Armed and Fabulous (Lexi Graves Mysteries)

by Camilla Chafer

  "It's at my place," I lied. "What's wrong with my hair?"

  "Nothing. It's okay. I liked the blonde more is all. You had the whole fabulous thing goin’ on."

  "I felt like a change." And it's all your fault, I added mentally. I could feel tears pricking at my eyes again and had to fight to keep my chin from quivering.

  "The key?" prompted Vincent.

  "I said it was at my apartment. I can take you there."

  "No, it isn't. I searched and it wasn't there. It's here, isn't it? I told you I'm smart! I told you! You can't fool me! I'll get it when you're dead. I’m armed and dangerous, you bitch!" Vincent shrugged and pointed, his finger scraping the trigger guard.

  At the same moment, I dropped my arm, tipped the gun into my hand and fired, yelling, “And I’m armed and fabulous!”

  Vincent screamed as his shooting arm dropped. I saw a blur behind him, just a shadow against the wall. Like slow motion, I watched Vincent steady himself, position his finger, extend his arm slightly forward and then... there was nothing.

  When I came to, it was to look into beautiful blue eyes. I raised a hand to my head, brushing my fingertips across my forehead then down to my chest, feeling for a bullet hole and finding none. Next, I pinched myself hard. Yep. That hurt all right. And was probably a very good sign that I was still alive. Just to make sure, I pinched the man holding me.

  "Ow," he said and Maddox's face swam into view. "I've been bashed over the head and shot. What was the pinch for?"

  "Just checking."

  Maddox helped me sit up. I looked over, following the sounds of grunting and swearing. Vincent was flat on the floor, face down. His glasses had fallen off and lay, the frame twisted, a little to his left. His hands were cuffed behind his back along with his ankles. He drew his legs up so his heels bounced off his butt as he struggled against the bindings. Solomon knelt next to him and delivered a punch to Vincent's side, which stopped him struggling for a moment. Solomon looked up briefly and I think he smiled.

  "What happened?" I asked. I was dizzy and sick and really, really angry. And in pain. Oh boy, the pain that hit me suddenly was enough to knock me off my feet.

  "When I went out to check the camera, Vincent came up behind me and knocked me over the head. I went down and the bastard shot me."

  "That is so rude," I said, commiserating with him, overjoyed that he wasn’t singing with the angels. "What else happened?"

  "When I came around, Vincent was inside the house already, and I could hear him talking to you. I snuck up behind him. You fired. I went for him as he fired. Great shot, by the way. You got him in the hand."

  It turned out that when I crumpled to the floor, Maddox thought I'd been killed. As it was, Vincent had squeezed off a shot, the bullet slicing past my arm, causing a very bloody, but not life-threatening wound and I'd simply passed out from shock. A few stitches, some rest, and I would be right as rain.

  Maddox helped me to a sofa and filled me in on what happened in the minutes I was out. There had been a brief struggle, during which Vincent had turned on him and stuck his finger into the wound in his shoulder, causing Maddox to nearly pass out from the pain.

  Maddox managed to grab the gun from him, throwing it into the dark hallway just as Solomon came to the front.

  Ranting and raving about how I’d spoiled everything, Vincent didn't know whether to go for his glasses or the gun, so it had been easy for Solomon to subdue him. I don't know where Solomon was when I called, and he didn't volunteer the information, but it was close enough that he'd beaten the rest of the team who were on their way.

  "You're just a temp," spluttered Vincent, lifting his face off the floor enough to stare at me. His face was bright red and he puffed angrily, pulling against the restraints from where Solomon had him hogtied. "How could you have figured any of this out?"

  Maddox had one hand clapped to his shoulder. I could see blood seeping through the rag, blooming between his fingers. I could only imagine I must have mirrored his bloody image. We were lucky Vincent was such a crap shot. "She may be a temp, but she's also a highly trained government operative," said Maddox, his voice quietly menacing.

  Bless him. He was such a good liar. And he had my back too. He was really growing on me. Well, the kissing helped define my opinion, but the whole saving my life thing helped too. Obviously. Maddox looked at me with mutual admiration.

