She kissed me again. “I love you, too. Now, let’s get going or I’m going to be late.”
We went outside to the alley and I drove her to St. Joe’s. “I’m not sure what I’ll be doing later, but call when you’re ready to go. If I can’t come and get you, I’ll get one of the Goofballs to.”
“Okay.” She pecked my cheek. “Be careful.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said.
“And when this is all done, we still have a wedding to plan!” She laughed and got out of the 4-Runner before I could come up with an excuse.
I smiled as I watched her hurry into the hospital, and then I drove back home. I went around the block a couple of times, looking for the SUV, but I didn’t see it or anyone else who tipped my suspicion-meter, so I parked and dashed up the sidewalk. As I stepped onto the front porch, Deuce came out of his place.
“Hey, Reed, everything okay?”
“For the moment,” I said.
“Ace said he saw someone around here earlier, but I haven’t seen anyone since I got home. I’ve been watching.”
“Great, thanks.” I didn’t want to rush him off, but I wanted to get upstairs and do some research on Lorraine Fitzsimmons and her husband.
“Is there anything else I can help with?” At times Deuce fancied himself a detective. Even though he’d had a scare once that had been quite a reality check, he still wanted to assist in my investigations…as long as it wasn’t boring, or dangerous, which didn’t leave much in between.
“Uh…” I thought quickly. I didn’t want to disappoint him, but I wasn’t sure what he could do. “I’ve got to do some research. You want to help with that?”
He scowled. “Sounds boring.”
“It is.”
Then he shrugged. “Okay, I don’t have anything else to do.”
“Uh…” I said again. “Grab your laptop and come upstairs.”
“Right.” He saluted and ran back inside.
We needed to find him a girlfriend, I thought. Someone to keep him busy when Ace was at work. He emerged a few seconds later with a laptop under his arm.
“What are we going to research?” he asked.
“A guy I think might be involved in stolen art.”
“Stolen art? Wow, what kind of art? You mean like from the museum?”
He kept chatting all the way upstairs and into the condo. Maybe this was a mistake.
“How about a Coke?” I asked.
“Sure,” Deuce said. “Is Willie at work?”
“Yep. I took her to work, but if I can’t pick her up, can you? She’s staying at Darcy’s, and just to be safe, drop her off in the alley and walk her up to the apartment.”
“Sure, no problem. I can handle it.”
I grabbed us Cokes. “You want to get a chair and bring it into the office?”
“Naw, I can sit on the floor,” he said.
He followed me into my office, where I logged onto the computer while he sprawled on the floor in front of the desk.
“What are we researching?” his voice called up from the floor.
“Look up Lorraine Fitzsimmons,” I said, then had to spell it twice for him. “Tell me what you find on her.” It wasn’t much, but it would keep him busy.
“Okay,” Deuce said.
I started my own Internet search and found that her husband was named Fletcher. They’d been married for almost forty years and had lived in New York, Los Angeles and finally Denver. I looked up “Fletcher Fitzsimmons”. He used to work at a financial firm in downtown Denver, but I couldn’t find much else on him. And for everything that the Internet had, I couldn’t find a picture of Fletcher Fitzsimmons.
I swore under my breath.
“What’s the matter?” Deuce asked.
“Lorraine’s husband is Fletcher, but I can’t find a picture of him. I need Cal’s skill to break into the DMV site and get his driver’s license photo.”
“I’ve got a picture of him.”
“You do?” I couldn’t contain my surprise.
“Yeah.” He stood up and brought his laptop over.
“Where’d you find it?” I asked.
“Facebook.”
“He has a Facebook account?” I hadn’t seen that when I searched his name.
“No, but you said his wife’s name is Lorraine, right?”
“Yes.”
“I looked her up on Facebook,” he said, as he set the laptop down on the corner of the desk. “See, I figured maybe she was like my mom. My mom loves to get on Facebook and post pictures. Man, she really likes to put up pictures of me and Ace and Bob. And she’s got lots of pictures of her and my dad. So I thought Lorraine might do the same thing.”
