Kane checked his watch. "Now that was impressive. I hear you stopped by to see Mick."
Gilda glanced at him. "He told you?"
"When I dropped by on the way there and saw the flowers you brought from your garden, I deduced you'd been there."
"Doc and his parents told you."
"Maybe." He stuffed his hands in his front pockets. "Mick says he doesn't remember anything about the explosion. Not even why he was there to begin with."
She sighed. "Doc said the memory loss is probably a temporary side effect of the shock. Mick should be okay in a day or so."
"I hope so, love. At least he remembers us." Kane hesitated. "How was he last night?"
Gilda folded her arms over her stomach. "We should go."
Marvin's funeral was small compared to others Gilda had attended recently. The only people in attendance were Mrs. Watson, a sour-looking overweight man, a timid little woman who Gilda guessed was the sour-looking man's wife, Marion, Kane, Gilda, and a couple of young men Gilda had seen in the lone computer shop in town. No sign of Henry or Cory.
Mrs. Watson huffed, then went to the front of the chapel where a couple of cheap flower arrangements stood on either side of a dull, gray urn on top of a rich mahogany pedestal. Marvin's remains. Not a single picture stood on the table to remind everyone of the man he'd once been.
"I'm glad we showed up," Kane whispered. "Looks like no one else in town did."
Gilda nodded. "That's kind of odd, isn't it? I thought more people would be here to support Mrs. Watson."
He snorted. "You have to admit she's not the sweetest little old lady in town. She didn't even put a picture of Marvin with his urn. Poor sap's only been gone a few days and it seems like everyone's already forgotten him."
"I was thinking that too."
"Do me a favor, love." Kane placed his large hand on her lower back. "If anything happens to me, make sure they give me a great send off. No tears, just one great party."
"Nothing's going to happen to you. You're too stubborn." She sat to Mrs. Watson's right side, relieved when Kane settled beside her.
Just as the service was about to begin, Thayer and his partner Fabio strolled through the door. Both men nodded and slid into the pew behind Gilda and Kane.
Mrs. Watson stiffened, then let out a sniffle. "I don't want those men here. They make me very nervous."
Marion patted her hand. "It's okay. They're police officers. I'm sure they're only here to pay their respects and won't make a scene."
"Respects my fancy dentures." Mrs. Watson huffed. "They're here to snoop."
"Snoop for what?" Gilda asked.
The older lady puckered her pink lips. "Clues that my poor Marvin was murdered."
From the far end of the pew beside Marion came a snort. The sour-faced man frowned. "Your poor Marvin? What about the rest of us? What about what he's put us through?"
Mrs. Watson's face reddened as the pastor stepped up to the podium. She pressed her lips together so hard her entire lower face paled. "I really didn't want that man here."
"Who is he?" Marion looked like she hadn't slept in days.
Mrs. Watson kept her lips pressed tight.
Gilda glanced over at the doughy man, then averted her gaze. From the unruly shock of dark hair and the same weak chin Marvin had, she guessed he was Marvin's father. Nice family Marvin had. No wonder he lived with his grandma over her store and didn't talk to anyone. For Mrs. Watson to not want him at Marvin's funeral spoke volumes.
The memorial service was short and dull. No one seemed to have anything to say about Marvin, nice or otherwise. No last words about what a great man he'd been. Nothing. It was as if the only thing of significance in the front of the chapel was the plain gray urn containing Marvin Watson's remains and the sad flowers that flanked it.
Mrs. Watson shed few tears. She was probably dehydrated from the combination of lemonade and crying on Marion's shoulder for the past couple days—mostly about her store and now being homeless.
Marvin's memorial seemed a mere formality.
Refreshments were served in the funeral home's guest area at the end of the hall closest to the front exit. The second Marion and Gilda ushered Mrs. Watson out the chapel door, her relatives pounced with nostrils flaring.
"I want to see his will." Dough man's dark eyes narrowed as he shoved Gilda aside and grabbed Mrs. Watson's frail arm.
