by PJ Fernor
“And he’s not in jail?” Ben asked.
“Circumstantial,” Garrison said. “He took to me and trusted me too. He told me a lot he never told anyone else. I always kept that to myself. My information to have. The case went in another direction away from Andy so it didn’t really matter. It did intrigue me though. I kind of keep it locked away in my brain, wondering if it would ever become useful. Now it has.”
“So are you suggesting Andy did this to Jessica?” I asked.
“Not exactly,” Garrison said.
“Okay, wait,” Ben said. “Connect it all together for us, Garrison. That’s where this is going, right? Your long, drawn out speech here… we get it. You’re getting your two seconds in the spotlight.”
“Tell me I can do something with this case,” Garrison said.
“You’re not going to hold us hostage,” I said.
“After digging around a little more, I found out something interesting about Calvin. He’s broke. He’s in debt.” Garrison put his hand up. “I know I said that. Here’s the big one… a year ago, the bistro was at risk of closing. His grand plan wasn’t working out. He took a little money from the other restaurant but needed more. He took out a loan.”
I looked at Ben.
Ben rubbed his chin. “From IY Green…”
“Exactly,” Garrison said. “Calvin took out one of those terrible loans. It saved the bistro from closing down.”
“But,” I said with a head nod.
“But…,” Garrison said. “The guy is broke. Whatever the bistro made went toward the loan. He did the best he could to keep up. Of course, some of these loans have insane interest rates, payments and…”
“He didn’t make his payments on time,” I said. “Which means a company like IY Green could have done something to Jessica.”
“Could have?” Garrison asked. “There’s your murder… solved.”
“That vicious?” Ben asked.
“Maybe there’s more to the story I didn’t find out yet,” Garrison said. “Something that left them with no choice but to do what they did. They took her hand. Think about it.”
Garrison stepped back out of the office.
“Wait,” I said. “Your contact from that case. Andy. The bodybuilder.”
“What about him?” Garrison asked.
“Can you still call him?”
“Sure.”
“Go do that,” I said. “Let’s build a theory and a case here. If these guys did this, I want to make sure we have everything lined up. Also… good work.”
Garrison smiled and hurried away.
I felt Ben step up next to me and touch my back.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I think we need to go talk to Calvin.”
Chapter Twenty-One
There are too many hands in the kitchen.
He looks at his own hands.
Mentally, he has to draw his plans. Several drafts of the plans too. He can’t just draw them out in real life. If someone were to see them, things would get very messy.
Messier than they already were.
He pictures some kind of device. A large blade that can fall at his command.
He thinks about cutting his own hands off.
In one quick shot.
The blade falls. His hands pop off.
There’s your message.
Of course that’s just silly.
“We need to focus on the growth right here…”
A red dot touches the whiteboard screen.
His eyes follow like a cat would.
These meetings are pointless.
But he’s nestled right where he belongs.
The pants, the shirt, the tie… all of it creating a type of corporate camouflage that allows him to sit at the long table in the very clean room with a glass of perfectly clean water in front of him looking at these dumb charts… all the while his mind thinks about what’s next.
The woman in the park was an appetizer.
A gift.
The next would require work.
Deep thinking. Good planning.
A hand touches his shoulder.
He looks back.
He smiles.
“Are we clear?”
“Perfectly,” he says. “Let me run some numbers. I’ll make some projections. Figure a ten percent growth pattern over… five years?”
“Let’s do three, five, and seven.”
“Not a problem,” he says.
The hand on his shoulder squeezes tighter.
He looks at the hand.
The meeting comes to an end.
He lingers around to make small talk. He can’t have any red flags showing at all. It needs to be business as usual. That means talking about golfing. Or talking about winter plans. Skiing. A cabin in the woods. A few people talk about ice fishing. A few others talk about going to Florida for some winter sun.
He knows when to talk. When to laugh. When to shut up and look out the window.
“Don’t mind Leighland,” someone says to him. “The guy is a moron. He likes fancy colors and charts.”
“I know,” he says to his co-worker. “I know how to make everything right.”
Back to his work area, he sits and thinks.
An hour later he stands up and walks to the boss man’s office.
No knocking needed here.
He opens the door and sees Leighland on the phone.
Leighland hangs up and points to him. “Got what I asked for?”
“You have what I need,” he says.
“Excuse me?”
He slides a long knife from the inside of his shirt.
The same knife he used on that woman in the park.
The teeth are jagged, crooked, meant for tearing skin, muscle, tendon, and ripping apart bone.
He throws his left elbow, hitting Leighland in the jaw.
The hit is hard enough to daze him.
He grabs Leighland’s left hand and puts the knife to his wrist.
Leighland wants to scream but can’t. He’s dazed and his jaw is pretty much shattered.
