“Don’t pull in!” I cried out loud. “Drive by!”
“Is that Ralph’s van?” Bosco asked. There were lights on in the building.
“Yes. What do you suppose he’s doing in there at this time of night?”
“Something he doesn’t want anyone else to know,” Bosco decided. “Come on. Let’s check it out on foot.”
We left the car down the road, at the Tastee Freez parking lot. I grabbed my purse and got out, joining Bosco as we made our way back to Dynamic Productions. We ran quickly, hugging the tree line, away from the street traffic. The lights were on in the outer office, but the blinds were closed.
“Can you see anything?” I whispered to Bosco as he pressed his nose up against the glass.
“Nope. Any other way into the building?”
“Back door.”
“Got a key?”
“Yes.” I dug through my purse for my key ring. “Follow me.”
Two minutes later, we were through the back door, making our way across the soundstage, towards the front of the building. I could hear Ralph moving things around in the distance. Bosco grabbed my hand and pulled me close, putting his lips by my ear.
“We’re going to take a quick look-see, and then we’re calling the cops. I want to catch him in the act.”
“Hold on,” I whispered back. I dug into my purse and took out my flip camera.
“Brilliant!” Bosco grinned and gave me a long, deep, wet kiss in the darkness.
We crept forward, moving slowly, listening for any sounds to suggest Ralph was headed our way. We could see him carrying boxes of files, dumping them in the center of the room.
“We have to get down the hall without him seeing us,” Bosco told me softly. “Can we park ourselves in your office? Is the door locked?”
“I left it open,” I responded. “If we can get to the production booth, that’s halfway down the hall.”
The minute Ralph emptied the carton he carried in his hands and turned, we ran the twenty feet to the tiny soundproofed room. Watching from behind the door, we waited again for him to drop the next batch of files on the pile. As he again turned away, we crossed to my office and tucked ourselves into the shadows. When I saw the cans of acetone lined up on the counter, I took out the camera and pressed the record button.
“I’m going to go call the cops and the fire department. Can you stay out of sight and keep filming?” Bosco spoke into my ear. I nodded. “I’ll just be right outside. Holler if you need me.”
As soon as I saw he made it back to the rear of the building, I aimed the camera in Ralph’s direction, thanking God that the last time I used the camera, I had deleted unnecessary files and recharged the battery. I had a good twenty-five-minute recording time. Hopefully, Ralph would incriminate himself before the camera shut off.
The front office door burst open unexpectedly, and Gloria appeared, her arms full of jugs of what looked like more acetone.
“Aren’t you done yet?” she demanded.
“Just a couple more boxes. I want to make sure that I get it all.”
“I had to go to two different Home Depots to get all this. I have more in the car. Come help me carry it in.” Ralph followed her outside. As the door opened, I could see them lifting the containers from the lit trunk of Gloria’s car, so I risked being seen and stepped forward for a good ten seconds’ worth of filming. Just as quickly, I retreated into the shadows, in anticipation of their return. By the time they came through the door with accelerant-laden arms, I had a good angle to capture them in action. They were bickering as they hurried to get everything set up.
“Did you get the cameras out of the equipment room yet?” Gloria asked.
“I haven’t had time.” Ralph was frustrated, trying to open the cans. “Do we have a screwdriver?”
“In my top desk drawer,” she replied, heading my way. I ducked behind the door, hoping Bosco had the good sense to hide, wherever he was. He had been gone at least six minutes. To my horror, Gloria flipped on the hallway lights and I had barely enough time to move my pocketbook out of sight. I could hear her taking cases off the shelf and putting them down on the floor. A moment later, she emerged from the storage room, arms full. By then, I had positioned the flip phone on top of the frameless box canvas print of Lamson Woods hanging outside my office door. Gloria probably didn’t realize she just helped me obtain the evidence of their criminal conspiracy. Now that the hallway was lit, the camera would produce a beautiful HD recording of their activities. Positioned towards the front office, it captured the action as I hid in the dark. She came back twice more. As they worked, they carried on a conversation that was damning.
