Out of the Past: A Reed Ferguson Mystery (A Private Investigator Mystery Series - Crime Suspense Thriller Book 5)

by Renee Pawlish

  “I’ve had about enough of you,” he barked at me.

  “The feeling’s mutual,” I managed to say.

  “Let him go,” Tyrone said. He stepped away from us, pulled a cell phone from his pocket, dialed and spoke for a moment. Then he hung up and waved the phone at Oscar. “The boss wants to talk to him.”

  Oscar let me go. “No more funny business.”

  He didn’t have to worry. I just wanted to know what this was all about, and I wasn’t about to do anything more to delay it. Least of all pointing out another one of his clichés.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I crossed my arms and stared them down. “Now what?”

  “One more ride,” Tyrone said.

  We crossed the street and got back in the SUV. Tyrone pulled into traffic and headed south. We soon picked up University Boulevard and drove in silence for a few miles until we reached an exclusive, gated community just north of Belleview Avenue in Cherry Hills. Tyrone turned onto a side street and pulled up to a small brick gatehouse.

  An older man in a blue uniform stepped out. “Evening, Mr. Harrison,” he said with a wave of his hand.

  Tyrone nodded and drove through the gate, then turned right.

  “Doesn’t John Elway live around here?” I asked, taking in the multitude of mansions on either side of the street. “Are we going to see him?” Elway, the famed quarterback for the Denver Broncos, is revered throughout the city for leading the Broncos to two Super Bowls in the late ’90’s.

  Oscar grunted and Tyrone kept his eyes straight ahead. Boy, these two…their banter was killing me.

  Tyrone took a left and halfway down a long street turned into a circular driveway. The mansion was European-style, with a long front porch, pillars and arched windows, and a double door. Towering evergreens shaded the house and front yard. Tyrone parked right in front of the door and we piled out.

  “Wow,” I murmured as we walked through the front door. Scenes from my favorite film noir, The Big Sleep, flashed in my mind, where private detective Philip Marlowe, played by Humphrey Bogart, visits General Sternwood at his mansion. Only this mansion wasn’t cast in shadows and gray, and I wasn’t Philip Marlowe.

  Inside was an enormous foyer with vaulted ceilings and marble floors. A curved staircase led upstairs, and through arches to the left was a living room that was larger than my condo. Off to the right was another sitting room with a grand piano. Oscar led the way past the staircase and down a hallway. He paused before an arched door, opened it with a flourish and stepped aside as if I were a valued guest, not a kidnap victim.

  I walked into a library that was walnut and dark tones. One wall was floor-to-ceiling shelves, filled with expensive knickknacks and colorful books with gold-lettered spines, the kind people buy from a book club but never actually read. To my right, a painting that looked like a Monet hung on the wall above a stone fireplace. Directly opposite me was a huge desk and a high-backed leather chair. Two brown wingback chairs were positioned in front of it. Recessed lighting bathed the room in shadows. It was elegant, and yet it felt forced, as if having a library gave the owner a sense of importance.

  And speaking of owners, a man stood behind the desk, staring out a window. When he heard me, he turned, walked around the desk, and extended a hand.

  “Forrest McMahon.” His voice was deep, with a cultured tone to it. He was somewhere past fifty, with thick charcoal hair streaked with gray, a tanned complexion, and brown eyes. He wore black slacks with a sharp crease, a blue cashmere sweater over a white shirt, and dress shoes. I’d heard of McMahon. He was one of Denver’s wealthiest men. His grandfather had made a mint on Wall Street, as had his father. Forrest McMahon was a very successful trader and, after paying his dues, he’d started McMahon Investments, where he managed a hedge fund that was thriving. He had money. If the papers were correct, he had more than millions.

  I stared at him, but didn’t shake his hand. He hesitated, then gestured at one of the wingback chairs. “Please, sit down. I assure you I have no ill intent.”

  “Really?” I thought. “Tell that to my kidneys.”