I stared at him, flabbergasted. It was so logical…and so unlike him. And I was a bit embarrassed that he’d come up with the idea before I did.
“So,” he pointed at the laptop. “There’s photos of her with a guy who I’ll bet is her husband.”
I looked at the screen. On it were pictures of Lorraine with a gray-haired man about her age.
“Hmm,” I said. I’m sure that was the man I’d seen in her kitchen, but I wasn’t certain it was the Mercedes driver I’d seen with Walt Cummings.
“What?” Deuce asked.
“I think I might’ve seen him before, with a fence.”
“A fence?”
I nodded.
“Why would he be with a fence? Like a wood one or a metal one?”
I smothered a smile. Ah, that’s the Deuce I know. “A fence is someone who buys and sells stolen goods.”
“Oh,” Deuce said.
I studied the pictures some more and then sat back. “I’m coming up empty.”
“Me, too.”
We stayed silent for a moment.
“Maybe you’re looking at it the wrong way,” Deuce finally said.
“Could be.”
Deuce shifted from foot to foot.
“You’re bored, right?” I said.
He nodded.
“You can take off if you want.”
“Thanks, Reed.” He grabbed his laptop and ran off like a kid who’d been released from chores.
I spent a few more minutes trying to find anything interesting on Fletcher Fitzsimmons and then I gave up and pulled out my cell phone. “Looks like I need to call in the big guns,” I said and dialed Cal.
“Hey,” he said. “How goes the investigation? I’ll bet you want to know what I found out.”
“Yeah, and I wanted to ask you about Lorraine Fitzsimmons’s husband.”
“You talked to her?”
“Yeah, a couple of times. And I’m wondering if I saw her husband with a fence named Walt Cummings who was involved in selling stolen artwork.”
“There’s not much on Fitzsimmons,” Cal said. “Hang on.” He typed for a minute. “The guy seems clean. He worked at a financial firm and it looks like that’s where he made the bulk of his money. And Lorraine received a sizeable inheritance when her father died.”
“Does he have any Mafia connections?”
Cal sighed heavily. “You’ve got to let that go.”
“If Floyd Powell was involved with the Mafia, it’s entirely possible that Fletcher is, or was, too.”
“I’ll check.” He wasn’t happy about it. “Give me a while on that one. Oh, and Irving Beauchamp and Sterling Vederman are clean, at least from what I can find. And so was National Insurance. But keep in mind, all this happened a long time ago. There may be something out there that I can’t find on the Internet.”
“I know,” I said. “What about Walt Cummings?”
“Who’s that again?”
“The fence who’s connected to Floyd Powell.” I explained what I’d learned so far.
“Hang on.” He hummed while he typed. “Not much on him.”
“He’s clean? No record? He was fencing stolen goods. I can’t believe he never got caught.”
“If he did, he doesn’t have a criminal record.”
“Wow,”
I said, slightly impressed. “He must’ve been really good.”
“So this is about fencing stolen artwork?” Cal said.
“It looks that way.”
“Those pieces of Powell’s must’ve been pretty important, or worth a lot to someone, for people to still be worried about it now.”
“Yeah, it looks that way. Or maybe the artwork isn’t that big a deal now, but whoever killed Dewey doesn’t want his murder solved.”
“What’s next?” he asked.
“Dewey was on to something because he followed these two guys to an old mansion that had been converted to offices.”
“Who’s office did he visit?” Cal asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, “but I think Dewey was going back to the old mansion to see if he could find out…”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Dewey Webb – 1955
When I went back to the Colorado Educational Association building, I parked down the block as I had the night before, but this time, it was in a spot where I could see the building. I waited for a while to see if either of the two men I’d seen last night entered or left the building. After fifteen minutes with no activity, I got out of the Plymouth but left it unlocked in case I had to make a quick exit from the neighborhood.
