I filled out the medical history; I had no reason to lie. Under Sex I resisted the temptation to write “you bet.” Under “reason for visit” I wrote “scar tissue.”
In a few minutes, the glass window slid open again. Nurse Chang stuck her head out the opening. “Dr. Wallace will see you now, Mr. McCrary. Exam room three, second door on your left.”
“You got a room free on the south side? I want to watch the storm.”
Chang glanced at her schedule board. “Exam four, second door on your right.”
“Thanks, Sylvia.”
I opened the blinds in exam room four. The storm arrived with a crash as sudden as turning on a garden hose. Rain cascaded down the glass in rivulets. I raised the blinds all the way. The deluge traced braided streams down the window.
A nurse came in to take my vitals.
Before I stepped on the scale, I unclipped my belt holster and laid the Glock on the examining table. No point in adding two unnecessary pounds to my weight.
If the nurse noticed the gun, she gave no sign. She must’ve had lots of patients who wore guns. “Dr. Wallace will see you soon.”
I watched the storm while I waited. The lightning looked like God taking flash pictures of the landscape.
Wallace knocked twice on the door and entered. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Chuck. It’s nice to see you.” We shook hands and sat down. “You have a problem with scar tissue?”
“I said that, Lorraine, but I lied. My real problem is with the people you sent to kill me.”
Wallace’s eyes widened and her mouth formed an O. “What did you say?”
I handed two mug shots to her. “Charlie ‘Bones’ Bonano and Hector ‘Scrambles’ Scarpetta, two soldiers from the Santorini crime family in Houston that you hired to put a hit on me.” Her eyes widened again and I added, “Also, Vittorio Martinelli, a/k/a Victor Martin, a local driver originally from New Jersey who Bones and Scambles hired to drive for them.” I handed her Martinelli’s mug shot.
She acted flustered. “You’re saying I hired these men to kill you? That’s ridiculous.” She dropped the photos on the counter. “Why on earth would I want you dead?”
“So I wouldn’t find out that you arranged the fire that killed Ike’s half-sisters.”
She paused a second. “Now you’re saying I’m responsible for the fire?”
“You told Frank Turbot to have Ike’s half-sisters killed.”
“Frank Turbot?” She scoffed. “He’s a family law attorney, not a mob lawyer. He wouldn’t know the first thing about having someone killed, any more than I would. I didn’t want Ike’s half-sisters dead. I have no motive.”
“Sure you do. You wanted Ike to inherit all of his father’s estate instead of one-third. So last Labor Day week, when you were in Houston, you arranged to have Ike’s half-sisters killed. Then at Thanksgiving, you found out Ramona was pregnant and realized that Ike would get only half.”
“That’s absurd.”
“I’d bet that you intend to kill Ramona and Gloria too, eventually. That would leave Ike as sole heir. Then you kill him like you did your first husband and you inherit four hundred million dollars plus whatever money Ike’s made on his own. You inherit eighty million per murder. I’ve seen people kill their whole family for a lot less.”
“That’s ridiculous. My first husband Walter had a heart attack. And I have plenty of money of my own. So does Ike. We don’t need more.”
“For some people that might be true, Lorraine. But for you, not so much. A jury can decide.” I leaned back in the chair. “Lorraine, I know everything. I know about your sister, Virginia. I know that her father-in-law is Big Al Compostela.”
She flinched. “Virginia has nothing to do with that aspect of Norberto’s family. Ginny married Norberto in college when she got pregnant. We’re Catholic.” She said it as if that explained everything.
“Ginny didn’t know about Norberto’s family when they were dating. She just knew he was smart, handsome, and charming. Then she got pregnant.” Tears welled in her eyes. “They eloped that weekend. She’s made the best of a bad situation ever since…for the children’s sake.”
I waved her remark off. “And I know about your deal with Frank Turbot too.”
“I don’t have any deal with Frank Turbot. Last September I was in Houston to visit family, and I had Frank set up a foundation to help children of drug-addicted parents. He revised my will to include the foundation. “
I waited to see if she would admit anything.
