Page 25 of The House of Cross

“She knows better, and anyway we have two tags.”

Willow returned, munching on a cookie. “What’s next?”

“Bed,” Sampson said firmly.

His little girl looked ready to argue, then nodded. “I’m tired.”

I went in the kitchen and found some leftover fried pork chops with onion-and-sriracha applesauce, a concoction of Nana Mama’s that deserved a place in the recipe hall of fame. Bree followed me in.

“I’m beat,” she said, and yawned. “How’d your day go?”

When I told her, she got angry. “You didn’t think to call and tell me you’d been in a shooting with Haitian gangsters? When I have history with guys like that?”

“I apologize. But they were totally different guys. From Baltimore. And we were fine. It just got crazy there for a minute.”

She came over and hugged me tight. “In the future, promise you’ll call me if you’re involved in a shooting.”

“I hope there isn’t another shooting in my future, but I promise. And how was your day?”

Bree described finding out that two real estate attorneys weremurdered after representing the cattle companies in the purchase of large ranches in Colorado and Nevada.

“That’s no coincidence, especially when the two companies are around the corner from each other in Brazil,” I said.

“That’s our thinking,” Bree said. “John and me. But we can’t seem to find anything about them other than the addresses in Brazil.”

I thought about that as I chewed the first delicious bite of my dinner, a little sweet, a lot spicy. I groaned a little.

“It’s my favorite of her creations too,” Bree said. “Any advice on where to go next?”

“I’ll talk to Ned tomorrow, see if we can contact our counterparts down in Brazil and have them take a look into the mysterious cattle companies of Belo Horizonte.”

CHAPTER 17

MAHONEY PICKED ME UPthe following morning, and I told him what Bree and Sampson had discovered about the Brazilian cattle companies. He thought the link to Ryan Malcomb was more than a little tenuous, but in the end, he agreed to contact the Brazilian national police.

“After we execute a warrant on Professor Whelan’s home in Bethesda,” he said.

“What took so long?”

“We lost one judge to recusal because she knows Whelan personally. The second judge sat on it but ultimately found the testimony of the old lady across from Judge Franklin’s house compelling enough to give us a look around the place.”

“I get the feeling the professor is not going to be happy to see us.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and she’ll be in her office or teaching.”

We weren’t lucky. Willa Whelan was at home, and when she answered the door to her modest house at the edge of a creek, she took one look at the booties on our shoes and the warrant and let loose with a barrage of insults and curses. Mahoney had to threaten her with obstruction if she did not let us in.

The law professor’s lips curled bitterly, but at last she stepped aside, and we entered. As I passed her, I could not help thinking that in my experience, most people who unleash a tirade like that are doing so out of fear.

As we began the search, I believed Willa Whelan had something to hide.

At first, my suspicions ran to undeclared income. For a law professor who had been an assistant U.S. attorney in Arkansas, she had a home that was borderline lavish. It was relatively small and the outside was plain, but the interior held Persian rugs, limited-edition sculptures, original oil paintings by well-known artists, and a state-of-the-art entertainment center. The kitchen appliances were all from Scandinavia; the counters were beautiful green granite; the fixtures were copper, unique, and gleaming.

By the time we turned toward the bedrooms, I believed that the professor had either inherited a pile of cash or was a tax cheat. The sudden appearance of all the finer things in life, the things you can buy when you have a lot of cash lying around, is often an indication that someone is trying to avoid the IRS.

Whelan’s spare bedroom was set up for guests and decorated out of Laura Ashley and Pottery Barn. The primary suite was huge, its hardwood floors covered with more Persian rugs.

Then we found embarrassing intimate tools and lubricants in a drawer in the bathroom. For the next half an hour or so, I figured that must have been the source of her fear and I was glad she hadn’t been in the room when we made that discovery.

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