Dying Embers

by Robert E. Bailey

  Praise for

  Dying Embers

  “‘Mean streets’ may seem more desperate running through Detroit or Chicago than through Grand Rapids, Mich., but Bailey’s second Art Hardin mystery showcases a PI who could hold his own anywhere. … The author ably mixes action and exposition, as Hardin’s seemingly simple quest spills over in all directions as the body count rises. … Buckle up and enjoy a wild ride through the mean streets of Grand Rapids.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “The second Hardin thriller is packed with sharp dialogue, stark violence, and details of real-world investigatory work. An intriguing new voice for mystery fans.”

  —Booklist

  “Bailey, himself a retired P.I., imbues his second [novel] with that reassuring been-there-done-that confidence, plus considerable style and brio.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Bailey’s at his creative best in the book’s last half, as violent confrontations and frenzied, frantic action on the gritty streets of Grand Rapids lead to stunning revelations and an explosive conclusion.”

  —Lansing State Journal

  Also by Robert E. Bailey

  Private Heat

  Dead Bang

  Dying Embers

  Robert E. Bailey

  San Diego

  Dying Embers

  Ignition Books

  Published by arrangement with the author.

  Copyright © 2003 by Robert E. Bailey.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. For information please contact: permissions@endpaperspress.com or by writing Endpapers Press, 4653 Carmel Mountain Road, Suite 308 PMB 212, San Diego, CA 92130-6650.

  eISBN: 978-1-937868-02-4

  Visit our website at:

  www.endpaperspress.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, or events either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, corporations, or other entities, is entirely coincidental.

  Ignition Books are published by Endpapers Press

  A division of Author Coach, LLC

  The Ignition Books logo featuring a flaming “O” is a trademark ™ of Author Coach, LLC.

  Dying Embers

  This novel is for Linda—my wife, my love, and my best friend.

  Linda Diane Bailey

  8-16-48 to 11-07-02

  She was a Child and I was a child,

  In this kingdom by the sea

  But we loved with a love that was more than a love—

  I and my Annabel Lee—

  With a love that the winged seraphs of Heaven

  Coveted her and me.

  “Annabel Lee,” Edgar Allen Poe

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thank you to Heather McLees, my line editor, who hung in with me when time was short and the pages long.

  Thank you to Darby Grover who gave the manuscript the final critique, and helped me keep focused. Special thanks to Darby’s wife JoAnn who tolerated and encouraged us both.

  Thank you to the Bard Society members for their critique, especially all who made the Exhumas sailing trip: Frank Green, Darby Grover, Tyler Payne, Jeffrey Phillips, David Poyer, and Captain Steven Kerry Brown.

  Thank you to Joe Erhardt, the chairman of my writer’s group and the members—Gordon Andrews, Meredith Campbell, Kaye Carrithers, John P. Carter, Cathy Hill, Gertrude Howland, Pamela K. Kinney, Linda Lyons, Heather McLees, Mark Pruett, Maurice Reveley, David Swift, and Richard Thomas.

  Thank you to Sergeant McLoed for updating me on form numbers.

  Thank you to my wife Linda for her unflagging support; my son Sean for his enthusiasm, my son Eric for his encouragement, and my son Adam for his wit.

  Thank you to my sister Mary Sue for her faith and support, even when it was needed on short notice.

  Thank you to my brother Bill and sister Gloria for their joyous enthusiasm.

  God bless my parents.

  1

  PEOPLE CAN BE TRUSTED TO LIE. They lie in the bedroom, the boardroom, and the courtroom. The biggest lies are told the loudest. The worst lies are the ones they whisper to themselves.

  Tracy Ayers was tall, tan, thin, and blond. She had porcelain skin and a pouty little mouth, ripe with lies. Folks like Tracy lie to me, a lot. I never take it personally. I’m a detective—when people quit lying, I’ll be out of business.

  Tracy breezed into the office of Howard Butler, dressed for success, wearing a string of pearls and a navy blue shirtwaist dress with white piping and a pleated skirt. She sported perky and unfettered breasts that swayed in unison like a pair of fat puppies doing a vaudeville soft-shoe with their noses pressed into the curtain.

  Howard Butler owned Butler’s Prestige Import Automobiles. I sat enthroned on Howard’s custom recliner chair behind two acres of leather-topped mahogany. I stood as Tracy sashayed from the door to the desk, across an oriental rug that protected the parquet floor. My suit pants had crept up my backside. I resisted the temptation to give a discreet tug on the seat of my trousers.

  “Hi, my name is Art Hardin,” I said. “This is my associate, Lorna Kemp.”

  Lorna sat to my right in an office chair we’d wheeled in for that purpose. These days it doesn’t do for a male investigator to interview a lady without a female chaperon.

  Lorna wore a charcoal business suit over a white silk blouse with a collar that made a ruffle around her neck, a costume I believe she considered camp. She was twenty-two—eight years younger than Tracy—and also tall, tan, thin, and blond. Unlike Tracy, who was a thief, Lorna had a degree in law enforcement and a job with the DEA that started in the fall.

  “Mr. Butler said I should come and talk to you,” said Tracy. She spoke to me first and then nodded to Lorna.

