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But how? That was the million-dollar question, and one that I’d been losing sleep over since I first met Annie. Carillo was a cop, he was vindictive, and he had emotionally and physically abused his wife. Taking him down was going to be next to impossible.
But nothing—nothing—was impossible. The improbable just took time. And I had all the time in the world to destroy the man.
First things first: earning back the five thousand I’d given to Annie real quick. My mortgage was due in two weeks, and no way in hell would I ask my mother for a loan.
I’d walked away from the family business three years ago, and asking for help now would be admitting that I had failed and needed them.
I would get out of this hole the only way I knew how: working my ass off.
Two
Margo Angelhart
I quietly slipped into the last pew of St. Dominic’s Catholic Church and hoped Uncle Rafe didn’t spot my late arrival. I probably shouldn’t have come at all. I could easily have called Rafe with the update about Annie.
But on my way home, thinking about grabbing a few hours of much-needed sleep before tracking Brittney Monroe’s super-wealthy dot-com husband, I’d spotted the cross in the distance and deeply instilled Catholic guilt washed over me. I hadn’t been to Mass in three weeks, and avoided my uncle’s messages while planning Annie’s escape.
I could easily blame the cases I’d been working—both paid and unpaid—but the truth? I’d broken one of the Ten Commandments three weeks ago. Sure, I broke the commandments all the time. Lying. Working on the Sabbath. Unmarried sex—though, unfortunately, not recently. I hadn’t killed anyone, even when I wanted to, so that was a plus, right? But this time, I’d lied to my mother, and that always made me feel doubly guilty. The whole honor thy mother and father rule? I really tried to obey that one.
Worse, my mom knew I was lying. And she knew that I knew that she knew I was lying. So, how could I go to church in good faith when I lied to my mom?
I’m pretty certain I’m not the only adult who felt guilty when lying to their parents, but double guilt here because my favorite uncle is a priest and I’m a borderline halfway decent Catholic. And I was pretty certain Uncle Rafe could read my mind, which would not be a good thing most of the time.
You could be home right now, Margo. In bed. Sleeping. Call Rafe about Annie later today.
Yet...there was peace here at St. Dominic’s that calmed me like little else. One of the oldest churches in Phoenix nestled in the valley between the Phoenix Mountains Preserve and North Mountain, designed to look like a small California mission, but with a distinctive desert feel. Thick adobe walls, narrow stained glass windows, and a long covered veranda that surrounded the church on three sides. Established trees flanked the structure, and to the west was a K–8 school with only nine classrooms—one for each grade, thirty to thirty-five kids in each class.
St. Dominic’s took up one side of a quiet dead-end street in Sunnyslope. Sunnyslope had once been an upscale suburb north of downtown but had gone downhill over the last twenty-some years. Half the community still maintained their stately streets, large lots filled with trees, and older homes that had been renovated and were now worth seven figures. Abuela and Pop still lived in their home off North 7th Street, the one they bought in the 1960s, where they raised their seven children in four bedrooms with only two bathrooms. But on the fringes of Sunnyslope, especially near the freeway, light-rail stations, and most everything on or off 19th Ave, were run-down apartments, small houses with bars on the windows, graffiti, boarded-up businesses, drug deals in broad daylight, regular shootings, and gang activity.
I blinked as the congregation rose for the Gospel. I may have fallen asleep with my eyes open during the second reading, because I didn’t remember a word.
Then, as if Rafe were speaking directly to me, a verse jumped out:
“‘The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones.’”
That capsulized what had been bothering me ever since I’d taken the adultery case ten days ago. A nagging little lie that my client told. It wasn’t a lie that needed to be told...so why had Brittney Monroe said it?
When we met ten days ago at a generic coffee shop far from where Brittney lived in Scottsdale, she’d at first seemed very distraught and forthcoming. Her husband had changed, lying to her about where he was and who he was with, and she had smelled perfume on his shirts that wasn’t hers. She just “had to know” if he was cheating on her so she could “fix their marriage.” I suppose that could have been true, though in my subsequent research I learned that, because of her prenup, she gets more money in the divorce if he cheats.
But her rambling about irrelevant things, like her family and college, gave me a lot of information to verify. I usually check out my clients, so when she said that she didn’t want to divorce because her parents had gone through a nasty divorce that forever impacted her, it was easy to verify.
Except, her parents had been married for thirty-six years and lived in the same house where they’d raised their two kids in Colorado Springs.
I asked her about it during our next conversation—over the phone, making it harder to read if she was lying—and she said, “Well, they didn’t divorce, but they separated and it felt like a divorce.”
Maybe that was true. But why not just say it? Why say divorce when it was a separation? A separation that clearly hadn’t lasted.
I could have talked to her parents and brother and learned the truth, but decided it wasn’t important. Besides, if she had lied, then I would have a harder time accepting her money...and I really needed the money. Bored housewife from Scottsdale wanted proof that her hubby of three years was doing the dirty with someone else? Sign me up. Hate the job; love the payday.
And a small lie was irrelevant as to whether dot-com multimillionaire Logan Monroe was cheating on his wife. It just annoyed me.
If she lies about small things, is she lying about big things?
And yeah, thinking about Brittney’s possible little lie reminded me of my big-fat whopping lie to my mom.
Dammit.
I sat through the Eucharistic prayer, then joined the line for Communion. Would have slipped out right after, but I couldn’t avoid Rafe’s warm all-knowing eyes when he handed me the body of Christ. I could practically hear him ask, Why have you ignored my texts and calls, Margo?
