“Just a guy hoping you can tell me a place I can buy some furniture in a hurry. Maybe the name of a good moving company, not afraid of burning the replaced furniture. Any ideas?”
A look of utter confusion crossed Brian’s face. His eyes pulled into squints and his eyebrows squeezed together. Then, as if a light was switched on inside his brain, his face relaxed. He lowered his head, then slowly began shaking it.
“You must be that investigator Mrs. Gracers hired.”
“Pretty formal, calling a woman you were having sex with Mrs.”
Brian’s head shaking increased speed.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”
“Derek Cole.”
Derek had been trained and had learned to expect anything. The Army had taught him any person, no matter how calm, could instantly turn into a threat. His years as a cop with the Columbus Police Department solidified that belief. Derek was ready for any turn of events. He prided himself at being able to respond to most situations with little to no delay. What kills people are delays. Delays in reacting to threats. Delays in responding to life or death decisions. A man pulls out a knife or a gun on someone, and that someone freezes. Maybe only for a second or two, but a second or two is all it takes to give the overwhelming advantage to the aggressor. Derek’s reflexes were finely tuned. Expecting everything and anything meant very few people would ever gain that second or two-second advantage. But what Brian Hilton did set Derek back on his heels. He was taken completely by surprise. Had no idea it was coming.
He invited Derek inside his home.
“I’m expecting an important business call to come in,” Brian said as he showed Derek into a marble-tiled living room, which overlooked a screened in pool, and, beyond that, the bay of Tampa. “Can I get you anything to drink, eat? I have a full bar, plus the best sweet tea this side of Alabama.”
Derek was still a bit surprised to be inside Brian Hilton’s home. It wasn’t that he was inside the home; it was that he didn’t need to break in, but was instead invited in, which had set him off.
As he sat in his car outside Hilton’s home, Derek decided, one way or another, he needed to get into both Hilton’s lodge and his home on Snead Island. Though the lodge had been cleaned, probably sterilized, nervous people always made mistakes. As for getting into the home he was now sitting inside, Derek figured if Brian Hilton had possession of any evidence linking him to the Sam Gracers murder, it would be somewhere in this very house.
“I’ll take a cold water, if that’s on the menu,” Derek said.
As Brian turned towards what Derek assumed to be the kitchen, his cell phone rang.
“Damn.”
Brian looked at his phone’s screen, then said, “Derek, I’m sorry, but this is the call I’m expecting. Seriously, make yourself at home. Kitchen is off to the right, bar and media room to your left. This should take no more than five to ten minutes.”
He slid his finger across the phone.
“Brian Hilton…Matt Steel! How are you, my friend?”
Brian gave a “thumbs up” sign to Derek, then climbed the staircase. A few seconds later, Derek heard the muffled voice of Brian Hilton, then a door close shut.
Time to explore.
Brian’s call lasted less than ten minutes, giving Derek enough time to quickly explore each room on the first floor. After grabbing a bottle of Dasani from the refrigerator, he walked silently through each room, pausing only occasionally to flip through a thin stack of papers and to rifle his hands through end table drawers. He looked on every bookshelf and every flat surface for the Lee Child book Jessica suggested the two used to pass notes back and forth to each other, but didn’t see the book. In fact, Derek didn’t see any fiction books at all.
He found nothing of interest. Nothing indicating Hilton was involved in anything suspicious and absolutely nothing tying him to Jessica Gracers.
“Things go well on your call?” Derek asked. He heard Brian talking upstairs, apparently, his call was drawing to a close and he opened the door to whichever room he was in, and quickly made his way back to his original spot on the couch. When Brian reappeared in the room, it was as if Derek had only gotten up to grab a bottle of water.
“Very well, actually. Thanks for asking.” Brian shot a puzzled look at the bottle of Dasani in Derek’s hands. “Water? I thought you private investigators were more whiskey type of guys?”
“Cheap scotch, actually.”
