Murder Strikes Twice: A Catrina Flaherty Mystery, Book 2 (Catrina Flaherty Mysteries)

by Pendelton Wallace

  Hoodie looked at the gun, then at the Catrina.

  “You have a choice to make here, bud. Do you really want to try me?”

  Hoodie stood up straight and dropped the knife, his eyes constantly roaming to find a means of escape.

  “Okay, smart choice,” Catrina said. “Now, take two steps back.”

  The man did as instructed.

  “Turn around.”

  The robber slowly lifted his hands in the air and turned.

  “Now, get down on your knees.”

  Catrina reached into her bra and retrieved a cell phone.

  ****

  The next day, Catrina sipped coffee and doodled on her desk blotter. After last night’s adventure, her feet were killing her. She sat behind her desk for most of the day. The private investigator kicked off her tennis shoes, which she wore instead of her usual boots with three-inch heels, and rubbed her feet. The gray-eyed blonde rarely had free time, but right now nothing demanded her attention. Catrina reached for the phone.

  “Hey Higuera, whatcha ya workin’ on?” She asked when her partner, Ted Higuera picked up the receiver.

  Ted, a professional hacker, signed on as her partner after her first partner, Jonathon Jefferson, was killed in Mexico. A drug dealer fled the country and left his wife, Catrina’s client, holding the bag back in Seattle. Her first partner helped bring the dealer back to the U.S. to face prosecution.

  “I’ve got a new gig,” Ted said. “First State Insurance. I’m working on security consulting for them.”

  Catrina stifled a yawn. All of this computer crap couldn’t have interested her less, but Ted brought in good revenue for the firm. “What are you doing for them?”

  “They were hacked. Someone stole all of their customer information. Credit card numbers, socials, birthdates, addresses, spouse and childrens’ names. They even got their medical info from the policy holders. I’m assessing their systems for security holes and doing a couple of classes for their IT staff.”

  Her young partner had worked for several insurance companies and quickly picked up the lingo.

  “You have time for lunch?”

  “With you? Any time.”

  “Okay, I’ll be over in a minute.”

  No sooner had Catrina put the phone back in its cradle than it rang.

  Probably having second thoughts about going out with the Old Lady.

  “Yes?”

  “Mrs. Flaherty.” The voice had a rich mahogany tone and a distinct British accent.

  “Abiba, what’s up?”

  Abiba, an Ethiopian immigrant, came to work for Catrina years ago after Catrina helped get her daughter away from the husband and mother-in-law who wanted to perform a female circumcision on the girl.

  “I have a walk in, a Mrs. Johnson. She seems very upset. She insists on seeing you.”

  “Alright, I was just going to lunch anyway. Show her back.”

  Catrina pulled on her sneakers and got up from her chair. She always liked to greet her clients standing. Maybe it was because her height gave her a sense of power. She took a quick glance around her office.

  The beat-up old Goodwill desk and equally decrepit lawyer’s bookcase never looked good, but at least they were neat. Catrina scoured nearly every thrift store and flea market in Western Washington when she set up her business. Now, almost ten years later, she could afford to upgrade the furniture, but preferred to put the money back into her employees.

  Catrina limped to the door and looked out over the sea of battered desks filled with women who looked like refugees from some third-world conflict. These were her rescues. She made a habit of saving women from abusive situations, rapes, sexual harassment and the other things with which they had to deal. She found them safe houses in which to stay and gave them employment in her growing little empire.

  “Mrs. Flaherty, I’d like to present Mrs. Johnson.” Abiba, an enormous black woman in an African dress of outlandish colors, put her arm on Mrs. Johnson’s shoulder and propelled her toward Catrina.

  Catrina extended her hand. “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Johnson.”

  “Please, call me Eleanor, or better yet, Ellie.” Eleanor Johnson was about Catrina’s age, late forties or so with short brown hair that came down to her chin.

  “Come into my office, Ellie.” Catrina stepped aside and gestured towards her office. “Please sit down.”

