Chapter Ten Margo Angelhart #2
she was scared that someone might think she knew more than she did, so she quit the VA. I told her that was smart, and she
left town. I didn’t think about her again until you found her in February. Then I was terrified because if you started asking
questions, it would put a target on your back.”
“How did you know I talked to her?”
“She called me.”
I was floored. “Georgia told you?”
“Yes. We had an agreement. She promised if you or anyone else asked her about Devin’s murder, that she would let me know.”
“Do you know where she is now? After she left Tucson?”
“I always have.” Mom glanced at me, then looked away, but I could read the guilt all over her face.
“What the hell?” I said.
“Margo,” Tess said, “give Mom a break.”
“A break? She and Dad have been lying to us for over three years and that has to stop. No passes. We’re over that. I get it,
Mom. You and Dad were scared. You panicked, and maybe any of us would have done the same thing if we saw the people we love
with a target on their back. But whatever was going on then is still going on, otherwise Liz Swanson would be alive. Tell me about Georgia. Maybe she knows more than she told you.”
No one said a word. Tess looked at me, her expression conveying that I had gone too far. Luisa’s face was blank, completely
unreadable, but she was staring at Mom. Nico appeared blindsided, a combination of horror and disbelief. And Jack . . . My
big brother had sided with Mom and Dad when Dad confessed, but he’d never told me I was wrong. I knew he’d never been comfortable
putting aside the investigation into what really happened to Devin Klein, but for family unity—even if it meant me distancing
myself—he had done it.
He caught my eye, nodded once. Then he said, “Mom, Margo’s right.”
Mom closed her eyes. When she opened them, they were dry.
“After Cooper made the plea agreement, the day after he surrendered to the court . . .” She paused, maybe thinking back to
that god-awful week. Dad had been given one week to get his affairs in order before starting his prison sentence. It was awful.
I was angry and Tess cried constantly and Jack was in shock and Nico looked like a lost puppy. And Mom, she never left Dad’s
side. Spine straight, expression rigid. There had been a get-together at Pop and Abuela’s house and everyone came, friends
and family, but there was nothing festive about it. And no explanation. No reason why he had done it.
“Georgia called the law firm,” Mom continued.
At the time, Mom and Aunt Rita had been partners in Arizona Legal Services, a firm that primarily offered low-cost legal assistance.
“She was scared, wanted to meet. She told me that Devin had been obsessed with a drug trial—I assumed the same one he had mentioned to Cooper. He had collected a staggering amount of data, she claimed, showing that a trial for a PTSD drug had been compromised. She never saw the raw data, and he told her that he didn’t want her involved.
He became reclusive and suspicious. When the police released the crime scene, she looked for the trial data.
His entire computer had been wiped. She knew he kept a backup at home, and when she went there, his home computer and his files were gone.
There was no sign of forced entry, no sign that anyone had been there, but someone had gone in and stolen
everything.”
“And she didn’t go to the police,” Jack said flatly.
“She was scared,” Mom repeated. “When we met, she said over the weeks before the murder that Devin was growing increasingly
paranoid. Georgia believes that Cooper was forced to confess partly as a warning to anyone who might have a piece of the puzzle
to keep quiet. But neither of us believed that Cooper had detailed information about the drug trial. Even Georgia only knew
about the existence of the trial, not the results.”
“That sounds like a conspiracy,” Jack said. “Multiple people? The ability to stalk and photograph all of us? It seems too
incredible to be true.”
“It is true,” Mom insisted. “Georgia took a job out of town. If she knew anything substantive, something she could have proven
or had evidence for, I would have told her to go to the police.”
“Would you have?” I asked bluntly. “Really?”
Mom stared at me as if I had slapped her. “I—I don’t know,” she finally said. “I was scared, because with Cooper in prison,
he would always be in danger. I couldn’t risk that someone might be able to hurt him. Cooper didn’t have any information to
turn over, to give the detectives a direction. And he felt—we both felt—that the time it took for law enforcement to find
answers based on very little evidence would have put us all in danger. We made the decision to keep what we knew to ourselves.”
I believed her, but at the same time didn’t understand willfully not seeking answers when the answers were there. Somewhere,
with enough time and people, we would have found them. Three and a half years later they were buried.
Until Liz uncovered information that got her killed.
Mom continued. “When Margo found Georgia in Tucson, she called me. I was so angry and terrified that if Margo pursued this,
they would kill her.”
“They,” Margo said flatly. “Do you even have an idea who they are?”
“At least one person at the VA, and one person high up in the drug trial. That was what Cooper and I surmised at the time.
But I didn’t look for answers because Cooper wasn’t the only one who received a threat.”
Mom rose, left the conference room, returned a minute later with a folder. She pushed it in front of me.
I opened it. It was a photo taken from outside Angelhart Investigations offices, through the thick hedges that separated our
small parking lot with a drop-off area for another business. It took me a second, but I realized when this was taken—right
before we opened the family business, three years ago, shortly after Dad went to prison. I’d learned the night before that
Mom had convinced my brothers and sisters not to investigate Devin’s murder. I was livid. We were all standing there at the
entrance and I was caught pointing a finger at Mom, my mouth open. I remember waiting all morning in the parking lot until
she arrived.
Under the photo was a typed page, two words, large font.