"A pleasure." He smiled, exposing his yellow teeth.
I pushed down a shudder and forced a smile despite the fact that Melvin was still holding my hand. His eyes focused on my chest rather than look me in the face.
"We’re vacationing here from California." I needed him to focus on Jesse rather than me to snap him out of his creepy routine. "While we’re in town, we have a couple of questions about a criminal investigation." I extracted my hand from his grasp without seeming frantic about it and took a step back.
"Criminal? It must be criminal to look that good."
I threw up in my mouth a little. "Yes. It seems there was a large amount of money withdrawn from the ATM here, over several visits. The thing is, that account belongs to a murder victim."
"Oh, yes. The ATM's the hot spot of the bank, but that can change." Melvin licked his lips.
I took a deep breath and looked at Jesse, willing him to step in and help. I think must've intuited I needed him because a moment later he stepped forward, blocking Melvin's view of me.
"Jesse Moreno, Los Olivos PD. I realize we’re way out of our jurisdiction, but if it’s possible to view the ATM camera footage, we need to see it. We have a dead man or a prisoner claiming the money at your bank. That could make for awkward publicity for an establishment like this. People want a bank they can trust, not a bank that allows fraud to flow through it."
Melvin dragged his eyes away from my chest. "Fraud? No fraud has happened here!"
Jesse looked at Melvin with a cool, steely expression I hadn't noticed before. "Oh, I'd like to assure my people and anyone else who may be interested that the transactions this bank permits are on the level, but to do that, I need to see the video footage and determine who’s using these accounts."
"I'd think it should be an easy matter to clear up," I added.
"I…er…well, the customers know there’s a camera; it’s obvious." Melvin wrung his hands.
I took a step toward Melvin to make sure he was looking me in the eyes. "Yes, I'm sure we're being filmed right now. I'm sure your behavior is never called into question with so many video cameras recording your entire day."
Melvin went red in the face. "I'm sure it isn't."
"Of course, I don't think the lobby tapes are the ones we need to see. I think the ATM footage should tell us what we need to know," Jesse said.
"No, they aren't. Since you only want to see the footage and not take it with you, I guess I could show you."
"I knew you'd help us out." I stifled a laugh as Melvin tried to contain his nervous breakdown. It made me wonder what might be on those lobby tapes that had him so worked up. I'd have to ask Jesse what he'd suspected.
Melvin led us to a run-down conference room and flipped on the monitor at a station in the corner. "Do you know what days and times?"
I handed Melvin the printout showing the dates and times of the transactions.
"All right. This, we can work with." His stubby fingers moved over the keyboard with surprising agility. Within a couple of minutes, he'd pulled up the first video.
The person using the ATM was a man wearing sunglasses and a ball cap. He looked as if he hadn't shaved in a while, but the video had been taken in the middle of the afternoon, and the sun kept the camera from getting a good image of his entire face.
The next video had been taken at night. The artificial lights weren't much better to go by, but by the second image, I was sure the man looked familiar.
I scanned down the list and found a video filmed in mid-morning. The building's ATM faced west, so I hoped for better lighting. "Can you find us this one?"
"Yeah, sure." Melvin keyed in some terms and chose a few drop boxes. A new video appeared. This time, the man was wearing a scarf in the middle of a snowstorm.
"Shoot, this guy's playing hide and seek," Jesse said.
"I think the glasses and hat are deliberate, but the lighting and weather were just dumb luck," I said. "What about this one?" I pointed out the only other morning video.
"I'll see what I can find," Melvin said. He was red, flushed, and shaking. I couldn't help but wonder why. The video loaded. For a moment I thought I was looking at another altered video.
"How can that be?" I tried to rationalize what I was seeing, but my experiences with edited video feeds took me to dark places.
"I've seen that guy before," Jesse said.
"I have, too. If I didn’t know better, I'd swear it's Bob Maddox, but Bob's in jail back in California."
