R is for Ricochet (Kinsey Millhone 18)

"Just don't drink."

"Right. I won't. One vice at a time." She took another drag from her cigarette, tension draining from her face. "It's been a year since I smoked. Shit, and I was doing so well."

"You were doing great." I was still picking my way across what felt like a minefield, wondering if I could tell her the truth without bringing down fire on my own position.

"What's sick is the damn thing tastes so good," she said.

The subject of Beck was beside the point, now that she had her smokes. "So now what?" I asked.

"Beats the hell out of me."

"Maybe the two of us can figure it out."

"Yeah, right. What's to figure? I've been had," she said.

"I'm puzzled about the fellow who came to the house. I don't get that. Who was he?"

She shrugged. "He said he was FBI."

"Really. The FBI?"

"That's what he claimed, all superior and smarmy. As soon as I saw the first photo, I told him to get the hell off the property, but he wanted to sit there and spell it out for me, like I was too dumb to get it. I picked up the phone and told him I'd call the cops if he wasn't out the door in five seconds. That shut him up."

"Did he show you his ID? Badge, business card? Anything like that?"

"He flashed a badge when I first opened the door, but I didn't pay attention. Parole officers carry badges. I thought that's who he was so I didn't bother to check his name. I mean, what's it to me? I didn't see what choice I had so I let him in. When he pulled out the envelope, I figured he had forms to fill out, like he'd be filing some report. By the time I realized what he was up to I was so damn mad I didn't care who he was."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm sure as hell canceling my dinner date. I wouldn't sit down with Onni if I had a gun to my head."

"Don't you think Beck's the one you should be mad at? You went to jail for the guy and this is what he does in return."

"I never went to jail for him. Who told you that?"

"What difference does it make? That's the word around town."

"Well, I didn't."

"Come on, Reba. You might as well come clean. I'm the only friend you have. So you're crazy in love and took the fall for him. Wouldn't be the first time. Maybe he sweet-talked you into it."

"He didn't sweet-talk me into anything. I knew what I was doing."

"I have a hard time believing that."

"You want to argue the point? You ask me to be honest and then you sit there and make judgments? How fucked up is that?"

I raised a hand. "Right. You're right. I apologize. I didn't mean it that way."

She stared at me, assessing my sincerity. I must have looked like an honest woman because she said, "Okay."

"Anyway, whatever the motivation, you're saying you didn't embezzle any money from him?"

"Of course not. I have money of my own, or at least I had some back then."

"That being the case, how'd you end up in jail?"

"The discrepancies showed up on an audit and he had to account for the missing money somehow. He thought they'd let me off easy. Suspended sentence, probation – you know, something like that."

"That seems like a stretch. You'd been in jail once before on a bad-check charge. From the judge's point of view, this was simply more of the same."

"Well, yeah, I guess it might have looked that way. Beck did everything he could to soften the blow. He told the DA he didn't want to file charges, but I guess it's like a case of domestic violence – once the system gets hold of you, you don't have much choice. There's this big gap, three hundred and fifty thousand gone and him without an explanation."

"What happened to the money?"

"Nothing. He was socking it away, shifting the money to an offshore account so his wife couldn't get her hands on it. How was he supposed to know the judge would turn out to be such a hard-ass? Four years? My god. He was more shocked than I was."

"Really."

"I'm serious. He felt like a turd. He got in this big stinking argument with the prosecuting attorney. That went nowhere. Then he wrote to the judge, begging him to be lenient, but no such luck. He promised he'd have his attorney file an appeal -"

"An appeal? What are you talking about? Beck had no standing to file an appeal. The law doesn't work that way."