A Fortune Wedding Read online

  He shook his head. How the hell had he wound up back in Red Rock? Eighteen years before, he’d started walking away and just kept going. Time was, he’d figured it would take an act of God or a funeral to get him home. In the end, it had only taken one phone call, a call he’d been powerless to ignore. His family needed him, it had been that simple. And he, who had resisted all ties for so long, started the long drive back.

  He’d figured it would be quick and over; he’d hit town planning on it. He’d figure out who was threatening his family and put an end to it. He’d never expected to be sucked into the middle of someone else’s mess.

  Or that he’d be powerless to walk away.

  At the sound of an engine, Roberto turned to see a dark blue sedan pull off the highway and crunch down the gravel road to park beside his truck. The doors opened and two men got out. He didn’t move, just watched as they adjusted their jackets and walked over to him, taking their time. They came to a stop before him.

  “I guess you’d be Roberto Mendoza,” said the older of the two. He was heavyset with thinning, brownish hair, but the man who made the mistake of thinking he was soft was the one who’d wind up on the losing end of the fight.

  Roberto nodded. “And you’d be…?”

  He flipped out his badge in a practiced motion. “Lieutenant Len Wheeler, Red Rock PD. This here’s Investigator Bobby McCaskill. How about you show us some ID?”

  Roberto’s brow rose as he brought out his wallet. “You always card citizens offering information?”

  Wheeler glanced up from the driver’s license. “The job’s about paying attention to details,” he said mildly, and handed Roberto’s license back. “Now, how about you tell us why we’re here?”

  “There’s something I think you need to see.”

  Wheeler’s washed-out blue eyes studied him. “I checked the files. The units on the scene interviewed you the night of Fredericks’ murder. Said you reported an unspecified person dressed in a black hoodie walking away from the scene.”

  “Black and red. Maybe.”

  “Whatever this thing is, why didn’t you tell the on-site officers then, when the scene was fresh?”

  “It wasn’t until I was running it over in my mind later that I realized there was something else that might have mattered.”

  “And you couldn’t just call it into the hotline?” McCaskill asked sourly.

  Roberto shot him a glance. “I left a message on the hotline a week and a half ago.” A week and a half. A week and a half that Frannie had been sitting in the county jail for Lloyd Fredericks’ murder when he knew damned well she was innocent.

  And no matter how little he thought of the faithless woman she’d proven to be, he couldn’t leave the golden, laughing girl from the hilltop to that. “You didn’t do anything about the tip. I figured I needed to take things into my own hands,” he said aloud. Clear his conscience and be done with it.

  Wheeler shook his head. “We got ourselves a good two hundred pages of notes from that fool hotline. Something about the murder of a guy like Fredericks brings out all the bedbugs.”

  Like you, was the unspoken subtext. Roberto’s jaw tightened. “Do you want to solve this case?”

  “Already have.” Wheeler smiled. “We got us a guy calls every day swearing Ronald Reagan appeared in his bedroom to tell him Dr. Phil did it. Another one who says it was all a plot by the arugula-eating elitists.” Abruptly, the smile vanished. “You live in Denver. Long way from Red Rock. You mind telling us what you were doing in town and all the way down here that night?”

  It shouldn’t have taken him by surprise. It did. “I was at the Spring Fling.”

  “Spring Fling was going on a good twenty, thirty yards away from here.” Wheeler glanced around. “This area would have been back away from the booths, out in the dark. So maybe you want to explain just how it was you happened to be around to see your mysterious person. And there was a whole line of outhouses over by the dance, and in the opinion of our officers you were stone-cold sober when they talked to you, so if I was you, I’d think twice about wasting our time with any stories about needing a bathroom.” And that quickly, the affable exterior fell away to show the cop beneath.

  Whether or not to tell the truth was an easy decision. Figuring out how much to tell was harder. “I came back from Denver for family reasons.”

  “That’s right, someone burned up your dad’s restaurant.” That was McCaskill, reaching down to pluck a ticket stub off the ground. “I guess they didn’t like their combination platter.”

