“It’s right through there, Grace,” Art told her, pointing to the other room.
Before Shankleman could open the front door to go out with Ringo, Charlie stopped him. “Hold up. I’ll go with you.”
Lorraine and I watched as the two men, one armed, and the dog went down the porch steps. Charlie’s head did a slow scan of the thick woods and brush while Ringo pulled Shankleman from bush to bush looking for the right spot to do his business. Just as the little dog was about to lift his leg, his nose went up into the air and he started barking.
I saw the assailant about the same time as Charlie did. He was half hidden within the trees, raising a rifle, aiming it at Shankleman. I slapped the glass on the window and screamed out a warning just as Charlie got off a shot. The gunman fired at the same time. Both shots found their marks. Shankleman went down, and we heard a cry from the gunman.
Lorraine let out a long, blood-curdling scream and sank to the floor, her hands and arms over her head in a classic duck and cover move she’d probably learned in grade school. Art ran to the wall on the side of the other window and peeked out while keeping cover. Mom shuffled out from the other room. Taking in the scene, she went to Lorraine and crouched down, trying to comfort her while staying low herself.
Shankleman lay still. Charlie ran to him. Shankleman clutched his shoulder and started to get up, but Charlie motioned for him to stay down and held his gun at the ready. Ringo was running in circles, unsure of what to do, barking and scared out of his mind. Shankleman said something sharply to the dog, and the animal went back to his master and quieted down.
“What’s going on?” I called out to Charlie, but he only waved for me to stay put.
It was then we saw a figure coming down the narrow road, his hands above his head. He was dressed in camouflage fatigues, his face dirty, his head covered with a ski mask, even in this warm weather. He limped, and I could see blood oozing from his thigh. Behind him marched Buzz with a handgun to the man’s back. Next to them walked Willie, holding a rifle that was probably the gunman’s.
Art and I started to tumble out of the cabin, sick with worry, but Willie waved us back. Charlie still held his gun ready and continued to scan the area for more threats. Mom poked her head up, reluctant to leave Lorraine, who was crying. “Why does all the good stuff happen when I need to pee?” Mom complained.
Willie helped Shankleman to his feet and walked him back to the cabin. The dog followed behind, his leash dragging on the ground. Behind them, at a safe distance, Buzz herded the shooter in the same direction. Bringing up the rear was Charlie, walking backward while he continued watching for more threats.
When everyone was in the cabin, Shankleman dropped into his chair by the stove. Willie dragged one of the hard-backed chairs away from the rest of us and placed it near the other small front window. “Take a seat,” Buzz said to the shooter. When the man didn’t respond, Buzz prodded him in the back with his gun. He sat down. Buzz posted himself on the shooter’s other side.
Mom and Art tended to Shankleman’s gunshot wound, stopping the bleeding as best they could with clean towels Mom gathered from the bathroom. Art announced that it looked like the bullet hit Shankleman’s shoulder. Nothing life threatening, he reported, but it needed medical attention sooner than later.
“Throw a towel my way,” Willie said. Art handed him one of the clean ones and Willie held it out to the gunman. “You’d better apply pressure to that,” Willie told him. “We might be here a while.” The gunman took the towel and pressed it to the wound in his thigh. Although it was bleeding, it didn’t look too bad. Both he and Shankleman had been lucky.
Pressed now against a far wall, holding Ringo to keep him out of the way, Lorraine took it all in with an odd mix of horror and curiosity. I wondered if this was enough excitement for her to forget about Elliot and the podiatrist.
When Willie yanked off the shooter’s mask we all gasped. It was Kevin Wong, the second-shift guard from Seaside.
“Holy hell!” Mom said. “Kevin, what are you doing shooting at Boaz?”
Willie and Buzz seemed just as shocked at the shooter’s identity. Willie leaned back against the doorjamb of the doorway to the bedroom. “Well, you’re a big surprise. Frankly, I was expecting to see Milton.”
Kevin glanced at Willie, anger in his eyes, but said nothing.