So he begins to cut…
The images fade with the sounds of phone ringing and the hum of the large printer against the wall.
He takes a breath and comes back to reality.
A quick look around reveals Leighland at a desk nearby. Holding a cup of coffee.
All the guy does is walk and talk.
That doesn’t bother him though. This isn’t a jealousy thing. He doesn’t want Leighland’s job. He doesn’t want any kind of promotion. His job is fine. It’s good. It’s secure. Everyone knows he’s good at his job.
This is about the hand.
Leighland is a good guy.
All he thinks about is the hand.
The woman’s hand.
In the bag.
The first of many to come.
He hears a whistle.
He looks and sees Leighland pointing at him.
“You’re the guy, okay? Get those projections done!”
He gives a thumbs up to him.
He loves that kind of stuff.
When Leighland is out of sight, he curls his lip.
Maybe instead of cutting Leighland’s hand off, he should just kill him.
Chapter Twenty-Two
We were on our way to Scarnie’s.
The first thing I wanted to do was talk to Calvin. I want to gauge his reaction to Jessica’s death and see what he was willing to talk about. If he was in the financial trouble Garrison suggested, and Jessica was killed because of that financial trouble, then Calvin knew he was done for.
It didn’t even matter the legal issues that would arise, he would have to handle the guilt that his bad business decision cost his girlfriend her life.
“When Allie Down gets quiet like this… look out, world,” Ben said.
I shook my head. “Can I help you?”
“How far are you going into this before we get there?”
; “And what do you do? Just not think?”
“I wait for the facts. I don’t create scenarios.”
“Everything Garrison said makes sense,” I said.
“It does.”
“So how do we approach Calvin?”
“With care,” Ben said. “He just lost his girlfriend. Whether he’s a good person or not, this is hurting him. And if he’s the face of true evil and it’s not hurting him… he’ll still show pain. We have to grab that and use it. If we go in there with our faces red from anger, he’s going to take off.”
“I’ll chase him down,” I said.
“Are you going to hit him with a jar of salsa?” Ben asked with a grin.
“If that’s what it takes,” I said.
“Okay, Allie Down. Keep it coming. Talk to me.”
“The bistro was in trouble and he took out a bad loan. Why?”
“Simple. His image.”
“Really?”
“Did you see that picture of him?” Ben asked. “You may not realize it so much, but some people will do anything for their image.”
“Meaning… I don’t have an image?”
“Oh, you have an image,” Ben said.
“What’s my image?”
Ben laughed. “I’m not getting trapped there.”
“Trapped? Wait. So this guy is too prideful to admit his plans are failing. He could have gone to the city. Local council. He could have pooled residents together. Instead, he ran to a dirty loan company.”
“For the image,” Ben said.
“For the image, right? And because of that loan, his girlfriend is dead. Is the image really worth it?”
“Probably not,” Ben said. “Look, Allie, it happens all the time. Business people look good but are broke. Look at athletes. They live this big lifestyle while the money is coming in but then they retire and the money stops then they go broke. It’s kind of the same thing.”
“I’m still intrigued about my image,” I said.
“And you know a guy like Calvin probably has gambling tendencies too,” Ben said, gliding right over my comment.
“He likes the thrill,” I said.
“Too much,” Ben said. “So he’s desperate to keep his image steady. There’s no way he doesn’t know about this loan company and their practices. He needs the cash. He gets the cash. In his mind, this will fix everything. There’s only one way of thinking.”
“But it doesn’t work out,” I said.
“Nope. Now he’s screwed.”
“The part we’re missing is how does it go from that to Jessica losing a hand and being murdered?”
“That’s what we get paid to figure out,” Ben said.
Ben made the last turn and pulled up to Scarnie’s.
I laughed. “The place just feels expensive.”
The outside was old, big stone. There was a black canopy that hung from the front door to the sidewalk. A podium stood at the end of the sidewalk, where a young man stood in a suit, waiting for guests. There was a valet, eagerly waiting to park some cars and make a little money from it.
I climbed out of the car and the young man in the suit came to greet me.
“Ma’am, you’re not allowed to park right there.”
“I think I am,” I said as I flashed my badge.
The young man’s eyes widened. “Oh.”
“You know why we’re here,” I said. “Right?”
He nodded. “Sad.”
“Terribly,” I said. “And it’s an open murder investigation. So you don’t mind us parking here, right?”
“Not at all,” the young man said. “Please… come this way…”
Ben stood by my side and we were taken to the front door.
Ben made a quick move and opened the door first. “Hey, my man, you can go back to work. We can take it from here.”
“I just wanted to-”
“Thank you,” I said.
Ben and I entered the restaurant alone.
We both stopped and looked around.
