T. Lynn Ocean - Jersey Barnes 01 - Southern Fatality

by T. Lynn Ocean

  Gripping the Sig, I unfolded my body and stood, realizing that I still held the mobile phone in my other hand. I was really getting tired of being shot at. The mix of tourists and locals passing by curiously checked out their surroundings for evidence of a disruption. Finding none, they carried on with their day, assuming the sound they’d heard was a car backfiring or perhaps a mischievous teen playing with firecrackers. Drive-by shootings just didn’t happen in Wilmington. I put the phone to my ear.

  Bill remained on the other end. “Jersey? What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. I tripped and fell, but I’m fine. I’m heading back to the Block, so I’ll catch you later.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Love you.”

  I flipped the phone shut without answering and returned to the other side of the street where I found a damaged black-and-white ONE WAY street sign. The bullet had punched a hole through the center of the arrow shape and lodged itself in the bark of an aged oak tree just beyond. Using a stone, I pried the bullet out and pocketed what appeared to be a flattened chunk of lead that might have traveled from a .38 Special. I gave the majestic tree a pat of apology for enduring a nasty assault and jogged back toward the Block. I took several unnecessary turns and scrutinized each approaching vehicle. When I got closer to home, I dialed Ox and, after explaining what had happened, asked him to take a look around the Block for anyone idling in a white car.

  “Retirement doesn’t seem to agree with you, Jersey,” he said before hanging up.

  The remainder of my run was without incident and my home telephone was ringing as I climbed the stairs to my residence above the Block. Plopping down at the kitchen table to remove my running shoes and ankle holster, I answered it.

  “Barb Henley’s sister is Lisa Wentworth,” Soup said in greeting. “Same father, same mother. You want the full story?”

  “Soup, you are amazingly good at what you do. I’ll take the dime version.” I drank Gatorade from a liter bottle and listened.

  “Barb is two years older than her sister. They were born and raised in Long Island. Father shot himself in an apparent suicide when they were teenagers. The newspaper blurb didn’t say why he shot himself, but apparently Lisa witnessed it. The mother reverted to her maiden name, Brown. Lisa kept her dead father’s name, Wentworth. And Barb changed her name to Henley after the man her mother remarried, even though the mother kept using Brown. The mother got herself arrested twice for driving under the influence. After crippling another driver in a wreck, she went to a judge-ordered alcohol rehab. She divorced a year after that, and it appears that both girls left home and went separate ways. Barb was seventeen, Lisa only fifteen.”

  “What might Lisa be doing now?”

  “Oh, that’s the best part,” Soup said after a slurp of something, mentally calculating my tab, which was growing by the minute. “It’s going to cost you more than a dime.”

  “Give me the quarter version.”

  “Lisa hooked up with an elderly boyfriend who took her in, made her finish high school, and then put her through college, according to a disapproving neighbor. I found the street address through DMV records for learner’s permits, and then rounded up the neighbor who, luckily, still lives in the house next door. The benevolent boyfriend has since died. Anyway, Lisa passed Sugar Daddy one-o-one with flying colors, and got pretty decent grades in school, too. Grew into a beautiful, leggy, natural blonde. Became a successful model, but never quite made it to the supermodel category. Ringing any bells yet?”

  “Good God.” When Bill had first introduced me to Lolly, he’d mentioned her real name was Lisa.

  “You got it. Lisa is Lolly. She had her first name legally changed to Lolly, I guess for a modeling stage name. I ran a basic background on Lolly and Samuel Chesterfield the first go-around and you already saw those results. They revealed prior employers and no criminal activity. I didn’t dig further.”

  “Well, I didn’t see a need to,” I said to us both, the implications seeping in.

  “There’s more if you want it, but nothing crucial. You’ve got the meat.”

  “I’m not upping the ante to fifty cents.” I thanked Soup for what seemed like the umpteenth time in the past few weeks and disconnected with a promise to add a bottle of Corazón tequila to the supplies for his upcoming week on my boat.

