Magic & Mayhem

by Susan Conley

  “You go ahead, sweetheart, I’ll call when supper’s ready.” Grams headed to the kitchen. “I’ll fix your favorite.”

  Chelsea lay down on the bed, picked up the pillow from the other side, and inhaled deeply. It smelled of spicy male, her body gel, and shampoo. It smelled of Brad. Tears rolled down her cheeks, but no sound left her lips. What if he didn’t return? What if he tried to hide from her? What if he couldn’t take her as she was? Then her tears were unworthy.

  • • •

  Brad drove without seeing, almost by instinct. He pulled his cell from his pocket and dialed his office.

  “Rearden Investigations,” Sally answered.

  “Sal, can you do me a favor?” Even to him, his voiced sound defeated.

  “Sure, boss. What do you need?” He heard the shuffle of papers, crisp over the phone.

  “I need you to check something for me. And I need it done quietly, like I don’t want the rest of my family to know I’m checking.” He hated keeping secrets, and if what he thought was true …

  “Got it. On the QT.” Her voice revealed her curiosity.

  “I want you to check into the background of Angela Blackwell. Look for a connection to anyone in our family.”

  “Okay … but wasn’t she … ?”

  “Just do it, Sal, I’ll tell you all about it later. I’m heading in, see you soon.” He disconnected the call. He still couldn’t believe he was doing this. If had been Angela Blackwell at the restaurant with Sam, why hadn’t the police spoken to him? Or to Brad for that matter. His name had been listed on the reservation.

  He dialed back into his office. “Sal, one more thing, can you get me a copy of the police report?”

  “Yeah, but it’s gonna cost you.” She twisted around in her chair; the creaking came over the phone. “He’s going to want Bulls’ tickets.”

  “Deal. Just get the report if you can … ”

  He thought about his brother, and their childhood. How could Sam go so terribly wrong? What had happened to him that hadn’t happened to Brad? When he reached the office building in Springfield, he went in the back way, through the freight elevators. He couldn’t deal with his family right now, especially if what he suspected was true.

  When he entered the office, Sally was speaking in quiet tones, the fax was working, the other line was ringing. Just another busy day in the life of private investigations. He didn’t answer the other line, he let it go to voice mail as he stopped to pick up the fax. The police report. He stopped by Sally’s desk, mouthed “thank you.” She gave a small smile and winked at him.

  He read through the first few pages. “Son-of-a-bitch,” Brad swore under his breath. His suspicions were well founded — Sam wasn’t even mentioned in the report, it didn’t even indicate he’d been at the restaurant. He flipped through pages, his eyes searching for the investigating officer’s name.

  “David Randall. No wonder Sam’s name wasn’t mentioned.” His fingers thumped the pages. David Randall was an old family friend.

  He sighed, and rubbed his tired forehead. He hadn’t slept much after reading the news listing Chelsea had found on the Internet. Now, he was worried about what she thought. He wasn’t his family, but he had bent to their will on more than one occasion. But never again. If what he thought happened really had, Brad would turn his brother over to the police himself. Even if it meant he had no place to call home. Then he realized something else: Chelsea had become his home. She was all he really needed.

  “Sally?” he called, and he heard her chair scrape across the carpet.

  She stuck her head inside his office. “Yeah, boss?”

  “Could you get my father on the phone?”

  “Um … sure. If that’s what you want.” She started to back out of the office.

  “Wait. Is there something else?”

  “Look, I asked my friend if there was any connection between what happened at the restaurant and the Rearden family, and he told me I didn’t want to go there, if you know what I mean.” She looked at him pointedly. “He kind of suggested that we let this one go.”

  “Let this one go?” He thumped the report laying open on his desk. “Let this one go? Have you seen the pictures, Sal? Have you read what happened to that girl? How can I let this one go?”

  “I never said I agreed with him, but you know the investigating officer was pressured into looking the other way. He’s a good cop, but he owes your family. So do you.” She shook her head. “And don’t look at me like I’ve grown a second head. I’m only saying what needs to be said.”

  Brad glanced at his clock, it was still early morning, nine o’clock, yet his head pounded like he’d already worked a double shift. In all of his twenty-eight years, he’d never felt this apprehensive, this afraid of the truth. But he needed information, and he needed it quick — why not go to the root of his problem? “I know, Sally, sorry I snapped, but I can’t let it go. See if my father’s available, I need to talk to him.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  His father answered his private line with clipped tones. “Rearden,” was his only response, even though he knew it was Brad calling.

  “Dad,” Brad answered.

  “Bradley, what can I do for you?” Not how are you, why don’t you visit your mother more often, or how’s life in general.

  “Something’s been brought to my attention, Dad, something to do with Sam.” He waited, breath held. Sam was always their father’s favorite, he never did anything wrong. Maybe that was the difference — Brad had never done anything right.

  “What is it you think you know, Bradley?” His father’s tone spoke volumes, like he was sick and tired of Brad already. But it mostly said, whatever Brad thought was wrong.

