The Fixer's Daughter Read online

  “Frank was curious. This man who murdered our girl, he wasn’t the same man who was burying her body?”

  Callie wished she could say yes. “No, he wasn’t. We don’t know what happened between the time of Bri’s death and when the trooper found her.”

  “Well, then maybe, just maybe, this Gavin wasn’t the real killer. Maybe her killer is still out there.”

  “Helen.” She was starting to lose her patience. “Gavin Hollister did it. He confessed. He knew details. He had motive. And he was trying to murder my father and me because I found him. He almost succeeded. I have bruises on my throat and stitches in my head to prove it.”

  The woman on the other end of the line gasped. “Oh, Callie. I didn’t think.”

  Almost instantly, Callie regretted her outburst. It had been selfish. This call wasn’t about being thanked. Helen’s anger was part of her grieving process, which Callie knew when she’d made this call. At some point, yes, she would like the Crawleys to thank her, but that shouldn’t be now when Briana’s story was just being told to the world. “That’s all right. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

  “No, it’s not all right. I’m so sorry.” The woman sounded genuinely mortified. “If you hadn’t been at the morgue that first day, I don’t know what we would have done. You were the first person we met. You helped when no one else did, not the police or anyone. And you nearly got killed. Then finally it’s over and I yell at you? What a horrible human being I am.”

  “You’re not a horrible human being.”

  “Yes, I am. I’m so sorry.”

  For the next ten minutes, Callie tried to stay out of the way. She accepted Helen’s heartfelt thanks and, when the subject returned to Bri, did her best to guide the conversation in this direction, turning their call into a small, audio memorial service, just the two of them, for this young woman she’d never met.

  CHAPTER 30

  Callie had promised herself not to drink until cocktail hour. But as soon as the minute hand clicked to six o’clock, she was there, pulling out a bottle of pinot grigio that had been waiting for her in the lettuce crisper. She was just uncorking it when her father walked into the kitchen. “How can people live in a house with no wine cellar and no wet bar?” He’d been in the present and fairly clear-headed for a day and a half now and she was loving the stability of having him back.

  Father and daughter settled into the armchairs in the living room. There was still a trace of blood on a corner of the Persian carpet that Sarah hadn’t been able to get out. Callie had her wine and Buddy had his whisky-colored water. He actually seemed to enjoy it. “You know I don’t blame you, honey, now that I’ve had three years to mull it over.”

  The subject took her by surprise. Was he really bringing it up? “I had no idea, Daddy. Honestly.” They had never seriously discussed it. It had been yelled about and fought about but never calmly discussed.

  “You should have had an idea. That was always my point.” He put down his drink and adjusted the cushion behind his back. “You were doing live TV, about a big-deal pharmaceutical company that you personally owned stock in. Did it not occur to you there might be a perceived conflict of interest?”

  “No, it didn’t,” she shot back, raising her voice more than she intended. “It did not occur to me that my father might have given me a Christmas present that was in violation of SEC regulations. Didn’t enter my mind.”

  Callie had never paid much attention to his work life. The things her father did were all vaguely important and illustrated just how crucial he was to the running of the state. She had heard about Barton Pharmaceuticals’ new cancer drug. They had conducted clinical trials all over Texas, five years of rigorous tests and recordkeeping. But Barton’s stock took a nosedive when the Texas attorney general’s office began looking into allegations of faked records, allegations that had been made by a disgruntled ex-employee. Months later, the Texas attorney general, Lawrence “Buddy” McFee, dropped the investigation and the stock soared.

  Buddy had no financial interest in Barton. That would have been illegal. But when Callie announced on TV that shares had been bought in her and her brother’s name, it began an investigation into her father’s actions. The Democrats accused him of everything from taking a bribe to insider trading.

