Playing Dead_ A Novel of Suspense - Allison Brennan [89]
“I’m not—”
He ran his fingers through the ends of her hair. “Yes you are. Please. No more about it, okay?”
She took a deep breath. “Okay.”
“Nelia is an attorney. She’s going to arrange for my surrender. I’m going to turn myself over to the FBI.”
“The FBI? Why them?”
“I believe that if I go into state custody my days are numbered. Someone wants me dead. I’m hoping that the FBI will listen to what I know.”
“You can’t trust them. You can’t trust anyone, Dad. Except me. I’m working on this. I already know so much more than you did yesterday morning. Stay away. I’ll figure it out, I promise.”
Nelia came in with a tray of teacups. She put it down and sat on the armrest of the chair Tom was sitting in. He absently took her hand. The simple sign of affection wasn’t lost on Claire.
“Frank Lowe died in a fire the night after Mom was killed,” Claire said.
“That’s not possible. Oliver said he’d tracked down Frank Lowe and that he had the key to what happened.”
“Lowe died in a fire, but Oliver told Bill that he thought he was alive. I don’t see how—it’s actually hard to fake your own death. Disappear? Much easier.”
“Oliver must have had a reason to think Lowe wasn’t dead.”
She frowned. “Maybe. I do know that Lowe’s boss at the time now owns a bar in Isleton. Oliver was returning from Isleton when he went into the river.”
“Stop. Stop looking into this right now,” her dad said.
“I’m going to find out who killed Mom and Chase Taverton.”
“Dammit, Claire!” He took a deep breath and turned to Nelia.
“Claire,” Nelia said, “if anything happened to you, Tom wouldn’t be able to live with it. You have to step back.”
Claire shook her head and looked at the ceiling. “You might think you know me, but you don’t.” She looked from Nelia to her father. “I’m not the naïve fourteen-year-old who was in shock during your trial. I’m a trained private investigator. Oliver Maddox found Chase Taverton’s personal day planner. He had a copy of it. That disappeared, and so did the original. Taverton’s sister gave it to a cop who claimed he was from the Sacramento County Superior Court.
“A friend of mine at the morgue told me Oliver swallowed a flash drive. The FBI has it. Something important was on there. Something that might prove you’re innocent. And there are other things. Like your transcripts are missing from the county archives. There are no coroner’s reports on the murders.”
Her dad leaned forward, a stern look on his face. “Don’t you see? Someone powerful is calling the shots.”
“What powerful person would want Chase Taverton dead? To the extent that he would frame an innocent man, destroy government records, and kill a law student?”
“Someone with a lot to hide, and even more to protect,” Nelia said softly.
Tom and Claire turned to her.
Nelia said, “You two are so much alike. If the situation weren’t so dire, I would laugh. Stubborn. Determined. Smart. Temperamental. But we know that Tom is innocent. That he was framed. That someone else killed two people, but we don’t know the motive.”
“It was about Taverton,” Claire said.
Nelia nodded. “Prosecutors make enemies, but usually they leave a paper trail. Something to follow that shows what they were working on.”
“Wouldn’t they be working only after an arrest?” Claire asked. “I mean, isn’t their job to prosecute those arrested for a crime?”
“Usually,” Nelia said, “but sometimes they are involved in sting operations. Or they arraign a petty criminal who has information to take down a bigger fish.”
“Frank Lowe,” Claire said. “He was a petty thief. He was arrested two weeks before he died in a fire. It’s too big a coincidence that Lowe died about the same time Taverton did. What happens after someone is arraigned?” she asked Nelia, who seemed to know more about legal issues than she did.
“He’s a thief? So