by Lori Avocato
Then, my luck changed. The front door of the mansion opened up and out she walked. Today she was in her bright yellow parka. I thought of fake canary Perry—only on a larger scale. Donnie was close on her heels. Damn. I really wanted to get Tina alone, but had no choice in the matter. When they pulled out of the driveway I started my car, and soon was nearly sucking on their tailpipe.
First they stopped at the coffee shop in the strip mall. Oh shit. I hoped Tina wasn’t going in for Jazzercise again. I really couldn’t think of a way to sneak in if Suzy was on duty. Thank goodness, the Macalusos went into the coffee shop and came out a few minutes later with a white bag. It made me wonder if they had bought Rubens, like Vance.
It’s funny, the dumb things one’s mind comes up with while on surveillance. It was much more fun working with Jagger along. Not because it was him, but because he was someone to talk to and pass the time with. Goldie would do as well, I told myself, then realized the Macalusos were on the road headed toward the professional building.
Were they going to the office?
Sure enough, a few minutes later they pulled into the back of the office building. That’s where the staff parked, although what with the police clearing out the building to go over it, the lot was empty except for a few cars.
Shoot, I hoped they didn’t belong to the police. I figured they might have finished their work here by now, and I didn’t figure they’d park so far away from the building like the cleaning people had to. They had to use their assigned spaces even on weekends, since some of the staff, especially the doctors, might go to their offices. And heaven forbid they’d have to walk from farther away.
I wondered, as I watched the Macalusos’ car, if janitor Jagger would show up.
Tina got out, and Donnie drove off.
Yes! It would be much easier to follow her without having him along to hide from too. Besides, I pretty well had my evidence on him for Workers’ Comp fraud. She went into the building through the back door. Thank goodness I still had a key. In the fury of finding Linda’s body yesterday, I hadn’t remembered to return the key. And now Jagger had me coming back anyway. I hadn’t asked Trudy, who I guessed would be in charge until Linda was officially replaced, if I should come back. I doubted she’d throw me out since they were now short-staffed even worse.
I waited until Donnie’s Porsche was out of sight, then pulled into the parking lot next to a car I’d guessed belonged to one of the cleaning people. Then I took my camera out of my purse, which I locked in the trunk. It wasn’t a good idea to lug it around when sneaking up on Tina. I put the camera and my keys into my jacket pocket.
Within a few minutes I was walking up the stairs very slowly, stopping at every landing to listen.
Nothing.
No footsteps coming from below. Thank goodness. If the forensic guys were still working, they must have gone on a lunch break. I really would have peed my pants if someone, Donnie perhaps, came up from downstairs. At the next landing, I opened the door to the elevator lobby where the office was. No one was around. A janitor’s bucket and cart, like the ones in hotels that the maids leave out in the hallway, sat nearby. Apparently the cops were letting them clean some areas that they were done investigating.
Now what?
The door to the office was closed. Tina had to have gone in by now since, I assumed, she took the elevator. I looked back and forth and walked toward the cart. A set of keys hung on the side. Hmm. Maybe there was a janitor’s closet on this floor. I took the keys, not sure why, and walked past the door to the office. Sure enough, a door was open at the end of the hallway. I needn’t have pilfered the keys.
Mops, chemicals, buckets. A janitor’s closet is not a pretty sight to someone with a cleaning phobia. I left that up to Miles and Hilly, the woman who came in weekly, since he insisted on paying for her to clean his condo, which he inevitably recleaned. I leaned against the door and wondered what to do.
When I looked up, it was like a heavenly vision. Janitor’s overalls. Similar to the ones Jagger had worn that day. A bit big for me, but, hey, this wasn’t a fashion show. I slipped the overalls over my jacket to take up some of the slack and stuck my camera in the overalls.
I’d die of heat, but determined to get paid by Fabio soon, I told myself, I could pretend it was like Alaska in this building, if that’s what it took. I grabbed a Dodgers baseball cap and shoved my hair under it. I groaned at the thought of wearing someone else’s hat, but when I thought of getting paid, I ignored the grossness factor.
I confiscated the mop and bucket and rolled it into the waiting room of the ortho office. No one was in that area, thank goodness. I heard radio music coming from the lounge area. No sign of any cops. Good. The music would help me sneak around. Tina had to be in there. I only hoped she was lifting something heavy.
With mop in hand, I walked toward the lounge.
I don’t know who screamed louder, Tina or myself. Then I realized my screaming was in my head—a reaction to her—although I amazingly had the wherewithal not to make a sound out loud.
I tipped my hat to her and prayed she didn’t recognize me. “Ma’am,” I said, trying to disguise my voice.
“You fool. You scared me.”
That was it? Good. She didn’t call me “fool Pauline,” so I figured I could mop while she … What was she doing?
Linda’s desk was covered in papers.
She never left it like that. Tina had to have spread them out. On the floor sat several file boxes. Heavy ones, I hoped.
Within seconds, Tina had gone back to ignoring me, and through the open doorway I could see her looking at the papers. I mopped the floor in the lounge and looked down to realize I’d moved onto the carpet. Dumb idea to mop a carpet, so I moved closer to the refrigerator.
