Mission

by Camilla Chafer

  "You were in the Army?"

  "Did two tours in Iraq."

  "Must have been tough."

  "About as hard as listening to the clients here whine over their prissy nails getting dirty. Listen, I don't know what to tell you about Sophie. I can't imagine anyone wanted to hurt her. She's sweet but like I said, she's naïve and she has a lot of money. Or access to it anyway. I don't know if Austen approves of how she spends it but he does a good job of appearing to be the doting husband."

  "You don't think he is?"

  "I don't like to get into her business but I've heard them arguing more often than not. Nasty stuff. Name calling. Accusations. If you ask me, Austen thinks he made a mistake by getting married."

  "Why?"

  "Who knows what goes on in someone else's marriage?" Zach turned away, working loose a carabiner on the rope he carried. "All I know is, he spent a long time as a rich bachelor and now he's got a wife who's curtailing most of his fun. I don't think they have a pre-nup so there's only one way out of it for him and that's when Sophie’s six feet under!"

  Chapter Ten

  I thought about Zach Gallo's unpleasant comments on the drive back to Montgomery. Instead of giving me new suspects to contemplate, he first pointed his finger at the Takahashis' work crew and then directly at Austen! His opinion of all of them jarred me. Although I only met Manny Ortega a couple of times, and David once, they made a good impression as hardworking, loyal men and Austen appeared to trust them implicitly. How far did that trust go? Would Manny lie to Austen? Would Manny cover for Austen? Would he “arrange an accident” if his boss asked him to? The idea wasn't implausible but I struggled to see it happening in reality. For one thing, Austen already told me about his pre-nup. He didn't stand to lose a penny in a divorce, something that Zach apparently didn’t know. Plus, there was the small matter of the racist slant I got from Zach's comments. He certainly didn't hesitate in pointing the finger at the construction crew.

  Regardless of Zach's unsavory comments, I still had to examine them both. I was sure Zach said one correct thing: Sophie was a rich woman. And the work crew probably weren't. Someone might have coveted her wealth and demanded more than she was prepared to give. That supplied a big enough motive to do her harm, even if it were a spontaneous act of aggression.

  Similarly, as much as I disliked the idea of investigating Austen and his relationship with Sophie in more depth, I needed to get some other opinions about the couple. Did anyone else notice a streak of animosity from Austen toward his wife? Were there any telltale signs of dissatisfaction observed in Austen's married life?

  From what I witnessed so far, Austen was a kind man renovating a home to make it ready for a new family he hoped to bring into the world. Instead of doing that, he was crippled and devastated by his wife's injuries. I barely knew the guy; could his acts of love really be an act? Just because he was absent the scene when Sophie fell didn't mean he couldn't have arranged it.

  Yet, if that were the case, why would he ask me to investigate? It didn't make any sense.

  By the time I pulled into the small parking lot behind Lily's bar, I was still contemplating the merits of the case. The only conclusion I drew was: either Austen or Zach was lying. While I thought about it, I switched my sneakers for heels and headed toward the back entrance.

  "Hey!" Lily waved me over to the bar where she and Ruby, her bartender and our mutual friend, were polishing tall-stemmed wine glasses.

  "It's quieter than usual in here," I remarked as I slid onto one of the barstools.

  "Happy hour just ended," said Lily. "It'll pick up shortly. Enjoy the lull while it lasts."

  "What can I get you?" asked Ruby.

  "A small glass of cabernet, please."

  "Remember when we used to call it "that red stuff"?" asked Lily with a roll of her eyes.

  "I'm much fancier now," I replied.

  "Coming up, one fancy cabernet." Ruby stepped away and poured my wine, placing it on the bar in front of me. "Is that Maddox?" she asked.

  I looked over my shoulder. Maddox strolled towards us in a slim-fitting, dark gray suit that enhanced his broad shoulders and neat waist, where I was fairly sure he concealed his gun. His white shirt was open at the neck and he appeared more than ready for a haircut as usual. "It is."