Wallace added, “That trip to see Frank Turbot was purely professional.”
“Lorraine, I hacked your bank account.” She said nothing so I continued. “A couple days after you met with Turbot, you wrote him a check for twenty thousand dollars. I have a picture of the check. Right after he got the money, he approached a local criminal defense lawyer named Lenny Lucas. Did he tell you about Lucas?”
“Frank Turbot didn’t tell me anything! That twenty thousand dollars was his fee to set up the foundation and to revise my will.”
“Lenny Lucas is a former public defender who knows lots of scumbags. Turbot paid Lucas to hire someone to kill Ike’s half-sisters. Lucas subcontracted the hit to an arsonist named Howard Hopper. Hopper torched the Montrose mansion in Cleveland. I haven’t hacked Turbot’s escrow account…yet. But I’ll bet a subpoena of his escrow account will reveal that he paid off Lenny Lucas with the money you gave him. You hit the jackpot with the fire, Lorraine. You killed your husband’s half-sisters, and you got their mother too.”
I waited for a reaction. Thunder rumbled through the room while the tropical storm beat white noise on the window. I counted seconds to myself to resist the temptation to fill the silence. When I got to nine-thousand-nine she spoke. “I am innocent. I explained everything. What more do you expect me to say?”
I shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. How about something like ‘You can’t prove any of this’?”
“Well, you can’t,” she said, “because it never happened. The twenty thousand dollars was to set up the foundation. I told you that.”
“How do you explain Turbot hiring Lenny Lucas?”
She sat on the stool again. “All I have is your word that he did.”
“I can prove it. The Houston police can prove it too.”
Her shoulders slumped. “I can’t explain it.”
“Lorraine, I connected the dots, and they lead right to you. And the police can connect dots too.”
I ticked my fingers as I reeled off the facts. “Dot one—the Cleveland crime scene investigators found Hopper’s fingerprint on the electrical box at the Montrose mansion. The Cleveland police know that. They will look for Hopper in Houston. And he’s not hard to find. I found him in two hours.
“Dot two—Hopper told me Lenny Lucas hired him to kill Ike’s half-sisters.
“Dot three—Lucas told me that Turbot paid him twenty thousand dollars to find someone to kill the half-sisters.
“Dot four—Frank Turbot confirmed that you came to see him after Labor Day and he did legal work for you.”
I spread all fingers on my left hand. “Dot five—you paid Turbot twenty thousand dollars just days before the fire.”
I leaned back in my chair and spread my hands. “Ta-da.”
This time her reaction took to seven-thousand-and-seven.
“This can’t be happening. I’m innocent. I hired Frank Turbot to revise my will.”
Time for the coup de grace. “And there’s a sixth dot. Sam Simonetti was murdered.”
“Pop was murdered? How?”
“It was pretty clever, Lorraine. You injected Fentanyl between his toes, where no one was supposed to notice.”
“Fentanyl? That’s a controlled substance. Is that what the autopsy showed?”
“It’s a controlled substance, but it’s easy to get for a physician on staff at the hospital. A physician like you.”
She looked at me, eyes red. “There has to be a logical explanation. I had nothin
g to do with that fire or with Pop’s death.”
Wallace stood and strode toward the door, tears in her eyes. “I’m…I’m…I’m hiring an attorney.” The tears spilled over. “If you make these ridiculous accusations public, I’ll sue you for every penny you have or ever hope to have.” She jerked the door open and whirled back toward me. “I had nothing to do with that fire. And nothing to do with Pop’s death. Nothing. Now get out.”
Chapter 60
Snoop leaned against a marble column in the lobby. When I unfurled my umbrella, he sneered. “Real men don’t use umbrellas.”
“In this case, you’re probably right.” I clutched the umbrella with both hands as we stepped into a tropical storm that whipped the downpour horizontally. We jogged straight across the street, dodging the traffic and the puddles. The rain soaked me from the waist down, but that’s life in Port City. Snoop looked like he’d gone swimming in his suit.
