BOOKER Box Set #2 (A Private Investigator Thriller Series of Crime and Suspense): Volumes 4-6

by John W. Mefford

  He held his gaze for an extra second. She looked into his eyes, felt herself melting away in the glimmering ocean of blue.

  Without warning, Josh scooted around her. “I still have another box to bring in. Meet you upstairs.”

  Still mesmerized, she almost stumbled forward, but recovered enough to say, “Do you need any help?”

  The door swung shut before she heard an answer. “He’s a big boy. If he needs my help, then he’ll come back and ask,” she murmured.

  “Talk to yourself much, Alisa?”

  Her heart skipped a beat. She’d completely forgotten about Dax over at the bar.

  “I live with a cat. What can I say?”

  Shuffling toward the bar, she pinched the corners of her eyes, determined to ignite a spark of energy. “I’m grabbing a cold beverage with plenty of caffeine.”

  “Make yourself at home,” he said with his back to her.

  She hesitated for a moment, taken aback by his comment, as if she needed his permission to get herself a drink at the bar she’d worked at for how many years?

  She reminded herself about the business arrangement Justin had made, where he would split time between the food truck business, which he shared with David and Dax, and the bar. As a result, Justin said Dax would help at the bar on occasion. Today was one of those occasions.

  The carbonated beverage fizzled as she brought the glass to her lips. As far as she knew, The Jewel was still solely owned by Justin, so that meant Dax and she were technically at the same level, if you drew out an organizational chart.

  That was the last thing she wanted. Dax could bust his ass every minute he was on the clock, as far as she was concerned, as long as he didn’t segue into shouting orders while he caught up on his Instagram likes.

  Already energized by the caffeine shot, she whipped her boat purse over her shoulder and rounded the bar. “I’m headed upstairs to work a case with Josh.”

  “Should I ignore any thumping I might hear through the ceiling? Pssh.” Dax could hardly contain his laughter.

  She planted a foot on the floor and a hand on her hip, spinning around with a finger pointed and her eyes firing lasers. “Are you trying to say I’m a tramp?” She could hear air pump through her nostrils.

  Holding a sheepish grin, he held up both hands. “I’m glad that thing doesn’t have bullets. I was just joking with you. I know what it’s like to be in love with someone new,” he said, grabbing a rag and wiping down the area by the wine bottles.

  Opening her lips, she held back, knowing higher priorities awaited her attention upstairs, and that didn’t include jumping Josh’s bones. Well, he wasn’t first on the list anyway. She put her hand on the wooden railing and took a single step.

  “Even if he’s young enough to pass as your son,” Dax said at a level that was barely audible.

  But she still heard his comment. Flipping her head around, she saw Dax was back at work, as if he’d said not a word. It was obvious this boy needed to understand how she expected to be treated. She’d deal with him later when there would be no distractions and she could focus on putting him in the right place.

  Two more steps.

  “Alisa, when are you going to start your shift, darling?”

  Fucking A. Dax again. “Justin and I have an arrangement. I’m able to get everything done for the bar in between my PI work.”

  “But we’re hosting a corporate happy hour this evening and—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said as bluntly as she could muster, then she padded up the remaining stairs and into the pint-sized office.

  “He’s just going to have to learn that Alisa Lopes already has two bosses, and she’s not about to take orders from a pipsqueak who doesn’t even know the bar business.”

  “Hope you’re not talking about me.”

  Her breath caught in her throat, but she quickly recognized Josh’s dulcet tone from behind her. She giggled, realizing he knew he wasn’t in her crosshairs. He set down a box and stepped closer to her.

  “When am I going to stop talking to myself?” she asked, leaning into his chest.

  He chortled, draping both of his arms around her. She felt safe and desirable.

  “When you stop living with a cat.” His eyebrows mimicked the McDonald’s golden arches.

  “I don’t want to kick Chloe out. She’s my reading buddy.” She kneaded his pecs.

  “I should have said when you stop living with only a cat.” He winked, smacked her butt, and turned to unpack the boxes.

