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  Then she said, "No rashes, right?"

  The light turned green. He grinned, whipping his truck around, and said, "Guaranteed."

  In the morning, Jose woke to find Casey standing at the edge of the bed, fully dressed, tugging on his big toe.

  "Look," she said, "I don't want to ruin a good thing."

  Jose rubbed his eyes and sat up, his bare back against the headboard, gathering the sheets around his waist.

  "That bad?" he said, peeking under the sheet.

  She blushed and shook her head. She'd stacked her hair up in a tight bun and even the nape of her neck flushed.

  "No," she said, drawing out the word and sitting on the edge of the bed. "But we've got this thing, this case, and there's a lot to it. If we're right, and something really happened, it's going to get worse before it gets better. A lot worse. I just don't want to get bogged down."

  "I'm kind of supercharged after that," Jose said.

  "I need you," Casey said, "as an investigator. I'd like to think we can put this to the side and keep going on the case, not get distracted."

  "An occasional distraction is never a bad thing," he said, hugging his knees. "Right?"

  "Maybe," she said, her expression giving nothing away. "Let's just not count on anything. If it happens, hey, okay. No expectations, that's all. You want breakfast?"

  "You making it?"

  "What did I just say about expectations?" she asked, arching an eyebrow, then cracking a smile. "There's a cafe on the canal."

  After breakfast, Jose took his slug downtown to Dante Villa, a guy he knew in the police lab, while Casey visited her friend at the morgue.

  Jose stood over Dante's shoulder as he punched up the digital image on his computer.

  "You got a winner," Dante said. "Trace amounts of blood and bone."

  "Is it old?"

  "Not so old. A few weeks, I'm gonna guess."

  "Can you do a DNA profile without anyone knowing?" Jose asked.

  "You want to match it to something?"

  "Eventually. Can you keep it semiofficial?"

  "I can slip it in with some files I've got going, sure," Dante said, cleaning his glasses on a corner of his lab coat. "Preserve the chain of evidence, if that's what you mean. You might have to pay for the test. That way no one can bitch at me for doing it later on. Can I ask what you're going to do with all this?"

  "This is one where, honestly," Jose said, "you're not going to want to know. If it turns back to bite me in the ass, you're better off sticking to the science."

  "Something I'll see in the paper?"

  Jose said, "More like CNN."

  CHAPTER 28

  TEXAS ISN'T LIKE A LOT OF PLACES," JESSICA SAID, PASSING A FILE across her desk to Casey. "We like autonomy, right? So you get some off-the-map town like Wilmer that can have the local funeral director designated as its coroner and even though we're half an hour up the road and technically they're in our jurisdiction, they call the shots."

  Casey opened the file and examined the death certificate, her eyes coming to rest on the words "hunting accident."

  "Meaning what?" Casey asked.

  "Meaning, you see that guy Blake Morris's signature? Morris and Sons funeral directors? He's the ME."

  "But he's not an ME, right?"

  "In Wilmer he is."

  "Without any investigation?" Casey asked.

  Jessica shook her head. "I didn't say that. I'm sure they'll say he investigated. He probably looked at the body, heard the senator's story, the cops talked to the wife, who said your guy went out hunting with the senator, and bingo, case closed."

  "That's not an investigation," Casey said.

  " Texas style," Jessica said. "Hey, at least they did that. I told you, technically, they could have just had some doctor sign the death certificate."

  "Instead, they had some funeral director do the same damn thing," Casey said.

  Jessica shrugged.

  "But you can open it up, right?" Casey asked. "Look more thoroughly?"

  "You know any judges?"

  "Most of them," Casey said.

  "Any of them like you?"

  "Why do you say it like that?"

  "You know I like you," Jessica said, "but some people think you're a little pushy."

  "Okay, I'll just sit on the curb and wait for someone to come by and ask me if I need any help."

  "Don't take it that way, I'm just saying."

  "Judge Remy," Casey said, "she'll help."

  "We need her to order the exhumation," Jessica said, dangling the papers over her desk. "The wife's signature goes a long way, but the court still has to weigh in. She might want the DA to get behind it. Anyway, you get Remy to sign this, and we're in."