  "You're crazy," she said. "Who would leave that?"

  "Have you seen her husband?" asked Lily.

  "Have you considered polygamy?" countered Ruby.

  "Shush, you two," I said, waving them to be quiet.

  "If anything happens to your husband, do you still have dibs on Maddox?" whispered Ruby.

  "Of course she does," whispered Lily. "It's the law."

  I glared at them both. Lily mimed zipping her lips shut and stepped away to serve another customer. Ruby simply busied herself at the bar, keeping one eye on Maddox. "So hot," she mouthed to me.

  "Have I kept you waiting long?" asked Maddox, taking the barstool next to me, and leaning in to kiss my cheek.

  "At least a whole minute," I replied, smiling. "Thanks for meeting me."

  "It's no hardship." Maddox pointed at my glass and then at himself. Ruby sighed and nodded before she fetched the bottle. "What's wrong with her?" he asked.

  "She's dazzled by you," I said and Maddox huffed as he shook his head slightly. Then he took a long moment to run his gaze over me, assessing every detail. Just when I was ready to ask why he was being so intense, he said, "You look like you recovered from your ordeal. I was worried about you. I feared you might have been stoic about it."

  "I feel weirdly okay now. It happened. I didn't get hurt. Someone did but he's okay and we all walked out of there. Bank robberies are usually crazier than that, right? I'm supposed to be terrified but I'm not."

  "Now, I am worried." Maddox reached for the wine glass Ruby placed in front of him and sipped it.

  "Why? Isn't that a good thing?"

  "When I first met you, what I liked about you was that you weren't a hard case. You weren’t jaded by all of the horrible things in the world. You could still flinch."

  "I thought what you liked most about me was looking down my top when you worked undercover for that insurance firm," I quipped. The memory of that dragged me back to the moment I misdirected my company time to shop for lingerie online and accidentally sent my choices to the communal printer. Maddox picked up the printouts. Thankfully, the low lighting of the bar covered my blush at the flashback.

  Maddox's mouth split into a delighted smile. "I didn't say not being a hard case was my favorite thing about you. I liked that you knew when to be afraid. Your fear impulse was still intact. You hadn't seen stuff."

  "I was afraid at the bank," I confessed.

  "But not enough to say screw this, I'm done with this life. Instead, you're right back at work, shrugging it off like it's nothing."

  "Solomon told me I could take some time off." Maddox raised his eyebrows. "He offered, but I didn't take him up on it," I continued. I sipped my wine and licked the residue from my lower lip. Maddox stared. "Fine. I get your point, but I've seen plenty of worse stuff. Psychologically damaging stuff."

  "I doubt many other people in that bank with you could honestly say the same." Maddox lifted the wine glass to his lips again. "Nice," he added appreciatively. "Good choice. Very grown-up."

  "What were you really doing there?" I asked.

  "What were you doing there?"

  I threw my hands in the air at his opacity. "Depositing cash from one of the clients."

  "Really?" Maddox appeared skeptical.

  "Yes! I'm not involved in anything. It was sheer coincidence that I happened to be there."

  "I believe you, although when I first saw you I thought you were undercover or something. It seemed too crazy that you turned up in the middle of yet another crime scene, even for you."

  I pulled a face. "Like it never happened before."

  Maddox looked at me and shook his head wearily. I got his point; usually I turned up a
t a crime scene simply because I intended to go there, although I didn't always expect the results. That didn't mean I would let Maddox get away with deflecting. As much as I enjoyed his company, we met for a reason. I wanted information. And also, possibly, a second glass of wine.

  "It's not my case but here's what I know," I told him. Honesty seemed the fastest shortcut to dragging some information from him. "The bank manager, Charlie Sampson, hired us to look for an item that was stolen during the robbery. He won't tell us what it is or why he wants it found, not even who the owner is, so we don’t know who really wants it. But I am convinced it's just one item. Do you know what it is? Or were you there because of something else stashed in that vault?"

