by Nancy Bush
And dead broke.
But you did confront Joe. Julia wasn’t supposed to be there. And she survived the boat accident and could wake up at any moment and point fingers.
God, what a disaster.
He raked his hands through his hair. Could he trust the thrill-killers to finish the job with Julia? Did he want them to? Yes . . . yes . . . it had to be done. He’d promised them a small fortune to do the job. What a laugh. If he couldn’t get his money back, none of them was going to get paid.
* * *
Sam’s cell rang as he was approaching the outskirts of Laurelton. He glanced at the screen, saw it was Griff, and swept the phone up, putting the call on speaker.
“Some new information,” Griff said without preamble. “There was a note in the car with the address of the property. Checking the handwriting. Doesn’t look like hers. Someone wrote the note out for her, and get this: That property is owned by Walter Hapstell Senior. We contacted him. He purchased it with the thought of developing it. He’s been waiting for the right time, and now there are preliminary plans in to the city. And the developer? One of Joe’s neighbors, Byron Blanchette, lives on the same canal.”
Jules sucked in a breath and Sam’s blood ran cold. “Doesn’t necessarily mean they were involved in whoever ran Phoenix off the road,” Sam said cautiously.
“No, but it’s a hell of a coincidence.”
“For sure. Did you find a file in the car?” Sam asked.
“No. Just the note. Look, I gotta run. All hell’s breaking loose here. Just wanted to get you up to speed.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“Phoenix said she was bringing me the Cardaman file,” Jules reminded.
“I know. I don’t like the note, like someone sent her there.”
“I don’t either,” Jules said thoughtfully.
“Maybe she forgot to put the file in her car.”
He didn’t sound convinced, and Jules asked, “Do you think someone took it? Whoever ran into her? That maybe . . . they were after the file?”
Sam shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe. Or maybe it was something else entirely. Phoenix pushed people and they didn’t like it. The police will be on it, and if Phoenix recovers, she might be able to tell us.”
“If?”
“When,” he corrected himself grimly. “The police are already looking for a vehicle with front end damage. They’ll find it.”
“And if it’s Walter Hapstell’s, or Byron Blanchette’s . . . or Rob Illingsworth’s?” she suggested. “Zoey told me Rob was trying to get involved in a land development project with Byron—maybe this is the one.”
“When did she tell you this?”
“I don’t know. A while ago? I just remembered it when I saw her earlier today with all the women. I remembered a lot of things about all of them, actually.”
“Like what?”
“Well, let me see . . .” And she told him all the things she’d recalled about the Fishers.
Chapter Eighteen
Tiny Tim’s was a low-slung building with neon beer signs sparkling in the windows in colors of red, white, and blue, the cheeriest thing about the place. Scraggly plants were stuck in boxes beneath the windows and a number of cars were nosed up to a cracked sidewalk. There was more parking behind the bar, accessed by a gravel drive around the side, but there were still a few places out front, so Sam pulled into an empty spot, three cars from the front door. A chain-link fence separated the bar from buildings on either side, and a line of trees around the periphery offered the illusion of privacy in the middle of the city.
Jules, shivering a little even though the temperature was warmer in the Willamette Valley than it had been on the coast, let herself out of the vehicle and met Sam at the front door.
“Need a jacket?” he asked.
“No, I’m fine.”
“C’mon, let’s get inside and find Pearl.”
The interior of the bar was dark, lit only by a few more neon signs against the walls and some undercounter lighting at the bar. The bartender moved toward them, a rotund guy whose waist was the widest part of him. At the end of the bar was a woman in her thirties, about ten pounds overweight, squeezed into a tight, flowered sundress. She looked up like she was expecting someone, but didn’t move.
Sam walked toward her and Jules followed. “Pearl Enos?” Sam asked.
“Oh. I thought . . . I didn’t know you were bringing someone,” Pearl said. She examined Jules’s sling and the abrasions on her chin.
Sam made introductions, then said, “This is where you and Dennis Mulhaney met for drinks?”
“Right here,” she said, gesturing around the end of the bar. “This is where we always sat.”