The building lobby across the street offered shelter. I shook off my umbrella and we took the elevator to the fourth floor, where we entered the door marked 416 without knocking.
Lieutenant Weiner glanced up from the computer monitor she’d been watching with Sergeant Ernesto Donatello. Special Agent Eugenio Lopez from the FBI stood at the window. Mother turned to us. “Snoop, you’re wet.”
Snoop stood in a growing puddle on the linoleum floor. “Thanks for telling me, Mother. I never would’ve noticed.” Snoop took off his wet jacket.
“Snoop says real men don’t use umbrellas.” I took off my shirt and removed the microphone and transmitter taped to my stomach. The tape stung like hell as it ripped off the hair on my stomach. “Did you get everything?”
Weiner nodded. “Picture and sound, clear as a bell. That was a good idea to raise the blinds.”
“You think Lorraine’s innocent, Mother?”
Weiner sighed. “Bubalah, no one is innocent, not even me. If you’re asking ‘did she do it?’ I answer what I always answer: Follow the evidence.”
I nodded. “And our evidence leads to Turbot, but we have no proof Wallace hired him to hit the Simonetti sisters. And we got nothing that says she injected the Fentanyl.”
The lieutenant said, “I’ve had people working the hospital drug records since Tuesday. A Fentanyl vial went missing a couple days before Sam’s death, but we can’t nail down who took it. Could be anybody from a maintenance man to a doctor with access to the controlled substances.”
“So it could be Wallace?”
“Sure it could, Chuck, but it could be a nurse or even a janitor with a key. Anyone could’ve bribed a hospital employee.”
She turned to Donatello and Lopez. “We gotta do this the hard way, guys. Ernie, take your team and execute the search warrant for Lorraine Wallace’s house, office, car, and all bank and brokerage accounts. Gene, I guess your FBI people and the Houston cops will execute on Turbot, Lucas, and Hopper?”
“Yeah, Mother. I’ll text them the go-ahead.”
“So, if Wallace didn’t arrange the fire, who did?”
Chapter 61
Renate Crowell texted me: Will run story that cops executed search warrant on Lorraine Wallace in connection with investigation of Sam’s death. Care to comment first?
I called her.
“I thought you’d call, Chuck. Buy you lunch?”
“Meet me at the Rusty Pelican.”
“I can see this lunch will cost me.”
“Put it on your expense report, Renate. It’ll be worth it to the Press-Journal.”
###
Tropical Storm George had blown into the Atlantic and was on its way to threaten Bermuda. The air in Port City hung like wet clothes on an old-fashioned clothesline, even more oppressive than usual. The sun burned hotter on my arms, and the cooling coastal trade winds were notable by their absence.
I took a table overlooking Seeti Bay. The air stirred without any conviction. If the ceiling fans hadn’t rotated beneath the thatched roof, I’d have worked up a sweat just lifting my drink. But the skyline view across Seeti Bay took your breath away, and the ceiling fans made the humidity bearable. I hung my jacket on the back of an empty chair, rolled up my sleeves, and removed my tie.
Every time I’d ever seen Crowell, she’d dressed pretty informally, but today she’d spruced up. I whistled as I stood up. “You clean up really well, Renate.”
She did a mock curtsy. “I figured my usual uniform wasn’t classy enough for the Rusty Pelican.” She looked around at some of the other well-dressed women. “Looks like I made the right decision.” She sat and gestured at my glass as the server came over. “What’re you drinking?”
“Iced coffee; I have to work this afternoon.”
“What a waste of a good waterfront table—and expense account.” She glanced up at the server. “Bring me some kind of rum drink in a coconut with a paper umbrella in it.”
“We have several drinks that fit that description, ma’am.”
“Surprise me.”
The server laughed and left.
“Okay, Chuck. Is this for attribution or deep background?”
“Deep background. Can’t use my name just yet.”
She set her tablet computer on the table.
“Hold on, Renate. What do you already know?”
