by Karen Harper
* * *
Nick was glad to see Claire come through the door in one piece. She was cradling two more beautiful orchids when the backyard had already turned into a jungle of them. She put them down on the foyer tile and walked into his arms.
“What would I do without you?” she said, holding him tight, as if to assure him she was safe. “All’s well that ends well with Gracie, at least, though Ann says Brit’s distraught. At least Jace is with her, though I guess they were arguing too.”
“Lexi fell asleep in the back room, but I fed her some early dinner—mac and cheese, of course, which the microwave and I can handle. Did you take your meds or herbs? You need some rest. Heck and Gina are stopping by soon, because I had him ask his NPD contact about the bugs Jensen says were in the BAA office.”
“Heck and his sources,” she said, stepping back and looking up into his face. He kissed her nose, her cheek, her mouth. “I’ll just run to the bathroom and be back out to see them. Mac and cheese will do for me, master chef.”
Nick hustled to reheat more of that, adding a slice of avocado and tomato. Claire had barely finished it when the doorbell sounded, and he went to let Heck and Gina in. It was only Heck.
“She’s nervous again,” he told Nick before he could ask. “Rereading some of her med school books, but they’re in Spanish, and who knows if the medical training there is anything like here—her latest worry. I know you got worries too, boss. I couldn’t find out much. I know you—and my contact—both said the audio surveillance devices were state-of-the-art, but I doubt it. You know you been complaining about how your cell phone CPU runs everything slow lately? Let me see your phone a sec.”
They sat in the front living room, and Nick turned on lights, explaining that Claire had to wake up Lexi to get her into her own bed. “The demands of beginning school,” he told Heck as he handed over his phone. His tech genius always amazed him by the way he buzzed and punched around so fast on electronic devices.
“Whoooaa,” Heck told him. “You think the BAA office is bugged? I was thinking that with how someone’s risked a lot to give you a dead gator and snake, you’re maybe being bugged too.”
“You know I’m so paranoid from the past, I have the house swept every couple of weeks, and I did it after the gift of the dead gator. But you mean maybe my location is being traced by my phone, like Jace does in the sky with the FBI’s Stingray program?”
“Nope. Bugged, right here, but I just disabled it so that this phone isn’t spying on you anymore. Maybe you’d better get me Claire’s phone too.”
“What are you talking about? A spy bug has been inserted into my phone, which has not been out of my possession?”
“Yep. Cell phone spying. Someone downloaded—probably just through a simple phone call to your number where the phone didn’t even ring—a monitoring and recording program on your phone. It also acts as a microphone during any call you make. Whoever did this can receive remote alerts when you dial. Anyhow, you saying it ran slow—which means too much CPU used—was the tip-off. That and you and Claire seem to make enemies everywhere you go. This is getting sticky, boss. Someone really values that little acreage of the BAA.”
“What would I do without you? Are you sure it’s disabled now?”
“Yep, but go ahead and get me Claire’s phone. You said she was with the police today, so someone might know that now too.”
Nick swore under his breath as he went into the master bedroom and took Claire’s phone from the dresser. As he headed back toward Heck, he could hear her and Lexi’s voices in the hall bathroom, even over the running tub water.
“You know, boss,” Heck said after he had disabled the listening device on Claire’s phone too, “someone could make a mint selling software to shut this kind of spying down. Might take it up myself—in my spare time. Get some money, a nice house, impress my lady.”
“I can’t believe it—the phones, the extent of the spying, I mean. Or that someone is clever and powerful—and scared—enough to toss dead, dangerous animals in our yard one minute, and the next be savvy about something like this I hadn’t even heard of. Once again, my friend, you are worth your weight in gold. This case is getting to be a damn dangerous swamp, with some sort of human animal lurking in it. If we can just figure out the why, maybe we can get to the who. My money’s still on Stan Helter, so maybe I’m going to have to rattle his cage.”
“Pretty funny, considering this case.”
“Yeah, but I don’t think any of this is funny. We’re missing something, Heck, just like I was missing that cell-site simulator right on my phone that was in my jeans or suitcoat pocket. And now our enemy will know we’re onto that, and that we’re not going away. So what will he—or she—do next?”
23
Claire joined them and was annoyed—and scared—to hear their phones had been bugged without even being out of their possession. Heck was just getting ready to leave their house when the doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it,” Nick said, jumping up. “It’s dark—almost nine.”
Claire darted to the library window. “Jace’s car. He’s on the porch with Brit.”
“I’ll be on my way, boss,” Heck said, getting up to follow him out.
“No, Heck,” she called after him, “don’t leave. You’ll need to check both of their phones too.”
“Right,” Nick said, hitting his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Sweetheart, without you and Heck—and Bronco—I’d be more distracted than I already am.”
He opened the front door with Claire behind him. In the foyer she nearly tripped over the two orchid plants she’d brought from Gracie’s earlier. And what was wrong with her too, she scolded herself, that she hadn’t moved them out of the way for hours? Their lives were in chaos, but, she prayed, not really in danger. So far, dead animals and phone bugging—methods of a hands-off coward. For Lexi’s sake and the baby’s, maybe she should try to sit this case out. But she was probably in too deep now. She really cared about Brit, Ann—Gracie too. And, of course, Jace.
