No Right Turn

by A. J. Stewart

  “Presumably. It’s a private company, so they don’t have to produce public financials.”

  “What happened with the lawsuit?”

  “Settled out of court. The terms were undisclosed.”

  “So maybe a disgruntled former partner, all right. Do we know who the partner is?”

  “Partners. Two guys. And, yes, we know who they are. They still work together and they run a rival NASCAR team out of Mooresville, North Carolina.”

  “Is that anywhere near Charlotte?”

  “Just outside.”

  “So rivals with a beef? Okay, that’s something.”

  “There’s more.”

  “I could tell by the look in your eye.”

  Ron smiled. “Another lawsuit. A former engineer who worked for Beadman claimed that he had invented some kind of braking system that Beadman was claiming as his own. The guy lost.”

  “Lost?”

  “The court ruled that since the engineer worked for Beadman Engineering, everything he produced was work product and belonged to the company. The fact that he was later dismissed was neither here nor there.”

  “Disgruntled former employee. Always worth a look. This guy in Charlotte, too?”

  “No. Beadman’s racing team is based in Charlotte, but the engineering company is on the Space Coast, just near Daytona. The ex-engineer still lives and works in the area. Apparently, he’s crew chief on a third-tier racing team there.”

  “Score one, Florida.”

  “You did hear me say third-tier?”

  “I take them where I can get them, Ron. So two lawsuits, anything else?”

  “That’s the sum of it so far.”

  I nodded and smiled at Lizzy.

  “Anything, Lizzy, my dear?”

  “That’s not appropriate office language.”

  “Ron says it all the time.”

  “That’s Ron.”

  “Well, I’m in a mood.”

  “You’re always in a mood. So. . . Dale’s personal life. He has been married to his wife, Missy, for forty years. I trawled the papers and the gossip columns and got no hint of any extramarital activities.”

  “So, happily married. Nice to see.”

  “Yes, it is, isn’t it?” She pouted her lips and gave me a stare. I gave her my I don’t know what you’re getting at face. She shook her head like she was disappointed but not surprised and she continued.

  “They have one child, a daughter, Angela Jean. She grew up in Palm Beach and went to college at Tulane.”

  “Mardi Gras U. Nice.”

  “I suppose. She then joined her father’s engineering business and later his racing team and now is chief operating officer of the racing team and is on the board of the engineering business.”

  “Chief operating officer? So she runs the show?”

  “The nuts-and-bolts, pardon the pun,” said Ron.

  “You’re on a roll today, Ron.”

  He blushed. “The COO generally runs the day-to-day of the business, while the CEO—the chief executive officer—oversees the strategic direction of a business.”

  “What does that mean, in this case?”

  “It means Angie keeps the ship afloat but Dale still steers it.”

  “Okay, I’d like to think that was a helpful analogy. I’ll get back to you on it.”

  “It might mean nothing. Or it might mean that Dale doesn’t think Angie can handle running the entire business. Or he might just not be able to let go. That happens a lot. When a person builds a business, they don’t always know when it’s time to move on. Sometimes they take the business down with them because of it.”

  “Any sign that’s happening?”

  “No. The race team is competitive and the engineering business has the residual royalties. No mass layoffs or anything like that.”

  “Plus he just bought a new car, for cash.”

  “Assuming it was his cash.”

  “Whose cash would it be?”

  “The business’s.”

  “Are you saying he might be embezzling from his own company?”

  “It’s not embezzling,” said Ron. “It’s his company, he can distribute funds pretty much however he wants. But when owners start taking money away from the companies, bad things often follow.”

  “Okay, anything else?”

  “Nothing yet,” said Ron. “We’ll keep digging.”

  Lizzy stood and made her way to the door.

  “And Lizzy,” I said. “Sorry about the my dear thing. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  Lizzy looked at me for a moment, and then she winked and walked out. I turned to Ron, who just smiled. I had no idea what was going on, but I suspected I was being plucked like a banjo.