  "Really?" said Vincent, his voice belying surprise.

  "No," I said, with a painful shrug. "I'm just a temp."

  "Christ," said Vincent as he stopped struggling, his cheek resting on the floor. I think I heard a sob escape from him.

  "I didn't figure it out," I told Vincent, just to add to his misery. "Not all of it anyway. I didn’t know it was you. I only knew for certain when I saw you here. If you'd gotten the money and disappeared, I may never have put it together. You could have been in Hawaii, home free in weeks. Instead, you'll be sending me a postcard from the big house."

  That sounded so cool, the way I said it. Unfortunately, the first part was true. I had no doubt that the taskforce would have pieced everything together, and that Vincent's name would have come up in the investigation, but it would have been too late by then. He and the money would have vanished. We were lucky that in his desperation, he made the wrong move as Maddox anticipated.

  Solomon hauled Vincent to his feet. For a serial killer, he looked so pathetic with his shirt untucked, his hair mussed up, and a bloody rag wrapped around his hand from where I shot him. "Will you visit me?" Vincent asked.

  "Are you kidding?"

  He looked so perplexed, I nearly laughed. "No," he said, his forehead marred with frown lines. “I’ll write you!”

  Solomon hauled Vincent away before he could embarrass himself any further.

  I heard sirens approaching, paramedics I hoped for Maddox and me, and a ride to the can for Vincent. Once word got around that he'd attacked a Graves, his stay at the precinct wouldn't be pretty. I struggled to care, but couldn’t.

  "Let's go to the hospital and get patched up," said Maddox, his arm sliding around my waist.

  "It's a date."

  Chapter Eighteen

  Garrett picked me up from the hospital after my arm was stitched closed. He drove me home, very quietly, eyes forward, fingers gripping the wheel until his knuckles turned white. He hadn't said a word about Maddox, or Solomon, and I figured he might explode soon. He just hadn’t decided on whom to explode yet. I was glad I wasn't playing baseball with him and the guys at their regular weekend game. With Garrett's temper simmering just below the surface, it had the potential to get brutal. At least Vincent Marciano’s arrest had assuaged some of his anger.

  “You could have been killed,” he said quietly, after settling me on the couch.

  The weight of his comment lay heavily on my chest. “I know,” I said simply because there was nothing else to say. “But I’m here.”

  “You’re not indestructible,” Garrett pointed out. He took my overnight bag to my bedroom and came back, looking down at me. I leaned against the back of the couch and took a deep breath, waiting for the lecture about safety, why you should never trust an accountant, and how to avoid getting shot at. Instead, he surprised me. “As soon as your arm is healed, we’re going to the range,” he told me.

  ~

  Vincent was arrested for six murders, two attempted murders, assault with a deadly weapon, extortion and fraud, which wasn't too bad for a guy who had never even gotten a parking ticket.

  Two weeks later, Lily and I were sitting in my living room. She had run out first thing after the verdict came in, and bought double-pump mochas with extra whip and sprinkles along with the biggest chocolate croissants she could find. I was in heaven. Plus, now the court case was over, and quickly solved given my rock-solid evidence, I could tell her everything.

  "How did that little creep Vincent get involved?" she asked.

  Vincent squealed with barely any prompting. Some I even overheard as we exited
the safe house to the waiting paramedics—Maddox’s boss, Matt Miller nodding to me as we limped out—some Maddox filled me in on more in the days after; while I got the rest from the court case.

  With Vincent behind bars, we wouldn't see him again.

  "As company accountant, he had access to all Green Hand's financial records. After Dominic mentioned an irregularity, Vincent noticed other irregularities in the payouts," I explained. "On investigating, he realized the extent of the fraud, piecing together who was part of it from weeks of patient watching and waiting. But instead of turning his evidence over to the police, for their forensic accountants to comb, Vincent got fat dollar signs in his eyes and decided he wanted his slice of the multi-million fraud pie."

  "Whoa," said Lily. "I did not think Vincent had it in him."

  "It's always the quiet ones," I agreed.

  "No, that's not it. It's that people are never what you expect them to be."

  "Can't argue with that."

