The Mather Triad: Series Boxed Set (Chloe Mather Thrillers)

by Lawrence Kelter

  It was a barebones motel room, clean but nothing fancy, with a bed, dresser, and a couple of cheap chairs on either side of a small table.

  “Have a seat,” he offered. He pulled a pint bottle of Sambuca out of a paper bag and placed it on the table along with a small diner take-out cup of coffee. “I would’ve brought you coffee if I knew you were coming.”

  Duh? “I would’ve told you I was coming if I knew how to reach you.”

  “How’d you find me?”

  “Your credit cards.”

  “Yeah, I figured. I’ll go to the bank in the morning and grab some cash.”

  “That would be smart, and change hotels too, somewhere away from here. You’ve left a trail of bread crumbs even the dumbest pigeon could follow.”

  “Okay.” He broke the seal on his Sambuca, removed the cap from his coffee cup, and added a splash to it. He took a sip and looked up at me. “Okay, you’ve got me. Now what?”

  “You do know that Benzino was murdered?”

  His mouth parted and his eyes wandered momentarily. “No,” he answered with surprise. He dropped down into one of the chairs. “What happened?”

  “His throat was slit.”

  “Huh,” he said and took a long sip of coffee before filling the cup back to the brim with Sambuca. He sat back in his chair. “I’m stunned. I figured it was Benzino who killed Nunzio and Mike for sure.”

  “Well, it wasn’t, so who else could it be?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know.” Sniffing the aroma of his coffee, he said, “I figured Benzino had partners, but I never knew who they were. Anyway, why all the killing? I mean, all this over a dumping scandal? Doesn’t make sense.”

  “Could make a lot of sense.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “What role did you play in the dumping?”

  “I drove a truck, like Mike Otho and Nunzio. More than that I can’t tell you.”

  “And do you have any idea what you were dumping?”

  “Construction waste: lumber, sheetrock, insulation … old doors and windows. The pay was good. I didn’t ask a hell of a lot of questions—didn’t want to foul the nest, if you know what I mean.”

  The almighty coin, throw enough of them at anyone and they’ll turn a blind eye to almost anything. “Well, Monte, you dumped hazardous materials like mercury, PCBs, heavy metals, and asbestos. Your crony Stan Longinus kept his mouth shut while the town built a park on top of a mound of carcinogens that children have been playing on for the past thirty years.”

  He turned pale. “Shit! I-I didn’t—”

  “You didn’t think, or you didn’t want to know?” I asked with contempt. “Al never mentioned you by name, but he told me that you had grandkids. How’d you like it if they were rolling around in that kind of crap?”

  He closed his eyes and shook his head remorsefully. “Fuck!” He slammed his fist down on the table. His eyes were red and strained when he opened them. “I’m going to hell. I’m goddamn going to hell.”

  Very possible. “So what about Al? Where was he staying?”

  “He was staying here—couple of doors down.”

  “You still have his phone?”

  Rossetti nodded. “It’s still in his room with the rest of his gear.”

  “And no idea who else could’ve taken him?”

  “The guy who came after my daughter and kids. We saw him run from the house, but it was dark and he got out of there in a hurry. There’s a police sketch of the creep, but I gave my copy to your dad. The police missed him by a minute.”

  “You said we?”

  “Yeah, Al and me. That mook was using my family for leverage to get to me. We called the police and anonymously reported a terrorist thing, but the police sirens spooked him and he took off in my daughter’s car.” He became pensive for a moment and then looked me in the eye. “If this is the guy who has your father … I’m sorry, kid, I don’t think he’d keep him alive for long. Nunzio Faciamano was butchered with a knife, tortured like an animal. This guy … this freak, he plays rough.”

  Rossetti figured I’d take his warning hard, but I was emotionally numb. Between Al’s toxic dumping fiasco and two decades of parental neglect … well, I really didn’t feel emotionally invested in the man’s well-being. “I suppose you’ve got the key to his room?”

  He nodded and reached into his pocket.

  “Let’s go have a look around.”

