Family Secrets: A Jake Badger Mystery Thriller

by Glenn Rogers

  “Why didn’t you call the police?”

  She took a deep breath. “Because he’s a family friend. His parents and my mother have been friends for years. I didn’t want to do anything that might hurt the friendship.”

  “So, your mother doesn’t know.”

  She shook her head.

  “But you told your aunt.”

  “My mother lives in Denver. I had to talk to someone. I wasn’t sure what to do. I tried to break up with him. I told him not to come around anymore. But he won’t stop. He says we’re meant to be together.” She paused, but I waited for her to go on. “He’s got me scared. And then I remembered that Aunt Mildred worked for a private investigator. I was hoping you could help without the police getting involved.”

  I nodded. “What’s his name?”

  “Todd Crestor.”

  “I need his contact information: home and work. A photo would be good, too.”

  She gave me his home address and said that he worked at a sports bar in Van Nuys. She didn’t know the address. It was called, The Silk Rhino. She sent me a photo of him from her phone. He was a big guy.

  “The Silk Rhino,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve ever been there.”

  “It’s on Vanowen. Not a typical sports bar. The people who go there do a lot of serious drinking and gambling. Drugs, too, I suspect. Todd’s one of the bouncers. A big guy, like you. Does martial arts and all that stuff. That’s one reason he’s got me spooked.”

  “And you want him to leave you alone.”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, I’ll explain things to him.”

  *****

  At five o'clock, I was in Westwood again. Wilson agreed that he would wait in the Jeep while I went into the building where Jane's former doctor had been practicing medicine for over thirty years. Dr. Harold Owen looked to be in his late sixties. He was bald, wrinkled, and thin. But his voice was strong and his manner confident. I explained who I was, what I was doing, and what I needed. He did not remember Jane Lindell. I asked him if he could look at his files and see if there was something in them germane to my investigation. He said he could not. Doctor-patient confidentiality. I had figured that's what he would say, but I was still disappointed when he did. Hope can be a cruel master.

  Wilson and I got back home a little before six. The apartment complex where Wilson and I live has a front entrance that opens to a common hallway. My apartment is 103. As Wilson and I made our way down the hall, the door to apartment 102 opened and my new neighbor, a six foot tall, well-endowed blond, came out into the hallway. She was wearing small, tight, white shorts and a tight pink tank top. She smelled really good.

  “Hi,” she said, extending her hand. “I'm Heidi Ekstrom.”

  I shook her hand. Nice handshake. Firm. Confident. “Hi, Heidi. I'm Jake Badger. And this is Wilson.”

  She stooped down. “Hi, Wilson,” she said, scratching him behind his ears with both hands. She would be his friend forever. She stood up again. Shoulder length hair. Excellent bone structure. Blue eyes you could get lost in and a smile that made the sun shine a little brighter. Wow.

  “So,” I said, “Ekstrom. Sounds Scandinavian.”

  “Swedish,” she said. “What about Badger?”

  “British probably. It’s the old English word for a peddler who carried his wares in a bag.”

  “Interesting,” she said. She looked me over. “You’re a big guy,” she said. “You look strong.”

  I shrugged. Appropriately self-effacing.

  “So what do you do, Jake?”

  “I’m a private investigator.”

  “Wow. I’ve never met a private investigator before. Sounds interesting.”

  “Sometimes,” I said.

  “We’ll have to get together sometime so you can tell me all about it.”

  I smiled. “Sure.”

  “I hate to ask,” she said, “but I just had a new sofa delivered. It's kind of big and I'm having trouble getting it just where I want it. I was wondering if you would help me.”

  “I could probably manage that.”

  Wilson and I went into her apartment. The sofa wasn't that big and she wasn't that small. I was pretty sure she could have put it wherever she wanted it. What she wanted was me in her apartment. Which under normal circumstances is where I would have wanted to be. But circumstances hadn’t been normal since Elaine had been killed.

  Alex was right. Elaine would want me to move on. And I would. Someday. But not today. I moved Heidi’s sofa for her.

