by J. L. Abramo
He snorted a derisive “heh!”
Jamie took a step forward and lowered her voice, venom having replaced her earlier syrupy tone.
“Trust me when I say you wouldn’t like to see me upset,” she said. The threat was plain. “Am I understood?”
“Y-yeah,” he stammered. “You got it.”
“Then get out of here before I change my mind and do something rash.”
The man disappeared back into the shadows. She could hear his footfalls against concrete as he ran down the narrow space between the buildings once he was out of sight. Seconds later, Jamie heard a car door slam, then another. Unlike her, the man in the ski mask had not come alone. She was more convinced than ever that he was simply a hired flunky. She wouldn’t be surprised if whoever hired him disposed of him now that his part was done. She hoped not, but ski mask boy wasn’t her problem. Tires squealed as their car speed away into the night, blocked from view.
Jamie picked up the first envelope. She had an idea what was inside, but she looked nonetheless. Inside she found several photos, each easily twenty-five to thirty years old featuring a young Alexander Bishop and his underage lovers in multiple compromising positions. She recognized most of the men in the photos, but not all. Bishop ran in powerful circles in his youth as well as now. In addition to the photos, the negatives were also inside.
The second envelope contained several photographs of David Westerfelt in the company of several different ladies, none of whom was his wife. Some were shots of meals whereas others were more intimate, with him and the ladies in various states of undress. Some of the photos were quite old, others more recent.
She opened the third envelope and found more of the same inside. There were also group shots featuring multiple men and women enjoying one another’s company, including Roland Carter, mixed in with the others, including her other two clients. To say they were close would be an understatement.
Jamie didn’t judge. She herself had met many couples that had unique arrangements. Her client’s indiscretions didn’t matter to her. She had been hired to get the incriminating evidence and she had done just that. It was not her place to pass judgment on what consenting adults did behind closed doors. She, herself, was known to throw caution to the wind from time to time.
Her clients weren’t ashamed of the photos, but they also didn’t want to deal with any type of scandal should they go public. Paying off the blackmailer was the simplest solution.
Jamie got in her car and headed back to the office to wash up and change before meeting with the client to deliver the photos and the good news that it was over. In an hour, she would wish she had gone straight to Alexander Bishop’s home.
Had she done so, she might have saved his life.
There was no answer when Jamie Southern rang the bell.
Unlike her previous visits to her client’s home, this time there was no one on staff around to greet her, no pitter-pat of expensive shoes against the marble floor. This time there was only deathly silence.
It made her uneasy.
Jamie turned the doorknob carefully, surprised to find it unlocked.
Pushing the door open slowly, Jamie stepped inside. There were no lights on in the house. The only way she could see was by the moon outside streaming through open curtains. Since she had visited Alexander Bishop at his home on multiple occasions to discuss the details of his case, Jamie realized immediately that something felt off.
One of the first lessons she learned as a private investigator, and one of the things she had heard her father say on more than one occasion, was to always be on guard and to always protect yourself.
Ain’t living long like this unless you’re prepared, he often told her in regards to the business. It was advice Jamie took to heart. She pulled her trusty .32 handgun from her clutch purse before sitting it down beside the door. She needed both hands free.
Jamie eased into the foyer and into the hallway that led deeper into the house. Off to the right, a set of stairs ascended to the second floor bedrooms. Without a word, she passed the stairs and headed for Bishop’s study. The house had been ransacked. Papers littered the floor along with broken pieces of glass from picture frames and assorted glass and ceramic baubles her wealthy client kept on display. She heard shards crack and pop beneath each step she took.
The study door was closed, but not all the way. She pushed against it with the toe of her shoe, the .32 firmly gripped with both hands. The door swung open on well-oiled hinges. Jamie stepped inside. The condition of the room resembled the rest of the house. She righted a toppled desk lamp and snapped it on, glad to learn that the bulb had not blown. A pale glow filled the study, forcing the shadows to the far corners of the room.
That’s when Jamie found her client.
Alexander Bishop lay on the floor, a small pool of blood radiating outward from beneath him. From his albino pallor, she knew he was gone, but Jamie had to make certain. Mindful of the debris and her short skirt, Jamie knelt next to her client and felt for a pulse. Not surprisingly, there wasn’t one.
“Damn,” she muttered.
Bishop had enemies. He had told her as much when they first met. A successful businessman, he had climbed over many others to reach the top. That left a lot of potential suspects in his wake, including her other clients, considering what she had seen in the photos she’d recovered from the blackmailer’s bagman.
After a moment, Jamie stood and searched the rest of the house.
It was empty.
She picked up the phone from the study floor and sat it back on the desk, the one piece of furniture in the room that hadn’t been upended. She assumed the solid oak frame had proven a bit too much for whoever had torn the place apart. She dialed the number by heart.
“This is Jamie Southern for Lieutenant Chase, please,” she said once the desk sergeant at the local precinct answered. “It’s an emergency.”
The smart play would have been to call 9-1-1 and let the system work the way it should, but then there was no way of knowing who would be assigned the case. With Chase, she knew what she would get.
