Last to die

by James Grippando

  Deirdre Meadows stared at her reflection in her monitor, thinking.

  Since learning that Sally Fenning had made her one of six beneficiaries in her forty-six-million-dollar estate, Deirdre had been brainstorming, trying to find the best angle for a story. This one had all the elements. Sally was a beautiful young woman with a tragic past, a multimillionaire second husband, and an intriguing flair for creative estate planning that seemed driven by mysterious motives that Deirdre was itching to unravel. Deirdre had finally settled on a three part investigative piece: Sally and her daughter as victims, Sally’s marriage to a millionaire and her violent death, and Sally as a hand from the grave manipulating the lives of six seemingly disconnected heirs, only one of which would ultimately inherit her entire estate. She’d pitched the idea to the managing editor late that afternoon, only to be shot down immediately.

  “Sorry, Deirdre. We just don’t have room in the budget for another investigative piece.”

  “But a ton of the research is done already.”

  “I’ve heard that one before.”

  “It’s true,” she said. “I’m the one who covered the murder of her child five years ago, so part one is basically done already.”

  “Which is exactly the part of the story that isn’t news anymore.”

  “The rest won’t be as much extra work as you think. For some reason, I’m a beneficiary under her will. For my own good, I have to investigate this anyway, so why not do a story about it?”

  He made a face. “That’s the more fundamental problem. Call me old-fashioned, but frankly, I don’t like stories written by reporters who are part of the story.”

  “I’m really not part of it. I’m incidental. I think the only reason she made a reporter one of her beneficiaries is so that this story would be written.”

  “And you think that’s a reason we should do the story?” he asked, incredulous. “Sounds like a creative form of checkbook journalism to me.”

  It was downhill from there. Deirdre didn’t like his answer, but she didn’t want to push so hard that she’d spend the next two months covering the likes of chili-eating contests and high school student government elections.

  Deirdre laid her fingers on the keyboard. One option was to simply start writing, churn out a few compelling pages, and go over his head. That was risky, but it was impossible to succeed in this business without taking risks. Newsrooms across the country were filled with talented reporters. No one ever won a Pulitzer Prize by cowering in the face of rejection. Especially when the guy doling out rejection slips was an idiot.

  She let her fingers start dancing, tapping out words, only to be interrupted by the ring of her telephone.

  “Meadows,” she answered.

  “Want to know who killed Sally Fenning?” said the man on the line. It was a deep, mechanical voice. He was clearly speaking through one of those voice-altering gadgets that were sold at spy stores and electronics shops on just about every other block in downtown Miami.

  Deirdre didn’t answer right away. The steady drone of a newsroom full of countless other conversations hummed all around her. She plugged her open ear, as if to make sure she’d heard correctly. “What did you say?”

  “I think you heard me.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Would I be altering my voice if I was going to tell you who I am?”

  “Why are you calling me?”

  “Because I have a story that needs to be told. How’d you like to tell it for me?”

  Her heart was thumping. She cradled the phone with her shoulder and scrambled for a pen and paper. “I’m listening.”

  “I was at the on-ramp to I-395 where she was shot. I saw it happen.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Everything.”

  “Let’s start at the beginning. What were you doing there?”

  “No, let’s start at the real beginning. What’s in this for me?”

  She paused to choose her words. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “Look, I can’t pay you for a story.”

  “As a reporter for the esteemed Miami Tribune, that’s true. You can’t. But simply as a curious heir to Sally Fenning’s estate, what’s wrong with compensating someone for their time and inconvenience?”

  Her grip tightened on the telephone. She wanted this. Bad. “Why should I believe anything you say?”

  “Because I can show you the four-karat-diamond wedding band that Sally Fenning was wearing when she was shot-and that she wasn’t wearing when the police found her body.”

  Deirdre felt chills. Instinctively, she looked over her shoulder, a subconscious confirmation that her supervisors wouldn’t approve. “We should talk about this.”

  “You want to see the ring, don’t you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we meet on my turf, not yours.”