  The attorney general never addressed these accusations. The involvement of his only daughter made it too sensitive. But certain people within the Republican Party went into damage control. Her statement hadn’t been accidental, the rumor-mongers said. She might pretend to be free of malicious intent, they said, but Calista McFee was a rabid Democrat, a muckraking reporter out to make a name. She hated everything her father stood for. She wanted him ruined. And her weapon – to many Texans this was truly the most egregious part – had been her dad’s sweet little Christmas present. The rumors had their intended effect. Waters were muddied, public opinion was divided and Buddy managed to escape with a simple resignation.

  “I never blamed you, Callie. I never said a word.”

  “But you never told them to stop. If you’d objected strongly enough or made a public statement on my behalf…”

  “I never would have started it, you know that.” There was real distress in his voice, mixed with regret. “It was someone in the governor’s office. By the time I heard about it, it was too late. You’d been damaged. You couldn’t be undamaged. That’s not how political rumors work. So, what’s the best result?” ‘What’s the best result?’ It was a line she’d heard a hundred times, a key part of Buddy’s negotiating language. “The best result, at least I thought at the time, was to let it ride out. I didn’t defend you or blame you.”

  “I know. You got to be the injured father trying to keep his family together.” The governor, her godfather, had used some similar phrase to explain away Buddy’s silence in the matter. All the people she’d known growing up, the politicians she’d gazed down on through the staircase balusters, had stayed silent or closed ranks against her.

  “We both made mistakes, darlin’, mistakes that hurt.”

  “I am sorry,” Callie said. She knew this wouldn’t be the end of the discussion, but it was the end for now.

  “Sorry, too.” Buddy glanced down at his four fingers of colored water and shrugged. “Damn it. I need a fake cigar to go with my fake whisky.”

  “And I need to warm up whatever Sarah left for us.”

  Sarah had left a batch of chili and cornbread, one of Buddy’s favorite meals. They ate at the Formica-topped table by the bay window, a situation that led Buddy to mumble another question, “How can people live in a house with no dining room?”

  Afterwards, Callie put the dishes in the sink and joined her father in the living room, him with his wooden cigar and his third colored-water, her with her third glass of wine. “Do you really like that?” she asked, pointing to the contents of the cut crystal glass.

  “Keeps my mind clear, on the days when I have a mind. On the bad days, Gil pours me a snort of the real brown goods. Just a snort.” He tilted his head slyly toward a bottle on the sideboard. Callie didn’t recall seeing this bottle before. “You like it?” Buddy asked. On a bad day, make sure you pour me this one.”

  She walked over to the sideboard and checked the label. “Glenfiddich.”

  “Not just Glenfiddich. Fifty-year-old Glenfiddich. Best of the best.”

  Callie knew her father well enough. “All right. Who gave you the Glenfiddich and why? I know you’re dying to tell me.”

  “You’re not going to like it.” Then before she could guess… “Keagan Blackburn. He messengered it over today while you were out.”

  “Jeez, Dad. Did you have to tell me?”

  His grin was proud and impish. “People still appreciate my skills.”

  “And what were your skills in this case?” she asked. “Erasing his arrest record? Getting the state trooper to disappear?”

  “State trooper and girlfriend.” Buddy chuckled. “I almost messed up with the girlfriend
. Clever of you to think of her.”

  “I learned from the master.”

  “There was no reason for the arrest, you know. That loser from the website killed her and almost killed us. Any doubt about that?”

  “There’s no doubt,” she had to admit. “But Blackburn was involved.”

  “A misdemeanor. A two-year-old could make a misdemeanor go away.”

  “Doesn’t it bother you, helping him get away with whatever he got away with?”

  Buddy used a finger to stir the ice in his brown water. “Keagan’s gotten away with a lot in his lifetime. You know, he cheated on all three of his wives, plus at least one fiancée he didn’t marry. Not one of them found out.”

  “Quite the stud.”

  “Hey, you know I don’t approve.” He looked past his daughter into the distance. “Me, I sowed my oats early and married late. I was the luckiest bastard alive when I met Anita. I didn’t want to outlive her. Didn’t think I could. What Anita and I had was sacred.”

  Callie didn’t know what to say. Her father had never talked about his grief.

  Buddy shrugged. “If there’s any karma in this world, I think Keagan really loved this last wife of his. Ingrid or Elsa or Asta.”

