Page 64 of Don’t Say a Word (Angelhart Investigations #2)

Chapter Forty-Eight

Margo Angelhart

Cal was not a person people said no to—even nurses, which was pretty damn impressive. My dad had been a doctor my entire life, and good nurses ran the floor. Cal sweet-talked or threatened, whatever the situation called for, to ensure that Angie had a security guard until the police detail arrived.

After Angie returned from X-Ray, I sat with her. “It’s totally broken,” she said. “Clean break, like snap . They wanted to give me drugs for the pain and I said no.”

“You know, sometimes drugs actually do what they’re supposed to and help.”

“It’s not that bad,” she said. She looked at the ceiling.

“You know, my mom got oxycodone after a slip and fall where she worked. That’s how she started smoking pot every night.

And drinking. The first thing she does when she gets home from work is pour vodka and whatever she has around.

When she’s not working, the clock strikes noon, she pours a drink.

I don’t want my life to be all about work and getting stoned every fucking day. I want to do something.”

I touched her hand. “You are doing something. Do you know how many people see what’s going on around them and just ignore it? Pretend it doesn’t exist? You see . That puts you ahead of the game.”

Cal came in. At first, his expression was angry and tired, then like a switch it was gone. “Hey, kiddo, I hear you’re getting an actual cast. Don’t forget to let me sign it. I get to be first.”

“Kiddo? I’m seventeen.”

He shrugged. “My baby sister is twenty-nine and I call her kiddo all the time. Among other things.”

He pulled the other chair up and sat next to me. “So, because you’re a minor, Officer Morales—you remember her, right?”

“Yeah,” Angie said cautiously.

“She went to your house. Talked to your mom. Long story short, she won’t be coming by for a while, but lucky me, I’m authorized to sign off on any procedures.”

“She’s wasted, isn’t she?”

He nodded. “By the time she comes down, you’ll be outta here. And if you need a place to crash—not a group home or any bullshit like that, those places suck—I know someone who can put you up for a few days.”

The unspoken words were clear. Angie had a choice.

“Oh. Thanks. I can stay with my best friend, Gina Martinelli, and her family, they’re really nice, but I don’t want to bring anything bad to them.”

“I hear you loud and clear. And I’m hoping we wrap up this entire operation in the next couple of days—with your help.

And I arranged it so you can stay here for another day or two if we need it.

Just telling you, the option is out there, and the people I’d put you with are one-hundred percent safe. ”

She sighed. “I can’t help. I didn’t see his face. They didn’t say anything, just started shooting. But they knew I was coming.”

“They spoofed or cloned your friend Benny’s phone. They might have seen the messages you sent him, so they knew you were out back. I won’t know for certain until we finish processing the dead guy.”

Angie took a deep breath, then let it out. She winced.

“So, I heard you don’t want painkillers,” Cal said. “I don’t blame you, I refused them even when I was shot.”

“You were shot?” she asked, eyes wide.

“Not today, a few years ago. Can’t show you the scar, it would be indecent,” he added with a glance in my direction, and a wink. “But pain really sucks. You can get the mildest oxycodone out there—”

“No,” she said.

“Or they have prescription strength Tylenol. I told them to bring you some. You don’t have to take it, but I strongly recommend it. It won’t numb the pain, but it’ll take the edge off and it’s not addictive.”

She nodded. “Okay,” she said.

I watched Cal. He worked the nurses, Angie, even me. He was charismatic. It was subtle, but it was undeniable. The guy who stalked me—okay tailed me—was extremely affable.

Probably charmed everyone he met. A regular Mr. Prince Charming.

I couldn’t help but wonder exactly where his scar was.

“So, that’ll take them awhile—in the meantime, I’d like to pick your brain,” Cal said.

Angie looked at me.

“You’re not in any trouble,” I told her. “Right, Cal?”

“Not at all. I mean, if you were my kid, I might lock you in your room until you turned twenty-one for sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night, but I did worse.” He grinned again, an easy smile that, this time, reached his deep blue eyes.

Cal continued. “You know something. You don’t know you know it.

Between Margo here and Officer Morales—Josie—I think I know what’s been going on.

One of the reasons my bosses love me even when I drive them crazy is because I see patterns.

I see how things fit together—or don’t—and that solves cases. ”

I thought back to how he tweaked the information on my board at the office and how everything became so much clearer when he moved a few connections around.

“And I’ve gone over everything that happened in the last few weeks. Plus, Margo came up with the one thing I missed three years ago.”

“The work permit?” I asked, thinking about Scott Jimenez.

He frowned at me. “Okay, I missed two things. The big one? Coach Bradford wasn’t the only adult involved at Sun Valley High School.

Margo thinks that Lena Clark was killed because of something she learned, because she was asking questions about Elijah Martinez and maybe she got a sense that something was wrong.

Maybe someone lied. Maybe someone looked at her the wrong way.

Maybe she asked the wrong question to the wrong person.

“I’d like you to relax, close your eyes, and go back to Monday,” Cal said to Angie in a hypnotic voice. “You went to the volleyball game and Mrs. Clark came to talk to you.”

Angie took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She was tense and trying to relax. I’m sure the pain didn’t help. “She saw me coming out of the bathroom,” Angie said. “I wasn’t supposed to be there. I’d cut school.”

“A witness said that you were arguing.”

