Once there, he tossed and turned, unable to shut his mind off and go to sleep. Thoughts of Carmen’s pass at him made him analyze her motives. She must be worried that he would detect the Clenbuterol before it passed out of Diablo’s system, and losing her license would most likely end her career and break her business. Did she think that a relationship would keep him from reporting her?
And here he’d been thinking she was actually interested in him.
Then his mind jumped to Angela and his concerns about her. Was the presence of Mrs. Gibbs truly the catalyst for the change in his daughter’s behavior? Or was it something more serious? Whatever it was, he’d better get to the bottom of it soon. He didn’t want anything to drive a wedge between them like the one that had been driven between him and her mother.
It was late by the time Stella pulled into the yard. Mattie had already taken sheets and blankets out of the closet and laid them on the coffee table. She kept busy—picking up her house, washing some dishes she had in the sink, feeding Robo—doing anything to keep her mind from going back to her brother’s words. She’d been fighting a low-grade sense of nausea all day and hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday. But when she met Stella at the door, the scent of the pizza actually tempted her appetite.
Robo started his happy dance when Stella came to the door.
“Smells good,” Mattie said, holding the door wide for her guest to enter.
“You’ve looked peaked all day, Mattie. You’re not getting sick from spending the night out in that snowstorm, are you?”
“Nah, it takes more than that to get me down.”
“Good. Get out of the way, Robo. Let me set this box down and I’ll give you the attention you deserve.” Stella carried the pizza through to the kitchen, set it on the counter, and then leaned down to pat Robo. He was ecstatic.
“There, that makes you happy now, doesn’t it?” she cooed, looking around the kitchen. “I like your place, Mattie. It’s better than mine.”
“Thanks.”
Stella waved at the ancient refrigerator that huddled against the far wall. “That’s got to be an antique. Cute. Say, it wouldn’t have a beer in there for me, would it?”
“Sure. Help yourself.” Mattie took out paper plates and plastic forks and laid them on top of the pizza box while Stella unscrewed the cap on her bottle. The tangy scent of the brewed drink wafted out, making her stomach lurch.
“Want one?” Stella asked.
“Not tonight. I’ll fix some peppermint tea.”
Stella raised a brow, looking surprised. “You’re off your game, girl. There is something wrong with you, and I plan to find out what it is.”
Christ. Nothing like having a detective for a friend. “Let’s take this into the living room,” Mattie said, pointing to the pizza box and the disposable dishware she’d placed on top of it. “I’ll heat some water and be right with you.”
After a few minutes, she joined Stella and Robo in the living room. Robo was lying on his cushion with his head up and ears pricked, watching everything but looking completely at ease. Stella had kicked off her shoes and leaned back into the sofa cushions, her feet up on the coffee table, a slice of pepperoni pizza filling a plate on her lap. She was taking a pull on her beer when Mattie entered the room.
“Ah . . .” she said, taking the bottle from her lips. “That’s good. I needed that.”
Mattie sat her tea on her end of the coffee table, chose a pizza slice, and then settled down on the sofa, bending one leg under her. She hoped she could eat. Her body needed fuel if she was going to keep up with Robo.
She turned to the one subject she was always comfortable with: work. “Did you find anything in the phone records and e-mails?”
“Yes and no. It seems crazy in this day and age, but our victim didn’t use her cell phone or her e-mail all that much. So I was able to trace back to last May pretty easily. I thought I should take a look at the time she received that letter from Vasquez.”
“What did you find?” Mattie asked, taking her first bite of the pizza.
“I found his phone number. I compared dates, and it looked like she called him a few days after that letter was posted, which appears to confirm his statement that she contacted him soon after. There were no e-mails, no texts, but there were around ten phone calls back and forth. Some that she initiated, some from him that she answered, and many that lasted for close to an hour. They were talking all right. He didn’t lie about that.”
“How about close to the time she was killed?”
“No. The back-and-forth phone calls ended in late June. There are a few texts, but they seem to be updates. Normal brother and sister chitchat.”
“What about the client list? What did you find there?”
“It looks like she used phone calls and texts to schedule her appointments. There were some phone calls that matched up with the clients on our short list but nothing within the past two weeks. I called them before leaving the station. Everyone denies an appointment on Wednesday, and there were no texts that would contradict them.”
“And there were no calls from that TracFone number?”
“I know what you’re thinking,” Stella said. “We’ve gotta think that the tipster might also be our killer.”
“Rainbow’s not sure that Vasquez’s voice matches the tipster’s, and he doesn’t have an accent.”
“Yeah. But easy to disguise,” Stella said.
“True.”
Stella pursed her lips, thinking. Then she took another drink of beer. “Thank God that Adrienne knew the two of them were half-siblings. Incest would have been a tough mistake to get over. What if Vasquez lied about that, and the two of them really did sleep together?”
Mattie gagged as she tried to swallow the bite of pizza she had in her mouth. She put her slice back on her plate.
From her end of the couch, Stella studied her reaction. “You look like someone poisoned your pizza, Mattie. What’s bothering you?”
Mattie shook her head, not sure what to say, not sure if she could even talk.
“You’ve looked sick off and on all day.”
She shrugged and picked up her tea to take a sip.
“Did you get in touch with your brother?”
Stricken, Mattie stared at Stella, wondering how she could guess.
“You look like you did the night you told me about your family. What’s going on?”
Mattie curled her hands around the tea mug and held on tightly. “I’m not sure I can talk about it.”
“Something’s eating you up inside. It might do some good to talk. Maybe I can help you put it into perspective.”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Willie called last night. Turns out he’s working a twelve-step program. Drug rehab. He’s at the stage of wanting to apologize for his transgressions.”
“Okay?”
“I didn’t get it when he apologized to me. Didn’t know how he might have hurt me. I mean, we were just kids. It was our dad that hurt us.”
Stella nodded, her eyes sending encouragement.
“He said he should have stopped our dad from coming into my bedroom . . . at night.” Mattie choked, and a wave of nausea hit her.
“Excuse me,” she said, getting up and heading toward the bathroom. Robo jumped up to follow her and wouldn’t stay outside the door. She had to let him come inside with her, so she leaned against the cool tile on the wall taking huge gulps of air while he pressed against her legs. After a few minutes, her stomach settled, and she tentatively bent to pat him on the head to reassure him. She splashed cold water on her face and returned to the living room with Robo at heel.