  “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you, Dad? Have you been waiting to see if I could figure this out? Or had you hoped to sweep the whole sorry business under a rug?” Brad barked out a harsh laugh. “There are some things money can’t buy. Silence is one of them, at least not from me.”

  “You don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  “Dad, she was just a kid. Do you even remember her name? Angie Blackwell? Did you see the pictures? Do you know I saw her with Sam the night she was killed?” All came out in rapid succession.

  “Bradley, son, why don’t we have lunch, we’ll discuss this like adults.” His father’s patronizing tone grated against Brad’s frayed nerves.

  “What’s there to discuss, Dad? What’s there to figure out?”

  “You didn’t even know this girl. She dumped Sam at the restaurant, left with someone else. Ask your brother if you don’t believe me, or the maître d’. Both have been questioned. Come on, son, come to lunch and we’ll talk it through,” his father cajoled in his best lawyer’s voice.

  “How come Sam’s name isn’t even mentioned in the police report? Or mine? How much did it cost, Dad?”

  His father’s voice contained a new hardness. “You think I’m going to let our family and our firm’s name be dragged through the mud? What good would that have done?”

  “How can you sleep at night? How can you live with even the possibility?” Brad was dumbfounded.

  “The police investigated this, and they didn’t find any reason to continue in this vein. There was DNA evidence connecting the whole thing to someone else, some unknown party.” His father’s tone was losing its patience. “Can’t you let this go? Can’t you do something for your brother instead of trying to pull him down?”

  “Pull him down? He’s the youngest associate with the firm, he manipulates everyone, and he’d still be in law school if you hadn’t bought his way out.” Brad still wondered how his party happy brother had passed the bar, but the juries loved him. “Angie Blackwell doesn’t have to worry about being pulled down. She doesn’t have to worry about going to school, or
work, paying her rent … She doesn’t have to worry about anything anymore, Dad, because she’s dead.”

  “Don’t be dramatic, Bradley, your brother didn’t do this. How can you even think it?” His father had gone from cajoling to angry in a matter of moments.

  “Because, I saw him with her. I know she was alive then. And wasn’t afterwards. I have a sick feeling, Dad … ”

  “Sick feelings don’t mean shit, Bradley.” The phone slammed in his ear.

  “Maybe not.” Brad dropped the phone back into its cradle when silence filled his ear. “But how can I live with the possibility?”

  • • •

  Brad left his office, and wandered through the streets of downtown Springfield. How could he go back and face Chelsea with everything she knew?

  He walked until he found himself back at his office, and suddenly he knew what he had to do. He’d do exactly what he would if a stranger had come to him, and in a way, isn’t that what had happened? Through Chelsea’s gift? He would do a thorough investigation, like his head was telling him to do, and he’d let the chips fall where they may.

  He strode with new purpose through his office. “Sally!”

  She scurried from her desk. “Yes, boss?”

  “Start a new file, labeled A.B. Investigation. It stays inner office, hardcopies filed here only, under lock. Computer copies encrypted and sent to my laptop alone. I want copies of Angela Blackwell’s phone records, interviews with her friends and neighbors, and their phone numbers. Maybe they’ll tell me something they wouldn’t or couldn’t tell the police. I want to know how often she walked her dog, if she had one. Understood?” He eyed his secretary and continued to his desk. “The police still show it as an open file — they’re investigating her death, I’m just going to put some time and effort into helping them along.” His voice took on that hard clipped tone of the street smart cop he used to be before he’d saved up enough money to go out on his own. Not that he’d needed to, but to use his family’s money, even the funds bequeathed to him, meant he was beholden, and that he couldn’t tolerate. “But none of my family should be made aware of what we’re doing here.”

  “Sure, I’ll get on it right away.” She smiled at him. “Brad … ” Sally rarely used his given name, she liked keeping their relationship professional. “If it counts for anything, I think you’re doing the right thing.” She quietly closed his office door as he reached for the phone.

  “Thanks, it means a lot.” The empty office echoed around him, but it still felt good to be acknowledged. Then he picked up the phone and dialed the one person who would understand his need even better than he did, who knew he’d come to the right conclusion, even if he didn’t want to: Chelsea.

  • • •

  “Hi,” she said as if only one person would be calling her.

  “Hi,” his deep tones replied. “I’m sorry I left so quickly this morning. How can I make it up to you?”

  “You don’t have to do anything but come back.”

  “I can do that. See you tonight?”

  “Sure. See you soon.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  The next morning, Brad grinned across the kitchen table at Chelsea. “Alright. You wanted to be a detective … detect. Sometimes a fresh set of eyes is just what a case needs.” He laid out all the information he and Sally had accumulated. “My investigation has only just started, but the police had already completed most of the groundwork.” He opened the file, a gray envelope was attached to the inside. “Here’s a copy of the police report.”

  She fingered the envelope. “What’s in here?”

  “Crime scene photos. If you need to see them.” He started to pry the clipped edges.

  She covered his hand with hers, stopping his motions. “I don’t, at least not now.”

  “When I spoke with her roommate, she said Angela was tight with a boy named Rick. Maybe that’s who she left the restaurant with.” Brad pulled his laptop from its case.