  The desk was too wide to reach across and offer her my hand. I said, “Please have a seat,” and motioned to the straight-backed chair I’d placed across the desk from me. Tracy made a swish and flounce of her skirt as she sat, filling the room with the scent of jasmine.

  “I think it would be best if we kept this private,” I said. “Do you mind if we close the door?”

  Tracy shook her head. “What’s this about?”

  Lorna stood and stepped over to the door. She wore flat-heeled shoes that revealed a lithe and athletic gait.

  “I’ll try to be brief,” I said, and opened the manila file folder in front of me. Tracy’s work application was the first item in the fat file, which also contained her bond application, a background investigation, and a list of her financial assets—including those she shared with her husband Ken. Under the top sheets I had enclosed case notes and added a wad of miscellaneous crap to give the file an ominous bulk. Tracy leaned forward and twisted her head to look at the file. I closed the folder. Lorna returned to her seat.

  “Just so there’s an accurate record for all of us I’d like to record our interview,” I said. “Is that all right with you, Tracy?”

  “Sure,” she said, all smiles.

  I took the recorder out of the top right hand drawer—where I’d stashed it after the previous interview—set it on the desk, and pushed the play/record button. After a quick glance at my watch I said, “It is nine fifty-two A.M. The date is May thirty-first. Present are Tracy Ayers, Lorna Kemp, and myself, Art Hardin. Tracy, do we have your permission to record this meeting?”

  Tracy leaned toward the recorder and spoke. “Yes,” she said in a smoldering alto. Lorna rolled her eyes.

  “Please state your name.”

  “Tracy Ayers.”

&
nbsp; “Thank you,” I said. “You’re a cashier. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s your job to handle the work orders, add up the charges, and take payment from the customers?”

  “Basically,” she said. “I also answer the telephone, direct the calls, and take messages.”

  “A man brought his car back for warranty work on a repair. The service manager had no record of the sale. The customer had an attitude and a canceled check. Do you have any idea how that could have happened?”

  Tracy shrugged. “I just take the money,” she said.

  I studied her silently. She was good—not a fidget, not a flutter, just the truth that was a lie with a fresh coat of paint—and all innocence incarnate.

  “Do you know Mary Ellen Straten?”

  “Sure,” said Tracy. “She’s the day shift cashier. They called me in early because she went home sick.”

  “Her responsibilities are the same as yours?”

  “I don’t know. Mostly, I just work nights.”

  “But you have worked as the day shift cashier before?”

  “When Mary Ellen was on vacation,” she said.

  “Was your job different when you worked the day shift?”

  “You have to wrap the deposit for the previous day’s receipts when you come in. The armored car company picks it up around ten.”

  “So, when you work nights all of the daytime work orders and receipts are in the cashier’s booth?”

  “Sure,” she said with a little toss of her blond head.

  I said, “We finally found the mechanic’s hard copy back in the parts department, but the invoice copy didn’t turn up until this morning. It was in Mary Ellen’s purse along with seventeen other invoices. Do you know anything about that?”

  Tracy gave me the owl eyes and shook her head. “Why would she put them in her purse?”

  “She said that she did that to keep track of the money she stole, so that she could pay it back.”

  Tracy folded her hands in her lap and squared her shoulders. “What does that have to do with me?” The tone of her voice was accusatory.

  “Mary Ellen said that she wasn’t the only one doing it.” Okay, right there I lied to Tracy. In court I’d swear that it wasn’t a lie. I’d say it was a pretext—a tool used to reveal information that might otherwise be concealed.

  As to Mary Ellen, I’d installed a pinhole camera in the ceiling of the cashier’s booth and we had watched her take an invoice and stuff it in her purse with the money. She wet her pants when we arrested her. We kept the interview short. After she signed her confession and a promissory note she was in such a state I had to send her home in a cab.

  “I don’t know anything about this, and if you’re accusing me, you’re going to be sorry. My husband is the shop steward—”

  “At Accredited Avionics,” I said.

  “Yes—and he knows a lot of labor attorneys.”

  “He’s also the sergeant-at-arms for the local chapter of the Road Rats Motorcycle Club. I’ve got his rap sheet here. I’m sure he also knows a lot of criminal attorneys, but I don’t think that you want to embarrass your husband or involve his business associates in this matter.” I opened the file and turned past the personnel forms to a sheet from a yellow legal pad that listed an invoice number, a date, and a list of bills and coins.

  Tracy glanced at it, made a stern face, and started tapping her foot on the parquet floor. Her whole body jounced in the chair like she’d left her motor running.

  “Yesterday was May thirtieth?” I said.

  “Yes. Maybe. So what?”

  “You worked yesterday?”

  “Yes.”

  “You wore a white blouse and black A-line skirt?”

  “I don’t recall.”

  “You were carrying a white leather handbag?”

  “So? What has all of this got to do with me or my husband?”

  “We’ll get to that—but first I want to know, did you steal invoice number 1-7-8-5-2-9 and a one hundred dollar bill, seven twenty dollar bills, a ten dollar bill, a five dollar bill, two one dollar bills, three quarters, a dime, and three pennies?”

