C T Ferguson Box Set

by Tom Fowler

  “It seemed like the better move,” Gabriella said. She took a long pull of the beer. “Following my father’s goons wouldn’t have done much.”

  “They don’t like being called goons,” I pointed out.

  Gabriella smiled. “Then they shouldn’t act so goonish,” she said.

  “What if Esposito would have forced me to shoot him?” I said.

  “Then Jonah would have come home,” Gabriella said. “I told him he wasn’t to do anything to you.”

  If Gabriella took over for her father, I wondered how long Jonah would honor her order.

  “Are you OK, C.T.?” she said. “I wasn’t going to let anything happen to you.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You understand why I did it?”

  I nodded. “You did what you felt you had to do,” I said.

  Gabriella smirked. “That’s not much of an endorsement.”

  “You are who you are, Gabriella,” I said. “You’re your father’s daughter.”

  She nodded. “I am,” she said. “But I’m still your friend, if you’ll let me be.”

  Having Gabriella in my corner would be a giant perk. At some point, she would take over her father’s operation, despite his current attitude on the matter. Tony and I had a pretty good relationship based on the fact he had been friends with my parents forever. But Tony and I weren’t friends. He didn’t come to my house, sit on my couch, and drink beers. I didn’t know how often Gabriella would once she was running things, or if she would at all. Still, I would rather have her as a friend than an enemy—or even a frenemy.

  “I’d like to be,” I said.

  “Good,” Gabriella said with a genuine smile.

  We finished our beers. Gabriella called Jonah to pick her up. We shared a long embrace, and she left. Halfway to the car, she looked back over her shoulder and gave a small wave.

  Whenever she came back, I knew it would be interesting. And interesting wasn’t always a good thing.

  Later in the day, I drove Matty’s BMW back to Esposito’s house. I didn’t know where else to take it. I also didn’t know what kind of reception I would get, so I asked Joey to come with me. Billy answered the door when I knocked. He glared at me. “You got some nerve showing up here,” he said.

  “I didn’t know someone would shoot your boss,” I said. “He was alive when I brought him out of the house.”

  He didn’t have an answer, so he kept glaring. I held out the car keys. “I said I would bring these back when I finished.”

  Billy held out his hand. I dropped the keys into it.

  “You’d better be telling the truth,” he said.

  “I am,” I said. “If you’d like to drive down and talk to the St. Mary’s County Sheriff, I can give you a point of contact.”

  He shook his head. “Fuck off,” he said, closing the door in my face.

  “These guys don’t get paid for their manners,” Joey said.

  Later in the evening with Gloria at my house, I got the call I had been expecting. “Coningsby, what a mess,” my mother said.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” I said. I decided not to tell her anything about Gabriella Rizzo. It would open a thread of conversation I had no interest in exploring.

  “Your father and I heard you were OK,” she said. “Richard told us.” I heard a little peevishness in her tone.

  “I’m sure he gave you all the details,” I said.

  “It would be nice to hear them from you sometimes, dear.”

  “I’ll try and work on it,” I said.

  “Please do,” my mother said.

  “I did find the missing brother, at least.”

  “Yes, dear,” she said. “The younger brother was very happy to talk about the job you did.”

  “I wish I had done it a little better.”

  “You got a family back together, Coningsby,” said my mother. “That’s important. It’s worth doing.”

  “I know,” I said. “I just wish this hadn’t been such a problematic case.”

  “The easy ones would only bore you, dear.”

  My mother knew me well. “True,” I said.

  “Your father and I have transferred the usual amount to your account,” she said.

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “You’re doing good work, Coningsby. I wish it weren’t so dangerous sometimes.”

  “Like you said, Mom, the easy ones would bore me.”

  “Very well, dear,” she said. “We’re proud of you. Keep it up.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Just got paid?” Gloria said once I hung up.

  “Yep,” I said.

  “Where are you taking me?” she said with a smile, then kissed me.

  “How about upstairs?”

  “You always know what to say to a girl,” said Gloria.

  “It’s a gift,” I said.

  END of Book #2

  The Workers of Iniquity

  Novel #3

  The Workers of Iniquity

  Chapter 1

  Someone jackhammered the floor near my head.

  I had to be dreaming. I told myself no one could be using such a tool indoors. Then I heard it again. As the haze lifted, I realized it was my cell phone vibrating. I must have left it in the pocket of my jeans, which currently resided on the bedroom hardwood. It clattered again. I rolled out of bed, grabbed it, and looked at the number. Another one I didn’t recognize. The alarm clock told me it was 2:30. I answered.

  “Is this C.T. Ferguson?” a woman said.

  “Yes.”

  “The private investigator?”

  “Is there another C.T. Ferguson who would take your call at this beastly hour?”

  “No,” she said. “No, I . . . I suppose not.” She sounded distracted. I sounded tired. This would be a great conversation.

  “Is there a reason you called?” I said when she lapsed into silence.

  “I’m worried about my husband,” she said. “He’s been gone for almost three days now.”

  “Do you know where he went?”

  “Not exactly. That’s part of the reason I’m concerned.”

  “What happened?” I said.