  It was a clumsy attempt to provoke a reaction. Roberto wasn’t about to rise to it. “You’ve been doing your homework.”

  “Yep, we’ve done a lot of studying.” Wheeler squinted at the trees. “Funny thing, the Fortunes have been having their share of fire trouble, too. What was that note Lily Fortune got? ‘This one wasn’t an accident, either’? You know anything about that?”

  “Why would you think I would?” Or about the other cryptic notes—One of the Fortunes is not who you think.

  “Oh, maybe on account of you worked at the ranch about twenty years back.”

  Roberto shot him a look. “You investigating the murder of Lloyd Fredericks or you investigating me?”

  “Lloyd Fredericks. Although you’re becoming an interesting sideline. So what were you doing creeping around back here, Mendoza?”

  Funny how sometimes your entire life could hinge on chance. He hadn’t planned to attend the Spring Fling, wouldn’t have.

  Except for the message.

  “I got a call to meet someone. They said they had some information for me.”

  “What was it?”

  Roberto shrugged. “I never saw them.” The caller hadn’t bothered to show up. Instead, Lloyd Fredericks had.

  McCaskill flipped the ticket stub away. “No mystery caller, just you standing here when Lloyd Fredericks got his head staved in twenty yards away. Oh, and your imaginary hooded avenger running away—”

  “Walking.”

  “Yeah, sure, walking away. Except no one else around here saw them. You really expect us to buy that?”

  “Take it easy, Bobby,” Wheeler said. “Who was it you were supposed to meet?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Man? Woman?”

  “I don’t know,” Roberto repeated. “It was a cell phone message, a bad connection with a lot of noise in the background. Look,” he snapped, patience finally evaporating. “I came here to show you something that could be important to your investigation, not get grilled. You got any more questions to ask, I want a lawyer.”

  Wheeler looked mild again. “No need to lawyer up, we’re just talking here. Why don’t you show us whatever it is that’s got you so excited?”

  “Over there.” Roberto pointed over at the line of bushes at the field’s edge. “I told your officers about the guy hurrying off a couple of minutes before the screaming started. I wasn’t watching all that close, just figured he was swinging his arms, but the way he was swinging them was funny. I got to thinking maybe he tossed something away. That’s why I called the hotline. I figured you’d check it out, but you all seemed a lot more interested in railroading Frannie Fredericks.”

  Wheeler looked interested. “You got some kind of acquaintance with Miz Fredericks? Or the deceased?”

  Roberto cursed himself silently. “I told you, no more questions without a lawyer. And if you don’t look in that honey mesquite over there in the next two minutes, I’m going to fish the damned thing out and haul it to the lab myself.”

  “Now you just take it easy, Mr. Mendoza.” Even as Wheeler said the words, McCaskill crossed to where Roberto pointed.

  Roberto could tell the minute he saw it, see the sudden attention in the line of his body. “Hey, Len, you might want to come on over here.”

  Wheeler had been on the job too long to show obvious interest in anything, but he moved with purpose to stare at what Roberto had found.

  It had been to
ssed back into the center of a thicket of branches, a thick metal bar maybe the length of a man’s forearm, but far more deadly. And Roberto knew what they’d see if they looked closer—the dark residue, the clots of matter. And hair.

  “Bobby, get the forensics team out here,” Wheeler said without looking up.

  “Already got ’em on the line.” He spoke into the phone as Wheeler bent back the twigs under the end of the bar with a pen.

  “When did you find this, Mr. Mendoza?”

  “This morning, after I got sick and tired of waiting for one of you people to call me back or at least get your asses out here.”

  “And you haven’t touched it?”

  The mildness was gone, the gaze flat and assessing.

  “I think I want that lawyer, now,” Roberto said.

  “We’ll set you up with your phone call as soon as we get back to the station,” Wheeler said as he and McCaskill fell in on either side of Roberto.