Claire could tell Brit had been crying and Jace had been arguing. Brit’s hair was a mess as if she’d been running her hands through it. Jace looked flushed but grim.
“Come in,” Nick told them. “Brit, we know about the court order to have Tiberia moved to a facility near Tampa. We went to see you at the BAA, but you’d just left. I don’t think there’s any legal way to stop that, considering everything, and maybe the environment will be better for the cat. If there’s another attack at the BAA, someone might hurt the tiger too.”
Brit and Jace said nothing as they stepped in. Trouble between the two of them too? Claire wondered.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Jace finally said.
Claire steered them toward the library instead of the back room. Out there, they could be watched through the glass if someone scaled the fence. The BAA fences, even the ones along the ranch’s border, had not stopped even an old woman, let alone a possible attacker and murderer. They were better off huddled here in the enclosed library.
Jace and Brit sat on the couch. She moved a bit away from him, but he scooted nearer and threw his arm behind her but not around her. They exchanged greetings with Heck, who was perched on the big ottoman near the chair Nick took. Claire sat in the upholstered one facing Brit and Jace.
“Claire,” Brit said, “Mother told me she had a feeling you already knew about Tiberia being forcefully removed in a few days when she saw you.”
“That’s true. I went with the police to question Gracie Cobham today and—”
“This legal tiger kidnapping is all her fault, isn’t it?” Brit exploded, leaning forward as if she would vault off the couch. “The letter mentioned her complaint against me, and I don’t need that on my record! I’m not an idiot—I know the tiger shouldn’t be kept at the BAA with all that’s happened—but I should control the an
imal’s destiny, not her!”
Nick said, “Brit, you must realize that Tiberia going to a good, safe place is the best thing for—”
“But I had a deal where he was going to the Naples Zoo, and I was going to work part-time there, a fill-in if they needed help with the Malayan tigers, other large cats and the Florida panther they have that some idiot shot in the face and blinded. I was going to have my foot in the door there, and we’d either sell the land to Helter or hire someone to run the BAA for me and Mother. But now, with this legal letter about a Tampa-area zoo taking him—well, I know they’re an excellent facility...”
When she broke into tears, Jace patted her back, and Claire got a tissue for her. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose while everyone waited.
“It was Dad’s dream, his and Mother’s,” Brit choked out, “but I—I was so glad to help, and then Tiberia seemed like a gift from heaven—for me, and to bring more visitors in. But if I moved on in my life—if I stayed here with Jace, like he wants—I would have to work at the zoo here. There’s nothing else—no other place for me to work with big cats nearby.”
Nick said, “So you and Jace are planning to marry and stay here?”
She shrugged. “We were. But now that damned letter that old woman sent screws everything up.”
Jace said, “Unless you can get that zoo job here without Tiberia to hand over, I guess I’m second place and you’ll move on from Southwest Florida and away from me. Brit, you know I have commitments here, at least for now.”
“I told you it doesn’t have to be that way,” Brit said, her voice nasal.
They’d evidently argued this out before, Claire thought. She turned to look at Jace.
“Husbands move for their wives’ jobs sometimes in this enlightened day and age,” Brit plunged on. “We can have Lexi visit in the summers and some weekends.”
Claire didn’t speak or move, but her eyes widened and her nostrils flared. She gritted her teeth. One of her worst nightmares of the many she’d faced in her life was that Jace would try to take Lexi half-time. And if he wasn’t even in this area...
“Nick,” Claire said, turning toward him, “are you sure there’s no way to arrange for Tiberia to stay here? To counteract that order if the Naples Zoo is willing to take him—and Brit?”
“I can’t promise, but I’ll look at the letter and make some calls. Now since you two are here, Heck has something to explain to you about the search for Ben’s killer—if there was one. He figured out that Claire and I have had our phones bugged, tapped, whatever you want to call it, and I’d like for Heck to examine your phones too. It just takes him a second.”
“But it hasn’t been out of my possession,” Jace said, digging his out of his shirt pocket. “And the FBI checked it a couple of weeks ago before I started flying Stingray.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Heck said, reaching for it. “This is done by the bad guys with a simple phone call you don’t know about and a quick download, the ultimate in malware.”
Brit was getting hers out of the purse at her feet. “Since all the media hoopla over Dad’s death and then Jackson’s injury, I’ve hardly had mine on. Too many crank calls, media, etcetera.”
“Caramba,” Heck said, “it’s here on yours, Jace, and I’m going to kill it. ’Course whoever’s doing this can get right back on, so you, Nick and Claire gonna have to change your numbers ASAP. Hello, you evil SOB out there, if you’re listening now,” Heck said as if he were holding a microphone. “Just kidding. I knocked it out before I said that.”
