When Twilight Comes - By B. J. Daniels Page 0,37
of the sudden pounding at the front door. “What the hell?” Lorenzo swore. He hung up and went to the door to look out.
Cops?
RAYMOND VALENCIA HAD SENT Jolly and Rico over to Jenna Dante’s apartment after numerous attempts to reach her had failed. They came back with the bad news.
“Looks like she skipped,” Rico said, playing with the toothpick in his mouth. “Super said she left last night and didn’t come back.”
“How the hell does the apartment super know that?” Raymond snapped.
“Insomniac. Saw her leave with two suitcases, a large one and a small one. Seemed to be in a hurry. Her parking space was empty all night. No sign of her this morning.”
Raymond pulled on his left earlobe, a habit when he was thinking. “No one has any idea where she went?”
Rico shook his head.
“And what about this Rose Garcia woman? Any word on her?”
Jolly shrugged. “Lorenzo scared her off.”
It always came back to Lorenzo.
Rico pulled the toothpick from his mouth. “After a little persuasion, we found out that someone else had been snooping around the apartment.” He paused as if waiting for a drum roll. “Some broad,” he said finally, nodding and smiling. “A cop. Name was Rose Garcia.”
Raymond stared at Rico, his mind reeling at the implications. He tried not to show his surprise. Or his distress at the news. A cop looking for Jenna. A cop whose number was on Franco’s cell phone. Nothing about this situation boded well.
Was Franco working with the cops?
Or worse, was Franco a cop? If so, he’d certainly fooled him. Raymond had always prided himself on his instincts. If he was wrong about Franco, could he also be wrong about Jenna? If so, how did she fit into the picture?
“Tell me something,” Raymond said after a moment. “You knew Franco. Can you see him with Jenna Dante?”
Rico laughed. “That broad was too classy for Dante, let alone a dunce like Franco. No way.”
Raymond wanted to argue that Franco was no dunce. There had been intelligence behind all that attitude. In fact, Franco could have been smarter than Raymond had realized. He’d certainly fooled him. Raymond looked to Jolly. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know, Boss. I’ve never understood women.”
Rico laughed and even Raymond had to smile. “I know what you mean, Jolly,” Raymond said. “I’ve never understood women, either.” But he’d thought he’d understood Jenna. He’d thought he knew her. More important, he’d thought he could trust her. Just as he had Franco.
Now he wasn’t so sure. “You left a man watching Jenna Dante’s apartment and another one watching Lorenzo?” Both nodded. “Rico, I want you on Lorenzo. You know the drill.” Rico nodded. “Jolly, you take the apartment. I want to know if anyone comes or goes. Anyone.”
Rico’s cell rang. He checked the caller ID, looked at his boss, then quickly answered. “Yeah. No kiddin’. Yeah.” He snapped it off. “The guy I left at Dante’s. He just called to say that cops are there. Had a warrant and everything. Got one of them forensics teams in there. And two detectives just took Dante downtown in handcuffs.”
Raymond Valencia swore. Hadn’t he known he would live to regret not killing Lorenzo?
DETECTIVE ROSE GARCIA cupped the cell phone to her ear as her fingers whipped over the computer keyboard at a Ballard Internet café.
“We got a warrant to search Dante’s house, and picked up blood spatters in the tile grout on the living room floor,” Detective Luke Henry said on the other end of the line.
“Franco’s?” she asked scared.
“Maybe. Could be his ex’s. Got the forensics guy on it and Dante in custody. He says the blood is from a cut on his hand. Has a fresh cut. Unless we find more evidence of foul play, we aren’t going to be able to hold him, and he knows it.”
Rose stopped typing and closed her eyes.
“You still there?”
She took a breath, opened her eyes. “Let’s say he did the ex. Where’s the daughter?”
“We found a bedroom upstairs. Had some little girl’s clothes in it. Dante says he has visitation rights. Doesn’t get the daughter again until the weekend. Claims he hasn’t seen or heard from his ex since the last time he had supervised visitation.”
“He’s lying.”
Luke laughed. “You think? But unless we have a body…”
“Yeah. I’m running her credit card right now to see if she’s used it in the last twenty-four hours. Maybe we’ll get lucky.” Maybe by some miracle Jenna Dante had escaped her ex-husband. “Still no word from Franco?”
“No. Shouldn’t