Once Lieutenant Chase got on the line, Jamie laid out the situation for him and he promised to be right over. Before hanging up, he told her to get out of the house and wait for him outside by her car.
“And don’t touch anything,” he finished.
She lied and told him she wouldn’t touch a thing, but did just that as soon as she hung up the phone. She knew there wouldn’t be much time before the police arrived. Chase and his people were good, but this one would have eyes on it from higher up because the victim was part of the city’s wealthy elite.
“What were you looking for?” she asked the room.
Lying near the body were several pieces of paper and a couple dozen business cards. She knelt and looked to see if anything about them stood out. The papers were a bust. Nothing jumped out at her.
She could hear sirens approaching and was in no mood to list to another one of the Lieutenant’s lectures about disturbing his crime scene. Not tonight. Jamie was about to head outside to meet him when something caught her eye.
One of the business cards looked out of place compared to the others. Most were white or cream colored with lots of letters, addresses, names, numbers, the usual, but this one card had none of those on it. It was all black with a white border.
Curious, Jamie picked up the card and turned it over. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She rolled the card around in her fingers before dropping it back to the carpet so the police could find it.
“Just when you think you’ve seen it all,” Jamie said.
She walked away, leaving the card next to the body. It was a simple card, but it spoke volumes. Three words in white text on a black card leapt out at her.
The Ravenwood Club.
In this case, all roads led to Ravenwood.
Jamie Southern was tired and irritable.
She wanted nothing more than to head home for long a soak in a
steamy hot bubble bath, but police Lieutenant Mark Chase was doing everything in his power to make sure that didn’t happen anytime soon. Most of the time, she found his tenaciousness adorable, both on the job and at play, but this was not one of those times.
“Okay, let’s go over this one more time,” he said.
“What do you think I’m going to say that I haven’t already told you the last five times you asked,” Jamie said, no longer bothering to hide her irritation. “Alexander Bishop is...” She caught herself. “...was my client.”
“What were you doing for Mr. Bishop?”
“You know I can’t tell you that, Mark. You know that’s confidential.”
“Damn it, Jamie, this is serious,” Chase said, his voice rising slightly. “I’ve got a dead man and no clues.”
“And I’ve got a little thing called ethics,” Jamie fired back, her tone sharper than intended. From the look on his face, she had scored a direct hit.
The Lieutenant softened a bit, his tone lowering to just below normal. “Look, Southern, you’ve got to give me something I can work with here.” He pointed toward the house where the coroner’s people were starting to load the body into a plastic bag opened atop a gurney. “Your client is dead. I stopped caring about his confidences the moment he stopped breathing,” Chase said.
“But I didn’t,” she said as the body was rolled past them. “And neither did he.”
Chase opened his mouth, but then thought twice about what he was going to say and shut it just as quickly. The last thing either of them wanted to do was fight each other. There was a murder to solve.
“Did you find the card I told you about?” Jamie asked.
“I did.”
“And?”
“And what?” The Lieutenant blew out a breath and reigned in an outburst.
“I’ve heard stories about The Ravenwood Club all my life. So have you. My father used to tell me about his early days as a P.I. and some of the things that used to go down in that place. That’s where we’ll find our killer.”
“They’re just stories. Not real.”
“Most stories have some basis in truth.”
Chase held up his hands in mock surrender. “Maybe, but even if you’re right what do you want me to do? No one gets in who isn’t a member. Not if they want to keep their police pension intact. That place is a who’s who of people who tell my bosses what to do. I ain’t kickin’ that hornet’s nest without some damn hard proof.”
She smiled. “You mean you aren’t a member?”
“I look old and rich to you?”
“Can I have the card?” she asked, hand outstretched. “I’ve got a hunch. You boys in blue aren’t the only ones allowed to have those, you know.”
He chuffed a laugh even as he pulled the card from his shirt pocket. He rolled the card around in his beefy fingers, looking it over. “Fine.” Chase handed it over. “It’s all yours.”
Jamie reached for the card, but he pulled it away from her touch. “One condition,” he said.
She scowled. “Somehow I just knew you were going to say that. What’s your condition?”
“On the off chance you do find something, you call me and let me know.”
They stared across the card between them, neither wanting to be the first to blink. Finally, Lieutenant Chase flinched. “Deal?”
Jamie plucked the business card from his grip. “Deal. So, I’m free to go?”
Chase smiled. “Yeah. Get out of here. I’ll call you tomorrow in case you jog any other details while sleeping. Or, perhaps I could pop by your place first thing in the morning to compare notes.”
“It might be better if I come to you,” Jamie offered.
“Fine. Just make sure you don’t leave anything out.”
“Why do you always assume I’m hiding something, Lieutenant Chase?” she asked, pouting playfully.
“You private eyes are all the same, Southern. You’re always holding something back.”
“Heh,” Jamie chuckled. “And we all know how much you cops love to share, don’t we?”