  Chapter 47

  Al’s rental car was locked and parked outside his empty room.

  “I checked the car,” Rossetti said. “The keys were still in the room with his other stuff.”

  “You found nothing?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing that meant anything to me.” He unlocked the door. “We had keys to each other’s rooms.”

  Housekeeping had made up the room. It was neat and smelled from pine-scented cleanser.

  “I put all his stuff away,” Rossetti said. “Both rooms are paid for until the end of the week.” He opened the top credenza drawer, retrieved Al’s cell phone, and handed it to me. “I looked at the history,” he said, “but the only one in there is you.”

  What? “That’s impossible.” I sat down on the bed and examined the phone but knew at first blush that Al’s phone was one of those prepaid month-to-month jobs, burners as we call them in the trade. Now Al could have been using a burner for any number of reasons. He might’ve had poor credit and was unable to get a service contract from a major carrier. What his life in Florida was like was a mystery to me, but of the little I knew, his financial woes topped his list of problems. Knowing him as I had come to in recent days made me suspect a different motive. I searched for his list of contacts, checking the internal chip as well as the SIM card, but Rossetti had been correct, Al had only used the phone to contact me. “This is crazy,” I said in disbelief. “He never called a restaurant or a friend?” It couldn’t be. I didn’t want to vocalize my suspicions in front of Rossetti, but Al must’ve had a second phone, one he used for legitimate conversations. “You searched the room thoroughly?”

  He nodded. “I tossed it pretty good, I think.”

  “Fair enough.” I got up and walked to the door, not knowing or caring if I’d see Rossetti again.

  “Hey,” he shouted. “Where are you going?”

  “I need time to think.”

  “But what about your father?”

  I shook my head woefully. That deceitful piece of crap? This is a setup, I suspected. No one took him. He just wants it to look like they did. “He’ll keep, Monte. He’ll just have to keep.”

  Chapter 48

  “Hello, Glowmus,” Morty said unhappily when he noticed the cigar-smoking homeowner approaching to snoop on the excavation project. Morty had raced out of the house without showering or his morning coffee to watch the three workers who were submerged in the large sinkhole, throwing shovel after shovel of dirt out of the deep pit. “You come by to supervise, Jack?”

  “I heard all the to-do from my den and figured I’d have a look. That’s all right with you, isn’t it?” he said acerbically.

  “Sure,” Morty said, taking a brief pause before delivering his answer. “Just don’t get too close.” I wouldn’t want you to fall in and break your neck, he mused.

  “What do you think you’ll find down there, buried treasure?” Glowmus jested. “I lost my Big Bertha driver a few years ago—maybe you’ll dig it up.”

  It won’t help your game. Try a driver with a bigger head, one with a head the size of a typewriter. “We’ll have to wait and see. The engineer we hired reviewed the original building plan. There should be a storm drain down there.”

  “What the hell is that?”

  “It’s a collection tank used to channel rainwater away from the buildings.” He pointed out toward the golf course. “It also takes water from the water hazards when there’s too much rain.”

  “We’re here twenty years. Why all of a sudden is it a problem now?” Glowmus complained as he
took a puff on his cigar.

  “We’re not sure, Jack, but the engineer thinks all the heavy rain we’ve been getting overflowed the ponds, and the large volume of water back-flowed to the storm drains and lifted the lids off of them.”

  “I see.”

  Do you? I really doubt it.

  “How big is this storm drain thing?”

  “According to the original plans, it’s about ten feet in diameter and six feet high.”

  “That’s pretty big. So when the top comes off, the mud falls into it and causes the sinkhole.”

  My God, he really does understand. Remarkable. “That’s our theory anyway.”

  “How long before we know?”

  Morty looked into the pit. The heavy concrete storm drain lid had just been uncovered but the sides of the unit had yet to be excavated. “An hour or two, I figure.”

  “Call me when it’s done,” Glowmus said and walked off.