  Cracker materialized and nudged my hand with a wet nose, then chest-butted my chair, his way of demanding attention from his humans. I scratched him between the eyes, right on top of his snout. It was one of his favorite places to be rubbed and he angled his head so I could have a better reach.

  “You and the Sig have a nice run?” Spud asked, ambling into the kitchen. My discarded running shoes were on the floor and backup weapon was on the table.

  “Just being careful, like you said,” I told him. He clicked his teeth a few times and made a sound that ended in “harrumph.”

  “You know, kid, I been thinking …” he began and I knew by his tone of voice that a revelation was forthcoming. “Since the LHS has been all cleaned up and waxed and has that shiny stuff on the wheels, it’s a pretty nice-looking ride. I might just keep it to have something for my girlie babes to carry me around in, like Trish suggested. Plus, Bobby can drive it pretty good.” He watched for my reaction over an upturned chocolate Yoo-hoo bottle.

  “That’s a fine idea, Spud. Just keep your insurance policy up to date.”

  “You think so? Even though I can’t legally drive it?”

  “Sure,” I told him, not much caring either way. His ongoing love-hate relationship with his car was the last thing I cared to ponder at the moment. “You can always sink it or blow it up later, if you decide you don’t want it anymore.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “I’ll keep it for a while and see how things go.”

  “Barb Henley’s sister is Lolly Chesterfield,” I told him.

  “Holy friggin’ cow!” Spud responded. “You think she’s in on the missing kid? Her own stepson?”

  “Odder things have happened.”

  “That’s reminds me. Samuel Chesterfield wants you to call him at home, and it’s urgent. Said you didn’t answer your mobile.”

  I phoned Chesterfield and learned three things.

  One, after a call from one of the agents, he’d rushed home to find a ransom note in place of his wife. It appeared to be the same paper and same typestyle as Jared’s ransom note. Lolly was additional insurance to ensure the ransom money was delivered, it said. The Feebie who was stationed at the penthouse had gone down to the lobby to accept a food delivery. When he returned, a lamp was overturned, a torn magazine was on the floor, and Lolly was gone. None of her belongings were missing. I asked Chesterfield if his wife had been on birth control and he said, yes, pills. I asked him to check and see if her birth control pills were there. He returned to the phone shortly, telling me that they were not in their usual place in the top bathroom drawer. Which meant she probably hadn’t been abducted, even though somebody wanted it to look like she had. Clothing and cosmetics could be easily purchased, but prescription drugs would be more of a hassle to replace.

  Two, Melinda Hertz’s lawyer called offering some information in exchange for dropped charges. The theft and drug dealing were all done by her husband Gary, she maintained, and he had been the actual property manager. Chesterfield agreed that if her information directly led to finding Jared alive, he’d drop the charges against her. If not, no deal. The other condition was that she had to provide the information immediately. Melinda Hertz claimed that the day she and Gary had skipped out of their apartment, she was in the Bellington Complex lobby getting a newspaper and overheard a young man calling Jared on the courtesy phone. The conversation led her to believe the visitor was an old friend and that he and Jared were getting together. And no, the courtesy phone wasn’t viewed by a security camera. But after he hung the phone up, Melinda distinctly heard the kid mutter to himself, “You’ll enjoy Piney Place, Jared. You’ll blend right in with the trailer tra
sh.” The kid was white, tall, and lanky with longish hair and jeans. After the jail time cleared her head of a drug-induced haze and she’d had some time to contemplate things, Melinda remembered the incident and it dawned on her that it occurred right before Jared disappeared.

  Three, Chesterfield was reaching a breaking point. Controlled and together though he was, I wasn’t sure how much more he could take and I didn’t want to give him any more bad news to contemplate—at least not until I had his son safely back home. I hadn’t told him what I’d learned about Lolly.