Chase stepped away, arms out to his side. “I’m an open book, Southern,” he shouted. “Nothing to hide.”
“We’ll see about that,” Jamie muttered as she turned and headed back to her car. She tucked the evidence into her purse next to her gun. Mark Chase was many things, but he was fair. He would follow the evidence wherever it may lead. Alexander Bishop had not been killed with a .32 so he hadn’t tried to take her gun, although he knew she always carried it with her. There were more than a few of his colleagues who would not have afforded her such a courtesy.
The Ravenwood angle was a long shot, she knew, but it was not the only card in her arsenal, so to speak. Urban legend or not, if the club was still active and that somehow led to the death of her client, Jamie Southern was determined to find out the truth.
But that would start in the morning. It had been a long day and she was ready to call it a night. A nightcap and a soak were waiting for her back at her place and she planned to enjoy both to the fullest.
Right after she fed the cat.
Jamie Southern woke to the sound of a ringing phone.
Before taking over the family business, the thought of starting her day before the sun came up was laughable. One of the hardest things she had to learn as a private investigator was how it was all but impossible to keep a set schedule. Late night, and often overnight, stakeouts were the norm, but so were morning meetings with clients. It wasn’t easy to juggle all of those things alone, but so far she had managed. The thought of one day bringing on a partner was one she toyed with from time to time, but she always discarded the notion as something to worry about another day.
She hadn’t even rolled out of bed yet when the phone rang on her nightstand jangled again. Eyes still closed, she reached for the bedeviled machine.
“Jamie Southern,” she answered, trying to stifle a yawn. She was not surprised to hear Mark Chase’s voice on the other end of the line.
“Morning, beautiful,” he said. “Did I wake you?”
“Of course not,” she lied. “What can I do for you, Lieutenant?”
“Told you I would call. I thought we could get together and compare notes. On the case, that is,” he clumsily added. “I can be at your place in...half an hour...” He let the invitation hang there for a moment, hoping she would invite him over to her place. While the idea had its merits, she had a murder to solve and having Mark Chase in her house for breakfast was not the best way to stay on target.
“Let’s make it my office,” Jamie countered. “One hour?”
“Sure thing,” Chase said. He didn’t bother to hide the disappointment in his voice. “See you in an hour.”
Five minutes later, Jamie rolled out of bed, ready to face the day. After a shower and getting dressed, she fixed a small breakfast, toast with peach preserves and coffee, before rushing out the door on her way to the office.
No sooner had she gotten off the elevator than her favorite police lieutenant jogged up the stairs with a case file clenched in one hand and a box of donuts from his favorite breakfast stop, Donut Explosion, in the other.
“You’re late,” she joked, leaning against the door frame.
“Nonsense,” he countered. “I’m always right on time.”
She nodded toward the box he carried. “I see you brought breakfast.”
“Cop’s best friend,” he said with a laugh. “Can you think of any way finer to start the day than hot coffee and warm donuts?”
“I can think of a few.”
“So can I, but you wanted to meet at your office so this is all I could manage,” he said, a big goofy grin on his face. “Come on, Jamie. This is brain food for detectives.”
“I’ll try to remember that,” Jamie deadpanned. “Seems like you’ve forgotten the coffee.”
Chase took on an air of mock hurt. “Now what kind of partnership would this be if we didn’t both bring something to the table?”
&nb
sp; “Come on in,” Jamie said before turning on her heel and walking into the office. “I think there’s a coffee maker in her somewhere.”
Breakfast with Mark Chase didn’t yield any new leads.
At least not in terms of the case.
The Lieutenant had made no secret his desire to be more than friends and Jamie knew it would be a lie to say that she hadn’t enjoyed being chased, no pun intended, but there was a time and place for everything and eating donuts over case files in her office was neither.
It had taken a bit of time to get his mind on the task at hand, but Jamie was quite persuasive when she wanted to be. They discussed the case in generalities at first. It seemed like he was more interested in learning what she knew than sharing information with her, but she managed to pull a few details out of him. While she wanted to keep things purely platonic, Jamie had no problem with using her feminine wiles to her own advantage. Mark Chase thought he had the upper hand, but he was putty in her hands. He just hadn’t realized it yet.
The ME had retrieved the bullet, a .22 caliber. It was a mighty small weapon comparatively. There were certainly weapons that pack more of a punch. Beyond that, they exchanged a few additional details, but nothing of substantive value. By the time Chase left her office, Jamie still had more questions than answers. Someone had blackmailed Alexander Bishop and then killed him. Was the blackmailer and killer the same person? Alexander Bishop had followed the blackmailer’s demands and paid the money without any fuss. Killing him made no sense.
These thoughts and more bounced around inside Jamie Southern’s pretty blonde head as she drove through the city, enjoying the warmth of the midday sun. She had the top down on her new Jaguar, a treat she had allowed herself recently after concluding a rather lucrative case. The client had insisted on giving her a bonus and she happily accepted and put the money toward the new car. It handled like a dream.
Once this case was behind her, she planned to take a long ride up the coast to really break in the new car.