Sydney Valentine Mystery Series: Books 1-3 (Boxed Set) (A Sydney Valentine Mystery)

by Danielle Lenee Davis

  He stepped back. “Hey, what did I do?”

  “Nothing.” I gave him a phony smile. “What do you want?”

  “I have an idea.” He paused, probably waiting for me to say something. I didn’t. “Why don’t we go back to Teena’s house and see if she has a safe? Maybe she’s got a boatload of cash hidden there.” He patted himself on the back.

  I leaned back in my chair, nodding. “That’s actually not a bad idea.” With that, the thought I’d had reappeared. “I have another one. Let’s see if she has a safe deposit box at one of the banks she used. I think it might be more likely that she had money in one of those than in her house.” I grinned, pleased with myself.

  Bernie nodded. “Great minds think alike. Maybe it’s the doughnuts, right?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure that’s it.” I laughed. “I’m going to give Veronica a call. She might know about the safe deposit box since she’s the executor of the will.” I found Veronica’s cell phone number and dialed. She answered on the third ring.

  “Veronica, this is Detective Valentine. Do you have a minute to talk?”

  “Sure. Is something wrong?”

  “No, nothing like that. Do you know if Teena had a safe deposit box?”

  “She sure did. It’s at Bank of America. Why?”

  “Do you have the key? You’re the executor of her will, and that’s something you’d probably want to take care of.”

  “I have more than the key. I’m on the account as a joint owner. She wanted me to have access to money so that I could care for Chico.”

  I wondered why she hadn’t mentioned that when we were asking about the will. “My partner and I want to meet you at the bank branch. We’d like to see the contents of the safe deposit box.”

  “What time should I meet you there?” she asked.

  “Which branch is it?”

  “It’s in San Sansolita. It’s the one on Fifth Street.”

  “Would you like us to pick you up?” I recalled that they didn’t own a car when we’d interviewed them on a previous case. At the time, they were sharing a friend’s motorcycle.

  “No, I’m okay with meeting you there. We have a car now. I’m on my way out the door now.”

  “I’ll see you soon, then.” I stood and looked over the cubicle wall at Bernie and told him what she’d said.

  “I told her we’d be there soon.”

  Bernie frowned. “I don’t think the bank would allow the money to be removed without her going through the proper process with the state first.”

  “I didn’t think so and didn’t mention that to her. It’s a moot point now since Chico’s gone.”

  We headed out the door on our way to the bank.

  Bernie drove to Bank of America, and we waited a few minutes for Veronica to arrive. I always noticed her long dark hair before anything else. Perhaps, because it was so different from my own auburn curls. Hers was styled in waves that appeared to ripple down her back. Her Levis were snug on her hips, and I saw Bernie ogling the view. I poked him in the ribs as we trailed after her into the bank, her red heels clicking on the gleaming tile floor.

  Veronica walked toward a woman who was sitting at a desk with a pile of papers in front of her. Veronica spoke, and the woman pointed her in the direction of a skinny redhead, who looked like the girl in the Wendy’s television commercials. Either that, or Pippi Longstocking. Veronica stepped into the woman’s path and chatted with her. Bernie and I stood at a distance. The woman nodded. Veronica showed her a driver’s license and the will we’d removed from behind the painting, then she waved us over. We showed the redhead our IDs.

  We were led to a vault. The walls were lined with boxes. A man entered the room with us. The man used his key, and Veronica produced hers to open the slot holding the box. He set the box on a table, and Veronica opened the box. She examined a few papers but didn’t take them out of the box.

  “You’re permitted to remove the will, a life insurance policy, and a cemetery deed,” the skinny redhead said. “Everything else can be viewed but must not leave this room.” Her face was stern. I thought she might wag her finger at us, treating us like third-graders who’d misbehaved in class.

  “I understand.” Veronica glanced at me. “She has all of those items in here.” She lifted the papers out and laid them on the table. She began removing other things and placing them on the table as well. Finally, she pulled out a manila envelope and peeked inside. “It’s empty.” She set it on the table then looked inside the safe deposit box again. Her eyes went wide.