  CHAPTER 29

  EARRINGS THE SIZE OF FISHING LURES WERE A FEMININE COUNTER-balance to the steely gray in Judge Remy's short spiked hair. Her bright green eyes rested in her sagging gray face like two jewels. Around the judge's neck silver reading glasses hung from a pewter chain. When Casey finished the story, the judge used her glasses to examine some of the documents in Casey's file.

  "Where is the DA on this?" she asked in a gentle Texas drawl that belied her reputation for harsh sentences.

  "I presume he'll be behind it one hundred percent," Casey said.

  "Presume?"

  "We aren't drinking buddies," Casey said.

  "Neither are we," the judge said, removing the glasses from her nose and waving them between Casey and herself before she let them fall into the folds of her robe, "but I get it."

  Casey smiled.

  "You like skydiving?" the judge asked.

  "I haven't," Casey said, "but I would. If I had a parachute."

  "You ever packed a chute?" the judge asked.

  "No."

  "You don't pack the chute just right, you end up mush. You don't just jump out of a plane unless you're really ready."

  "I'm not the one who needs to be ready," Casey said, edging forward in her chair. "I think Chase is the one who's going to take a fall here."

  "Really?" the judge asked, narrowing her eyes.

  Casey nodded.

  Judge Remy compressed her lips into a frown, took a pen from her desk, and with a flourish signed the order. She held it out, but when Casey took hold, the judge didn't let go. Casey felt the tension running like a current through the taut sheet of paper. Casey met the judge's eyes, the glint now shadowed by something dire.

  "This man knows how to pack a chute," the judge said quietly. "I see the son of a bitch on FOX News about every other week talking about shutting down the borders. He'll play the sympathetic, persecuted public figure, a victim of the rabid liberal media and an ambitious glory hound. That's you. And after his opening move, he'll come after you with everything he has, every mistake you've ever made. They'll dig and they'll pry and they'll worm their way underneath your skin until they find something unpleasant and they'll bring it to the surface and spit it up for everyone to see.

  "And they will see, because the whores with the cameras and the microphones will be like locusts on this one. You think Lifetime made you look like an ass? This'll be a Hollywood double feature."

  The judge let go of the order and Casey nearly fell back into her chair.

  "You'll be tangled in your lines with the earth coming up at you like a hammer," the judge said. "And he'll be floating to the ground."

  Casey set her jaw.

  "That said? I'm behind you," the judge said, then poked her chin at the order in Casey's hands. "Obviously."

  CHAPTER 30

  I'VE DONE A LOT OF SHIT," JOSe SAID, "BUT I NEVER DUG UP NO bodies."

  "Stick with me," Casey said, trying to concentrate on the last sentence of the answer to Jordan 's slander complaint before she shut down her computer. "It's a bowl of cherries."

  "Can I come?"

  "What?" Casey said, looking up.

  "When you dig him up?"

  "I imagine when I get this Morris guy from the funeral home on t
he line that his first call is going to be to Gage," Casey said, e-mailing the answer to her complaint to Stacy and shutting down the machine, "so I'd like it a lot if you would."

  "There goes the beginnings of a beautiful friendship, though," Jose said with a sigh. "Don't be surprised if I'm off his Christmas-card list when I show up with you and that court order.

  "You don't look like you're ready for Tales from the Crypt."

  "I'm not," Casey said, standing and smoothing the folds of her sundress. "The dig is for tomorrow."

  "Picnic you going on?"

  "Tea party."

  "Oh, well, let me just shuffle on out of here then," Jose said, sidestepping toward her back door. "I was gonna cancel my meeting with the redhead's husband for you."

  "I appreciate it," Casey said, closing up her computer and packing it into her briefcase.

  Jose sniffed the air. "They got that plumbing going okay, I see."

  "Woman's kid flushed down a toy duck," Casey said, shaking her head. "The plumber cost us more than a filing number for a federal appeal."

  "That something you go on with a guy or something?" Jose asked. "Tea party, I mean."

