The Redemption of Rafe Diaz Read online

  “Mercedes was a gorgeous, exciting woman,” Bishop said. “She gave me something my wife and I haven’t shared for many years. In return, I fulfilled Mercedes’s needs.”

  “Which were?”

  “Material. She grew up the kind of poor where you don’t know where your next meal is coming from.” Bishop took a long sip of whiskey. “As for blackmail, if she thought it would get her a nest egg, I can see her doing it.”

  “That’s an angle I’ll work on.” As he rose, Rafe glanced toward the credenza, focusing on the framed photo of a dark-haired woman in her late forties. “I need to talk to your wife. She won’t take my calls.”

  Bishop scowled. “Ellen doesn’t know anything about this. She had no idea I was seeing Mercedes.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “I know Ellen. If she’d gotten wind of Mercedes, she wouldn’t have kept quiet about her.”

  Rafe stepped closer to the desk. “You hired me to get you off the hook on a murder charge. The only way for me to do that is to find out who killed your mistress.”

  “Are you saying you think my wife did?”

  “I think a man did the killing. Mercedes fought hard. It would have taken a lot of strength to overpower her. Same goes for the blow Allie Fielding took to her head.”

  “Then why do you need to talk to Ellen?”

  “She could have hired it done.”

  “No.” Bishop sat the tumbler on the desk with enough force to slosh whiskey over his hand. “She’s not talking to me or you because she’s irate and humiliated about the affair. Our grown son feels the same way. But neither of them would resort to murder.”

  “Speaking of your son, he hasn’t returned my messages, either. Because he works here, I plan to stop by his office on my way out.”

  Bishop’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “Don’t waste your time. After my arrest, Will informed me he’ll be out of the office a lot. Said he intends to spend time with his mother. That she needs his support now more than I do.”

  “Did Will know about your affair with Mercedes?”

  “You think I’d tell my son about that?”

  “I need to talk to him and your wife,” Rafe said, ignoring the question. He’d worked enough divorce cases to know that secret affairs didn’t stay that way forever. “Any idea how to do that?”

  Bishop blew out a breath. “You wind up at the same social event with them.” He moved back to his desk, shuffled through a pile of mail, then frowned.

  Rafe waited while Bishop called his secretary. “Check with Guy to see if he’s got his invitation for tomorrow night’s benefit auction.”

  Bishop’s partner, Guy Jones, was married to Bishop’s sister, making the men brothers-in-law. In the light of Bishop’s arrest for the murder of his mistress, Rafe figured gatherings of the Bishop/Jones clan might be tense for a while.

  When Bishop hung up, Rafe asked, “Are you sure your wife will go out in public right now?”

  “Positive,” Bishop said. “Social contacts mean everything to Ellen. She isn’t about to let anything I’ve done shame her into seclusion. She’ll make sure everyone knows what a bastard I’ve been to her.”

  Both men looked across the office when the door swung inward. “Hank, you wanted to see this invite?”

  “Yeah, Guy. Come in.”

  Rafe studied Guy Jones as he approached. He was short and burly, his dark hair thinning at the crown. His pleated khaki slacks, striped short-sleeved dress shirt and black brogans were a far cry from the tailored suit and polished Italian leather loafers worn by his partner.

  “That’s it,” Bishop said, checking the invitation. He told his brother-in-law why he wanted it, then introduced Rafe.

  Guy offered a hand. “Diaz, I hope to hell you can get Hank cleared of the murder charge.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Rafe said. The man’s grip was like a can crusher.

  The piece of heavy card stock Bishop handed Rafe was an invitation to a silent auction. Rafe’s gaze narrowed on the small pair of ornate shoes embossed on the card’s upper center. He’d seen those embroidered, bejeweled shoes earlier on a velvet-covered pedestal at Silk & Secrets.

  Rafe glanced up from the invitation. “The Friends Foundation. What does it do?”

  “I’m not sure.” Bishop flicked a hand as if batting away a cobweb. “Ellen and I receive piles of invitations and I never pay attention to the who and the what. I just sign the checks and she deals with the details.”