  “Call me when it’s done,” Morty parroted with irritation. “Yes, boss, whatever you say.” He turned back just in time to hear a shriek and then all three workmen sprang from the hole so quickly it looked as if they’d seen a ghost.

  Chapter 49

  I smell coffee. My eyes weren’t even open when the aroma of strong coffee wafted through my nostrils. I opened my eyes to see Liam dressed for work sitting sidesaddle on our bed. “Is that your coffee or mine?” I demanded.

  “I’m no hero—I’m not brave enough to wake the goddess without bringing a sacrifice.”

  “Smart man.” I sat up in bed and Liam helped his gimpy girlfriend prop a pillow behind her back.

  He handed me a cup of bold black joe. “How are you doing?”

  “I want to kill my father. Aside from that, I’d like to get back the use of my left arm.” I’d come home ranting and raving to Liam and Grace about Al, about the travesty I knew he was responsible for, and the deceit I suspected he was part of. The burner phone with just my number in it reeked of duplicity. I no longer believed he had been abducted. My best guess was that he was lying low and had duped Rossetti into believing he’d been taken prisoner. I sipped the strong coffee. It was really stout, heavy-duty on the verge of eating the enamel off my teeth strong. “You spike the java with cleaning fluid or something?”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “No. It’s perfect. It feels like I just got two hundred joules of current through a defibrillator.”

  Liam grinned. “I’ll make it stronger tomorrow.”

  “Come here.” I gave him a closed-mouth morning-breath kiss. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, and I can’t wait until they take your sling off either. All the lopsided sex is hurting my back.”

  “Stop being such a wuss.” I covered his face with my hand and shoved him spiritedly. We grinned at each other like randy teenagers. I’d really beaten him to a pulp last night. I’d come home furious. My lovemaking was as sexually aggressive as it had ever been. “I’m surprised you’re able to walk.”

  “Yeah,” he said, mugging. “Me too. I almost had to call out sick.”

  “At least one good thing has come from Al’s visit.”

  “So do you really believe that your father orchestrated a fake kidnapping just to push you to take action?”

  “Am I sure? No, but I certainly wouldn’t put it past him. He saw that I was reluctant to get involved, so he forced my hand. He’s pretty clever, the conniving old bastard.”

  “I love it when you express your feelings for him so fondly.”

  “If you’re lucky, I’ll uncover more of his misdeeds today, come home, and ride you like a brahma bull.”

  “I’ll know what to expect if you come home wearing chaps and a Western hat.”

  I stroked his hair. With a loving but stoic mother like Grace and a rotten-to-the-core father like Al Mather, I wasn’t the kind of girl who was loose with sentiment, but I needed to tell him how I felt. “You know I love you.” I gave him another stink-barrier kiss.

  “I love you too, but it’s time for this brave buckaroo to hit the road. Good luck with your crusade, Chloe.” He stood and spoke in a haughty British tongue. “Purge the world of all evil and wrongdoing. Make the earth a better place for all mankind. And if you have a spare moment, please do try to recover that dirty rotten scoundrel father of yours.”

  “You’ve been spending too much time with Grace,” I quipped.

  “Then don’t leave me alone with her so much,” he complained with a gleam in his eyes.

  Liam left me alone with my cup of coffee and the files I had been reading through. I made a mental note to call the bureau cryptanalysis department and give them hell for not getting back to me on the numbers found on Benzino’s arm. At least that was my plan, but then I decided why wait? I picked up my phone to make the call. I heard the call ring but disconnected when I saw Grace at the door. She had a cup of coffee in one hand and a bottle of vanilla vodka in the other. She looked kind of loopy, which was a polite way of saying that she was looped. She jiggled the bottle to entice me.

  “Would you like a little splash in your coffee?”

  I picked up the alarm clock and turned it so that she could see the time. “A little early in the morning for that, don’t you think?”

  She walked over and plopped down next to me. “Mitigating circumstances.” She topped off her coffee. “Want to reconsider?”

  I shook my head and lifted the stack of folders to eye level. “I’m trying to stay quick-witted.”

