Page 141 of State of Grace (First Family 2)

“My client would like a deal,” the useless lawyer said.

Gonzo leaned in, waited until he was certain he had their attention and said, “No deal.”

“Oh my God,” Sam said when she met him in the hallway. “That was fucking awesome.” She gave Gonzo and Green high fives.

“I’ll talk to Tom about filing murder and murder-for-hire charges against her,” Charity said, referring to the U.S. Attorney, Tom Forrester.

“What about the gardener who did the actual deed?”

“He’s looking at murder one as well,” Charity said.

“What if we can get him to testify against her?” Gonzo asked. “She was the ringleader. He’s an undocumented immigrant with a lot to lose if anyone finds out he’s banging one of the customers on the side, and he believed the husband was knocking her and the kid around. She pressured the living hell out of him to do this for her, and we’ve got proof of that.”

“I’ll see what I can do for him, but at the very least, he’s looking at murder two—if he’s willing to testify against her.”

With Tiffany Thorn on her way to life in prison, Sam went to find Freddie, who hadn’t returned yet from Central Booking. He wasn’t there, so she went to check downstairs and ran into him coming up, looking harried.

“I’ve got to admit I was skeptical that Grace Ouellette could’ve killed Pam Tappen until I spent a little time with her, and now I’m almost positive she has murder in her.”

“What makes you say that?”

“There’s just this hard edge to her, and get this. I told her we needed access to her phone, and she gave it to me along with the code. I think that despite her tough exterior, she’s scared shitless and doesn’t realize she shouldn’t give us access to her phone without making us get a warrant first.”

“Let’s not do anything with it until we have the warrant. I don’t want to make any mistakes that will let a killer off the hook.”

“My next move was to get the warrant and have her sign the release giving us permission to review it. In the meantime, I put her in an interrogation room—with the phone—hoping she might send some texts that help our case.”

“Good idea. Let’s leave her for a bit and then see who Grace has been in touch with.”

It took an hour to get the warrant that gave them permission to open Grace’s phone to check her emails, texts and internet search history. In the meantime, Jeannie and Matt returned with a sobbing Holman Aguilar, who was willing to tell them anything they wanted to know about the plot hatched by Tiffany.

And yes, he was willing to testify against her to save his own ass from a lifetime in prison.

With Gonzo sewing up the parts and pieces of that case, Sam and Freddie turned their attention to Grace Ouellette’s phone.

“Look here,” Freddie said after scrolling through everything from around the date of Pam’s abduction. “She texted Lucas Tappen on Friday to ask if he might put her in touch with his mom because she was interested in an internship. Lucas responded that his mom was heading out of town later that day to do a show in Baltimore, but he could ask her to get in touch when she got home.”

“So she knew Pam would be leaving that day and which way she’d be going to get to Baltimore.” Sam jumped up from the conference room table where they’d been camped out. “I need to see Archie about that footage.”

“One step ahead of you.” Archie came in holding a thumb drive. “We hit pay dirt two miles from Pam’s house where she picked up a young woman by the side of the road.”

As he put the thumb drive into the conference room computer and called up the footage, Sam’s entire body buzzed the way it did when they were about to close a case.

“Wait for it,” Archie said as the camera picked up Pam’s minivan coming toward it. The next frame showed a young woman dressed all in black by the side of the road. She waved to Pam, who pulled the car over. Grace leaned into the open passenger window and then got in the car.

“Why would Pam pick her up if Grace had threatened to ‘end’ her for having an affair with her father?” Freddie asked.

“For the same reason I didn’t think to look sooner at any of the kids.” Sam felt sick for Pam. “She didn’t believe Grace was capable of following through on her threat. She saw her lover’s child by the side of the road and pulled over to check on her the way any mother would do for a friend’s kid. I bet Grace pulled a weapon on her, and Pam did what she was told, hoping it would save her life.”

The others were silent as they absorbed the impact of Pam helping Grace and how it had cost her her life.

“The threat she made to her father and Pam, the video putting her with Pam right before she was killed and the text with Lucas are enough to charge her,” Freddie said. “Do we even need to talk to her?”

“We’re going to be hard-pressed to get the dad to testify against his own kid, so we need more,” Sam said.

“While she was in interrogation earlier,” Freddie said, “she texted Lucas again to say she’d been arrested.”

“Did he reply?”