Un-Connected

by Noah Rea

  I told them it would be a while, but I would eventually be able to get Rebecca’s stuff, and there might be something in there they would want. We would work all that out later.

  They told me one of Rebecca’s nieces was driving her car and hoped I didn’t mind, but they were tight on money, and it was just sitting there. They were sure Rebecca would have wanted her to have it. I assured them it was a great idea.

  Then we got out of there real quick.

  Otis called and wanted us to stop by the truck stop for a minute because he had something for us. When we got there, everyone was excited. Otis explained that they had just received the last payment for the one helicopter engine I hadn’t shot up. He said it was the last major part sold. They got some money from the damaged engine, but the real money came from the other good engine, the gearbox, the frame and body, the electronics and the black box. They had used Deb’s truck to store the helicopter frame out of the way so no one could find it. Then when it sold, they delivered it in the truck with some other stuff piled on top in case they got stopped. And they had charged extra for the delivery. There was more stuff to sell but most of it didn’t have near the value of what was now sold. So there would be a little more later but not much more. Otis appeared to be a good businessman.

  He gave me a briefcase. “That’s your cut.”

  “Was it about half of what my other briefcase was holding?” I asked him without opening it.

  He laughed. “Multiply what you got last time by two and half times, and you’re close.”

  “Not really two hundred fifty,” I said, not believing my ears.

  “Not exactly, but really close. And unless someone files a 1099 on you, it’s garage-sale money. Do you want to see the other briefcase, or do you want us to store this one for you? Any combination is your call.”

  Deb answered. “Store it.”

  “Just hold it for us,” I said, “until we get a safe place of our own to keep them.”

  “Otis, thank you so much. This really is unbelievable. Is everyone getting as good of a cut?”

  “Everyone is getting a fair cut. It isn’t the same for everyone.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Tilly isn’t getting a cut. She has to share with me. Some of the kids are young and living at home and didn’t do much. They might get a new car or whatever they need but it is a fair split.”

  We both thanked Otis and everyone who we could find and the meeting was over.

  Deb and I went out and drove by more houses.

  Otis called and said the land Deb and I picked out would soon be ours. Barbara’s husband, Jim was finishing up the paperwork, and someone would get it to us to sign. He then asked how we wanted it titled.

  Deb and I had learned that with Otis, it was a good idea to ask his opinion. There were a lot of good reasons to do so. They were being extremely generous, and it was important for us to be as kind and grateful as we could be. It wasn’t hard because they had no reason to be so nice to us and we were very grateful. Another reason to ask Otis is that he rarely pried into private matters or made decisions for us. But his advice was usually very good.

  His advice was that we form an LLC and put the property in that. It would give us a little privacy and would give us a little protection from a lawsuit. After talking it over Deb and I agreed and asked what we needed to do.

  “Not much. I’ll call Jim and ask him to take care of it. In the meantime, you need to come up with a name.”

  We were in the middle of kicking names around when Jim called. There had been a rush of complaints in the Phoenix area of elderly estates being settled too quickly and at discounted rates. Bank accounts had been cleaned out and closed. Stocks had been dumped and the money taken. Houses sold at liquidation cash prices. Cars sent to auction and the money taken. Jewelry and expensive personal items were missing. Then the rest of the personal belongings sold to antique auction houses or personal property auction houses and liquidated. Someone was cleaning up fast, getting ready to run it appeared to Jim, Seth, and Tex.

  Jim was on his way to Phoenix. He had asked the police to put a tail on Dr. Robinson. He had also talked to a detective he had met and told him of his concerns about elderly people dying prematurely. Jim didn’t want to cause too much drama around Dr. Robinson, but he also didn’t want to leave him to his devices if he was cleaning up his patient list. The detective had called back to tell Jim about his sergeant sharing his fears.

  The sergeant made a few phone calls and got some extra manpower to run a program he called Arizona Medical Student Month. They put medical students at all the nursing homes where they knew Dr. Robinson had patients. During daylight hours the medical students were to follow Dr. Robinson around for educational purposes. The nursing homes were asked to restrict doctor-visiting time to daylight only. Jim found out later that this irritated Dr. Robinson more than a little by his admission, and several said they thought it irritated him enormously.

  Jim didn’t get there overnight as he had in the past, and his excuse was his wife told him it would be worth his time not to leave until the next morning. I told him I didn’t know what to do about assertive women. For that comment, I got an elbow in the ribs but it didn’t hurt.

  Jim called the next morning real early. In fact, it must have been early East Coast time. Dr. Robinson had been shot at home and robbed. The police were outside the front of his home when they saw a suspicious shadow in a window just after Dr. Robinson returned to his home. When they went to the door, no one answered. They called in for instructions and were told to go in.

  They sent the backup in the back alley to meet them at the back door, and they broke through the front door. Inside the place was torn apart. Much of it must have happened before the doctor got home. A safe in the office was open and empty. There were no expensive things left in the house including probably what had been nice paintings. There was no jewelry, no guns, and no keepsakes. Nothing that had much value except a really large TV mounted on the wall.

