Baby Brother Blues (Sammy Dick, PI Series: Book 1)
Page 24
“I believe you, Kathy. I will use all the investigative powers I have to get to the bottom of this and expose this man for what he is,” intoned Geo, stroking the back of her little hand.
“I also suspect he’s involved in the murder of Franklin Leary, who was in my company,” Kathy continued. “It’s the story I just told you about, Geo, on the evening news about the man who was murdered in the Carefree area. Franklin worked for International and American Title. The police think his death is gang-related, but I think it’s too much of a coincidence that St. Pierre shows up in town and then, suddenly, Leary’s dead and the western division office burns to the ground. All in quick succession.”
“I have to agree with you, Kathy,” I said. “My dad is a Phoenix police detective. Carefree is outside his jurisdiction, but he has contacts throughout the Valley. He’ll be able to influence the direction of the investigation.”
Geo broke in. “But first, Sammy, I mean Tina, we’ve got to get Kathy out of here! Give me your keys.”
“The valet has my car keys, Geo, but I have the valet ticket in my purse at my table. Why don’t you head down to the lobby? I’ll say one of you took ill, then grab Delilah out of the arms of Soul Patch or St. Pierre or whoever the hell he is, and we’ll all get out of here.”
With that said, Kathy collapsed against Geo’s side. Geo brushed her hair back from her face, his eyes full of concern. Then he gently pulled her toward the elevator.
I would have been pissed off at this little interchange, but I love solving cases, so I left them to their intimacy and rushed off in the direction of the Elegante Room. Soul Patch, or Stephan, or whoever the devil the man really was had just led the lovely Delilah back to the Kids’ Table and was preparing to ensconce himself there. I wondered what happened to his dishwater blonde date? Hard to hold a candle to Delilah.
I approached them both. “Hey, Delilah, Geo’s become quite ill suddenly and we all need to go.” I looked her straight in the eye with my “get it?” look, so she would understand the seriousness of my suggestion.
The “get it?” look was one hundred percent lost on her. “Tina, Stephan here is a wonderful dancer. Perhaps he can take me home? You know I’ve been waiting to dance all night!”
“Stephan already came with a date, Delilah. Perhaps he needs to return to her now.” I looked at Soul Patch with my eyebrows raised, then switched my gaze back on Delilah. “We need to look out for the well-being of Geo. Don’t you think?” I retorted in a voice laden with meaning.
Finally she did start to get it. I saw her waver, so I pushed my point further. “He’s really ill, Delilah, and we need to get him home.” I kept staring her down intently. “Now.”
“I’ll meet you in front of the restroom, Tina, after you go get your purse.” She turned to Stephan and curtsied demurely, smiling, “Thank you, Stephan, for the thoroughly enjoyable dance, but I need to get going and help my friend.”
“My pleasure,” Soul Patch replied stiffly and marched off toward Sylvester’s table. I followed behind him. When I got to the table, I explained about Geo’s sudden illness and that I needed to go. There was a murmur of regrets, but no one seemed to care too much that I was leaving. I did catch Sylvester’s wink at me as I spun on my stiletto heel and exited the lovely Elegante Room.
Chapter 28
I found Delilah waiting for me in front of the restroom. We hurried along the plush red carpeting to the elevator. We were not alone as we descended to street level, so Delilah and I were quiet. When we reached the main floor, we scanned the immense lobby for Geo and Kathy. No one in sight.
“Delilah, if you could look for them, I’ll get the car.”
Just then Geo emerged furtively from behind a flower festooned column. “Were you followed?”
I looked around the expansive lobby and toward the elevators. “Not that I can see. Come on. Let’s get out of here before another elevator arrives.”
Geo slipped behind the column, grabbed Kathy, whose face was paler than the light marble floor we were all walking on and pulled her toward the entrance doors. Delilah and I took up the rear guard. Feeling like a Secret Service Agent, I scanned the room behind us for Soul Patch. Kathy’s fear was palpable.
