Murder Across The Ocean

by Charlene Wexler

  "I'll just think of it as just another one of Pauline's Perils," she said.

  Her thirty-something therapist asked, "Excuse me. Either I didn't hear your comment correctly, or I misunderstood it.”

  Lori just smiled and shook her head. Are they all so young, or am I just so old?

  ***

  Cate ran into Lori’s hospital room. “How is she?”

  Barry, who had just sat down next to his mother, turned around to face his excitable daughter. “Slow down, honey. Gram is sleeping. She had a full physical therapy session. Things are going so well, the doctor is planning to send her to a rehab center Wednesday morning.”

  “Great!” Cate almost shouted.

  Her father gave her a stern look as he ushered her out of the room, repeating, “Gram is sleeping.”

  “Where’s Mom?” Cate asked.

  “Doing some shopping.” He declined to say that his wife was out looking for a graduation present for Cate, but it did remind him to ask Cate a question. “Honey, do you think you could take care of Gram if Mom and I went home after your graduation next week?”

  “Of course, Dad. I’ll stay here until she can go back to the States with me. I better take off to class now. Today is my last day. I’ll see her later.” Reluctant to go, Cate stepped back into the room and took a long, loving look at her sleeping Gram, who finally was without tubes and IVs in her arms.

  On Cate’s way out, she literally bumped into Jordan, almost falling down.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked as she bent down to pick up her fallen purse.

  “I came by to see how your grandmother was doing, and if she’s up to it, I need to ask her a few questions.”

  Cate immediately found herself going on the defense. “She is still recovering. You have no right to bother her now.”

  He put his hands up in surrender. “Okay, Cate, okay. Why are you always fighting me? It’s clear I can’t do anything right by you. You are like a tightly coiled spring waiting to unwind."

  Her dad walked over to where they were standing. "Jordan, good to see you again. Mom is doing much better."

  Cate left Barry and Jordan talking and continued on her way, keeping her mouth shut for a change.

  Her heart plunged as she berated herself for always jumping to his bait. She turned around and eyed Jordan standing in jovial conversation with her dad. She sped up her pace in order to get out of the hospital before Jordan decided to join her.

  At twenty-six, she would soon leave London with a master’s degree in law. Why did she become a bumbling idiot every time she ran into Jordan Gould? Why couldn’t they just be friends? He looked really handsome today with his crisp, white, button-down shirt and black cotton trousers. She admonished herself for thinking like this. She just couldn’t help it. Damn that Jordan, complicating matters! She had to stay focused.

  ***

  Jordan left, and Barry went back into the room to sit by his sleeping mother. He was anxious to talk to Lori about Cate. In many ways, his daughter was unlike he and Anne. Cate was smart, confident, and always looking for a challenge, yet she had vulnerability, one that always showed up when she was near that Gould fellow.

  He sighed, letting his body slump into the chair. Lori woke up and focused her eyes on her son. Alarmed at his posture, she asked, “Barry, you look worried. Is something wrong?”

  “I’m not sure, Mom. Cate and that Gould fellow have a thing, but they won't acknowledge it. I really don't think she is in love with Joseph."

  Lori grinned. "So you've noticed."

  Chapter 21

  Chief Inspector Holmes called for a meeting of the team working on the Wheeler murder at nine o’clock on Thursday morning. Around the table sat Chief Inspector Holmes, Inspector Sanders, and Inspector Tuttle. They were waiting for the Yank from the FBI.

  At 9:22, an irritable and hurried Jordan entered the meeting room. “Sorry, gentlemen, I stopped by the hospital to check on Mrs. Brill and possibly ask her a few questions, but her granddaughter wouldn’t let me near her.”

  “Maybe her granddaughter is right,” Holmes said. “We need to give the lady time to recover, to heal. I’ve been going by to check on her and Suzi Wu, too, but not to question them. Mrs. Brill, I believe, has told us everything she can, and unfortunately, the Wu girl is still in a coma.”

  Sanders, scowling, gave a shrug, “Are we ever going to start this meeting? I have work to do.”

  Jordan ignored the men’s comments and poured himself a cup of coffee before speaking.