  “What’s in there?” I remained where I was and tried to see around her.

  “Money,” she said. “Stacks of hundred-dollar bills were under the envelope.”

  I studied the redhead and the man from the bank. They didn’t move. I stepped closer. There were bundles of hundred-dollar bills with mustard-colored bands. That was ten thousand dollars per stack.

  Bernie moved closer. “How many bundles are there?” I asked.

  She counted. “There are ten stacks.”

  “That’s a hundred thousand dollars,” I said.

  Veronica looked up after she finished removing all of the bundles. “Why would she keep all of this money here?”

  “Good question. What else is in there?” I asked.

  Veronica removed papers from another envelope. “I don’t know what this is.” She handed it to Bernie.

  He scanned it. “It’s a list of numbered accounts. Offshore accounts and the balances as of two months ago.” He looked up. “Over a hundred and fifty million. Jeez.”

  I took photos of the documents and money with my cell phone. Bernie and Veronica did the same. We closed the box and put it back in its slot. I had an idea and needed to get back to the station to check it out. We’d missed something.

  “Thank you, Veronica,” I said.

  She walked in a daze but mumbled goodbye.

  “We’ll be in touch once we figure this out,” Bernie said to her as we got in our car.

  When I went back to the station, I pulled out the recent financial statements we’d taken from Teena’s house. Teena had direct deposits for eight thousand dollars every week over several months, then they escalated to twenty thousand dollars. She was withdrawing thousands periodically, about five to eight thousand at a time. I had previously assumed it was her paycheck, but there were larger deposits on a monthly basis from Curtis Walker Productions. The withdrawals were probably going in her safe deposit box.

  When I walked over to Bernie’s cubicle, he held out his phone with the mute on. “Hey, Syd. Walker’s on the phone. He says you’re not returning his calls.” He grinned.

  “He hasn’t called me lately. What’s he talking about?”

  Bernie shrugged. “He wants to know when this will be over. His investors are worried, and he’s getting impatient.”

  “Getting impatient? That ship has sailed.” I shook my head. “What are you going to tell him?”

  “I don’t know. No news is good news?” He laughed.

  I raised my eyebrows and smiled. “Ask him to come down here and have a chat.”

  Bernie furrowed his forehead. “You really want to talk to him?”

  I nodded. “Yes. Get him down here this afternoon. Tell him whatever you need to. Can you also have patrol pick up the security guard, Ben Lane?”

  “Consider it done.” He continued his conversation.

  I hopped online and did a corporation search for businesses registered in the state of California. I scrolled through the names. Bingo! I’d found what I was looking for. I printed out the website pages.

  Bernie leaned over his cubicle and looked down at me. “Walker’s coming. He told me he’s in Redlands.”

  “What are the chances he was there to mess around with Jen?” I smiled, shaking my head. “Come look at this.”

  I dug through the statements we had taken from Teena’s house until I had the ones from the previous six months. I grabbed several from last year too. I spread the
m on my desk. “Pull up a chair.” He rolled my rickety visitor’s chair toward the desk. I scooted over to make room.

  Bernie leaned over the pages. “What are we looking at?”

  “Look at the corporations I found on the California Business Search website.”

  “Okay. I see you were looking for variations of Curtis Walker’s name, including his middle initial.”

  “Right. Now, look at Teena’s bank statements.” I pointed out one company in particular. “This one is for Mega Star. I know that because I saw it on the credits when I watched the recording at Mac’s house. His production company paid her monthly, and it was a lot of money. From what some of the people we spoke to said, it sounded like she probably earned it.”

  My desk phone rang, and I wheeled my chair over there. “Valentine.”

  It was a clerk at the front desk. “Sydney, there’s a Mr. Curtis Walker here to see you and Bernie.”

  “Thanks. We’ll be right out.”

  “Walker’s here?” Bernie asked.

  “Yep.” I planned to photocopy the statements and redact the account numbers. “You want to get him and put him in Interrogation B?”

