by Karen Rose
Chandler Nystrom had the build of an athlete who’d allowed his body to go to seed. His face was florid, broken capillaries criss-crossing his nose.
He’s a heavy drinker, was Gwyn’s first thought. She wondered why that was. He stopped in front of them and she was gratified to see that Thorne was easily eight inches taller. Maybe ten.
She was more gratified to see the flicker of apprehension in Nystrom’s eyes as he had to look up to see Thorne’s face. He was nervous. Good. He should be.
‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ Nystrom hissed.
Thorne didn’t blink, didn’t back down. But the hand he had on her back tensed. ‘I’ve come to talk to you.’
Nystrom’s face grew redder with fury. ‘Well, you can just get out. Now. You have one hell of a lot of nerve. First you kill Richard, then Patricia, and then you just “happen” to find Darian’s body. You should be locked up.’
To look at Thorne’s face, one would never know he was affected by the words, but his hand on Gwyn’s back twitched, tightening on the fabric of her blouse. Still, he met the man’s angry gaze steadily.
‘I haven’t killed anyone. You know that now. And you knew it then too.’
Bleary eyes narrowed. ‘You are full of shit, White. You always were.’
Again Thorne let the insult fly by. ‘You’re so upset by Patricia’s death,’ he said calmly. ‘I wonder why you weren’t more upset that she’d been raped by her brother when she was still in high school.’
The color drained from Nystrom’s face and his mouth fell open. It took him ten full seconds to regain his composure enough to stammer, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
Thorne’s hand relaxed on Gwyn’s back. ‘I don’t know how you lasted as long on the police force as you did. Suspects must have had your number in a heartbeat. Your poker face is non-existent.’
Nystrom’s nostrils flared, his rage returning. ‘Fuck you, White.’
‘Why did Richard’s killer put his key ring in his body?’ Thorne asked quietly, and once again Nystrom was struck silent for long seconds.
‘There was no key ring,’ he finally said stiffly. ‘But you should know, since you killed him.’ Thorne simply looked at him, and Nystrom grew fidgety. ‘I said, get out. I will call the cops on you.’ He stomped past them to open the door, glaring daggers at them. ‘Out. This is private property and you are trespassing.’
‘All right,’ Thorne answered, never losing his cool. Gwyn felt a swell of pride at his self-control, because she knew this had not been an easy confrontation. The last time he’d seen this man was in court as Nystrom testified against him on a murder charge. The time before that, he’d seen Nystrom’s boot as he’d kicked his head.
The three of them turned to leave, JD and Gwyn having said not a single word to the man. Thorne paused at the door and gave Nystrom his card. ‘Be careful,’ he said. ‘Somebody is snipping off loose ends. Don’t think they don’t know who you are, even if they haven’t revealed themselves to you.’
Sneering, Nystrom ripped the card into tiny pieces, tossing them out the door with great drama. They caught on the light breeze and scattered, falling to the grass outside. ‘Fuck off, White.’
Thorne gave him a single nod and walked out, tucking Gwyn’s arm through his, keeping his steps slow so that she didn’t have to run to keep up. But they paused to listen when JD stopped in the doorway and handed Nystrom another card.
‘I’m not here in an official capacity,’ JD said quietly, ‘but my boss said to give you his card. If you need help or think of anything that could be helpful, please call him. It’s Lieutenant Hyatt. Two Ts.’
Nystrom’s eyes narrowed to slits. ‘Tell your boss that I don’t need his fucking help.’
‘He figured you’d say that,’ JD said companionably. ‘He asked me to tell you that he’s got eyes on you, and for you not to wait until it’s too late to call him. Your buddy was rotting by the time we found him.’ He smiled. ‘Have a nice day.’
He left the building and walked to where they’d parked the SUVs, leaving Gwyn and Thorne to follow in stunned silence.
‘What was that?’ Thorne exploded once they were at the vehicles.
‘Did Hyatt really say all that?’ Gwyn demanded.
‘He did. He’d checked into Nystrom for me. Couldn’t give me details, as the IA investigations are sealed, but he got enough dirt on the down-low to know Nystrom was going to be a problem. After Hinman was found last night, he told me to give Nystrom his personal message.’
‘Huh.’ It was all Gwyn could think to say. Maybe Hyatt wasn’t quite so bad. At least he was aiming his grandstanding at someone who deserved it this time.
