Cut and Run (Lucy Kincaid #16) - Allison Brennan Page 0,42
few days, keep her out of the media spotlight. But mostly, I wanted her safe.”
“Again,” Max said, “who are they? Who is the man who threatened you?”
“I never saw him before. He’s big, six four at least, Hispanic, broad-shouldered. Dark hair, dark eyes, mustache. His right hand is scarred, like he’d seriously burned it. All wrinkled and discolored, but it looked like an old injury.”
She knew they were tight on time and this whole conspiracy theory was hanging by a very thin thread. “Why would someone you don’t know pressure you into confessing to a murder you didn’t commit?”
“I don’t know.”
And the thread snapped. “You’re lying.”
It had just been a flicker in his eyes as he glanced down, barely discernible, but Max was very good at reading lies and Stanley Grant was bad at telling them.
He hedged. “My sister—”
Max stood. “If you don’t tell me the truth, I can’t help you. And just so we’re clear, I’m not under any obligation to protect your family. I sent my colleague to sit with Marie this morning because I knew you were concerned and I wanted to talk to you. We learned that she already received a threat. A photo of her mother-in-law’s house was left in her mail slot late last night. So someone knows where her kids are.”
Stanley paled even more. “I—I—”
“Good-bye.” She walked to the door. She’d left in the middle of interviews before when someone was bullshitting her; she had no qualms about walking out now.
“Wait!”
She turned but didn’t sit back down.
“I don’t want Victoria’s name dragged through the mud.”
“She’s dead. She doesn’t care.”
“Her parents do. Her brothers. The company we built from the ground up—”
“The company you admitted to embezzling from? The company that is struggling now that Victoria is dead and you are in prison and the two million dollars recovered is in a government trust while the DA tries to figure out exactly what happened? Do you want to go to prison for the rest of your life, possibly be executed, to protect Victoria’s name?”
“No. No! Listen, I confessed because they threatened my family. I was heartbroken over Victoria’s murder. I loved her like my sister. But I can’t do this. Her brother came to visit me … and I couldn’t do it anymore. I just couldn’t. I would never embezzle from my company, my friends!”
“Victoria,” Max snapped, pushing him back on topic.
He looked pained, and Max wasn’t positive it was all an act. Some of it was. He was hedging, and Max didn’t know if she could believe anything he said.
“I flew halfway cross-country to talk to you,” she said. “I jumped through the hoop you sent your attorney to dangle, and put my associate on your sister to protect her. If you want me to find the truth—wherever that truth leads—you need to tell me exactly what you know. Because right now, you’re not even close to convincing me that this plea change is out of guilt or fear. It looks like an orchestrated plan to get out of jail, and if that’s the case, I’m going back to New York and I frankly don’t care what happens here.” That wasn’t true. Max despised not knowing the truth—she didn’t work a case and walk away because someone pissed her off.
She would find the truth, with or without Stanley Grant’s help.
Grant stared at her. “Please, Max, I didn’t kill Victoria. I confessed out of fear for Marie and her boys, but I should have got them out of town and…” His voice trailed off.
“What are you hiding, Stan?”
“In the weeks before Victoria was killed, she was buying a lot of land. It didn’t make sense. The market was good, but we knew December was a better time to buy—for a variety of reasons. We had a plan—and this didn’t fit into the plan. Plus, she was going around Mitch and me. Now, that’s not necessarily wrong, because we all take our own clients, but this is mostly undeveloped land. She was prickly and wouldn’t talk to me about it. And then she was dead and that property was just … gone.”
“Land doesn’t disappear.”
“I saw the contracts, signed. Saw the county stamps. But I don’t think the land was for MCG. I think she was a straw buyer—buying for someone else. Or she was just doing the paperwork.”
“This is all a lot of what-ifs and maybes. I need a name.”