  I called Trish for an update and found that she’d finally had some luck with the tracker in Walton’s mobile phone. He’d made a call from it just minutes earlier and she managed to catch a few snippets of conversation. From what she surmised, Walton was planning to get on a plane tomorrow and wherever he was going, he was going with someone. Even better, Trish got a reading on the GPS location of the phone. Walton was still in the Wilmington area, and my handheld GPS device could pinpoint his location—at least the location he’d been when he placed the call on his mobile phone—to within twenty feet. Bits of the puzzle were plummeting into place and a rush of charged energy filled my body and stimulated my mind. It was the same feeling I always experienced when getting close to solving a case and I thrived on it. In a flash-forward instant, I felt a sense of loss. Something I was going to miss in retirement.

  After studying a map and comparing the GPS coordinates with the Piney Place neighborhood, I discovered the two overlapped. Definitely a clue.

  Steaming hot jets of water pounded the back of my shoulders and, despite the fact that it was the day of reckoning, I stood beneath the shower much longer than necessary as I visualized the various scenarios that could happen and what my response to each would be. A calming type of mental preparation I’d learned working for the government, it had become habit.

  I dressed in what Ox dubbed my combat duds: black hiking boots, stretch jeans that were popular with the teen crowd and had enough assorted pockets to carry a few tools including my backup piece, and a custom designed bullet-resistant vest that molded nicely around my size Ds. The vest was covered by a plain T-shirt, and a lightweight black jacket concealed both the vest and the Glock. I’d requested Ox’s company and when we met downstairs at the bar, he grinned, even though he didn’t know my outfit also concealed a pair of sexy striped Victoria’s Secret briefs and lace-lined cami. Or, considering his mysterious powers of observation, maybe he did know.

  “Planning on some action, Barnes?” He was dressed no differently than usual, although I knew he’d strapped on his carry weapon of choice, a Kimber .45 automatic. He had several weapons, if you counted the two knives that he was never without and the two hands that could kill as easily as they could comfort.

  We ordered food more as a necessity for body fuel than a social pleasantry. While we ate boiled shrimp and hush puppies, I brought him up to date and told him that there had better be some action soon, or else Chesterfield had hired the wrong woman. Ox agreed that Piney Place was where we needed to be.

  I touched his arm. “Put on your vest before we go, okay?”

  “Worried about me?”

  “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  “Ditto, Jersey Barnes.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  When we Climbed into my car and went in search of Jared, the evening was growing dusky and would soon go dark. In the electronic dimension, SIPA transfers to Chesterfield Financial’s system were drawing to a close.

  “Thanks for coming along, Ox.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said simply.

  Piney Place turned out to be a rental community of single and double-wide mobile homes. Just on the other side of the bridge—the one leading south on Highway 17—the area was heavily wooded, giving the illusion of privacy between the postage-stamp lots. Most yards were landscaped with layers of pine straw in lieu of grass. As we canvassed the neighborhood, there was little activity other than some teenagers gathered in one backyard passing a cigarette between them, and the occasional bluish, flickering glow of a television through a window. With the exception of a man taking his poodle for a walk from behind the wheel of a golf cart, the streets were empty.

  We spied Walton’s white Mustang convertible parked in the dirt drive of a nondescript double-wide with rotting white lattice boards covering the crawl space where vinyl skirting otherwise would be. A real estate sign, indicating the home had been for rent, rested against a tree. We parked in the street.

  Communicating with our eyes and hands, we agreed that I’d take the front door. Ox vanished into the backyard. In the distance, a small dog yapped but other than pulsing, tinny music emanating from a cheap radio, there were no sounds coming from the trailer. Heading in with my weapon drawn, I found the front door unlocked, noiselessly entered, and crouched against a wall. A stale cloud assaulted my nose. It reeked of cigarette smoke and the odor of someone who hadn’t bathed in a long time. The front door opened into the living room and Walton sat on the sofa, facing me. His half-nude body was leisurely stretched out, face aimed at the ceiling, eyes closed. A female knelt on the floor in front of him and her head of short blond curls methodically moved up and down between his legs. Nobody else was in sight.

