“You were just a kid.”
“I don’t know why I shot that man. I really don’t. It was a long time before the impact of what I’d done began to sink in. At first it was just a big joke. Everybody knew how serious it was but me.”
“I guess you’ve had plenty of time to ponder over it.”
“Damn right. Sittin’ in that cell, I spent a lotta time thinking about that night. Took me years to start feeling sorry for the guy’s family. I thought about my own life. My mom never had time for me. She didn’t know whether I was shootin’ baskets or out stealin’ cars and she didn’t give a damn. I didn’t know any better. It was just what we did.”
Jaz looked him in the eye. “Your granny told us that you vowed to change your life when you came out of prison.”
“Granny’s my angel. She let me move in with her. If I’d gone back to the hood, I’da got mixed up with the same guys I ran with before. The ones that aren’t in jail or dead. I just hope Granny don’t think I’ve let her down.”
“What have you been doing since you got out?”
“Looking for a job, mostly. But nobody wants to hire me. I was sittin’ on the porch one day and some kids came up, trying to make out I’m something because I did time for murder. I told them the real heroes are the guys who get jobs and work to make something of themselves. Kids just don’t understand.”
“Did you get any career counseling in prison?”
“I got my GED. Took some courses that would help me open a center for kids like me. But I can’t do anything without money, and I can’t make any money without a job. Now this.” He rubbed hands as rough as a scratchy blanket down the sides of his face. “That fat cop kept saying ‘you killed that man; you killed that man just like you killed the one fourteen years ago.’”
“You denied it, didn’t you?” Sid asked.
“Damn right. I told him I never fired that gun. But I knew better’n to say anything else.”
He’d learned how to stonewall the cops during his prison stay, Sid thought. “Getting back to what happened Tuesday afternoon, think about it. Concentrate on what you saw and what you heard when you first entered that store.”
Burden closed his eyes for a moment, his face twisted as if in pain. When he opened them, he said, “I saw junk scattered all around. It was a mess. As I walked in, a box turned over and stuff clattered onto the floor. Oh, and I smelled gunpowder. Then I saw the man at the desk.”
Sid pictured the scene as he remembered it. The fallen box lay in the doorway to the back room. At the time, Valdez would have been dead already. Who knocked the box over?
“Did you hear any other sounds?” Sid asked.
Burden looked puzzled. “What sort of sounds?”
“If you smelled gunpowder, Valdez must have just been shot. Did you think someone was in the back room?”
“At the time I wouldn’t have cared…wait.” His eyes widened. “Yeah...I remember now…a noise, a clicking noise. Was there a back door?”
“There was.”
“Damn! I see what you mean. The killer must’ve left just as I got there, and I never saw him.”
“Maybe somebody else did,” Jaz said.
Chapter 6
By late afternoon, the bright spring day had turned sour, with knotty dark clouds smudging the blue canopy overhead. Sid dropped Jaz off at a downtown garage where she’d left her red Lexus. She had an accountant to meet at her company headquarters before the office closed. Sid drove out to Green Hills to find who might have had a view of the rear door at Prime Medical Equipment.
A paved alley behind the building provided access for delivery and garbage trucks. A large gray dumpster sat between the rear entrances to the former medical supply store and the florist shop next door. Sid stopped beside the trash receptacle and looked around the area. Trees in the process of leafing out and tall wooden fences blocked the view from houses beyond the alley. A tire store-automobile service shop bordered the alley on a side street. Its overhead doors in back opened onto a parking area where cars awaited servicing. As he watched, a mechanic climbed into a pickup truck and drove it inside the service bay.
Sid parked in front of the shop and entered the office area, where two neatly-dressed women chatted in cushioned wrought iron chairs at one side. A couple of suited business types wandered around looking at tires on display racks. Behind the counter a scruffy-looking man in tan coveralls greeted him with a toothy smile. “I got some great tires just the thing for that Chevy,” he said.
Sid returned the smile. “I’m sure you do. Maybe some other time, though. That’s not what I’m here for now. Are you the manager?”
“Quint Nevins,” he said, nodding. “You don’t look like a salesman.”
“Good observation.” Sid introduced himself and showed his PI card. “Were you here when the murder took place yesterday afternoon at the medical supply place across the alley?”
“You better believe. Spooked people around here, I’ll tell you. Cop cars all over the place. Heard it was that black boy just out of prison.”
“He was charged with the murder, but we’re looking into another possibility. It looks like somebody left by the rear door about the time of the shooting. If any of your employees were out back at the time, they could have seen something.”
Nevins scratched his nose. “I guess it’s possible.”
“Mind if I talk to them and see if anyone remembers anything?”
“Not a good time. We’re awful busy today. Gettin’ behind and these folks are waiting.”
“I could come back later.”
“Let me ask around when I get a chance. You got a card? I find anybody who knows something, I’ll give you a call.”
Sid wasn’t happy with that prospect but handed over a business card and hoped for the best. He didn’t trust other people to ask questions the way he would. He drove back to Hillsboro Pike and pulled up to the florist shop. The fragrance of flower blossoms scented the air. Something springy, maybe daffodils or hyacinths. They had been his mother’s favorites. Several plants were displayed around the small lobby in wicker baskets. Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” flowed like a sprightly summer rain from a speaker in the ceiling. A silver-haired woman in a flower-bedecked smock stepped out from behind the counter.
