. “It was a call, not a text. He was on the 17th floor of MII.”

  Munoz’s face told me nothing. “Why was he at MII?”

  “It was a professional matter not relevant to this investigation. Besides Leon, the meeting involved me, Cornelius Harrison, Augustine Montgomery, and his assistant, Lina Duplichan. All of them can confirm his presence. MII will be able to provide the exact time he left the building.”

  “Where did he go after he left MII?” Giacone asked.

  “He accompanied Cornelius Harrison to deliver a small tamarin monkey we’d recovered to a child from whom she’d been stolen. Her family and Mr. Harrison will verify this for you. Then he drove home.” I tapped my tablet and placed it in front of them. “Here’s last night’s security footage.”

  On the screen, Leon parked in front of the booth, exited his Shelby, walked up to the window, and placed his hand against the holes drilled in the bulletproof glass. A moment passed. Leon returned to his car. The barricade turned, lowering into the ground, and he drove to his parking space. We watched him enter the building. The time stamp on the video said 6:33 p.m.

  “He hasn’t left the property since he arrived last night,” Patricia said. “I have hours of boring footage if you would like to go through it.”

  Munoz took out a tablet and placed it in front of me. He tapped the screen. A recording of an apartment building popped up, a tall Art Deco rectangle bristling with balconies. Probably the feed from a security camera mounted across the street.

  “Where is this?” I asked Munoz.

  “Ivy River Oaks apartments.”

  Audrey’s residence, an upscale apartment complex.

  On the screen, “Leon” walked into the building. The time stamp said 6:27 p.m.

  At 6:39 p.m. “Leon” exited the building and walked away. He moved like Leon, he wore the same clothes, but he was not my cousin, because Leon was here, in this building, when it happened.

  “Is she dead?” I asked.

  “She is,” Munoz answered.

  My pulse spiked and for a second I worried they might hear it.

  First, they tried to provoke Arabella into exposing her magic. When that failed, they went after Leon. They tried to lure him to her place with the phone call, and when he didn’t show up, they framed him for Audrey’s murder. This went beyond a simple attack. It was subtle and elegant. These people weren’t just another House starting a feud. This was executed with a professional smoothness that spoke of experience.

  Arkan’s people wanted me out of the way. If they killed me, Linus would go in guns blazing, but they didn’t need to kill me. They just needed to distract me long enough to accomplish their goals. Going after my family was the surest way to incapacitate me.

  This incident was just the opening salvo. Since the frame-up would fail, there would be more, probably nastier and harder to get out of, and we needed Munoz and the Houston PD on our side while we fought them off. I had to obtain Munoz’s trust at any cost. My trump card sat in the chair next to him, and if I played it, there would be a price to pay. I shouldn’t have asked Nevada to sit in on this conversation. Shit.

  Munoz slid his finger across the tablet. On it appeared the crumpled body of a girl curled in the fetal position halfway on a white shag carpet, her knees drawn all the way to her chest. Blood pooled around her head, staining the wood floor. Her long blond hair fanned all around her, covering her face like a funeral shroud. A dark red hole gaped in her skull, just above the ear.

  The breath lodged in my throat and stayed there, like a rock. They killed her just to get to us. She was collateral damage. A life cut short for nothing.

  “Here’s what I have,” Munoz said, his voice hard. “A nineteen-year-old girl has a crush on an older guy.”

  “Leon is twenty, Sergeant.”

  “She calls him, she sends him gifts, she keeps bothering him. Maybe she has something on him. Maybe she told him she’s pregnant. He wants her to go away. So, he either hires someone, or his friend, an illusion mage, does him a favor. He assumes his form and drives his car back to his house. Meanwhile, your cousin goes over to Ms. Duarte’s residence. Maybe they have an argument, maybe it becomes an altercation. Maybe he goes over there with the idea that things may turn violent and that’s why he takes the time to build his alibi. He kills her, gets a ride home, and his buddy slips out of your house.”

  Nevada laughed. It sounded cold, bitter, and frightening.

  The two cops looked at her.

  “She is laughing because you think that Augustine Montgomery or any of his employees would incriminate themselves for our sake.” I shook my head. “We are talking about the same Augustine Montgomery, aren’t we?”

  Munoz didn’t even blink. “Who knows? Perhaps he owed you a favor.”

  “Prime Montgomery and House Baylor have a complicated, often adversarial, relationship,” I said. “Oddly enough, he did once come here as one of us.”

  “Who?” Giacone asked.

  “Me,” I said. “He made it past all of our defenses.”

  “Before my time,” Patricia said.

  “Which is why we have taken certain measures to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

  Patricia fiddled with a tablet and put it in front of the cops again. This was turning out to be the ballad of dueling tablets.

  A brightly lit interior of the security booth appeared on the screen. Two guards manned the console. A large German shepherd lay on a pillow by their feet.

  “This is Cassius. This is what happens when one of us approaches the booth,” I said.