  Maddox leaned in. "This remains strictly between us?"

  I nodded. "Absolutely."

  "While I've no doubt many of the bank's security boxes are owned by perfectly normal people, the FBI got a tip a few months ago that the boxes are also being used by several less than reputable people. Obviously, we can't get a warrant or anything because we have nothing concrete to work from but we did conduct some surveillance on the bank. After a month, however, we had nothing so the plug was pulled."

  "Was your intel credible?"

  Maddox lifted one shoulder and dropped it again in a half-hearted shrug. "Hard to say, but I think so. It came from a small-time crook eager to make a deal. The DA who passed the information on was dubious about the crook's credibility. It landed on my desk so I looked deeper into it. While no deal was made, I asked around and felt reasonably sure the tip was solid. That led me to believe that items were being stashed in a very unassuming bank for long-term safekeeping, or that the vault might be a dead drop location."

  "Dead drop location?"

  "Someone puts something into a box and locks it," explained Maddox, miming the actions. "The key gets passed on sometime later, giving another person access to it and the ability to remove whatever was left there for them. It's a very simple and very secure way of doing business. This is all just conjecture, of course. Like I said, I couldn't get any evidence to allow me legal access."

  "It's an interesting theory. Do you really think any of that could really be what's happening?"

  "Honestly? I don't know. It was just an idea I latched onto because it could work. Probably just being fanciful."

  "The bank boxes that were targeted have fingerprint scanners. Unless your dead droppers are passing on fingerprints or devised a very sophisticated system to bypass them, I think that theory falls flat."

  "Like I said, fanciful."

  "Do you have any theories with a bit more substance?"

  "Ouch!" Maddox sipped again but when he winked, I knew he wasn't offended. "I have one or two more ideas based on the tip. The first is that the boxes are being used to store cash from black-market deals."

  "Wouldn't it be better and faster just to launder the cash?"

  "Probably, but that requires the specific knowledge and access to do so. Some of the currency could be foreign, which makes it a little trickier still. If it’s clean cash, maybe it’s being stored as back-up, like instant funds if someone needs to disappear quickly without a trace."

  "What's your other theory?"

  "A lot of the crime I investigate is high-end theft."

  "Like the art forger you captured?" I asked, remembering a case I stumbled upon while conducting my own.

  "Similar to that. Same high value but smaller in size. Do you remember a man named Ben Rafferty?"

  The name tugged the edges of my memory banks. "Sounds familiar. Why?"

  "We were both on a case involving him. He used you to steal jewels from the museum."

  My eyes widened in recognition. Of course I remembered Ben Rafferty! Not only was he a charming rogue but also my arch nemesis. Not because he was evil or dangerous but because he got away with a huge theft right under my nose. I came so close to catching him but he slipped away, vanishing as quickly as he appeared. "Is he involved in this? I never figured him for a bank robber. That doesn't seem his style," I mused.

  "It's just a theory, Lexi. We got a tip that some jewels were being fenced through an intermediary in Montgomery. When I added that information to a sighting of Rafferty in the area, as well as his knowledge of Montgomery, I figured it was too much of a coincidence to ignore."

  "Ben Rafferty came back to the city? I thought he'd never show his face here again!"

  "I'm not surprised you didn't know. He's on a federal watch list but usually, by the time we catch wind of his location, he's long gone and the trail goes cold again."

  "Is there any chance his presence is simply a coincidence?"

  Maddox sighed. "Since I can't tie Rafferty directly to any particular crime, I'll concede anything is possible."

  "He sounds like a thorn in your side."

  "He is, but he's not even the worst one. If I told you some of the cases I've been assigned since I left the MPD, joined the FBI, and now this taskforce, you would not believe me." Maddox drained his glass and signaled for two more. Ruby returned with fresh glasses and whisked away our used ones.

  "Smokin'," she mouthed at me.

  "I look forward to hearing those stories some day," I said, trying not to smile.

  "They're too fantastic. You'd never believe me." Maddox paused to sip again. "Another name came up. Joe Bagshot."