Jesse leaned closer to the video feed. "Play that back," he ordered.
Melvin did what he was told. I wondered if he was about to pass out.
The footage played again. The man—who could've been Bob Maddox's twin—approached the ATM, put his card into it, and took out his cash. He couldn't actually have been Bob's twin—he was dead and would've been cremated by then.
"How can there be three of them? Were the Maddoxes triplets?"
"No." That was all I'd said before Melvin broke.
He pulled a small handgun from the breast pocket of his sports coat, exposing well-saturated pit stains in the process. "Stay where you are!" Melvin's voice cracked. "Put your hands up!"
"Okay, Melvin," I said. "Calm down. We came to see the video, not to cause you any trouble."
"Man, don't do something stupid," Jesse said. "We may be off duty, but don't think people wouldn't notice if you murdered two people in your bank."
"It's not murder; I’m just doing my job. Sit on the ground and keep your mouths shut."
We were unarmed, so we lowered ourselves to the ground and sat on the floor. Jesse gave me a look that screamed, "Please don't do anything crazy."
"Your job? You work for the bank." Jesse's voice was calm and collected despite the situation. "Look, we're not after you. We need to know how the money left the account." I was glad that he was holding it together because the adrenaline surge coursing through me made me feel anything but calm.
"Some things pay better than banking," Melvin said. He slipped his cell phone out of his pocket and made a call. "Yeah, someone turned up here...No, still here...Yeah, well, I have them under control. They couldn't leave if they wanted to...No, I didn't...Yeah, they already watched it...Okay, I'll see you soon."
Who was Melvin talking to? I suspected he'd contacted the other Bob from the video. If that was the case, we needed to deal with Melvin before he showed up—the man on the video had too much to lose.
"You know, if we leave, you can, too," I tried to look at Melvin with sincerity, but every fiber of me wanted to take him down.
Melvin snorted. "And then what?"
"We go on with our lives with none of us dead or in prison," Jesse said. His voice exuded calmness, but I noticed the muscles in his brow and jaw were clenched.
"Maybe you go on with your lives, but I'm already committed."
"You haven't committed murder. You still have a life ahead of you." I tried to keep my voice steady.
"I should've known it wouldn't be as easy as looking the other way," Melvin grumbled to himself as he paced, the gun haphazardly pointed in our direction.
"As a banker, I thought you'd know that money leaves a trail." Jesse shifted his body, so he was up against a chair.
"I do. And that jerk let it lead right here."
"Right, so you already know." I hoped Melvin would take the bait.
"Know what?" Melvin asked.
Bait taken! "That we’re not the enemy. The person who hired you set you up to take the fall."
"He wouldn't do that!"
"No? How do you know he’ll even show up? My bet is that your employer skipped town and left you with his mess." Jesse had figured out my angle and played along.
“Why would he do that?" Melvin waved the gun in frustration, escalating my need to disarm him.
"He used you to skim large amounts of cash. I’m sure it was never out of the goodness of his heart. He wanted the money, just like you agreed to help him for your cut of the funds.
Did you ever ask him why he needed to take the money out that way, or why he wanted you to cover for him?"
"No. I mean, why would I?" Spit flew from Melvin's fat lips as he stammered.
"Exactly," Jesse said. “That was his problem. Why would you waste time worrying about it? Now, it's your problem, and you don't even know why this guy's hiding out. Or maybe you do know, and that’s why you're keeping us here."
"Know? What are you talking about?" I worried Jesse would push Melvin too far, and he'd do something stupid or die of a heart attack. I wasn't sure which one would happen first.
"Are you familiar with the concept of accessory after the fact'?" Jesse asked.
"Accessory to what?" Melvin asked.
"Murder," Jesse said. "That’s what we're investigating. That’s why we followed the money here."
"Accessory to murder? I didn't kill anyone!" Melvin waved the gun at us. I was sure he'd lost all grip on reality, denying being involved in a murder while waving a gun at his captives. "Who was murdered?"