  Casey suppressed a smile. "Jose? Are you jealous?"

  Jose stuffed his thick fists into the front pockets of his jeans, but did not look away. "Not one bit."

  "It's a fund-raiser for the clinic at Paige Ludden's. Also, Chase's wife might be there."

  Jose raised his eyebrows. "Want me to have a chat with her?"

  "It's not like a barbeque," Casey said. "It's ladies, flowers, and little cucumber sandwiches."

  "I could wait by her car. Kind of jump out of the bushes like a process server."

  Casey shouldered her bag and hollered out to Stacy to print and file the answer to the slander complaint and that she was leaving.

  Stacy appeared in the doorway with her arms folded across her chest and said, "We got a call from Isodora, collect."

  "Isodora, you're kidding," Casey said. "Why didn't you get me?"

  "You were the one who said not to disturb you for any reason."

  "She called from Monterrey? Did she leave a number?"

  "A church in a place she called Higueras. I did Google Earth. It's northeast of Monterrey. Remote. Over some mountains and down in some river valley. I asked for a number but she said it wasn't her phone and she didn't know."

  "What church?"

  "She didn't say," Stacy said, "she said 'the church.'"

  "Christ," Casey said, "you should have gotten me."

  Stacy narrowed her eyes and said, "Some of us listen to what people say."

  Stacy turned and walked out.

  Casey followed, stopping at the doorway, and said, "I want you to get Sharon and the two of you start calling down there. I want you to find her and figure out a way I can speak with her."

  Stacy busied herself with some files, slamming open a drawer and stuffing them in with the same vigor she used to cram the trash down in an overloaded bin.

  "Stacy?" Casey said. "We set on that?"

  "I'll get to it," Stacy said, and turned her back.

  "Great," Casey said to herself in a mutter, turning and heading for the back door only to be blocked by Jose. He took a gentle hold of her elbows.

  "You want me in this with you, right? I mean, like a team?"

  "Some team," she said. "You see the crap I have to put up with. She could make ten thousand more at a downtown firm, so I have to eat the attitude."

  "She did do what you asked," he said quietly. "What about me?"

  "What about you?" she asked.

  Jose shrugged and said, "Chase's wife. You're the lawyer. I'm supposed to be the investigator."

  She looked up at him, and the little nervous tic skittered across his eyelid.

  She asked, "Did I ever tell you I was a prosecutor with an eighty-seven-percent conviction record? I didn't get that depending on Barney Fife and company to lock down my evidence."

  "Barney Fife?" he said, aping a wince.

  "Not you," she said. "Them. The Austin police. I know how to interrogate a witness, is all. Especially a cheating wife."

  "Cheating wives," he said. "That I know about."

  Casey furrowed her brow, wanting to apologize, but thinking that would make it even worse.

  "Let's tag-team the wife," she said. "Let me see if I can work the inside and you keep the thumbscrews in your back pocket."

  "What about after?" he asked.

  "The wheel?"

  "No. After your tea?" Jose said. "No expectations, but maybe something between us? Some kind of spontaneous distraction? A spontaneous combustion type of thing? You know, since we've got the dig tomorrow, anyway, and we'll be going down there together."

  "A planned spontaneous combustion?" she asked, arching a brow. "That's arson, right?"

  Jose shrugged. "I never made an arson case, so I can't help there."

  "I think it is," she said, rigid and stepping around him, afraid of what she'd say if she brushed up against the muscles in his arm, wanting to, not wanting to. "Let's keep it legal. Come on."

  "Of course," he said. "Please. Don't mind me."

  "I don't," she said, offering a smile before she went out the door so he'd know there were no hard feelings. "Honest."

  CHAPTER 31

  THE CAST-IRON GATES CLANGED OPEN AND CASEY LET THE BENZ roll through between the fieldstone pillars of medieval proportions. The house, centered on a ten-acre rise in an oval hilltop of grass, dwarfed even the gates. The dome over the central body had been shipped in pieces from a Bulgarian church. That and the three-story fluted columns always made Casey think of the US Capitol building. Luddy had inherited it all from his mother's side and the house, Grace Manor, bore his grandmother's name.