  Chapter Ten

  The corn chips from the previous night only held me until late morning, so I decided to see how things were faring down at Longboard Kelly’s. Ron and I found the courtyard deserted. The plastic was still flapping over the outdoor bar. We wandered inside, where we never sat. Everything looked pretty much shipshape for an opening. We found Mick in the walk-in refrigerator, taking stock.

  “You open?” I asked.

  “Nup,” said Mick. “City says the inspectors are going as fast as they can. Bradley’s is already open, dammit.”

  Ron and I glanced at each other, both considering lunch overlooking the Intracoastal. We shook our heads at the same time.

  “What’s for lunch?” I asked.

  “You not listening?”

  “The county condemned my house,” I said. “What you got to eat?”

  Mick shrugged. “I got burger patties, I got buns. I got mayo.”

  “Well, fish them out, I’m cooking.”

  I fired up the grill in the kitchen and rubbed it with oil despite it having a patina like a lubed-up sunbather. Mick brought some beef patties in and I tossed them on and then cut open the buns and sliced some onion. Mick found some mayo, some cheese and a head of lettuce on its last legs, and Ron poured three beers. We sat inside in case the health inspector turned up. Someone turned up, but it wasn’t the health inspector.

  I recognized the clothes before I saw the face. The weather was warming up but the guy was still in an expensive suit. His hair was still brushed back and he looked like he’d just stepped off the set of a Mexican beer commercial. Or maybe a high-end tequila.

  The guy stood in the courtyard as if he expected me to materialize. So I did.

  “My house isn’t for sale, pal,” I said as I stepped out into the sun.

  “Everything is for sale, amigo,” he said, his accent giving the sentence gravitas. He wasn’t Cuban, at least I didn’t think so. He could have been from any number of places south of the border. Hell, he could have been from Wisconsin and just been good at accents.

  “I am prepared to increase my offer,” he said.

  “You didn’t make an offer.”

  “No? Well, let me do that.”

  He gave me a number and I wasn’t all that impressed. For the sharp suit and the electric car, I thought the number was going to be one of those hard-to-say-no-to kinds of numbers. It wasn’t. It wouldn’t have mattered if it was.

  “Really, that’s all?”

  “It’s a very reasonable offer, señor. Think about how much it will cost to rebuild. Do you have that kind of money?” He shrugged like he didn’t know.

  “That’s what insurance is for.”

  “Insurance. It doesn’t always cover things, no? Maybe your insurance says it’s an act of God. Maybe you get nothing. And then maybe my buyer has moved on. Too late for you.”

  “Who’s your buyer?”

  “I am not a liberty to say, amigo.”

  “Well, I’m not at liberty to sell.”

  “Perhaps you need some time to consider.” He nodded like this was the last word on it and walked out of the courtyard. I watched him get in the electric car and roll silently away. I liked the stealth of a car like that.

  “Who was that?” asked Ro
n as I came back inside.

  “The guy who tried to buy my house. Again.”

  “I know him from somewhere,” said Mick.

  “Where?”

  Mick shrugged. “Somewhere.”

  “Helpful.”

  “I thought you said the county condemned your house?” asked Mick.

  “I did. They did. I just don’t know why. We get the carpet dry, it’ll be fine.”

  “You should find the guy on the notice. Get his story.”

  “That’s not a bad idea, Mick.”

  “It’s a terrible idea,” said Ron. “The bureaucracy doesn’t take kindly to circumventing the process.”

  “I like circumventing the process,” I said. “And I’m not much one for bureaucracies.”

  “Amen to that,” said Mick.

  We finished our burgers and helped Mick clean up. Ron washed the glasses and placed them on a rack to dry, humming the entire time. I wondered if he had missed his calling. He would have been a hell of a bartender, if he didn’t drink the profits.

