by Derek Murphy
All the lights in the library shined brightly, reflecting off the highly polished brass, the picture frames, the glassware at the little bar to one side, illuminating the spreading, dark blot made by the blood that covered the center of the rug he had replaced after Sophie’s suicide.
Martin turned and ran for the kitchen. There were closer phones, but he didn’t want to be anywhere near the library just now.
Chapter Two
Stumbling a little as he closed the door behind him, Carl blinked once at the flashing red light on his answering machine and frowned as he pushed the ‘playback’ button. He flipped the switch to turn the lights on as Jan Buckley-Craven’s slightly accented voice came out of the answering machine.
“Carl, there has been a development you should be aware of; my contact at Miss Marais’ hospital tells me that Miss Marais went into a decline early this morning and died just an hour ago. Because of the circumstances and the influence her family was able to exert, my contact was unable to be near when she was being treated and can’t swear to have seen the body, but Miss Marais’ body was taken to the morgue under great secrecy. I have an operative there now and when I get more information, I’ll call. I’m very sorry, Carl. Please accept my heartfelt condolences. Goodbye.”
He stumbled again as he made his way to his nearby easy chair and sat. Well, there it was. Marta had been injured very badly when they killed Stacey; had actually died three times before they got her stabilized and he wondered if the brain damage had been enough to have caused this late development. He supposed it was possible, though he couldn’t bear to think of her dead. She had been so full of life during their short time together. Should he fly back to Johannesburg? No. No, he didn’t have any contacts there but Jan, and the man was well enough connected that anything Carl could uncover would come to him faster if he just let Jan alone. Besides, he was sure that Marta’s family wouldn’t let him anywhere near the funeral.
The drinks that Ike and Julie had pushed on him all night had certainly dulled the pain enough that he felt a little disengaged at the moment. Enough so that he wasn’t breaking down in tears at the news. He sat for a while, letting the news sink in and finally rose, removing his suit jacket and tossing it over the back of his chair. On his way to his bedroom, he slipped his tie and shirt off, kicked his shoes into a corner of the darkened bedroom. With the light slanting in from the living room, he flopped in the middle of the bed and pulled one corner of the spread up over him.
Staring at the ceiling for a while, he finally rolled over, conscious of the cold, bare spot beside him. Without really knowing it, he fell asleep.
* * *
The jangling of the phone woke him and he rolled over, tangled in the spread. Freeing a hand at last, he picked up the receiver.
“Hullo?”
The line was live, he heard the whispery hisses and crackles of a long distance call, but no one came on the line.
More awake, he said again, “Hello?” and waited.
More hissing. Then what could have been a woman’s voice, very low and quiet, said, “I’m coming.”
There was a click and the dial tone began as the line went dead. He held the receiver in front of him, staring at it. Was that Marta’s voice? He couldn’t really tell if it was or not. Who else would want to tell him they were on their way to him? But…Marta was supposed to be dead. The superstitions of his Lakota upbringing came to him then and he shuddered a little. Slowly, he dragged himself back into the twenty-first century and pushed the superstitions away, hanging up the phone.
Rising from the bed, he looked to see the time on the alarm clock and grimaced; nearly seven, time to get up anyway. He walked to the kitchen and began a pot of coffee, stopping by the little caller ID box. He pushed the button to recall the ID of the last call and frowned as he saw the ‘Out of Area’ message. Still frowning, he went back to the bedroom to begin getting ready for work. His heart wasn’t in solving other people’s problems right now, especially after the troubling phone call, but he had to get busy doing something or he would slowly go to pot.
Stepping into the shower, he had just soaped up when the phone rang again. It could be the caller of a few minutes ago. He shut off the water and stepped from the shower, dripping as he hurried to the phone. Picking it up on the fourth ring, he wiped the water from his eyes.
“This is Tanner!”
“I wasn’t sure you’d be awake, man. Not after the way you put ‘em away last night.”
Almost disappointed that it wasn’t the mystery caller, Carl said, “Yeah, well, you and Julie kept me supplied. What’s this about, Ike?”
“I’m out at Webster’s place. Julie just left to get some sleep.”
“Wait a minute. I thought you were supposed to be there at nine this morning. What are you doing there so early?”
“I’m on an unsecured phone, buddy. I can’t tell you now. Let’s just say the shit hit the fan and we’ve spent all night calming Webster down and running our scans. Webster checked into the Breyerton.”
“What happened?”
“Uhh, a case of vandalism, Carl. I had Webster call the police to investigate so their crime lab will foot the bill for the DNA tests and stuff.”
Carl sighed and said, “Okay, I can tell this is too complicated for me to get any idea of what it is from a phone call. I’ll meet you at the office so you can fill me in before you go home to get some sleep. DeeDee and I can handle everything today.”
“Julie said she’ll be there about four. I’m supposed to meet her here at five. See you at the office, buddy.”
The phone clicked as the line went dead and Carl hung up, turning to go finish his shower. He could tell it was going to be a long day.
* * *
Carl was just a few minutes ahead of Ike when he arrived at the office and found DeeDee already there, pouring a cup of coffee. He smiled tiredly as he passed her on his way to his office.