  Guy Jones shrugged. “Seems like Allie Fielding is somehow involved with this foundation. I know for sure you need more than the invitation to get in the door. You also have to have your name on the confirmed guest list. I can ask my wife to make some calls and try to get you in, but she’s busy planning our daughter’s wedding so I can’t guarantee she’ll get around to it.”

  “I’ll get myself in.” Rafe stabbed the invitation into the inside pocket of his suit coat. He needed to talk to Bishop’s wife and son. Period. At this late date, the only way he could ensure getting into the auction was to use Allie Fielding’s connections.

  In his mind’s eye, he pictured her cool, perfect face framed by silky blond hair, heard the echo of her sultry voice, and felt all over again something tighten inside him. It was that intense man-to-woman response that had kept his gut in knots since he walked out of her shop.

  Then there was the memory of her faint, expensive perfume, which had been the best thing he’d smelled in years.

  He shoved away the thought. Next time he saw her, he’d be prepared. Next time, he wouldn’t allow her to get past the wall of control he’d built around himself.

  Paint roller suspended in one hand, Allie narrowed her gaze across the small bedroom. “Rafe Diaz shut down an entire street gang?”

  “Not single-handedly,” Liz Scott replied while using a small brush to dab pale blue paint near the room’s sole window. The pane was open, letting in a breeze heated by the bright morning sunshine.

  “But Diaz got the ball rolling,” Liz added. With her long coppery hair piled on top of her head, and the tube top and baggy overalls she wore, she in no way resembled the kick-ass cop she was.

  “Wouldn’t that have put Rafe in danger?”

  “After spending two years in stir, taking on a street gang probably seemed like a walk in the park.”

  “I suppose so.” Allie closed her eyes. Seeing Rafe yesterday had forced the sharp-edged guilt she’d harbored for years to the surface.

  She opened her eyes when Claire Castle settled a hand on her arm.

  “Having Rafe walk into your shop yesterday must have been a shock.” The owner of the antique shop next door to Silk & Secrets had dressed for a day of voluntary labor in tattered jeans and a faded khaki shirt. The house they toiled in was being readied for a woman who’d escaped her abusive husband and had been living in a shelter with their kids. With help from the Friends Foundation, she was getting a fresh start.

  “A total shock,” Allie agreed, and squeezed Claire’s hand.

  One of the best things about having close girlfriends was knowing you could count on their support. Allie had opened her shop on the same day Claire finalized her purchase of Home Treasures. They’d met Liz that same night when she’d encountered them on the sidewalk outside their shops, drinking champagne toasts and attempting a tipsy ceremonial burning of a photo of the sexy federal agent Claire had walked away from.

  After hearing Claire’s tale of love gone bad, Liz torched the picture herself. Since then, the friendship among the three had flourished.

  Now, Claire was married to the sexy Fed and Liz was engaged to a gorgeous detective, who’d transferred from the Shreveport PD to the Oklahoma City force.

  In Allie’s experience and twenty-seven years of observation, she had only ever witnessed love go bad, crash and burn. Seeing her friends genuinely happy in their relationships was an ongoing learning experience.

  Turning back to the wall, Allie put more muscle into wielding t
he paint roller. “In fact, when I looked up and saw Rafe, I thought I was dreaming.”

  “When you called to tell me Diaz had shown up, you sounded more like you’d had a nightmare,” Liz commented. “Which is why I checked him out.”

  “How did he manage to take down a gang?” Claire asked.

  “He’d finished getting his college credits while in prison, so he had a degree in accounting when he was released,” Liz replied. “His uncle owned a restaurant and needed a bookkeeper. Apparently he was uneasy about having his nephew do the job, but in the end he agreed.”

  Allie replenished the paint on her roller. “Why was the uncle uneasy? Because Rafe had been in prison?”

  “No. The uncle was being forced by a street gang to launder drug money through his business in lieu of paying them for protection. It didn’t take Rafe Diaz long to figure out what was going on. His uncle admitted the same thing was happening to other business owners in the area.