  Eleanor walked in and took a chair.

  “Would you like coffee, tea, water, a soft drink?” Catrina asked as she seated herself in the black leather chair behind her desk.

  “Coffee would be nice.”

  Catrina turned to her receptionist. “Abiba, will you bring us coffee, please?”

  “Right away, Ma’am.” Abiba answered in her cultured voice.

  “Now, how may I help you?”

  “I . . . I . . . read about you. It was that bikini barista case. Your name was all over the papers.” She stopped, sniffed and pulled a tissue from her purse. “I don’t want to open old wounds. You can’t imagine how painful this is. If my husband found out, he’d disown me.”

  Catrina leaned forward. The sadness in this woman’s voice set off alarms in the back of her head. “If your husband found out what?”

  “My daughter, Julie . . . Oh God, I don’t know if I can do this.” She dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose.

  “Take your time. I’m listening.” Catrina used her best shrink voice.

  “You see, Julie died, I think she may have been killed, seven years ago.”

  Now she had Catrina’s full attention. “Go on.”

  “I had so much hope for my little angel. She was a wonderful child. Bright, happy, always wanting to help everyone.” Eleanor moved her purse from her lap to the floor. “She was an honor student. And so beautiful.”

  “Can you tell me how your daughter died?”

  Eleanor took a deep breath. The distressed woman looked like she was standing in front of a firing squad. “It was an accident. At least that’s what the police said. She and her husband were coming home from a weekend hike. It was late at night. They had a flat tire. Brody . . .”

  “That’s the husband’s name?” Catrina wrote rapidly on a yellow pad.

  “Yes, Brody Barrett. He hurt his back. Julie helped him change the tire. Something happened and the car fell on her . . . crushed her.”

  “And the police investigated it? Ruled it an accident?”

  “Yes. There was nothing we could do. We buried her and mourned. Brody was so broken up. He was part of our family. He continued coming to family events, holidays, birthdays. He was a good Christian man.”

  Catrina stopped writing. “So, I’m confused here, Elean . . . Ellie. What do you want me to do?”

  “I can’t believe I’m saying this. I can’t believe it really could be true, but . . . Brody remarried. We were so happy for him. He brought his new wife, Lauren, with him to Thanksgiving and Christmas. Then we sort of lost touch with him. We missed him. He was our only link to our daughter, but we understood. He was healing, moving on with his life.”

  “Yes.”

  Eleanor broke down crying. Catrina got up from her chair and sat in the chair next to her, patting the back of her hand and handing her a box of tissues.

  “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe God could be so cruel.” Eleanor paused and took a deep breath as if she was about to blaspheme The Lord. “I just heard from a friend . . .” She stopped again and looked at Catrina as if she wanted Catrina to tell her it wasn’t true.

  Abiba appeared at the office door with a silver tray and glass-stemmed coffee cups.

  “Here’s your coffee.”

  Catrina was grateful for the break in the tension. “Thanks, Abiba. Mrs. . . . Ellie, do you need cream or sugar?”

  “Yes, please,” the woman squeaked, “cream and Sweet and Low.”

  Abiba served the coffee and cast Catrina a questioning glance.

  “Thank you, Abiba. That’ll be all for now.”

&nbs
p; Abiba shrugged her broad shoulders, let out a pouty “hmmph,” and left the office.

  “What did you just hear from a friend?” Catrina prompted.

  “Lauren is dead. She fell off a cliff two years ago.” Eleanor shrieked. “I . . . I can’t believe that the same thing could happen to the same man twice. And such a nice young man.”

  Claxons blared in Catrina’s head. “You mean his second wife died in an accident too?”

  “Um . . .hm.”

  “Have you contacted the police?”

  Eleanor drooped in her chair like the air had been let out of her. “I tried. They only told me they ruled it an accident. The case was closed. No, the officer said it was dead.”

  She really had Catrina’s attention now. “And what do you want me to do?”