  “Ingrid.”

  “Ingrid.” He had a way of half-forgetting names, more a form of disrespect than anything. “This Ingrid, she paid him back in spades. You should’ve seen. You would’ve enjoyed it.” Buddy eased back in the leather, ready to tell another one of his hundred stories. “This was some months back, before you came home. The two of them, Ingrid and her lover, ran off with the jewelry and everything else in her name. All she left him was this one-page note and an address in Buenos Aires to send her stuff. Keagan came over the night they ran off, pounding on my door. He was a God-awful mess.”

  “He came to see you?”

  “The night she ran off. Pounding on the door, half-hysterical. Clothes all rumpled, babbling, sweating like a pig. At first, I thought he needed my services. But the man just wanted to talk, avail himself of a drink and a sympathetic ear.”

  “I didn’t realize you were close.”

  “People generally come because they need me to grease the wheels or make things disappear. In this case… Guess he just needed someone to listen, to tell him it’s not so bad. Hell, she’s just some foreign sexpot who never made a real friend. Half of Austin knew about the polo player. Just check your pre-nup, I said. Go on with your life. People will gossip, but what the hell? Let ‘em. You’re goddamn Keagan Blackburn. What do you care? Take her stuff and burn it in a bonfire, why don’t you? Good riddance.”

  Callie had to smile. “Did he appreciate your tender sympathies?”

  Buddy grinned. “I think he did. Like I said, he came over a blubbering mess, like her screwing around was his fault, like he was responsible . . .”

  “Well, he was screwing around himself,” Callie pointed out, “so in a way he was responsible.”

  “Hmm.” The guttural sound was barely audible.

  “Dad, what are you thinking? Dad?”

  Buddy didn’t seem to hear her. He was focusing his gaze downward, staring at the brown ice in his cut crystal glass.

  “Dad?” she repeated, but her father didn’t move a muscle. “Dad, are you okay?” Could it really happen this quickly? Could his mind have been taken away this quickly? One second here, the next second gone? Was it going to be like this from now on? Comfortable, heartfelt conversations cut short without any warning?

  “Why, that sonofabitch,” Buddy muttered under his breath. “That goddamn sonofabitch.”

  “Who are you talking about?” She reached across and touched his hand. “It’s Callie, Dad. How are you feeling?”

  “How am I feeling?” he asked himself, his mind still somewhere else. “Better now. I’m better now,” he answered. “Thank you, sweetie. Much better. Sonofabitch.”

  “Good. Do you want to go to bed? Maybe lie down for a while?”

  He laughed. “Hell, no. I want to go for a drive.”

  “A drive? Um, I’m not sure that’s the best idea. You look tired.”

  “Tired? Who the hell’s tired?” Buddy McFee shot to his feet. He wavered for a second then stretched out his arms and caught his balance. “I’ll grab the Glenfiddich. You grab the car keys. The two of us are going for a drive.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Most of her life she had spent not questioning her father. Even now, as she pulled the silver Yukon out onto Hacienda Road, she didn’t ask. Buddy seemed lucid and in control as, turn by turn, he barked out the directions. It wasn’t even nine p.m., so she doubted they would be waking anyone up. It reminded Callie of when he used to pile the family into the Cadillac without explanation. It was always exciting, whether they were heading to a circus just come to town or to a political fundraiser.

  This particular ride was short and they spent less than a minute idling by the roadside intercom for someone to answer. Then the wrought-iron gates swung inward and Callie drove onto the Blackburn estate and up to the house on the artificial hill.

  Keagan Blackburn met them at the door and the unflappable Texas gentleman ushered them inside. He was wearing black jeans, a flannel shirt and a bemused but welcoming smile. Buddy brandished the Glenfiddich, swinging it overhead. He profusely thanked his host for the extravagant gift and suggested that the three of them open it to celebrate the ending of “the troubles”. Callie mouthed a soft hello, apologized for the intrusion and left the rest to her father.