  “Well, if you want to find your father, maybe it would help if you thought like he does.” She rocked the bottle back and forth, still hoping to egg me on. She pulled back the covers and got in bed with me. “Let’s get silly,” she said. “It’s not like you have to go into work or anything.”

  I rolled my eyes and held out my coffee mug. “Hit me, but just a little.”

  “That’s my girl.” She smiled gleefully and poured some hooch into my coffee.

  “Vanilla vodka, huh?” I sipped her elixir and nodded with approval. “This is good.”

  Grace was way ahead of me. Her grin never dropped. “You know they tell you on the bottle not to consume alcohol if you’re pregnant, but what they don’t tell you is that drinking enough of it will get you pregnant too.”

  My focus narrowed. “Is this where you break down and confess that I was conceived out of wedlock?”

  “Nooooo. I’m not saying that at all. I was properly married when you were conceived. I’m just saying …” She shrugged. “Your father was a charmer and we drank constantly. I was so happy that I didn’t see what was really going on. We had money and friends, and spent our early years in varying states of alcoholic oblivion. He ran the business and I shopped and partied and played with my little girl and never thought for a moment that the dream would come to an end, but one day I woke up and found my world crumbling around me.” Her head dropped. “I had on rose-colored glasses, Chloe. I guess I’m just as responsible for what happened as he was.”

  “I think you’ve had too much to drink.”

  “What I mean is that I didn’t know he was an alcoholic. I was always drinking too. I couldn’t judge him objectively.”

  “You never suspected that Al had an addiction?”

  She rested her chin in her hand. “He was what they call one of those high-functioning types.”

  “Yeah. He was a professional, a professional conman. Hitting the bottle is one problem. Selling the business out from under you to cover his debts and putting up a floosy is quite another.” What had started out as fun had taken a quick nosedive. “I still have to find him—at least try to.”

  “I guess that’s my cue.”

  I nodded and Grace kissed me on the forehead as she got out of bed. I went back to the thankless job of finding Al Mather.

  A printed copy of the snapshot I had taken of Benzino’s arm was face up in the folder. To get my bearings I punched 1715 Motor Parkway, Hauppauge, NY, the address of the old Beacon Hill Resort, into Go
ogle Maps and selected Street View. The Beacon Hill had been torn down in the ’90s. In its place a Hyatt Hotel now stood, which was all I really wanted to see. All I was hoping for was a physical reference point, but when I accidentally two-finger-clicked the touchpad on my Mac with the cursor positioned on the map, something surprising and wonderful happened. A new window popped open which read “What’s here?” That’s cool, I thought. “Huh?” The coffee must’ve cleared all the cobwebs out of my head in a hurry because when I glanced at the photo of Benzino’s arm I was struck with an eye-opener. “My God, the tattoo isn’t a code or a number sequence at all.” A smile blossomed on my face. “Now I can call those slow-moving cryptanalysis fools and tell them that they can go take a hike.” When I clicked on the What’s here? window, the address latitude and longitude popped up.

  Chapter 50

  You again? Must’ve been the first unhappy thought to cross Fräulein … I mean Detective Tammy Lauda’s mind when she was summoned to the front desk at the Suffolk County 3rd Precinct Headquarters. She was the detective who’d questioned me in conjunction with the Benzino homicide. She came off as an aggressive ice maiden, a professional persona used by many female law enforcement officers. You know the old adage; a good offense is the best defense. “Mather? What are you doing here? You should’ve called,” she said flatly. “I’ve got a lot going on.”

  “I did leave a message,” I told her emphatically. “Got a few minutes?”

  “I just got here,” she said, looking around in a distracted manner as if she was in desperate need of an errant sanitary napkin. “I didn’t have a chance to check my messages.”

  Don’t pull that distracted routine on me—I wrote the book on it. I waited until her eyes finally met mine, matching the best I-don’t-give-a-shit expression she could dish out with the best I could dish out. I’m not going anywhere, biatch. Let’s boogey.

  “All right, five minutes,” she said, yielding. “Follow me.”