  On the screen the dog rose and sniffed the holes in the glass. A separate feed in the corner of the screen showed Leon outside of the booth.

  “Note the time stamp,” Patricia said.

  6:33 p.m., yesterday.

  Patricia fiddled with the tablet again and returned it to the table. “This is what happens when an illusion mage attempts to gain entry while impersonating a member of House Baylor.”

  On the screen Grandma Frida walked up to the booth. Had I not known that this was a hired mage, I would have sworn that it was my grandmother. She walked with the same bounce in her step. Her clothes were right, her smile was right. Even the engine oil stains on her coveralls were right.

  She approached the booth. She was five feet away when Cassius snarled, baring his teeth, and exploded into barks.

  “As you’re well aware, an illusion mage can change their appearance but not their biochemistry. We have four canine sentries,” Patricia said. “They work six-hour shifts. We test them every month. They have never given a false positive.”

  “I don’t know who that is on your recording,” I said. “But it’s not my cousin. Leon would never kill Audrey. Nor would he have a relationship with her or lead her on. He is a Baylor.”

  “Are you implying that he’s too good for her?” Munoz asked, a faint warning in his tone.

  “I’m implying that, as a member of an emerging House, Leon understands discipline and obligation to his fa
mily. He works fifty hours a week on average. Sometimes, especially in the beginning of a new case, he works more. He still resides with the rest of us here, he logs his every move, and he doesn’t sleep with clients. That would be against our policy. He doesn’t have the time, opportunity, or the energy to commit to a relationship, all of which he explained to Audrey. You can listen to the recording if you wish.”

  “And he just happened to record this conversation?” Munoz asked.

  “No, but she did. You can view it on her YouTube and Instagram, video #468. Titled ‘Should I give him a chance?’ She recorded the phone call and inserted chunks of it into her video with her commentary while doing her makeup. This was over a month ago.”

  Munoz looked like he wanted to say something. I would drag him over to our side. Whatever it took. Very well. Might as well kill two birds with one stone.

  I turned to Giacone. This would have to be done just right. I looked at him as if he were a dog. A loyal, but stupid, dog.

  “How is Amanda, Henry?”

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Nevada frown.

  Giacone pulled himself ramrod straight. “She’s well, thank you.”

  “I understand she’s made quite a lot of progress with her violin.”

  Giacone offered me a shy smile. “Yes. She has a recital later this month.”

  “Are you considering the Mayflower Academy?” The Mayflower Academy was a high school for gifted students, private, exclusive, hellishly difficult to get into and far out of a typical police sergeant’s range.

  “We thought about it,” Giacone said.

  Of course you did. “My grandmother believes your daughter would be a good fit.”

  Giacone turned slightly whiter. “Thank you.”

  “Give us a few minutes, Henry.”

  “Yes, Ms. Tremaine.”

  He rose, walked out of the room, and shut the door. Next to me on Patricia’s tablet, Britney Hays, one of our security people showed Giacone to a room across the hall and followed him in there.

  If Munoz could be any more inscrutable, he’d turn to stone, but I knew he’d caught that “Tremaine.” Henry had slipped. And that’s after he hit his own professional impartiality over the head with a shovel and buried it in his backyard.

  I dropped the mask and looked Munoz in the eye. “Detective Giacone is my grandmother’s creature. He’s been bought and paid for. This is a show of trust on my part. I’m giving you a chance to transfer a mole out of your department.”

  Munoz leaned back, the nonchalant expression gone. “As long as Giacone is my partner, he’ll be keeping tabs on you and reporting to her. You want Victoria Tremaine out of your hair and you’re using my hands to do it.”

  “She’ll know it’s me.” And she won’t like it.

  Munoz fixed me with a heavy stare. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can manipulate me, Ms. Baylor.”

  Everyone had a pressure point. I knew Munoz’s, but that was the difference between me and Grandma Victoria. I would never use it.

  “You don’t believe Leon did it either. If you did, you would have gone about this meeting in an entirely different way.”

  “What I believe isn’t as important as what the evidence tells me.”

  “Sabrian Turner will shred that recording in court and you know it,” Nevada said.

  “Sergeant Munoz, in the last forty-eight hours we’ve been attacked three times. We are in someone’s crosshairs. I don’t know who is behind this series of unfortunate events, but I’ll find out. I have no reason to manipulate you. I just want you to be aware of what’s happening, and I don’t want Houston PD to jump to conclusions, because I expect more trouble. A lot more. I’m asking you to trust me and offering evidence that I’m trustworthy.”

  I had served him Giacone on a silver platter. Munoz was too smart not to recognize it as an overture to the alliance. I gave him the mole. In turn, when the next piece of weird evidence involving us crossed his desk, he would view it more carefully.

  “Consider me aware.”

  “I’m not asking for special treatment. Just a little patience.”

  He shook his head. “You’re playing a dangerous game.”

  “I have to protect my family, Sergeant.”

  He nodded, stood up, and left.