Marion yanked his hand away and stepped between them. "Look, buddy. I don't know who you are, but I'm about ready to shove my size ten shoe into your butt and show you the fast way out the door."
"It's okay." Mrs. Watson patted Marion's shoulder. "This is my son Brutus. He's always been a jerk, even when he was a wee thing."
"Yeah, well, he's far from a wee thing now and he'd better be nice if he doesn't want to be under arrest for assault." Marion moved back to Mrs. Watson's side once more. "If you ever lay a hand on her like that again, I'll make sure you—"
"Look, lady," Brutus Watson snarled. "I don't need your permission to speak to my own mother. What I need is to see what she cooked up for my son's will and for you to keep your nose out of our family business."
Cooked up? Gilda touched Marion's arm. "Maybe we should get Fabio and Thayer to keep an eye on things here while we go grab some coffee or cookies."
"Sure." Marion pointed a thick finger at Brutus. "But I'm keeping an eye on that one. If he causes Mrs. Watson any grief, I'll personally—"
Gilda clapped a hand over Marion's mouth.
Kane appeared next to Mrs. Watson and handed her a delicate teacup. "If Brutus misbehaves, I'll deal with him."
Brutus paled and shifted his bulk, shrinking away from Kane.
Fabio tapped Kane's shoulder. "It's okay. If Thayer and I need your assistance, I'll shout. Considering the tension, I think it's best Mrs. Watson have an advocate for this conversation."
"Are you a lawyer?" Brutus gawked.
"No." Thayer flashed a smile. "We're cops."
Brutus broke into a sweat and shot his wife a wide-eyed glance.
Kane draped one arm over Gilda's shoulders and caught Marion's shoulders in the elbow of his other arm. "Come, lovely ladies. There are some decadent looking chocolate chip cookies screaming my name."
Marion reached over to straighten Kane's collar. "Play your cards right, big guy, and they won't be the only thing screaming your name."
Gilda snickered. "Shall I leave you two alone?"
"That's okay, love. You're fine right where you are." Kane tightened his grip around her shoulders once they'd reached the refreshment table and muttered. "Don't you dare ditch me."
"You have a divine accent." Brutus's wife had followed them across the room. "Are you from England?"
Kane winced, then met Gilda's gaze. He was from Detroit and had picked up the accent in jail when he was a kid. "Australia, love. Near Sydney."
"Oh." She flashed a timid smile as she picked up a napkin and a date square. "I've never been there. I'd love to go sometime. Brutus doesn't like to travel though. Even coming all the way from Detroit for his son's funeral was hard for him."
His son? Gilda flinched. "Aren't you Marvin's mom?"
"I'm Ivy." She poured a cup of tea, her pale face flushed. "Oh, I gave birth to him, but I'm not really… It's hard to explain. Brutus mostly raised Marvin without me. I… I had to go away for a while."
"Prison?" Kane raised his eyebrows.
Marion nodded. "Oh, that's right. Mrs. Watson said you were in some kind of fancy hospital. She told me you needed a long rest somewhere quiet after some things happened when Marvin was a kid."
"Sometimes that old woman talks far too much." Ivy bowed her head. "It was lovely to meet you all."
As Ivy walked away without her tea, Kane leaned closer to Marion. "She's cuckoo?"
"She couldn't handle Marvin or Brutus," Marion whispered. "Marvin was a troublemaker from the day he was born. Brutus loves women, but only ones he can't touch. Women on the computer, women in magazine
s… Ivy was forced to live out his fantasies and lost her mind. Mrs. Watson took Marvin in and tried to teach him how the world really worked."
Gilda glanced across the room where Brutus raised his voice to his mother and was quickly quieted by Thayer and Fabio. "I can't say I blame her."
Once Brutus and his wife left, Marion took Mrs. Watson back to her house.
Gilda snuck away from where Kane chatted with Thayer to follow Fabio out the front door of the funeral home. "I need to talk to you."
"About what?"
"What have you found out about Marvin Watson?" she asked.
"Marvin?" Fabio raised his eyebrows and blinked. "What do you want to know?"
