by Mike Faricy
Vague information was on the radio news, but nothing that I didn’t already know. There had been a “fire” at the Venture Inn and the place had been evacuated, the cause was unknown at this time. Nothing much after that, I got into the office a little after nine, Louie was nowhere to be seen. I phoned Gemma and ended up leaving a message asking her to call me when she had a moment.
She phoned me maybe a half hour later.
“Dev, this is Gemma.” She sounded, I don’t know, distracted maybe.
“Gemma, thanks for returning my call. I was at the Venture Inn last night, I don’t know if you saw it on the news, but there was….”
“The police left maybe an hour ago. I wasn’t feeling well and took a sleeping pill last night, didn’t wake up until they were pounding on the door this morning. I figured Royal had already left for work.”
I waited for her to say something else, but she didn’t.
“Is he at the office?” I finally asked.
“No, apparently there was some sort of explosion or fire or something and, well, he won’t be coming home.”
“Is he okay?”
“No, they think he might be dead. He had a room there, at the Venture Inn, it’s where the explosion happened.”
“Are you okay, Gemma?”
“What? I don’t know, I’m just trying to get my head around this whole thing. I really don’t know what to think.”
I didn’t think she sounded that upset considering the police had just told her that Royal was most likely blown to bits just last night in a hotel explosion. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“No, no I think I just need some time. My mother’s on her way over, now. I’ll be okay, I think.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
I thought about my brief phone conversation with Gemma for the rest of the morning. I called Aaron LaZelle just after my late lunch and left a message, he phoned me back toward the end of the day. I was in The Spot, sitting at the bar talking to Louie.
“Yeah, Dev, you called.” He said it in that clipped sort of way he has when he’s juggling a half dozen different things, suggesting I had better make it fast.
“Thanks for returning my call, Aaron. That Venture Inn explosion….”
“I really don’t know much more than what you hear on the news right now. Not that I’d tell you, anyway. You need anything else?”
“Actually, the reason I’m calling is I was there.”
“What do you mean, you were there?”
“I was there, in the parking lot, working. I saw the explosion, and saw all the folks running out the door. I drove past this morning and it turns out the guy I was investigating, doing surveillance on, his car was still in the lot along with another guy whose wife or girlfriend was meeting with the first guy and….”
“Just what in the hell are you talking about?”
“I was there trying to watch a guy named Royal Baker. He was supposedly having an affair with a woman named Ashley. She’s some sort of professional escort. I believe they were in the room together, her and Royal Baker. I met this jackass guy who drives this Ashley chick around, guy’s name is Tony, don’t know his last name. I ran into him in the hotel lobby and he said he was waiting for a package to be delivered. Then he was going to take it to Baker. I don’t know, maybe an hour later that explosion happened. I didn’t put it together until this morning when I drove past and the parking lot is basically empty except for their two cars.”
“Any chance he might be somewhere else?”
“Who, Royal Baker? If he is then you guys got a lot of explaining to do, because his wife told me two officers had been there this morning giving her the bad news.”
“I’m thinking you should probably come in so we can get a statement.”
“When do you want me?”
“The sooner, the better.”
“I’ll be down there within the hour.”
“I’m going to be meeting with the fire inspectors on their preliminary findings, when you get here ask for Manning.”
“Manning? Oh come on, isn’t there someone else that could do this?”
“Let me explain something, Dev, I just might have a few more irons in the fire than your inability to get on with Manning. No one else seems to have a problem, except for the bad guys. Get over it and then get your ass down here, pronto.”
“What about tomorrow, would you have time then?”
“Dev. Hello? Are you listening? Did you hear anything I just said? I’ll tell Manning you’ll be down here within the hour and I’ll ask him to be gentle.”
“I don’t think he has it in him.”
“One hour,” Aaron said and hung up.
Chapter Fifty-Three
I didn’t know if Aaron’s “hour” included the fifty-five minutes I had to wait locked in an interview room while Detective Norris Manning finished up whatever phone call he pretended to be on when I arrived. It was approaching the two-hour mark since I’d spoken with Aaron before Manning decided to make his appearance in the interview room.
He opened the door carrying a couple of files and a coffee mug. He marched over to the metal topped table where I was sitting, cracking his ever-present wad of gum in time to his footsteps.
“So, Mr. Haskell, we meet once again. How are you? Well, I hope.”
“Hey, look, Manning, I don’t want to talk to you anymore than you want to talk to me. So, let’s just get this statement over with and then I can go home and you can hassle some other innocent citizen.”
“Amazingly, there seems to be a multiple homicide in our saintly city and you just happen to be in the area. Imagine my surprise.” He smiled, but his cold blue eyes bored in on me like lasers. The pink dome of his bald head flushed ever so slightly as he opened the file in front of him. “Why don’t you start at the beginning and enlighten me.”
“Okay, I was hired by a Mrs. Gemma Baker to investigate her suspicions concerning her husband, Royal Baker, and his possibly being involved in an extramarital affair.”
“How did she hear about you?” he asked and turned a page in the file.