  I contemplated him for a second longer, then took a seat. My danger radar had diminished, slightly, and although I was more than unhappy about how I’d been brought here, I was genuinely curious about what he wanted.

  McMahon perched on the edge of the desk, where he had the advantage of looking down on me. I glanced over my shoulder. Tyrone and Oscar stood near the door, feet spread apart, hands crossed in front of them. Typical bodyguard stance.

  “What’s with the game?” I asked, my tone letting him know I was still angry about being beaten up. “Why the peep show with the girl?”

  “She’s quite a handful, isn’t she?”

  “Let me guess, she’s your daughter.”

  McMahon exhaled slowly. “You are correct.”

  “You must be so proud.”

  “I heard you were flip.”

  If he knew that, he must’ve been researching me. I wondered how much he had uncovered.

  A few beats of silence ensued while he contemplated me. “As you saw,” he finally said, “Stephanie, my daughter, is a bit…wild. It started in high school, but I had hoped that by sending her to Smith she’d find some direction, a career path, but instead she took to partying even harder. She managed to graduate, but in the three years since, she’s done nothing with her life.”

  “Smith’s a tough school, academically speaking,” I said. Smith College, a private women’s college in Massachusetts, is expensive, liberal and hard to get into. “How much did your reputation help her?”

  “I admit it helped. But Stephanie is smart, and she did what she had to in order to be accepted there.”

  “But she’s done nothing with her education.”

  “Correct. Since she came home, she’s done nothing but party.”

  “She’s not working at all?”

  He shook his head. “No. There’s family money. She receives a yearly stipend that provides for her nicely. Although if she keeps up her present lifestyle, I’m afraid she’s going to have nothing left.”

  “This is all fascinating,” I said, “But what does it have to do with me?”

  “I need your help.”

  “I’m not a counselor.”

  McMahon plucked at an invisible piece of lint on his pants. “I’m not looking for you to change her lifestyle. I want to hire you to be her bodyguard.”

  “Why not just use Bert and Ernie?” I nodded at the two behind me.

  “I can’t use them.” McMahon snorted. “Look at them. Those two would be like elephants trying to hide in short grass. I need discretion.” I glanced back again at Tyrone and Oscar. Neither showed any sign that they were bothered by what they heard. “And besides,” McMahon continued. “I’ve tried other bodyguards and she makes their lives, and mine, a living hell.”

  “How so?”

  “She mocks them. She tries to elude them. They interrupt her lifestyle and I hear about it. From her and the bodyguards.” He sighed. “She hates being watched over, having someone hanging in the background. And I don’t blame her, but I need her protected. I thought I would try someone who doesn’t look like a bodyguard. Someone who can blend in with her, sort of be her companion as well as a bodyguard.”

  “Why does she need a bodyguard?”

  “I’m a very wealthy man, and I have enemies. I’m worried that they’ll try to use her to get to me.”

  “Who?”

  “If I knew that, I wouldn’t need you.”

  I sat back. I didn’t buy his story, and I didn’t like how he’d handled things so far.

  “Why not call me like normal people do? What’s with sending the goons?” I asked.

  “I know the way you were brought here was a bit…unorthodox, but I wanted you to see what Stephanie was like before I asked for your help.”

  “It’s more like you hoped a show of force would tip the hand in your favor.”

  He frowned. “I hop
e Tyrone and Oscar didn’t treat you poorly.” There was no sincerity in the words.

  “Nothing I can’t handle,” I said, although my body protested.

  “I chose you for a very specific reason, Mr. Ferguson,” he said. “You’ll understand Stephanie in a way others won’t.”

  “How so?”

  “You came from money, and you understand the lifestyle.”

  “The lifestyle?” Who did he think he was? I’d inherited money from my grandparents, but not until after I’d graduated from college. My grandfather had worked in oil and gas investments, and then my father had taken over the business. He’d run it for years, but sold it and retired in his fifties. And even though we had money, I certainly didn’t grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth, as I assumed McMahon’s daughter had. I had summer jobs in high school, worked in my father’s firm during college, and I was expected to have a career. Don’t get me wrong, there was money, but it wasn’t just handed to me.