DeeDee asked, “Ike called you?” as she followed him through the door.
He dropped his coat on the back of a chair and nodded. “Yeah. He couldn’t talk though.”
She passed him the cup and said, “You look like you can use this more than I can. It’s decaf, but you probably don’t need anything to get you wound up this morning.”
He sipped the coffee and was surprised that he couldn’t even tell that there was no caffeine in it. Slipping into his chair, he shook his head at her.
“Buckley-Craven called last night. Marta is dead. He’s trying to get more information for me.”
The sympathy on her face was plain to read as she said, “I’m so sorry, Carl. I know it’s been a difficult year for you. With this on top of everything else; it just sucks.”
“Thanks, DeeDee.”
She frowned at him for a moment. “There’s something else. Give.”
Frowning at his pc’s monitor, he bent to reach inside his desk to boot it up and sighed as he waited. He said, “Someone else called last night. The connection sounded like it was long distance; you know how the line noise sounds. All they said was “I’m coming”.”
She quirked one side of her mouth up as though she had bitten into something distasteful and said, “Who in the Hell would do something like that?”
Shaking his head, Carl answered, “Probably just a prank call.” He added, “It sure came at an inopportune time.”
She put her hand on top of his ‘in’ basket and said, “Well, this is the stuff we let fall by the wayside to work Webster’s case. Don’t worry about hurrying to get into any of it; it’s all pretty non-crucial stuff. That’s why we thought we could let them all slide for a few days.”
He leaned forward, putting his elbows on his desktop as he rubbed his eyes. After a moment, he said, “Well, I’m back now. I’ll work on them so the clients can’t complain that we aren’t doing anything. Gotta earn our money, y’know.”
She turned to leave but stopped at the door, turning back.
“I’m sorry, Carl. I was
pretty hard on you when you took up with her but that was me, feeling hurt. I am sorry that you two can’t be together.”
He watched her back as she left and felt that though their relationship had come to a crashing end, they were still friends. As they had been in the beginning.
Turning back to the ‘in’ basket, he began sorting through them to find the most time-sensitive among them. After sorting them, he fixed on one and opened the jacket cover. Now, what were the chances that they would have two cases connected with Nelson Aerospace in one week? Since all of the cases were more or less equal, he leaned back in his chair and began reading the preliminary report that Julie had done.
Quinton (Chip) Nelson Jr.; son of Quinton Nelson Sr., founder of Nelson Aerospace, and of Virginia (Ginny) Marshall-Nelson, twenty-eight years of age, graduate of UCLA, uncompleted Master’s program in Business, low-level exec in Marketing at Nelson Aerospace, married to the former Miss Erica Morgan; (descendant of Silas Morgan, founder of Port Morgan).
He skipped over the paragraph relating to Nelson’s parents; the father was dead and the mother, though active in society, was not involved in the company at all after marrying the elder Nelson, though she had once been an intern there during her college years and worked there for a year before the marriage. Continuing to read, he saw that Nelson owned a small home in Harborview Heights, a fringe development several miles from the really big homes owned by the super-elite of the city, property encumbered with $300,000 in debt, three cars, also encumbered. Hmm, expensive cars, too. A Mercedes for her, a Porsche for him. And a ‘69’ Camaro SS for a toy. Trust fund for her that generated $80,000 a year in interest payments, but they were drawing on the principal now, so that figure would go down. An empty and defunct trust fund for him, salary of $50,000 and change for him, no job for her. Scraping by on the payments for the house and cars while attending every soiree, benefit dinner and social event in town. And Erica Nelson thought that Chip was cheating on her.
Though he tried to keep his personal opinion out of it, he immediately thought that the young couple was trying to live up to their families’ names without the means to do so. But…if Chip Nelson was old Quinton Nelson’s son; then why didn’t he inherit the business? Why was Martin Webster the CEO?
Carl looked for the information in the file and found that it wasn’t in the prelim report at all; which was normal. Such things weren’t usually delved into until the case was in full swing. He turned to his computer and began searching for the information he needed, finding it on the third page of search results.
Webster had been the CFO when Old Man Nelson had embarked on a questionable course of action, attempting to purchase another aerospace company in order to expand their business footprint. The only problem was that there wasn’t enough money in the company coffers and he proposed putting the company in hock to the tune of nearly a billion dollars. The board had objected, requiring a shareholder meeting, during which Nelson was removed as CEO and Webster was elevated to replace him. Nelson had taken it badly and blown his brains out a month later after a failed attempt to regain his position.
The younger Nelson had continued on with the company, relegated to low-profile jobs in which he had no hopes of ever rising into the upper echelons of the company. The only thing of worth that the young man owned was his father’s hundred-twenty-foot yacht, the Dancing Lady. Ahh, there was the biggest drain on the Nelsons’ resources; the yacht. Nelson used it to entertain the senior executives with the company in endless, futile attempts to promote himself. He not only had to pay operating costs which included paying the crew of four, plus fuel, but also docking fees, storage fees in the winter, any number of expenses that Carl was sure had never occurred to him. All because he wanted to recapture what he probably felt he should have received upon his father’s death.
