by Tim Ellis
Carrie looked all around, as if she expected a bolt of lightning, or something similar to appear out of nowhere, but nothing did.
“What will happen to Sally?” Tom said to Carrie.
“I’ve heard rumors, but I can’t say.”
“Don’t worry me none what they do to me, Mister. I’m gonna do what I’m gonna do. Ain’t no two ways about it. If’n someone wants to belt me, then that’s just the way it’ll be.”
She told Tom who she was, where she’d lived, and how she was snatched. She told him about Henry Appling, where he lived, and what he did to her. She told him how she’d been bought and paid for, about the hole beneath the cellar, about Hank Giffey, and about where she was buried . . . and then she was gone.
“Where did she go?” Tom asked Carrie.
“I can’t say, but she’ll be all right.” She brushed his lips with hers, and also disappeared.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Mabel stared at him with a worried expression etched on her face.
“You saw, it wasn’t my fault,” he said, swinging his legs out of bed. “That Sally Stackhouse was going to tell me who had killed her whether I liked it or not.”
He went to the kitchen, and put the percolator on. Rae had put his cell on charge. His cell! It sounded strange. Why hadn’t he bought one before? He unplugged it, switched it on, and phoned Mona.
“My number’s the only one you’ve got in that cell, isn’t it?”
“How’d you know?”
“Did the stake-out go well?”
He told her what had happened.
“I saw the burning wreck on the news. That was you, was it? You remind me of Arnold Schwarzenegger.”
“Who?”
“Never mind.”
“Listen, we need to meet. What about Zero’s Diner in an hour? I’ll buy you lunch.”
“You’ve got more news, haven’t you?”
“Sure have.”
“I have news for you as well. I’ll see you there.”
He filled his coffee mug up, swallowed down the brew, and then banged on the utility room door before he entered.
“Go away.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I definitely do. I’ve only just closed my eyes. What time is it?”
“Twenty past eleven.”
“Oh God! Do people die for lack of sleep?”
“I’m leaving in fifty minutes. You can stay here, if you want to.”
She sat up bleary-eyed. “You know I’m not going to do that. Where are we going?”
“To have lunch with Mona.”
“Has something happened?”
“I need to give her that gun, so she can send it for analysis. Also, I’ve had a visit.”
“It’s a bit early for Santa.”
“I’ll tell you while we’re eating lunch. That way I don’t have to repeat myself. Get ready.”
“All right, I’m coming. Have you been in the bathroom yet?”
“Just going now.”
She groaned and threw herself back under the sheets. “Wake me when you’ve finished.”
They left the room with ten minutes to get to Zero’s. When they reached the bottom of the wooden stairs at the end of the second-floor veranda, Allegre ambushed them.
“Well, if’n it ain’t Mister wrecker-of-old-Allegre’s-prize-winning-vehickle-and-refusing-to-buy-her-a-new-one Gabriel. I hope you’re going to the bank to get all my money.”
“I’ll come round to your apartment later, and we’ll talk about the options available to us.”
“Options! You weren’t talkin’ about options when you wanted to borrow poor old Allegre’s prize-winning –”
“That rustbucket ain’t won no prizes,” Rae butted in. “I’d like to see one thing that crapheap has won.”
“I got trophies, awards, scrolls, medals, and things.”
“You ain’t got nothin’. You’re just a scheming old bitch who’s trying to get Tom to buy you a new truck. Well, I can tell you, it ain’t gonna work while I’m here to –”
“Ladies,” Tom said, stepping between them. “And I’m not sure that’s the right word to use in the circumstances. Creating a hullabaloo won’t get you a new truck, Allegre. I’m willing to pay for the damage, or pay the equivalent towards a new truck, but I’m not going to buy you a new one. The Firebird is rented, so I need a new vehicle myself. I haven’t even notified my insurance about what happened to the Dodge yet, but I have the feeling they’re going to wriggle out of replacing it one way or another.”
“That’s not what we agreed when you asked to borrow Allegre’s prize-winning vehickle.”
“My agreement was based on the assumption that what you were telling me was accurate. Unfortunately, when we came to use your prize-winning truck, we found that it had escaped from the junkyard.”
“That ain’t my fault. You should have checked it before you agreed ”
His face creased up. “I thought we could trust each other, Allegre. If you’re telling me that’s not now the case, then maybe I need to consider letting people know that this place is open to inspections again.”
“You won’t have anywhere to live.”
“I can always find somewhere to rest my weary head.”
“I don’t think I like you anymore, Mister not-so-nice-sneaky Gabriel.” She stomped off towards her own rooms with Rattlesnake hissing and spitting behind her.
“I didn’t think you had it in you,” Rae said.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Butterfly Raeburn.”
***
Zero’s was busy, but Mona had already squeezed into a table near the back.
He’d been coming here for nearly thirty years, except ten years ago it used to be called Hugo’s Diner. Hugo had been a friendly, grey-haired old man with a wife and two daughters, who had been part of the community until he died behind the counter one day. The family eventually sold the diner. Now, there was nobody called Zero – it was just a name given to a string of diners across Florida. Managers were installed to run them as businesses. Managers who weren’t part of the community. Managers who focused more on profit, turnover, and wastage rather than on friendship, customer satisfaction, and long-term relationships.