  “That's perfect,” Heidi said. “Thank you.”

  “You're welcome,” I said. “Any time.”

  “Can I offer you a drink?”

  “Well, actually, I'm not much of a drinker and I still have some things to do this evening. Maybe another time.”

  Wilson and I started for the door.

  “Okay,” she said, sounding a little uncertain. She probably didn’t get turned down too often. “Thanks again for your help,” she said. “Let me know how I can return the favor.”

  I didn’t want to be rude or make her feel bad, so at the door I stopped and smiled. “I'm sure we can think of something,” I said.

  She seemed to like that.

  Chapter 15

  Once safe in our apartment, I fed Wilson. When he’d finished, I told him I’d be back in a while. He woofed a soft okay and hopped up on the sofa for a snooze while I was gone.

  I had my iPhone find The Silk Rhino and provide the location. I got there a little before seven. The parking lot was full. The building was Southern California hacienda style. Originally, it may have been a Mexican restaurant. Now it was a sports bar. I went in. It was crowded and noisy. I checked the photo of Todd again that Shannon had sent to my phone. I looked around and saw him. He was close to my size, standing stoically off to the side of the bar, securitizing the club patrons intently. I went to the bar and ordered a Diet Coke. I wanted to watch him for a few minutes, hoping I’d be able to observe him interacting with a patron. After a few minutes, I got what I wanted. On the opposite end of the bar from where I stood was a big guy that looked like a construction worker, or an NFL lineman disguised as a construction worker, who’d had too much to drink. The bartender attempted to cut him off and he objected. He got loud and belligerent, which generated a response from Todd. He walked up beside the guy and spoke softly to him. Todd was as tall as the big guy but not as heavy. That didn’t seem to concern him. The big guy grabbed the bar, gripping it tightly, as if to control his rage. He jerked his head toward Todd and told him, in sexually explicit language, to go have intercourse with himself. Todd didn’t like that. I couldn’t blame him for being upset. That sort of suggestion annoys me as well. Todd grabbed his wrist, bent it back, and then twisted it up behind the large drunk man. A basic move that’s not hard to do to someone who’s had too much to drink. With his free hand, Todd grabbed the back of the guy’s shirt and pulled him back away from the bar. He turned him and walked him to the door. Another bar employee opened the door for Todd and he shoved the big guy through the door, out into the night. Effective, if not very sophisticated.

  Todd then went calmly back to his previous spot along the wall. He was confident and competent. Interesting. I waited a few minutes and then went over to visit with him.

  “Hi,” I said. “I’m Jake. You’re Todd, right?”

  “I know you?”

  “Not yet.”

  I could see that he wasn’t sure what that meant.

  “I know a friend of yours,” I said.

  “Yeah? Who’s that?”

  “Shannon.”

  “Yeah? How do you know Shannon?”

  “Let’s step around the corner over there, by the restrooms, so we don’t disturbed anyone.”

  I didn’t wait for him to agree. I just walked away. Fortunately, Todd followed me around the corner, out of sight of the bar patrons. I positioned myself so that he had to stand with his back to the wall.

  “So how do you know Sh
annon?” he asked again.

  “Her aunt asked me to talk to her,” I said. “So I did, just this afternoon. Turns out Shannon has a message for you.”

  “What message?”

  No point in farting around with it. “Shannon’s message to you is, stay away. Shannon doesn’t want to see you again.”

  He looked me in the eye, moved a couple inches closer to me, and in his most menacing tone, said, “Look asshole, I don’t know who you think you are, but you don’t want to mess with me. You stay the hell away from my girlfriend and away from me before you get hurt. You understand me?”

  “Todd,” I said calmly, “you have it backwards.” I kept my voice low so that only Todd could hear me. “Now I just saw you handle a big fat drunk and you did that quite well. But he was drunk and you’re an amateur. I’m neither a drunk nor an amateur. So you need to listen to me. You have a drinking problem. When you drink, you get mean, aggressive. You need to get into rehab. But whether you do or not is up to you. What’s not up to you is whether or not you get to spend time with Shannon. You need to stay away from Shannon.” When I was finished, I took half a step back. “Do you understand?”