  "So... he didn't just kill Dean straight off?"

  "Vincent didn't kill Dean at all. Dean was killed by the Finklesteins." I licked the cream from the top of my mocha and snuggled against the couch as I told Lily everything.

  Vincent's first step was to blackmail Martin Dean, but Dean didn't have access to the money. When Vincent threatened to turn Dean in, Dean 'fessed up his connections and bought the tickets to Paris where he intended to flee with Tanya, with or without the cash. He simply couldn't get the money without alerting Harris, Mathis and Ramos, his car-crazed conspirators, and he wasn't going to jail for the fraud without a payoff awaiting him.

  The four never trusted each other much from the start. They decided it was in all of their best interests that none of them could access the cash without the other members present. With more than three million of it already converted to cash, it was the smart thing to do. Not as smart as not committing a crime in the first place, but I didn't like to be picky.

  The cash was stored in a special bank deposit vault in the city. Each conspirator had something that was needed to access it, and none of them could open the box without the others. Dean and Ron Harris each had a key; Chris Mathis had the code for the electronic keypad; and Hector Ramos was the signatory. His thumb print provided the extra security, which was why Vincent hacked it off. It was found in his freezer, between the ice cream and peas.

  "And Dean gave his key to Tanya?"

  I nodded. "Dean knew he was in big trouble. On one side, he had Vincent blackmailing him, on the other side were Harris, Mathis and Ramos who wanted to get more money, and then there was always the potential that the authorities would discover the crime."

  This much was guesswork, given that none of the gang could corroborate the truth. We surmised that faced with the evidence and the threat of the police, Dean stalled for time with Vincent, telling him he could get the money, but to be patient. Vincent knew who was in the gang and since the money couldn’t be moved, he was okay to wait it out.

  Then Dean saw my research for the Gazette and knew that I had put together his connection to the other three members of the gang. He panicked, putting in a call to Ramos. "He gave his key to Tanya to hide as collateral,” I explained as Lily hung on my every word. “If anything happened to him, the others wouldn't be able to access the collated money. He couldn't pay off Vincent without any ready cash, and he knew there was a discoverable connection between the four of them. All he wanted was out. He confided in Ramos all about the problems he had."

  Lily frowned. "So why did the Finklesteins kill Dean?"

  "In his panic, Dean became the weak link so Ramos put out a hit on him. Ramos' wife is Knuckles Finklestein's wife's cousin, so Ramos hired the brothers to take out Dean, get the key and the report, thus reducing the pot. It would have finished off the fraudulent claims, but they could take a cool million each. Importantly, Ramos wanted the evidence between him and the rest of the gang obliterated before pay day."

  "Who knew this kind of stuff went on in Montgomery? Makes you wonder what else is going on under our noses."

  I didn't want to think about it. I'd had enough “fun” for a while.

  "When did the police get involved?" asked Lily. "They knew, right?"

  "They knew there was fraud, but had no clue who was involved. Green Hand is huge, they have hundreds of thousands of active policies and pay out thousands every day. It took them months to narrow it down to Dean's department." Apparently, Dean didn’t know that Maddox was already in the department spying and collecting evidence to implicate the whole gang, until the night he died. “Without his notebook, they didn’t have any place to start looking for the fraudulent policies.”

  "Do you think Dean knew he was going to die?"

  "When the Finklesteins came by that night? Yeah, I think so."

  "Sucky," said Lily.

  To Dean's credit, once he realized he was going to be killed, he didn't give up my name or Tanya’s to the Finklesteins. I don't know whether he thought that would keep us safe or just make things difficult for Ramos, but since he also didn't give up Vincent, it was hard to tell. Perhaps that was his revenge. He knew even if he were dead, Vincent would go after the other three to get the money. In a weird sort of way, Vincent was his insurance policy just as much as Maddox was and he’d seen the whole thing.

  However, what Dean hadn't banked on was Vincent knowing about Tanya, or that he would be desperate enough to kill her, too. I think Tanya was the one person Dean trusted, and probably the one person he really tried to protect. He probably hoped she would take the Paris tickets and flee.