"Kane and I talked to Henry Lott. From what he said, it seems Marvin, Henry, and the pizza guy, Cory, were all mutual friends." Gilda hesitated. "Rumor has it Marvin was involved with pirating movies. I think Cory and Henry were in on it."
"Piracy? That's one I haven't heard yet." Fabio chuckled. "Come to my office. I think we need to talk before you start digging for skeletons that don't exist."
Gilda huffed. "What does that mean?"
"It means whoever you talked to sent you on a wild goose chase," he said. "Marvin didn't have anything to do with movie piracy, or any other kind of piracy for that matter."
Once they arrived at the police station, Fabio stopped to pour himself a cup of coffee. "You want a cup?"
Gilda shook her head. She'd had police station coffee before and knew why so many of the officers went to Café Beanz for their beverages. "No, thanks."
He added milk and two packages of sugar to a cup and topped it off with something that smelled like coffee, but was blacker than asphalt. "So what does this so-called piracy have to do with his death?"
"No idea. What have you heard?"
"Look, Sherlock." He then leaned his elbows on the desk and lowered his voice. "You know I'm only telling you this because you seem to have a knack for stumbling into the right things at the wrong times. I don't condone your snooping, but, as usual, you have an advantage Thayer and I don't. You're close to all the parties involved."
Gilda grimaced, hugging her cup. "Understood."
"You're right about one thing, Marvin was running a scam. One of those online bidding things. He'd have pictures of items for sale, people would place bids to win them, then the highest bidder won."
"Sounds normal so far." She nodded. "What was the catch?"
"He'd keep all the money. Every bid people put in, whether or not they won, the money ended up in his bank account. He set things up so at the end of each bidding session everyone thought they had 'won.' Only when they'd get their 'prize,' it was a cheap, miniature replica of the item or a photograph."
Gilda gasped. "How did he get away with that?"
Fabio shook his head. "He didn't. Someone reported him, but it took over a month for the police and FBI to catch up to him."
She stared. "The FBI was involved? Why did it take so long to catch him?"
"Number one, his electronic trail was so convoluted it took months before they could track him down."
Gilda frowned. "That's odd. Henry said Marvin wasn't all that smart and had left a really obvious trail. What else?"
"Oh really? Henry Lott said that? Interesting. I'll have to have a chat with him and Cory." Fabio scribbled on a yellow notepad. "Number two, Marvin had written everything he was doing into the contest rules in an ambiguous way so it was semi-legal. Rather than call it an auction, he simply called it a sale."
"So what happened once you'd tracked him down?"
Fabio sighed and sipped his coffee. "His computer is gone, his apartment destroyed, and he's dead. All we have left is his online persona and a lot of angry customers who won auction items and lost money we can't find."
"Do you think one of those angry customers killed him?" she asked. "Or that he was working with a partner or two?"
A brief, heavy silence fell between them.
"They would have had to track him down first," Fabio said. "Which means they would have to be an expert computer hacker. No regular person could have found him."
"Not unless they already knew what he was up to." Her stomach clenched. "What did the killer use to destroy the building?"
"The mailman said he delivered a couple of packages to Marvin this morning. My guess is someone had sent him a homemade bomb set to go off when he opened the package." He frowned. "It seems Marvin had set up quarters in the old Yoshida building and was there when it went off. The poor guy never stood a chance. Mick's lucky he wasn't killed as well."
"So what was Mick doing there?"
Fabio hesitated. "I haven't been able to get an answer to that one yet. If you're able to get an answer, let me know."
"I'll call you as soon as I hear something. Thanks anyway." Gilda left the air-conditioned station and strolled across the street to Café Beanz with every intention of getting coffees before she went to see Mick at the hospital.
Instead, Henry, dressed in a white shirt, tie, and dress pants, stormed toward her, steering her up the street in the direction of the karate school. "You are not going to believe what I found out. Marvin Watson was running a fake auction website."
The flyer she'd seen at his house flashed to mind. Since she didn't remember seeing him either at or near the funeral home, he must have seen her leave the police station on his way to work. Before she could explain how she already knew, he went on.