“Why, Kevin?” Shankleman asked, getting to his feet and moving closer. “What have I ever done to you? I’m even generous to you and the other guards at Christmas.” Kevin looked down at the floor but said nothing.
Buzz grabbed a fistful of Kevin’s hair. “The man asked you a question. Answer him.”
I turned to watch Lorraine. Her eyes were glued to Buzz, watching him turn from a sweet-talking hunk to an enforcer. I knew I’d have to have a talk with her about this and about Willie, or maybe it was a topic I should leave for Clark. After all, I’m just her aunt. Aunts don’t have to do the tough parental stuff. Still, I hoped that Buzz didn’t have to get too physical in front of her.
Buzz yanked Kevin’s head back again. This time the guard said, “It wasn’t personal.”
Shankleman moved closer. “You freaking shot me, you SOB!” he yelled. “That’s personal!”
Willie pushed off from the wall and came forward. He put a hand on Shankleman’s good shoulder and pulled him away. “Take a seat, Boaz. Don’t worry, we’ll get to the bottom of this here and now.”
As soon as Shankleman returned to his seat, Willie whipped around and backhanded Kevin Wong, snapping his head back. Lorraine let out a small half scream. Ringo, agitated and shaking, let out a couple of yips. Shankleman motioned to Lorraine for her to bring the dog to him. When she did, he held Ringo with his good arm and comforted the animal.
“Who paid you to kill Cydney Fox and take out Boaz?” Willie asked.
“Paid?” Mom asked. “What makes you think Kevin was paid?”
Willie turned and smiled at Mom. “When someone takes a shot at someone, Grace, then says it’s not personal, usually money is involved.” He turned back to Kevin. “Am I right? All other motives are very personal.”
“I didn’t kill the Fox woman,” Kevin said. “I was paid to follow Boaz and take him out.”
“Are you a professional hitman?” I asked. “Is that how you supplement your guard’s pay?”
From his post at the window, Charlie laughed. “He’s no pro. If he was, he wouldn’t have failed.”
“Charlie’s right,” Willie said. “You’ve got skills, Kevin, no doubt, but not the expert skills of a professional killer. Where did you learn to shoot? I’m guessing the military.” Kevin nodded.
“Why did you think it was Milt doing the shooting?” Mom asked. “He can barely get off his butt to walk around the property.”
This elicited a muffled laugh from Kevin and caused Willie to eye him with narrowed eyes. Kevin stopped laughing and shrunk into himself.
“I think, Grace, you just hit a nerve,” Willie said with a smug smile. He turned to us. “I thought it might be Milt because when we brought Odelia’s car to Seaside this morning, he was in the guard shack. When we left a few minutes later, he was not. Buzz got out and doubled back on foot and spotted him putting something under Odelia’s car. When Milt returned to the guard shack, Buzz investigated, just to make sure it wasn’t some sort of incendiary device.”
A small involuntary squeak escaped from between my clenched teeth. “But it was a tracker,” Willie said, continuing. “After you ladies started on your drive here, we hung back, hoping to spot Milt following you. And good thing we did, although we didn’t get close enough to see who it was.”
“But how did you know we’d lead you to Boaz?” Mom asked Kevin.
“We didn’t,” Kevin said. “At least not this quickly. We knew you and your daughter were looking into Boaz’s disappearance. We were gambling that you’d stick with it unti
l you found him. We were right.”
“So Milt paid you?” Shankleman asked with great surprise. “Lazy Milt?”
“Don’t underestimate Milt,” Willie warned. “From what we saw, he’s pretty agile and fast when no one’s looking. I think that lazy guard thing he’s got going on is just a ruse.”
“For Milt it was personal,” Kevin spat. “Very personal. Something from your past, but I’m not sure what. He said he doesn’t have any experience with guns, but he knew I did. As they say, he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
“Personal?” Shankleman was having a tough time understanding that the Seaside guards were out to get him, personal or not. He shook his head and started to stand again, but Art put hands on his good shoulder to warn him to stay still. Instead, he pulled Ringo closer, like a security blanket.
“Did Milt kill Cydney Fox?” I asked.
