No Good Deed (32 page)

Blair pressed a call button on the gate. Several minutes later a female voice said, “May I help you?”

“My name is Special Agent Blair Novak with the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Blair said. “I’m looking to speak to Ms. Tamara Rollins regarding her daughter, Nicole Rollins.”

Silence. She wondered if they would even open the gate. She waited a good half minute before she said, “Ma’am? Did you hear me?”

“Tami doesn’t live here anymore,” the voice said.

“Are you Margaret Hunt?”

“Yes, I’m Margaret.”

“Do you have a minute? It’s important I talk to Mrs. Rollins.”

There was a click, then nothing. Blair shook her head. “People,” she muttered. She was tense, because Hans Vigo had made her tense. If Margaret Hunt was involved in her husband’s illegal activity, then they had to be very careful around her.

The electric gate slowly swung open.

“I’m getting twitchy,” Nix said.

“You and me both,” she said. “Stay alert.”

Blair drove up a very long driveway to the top of a hill. The trees and brush were dangerously dry, thanks to the drought, but had been cleared from around the large and well-maintained ranch-style home. A wide porch wrapped around the front and sides of the house.

A barn to the east had all doors closed. Two other outbuildings could be seen through scraggly oak trees that dotted the uneven land. Property records indicated that Margaret Hunt and her sister owned twenty acres, which would be worth a small fortune. The land alone was worth millions.

Margaret Hunt met them at the door. “You don’t mind if we talk out here, do you?” she asked, though it didn’t sound like a question. She motioned to a picnic table on the porch. “Have a seat.”

“Thank you for speaking with us,” Blair said and took a seat. Nix didn’t. He stood behind her and watched their surroundings.

Margaret Hunt was in her sixties with long silvery-gray hair she had braided neatly down her back. She wore no makeup and her glasses made her blue eyes seem bigger and brighter. She was petite with firm, tanned skin over a layer of sinewy muscles.

“I’m going to be honest with you from the get-go. I’m not a fan. I don’t trust the police, and I certainly don’t trust the feds.”

“Because your husband is a wanted fugitive?”

“Because of how you all treated me because my husband is a dipshit,” she said.

“Fair enough,” Blair said. “We’re not here about your husband. We need to speak with your sister, and the DMV lists Tamara Rollins at this address.”

“I haven’t seen my sister in five years. I haven’t seen my husband in five years. You put it together.”

Okay
, Blair thought. Time to change gears. “Are you aware that your niece Nicole Rollins escaped from custody yesterday morning?”

“Yep.” She gestured toward the roof, though Blair couldn’t see what she was pointing at. “Got satellite, saw it on the news. Nicole doesn’t talk to me any more than she talks to her mother.”

“We’re trying to cover all the bases. Has Nicole reached out to you since she escaped?”

“Nope. She’s not welcome here, and she knows it. I washed my hands of that family five years ago. I’m through. That’s what I said to the feds then, and nothing has changed.”

“We’re trying to piece together Nicole’s background. Much of the information in her record has been falsified. Were you ever contacted by a DEA agent when the agency did a background check on Nicole prior to her employment?”

Margaret stared at her. “Look, Agent Novak, I’m a recovering alcoholic. I barely remember living with my husband, let alone my sister and her family. Why? Because I was drunk and stoned and should probably be dead now. It took my husband picking my sister over me to make me realize I made my own fucking bed and needed to start clean. Good riddance. I never even knew what day it was fifteen, twenty years ago, let alone if any cop came to talk to me. And I doubt Jimmy would have let anyone talk to me. He never knew what I might say or do because I was addicted to anything that made me numb and happy.” She scowled.

Blair changed tactics. “Do you remember when your sister and brother-in-law came to live with you?”

“Yeah, I wasn’t so bad off then. Tami and John and their kids. At first it was good. I mean, Tami owns this property just like I do, she had a right to live here. She and John took the house up the road. Originally a barn, my daddy converted it to a house. But Jimmy and John fought all the time. You know—Jimmy ain’t no saint, and John was a cop. John was killed in some gang battle or something—I never knew the details. Only that Jimmy took care of his kids, Chris and Nicole.” She snorted. “And Tami. Took care of Tami a little bit too much, I tell you.”