  “The raid went well, considering the losses.” He paused to acknowledge the gravity of his statement. The men of Scotland Yard shifted in their seats uneasily, each feeling the weight of the loss of Inspectors Townsend and Isaacs, who had shadowed Bly and Lori’s car and were ambushed and murdered by Roland. It was never easy when officers were killed in the line of duty. It made the case more personal, no matter how objective they needed to be.

  “Details regarding funeral services for Inspectors Richard Townsend and Arthur Isaacs will be discussed after Mr. Gould gives us the briefing,” Holmes announced to the solemn group, and then he deferred to Jordan to continue.

  Jordan turned his gaze on Milton Sanders, who sat glumly stirring the tea and cream in his cup. “Milton,” Jordan said sharply to rouse him out of his stupor, “you are the one covering the Wu girl. I need to see the video of everyone who has visited her since she’s been in a coma.”

  Realizing the room had turned silent as his companions focused on him, Sanders, a look of weariness in his eyes, took off his wire-rimmed glasses and looked sullenly around the table, then rose and left the room, mumbling to himself.

  Jordan followed, saying, “Should we meet you in the computer room?”

  “No. I’ll set it up there, be back shortly,” Sanders replied as he made his way down the hall.

  Ten minutes later, Sanders reentered the meeting room with a metal cart upon which sat a television and video player. He was silent as he set up the video and turned on the screen. Jordan put his hand on his shoulder.

  “You are the one who has identified and questioned Suzi’s visitors. You need to stay and identify them for me.”

  Milton Sanders sat down and stared at Jordan. “So, you think now you’re running England along with the colonies?”

  Jordan laughed and patted him on the shoulder, trying to keep the mood light. He understood these men were under a lot of strain, but he needed work to continue.

  “Hey, man, remember, we’re on the same team.”

  The men at the meeting gathered around as the computer beeped and the video started. The first scene they looked at was of a small woman quietly entering Suzi’s hospital room. Shuffling over to the bed, her back hunched, wearing baggy tan pants, sporting thin, cropped, yellow-gray hair, the elderly woman resembled a poor Chinese farmer from another time.

  Jordan stopped the video and turned to Sanders. “Is that Suzi’s mother?” he asked excitedly. “It can’t be! This woman looks like she’s in costume.”

  To think that Suzi came from Chinese peasants was almost too hard to believe. Didn’t Cate tell him that Suzi’s mother used to be a prostitute? Now she looked like a coolie. How was that possible?

  ”No, I don’t think so. Through an interpreter, I learned she claims to be an aunt who came over from Chinatown in San Francisco when she heard about Suzi being in a coma.”

  ”Did you check out her story?”

  ”We’re not dumb here, Gould. Her passport is from California, and her residence address has been confirmed, though we couldn't confirm her relationship to the patient.”

  The next scene showed a tall, thin, blonde woman entering the room, arm-in-arm with a distinguished-looking older gentleman. Jordan recognized Cate immediately. His hands tightly clasped around his coffee cup until the man on the screen turned around and Jordan realized Cate was with her father.

  ”Oh, yes, you should recognize these two,” Sanders said slyly, then stopped the vid
eo. “Ah, yes. The lovely and cantankerous Miss Cate Brill and Dr. Barry Brill, Lori Brill’s granddaughter and son, respectively.”

  “Okay, that is obvious. Now, what about the old woman?” Jordan asked, urging Milton to move on. He would have no part in whatever he was implying.

  “The old woman sat by Suzi’s bedside every day for a week and a half before returning to the United States. Cate and her father came by about once a week. Dr. Brill spent time talking with the doctor about the girl’s condition. They were the only visitors, besides you, until a week ago. I will move the video forward.”

  Milton tried his best to be professional and not lash out at Jordan. After all, he had worked with him on the raid, and Jordan was no slouch in the field. He had heard rumors that the FBI was calling Jordan back to Washington. As far as he was concerned, the sooner, the better. Bloody Yank!

  As the video moved forward, Milton narrated, “Two young women visited Suzi one day. When our man watching the room alerted me, I had them detained and went down to the hospital to question them. Both…”

  “Where were you?”

