The Alex Shanahan Series

by Lynne Heitman

  “He’s the kid I told you about who works at The Harmony House Suites. He’s been trying to identify the cars in the hotel parking lot the night of the murder.” I explained the low-tech security system and Felix’s idea about finding cars that weren’t supposed to be there.

  “He found some?”

  “Yeah, he called me back. I talked to him just before I came over here. Here it is.” I’d written the notes on the back of a page. “He got two hits. A black Volvo registered to The Cray Fund, which is an investment firm here in town. And the second one was a green Subaru Forester. It belongs to a George Speath.”

  I looked over at Jack. He was leaning in, listening intently, holding his buttered fingers in the air like a surgeon. “That’s him,” he said. “He runs Speath Aviation. He was at the hotel the night of the murder?”

  “He was there and not checked in or he would have had a placard in his windshield.” I scanned my notes. I’d been writing so fast to keep up with Felix, they were almost illegible. I’d had to make him stop and take several deep breaths. But now I was starting to feel the same way. “Heavy aircraft maintenance facility. Been in business twenty-eight years. Started by a guy named Howard Speath and now operated by his son George—”

  “Who was at the scene of the murder,” Jack said, “and is being investigated by the FBI.” He seemed more satisfied than excited, as if he knew we were running a marathon and I was trying to sprint. But I had a deadline.

  “We have to talk to him,” I said. “Tomorrow. This Speath sounds like the key to everything.”

  “Hold on. Slow down. Drink your beer and let’s talk about this.”

  I sipped my beer, but hardly tasted it. My mind was going too fast and my sense of urgency had been heightened considerably by my discussion with Paul Gladstone. I had one week and one week only. There would be no more extensions on the Detroit job after that.

  “From what Patty told me, it sounds as if George Speath is part of the business community and has never had any trouble with the FAA or the law. He’s not the usual kind of partner who hooks up with Jimmy.”

  “So?”

  “If he’s not a pro, and the detectives don’t think he is, then we might be able to turn him easier than we could Avidor. I want to find out a few things about him before we go blowing into his business.”

  “Like what?”

  “This is the investigation part, Alex. We’ll talk to some of the employees. Check out his inspection records. Talk to the FAA, vendors—”

  “I don’t have an unlimited amount of time down here, Jack. Or cash. The clock is ticking.”

  “It takes as long as it takes.”

  The motor on a boat kicked in behind me. I stared up into the palm trees. “Do you know if Speath does work for any of the major airlines?”

  “Probably. Why?”

  “I have a better idea.” I pulled out my cell phone. “I have a guaranteed way to gain total access to his business.”

  “Without him knowing?”

  “With his enthusiastic assistance. All I need is a little help from Bic.”

  The restaurant was even more crowded when we left. Jack put his hand on my shoulder to guide me through the ever-burgeoning group thronged around the door. It was one big party out on the sidewalk. Blonde women and tan men with big plastic cups of beer swirled around each other. It was later in the evening, so this was the crowd that had already drunk their way through happy hour and was out in search of something to eat. They were raucous. They were ribald. They were all having a good time.

  After we’d made it through the gauntlet, Jack moved his hand to the small of my back, and kept it there as we crossed the street to my car. He’d touched me before, but this felt different. Purposeful. I liked the way it felt, and it started me thinking about how his hands would feel in other places.

  He took my keys and opened the door for me. I turned and we stood for a moment and I looked at his face as if I had never seen it. I saw the curve of his mouth. How warm his brown eyes could be. And there was something else in his eyes. A connection. An attraction. That he was thinking what I was thinking, too. It was thrilling and unexpected and stimulating on so many levels and I wanted—

  “I’m going to take a cab home,” he said, stepping away.

  “I’ll…” I had to stop myself from stepping with him. “I’ll drive you home.”

  “It’s a long way out of your way. You should go home and take care of that ankle.”

  My ankle? I hadn’t been thinking about my ankle. Is that what he’d been thinking? I looked into his face again. There was something there. There was a lot there. I was getting so I could read him, but there was too much for me to work out without a few clues from him. He didn’t seem willing to offer them.

  “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, then?”

  “Yeah.” He turned and went back toward the restaurant, presumably to get Al to call him a cab. I looked for him as I drove by, but the crowd had swallowed him up.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ​Speath Aviation was expecting me. I could tell, not because anyone was there in the small reception space to greet me—there wasn’t—but because of the letter board sign standing just inside the door. It had WELCOME and my name spelled out in magnetic white letters, only they must have been short on ns because the last one in SHANAHAN was a sideways z. But that was the only thing that appeared to be improvised in the neat, carefully ordered offices. The rubber tile floors were scrubbed. The bulletin boards on the pale yellow walls were hung with directives and reminders and alerts that were carefully spaced and clearly visible. Lining one wall was a row of twelve five-drawer file cabinets. All sixty drawers had typed labels.

  That’s what businesses look like when they’re expecting an audit. It had taken one more day than I would have liked, but due in large part to Bic’s assistance, Speath Aviation was expecting an auditor dispatched by Majestic Airlines to check them out for possible overhaul work. They had been encouraged to provide full access. To everything. I was about to embark on my first undercover assignment.