  “We’ve . . . had some money problems. He wanted to put together a plan to get us out of debt. Do some quick buying and selling on the stock market, that sort of thing.”

  “Day trading.”

  “Whatever they call it. He said he didn’t want to be bothered, so he checked into a hotel.”

  The behavior sounded odd. Why incur the expense of a hotel if you were having money problems? “Couldn’t he have simply stayed home and locked the door?” I said.

  “I tried to tell him.” She sighed. Her voice cracked. “He’s just so stubborn these days. I’m worried about him. I don’t know what hotel he’s staying at.”

  “You’ve called around?”

  “To all the ones in the area, yes.”

  “Then either he went out of the area, or he’s staying under an assumed name.”

  “Can you find him?”

  “How?” I said. “All I could do is call hotels or show his picture around. And if he’s sequestered himself in a room, showing a picture to the guy twiddling his thumbs on the night shift probably won’t work. It’s late, and we both need sleep. We can talk about it in the morning if you haven’t heard from him.”

  “He might be dead.” Her voice broke again. She paused. “He might be dead.”

  “If he is, he’ll still be dead at a more respectable hour,” I said. “Come by after nine if you want to talk some more, but I’m going back to sleep.”

  She remained silent. I hung up.

  The next morning, I woke up at eight o’clock without the benefit—or curse—of an alarm clock. As I approach twenty-nine, I’ve noticed myself rising earlier. I used to sleep until nine or ten, and only a bomb going off outside the window would rouse me from my slumber. Nowadays, eight was a typical time to wake. I threw on some jogging attire and shoes, stretched, a
nd walked to Federal Hill Park for my morning run.

  As usual, I wasn’t the only one out for a constitutional. An attractive young lady in aggressively pink spandex trotted along with a dog of indeterminate breed. There were a few other walkers and joggers out, but I settled in behind her. If you’re going to follow someone while you’re running, make sure it’s someone worth following. She stopped after one lap and walked back down Battery Avenue. I hoped she would take a short stroll up Warren and head to Riverside, where I lived, but she went the other way.

  I completed a few more laps around the park, stretched against a tree, and returned home at a leisurely pace. My stomach rumbled before I walked in the door, so I worked on breakfast before I showered. I took some vegetables, cheese, and eggs out of the refrigerator and fixed an omelet. It had taken months—and many prospective breakfasts splatting on my kitchen floor—but I mastered the omelet flip. I flipped this one, poured tall glasses of milk and orange juice, and set them on the table. I slid the omelet onto a plate, covered it with mango salsa, and sat with it.

  As soon as the first bite slid down, my cell phone rang. I looked at the number; it was the same woman who woke me with vague concerns about her husband. If I let it go to voicemail, she would only call back with more worries she couldn’t articulate and I couldn’t care about. I answered to get it over with. The omelet could always go in the microwave. “Hello?”

  “Is now a better time for you?” she said. Annoyance danced with worry in her voice.

  “Not really,” I said. “I’m eating breakfast.”

  “My husband is still missing.”

  “When did you talk to him last?”

  “A day and a half ago, I suppose,” she said.

  “Have you been to the police yet?”

  “Why would I go to them?”

  “He’s been gone almost two days,” I said. “You could ask them to open a missing persons case.”

  “No, no,” she said. “They don’t find too many lost people. I think I’d have better luck with you.” Her voice quavered again. “Please. I’m worried about him. I want to be sure nothing’s happened to him. Our . . . our children would be devastated. I would be devastated.” She fell silent. Soft sobs came through the connection. She had to go and cry.

  “Can you come by in about forty-five minutes?” I said.

  She sniffed a few times. “I’ll be there.”

  “See you then.”

  She hung up. I finished my omelet.

  Forty-three minutes later, someone knocked on my front door. Of course she would be early. I looked through the peephole at a woman who looked familiar, though I couldn’t place from where. Gray hair sprang up in the center of her head. I remembered her with a head full of hair so black it looked like a crown pulled from the midnight sky. She was the only person I knew with hair so dark, though I’d fully suspected it came from some twit at a salon.

  If the woman walking over the threshold recognized me, she didn’t show it. Her eyes passed over me like another decoration to take in. I took her coat, hung it on my rack, and showed her to the office. Her clothes came from a department store. She strode like she hadn’t yet gotten comfortable in her shoes. Her hips had no sashay to them, merely the steady back-and-forth of a businesswoman. She sat in one of the guest chairs, and I took my place in the high-backed leather model behind my desk. I knew I knew this woman, but I couldn’t come up with her name.

  She spent a minute looking at my long desk. I had three 27-inch monitors atop it, arranged side-by-side. A printer sat at the far end. Two computers squatted on the floor, both to the left of my chair. The Windows machine used the two monitors on the left, and my Linux server connected to the one on the right. I also had a rarely-used paper notebook on the desk and a box of tissues I expected to receive a workout during this lady’s visit.

  “I told you about my husband,” she said.

  “You told me something,” I said. “It’s hardly enough to act on.”

  She looked at me as if seeing me for the first time. “You’ve probably heard of us. Stanley and Pauline Rodgers.”

