Client On The Run (A Nick Teffinger Thriller)

by R. J. Jagger

  Where?

  He trotted after her and jumped in front.

  “I know you,” he said.

  She studied him.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Yes, I do,” he said. “What’s your name?”

  She cocked her head and said, “Listen, you’re cute and all, but I’m in a hurry.” Then she walked around him.

  “Wait!” he said.

  He pulled a business card out of his wallet and handed it to her. “Give me a call when you remember where you know me from.”

  She looked at the card—Dalton Wrey, Martin Productions. “I don’t know you,” she said.

  “Then just call me anyway,” he said.

  She handed the card back to him, then walked away.

  Five minutes later, Dalton walked into Mandy Martin’s office. She looked harried; no doubt because Summerfest was slated for tomorrow at Red Rocks.

  Six hip-hop acts.

  “So far, no one’s cancelled,” she said. “What’s going on at your end?”

  Dalton told her.

  He had been working the phone for the last two days and so far hadn’t received a request he couldn’t handle. “Here’s the latest, though, which I just found out about ten minutes ago. They all want to get together after the concert and have a blow-out party; the kind they’ll still be talking about for ten years. So between now and then, I need to set the whole thing up.”

  That meant to find a place big enough and private enough and stock it with liquor, food, strippers, DJs, etcetera.

  “How many people are we talking about?”

  “I’m guessing two to three hundred, counting crews, friends, and all the rest.”

  “Security’s going to be the big thing,” Mandy said. “Every groupie in the world will know about it by midnight. I’m already picturing a scene from the Alamo.”

  Dalton chuckled.

  “How are they handling the costs?” Mandy asked.

  “They’re going to split it equally, six ways. Martin Productions will advance all the upfront money,” Dalton said. “Then we’ll withhold one-sixth of the total costs from what we owe each act under their base contract.”

  “Be sure the total cost includes a 20 percent markup for our time and effort,” Mandy said. “And be sure the lawyers are in the loop. I want them to send all the right emails so there’s no argument about the money afterwards. We’ve been stung before on this kind of thing. In fact, let’s get Prichard on the phone right now.”

  Dalton smiled.

  “Now I remember why I keep you around,” he said.

  An hour later, James Madden called and said, “We have an assignment for you.”

  “Where?” Dalton asked.

  “Miami.”

  “Your timing couldn’t be worse.”

  19

  T effinger wadded a piece of paper and tossed it into the air to see if he could get it to land in the snake plant. It bounced off the edge and landed on the floor. As he picked it up, he got an idea and headed over to Sydney’s desk. She was working the phone, trying to get in touch with the rest of Lindsay Vail’s friends and clients to see if they recognized the pirate.

  “Any luck?” Teffinger asked.

  “Yeah,” she said. “All bad.”

  “Let’s shift gears,” he said. “I want to find out what that woman knows, the woman who was in front of Lindsay’s house.”

  “The one I took a picture of?”

  Teffinger nodded.

  “She told me her name was Yardley,” Teffinger said. “Let’s pull driver’s licenses with that name, age bracket twenty-five to thirty-five. There can’t be that many.”

  There were more than Teffinger thought, but that was okay, because in the end they found her.

  Yardley Sage.

  “It figures,” Teffinger said.

  “What?” Sydney asked.

  “Every time I try to find something, it’s in the very last place I look.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Bad, even for you.”

  “Actually, not bad for me,” he said. “Run a background on her.”

  Sydney did.

  The results weren’t what Teffinger expected. The woman turned out to be an attorney, licensed five years ago. She worked for Radcliffe & Snow for four years and then opened her own practice, Yardley Sage, P.C., a year ago. She used to have an office downtown but it burned down. Now, according to the Colorado Supreme Court records, her office was located in the Chatfield Marina, Slip No. D-38.

  “This is more than a coincidence, her being with Radcliffe & Snow,” Teffinger said.

  “You think?”

  He nodded.

  “So why was she at Lindsay Vail’s house?”

  Teffinger retreated in thought.

  “It could be that she’s the pirate’s lawyer,” he said. “She might have been hanging around specifically to talk to us, to see if we were getting anything on her client.” He sipped coffee. “I’m thinking that we should stake her out and see if we can catch the guy going to meet her. Call Clay down at the D.A.’s office; he’ll know how to get into the court databases. See if he can find out if she does any criminal work.”

  “What if she doesn’t?”

  “She still might be the pirate’s lawyer,” Teffinger said, “a friend or a family member or something like that. My gut tells me that she’s tracking our investigation and giving him feedback.”

  Sydney nodded.

  “Nice office,” she said. “Slip No. D-38. It must be a boat. I wonder if she lives there too.”

  Three minutes later, Paul Kwak called from the 6th Floor. “I drove the split window to work this morning,” he said, referring to his 1963 Corvette. “You want to take a cruise during lunch?”

  Teffinger was tempted but couldn’t.

  There was too much going on.

  “Your loss,” Kwak said. He almost hung up and then added, “Oh, wait a minute, that’s not the reason I called. Remember that dead lawyer, Ryan Ripley?”

