Distortion (Moonlighters Series) (12 page)

She was falling apart, bit by bit, and she couldn’t seem to catch the pieces. She tried to keep her voice down, but she couldn’t stop the sobs tearing from her throat. “My life was . . . nothing but a lie. All these years . . . he lied to me . . . about
everything
!”

Holly tried to put her arms around her, but Juliet shook free.

Suddenly the doorbell rang. It barely registered. She couldn’t see anybody. Not now.

“I’ll get it,” Jay said in a soft voice. “Don’t worry. Whoever it is, I’ll tell them it’s not a good time.”

She stood there, her hands covering her face, as Michael read over the e-mail. “He had another woman,” she said. “He took her to the Bahamas and who knows where else. They
had a
baby
. No wonder he was gone so much! He had another whole
family
!”

Cathy and Holly had no words of comfort. They just looked at her, tears in their own eyes. She knew they felt her pain, but they couldn’t understand. No one could.

Jay came back in. “Juliet, it’s the FBI. Two agents. They want to talk to you.”

She wanted to scream, put her fist through the wall, smash that computer into a million pieces. But she couldn’t say no to the FBI. She drew in a deep, shaky breath and wiped her face. Cathy handed her a tissue and she blew her nose. “I’ll be okay.”

“Are you sure?” Jay asked. “Maybe we could ask them to come back a little later.”

“No, let’s just get this over with.” She said a desperate, silent, angry prayer for strength, then stepped out of the study.

CHAPTER 20

T
wo agents stood in the foyer, waiting to talk to her. One of them was Darren Clement, the one Juliet knew had gone to high school with Bob. He smiled sadly and reached out to hug her. “Juliet, I’m so sorry about Bob.”

She hadn’t seen Darren in a couple of years—she couldn’t remember whether he’d been at the funeral—but she gave him a hug and accepted his kiss on her cheek. “Are you on the case, Darren?”

“Yes,” he said. “This is my partner, Special Agent Blue.”

Juliet turned to the woman and shook her hand. She was smaller than Juliet, but she had a hard edge and a cool look of professionalism. “Nice to meet you,” Juliet said, though it really wasn’t. She turned back to Darren. “I’m surprised they let you work on this case, since you knew Bob. It’s not a conflict of interest?”

He shook his head. “I haven’t seen him in years, so it’s not
a problem. I’m bureau chief of our Panama City office, and this is an important case, so I took it.”

She wasn’t sure she agreed. An old friend wouldn’t be as likely to assume Bob was a criminal based on the facts they’d uncovered. Part of her was relieved to see a familiar face, but the other part—the part that needed to know the truth—felt slightly uneasy. But she knew Darren to be a professional, and he had been with the FBI for twenty years or more. “Well, it’ll be a little easier to talk to you.” She introduced him to Cathy, making sure he understood that she was her attorney, then introduced Michael, Jay, and Holly. He agreed to allow them to stay for the questioning and to add anything they’d like to.

But Cathy said, “I’d rather it was just my client and me in the room. You can talk to the others later if you’d like.”

Juliet nodded and glanced at her siblings and Michael.

“I’ll just go back to work,” Holly said. “I’ll see you guys later.”

Michael nodded. “I’ll walk you out. I have things to take care of too.”

Jay disappeared into the house, and Juliet followed Cathy back into the study. The fact that Cathy was trying to control the situation made her uneasy. Did she fear they were going to arrest her? Or that one of her siblings might say something to implicate her?

No, of course not. Cathy was just doing what attorneys do—trying to make sure that Juliet’s rights weren’t violated. But Juliet had nothing to hide. She was happy to tell them every single thing she knew. Maybe they could make sense of it. Maybe they would tell her that Bob wasn’t really involved in anything illegal, that it was all a terrible mistake . . .

But the FBI wouldn’t have taken over the case if it wasn’t big.

As the agents walked into the study, Juliet started to close the door, but Agent Blue stopped her. “Leave it open, please,” she said.

Juliet swallowed. Of course. Law enforcement people were paranoid. Closing them into a room would rob them of a little control, wouldn’t it? She just hoped the kids were still playing video games. She’d have to keep her voice low.

Zach hated being left out. He wasn’t a little kid who would hide under the bed at the thought of danger, like Abe might. He was twelve and he could take it. But the whole family had been talking in code language and locking themselves behind doors to whisper and plan. His mom, who was a wreck, wouldn’t have been gone so much when her kids had just buried their dad unless something even worse than his murder was happening.

But what could possibly be worse?

He had tried to listen through doors and walls, but he could never hear more than mumbling. Now there were FBI agents in Uncle Jay’s study, and they were questioning his mom.

What was up with that?

Wasn’t the FBI only called in on special cases? Big ones? Maybe they were here now because his dad was an important man. Someone people looked up to. Maybe they knew that he wasn’t just some ordinary dude gunned down on the street, so the big guys were called in.

But Zach had been there himself when his mother identified the shooter. She had been sure. So why wasn’t the case over? Why couldn’t his family just be left alone?

He knew the house had been broken into. He had seen the mess and the damage. His family had been destroyed, and now his home had too. They could never go back to the way things were before; they couldn’t even pretend. And now, before they could move back into their house, they’d have to patch walls and floors and replace furniture . . .

It would be a long time before anything was normal again.

Even his dad’s office. He’d heard his mom talking about that. She had cut off her words when she saw him, but he was pretty sure that someone had broken in there too. So if that Jerome Henderson guy had done the shooting, and he was in jail, who was doing all these break-ins? And what did they want?

The whole thing made him sick, but he had to know what was going on.

Zach went down the stairs and into the foyer. He heard Uncle Jay in the kitchen, and the sounds of Abe’s video game in the den. He stole up the hall toward the study, hoping Abe and Jackson didn’t come looking for him.