  Something caught my eye at the end of a short hallway. There was a door there that seemed to lead out to the hangar. The door had a window about chin high, the kind with safety glass. I wasn’t sure, but I could have sworn I’d seen a man looking through it at me. A man wearing a cap. A baseball cap. It was one of those deals where the second I saw him—or thought I saw him—he vanished.

  “Miss Shanahan?” I turned to find a large block of a man lunging toward me with his big, outstretched hand. His face was as wide as a stop sign, his features emphatically blunt, and shaking his hand was like trying to grip the wrong end of a Ping-Pong paddle. “I’m George Speath. I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.”

  “I just got here.”

  “Good. Did Margie take care of you?”

  “Margie?”

  I gazed about the empty office. A cup of hot coffee on a desk steamed in silent testimony to the fact that someone had been there recently, but not since I’d arrived. George looked around when I did and seemed to notice for the first time that we were alone.

  “Shoot.” He gave himself a verbal smack in the forehead. “Sorry. Margie must be in the back. Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea? Cookies? We usually have these really good butter cookies. They don’t look like much, but I can’t stop eating them. I wish she wouldn’t buy them, but she does.”

  “No, thank you. I’m fine for now.”

  “Okay. Well, then…” He started to lead the way out of the reception area to a long hallway, but then in a gesture that seemed both courtly and awkward, stepped aside and let me go first. As I passed, I felt again the presence of someone watching me. I took a quick look at that door with the window. Nothing.

  George’s office had the low-ceilinged feel of someone’s basement family room. A Foosball table wouldn’t have been out of place in the corner. Hung on the walls in inexpensive and mismatched frames were pictures of George and various people, and George
and various airplanes. He looked happiest with the airplanes.

  “Now,” he said, standing in the middle of the durable, rust-colored carpet and rubbing those big hands together, “where would you like to begin?”

  “First let me apologize for the extremely short notice, and I’m sorry to get you in here on a Sunday.”

  “That’s no problem at all. We work seven days a week here.”

  “I assume you’ve talked to Mr. Ryczbicki,” I said.

  “He called me yesterday. He’s a nice fellow, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, he is.” Bic must have really laid it on thick. “Maybe you could tell me what he’s told you so we don’t have to cover the same ground.” When telling a lie, always best to see what has already been communicated by your coconspirator.

  “Sure, sure. Whatever you want.” He gestured for me to sit, then eschewed his big desk chair to settle across from me. The couch he sat on was too low for his frame, putting his knees almost up around his ears.

  “Mr. Ryczbicki said he was interested in asking us to bid on overhaul work for Majestic Airlines, mainly overflow situations. He’s having trouble handling the volume, and he’s hired you to do a pre-audit to make sure we’re in compliance with FAA and Majestic standards.”

  “Just so there’s no confusion,” I said, “I’m not an employee of Majestic Airlines. I’m an independent auditor, and I’m not affiliated with the FAA, so you don’t have to worry. Whatever I find here is between you and Mr. Ryczbicki and me.”

  George put his hands up, palms out, and shook his head. “You’re not going to find anything out of order. Needless to say, Miss Shanahan, this is very exciting news for us. We’d be so pleased to work with Majestic. We’d do a good job. I think I can convince you of that while you’re here.”

  “Good.” I pulled a pad and pen from my backpack. I was trying to look like an auditor, but I felt like an imposter, and the nicer he was to me, the more false my false persona felt. “I’d like to start by asking you a few questions.”

  He sat forward on the couch, ready to rumble. “Fire away.”

  “I understand your father started this business. Is that right?”

  He smiled, revealing a crooked lower front tooth. “How did you know that?”

  “I did my homework.” Actually, Felix had done all the work. “When did you join him?”

  “Seventeen months ago. After he’d already left. I was working at Honeywell when he began thinking about selling, so I talked him into letting me run it. He started five different businesses over the course of his career, and do you know he made successes out of every one? Five different industries, too.” His expression was quizzical, as if he’d been studying this phenomenon for years and still hadn’t cracked the code.

  “Is he here?”

  “Oh, no. He’s busy with a group of college kids that are starting up one of those dot-com companies. I’m not even sure what it is they do.” He nudged his silver aviators farther up the bridge of his nose. “I always was more comfortable with a product I could touch and feel.” He held up his big hands as if he were cradling a crankshaft between them. “I like standards. I like things I can measure.”

  “Is your father still involved in your business?”

  “No.” A rueful smile flashed and disappeared. “He doesn’t have much time for aviation parts and repairs anymore.”

  Nor for his plodding son, I imagined. So far, it was hard not to like George.

  I asked him questions from the list Bic and I had made up, things he and I had agreed we’d want to know about any business doing repair work on our airplanes. It was a long list. George answered every question thoroughly, but not succinctly, and a full hour had passed before I’d realized it.

  “I’d like to see your operation now, George. Can we do that?”

  “Sure. What do you need?”