“We’ve been looking into the shooting that killed Officer Rollins, and there’s been some information that he was a corrupt cop who may have been caught in a sting operation.”

Margaret stared at her. “I never heard about that,” she said flatly.

“It’s not in any official records. Right now, it’s an unsubstantiated rumor.”

“Chris, I’m betting.” Margaret shook his head. “He really had a chip on his shoulder. I guess I don’t blame him much, he was seventeen when his daddy was killed, and John and Jimmy never got along. The kid knew that. He left as soon as he hit eighteen. Didn’t even graduate from high school, just got his GED and joined the army. Think he might have gone through an ROTC program, you know, where you go to college and are a soldier-in-training or some such thing. I really don’t remember. Tami used to keep in touch with him, but hell if I know what she does now.”

“There’s nothing in Nicole’s file about you or her uncle. The only family members she listed was her mother, who she claimed died two years ago, and her brother.”

Margaret snorted. “Well, the news said she was a fugitive, a DEA agent who was caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Why would you expect her to tell the truth about anything?”

“Did she have any close friends growing up?”

“Nope. She was a smart girl, did well in school, and fought with her mother. That’s all I remember about her. She moved out when she went to college, and the last time I remember seeing her was…” She frowned. “I really can’t say. The last time I saw her was during my fuzzy years. I think I went to her college graduation, but I’m not sure. We had a party here, I remember that.”

“Do you recall ever meeting a man named Tobias? He would be a little older than Nicole.”

She shrugged. “I really don’t know. Nicole didn’t bring men around. She had one boyfriend for a long time, don’t know what happened to him. His name wasn’t Tobias.”

“Do you remember who this boyfriend was?”

She shrugged. “It’s ancient history. Why do you care about who she dated in college?”

College. Right before she joined the DEA. “We’re trying to figure out who knew Nicole at the time she joined the DEA. It might help us find her.”

“Good luck with that,” Margaret said. “I don’t like my sister, and I’m certainly not going to lose sleep over her kid being hunted by you feds. I don’t like them, I don’t like you, and I just want to be left alone. My husband fucked up my life, and I’m done.” She stood up. “You know, you’re all the same. Come up here nosing around, playing games. Not telling me shit, because you think I’m stupid, just like Jimmy and Tami thought I was stupid and didn’t know they were fucking around. Asking about Tobias and Joseph as if I know every idiot Nicole screwed. I. Am.
Done
.” She walked into the house and slammed the door.

Blair could hardly contain her excitement. She walked to the car, got into the driver’s seat. Nix followed around to the passenger side.

“Why didn’t you call her on that slip-up?” Nix said.

“Because she would have stopped talking anyway.” Blair turned the car around and started back down the long, winding gravel driveway.

“There were people in the barn. Don’t know how many, but a couple. Could have been laborers.” His tone suggested otherwise.

“We’re going to dig around and find something so we can get a warrant and search her property and financials.”

“You don’t believe her?”

Blair considered as she turned onto Old Topanga Canyon Road and headed back to headquarters. “The best liars are those who mix truth with fiction. I think a lot of what she said was the truth. And a lot of what she said was a deliberate lie. Calculated so we leave thinking she’s the betrayed wife of a wanted fugitive. She’s still married to him even though he fled the country with her sister.”

“If he left with her sister.”

Blair hadn’t considered that. “You think that Tami Rollins is still around?”

“Like you said, the best liars mix truth and fiction. What if she really is dead and Nicole wasn’t lying about that?”

“There’d be a record of it. She didn’t die in Austin, as Nicole said.” Blair had that butterfly in her stomach that told her she had a juicy case in front of her. “We need to find Tami Rollins or learn what happened to her. And now we know that Joseph Contreras knew Nicole in college. Nicole went to UCLA. I worked an investigation there a couple of years back, I know the assistant dean very well. Let’s swing by and see what he’ll give us without a warrant. I find people are far more forthcoming chatting face-to-face.” And if he wanted a warrant, she would get one.

*   *   *

Maggie Hunt strode through her house to the oversized country kitchen. “Are they gone?” she snapped at Tito.