"Marvin added so much fine print to the contracts no one even knew they were being scammed until it was too late," Henry said. "By then he'd transferred all the money to another account in the Bahamas."
She stopped and stared. "So how do you know all that?"
"I tracked him down. I do have more skills than just waiting tables, you know." Henry reddened. Her stomach churned. Like hacking computers, setting up websites, and researching how to build a bomb. "Huh. Maybe you should go to work for the FBI. I'll bet Fabio has a contact you could talk to."
"I dunno." He shrugged, backing away slightly. "I kind of like being a rogue agent."
She laughed, not liking the flood of suspicious thoughts that filled her head. "You'd better not let Fabio or Mick ever hear you say that."
Henry let out a long, soft breath. "How is Sensei Mick, by the way? When will he be strong enough to teach classes again?"
"Actually, I was just on my way to see him. His shoulder's healing nicely, but his hearing and memory will take some time to come back. He doesn't seem to remember what happened."
Henry stumbled, but said nothing.
She paused then turned to cross the street to the hospital. "You should come with me. He'd be happy to see a friendly face."
"Wow, that stinks. I'd like to stop by, but I'm on my way to work." Henry hesitated before he walked her across the street. "Do you know what Sensei Mick was even doing there?"
The knot in her stomach grew larger. "I'm not sure. Whatever he knew, he didn't tell anyone. Not even me."
"Oh." He scratched behind his left ear then cleared his throat. "I won't keep you. Tell Sensei Mick I said hi."
Gilda paused in front of the hospital and frowned. "Are you sure you don't want to come in for a few minutes? It's okay. There are no restrictions. He's allowed to have visitors."
Henry backed away. "Thanks, but I'd better get to the restaurant. I'll see you later."
She folded her arms across her chest and watched him walk away. Henry seemed to know an awful lot about what Marvin was up to before he died. What if he or one of his computer friends was one of the people Marvin had scammed?
Or worse, one of his partners in crime.
As she turned to enter the hospital, she ran smack into Kane. She bounced off him, taking a step back. "What are you doing here?"
He raised his eyebrows. "Are you serious? You disappeared from the funeral home so I didn't get to tell you the hospital called."
"Why did the hospital call?"
"Mick can go home tomorrow." Kane glanced down
the street toward the beach. "What were you so busy watching, love?"
"Henry."
Kane snorted. "He's not so hot."
"I know. I was just thinking…" Gilda grimaced, then pushed past him and walked through the hospital doors. "Never mind. You wouldn't understand."
"Let me guess." He strode alongside her. "You think Henry knew about whatever it was you talked to Fabio about at the police station earlier."
She froze and opened her mouth to argue. Instead, she pulled him into the same small office they'd used when Doc told them Marvin was dead. "What do you know?"
"I know why Mick was in that building when it blew up," he said. "What do you know?"
Gilda closed her eyes. "I think I know why Marvin died."
"Great." He met her gaze. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours."
Her face burned. "What?"
"Your information, love." Kane folded his arms across his chest. "Are we at a stalemate, Sherlock, or can we share what we know and help the cops catch a killer?"
Gilda swallowed hard. "That depends. Is Mick in trouble?"
"Not yet. Is Henry?"
"Possibly." She told him everything she'd learned from both Fabio and Henry about Marvin's online auction business.
Kane nodded. "That makes sense then. Mick still owns the old Yoshida building. Gary told him there'd been a lot of activity going on there lately even though the place is empty. Foot traffic. Gary thought someone might be selling drugs at first and was going to demand a cut of the action. Since he had talked to Mick about putting a legitimate business in there, he did a little snooping and watched Marvin head out to the post office early every morning with armloads of packages."
"The items people supposedly won." She bowed her head and rubbed her eyes. "So while Mrs. Watson thinks he's lazy and never leaves their apartment unless she drags him out—"
"Marvin's busy hopping from post office to post office all around New York State mailing packages and collecting small sums of money from people wanting a good deal."
Gilda slumped into a chair. "Wow. And Mick just happened to walk into the building to investigate when…"
Killer Beach Reads Page 20