  Half an hour later, she was sitting quietly, smiling mechanically and feeling exasperated, only half-listening as the men blathered back and forth. They were in the living room just beyond the entry hall, a well-proportioned room with classical moldings and a painting of an oil rig on a barren plain, gracing the fireplace mantle. Buddy had immediately scoped out the best seat for himself, a padded wing chair with a view out to the lush gardens, the stone wall and the field beyond it, the whole view illuminated by a halogen street lamp along a deserted country road. It was a pleasant enough view.

  “Keagan,” Buddy finally said, as if just realizing it, “Is this your chair? Did I come in here and steal your chair?”

  “You’re my guest.” Blackburn waved a gracious hand. “It’s an honor to have you there.”

  “Appreciate it.” Buddy chuckled. “Let me just say, when you and the snot-nosed lawyer came to me, I thought you were hellbent on disaster. No way out, you stubborn bastard. But just look.” It was at least the fourth time Buddy had expressed that sentiment, each time in a slight variation. Each time, Callie expected him to go further, in his patented way – to slyly reveal a new fact, to ask a pointed question, to insinuate or goad or guess, to somehow peel off a layer of the onion. Not tonight. And each time Buddy repeated himself, Blackburn smiled back, poured another toast with the 50-year-old whisky and expressed his gratitude for all that the fixer had done. It was becoming interminable.

  “I hope your little girl has no hard feelings,” their host said. His speech was on the cusp of slurring. And that was when Callie noted that her father had not been downing his share of the Glenfiddich, merely holding his glass over the side of the chair, out of sight, bringing it up to his mouth occasionally, but barely imbibing.

  “No hard feelings,” she replied.

  “You must understand, darlin’, some things are private,” Blackburn drawled between sips, leaning into Callie, like a tutor to a student. “That doesn’t make them bad or illegal, just private. You want to know everything, whether it’s private or not. I get it. That’s part of your job.”

  “Part of the job.” Callie was a little more alert now, a little more engaged.

  “Part of the job,” Buddy said then rocked forward in his wing chair, pushing himself up with a grunt. “Is it safe to leave you two alone? Keagan, buddy, I trust your powder room is still in the front hall?”

  “It is,” said Blackburn. “Make yourself at home.”

  Buddy headed in the right direction
, drink in hand, swaying slightly. “I want you to keep Mr. Blackburn occupied while I’m gone, you hear me? The art of holding a man’s attention is a woman’s hallmark.” And with that, he disappeared into the front hall.

  “Is it safe for me to be alone with you?” Blackburn asked, showing off his bright smile.

  “Maybe.” Callie shifted on the couch. The last time they’d been alone had been at the brunch after he’d followed her in his Lamborghini. “Briana’s parents still need answers,” she said pointedly.

  The brightness faded. “They have all the answers they need. I didn’t kill her, and the man who killed her is dead. I hope they can take some solace in that and go on with their lives.”

  “Hmm. I have this feeling you’re getting away with something.”

  “What the hell would I be getting away with?” His question had some genuine bite in it. “Tell me. Did I rob a bank? Is there some local crime spree I’m unaware of? Because if there’s no crime, then what the hell…” A cell phone jangled in the distance, interrupting his outburst. He swiveled his head toward the dining room and the kitchen beyond. “Office ringtone,” he said. “I’m sorry, Ms. McFee, but I’m going to have to leave you for a few minutes.”

  “No problem.”

  Callie watched as he retreated toward the back of the house, replicating her father’s slightly inebriated gait. She rearranged herself on the couch and thought over what he’d just said. What exactly did she think he’d gotten away with?

  Within a minute, the light from the halogen street lamp drew her eye. Was there something moving out there? she wondered, a breeze rustling through the branches or a car passing by? She stood up to stretch her legs. Something was definitely moving, she deduced as she made her way to the window. It was not a car or a breeze. No, it was her father. The man she’d last seen ambling to the powder room was now ambling out under the illumination of a street lamp. Callie tuned her ear, identified the CEO’s barely discernible voice behind one or more closed doors, then made her decision.