  McMahon held up a hand. “I meant no offense. Let me clarify. I know you’ve helped some wealthy people in the past, and you are known to be discreet. I don’t want any sort of publicity with this.”

  Another indicator he’d been investigating me. I had helped a wealthy friend of my father track down an old business partner, and I’d helped another wealthy woman, who turned out to be a femme fatale who’d conspired to kill her husband. Neither case was well known. McMahon was good, and he was trying to flatter me, but it wasn’t working. With his money, he could hire any number of bodyguards who could be discreet, so why choose me? I was intrigued, but not enough to help him.

  “I’ll pass,” I said.

  His eyes narrowed. He nodded, glanced at the thugs behind us, and then spoke. “I hate to do things this way, but you leave me no choice.”

  I tipped my head slightly, looking to see what Tyrone and Oscar were doing. McMahon smiled, but it was sinister. Was he going to let them rough me up?

  “No, Mr. Ferguson, it won’t be anything like that,” McMahon said. “Needless displays of violence are not my style.”

  “I’m overjoyed,” I said, still wary of Tyrone and Oscar.

  “Does Chancellor Finance mean anything to you?” he asked.

  My heart missed a beat and my mouth dried out.

  “Yes, that’s an unpleasant memory, isn’t it?” he continued.

  I stared at the floor, then nodded.

  “It would be a shame for the details about Chancellor to come out.”

  “How do you know about that?” I asked.

  “I have my ways.” McMahon smiled again. “But I’ll give you my word to keep your secret.”

  I met his gaze, detesting him. “If I agree to help you.”

  He shrugged. “I wish I didn’t have to resort to this.”

  “Sure you do.” I swallowed the lump in my throat.

  He laughed, without humor. “I’m sure watching my daughter won’t last for more than a few days. Just until I get some things resolved.”

  “Fine,” I said, then named my rate.

  “That’s three times what you normally charge.”

  My rates weren’t publicized, so where did he get that information? “My rates go up when I’m accosted and then blackmailed,” I said.

  McMahon allowed himself a short laugh. “Fair enough.”

  He started to hold out his hand, then stopped. “Stephanie is coming over tomorrow at noon. I shall propose this arrangement to her then. Be here a few minutes before that. When you arrive, give the guard at the gatehouse your name. He’ll be expecting you. Tyrone will take you home.”

  With that, he strolled out of the library, followed by Oscar.

  As Tyrone drove me back downtown, I sat in the passenger seat, wondering what I’d just agreed to.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It was close to three in the morning when Tyrone dropped me off in front of my building. I own a third-story condo in the Uptown neighborhood east of downtown, an area with a charming mix of older houses and newer buildings like mine. I stood in the cold and watched the SUV drive off, its red taillights disappearing around the corner. Then I dragged myself up the porch and walked its length to the left side of the building, where a metal staircase led up to my condo. The Goofball Brothers lived below me, and since no lights were on there, I assumed they were already home and in bed.

  I climbed the stairs, and as I reached my landing, I noticed my coat hanging from the doorknob. That was thoughtful of the Brothers. I let myself inside, tossed the coat on the couch, and since I was wound up, I grabbed a beer from the frig and headed to my home office.

  Like Forrest McMahon’s office, mine also has one wall with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, but I’ve filled mine with my favorite books, mostly mysteries and a collection of rare first edition detective novels. Against another wall is a DVD case full of film noir and detective movies that I love, along with the “best of Alfred Hitchcock”. In the corner, a glass case displays a first edition of A Study in Scarlet, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and I’ve recently added a first edition of Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye.