  Shifting her gaze to the red Ferrari poster for a moment, she tried to read between the lines of Josh’s comment. Is he suggesting that we…? Crazy. We just can’t go there. Well, not after dating only a couple of months.

  “What do you have in all the boxes?”

  He lifted what looked like a printer of some sort and set it on the desk, creating a metal echo.

  “You wanted to know if I could figure out a way to get into Natalie’s phone.”

  Josh removed two more wrinkled bags, set them on the table, then leaned down and plugged in the electronic.

  “I could have come to your place. You didn’t have to haul all of this stuff up here.”

  “I knew you had to work at the bar this afternoon, and you didn’t want to wait until later tonight to learn what was in Natalie’s phone. It’s no big deal.”

  She took in a full breath, wondering how she’d been so lucky for her life’s path to intersect with someone so thoughtful. “I don’t know what to say, Josh. Thank you. You can really tell when I need support…from you.”

  He smiled and quickly went back to setting up his workstation. Her eyes just now noticed his bright orange, collared shirt with a logo on it. He delivered pizzas when he wasn’t refereeing soccer games.

  “You working this afternoon?” she asked.

  “Yeah, another driver called in sick. It’s okay. I need the money.”

  With the felony cybercrime still on his record, Josh had yet to find a paying job in the IT industry. In the meantime, he logged a few hours performing some of these one-off, technical side jobs for Booker & Associates. She considered Josh the most ingenious person she’d met and knew all he needed was a foot in the door at any small company and they’d do anything to keep him. He was that talented. Actually, he had many talents, as she’d found out since their sixth date, but that one wasn’t for sharing with anyone else.

  Something just hit her. The work he was doing today wasn’t a paying gig, since it couldn’t be billed back to their client, Jade’s parents. But she couldn’t let him know that. She knew he needed the money, as well as the affirmation of his skills.

  Josh opened his laptop, logged in, and then made some configuration changes to the printer.

  “What’s the plan?” I asked, intrigued about how Josh would crack the code, so to speak.

  “Do you have the phone?”

  Alisa dug through the pit covered in scarred white leather.

  “I hope you have it in a—” he started to say as I finally pulled out a zip-lock baggie and set it on the desk.

  “Cool.” Holding the baggie with two fingers, he twisted it around. “Just what I expected.”

  “What?”

  “I brought everything I need to break the phone’s biometric security, I think.”

  He shot her a wink and got to work. Opening the plastic baggie, he slid the phone onto the desk. Using a magnifying glass, he scanned the phone slowly, methodically.

  “My, you are thorough,” she said. “You look like a young Sherlock Holmes.”

  “I’d need a deerstalker cap and a curved pipe to pull that one off.” He glanced up, grinned quickly, then returned to the hunt. “I’m looking for a print. Once I find one, we’ll go through several steps to turn it into a usable biometric replica of the real print and attempt to unlock the phone’s security. If it doesn’t work, most likely it’s because it’s not Natalie’s print. Then, we’ll keep looking.”

  Alisa nodded and le
aned forward, staring at the phone. Ten long minutes passed. Other than a couple of loud diesel trucks passing by outside and Dax clinking a few glasses in the bar downstairs, she mostly heard Josh’s steady breathing.

  She sipped her carbonated drink, mostly half-melted ice, her mind drifting a bit, wondering what Natalie might be doing at this very moment.

  Natalie is still alive, isn’t she?

  Pressing her eyelids shut, Alisa cut the cord to that thought just as quickly as it had entered her mind. She wasn’t a psychic who could read the aura of people and provide an assessment of their current state of mind or their whereabouts. But, she’d always had a strange, almost motherly sense of Natalie’s well-being. Nine times out of ten, the wheels were flying off in some form or fashion, even if it was just another Natalie overreaction to a perceived problem.