“Can I show you something?” She had a strong voice that reminded him of Mary Virginia Chance. His mother had been an English teacher who specialized in American Literature. That was how he came to bear the name Sidney Lanier Chance.
Sid explained who he was and asked if she had been in the shop when the murder took place next door.
Her thin brows pinched toward her nose. “I’m afraid so.”
“I guess it was rather traumatic when you found out what had happened.”
“It certainly was. I started this shop twenty years ago, and I can’t remember anything like this in the past.”
“Were you acquainted with the people who ran Prime Medical Equipment?”
“I’d met them but never really got to know them. Mr. Valdez wasn’t much of a communicator.”
“How about Ms. Ortiz?”
“She was friendly enough, though I only saw her on a few occasions. She bought some potted plants once to decorate the front of the store.”
“Were you aware that they were moving out?”
“I had no idea. I hadn’t seen many cars around, but I never did. I presumed they did most of their business by mail or by phone. I get lots of phone orders.”
“Did you hear the gunshot?”
“No, even though it happened on the other side of this wall.” She nodded toward the medical supply store. “The police asked about that. I told them I supposed the music could have drowned it out.”
“Did you have a loud song playing?”
“I never play loud songs.”
It could mean a suppressor, popularly called a silencer, he thought. “Were you in a position to see anyone going into the store, or coming out?”
She pondered th
at for a moment. “I stay busy in here, Mr. Chance. I could have been back in the workroom. Anyway, I don’t do much window gazing. I don’t recall seeing anyone.”
Sid turned, looked out toward the parking lot, and nodded. “I imagine it would be difficult to see someone from here. And you probably won’t see anyone for awhile. The real estate agent let us in there this morning after the police were finished examining the scene. They won’t be cleaning the mess out for a while yet.”
He gave her a card and asked her to call if she thought of anything else.
Moving next door to the clothing store, he found it a shop that specialized in what he called funky clothes for teenagers. Stacks of brightly colored tops and jeans with stringy threads covering fake holes were arrayed on tables. The two clerks had seen and heard nothing after the murder except all the police cars that crowded the parking lot. An officer came in to question them, but they were completely in the dark as to what had happened. Sid gave up and started back to his office in Madison. While creeping along I-440 in the homebound traffic that slowed even more with a drizzling rain, he got a call from Quint Nevins at the tire store. None of his employees had reported noticing anyone behind Prime Medical Equipment on the afternoon of the crime.
After dinner in the spacious kitchen with Marie and John Wallace, Jaz retreated to her office. Before her father died, the Wallaces had lived in a small house behind the mansion, but she finally convinced them to move into the big house with her. Turning to her computer, she logged onto a comprehensive search site used by private investigators and entered “Omar Valdez” with his Nashville address. She found scant current information on him other than his position as president of Prime Medical Equipment, Inc. In the past he had lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he worked at Casa Rosa Restaurant. Even if he had been the manager, and there was no indication what job he held, no way would it have provided him with the designation of “veteran medical supplier.” He had no criminal record, no judgments against him. He appeared about as plain vanilla as they came.
Next she tried Elena Ortiz, who currently lived at the same address as Valdez. There was no shortage of information on the secretary- treasurer. She had worked in accounting at an orthopedic clinic in San Antonio, Texas. Thirty-five years old, she was born in El Paso of legal immigrant parents from the Mexican state of Chihuahua, which bordered on the Rio Grande. Ortiz had no criminal record. There was a note, however, to “see entry for Pablo Francisco Ortiz.”
When Jaz checked on Pablo, she found he was Elena’s brother. He had a lengthy criminal record around El Paso, including drug trafficking. It was an interesting development, but brother Pablo’s wicked ways didn’t appear to have any relationship to his sister’s evident involvement in Medicare fraud.
Considering where to turn next, Jaz recalled finding a crumpled deposit slip on the floor beside Omar Valdez’s desk. Though the slip was blank, she reasoned that the bank involved would be the one where the company had its account. The good news was that she had a close friend from her police department days who now worked in security for the bank. She picked up the phone and punched in Hattie Jordan’s cell number.
“Hello, Sunshine, where you been hiding?”
As rookie cops, they had faced similar hurdles, though Hattie’s problems were doubled. Not only was she a woman, but a black woman. Jaz replied with a smile in her voice. “Sorry I’ve been out of touch lately. It’s been a hectic month.”
“I understand. How can anybody believe you’d do something like that?”
“I’m sure it was the work of a rival company we’re having problems with.”
“Well, you just give me the word, honey, and I’ll tell ‘em where they can shove that stuff.”
“Thanks, Hattie.”
“What you up to now?”
“Just doing a little computer trolling for a new case I’m working on with Sid.”
“That big hunk, huh? You’d better grab him before some slinky babe snatches him away.”
“A tall, slinky number like you?” Her friend was five-eleven, a real charmer with skin as smooth as a chocolate shake.