I pulled my trusty fedora down low and walked back to the building. The front window where I’d eavesdropped last night was cracked open. I paused on the sidewalk and looked in the window but I didn’t detect any activity. Then a man, tall and skinny as a flag pole, walked out of the building and turned north without giving me a second glance. I waited until he reached the corner, and then I trotted up the front porch and into a large, L-shaped foyer. The walls were paneled in wood, the floors carpeted in brown, and a large chandelier hung from a high ceiling. Ahead and to the right was a wide staircase. On my left was a wooden door with a frosted glass panel, but with no sign indicating whose office it was. I stepped up to the door and listened, but couldn’t hear anything on the other side. I tried the knob. Locked.
I turned around. Across the foyer was another door, which stood open. The clackity-clack of a typewriter floated into the foyer. I crossed the hall in five strides. The glass panel on this door read “Johnson and Taggert, Accountants.” I poked my head inside. Behind a small oak desk with a phone and typewriter sat a dame with brown hair piled high on her head. A couple of curls draped down around each ear. She was typing away, but she paused when she saw me.
“You can come in, sweetheart. I don’t bite.” Her little voice was full of honey.
She was all curves in all the right places, with blue eyes and full lips painted a bright red. She wore a gray tailored dress that served up the curves, a gold wristwatch on her lovely wrist, and a ring on her left hand.
“Hello,” I said. I removed my hat and stepped inside.
She eyed my cheek. “Did she win or you?”
I ran my hand lightly across the scraped area and shook my head. “Maybe you can help me.”
She sat back, her lips curling into a smile. “Maybe I can, maybe I can’t.”
I jerked a thumb at the writing on the door. “Accountants?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Where is the Colorado Educational Association?”
She pointed with a slender finger out the door. “They’re upstairs.”
“And who’s across the hall?”
“I’m not sure what they do. Some kind of management.”
I came over, pushed the phone aside, and perched on the edge of the desk. “Management?”
She nodded, her brown hair bouncing. “Yes, they manage things, but I don’t know what.”
“I see.”
“They’re not there now.” She leaned farther back and her skirt pulled up slightly, exposing more leg. Apparently marriage didn’t stop her from flirting.
“So I gathered.” The leg was nice, but I wasn’t interested. However, I’d play along if it meant getting information from her. “When someone is there, who is it?”
Her shoulders lifted up and then back down. “Darling, my boss keeps me chained to this desk all day. I hardly get out. However,” she ran a finger across her lips, “the people who go in are rich.”
“How do you know?”
“They look rich.”
“What does rich look like?”
Her eyes did a slow survey of me, from my shoes to my head. “They had on suits that you couldn’t afford.”
She had me there. I smiled, then said, “When might they be back?”
“I don’t know. You just missed them.”
“I did?”
She returned my smile with one of her own, exposing gleaming white teeth. “Uh-huh. Someone came in earlier, and he was there for a while, then another man came in and they argued.” She wagged a finger at the door again. “I could hear them all the way across the hall.”
“What were they arguing about?”
She twisted one of the brown curls and smiled coyly at me. “What else do rich people argue about? Money.”
I leaned in. She smelled of berries. “What were they saying?”
“They talked about millions of dollars and someone said ‘Do you know what happens if this all comes out? I’ll be ruined’. And another fellow said, ‘Don’t worry, we’re handling it’. Then the first fellow said, ‘You better.’ ”
“The man who came in – what did he look like?”
“Darling, I don’t know. I just heard him come into the foyer and then I heard the voices across the hall so I assumed it was him.” She gave me a pout. “Was I wrong?”
“Not at all,” I said. “What about the first guy who came into the office?”
“He comes around once in a while.”
“So you’ve seen him.”
“Uh-huh. He has curly blond hair parted in the middle, but he keeps those curls slicked back.”
“But you don’t know him.”
She pursed her lips. “I know his name is Earl, but that’s it.” She now leaned in and put her elbows on the desk. “You sure ask a lot of questions.”