  “Diaz got them all to agree to let him install surveillance equipment in their shops. Then he taped various gang members picking up payoffs. He took the recordings and the account books to the cops, and worked a deal to get immunity for the business owners on the money laundering. Between white-collar crime and the gang unit, they put away every member of the gang.”

  “Impressive,” Claire said while positioning tape along the top of a baseboard.

  “Word of mouth about what Diaz did was a boon to his PI business,” Liz added.

  “He wanted to be a cop,” Allie said. “That’s one of the things I remember about Rafe. His conviction ended that.”

  “But it was expunged, right?” Claire asked. “Doesn’t that mean the slate was wiped clean?”

  “That’s what it’s supposed to mean,” Liz answered. “In truth, cops don’t like ex-cons. There are some cops who’ll always view Diaz as the guilty party, who caught a break and walked. That’s not right nor fair, but it’s the cold, hard truth.”

  “Which is totally wrong because none of what happened was Rafe’s fault,” Allie said, frustration honing her voice to an edge. “He was innocent. But the evidence the police had seemed to point to his guilt.”

  “What happened to Rafe was awful,” Claire said.

  “It sucks,” Liz agreed. She stepped back and scowled at her work area. “So does my paint job. I’m sure there’s some technique to this, but all I know how to do is slop the stuff on and wait for it to dry.” She sent a look across her shoulder. “Al, why don’t you just pronounce me a failure? Then I’ll slink on home.”

  Glad for change to a lighter subject, Allie stepped across the room to get a close-up view of Liz’s work.

  “It looks fine to me,” Allie said. “But if you think your painting’s not up to par, I can transfer you to the scraping team. They’re starting on the outside of the house after lunch.”

  Pursing her lips, Liz gave her work another considering look. Then she shook her head. “On second thought, I think I’m getting the hang of using this brush.”

  Rafe braked his car in front of a small house that had paint peeling off it like dead skin. Sawhorses sat on the porch. Frowning, he rechecked the card the clerk at Silk & Secrets had jotted the address on to verify he was at the right place.

  He was.

  The clerk had told him Miss Fielding was spending the day painting in the Paseo District. Because this area of the city catered to emerging artists and trendy galleries, Rafe figured he’d find her in an art class, sketching some nude male model, which would have been right up the alley of the sexy party girl he’d known in college.

  He climbed out of his car just as a beefy workman wearing a sweat-stained T-shirt, jeans and a tool belt lashed beneath his bulging belly lugged a ladder from around the side of the house. Not quite the male model he’d envisioned, Rafe thought as he headed across the yard.

  Moments later, he followed the workman’s directions to the house’s back bedroom. The smell of fresh paint hung heavy in the air.

  At the bedroom’s doorway he paused, taking in the lone woman working with her back to him. She was wearing an old, tattered pair of jeans with frayed hems. A rag stuck out of one of the back pockets. Her T-shirt looked as if it had once been beige but had been washed so often that it had faded to a soft cream. Her hair was stuffed up into a ball cap and her scuffed work boots were spattered with the same light blue paint she was rolling onto the wall.

  “I’m looking for Allie Fielding.”

  At the sound of his voice she jolted and did a fast, twisting about-face. The momentum of the turn had her fumbling the roller, dripping paint on the floor.

  She glanced down, then looked back at him, her blue eyes glinting. “You scared me to death!”

  For a moment, all Rafe could do was stare while Allie abandoned the roller to the paint tray, then jerked the rag from her back pocket. Muttering, she crouched and began swiping blots of paint off the wood floor.

  In college, the money vibe had rippled off her like heat—the designer clothes, “in” shades and foreign cars so sleek they gave the impression they belonged in a cage. Even yesterday she’d looked like the millions of dollars she was worth.

  The woman presently crouched at his feet looked like she’d just come from Goodwill. And because her face was bare of concealing makeup, the bruise on her temple was the deep purple color of a plum gone bad.

  The unexpected quake of empathy that shot through him settled like a stone in Rafe’s gut. This particular woman had stirred enough emotion inside him for one lifetime.