  Damn, that girl couldn’t breathe without drama engulfing her life and everyone else’s around her. She was like a black hole, sucking in those who dared to hover anywhere near her. Alisa had been sucked in a few times when she was younger, eager to help her baby sister. She recalled one time when Natalie was in eighth grade, she begged Alisa to call the school and pretend she was her parent so they’d let her out. It sounded innocent, almost like a remake of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

  The problem was, Ferris and company would have blushed at the type of day Natalie had experienced. She called Alisa late that afternoon all in a frenzy because the high school junior boy she’d left school with had left her at a house with a bunch of dopeheads. Natalie had smoked so much weed, she couldn’t stand up, and had come out of her stupor to realize someone had stolen her clothes. She was in a doublewide in the middle of the East Texas Piney Woods and scared as hell. Alisa had to jump in her car and drive three hours from Dallas, speeding at about eighty miles per hour, finally reaching her little sister at almost nine o’clock that night. She gave Natalie some sweats and then a piece of her mind while she drove her back to her parents’ house.

  She’d never forget what Natalie said after several minutes of silence sitting in their parents’ driveway. “Hey sis, would you be cool if we just told Mom and Dad that I was kidnapped and drugged? They’ll probably feel sorry for me and give me some extra cash for a new wardrobe.”

  “What the hell are you thinking, Natalie?” she’d said, turning to face her sister.

  “My birthday’s coming up and all, and it would be really special if I could show off some new clothes when I come up to Dallas and visit you for a weekend.”

  Alisa paused her verbal assault, thinking her little sister simply wanted some attention. They could go see a nice chick flick, do a little more shopping in Dallas, eat some good food, stay up late, and tell ghost stories while eating a tub of ice cream.

  “Wow, Natalie, I’m sorry if I didn’t see that one coming,” she’d responded, her tone back to a calm state.

  “We could probably do brunch on Sunday, depending on where my two friends want to go.”

  “You want to bring friends? I thought it would be a sister weekend?”

  “Well, it kind of would be, technically. We’d stay at your place, so I’m sure we’d see a little bit of each other in passing.” Natalie’s lips had turned up at the corners, as if she was convincing a toddler to eat his veggies.

  Alisa was no toddler, and she refused to be duped again.

  Puffing out a breath, she clung to the memory of Natalie’s energy, zest for life, even her voice, as manipulative as it could be at times. Alisa would gladly trade an evening of arguing about Natalie’s latest boyfriend selection for her current fear of the unknown—wondering if Natalie was safe, unharmed, being treated like a respectable young lady. Just repeating those words inwardly created a new wave of anxiety.

  “Everything okay?” Josh’s hand touched her elbow, which leaned on the desk.

  She released a slight chortle, her lips drawing a straight line. “Just thinking about some of the drama I’ve experienced with Natalie. And strangely, just hoping, praying, I have a chance to experience more.”

  “It’s not strange. I understand, and I’m right there with you. I look forward to you introducing me to Natalie.”

  “Thanks, Josh.” She felt a tear gather at the corner of her eye, and she blinked it under her eyelid.

  “Hey, I’ve found what looks like a usable print. I’m taking a picture of it now,” he said, steadying his camera phone a few inches above the phone on the desk. He took a quick look at the close-up picture and nodded.

  “I took the shot at 2400 dpi. I’m loading it into my laptop and converting it to a black and white photo. Then I’ll invert it and mirror it. Give me a quick minute here.”

  Josh’s eyes narrowed as he twisted his lips while clicking away on his computer. He made another adjustment to the printer. “Need to print using this transparent sheet of paper at 1200 dpi.”

  Alisa watched intently, not necessarily understanding each step of the process. Josh emptied a bag of items and began to create the mold of the fingerprint.

  “The key here is using photosensitive PCB material.”

  Nearly an hour later, after he’d developed the mold and cleaned it, he sprayed graphite on the compressed button on the cell phone. “That helps make sure we have an improved capacitive response,” he said.

  He laid down a razor-thin layer of white wood glue into the molded fingerprint and blew on it until it dried.

  “Ready?” He lifted his eyes at me, his hands hovering over the phone.

  “Let’s do it,” Alisa said, curling a lock of hair around her ear, her eyes unblinking as she watched Josh carefully press the repurposed print into place. His chest didn’t move, and she realized he was anxious about this moment as she was.

