by Dale Mayer
There was something unnerving about having a guy like that behind her. His hands might be tied, and Johan might be beside him, but, damn, it didn’t feel comfortable to her.
The guy never said a word.
Galen drove them straight to the police station. When they got out and walked inside, a detective came out, took one look, then nodded and said, “Interesting.”
Two other officers came and took away the prisoner.
The detective motioned for them to enter the nearby room. He sat down and asked them a dozen questions each, and, when they were finally done, they signed their statements and left.
Chapter 16
As she walked out of the police station, Joy asked, “Anything new on finding Barlow’s murderer?”
Johan shook his head. “Not really. Still relatively early in the investigation.”
She nodded. “After what our mall bully said, this guy’s definitely involved.”
“Well, he might be involved in whatever’s going on that got Barlow killed,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean he killed him.”
She nodded, and, back in the vehicle, she asked, “Whatever happened this morning? Did you guys go and visit those guys who were being blackmailed?”
“Well, that was the plan, but they weren’t home,” he said. “If you’re up for it, we can go now.”
“Absolutely,” she said.
Galen had been there, so he knew the way. They drove up the driveway, parked, and hopped out. She noted Johan had an envelope.
“What’s that?”
“We printed off copies of the photos.”
“Will they think we’re the blackmailers?”
“Not likely,” he said, “and not for long, even if they do think that way at first.”
“Right,” she agreed, then shrugged.
When they got to the front door, they heard music inside. Johan stepped forward and knocked sharply on the door. The music was muted, and eventually a man came and answered the door.
He looked at them with a frown. “What’s this all about?” he asked sharply.
Johan quickly identified himself, Galen, and Joy. “May we come in and speak with you for a few moments?”
Confused, the guy shook his head. “No, you can tell me whatever the hell you want right here.”
“It’s personal,” Joy said, “but if you want us to do that here, sure.”
The door opened a little wider to reveal a second man, and she recognized him from the photos as well.
She sighed. “Again, this is very personal,” she said. “We can do it out here, but I think you both would feel better if we were inside.”
The second man looked at the first, then opened the door wider, telling them to come in. They were led to a small formal-looking living room just inside the front door. The first man looked at them and said, “Take a seat and tell us what this is all about.”
The other guy sat down and said, “I’m Mike.”
She looked over at Johan and Galen, who were looking at her, so she reached for the envelope. “We didn’t take these, but they did come into our possession,” she said. “We would like you to know about them, in case you don’t, and, if you are being blackmailed, we would very much like to know who’s blackmailing you.”
Both men lost all color in their faces, immediately turning pale. They stared at the envelope as if it would reach out and bite them. One of the men looked up, his gaze moving back and forth between the three of them. “Are you cops?” His voice was harsh and cutting.
Galen and Johan shook their heads. “No, we’re not. We do a lot of private work though,” Johan said, by way of short explanation. “This has come about in response to a man’s murder and problems at a company.”
“Westgroup,” the man snapped.
She nodded. “I work there myself.”
He turned his laser gaze on her and frowned. “I don’t know you.”
“I don’t know most of the 240 people who work there,” she said. “I doubt you do either.”
He had the grace to look ashamed, and he nodded.
“In my case,” she added cheerfully, “I have only been there about six weeks, so I wouldn’t expect you to know me.”
“What department do you work in?”
“I’m not sure I have one,” she said. “I’m the inventory clerk for Westgroup and have been doing inventory, and I’m down in the basement with Phyllis and Doris, if that helps,” she said. There was a moment of stillness as the men looked at each other and then back at her. She shrugged. “That obviously seemed to trigger some reaction,” she said. “I just don’t understand what.” They looked down at the envelope again, so she asked, “Do you want to look?”
“No,” Mike said. “We really don’t want to look.”
She sighed, dropped the envelope on the coffee table, and said, “Well, obviously you’re being blackmailed then, and we would really like to know who is doing the blackmailing.”
“If you’ve got those photos,” Mike said harshly, “then you already know.”
“Potentially,” Johan added, “but they were hidden, so we’re not so sure. And names or initials in a book don’t work if we have to guess on some of it. We really don’t want to guess,” Johan said distinctly. “I don’t know if the cops have been here yet, but they will be soon enough.”
Both men settled back, and then one reached over and grabbed the other by the hand. “We’ve done nothing wrong.”
“We’re not judging you,” Joy said quietly. “Personally I think blackmail is disgusting, and there is no viable reason for anybody to do this to another human being. But now a man’s been murdered, and I’ve been threatened. At this point, I’m really tired of it all.”
When she said she’d been threatened, they looked at each other again and then back at her, both frowning.
She nodded. “Yes, my place was trashed, and just this morning I was followed and threatened at the mall. He said that I’ll end up dead for having spoken up about the company. In fact, the woman who had my job before me may have been killed too.” At that they seemed completely surprised. She stared at them. “How involved are you in Westgroup?”