  I’d recently given up my office, located near the 16th Street Mall, a pedestrian mall in central downtown, because I was hardly there. I had an online presence with a website and various social media accounts, and that seemed to do the trick. It also meant the framed movie posters from The Big Sleep, starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, and The Maltese Falcon, one of Bogie’s most famous movies, that had been hanging in my downtown office were now here in my home office. The latter poster was rare, a gift from a previous client. All in all, my office was cozy, inviting and personal, whereas McMahon’s office felt cold, dark and distant.

  I sat down at my small mahogany desk, opened a drawer and pulled out a folder labeled “Chancellor Finance”. I hadn’t looked at it in years.

  Chancellor Finance was a company I started with a few guys I met at Harvard. They were all young, ambitious, moneyed, and full of themselves. I had less money than the others, but was no less full of myself. I think they asked me to be a part of Chancellor because I was cocky, and because, like them, I had connections to wealthy individuals and firms. We started an investment firm and built a small clientele. Things were going well, and we were creating a lot of wealth, or so I thought.

  One day I overhead my partners talking about the inflated rates of returns on some of the investments. I became suspicious and started digging, and I found that I was involved in a classic Ponzi scheme, where Chancellor Finance was paying off returns with deposits of new investors. I confronted my colleagues, but it went nowhere. And I stayed silent when I should’ve turned them all in. Eventually, one of the investors, a powerful man named Allen Brubaker, who knew the father of one of my partners, discovered what was going on. He chose not to turn us in, but to keep things quiet, we had to shut down the firm and pay off everyone. In order to do this, we had to pool our money, and for me, that meant using a big chunk of my inheritance. As far as I knew, very few of our investors had any idea what Chancellor had done, but Brubaker did.

  I opened the folder and scanned through the documentation, but nothing signaled a connection between Brubaker and McMahon. I sat back and looked at the time. I could spend hours researching this, but I knew one person who would be up and willing to do the research for me. I picked up the phone and put it on speaker.

  “Oh Great Detective,” my best friend Cal Whitmore answered in what had become his standard greeting. “You must be on a case, otherwise you wouldn’t be calling at this time of night. Or morning.” I’d known Cal since we were kids, and he’s my sidekick, Doctor Watson to my Sherlock Holmes. He’s a genius and an IT whiz, and seems to know everything about everything. And yet, I’d once seen him try to eat an orange without peeling it. He’s brilliant but has little common sense. He was also known to work late into the night.

  “You are correct.” I sipped my beer and told him about being hired as a bodyguard.

  “That’s odd, being hire
d as a bodyguard, and odd the way McMahon approached you with this,” he said when I’d finished.

  “It gets worse.”

  “How so?”

  “McMahon knew about Chancellor Finance,” I said. I heard him take in a breath, surprised. “I never told anyone about it, except you.”

  “I’ve never said a word to anyone,” he said.

  “I know, I trust you.”

  He sighed. “Yeah, it just felt like I needed to say it.”

  “Everyone involved agreed not to say a word about Chancellor,” I said.

  “McMahon either has an incredible team that was able to dig it up, or he heard about it from one of the players involved in Chancellor.”

  “I scanned through my documentation but I didn’t find any connection.” I groaned in frustration. “There are plenty of other people he could’ve hired, so why blackmail me?”

  “Your curiosity will get the best of you.”

  “You should’ve heard him. You came from money,” I said, imitating McMahon’s refined tone.

  “Huh,” Cal said. “If he did his research on you and Chancellor, he’d know you don’t have that much money anymore.”

  “I know.” What inheritance was left after Chancellor I’d mostly frittered away as I’d jumped from job to job, trying to figure out what I wanted to do. What was left I was trying to keep for my retirement. “What’s his angle? He’s not telling me everything.”

  “You get the feeling he handpicked you very carefully?”

  “I do.” I yawned. “Besides Chancellor, he knew way too much about my business, how much I charge, and how I helped that friend of Dad’s. But he’s been sneaky about it because I didn’t have any idea someone was checking me out. Which leads me to why I called you.”

  “And that is?”