“So the victim is the second, bigamous wife?”
“Yes.”
“But it’s not certain the husband did it?”
“I don’t know the time of death yet, so I can’t say for sure.”
“No one knows yet. This isn’t TV. Educated guess?”
That he valued my opinion made my chest swell in pride. I gave it a thought. “The rug in the victim’s house was still wet with blood. I think she was killed early that morning, and for that time we have his whereabouts covered.”
“I’ll look into it should I take up his defense. Maybe I’ll get him freed on that.”
“There’s still the bigamy to consider.”
He sneered, full of lawyerly arrogance. “I’m being hired for the murder case.” Meaning, he didn’t have to care about the bigamy.
“In that case, would you consider hiring us as investigators?” Technically, Moreira had asked first, but we’d have better access to everything as part of the official investigation. He wouldn’t mind.
“I’ll think about it. Now, you’ll have to go or I’ll be late the whole day. This client was already extra. Oh, and take the corridor to the right. No need for you to come face to face with Mrs. Williams at this point.” I did as told and managed to get out without running into our erstwhile client.
It took twenty minutes to cover the ten minute drive to the agency—I now officially hated driving in morning traffic, by the way—plus ten minutes to find a parking spot—I ended up to the garage two blocks from the agency Jackson and Cheryl used. So it was already almost ten before I entered the small reception area of Jackson Dean Investigations on the second floor of a low redbrick building at the corner of Flatbush Avenue and Bergen Street.
I was greeted with the delighted barking of Misty Morning, Cheryl’s border terrier Yorkie mix that followed her everywhere. She was wearing a pretty pink coat and a bow on her head, and kept jumping against my legs until I picked her up. She instantly tried to lick my face.
“Where have you been?” Cheryl asked from behind her desk. She was in her early fifties with blond bouffant hair, a heavily made-up face, and a tendency to dress in pink clothes a size too small for her round figure.
“I had to visit my brother Travis.”
The door to Jackson’s office was thrown open with a loud bang and he stood in the doorway, looking thunderous. “I’d think that if you had such important news for me that you forewent breakfast and shower for it, you’d have the courtesy of showing up at work on time.”
He had a bit of a temper at times, but he cooled down fast too, so I ignored his mood. “There’s been a development.”
“This had better be good.”
He marched back to his desk and I exchanged a commiserating look with Cheryl. “What’s this about shower and breakfast,” she asked, shamelessly curious, almost making me blush—though what there was to blush about, I couldn’t say.
“We went for a jog together,” I said lightly, following Jackson in, Misty at my heels. She often sat next to me on the comfy couch in Jackson’s office, my official work space. I’d managed to gather enough papers, books, and files on the coffee table in front of it over the past three weeks to make the table overflow, so I guess Travis and I weren’t so different after all.
The table barely had room for the coffee mug that was currently perched on one corner. I was wondering if I had time to take it to the other side of the room where the coffee maker stood and fill it with fresh goodness, but one look at Jackson’s face made me take a seat instead.
“Talk.”
“What is it with men and their need to give curt orders?” But he wasn’t easily amused this morning, so I sighed and got on with it. “Mrs. Williams just hired Travis to defend her husband in the murder case, and if he’s able he’ll hire us on it.”
He blinked. “And you know this because?”
“She showed up at his offices earlier this morning when I was there. The reason I was late, by the way.”
He contemplated my news with a frown. “Did she see you?”
“No.”
He nodded. “And what did Moreira want?”
“That we find out who killed Sheila Rinaldi.”
“What?” He looked as flabbergasted as I’d felt at the time.
“My reaction exactly. Turns out they were cousins.”
He stared at me for a few heartbeats, then he gave a longsuffering sigh. “You’d best tell me everything.”
Chapter Ten
Half an hour later we were in Jackson’s car, driving towards Ozone Park in southern Queens and the Aqueduct Racetrack there. Travis had called before I’d finished my account to Jackson and given us the green light to investigate the murder.
“Until we have the time of death, they’ll consider my client the prime suspect for the murder and won’t look for others, so it’s in our best interest you find the killer.”
And the best place to start was to find out everything about Sheila Rinaldi, who had worked at the racetrack.
“Should I have told Travis that Moreira wants us to investigate too?”
His name made Jackson frown. “It’s not like he hired us officially.”
“So it’s not a conflict of interest or whatever?”
“No.”
“He promised to find out if Sheila had a steady boyfriend before Larry who might have wanted to kill her.”
Jackson’s frown deepened. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he didn’t like Moreira. Then again, he had held the man at gunpoint, so it was probably exactly the case.
“Good,” he only said though.
“I suggested she might have become involved in some mafia stuff, but he insisted he’s not in the mafia.”
Jackson sneered, but let that go too. “There are other ways to get in trouble at the racetrack. Maybe she placed bets she shouldn’t have and owed money, or was blackmailed into fixing bets.” Then he sighed. “But the boyfriend is a better call. It takes great personal emotion to kill someone by bashing their head in.”