  “I had taken my leave for an hour or so, and the room was watched while I was away.”

  Jordan simply nodded, prompting him to continue.

  “Both women claimed to be models who worked with Suzi in Las Vegas.” Milton checked his notes in a small notepad. “Their passport names were May Chung and Claire Todd.”

  Jordan and the men peered closer at the screen. Two leggy, paper-thin, thirty-year-olds toppled into the hospital room on five-inch heels. If Suzi was going to wake up, the clicking and clomping of those shoes would have done the job. The blonde’s hair fell down over her shoulders, and her red skirt barely covered her thighs. The Asian woman’s dark hair was twisted and piled high into one of those beehive styles women wore back in the sixties, which only made her long black lashes more prominent. Her tight black dress reached to her knees, but it barely covered her breasts.

  Jordan turned to the Inspector and smiled. “Must have been a tough job interviewing those two.”

  With a straight face, Milton answered, “Just doing me job.”

  The ice was broken, and the two of them laughed along with the other two men, but they were silenced as the screen showed a room empty of visitors, with only a petite, shriveled, silent patient attached to tubes and breathing machines.

  “That’s a tough break,” Jordan said, shaking his head glumly. If they had only arrived sooner, Suzi’s life may have been spared.

  When the surveillance video was turned off, Jordan began his briefing.

  “We rescued Mrs. Brill. Good job, Sanders,” Jordan said, nodding to his partner. “We brought out Nate Fillmore and Roland McKeifer alive, and we lost one of the kidnappers in a car chase. The press thinks we have the case solved, but we know better.”

  “Yes, there are still too many loose ends. None of the kidnappers’ weapons matched the bullets in Wheeler, and none of their fingerprints matched the prints from Wheeler’s room. The bullets in Bly definitely came from Roland’s Smith and Wesson. And we know Roland was personally responsible for the deaths of our men on the force.” Jordan stressed the “our” to emphasize his feelings of camaraderie with the men of Scotland Yard.

  “Milton, go over the techs on Wheeler. We need to know how close the killer was to him so we can get an idea if he knew him or her, or was surprised. In addition, we must go over the layout of everything in the room. We know he died immediately with one shot above his left eye. This was all confirmed by the autopsy.”

  “Will do.”

  Reginald Tuttle—short, stocky, thinning reddish-brown hair, bespectacled, rigid conformist, on the force twenty-two years—said, “I was the one interrogating Roland, the bastard. He is ready to take the rap for our men and Bly, with Brill there as a witness, but he says he had nothing to do with the Wheeler murder. Says by the time they got to the hotel to ransack Mrs. Brill’s things, the chap was already dead and the hotel was crowded with lawmen. I don’t believe him. I think he done him in.” Tuttle scowled as he faced the others.

  “You’re a better man than I, Reggie,” Milton Sanders spoke up. “I would have left him in a million pieces had I been the one interrogating him.”

  Reginald Tuttle shook his head and stared down at his hands; he’d clenched them in fists in an attempt to suppress his anger. “It took everything in me not to strangle the life out of that son of a bitch with my own bare hands. He was so cocky and smug…”

  Chief Inspector Holmes rose from the table and poured himself some tea. He added his customary two lumps of sugar and some cream, took a sip, put his cup down, stroked his chin, and finally commented, “If we believe them, then we have to believe Josh Wheeler missed his connecting flight to Zurich just to stay with Mrs. Brill, not to throw people off his trail.”

  Jordan laughed and shook his head. “Sure, he stayed to fuck a seventy-year-old woman. It was a plan. His girlfriend wasn’t scheduled to meet him for two days.” Jordan then got up, poured himself another cup of coffee, and paced back and forth with the cup in his hand.

  Sanders pushed his rimless glasses up to his forehead and shook his head in disgust. “How the hell did you get into the FBI? You’re nothing like the Yanks we worked with before. Your family know someone?”

  The camaraderie, so tenuous to begin with, had dissipated with Sanders’ rhetorical question.

  Jordan stopped and stared at the British man who so openly offended him. “Don’t fuck with me, Milton. I grew up in the Bronx; my dad was a peddler with six of us living in a small apartment. I worked every job possible and got into Harvard on brains, muscle, and chutzpah.”

