Chapter 10 #2
“But all of you could have accounted for the fact that Theo left the party, and not one of you knew where he was going or who he was going there with! Theo knew about that damn money, and he knew exactly where it was hidden, Bennett. Which makes every one of you complicit in concealing evidence from a police investigation.”
Bennett stiffened. “Are you threatening me? Do you have any idea what I do here?” he asked, gesturing around the conference room. “I’m an image consultant, Veronica. My job is to make problems disappear.”
“You’re an assistant,” Vero clapped back. “And the only way you’re getting rid of me is by telling me where Theo lives.”
Ben’s jaw hardened. “I don’t know.”
“Then where does he work?”
“I don’t know that either.”
“Quit trying to protect him!”
“I’m not trying to protect him, Veronica!
I haven’t talked to Theo in a while. He moved out of the house a few weeks after the money went missing.
” Vero didn’t look like she was buying a word of it.
“It’s true. Things got really ugly after you left.
Some of the guys in the frat lost a lot of money in those poker games.
They saw a chance to get it back after that pledge blew the whistle, and they blamed Theo when they thought you were the one who took off with the cash.
Everyone on Frat Row knew you two were screwing.
A lot of people suspected he was covering for you. ”
Vero barked out a laugh. “Covering for me? He wouldn’t even pick up the damn phone when I called him!”
Bennett’s face twisted with disgust. “Can you blame him? Someone ransacked his room looking for that money. When they couldn’t find it, they slashed his tires and smashed all the windows in his car.
He finally moved out when he started getting death threats.
Hell, most of the guys in our own house weren’t even speaking to him when he left.
He didn’t exactly broadcast his forwarding address. ”
Vero studied Bennett. He looked away. “But you know where to find him, don’t you?” she said without a hint of doubt.
“I already told you, I can’t help you, Veronica. Please take your friends and—”
Javi slung a tattooed arm over Bennett’s shoulder and whispered, “I’ve been standing here listening to your bullshit because Veronica asked me to keep my hands to myself. But I’m losing my patience, Bennett. You’re not the only person in this room who knows how to make a problem disappear.”
Bennett paled as he took a moment to reconsider his response. He shook out of Javi’s grip. “Fine. I might have heard he’s slinging drinks at a sports bar.”
“Where?” Vero demanded.
“I don’t know.”
Vero got in his face. “Think harder, Ben. I have all day.”
But Vero didn’t have all day. She’d had only an hour when we’d left her house more than forty-five minutes ago. I checked my phone for the time and nearly choked. “Vero, your curfew! We need to—”
An alarm ripped through the conference room, the piercing wail ricocheting off the walls. The light on her ankle monitor began blinking red, and we all covered our ears as a robotic voice boomed from the vicinity of Vero’s sneakers. “Curfew violation. Contact your monitoring officer immediately.”
Vero was the picture of cool as she patted Bennett on the shoulder. “See? Telling the truth wasn’t so hard, now, was it?” she asked over the shriek of the alarm.
Bennett’s face flushed as his curious colleagues began gathering in the hall. They covered their ears and stared through the glass. “If you come here again, I’ll report you to the cops,” he warned her.
“You value that sterling reputation of yours too much to do it!” Vero dared him.
Ramón and Javi grabbed her under her arms and carried her backward out of the conference room, her alarm blaring in our wake.
“Weren’t you watching the time?” Ramón shouted over Vero’s alarm as we clambered into the van.
She hiked up her pant leg and attempted to stifle it. “I was a little busy, Ramón!”
“What do we do?” I asked as I sped out of the parking lot. “It says you’re supposed to call your monitoring officer.”
“That’s a little difficult when you don’t have a phone!”
Javi leaned forward, clutching the back of my seat. “We should just keep driving. If we hurry, we can cross the bridge back to Virginia before anyone finds her.”
“We are not doing that.” There was no way I was going to be implicated for transporting a runaway felon across state lines.
Definitely not to the jurisdiction where my boyfriend and my sister were serving as cops.
“If we’re proactive and follow the monitor’s instructions, she’s less likely to get in any more trouble.
We’ll just call her monitoring service and tell them we got stuck in traffic or something.
” Traffic was synonymous with living near the Beltway.
It was a perfectly reasonable explanation for being late.
“Tell them you were on your way home from your errands, but you got stuck behind an accident.”
Vero reached for my phone.
“Not that one,” Ramón said. There was a warning in his eyes when they caught mine in the rearview mirror. He passed his own cell phone to Vero instead. He was right. If Vero’s monitoring officer knew she had violated her curfew with me, that might raise some eyebrows.