“Where are you going to start the fire?” Gloria asked her accomplice.
“I’m setting the smallest fire on the soundstage, and then I’m going to set Dori’s office on fire, so it looks like she tried to destroy evidence. I’ll set this one when I’m ready to leave.”
“Why not start here, so we’re sure all the files are destroyed?”
“Too dangerous,” he insisted. “We could get trapped.”
“It’s too dangerous if the files don’t burn completely, or if somebody sees the smoke before the papers all burn and the computer is fried. Did you scrub the hard drive?”
As they talked on, I tried to figure out how I would get out of my windowless office without discovery. Short of running down the well-lit hallway, I didn’t seem to have a lot of options. Just then, the phone rang, and I heard Gloria gasp.
“Who could that be?” Ralph wondered. “Were we seen?”
“Answer it. Just play it cool.”
“Hello? Who is this? No, ou cannot have the number five with fried rice!”That sounded like Bosco’s handiwork. I could see them huddled around the phone on Gloria’s desk, so I slipped out from behind my office door and tore down the hallway, my purse flying behind me. As soon as I was through the doorway, Bosco grabbed me and pulled me to the wall.
“The cops are on their way, the fire department will be standing by on the street. We have to get out of here.”
“My camera’s in the hall,” I whispered. It’s still rolling.”
“It’s okay,” he insisted, pulling me towards the back door. Outside, in the moonless night, we hurried down the alley. When we reached the complex driveway, we headed down the street. Three police cars, a couple of fire engines, and a slew of emergency vehicles were already waiting, out of sight.
The commander of the police unit peppered me with questions as we stood there. I explained about my camera in the hallway, Ralph’s plan of action, and the fact that they had already loaded equipment into Gloria’s car. Several police officers were deployed with my key to cover the back of the building. As soon as Ralph turned on the light in the soundstage, it would be the cue for the rest of the cops to go through the front office door. On the off-chance that Gloria and Ralph had locked the front door, I supplied my key for that, too. One officer was to grab the camera as evidence, just to make sure it wasn’t destroyed. I drew a quick sketch of the inside of the building, so they had an idea of what to expect. As I did, another police vehicle pulled up and the deputy chief stepped out.
“Okay, tell me what you’ve got,” he directed his second-in-command on the scene. As they were talking, the fire chief approached.
“What do they have inside? Tell me the set up, so we can figure out how we’re going to fight it if it burns. We’ve got chemicals, so get ready, people. Masks on, foam ready, and we need to contain the water we use, because we’re fighting a hazardous chemical fire.”
Ten minutes later, the radios began to crackle and the officers left behind were monitoring the communications.
“We’re ready, boss. He’s in the back of the building.”
“Where’s the woman?”
“We’re not sure. She might be in the other office.”
“Tell the guys to peek inside. We don’t want her locking herself in that room, especially if she’s dumb enough or c
razy enough to light a match.” The fire engines were ready to roll, the firefighters in their gear. They had already hooked the hose up to the hydrant on the street and were ready to turn on the water. We all began moving up the street to get a better view of the finale. One moment, all was quiet. The next, chaos reigned. A loud explosion blew out the windows of Dynamic Productions. The big bang reverberated for several seconds as we watched emergency responders with their tanks of foam pour through the doorway as flames shot out into the night. Even from a distance, we could hear the tinkle of broken glass bouncing on the pavement.
Chapter Thirteen —
“What the hell was that?” said a baffled voice to my right.
“Sounded like an M-80.” A firefighter shook his head, waiting to move in on the next wave of responders.
“What kind of idiot throws an explosive at fire accelerants?” Another man beside him wondered.
“The kind of idiot we’ve got,” the fire chief growled.