  “I’ll need to take a look at all your certifications, all of your procedures for ordering, tracking, and receiving parts. I want to see your file of FAA directives. I’d like to take a look at your accounting system, your inventory system, and I want to talk to the person who receives your parts. I also need a list of customers.”

  “That’s very thorough.”

  “Majestic has requested a full audit. They’re selective about who works on their airplanes. And they only work from a list of approved vendors.”

  “I sure hope we can get on that list.”

  “Oh.” I’d been scanning my list again. “How about a business plan. Do you have something like that? Something recent?”

  He was up and to his desk across the room in two long strides. “I’ve got exactly what you need. I made up a business plan for the bank. For a loan I needed.” He rummaged around, looking first through a thick stack on top of the desk. Then he turned and thumbed through a pile at eye level on one of his built-in shelves. Finally, he punched a button on the phone.

  “Margie, do you have my copy… any copy of the business plan?”

  A voice came right back. “You have them all in there with you, George.”

  “Where? I can’t find them.” George was now down on his knees behind his desk. “Margie?” His voice grew muffled as he dipped down and his head disappeared behind the desk. “They’re not in the drawer.”

  There was no response until the office door flew open and a woman—Margie, I presumed—stepped in. She stood for a moment with her hands on her hips, sizing up the situation. I could tell right away that she was a gold woman, although a younger version of this new species that I’d discovered in Florida.

  Gold women usually had blonde hair, and however they chose to wear it, it always looked as if it had been painted over with clear fingernail polish. Their lipstick was lighter than their tanned faces, which were usually on the way to leathery, and they could never wear enough gold jewelry. The most evolved of the gold woman species, usually women in their late fifties or early sixties, had additional coordinating accessories such as gold handbags and shoes.

  Margie had all the basics, including a pair of hose that made her long, tan legs a shade darker, but not too dark to dull her pedicure, which was shown to good advantage by the open toes of her high-heeled shoes. She walked on those very high heels across the office and straight for the credenza. “Move your feet, George.”

  He did as he was told. She opened a cabinet, pulled out a thick spiral-bound document, and handed it to him with a look that said, “Honestly, George.” On her way back around the desk, she punched a button on his phone and hung up on herself.

  George got to his feet—being a big man, none too gracefully—and started thumbing through his business plan. “Margie, did you meet Miss Shanahan?”

  She looked at me with hazel eyes that shone brightly against nutmeg brown skin. “I must have been out in the hangar when you came in. You’re the auditor?”

  “Yes.”

  “I keep all the books, and I’m the only one around here who understands the filing system, so just ask me for anything you need. I’m usually out front, but if you can’t find me, I’m back in the hangar with the boys. Just yell out there for me.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  She was as crisp, almost to the point of being brusque, and as direct as George was meandering. They probably made a good pair. She left me with George, who handed me the business plan. Then he stood, looking as if he were waiting for direction.

  “Shall we go through your operation, George?”

  “By all means.”

  He walked me through his operation. He had a reasonably large facility, with seventy-five employees working three shifts. I did a quick scan for the baseball cap. Everyone I saw had one on. They appeared to be standard issue at Speath, so I assumed whoever had been staring at me from outside the door had been a curious employee.

  The main part of his space was a huge hangar where he did engine, airframe, and structural work. George made an effort to introduce me to as many employees as he could as we walked around. Everyone seemed happy
to see him, and the ones that were too far away made a point of waving or shouting a greeting.

  “Is this your only facility?” I asked him.

  “This is it. This is all I need. Watch out.” His arm shot toward me in a move so quick I reacted without thinking. I jerked away from him, but not far enough. I felt his big hand on my back, nudging me forward a few steps.

  “What?” I pulled farther away. “What are you doing?”

  He pointed to a still wet, white grainy splat on the ground, perilously close to where I’d been standing. “Pigeons. That was a close one.” He tilted his head back to search the rafters for the perpetrator of the poop bombing.

  I looked up to where he’d been looking, intending to gaze sternly at the feathered offender, but what I saw was an entire squad perched overhead on the exposed steel struts. I had to settle for a blanket squinty-eyed condemnation.

  George sighed. “We can’t get rid of them.”

  I thought back to my own experience with hangars and pigeons. “Have you tried owls?”

  “Look over there.”

  He put his hand on my back again and, as if he were turning a telescope, redirected my line of sight until I saw what he was pointing at. It was a fat, dark gray, in-your-face pigeon that had chosen the head of one of George’s plastic owls as a perch.

  “Tough birds,” I said.

  “It’s a problem. Most of my guys make sure to keep their hats on when they’re out on the floor. Would you like one? I recommend it if you’re going to be out here.”

  “Sure.”

  George snapped the radio off his belt and raised Margie. She appeared almost immediately to deliver one of the heavy-duty black baseball caps with the Speath logo on the front and SPEATH AVIATION stitched in red across the back.

  “What are you doing?” George stared at my hands as I rolled and shaped the bill of the cap, something I did without even thinking.

  “I’m—” I started to say “making it less geeky-looking.” Instead, I said, “I’m making it more comfortable. It’s a great hat.” I put it on and smiled at him. “Thank you, George.”