  “No wonder you are so wired. You drink that stuff like it’s water. Sit down, and for fuck sake, talk slower so we can…we can understand ye.” He was in a foul mood, and Jordan Gould wasn’t making it better.

  Holmes, understanding tempers and emotions were high, jumped into the conversation before his team started to fight each other. It had been quite some time since they had lost two officers in action. He also was distraught.

  “We need to be working together for the common good. I’ll have no more dissension or swear words here! Milton, perhaps you need to take a couple of days of leave. I know you and Arthur were close.”

  Milton Sanders shifted uneasily in his chair and stared glumly out the window. “When this case is closed, I’ll do just that, sir. Until then…”

  Jordan sat down and took a few deep breaths before resuming. “Roland McKeifer is our prime suspect. He is forty-two, Irish, and quick to temper. When he was handcuffed and led out of the warehouse, he spit into Sanders’ face. Obviously, he has no scruples when it comes to murder, but we still are not sure that he killed Wheeler.”

  “The other kidnapper, Nate Fillmore, he’s a young kid. He was scared to death. He had rented his family’s unused warehouse and got set up by Roland and his crowd. He had no idea what he had gotten into. The kid didn’t know how to shoot a gun. He kept asking about the lady, how was the lady? Asking about her welfare. This kid’s no criminal. He had a gun pointed at Roland to stop him, but I doubt he would have shot him. I’m sure he had nothing to do with the murder.”

  “The third kidnapper, Anthony Hundai, known as Tony, died in the car chase. He was a smalltime crook hired by Roland. Roland raped and beat Wheeler’s girlfriend unconscious. Suzi Wu may have the key to everything, but at the moment, as you know, she has not regained consciousness, so…”

  “So it may have been Tony.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Did you find out Suzi’s connection to the Brill Family?” Sanders asked.

  Jordan answered, “Lori Brill was able to tell me very little before going to the hospital. She told me Suzi’s father, Steve, divorced Suzi’s mother over twenty years ago, and mother and daughter went back to China. When they moved back to the States, we don’t know. Lori has no knowledge of how Wheeler and Suzi got together. She hasn’t seen her niece in twenty years,
but she feels that because of the connection, she is still alive. Otherwise, she is sure Roland would have killed her. But seeing that in the end he wound up shooting her, I have my doubts.”

  Jordan resumed his pacing and continued.

  “Roland, after being interrogated,” he said, giving a curt nod to Tuttle, “told us he and Tony were hired by someone named Chang, who represented a Wu in Shanghai. They met Chang in Chinatown, and he gave them five hundred pounds and promised them another three thousand pounds when they brought him some keys and codes that Wheeler had with him. They were told Wheeler was going straight to a bank safe deposit box from the airport. They planned to kidnap him after he left the bank. His detour to the Palace with Mrs. Brill made them change their plans. Seems they felt that Lori Brill may have been the mule in this scenario, that he would use her to plant the codes and such and make a clean get-away.”

  Jordan didn’t volunteer that his own men from the FBI were also planning to pick up Wheeler after he left the bank. That would have made a wild party at one of London’s major banks.

  Tuttle interrupted. “He hasn’t told us much about his plan change, only that he had been informed to make a thorough check of Lori Brills things, as the keys and code may have been planted on her. But he didn’t have the chance to do that. Maybe Roland shot Wheeler because they didn’t find anything, nor has he admitted to the Wheeler murder, and truthfully, there is nothing at the Palace to positively identify him as the murderer. Though the tape does show a very large man by Wheeler’s room that morning.”

  “Wouldn’t they have taken Lori then and there if they suspected her of carrying what they wanted?” Holmes asked.

  “Good question. Anyone find out more about Chang and Wu?” Sanders asked.

  Jordan looked down before answering. That slow drawn-out voice of Sanders drove him crazy.

  “We know all about Wu Industries. They invested with Wheeler. Trust me, to accuse them of anything will start an international political problem. I just wish I could talk to Suzi. She’d be able to shed some light on whether or not Roland is telling us the truth.”