Blood Orchid

by Stuart Woods

  She handed it back. “Tell me about him.”

  Hurd sat down and opened the folder. “Name: Carlos Alvarez, born Havana, thirty-two years ago. Arrived Miami twelve years ago on a small fishing boat with nineteen others. He was printed by Immigration at the time. He’s a partner in a locksmith’s shop in Fort Lauderdale; unmarried; has no arrest record—he wouldn’t have gotten a locksmith’s license if he had. He drives a two-year-old Chrysler Concorde.”

  “Is that it?”

  “His partner’s name is here, if you want it.” Hurd handed her the folder.

  “Thanks, Hurd.”

  “I’m organizing my workload now, preparing memos to the people who’re going to take over my duties. You want a list of my recommendations?”

  She was thinking about the locksmith. “Whoever you want is fine with me, Hurd.” This was the sort of detail for which she relied on him.

  “I’ll let you know if we find anything else,” he said. “We’re still dealing with Daimler-Chrysler about the car key.”

  “Notify all the patrol cars to look for an abandoned Concorde,” she said. “You got a color?”

  “Registration just says green.”

  “Okay. If we can find the car, then we can dust it for prints, and we might get lucky and come up with the shooter.”

  “I’m on it.” He went back to his office.

  Holly read the file folder, then turned to Daisy. “You up for a trip to Lauderdale?”

  Daisy was on her feet, wagging everything.

  Holly closed her office door and changed into civilian clothes. “You can reach me on my cell if you need me,” she said to her secretary on her way out. “Try not to need me.”

  She drove south on 95, enjoying the seventy-mile-per-hour speed limit at eighty-five. Her car had no markings, but there was the big antenna on the back. Once, a state trooper pulled up next to her and gave her a look; she held up her shield for him to see, and he dropped back. There were some perks connected to being in law enforcement.

  Using a map of the city, she found C&P Locksmiths fairly easily. It was in a small strip mall in a good part of town. She parked the car and, putting Daisy on a leash for appearances’ sake, entered the shop. A Latino in his mid-thirties was making a key on a duplicating machine. He looked up and smiled, turning off the machine. “Hello, can I help you?” he asked, in slightly accented English.

  Holly looked at the file folder. “Are you Pedro Alvarez?” she asked.

  “That’s right.”

  She showed him her badge. “My name is Holly Barker. I’d like to talk to you for a minute.”

  “That’s not a Lauderdale badge,” he said.

  “No, I’m from Orchid Beach, up the coast.”

  “What can I do for you?” He had become a little wary, she noticed, but some people did at the sight of a badge, even when they had nothing to hide.

  “Do you have some place we can sit down?” she asked.

  He went to the door, locked it, and hung up a sign saying he’d be back in ten minutes. “Back here,” he said, leading the way to the rear of the shop. It was a room just large enough to hold two desks and a couple of filing cabinets. He indicated where she should sit, then sat behind his desk.

  “You’re Carlos Alvarez’s partner, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Brothers?”

  “First cousins. We grew up together in Havana and came to the U.S. at the same time.”

  “Same fishing boat?”

  He nodded.

  “Do you know where Carlos is now?”

  “He’s taking some time off,” Pedro said. “A few days.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “He said he had some personal business to take care of.”

  “Do you know where he’s taking care of it?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  Holly didn’t believe that. She took the locket photo, blown up, from the folder and handed it to him. “I expect you know this girl.”

  Pedro looked at the photo but said nothing.

  “What’s her name?”

  “What is this about, exactly?”

  Holly took a deep breath. She hated saying this to people because she never knew what their reaction would be, and it tended to vary widely. “I’m afraid I have some bad news,” she said.

  Pedro sat up. “Has Carlos been arrested?”

  “Was he doing something that he might be arrested for?”

  “I don’t know. Tell me what’s going on, please.”

  “Carlos is dead.”

  Pedro’s face became expressionless. “How?”

  “Someone shot him in the head and threw his body into the Indian River, in my jurisdiction.”

  To Holly’s astonishment, Pedro began to cry. She said nothing, just waited for him to get control of himself.

  Finally, he did. “Who did this?” Pedro asked, wiping his face with a handkerchief.

  “I was hoping you might be able to help me find out. What was Carlos into?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Pedro replied.

  “Did Carlos have knowledge of burglar-alarm systems?”

  “It’s a good part of what we do here,” Pedro said. “Carlos was a lot better at it than I am. I tend to stay in the shop.”

  Holly nodded. “I have reason to believe that Carlos broke into a house in my jurisdiction. Repeatedly.”

  “Carlos was no burglar.”

  “Then what was he, Pedro? You must have known him as well as anybody. What was he into?”

  Pedro stared at her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, then stood up. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I’d appreciate it if you’d go, now. I have to open the shop.”

  “Your cousin and partner is dead, and you’re going to reopen the shop?”

  “I have to make a living,” he said. “How do I claim Carlos’s body?”

  Holly gave him her card and wrote the ME’s number on the back. “Have your funeral parlor call this number. I’ll see that the body is released tomorrow.”

  “Thank you,” he said, leading the way to the front door. He opened it for her and stood aside to let her leave.