  I waited until the camera feed on my laptop assured me that the two officers exited the building under Patricia’s watchful eye and then tapped my keyboard. An image of Bern nestled in the computer room expanded on the screen. Arabella was behind him and Grandma Frida sat on his left, while Mom was on his right. They woke her up. Figured.

  Patricia came back and sat in the chair across from me.

  “We are being targeted because of Linus’ case I’m working on. Originally I thought I was the primary target, but it doesn’t seem to be the case.”

  I told them as much about Arkan as I could without betraying Linus’ confidence.

  “Whoever Arkan sent is smart and knows way too much about us. As of this moment, we’re going to proceed as if we are in a feud. Bern, please check our networks, the servers, the cameras, everything. Arabella, please review our financials. Liquidate anything that can potentially result in a crippling loss if someone starts manipulating the market.”

  “That would be about thirty percent of our portfolio,” she warned. “We’ll take a hit.”

  “Do it,” I said. “We don’t want to be financially vulnerable.”

  She nodded.

  Grandma Frida threw her hands up. “I’ll dust off Romeo.”

  “Thank you, Grandma.”

  Grandma Frida subscribed to the philosophy that most problems could be solved by applying a tank to them. I had a terrible feeling that this mess wouldn’t be that simple to fix.

  I closed the laptop.

  “How did you know about Giacone?” Nevada asked.

  Crap. There was no escape. “Victoria told me.”

  My evil grandmother had expected me to use Giacone as an asset.

  My sister stood up, walked over, and stared at me from across the table. “You visit her?”

  “Every other Thursday.” At the start of our relationship, I visited her every other day for a month, but Nevada didn’t need to know that.

  “Catalina!”

  I looked up at her. “Yes?”

  “That woman is evil. Do you have any idea how dangerous she is?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have to stop talking to her. She’s—”

  Nevada’s phone went off. She glanced at it. “Damn it. I have to take this. Don’t go anywhere.” She walked out and ducked into the nearest office across the hall.

  “Time to earn my pay,” Patricia said.

  “We know they have at least one illusion mage with them.”

  “We’ll sniff test everyone.”

  “I’ll let you know as soon as I have more information.”

  Patricia nodded. “Do you want to talk to the Lone Gunman or should I?”

  I got up. “I’ll talk to Leon.”

  “What do you want me to do about Prime Sagredo?” Patricia asked.

  “I don’t follow.”

  She pushed her tablet toward me. A silver Spider waited a few yards away from the security booth.

  “How long has he been here?”

  “Since 7:00 a.m.”

  And nobody told me. Considering that nobody shot him, my family showed remarkable restraint.

  “We don’t need to do anything about him. He’s guarding me.”

  “Where do the two of you stand?” Patricia asked.

  “I’ll tell you as soon as I figure it out.”

  I climbed the stairs to the second floor. Leon sat in his office chair. A huge coffee mug with a drawing of an action figure and the slogan “If you’re not shooting, you should be communicating your intention to shoot” waited on his desk.

  Leon’s shoulders were rigid, his spine tense. He already knew.

  Bern was smart. He vacuumed up data, and hi
s powerful brain sorted it into logical chains. He had excelled at almost every subject in school, because once he learned something, he remembered it forever. Leon had failed most of his classes and limped to graduation with a C average, but he was sharp. When the occasion called for it, he made lightning-fast deductions. If his brother’s mind was a lighthouse beam, Leon’s was a strobe light, firing off unpredictable flashes of blinding brilliance.

  “Audrey is dead,” I said.

  “I figured that out. How?”

  “A single shot to the temple, very quick. They have security footage of someone who looks exactly like you walking in and out of the building.”

  “Looks like me or is me?”

  “Is you. A high-ranking illusion mage. The clothes were right, the posture was right, and they even sauntered like you.”

  “I don’t saunter.”

  He said it on autopilot, his voice without any emotion. Oh, Leon.

  “They killed her just because of me.”

  “No. They killed her because of me.”

  He jerked to look at me. His voice was harsh. “Tell me.”

  I told him about Arkan. “He’s targeting us to divert attention from Felix Morton’s murder. Nothing you did had anything to do with it.”

  Leon looked at me. His eyes were red. “I should have gone over when she called me.”

  “Then she would have died half an hour sooner.”

  “Or I would have saved her. She called me for help, and I didn’t come.”

  “This was a trap,” I said. “They tried to lure you there. They waited to see if you would show up, and when you didn’t, they went with plan B. It was a pretty good plan B but flawed. They didn’t account for our dogs.”

  “I should have gone, Catalina. She must have been terrified. I could tell she was scared on the phone, but I thought she was acting. I ignored her and they killed her just to set me up. If it wasn’t for me, she would still be alive.”

  But she was dead, and every time I thought about it, my heart jerked in my chest. There would be time to process it later. Right now, Leon needed reassurance.

  “You didn’t ignore her. You talked to her. You called the police. You told her to dial 911.”