  More than a dozen cars hugged the low wall of the circular fountain in front-Jaguars, Mercedeses, two Rolls-Royce sedans-and Casey grimaced at her watch. Cobblestones rumbled beneath her as she sped up the hill and into the circle, where she screeched to a halt and jumped out. With her car blocking the drive, she threw her keys on the seat before dashing up the steps.

  A stiff-faced butler led her through the house and into the garden, where the crowd twittered and buzzed beneath a white tent hemmed in by fragrant yellow roses. Notes from a string quartet floated on a merciful breeze and Casey could see the glaze of sweat on her friend's pink cheeks despite the cool glass of champagne that she sipped disinterestedly.

  "I am so sorry," Casey said, bussing her friend's cheek.

  "Pish," Paige said, indirectly announcing Casey's arrival in her most Southern and charming way, "a working girl like you? We're all jealous as high school lovers, just wishing we didn't have all that we got going on so we could be in the trenches with you, honey. Come right here, you beautiful thing. Too hot for tea after all, and I decided all on my own to break right into the back of Luddy's cellar. Sissy? Here she is, darling."

  Paige floated through them, a butterfly flickering, pollinating, and sipping up their contributions like nectar with Casey in tow. Casey let her speech lilt into the drawl of forgotten balls and fetes from another life. Stacy's skeptical face and her expression, "You make me vomit," came into Casey's mind, but she smiled the smile of a grateful beneficiary, shaking the hand of a woman old enough that she wore white gloves and a hat with both a netted veil and flowers.

  From Chase's wife, Mandy, Casey received no more than a vacant stare and a forced half-smile that left Paige's fingers in a vise around her wrist as she dragged Casey on to the next woman, whispering hotly in her ear that Mandy was the most extraordinary bitch she'd ever shared a back lawn with. Casey glanced back at the tall blonde in the bright red dress, standing out like a hooker in a girls' choir, and wondered if the woman had the same surgeon as Paige.

  Before they'd finished, Casey realized the glass of champagne Paige had armed her with had been emptied and refilled twice, brightening Casey's appreciation of the sights, sounds, smells, and money that the tea party had provided.r />
  Paige finally sat her down in a white rattan love seat before bringing two fresh glasses and resting her own feet beside her, fanning herself with a sigh.

  "Honey, you are just a charm," Paige said.

  "I didn't do a thing."

  "Oh, pish, all that habeas corpus and right-to-appeal jargon? They loved it. They just loved it. You made my job easy."

  "You are so good," Casey said, touching her arm.

  "It's the least," Paige said, sipping her champagne and shaking her head, "the very least."

  "Oh, God," Casey said, jumping up. "I'll be back. There she goes."

  Looking past the table piled high with dainty sandwiches, Casey just caught the flash of red as Mandy Chase slipped into the house, deserting the party with no respect for convention. Casey stumbled on the walk, her heel catching between two flagstones and breaking off. She heard someone behind her offer up a little gasp from beneath the tent, but paid no mind, churning ahead on one shoe and kicking it off somewhere near the fireplace as she shot through the house.

  Mandy Chase had just given up trying to get around Casey's beat-up Benz blocking the circle and began to carefully back the white Range Rover out. Casey closed the distance and patted the window. The senator's wife jammed on her brakes and jerked her head around, covering her mouth in astonished fright before glowering at Casey and running the window down.

  "I could have killed you," Mandy Chase said.

  "I'm sorry," Casey said. "I wanted to talk to you."

  Mandy raised her chin. "I'm late for an appointment. You met me. My husband will send whatever kind of funding Colby James asks him to send. You should know how this works. Now, you'll have to excuse me."

  Mandy gripped the wheel and swung her head back over her shoulder.

  "Wait," Casey said, walking quickly as the SUV began to roll back. "I have to talk to you about Elijandro Torres."

  This time, Mandy's shocked look was coupled with a stomp on the gas. She spun the wheel and backed right onto the lawn. Casey kept up, hanging on to the window frame, even as Mandy slammed the Range Rover into drive.