“You were here a lot with him?” Sam asked.
Even in the dim lighting, he could tell she blushed. “A few times. It was kind of his place and I . . . would stop in.” She shook her head and said, “He stopped coming to work. I’ve been to his apartment over and over again, but he’s not there. His car’s there. Hasn’t moved. It’s all dusty now, but Denny hasn’t been there for weeks.”
The bartender had been methodically wiping a glass. Now he edged his way down the bar to them, listening hard. Sam looked over at him and said, “We’re looking for Dennis Mulhaney, who was a semiregular here, it sounds like. He’s been missing awhile.”
The bartender looked him up and down. “You a cop?”
“Not anymore,” Sam said.
He thrust out his hand and shook with Sam. “I’m Tim. Tiny Tim.”
“Sam Ford.”
Pearl said, “I’ve called and called Denny’s cell, but he’s never answered. I texted. E-mailed. Even tried to find him on social media. Facebook. Twitter. Instagram. Nothing. The boss finally hired somebody else. I thought it was mean to just give up on him.”
“I think I saw him here with you a time or two,” Tim said to Pearl. “He always sat at this end of the bar.”
“Yes,” Pearl said eagerly. “Have you seen him? I mean, recently?” She sounded hopeful.
“Uh-uh. Hasn’t been here for a couple months, maybe. No . . . about six weeks.”
He met Sam’s eyes meaningfully, and Sam realized he had something else he wanted to say.
Sam pulled out his wallet and laid some bills on the counter near Pearl. “Jules, can you get Pearl a glass of wine, or whatever she might like?”
Jules looked from Sam, then over to Tiny Tim, who’d wandered to the far end of the bar. “Sure. Pearl, what’s your drink?”
“A chi-chi?” she asked, suddenly teary eyed. “I thought maybe Denny was still coming here . . . without me, but now I don’t know. You think something bad happened to him?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out.” Sam moved down the bar to join Tim, leaving Jules to commiserate with the unhappy woman. “You have something you want to say?” Sam asked, when he and the bartender were out of earshot.
Tim bent down to an undercounter refrigerator and pulled out cans of coconut syrup and pineapple juice. “The last time I saw the guy, there was a man and a woman in here, sitting at the bar. I’d never seen either one of’em before. She was a looker, but just smelled like trouble, y’know? Came on to the other guy. Told him she was stepping out on her husband, who sounded like he was bad news. The guy didn’t pick up on her, so she moved down the way to your guy, Denny.” Tim dumped the cans in a blender along with vodka and ice and turned it on. Sam waited out the loud whirring noise as Jules continued commiserating with Pearl.
A half minute later Tim stopped the blender, grabbed a tall glass, and poured the white concoction into it. “Denny told everybody his troubles. Life had run him down, y’know? He’d been cheated and stomped on, promised things that never panned out, the whole nine yards. Meanwhile, this woman gets all huffy with the other guy and says she’s gonna be with him, meaning Denny. She struts on down to Denny, who thinks he’s won the lottery. The other guy sits there for a bit, then pays for his beer and goes out th
e back. A little while later—this woman is all over Denny by now—she and Denny stumble out the back, too.”
Tiny Tim stuck a straw in the drink and took it to Pearl, who looked up gratefully. He came back to Sam, and said, “She always orders chi-chis. Not the usual drink around here. Don’t want to crush her, but Denny just put up with her, y’know? You could just tell.”
“Did they ever come back in? The woman and Denny, or the other man?”
“Nope. Not that I saw.” Tim was frowning, shaking his head as he swabbed at a spot on the bar. “The woman and Denny both used the front door when they arrived, but they went out the back. Didn’t see how the other guy entered—I was busy with customers—but I know he went out the back, too. He sat right there in the center of the bar. Once the woman moved on to Denny, he couldn’t take his eyes off her.” Tim huffed out a laugh. “Gotta admit, I couldn’t either. She had Denny by the balls, damn near literally, when they headed out. It had been getting pretty damn hot in here, while she was stroking and rubbing. I swear the temperature dropped ten degrees once they were gone. I wanted a cigarette something bad, but I gave those cancer sticks up six years ago. Anyway, that was the last time I saw Denny.”