“We’re not,” the first man said. “We’re on the board, but that’s it. We’re also on the board of several other big companies.”
“Right,” she said. “In that case, did you have anything to do with Barlow’s murder?”
“Of course not,” he said. “Why would we?”
“Because he was blackmailing you for one,” Galen said in a sharp voice. “And that’s what the police would assume when they get here too.”
Both men shook their heads. “Yes, he was blackmailing us.” The one man swallowed hard. “We’re not proud of caving in to blackmail, but sometimes it’s what you have to do to make a problem go away. We’ve been together for over twenty years, but society still hasn’t come to a place that would accept it.”
“Well, some of it has,” Joy said. “But, yes, I can see that it’s still a problem, particularly in the business world.”
“Exactly. I don’t know how Barlow found out about us in the first place, but that’s why he was still there, serving as the head of the corporation. It’s where he wanted to be and what he wanted to do. We did anything we could to keep him happy.”
“Including paying five thousand a month?”
“Each,” Galen added.
“Yes,” the first man said slowly. “We discussed it. We tried to talk him out of that money. We said only one of us could pay, but he wouldn’t deal. It was both of us or none of us.”
“He was also blackmailing two other men,” Johan said. “I’ll show you their faces, and we want to know if you know who they are.” Frowning but not surprised, he held out the first photo. The men looked at it and nodded.
“They’re friends of ours. But we didn’t know they were being blackmailed too.”
“And their names?”
“Adson Powell and Roy Drawback,” he said. “They
“So, of course, if these photos were to come out, that would destroy them too.” She looked at both men across from her. “And were you guys married when the photos were first taken?”
Both men nodded. “We both were. We both have children.”
“Have they come around to accept your current lifestyle?”
Both men smiled. “It’s been a long haul, but, yes, they have.”
“Good,” she said, beaming at them. “Acceptance is a wonderful gift.”
“Do you know of anybody else who might have been blackmailed?” Johan asked.
“We didn’t even know about these two,” he said, “so, no. But, if Barlow was blackmailing us, it makes sense that maybe he was blackmailing somebody else.”
“Did he ever lord it over you when you’re out in public?”
“No, but then we didn’t move in the same circles,” Mike said stiffly. “We did a lot to go out of our way.”
“Well, you’re now ten thousand a month richer,” Galen said. “That’s a hell of a motive for murder.”
“We hadn’t done anything about it for the last five years,” the one man said. “So why do anything now?”
And she had to admit he had a hell of a point.
*
Johan didn’t know how to get any more information out of anybody. Nobody had, it seemed, anything more to say. “It has to be related,” he muttered.
The two men nodded. “After he started this, we distanced ourselves. We always voted in favor of keeping him in place in the company, and, other than that, we were done and gone. We knew if we didn’t keep him in the company, it would get worse for us.”
“You never thought to call the police?” Galen asked.
They both shook their heads. “In the beginning we were both still married. We were trying to extricate ourselves nicely and figure out our own future,” he said. “Police involvement would have made it a big ugly mess. The company would have suffered. We and our families would have suffered. It seemed much easier to just pay Barlow.”
“Why that amount?” Joy asked. “It’s not that much for guys like you, is it?”
“No, not really. Not if you’re making good money, and, between the two of us, it was just an irritant.”
“Maybe that’s why his safe was full of cash, as if he wasn’t even spending it.”
“That wouldn’t surprise me in the least,” the first man said. “I think he did it more for revenge and because he knew he could get away with it.”
“A power play,” Galen said. “He could smile at you and know what he was doing, confident he had your votes and your money, and you would know what he was thinking, but you couldn’t do anything about it.”
She nodded. “I only met him once, but he seemed slimy.”
“Good assessment,” said the second man and then smiled.
She asked them, “Do you have any idea why he doesn’t have any relationships himself? I wondered if he was gay too.”
Both men looked at her, surprised.
She shrugged. “It doesn’t really pertain to anything. I was just wondering.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think he was gay though. He was quite homophobic.”
She frowned and nodded. “It just seems strange that somebody who put so much stock in blackmailing other people’s sex lives didn’t have a very good one himself.”
The first man looked at her with a frown and said, “Well, he had what seemed like a permanent relationship a long time ago,” he said. “I don’t know why that broke up.”
“Yes, you do,” the second man said, laughing. “She got pregnant, remember? And he wouldn’t have anything to do with it.”
The two men looked at each other and started talking more. “That’s right. I forgot about that. Who the hell was that anyway? It was a weird name.”
“Yeah, like a city or something.”
She turned and looked at him. “Philly?”
Both men turned at her in surprise. “Yes. That’s exactly who it was.”
She stood ever-so-slowly and walked to the front door, as if her mind had completely locked on to something.
Johan called out, “Joy, what’s the matter?”