  “She left with someone besides your brother? That’s kind of good news, isn’t it?” Chelsea asked.

  “It could be. I talked to the detective in charge of the investigation, he claimed Angela didn’t leave with Sam. Here’s the video from the restaurant, it confirms Angie left with someone else.” Brad fed the DVD into his laptop. The restaurant came into focus. The first view was of the front exterior, then it leapt to a side view, then the rear exterior. It switched every fifteen seconds between shots, creating a jumpy picture of the passage of time.

  Brad picked up a second DVD, and fed it into the laptop. “This is the interior shots.” They watched together for several moments, the camera swept over the diners, finding Sam and Angie, the only sound was a resounding static, too much noise to capture their conversation. When the camera captured Angie’s upturned face, she scanned the restaurant, as if waiting for someone. In the next shot with Sam and Angie, she was standing and there was a young man with his back to the camera. The next shot showed Angie’s and the man’s backs as they exited the restaurant. The young man’s face was never displayed.

  “Well, that helped a lot.” Chelsea played back the frame of Angie and the young man. “You can almost see his face.”

  “It supports what Sam told the police, and why they didn’t investigate him any further. Not that they would have anyway, not when my family applied the right financial pressure.” He sighed. “This leaves us back at square one.”

  “All I know is what Angie told me, that the person who hurt her might try to hurt us too, and we knew him, she specifically said him.” She looked up from the video. “So you think she left with this Rick?”

  “I haven’t a clue. The police have searched for him too. Her family’s seen the video, they said it might be Rick, but from the back, who can be certain? They didn’t know his last name and neither did the roommate. Angie was secretive about who he was.” He ejected the DVD from his laptop. “Do you have any idea where to go from here?”

  “Nope, do you have anything else?”

  He opened another file, removed a few slim sheets of paper. “About a week later, the body of an unidentified man was found matching this man’s height and hair color, all of his identification was gone.” He pointed to the still of Angie and the young man. “Not that there was a lot left to identify. His face was mutilated, his body cut open, his hands removed. There was enough forensic evidence to suggest he was still alive when the torture started, though probably not for long.”

  Chelsea shuddered. “That’s more than I wanted to know.”

  “All part of being a PI.” Brad picked up her hand. “That’s it for this case.” Brad gathered up the reports, the photos, and the DVDs, dropping them all into a manila envelope, pushing the clip closed.

  “But for the next case … ” He stood and walked into the living room, and Grams followed him back into the kitchen. He was carrying two large shopping bags. “I need help with this too.”

  Grams sat across from Chelsea at the kitchen table, while Brad emptied the contents of shopping bags, seven photo albums in all.

  “Are these the albums from your aunt’s house?”

  “Yes. I need to find more with the pond in the background. I can’t take something as thin as ‘I remember from when I was a kid’ to the DA, or trying to place something from a single picture. I need something more.”

  Chelsea pushed one of the albums in front of her Grams. “Okay, we need all the help we can get. Start with this one, and we’ll keep going until we’ve looked at them all.”

  Grams opened the pages, and stopped immediately. “This is your Aunt Deloris?”

  It was an album filled with recent pictures. “Yep, that’s Aunt D. Why?”

  “Del was part of our canasta group. She was a friend of Hildie’s, I didn’t know her very well. I had no idea that our Del was your Deloris. I
’m so sorry.” Grams’s eyes showed her shock.

  “Wait, your friend Hildie?” Brad questioned. He flipped through the police report, located the name of the person who found his aunt. “Constance Jackson?”

  Grams grinned. “Yeah, that’s Hildie. She’s named after her grandmother, Constance Hildegard Jackson. She always hated Connie, but Hildie, it fits her personality.”

  Brad’s eyes moved back and forth over the report. “Would Hildie be willing to come out to the house, take a look around with us?”

  “I’ll give her a call.” Grams went to the phone and spoke to Hildie briefly. “According to Hildie,” she said after hanging up, “Del spent part of every day sitting on the bench out by that pond, no matter the weather. She doesn’t think there’s any way Del slipped and fell.”

  Chelsea glanced at another photo of his aunt’s property, this one taken during the Spring, out by the weeping willow. It was a shot of humming birds busy at a feeder. Sure enough, there was a bench in the background. “Brad?” Chelsea glanced over at him. “Where was the bench when we were there?”

  “Not by the pond, that’s for sure.” Brad pulled the album closer to him. “There wasn’t any place to sit when we were there.” He glanced between the two women. “I need to visit Aunt D’s house again, today.”

  “I’m coming too,” Grams said. “We can pick Hildie up on the way. She doesn’t live far.”

  “That’ll be great, Grams.” Chelsea squeezed her hands.

  Brad pulled Grams to her feet. “Thank you.” He wrapped her in a warm hug. “If you hadn’t been here … ”

  “You would have figured it out on your own.” Grams squeezed him back.

  • • •

  Hildie and Grams tromped through the back of the property, toward the place where the bench had rested for years. “This is where it sat.” Grams and Hildie stood where the bench should have been — the grass was shorter from being trodden down over time.