I leaned even closer. “That’s what I do.”
“Ah.”
“Can I ask one more question?”
Another smile. “Sure.”
“Have you ever heard the men across the hall mention the name Bert?”
She tittered. “Bert. No, darling, I’ve never heard that name. Now,” she placed a hand on my leg. “Even though you’re cute as a button, I need to get back to work. My boss will be coming back soon, and I have to get this typed up.” She pointed at the typewriter.
I stood up and her hand slid back into her lap. “Thanks, doll. If I ever need more questions answered, I know where to come.”
That brought a burst of laughter. I winked at her, then went back into the hall, put on my hat, and stepped outside.
I immediately began to sweat as I stood on the porch, feeling like this trip had been a waste of time. What the hell kind of management did the blond man do? I thought about that woman. How could she not know? She was a looker, but not very helpful.
I started down the porch steps, and my eyes caught the open office window. I halted, and glanced up and down the block. No one was around. On impulse, I darted across the porch to the window. I bent down and looked inside. The office was empty, so I pushed up the sash and crawled inside. I pressed myself against the wall by the window and listened. Nothing.
I was standing in a large room cloaked in shadows. The walls were painted a soft yellow. A couch and chairs situated about the room were the latest style, shelves along one wall of the room displayed some bronze sculptures, and a Chinese rug covered most of the floor. I stepped around the long oak desk I’d seen from the window last night and crossed to the shelves to inspect the sculptures. I picked up one and looked at it closely. The artist’s name – Pinchot – was scrawled on the bottom. Not someone I was familiar with. But then, since the room had the aura of money, and lots of it, and I didn’t come from money, I wouldn’
t be expected to know the sculptor. I let my eyes rove around the room but didn’t see anything noteworthy, so I went back to the desk. Sitting on top of it was a file folder, which wasn’t labeled. I flipped it open. Inside was a list of names, dates, and dollar figures: forty thousand, five thousand, two hundred thousand. I added it up in my head. Well over a million dollars.
Just then the doorknob rattled. My eyes shot to the door. A shadow filled the frosted window panel.
“Let me get the file,” a voice said. It sounded like the blond man from last night.
“I can’t believe you left it,” said someone else.
“Get off my case,” the first voice growled.
I heard the sound of keys rattling. I grabbed the file, climbed back out the window, and leaped over the porch wall. I ran down the side of the building and into the alley, then around the block. I didn’t stop until I got to the Plymouth. I tossed the file on the passenger seat, slid behind the wheel and careened up the street. I glanced back but didn’t see anyone come out of the building. I’ll bet whoever those men were, when they noticed the file was gone, they’d be smoking mad. It served them right.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Reed – 2015
I sat back in my chair, and stared at The Maltese Falcon poster on the wall and wondered, Had I seen that very file in Brad’s house? I took a sip of my Coke, then set it down with a thump. There was only one way to find out.
I grabbed my cell phone and called Brad’s cell phone, but it went to voicemail. I checked the time. Almost five o’clock. Brad was supposed to be working from home – or from his dad’s house. Maybe Brad was busy with something job-related and that’s why he didn’t answer the phone. But I didn’t like it, so I snatched up my keys and headed out the door.
It took a while in rush hour to get to Brad’s dad’s house in Lakewood. I got out, hurried up to the front door, and rang the bell. Nothing. After a minute, I pressed the doorbell button again. Inside I heard chimes sound, but the door still didn’t open. I tried calling Brad again. No answer.
An edginess coursed through me. Brad had said that he would stay inside. I stepped off the porch and looked around. No one was about, so I dashed back to my car, pulled my lock-pick set from under the driver’s seat, and hurried back to the front door. I was getting pretty adept at picking locks and it didn’t take me any time at all to get into the house. I stepped inside and then remembered that Sam’s house had an alarm system. Then why wasn’t it going off? I thought. It had beeped when Brad and I had come here before. But now, nothing. Was it set to silent?
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