She turned to look at me through the glass partition. She looked nervous. And why wouldn’t someone who was bilking the insurance company out of millions? I touched my pocket to feel the camera.
“I have work to do. The hallway needs mopping,” she called out.
Shit. I couldn’t say no. I nodded and carried my mop toward the hall. I hoped the door was open enough for me to peek through and take a few pictures.
After that, Tina never paid me a second thought or got up to close the door. Instead, she lifted a stack of papers and started to shred them over a file box.
Twenty-five
Shredding documents, even if by hand, didn’t seem like logical office work to me. Stunk to high heaven, in fact.
Now I knew why she did the dirty work, though. Donnie couldn’t risk injuring his precious surgeon’s hands. I got that from Vance all the time. Besides, it made sense. By the looks of things, Tina could win one of those competitions where contestants tried to tear a New York City phone book in half in one fell swoop.
Watching her fury, I thought she was getting into this shredding business like gangbusters. Then she got up.
I got out my camera.
She grabbed a rather large stack of papers and, to my horror and delight, became a madwoman. She twisted and turned like a hula dancer.
I snapped in sync.
When papers would fall, she bent—not using her knees, I might add—and picked them up at record speed. And the papers did fly.
I caught her looking at the clock and figured Donnie had given her a time frame to work in. The thing I still wondered was, What were those papers?
Maybe fake bills? Tina and Donnie must have made some extra bucks on the Workers’ Comp fraud, and that’s how they could own two houses.
My original mission had been to get pictures of her committing Workers’ Compensation fraud—and today was my lucky day, so it didn’t matter right now what the papers were.
After several minutes, my camera wouldn’t click anymore. I looked down to see I’d taken twenty-eight pictures on a twenty-seven-picture roll. I knew it was pushing it to go past the allotted number, but I’d lost track in my frantic effort to keep up with Tina.
At least
the last two shots were of her picking up the file boxes with angst on her face, which I was going to promote as showing how heavy the boxes were, and moving them to the other side of the room by the door.
I should have just left, since I had what I’d come for, but I couldn’t move.
I needed to know what she was doing.
I needed to know what files she was destroying.
And I needed to find out before I got caught.
Jagger would, after all, need this info.
The files had to have something to do with the unorthodox running of this practice. Linda was killed yesterday. I guessed it was because of something she knew or was a party to. And Tina was making confetti out of files from Linda’s desk. I remembered how Linda would move files from the IN tray to the OUT tray and back and forth when I came into the room. Maybe there was something to that. Maybe she did that to distract me or whoever else came in. Or maybe it was to mix up the files.
A funny feeling stuck in my gut.
I think I’d stumbled upon the answer to Jagger’s case.
The question was, how the hell was I going to help, when the papers were smaller than the nail on my pinky finger?
A pain pierced my back.
I spun around, thinking I’d been shot. No one in the hallway. I ran my hand along the back of the overalls and looked at it. Clean. No blood. Then it dawned on me that my imagination had gone haywire for a second. I’d been hunched over for so long, my back muscles were rebelling. I moved to the side to stretch. Stretching always helped.
In my haste to ease the pain, I bumped into the wall.
“Who’s out there?” Tina shouted. “That you, janitor?”
My eyes widened. My mouth went so dry that I thought no words would ever come out again. And my heart beat so loudly I knew, just knew, Tina would be at the door any second.
She stuck her head out the open door.
I stumbled against the wall while grabbing for my mop.
“I’m going to report you, you drunk. Get the hell back to mopping that floor and then leave.” She turned and shoved the door.
I stuck my foot out in time to stop it from slamming shut. Ouch. Not a good move, although necessary. I peeked in, thinking. What the heck. She was going to report a short, fat janitor in a Dodger’s baseball cap for working while drunk.
I was in the clear.
I looked inside.
She wasn’t there!
I leaned closer. The bill of the hat prevented me from sticking my face too far inside. I shoved it to the back. Several strands of hair fell into my face. Damn! I tried to stick them up, but didn’t have much luck. I let them go and opened the door in time to see Tina near Linda’s desk, picking up the last box.
I waited until I heard a door close.
Then I hurried in.
If I followed her out the back entrance that Jagger had used to sneak up on me, what then? What should I do? I couldn’t get any info out of the tiny pieces of files. Damn it all. Still, wait until the police found out she was shredding and stealing files. Even if her husband was part owner of this place, I didn’t think they’d like it.
I dropped my camera on the desk and slumped into Linda’s chair in a huff.
Three papers flew, like Uncle Walt’s fake canary, out from under the desk. Well, they really didn’t fly of their own accord but merely jumped into the air from the breeze I created when I collapsed into the chair.
For some reason, I thought of Jagger.
Damn. I should call him and tell him about this, but I’d left my cell phone in the car, and I knew he wouldn’t want me using the office phone in case they could trace his number.
I bent to pick up the papers.
Mr. Suskowski had had two MRIs, according to this insurance form. And Mrs. Bakersfield had had one too. It was of her skull, when she’d come in for her knee. I know the backbone is connected to the shoulder bone and the shoulder bone connected to the … the damn song started in my head but I couldn’t remember any more of it.