‘Where to next?’ JD asked cheerfully.
‘You enjoyed that way too much,’ Thorne grumbled. ‘But I did too. We need to meet with Ming and Mowry to discuss the club. We’ve got employees who need to work.’
‘Maybe we can call for food delivery,’ JD suggested. ‘If we’ve hit a lull, we should eat. I don’t want a repeat of yesterday. I was hungry enough to eat the pizza and the boxes.’ He left them and got into his SUV.
Gwyn swung herself up into her own seat, then threw Thorne a sultry look when he slid behind the wheel. ‘I can think of a lot of other ways to spend the time,’ she said.
Thorne choked out a laugh. ‘You’re a tease.’
She sniffed, pretending to be offended. ‘I’m only a tease if I don’t deliver.’
Thorne put the SUV in gear. ‘We’ll make it a fast meeting.’
Baltimore, Maryland,
Wednesday 15 June, 12.00 P.M.
Mowry was packed. Like, packed to move. Thorne frowned when he, Gwyn and JD entered his manager’s small apartment and saw boxes stacked against the wall. Some were labeled with rooms – kitchen, bedroom, bath – but some had names. He saw his name, Gwyn’s and Ming’s written in Mowry’s distinct handwriting.
‘Where do you want this?’ Thorne asked, lifting the takeout bags he’d picked up at the Ethiopian place they all liked. ‘And what’s with the boxes?’
Mowry closed the door behind them and gave JD a slightly irritated glare. ‘I’ll tell you later, Thorne. Put the food on the table. Ming’s getting plates.’
JD put his hands up in a gesture of surrender. ‘I can wait outside if you’ve got confidential business.’
Mowry shook his head. ‘No, it’s okay. Come in and eat. You’ll hear what I have to say soon enough anyway. I’ll tell these two, they’ll tell Lucy, then she’ll tell you. I might as well cut out the middleman.’
Thorne exchanged a glance with Gwyn, who looked as worried as he felt.
‘Hey, boss,’ Ming said when they got to the table. ‘And hey to you too, Thorne.’
‘No respect,’ Thorne complained without heat, bumping Ming’s fist when he held it out. The guy was every bit as big as Thorne. Maybe bigger. Ming was Samoan, his skin a shade more bronze than Thorne’s. Their size, similar ethnicity, and love of rugby had drawn them together years ago.
Gwyn drew Ming down to kiss his cheek, her smile strained. ‘So, you guys were okay yesterday. Pissed off, but okay. What’s happened since?’
‘Sit.’ Mowry took the chair at the head of the table. ‘Let’s take care of the easy stuff first. Ming and I went over the books.’
Ming snorted. ‘That wasn’t the easy part.’
Mowry handed him a styrofoam box. ‘Eat. I meant the easy part of the books. You know, the good news.’ He said the word sarcastically as he opened his own meal. ‘The part where we get to tell them we can only stay closed for another week before we run through our cash reserves. And that doesn’t count paychecks. The liquor distributor is already demanding his money. It’s not due until next week, but he’s afraid the cops will seize our assets.’ He shoved a bite of flatbread-wrapped beef into his mouth.
Gwyn’s e
yes flittered closed for a few seconds. ‘That’s the good news?’
Mowry swallowed, nodding. ‘Yep.’
Thorne frowned. ‘We should have more cash than that.’ He’d been ready to front the paychecks, but he’d thought they’d be okay for longer than a week.
‘Part of the bad news,’ Ming said quietly. ‘About half the reserves have been siphoned off, all within the last two weeks.’ He glanced at Mowry. ‘The money had been funneled to petty cash and withdrawn.’
Gwyn closed her eyes again, shaking her head. ‘Fuck.’
‘Why fuck?’ JD asked.
‘Because Mowry handles petty cash,’ Thorne said grimly.
‘And because,’ Mowry added, his stress clear in his tone, ‘Mowry has been paying a member of the Circus Freaks gang for information about his band of brothers.’
‘Which is how we knew who to kick out Sunday night,’ Ming finished. ‘But it makes it look like Mowry has been stealing from the club.’
‘We know you haven’t,’ Thorne murmured. ‘Is that why you’re packed to run?’