Vero tilted her head to read the phone number printed on the side of her ankle monitor. She tapped it into Ramón’s cell and put it on speaker, holding up a hand to silence us when the call connected. Considering all the noise coming from her alarm, there hardly seemed any point.
“Officer Oates? Hi, this is Veronica Ramirez,” she said, a little too cheerfully. “I’m having a small problem with my ankle monitor, as you can probably hear.”
The officer’s tone was disconcertingly serious. “The problem wouldn’t be a problem if you had been home ten minutes ago. Where are you?”
“I’m almost there. See, I was running my essential errands, but there was an accident on my way home, and we got stuck in traffic.
But we’re on our way! We should be back at my mother’s house any minute.
Do you think there’s some way you could turn off the alarm?
It’s very hard to concentrate on the road with all the—”
The alarm cut off abruptly, plunging the van into silence until all I could hear was the ringing in my ears and the rattle of my muffler.
“Who is we?” Officer Oates asked.
“I’m … not sure what you mean,” Vero stammered.
“You said we’re on our way. Who’s with you?”
Vero looked sideways at me as I furiously shook my head. “I’m … with my cousin,” she said, picking the only saint among us.
“Really? Because I could have sworn I parked right behind Ramón’s work van when I pulled into your driveway two minutes ago.”
“You did?” Vero paled.
“I did,” the officer said. “I was on my way home from work when your monitoring unit alerted me about your curfew violation, so I took a little detour to see for myself. It’s a very, very good thing you called me before I called you, Ms. Ramirez.”
Vero’s laugh was brittle. “I bet.”
“I assume Ramón can confirm your story?”
Ramón called out in a loud, clear voice from the back seat. “Yes, ma’am. Loads of traffic.”
“Whose car are you driving?”
Ramón cringed. “Actually, my … um … my girlfriend drove us in her minivan. We’re only a few minutes away.”
“I’ll be waiting,” Officer Oates said and disconnected the call.
“Seriously? Your girlfriend?” Vero threw a packet of tissues over her shoulder at Ramón.
“What was I supposed to say? Your monitoring officer isn’t going to go digging around to see if I have a girlfriend.”
“She’d have to dig back too far to find one,” Javi muttered.
“Everything will be fine,” I said over them as they argued.
“It was only a few minutes, and it was Vero’s first violation.
Once Officer Oates sees Vero is back, she’ll probably issue her a warning and go.
” We rounded the final turn to Norma’s house.
Officer Oates leaned against the door of her unmarked police car.
If it weren’t for the governmental license plate on her bumper and the badge clipped to her belt, I would have pegged her for a middle school principal.
She had the stern and jaded look of a woman who had seen it all, heard it all, and was tired of every bit of it. She was probably a mom.
I watched her eyes clock my own license plate as I eased to a stop behind her.
“Shit,” I muttered, trying not to move my lips when I said, “We’re definitely going with the girlfriend story.
” It wouldn’t help Vero at all if this woman knew who I really was.
I adjusted my wig-scarf, which I hadn’t gotten around to removing in our haste to leave Bennett’s office building.
I glanced in my rearview mirror, relieved to see Javi had already climbed over the third row and was crouched behind the bench seat, out of sight.
The rest of us got out. I locked my van and approached Officer Oates, extending my hand. “Hi, Officer. I’m Ramón’s girlfriend … Fiona.” It wasn’t entirely a lie.
Ramón put an arm around my shoulder. “Sorry we’re late. I thought Virginia’s traffic was bad. Right, babe?”
“Right,” I said through a nervous laugh.
Officer Oates looked skeptical. “What kind of essential errands were you running? I don’t see any bags.”
“Oh, you know,” I said, scrambling to come up with errands that could explain our empty hands, “the usual. We stopped at an ATM, dropped off some dry cleaning, went to the post office.”
Vero smiled. “I needed to send an important message to someone.”
“Uh-huh.” Officer Oates didn’t look convinced. “I’m going to let you off with a warning, Ms. Ramirez. But I’m going to be keeping a close eye on you. Don’t let it happen again.” Her gaze slid back to my minivan as she got into her car and drove off.
Javi waited until the officer’s taillights disappeared before opening the back door and jumping out to meet us. I pulled off my wig-scarf and raked a hand through my hair. “That was close,” I said.
“Too close,” said Javi.
“You’re not leaving this house again.” Ramón took his cousin by the back of her shirt and marched her inside.