This house was a grandmother’s dream, not a coverup for hiring a shooter to take out her ex. There wasn’t going to be anything suspicious here.
Except the toilet seat was up.
I wasn’t in the mood for commode forensics, but the position of the toilet seat suggested that a man had been the last person to use it. And I’d heard the toilet flush while in the study with Nick. Those two facts made me curious.
I picked up a chipped plastic cup that sat next to the toothbrush and pressed it against the door with my ear. There were voices.
Two voices. One male and one female, and the male wasn’t Nick. When I couldn’t make out what they said by the door, I climbed onto the vanity and listened by the vent. No luck. I climbed back down and spent ten minutes scrubbing my footprint from the vanity before flushing the toilet to maintain my cover story. I (regretfully) lowered the toilet seat, effectively tampering with the evidence I’d been so happy to spot.
I washed and dried my hands and yanked the door open (with considerable effort and one foot on the wall for leverage.) I hovered on the landing, looking left and right. Peggy appeared at the bottom of the stairs with an empty case of Chardonnay. “I was starting to worry about you,” she said.
I descended the stairs and followed her into the study. “We’re just about done,” Nick said.
“Thank you, Peggy. I’m sure your husband will be pleased when he finds out you cooperated with us. This party is going to be very special to him.” I set a football trophy in the bottom of the box and added a deceptively heavy pile of folded garments.
Peggy’s expression changed, but it wasn’t anger or disgust that took over her features. If I had to bet, I’d say she was nervous. Why? If she thought we’d find something, she wouldn’t have let us in. What was it? I felt like we were in front of a clue and didn’t even know it.
“I just assumed, after what I’ve read in the papers about Tradava, that the party was off.”
“Your husband’s retirement is a milestone. I’m sure you’ll enjoy having him around the house and out of the dangerous situations that come with being a homicide detective.” It was bait, pure and simple. Peggy hadn’t said one thing to indicate she and Loncar were getting divorced or that he didn’t live here anymore. She’d accepted every single fabrication we’d offered since arriving, including a lie about someone from Tradava having called ahead. Her willingness to play along was suspicious.
Nick put his hand on my arm, and I stopped talking. He knew something. Either that or he had an unexpected desire for a public (ish) display of affection.
“I hate to rush you out, but I do have to attend to the baby,” Peggy said.
A male voice called down the stairs. “It’s okay, Peg. I finally got her to sleep.” Footsteps came closer, and the door to the study opened. Whoever Peggy Loncar was with was about to give himself up.
He entered and seemed surprised to find Nick and me in the room. Recognition hit me as quickly as it dawned on him. I forced a smile, though I was anything but happy.
“Samantha?” the man asked.
“Captain Valderama?”
25
Cover Blown
“Samantha?” Peggy repeated. “You introduced yourself as Mrs. Taylor.”
Nick stepped closer and put his arm around my shoulders. “She is Mrs. Taylor. I’m Nick Taylor, and she’s my wife.”
Peggy ignored Nick. “What is your name?” she asked me.
It would have been a good time to lie, but Captain Valderama removed the opportunity. “Her name is Samantha Kidd.”
Nick had been right. Peggy recognized my name. “Get out,” she said. She pointed to the door. I picked up the box. She put her hands on her hips. “Really?” she asked.
“But I thought—”
“You thought wrong. Get out and tell my ex-husband it didn’t work.”
“Your ex-husband doesn’t know we’re here,” Nick said.
While Peggy turned to glare at Nick, I locked eyes with Captain Valderama. He’d been the one to ask me to plan Loncar’s surprise retirement party. He could easily tell Peggy that I was there on his request. And if he wasn’t there because of the detective, then why was he there? Valderama broke eye contact and looked away. I tried to process what was happening, but there were too many competing questions.
I set the box on the corner of the desk. Nick moved closer to it, and the box tipped. It landed on the green carpet, spilling out trophies and framed certificates.
“There’s nothing in there that doesn’t rightfully belong to Detective Loncar,” I said. “Your desire to hold on to his personal items seems to contradict your need to cut all ties from him. You may want to think about what that says about you and your rush to dissolve your marriage.” I walked out of the room.
All I’d wanted was to get in a jab, to make a statement on Loncar’s behalf. I didn’t know whether he was responsible for his marriage falling apart, but right now, all I saw was a bitter woman who was trying to punish someone she once claimed to love. And if that sort of behavior kept Peggy Loncar from finding true love, then she was going to have to accept a long and lonely life.
Except maybe Peggy wasn’t looking for true love. Maybe true love had found her right here in her ex-husband’s house.
Peggy and Captain Valderama?
All the questions that had been floating around my brain fell neatly into custom-shaped holes. Why the captain was enforcing Loncar’s mandatory retirement. Why Peggy was pressing for the divorce now. Why she wanted the party canceled, and why she wanted us out of the house.
They both wanted Loncar out of the picture. If Loncar retired, he’d have no reason to keep showing up at the police station. When word leaked about Peggy and Valderama’s relationship, it would circle through the contained audience of cops. Loncar would be on the outside. The papers would be signed, and he’d be the bad guy who cheated on his wife. She’d get half of his pension, the house, and whatever else she demanded.