“Well, if it’s all the same to you, I just closed the biggest deal of my life and feel like celebrating a bit. I have some of the finest scotch in the world. Care to join me?”
“Expensive scotch would be wasted on me. I’m more of a bottom shelf type of guy.”
“That’s crazy.” Brian smiled, shook his head a bit. “Listen, I know it’s hot as hell outside, but my patio is climate controlled. You head out and I’ll bring you a scotch that will make you never want to drink another brand for the rest of your life.”
“Climate controlled outdoor patio?”
“Cool mist and air circulation system. The mist is so fine, you won’t even feel it against your skin. Cost a fortune but I love the view from the backyard. Please, head out and I’ll be there in two minutes.”
As he stepped through the sliding glass doors onto the covered patio, Derek realized two things. First, despite it being close to a hundred degrees, the patio’s air was perfect: Humidity was low and whatever the hell a “cool mister” was, he liked it. The second thing he realized was if he wasn’t investigating Brian Hilton for framing his client for murdering her husband, Derek would have liked the guy. Hilton was unassuming, welcoming. He had an air of confidence and openness about him that was disarming.
“You’re not here to make friends, Cole,” he thought. “You’re here to find out how this asshole framed your client.”
Brian came out through the sliding glass doors, which, it turned out, could be opened automatically by placing a foot an inch from the motion sensor located near the door jam, carrying two tumblers filled with brown liquor and two large ring-sized cigars.
“Deanston Highland single malt. Twelve years old. Not the most expensive, by far, but, damn this is good scotch.” He handed Derek a tumbler. “Wasn’t sure about your ice preference, so I added two. Figured people either like one cube or three, so I split the difference. And, if you’re one of those purist who drink it straight, I’ll pour you another and will have that as my second.”
“Two cubes is fine,” Derek said.
“And, not sure if you smoke cigars, but I always have one after I land a big deal. Join me? They're Cubans.”
Derek snipped the end off the cigar, lit it using a torch flame Brian handed him and drew in the smoothest, silkiest cigar smoke he’d ever tasted. And when he followed the cigar draw with a pull of the scotch, Derek figured he could spend the rest of his life on Brian Hilton’s cool misted patio, smoking cigars and drinking scotch, and be absolutely fine with how his life ended up.
Before Derek could grow upset with himself for devoting more of his mental energy towards being amazed at how great the scotch and cigar were, Brian started up the conversation.
“So, I know you’re not here to talk about good scotch. You want to talk about Jessica Gracers. Am I right?”
“Yup. You seem pretty open to talk about her.”
“No reason not to be. I mean, actually, there are probably a thousand reasons why I shouldn’t be speaking with you about her, or about anything. But, I really feel bad about what happened to Sam and…Jessica has some issues you may or may not have noticed yet.”
“Issues?”
“Let me guess. She told you she and I were having an affair. She told you she was with me at my lodge when her husband was murdered. That much I know for certain since you all showed up with a search warrant in hand to inspect the place. She probably told you some story about how Sam wasn’t a good husband, that they had grown apart and getting involved with me was not intended at all.
It just happened, like she and I had no control over our emotions.”
“So far, so good.”
“Well, let me tell you the truth: I met Jessica at a company party a year and a half ago. As I’m sure you know, Sam and I work for the same group.”
“FJ DeNuzzio’s group.”
“Exactly. She and I met when FJ introduced a new partner. We talked a little but no more than I spoke with any of the other partner’s wives or girlfriends. A couple of days after the party, Sam calls me. He asks me what his wife and I spoke about at the party. I told him we didn’t talk about anything important. I couldn’t even remember a single topic. Hell, I barely remembered her name, to be honest. I asked Sam what the heck he was getting at. He said Jessica hadn’t stopped asking questions about me. He wondered if I made a suggestive comment to her. If I came on to his wife at the party. Listen, Jessica is an attractive woman, but she is far from being my type.”
“So, have you been converted?”
Derek shot Brian a puzzled look.