It took the police three minutes to take Ralph and Gloria into custody. On seeing so many uniformed officers pouring into Dynamic Productions, Ralph threw his hands up in the air. Gloria, however, went kicking and screaming, calling Ralph every vile name under the sun. It reminded me of Tatiana Stevanovich’s behavior, and when I mentioned it to one of the detectives, he made a point of checking out Gloria’s identification. Like daughter, like mother. It turned out Gloria’s real name was Galina Stevanovich and she was working in concert with her daughter and son-in-law. They had extensive ties to an organized crime money-laundering service based in Brighton Beach, also called Little Odessa by the Ukrainian immigrants who came by the droves in the nineties. Suddenly, it made sense that Ralph spent his time at casinos and racetracks with his lady love.
It turned out that Ralph left a surly wife for an even surlier mistress. Gloria got a deal when she rolled over on Ralph, Tati, and Gregory Wink, whose real name was actually Yury Petrovich, hence the alias of George Peterson. The United States Attorney decided Galina was a whole lot more important than a washed-up old philanderer like Ralph, since she had the ability to give up names of people in the business of cleaning cash and transferring it back to the old country, where it was influencing politics and organized crime.
It turned out that Ralph was using our money to keep the company afloat and he couldn’t afford to give it back. He never had any intention of buying our shares. It was all part of the set-up. He hadn’t just intended to burn down Dynamic Productions. There was also a Thermos of coffee with a healthy dollop of Ketamine in Ralph’s van. The plan was to set fire to Bosco’s apartment, killing him in the process, and take me captive. Once I was disoriented and confused, Ralph would drop me at the side of the road, far from the scene of the murderous fire, after planting evidence on me. He would kill two birds with one stone, getting rid of Bosco as a forensic investigator and getting rid of me as a junior partner and investor. He thought he would be rich once Gloria’s friends bought into the company. It turned out they planned to kill Ralph, once Gloria married him. Ralph, it seems, had been separated from his wife for the better part of a year, and he was just months away from receiving his final divorce decree. The scope of betrayal all around was numbing.
Once Bosco and his colleagues at Honshield Walker put together an in-depth report on the financial state of the production company, right down to the fraudulent bills and the misuse of investor funds, Ralph agreed to release the full amount of the money owed us. His lawyers realized just how much evidence we had gathered and encouraged him to make us whole, financially, because they wanted Ralph to take a plea deal as the result of diminished capacity. His lawyers claimed that Ralph’s mental state was affected by the drugs he was taking to maintain his lifestyle with his mistress. The Viagra supposedly caused Ralph to experience transient global amnesia, anxiety, and depression, which his defense team claimed resulted in his bad behavior. The need for Ralph to appear remorseful outweighed the lawyers’ need to be paid, so they encouraged him to liquidate assets, including the boat and the condo. The stolen Dynamic Productions equipment showed up at a resale shop in New York, and we took it back. The insurance company wasn’t responsible for the damage caused by the fire when Galina ignited the blaze with her firecracker, so we lost the facility and everything that was damaged by smoke or water. Still, we got most of our money back from Ralph, and Stan, our insurance agent, was more than thrilled to present us with a check, once the police investigation ended.
We chose to put much of the money towards a new home. There was talk of rebuilding on the old lot, but in the end, we chose to give our marriage a fresh start. We sold the land where we raised our son. Bosco still had almost six months to go on his lease, so we decided we would take our time before we started looking for a new place. It would be part of the process of rediscovering ourselves. In the meantime, we would live in Bosco’s apartment. I was growing fond of that cozy space.
Two weeks after Ralph, Galina, and the others were arrested, Bosco and I got to work pushing for a settlement in Kevin’s death. We presented the many cards and letters from friends and relatives of the drunk driver who killed our son to the insurance company, as evidence of negligence and reckless endangerment. Bosco had taken the letters with him when he moved out, keeping them in a shoebox on the top shelf of the closet of the second bedroom. We informed the insurance company that we planned to share our story publicly, including giving reporters the opportunity to interview those who expressed regrets. We finally agreed to a settlement out of court. It was a compromise, but it still felt a little like some small sense of justice for Kevin. It was acknowledgment that people could have and should have prevented the driver from getting behind the wheel.