“That’s what Trevor said.” I tried and failed not to imagine that kind of rage. “Maybe her ex found out that she’d married, or something, and got angry.” Maybe he was in mafia too, no matter what Moreira tried to claim to the contrary.
“I’d still put my money on Larry Williams.”
“I just can’t imagine him bashing anyone’s head in.”
“There is that.”
“Moreira asked what was in the apartment,” I said, thinking back at the place, “but there wasn’t anything, was there?”
“Not that I noticed, but we were there for such a short time.”
“But there weren’t even signs of a struggle.”
He spared a glance at me from the traffic and nodded. “You’re right.”
“So what does that mean?”
“We’d better find out.”
I’d never been to the Aqueduct Racetrack before—no one gambled in our house, and definitely not on ponies—and I didn’t know what to expect. The sheer size of the place hit me first. We approached the compound from the west, where the clubhouse and stand were, but even though they were huge—the seats for over ten thousand spectators were on one side of the track only—they weren’t large enough to cover the length of the track itself. Parking lots circled the track on three sides and went on for miles. Seemed like, anyway.
“Not many cars here,” I noted as Jackson drove to the main admission gate.
“The season won’t start until November.”
“You’re a betting man?”
I asked it lightly, but the bitter twist of Jackson’s lips suggested I’d hit a nerve.
“My father was.” Since he’d once revealed he’d had the kind of childhood where he much preferred to hang out in his friends’ houses—mine included—than home, I let it be.
We were directed from the admission gate to the employee entrance at the south end of the clubhouse. The parking lot there was pretty full. “So wh
at are these people here for, then, if the season’s not started?”
“This is a casino too, and there are restaurants.”
A security guard at the entrance checked our credentials before directing us to the employee manager’s office on the first floor. Emily Hunter was in her late thirties, with a honey-color shoulder-length hair, and dressed for a PR job in a pinstripe skirt suit and black Louboutin pumps—yes, I know what they look like—instead of a job in an office where no one could see her. She gave Jackson an appreciating look, which he didn’t notice—the idiot—and ignored me completely. I was fine with that.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Dean?” she all but purred, but Jackson had retreated behind his work mask and didn’t react to her invitation.
“We’re here to talk about Sheila Rinaldi.”
A small frown appeared on the woman’s expertly made-up face. “She didn’t show up at work today.”
Jackson and I exchanged stunned glances. It hadn’t occurred to us that people here wouldn’t know Sheila was dead. But of course no one would inform them, since her husband was being held in custody. Jackson rallied admirably.
“I’m afraid I have bad news. Ms. Rinaldi was found dead yesterday morning.”
“What?” Genuine shock twisted Ms. Hunter’s face. “Sheila? How?”
“It wasn’t a natural death.” A racetrack-sized understatement.
“Is Larry all right?”
I found it interesting that she would ask that, instead of, say, “Did Larry do it?”
“You know her husband?”
She gave me a baffled look, as if noticing me for the first time. “Of course. He’s here all the time. They were so in love.” Tears sprang into her eyes. “Poor Larry.”
We gave her a moment to compose herself, and when the woman had dried her tears—without somehow smudging her makeup, I might add—Jackson asked, “Is there anything you can tell us about Sheila, her relationship with other workers, for example, that might help us in our investigations?”
“I don’t know what to say. She was very well liked. Efficient in her job too. I can’t understand why anyone would want to harm her.”
“Has she worked here long?”
“Five years.”
“Do you know if she had any serious relationships before Larry?” I asked. I wasn’t ready to give up the mafia angle, but Ms. Hunter wasn’t likely to reveal to us if the casino employees were crooked.
“I don’t know about that. You should ask Anna Jagoda. They were very good friends. I’ll show you to her.”
We followed Ms. Hunter down the bare concrete corridors of the employees’ quarters and one floor up to the clubhouse proper. It was a different world entirely, all chrome and glass, widescreen TVs and lounge bars, shiny at first glance, but a closer look revealed fading carpets and flaking walls. All that was forgotten, however, when you saw the view through the enormous glass wall onto the racetrack itself. You couldn’t see anything else, really. There wasn’t even a race on, just a couple of jockeys exercising their horses, but that was enough. I was mesmerized.
“Keep up, Tracy,” Jackson said, amused, and I hurried to catch up, having paused to gawp.
Betting stalls were at the back without a view to the track, a row of booths with a heavy Plexiglas wall between the customers and the clerks. TV screens showed live broadcast from races all over the country where the season was in full swing, but not many people were here to bet on them.
Only a couple of stalls were occupied at that time of day and Ms. Hunter led us to one of them, to a young woman with thick blond hair and a pretty, round face. She frowned when she saw Ms. Hunter.
“Sheila still hasn’t shown up.” She had a thick accent—Slavonic, I’d say.
We left the gruesome task of relaying the bad news to Ms. Hunter—and the consequent consoling too. It took quite a while before Ms. Jagoda was calm enough to talk to us, by which time most of the employees on that floor had heard the news too, and gathered around us.
“If we could have a quiet place to talk?” Jackson suggested politely.