“It’s like old times,” he said, sitting down in a red-leather chair.
“Except, I’m up to my eyeballs in work, and you’re taking things easy as an unlicensed PI.”
He let out a grunt. “Yeah, not for long though. Anyway, let me formally introduce Rae, cub reporter with the St. Augustine Record.”
They half-smiled and nodded at each other, but he could see that they were probably never going to go shopping for clothes together.
The waitress came up, filled up their mugs with strong black coffee, and took their orders.
He slid the plastic bag across the table.
Mona squinted at it, but didn’t pick it up. “My birthday’s not for a couple of months yet. Twenty-one again. Doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun?”
“When was the last time I remembered your birthday?”
“Never. That’s why I’m so underwhelmed.”
“I’ve made a special effort this year, and I’m going to give you your present early. I think that the two people in that Hummer, which by the way, was the same Hummer that edged us off LPGA Boulevard last time, were government agents –”
“Crap, Tom! What the hell have you got yourself into?”
“I wish I knew. Anyway, if you send that gun for fingerprint and ballistic analysis, we should know one way or the other.”
“And then what?”
He shrugged. “I have no idea. I’m beginning to wonder if there’s something else going on here besides the missing children.”
Mona put the plastic bag on the chair next to her.
He picked up his mug. “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you –”
“You’d like the results by the end of the day?” she finished for him.
&nbs
p; The corner of his mouth went up. “I see you still know what makes me happy.”
“You mentioned LPGA Boulevard. That cop who wrote the report, and gave you the Hummer’s number plate –”
“Eddie Plaziuk?”
“Yeah. He’s dead. Gunned down, no suspects.”
Tom took a swallow of coffee. “That’s a bit too convenient for my liking.”
“That’s what I thought when I read the report. Also, you wanted me to run Oscar Gibson’s plate.” She passed him two sheets of paper. “I had a quick look. There isn’t much, but the parking tickets and speeding fines don’t mean anything to me. And to be perfectly honest, I’ve got better things to do than chase shadows.”
The waitress brought their food. “Enjoy.”
They began to tuck in. He could have eaten another breakfast, but he knew Rae would have had something to say about that, so he’d ordered the Smokey Joe burger with fries and barbeque sauce. Mona went with the chicken club, and Rae had the Mediterranean.
“Is that all I’m going to get for my birthday then?” Mona asked, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, even though there were paper napkins available. She’d grown up with two brothers and spent most of her adult life with a bunch of uncouth slovenly coppers.
“I’ve saved the best and biggest present for last. You’d better get your notebook out.”
She did as he said.
“I had a visit from two people earlier. Now, as you know Mona, the dead are subject to rules, and these visits aren’t usually much help –”
“I remember. I don’t know how you stay sane with all those dead people popping in to talk to you all the time.”
He grunted. “You have to play the cards that you’re dealt. Anyway, one of the two people was Carrie, and the other one was a little girl called Sally Stackhouse . . .” He told them what Sally had said about Henry Appling.
“Poor thing,” Rae said. “Do you think Sally is connected to our case?”
“I’m sure she is. I think that’s what it’s all about – child trafficking. Children are being abducted to order from all over Florida. The financial transactions are camouflaged as the purchase of paintings through the Antonio de Natalie Gallery, which is used as a halfway house to hide the children until they can be safely transported to their new owners. At the moment, Rae and I have only scratched the surface. We’ve been following bread crumbs like Hansel and Gretel, but those crumbs don’t seem to be leading us anywhere. Take last night for example. We followed a car all the way to a house in Summer Haven, but apart from the person being connected to Oscar Gibson – who likes child porn, and sends and receives a lot of coded emails – we actually have nothing.”
“I’m struggling to get my head around what I can do about Henry Appling,” Mona said, dipping a piece of chicken in her barbecue sauce. “No judge in this beautiful state of ours is going to give me a search warrant based on the statement of a dead little girl, and I have no probable cause to even knock on his door.”
“I remember telling you any number of times to be creative. You’ve had an anonymous tip that a little girl is being held against her will in a room underneath Henry Appling’s basement, and that he’s also a purveyor of child pornography. No judge in this beautiful state of ours is going to deny you a search warrant when a child’s life is at stake.”
“I can at least try, I suppose.”
“Go and see Judge Francis Robb. She’s got kids of her own, and tell her I said, ‘Hi’. I think if you do, she’ll have an idea where the anonymous tip came from.”
“A good defense lawyer –”
“Get the CSIs out there.”
“They’ll call it a fishing expedition.”
“Tell the judge that if there’s no room beneath the basement, you’ll walk away without a backward glance. If there is, you get to call in forensics. She’ll agree to that. There should be enough forensic evidence to put Sally Stackhouse in that room. You need to make sure the warrant mentions the whole house and any papers, computers, or other effects related to child abduction or pornography.”