  Holly held up the photograph again. “I’m going to have to tell her about Carlos,” she said.

  “I’ll take care of that,” Pedro replied.

  “I’m going to have to talk to her,” Holly said firmly.

  Pedro was just as firm. “I’ll give her your number,” he said. “She can call you in a few days, when we’re past this a little.”

  “Something else, Pedro,” she said. “Where were you the night before last?”

  “I closed the shop at six o’clock, then I picked up my wife and kids and we went to a wedding. There were more than a hundred people there.”

  Holly nodded. “Pedro, there’s going to come a moment when you realize that if you want to find out who murdered Carlos, you’ll need to talk to me. When that happens, call me.”

  He said nothing, just closed the door behind her.

  Holly left, but she wasn’t through with Pedro Alvarez.

  24

  Holly got back onto the interstate and headed north. At seventy miles per hour she put the car on cruise control and called Harry Crisp.

  “Hey there, Holly, how are you?”

  “I’m real good, Harry, and I could use your help.”

  “Shoot.”

  “You’ll remember that my house was broken into and my phone tapped?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, we found the guy who did it.”

  “Good for you.”

  “Not so good: We found him in the Indian River with a bullet through the head.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. We IDed him as Carlos Alvarez, a locksmith from Fort Lauderdale.”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “No reason why it should; he has a clean sheet.”

  “That’s interesting.”

  “Why?”
>
  “Well, you’d normally expect somebody with the proficiency to do your burglary and wiretapping to have some sort of record, at least an arrest or two.”

  “I thought proficient people were the least likely to get caught.”

  “Yeah, but they don’t start out proficient, and they usually screw up early in their careers.”

  “If you say so. Anyway, I went down to his shop today and talked with his partner and cousin, Pedro Alvarez, broke the news to him. He was shocked, said he didn’t know what Carlos was into, but I don’t believe him.”

  “So what do you want from me?”

  “Wiretapping’s a federal crime, so I thought maybe you might be able to investigate this for me. I don’t have the resources to send people all over the state to conduct interviews, and I don’t want to go through the red tape with the state.”

  “I don’t know, Holly. What with our push on terrorism, I don’t have a lot of agents to put on stuff with a low priority. I mean, some tech gets himself wasted, that’s not really our problem.”

  “You’ve got enough people to send a guy to my jurisdiction, haven’t you?”

  “That’s different.”

  “How?”

  “You know I can’t tell you that.”

  “Suppose this is connected to what your man is working on?”

  “How would you know that? You don’t know what he’s working on.”

  “No, I don’t, but you do, and if there’s a connection to be made, you can make it.”

  Harry was silent.

  “I hope you’re thinking.”

  “I’m thinking.” He went silent again.

  “Just tell me when you’re finished, Harry.”

  “All right, I’ll send somebody over to talk to Pedro.”

  “Carlos also had a girlfriend, but Pedro wouldn’t give me her name.”

  “We’ll talk to her, too. We can probably find a way to worm the name out of Pedro. Is he a U.S. citizen?”

  “I don’t know. Both cousins were born in Havana and came over on the same fishing boat twelve years ago.”

  “I’ll check him out; he’ll be easier to handle if all he has is a green card. Easier still if he’s an illegal.”

  “Thanks, Harry, I appreciate it.”

  “Glad to help. How are you and what’s-his-name getting on?”

  “Who?”

  “You know who I’m talking about.”

  “Oh, him. Well, I saw him like you suggested.”

  “And . . .”

  “You trying to be a matchmaker, Harry?”

  “Me?”

  “Talk to you later, Harry.” She punched off.

  Daisy took a couple of turns around her seat and resettled with her head in Holly’s lap.

  Back at the station Hurd had news for her.

  “We ran down the Chrysler key,” he said. “It’s not to Carlos Alvarez’s car; it’s to a year-old van. We ran the VIN number and it turns up rented from a Miami company two weeks ago and not returned on schedule.”

  “Who was it rented to?”

  “For cash to a fictitious name and a false driver’s license. It’s a small rental agency in a Cuban neighborhood that apparently doesn’t do all the checking that Hertz and Avis do.”

  “Okay, cancel the bulletin on Carlos’s car and put out one on the van.”

  “It was kind of smart to steal the van that way, instead of just grabbing one off the street,” Hurd said. “This way, the guy gets a couple of weeks of use without the thing being reported stolen.”

  “Yeah, that is smart,” Holly said, “except that there was a face attached to the fake driver’s license, and an employee of the agency would have seen it. Call them and get a description of the renter.”

  “Okay.”

  “Also, do a criminal background check on Pedro Alvarez—he’s Carlos’s cousin and business partner. Check out his immigration or citizenship status, too.” No need to rely entirely on Harry Crisp, she thought.

  “Okay.”

  “Let the coroner know that it’s all right to release Carlos Alvarez’s body, too, and tell him to call me with the name and address of the funeral home.”

  “Will do.” Hurd returned to his office.

  Holly sat and thought about Carlos Alvarez. He didn’t do this on his own, she knew. Why would a Fort Lauderdale locksmith be interested in her telephone conversations? No, he was hired, and by somebody smart enough to find a man with no criminal background, and to steal a van from a rental agency, instead of off the street.

