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“Whatever you’re thinking, you’re wrong.”
“Then how do you explain the cash?”
She folded her arms across her middle and tilted her head to one side. “Why are you just now mentioning this box of money to me?”
“With everything else, it slipped my mind,” he lied.
Their mutual stare held for several seconds, then she shrugged. “Foster kept large amounts of cash in the safe here at home, and in another at his office.”
“You don’t say. Why?”
“He liked to pass it around.”
“Pass it around?”
“It was a trait of his. An idiosyncrasy. He was a lavish tipper. He enjoyed leaving huge gratuities to waiters, hotel maids, the toll-booth attendant, anyone who did a service for him. Sometimes he would go out to the airport and hand out cash gifts to SunSouth ticket agents, baggage handlers, people who worked for him and were rarely thanked for the jobs they did. He did things like that often. Ask anybody.”
He raised his hands in surrender. “I believe you. It’s just a strange hobby. Never heard of such.”
“Foster didn’t advertise it. He did it for the pleasure he derived from doing it, not for self-aggrandizement.”
“Thank you for telling me,” Rodarte said, faking sincerity. “That could be one explanation
for the box of cash. Except…”
“What?”
“Burkett’s prints were on the lid of the box. How do you explain that?”
“I can’t. But it proves that Griff Burkett isn’t a thief.”
He chuckled. “Well, the Department of Justice, gamblers nationwide, and the Cowboys organization would disagree. He took them for plenty every time he shaved points. I guess he didn’t need your husband’s half million.”
She pounced on his remark as though about to contradict it, then closed her mouth quickly and put her sunglasses back on. Whatever she had been about to say, she’d thought better of it. “If that’s all, I’d like to go in now and place that call to the funeral director.”
“Sure,” he said, waving her toward the steps. He walked along beside her as they crossed the expansive lawn. Whenever he got too close, she moved away, which amused him. “Oh, I forgot to tell you. We found two different blood types in Burkett’s Honda. One, of course, was your husband’s. Burkett must’ve had his blood all over him.”
The sunglasses weren’t large enough to conceal her grimace, but she didn’t address the issue of her husband’s blood being on her lover. “The other is probably his,” she said. “If there was tissue beneath Foster’s fingernails, he probably scratched him.”
Rodarte said, “I would think that, too, except we’ve already tested it. Doesn’t match Burkett’s blood type. So what I think is, it’s Manuelo Ruiz’s blood. Because it’s the same blood type as what we got off your library rug.”
“Implying what?”
“That Manuelo Ruiz was bleeding, too.” Rodarte tugged on his earlobe as though thinking it through. “The man’s vanished. I got in touch with Immigration to try to track him down. Guess what? Ruiz didn’t have papers. Your husband hired him illegally.”
“That’s academic now, isn’t it?”
This rich bitch was one cool broad, staring up at him through her dark sunglasses, her body language a dead giveaway to her contempt for him. He’d like to have done something to shake her up, something to crack that smooth mask she wore whenever she was talking to him. Twist her nipple, maybe. Push his hand between her legs. Something that would shock and frighten her.
“I guess it’s beside the point now.” He smiled amiably, even as he was thinking how much pleasure he would derive from humiliating her.
“Then what is the point, Detective?”
“Griff Burkett knocked off the wetback, too.”
Well, at least that elicited an honest reaction. He wasn’t sure if she flinched away from the racial slur or from his allegation that Burkett had committed double murder. It was hard not to look smug, but he kept his stoniest cop expression in place. “I don’t know if he got rid of Manuelo before or after he killed your husband, but it’s almost a certainty that he’s responsible for Ruiz’s unexplained disappearance.”
She wet her lips, pulled the lower one through her teeth, and he understood why Burkett liked fucking her enough to kill for it.