We made it out the door and across the stone terrazzo to the parking valet. I fumbled in my little silver purse and pulled out a ten dollar bill for a tip, feeling generous since Geo and I were currently rich. When the Mazda3 zoomed up, we all catapulted in and gunned it out the back toward 24th Street. I hung a quick right and careened through the yellow light across Camelback. Then I ascended up the hill toward Lincoln Drive in the warm darkness.
Everyone was silent for a few minutes. I leaned closer to the steering wheel to look out the windshield at the night sky. By now a full moon had risen, pale yellow and strangely ominous. I felt a primordial urge to roll down the window and howl. We were now deep in the hunt of not just one case, but two. Sweet! But I kept these thoughts to myself as Kathy’s story began tumbling out, starting at the very beginning. The day she first met Soul Patch.
Breathlessly and in a trembling voice, Kathy explained how her suspicions had begun regarding the Obsidian Towers Project, researched further, then downloaded everything she could find on it to a shadow drive and pocketed it in her purse. Then she told us about her decision in the Lettuce Feed You restaurant. How Soul Patch spotted her on her return, followed her back to the title company and how her life literally blew up right then and there, never to be the same again. She described the death of her cat, the hasty retreat out of her apartment and her flight across the U.S.
She never cried in the telling, but her voice trembled throughout. Next she described the evening news story she had just inadvertently watched that day. To find Soul Patch here now with Leary murdered, and the local site of American and International Title recently burned to the ground all so close in time proximity could not be mere coincidence.
When she’d finished the story, Geo pulled her in close and announced to all of us in the intimate confines of the car as we neared the I-17 on-ramp, “Kathy, this is what I do best, link disparate facts together to solve crimes. I promise you we will gather enough evidence to put this son of a bitch away forever!”
I began to heat up, thinking, So what am I, chopped liver? Do you think you conduct all these investigations all by yourself, Geo? but I kept my thoughts to myself and chimed in constructively, “I’ll ask my dad to help initiate a more in-depth arson investigation of the title company and also to help shift the focus of the Leary murder off of gangs and onto Soul Patch or his accomplice, now that we know these specific details.”
“Oh, Sammy, that would be wonderful!” Kathy cried out in a trembling voice. For the moment, I decided she was okay after all, and actually on the brave side considering all that she’d been through.
“Here’s the problem, though,” I added. “Soul Patch is most likely a cold-blooded murderer, not to mention arsonist. Or he hired someone. Now that he knows Kathy’s in town, who knows what he’ll do next, to her or to any one of us.”
Everyone in the car grew deadly silent. Then we began to hear Kathy sobbing softly in the back seat. Geo couldn’t take it. In a fierce voice he said, “Okay, here’s the plan. Kathy comes home with us and sleeps in my room with the bars on the window. We lock all the doors. We have a security system and a guard dog.”
Delilah giggled, “You mean Snack is going to protect us? I can hardly wait.”
I was reluctant to have my dog maligned, so I retorted back, “Of course Snack can protect us. And, besides, if that falls through, I’m an excellent shot with any one of my three guns, and I’m not afraid to use them.”
This no one denied. I practiced regularly at the shooting range and had been coached for years under the guidance of my father. I was a crack shot. There was no arguing the point.
My expertise in guns seemed to calm Kathy down. She added helpfully, “My father also taught me how to shoot, if it should come to that.”
“You mean like a sting operation?” Geo asked.
“Sounds dangerous,” Delilah sighed, “like something Sammy would think up.”
“Humph,” I snorted as I skipped the Mazda3 through another yellow light. “What do you suspect Soul Patch of doing, Kathy?” As of yet, Kathy hadn’t really described in-depth the nature of Soul Patch’s original crime.