  The brown-haired woman took a deep breath and shook herself. It looked like she was re-inflating. “I want you to look into Lauren’s death. I want to know if that sick bastard, excuse me dear Lord, that sick bastard killed her. If he killed her, he probably killed my Julie too.”

  Catrina twirled her pen for a moment, thinking. “Why did you come to me? I think the police are the ones who should handle this.”

  “The police wouldn’t discuss the case with me because I wasn’t a relative. If we’re going to get justice for my daughter, it’s got to come from you.” Eleanor seemed to be drawing on her last bit of courage. “I looked you up on the computer. I know all about you, how you sued the police for sexual harassment. I know that you help women who no one else will help. How you find them homes and get them jobs. I know that you have a high sense of justice.” Tears poured from Eleanor’s eyes, but she kept talking. “I also know about the rumors. How you helped a girl who was raped, and when her rapist was acquitted, he was found in an alley all beat up. And the man at Millennium Systems who killed those people. When the courts threw out his case, he just disappeared.”

  Catrina laughed a nervous laugh. “Why would you think I had anything to do with those cases?”

  “Come on now, Mrs. Flaherty, we’re both grown women here. Do you think I’m stupid?”

  Catrina began to feel sweat run down her back. “Far from it, and please, call me Cat.” She needed to change the subject. “You know this kind of investigation could be expensive.”

  “I thought about that.” Eleanor reached down to grab her purse. “We’re not wealthy people. We both work hard for a living, but I do have some money put away.” She rummaged around in her purse and produced a check book. “It was part of Julie’s college fund. We put it away every month when my angel was growing up. We paid for her tuition and she paid for her living expenses when she was in school. Julie always wanted to go to graduate school. We had twenty thousand dollars left over; we were going to use it to pay for grad school, then she got married. After she died, I never spent it. I just felt it wouldn’t be right, spending Julie’s money on some indulgence or other.”

  Catrina patted her on the shoulder. “You’ve really thought this through, haven’t you? We charge one hundred twenty-five dollars an hour plus expenses. Your twenty thousand is a good start, depending on how deep we have to probe on this case.”

  ****

  Catrina was an old-fashioned girl. She liked paper. In the old days, she would have headed down to the library and searched their newspaper archives.

  Higuera changed all that. He was determined to bring Flaherty & Associates into the twenty-first Century kicking and screaming.

  Catrina filled her coffee cup and sat down at her computer to do a little detecting. She hated the computer age. It used to be so easy. Now she had to remember key strokes, email address formats, URLs, whatever they were, and all this other computer crap. The upside was that she and her staff could access their case files from anywhere on the planet. Higuera built some sort of system that kept all of their data in the sky. Her associates could add to it, put pictures in the files, do analysis from anywhere.

  Be all that as it may, Catrina was delighted at her new powers. She brought up her search engine and typed in “Lauren Barrett.”

  Eighteen million three hundred thousand hits appeared on her screen. She had to sort through that pile to find the Lauren Barrett she was interested in.

  There were newspaper articles, mainly from Montana papers, the coroner’s report, Facebook posts, LinkedIn pages and pictures, lots of pictures. Lauren was a beautiful woman, short blonde hair, blue eyes, cute face and a bikini body worthy of People Magazine. Her husband wouldn’t exactly scare a bull dog off a meat truck, either.

  Brody was tall and well built with stylishly cut brown hair. He looked like a Hollywood movie idol. And his smile . . . Catrina could see why Lauren fell for him. What’s not to like?

  Digging deeper, Catrina began to make a list of names. From Facebook, she got Shirley McBride, Lauren’s BFF. Catrina shrugged her shoulders. She knew from her son that BFF meant Best Friend Forever in kidspeak.

  From Lauren’s business web site Catrina learned that she was an optometrist. Catrina got the names of her partners.

  Brody’s Facebook page yielded only one name, Brad Stein, Brody’s best bud.

  Catrina kept digging. She found Lauren’s sisters and family’s names, co-workers and even her babysitter.