The place oozed with fanciness. The colors were dark. The accents were mostly gold. It smelled very clean, yet had the subtle hint of food lingering in the air. I had to admit the smell of the food hit my nose and made me hungry.
“Expensive,” Ben said.
“Very,” I replied. “I think we might be under dressed for this kind of place.”
“Me? For sure. You? Never.”
“Meaning?”
“You look beautiful, Allie Down. Like always.”
I laughed. “Are you trying to flirt with me right before we interview someone who could be responsible for the death of his girlfriend?”
“Not sure it’s flirting if it’s true,” Ben said.
“No?”
“I don’t know. You asked about your image when we were driving. This is your image, Allie Down. You’re tough, beautiful, and you make me happy.”
“I think that’s the image you’re making up. Versus the image Calvin paid to have.”
“And she ties back into work,” Ben said.
“Are you going to buy me a meal from here?” I asked.
“I’d have to sell a kidney to do that.”
“Then we better get to work,” I said.
I walked across the restaurant floor and saw Calvin a few seconds later.
He stood up from a table and looked right at me.
I showed him my badge and gave a sorrowful nod.
He was dressed in a nice suit, much like the one in the picture I saw of him.
He nodded back to me.
“I’m Detective Allie Down,” I said. “This is…”
My voice trailed off as a second person stood up from the table.
The man stood next to Calvin.
I knew the look of a lawyer from a mile away.
Calvin had his lawyer with him.
I glanced back at Ben.
He looked as annoyed as I felt.
Why in the world did Calvin have a lawyer with him?
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Just call me Ben,” Ben said to Calvin. “And this is Allie. We’re here about Jessica.”
“I see you have company with you already,” I said. “Should we leave and come back later? Maybe around dinnertime?”
Calvin shook his head. “No. Right now is fine.”
“Is the restaurant still open?” Ben asked.
“It is,” Calvin said.
“No rest for the wicked?” I asked.
Calvin’s lawyer cleared his throat. He was tall, skinny, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. His hands folded in front of him, his eyes beady and intense, just waiting for the right moment to shut Ben and I down.
“If I close the restaurant, the ripple effect…,” Calvin looked away for a second and took a deep breath.
“I get it,” Ben said. “There are a lot of people who depend on you. You have to be here. You have to be their leader. Stand tall and stay focused. Right?”
Calvin looked at Ben. “Exactly.”
I applauded Ben in my mind. He knew how to get to this guy quicker than I could.
“We’re from Sandemor,” I said. “Just following up on some information. Gathering more. Trying to piece this entire tragedy together. First off, I just want to tell you how sorry I am. I’m sure there’s not-”
“Can I get you two something to drink?” Calvin asked.
“We’re on the job,” Ben said with a smirk.
“Soda?” Calvin asked.
Ben snapped fingers. “Right. Of course. You’re not going to charge us, are you? I’m not sure I can afford this place. Although it’s tempting.”
Calvin half grinned. “Anything you would like is on the house. As long as you find the person who did… this…”
Calvin hurried away and tracked down a waitress.
I studied his body language.
The way he touched the woman’s arm. Leaning down and whispering into her ear.
The waitress walked away but Calvin didn’
t look back at her.
He looked away.
His back to us.
“You can have a seat,” Calvin’s lawyer said.
“And your name?” I asked.
“You can call me Chris,” he said.
“Somber mood here,” Ben said. “Too bad.”
“Not sure what you’d expect right now,” Chris said.
I slid into the booth first.
Ben sat next to me.
Chris sat down, which surprised me.
He looked at me, knowing what he was doing.
Standing his ground in a way.
Calvin returned and sat down with a deep breath.
He folded his hands, looked at me, then at Ben… and then he broke down into tears.
They were real tears and it was real emotion pouring from him.
Chris sat stoic like nothing was happening.
I wasn’t across from Calvin, which meant it was up to Ben to do something.
Slowly, Ben reached across the table and grabbed Calvin’s arm. “No shame is crying. It’s sad what happened to her. I can’t imagine what you’re going through right now. Mentally. Physically. Still carrying this place. And the bistro.”
“What did you two do, look into my life?” Calvin asked as he looked at me with glossy eyes.
“I frequent the bistro,” Ben said, lying. “And Allie won’t stop talking about this place.”
“Spoiled tongue,” I said, playing into the lie.
“We also saw an article about what you had been doing with the bistro and the building,” Ben said. “You’re a real go-getter. Like Jessica, right?”
Calvin wiped his cheeks. “That’s right. She was amazing. She was my inspiration.”
“How so?” I asked.
The waitress came to the table with our drinks.
“Order something to eat,” Calvin said.
“That’s tempting,” Ben said. “But I feel that if I eat here I’ll end up in a food coma. Or I’ll never want to eat anywhere else ever again. Can we take a raincheck on the detective discount meal?”