“But if the girl’s dead, we won’t find her in that room.”
“Exactly. It’s now a murder investigation. At that point, I think you probably need to get the FBI involved. Sooner or later, they’ll take the case off you, because besides everything else, any crime against a child is a federal offense.”
“We’ll have to reveal where the anonymous tip came from.”
“By which time, I’ll have thought of something.”
“I hope so.”
“The alternative is doing nothing. For me, that’s not an option. If I have to bend and twist the rules to bring the guilty to justice, then that’s just the way it’s going to be. Retirement hasn’t made me soft in that respect. I think Sally Stackhouse made a terrible sacrifice breaking the rules of the afterlife, and I’m going to make sure that sacrifice wasn’t in vain. You just get the warrant. We’ll work everything else out as we go along.”
“You’re the boss.”
“No, Mona, you’re the boss now.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” She grinned. “I am the boss, aren’t I?”
Tom signaled the waitress for more coffee, and she came over with a steaming jug and filled up their mugs. “Anything else I can get you, folks?”
“Coffee’s just fine,” he said.
“Just holler if you change your minds.”
“What concerns me,” Tom said, once the waitress had left them alone again, “is that maybe we’ll put Appling in prison, but we won’t have changed anything. If Appling bought Sally, then he’s just another customer.”
Mona’s jaw set hard. “He’ll talk.”
Tom shook his head. “He won’t have anything to say. Let’s for arguments’ sake say that those numbers at the beginning and end of the coded emails were customer numbers. The only constant was Oscar Gibson’s number, but he’s an intermediary. Appling won’t know anything. We have no idea who’s running this organization.”
“What about taking Oscar Gibson in for questioning?” Rae suggested.
“Two things against that idea,” Mona said. “No probable cause, and why would he open his mouth to say anything?”
“He wouldn’t,” Tom agreed with her. “You’d never get a search warrant, and we’d immediately tip him off that we’re onto him.”
“They always say, ‘Follow the money,’” Rae suggested.
Tom shifted on his chair to stare at her. “Who does?”
“I don’t know, but maybe we could do that.”
“Let’s say that we find evidence of a payment in Henry Appling’s bank records that has been made to the Antonio de Natali Gallery for a painting entitled The Mona Lisa, which is valued at $20,000 – so what? All it tells us is that he bought a painting for that amount.”
Rae’s eyes opened wide. “But what if the gallery didn’t have a painting called The Mona Lisa?”
“It’s an art gallery. I’m sure it wouldn’t be too hard to arrange for a picture to be painted, added to the inventory, and then wrapped up for Henry Appling at the same time they send him the little girl he ordered.”
“You have all the answers, don’t you?”
“I wish I did. All I have is speculation and no evidence.”
“What about last night?” Mona asked.
He looked at Rae.
“What?”
“You wrote down the license plate.”
“So I did.” She rummaged in the rucksack for her notebook, ripped the page out, and passed it to Mona.
“Forty-seven Beachside Drive,” Tom said. “I’m particularly interested in who lives there. It had security like Fort Knox.”
Mona finished her coffee and stood up. “I’ll let you know once I run the plate. Well, thanks for lunch. I suppose I’d better go and see Judge Robb, and do all the other things on the list you’ve given me to do.” She scooped up the plastic bag from the chair.
He sat back and stretched hi
s legs out now that Mona wasn’t sitting opposite him anymore. “I’ve got a funny feeling things are going to start moving pretty fast as soon as you get inside Henry Appling’s house.”
“Let’s hope so. The last thing I need now is a long, drawn-out investigation. I wish I could pass all my cases to the FBI.”
“My suggestion is that you have a news blackout.”
“Why?”
“Other people might get nervous. We don’t really know the extent of this thing, and I’d hate for children to die just because we forgot to keep things under wraps.”
Mona nodded. “I agree.”
When Mona had left Rae said, “She doesn’t seem very happy.”
Tom pulled a face. “Never has been, unfortunately. Her personal life lurches from one disaster to another, and the job isn’t the same as it used to be – too much bureaucracy now.”
“Is that why you left?”
“No. When my wife died, I lost the will to carry on. Anyway, enough about me. I was thinking that we could go and see Satan’s little helper to ask her about my PI’s license.”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
“Because?”
“You know what she’s like. If you go and start annoying her, she’ll make sure you never get your license.”
He rubbed his stubble. “I suppose you’re right.”
“What you need to do is sort out your disagreement with that bitch at the hotel.”
“That might be easier said than done.”
“She likes you. I don’t think she wants to see you go, and she doesn’t want to fall out with you.”
“You seem to know a lot about people all of a sudden.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty good at reading people. Don’t forget, we also need to buy her tobacco. If we get that first, then that’ll be your excuse to go and haggle with her – a peace offering, so to speak. She needs to save face now, because you basically called her a liar and a cheat.”
“Which is what she is.”
“You could have handled it better.”
“And that’s coming from someone who calls her a bitch and fights with her every chance she gets.”