  Now I had the name for the face. “I met you a few times, but I don’t recall meeting your husband.”

  Pauline frowned. She stared at me so long I thought she had lapsed into a coma. “Ferguson,” she said.

  “Robert and June are my parents,” I said.

  “I thought you looked a little familiar. She offered a small smile. “I’m sorry you have to see me like this.”

  “What happened?”

  “Like I told you yesterday, we encountered some money problems.”

  “At the risk of sounding indelicate, what happened to you sounds like more than some simple problems,” I said.

  She sighed. A weariness crept onto her face, highlighting the crow’s feet near her eyes. She couldn’t afford to mask them anymore. “You heard about that.”

  “Kind of hard not to.”

  “It was all a house of cards, basically. We took a bit of a hit when real estate first started struggling, but stayed afloat. Recently, it all collapsed. Bad advice, bad investments, the wrong stocks . . . you name it, it’s kicked us over the last few months.”

  “Did your husband lose his job?” I said.

  “He started his own fund.” Pauline shook her head. “He had to shut it down.” Her eyes glistened. “People lost money and jobs. I was forced to find work as a secretary.” Now a tear slid down her left cheek. “I’m not even a good one, but I think the boss took pity on me.”

  “So now your husband is locked away in a hotel room?”

  “As far as I know,” Pauline said.

  “And he’s trying to regain the money he lost?”

  “That’s what he said. He thought up a plan. He needed to borrow some money to make ends meet for a while. I don’t know where he got it, but I’m sure the payments are due. Even with his fund, we got bad advice before.” Pauline sobbed now. “We can’t go through it again. We just can’t.”

  I pushed the box of tissues toward her. She nodded, grabbed one, and dabbed at her eyes. Her makeup already ran. Pauline spent a couple minutes composing herself before she said anything. “Anyway, I’d like you to find Stanley,” she said. “I came to you because we can’t pay for anything like this right now.”

  “Pauline, what if he lost more money?” I said.

  She shook her head and cried a few more tears. “I just want him back. I want to know he’s OK.”

  I nodded. “I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime, I’ll need to get some more information from you before you go.”

  “Anything I can give you. Will you let me know when you know something?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Thank you, C.T.” She wiped at her eyes again. “This has all been very humbling. The kids are taking it rougher than we are. We put them into public schools.”

  “Not an easy transition?”

  “It was for Katherine,” she said. “She’s a senior at Goucher now. She had been studying at Brown.” Pauline sighed. “It’s been a lot harder on Zachary. He went to Calvert Hall before. Now he’s in Loch Raven. He’s already cut a few classes, gotten into a fight . . . this is really hitting him hard. It’s not just the money.”

  “It’s the loss of his father, at least figuratively,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Pauline.

  “I might need to talk to them at some point.”

  Pauline stared ahead. “I’d like to keep them out of it unless you really need them.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said.

  I certainly would, once I figured out where to start. Pauline told me the family moved out of their swanky Fallston house, sold it for no gain, and ended up living in an apartment in Essex. This was like living in the royal palace, getting thrown from the roof, and landing in the stables right beside a giant bucket of horse turds. Even the smell was the same.

  She checked all the hotels near their house. I discounted those right away—not bec
ause she had checked them but because he wouldn’t stay there. If Stanley Rodgers wanted some time away from his wife, why stay someplace she could wander in and find him? No, he wouldn’t be anywhere near their house, and he would probably use an assumed name to minimize the chances of being found.

  It would make him hard to track. I’d have to come up with a list of possible places he might stay and show his picture around, then hope someone on duty at the time saw him. I might as well toss a penny into a fountain and wish for a pony, and I don’t even like ponies. The alternative was cracking his assumed name. To do so, I would need to know an awful lot about him and get lucky making some guesses. Back to tossing pennies into fountains.

  I liked my chances of figuring out a few places for him to stay better. So I’m Stanley Rodgers. I used to have the world on a silver plate, but now I had to eat a shit sandwich every day. I want my old life back, and I think I have a way to get it. To do it, I need to lock myself away from the wife for a few days and make money like I used to. Maybe I have a loan or two to pay off at the same time. So I go to a hotel and rent a room. A room? No, I rent a suite, I rent the penthouse, because I’m a big baller again, and regular rooms are for regular people.

  Where do I go to do all of this, though? Not near my house—Pauline might find me and try to stop me. I have to get away from her. Do I go downtown? There’s the PNC building, the World Trade Center, and I’d feel right at home amid all the money. It would be tempting. My business was in Towson. There’s a lot of money in Towson, too, and it’s county money, so it smells better. It’s my old stomping grounds, the scene of my biggest success and my most harrowing failure. I’m going there to redeem myself.

  Towson it was. At the least, I had a place to start. I went online and found a picture of Stanley Rodgers, then made a call to the Baltimore County police. I’ve done most of my work in the confines of the city—and my proper police detective cousin Rich has reaped the rewards—but I had a few cases take me into the county. During a couple of those, I worked with Sergeant Gonzalez in Homicide. He answered the phone on the fourth ring. “Gonzalez.”