“Are you asking me if I believe what you’re saying over what my client is saying?”
“No,” Brian said, laughing and waving off Derek’s question with his hand. “I mean, has that delicious glass of scotch converted you to being a fine scotch connoisseur instead of a rot-gut scotch drinker.” Brian stood up, bending forward at his waist. “Or, do you need one more to find out for certain?”
Derek considered him for a beat. Then only drained the last bit from his glass and nodded his head.
“One more ought to do it,” he said.
When Brian returned with two more heavily poured glasses of scotch, Derek was ready with questions.
“Why the hell did you get all new furniture in your lodge and have your old furniture burned by the two movers?”
“Last month, I had a partner meeting at the lodge. Partners with their spouses or significant others. Jessica and Sam showed up, of course, even though I was pretty damn nervous about having her in the place. Hell, I was nervous as shit just letting her know where my lodge was. Anyway, the party was fine. No issues, but Jessica was wandering all over the place. She went into every room. I guess that’s not a big deal but I found her lying down on my bed at one point, just before the party was breaking up. Just lying there, like she owned the damn place. When I found out you were bring a forensics specialist to inspect my lodge, I figured I had better do some serious cleaning. Last thing I wanted was for you guys to find one of her hairs left on my pillow. Or, I don’t know, some of her DNA on my couch.
“Sam called me the day after the party to apologize. He told me he was concerned about his wife, thought she might have some mental illness. He also told me he had been speaking with his lawyer about getting a divorce. Sam and I weren’t the best of friends, but close enough to share some personal matters, anyway. If you’re interested, I can give you the name of Sam’s lawyer. Talk to him yourself. See what he says.”
“I may just do exactly that,” Derek said in a low, somewhat muffled voice.
“I know what Jessica said in her alibi. I was read the whole damn story. Beginning to end. I know what she said about she and I having sex all over the lodge. I wasn’t taking any chances. Plus, and this may have been pure paranoia, if she really is as mentally sick as Sam and I believed her to be, I didn’t put it past her to have driven up to my lodge, found a way in, and to plant evidence all over the place. I wasn’t taking any chances.”
Derek puffed away at his cigar, spilling bluish smoke into the air, as he considered Brian’s story. It was so different from Jessica’s. Told in such an absolute and confident manner that Derek was seriously challenged not to believe Brian’s story over his client’s. He decided making a call to Sam Gracers’ lawyer would go a long way in helping him decide which story was accurate. If Sam Gracers was about to file for a divorce, Jessica had motive. And the one critical thing missing from the Gracers case thus far was motive.
“What can you tell me about FJ DeNuzzio and his company?” Derek asked.
“What do you want to know? Most disciplined and intelligent man I know. Gets up before the sun every day. Workday or not. Same time, every day. Works out then goes for a beach walk around his place on Anna Maria Island. He has a fantastic home on the island. As close as you can get to the westernmost point. Beautiful.
“He keeps everything simple, really. Simple and brilliant. FJ is a true genius. A business genius and a genius when it comes to understanding how people tick. His grandfather started a vacation rental business back in the 1930s, which he handed down to FJ’s father, who then handed it down to FJ. But FJ took the business to a whole new level. Instead of just renting homes owned by other people, he started buying homes and renting them himself. He bought tracts of land on Anna Maria Island, well before the market went through the roof. He bought condos, hotels, resorts…you name it. Took his grandfather’s business that, in today’s dollars, produced a couple hundred thousand a year in revenues and turned it into a worldwide business that brought in millions each quarter.
“About six years ago, FJ was approached by a team of investors from London. He sold them the whole business for over a hundred million. But, after five or six months of retirement, he got bored. Came up with an idea where a very selective group of business professionals all work together, pooling resources, sharing risks and profits and each focusing on their own area of specialty. He formed a group of eight, including him, and the idea just took off. I was fortunate enough to be asked to join a couple years ago and I haven’t looked back since.