  She hesitated for a moment, then said, “Where?”

  He chuckled. “Not so fast. Give me your cell phone number. I’ll call you and tell you where to go.”

  She gave him the number, then asked, “When should I expect your call?”

  “I work till midnight. Have your phone on then.”

  “Midnight, tonight?”

  “Yes. Unless you want to put this off. Or maybe you just want to forget the whole thing, and I’ll call someone over at the Sun-Sentinel.”

  “No,” she said, checking her eagerness. “That’s fine. Tonight’s fine.”

  “One last thing.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want an audience. This is just you and me. Got it?”

  She swallowed hard, then said, “Got it.”

  He said good-bye. The line clicked, and her caller was gone.

  Fifteen

  Jack was driving his Mustang, ten minutes away from Kelsey’s house, when his cell phone rang. It was Nate.

  “You have to speak up, buddy. I can hardly hear you.”

  “I can’t,” said Nate. “Mom thinks I’m asleep. I’m under the covers.”

  “Then maybe you should hang up and go to sleep.”

  “No, no, wait. I have to ask you something.”

  Jack stopped at the traffic light. “What?”

  “Are you and my mom going out on a date?”

  Jack could hear the hopefulness in Nate’s voice, the very thing that had kept Jack from even thinking about an attempt at romance with Kelsey. Dating the mom was a huge no-no in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program. If it didn’t work out, it was always the kid who suffered.

  “No,” said Jack. “This isn’t a date. This is work.”

  “Then why did she try on fifteen different dresses?”

  Jack recalled the cleavage debate, but he definitely wasn’t going to go there. “That’s just what women do, Nate. You’ll see some day.”

  Nate tried to pursue the dating issue further, but Jack put a stop to it. “I’ll see you this weekend, okay, buddy?”

  “Oh, okay,” he said, grumbling. They said good night and hung up.

  Jack slowed as he approached Kelsey’s house, but he was a few minutes early. He waited in the driveway, giving her enough time to try on dress number sixteen, then at precisely 10 P.M. he walked to the front door and knocked. Kelsey answered with a smile.

  “Ready?” she said.

  “Yup.”

  She was wearing red, a good color for the South Beach club circuit. Rather than blatant sex appeal with a heaping helping of cleavage, she’d opted for a more tasteful, striking look, and she’d hit a home run. Her hair was up in a twist, and the dress was strapless, which let the beauty of her long neck and sloping shoulders play out. Jack had never really noticed before, but she had great arms, beautifully sculpted. Her walk was clearly that of a dancer, poised and graceful, perfect posture without a hint of stiffness.

  “Nice dress,” said Jack.

  “This? Oh, thanks. Just something I threw on.”

  Jack smiled to himself, deciding no
t to tell that Nate had already ratted her out.

  It was a fifteen-minute drive over to South Beach and a thirty-minute wait at the valet entrance to Club Vertigo on busy Washington Avenue. By the time they got inside it was after eleven, which was like the early-bird special in this sleep-till-noon, party-till-dawn neighborhood.

  It seemed like forever since Jack had done the South Beach club scene, even longer since he’d done it with a woman who turned heads the way Kelsey did. One thing that never changed about South Beach was the utter lack of subtlety in the way people checked each other out. There was nothing casual about it. This was the stuff by which one’s clubbing worth was measured. If South Beach were in Silicon Valley, people would be wearing the high-tech equivalent of Web site counters around their necks. Naturally, the ones with the most hits would vault to the head of the line behind the velvet ropes.

  “See your bodyguard friend anywhere?” asked Kelsey.

  “I’m not even sure what he looks like.”

  “Just look for the guy with the thickest neck.”

  Jack chuckled. “He said to give our name to the woman bartender. She’d call him over.”

  The line was moving slowly, and they were nearing the entrance. Each time the doors opened, Jack was hit with a flash of swirling lights and a blast of music, and he could feel the vibration in his feet. He suddenly had an unnerving thought, one that made him glad this wasn’t a date. He was entering a dance club with a professional dancer. Sort of like going to bed with a sex therapist. No, no, no. Your hips go this way. Who needed that?

