A Score to Settle. Kara Lennox
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walked through a wormhole and was transported to an outdoor café in Tuscany. This is incredible!”
“I’m glad you like it.” Daniel enjoyed surprising people.
“Are those…grapes?” Jamie looked above them at the grape arbor, which did, indeed, have a few clusters of fruit growing on it.
“Yes, they are. I had some of our grapevines transplanted to this room. I wasn’t sure they’d survive—grapes are tricky. But they seem to love it here.”
“Where did you get that fountain?” she asked suspiciously.
“From an antiquities dealer. Legal, I assure you. It was recovered in pieces from an Italian farmer’s field. The restoration cost more than the fountain did. Shall we eat?”
Daniel pulled out a chair for Jamie, then took his own. He did love this room. Already, he could feel some of the tension leaving his body. He shrugged, testing his back, but the muscle spasm appeared to be gone for good.
Sometimes he took for granted what his wealth could create.
Jillian took Tucker and departed, leaving Daniel and Jamie alone.
Daniel lifted the lid on his plate and inhaled. His mouth watered. “I’ll have to find out the name of this dish so I can request it again.”
“It does smell good,” Jamie said cautiously as she examined her own plate. It was a small portion of chicken with a light dousing of creamy sauce, along with a generous helping of fresh asparagus and some rosemary new potatoes.
Daniel cut a piece off the chicken, but his attention was focused more closely on Jamie than his meat. He wanted her to enjoy the food.
She took a bite, chewed thoughtfully, swallowed. “Your fifteen minutes are running.”
“Right.” Damn, he’d almost forgotten the reason she was here. Who cared if she liked Claude’s cooking? It was more important that she like his facts.
“Are you familiar with the Andreas Musto murder case?”
“The one for which you stood trial. I’m somewhat well versed,” she said cautiously. Which probably meant that what she knew, she’d absorbed from the media. It had been one of those crimes that reporters loved to sensationalize—a billionaire’s son accused of a gruesome slaying.
“I’ll quickly refresh your memory. Andreas Musto was my business partner. We owned a restaurant together. He was found at the restaurant with his throat cut, the murder weapon—a wickedly sharp butcher knife—lying nearby. The knife had my fingerprints on it. I did not have an alibi. Does this sound at all familiar?”
Jamie, who had been devouring her rosemary potatoes during his speech, made a show of chewing, swallowing, taking a sip of iced tea and delicately blotting her mouth with her napkin.
“I’ll admit, the circumstances are similar to those of the Frank Sissom murder. But lots of crimes sound alike. There are only so many ways to kill people—shooting, stabbing, poisoning, strangling, drowning or blunt-force trauma.”
“But how many killers—seemingly intelligent young men like myself and Christopher Gables—leave behind the murder weapon with their prints on it?”
“Criminals often act without logic. In the heat of the moment, a person can lose their ability to reason. Take the bank robber who wrote the demand note on his own deposit slip. Or the man who, hours after a murder, goes on a spending spree with the victim’s credit cards.”
“And just how many murder victims have their throats slashed with a butcher knife? In a restaurant?”
“Murders often take place in restaurants. They’re open late at night, they deal in cash—”
“Robbery wasn’t the motive in either case.”
“The crimes took place many years apart,” Jamie said sensibly. “The locations were twenty, maybe thirty miles from each other. I’m sorry, but the facts do not scream ‘serial killer’ to me.”
He was losing her. He could see it in her eyes.
“So this is why Project Justice took on Christopher Gables as a client?” she asked. “The crime reminded you of the one that landed you in prison?”
“Partly.” He’d rather not tell Jamie about Theresa Chavez until he interviewed the woman himself. But he had to do something to make an impression.
“The similarities in the crimes are one reason I took the case,” he admitted. His decision had shocked his staff; he’d never personally led an investigation before. “It was easy for me to put myself in Christopher’s place. But what really swayed me was the witness.”
“Witness? There was no witness.”
“Ah, but there was. A young woman who bussed tables at the restaurant, El Toreador. She called the police, babbling incoherently in Spanish, then fled the scene before she could be interviewed.”
Jamie leaned back in her chair. “Theresa Chavez. She was the one we think found the body,” Jamie said. “That’s not the same as a witness to the murder.”
“So you know about her.” Damn, he’d been hoping to take Jamie by surprise.
“She was considered briefly as a suspect, but dismissed because she was hardly more than a teenager and weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet. Frank Sissom was six foot and two-twenty. No way she could have overpowered him.”
“But she was never questioned.”
“Unfortunately, Theresa was an illegal alien. Apparently she was scared of being deported, so she went into hiding. We never found her.”
“How hard did you look?”
“The police made a concerted effort to locate her.” Jamie didn’t conceal her defensiveness very well. “But a person with no credit cards, no social security number or driver’s license—she disappeared. Completely.”
“But not forever. Theresa has recently come forward. Her conscience was bothering her. She says she spotted a stranger in the restaurant kitchen only minutes before Frank was killed. It certainly wasn’t Christopher Gables, whom she knew quite well.”
His news did not have the desired effect. Jamie did not look shocked or even surprised. She raised one skeptical eyebrow. “After what, six years? Her conscience is bothering her?”
He supposed he couldn’t blame Jamie for her skepticism. Her job put her in daily contact with criminals of the worst order, most of whom would do or say anything to get them off the hook.
“It’s more like a change of circumstances,” Daniel said, noting with some satisfaction that Jamie was well on the way to cleaning her plate. “Her conscience has always bothered her. But she recently got a green card. She doesn’t have to fear deportation. Her English has also improved a great deal in the last seven years.”
“Well. If she has something to say, I’d like to hear it.” Jamie’s tone indicated she didn’t want to hear it at all, but didn’t want to be considered unreasonable. “Have her contact my office. I will at least listen to what she has to say.”
“Will you really?”
“If I say I will, then I will. But keep in mind, eyewitness testimony isn’t the gold standard it once was. So many things can taint a person’s memories—the passage of time, the influence of the media or others’ recollections, even a fervent wish to have seen something different. And, of course, the promise of a load of cash can improve a person’s memory in sudden and dramatic ways.”
This was the height of rudeness. “You think I would pay someone to— You’re actually accusing me of—”
“I am not accusing anyone,” she said hastily. “Just stating a few well-known facts about witness testimony in general. I’m willing to hear the woman’s statement. But I will accept hard,