Even if she’d cheated too.
I was so lost in my thoughts that I reached the front door and realized I was alone. No one, not even Nick, had followed me out of the office. I turned away from the front door and spotted the entrance to the kitchen.
Loncar had wanted me to look at a planner on a table in the kitchen.
It was where he said it would be. The planner was open to January. I flipped through the pages until I reached April and scanned the entries. One stood out.
10 a.m. Tradava.
The day of the shooting.
I flipped to the front of the planner and found Peggy Loncar’s name neatly written on the front page.
What business did Peggy Loncar have at Tradava the day of the shooting? And who else knew she’d been there?
I picked up the planner to get a better look and heard voices. I opened my navy-blue handbag, dropped the planner inside, and closed the handles. I ran across the living room and had my hand on the doorknob to leave when I heard Nick’s voice. “Thank you, Peggy. I’ll explain everything to my wife.”
He rounded the corner with the chardonnay box. I held the door open for him, and he walked out. “Let’s get out of here.”
He set the box on the seat between us, and we left with Peggy Loncar and Captain Valderama watching us from inside Loncar’s house.
We were three blocks away when Nick spoke. “What did you take?”
“You think I took something? From their house?” I asked with somewhat inauthentic damaged pride. “You think I’m a thief?”
“I think you set that box on the corner of Loncar’s desk to buy some time. I think I knocked it over to see if they were more interested in following you or seeing what it was we had taken. I certainly hope if you found something, you took it. Otherwise, I’ll have to replace the frame on Loncar’s Hall of Fame certificate for nothing.”
“Does it have his first name?”
Nick looked away from the road at me and then back at the road. “Yes, it has his first n
ame on it. Did you think his first name was ‘Detective’?”
“I don’t know.” I held up my hands palm-side out. “I don’t want to know. Once I start thinking of him with a first name, then I stop thinking of him as Detective Loncar. He’s being forced out of the job that defines him, and that’s sad. I want to remain in the part of his life where he’s Detective Loncar. The part of his life that he chose.”
Nick reached across the seat and took my hand. “Have I ever told you I love how you think?”
I told Nick about the planner and pulled it out of my handbag. Anger bubbled up inside me. Anger on behalf of Detective Loncar. How dare Peggy move on to Loncar’s boss after Loncar had made a life for her? How dare she?
And even worse was the creeping knowledge that Peggy Loncar and Captain Valderama were more connected to the shooting than I’d wanted to think. The captain had been the one to send Loncar to Tradava that morning. He’d been the one to arrange for the surprise party. He’d pulled strings to get us all at the same place, and an innocent person who’d been at the wrong place at the wrong time had died.
And if I was right and Captain Valderama and Peggy Loncar had something to do with the shooting, then there was another casualty: my alter ego, Mrs. Taylor. Because my actions in Loncar’s house had officially broken her unblemished record of steering clear of criminal investigations.
26
Manifesting Reinforcements
We arrived back at my house. I immediately manifested reinforcements (Eddie and food). (Manifesting is easy when you have a cell phone.) Nick set the table while I updated the whiteboards with what we’d learned.
Eddie showed up with two pizzas. “You’re not still eating fish and chips, are you? I’ve hit my limit on fried cod.”
“You and me both.”
I took the boxes and opened the top one. I inhaled the scent of cheese and tomato for a count of four, held my breath and exhaled in a whoosh. The breathing technique was more satisfying with the scent of pizza under my nose. I repeated two times.
My world was righting itself.
Except I was no closer to understanding what had happened at Tradava two days ago.
We went into the kitchen, and I grabbed the oregano and the crushed red pepper from the cabinet and set them on the table. “Two pizzas? I only manifested one.”
“Dude,” Eddie said. He flipped the top box open. “I asked Xavier to join us.”
Nick looked up. “Who’s Xavier?”
“One of my freelancers,” Eddie said. He turned to me. “His brother owns a landscaping business. The two of them have mad skills, and they’re going to build the miniature English topiary maze Moneypenny wanted us to build in the parking lot. We can repurpose it for Loncar’s thing.”
Nick looked from Eddie to me. “Who’s Moneypenny?”
“Victoria,” I said. “British sales executive from Piccadilly. I told you about her when we left Peggy’s house.”
“Who’s Peggy?” Eddie asked.
“Detective Loncar’s ex-wife,” Nick said.
Nick and Eddie looked at me. Each man had half of the story.
“Pizza first. Then we recap.”
We claimed one pizza for ourselves and gave the other to Eddie’s freelancers. Nick and Eddie got a head start while I doused mine in oregano, but in pizza eating, I’m practically an Olympian, and I caught up quickly.
Between slices, I picked up the red marker and turned to the blank dry erase board. Along the top, I wrote SUSPECTS.
“There was a shooting outside Tradava. Two victims: Harvey Monahan and Detective Loncar. Which means either the shooting was about one or the other.”
“You’re right back where you started,” Eddie said.
“You two were there the morning of the shooting, right?” Nick asked. Eddie and I nodded. “Tell me everybody who you remember.”