Mowry cast another furtive look at JD, then sighed. ‘Shit. Look, as soon as I got arrested, I knew I was going to have to leave.’
‘Because of who you were before you came to Sheidalin,’ JD said levelly, rolling his eyes when Mowry’s own eyes popped wide with shock. ‘Did you think I didn’t check on you, Sheldon? On any of you who came in contact with Lucy, who got close enough to hurt her? After what we went through with Ev—’ He cut himself off. ‘Sorry, Gwyn.’
‘It’s okay,’ she said, but her cheeks bore the dark flush of embarrassment. ‘Did you know about me? About what Evan did?’
Ming tensed, and on a man that large it was a terrifying sight. ‘What did he do?’
Thorne gave him a slight shake of his head. ‘Later, man.’
Ming nodded, looking unhappy.
JD’s nod was even less happy. ‘I knew what you’d told them at the hospital and I knew that they did a kit anyway. I almost asked you about it, but it was your business. Your story to tell. I didn’t even tell Lucy.’ He winced. ‘She told me last night and she knew I wasn’t surprised. I can’t ever get anything past her. She gave me shit for not telling her, I’ll have you know.’
Thorne was torn between respect for the cop and the desire to tear JD’s arms off and beat him with them. He’d known. For four fucking years. He’d watched Gwyn stumble through her life like a zombie and he’d said nothing. I could have done something. I could have helped her.
He looked up when he felt Gwyn squeezing the hand he hadn’t realized he’d clenched into a fist. ‘It wouldn’t have mattered,’ she whispered, once again seeming to read his thoughts. ‘I wasn’t ready to deal with it yet. I had to do it on my own. So it turned out okay. Let it go, Thorne.’
Gritting his teeth, he nodded. ‘Okay. So you checked up on all of us, JD? Even me?’
JD met his eyes directly. Unapologetically. ‘Yes.’
And Thorne had to admit he would have done the same. But this wasn’t about him or Gwyn or even Evan. It was about Mowry, who looked ready to flee at any moment. ‘What did you find on Mowry?’
‘That he was a dumb-assed punk who played lookout for some dangerous men but turned them in when they robbed a store and killed the owner. He ran away with his guitar, his insides intact, and his head attached. And not a lot more. You met him when he came in to audition for the band shortly before you opened the club.’ JD’s smile was kind. ‘And you got him a new ID so that the thugs he’d turned on couldn’t find him, and gave him a new start.’
Mowry was staring at JD open-mouthed. Gwyn was staring at Thorne, her eyes soft. He’d never told her and he’d assumed she’d be angry to learn the truth so many years later, but he saw no anger. Only approval.
And because he wanted to drown in that approval but didn’t have the time, Thorne forced himself to turn back to JD, studying him skeptically. ‘How did you dig all that up?’
‘I’m a detective,’ JD said very slowly. ‘My job is detecting. I find stuff out about people. It’s what I do.’
Ming coughed to cover a laugh. ‘Sorry,’ he said when Thorne glared.
‘Yeah, yeah, I get that you’re all super-cop, but how?’
JD shrugged. ‘I got suspicious when Mowry just showed up in the system. Next time you build a new ID, give the person a backstory, for God’s sake. I started digging, asking questions here and there. It took me a while,’ he admitted. ‘It’s a good ID. If you’re worried that the cops are going to start investigating you, that’s unlikely. And if I get wind that they are, I’ll discourage it.’
‘Why?’ Mowry asked, clearly not buying JD’s helpfulness.
‘Because Lucy loves you like a brother. You’ve been good to her. And if that’s not a good enough reason, I’ll rent you a U-Haul truck and you can run.’
‘They will investigate, though,’ Ming insisted. ‘The money is gone.’
Gwyn was feverishly tapping on her phone, accessing the bank account. ‘Fuck,’ she hissed. ‘It really is gone, but as of today, not over the last couple of weeks.’
Ming looked over her shoulder at her phone. ‘Huh. The ledgers give the same balance, but show the money being withdrawn over time.’
Gwyn shook her head. ‘I looked at the ledgers on Tuesday morning – last time was three a.m. I spent hours combing through the books to see if there was anything that would catch the cops’ attention. There wasn’t. And the petty cash account was intact. So was the bank account.’