  The police believed someone or several were waiting for the doctor to close the garage while they were in the house but out of sight. Possibly, they were in the laundry room just inside the garage door. They probably cleaned out the house before the doctor got home.

  As soon as the overhead garage door was shut, they probably showed themselves and took control. They probably didn’t take long to get what they wanted out of him because there was no sign of struggle, no sign of forced entry, and no sign of torture. They probably convinced him to open the safe and then killed him. They must have gone out the back door just after they pulled up in the front and before anyone got to the back.

  Jim was sure when the banks opened they would find his accounts cleaned out. He would be in Phoenix just after lunch. Jim had asked the detective to phone the nursing homes where the doctor had patients and see if all of them were OK.

  “Oh, by the way,” Jim said. “I was able to get a phone to Rebecca’s parents, and their phone number is the same as yours except the last digit is a seven.” Then he was gone.

  Deb and I looked at each other, and she spoke first. “Someone is cleaning up.”

  Deb asked me if I thought New Hope Properties, LLC was too ordinary. After thinking about it for a minute, I said it had good content, but I wasn’t sure if I was ready to vote for that one. I told her our life had been so stressful and now so good that we probably did want a name that spoke of the big change in our lives.

  I told her I had heard that in Indian mythology, there was a bird called the phoenix that rose from ashes of some kind of fire or disaster. It was kind of a miracle or at least an amazing revival of spirit and good fortune. Since we were so close to the City of Phoenix, someone had probably taken all variations of the name, but I would like to try some combination of that name if it sounded good to her. I said we had been blessed by making the right decisions so many times, and those decisions were probably inspired.

  I pointed out that things would have
been different if I had gotten in the talker’s truck instead of hers. And what if she had turned me down? It would have been my loss.

  She jumped on the computer and searched the internet for “Phoenix Properties, LLC” in Arizona and nothing came up. That didn’t mean there was nothing in Arizona and the name was free for us to use, but it seemed so. We liked it and told Otis it was what we wanted if it was available. We asked what he thought, and he liked it. In a few days Tilly called and wanted to meet us somewhere to sign some papers. We invited her to our home, and she was there soon.

  We signed the papers, and she said the property was officially ours, named as we had asked. Then she said we might want to get it surveyed to know exactly where the property lines were, but Will and Jack would help us lay it out with stakes and flags that would be pretty close. We agreed, and told her that the stakes and flags would be good for now.

  “Can Will and Jack walk around out there on the uneven ground?”

  “Will is weak but as usual he does what he wants to and Jack is getting around really well. He has scars, but he is working out and says the strength has just about returned to where it was.”

  We asked how Otis was doing. “His legs were healing slowly, but he was walking some. It hurt him a lot to stand, so he didn’t much, but you know how stubborn he is. He told me he’ll be walking soon. His legs are sure torn up. Hunks of tissue are missing, leaving indentations in his skin. And there are large ugly scars that have not fully healed yet. The doctors said they could do plastic surgery and fill them in. Their surgery would remove nearly all the scars.”

  Otis told them no thanks. Unless it grossed out the grandkids, he wanted the scars. It would be a good conversation starter on those rare occasions when he wore shorts. And he said it would be a warning to people that he was a tough old geezer and was hard to kill. They better think twice about messing with him.

  Deb and I laughed and said it sounded like Otis. We apologized for not going around to see him more, but this case was keeping us on pins and needles.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “He knows you love him, and he told me he’ll come around and see you once you’ve been married awhile. He didn’t want any newlyweds embarrassing him.”

  We asked if he’d been out of the house much, and she said not at all that she knew of. He didn’t when she was there, but he was high maintenance. She was always running errands for him or getting medications for him or whatever.

  I called Rebecca’s parents, and we had a good visit. I made sure they had my phone number. I told them that the FBI agents were keeping an eye on them and making sure their house didn’t have any bugs. They could talk to me from home but probably shouldn’t from anywhere else. With the new phone they could call me anytime. That sounded good to them, and they were glad to be able to stay in touch now and not get confused on who they were talking to.

  Before we hung up they told me that Rebecca’s niece had been in a small fender bender. I told them the insurance should have been paid for at least a few more months. It was the other driver’s fault anyway, so she should not need to file on Rebecca’s insurance.

  I told them I would take care of the insurance payments. I told them I was now using Sam Adams’s name because the people that killed Rebecca were still trying to kill me. I asked if they had the time or the desire to meet somewhere. They wanted to so we began to make plans.

  Jim called and said he was in Phoenix and was picking up his rental car. He had talked to the police detective since he landed, and they confirmed the doctor’s banking accounts had been cleared out.

  “And get this,” he said. “The one that closed the bank accounts flashed an IRS badge. The banks got a signature but it isn’t really legible. They think the IRS person probably talked them into doing things that are not legal but we aren’t sure yet. If all they did was legal, then they sure skirted illegal.”

