4 Bodies and a Funeral. Stephanie Bond

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СКАЧАТЬ a moot point? We both know that Hollis Carver is an informant for the APD and will probably get a pass.”

      Lucas blanched. “Who told you that he was an informant?”

      “I have my sources,” Liz said silkily.

      Wesley pressed his lips together. Liz must be back to banging Detective Jack Terry again, if they’d ever stopped.

      “So why drag us in here today?” she demanded. “What do you want, Kelvin?”

      The D.A. screwed up his mouth and bared his crooked teeth. “Maybe young Wren here has some information about his long-lost daddy he’d like to trade for his freedom?”

      Wesley fisted his hands and started to rise. “You motherfu—”

      “Wesley—” Liz cut in sharply, reaching up to place her hand on his chest. “Sit down.”

      He dropped back into the chair, but didn’t bother to hide his contempt for Lucas.

      “We’ve been over this before,” Liz said calmly. “My client doesn’t know anything about the whereabouts of his father. Come on, there must be something else we can do to work this out. Wesley is performing well under the terms of his probation, his supervisor in the city computer department says he’s excelling at his community service.”

      Lucas’s mouth formed a long, thin line. “If your client is so smart, he’ll take what I have to offer.”

      Liz wet her lips. “Which is?”

      “I want Hollis Carver behind bars on something that will stick. I think his son is distributing drugs for him.”

      Liz gave a dry laugh. “You want to set up your own informant?”

      “We only made Carver an informant so he’d let down his guard. We thought we’d be able to get closer to him, but we need someone on the inside.”

      Liz’s shoulders went rigid. “You want my client to go undercover in The Carver’s organization?”

      A smile spread over Lucas’s toady face. “It’s a win-win situation. He gets to work off his debt to The Carver, and work off his debt to society at the same time.”

      Liz shook her head. “It’s too dangerous. The man is an animal.”

      “It’ll be safer,” the D.A. insisted. “Your client won’t be running from The Carver, he’ll be working for him. He’ll be too valuable to rough up.”

      “Why should I trust you?” Wesley asked. “You went back on the deal you made with my sister.”

      “This one will be put in writing,” Lucas said.

      Wesley barked out a hoarse laugh. “What am I supposed to do, just walk up to The Carver and ask him to put me on the payroll?”

      Lucas nodded. “Something like that. We’ll provide you with a contact in the APD who will guide you through the process.”

      “How long are we talking about here?” Liz asked. “A few weeks? Months?”

      “That depends on your client’s ability to blend in with criminals.” Lucas smirked. “Something tells me he’ll be good at it.”

      A backhanded compliment, Wesley realized, even with his mind racing in circles. “My sister will worry herself sick—”

      “You can’t tell your sister,” the D.A. interrupted. “No one can know except the people in this room and your contact at the police department. If we discover that you’ve told anyone, even your damn priest, we’ll find another stool pigeon, and you’ll be put in a cage, got it, Wren?”

      Anger was a powerful motivator, Wesley realized. His mind was misfiring and sputtering, but even through the haze, he could process pure emotion. From now on, his life’s mission was to get even with Kelvin Lucas, to humiliate him the way he’d humiliated the Wren family.

      The D.A. splayed his hands. “So what do you say, Wesley? Do you want to work for me or do you want to go to jail and make new friends?” Under the table, Lucas moved his foot back and forth. The capsule had burst and the precious white powder was being ground into the carpet.

      Wesley gritted his teeth against the desperation swelling in his chest. God, how he’d love to spit in the man’s face. But his sister would be devastated if he went to jail. And he couldn’t very well help his father if he was sitting in the slammer.

      “And all charges against my client regarding the body-snatching incident will be dropped?” Liz asked.

      “I’ll drop it to a misdemeanor and add to his community service for appearances’ sake. That way no one’s suspicious.”

      Liz turned toward Wesley. “It’s a good deal,” she murmured. “My advice is to take it.”

      “And what if The Carver finds out what I’m doing?” Wesley asked, rubbing his arm where the man had already etched part of his name.

      “Make sure he doesn’t find out,” Lucas said flatly. “Do we have a deal?”

      More than anything, Wesley just wanted to get out of the building, ride to Chance’s and get a bag of Oxy. Even his eyelids were starting to sweat. “Okay,” he grumbled.

      “Good,” Lucas said, pushing to his feet so triumphantly that Wesley immediately wanted to take it back. “We’ll be in touch, Ms. Fischer.”

      After the pair left the room, Liz touched Wesley’s shaking hand. “You made the right decision. Do this, and you’ll come out debt free on the other side.”

      Wesley stared at the white powder stain on the carpet in despair and nodded numbly. Debt free—or dead.

      3

      Carlotta swallowed the last Percocet capsule from the bottle and returned her purse to her locker. She glanced in the mirror mounted on the door and smoothed her finger over the frown line between her brows that had become more pronounced recently. Leaning close, she noticed wryly that the furrow bore a distinct resemblance to the letter W—for Wesley.

      Her brother was going to be the death of her youth.

      She slammed the door closed and returned to the sales floor where the crowd waiting for the Eva McCoy appearance had swelled. Carlotta joined Patricia, who was back and passing out tickets.

      “Did you get your charm bracelet?” Carlotta asked.

      Patricia nodded and pulled back her jacket sleeve to display the silver bracelet and dangling charms. “But I’m confused. These charms have absolutely no correlation to anything in my life. There’s a little dog charm, and I have two cats. And a baseball glove, when I’ve never played any sport except tennis. A lion, which might stand for Leo, but I’m an Aries. A Texas steer head, and I don’t eat meat. And a broom. How weird is that?”

      Carlotta pursed her mouth to keep from making a comment about the broom as a mode of transportation. “I thought the idea was that the charms are random, a way of challenging СКАЧАТЬ