Kevin Wong shrugged. “Probably. I just know for sure that he was out to get Boaz. That’s the only target he mentioned to me.”
“Who else could it be?” I asked.
“My money’s on Mona,” Mom said. “She’s his niece and is pretty nasty.”
I moved a few steps closer. “Does Mona D’Angelo know about all this?”
Before Kevin could say anything, Shankleman said, “I still don’t understand what’s personal between me and Milt. Are you sure you don’t know what it is?”
Kevin shrugged again but remained silent.
“Shouldn’t we get the police involved?” asked a mouse from the corner who looked strangely like my niece.
“Not quite yet,” Willie answered. “Not if we want the truth.” He smiled at Lorraine. It was a warm smile, genuine and fatherly. “If we take this creep to the police, he’ll just lawyer up and we may never learn what’s really behind all this.”
Willie stretched out a leg and kicked Kevin’s injured one. The vibration sent pain shooting up into the gunshot wound, and the guard yelped in pain and went white. “Answer the man,” Willie said to him. “What do you know about Milt’s motives?”
“Nothing, I swear, but I do know his name isn’t Milt D’Angelo, or at least it wasn’t always,” Kevin said.
“He told you that?” Buzz asked.
Kevin shook his head. “No, I overhead him and Mona talking one night during the shift change. I’d gone out to walk the property and came back a little earlier than usual. They were talking in the guard shack. Mona called him Uncle Kurt.”
Shankleman got to his feet, shaking off all attempts by Art to quiet him down. Instead, he handed Ringo off to Art. The poor little dog was being passed around like a bad cold. “Kurt? She called him Uncle Kurt?”
“Yeah,” Kevin confirmed, “that’s what I heard, although that’s the only time I’d ever heard Milt called that.”
“That’s impossible,” Shankleman said, his face exploding with shock. “Kurt Spencer-Hall’s been dead for a very long time, and Milt looks nothing like him.”
“Hey,” said Kevin, “I don’t know about the Spencer-Hall part, but Mona definitely called him Kurt.”
“Do you have history with anyone else by the name of Kurt?” I asked.
Shankleman paced the room, a hand on each side of his head as if squeezing a zit. He shook his head. “I honestly can’t think of another person in my life named Kurt, past or present.”
“How about a niece?” asked Lorraine, coming alive. “Do you remember him mentioning his family when you were in the band before?”
Shankleman stopped pacing at the question, gave it some thought, then laughed at a memory. “Kurt, the Kurt I knew, was very secretive about his family, so I have no idea if he had a niece or not. He wanted everyone to think he was English. He always said English musicians got the best girls, but he wasn’t from England. By the time Dave and I joined up with him, he’d added Hall to his last name because he’d once heard that name in an English movie and had affected a British accent. Kurt Spencer was actually from Downey.”
“Milt’s been living in Downey,” Kevin Wong said from his chair. “At least since he’s been at Seaside.”
Willie stared down at Kevin. “You said Milt made you an offer you couldn’t refuse to do the hit on Boaz. How does a guard living in Downey have that kind of money?”
Kevin shrugged. “I wondered that myself, but I didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, if you know what I mean. He paid half in cash, with the other half to be paid after it was over. I’m divorced, no kids, no future. I was going to use the money to relocate and start over. I couldn’t do that on a miserable guard’s pay.”
“It still can’t be the same Kurt,” Shankleman said, unconvinced. “Kurt Spencer-Hall died of an overdose in Mexico. That’s where he went when things got too hot for him legally.”
I was kicking myself for not bothering to read the Marigold report on Kurt Spencer-Hall. I had stopped reading after confirming his death. Then I remembered what Titan had said about Kurt. “We asked Titan about Kurt’s death when we saw him,” I said. “He told us he went down to Mexico to identify the body. What if he went down to Mexico to give Kurt a new beginning instead?”
All eyes were on me. “I don’t know how gangs work,” I continued, “but is it possible that Titan used his Armenian gang connection to make that happen?”
Willie was nodding. “We did say that whoever alerted the gang that something was about to go down triggering a police investigation had to have known about Titan’s connection to them. If Titan used his connections to help Kurt get a new start, he would know all that.”