  “I’ll bring him in there, but I want you to tell me what you’ve figured out. I noticed there were weekly amounts of eight thousand dollars going into Teena’s account,” Bernie said. “And it’s from one of the companies you found on the business search.”

  “Right. I clicked on it, and the address is near where he lives. It’s an office building. I found it on Google Maps.”

  “Okay. Tell me more.”

  “I scanned a statement from last year and found another company with Walker’s name. It was a catering company. I checked the business search website, and the same address was listed. Why would a catering company be paying Teena? For food? Tables or chairs? I don’t think so. According to Billi, Teena didn’t cook.”

  “Oh, I get it. Wow.” He stood. “I’ll get him in a few minutes.” He walked away, shaking his head.

  I went to our forensic document examiner and learned that the statement written by Mr. Lane, the security guard, matched the handwriting on the suspicious envelopes and fan mail letters we’d found. I went to Interrogation B to wait for Bernie and Curtis Walker.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  When Bernie brought Walker into interrogation, I’d already turned on the audio-video feed and arranged the documentation I’d planned to confront him with. Walker was dressed in dark casual slacks and a white button-down shirt and red tie. He wore a spice-scented cologne with a woodsy undertone. He’d dyed the blond streak in his goatee to match the rest of his goatee. His lanky body glided into the room. He still resembled the Pink Panther to me, especially when he strutted about.

  I waved him to a seat. “How are you, Mr. Walker?”

  “I’m fine. Thanks for asking. I see this day has you in good spirits.” He slid a chair out from the table and sat. “I hope this means you’ve found out who killed Teena and Billi. We all want to get on with our lives.” He folded his hands on the table near his cell phone. “I’d enjoy leaving here with good news for my investors.” He flashed a wide grin.

  Bernie chose a seat next to Walker. He pulled his notebook out and tapped his pen on it.

  I cleared my throat and picked up a page to a bank statement. “I’d like to start with Teena’s salary. Do you mind?” I watched him as I paced in front of the long table.

  He stroked his goatee. “No, I do not.” He flicked a glance at Bernie, and his mouth twitched. He tugged on his collar.

  “How often was she paid for her work on Mega Star?”

  “Everyone was paid monthly with the exception of outside contractors. They were paid from outside companies. Some were paid semi-monthly.”

  “You’re saying Teena was one of those who was paid monthly?”

  He nodded. “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “How much did you pay her every month, gross?”

  He pulled his collar farther away from his throat. “She was paid per episode, which we broke down into a monthly payment.”

  “And how much was the payment, either monthly or per episode?”

  “I’d have to look that up. I don’t recall.”

  “I’ll take a ballpark figure.”

  “Ballpark? A million per episode. The contract was a significant increase for her because we valued her as a judge. If we did two shows in one week, she’d get five hundred thousand for the second one.”

  Bernie’s mouth had fallen open. Exactly. I couldn’t fathom that kind of money. The figures he gave corresponded to the statements. I’d noticed she had moved money into investments from her checking accounts. We would need a forensic accountant to track it all. For now, we had enough to keep talking to Walker.

  “Did she do any more work for you that required payment?”

  “No. The show was the only business relationship we had.” He glanced at the display on his phone. It was a different phone than the one he’d had when we met him the first time at his home.

  Someone knocked on the door. I opened it and stepped into the hall, closing the door behind me.

  “Sydney, we have Ben Lane next door in Interrogation C,” Theresa said. “Who do you have in there?”

  “Curtis Walker. It’s going well. I’ll catch up with you later and let you know how it went.”

  “I may watch the monitor later after I wrap up some things. Good luck, Sydney.” She walked down the hall toward the squad room.

  I peeked my head inside the room and called Bernie into the hall. Walker eyed me warily.

  I smiled. “We’ll be right back.” I had a plan.

  Bernie grabbed the statements and stepped into the hall then closed the door behind him. “What’s up?”