“Yeah. I felt bad for cutting school because Mrs. Clark had always been so nice to me, but I didn’t think anyone cared about what happened to Elijah. And—it was more than that.”

“How?”

“I was mad at myself for not making Elijah tell me what was going on. I knew something was off with him. But he was so prideful, he didn’t want to ask for help. Not from me, not even from Andy who was his best friend since they were little. Like me and Gina.”

“Okay,” Cal said, “you argued. What did Mrs. Clark say?”

“I don’t remember. Really, I don’t. Except that Elijah’s mom had hired a private investigator to find out what happened that night.

How he got to the park, who he was with, that stuff.

She wanted me to sit down with her and the PI, but right then I knew I wanted to talk to her—you—” she glanced at me “—alone. I didn’t want Mrs. Clark there as a buffer where I couldn’t say what I wanted.

So I went to her office and took the card. ”

“You told the police that Mr. Borel saw you leaving the office,” Cal said. “I read the report,” he added when I glanced at him. Then he smiled again. “I told you, I see connections, but that’s only because I read fast.”

I almost laughed. He was both supremely self-confident and humble at the same time. It was almost endearing.

“Yeah, I got out of there fast.”

“Did you see anyone else?”

“No.” She paused. “Yes. Not really.”

“What do you mean by no, yes, not really?”

“I was leaving and I was going to go out the closest door because I didn’t want to talk to anyone, but I heard two people coming in, talking. One was I think Mrs. Clark. Because of her jewelry.”

I nodded, said, “Lena Clark wore a lot of necklaces.”

“Yeah, but—” Angie paused.

“What did you remember?” Cal asked.

“It wasn’t jewelry, or not just jewelry. It was a jangle of keys. But...”

“Don’t stop. Spill it. You’re safe here,” Cal repeated.

“Mrs. Webb always has keys around her wrist. She’s the vice principal. Mr. Borel didn’t give me shit when he saw me, but she would have. But I didn’t really think about it when I heard it, it was like... I don’t know, I just knew it was her but didn’t consciously think about it until now.”

“You heard her. Did you see her?”

“No.”

“Do you remember what she said?”

“I don’t...” Angie paused, squeezed her eyes shut. “Give me five minutes.”

“She was talking to someone and said, ‘Give me five minutes’?”

“Yeah.” Angie opened her eyes. “Then I heard heels coming down the hall... Oh, my God!”

I knew it almost before she said it.

“Mrs. Clark! She wears heels, they were her heels. I heard her walking down the hall toward her office as I left.”

“So Mrs. Webb, who you recognized by the keys jangling around her wrist, and maybe her voice, came into the building with Mrs. Clark, they parted ways, and Mrs. Webb said to give her five minutes.”

As if she would be meeting her in five minutes.

Which gave Lena enough time to call me before Melissa Webb came back to kill her.

After Cal called in a protection detail for Angie, we leaned against the wall outside her room as we waited for her bodyguard to arrive.

“It’s all set,” he said to me. “I’ll hang until they arrive. Shouldn’t be more than an hour.”

“You did great with Angie,” I said.

“She’s a great kid. A little too smart and sassy for her own good, but who doesn’t love a smart-ass?”

“Most parents.”

He laughed. “Well, I’m not a parent.”

We stood there in silence and it wasn’t uncomfortable. “What’s your story?” I finally asked him.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we’re waiting here for a guard for who knows how long. Why DEA?”

“Why not?”

It was a flip answer, and I didn’t believe him. “Your sister?”

“Hitch blabbed.”

I didn’t respond.

“In part,” Cal said, and that was it. For now.

“Where you from?” I asked.

“All over.” He glanced at me and raised his eyebrows. “Army brat.”

I laughed. “You looked me up, didn’t you?”

“Of course I did. Have to know who I’m tailing .”

“And you didn’t want to enlist?”

“Nope. We moved a lot, and Mom was responsible for all of us—me and my three sisters. My dad was a good dad, but he worked a lot and deployments were really hard on my mom especially.” He paused. “He died overseas.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“I was eighteen. I miss him. My mom never really recovered. Maybe because it was only a couple years after my sister died. Or maybe it was like she expected the worst their entire marriage and when the worst happened, she couldn’t deal with it.”

There was more to the story, but I didn’t push. This wasn’t the time or place.

“So, three sisters. Where do you fall?”

“Middle.”

“Middle of four?”

“I have a twin sister. She’s only two minutes older than me.”

I laughed. “Well, I am an actual middle child. I have an older brother and sister, and a younger brother and sister.”

“All the baggage we middle children have,” he teased.

“Where do we go from here?” I asked.

“Well, I was hoping I could take you for dinner sometime this week.”

My stomach did a little flip when I realized he was flirting with me. “I meant our cases. Mine, yours.”

“I knew what you meant.”

But he didn’t answer my question.

“Well?”

“You first. Dinner?”

“Really?”

“I can think of a lot of things we can do, places we can go, but we still have to eat at some point. I like eating.”

“I’ll think about it. But I don’t want to be shut out of this case.”

“I wouldn’t think of it.”

“Okay. How are we going to take down Manny Ramos and Melissa Webb and John Brighton before they hurt anyone else?”

“Well, funny you should mention that, because I have a plan.”

He told me his plan and I smiled.

I was really beginning to like this guy.