We were almost home, but I slowed down as she explained, “I can’t prove it yet, but I have some ideas on how I can prove it. I think Soul Patch, either working alone or with someone else, has been selling and re-selling condos for the Obsidian Towers Project. More specifically, the penthouse suite, because it’s so unusual. They call it the Penthouse Eye because it’s completely enclosed in glass, like a beacon over the city, be it Phoenix, Madrid or Dubai. Each has its own Tower. The Eye sells for ten million dollars, and the buyer puts down a million dollars in earnest deposit. As with all earnest deposits, the title company cashes out the money and holds it in escrow.”
“So what’s different about this project?” Geo asked.
“What’s different about this project,” Kathy replied with indignation in her voice, “is that, according to my research, the penthouse suite alone has been sold thirty times.”
“You mean it’s a timeshare investment?” Geo tried to clarify.
“No, I mean, it has thirty different, simultaneous owners who don’t know anything about the other ones.”
“Holy crap!” I whistled. “So somewhere there’s thirty million in an escrow account.”
“I wish that were true, for the owners, but I think Soul Patch, or whoever he’s working for has quote, unquote invested it.” We had turned into our driveway and were all sitting in the car inside the garage as the door closed slowly behind us. I’d shut down the Mazda and turned in the driver’s seat to look back at Kathy.
“Kathy, you’ve uncovered the real estate crime of the decade!” I said happily, charged up over the hunt.
“I may have,” she said as her lower lip began to tremble again. “I wish I were half as excited about it as you are.”
Geo frowned harshly at me, then gently coaxed Kathy out of the car. “Kathy, the second we get inside, Sammy’s calling her dad. Now tell us about this sting operation you have in mind.”
When they got in the house, Snack, our courageous protector, rushed through the doggie door to slobber happily all over us. Then he flapped back out through the doggie door and returned with a tennis ball. Then another. Then another.
I gave Snack a treat to occupy him and flipped open the cover on my phone to call Dad. He answered on the first ring and listened intently to my requests. I could tell he was jotting down notes. Next, all four of us arranged ourselves around the little Formica kitchen table as Kathy outlined her scheme.
I liked the scheme. It had merit and danger. Two of my favorite adjectives. We’d have to enlist the help of Montaigne to carry it out, since Soul Patch hadn’t seen him yet. I liked that part of the scheme too.
It was only a matter of time, we hoped, before Soul Patch was behind bars one way or another, but first we had to make it safely through the night.
Chapter 29
No incidents occurred during the night, but that didn’t keep me from tossing and turning. I’d slept on the living room couch with our amazing guard dog, Snack, snoring at my feet and a gun under my pillow. No wonder I couldn’t sleep well. It’s hard to get comfy with a gun under your pillow.
In the early morning light, I finally just gave up, took a long, hot shower and dressed for work. When I emerged from the bedroom, Kathy and Geo were twirling chunks of toaster waffles in puddles of Aunt Jemima syrup looking at each other all lovey-dovey. Geo was dressed for class and Kathy had on one of Geo’s black t-shirts, some of his black gym shorts and his black socks on her tiny feet. Aren’t we just so cute, I thought to myself.
“Morning,” I said dryly.
“Good morning, Sammy,” Kathy chimed. “Thank you so much for taking guard duty!”
“Just a part of the job,” I said coldly, like a jerk, then relented, “but thanks. We seem to be safe for now. I’ve got to go into work on our other investigation,” I said pointedly, looking at Geo who missed my intent completely he was so focused on Kathy. I gave up and continued, “But before I head out, let’s make a game plan.”
Geo nodded. “Kathy and I were just discussing that. She needs to get to work too, but she’s going to call some of the Penthouse Eye clients to verify, without revealing anything, that several do in fact believe that they simultaneously own the Eye and have not received their escrow money back.”
“Plus, Sammy, I thought I’d call Franklin Leary’s ex-wife to see if she suspects him of being involved with drugs or anything along those lines. She may be unwilling to talk, but you never know,” Kathy added.