“I won’t tell you too much about how FJ has the partnerships arranged. It’s proprietary. Literally, if other business owners knew how the hell FJ does it, how he arranges the seven different businesses and how each of us seven work together but also completely independently, there would be hundreds of other partnerships like FJ’s. FJ treats his ‘formula’ like KFC keeps their secret recipe.”
“But partners have left or have been asked to leave over the years,” Derek questioned. “You’d figure one of them would leak the recipe. Maybe start his or her own similar partnership?”
Brian shook his head.
“Each of us signs a whole stack of legal agreements. There’s a lot more than these two, but two of those agreements are non-disclosures and non-competes. If a partner leaves or is asked to leave, they have about fifty-million reasons to keep their mouth closed.”
“So, what’s your story? How did you get to where you are?”
“I was eighteen years old. Just graduated from high school up in Vermont and getting ready to head off to a local community college. Typical story for plenty of kids that age: I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I was good at fixing things but had no interest in getting paid to fix stuff.
“About a month after graduation, I broke my arm playing football in my parent’s backyard with a bunch of friends. Had a cast from my wrist past my elbow. When I went to have the cast removed a month or two after I broke my arm, I saw a box of tools behind the receptionist’s desk. I asked her what the tools were for, and she told me they were old and broken cast saws. When I was with the doctor, I asked him about the saws. He told me they buy new ones every so often and throw away the old ones. Said the last thing they needed was for a saw to malfunction and end up causing damage to one of their patients. I asked the doctor if I could take the saws, he said yes, and I brought them home. I took them apart, cleaned them, fixed them and made them like new. A couple of weeks later, I got dressed in the only suit I owned, and ended up selling the cast saws to another orthopedic medical practice. I sold six saws that day for three hundred and seventy-five dollars. My total cost, not including labor, came to fifteen dollars.”
“That’s a hell of a profit margin,” Derek commented.
“I was hooked. I made the rounds every quarter to every doctor’s office and hospital in the Vermont, Massachusetts and New York areas. I took a loan from my dad for start up money and was able to pay him back ever
y cent within six months. I started small, but grew to a point where I was buying million dollar MRI machines from hospitals, having them remanufactured and selling them back to the same hospital or a different one for two to three times what I paid for them.
“I have no idea how FJ heard about me—finding talent is part of his secret formula—but I was pulling in close to two million in personal income a year when I decided to join FJ. I ended up selling my business for six point four million and got into buying and selling other entrepreneurs businesses. Now—and I hope this doesn’t sound like I’m bragging or think I’m better than anyone else—I’d consider two million a year in income to be my poverty line.”
Derek liked this guy, and he was pissed that he did. Hilton seemed so genuine and down to earth, despite being a multimillionaire and partner with a company shrouded in secrecy. But maybe FJ’s group was exactly how Brian had described it: A group of business people, sharing risks and rewards. Helping one another out. All above board. Fully legal. Legit.
Derek drained the remnants of his glass and stubbed out the majority of his cigar.
“I think I’ll let you get back to work, Brian. I would like to get the name of Sam Gracers’ lawyer from you before I leave.”
“Absolutely.”
Brian walked Derek back inside and to the front door. He bolted up the stairs, leaving Derek alone downstairs once again. He wasn’t sure if the scotch had numbed him or he no longer felt the need, but Derek didn’t even consider having one last unmonitored look around Hilton’s first floor.
“Here you go,” Brian said, extending a business card to Derek. “I don’t know the guy but Sam recommended him to me a while back. Tell him I gave you his card. He might be more willing to talk with you knowing a friend of Sam’s sent you.”
Derek took the card, then shook Brian’s hand. He turned towards the door when a few more questions popped into his mind.
“What can you tell me about a man named Craig Washburn? Used to be part of FJ’s company, or so I’ve been told.”
Deathly Reminders: a Derek Cole Thriller (Derek Cole Suspense Thrillers Book 6) Page 13