  He said to me the same thing to me the drunk had said to him. So I slapped him—fast and hard. Not to hurt him, just to make a point. He didn’t even see it coming. His face turned red where I’d hit him. And after the initial shock of being hit so easily passed, his eyes filled with rage. He was so angry he almost trembled.

  I shook my head. “Don’t try it. You’re way out of your league.”

  No one had seen the slap. He could have backed down if he’d wanted. But he wasn’t going to. I could see it in his eyes.

  “Don’t make me hurt you,” I said. “Just tell me that you’ll leave Shannon alone. I’ll walk out of here and as long as you stay away from Shannon, you’ll never see me again.”

  He sneered at me and made another comment that included a sexual slur, and then tried to bring his right up quickly for a punch to my head. He wasn’t nearly fast enough. I deflected it with my left and hit him with a fast open-handed right in the throat followed by an overhand left that bloodied his nose. Neither punch was hard enough to do any damage. I didn’t need to hurt him. I just need to send a message. He slammed back into the wall but stayed on his feet. Impressive. I grabbed his right wrist with my left hand, turned him and wrenched his right arm up behind him. I grabbed a handful of his hair with my right hand and jerked his head back so that my mouth was right at his ear.

  “Told you. You’re out of your league. Now, you’re going to stay away from Shannon, aren’t you?”

  He didn’t reply. Tough guy.

  I wrenched his arm up a little further. “I can break it.”

  “Okay,” he said through clinched teeth.

  “Good,” I said. “Now I’m going to let you go and you’re going to go into the men’s room and clean up your face. And you’re going to stay away from Shannon. If you bother her again, I’ll come back. And that will not be good for you.”

  I let go of his arm and stepped back.

  He turned around, looked at me with angry eyes, reached up to rub his aching shoulder, and said, “You’re a dead man.”

  “Dumb thing to say, Todd. Be even dumber to try. Don’t let your ego get in the way of your life.”

  I turned and walked away.

  *****

  When I got home I took Wilson for a walk and then I grabbed my gym bag and was out the door. Tonight was my night to lift weights. I lifted for about an hour. On the way home, I stopped for some Chinese take out, getting an extra egg roll for Wilson. I watched TV while I ate, and then tried to read for a while. I was rereading Plato's Republic. After a while, though, I put it down. Thoughts about why Jane Lindell left were drowning out Plato. Something had happened and she'd made a decision to leave. Did the something happen to her? Did someone betray her? Did someone else want her to leave? Was she leaving to get away from something that was upsetting her? Or was it she who had betrayed someone? June had said that their father saw her leaving as a form of betrayal. Did she somehow betray him? Was her leaving the betrayal, or was there something else that was the betrayal and she felt she had to leave because of what she had done? What could she have done? She worked in research and development. Maybe she sold a design to a competitor. Maybe she stole a design from a competitor. Unlikely. She was a trained lawyer. Maybe she discovered something illegal and felt she had to expose it.

  There were too many possibilities. And there was way too much that I didn't know. Nothing to do but forge ahead. More people to see. More questions to ask. It was after midnight before I got to sleep.

  Chapter 16

  Wilson and I were up early the next morning for our run. Running four miles with my big .357 would not easy, so I was carrying my smaller Ruger LCR .357. I carried it in a fanny pack on my right side. It was heavy enough so that you knew it was there, but light enough so that you could still run comfortably. And even though the barrel was only 1.87 inches long, at twenty feet I could still put five within a three-inch circle.

  We did our four miles on a clear sunny morning without incident, returned home, and got ready for another day of exhilarating sleuthing. I put away my small .357, slipped into my shoulder holster, checked the loads on my bigger weapon and holstered it. We got to the office right at eight. I got the coffee maker going for Mildred and made myself a cup of tea.