“You can probably get anyone to talk, Kathy, if you put your mind to it,” Geo patted her little hand. I jumped in to stop this line of talk before it grew more syrupy than their drenched plates.
“Sometimes you can learn a lot from a spouse or an ex. Geo and I just did the same on our other case. Very illuminating.”
“Okay, I’ll get on that as soon as I get to work,” Kathy chirped.
“I’m going to drop Kathy off at her condo, then I’ve got a class in Tempe at nine, but after that I’m going into our office to dissect that Obsidian Towers Project inside and out. Kathy showed me how to gain access to all kinds of records. By the end of the day today, I’ll know everything that can be known about this deal.”
“Well, don’t forget we have another investigation that needs working on too,” I reproached.
“Well, don’t forget Kathy’s life is on the line!” Geo shot back.
Kathy decided to intervene before we strangled each other, “Geo, of course you need to make sure the other investigation is fully supported. I have absolute faith that you can do both and make a lot of headway today.”
“Geo, I have an idea,” I interjected. “Remember how Karl Zaiid had those drug deal charges he was acquitted of in Europe? Belgium, I think it was. How about researching those court records and accounts to see if there are any names which also show up here in Phoenix in association with drug dealing? Once a drug dealer, almost always a drug dealer, with very few exceptions. Maybe he brought some of his buddies with him. He might be using them to hide his tracks.”
“Either that or switched to diamonds.”
“There’s that. Or both.”
“Or both, I agree,” responded Geo. “At any rate, it’s worth digging into. After clearing the table, Geo planted a loving kiss on Kathy’s dimpled cheek.
“You ready, Kath?”
“Almost. I’m going to have to wear my high heels with these gym shorts, because those are the only shoes I have here.”
“Sounds sexy!” Geo smiled at her.
On that ridiculous note, I exited as fast as I could. I made a beeline for the garage, grabbed my helmet from where it hung on the handle bars, and mounted my Ninja. Today was a day to ride like hell through the city to calm my nerves.
I fired up the Ninja, and thundered down Sunnyside Lane toward Greenway at such high speed I flipped up into an unexp
ected wheelie. Holy shit! I almost fell off. I slapped back down with a rough thump of the front wheel on pavement. Wobbled out of control from side to side. Righted myself and settled in for a thoroughly fast ride to work. I only slowed down whenever I spotted a cop lying in wait, then roared on as soon as I passed the danger zone.
I arrived at work in no time. Parked the Ninja in a nearby street lot, since all-day parking for a cycle is cheap. Stuffed my helmet into the back compartment and locked it shut. I debated switching out of my jeans into my mini in the parking lot, but thought I might get arrested, so I slipped the sandals on without unbuckling them, just sliding the straps up over my heels. I then headed for Central One after gliding my fingers through my hair to perk my spikes up a bit after being crushed by the helmet. I glanced at myself in a reflective window as I strode along Adam’s Street toward Central Avenue. I figured I struck a fashion note somewhere between chic and sheer idiocy and it fit my mood just right for the day.
When I arrived at Central One, I darted into the main floor restroom to switch into my mini and out of my jeans. Stuffed the jeans into my voluminous handbag. Touched up my make-up. Added more mascara and some mauve gray eye shadow, aptly named “Ooh La La” to bring out the color of my mauve mini and to compensate for how weird my hair looked. I then swung back out the door for my second week as corporate consultant for Swann Diamonds.
I was feeling uneasy because Geo was so distracted by Ms. Keach’s dilemma, which didn’t pay a dime, but put Kathy’s life on the line. How would we get to the root of the Swann problems with only half a team, and that half was me?
I watched the elevator numbers descend as I waited in the lobby, feeling foolish and low, when Tomas nudged my shoulder. “How are you this hot Monday morning, Tina?”
I hadn’t even noticed him I was so preoccupied with my own troubles. I tried to focus. “Fine,” I lied. “How about you, Tomas?”