  I left in a much better frame of mind than when I had arrived. Score one, Longboard’s. But Mick’s comment about clarifying the story on my house had given me an idea, and I was ready to float it. We headed back out in my Caddy SUV.

  * * *

  The Palm Beach County courthouse was part of a monolithic structure that consumed the entire block between Quadrille Boulevard and North Dixie Highway. I left Ron in the lot by our building and walked across to the section signed as Office of the State Attorney. I wasn’t a regular visitor to the offices like I was to Longboard’s, but I had to admit I found myself there more often than most non-criminals. The lovely young lady behind the reception desk smiled like she knew me. I couldn’t place her. I found most of the women in that particular office to be somewhat homogenous. Young, bubbly, blond seemed to be the job description.

  “Hi,” said the receptionist, or whatever it was that Lizzy thought I was supposed to call the girl. She gave me a smile that would melt an eighteen-year-old heart but made me wonder how her parents had afforded the bill for such dental perfection.

  “Back at ya,” I said. “Eric in?”

  “You don’t have an appointment, do you?” She smiled again.

  “Not usually.”

  “He’s in his office.”

  “Thanks.”

  I winked for reasons I couldn’t fathom and wandered into the hustle and bustle of the SA’s office. There were a lot of well-dressed young people walking around, chatting as they went. It looked like an Aaron Sorkin television drama. I tapped on the door of the Office of the State Attorney for the 15th Judicial District and went straight in.

  Eric Edwards was frowning at a computer screen and stroking his tie. If he had been breathing heavy, I would have turned and left without a word. He wasn’t. He never did. He was long and lean and had that vaguely famished look of people who spend too much of their leisure time jogging. He looked up, clearly expecting to see a young coed intern, and it took him a second for his brain to process the dude in the cargo shorts.

  “Jones, do you ever knock?”

  “I did knock.”

  “Do you ever make an appointment?”

  “You usually manage not to be here when I make an appointment.”

  “Wonder why. What do you want?”

  “How’d you make it through the storm?” I asked.

  He paused like he was wondering if it was a trick question.

  “Yard got flooded but the house is fine, thanks for asking. How about you?”

  “Got a county notice saying my house was unfit for habitation.”

  “That bad?”

  “No, Eric. Not that bad at all. That’s why I’m here. Why would the county be putting a notice on my door when they have no reason to believe the structure is in any way unfit?”

  “They do an inspection?”

  “Not with me.”

  “Did you evacuate? Maybe they thought it was abandoned.”

  “I was at The Mornington during the hurricane.”

  “Nice for some.”

  “And then I went home. Then I went to work, and then I came back to find a note saying I couldn’t stay there.”

  “The inspector probably had his reasons.”

  “Why is the county doing inspections in the city of Riviera Beach? That’s a city job, isn’t it?”

  “Do I look like I know or care about whose responsibility it is? Maybe the city called in help? Everyone’s stretched here, Jones. Including me, so if you will close the door as you leave.”

  “You okay with Danielle being homeless?”

  He lost all expression on his face. It was a hell of a poker face. But the stroking of the tie was a bit of a giveaway. It always got under his skin whenever I mentioned his ex-wife. My fiancée. I knew it was cruel and unusual. But he was always so damned smug.

  “If she hung around with you long enough, that was bound to happen,” he said.

  “Classy, Eric. Classy.”

  “Right back at you, Jones.”

  I stepped to the door. He was watching me. He knew I’d stop before I left for one last quip. My Columbo moment. So I kept going.

  “Jones,” he said.

  I stopped just outside his office but didn’t turn around.

  “Don’t do anything stupid. The county takes harassment of its staff very seriously.”

  “What about its citizens?” I asked as I strode away.

  Chapter Eleven

  Sally Mondavi’s pawnshop sat in a tired strip mall on Okeechobee Boulevard. It was out on the wrong side of the turnpike, where the ocean breezes never blew and recessions really hit hard when they came.