“It could also mean that this Spencer-Hall could possibly be working for them himself,” noted Buzz, “which might be how he had the funds to pay for the hit. Maybe the Armenian gang has a partnership with one of the Mexican gangs. Maybe the Armenians distribute the goods for the Mexicans up here, and Kurt is working for one or the other.”
“You mean,” asked Shankleman, standing in the middle of the room, his good hand holding the sliding makeshift bandage on his shoulder in place, “that Kurt and Titan could have been working together all these years?”
“Could explain why Milt speaks Spanish like a native,” Kevin said, either trying to be helpful or buy into our good graces. “I’ve heard him myself.”
“You know,” Willie finally said, “that does make sense. Kurt escapes his troubles by going down south. Through Titan’s connections, he gets a new life, a new look, and a new name, and goes to work for the people who helped him.” He looked straight at Kevin. “When did Milt start working at Seaside?”
“I can answer that,” I said. I’d been sitting in a chair and now got up to add to the nervous pacing crowd. “Teri Thomson told me Milt started just a few months ago. Mona’s story is that her uncle had been traveling out of the country and had just returned and needed a job. The other night guard had left, which gave Milt the perfect cover as the new guard.”
Mom nodded in confirmation. “That’s the story we were all told about Milt.”
“A few months ago?” repeated Shankleman. “That’s just after Cyd and I started working together and she started coming around Seaside.”
“So,” I said, thinking and walking, “what if Mona tells her uncle that Cydney Fox, the woman who brought down Acid Storm and brought his other indiscretions to light, has suddenly shown up at Seaside? Maybe he returned to take revenge on her.”
Shankleman shook his head and closed his eyes. “Mona did ask me her name when Cyd started showing up regularly, and I told her. She said it was for security reasons.”
“So the Fox woman was the target all along?” asked Mom.
“That’s what I’m thinking,” I said, “or at least the one target Spencer-Hall wanted to take out himself.”
“But I’ve lived there for several years,” Shankleman said, his voice heavy with confusion, like a kid who didn’t get the math problem on the
chalkboard. “Why hasn’t he tried to come after me before this?”
“Because he’s a patient man,” Willie said. “He wanted you all, but mostly her, and she didn’t come back to the area until recently, right?”
Shankleman nodded. “But why set up Titan to be killed if they were working together?”
“Because he was a loose end,” Buzz answered. “Titan was the only person who knew that Milt was really Kurt Spencer-Hall.”
“I’m still confused,” said Lorraine. “I understand why this Kurt guy turned on Titan, but why would he call Titan and give him a heads-up about the gang, giving Titan and the band a chance to get out of town?”
“Maybe it wasn’t Milt who sounded the alert,” Mom said. “Maybe it was someone else?”
We all turned to stare at Kevin, who held up the hand not clutching the towel to his leg. “It wasn’t me. I knew nothing about that hit, I swear.”
Willie studied him, then said, “I believe Kevin on this. My money is on Mona. She might have been the one to call Titan after she found out about Cydney being murdered. Maybe she thought her uncle was just going to have it out with them, not kill them all. Titan was probably given a heads-up the day you saw him packing. Wasn’t that the day after Lorraine found Fox’s body? Maybe Mona overheard her uncle discussing his plans with someone or was privy to them.”
“Yes, it was the day after, but I can’t believe Mona chose to do the right thing,” Mom said with a scowl. “I can’t see her doing that.”
“You don’t have to be a nice person to do the right thing, Grace,” Art told her.
“Especially if you’re worried about being charged as an accessory to a murder,” added Willie with a wink. “Maybe she didn’t want any more blood on her hands.”
“Well,” Mom said, raising a fist into the air, “if I get my hands on Mona, her blood is going to be on my hands for putting all of us in danger like this.”
Buzz laughed. “You go, abuela!”
twenty-four
Willie kicked Kevin’s injured leg again. “So what’s the setup? Once you killed Boaz, what were you supposed to do?”
Rhythm & Clues Page 23