  Teffinger remembered.

  “I told the coroner to check the guy’s dick, like you wanted,” Kwak said. “Guess what he found?”

  Teffinger didn’t know.

  “Saliva. A lot of saliva.”

  “The guy’s my hero,” Teffinger said. “That’s exactly how I want to go.”

  20

  O ver lunch at a soup-n-salad bar on Larimer Street, Dakota Van Vleck kept her back to the wall and kept one eye on the door, obviously nervous about someone in the firm stumbling in and seeing her with Yardley—the enemy. She was thirty-one and in training for a triathlon next month in Daytona Beach.

  Single.

  Attractive.

  Short black hair.

  Killer legs, framed in nylons and a Saks Fifth Avenue skirt that rose seductively high when she crossed her legs.

  “I can’t believe how you ripped Osborne a new one,” Dakota said. “It was all I could do to keep from jumping up on the table and going into a full-blown cheer. I was actually looking around for my pompoms.”

  Yardley laughed, then got serious and said, “That’s so weird about Ripley. How’d he die?”

  “Details are sketchy. About all we know for sure is that he got killed Saturday night,” Dakota said. “There’s a rumor going around that he was in a Colfax alley getting a blowjob and got stabbed in the back. I don’t know if there’s any truth to it or not.”

  “I wouldn’t doubt it,” Yardley said.

  “You never did like him.”

  More than true.

  “He was just one more frog on Jeff Salter’s leash,” Yardley said. “Did I ever tell you about the voodoo case I had with him?”

  Dakota shook her head.

  No.

  “What voodoo case?”

  “Our client was a woman from New Orleans who, supposedly, was a voodoo priestess.”

  “You’re messing with me, right?” Dakota said.

  “Wrong,” Yardley said. “Anyway, this voodoo
lady supposedly put an evil spell on a man from Denver by the name of Michael Coburn.”

  Dakota chuckled.

  “Yeah, right.”

  “I’m serious,” Yardley said. “Coburn was married to a woman named Susan, who was half Haitian. After five years of marriage, Coburn decided that it wasn’t fair to only let Susan experience the splendor of his cock, so he started to spread the joy around. Susan, of course, found out and was none too pleased. She made a trip down to New Orleans and had a voodoo priestess put an evil spell on hubby-face.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Dakota said. “Let me guess . . . his dick fell off. Am I right?”

  Yardley pictured it and chuckled.

  “Nothing that dramatic,” she said. “But, believe it or not, he ran into an incredible string of bad luck. He lost his job; he got arrested for drunk driving; the hearing in his left ear started to go; he went bald almost overnight; a strange red rash started to grow on his face.”

  “I’m starting to like this voodoo woman,” Dakota said. “I might need to have a talk with her about my ex.”

  “You jest,” Yardley said, “but this was no laughing matter to Coburn. He actually went out and got a lawyer.”

  “Who?”

  “A guy by the name of T. Schiel.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “You’re lucky, he’s an asshole—one of those last-in-the-class P.I. attorneys with a linoleum-floored office in Wheat Ridge,” Yardley said. “Anyway, he drafted a Complaint but didn’t file it. Instead, he mailed a copy to the voodoo lady with a letter that basically threatened that he would file it unless she removed the spell and coughed up some money.”

  “Remove the spell?”

  “Yes.”

  “Weird.”

  “Very,” Yardley said. “Anyway, Ripley ended up with the case. He brought me into it to do research on whether any courts have acknowledged a cause of action based on a voodoo spell or a spiritual assault or anything like that.”

  “I can already tell you the answer to that,” Dakota said.

  “And you’re right, too,” Yardley said. “Amazingly, three or four cases like that were actually filed. Various theories of relief were asserted—negligence, assault and battery, outrageous conduct, invasion of privacy, and others that I can’t think of right now. In each case, the trial court dismissed the action for lack of a cognizable claim.”

  “That just goes to show you,” Dakota said.

  “Show me what?”

  “That even judges can get it right sometimes.”

  Yardley chuckled.

  “So, I did the research and gave it to Ripley,” she said. “I didn’t hear much more about it after that, other than an occasional comment from Ripley that the parties were exploring settlement.”

  “Settlement?”

  Yardley nodded.

  “Apparently this voodoo woman didn’t want to go to court, no matter what,” she said. “Anyway, time passed and then one day Ripley told me that the case settled. He said our client formally denied that she put a spell on Coburn but agreed to pay him $5,000. The agreement had a confidentiality clause. Here’s the weird part—she also agreed to counter the spell that had been put on him.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  No.

  She wasn’t.

  “So who was this woman?”

  Yardley shrugged. “I don’t know. Ripley opened the file under an alias name at her request. In fact, I don’t even know the name that he used for the alias.”

  “Weird,” Dakota said. “So what happened to Coburn? Did his hair grow back?”

  Yardley started to answer.

  But Dakota suddenly twisted her face away from the front door and said, “Don’t turn around! Jeff Salter and Adam Osborne just walked in.”

  Yardley looked for just a heartbeat.

  Dakota was right, but they hadn’t been spotted yet.

