“Not yet, but I’m getting very close.”

We sat in his messy living room. Magazines lay strewn about the apartment. A laundry basket of clothes sat on one end of the sofa with dirty dishes punctuating the disarray. The cleanest part of the room was a tank with a turtle in it.

I resisted the urge to introduce myself to the turtle. “Mr. Adams, I am all for finding out what happened to your daughter, but I’ll need your help.”

“Of course. Anything.”

“I couldn’t help but notice you’ve had a few unfortunate accidents over the last few years. Strange things like a broken leg. A dislocated shoulder. And you lost two fingers in a construction accident?”

He folded his hands together. “Mrs. Davidson, what does that have to do with my daughter?”

“Sir, you promised to be honest with me.” When he said nothing, I added, “I believe it has everything to do with her and a certain bet that you made.”

I barely got out the last word when Mr. Adams broke completely. He sobbed into a towel he had sitting on the sofa. His shoulders shook so hard I thought he’d rattle his ribs loose.

“I took the bet,” he said, his voice cracking on every syllable. “I didn’t think he’d do it.”

“A man who would break your leg? Who would take your fingers?”

“Fernando didn’t do this.” He held up his hand. His pinkie and ring fingers had been severed at the knuckle. “That was another bookie in another city in another time.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“Since I was in grade school. I bet on anything. Used to get sent home for running craps games in the schoolyard. I’d go for days without lunch and use that money to make a bet of one kind or another.”

“Didn’t your father ever get you help?”

He laughed a long moment. It was bitter and full of pain. “Oh, I have never lived up to his pristine standards, and he doesn’t let me forget it. Adams men don’t need help. They stand on their own two feet.”

“Is that why you did it? As payback to him?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that I took the bet. I signed my own daughter’s death warrant.” He broke down again.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Adams. But this is all hearsay. It won’t clear Lyle Fiske. The evidence against him is too solid. We need something more to get Lyle off. We need a guarantee.”

And I might just have one. I couldn’t wear a wire to the meeting with Fernando, but maybe I could get something that would help us. See some clue that would get Lyle acquitted.

Fernando had to have done it. Who else? Unless a member of his crew really did do it, possibly thinking it would endear him to Fernando. But when he freaked out and started questioning his men, whoever did it clammed up, scared for his life.

If the guilty party was at the meeting, I would be able to feel it. If nothing else, I could tell Fernando and bargain for the guilty party to turn himself in.

Just as I stood to leave, I spotted a shotgun in the corner of the living room, and I knew exactly why it was there.

“I’m sorry, but could I have a glass of water?”

“Of course.”

The minute he left the room, I texted Parker. At Adams’s house. Get here now.

In a meeting. Be there in an hour.

Wonderful. How was I going to keep Mr. Adams busy for an hour? I had a meeting to get to myself.

I couldn’t put Cookie in the middle of this. Ubie was busy. I couldn’t drag Pari into this, either. I’d just dragged her into the Heather case. I had no choice.

When he walked back in, I was pointing the shotgun at him.

“What’s this?” he asked, alarmed. For good reason.

“Sit down,” I said, indicating the sofa with a wave of the gun like they did in the movies.

He stood there, took a drink of the water that was meant for me, and resigned himself to his fate by opening his hands. Damn, I didn’t think of that. Pointing a gun at someone who is suicidal is like Christmas coming early.

I never think ahead.

“I mean it,” I said from between clenched teeth, hoping it would make me sound more authentic.

“Just do it. Please.” Tears still shimmered in his eyes, and as angry as I was at him, my heart still ached.

I released a loud breath in defeat and started to put the gun down when I remembered the turtle in the tank. I grinned and pointed the gun in its direction. “Sit down.”

Thank God Mr. Adams had no idea I’d sooner shoot him than the turtle.

24

My family’s coat of arms is a wraparound and ties in the back.

Is that normal?

—MOSTLY TRUE FACT

After tying up Mr. Adams, I put his phone on the table in front of him. “You can call the police when I’m gone. Just use your nose. It works. Trust me.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because, Mr. Adams, you are a danger to yourself. I’ve called Parker, too. Oh, and I’m going to meet with Fernando, so if you could wait to call the cops and have me arrested for about, say, twenty more minutes, I’d appreciate it.”

“You can’t meet with him,” Mr. Adams said. “Mrs. Davidson, Charley, he is not a nice guy. Look what he did to my baby. Please—”

“Mr. Adams, this is the only way to get the charges against Fiske dropped. I need to find the real murderer.”

He bowed his head, grief consuming him.

I left him alone like that, hoping there wasn’t another gun in the house and Parker really would get there when he said he would. Just in case, I called Uncle Bob, told him I’d tied a man up for his own safety, and asked him to send a uniform in, say, about twenty minutes.

The last thing I heard before hanging up was “You did what?”

I pulled around a rather nice house in what was known to the locals as the war zone. The crime rates in this part of town were astronomical.

I knocked on the front door of the house, a nice adobe with flowers in window trellises and ivies growing up the sides. It wasn’t huge, but it was nicer than most of the houses in the neighborhood.

“This way.”

I turned to a man motioning me to go around the side of the house and through a gate to the backyard.

“Are you Fernando?” When he didn’t answer, I asked, “Strong silent type, huh?”

When we got to the backyard, a man in his midfifties waved me over with a barbecue fork. I could only hope it would not be the instrument of my death.