“She never once mentioned a child,” she said, turning. “Are you guys aware that Phyllis, who works in the basement with me, is Philly?”
Mike frowned. “Seriously? She was like a partner or something back then. There was this big foofaraw about it, and then she was gone.”
“She was gone for five years, but she’s back now. And has been for like nineteen years.”
“Why would she do that?” the first man asked.
“I’m not sure,” she said, “but maybe that’s something we need to figure out. Although in truth could simply be the games she played with Barlow. Or she was part of the blackmailing. She had access to the computer system and was quite talented. Maybe she was keeping track of everyone. Nothing makes sense in their relationship.”
“Do you know anything else about her pregnancy?” Johan asked them.
“No. I don’t even know if she had the child,” he said. “You know what rumors are like. Somebody starts them, and everybody hangs on to them. We are the byproduct of the same problem. We spent a lot of time and effort trying to keep under the radar so people don’t talk about us.”
She nodded. “If you think of anything else, will you give us a call?” She pulled out a piece of paper, wrote down Johan’s number and her own, and placed it on the table. “It could be important.”
“But it’s not likely we’ll come up with anything.”
“No,” Johan said, as he walked over to Joy, putting an arm around her shoulder, tucking her up close. “The thing is, one man’s dead already, and she’s been threatened, so we’re doing our best to keep her alive and to solve this before something happens to her.”
Understanding lit their faces. “Right.”
Galen suggested something that made everybody freeze. “You also might want to consider that, now that one blackmailer is gone, you might hear from a second one.”
The men stared at him in shock. “What do you mean?”
“Barlow had stacks of money for some reason,” he said. “We just don’t know why. Maybe he didn’t care and didn’t need it, but what if somebody else knew what he was doing? And what if they also had copies of the photos? For all you know, somebody else is likely to call you.”
Just then one of the men’s phones buzzed. He looked down at it, picked it up, and swiped his finger across the top to unlock it, then frowned at the email. “I really wish you hadn’t just said that.” He held up his phone. “I just got an email saying the payments will continue.” He shook his head. “This shouldn’t be happening,” he cried out. “It should be over with.”
Johan was at his side in seconds. “May I see it?” Sure enough, there was a nondescript email.
The payments will continue. Same time, same place. Just because one’s dead doesn’t mean the other is too.
Johan handed the phone back. “And that brings us to the next thing. How did you pay him?”
They both took a deep breath, and one spoke. “We put the money in an envelope and left it in our mailbox. When we came home, it was always gone.”
“Simple, straightforward, but potentially a problem, unless somebody is out there every day waiting for it,” Johan said.
“If it was on a weekend, then what?” Galen asked.
“They had to be paid on the first every month. If it was a weekday, we left it in the mailbox. If it was a weekend, we would put it there the night before. It was always gone in the morning. It’s been a big thorn in our sides for years. We couldn’t travel on the first or anything.”
“Did you ever see who took the money? Because I sure as hell would have been standing there waiting and watching to catch him.”
“We already knew who the blackmailer was,” he said, “so, no, we never even looked. And honestly, in all these years, we’ve never seen him pick it up either.”
Galen and Johan exchanged a hard look.
Joy saw it and stepped forward. “What?”
“Can you see Barlow coming here to pick up the money every month?” Johan asked her.
She stared at him, then slowly shook her head. “No, I can’t.”
Johan nodded. “Neither can I. So he had a partner.”
She continued, “Or he was being blackmailed too. What do both have to pay? Maybe one payment was for Barlow to keep, and the other one was for someone else to keep.”
“This has to stop,” the first man cried out.
Johan looked at him. “Are you ready to talk to the police now about the blackmail?”
The two men exchanged meaningful glances, then turned, standing together, their arms entwined, and nodded. “Yes,” one said.
“It’s time,” said the other.
“Good,” Johan said. “I hope we can catch the second guy before it gets any worse.” He smiled at them. “The first of the month is in two days.”
They both nodded. “We already have the cash too,” one said grimly. “It’s in the envelopes as usual.”
“So you would just put it in the mailbox out front?” Johan asked.
They nodded.
He walked to the front door, flung it open, and stepped out onto the concrete. “We can set up a camera,” he said. “You guys will go to work as you normally would, and we can have a video camera set up here to see who’s picking up the money.”
They both got excited at that idea.
He turned to Galen. “We may have to pick up some equipment though.”
“Not a problem. A two-day window is huge in our world.”
“It is, indeed. So today is Sunday. Tuesday’s the first,” he said. “We’ll be back with the equipment as soon as we can, if that’s okay with you.”
They nodded.
“And call us if you hear anything else,” Joy called out. Johan ushered her out to the vehicle. “How long will it take to get something set up?” she asked.
“Being Sunday, I’m not sure how much trouble we’ll have getting something. We may have to take a drive to Levi’s compound to get what we need,” Johan said.
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