  Finally they were at the velvet rope. The goon at the door gave Jack a once-over, then focused on Kelsey. Her proverbial hit counter was overheating.

  “You with him?” he asked, as if he couldn’t believe it.

  Jack was about to give it right back to him, but Kelsey moved closer and locked arms with Jack. She was clearly just playing the game and pushing the goon’s buttons, but Jack liked the feeling nonetheless.

  “Is that a problem?” she replied flatly.

  Attitude ruled in South Beach, and it both amused and intrigued Jack to see that Kelsey had it in her. The goon unhooked the rope, and with a jerk of his head he signaled them to enter.

  Club Vertigo was in an old hotel that had been gutted on the inside and completely reconfigured with a tall and narrow four-story atrium. The main bar and dancing were on the ground floor, and if you looked up into the towering atrium from the center of the dance floor, the mystery behind the club’s name immediately unraveled. Several large mirrors suspended at different angles made it difficult at times to discern whether you were looking up or down. With even a slight buzz, the pounding music, swirling lights, and throngs of sweaty bodies were enough to give anyone a sense of vertigo. The sensation worked both ways, with hordes of people-watchers looking down on the dance crowd from second-, third-, and fourth-floor balconies.

  Jack gave his name to the female bartender at the main bar and told her he wanted to see Javier. She picked up a phone for about a ten-second conversation, then looked at Jack and said, “Second floor, Room B.”

  Jack and Kelsey meandered through the crowd and took the stairs to the second floor. A muscular guy dressed in tight black clothing and wearing a thick, gold chain around his neck was standing outside Room B. It was one of the champagne suites, a private room away from the commotion where people could have more intimate gatherings. Sort of a sex and drug club within a sex and drug club. The night was young enough that most of the suites were empty.

  “You Tatum’s friend?” he asked.

  Jack shook hands, then introduced Kelsey.

  “Nice to meetchya,” he said, looking past her. Javier looked Hispanic, but he talked like a New York Italian. It seemed that everyone on South Beach was pretending to be something they weren’t.

  “Please,” he said, inviting them into the suite. Jack and Kelsey entered first. Javier followed and closed the door behind him, shutting out the noise. The sudden solitude was a strange sensation, like submerging into the silence of the deep end. The room itself was nothing spectacular, just a fake-leather couch, an armchair, smoky glass-topped table, and cheesy red velvet wallpaper.

  Jack started to explain what he was after, but Javier stopped him. “Tatum already filled me in,” he said. “And I can only give you about ten minutes.”

  “Let’s get to it,” said Jack. “Kelsey, why don’t you start.”

  Kelsey gave a little smile, as if to thank Jack for keeping his promise to let her take an active role. She scooted to the edge of the couch, leaning forward slightly, trying to make eye contact. Javier seemed to be looking beyond her, just as he had with their handshake, as if something on the wall behind her had caught his attention.

  “How long did you work for Sally?” she asked.

  “Few months, on and off.”

  Kelsey paused, as if she’d expected at least a little eye contact with his response. But he still seemed obsessed with something over her or behind her.

  “What did you do for her exactly?” asked Kelsey.

  “Bodyguard.”

  “Did she really need a bodyguard?”

  “She was a rich lady. And she scared pretty easy. She’d be alone a lot. Her old man-and I do mean old man-was from France or someplace. And you heard about what happened to her and her daughter a few years back.”

  “Yes,” said Kelsey, “we know about that.”

  “So, she’d be alone, sometimes afraid to even go anywhere. She hired me to drive her around. The mall, restaurants, wherever. I’m not saying she needed me. But I made her feel safe.”

  Kelsey asked, “Didn’t she have any girlfriends?”

  “I suppose. None that I saw, though. She struck me as a loner. Real pretty lady, but not a very happy person. Know what I mean?”

