Chapter 60

“They found Jasmine Howard dead in a motel with a bottle of pills on the floor.”

“Suicide?”

“Looks that way.”

Detective Jones thought it over.

“Or someone wants us to think suicide.”

“How so?” said the FBI agents.

“She testified in an earlier case versus Mark Pace. Is it a coincidence that just after we have him in custody again, Jasmine turns up dead?”

“We know from the first trial that she didn’t have anything useful. We don’t need her testimony.”

“Everyone doesn’t know that. Maybe this is the first step for the organization to get Mark off.”

“They’ll be hard pressed to explain away the forensic evidence.”

“Even so, that is all we have now. It would have been nice to bring supporting testimony as well.”

“How are the interviews going? Is there anyone else willing to testify against him?”

“There’s a whole lot of amnesia out there. Interesting how fast people run away when someone falls from grace. Just a few months ago, people were begging the Pace cousins for dates at the club. No one wants to talk to them or about them.”

Leon would have agreed with that assessment. He sat in his house alone. Many acquaintances disappeared or were “too busy” to talk to him. Those friends who remained were sympathetic but empty of business ideas or what to do about Mark.

Bitterly, he thought about all the money he made for them. Leon was relearning the hard way that gratitude melts quicker than snow. “What have you done for me lately” was the prevailing attitude.

It was late, but he could not sleep. The last conversation with Simon replayed in his mind over and over again. He tried to approach the problem from a business standpoint and analyze all options. But Mark was blood. They had been through so much together.

Even so, Mark’s promise that he would not go down alone was fresh in his mind. Would his cousin really roll over on him? He would never have imagined this scenario, but Leon was not the one in prison facing murder charges.