“And the man and woman?”
“Nope. Never been back. Paid cash and were gone . . .” He snapped his fingers and blew out as if they’d disappeared into dust motes.
“You think they had something to do with Denny’s disappearance?”
“I didn’t know he’d disappeared till I heard her say it.” He nodded toward Pearl. “But yeah, I’d say so. They both seemed . . . wise, y’know? Like they were playing a game and made up all the rules themselves. It just seemed off . . . role playing, that’s what it was. I’ve sorta thought about it off and on.”
“All three of them went out the back and never came back in,” Sam reiterated.
“That’s right. It got a little busier around here after they left, but I was kind of looking for them, y’know? I even went out back and looked around a bit when I had the chance, but there was nothing to see. Nobody there.”
“Can you describe them, the woman and other man?”
Tim thought it over. “The guy was cheap with his money, barely left a tip. I saw in his wallet briefly, when he took the cash out. License right out in front. He tried to put his hand over it, but he was careless, pretty turned on by what the woman was doing to Denny. No surprise. I’ve seen a lot of shit around here, but she wasn’t even trying to hide what she was doing at all, and she kept looking at the other guy, like daring him to stop her. I wanted to know who the hell the guy was, so I looked at his license. Whole thing just felt like some kinda setup.”
“You saw his name?”
“Not really,” he admitted regretfully. “Started with an E or a B. Short one, like Eric or Evan, or Brian or Bob, maybe? Take your pick. He was in his thirties somewhere, I’d say. Maybe a little taller than average. But it’s her I remember. She had ample breasts, very nice, y’know. Big enough, like I said, ample, damn near spilling them out on the bar. Dark hair, but it coulda been a wig. Good body. Denny’s tongue was hanging out and why not, with that massage going on beneath the bar.”
Sam asked a few more questions, but that was about all Tiny Tim had. “You some kind of private investigator?” he wondered then.
“More like I’ve got a personal stake,” Sam said. He gave Tim his cell phone number, in case he remembered anything else, and he inputted the bar’s number into his cell contact list, then walked back to where Jules was just getting to her feet, having seen Sam’s interview with Tim had ended. “I’m going to take a look outside,” he told her.
Jules nodded and said to Pearl, “We’ll do what we can to find him.”
“You’ll let me know?” she asked, clutching her glass with the last swallow of her chi-chi separating in the bottom.
“Yes.”
Jules followed Sam through the back door and they stepped into a moonless evening. There had still been a faint glow to the west as they’d driven east, but since they’d been inside the bar it had grown very dark. There was one outdoor light, but it was at the far end of the lot and gave out a minimal pool of illumination. There were no cars in the back lot. It was quiet and secluded. “No cameras,” he observed.
“You think something happened out here?” Jules asked.
He brought her up to date on the man and the woman in the bar the last time Denny had been seen at Tiny Tim’s. “None of them ever came back inside through the rear door, so they either got into vehicles here, or walked around to the front. Doesn’t sound like he had his car here, from what Pearl said about it not moving.”
“Pearl said he always used Uber. Didn’t like to drink and drive.”
“So, did they come out here for privacy? Sex? Was the other guy still here, and did they roll him?”
“You said Tiny Tim felt like it was a setup.”
Sam nodded. “Yeah.”
Sam started walking up the gravel drive around the building, and then past the front parking lot, all the way to the street. He looked up and down it. “There’s a camera on that cell phone tower,” he observed. “I’ll ask Griff if he can pull some records from around that date, check with the Laurelton Police. I should’ve pinned Pearl down on dates and found out what kind of cell phone Mulhaney had.”
“Apple, and sometime after Flag Day. That was their last date and he didn’t show up for work after that.”
He gazed down at her admiringly. “Nice going.” A breeze was blowing her hair across her lips and he automatically reached forward and pulled the silken strands away. She stayed very still and he dropped his hand. “We’d better get back,” he said gruffly.