  As I thought about talking to the rest of the people on June's list, I figured I’d get a lot of the same kind of responses. Yes, I remember her. She was very nice. No, I didn't know she had passed away. No, I don't have any idea why she left. I didn't think there was much more to be discovered by talking to people who knew Jane thirty years ago. Maybe a different approach would be more effective. I decided to find out where Jane went, where she'd been, assuming she'd settled somewhere and hadn't been moving around. If she'd settled somewhere, I could talk to people who knew her in her new life. Maybe they'd know something.

  I called June.

  “Morning Jake,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

  “I need Jane's social security number.”

  “Hold on a second. I'll have to look it up.”

  I heard her typing.

  In a minute she said, “Got it.”

  She read it off to me. “Thank you,” I said. “The first Christmas card you received from Jane, where'd she mail it from?”

  “The first card was mailed from Tempe, Arizona.”

  “And subsequent cards?” I asked.

  “From all over, really,” June said. “From Texas, Nevada, Iowa, Ohio, Arkansas, big towns, small towns. Evidently she moved around a lot.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe she just wanted it to look like she moved around a lot.”

  “But if she wasn't traveling, how would she have managed all those different postmarks?”

  “That's not that hard to do. If she was a Harvard trained lawyer, she could figure that out.”

  “Jane was very smart,” June said.

  “I'm sure she was,” I said, mostly because I didn't have much else to say.

  “So what will you do next?” June asked.

  “I'm going to find out where she went and find people who knew her in her new life.”

  “Keep me informed?”

  “Sure thing.”

  *****

  There was a woman I knew, Gloria Alvarez. Before I met Elaine I used to date her. Gloria works for a company called Credit Score, one of the national companies that keeps track of everyone's credit. Even though we had not dated for several years, we were still friends. I called her and asked her to find out what she could about Jane Lindell. I gave her the social security number June had given me, and told her that Jane may have changed her name. She said she'd find what there was to find, but only of I'd take her to lunch. I agreed.

  *****

  Mildred arrived at nine. Wilson went to greet her and collect his morning cookie. She kept a stash of dog
gie treats in her desk. She came into my side of the office where the coffee maker was, poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down in one of my guest chairs.

  “Did you have time to see Shannon?”

  “I did. Talked to the guy as well.”

  “Any problems with him?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “Hopefully, he’ll be smart enough not to create any.”

  “Thank you for taking the time to do that.”

  “Glad to help. You know that.”

  Mildred had found what she was going to find on Lindell Industries. The rest of what I needed would have to come from Alex. And Gloria was working on information regarding Jane's other life. I could sit and wait for one of them to get back to me, or I could go see another of the people on June's list. I don't like to sit and do nothing, so even though I thought I'd probably come up empty, I decided to go see Jane's sister-in-law, Lisa Morrison.

  As I understood it, while June was dating her then future husband, Gregory Morrison, Jane had become friends with Gregory's younger sister, Lisa. Depending on how close they were, Jane may have shared something with Lisa that might provide some insights into what had happened. Lisa lived in Thousand Oaks. It would take me about forty minutes to make the drive.

  As I pulled out of my office parking lot, I noticed a white Ford Explorer sitting across the street. It was not one of the vehicles I usually saw in my neighborhood. As I drove up Laurel Canyon Boulevard, the Explorer fell in behind me, three cars back.

  It followed me all the way to Thousand Oaks.

  I got off the 101 at Hampshire Road and went up to Thousand Oaks Boulevard and I turned left. A few blocks up I turned right and pulled into a small strip mall and drove around to the back. I drove down twenty yards or so and stopped. I told Wilson to lay down, hopped out quickly, ran back to the corner of the building and ducked down behind a big green dumpster. The Explorer came around the corner and drove up behind my Jeep. Three guys got out. These three guys were not security guards. Probably ex-military from the look of them. They walked toward my Wrangler, which appeared to be empty. By the time they turned around, I was standing between them and their Explorer, my .357 in my hand.