“Why did you run?”
“Detective Chavez came to me right after you were there, Agent Kincaid. During my lunch break. I left early to get my head straight, and he found me and showed me a photo of Penny and Gracie at the park. My baby girl and her baby. He said if I talked, they would die. He was serious, Agent Kincaid. He was serious. Please, please find someone to protect them.”
Lucy didn’t think they were in danger at this point because Chavez was on the run, but she assured Pollero that she would send officers to sit on Penny’s house for tonight at a minimum.
Lucy asked a few clarifying questions, but she had what she needed for now. She told the FBI agent who had detained Mr. Pollero that her boss would work with him to transfer Pollero back to Texas. He would face charges, but that was up to the AUSA. If he fully cooperated, he may not face much jail time, but he certainly would lose his job and never work again in the financial sector.
She ended the Skype call and Nate said, “I’ve already put out an APB on Simon Mills.”
“It’s time we talk to Grover and Judith Mills,” Lucy said. She was dreading the conversation. She couldn’t imagine that they knew what had been going on with their two oldest children, especially since they’d asked Max to help find answers to Victoria’s death. But they could know more than they’d shared—either things they didn’t think were important to mention or maybe didn’t want to think about.
* * *
By the time they arrived at the Mills ranch in Fredericksburg, reports had been coming in from those looking for Simon Mills. He wasn’t at his home, at MCG Land and Holdings, or at any of the properties he owned in the area.
Jennifer Reed had called Lucy and said that she was getting her ducks in a row with the DA and warrants and would be going over to the Monroe house first thing Saturday morning. She had an unmarked car watching the property, which was both easy and hard. Easy because there was a lot of land in the area with heavy foliage and trees, so they could be discreet, since there was only one road in and out of the neighborhood, but hard because the property was far back and they couldn’t get close enough to keep the house in sight.
“Mike, me, the DA, an AUSA, your boss, Vaughn, and a guy named Adam O’Neal—”
“He’s in White Collar Crimes,” Lucy explained.
“We’re all meeting in ten minutes to talk about how we want to proceed. We don’t want them running. Good work on Clemson. Weasel. For what it’s worth, I think Melissa Randolph freaked when I showed up. She wanted to tell the truth, I believed her that she had no idea what was going on, but when your boss tells you to do something you do it, according to her. She didn’t think the move to Chicago was to keep her from me—Hollinger’s legal aide was going out on maternity leave, and according to Randolph, her replacement didn’t work out. She believed it, but I don’t. Anyway, I asked her to keep it to herself for the time being, but we should expect that it’ll get out.”
“We put a flag on their passports,” Lucy said. “They won’t be leaving the country.”
“I’ll let you know what we decide to do. It’s going to depend if the DA thinks we have enough evidence to go after a high-end lawyer like Parker. The crime lab is busting their butt to collect evidence from Clemson’s vehicle tonight and that will make a huge difference. We have Clemson’s statement, but we need to corroborate it. I don’t see a woman like Faith Parker blabbing like Clemson or Pollero.”
“They were pawns,” Lucy said. “Pieces of a puzzle. They didn’t know what was going on, but they certainly knew what they were doing was illegal. I don’t want them getting a pass.”
“They’ll face some charges, what I don’t know. We get Parker for murder, we can rip apart her life to get her husband on accessory or the illegal gambling. Once this gets out to the press, we could have people knocking on our door wanting to give us information.”
“Wish it was all that easy.”
“You call this case easy?” Jennifer laughed. “We need something so solid the lawyer can’t wiggle out of the noose.”
“Has Mitch Corta come in?”
“No.”
“He hasn’t come to our office, either,” Lucy said. “Sean thought he’d convinced himself to turn over everything he has. He doesn’t have hard proof of any crimes, but he has some firsthand knowledge of the money-laundering operation and documentation that would be valuable to our White Collar unit. He needs to go on record.”
“Should we put an APB out on him?”
“I don’t know.”
“He didn’t kill her, so what he has or doesn’t have isn’t going to help me make a case against Faith Parker. But if he’s an accessory—”
“We need to question him, but we don’t have anything tangible about his involvement, other than Sean’s unofficial statement.” Lucy snapped her fingers. It had been a long day—a long week. “I almost forgot. Mitch told Sean that Harrison and Victoria had been having an affair—a long-running affair ever since he returned to Texas.”
“That’s why they divorced?”
“I don’t know. Sean didn’t go into details, other than to say that he believed the divorce was amicable and Mitch claimed that he was in a relationship with Stan and that Victoria knew about it.”
“That explains a lot.”
“It does?”
“I have a copy of Stan’s will. Everything he has—and that’s up to the lawyers to decide what was ill-gotten gains and what wasn’t—is to be split fifty-fifty between his sister and Mitch Corta. It was written three years ago.”
* * *
Grover Mills didn’t want to disturb his wife. It was nearly nine at night, and she was getting ready for bed.
Lucy wasn’t backing down. They needed to find Simon Mills.
Lucy said, “Max Revere was run off the road this afternoon because she was investigating your son and Harrison Monroe. She could have been killed. As it is she has a concussion, cracked ribs, and a broken ankle.”
He closed his eyes. “She asked today if we wanted the truth, the good and the bad. We told her yes. We told her we needed to know or we couldn’t put this chapter of our lives behind us.”
“That’s what Max does. She finds the truth. This time, the truth got her hurt. She learned at the recorder’s office that both Simon and Harrison profited when Kiefer lost the federal public works project. She didn’t know what everything she read meant, and she was bringing it down to the FBI for further analysis when she was run off the road.”
“She’s okay, right?”
He was genuinely concerned.
“Yes,” Lucy said. “Her boyfriend took her back to her hotel. You should also know that we have another suspect in Victoria’s murder.”
Judith came down the stairs at that point. “Who?” she asked.
The woman looked frail, especially in a bathrobe and slippers. Grover helped her down the last few steps. “Are you sure you want to hear this, sweetheart?” Grover asked his wife.
“Please, tell us the truth,” Judith said. “I can take the truth. I can’t take any more lies.”