“What about mine?” Brit asked, stretching to hand it to Heck. “Like I said, I might not have that bug since I’ve tried to ignore the phone. I’ve changed Mother’s number but didn’t have time to do mine. This is diabolical, but doesn’t it mean someone really did kill Dad and that Jackson’s injury is not some freak accident? Someone has a huge stake in all this, if he—or she—is willing to go to all this time and high-tech expense.”
“Too much is still undetermined or circumstantial,” Nick said, “but lawyers and the police always check out circumstantial.”
Heck finished with Jace’s phone and handed it back to him. Staring at the monitor, Jace muttered, “And I thought the way the Feds track criminals with my flyovers was state-of-the-art.”
“Too many people know about Stingray,” Heck said, starting to work on Brit’s phone. “Media coverage. I haven’t seen much public info on this cell-site simulator, but it works kind of the same as what you do, Jace. Still got to have a real expensive analyzer.”
Pocketing his phone, Jace said, “Yeah, well, the equipment I fly with is around four hundred thousand dollars for a suitcase-size brain.”
“So,” Nick said in the sudden silence, “whoever did this to our phones—whoever thinks we’re a danger—is probably rich. Another vote for Stan Helter over someone like Gracie Cobham.”
“Or over Lane,” Brit added. “Like I said, I know that they were not only looking at him, but at me too lately. But I’m barely making ends meet. So, is it on my phone too, Heck?”
“Nope,” he said, shaking his head. “Of the four of you, yours is clean.”
“Well, it must be, like I said, that I had it off for a while. Besides, whoever is behind this obviously thought it was enough to use those—those physical surveillance bugs in our office. I’m going to have Mother’s house and my apartment swept for bugs. The police gave me a good person to call.”
She leaned back against the couch and crossed her arms over her chest protectively, much closer to Jace than before. Claire wished she could be objective about all this, but she could draw several conclusions. First, Jace must have proposed marriage and that they stay in Naples. If Brit had agreed before, she’d changed her mind now, because she desperately needed a job and wanted one working with big cats. And, especially with Tiberia as a bargaining chip, she’d thought she’d had an in with the Naples Zoo. Had she gone behind Jace’s back on that as she’d gone behind her father’s to deal with Helter?
Second, it was strange—especially since Brit had obviously had her phone on sometimes, including when Jackson had called her right before he got hit—that hers had not been tampered with, since she was at the center of this case.
Third, it made Claire sick to admit it, but when it came to why Brit’s phone was clear, she thought the lady doth protest too much, expounding on reasons it might be clear before Heck even checked it—as if she knew it would be but couldn’t refuse to hand it over. It was one of the forensic tech ten tips for an interview: a guilty person will give many nervous, verbose reasons for their innocence, perhaps even before they are accused or caught.
Interestingly, that doth protest too much line from Hamlet that Mother read long ago to her and Darcy was about a young man whose father had been murdered. And here sat Brit in tears again, yet still looking defiant—or guilty. But who could she have set up to do the murder for her, and why then, with the place loaded with children? Claire knew she’d been wrong about suspects before with nearly deadly results. And poor Jace. Could he have fallen for a killer?
* * *
Jace hated the silence in his car as he and Brit finally drove toward the BAA. They’d stopped at Brit’s place to get some clothes for her, then at his place too, where, exhausted, they’d fallen asleep on the couch. It was late, after 2:00 a.m. He really did want to comfort, not confront Brit, but she was making it hard. Besides, he was furious with himself too. Damn, what kind of a father was he? Was he so obsessed with Brit that he hadn’t even asked to tuck Lexi in bed, before Nick had said he’d carried her upstairs? What if Lexi learned he was there and didn’t even try to see her?
“Thanks for insisting on coming along, but I can’t ask you to keep spending nights there with me.” Brit picked up their argument.
“I’ve already said yes. Once the tiger’s gone, we’ll hire someone. You’ve said you’re not thinkin
g straight, so try listening to me.”
But he was starting to think she actually was unstable, not that losing her father, Tiberia and probably the BAA wouldn’t be enough to shake anyone. But she’d flared up so fast at him more than once today that he’d feared she could lose her temper, go over the edge. And she hadn’t told him anything about her dealings with the local zoo at first, though he liked the fact that she was trying to stay here. It reminded him she hadn’t told him she’d gone to Stan Helter until well after she’d done it. So what else was she hiding, he fumed as they left the lights of the city behind and headed out on the highway toward the BAA.
“Look, honey,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady, “you can’t be staying there alone where your father was killed and where Jackson was attacked.”
“If dad was murdered, if Jackson didn’t fall.”
“Don’t you think Jackson ending up that way is proof there was foul play with your father?”
“Yes, but Dad could be unstable. The drinking, for example.”
“I know he was bad that last night we both talked to him, but, believe me, I’ve seen men with his training and toughness not crack under pressure. He had not only physical instruction years ago, but how-to-be-tough mental training too. I don’t think he walked in that tiger cage on his own because he was drunk or despondent. He’d been through worse in the corps, serving his country for big stakes.”
“Now you’re sounding like Claire with all her analyzing. But fine, at least for tonight. I can sleep on Jackson’s couch and you can have his single bed. The police have searched the place for signs of someone else inside and found nothing.”