  I parked in front of his store. The Chinese restaurant next door seemed to be doing a roaring trade, and I wondered if there was an entire Chinese community without power somewhere. The restaurant looked packed even if the parking lot didn’t. Chinese folks knew a thing or two about sharing resources, so carpooling was something that came naturally to them. If it had been an American sports bar, the pickups with one guy inside would have been lined up along the street looking for spots.

  I pushed in through the door and the little bell jingled in a non-Christmassy fashion, hard and abrupt. There was a Latina girl sitting inside the Plexiglas check-cashing booth, filing her nail down to the first knuckle out of boredom. It wasn’t payday, so things were slow. I left her be and wandered into the maze of shelves and along the glass-topped cabinet that ran parallel to the wall. I wasn’t in the market for a secondhand wedding ring or a gold watch that had once been a retirement gift. The notion of such things depressed me.

  Sal Mondavi was at the back as usual, unpacking small packets of something from a delivery box. His solitary wisp of hair hung over his forehead. He looked like a walnut with an attitude.

  “How’s them Jets?” I asked, louder than was necessary.

  “I knew it was you,” he said. “I knew I’d see you before you even woke up this morning.”

  “Yes, but do you know where I woke up?”

  Sal stopped his moving like he was redirecting the blood flow to his brain so he could think on it.

  “Not at home.”

  “Good guess.”

  “If it was some floozy, I’ve got a cabinet full of handguns here I’m happy to turn on you.”

  “No floozies, Sal.”

  “Good. You gotta make that girl your bride, you know? Even if she is a cop.”

  “It’ll happen, Sal.”

  “So will death, my friend. Which one you want first?”

  “You’re in a cheery mood today.”

  “You come in here joking about my Jets and you expect me to be cheery for you?”

  “I expect nothing less from you, Sal.”

  Sally grunted and dropped the packets in his hand back into the box.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Pokémon cards.”

  “Seriously?”

  “No lie. A shipment
came into my possession. The kids love these things. I don’t see it myself, but then I don’t get the designated hitter either, and that’s a thing.”

  “You get a lot of kids here in the store?”

  “What do you think? I’ll take these down to the children’s hospital. They’ll get a kick out of them.”

  I just smiled.

  “What do you want, anyway? You drive out here just to give me grief about the Jets?”

  “It’s a reason.”

  “Your time will come, Patriot boy.”

  “But it wasn’t the only reason. Did you come through the storm okay?”

  Sally shrugged. It was a slow-motion thing.

  “Even storm surge doesn’t visit this part of the state.”

  “No repairs you need done?”

  “Thanks, kid. I’m good. A couple of the kids came around and helped clean up the yard, do a little fixing on the roof.”

  “I just saw one of the kids. Leo.”

  Sal smiled his crooked nicotine grin. “He’s a good boy. Money smarts. Gets his numbers. How’s he doing?”

  “He’s a guy in his early twenties working in an old folks’ home.”

  “Don’t knock it. Old folks has got lots to teach, if you care to listen.”

  “I do, Sal. I do. And so does Leo.”

  “When he leaves there he’ll know everything about managing condos and he’ll have a deposit to put down on his first apartment building.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “And what about your place?”

  “It’s a swamp.”

  “You got the flood insurance, like I told ya?”

  “I did. I’m insured like the crown jewels. That’s why I’m here. There’s some water damage, the carpets are done for. Maybe the floors, I don’t know. I need to find a contractor but my insurance guy says good luck with that.”

  “Yeah, those boys will be as busy as a firecracker store on the Fourth of July.”

  “You know anyone?”

  Sal thought about it for a moment and slowly began nodding. He had a mental Rolodex in his head, with more names and faces and numbers than a baseball statistician’s notebook. At his age, it took a while to look the stuff up, but it was still there all right.

  “Yeah, I know a guy. Good boy. I know his mother, from way back. The father wasn’t such a swell fella. Got himself shot. I helped them get set up when they relocated from the Bronx.”