Chapter Eight
Colby Agency Safe House
Owen had gotten up early for a conference call with Victoria and agency attorney Alfred Mannington.
One of the agency’s top criminal attorneys, Darren Brocato, had sat in on the call and provided the best advice for Owen going forward.
If Lambert chose to move toward an arrest or even suggested as much at this time, Brocato would act as Leah’s representative if she accepted the offer.
Once the call ended and Owen heard Leah moving about upstairs, he started breakfast.
The toast popped up and Owen added it to the plates he’d prepared.
Scrambled eggs, fresh fruit and toast. He was no master chef, but he made a mean scrambled egg.
The secret was adding a little milk when whisking.
He would let Leah be her own judge. It was doubtful that she would complain, even if she didn’t like his efforts.
She was too kind. He still found it difficult to conceive that she’d been involved with someone like Chris Painter as a senior in high school.
He’d done his research on the guy. Painter and his crew had been serious trouble.
Not to mention the thirty-year-old man, now forty, had been way too old to be dating a high schooler.
Maybe not by legal standards, but in Owen’s opinion.
Just then, Leah walked into the kitchen. “Coffee smells great.” She mustered up a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Good morning.”
Assuredly, the effort wasn’t one of her real smiles.
He’d gotten a glimpse of the real thing a few times.
Her whole face came to life with one of her genuine efforts.
This one was nervous and for his benefit only.
Not to mention her voice was a little over-bright.
She was trying but couldn’t quite pull off the I’m okay mask.
She had every right to be nervous. The situation for her grew more complicated each day, as well as admittedly more disturbing.
“Good morning.” He gestured to the plates he’d finished preparing.
“This is my limited breakfast endeavor.” He chuckled.
“Hopefully, it’s edible. If you like butter or jam on your toast, there’s a nice variety available.
” The staff who maintained the safe houses were particularly good at stocking kitchens when guests were expected.
Her smile widened a bit, the expression prompting a little extra light in her eyes this time. “Looks great. Thank you for going to so much trouble.”
They ate for a while without talking. He had spent a good deal of time last night considering how the setup mounting around her appeared to be a bit of an overkill.
The end game seemed fairly clear at this point, and still the hits kept coming.
This newest element—the resurrection of Chris Painter—really was over-the-top.
Last night they hadn’t talked a lot about that news or even the more painful reality that Raymond Douglas’s body had been discovered.
Leah had called it a night quite early. Owen understood she’d needed time alone to think.
She managed a few bites of eggs and half a piece of toast before diving into the questions he’d fully expected this morning. Her gaze fixed on Owen’s. “Where did they find him? Raymond, I mean.”
“They weren’t liberal with the details,” he clarified. “But it was near the lake house. In a car registered to him.”
She nodded slowly. “No sign of Isla?”
“There was no mention of her.” He understood the question she really wanted to ask but dreaded the answer even more than the previous two.
She sipped her coffee, then cleared her throat. “How…” Deep breath. “How did he die?”
This was where things got even stranger and considerably more murky. “He was shot, once, in the chest.”
Another slow nod. “I guess that’s where all the blood in the lake house came from.”
The answer was not as cut and dry as that, and he only knew the few details at his disposal because the agency had friends in the medical examiner’s office. Certainly Lambert had not shared the gritty details as of yet. The detective was far too convinced Leah was his best potential suspect.
“There’s some question about that, actually,” he explained, pushing his plate aside as well. He didn’t look forward to relaying the rest to her. She was already hurt at the prospect of how she’d been fooled.
Her gaze searched his. “What do you mean?”
“The amount of blood found in the lake house was enough to suggest he died there,” he explained, “but what the medical examiner found when examining the body was that the injury sustained with the gunshot would likely have caused far more internal bleeding versus external. The large amount found— outside his body, obviously—at the lake house is not consistent with his injury.”
“Then the blood wasn’t his?” Doubt and uncertainty clouded her expression.
“Testing confirmed the blood was his. The consensus we—meaning my colleagues from the agency and I—reached was that the blood was taken as if he’d given blood, like a donor, and then it was used to establish the appearance that he had died in that bedroom.”
“Like the book Gone Girl,” she suggested.
“Exactly like that, yes,” he agreed. “But he was killed somewhere else by that single shot. What will help clear you of involvement is to know the actual time of death.”
Sharing the other details wasn’t exactly breakfast conversation, but she needed to hear the rest.
“The ME determined that the body was in the vehicle for some time before it was found. With temperatures in the high eighties, the heat inside the car sped up the decomp process and created some difficulty in determining a precise time of death, but the ME assigned to the case is very good. He’ll pinpoint it as closely as possible.
Obviously, the timing will not fit with you being the one who killed him, since many witnesses—employees of the Chop House—saw him, alive and well, around midnight on Saturday. ”
She considered all he’d said for a few beats, then asked, “Was there a head injury?” She touched her temple. “That’s where the blood I saw was coming from when he was being dragged on that kitchen floor.”
“No head injury. I specifically asked that question in the conference call with Victoria. Not even a scratch.”
Leah digested this detail for a time. “So the blood I saw may have been planted to make me believe he was injured.”
“Quite possibly.”
Something changed in her demeanor. Her shoulders straightened; her lips set in a firm line. She was angry. Understandably so.
“Then it’s true.” Her words were edged with ice. “Raymond was part of whatever this scheme is to set me up. Most likely Isla, too, since the lake house belongs to her and her mother.”
“There is good reason to believe as much, yes.” Sugarcoating the situation or trying to lessen the blow at this point would be ridiculous. Her longtime friend was no doubt involved. He supposed it was still possible that she was a victim as well, but the idea seemed increasingly unlikely.
“I contacted her brother this morning.”
Leah stared at him expectantly.
“He hasn’t heard from her in years. Or their mother. There was a falling-out about six years ago. He was quite put out that I would even call him, and he wanted me to ‘lose’ his number.”
“Wow. She mentioned they didn’t keep in touch.
But she never said a word about a falling-out at that level.
Good grief, all she did was lie to me.” Leah poked at the scrambled eggs with her fork.
Took a bite and chewed far longer than necessary.
“Is there any suggestion that some aspect of this is related to Chris?” She shook her head.
“I mean, I don’t see how that’s possible.
What happened with Chris was a long time ago—before I moved to Chicago or even knew Isla and Raymond. ”
“I can’t answer that question,” Owen admitted. “We don’t have enough information to hazard a guess. We will, in time, find those answers for you.”
“I can’t keep waiting for answers.” She moistened her lips.
“I need to see him.” She nodded as if only now, after saying the words, attempting to convince herself of the strategy.
“I have a right to know why he left me to deal with all the fallout nine plus years ago. If we wait, some of the thugs he wronged will come after him, and then I may never know the truth.”
Although Owen understood her reasoning, he couldn’t help wondering if she wanted to see Painter because she still had feelings for the man.
He had been her first love… Maybe on some level she was still in love with him.
But then, that was none of his business unless it somehow affected the investigation.
He understood this, but accepting it was a different story…
for reasons completely unreasonable and inappropriate.
Other investigators had told him about developing feelings for clients—some even married those clients—but Owen had not encountered that issue… until now.
Clearing his head of the thoughts, he opted to chalk her question up to mere curiosity whether it was precisely true.
He liked Leah. More than he should, really.
He’d felt a subtle attraction to her the moment they met.
But being attracted to his client was not smart under the circumstances—never was, actually.
Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to set her up, and he needed to find the reason and determine all the players involved.
Hopefully to stop that person or persons and to see that Leah was not falsely accused or harmed.