  At this point, I’d have been a quivering pile of gelatin. Not so for Ms. Tracy. She stood up, made fists of her hands, and crushed her bosom with her folded arms. “No, I certainly did not,” she said. “And if you persist in this, I am leaving.”

  “I thought you’d want to see the videotape before you left.”

  Tracy sat back down, perched on the front edge of the chair. Her eyes had gone from narrow to quite round, which, along with her parted lips, made her face telegraph a silent, “Oh-oh.”

  I pushed my chair back. I’d hidden the monitor and tape player under the desk in front of my feet.

  “The camera is in the ceiling, over the white table, behind the cash drawer where you wrap the deposits.” I set the monitor on the desk and turned it so that we could all see it. “It’s called a pinhole camera because it takes the pictures through a tiny hole in the ceiling.”

  I bent back over to get the tape player from under the desk, and that’s when it happened—a long, baritone rip. I felt my trousers go slack across my fanny. I sat back up with a start, but without the machine.

  Lorna, her face red, held a hand over her mouth. I looked at Tracy. A smirk had settled on her face.

  “How bad is it?” I asked.

  “You have little yellow smiley faces on your boxer shorts,” said Lorna as she sat and giggled behind her hand.

  I looked back at Tracy. Her smirk had turned smug.

  “Be that as it may,” I said, “the damage is done and I think that we should press on.” I bent over again but stopped when the size of the draft area reached panic proportions, opting to hook the player with my foot and skid it within easy reach. I set the player on the desk and scooted my butt back on the chair. The leather felt chilly.

  Lorna had turned away and sagged down in her chair. She held her side and gasped for air. Tracy planted her face in her hands and collapsed onto the desk. She wheezed out laughs in groups of three or so, separated by gulps for air.

  I closed my eyes and shook my head. I had to laugh.

  Tracy sat up, folded her hands on the desk, and affected a serious face. When our eyes met, she slid off the chair and out of sight. I could hear her pulsing and gasping on the floor. Lorna’s jaws were tight as she tried to cap off the heaving in the rest of her body.

  “Could you help Tracy back into her chair?” I asked.

  “Art, I don’t think I can walk yet,” Lorna said in a faint voice, then slumped back down in the chair and lost it again.

  The door opened, and Harold Butler’s head and shoulders appeared through the opening. His hair and moustache were both steel gray and he wore a black pinstriped suit. He looked around his office. “Is everything all right?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “We can hear you all over the dealership.”

  “Sorry.”

  Harold looked at Tracy and said, “Oh my god.” He brushed in the door and bent down to lift her from the floor. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “I wanted to make sure that Tracy wasn’t as mortified as Mary Ellen,” he said and piled her in the chair like a rag doll.

  “She’s not.”

  “She’s laughing?” he said.

  “Maybe I over-corrected.” I punched the play button on the recorder. “Tracy, Tracy,” I said, “Tracy! Try to focus here!”

  Tracy wiped her eyes with her forearm and looked at the screen. She fell silent but not quite sober as the tape played and she watched herself stuff the money and the invoice in her purse. Finally she said, “I guess I stole that money.”

  Harold Butler pushed the door closed behind him and made an astonished face. “Is it all right if I stay?”

  I looked at Tracy. She shrugged and giggled.

  “On Friday last did you steal …” Tracy started sliding dow
n her chair, and I flipped the next half-dozen sheets of yellow legal pad paper into the middle of the desk one at a time. “Tracy, when you stole the first hundred dollars you made this a felony. On each of these incidents you stole over a hundred dollars, making every incident a separate felony.”

  “Tracy,” said Harold Butler, “I know how much money you stole, and I expect you to pay it back.”

  “I didn’t steal anything Mr. Smiley Face doesn’t have pictures of,” she told him.

  I pushed the stop button on the player and then the rewind. While the player hummed away, I fished a spreadsheet out of the file, circled the total, folded the paper, and stashed it in the breast pocket of my jacket. The player clicked to a stop.

  “This is the second of two tapes concerning your thefts,” I said, “but I suppose we can play this one first.” I pushed the play button. Tracy watched, entranced.

  I picked up the telephone and dialed.

  “Who are you calling?” asked Tracy. Panic replaced the mirth in her face.

  “My wife,” I said. “This is a two-hour tape and I’ve already seen it.”

  Tracy deflated back in her chair and Wendy answered the telephone, “Silk City Surveys.”

  “Hi,” I said, “I have a little problem. We have to back off my meeting with your client.”

  Wendy ran a detective agency from the house that specialized in industrial undercover work. Her client, Scott Lambert, had a personal matter that he wanted looked into, and Wendy had recommended me for the job.

  “I told you about this last week,” said Wendy.

  “And I called.”

  “Yeah, to tell me you weren’t going to make it. Like always. Like last week you missed Daniel’s football game.”

  “I called.”

  “So what?”

  “Honey!”

  “Scott is flying out at three and wants the work done before he gets back. This is business. I thought I could at least count on you for that.”

  “I split my trousers.” Now Harold gave me the wide eyes, and the ladies started giggling again.

  “So pull your jacket down and don’t turn your back to Scott,” said Wendy.