He pressed his back against the wall. He could tell that his mother was crying.

“Max said that Bob was being investigated by the DEA,” she said. “That he might have been involved in the drug trade. I didn’t think that was possible. I still don’t. But things aren’t adding up, and I can’t explain what was going on.”

The drug trade? Zach caught his breath. His dad involved with drugs? No way. How stupid was that? Heat rushed to his face, and his hands closed into fists. How could his mother say things like that? She knew Dad was a good man, that he would never do anything to hurt anybody. He
helped
people!

Zach fought the urge to bust in and defend his dad. He wanted to hear everything.

“Your husband traveled a lot,” the lady said. “Did you ever go with him?”

“Not much, not in the last year.” Zach heard a long moment of silence. “But I don’t think he was going alone.” Her voice seemed to crack. “I found e-mails between him and . . . a woman named Amber Williams.” Her voice dropped lower, and Zach strained to hear. “She worked in his office. I think the e-mails indicate that she . . . that he . . .” She couldn’t seem to get the words out.

Now Cathy spoke up. “The e-mails indicate that they might have had an extramarital relationship. They may have had a child together.”

Zach pushed off from the wall, almost showing himself through the open doorway. He wasn’t sure what he’d just heard. He didn’t know what an “extramarigold” relationship was. He’d have to google it. But the thing about the child?

He couldn’t have heard that right.

“We’re aware of Miss Williams,” the man said.

“Did you know, Darren? Did you know he had another woman?”

“No, Juliet, I didn’t. I told you. It’s been a long time since I’ve talked to him.”

Zach heard his mother blowing her nose, then she said, “Just because he was . . . cheating on me . . . doesn’t mean he was a criminal. That he was involved in something terrible.”

Cheating? Now Zach understood. Tears burned in his eyes, and his heart thudded against his chest. No way. His father wouldn’t do that. They were liars, all of them, even Mom.

What was she trying to do to their family?

He wiped his tears on his sleeve. His shirt stuck to him from a cold, clammy sweat. He wanted to run upstairs and
get into bed and cover his head with his pillow so he wouldn’t hear any more. But he
had
to hear. He had to know what other lies they were telling about his dad.

He stayed where he was, desperate to hear everything, but dreading every word.

CHAPTER 21

S
pecial Agents Clement and Blue seemed to be aware of most of what Juliet told them, but they still wanted her to repeat it. When she was finished, Agent Blue said, “Mrs. Cole, did you have any inkling that your husband was involved in the drug trade?”

She sucked in a breath. “No, of course not. This is shocking to me. I never had any reason to believe anything was out of the ordinary. Even after he was shot, I thought it was a random shooting. That he was an innocent victim.”

“Did you know about the investigation the DEA had under way regarding your husband?”

“Absolutely not. Nobody ever questioned me before the shooting. I’ve told you everything I know.”

Darren got to his feet and walked around the room, looking at framed family photos on Jay’s shelves. They weren’t even hers; Juliet felt like shouting that Jay’s pictures had nothing to
do with her husband. He slid his hands into his pockets and turned back to her. “Juliet, we have reason to believe that Bob was brokering shipments of cocaine from Colombia.”

“Brokering? What does that mean?”

“Brokers arrange the purchase and transport of drugs from other countries, then get them into the hands of distributors when they arrive.”

“No, that’s not possible. He’s never been to Colombia. He doesn’t know anyone there.”

“We think his shipments were coming via one of the Caribbean islands,” Blue said. “Customs officials usually stop boats coming from Colombia, so the traffickers often route them to some other point and ship from there.”

“Somewhere like the Bahamas?” she whispered.

“Yes, maybe the Bahamas. We’re aware that he traveled there this year. He may have set up a contact to receive the shipment and then ship it again to the US, with Bahamian papers.”

Juliet got up and crossed her arms. “I still can’t understand . . . why would he do this? And why cocaine? Painkillers he prescribed regularly, but cocaine wasn’t even related to what he does. Why would someone like Bob do something so dangerous? He made plenty of money. He would never join some Colombian drug cartel. That’s ridiculous.”

Darren sat down, set his elbows on his knees, and leaned toward Juliet. “Cartels are a thing of the past, Juliet. Now the drug trade is made up of people who don’t know each other but who perform certain functions in the chain. Farmers who grow the drugs in Colombia, someone else who processes it into cocaine, brokers who set up the purchase, someone involved in transport, someone to receive the shipment, the distributors who supply local dealers.”

“And the money laundering,” Blue said. “We think Bob may have started out that way—handling the money and sending it through several other companies, then paying off Colombian sources.”

“Money laundering? He was a doctor, not a banker! How would he know anything about that?”

“We’re not sure,” Darren said. “But it would have been a clean way to make a lot of cash. He never touches the drugs, never meets or talks to the transporters or distributors, never gets his hands dirty. But he makes a
lot
of money.”

Juliet sat back down, her head throbbing. “This is just too crazy. I can’t even picture him doing something so evil. He was my
husband.
I lived with him for fifteen years! I knew him.”

Cathy seemed unruffled. “You said he was a broker. Now you’re saying he laundered the money?”

“We believe he might have taken a bigger role after he was successful with several deliveries. There was even more money to be made if he brokered the deal.”

Special Agent Blue turned her sharp eyes to Juliet. “Did you know of any accounts that your husband had overseas? Any businesses he owned, other than his medical practice?”

“No. He wasn’t a businessman. He was a surgeon. A busy surgeon. He wouldn’t have time to run businesses.”

“Yet we’ve been able to find at least three businesses that he owned—in St. John, in Mexico City, and in the Dominican Republic.”

Juliet didn’t know how much more she could take. “That’s impossible. What kind of businesses?”