* * *
Jules sat in the passenger seat and watched the miles pass beneath the wheels of Sam’s truck. They hadn’t talked much on the way back to the coast, each lost in their own thoughts. Finally, when they’d passed the halfway mark, Sam said, “We’ve got to figure out the password to the laptop and find out what’s in that file.”
“I thought it was ‘Georgie,’ but maybe Joe changed it.” Memory tickled, but wouldn’t coalesce. So frustrating.
“Where does Mulhaney fit in?” Sam mused. “Phoenix was contacted by him. He wanted her to investigate Joe. He blamed Joe for mishandling investors’ money. He quit his job and moved to Laurelton. Started a new job, then a month or two later, disappeared.”
“And who are this man and this woman?” Jules posed.
“They targeted Mulhaney. I believe Tiny Tim on that. What did Mulhaney do for Joe? Did he have access to the Cardaman file?”
He looked at Jules, who said, “I don’t know. I knew the password to Joe’s computer and he dealt with the records from the company all the time, so Mulhaney must’ve had it, too, to access company records.”
“Mulhaney was stirring up trouble. He wanted to shine a light on Joe’s business dealings and that included his investors. Maybe someone didn’t want his or her name to come to light. Someone with an inside track to Joe’s business. Someone who knew about the Cardaman file.” He looked at her. “Remember, somebody took that note from your house.”
“So, somebody with access.” It gave her a cold feeling in the pit of her stomach. “I’m glad Georgie’s with Joanie and her daughters tonight. I don’t want her at the house.”
“Joanie seems okay, and I don’t want you there, either. Maybe we should go to my dad’s cabin. I put in Wi-Fi there. We can try to break into Joe’s laptop.”
“Okay.”
“And let’s go over the Fishers. Bette said she has a key, and everybody acts like Georgie passed hers around. Somebody got into your house, and maybe they tested the kitchen window like I did, found a way in that way, but however they did it, it’s someone familiar with your house. They knew you weren’t there . . . and maybe knew I wasn’t there, when they went inside and took the note, because it was taken between the time I was first at your place and after you were rescued.”
; “After you rescued me,” she reminded.
“Among others.” In the dash light she could see his brief smile, but then he sobered and went on, “Someone has a close eye on your house.”
“Or, someones? A man and a woman?”
Sam grunted an assent. “What do you think? Do any of the Fishers sound some kind of alarm inside your head?”
“They all do, kind of,” Jules admitted. “When Sadie said someone was coming I had a moment of real terror. It felt like déjà vu. And then I thought of Joe, and the laptop, and the note. . . .” She took a breath, wanting to make sure her head didn’t start hurting, then continued, “Joe said, ‘Get to the boat!’ He saw something out the front window that scared the bejesus out of him. I remember that pretty clearly now. So I ran, but I fell, hit my head . . . maybe that’s when it happened? The head injury. But then Joe was right there, and that’s all I remember until the hospital.”
Sam said, “When I found you on the beach, you said, ‘You’re dead.’”
“Was I talking about Joe?” she asked helplessly. “I just don’t know.”
He nodded, then went back to his train of thought. “You’d think one of the Fishers would have seen the boat leave. Tutti said she was picking up her sons, which was unusual on a Wednesday. Bette and Stuart Ezra were at work. So were Zoey and Byron, Rob Illingsworth, Joanie, and maybe Scott Keppler—don’t know about him. And Hap and Tina, where were they? Hap’s job sounds like it’s what he makes it.”
“Tina works for both Hap and Walter Senior some, I think. I don’t know doing what.”
“What about Jackie? I’ve never heard she has a job.”
“She doesn’t . . . I don’t think . . .”
Sam grunted. “Tomorrow, I’d like to nail down where all of them were on Wednesday. Maybe Griff will know something more about Walter Senior and the land development deal.”
“Well, there’s one thing. . . .”
“What?”
“If the man and woman who targeted Dennis Mulhaney are connected to the Fishers, or are the Fishers, we can count out Zoey and Joanie for the women because neither of them have ‘ample’ breasts.”