I went for broke. We had to catch Melvin off guard. "Ralph Maddox."
Melvin laughed a hysterical laugh. "Yeah, right. Then why did I just get off the phone with him? Was I communing with the dead?"
The pieces connected at that moment, but there was no time to dwell on any of it.
Jesse flung the chair at Melvin's legs, catching him by surprise. A second behind him, I went for Melvin's knee in one smooth kick. Off balance, Melvin's considerable bulk pulled him to the ground in an undignified heap. He waved the gun in the air as he fell, his sausage-like fingers clutching the trigger as he fought for balance and shooting through the drop ceiling. Ancient building materials rained down on us, but both Jesse and I were below his aim. I reached for the gun and removed it from Melvin's grasp with little difficulty as he lay there, stunned by the sudden change in the situation.
Jesse was on the obese man, somehow flipping him and pinning him in place.
I wanted my handcuffs. I wanted my gun. As it was, I had neither.
"Call the locals!" Jesse yelled.
I rushed from the conference room and yelled at the clerk, "Sound the alarm! Call the police!"
Chapter 22
I expected the clerk to grab the phone to call for help. Instead, she raised her hands as though I were holding the bank up. I realized that I still had Melvin’s gun in my hand, and set it carefully down on the credenza.
"Take whatever you want, just doesn’t hurt anybody else!"
"For Pete's sake, I want nothing except for you to call the police!"
"But I heard a gunshot!" The clerk eyes were wide with panic.
"Yes. Your boss, Melvin, shot through the ceiling while he was holding us captive. We have the situation under control, but you need to call the police. Now!"
"All right." Her voice trembled, but she picked up the phone and made the call. I wondered if any of the other employees had triggered the silent panic alarm when the gun went off. I didn't have to wonder long. A wave of armed police rushed through the front and back entrances of the bank before I could check on the Melvin situation. I held my hands up, letting the officers know I wasn't the threat.
"Jesse," I called out, "help is here!" I needed to warn Jesse to prepare for some confusion.
A lady officer approached me, her weapon drawn. "Identify yourself!" she demanded.
"Gladly." I pulled out my passport and my FBI consultant ID.
Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. "You're way out of your area."
"Yes, we're on vacation. I wanted to ask about a strange pattern of money withdrawals from this bank while I was in town. I figured it couldn't hurt to ask, but boy was I wrong. The bank manager flipped out and held Jesse and me hostage."
"Jesse?" she asked.
The other officers brought Jesse and Melvin out of the conference room before I could respond.
"This is Jesse. We're traveling together."
One officer, an older, heavyset, bald man, approached me. "You didn't cuff this one?" he asked the lady officer.
"No, sir. She's working with the FBI."
"FBI, like from the United States? What business do you have here?"
"Well, the trip's a mix of business and pleasure. We're on vacation. We’re staying at the Omega."
The man whistled. "They must pay better in the States. We need to ask for a raise!"
"All jokes aside, Jesse, here, is a police officer in Los Olivos, California. Our forensic accountants traced transactions from an ATM at this bank that ties back to a murder investigation."
"It’s that case with Ava Lenore's lover!" the clerk chimed in. She leaned over the counter with an expression that would have been more fitting on a roller coaster camera.
"Whoa—you mean the Maddox murder?" the lady cop asked.
Jesse nodded. "Yes, the same."
"I met him once. He has a place here."
I tried not to look surprised. “That makes sense.” Of course, he did! And he was in town spending his money to keep up his lifestyle, but if he wasn't the murder victim, everything in the case had changed.
Who was the guy in the morgue?
"That’s interesting," Jesse said.
"What I don't understand is how things went from asking about banking transactions to having a firearm go off in a business." The older police officer wasn't impressed by our Hollywood case.