  Suddenly, the screen came to life.

  10

  Releasing the clutch slightly, the Silver Streak was anything but blitzing down the streets, making hairpin turns to chase down a would-be killer.

  The four-door sedan nudged forward about three feet.

  Lodged in a mini traffic jam in front of a downtown Dallas iconic structure, I looked in my rearview mirror and adjusted my black tie, wincing a bit at the noose around my neck. I noticed the procession of luxury cars and limos, then shifted my eyes and saw the same thing in front of me.

  I felt like the oddball fish in the middle of an aquarium of exotic saltwater sea creatures.

  Stuck inside my car sidled against the curb off Ross, I tried to patiently wait my turn to valet my car—unfortunately, there were no other parking options within a five-block radius.

  My thoughts quickly retraced my quick visit with Jade’s parents earlier in the day. Actually, the interaction nearly became an intervention. Jade’s mom, Carol, spent the few minutes I was there wailing and traipsing around the house, with Bucky a few feet behind her, trying to convince her to put the bottle of vodka down. During a brief lull in the drama, I spent a few minutes speaking with Bucky, got a tour of Jade’s room, but didn’t find anything unique, other than a picture of her standing next to Santa Claus with a silly grin on her face. Bucky spilled more tears when I asked him about the picture, saying, “She always made fun of herself and her red hair. She traded some barbs with Santa about his red coat. Those were happy days.”

  A red carpet brought my attention back to the here and now. It was rolled out in front of the old Belo Mansion. A few photographers paced up and down the sidewalk, soft lights illuminating the live oaks, creating a cool vibe.

  The event was special, the annual fundraising gala for a Dallas-based charity, Cherish Our Kids, a global organization that used resources to improve health conditions and feed malnourished kids in some of the poorest nations across the globe. In conducting a bit of research in the last couple of hours, I’d learned they mobilized teams of doctors, nurses, and caregivers to over a hundred locations the previous year, while providing more than two million meals. If that wasn’t reason enough to dress up and mingle with the top one percent, having a chance to speak wit
h a person of influence who knew Natalie certainly was.

  Thanks to the inventive troubleshooting capability of Josh, the biometric security for Natalie’s cell phone had been bypassed. Alisa then scrolled through her sister’s contacts and found that one number had been accessed well over thirty times during the last few months, up until the last week. The only calls Natalie had received since her roommates had last seen her were from her sister and parents, at first glance.

  Alisa then did a little research on the person tied to the thirty phone calls. Zahi Kareem was founder and CEO of Premium Oil, a Saudi Arabia-based company with its main US office in Houston—not surprising to hear—but with satellite offices in both Dallas and Washington, DC. Alisa had found several online pictures of Kareem, whom she described as “tall, darker than you, a strong chin, and his eyes make me think he’s a real charmer.”

  Alisa also found two pictures of Natalie with Kareem on her phone, both grip-and-grin shots, dressed in clothes more expensive than her used Toyota, as well as a few text messages. She surmised from the notes traded back and forth that Natalie and Kareem were, more or less, a couple. He’d made several comments about her beauty, and she’d replied with sheepish, witty comments that made her come across as an aw-shucks girl.

  “My stomach is twisted in knots, reading through her personal messages, Booker,” Alisa told me a couple of hours earlier. “Part of me feels like I’m invading her privacy. But in reading how she interacts with this guy, it seems so fake. Can’t be too surprised, because she’s manipulated our parents, countless others, and me for years. But to see her do it to a man is upsetting. Knowing her, she probably had some type of ulterior motive, the type that was probably tied to money, clothes, jewels, fame. You know, all the characteristics that make up a good person. Makes me wonder if she pulled the chain of the wrong guy and got herself into trouble that she’d couldn’t get out of.”

  Alisa’s theory made sense, as did her connecting emotions. The fact she was able to function and contribute to the investigation was a testimony to her strength. Alisa was no wilting flower, and she knew the quickest way to find out what happened to Natalie was for her to squelch her pity party and focus on the facts and uncovering her sister’s trail.