  “I am so fired if they see me,” Dakota said.

  Yardley grabbed Dakota’s hand and pulled her into a standing position. They kept their faces pointed towards the back of the restaurant and made their way to the kitchen. They had one of the busboys get the manager, paid the check, and slipped out the back.

  They hugged.

  Then went separate ways.

  21

  W ith a saltwater aquarium, two pinball machines, a treadmill, a wet bar and a jaw-dropping view of the city and the mountains, Dalton’s office wasn’t a bad place. He was reclined in a contemporary leather chair with his feet propped up when Malcolm called.

  “I’m calling on behalf of G-Drop,” Malcolm said.

  Dalton pulled his feet off the desk and paid attention.

  This call wasn’t just important.

  It was important.

  Malcolm only got that tone in his voice when he wanted to be absolutely sure that the conversation remained confidential. “There are no problems, I hope,” Dalton said.

  “No, no, no, dude,” Malcolm said. “Nothing like that.”

  “So are you guys all set for tomorrow?” Dalton asked, referring to the Red Rocks concert—Summerfest. G-Drop was the third act.

  “Absolutely, don’t sweat it,” Malcolm said. “But here’s the thing. G-Drop is in one of his moods. You were talking before about setting up a special place—”

  Dalton knew what he meant.

  The dungeon.

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  “And?”

  “And, it’s set up.”

  “Nice,” Malcolm said. “G-Drop is going to be very pleased to hear that. So here’s the deal. We’re going to fly into Denver this afternoon. G-Drop would like to do a session tonight—let’s say seven o’clock. Can you get a woman?”

  “No problem.”

  “She needs to be tied down and blindfolded when G-Drop shows up. Stretch her out on a rack. Have you got one of those?”

  “Yes.”

  “The blindfold is the important thing,” Malcolm said. “It needs to be solid and needs to be something that isn’t going to fall off. She can’t know who she’s having the session with.”

  “Understood.”

  “Obviously, you’re not going to say anything to tip her off.”

  “You know I can be trusted,” Dalton said. “We’re way past that.”

  “Yes we are,” Malcolm said. “I’m just reminding you. Be sure the woman is drop-dead gorgeous.”

  “I already have someone in mind.”

  After the call, Dalton walked over to the aquarium and sprinkled shrimp on the surface as he dialed Samantha Dent. She answered on the second ring.

  “How would you like to make some insane money tonight?”

  She would, very much so.

  “Let me finish before you say yes,” he added.

  Then he explained the nature of the session.

  “So how crazy is this guy going to get?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, but I do know that he’ll pay in accordance with whatever it is he does,” Dalton said. “If he demands a lot, he’ll pay a lot. He can’t afford not to, quite frankly.”

  “Will you be there?”

  “No, it’ll be just you and him,” Dalton said.

  She hesitated.

  “Will you tell me who he was, afterwards?”

  “No.”

  “Not even if he gets off-the-hook?”

  “No,” Dalton said. “If something weird happens, he’ll have to make it good to you, both to your satisfaction and mine. You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

  “No, I have to. I have bills sitting on the counter.”

  “I’ll pick you up at six,” Dalton said. “You’ll need to wear a blindfold in the car.”

  “I can’t even know where it’s at?”

  “No.”

  “This guy must be huge,” she said.

  “He’s paying big bucks,” Dalton said. “Be sure he gets his money’s worth. My reputation is on the line.”

  Silence.

  Then
Samantha said, “If he kills me, will you kill him back?”

  Dalton laughed.

  “That’s not going to happen,” he said.

  “Yeah, I know. But if he does, will you?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “I said, sure.”

  “You promise?”

  “Cross my heart.”

  “And hope to die?”

  “And hope to die.”

  After he hung up, Dalton walked over to the pinball machine and put a ball in play.

  His flipper action was off.

  He knew why.

  He was nervous.

  He needed to get Lindsay Vail into the mountains.

  22

  W ith a cup of coffee in hand, Teffinger walked down to the office of Todd Rice, the head of the vice unit, and closed the door. Rice looked up from a pile of papers, took his reading glasses off and said, “This can’t be good.”

  “You still got that boat of yours?” Teffinger asked.

  Rice wrinkled his 52-year-old forehead and said, “The last time you came in here, it was to tell me that you were stealing Sydney.”

  True.

  Teffinger talked Sydney into leaving vice and joining homicide.

  That was a year ago.

  More, even.

  “You still mad about that?” Teffinger asked.

  “Maybe,” Rice said. “Give her back and we’ll call it even.”

  Teffinger chuckled.

  “I’d rather have you mad.”

  Rice cocked his head. “So what’s going on?”

  “You still got that boat of yours?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Is it still slipped out at Chatfield?”

  “Maybe,” Rice said. “Why?”

  It took five minutes, but Teffinger talked Rice into letting him use his boat—a 270 Searay—as a base to stakeout Yardley Sage, with one very important condition. “I don’t want anyone using the head,” Rice said. “If someone has to go, either do it in the lake or take a hike to the restroom.”

  Teffinger pictured the hike over to the south loading ramp, bout two hundred yards.