"Well, it came as a surprise to us. We asked to see the ATM video feed and Melvin, here, agreed to show them to us." I pointed at Melvin. "But the next thing we knew, he was holding us at gunpoint and calling someone to let them know we were here to ask about the footage."
"You can't prove anything!" Melvin whined. "I did nothing wrong."
"He managed not to kill us, but we weren't the ones waving guns around." Jesse looked at Melvin like he would've liked to launch him through the wall.
"The gun is for my protection!" Melvin stammered.
"So, you admit that you were the one with the weapon and not Ms. Rich or Mr. Moreno?"
"What?" Melvin realized his admission too late to change it.
"We don't have any weapons. There's no way we could board a plane, much less cross the border carrying a gun," Jesse pointed out.
"We had no reason to think we'd need to be armed to ask for permission to see a tape," I added.
"So, we have our own little mystery here. Why would you try to hold these people hostage after letting them see the video?"
"I thought that if I let them watch it, they'd go away, but when they saw him, they knew who he was—he said someone might come, asking about the money."
"He who?" asked the officer.
"Ralph Maddox." Melvin looked down at his feet with a dejected glare.
"I thought Ralph Maddox was dead," the lady officer said.
"So did we. Until we saw the videos. But now it seems that Ralph's alive and well."
"It couldn't have been someone else?" the male officer asked.
"Well, it could've been his twin brother, Bob."
The officer nodded in understanding.
"Except that he’s in jail awaiting trial for murdering his brother," I said.
"This is too much to figure out here. I think we need all three of you down at the station to sort things out. I’ll have a team come in to go over these videos. Something about this situation doesn’t add up.
***
We traveled to the local police station in three separate cars. I took it as a sign that my story about vacationing with Jesse wasn't being taken at face value. The entire drive, my mind spun through the case evidence, and the inconsistencies began to form a pattern. Bob's belief that his brother had never had plastic surgery only made sense if the murdered man wasn't his brother. The money transaction to which Bob and Ralph had access was easy to understand if Ralph had been the one taking out the cash, but how had Ralph ended up in Toronto, and who had actually been murdered?
My mind spun. I needed to go back over the evidence, but instead, I was
stuck in the back of a patrol car. Hopefully, I was heading in for questioning and not about to be booked for attempted bank robbery.
I barely noticed when the car stopped in front of a quaint municipal building. The area was clean and sunny. I marveled that the department had not been relegated to a gloomy basement somewhere. The lady officer led me, in handcuffs, to a holding cell.
It was not a good sign.
I wanted my bag so I could go over the evidence, but it had been taken away, along with the contents of my pockets.
I sat at the far end of the bench in the cell. There was an older woman at the other end. I assumed she was there to dry out as she was slumped against the wall in a stupor. I ran through the details of the case in my mind, feeling closer to a breakthrough each time. There was an explanation that would tie everything together, but I didn't have it. Not yet.
A noise broke my concentration. "I said, you're next." A lady officer was standing at the cell door. "Come on—Officer Dupree's ready to interview you." The sudden absurdity of thinking about the situation as if it were a job interview left my head spinning.
I headed out of the cell, glad my temporary roommate had remained asleep and docile.
We walked into an interview room. There was a table standing in the middle of the room with a chair on either side. There wasn't a single picture on any of the walls. One of the walls had a mirror that I was sure was a two-way. She walked me to the seat on the far side of the table. "Here you go, officer," she smirked. I guessed she hadn't realized I'd made detective.
"Thanks." I resolved not to antagonize the woman. I wanted to leave so I could put the puzzle together.
I sat in silence for a long moment before Dupree—the same officer from the bank—sauntered in and plopped down in the seat across from me. I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience for a moment, but then I reminded myself that I'd done nothing wrong. I'd just teased the bee’s nest; it was time to prove I wasn't part of the swarm.
"You're name's Avery Rich?" Dupree asked. His lip curled like he'd smelled something foul.
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