  He felt a thread of disquiet. “Are you arresting me?”

  “Just taking you in for some questions. Because I’ve got a lot more of them for you. Starting with why we found pictures of someone who looks a whole lot like you on Lloyd Fredericks’ cell phone.”

  Wrought-iron chandeliers cast golden light over the tiled floor. Antique serapes hung on pale ocher walls next to antique maps of Texas. In three or four hours, the main room of Red would be filled with diners, noise and the savory scents of the restaurant’s Tex-Mex specialties. At this hour, though, it was still peaceful and empty.

  Sort of. “It’s a good thing you own a restaurant, otherwise the rehearsal dinner would break you,” Jane Gilliam commented, glancing around the polished wood table at the people who had become a kind of second family to her in a matter of months.

  And at the man who’d come to mean everything.

  Jorge Mendoza had the knife-edged cheekbones and the rogue’s grin of a heartbreaker, but when he looked at her, there was something more, something deep and true for her alone. Impossible to think that mere months before she’d barely been aware of his existence. Now, he was her first thought upon rising and her last before going to sleep.

  And soon, he would be her husband.

  Catching her gaze, he leaned over to kiss her thoroughly.

  For a moment, Jane just sank into it before realizing the impropriety. “Hey,” she said. “There are people here.”

  “They’re not people, they’re family,” he corrected, giving her another kiss for good measure. “Besides, they’re used to it.”

  “He’s right, you know,” José Mendoza said, planting a kiss on his wife, Maria.

  “Pay attention, you.” Maria pushed him away, round cheeks tinting.

  He stroked his graying mustache. “I am paying attention.”

  “We have a rehearsal dinner to plan,” she scolded. “We barely have two months until the wedding.”

  “It’s all right, I know the owner,” said José.

  “Who is going to be very embarrassed if his son’s rehearsal dinner is a failure,” she responded starchily.

  “Women,” José said to Jorge, shaking his head.

  “They never have their priorities straight,” Jorge agreed.

  “Listen to Mama,” admonished his sister Christina. “We have to get your dinner planned.”

  “And the wedding planned and the honeymoon planned. Plan, plan plan. Life doesn’t always have to be serious,” Jorge reminded her.

  “Trust me, I know.” Her mouth curved as she watched a girl run past, followed by a giggling boy of about four. “That’s why you plan, so you can afford to not be serious. Bowie, stop barging around after Elsa or you’ll break something,” she ordered.

  “Like your head,” added Sierra, Jorge’s youngest sister, as she tied up her waist-length, curly brown hair. “Come on, Jorge, let’s get the planning done so we can go out into the courtyard and have some dinner.”

  “You’ve gotten bossier since you’ve become a mother,” he observed, watching her pull her daughter onto her lap.

  “I was always bossy,” she countered. “Anyway, think of Jane.”

  “Oh, trust me, I do,” he assured her. “In fact I—” A snatch of electronic music played and he pulled out his cell phone, glancing at the display before opening it up. “About time you called. Everybody’s here, you’re the only one missing. Now get your lazy—what?” He stopped. “You’re where?” The grin disappeared in an instant, replaced by shock and then a taut anxiety. “Whoa. Wait a minute, hold on. Run through it from the beginning.” Jorge listened, then cursed. “They’re out of their minds. How can they—all right, all right. Don’t worry about it, I’ll take care of it. Give me fifteen minutes, thirty tops.” He ended the call and lowered the phone slowly to the table.

  “What? What is it?” Jane asked.

  Jorge stared into space for a moment, then stirred. “That was Roberto.”

  “Where is he?” Worry infused Maria’s voice. “He’s more than an hour late.”

  “He’s at the police department.” Jorge looked at them all helplessly. “They’re holding him for questioning in the murder of Lloyd Fredericks.”

  Chapter Two

  “Cordell Fredericks conducted the reading of the will last week, but the bulk of Lloyd’s property is held in your living trust. That means it’s all yours.” Royce Gahan glanced up from the papers on his polished mahogany desk to Frannie, sitting across from him.