“I was working for her husband, well at least until we parted ways.”
Manning looked up. “He fired you?”
“It was more of a mutual decision. He had me looking into some online harassment of one of his clients and I didn’t get along with the client or her companion, for that matter.”
“There’s a surprise. So Baker terminated the contract?”
“Yes.”
“And his wife hired you?”
“Yes”
“Was she involved in any way with the earlier arrangement between you and Mr. Baker?”
“No, not to my knowledge. As far as I know she’s not involved in his business.”
“And what did she want you to do?”
“She told me she was going to initiate divorce proceedings against her husband, Royal Baker. She suspected him of having an ongoing, sexual relationship with one of his clients, a woman named Ashley. I was to obtain proof of that relationship.”
“And how did you intend to do that, obtain proof?”
“About all I had were some photographs, the usual things, their cars in hotel parking lots, the two of them entering and leaving the hotel.”
“Did they actually do this, arrive or leave in one another’s company? Walk arm in arm, or something?”
“No, that was part of the problem. Baker would arrive maybe close to an hour before her. She’d leave before he did. She was always with some guy named Tony, no last name. A real jerk, anyway, this Tony would drive her to the hotel then wait in the bar while she was riding Baker for a couple of hours up in some room and then they’d leave together.”
“This Ashley and Tony person?”
“Yeah.”
“So, although you had strong suspicions you never found anything incriminating.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty accurate.”
“And you get paid for this?”
&nb
sp; “You know, Manning, I’m down here on my own time trying to help you through an investigation. Could we just get on with it, I’m not the one under investigation, here.”
“Yet,” he smiled then said, “Okay, strike that last comment about getting paid. Nothing should surprise me any more. So what were you doing, just hanging around the bar?”
“No, I was out in the parking lot, sitting in my car. I went into the hotel to see if I could get Baker’s room number, I couldn’t. Instead, they gave me a phone extension to call his room. Before I could do anything, this Tony character spotted me and we talked for just a minute.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing worthwhile, except that he denied Baker and Ashley were at the hotel. But, I’d seen both of them entering earlier that evening. Then he told me he was waiting for a package to arrive and he was supposed to deliver it to Baker, at his home.”
“Arrive? You mean in the mail?”
I looked at Manning for a long moment. “No, somebody was dropping the thing off to him, at the hotel. Then he was supposed to give the thing to Baker.”
“At Baker’s house?”
“Yeah, at least that’s what he said. I think he was trying to blow smoke, you know convince me Baker and that Ashley chick weren’t there. I sort of had the feeling he knew it wasn’t working, and that I was on to them.”
“He tell you who this package was supposed to be from?”
“Nope.”
“Do you know if he ever received this package?”
I shook my head. “No. I did see a woman carrying a bakery box, you know those white things, but I don’t know if it was the package that this Tony guy was waiting for. I never saw the woman leave the hotel and I was watching the front door, well, up until that explosion.”
“I’m sure you wouldn’t miss anything,” Manning sort of half mumbled.
“So, who else was killed besides Royal Baker?” I asked.
Manning looked up from his file and studied me for a moment. “We have two other bodies, an adult male and female. We’re confirming identification right now, then we’ll notify next of kin. It will probably be on the ten o’clock news, you could watch the broadcast from whatever bar you’re in.”
“Sounds like it could be this Ashley and Tony, although given the nature of the business she had with Baker that may not be her real name. I think he might have the records at his business, Tri-Cort Services, they’re out just off of I-94, a couple of blocks from….”
“Someone’s out there checking that now.”
“Well, while they’re checking, the other male body, the guy I knew as Tony, see if he had any relation to Tommy Flaherty, the guy that got nailed on those ATM heists. I noticed what looked like red dye on his finger tips, it looked like the stuff Flaherty was covered with when he was arrested. One of Flaherty’s sisters made a remark about his pimp friend, Tony. Could be they were connected.”
Manning seemed to ignore my suggestion and said, “Tell me about your initial hire, working for Baker.”
“Not much to tell, Baker hired me to find out who was posting images of this Ashley woman on her ‘dating’ web site.”
“Images?”
“Not what you’re probably thinking of, usually no sexual stuff, at least that I know of. It was just shots of her going in or coming out of a hotel, standing by a tree or some other dumb thing most of the time. There was one, and this sort of led to me quitting the investigation, where she and that Tony guy were doing it on the hood of his car in a parking ramp.”
Manning made a quick face like that didn’t make any sense. “For what purpose?”
“Purpose? Maybe they just felt like screwing, I don’t know. None of it really made any sense, although this Ashley said her business was down ten or fifteen percent, I can’t remember the figure. Based on her line of work you’d think an image of her banging on the hood of a car might even be a good marketing campaign.”
“Did you find out who was taking these images and posting them?”
I shook my head. “Baker, or actually both of us terminated the contract before I had the chance. Not that I ever had any idea.”
Manning sort of frowned and nodded suggesting that wasn’t surprising.
“No one was really cooperating. I was just glad to be finished with the bunch of them.”