If he was cheating on his wife, then a divorce would wipe him out. The yacht would go to pay Erica, the house would likely be sold and Erica would be left with a much-depleted trust fund with which to support herself. Nelson would be lucky to get out of this with anything besides his job with the company his father started.
Carl leaned back in his chair, a frown on his face. So much for being born into money. He had only to look at what had happened to Marta to see the problems it brought. When she was a helpless and penniless child, her mother’s family would have nothing to do with her because she was the bastard of a wealthy man who had not married her mother. But when she found herself the ill and helpless heir to that wealthy man’s fortune, they rallied to her side and whisked her away to a foreign country where they could have a free hand with her money.
Suddenly soured on reading of the ill fortunes of the wealthy and their progeny, he picked up his coffee cup and found that he had emptied it as he read. He rose from his desk and turned to the coffeemaker on his credenza. DeeDee had filled the pot with water and he pulled the filter basket out, finding that she had also replaced the filter and filled it with enough coffee for a pot. Smiling a wistful smile, he remembered that it was the brand that Marta had told him of. He poured the water into the reservoir and pushed the start button, waiting impatiently for it to cycle through the grounds.
As he waited, he returned to his desk and read more of the prelim. Erica Nelson claimed that Chip had been spending more and more time on the yacht without any explanation. There were unexplained purchases on his credit card account that she had been unable to ferret out of him. When asked, he only told her that he was working on improving their finances. She had given them a copy of the last two statements and Carl scratched his head over them, wondering what Nelson needed with surveillance gear. For that’s what it had to be. When setting up their business in the beginning, Carl and Ike had purchased remote cameras and a variety of radio-controlled switches from the same company. Nelson had also purchased servos and micro-miniature, self-destructing release switches. Such things were very expensive and difficult to use; mostly made from paper and hair-thin wire, they were delicate and easily dissolved by almost any liquid. Water, blood, even sweat, could render them useless. Given their delicacy, they were almost useless in the damp climate around Port Morgan. Carl and Ike had learned their lesson the hard way by losing several hundred dollars worth of them to the humidity. What could Nelson possibly use them for?
He read the statements more carefully and found that Nelson had gotten several cash advances on his card. Since that was the case, there was no way to tell what he had spent the money on, but it was suspicious and he could understand why Erica Nelson was uneasy. But if he was spending more time on the yacht, where were the charges for extra fuel and supplies? With the craft at the dock, there was only one crewmember on duty, in a caretaker capacity only. If Nelson was screwing around on his wife, he wasn’t taking the boat onto the water to do it. She could walk in on him at any time with the boat docked.
He rose when the coffee-maker beeped and poured himself a cup, sipping at it as he walked to the window and gazed out at the main street that wound through the business district, sloping toward the bay. From the location of his office, he could plainly see the marina at the Country Club where Nelson docked his boat. Oh, yeah. That was another expense; the membership.
Though the yachts appeared smaller than models from this distance, he could easily make out Marta’s yacht; a two-hundred footer, and just down from it, the space where Nelson’s much smaller yacht was tied up. His memory of their first night together came back to haunt him and he abruptly turned from the window, only to turn back at once and estimate distances.
There on the bluff above the marina was Webster’s home, less than a mile away. He shook his head. There was no way for Nelson to profit from Sophie Webster’s death. Nor was there any way for him to profit from Webster’s distress. Shaking his head again, he returned to his desk and sighed as he sat down. After a while, the early morning phone call, coupled with the fitful night’s sleep caught up with him and he slumped down in his chair, resting his jaw on a fist as his e
yes grew heavy. In just a few minutes, he was asleep.
* * *
Julie smiled tightly as she walked into the squad room and saw Harold Michaelson was there. His partner, Steve Thomas was nowhere to be seen and of the two, she would rather have seen Thomas. Michaelson, divorced these past ten months, hadn’t taken well to her usual one night stands. He didn’t like being ushered out of her apartment in the wee-small hours with his shoes in his hand almost before he got used to making love to her. She had refused all his subsequent offers for dates and he wasn’t taking it well.
Even though he was in Homicide, he would have been apprised of the vandalism case at Webster’s house because of the recent suicide of Webster’s wife and because of the nature of the vandalism. She had hoped to get the information she needed from Thomas, but felt that though it would be uncomfortable, she could probably deal with Michaelson. Steeling herself, she walked directly to him, aware of the surreptitious looks she received from the others in the squadroom. They were probably all aware that she had turned the heretofore irresistible Michaelson out of her apartment in the middle of the night and refused further dates with him.
Taking a brash and friendly approach, she plopped down in the chair beside Michaelson’s desk as he stared at her, bitterness and resentment plainly written on his face.
Michaelson said, “I never thought to see you here again.”
Smiling, she said, “Ohh, Harry, you know I like you!”
He growled, “You have funny ways of showing it.”
“Well-l, you know how it is. I don’t like to be pinned down to just one guy. I’d rather keep things light. It was our first date and you were getting all serious and everything.”
Aware that he had offered to let her move in with him after an hour in bed, he lowered his voice and asked, “What do you want? You wouldn’t have come all the way down here if you didn’t want something.”