  It was all faintly unreal, going from orange jumpsuits at the county jail to a plush leather client chair at the office of their lawyer. Her lawyer, now. One minute she’d been in a cell, the next she’d been released on her own recognizance.

  At least until the police changed their minds.

  “Was there anything in the will I should know about?”

  “I don’t think so. Just the disposal of some Fredericks family heirlooms. There’s a copy of the document in the folder I’ve given you. It’s…unfortunate you couldn’t be there.”

  Frannie didn’t think so. She was happy to have missed it. Even without the suspicion cast on her, the reading would have been unpleasant. Jillian Fredericks had never made any secret of the fact that she thought Frannie had trapped Lloyd. Never mind that Frannie’s trust fund had largely supported them, that he was just as much at fault as she for the unplanned pregnancy.

  Or more.

  When Frannie had turned up pregnant after leaving Texas, Cindy had dragged her back to Red Rock to face Lloyd. It had taken a DNA test to convince the Fredericks family. By that time, Frannie had been so emotionally shell-shocked that she’d been in no shape to decide anything. Lloyd will take care of you, Cindy had told her, and she’d obeyed.

  Why he’d married her, Frannie couldn’t say. Not for his son; he’d scarcely been any kinder to Josh than to her. And yet he’d refused to divorce her. He’d liked having a beautiful wife, the same way he’d liked having a luxury automobile. In a way, his affairs had been a relief, better than those cold couplings in the dark when, despising herself, she’d pretended to enjoy it in the hope it would be over more quickly.

  She’d played the part of society matron, loved her son and endured her days trying not to remember that she’d once hoped for more. That for one golden afternoon she’d held everything in her hands. Still, she had her health and a wonderful son she loved, and maybe that was all she could expect. Maybe there were some mistakes that you paid for forever.

  Or not quite forever because now Lloyd was gone, killed, possibly by Roberto Mendoza, the man she’d thought for a few hours she’d loved.

  The man who’d walked away without a backward glance.

  Ridiculous to think it was impossible that he was behind the murder. She needed to believe it, needed, for Josh’s sake, for it to be true. Lloyd had certainly had no shortage of enemies and Roberto Mendoza was maybe just one more.

  She glanced up to see Gahan watching her. “Where do Josh and I stand?”

  “Everything that you owned previousl
y, you still own. For now, anyway.”

  She felt a little flutter of disquiet. “What do you mean, for now?”

  “Well, it all comes down to what you can bring in.” He made a dismissive gesture at the papers before him. “Your debt load is considerable.”

  “You mean Lloyd’s debt load is—”

  “Your debt load,” he corrected pointedly. “You’re responsible for all debts held by you as a couple and as I’m sure you know, you owe quite a lot.”

  But she hadn’t known. She hadn’t known at all. “What do you mean we owe quite a lot? There’s the house and a few years left to pay on Lloyd’s car, but that should be it. We own my car outright and we bought Josh’s car used.”

  “I’m not talking about those kind of debts, although your second mortgage is certainly hurting you. It’s the credit card debt that’s the worst, the commercial properties that you’ve borrowed against.”

  “Second mortgage? Commercial properties?” Her head was spinning. “But we paid off our credit card every month.”

  “Credit cards,” he emphasized. “Several of them are maxed out, particularly the airline miles card.”

  “That wasn’t our account, that was for Lloyd’s business,” she protested.

  “He may have used it for business expenses, but it’s a private card, Mrs. Fredericks. It was never transferred to Fredericks Financial. And you’re responsible for it.”

  She resisted the urge to put her hands over her ears. Lloyd had never let her be involved in their personal finances, had become hostile and abusive any time she’d ever asked. Now, she understood why.

  Consciously seeking calm, she let out a breath. “All right, how do I go about getting a draw from the trust fund to cover it?”

  “Trust fund?” Gahan looked at her as though she’d just announced she was flying to the moon. “Your trust fund is gone.”