“Victoria,” I said. “She and I were working in the parking lot. She went inside with Harvey to negotiate a deal. The human resources manager told me they never made it to his office. Harvey came back out and was shot. Turns out Harvey has dirt on Victoria and blackmails her to get results on his strikes.”
“How do you know that?” Eddie asked.
“She told me.” I looked back and forth between their faces. “I’m a natural at female bonding.”
“Write her on the board,” Eddie said.
I wrote VICTORIA PRATT.
“Next?” Nick asked.
Eddie helped himself to a second piece of pizza. “Taryn Monahan,” he said.
“Harvey’s sister?” I asked. “Why would she shoot her brother?”
“I’m not concerned with motive right now. I’m giving up suspects.”
I wrote TARYN MONAHAN.
“Izzy Smalls was there,” I said.
Nick’s brow furrowed. “Who’s Izzy Smalls?”
“The lead singer of The Ex-Pistols. They were playing at the whiskey bar, remember? I wanted to hire them for Loncar’s party.”
“Wanted to?”
“Victoria said no.”
“Izzy was at Tradava?” Eddie asked. “I never saw her, and she doesn’t exactly blend in.”
“She told me she was there. She said her ex arranged to meet her to pay back some money he owed her, but it turned out he had no intention of paying her back.”
“Either she was lying, or somebody wanted her to be there,” Nick said. “Any idea who her ex is?”
“A cop,” I said. “His name is Bob Pennino. If we believe her, then she places him at Tradava during the shooting too.”
“Do we believe her?” Eddie asked.
“I don’t know. She threw a beer on him at Whiskey Mick’s right before I talked to her.” I leaned back against the wall. Bob Pennino of the porno mustache and the heavy build had been among the more vocally antagonistic in the lobby of the hospital the night I went to visit Loncar.
I wrote IZZY SMALLS and BOB PENNINO.
“Who else was there?”
“John Jones, the human resource manager at Tradava,” I said.
Eddie said, “He was inside the store. All members of senior management were. Why did you single him out?”
“Because he said Harvey and Victoria never made it to his office, but he knew they’d reached an agreement on negotiations. How would he know that?”
We tossed theories and suspects around for the better part of an hour. We finished the pizza and put a dent in the blueberry pie. I felt no closer to the truth.
Jet lag was having its way with Nick, and Eddie was distracted by a game of laser tag with Logan, who’d joined us.
I couldn’t sit still. “I’m going to Tradava,” I said. I took Nick’s keys and left.
I drove to Tradava and parked next to the Ribbon Eagle/Times news van. Frank Mazurkiewicz leaned against the front watching a video on his phone. The security team was down to a thin, middle-aged man with two days’ beard growth and a black man with chrome-rimmed glasses. Five members of the union strike/candlelight vigil stood by the front doors.
Taryn Monahan had her back to me. She wore a dusty-rose quilted bomber jacket with a short black skater skirt peeking out below, black tights, and pink-and-black argyle over-the-knee socks with Pink UGG boots. She shot me a dirty look over her shoulder and turned back to her group. Without thinking, I held my hands up in a “what did I do?” gesture, which was lost on her since she wasn’t looking.
“Hey, Samantha,” Frank said. “Just can’t stay away, can you?”
“I’m not here for Tradava. I’m here for you.”
“Me?”
“Yes. You’ve been here every day since the shooting, right?”
“Right.”
“And you’ve been writing stories about it for the paper, right?”
“Right.”
“And has anybody from Tradava come out to make a statement? Or offer condolences? Or, well, anything?”
“Nope.”
“Nope. That’s what I thought.” I stared at the f
açade of the building. The large, concrete structure had remained relatively unchanged since it had been built in the forties: a broad building with a flat roof and a bottle-green “T” mounted on the left side next to the Tradava logo. Massive green-tinted windows and glass panels framed the entrance. I still remembered how it had felt to walk through those doors when I was a little girl, to enter, and look up at the ceiling with the hanging brass sculptures that decorated the atrium before passing through the second set of customer doors.
Harvey had expected the strike to last a week at most. And because of the shooting, the store was going to close. The news about Piccadilly pulling their funding should have shut them down, but they were still there.
We were a week past the targeted strike resolution. That meant a full week’s worth of payroll that had been quietly accumulating on the balance sheets. Payroll that Tradava had diverted into a slush fund that John Jones could pay at his discretion . . . if only there were a job for these people to do.
“Is your cameraman here?” I asked Frank.
“No, he got called to cover a water main break in Antietam,” he said. “If anything happens, I’m supposed to film what I can with my phone.”
“That’ll have to do. Let’s go.”
Frank followed me into the store and didn’t ask questions. I accepted his silence as a vote of confidence in my actions and said as much while we were riding the Up escalator. “Carl would have demanded to know what I had in mind before following me. I appreciate your faith in my actions.”
Frank shrugged. “It’s less faith than boredom.”
You work with what you get.
We reached the fifth floor. Before I opened the door, I turned to Frank. “Turn on your video camera and record this. Make sure the bald guy knows you’re recording him, and whatever happens, don’t let him take your phone away.”
Union Jacked Page 13