  She tried to figure out how this might all connect to the murder of the two Miami property developers and the attempt on Ed Shine’s life, but that didn’t work. Whoever was behind those crimes obviously wanted to win the auction of the Palmetto Gardens property, and once Ed Shine had won, there was no further motive for killing him, nor would there be any further motive for coming to Orchid Beach and rummaging around in her life. So her burglar couldn’t be connected to the Fed’s auction of the property.

  Dead end. Unless Harry Crisp could come up with something. She decided to relax and let the FBI do the work.

  Then her thoughts returned to the night before. She hadn’t heard from Grant today. She called a florist and sent a dozen yellow roses to his house, with a card reading, “Hope you get well soon.”

  25

  The following day, in the early afternoon, Pedro Alvarez called.

  “Hello?” Holly said. She hoped he was ready to talk to her.

  “The FBI was here in my shop this morning,” Pedro said, his voice trembling. “Why are you persecuting me?”

  “Mr. Alvarez,” Holly said soothingly, “I run a small police department in Indian River County; I don’t run the FBI.”

  “Then how did they know about me?”

  “When a person involved in criminal activity is murdered, that information passes to different law enforcement agencies.”

  “Carlos wasn’t into criminal activity!”

  “I told you that he committed burglary and wiretapping in my jurisdiction.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “It came out in my investigation of his death. Tell me, did you ever see Carlos driving a rented Chrysler van?”

  Pedro was silent for a moment. “It was rented?”

  “Did you think he had bought the van?”

  “I thought he had borrowed it.”

  “From whom?”

  More silence.

  “Pedro, what you don’t seem to understand is that the more you hold back, the more this is going to be investigated. You’re bringing all this attention on yourself, and there’s going to be more.”

  “I don’t know anything; what is it you think I know?”

  “Who was Carlos dealing with that might have gotten him into trouble?”

  “Why would I know this?”

  “You were his business partner, his cousin, and his friend. Who else would know more?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then perhaps the girl will know. Have the FBI talked to her yet?”

  “I have to go,” Pedro said, then hung up.

  Holly called Harry Crisp. “Thanks for moving so fast on Pedro Alvarez. What did you find out?”

  “How did you know we’d talked to him, Holly?”

  “He just called me, all upset. Somehow, he thought it was all my fault.”

  Harry laughed. “Then he’s smarter than we thought.”

  “Did your people get anything out of him?”

  “Not really.”

  “Harry, you’re being evasive.”

  “Holly, you know I can’t talk to you about our investigation.”

  “I put you on this guy, Harry, and now you’re holding out on me?”

  “My hands are tied, Holly.”

  “So, I guess I’ll have to hold out on you, too.”

  “You can’t do that, Holly; that’s impeding a federal investigation. There could be an obstruction charge. Now tell me what you know.”
<
br />   “I did that yesterday, Harry, and I haven’t learned anything new since then.”

  “You’ll keep me posted, though?”

  “Don’t hold your breath, Harry.” She hung up, incensed.

  Her secretary handed her a message: the name and phone number of the funeral directors who had collected Carlos Alvarez’s body. Holly dialed the number.

  “Good afternoon, Serene Rest,” an oleaginous male voice said.

  “Good afternoon,” Holly said smoothly. “Can you tell me when the Carlos Alvarez services will be held?”

  “Are you a family member?”

  “No, just an acquaintance; I’d like to pay my respects.”

  “Viewing will be tomorrow morning between ten and noon. Services are at two o’clock at the Santa Maria church, with burial to follow in the churchyard.” He gave her the address.

  “Thank you so much,” Holly said. “I’d like to send flowers, too. Can you tell me the name of his fiancée?”

  “The next of kin is Mr. Pedro Alvarez,” the man said guardedly.

  “Yes, but he also had a fiancée, Miss . . .” She hoped he would fill in the blank, but he didn’t.

  “You may send any floral arrangements here,” he said.

  “Thank you. Goodbye.”

  Holly didn’t like funerals, but she wasn’t going to miss this one.

  When Holly got home that evening there was a note on her door. I’m all better, it read. How about I bring over a pizza this evening around seven?

  She looked at her watch; it was a quarter to seven. She fed Daisy and let her out alone, then ran for the shower. She had just dried her hair and was putting on a sexy cotton shift when the doorbell rang. She ran down the stairs, happy to greet him.

  A pizza deliveryman stood on her doorstep. “Delivery, prepaid,” he said, handing her the box with an envelope taped to the top.

  “Then I assume you’re pre-tipped, too,” Holly said, snatching the box from him and closing the door. She set down the pizza on the coffee table and opened the envelope.

  Sorry, but duty calls, it read. I hope to be through not too late. I’ll call you when I’m free.

  “Oh, you will, will you?” Holly said aloud. “You son of a bitch!” She let Daisy in, then got a beer and sat down at the coffee table, switching on the evening news. From the local station menu on the satellite service, she chose a Fort Lauderdale station. The pizza smelled fantastic. She began to eat greedily.