“I’ve never heard him talk about buying a rental. I’ll bet my mother hasn’t, either.”
“He doesn’t want anyone to know. Hence the obscure name of the limited partnership—Cochise Partners. I’m guessing that holds no special significance for anyone.”
“Look at this.” She flipped through another document. “They’re supposed to be importing coffee from Mexico.”
“So maybe some or even all of these people don’t know the truth.”
“You’re saying he could be a con man along with everything else.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
Sophia imagined Anne prancing around her elegant house totally oblivious—and dropped her head in her hands. “My mother is going to be publicly humiliated.”
Paper crackled as Rod dug deeper into the file. “Don’t you mean brokenhearted? If this stuff means what we think it does, her husband will be carted off to jail.”
“It was embarrassing enough for her when my father lost his business and her first marriage ended in divorce. But having her second husband thrown in prison? Yikes. Anyway, I suspect her image means more to her than he does. At least, it’s always meant more to her than I have.”
Rod put a hand on her shoulder as if he understood and sympathized with how her mother made her feel. Considering what he’d been through, he probably did. But he didn’t comment on it; he was too cognizant of the ticking clock. “I’ll make a copy of this,” he said. “You put the office back together so we can get out of here. We’ve pushed our luck too far already.”
Her stepfather was so fastidious, so particular, he’d know someone had been in his office if the slightest article was out of place. She had to leave it precisely as they’d found it. But as she straightened up, she couldn’t help wondering how she’d break the news of their discovery to Anne.
What would she say?
Nothing yet, she realized. She couldn’t. Simply owning the safe house and possessing an agreement that suggested he was in the coffee business didn’t make Gary guilty of anything. She had to keep this quiet until they could stake out Dugan Drive and note what went on there. They had to get testimony from some of the illegals who paid for lodging, speak to any neighbors who’d talk and figure out the identity of the men who ran it and had beaten Rod, so they could prove Gary was breaking the law. Then Anne would have to believe her.
Or maybe not. Few criminal cases were solid enough to eradicate all question of guilt and, as long as a shred of hope remained, her mother would cling to it and insist Sophia had been out to get Gary from the start. Their relationship was about to get a lot rockier than it’d been in years….
“This sucks,” she said as she arranged the papers on Gary’s desk. “And how crazy is it that we stumbled across this safe-house business right in the middle of the UDA murders? If not for what happened to José and Benita, I would never have spoken to the man who told me about the safe house, and you would never have gone there and seen Gary’s number on the fridge.”
Rod was too busy to answer. He’d finished at the copier and was trying to see out by peering through the blinds at the only window.
“I mean, I wanted to leave with a bang, but putting my stepfather away for twenty years wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,” she said.
Rod tuned in again. “The fact that we came across this while we were investigating several murders makes me more than a little nervous.”
“What do you mean?”
“It might be too coincidental. But we’ll talk about that later. Hurry up.”
“Anything out there?” she asked as she righted a trophy Gary had received for coaching Little League. He had a dozen trophies. What a pillar of the community.
“Nothing on the side. I need to check the front but the lights have to be off for that. You ready?”
“Just a sec.” Sophia slid the file with the partnership document and the deed for the house back into the drawer. She was about to close and lock it when she spotted a small brown binder behind the separator. What was that?
It looked like an account ledger….
“I think I may have found something else.” She had to wiggle the binder back and forth to get it out, but once she’d flipped through the pages, she was glad she’d gone to the extra trouble. “Rod?”
“What?” He was still standing at the side window, gazing out at the neighboring building, the side parking lot and a section of Bordertown Boulevard.
“Get over here.”
When he didn’t move, she glanced up again and this time she noticed that he seemed to be on high alert. “What’s wrong? Is everything okay?”
“I’m not sure.” He changed his angle of vision. “What does your stepfather drive?”
“A pearl-colored Escalade. Why?”
“A vehicle matching that description has driven past here twice and seems to slow down when it goes by.”
Sophia’s heart began to pound with a renewed sense of urgency. “That’s not good,” she said. “It’s late. And he’s no night owl. Anyway, everything except the bar is closed up at this time of night. What do you think he’s doing?”
“I get the feeling he knows something’s going on in here.”
“Then why doesn’t he come and check?”
“That’s what I can’t figure out. It’s almost as if he’s waiting for someone….”
Swallowing hard, she closed the ledger book. “Maybe he’s expecting a sheriff’s deputy to show up.”
Rod remained flattened against the wall, watching. “No. He has too much to hide. He wouldn’t call the sheriff.”
“So who would he call?”
The look he shot her scared the hell out of her.
“You’re not saying you think he’s called the safe house and some thug is coming to take care of us, are you? Gary might be a smuggler and a con man but he’s not a murderer.”
“You sure about that?” Rod responded. “We’re already aware of two murders that are connected to that safe house. How do we know he’s not behind them?”
“Because a smuggler would have no reason to kill illegal immigrants. If those people don’t make it safely across the border, he doesn’t get paid.”
“Well, he has plenty of motivation to kill us. He knows what’s here, what’s at stake if we find it.”