“The autopsy report shows someone killed Sam Simonetti by injecting Fentanyl between his toes to induce a heart attack, just like you told me it would. The heart attack occurred after he was visited in the hospital by Ike Simonetti, Lorraine Wallace, and Ramona Simonetti. Dr. Wallace is on staff at the hospital where Sam died, and she had access to Fentanyl. The cops executed a search warrant yesterday afternoon at Wallace’s house and office. This is front-page juicy.”
“You didn’t hear it from me,” I said, “but the warrant also covered Wallace’s cars, computers, and bank records.”
“I didn’t know that. What did they find?”
“Nothing yet, and that makes me wonder if they’ve got the right suspect. They’re still digging, but nothing incriminating has shown up so far.”
“The public will put two and two together, Chuck.”
“If they do, they may get five.”
“How so?”
“Something’s not right.”
“Not right how?”
“I don’t know yet. That’s why I agreed to talk to you. Don’t let the dogs out on Lorraine Wallace yet. I once thought she was involved; now I’m not so sure. I don’t want to ruin her life with false accusations and innuendo.”
“What other suspects do you have?”
The server arrived and served Crowell an alcoholic coconut with a pink paper umbrella stuck jauntily in the top. “How does this look?”
Crowell looked up at the server. “It looks perfect. Thanks.”
“You ready to order now?”
“Give us five more minutes?”
“Of course.” She left.
Crowell took a long pull on the biodegradable paper straw. “Zowie, that’s good.” She took another long pull. “Okay, where was I? Oh yeah, you have any suspects other than Lorraine Wallace?”
I had baited the hook and dangled it in front of her. Now I set it. “Ramona Simonetti.”
“The widow?”
I dropped my bombshell. “Ramona Simonetti is now in a Mexican prison. She’s been arrested for murdering three previous husbands in Mexico.”
“What’s your source?”
“I’m the guy who delivered her like a Christmas present to the Federales.” I told her the story about how I delivered Ramona to Felix. “...and you can use my name as the source for that story.”
I didn’t tell her how I smuggled Gloria back to the U.S.A., and she was smart enough not to ask.
I didn’t want Crowell sniffing around either Wallace or Ike yet, so I’d served up Ramona on a silver platter.
She looked up from her tablet. “This will get my byline on the front page. I can see the headline—Did Black Widow Make Sam Simonetti Her Fourth Victim?�
�
Chapter 62
The next morning Renate Crowell had her headline and byline on the front page. I turned off my Carlos McCrary Investigations cellphone to avoid the media sharks circling for more blood. The publicity would’ve been good for my business, but I had more pressing obligations that weekend. I had to move into my new apartment.
Vicky had been right—this Simonetti case was paying off like a broken slot machine. With my improved finances, I had leased a waterfront high-rise with armed security 24/7 and a marina. It was smaller than the townhouse but no gunmen could surprise me behind the front door. The balcony was smaller than my townhouse deck, but the view was better. I stood at the rail and admired the Gator Raider at my personal dock fourteen floors below.
Terry helped me unpack. We spent the weekend on the Gator Raider. Since I proved Sam was not Gloria’s father, I stood to collect a bonus of a cool million.
Naturally, like any true Floridian, I was considering a bigger boat.
###
Monday dragged by like a snail in molasses. I killed the time by returning the messages from Fox News, CNN, and Telemundo. At five o’clock my phone played the Dragnet theme. “Good afternoon, Mother. Whatcha got?”
“Bad news, I’m afraid. The Feds searched Howard Hopper’s apartment and found nothing.”
“What does Howie have to say?”
“That’s the other bad news. Haven’t found him yet. He’s disappeared.”
I had a bad feeling about Howie. “I bet somebody put a hit on him. He’s too broke to run. He burned through the twenty thousand that Lucas paid him in about four weeks. His girlfriend Darshonnay put most of his money up her nose. What about Lenny Lucas?”
“The Houston cops searched Lenny Lucas’s office, car, and apartment. The office and car were clean. Lucas was found dead in his apartment.”
“How?”
“The autopsy isn’t finished, but it looks like an overdose two to five days ago. His air conditioner was set on meat locker.”
“And his computer and cellphone?”
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