‘You’re saying somebody changed the ledgers between Tuesday morning and now?’ Mowry asked. ‘Who would do that? And how? And why?’
‘That’s exactly what I’m saying,’ Gwyn said grimly. ‘And I can prove it. I printed out the last year’s worth of ledgers. As for who . . . Tavilla is trying to bring Thorne down. I don’t know who could actually have made the changes, though. Somebody who had access to our server and who understands the accounting software. I don’t know exactly how they’d have done it. But that’s what happened.’
JD was nodding. ‘Do you still have the printouts?’
‘I do.’
‘Good. Because the state’s attorney may try to get a warrant for your books. We can’t stop that, but we can show them that the existing books are doctored. That puts the rest of the evidence in question.’
Mowry shuddered in relief. ‘I might not have to move.’
Ming clapped him on the back, causing him to nearly faceplant into his food. ‘I still want what’s in the box you were filling for me.’
Mowry straightened his back, wincing slightly. ‘Fuck off, Clive.’
Ming took the jibe good-naturedly. ‘I’ll give you that one as a freebie because you’re damn giddy right now. But call me that again and we shall have words, Sheldon.’
‘Boys,’ Gwyn warned. She closed her bank app. ‘The ledgers can be verified, but the money is still gone. We have to be able to show it was stolen for the bank to replace it. If it looks like we withdrew it, we can’t file a claim.’
‘We’ll worry about that later,’ Thorne said. ‘We can still make payroll.’
Gwyn looked close to tears. ‘How? We’ve got so many people depending on us.’
‘I can cover payroll,’ Thorne said softly. ‘Don’t worry.’
She shook her head. ‘I’m not going to let you clean out your savings for our company’s payroll.’
He brought her hand to his lips. ‘We’ll discuss it later,’ he said firmly, then looked at Ming and Mowry, who were watching them avidly. ‘What?’
Mowry’s grin was quick and sharp. ‘About time. Way to go, Thorne.’
Ming’s grin was slower to spread, but nearly split his face. ‘Ditto, boss.’
Thorne had to bite back his own grin, because Gwyn was sputtering. ‘What else?’ he asked before she could get a w
ord in.
Mowry put his phone on the table and spun it around so that Thorne and Gwyn could see it. ‘This came in right before you got here,’ he said. ‘It’s from my contact in the Circus Freaks.’
It was a text. ‘“Our bosses need to talk”,’ Thorne read. He’d been expecting some kind of summons ever since the Freaks’ dealers had turned up dead, stuffed with Sheidalin matchbooks. ‘Where and when?’
‘No!’ Gwyn exploded. ‘Absolutely not.’
‘You can’t talk to the head of the Freaks, Thorne,’ JD protested. ‘Not right now.’
Thorne shrugged. ‘I think it’s better to talk to him than to start some kind of war over non-existent turf. I don’t think he believes we were behind the death of his boys. If he did, he’d have done something already, like burning the club down, or my house, or Mowry’s apartment building. He likes fire,’ he added when JD stared at him.
‘That’s true,’ Mowry said. ‘They wouldn’t have waited more than a day to retaliate.’
‘How did they know we were on our way here?’ Gwyn asked suspiciously. ‘It seems too much of a coincidence that they messaged you right before we arrived.’
‘They’re probably watching us,’ Thorne said. ‘Another reason to believe that they don’t think we’re involved. They want us to know they’re watching and that they haven’t killed us yet. Tell your contact I’ll be happy to meet with his boss.’
‘I don’t like it,’ JD grumbled. ‘It’s not safe.’
‘I think it would be less safe if he turned them down,’ Mowry said.
‘Agreed.’ Thorne glanced at Gwyn.
She nodded grudgingly. ‘I’m going with you.’ She held up a finger to cut off his interruption. ‘And if you say it’s not safe for me, then it’s not safe for you.’
He narrowed his eyes at her, considering the risk. She was right, unfortunately. ‘Fine. What else?’ he asked his employees.
‘Just Laura,’ Ming said. ‘She quit.’
Thorne stilled. ‘What do you mean?’
‘She quit,’ Ming repeated. ‘I called her this morning and asked if she could come for this meeting, and she told me then. Said she was going home to her folks. I told her she should wait until everything died down, that if she still wanted to quit, we’d give her a reference. She was determined, though.’