“Yep,” he said, pointing to the security screen. “Just turned onto the road.”

Tito was slow but loyal, and had been with the family for years. He couldn’t think on his feet, but he followed orders well. Maggie said, “I need everyone here in one hour for a family meeting—no excuses. Except George and Trina—send them to the vault. I want every gun and bullet we have stashed back here before dark. If the feds come back, they’re not getting in. Understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He ran out the back door to track down the half a dozen people who worked for Maggie on the property. Then he’d call in the rest. Family—which included blood as well as those they’d adopted.

With Tito on his errand, she sat down and grabbed one of the many burner phones she had. This one was international.

She stared at the wall of photos. Jimmy and his idea of
family
. He could be such a fool sometimes, but she loved him. He had the vision, she had the brains.

Jimmy answered. “Yep.”

“It’s me.”

“Mags.” His voice softened and she felt that little jolt in her stomach that reminded her why she had loved this man for forty-three years. “How are you, baby?”

She wanted to say fine, that everything was working the way it was supposed to, and she’d be down to visit him next month, as planned.

“I was great until ten minutes ago when the FBI came knocking.”

“You knew they would eventually. Once they realized Nicole’s file was fake they would have learned about us.”

“They asked about Tobias.”

“I should have told you about that.”

Her hand tightened around her phone. In the calmest voice she could muster, she said, “What haven’t you told me, Jimmy? Tobias can’t handle himself around the feds. They’ll kill him.” Her voice rose. “If anything happens to my son—”

“Shh, baby, Nicole and Joseph are taking care of him, like always.”

“How do they know? How did the FBI put it together so quickly?”

“They made a leap they can’t prove.”

“Explain,” she said, fuming. The only way their organization worked was if no one knew who Tobias was. He was the unknown but powerful leader. As long as they kept up that illusion, everything worked. But if their competition found out that he was the weak link, they’d push back. That would cost time, money, and territory.

She wasn’t going to lose her only child. Or her money.

“Truthfully, Mags, it’s his own fault. When Nicole went to jail he started thinking on his own, and you know how he gets. When I told him to kill Harper Worthington to keep Adeline in line, he came up with an asinine plan and used Elise.”

“Oh God, no.” Maggie sat down heavily. Elise was a wild card. Maggie didn’t trust her, not because she’d go to the cops, but because she was half crazy. Considering how crazy Tami had become over the years it was no wonder the kid was fucked up.

“Nicole’s the only one who was ever able to get Tobias or Elise to do what they were supposed to, once I was forced to leave the States. Nicole was in fucking solitary confinement. What was I supposed to do?”

Grow some balls.
But she didn’t say that. Jimmy, living the high life down in Mexico, while
she
kept the family together.

Nicole’s arrest had come before they had all the pieces of the operation set up. But it wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened. Because Nicole was smart, and she had an escape plan, one that Maggie had helped her create. Everything had worked exactly as they planned … except the FBI should never have been able to connect Tobias to Nicole, or Joseph to Nicole.

She frowned. How had the feds found out about Joseph? He was wanted for killing Adeline—how did they know he worked for the family? Or were they just fishing?

That was most likely. That’s how the fucking feds operated.

“I’m sorry, babe,” she said, “until Nicole retrieves the money we lost when Adeline went off the deep end, we’re at a standstill.”

“There’s no more hiding in the shadows,” Jimmy said. “The feds know because that bastard Kane Rogan has been feeding them information. But Joseph came up with a plan and Rogan’s as good as dead.”

“At least that’s one piece of good news. And the feds who screwed our plans? Donnelly and Kincaid? Are they as good as dead?”

“All in good time.”

“That means you don’t have a fucking plan. Dammit, Jimmy!”

“Look, Mags, I know you’re upset, but we have it under control. Nicole will locate our money and get it back. She’s smart, you know that. And we still have a few people on the inside.”

“Speaking of people on the inside—take care of Adam.”

“He’s already dead,” Jimmy said.

“What the fuck happened?” Maggie’s orderly life was spinning out of control. For
years
she’d kept this family together and now her careful, meticulous plans were unraveling.