But what I did remember was that these two patients didn’t have any of these tests done, and Mrs. Bakersfield’s skull wasn’t connected to her knee.
And again, Vance’s signature was on the form.
I leaned back in the chair. Was Vance in on the fraud? How could he be? He’d only been here a short time, and Jagger had said the illegal filing of fake insurance claims had been going on for years.
Something stunk.
I took a Kleenex tissue from the cute cat holder on Linda’s desk, although I figured maybe I shouldn’t touch it. But since the crime-scene tape was gone, the cops had to have gone over this place since yesterday. I used the tissue on the handle of the desk drawer anyway.
I listened for Tina to return although I figured she had left, since the boxes were gone. Damn. That would have been a great shot, to get her carrying two file boxes out the door. But I had perfect evidence already.
I smiled, even though alone in the room, and whispered, “Pauline Sokol, you devil of a medical-insurance-fraud investigator.” My next thought was that I’d have to get business cards made. I opened the last drawer on the bottom. Nothing. Nothing out of the ordinary.
I leaned back and looked at the desk. “Big help you’ve been.”
Saint Teresa had to be thinking of me.
I leaned closer. There on the front of the desk was a lovely piece of oak molding. Linda’s desk was the prettiest in the office. At least I thought so, since I was partial to oak. The doctors mostly had mahogany, except for Charlene, who had an old metal one. The woman must be in as bad a financial situation as I was. She had kids to feed.
Was she bad off enough to commit fraud?
I touched the molding, then pushed it very gently. Nothing. Damn it.
And here I thought I was so clever.
“Someone in there? That you, Bobby?” a man’s voice called out.
My hand shot forward. The tips of my fingers jammed into the molding. The man shouted once more, sounding closer.
I looked down to see that the molding had moved. I stuck my finger near the top: Bingo!
I pressed the button, the hidden drawer popped out, and I mentally shouted, “Yes, Uncle Walt!”
There sat a book. Not just any book I noticed, when I heard someone shove open the door between the waiting room and hallway.
I grabbed the book and hightailed it out the back door before the real janitor could finish his cursing when he nearly broke his neck on the mop I’d left in the hallway.
Once out the back door, I charged down the stairs to the ground floor, where I peered through the wire-glass window in the exit door. Good. No Porsche. Phew. I ran to my car, unlocked the door and jumped in.
I was out past the mall before I realized that I still had on the janitor overalls.
Feeling like a criminal, although I knew I wasn’t, even if I had stolen the overalls, I pulled into the mall parking lot. After looking around several times, I shimmied out of the outfit, balled it up, and got out. Nonchalantly I walked toward the brown metal Dumpster and promptly, up on tiptoe, flung it inside.
I looked around again, saw no one was paying attention and went to my car. I took my purse out of the trunk, got inside the car, and looked at the book on the seat. It sat there so innocently in its bright yellow cover with black writing. A big pencil was silhouetted against the title.
Forgery for Idiots.
My first thought was, Linda was no moron. My second was that she ordered the MRIs and forged Vance’s signature.
Vance needed to know. He was fearing for his life, and now I had evidence that said he need not worry.
I had to convince Jagger to let Vance in on it once the case was handed over to the DA’s office and indictments handed down. Of course Linda was dead.
But the Macalusos knew to shred Linda’s files.
I looked in the mirror and grinned. Pauline Sokol was an official investigator. I could get the pictures in my camera developed at the one-hour pho
to booth in the mall.
I looked around.
No camera.
I must have left it in the overalls. Damn! How would I … No, wait. I had dropped it on Linda’s desk. It had to still be there. Thank goodness, again, for the key to the professional building and the office. The real janitor wouldn’t pay me any mind now.
I reached into my purse and grabbed my cell phone. I shut my eyes to recall Jagger’s number. I was so excited to tell him what I’d found. Okay, calm down. I couldn’t think of the number. Foolishly, yet out of past experience, I looked around for a black Suburban. None.
I leaned back in my seat and forced my brain to remember. Okay, I had it. I punched out a set of numbers.
“Charlie’s Eatery,” a young man said.
Shoot. “Sorry, wrong number.” The cell phone beeped at me. “Okay, so I got a wrong—” It beeped again. I looked at the screen.
Low battery.
Shoot again. I transposed the last two numbers and held the receiver to my ear.
“Yeah.”
My heart thudded. Jagger’s voice.
“It’s me. I have some—”
Beep. Beep.
“What?”
I think I heard him call my name, but I interrupted with, “I have some information. I’m going to the off—”
Beep.
I’m pretty sure the final beep came before my words.
“Jagger? Jagger?” I looked at the phone as if it were its fault that I hadn’t thought to charge its battery in several days. “Damn you.”
I threw the phone onto the seat. Oh well, I’d get the camera, come back here and call Jagger from a pay phone. Too anxious to get my camera back, I didn’t want to take the time now.
I would think walking into a mostly empty office building would feel eerie, but I’d started to get used to it by the time I made it up the third flight of stairs. If the janitor caught me, I could say I had business here and my proof would be my key.