  Trying to ignore the distraction of two people having sex twelve feet away, I studied what I could see of the rental. Aside from empty beer cans and wadded-up remnants of fast-food meals, the place was tidy. To my left was a small dining area that led to a kitchen. To the right was a hallway with three doors. One was open and revealed a bathroom. The remaining two were closed and I assumed them to be bedrooms. I also had to assume who the bobbing head belonged to, even though I could only see the back of it. I may have found the mystery woman.

  Seconds later, Walton’s eyes flew open and revealed a mixture of bewilderment and pleasure as he registered my presence at the same time an orgasm overtook him. When the woman turned to see what Walton looked at with such wide eyes, I discovered that the head of white-blond curls did in fact belong to Lolly.

  Keeping my back to the wall, I stood and aimed the gun at her but kept my peripheral vision on Walton, just in case he was a cold-blooded killer, too. “Stand up, Lolly.”

  Looking almost comic, Walton got up and scrambled to get back into the pants that were discarded on the floor. Resembling a veteran prostitute, Lolly slowly wiped her mouth with the back of a slender hand and stood to face me with a slow smile. She was fully clothed in a solid black pantsuit and sandals and made sure that she kept herself behind the kid. She knew I wouldn’t shoot her if there was a risk of killing Walton in the process. For that matter, she knew a person with morals wouldn’t shoot an unarmed woman.

  “Why, hello, Jersey,” she said. “You’ve found our little love nest. I do hope you won’t tell Samuel. It’d just break his heart.” The voice was no longer pouty and sweet. Instead, it was deep, the words perfectly enunciated. The eyes were darker than I remembered, more intelligent, more calculating. To give Ox time to do whatever it was that he was doing, I played her game. I was in no particular hurry.

  “Lolly, Lolly, Lolly. To think you were worried about your husband cheating on you,” I said sadly.

  She brushed the hair from her face and casually reached for her purse that rested on an end table.

  “Hold it!” I said. “That’s a no-no.”

  Sighing, she retrieved a tube of lipstick from atop a rickety end table and taking her time in twisting up the stick of color, applied a layer of cherry red to her lips without the aid of a mirror. “I had to know if he was, Jersey, because I want a divorce and could have used that as cause.” She fluttered her lashes demurely at a stunned, motionless Walton. “Nothing compares to the endurance of a twenty-one-year-old.”

  “Why’d you marry him to begin with?”

  “Oh, it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long, long time,” she said flippantly and when she moved to replace the lipstick on the table, she grabbed Walton into a
bear hug against the front of her body, turning him into an even better shield.

  “Don’t worry, darling. She won’t shoot you,” she cooed into his ear as she reached into the handbag on the sofa behind her and removed a revolver that was pointed at me. The heeled sandals made her nearly a head taller than Walton and I felt certain that I could immobilize her with a shot to the shoulder before she got a round off at me. Or kill her with a shot to the head. Knowing Lolly, though, she’d have just enough psychotic energy to shoot either me or the kid on her way down. I went the safer route by waiting to see how things played out, but didn’t drop my armed stance. It was a standoff.

  “What are you doing with a pistol, Lolly?” Walton sputtered. “Are you crazy? You said nobody would get hurt!”

  We both ignored him.

  “I’m curious, Lisa,” I said, emphasizing her real name, “why did you really employ me to begin with? You knew Samuel wasn’t having an affair.”

  “Oh, I see you’ve caught on to me. Well, that was just a distraction. When Bill told me he was dating a detective-type, I figured that the cheating-husband front would confuse things a bit. Make a more interesting story for the cops after I disappeared. You just happened to be convenient.”

  “Convenient and free,” I mused. “Huh. So where are you headed from here?”

  “To a beautiful tropical place. To live happily ever after with my gorgeous man.” She let out a long laugh that finished like an ugly snort and I wondered who she was referring to as gorgeous. Surely not Walton.

  “And kidnapping Tared?”

  “Another distraction,” she said, momentarily releasing her grip on Walton to place the strap of her handbag over a bare shoulder. The other hand, the one gripping the revolver, remained steady. Ignorantly, Walton remained in place in front of her. “Besides, I’ve been kidnapped now, too. I wonder if Samuel has told my mother?” Her head tilted slightly with the question.