  “Theresa just told me the security guard, Lane, is here. He’s next door. How do you want to handle it?”

  He leaned against the wall. “I want to talk to Lane. You’ve got Walker.”

  “I’m thinking we should let Walker sweat while we talk to Lane, but I have something to do first. Rodriguez told us the bullet went through George. I have a theory.”

  We went back to our own desks. I called Forensics, and they confirmed there was a .22 caliber slug wedged under the passenger seat of Billi’s car. The window had been rolled down when they impounded it. The bullet must’ve gone through George and entered the car through the open window. That’s what I thought. It was time to go.

  Moments later, I was sitting across from Lane in Interrogation C. Bernie remained standing. I remembered that I’d forgotten to tell Bernie what the document examiner had told me.

  “Hello, Mr. Lane. I’m Detective Bernard. I understand you’ve already met Detective Valentine.”

  Lane nodded slowly. “Yes. What’s this about?” He was dressed in a red T-shirt, and perspiration stained his armpits.

  “I’m going to get right to the point.” Bernie towered over Lane, who peered up at him. “What type of investigative work do you do for Curtis Walker?”

  “I don’t…” He cleared his throat. “He pays me to be his security guard.”

  “Did you notice Mr. Walker’s car in the parking lot when you came in?”

  He gazed at the closed door. “Yes, I did.”

  “Then you know we’ve already spoken to him. We need you to confirm what he told us,” Bernie said.

  Lane frowned. “What he told you?”

  “Yes. How long did it take you to find out where Detective Valentine lives?”

  He smiled. “Oh, that was easy. It didn’t take…” He cleared his throat and looked at the table.

  “It didn’t take what?” I asked.

  His gaze shifted to the wall. “Nothing.”

  Bernie leaned forward on the table. “It didn’t take much time?”

  “It didn’t take a genius? What?” I asked.

  “Nothing. I thought you asked something else. Forget it.” He licked his lips. “I don’t know what else I can tell you.”


  “Do you know George Stone?” Bernie asked.

  Lane rubbed his hands over his face. “I know he’s Teena’s brother. I’m not friends with him if that’s what you’re asking.”

  Bernie sat on the table. “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “Jeez. I don’t know.” He shoved a hand through his hair then wiped the perspiration from his brow. “I think I last saw him about six months ago.”

  “That’s not what we heard. Remember, Curtis is here, and we’ve spoken to him.”

  He turned red, and his eyes flashed. “Wait, did he say I shot George?”

  Good. He thought Curtis was talking. “How did you know he was shot?” I asked.

  He slapped his fist on the table as he leaned forward. “I had nothing to do with that!”

  “Who did?” Bernie asked.

  “I have no idea. It wasn’t me. That’s not what I do.”

  I would bet he’d do whatever he was paid to do if the price was right. “What do you do?”

  “I investigate and pass on information. That’s all.” He shrugged then pointed to me. “I gave him her address. That’s all I did. No harm in that, right?” He looked at me. “Did you get the DVDs he wanted to send you?”

  I believed Walker stole the fan mail from my apartment or had Lane do it. What I didn’t know was why. “Don’t you think I would’ve gladly given him my home address if I’d have wanted him to have it?”

  He frowned as he looked at his watch. “I don’t know.”

  Bernie stood and paced. “Did Walker give you any assignments pertaining to Billi Jones?”

  “I followed her a few times after Teena died and reported back to him. She was mostly just doing normal things, like shopping, or she was at home. He told me he was worried about her and wanted to make sure she was safe.”

  “I guess you failed then,” I said.

  “She was safe the last time I saw her! She was in Teena’s house for a long time. I reported it to Curtis, and he told me it was okay to leave, so I did. He said he thought she was going to spend the night there because she missed Teena.”

  I couldn’t believe how stupid this man was. I wondered how he’d managed to get a private investigator’s license. Either Curtis set him up, or Lane killed Teena and Billi on his own. I didn’t know what reason he would have to do it on his own, so my money was on Curtis pulling the strings. Money could buy anything if the price was right.