“You weren’t upset? I could see how you’d be upset, that sort of thing can really hurt a reputation.”
“Save it, Manning. I wasn’t upset, believe me, I was ready to quit anyway. It’s not like I needed the hassle.”
“Of course, plus with the state of your so-called reputation already, well. Any final thoughts?”
“You mean who might have done it?”
“Yes,” he said then bored into me with those laser eyes.
“No, to be specific. In general terms it would have to be someone familiar with the locations. Someone with the time to do it. Someone with the time and inclination to follow either Baker or Ashley around. Well, and know how to, or know someone who would know how to build an explosive device.”
“Sounds like you’d fit the bill,” Manning said then just stared at me without smiling.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Manning chatted and made some more notes in his file, then finally looked up. “Okay, Mr. Haskell, I really don’t have anything else for you at this time and unfortunately no current reason to hold you, maybe just plan on keeping yourself available should something come across the radar.”
“I’ll be sure to do that, Detective. I’m free to go?”
“I’m sure we’ll be in touch, but please, by all means, get the hell out of my sight.” And so I did.
Once I was finished wasting time with Manning, I headed over to Andy’s place.
“God, I couldn’t believe it when that Detective Dondavitch called,” Andy groaned in his office. I had been sitting there listening for the past fifteen minutes to how well Tommy Flaherty had been working collections for him.
“Dondavitch was pretty good,” I said. “They got Tommy Flaherty for stealing three different ATMs. I mean he stole the entire machine, I saw the tape of one of the heists. He and some other guy just tossed the thing into the back of a hearse and drove off with it. Course they apparently hadn’t figured on this red dye exploding all over the place. One of your coffins had a bunch of cash stuffed in it. There was a few grand worth of twenty’s hanging up to dry in the basement, still dyed red and worthless. Tommy looked like someone had attacked him with an ax with all the red dye still coating him. All three of your coffins were in his sister’s house.”
Andy just shook his head. “You gonna send me an invoice?”
“You know what? I’m not. I was the one who suggested Tommy Flaherty to you in the first place. Maybe we’ll just call it even and next time I recommend someone, you can just ignore me.”
“Not your fault, I was the guy who interviewed and then hired that stupid son of a bitch.”
“Yeah, but remember I gave you his name.”
“Too bad, he’s actually got some real talent. I could have seen him working his way into other positions, he’s certainly not stupid.”
“Like one of my cop pals said, some folks just think they’re too smart to get caught.”
Andy’s phone rang, “This is probably our insurance guy wondering why we can’t put the deceased in the coffin with a family crest on it even though the guy’s been buried for a week. I better take this.”
I waved goodbye as he picked up the phone.
I phoned Heidi to see if she might be able to improve my mood after I’d been locked in a room with Manning.
“What?” she answered.
“Hey, I’m looking for a gorgeous woman who might be interested in dinner and maybe a glass or two of Prosecco.”
“You’re looking to get laid.”
“Well, yeah, but we wouldn’t have to do that on an empty stomach.”
“Thanks, but no thanks I’m going to a lecture tonight.
”
“A what?”
“Yeah, you heard right, a lecture. Its high class so it’s way out of your league, investments with a green future.”
“What?”
“Climate change, Dev, global warming. It’s been in all the papers, it’s even mentioned on TV, you probably could have caught it at The Spot, if they ever bothered to turn the sound up on the TV.”
“Maybe I should go with you and then we could just grab something later on.”
“I’m meeting someone there, so no. And anyway, I don’t really feel like being grabbed.”
“Since when?”
“Nice chatting, good-bye,” she said and hung up.
I ran down a list of potential dates in my mind, but every name I came up with had vowed to hang up on me if they ever heard my voice again so I headed down to The Spot.
Chapter Fifty-Five
I’d been nursing a couple of beers and chatting with Jimmy off and on for the past couple of hours when the ten o’clock news came on.
“Jimmy, turn up the sound, I want to hear what they say about that hotel explosion.”
“It’ll bother the other customers, Dev.”
I looked around, there was a couple who’d been arguing in a back booth for the past hour, a guy at the far end of the bar who just stared at his beer and hadn’t uttered a word since he’d walked in the door and then there was me.
“Jimmy.”
“Okay, okay,” he said and picked up the remote.
The newscast led with a story about highway closures in the metro area, then they spent five minutes on the change to the starting times for junior high schools. Finally, just before the commercial break they flashed three images on the screen; Royal Baker, Anthony Ceccio, and a woman named Joan Dillon. If you added a nose job, cheekbone enhancement, a few dozen Botox treatments, breast implants, and a new hair color Joan Dillon could be the woman I’d briefly known as Ashley.
It came as no surprise Anthony Ceccio’s photo was actually a mug shot with a date, his name spelled out beneath the facial image and then “Lino Lakes” under that. He had apparently served time there just like Tommy Flaherty and I was thinking possibly with Tommy. He still looked clueless. The forty-five second news report closed with some outside footage of the hotel with a giant hole in the wall five stories up from the blasted out room, then they promised to cover the Twins latest loss right after the commercial break.