  Maybe this brave new world wasn’t so bad. In the old days, it would have taken Catrina a week to get all the data she pulled up in a couple of hours.

  It was time to go to work.

  ****

  Catrina called ahead and set up an appointment for Shirley McBride’s lunch hour. She managed to find a parking place for her burgundy Explorer only four blocks from Group Health Hospital.

  Entering the building, Catrina found the cafeteria on the lower level. It was full of men and women in green scrubs. She had a picture of her interviewee, but all these people looked the same. How to single out Shirley?

  “Hi, are you Catrina?” a short, perky woman asked.

  “Yes, you must be Shirley.” Catrina handed the young woman her business card.

  “Let’s find a seat. They’re at a premium this time of day.” Shirley had a lunch tray with a salad and French roll on it. “Have you eaten?”

  “Just coffee will do me,” Catrina said.

  Shirley led the way to one of the few unoccupied tables in the corner, under the staircase.

  Catrina grabbed a latte from the coffee stand and followed.

  “I’m not sure what you wanted to talk to me about,” Shirley said. “I know it’s about Lauren, but she’s been dead a long time.”

  Catrina sipped her latte. “There have been some irregularities discovered recently. I only want to ask you a few things.”

  “Irregularities?” Shirley nibbled at her salad. “Why are you here? Why not the police?”

  “I’ve been hired by an interested party to look a little closer into the accident.”

  A look of recognition came over Shirley’s face. “He did it, didn’t he? The bastard killed her!”

  “What do you mean?” Catrina took a leather-bound notebook from her purse and pulled a pen out of the holder. “What bastard? Who are you talking about?”

  Shirley paused with her fork in mid-air. “Brody, the weasel. I never trusted him. I always thought something was off about him.” She dropped her fork back on her plate.

  “What was off about him?”

  “He was Mister Clean, Mr. Nice Guy. He made a big deal about his faith and had a company that raised money for Christian non-profits. He even met Lauren through the church. But I always thought there was something wrong with him.”

  Catrina scribbled away in her notebook. “What did you think was wrong with him?”

  “Well, for one thing, he never let Lauren out of his sight. If she wanted to go shopping or have a drink with the girls after work, she had to call him and he’d meet her. Then there was the phone thing.”

  “What phone thing?”

  Shirley’s cheeks reddened and tears welled up in her eyes. “From the d
ay she married him, he never let us talk on the phone by ourselves. I mean, anytime I called her, she put the phone on speaker and every now and then, he said something, you know, so I’d know he was listening.”

  “Wow! That’s controlling.”

  “You don’t know the half of it. When Lauren met him, he swept her off her feet. He’d take her to expensive dinners, the theater, ballet. He bought her expensive gifts. She almost entirely cut off contact with me from day one. I had to call her or drop by her work to see how she was doing.”

  “And how was she doing?” Catrina sipped her latte.

  “Laurie was deliriously happy. It was like a fairy tale for her; Prince Charming riding in on his white charger to carry her off to live happily ever after. Only ‘ever after’ was a trap. Once he had a ring on her finger, he acted like he owned her.” Shirley breathed hard, her voice cracked from time to time.

  “And did he own her?”

  “He thought so. He was so slick. I never trusted him. There was something slimy about him, you know, like a used car salesman. He could sell anything to anybody. He could pick your pocket and you’d thank him for doing it.” Shirley stopped to breathe.

  “What kind of work does he do?”

  Shirley gulped a breath of air. “I already told you, he owns a fund-raising company. I always thought he had a lot of money for someone who dedicated his life to raising money for charities. I think he really dedicated his life to raising money for himself.”

  “Umhmm . . .”

  Note to self: Have Higuera check out Brody’s fund raising business.

  “Brody was a real Slick Willy, said he was this big Christian. He was very involved in the church, but didn’t live a Christian life. I always felt the creep checking me out, you know, to hit on me. He didn’t practice what he preached.”

  “This is all very helpful. Is there anything else you can tell me?”

  “My lunch break is about over. If you need anything else, feel free to call me.”