  “I didn’t expect to find you doing manual labor,” he said, the words sounding harder than he’d intended.

  She flicked him a look from beneath her blond lashes. “I didn’t expect to have someone scare me half to death for the second time this week.”

  Rafe’s imagination conjured up the dark form that had rushed out at her from behind the condo’s kitchen door minutes after she’d stumbled on Mercedes McKenzie’s body. He couldn’t blame her for still feeling spooked.

  “I’ll make a point not to do that again,” he said evenly.

  “Appreciate it.” She rose, tossed the rag on an area of the scarred wooden floor where newspapers had been spread.

  Up close, he could see the ocean-blue facets of her eyes. Today, she smelled like soap. Just soap. A sharp kick of awareness left his solar plexus smarting.

  Her eyes flicked over his starched shirt and slacks. “Something tells me you’re not here to strap on a tool belt and get to work.”

  “No.” He knew he should just tell her why he’d shown up, get business over with, then leave. Maybe then he could get rid of the hard, hot ball of emotion in his gut. But curiosity pushed at him. “What’s going on with this house?”

  “It’s owned by a foundation. We’re making it livable for a woman who got up the courage to leave her sorry husband. He thought she and their kids were his personal punching bags. All the labor is done by volunteers.”

  Rafe glanced around. “You doing the painting by yourself?”

  “Two of my girlfriends are helping today. They left to pick up lunch for everyone.”

  “The foundation that owns this house,” he said just as the high-pitched wail of power tools drifted in through the hallway. “Is it the same one that’s sponsoring tonight’s silent auction?”

  “Yes.” Using a finger, Allie inched the brim of her baseball cap higher. “Why?”

  “Hank Bishop’s wife and son may show up there. I need to talk to them.”

  Allie’s eyes widened. “Are they suspects in Mercedes’s murder?”

  “At this point, everyone is.”

  “Can’t you just go and see them?”

  “I tried. They’re both angry at my client over his affair and they have little interest in helping him right now.”

  “Do you blame them?”

  “No. That doesn’t change the fact that I need to talk to them. I understand I can’t get into the auction unless my name is on the guest list a
t the door.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’ve been told you have a connection to the foundation.”

  “And you want me to get your name on the guest list so you can get in and corner Ellen and Will Bishop.”

  “Yes.”

  “The silent auction is a black-tie affair, Rafe. A lot of prominent people will be there.”

  In a fingersnap, cold hard tips of the anger he could never quite vanquish clawed through. “And an ex-con doesn’t fit in with that crowd,” he shot back.

  She kept her gaze on his as color flooded into her cheeks. “That’s not what I meant. Your conviction was overturned—”

  “You think that fixed things?” He took an aggressive step toward her. “Want to take a look at my résumé? There’s a two-year gap with nothing filled in. Makes it hard to explain when a prospective employer asks what I was up to during that time.”

  She flexed her fingers, then curled them into her palms. “I told you I was sorry. I’ll tell you again—”

  “I didn’t come here for a damn apology.”

  Stepping away, he pulled back on every level. He stared out the open window while the thud of hammers, the buzz of saws, the whir of drills coming from other areas of the house filled the air. Dammit, why the hell had he come here? He should have known that seeing Allie Fielding again would shove all the bitter memories to the surface.

  “Rafe, if I could go back and erase that night, I would.”

  The unsteadiness in her voice had him looking back at her. She’d been an unwitting player in the event that had sent him to prison. She wasn’t to blame, logically he knew that. Still, it didn’t lessen the storm brewing inside him.

  “What I was going to say,” she continued, “is that the Friends Foundation depends partly on the donations made during the annual auction. If you confront Ellen Bishop or her son and cause a scene, some of the donors are bound to get upset. They might decide not to make a contribution. That will hurt the people the foundation was established to help.”

  Pulling in a breath, Rafe snapped control back in place. “I won’t cause a scene,” he ground out. “Most of the time I’ll be observing. Reading body language. You have my word.”