Ms. Hunter led Anna and us to a small backroom—a closet, more like. Jackson asked the young woman the usual questions, but she told us that Sheila was well liked and she had no knowledge of a previous boyfriend.
“If she had, it was before I started here two years ago.”
“How about regular customers? Were there any that would have given her trouble? Blamed her for their heavy losses or some such thing?”
“No, the high rollers don’t come through us.” Then she frowned. “But on Thursday there was a client that upset Sheila.”
“What was it about?” Jackson asked, instantly alert.
“I don’t know, she wouldn’t tell me. But she was pale as a sheet long afterwards.”
“Do you know the customer? Would you be able to identify them for us?”
“No, I didn’t see the incident. But there are cameras monitoring the customers. I’m sure you could find it there.”
By the time the clubhouse security had found us the correct surveillance feed, we’d talked with the rest of the employees present and they’d all said the same: Sheila was well liked and no one would want to hurt her, least of all Larry.
“Well, somebody did hurt her, and badly,” I muttered to Jackson as we followed the head of security to the surveillance room on the ground floor, where banks of monitors lined one wall showing video feeds from all over the casino.
“That’s why I’m pretty sure it has to be personal and not a client here. But we’ll check this out anyway.”
Sheila had had a busy day on Thursday. Most of the customers spent only a moment or two at her desk: placed their bets, maybe made a smiling comment about the weather—I presumed, since there was no audio—and went on their way. It was all funny-looking, as we were viewing it on high speed.
Then a tall, elegant woman in slacks and a blouse came to her desk. It began like all previous inter-actions—money was exchanged to a ticket—but then she pointed to a photo on the side of Sheila’s booth and Sheila smiled and said something. The woman then retorted with anger, making Sheila stagger as if hit.
“Can we get that in regular speed, please?” Jackson requested. When the woman’s face came into clear view, he had the feed paused. “Is that who I think it is?”
My heart was beating fast. “I believe it is. Hannah Williams.”
Chapter Eleven
Ten minutes later we exited the racetrack with a copy of the surveillance footage, Jackson with purposeful strides, me practically skipping.
“We have to tell Trevor immediately,” I said when we got in the car.
“We’ve been employed by Travis, so we tell him first. He can tell Trevor.”
“Bit weird being placed between my brothers,” I noted, digging out my phone to make the call while Jackson concentrated on driving. The call went to voicemail. “Tracy here. We’ve found new evidence in the Williams’s case that I believe requires your immediate attention,” I said to the recorder, deliberately formulating it vaguely, and hung up. “Damn. I really wanted to tell him right away.”
“We don’t actually have evidence that Hannah Williams killed Sheila Rinaldi.”
“But we have evidence that she knew the other wife existed.” We’d dropped by Sheila’s booth and checked the photo, which had turned out to be of Larry Williams. “I bet Hannah noticed the photo and asked why it was there, and Sheila told her he was her husband. And then Hannah said, ‘No, he’s my husband,’ or something.”
“But wouldn’t Sheila have confronted Larry right away? Yet there he was, going to meet her as if nothing had happened.”
“Maybe she did and he managed to assuage her. I mean, he has to be good at sweet-talking women. He doesn’t look like much, but he has three women at the same time.”
He shrugged. “Could be. But if she was on to him it would also give him a motive. Maybe she waited till Sunday morning before she accused him, and then he kil
led her.”
“I guess. He just doesn’t look like a killer.”
“Maybe his charm has got to you too,” Jackson teased.
I shuddered. “What I really want to know is, why would Hannah Williams hire us if she already knew about the other woman?”
“She wanted to learn all the details.”
I could see that, but there had to be more. “Or she wanted an alibi for herself. If we hadn’t told her about the other woman before her death, she couldn’t possibly be the murderer.”
Jackson frowned. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
My phone rang. “What do you have for me?” Travis asked.
“We have evidence that Hannah Williams knew about Sheila Rinaldi before she hired us.”
“I need to see it. Can you meet me at the 70th? I’m on my way to talk with my client.”
“Absolutely. Should I tell Trevor?”
“I’ll decide when I’ve seen the evidence.” And he hung up.
“I guess we’ll head to the 70th, then.”
The 70th Precinct was on Lawrence Avenue, a small street in North Midwood—or South Kensington, depending on how you wanted to define the neighborhoods. It was a three-story building with an ornamental limestone façade, which made it stand out among the redbrick buildings surrounding it.
We got through security with little more than a hello, as the uniformed cop at the security desk knew Jackson—this had been his precinct—and we were shown to an interview room at the end of the first floor. Travis was already there, seated behind a small table that was bolted to the floor. He looked impatient.
“Can you get my client freed?” he asked by way of greeting. I almost nodded but Jackson shook his head.
“No, but we can make the police open another line of inquiry.” He took out his phone and showed the security footage to Travis. “This was taken Thursday afternoon. It’s Hannah Williams confronting Sheila Rinaldi. Timeline indicates that Mrs. Williams hired us pretty much immediately after that.”
Tracy Hayes, P.I. and Proud (P.I. Tracy Hayes 2) Page 6