  Javier was talking to Kelsey, but he wasn’t looking at her face. His focus had seemed to shift from the wall behind her to the top of her head. Kelsey tried to sit taller and make eye contact, but his gaze rose with her, as if he’d developed some bizarre fixation with the crown of her skull.

  “For crying out loud,” said Kelsey. “What are you looking at?”

  “Huh?”

  “Did a bird shit on the top of my head or what?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then what is it? You’ve been staring at the top of my head from the moment I opened my mouth.”

  “I’m not looking at your mouth,” he said.

  “I know. You’re staring at the top of my head.”

  “I understand that this is what you think. But what I’m actually doing is not looking at your mouth.”

  “You’re losing me.”

  “I’m a recovering porn addict.”

  “A what?”

  “I was addicted to porn. I can’t look at a woman’s mouth without having impure thoughts, which is a very distracting thing when you’re trying to have an intelligent conversation. So I don’t look at her mouth.”

  “I see.” Kelsey glanced at Jack and said, “Why don’t you take it from here, boss?”

  “Good idea.” Jack handed him a list of the beneficiaries under

  Sally’s will-her ex-husband, the lawyer, the reporter, the prosecutor, Tatum, and the unknown sixth beneficiary, Alan Sirap.

  “Did you ever hear Sally mention any of these people?”

  “Tatum, of course. After I linked them up together.”

  “I’ll get to that in a minute. What about these other people?”

  “I’m sure she said things about Miguel Rios. Mike, she called him. Her ex, right?”

  “Right. What did she say about him?”

  “I don’t remember anything specific.”

  “How about the other people? She ever say anything about them?”

  He read over the list and shook his head, then stopped himself. “This guy. Gerry Colletti. If I’m not mistaken, he was her ex-husband’s divorce lawyer.”

  “That’s right.”

&nb
sp; “Him I remember her talking about.”

  “What was that about?”

  “We was out driving somewhere one night, and we passed this restaurant on the highway. And she says that used to be Alfredo’s.”

  “Alfredo’s?”

  “Sally and her ex-husband used to own a little Italian restaurant that went broke. Poured everything they had into it.”

  “Miguel told me about that,” said Jack. “In fact he says it was Colletti who sold it to them.”

  “That’s right. I think him and Gerry were friends way back or something.”

  “Actually, it sounded to me like Miguel isn’t too keen on him anymore. But I’m more interested in what Sally told you about Gerry.”

  “As I recall, she’d had a couple of glasses of wine and was talking to me pretty freely. She just starts saying how she couldn’t stand this Gerry from the day she met him.”

  “Why not?”

  “From the way she described him, he was one of these real slippery guys who turn a girl’s stomach. She was telling me about how Gerry took her and her sister out to dinner one night to try to talk Sally into letting her husband buy the restaurant from him.”

  “Sally has a sister?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “I don’t…Rene, I think. She lives in like Africa or some place. According to Sally, she’s even more gorgeous than she was. But I find that hard to believe.”

  Jack glanced at Kelsey, as if to say “Remind me to follow up with this Rene.”

  Javier said, “Anyway, Gerry takes Sally and her sister out to dinner, buys them three bottles of wine. Sally’s convinced that this loser is thinking threesome with two hot sisters. All the while, Sally and her sister are doing their best not to puke at the thought. But my point is that Sally has a real vivid memory of this night. She remembers all the details. It’s almost creepy.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I give you an example. She gets to the part of the story where Gerry is telling her what a cash cow this Alfredo’s restaurant is. Gerry keeps going on and on, to the point that she figures he had to be keeping two sets of books, because the P and L didn’t show any profit at all. Then finally, she does this impersonation of Gerry. For me, it was one of those spooky moments, like when you know that a person has relived this moment over and over again in her mind. She did the mannerisms, the tone of voice, the whole thing. The way she tells it, Gerry leaned into the table, looked her in the eye, and curled his index finger to call her closer, like some child molester trying to lure a schoolgirl into his van. Then he got this drunken grin on his face and whispered into her ear, like it was some big secret he was sharing: ‘Alfredo’s. It’s a gold mine, baby.’”