I was officially out of work, as were my colleagues, thanks to Ralph and the fraudulent Gloria. We regrouped, rented space, and bought more equipment, determined to serve our clients. Most were very supportive, having heard the lurid tales in the media. Dom, Tony, and Kendall were happy to be employed again, and once again, Bosco and I invested in the new company. We were a smaller production house, with a lot less overhead, but a lot more creativity. Within a month, we were producing decent commercials, even without all the fancy bells and whistles of the Dynamic Productions facilities.
On the third Sunday after the fire, I came back from the apartment pool in the late afternoon, wearing a caftan and carrying my towel and my paperback, only to find my overnight case packed and waiting by the front door.
“Bosco?” I called him, but there was no answer. I was confused. Was he kicking me out? I went into the bedroom, only to find my closet empty. The rest of my clothes were in plastic bins, also packed and ready to go. What was going on?
“Hey, babe,” Bosco greeted me, coming through the front door. “How was the pool?”
“Great,” I managed to say as calmly as I could. “What’s up with the suitcase? Are you kicking me out?”
“Hell, no. The owner of the complex showed up last week, asking me if we would mind switching apartments, and he offered us a great price break, since we only have a little more than five months left on the lease. It turns out there’s a plan to renovate each of the units as condos. He needs this one for the new model, since it’s on the ground floor. We’re heading upstairs to the corner unit. We’re penthouse people now, Dori. Wait till you see the place. It’s fantastic.” I gazed around the living room, realizing the walls were bare and some of the furniture was missing.
“And you didn’t think to mention it to me?” I stood watching him, hands on my hips, feeling relieved and yet annoyed.
“Nope. I wanted it to be a surprise. If I told you, it wouldn’t be one.”
“Did it ever occur to you that I might not like the place, Bosco?”
“Only one way to find out. Come take a look.” He picked up my overnight case and a lamp. We took the elevator up to the fourth floor. A short jaunt down the hallway led us to 4C. Inserting the key into the lock, Bosco gave the knob a turn and opened the doo
r to a large, sunny unit, nearly twice the size of the one downstairs. The large kitchen was open to the dining area and living room, sporting new quartz counters and stainless steel appliances. Off the living room I could see the roof deck, with a distant city view. Bosco and I had talked about how lovely it must be to live on the top floor, with such a great outdoor space.
Bosco was pleased to show me around, leading me down the hallway to a larger second bedroom he said would make a good home office and guest room. A full bath was located next to it, along with a laundry closet. We went through to the master bedroom, with its ensuite bathroom, newly tiled, and large walk-in closet. The sliding glass doors faced the roof deck. Bosco took my hand, leading me outside. A small patio table was flanked by two matching chairs along the deck railing. A white tablecloth fluttered in the wind, topped by a small vase with a single red rose and a bottle of Champagne sitting in an ice bucket, accompanied by a pair of wine flutes. Through the air, I could hear the sound of Stan Getz on the saxophone.
“What do you think?” he asked. I could hear the hope in his voice.
“Well, it’s very nice, but don’t you think we should have discussed it first?”
“No. We have something much more important to discuss.”
“We do?” I glanced at him as he popped the cork.
“Champagne?”
“Do we have something to celebrate?” I inquired. A slight smile played on Bosco’s face, and I knew he was up to something.
“That depends.” He took an envelope out of his pocket and slid it across the table. I saw the airline logo and my heart started to beat a little faster. Flipping open the flap, I removed the pair of tickets to Rio de Janeiro. As I stared down, I caught sight of the date.
“Why did you pick this date?” My heart was pounding inside my chest and I found it almost impossible to catch my breath.
“You know why,” he smiled at me. There was a trembling, an electrical charge that jumped the distance between us and fused us together as our fingers met. Bosco was excited. “We can explore. We can listen to good jazz and dance. We can get married again….”
No Hiding Behind the Potted Palms! A Dance with Danger Mystery #7 Page 9