  Jim would be talking to all the people involved in the liquidations, auctions, banks, nursing homes, etc. Then Jim said he almost left out one of the more important parts because he was so focused on the illegal.

  “None of Dr. Robinson’s current patients were injured or dead.” Jim felt really good about that. He said we don’t know for sure he was going to take them out, but we think he was, and the good work by the Phoenix police probably saved their lives. There’s a lot we’re not totally sure about yet, but we’ll be interviewing a lot of people this week and next, so it will be interesting.”

  “By the way,” he said. “Do you remember the guy that you didn’t kill at the last dance? Well, we are beginning to verify what he told us. He knows that his leniency in sentence is riding on the truth. Anyway, they got hired by some men in a black SUV. But the one that did the talking was really angry about the first attack. He wore a suit and tie while the others were in SWAT-type clothing. He paid them $24,000 to have a little fun one night with all expenses paid. And $3,000 for a night’s work for each man was not considered to be too bad.”

  “I bet that didn’t include burial,” I said.

  “Probably not. Someone had stolen the cars for them and the guns and grenades were in the cars. Everything sounded fun and easy. They had told their wives and girlfriends they would be home for breakfast.”

  He had no idea who hired them. Twice they had asked the people for a name but were not given one.

  Jim said he wanted to see us one evening and would be calling again when he had a better idea of his schedule. He said the Phoenix police were all over this and had a lot of interviews lined up.

  One time while we were out with Jim, he asked how we were doing. He said we had been through a lot of stress but hoped things were really good for us now. I said it really was. We were planning to build a house. Our experiences had made us want a house that was safer than we would have thought about otherwise. We had the truck on the road now with income, so life was good.

  Then Deb said to Jim in this happy little voice, “Ask him how many times a week.”

  Jim and I both looked at her. Jim smiled, and I was amused at her tone, having no idea what she was talking about. So I asked her.

  She looked at Jim and apparently struggling to keep a straight face said in a similar happy voice, “Ask him how many times a week.”

  I was beginning to think she was sharing personal stuff.

  “Three to six times,” she chirped.

  “What!” I said raising my voice in disbelief.

  Still looking at Jim, she was giggling. She reminded Jim that he asked how we were doing, and her answer was three to six times a week.

  “That is how happy we are.”

  We all sat there laughing and we both blushed a little. I couldn’t believe I did that but I couldn’t believe Deb would be so candid about our personal life.

  “I’m not sure what she was sharing with you, but it sounded personal.” I looked at Jim. “I believe I should take her home now. I really can’t take her out much.”

  We all laughed again.

  I shook Jim’s hand and thanked him for everything including the meal. Deb hugged him real big, and we headed to the car.

  “Are you keeping track, and was it really necessary to share personal information?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “That was two questions.”

  “I answered them both. Jim asked a question, and you gave him an OK answer about having a truck on the road and building a house. You gave him a good answer, but I gave him a better one.”

  “Are you really keeping score?”

  “Like I’m putting notches on the bedpost saying, ‘Got him again’? No, silly. But do I remember? That answer is yes.”

  …

  Shortly after that I got a call from Margaret.

  “Hi, I don’t know if you can help me with this or not. We found out a few days ago that Dr. Robinson had been killed at home during a robbery. We asked a couple of doctors that were in here for other patients to look in on Dr. Robinson’s patients. He had three here
. Two are pretty feeble but are going to be okay. But one has been sedated more or less since Dr. Robinson brought him in about three months ago. The doctors that looked at him say that he doesn’t need to be here. Dr. Robinson said he was there because of a very week heart. The doctors that looked at him said that isn’t true. His heart is good for his age. Now that he is awake and alert and off medication, he wants to go home and we don’t know what to do.”

  “In addition part of his income has stopped and he can’t afford to be here any longer. I’m checking on that now and should have more information later. Since you guys are doing investigations and all, could you see what you can find out about his home and help me get him back there?”

  “We will do what we can.” I told Margaret. “Should we come by there and visit with him or do you want to give me his name and let me see what I can find out?”

  “If it isn’t too much trouble it would be better for us if you came by here and talked to him. He is kind of upset and he can probably tell you more than he has told us once he settles down. If I can tell him some people are coming by to help him then he probably will be a lot calmer when you get here. As the sedation wore off he became quite agitated. He has been a little bit difficult and we don’t want to sedate him again.”

  “Yes we will get there as soon as we can. It might be a couple of hours but we are coming, Okay.”

  “That is great. I will tell him and see if we can get him to eat something or at least drink something.” She said and then paused. “Thank you, Sam.”

  Deb and I grabbed a bite and headed to see Margaret. I called Jim on the way and told him about Margaret’s call. We didn’t think it had anything to do with the case but in interviewing the patient we might fill in some details.

  When we walked in the door, Margaret was up and moving. She was evidently very glad to see us.

  “Thank you so much for coming and for helping us with him. This kind of situation is so hard for us. We are running a business and can’t keep people who can’t pay but we really grieve over putting people out. He should be easier since he is really in good health for his age but it is still hard. He has been a little obstinate.”