  I shook my head. "Never heard it."

  "That's no surprise. Joe Bagshot has many aliases. He's also served a couple of lengthy sentences for high-end theft, and is definitely connected to Rafferty. They worked together more than once."

  "And this Bagshot guy was spotted here too?" I guessed.

  "Nope. He's been dead a couple months but still has strong links to Montgomery. I've been trying to find out if he ever held an account at First Eastern but even if he did, it could be under any number of aliases."

  "If he's dead, he couldn't have anything to do with this."

  "Definitely not the heist, but the man could, and did, steal anything to order. He could have stashed something very valuable in there. Might explain why Rafferty was sniffing around, if that’s what he was doing."

  "It's kind of ironic that a thief would store something valuable inside a bank."

  "I'm sure Bagshot saw the irony in that." Maddox sipped again. "So, the bank manager wants the agency to locate this magical mystery item?"

  "Yes. Given your ideas that something less than legitimate might have been stored there, I now have even more questions. What would you do?"

  Maddox considered that, his face growing thoughtful. "I'd go back to the scene of the crime. Look for more details. Perhaps not everything was taken from that box?"

  "Charlie says the robbers targeted it specifically!"

  "Sure, by blowing up a whole wall of boxes to reach it! That's not exactly the kind of safety maintenance I’d trust, although I presume they didn't stick the explosive directly on that one box."

  "You think they might have left something behind accidentally," I deduced.

  "I saw a lot of things on the floor of the vault. There's a distinct possibility the robbers left something behind."

  "We're working on the theory that they knew exactly what they wanted. Surely, that means they would not have left without it?"

  "Assuming it's one thing. What if it's not? What if several things were targeted?"

  "Like jewels?" I asked, thinking about Ben Rafferty again. "They're small, valuable, easily transportable and quickly fenced if you know the right people. That's Rafferty's wheelhouse."

  "Sure, that's one option and I did see pieces of jewelry on the floor, but there were other things too. Not to mention things that could have been stored in the same box and were ignored or launched like shrapnel after the explosion."

  "We keep circling back to that. We have all kinds of ideas but without Charlie's confirmation, we can't be sure. He says once we find the thieves, he'll be able to identify the item he seeks."

  "So he knows what it is?"
r />   "Yes, I think so."

  "And have you ascertained the reason he doesn't want you to know?"

  "We can't be sure about it."

  Maddox gave me a long look. "That sounds suspicious," he said finally.

  "Solomon agrees with you. It doesn't make sense to not simply tell us." I paused for a sip, savoring the full body of the wine. On the other side of the bar, I was fairly sure Ruby was savoring Maddox's full body. "Can you identify the owners of the boxes?"

  Maddox shook his head. "I don't have access to that kind of information. I would have to subpoena the bank records and since I'm not even on the case, there's no legitimate cause for me to do that."

  "I bet Jord can," I said, making a mental note to ask my brother if he'd already done so. Jord was a diligent detective so I figured he'd already considered that option. Why wouldn't he tell me? I shot him a text message asking if he had a list.

  "I wish I could be more help to you. I feel like I'm throwing fuel on a fire without bringing an extinguisher."

  "It's not even my case. I'm just curious," I told him. "Actually, I have another case I’m working on. A comatose wife who suffered an accident in their home that most probably wasn't an accident, and the husband thinks she's lying to him."

  "Have you ever considered the advantages of taking an easy case? Maybe catching a shoplifter? Finding a missing poodle?"

  "You don't think this will be easy?" I asked, even though it was already far from it. I wouldn’t dare announce that to Maddox though.

  "None of your cases are. Hey, I'm getting hungry. Do you want to share a burger?"

  "I should probably go home. Today felt like it went on forever and I suspect tomorrow will be worse or the same."

  "Another time then," said Maddox, checking his watch. "I have a hot date with the drive-through."

  I drained my glass and stood before wobbling a bit when my heel caught the edge of the barstool.