  "And the Finklesteins and Ramos thought you and Vincent were the same person?" prompted Lily.

  I nodded. This much I knew from Vincent's testimony. "Once Dean was dead, Vincent knew he didn't have long to shake down the rest of the gang for the money. The gang knew already from Dean that someone was on their tail, and had discovered a connection. They also knew Dean was being blackmailed. The only problem they had was that they didn't know who the blackmailer was and who had the evidence connecting them. Vincent said Ramos told him they figured it was the same person."

  "People should never jump to conclusions."

  "But they did. Harris, Mathis and Ramos weren't career criminals. They were opportunists." Once Ramos saw my name watermarked on the research, he knew I could connect them.

  Unfortunately for Ramos, Vincent was one step faster and had come up with another plan. He planned to stall any investigation into the fraud as he bumped one gang member off at a time, until he was the only one left with the knowledge of the crimes and access to the money. Earlier on the day Dean died, he overheard Dean telling Ramos about the file on his desk. He couldn’t get to it before the Finklesteins, so he counted on deleting my files as a guarantee to ensure that neither I, nor anyone else, would be able to put the pieces together. He just didn't count on my amazing ability to accidentally delete everything, thus ensuring I always, always, backed up my documents. And he also didn't count on the authorities putting together the task force that put Maddox in the building to spy.

  "I knew there were too many hit-and-run accidents," said Lily. "It was too much of a coincidence."

  "I agree. Vincent got the first key from Ron Harris and, so he claimed, killed him by accident when he was desperate to get away. After that, everything came easy. Chris Mathis gave up the box number and the bank where the money was stashed in a deposit box, along with the key code, and paid for the information with his life. Vincent couldn't risk leaving anyone alive. After all, he would never be safe while they were after him, determined to get ‘their’ money back. And that left Ramos, the most dangerous one. He was the signatory and Vincent needed his thumbprint. He chopped it off before he killed Ramos."

  "Why didn't Ramos cut a deal with Vincent?"

  "Too greedy. Ramos wasn't too bothered about the deaths of his co-conspirators. He just wanted the money, and like hell would he give it up to a pipsqueak like Vincent, not after they’d put all th
e effort and money in to pull it off."

  This came out during the investigation too. Ramos had been playing fast and loose with the bank's money and was in debt up to his neck. It was only a matter of time before he was investigated for banking fraud. Even with Vincent threatening him, Ramos couldn't afford to get out, not while his bank was on the verge of collapsing. He would have lost everything, not to mention facing a hefty jail sentence.

  With Dean, Harris and Mathis dead, Ramos could get enough money to wipe his slate clean and start over with millions. Vincent got to Tanya before Ramos could. Vincent forced her into retrieving the key from the safest hiding place she knew, Flames, and he shot her to cover his tracks. Except I picked up the key and it was safely stored in the evidence locker at Montgomery PD ever since.

  "Ramos figured I must have taken it and sicced the Finklesteins on me. Ramos assumed getting rid of me was the last step before claiming their cash.” I don't know what they were supposed to do to me to keep my mouth shut about the file, but given their rap sheets, I was sure it wouldn't have been pretty. “This is where Vincent actually saved the day. He recognized the Finklesteins outside my apartment and shot them both, effectively saving my life.”

  "Hurrah for Vincent?" Lily looked hopeful.

  "Not really. When the Finklesteins showed up dead, Ramos thought I killed them. He was the one who tried to ram us off the road the night we visited Serena. Ramos didn't know Vincent was also following us. When Ramos' car wiped out, Vincent picked him up, jumping him while he was injured. Faking a signature wasn't a problem, but he had to cut off Ramos' thumb to get the print."

  "Gross. Also, did Ramos think you were Ramboette or what?"

  "I know, right? Ridiculous."

  "Far out, Brussels sprout.”

  “What?” I shook my head. “Anyway, Vincent figured I had the key and followed Maddox to the safe house.” The money was nearly his. That one little key has caused a lot of problems for everyone.

  The Green Hand Gang, as the Montgomery Gazette dubbed them, were dead, most of the witnesses were gone and the money was recovered, rendering the fraud aspect of the case cut and dried.