Hattie Jordan laughed. “I’m not immune to the charms of oversize guys.”
“I’ve told you it’s just a business arrangement with us.”
“Of course it is, baby girl. Doesn’t mean you can’t work in a little monkey business.”
“Speaking of business,” Jaz said, quickly shifting the conversation, “are you keeping the bank as secure as ever?”
“Actually, I’m at the office right now. And since you mentioned computer trolling, we’ve had a hacker trying to do a bit of that on us lately. Goes on all the time, of course, but this one is a little more sophisticated.”
“You cut him off at the pass, I hope.”
“He didn’t do any damage, and we’re on his trail.”
“I need a little assistance, Hattie,” Jaz said. She explained about the Djuan Burden case, that they were looking into the possibility of Medicare fraud.
“Isn’t that the Feebs’ job?”
“Right. We turned over some stuff we found to an FBI agent, but they’re not interested in the murder angle. What I need to know is if Prime Medical Equipment, Incorporated has an account with the bank. They were located on Hillsboro Pike in Green Hills. Names associated with the account would be Omar Valdez or Elena Ortiz.”
“You wouldn’t want to get a girl in trouble?”
“You’re on your cell phone, Hattie. Nobody knows the trouble you see.”
She laughed. “Okay, smartie. Let me get on my computer.”
Jaz listened to the sound of keyboard clicking, her friend doing a bit of um, hmming, and then she was back.
“The murder took place yesterday afternoon, right?”
“Correct.”
“First thing this morning, Miz Ortiz closed out the account and departed with a check for several thousand in Uncle Sugar’s currency. You might want to talk to her…if she’s still around.”
Chapter 7
When he got back to the office, Sid checked his email. He found a message from a potential client searching for a missing heir to a small fortune. During his limited time in the business, he had earned a reputation for his ability to locate hard-to-find people. This job sounded like it had the potential for big bucks, which was always an intriguing prospect. Not that he faced any financial difficulties. He had a tidy egg resting in his nest. It was managed by Mike Rich, a financial wizard who had been one of his mother’s prize students back when.
Sid started entering notes on the day’s activities into his computer, but the ringing phone interrupted him. It was the owner of the florist shop next to Prime Medical Equipment.
“I thought you might be interested in what I saw when I was locking up the store,” she said.
“What was that?”
“A black car parked in front of the medical equipment place, and a man got out. It was a Dodge Avenger. I know because my sister has one. He went into the store and I left then, so I don’t know how long he stayed.”
“It was probably somebody from the real estate agency,” Sid said, “but thanks for calling.” She was a good observer. He wished she had been out back at the time of the shooting.
After printing out the case notes, he crossed to the small refrigerator in the corner and pulled out a bottle of Sam Adams, a Boston brew he had developed a taste for. He popped the cap and returned to his chair. Leaning back, he scanned the list of areas they had probed so far. He was almost convinced now of Djuan Burden’s innocence. A big question mark still hovered over the ballistics test, but he would press Bart Masterson on what the TBI lab might have turned up. Glancing at the clock, he saw he still had time to catch part of the local news. He switched on the TV across from his desk.
Turmoil in he Middle East brought interviews with Nashville citizens who were concerned about the safety of relatives back home. As he nursed the Sam Adams, he turned back to the printout on his desk. Hearing
the name “Djuan Burden” snared his attention and his eyes snapped back to the TV screen where he saw a familiar sight, the front of Prime Medical Equipment. Victor Grimm and a smaller man whose face was turned away, no doubt his partner, busily removed crime scene tape while the reporter updated the story. From what the real estate agent had said, the pictures must have been shot that morning.
He turned off the TV and returned to his notes, thinking about what he and Jaz would face in the days ahead. A major concern was how the confrontation with Detective Grimm might affect their investigation. They would have to use the backdoor approach through Bart or some other source to dig out what the police knew. Running his finger down the page, he stopped on the interview at Bailey, Riddle and Smith. The lawyers had been reluctant to consider going to trial, but he felt confident he could handle them. Confirmation of a person leaving Prime Medical by the rear door at the time of the murder appeared the most promising bit of information they could unearth, though at the moment it seemed totally out of reach.
When the phone rang, he saw Jaz’s number on the caller ID. He lifted the phone and said, “What’s up, partner?”
“Just thought I’d relate a conversation I had with an old banking buddy.” She gave him the gist of her conversation with Hattie Jordan.
Sid drained the last of his beer. “Sounds like I have another missing person to chase down. Since Ortiz came from Texas, it’s likely she would head back there. We need to find out a little more about her first.”
“They lived on my side of town. I’ll check around their apartment first thing in the morning.”
Sid dropped the bottle in his wastebasket. “Sounds like a plan. Call me with what you find.”
After backing up his computer files, he shrugged into his jacket, grabbed his Titans cap, and glanced around to see if he’d forgotten anything. though he rarely took work papers home. Jaz, who possessed a computer science degree as well as an MBA, had him set up where he could access the office computer from home. As he reached for the light switch, the phone rang.
The Good, The Bad and The Murderous (Sid Chance Myseries Book 2) Page 4