Thrilled To Death

by Jennifer Apodaca

  “She’s a magician, she has to be good. But the dogs.”

  He reached behind my neck and rubbed my tight muscles. “What, Sam?”

  It hit me then. Ali. She had ignored Bo and pouted because he didn’t love her. But someone else did. I looked up. “Fletch.”

  His hand on the back of my neck froze. “Christ.”

  “Gabe?”

  “Rookie mistake,” he snapped.

  I half smiled. “I am a rookie at this.”

  He did his lopsided grin. “Me. I meant me. Fletch has been there all along, helping Barney, having issues, and being invisible. We didn’t even look at him.”

  “It might not be him.”

  Gabe nodded. “Nikki had a point about magicians coming and going. We may have overlooked someone else hovering around town.”

  “Or they may be long gone.” The depression settled over me at that thought. Once the dust settled, they could come back and kill Grandpa. Plus, if Nikki didn’t kill Shane, she deserved to know who did and get on with her life and plans for her baby.

  But I had to keep trying. I sat up. “Gabe, Fletch said that he went to the motorcycle shop on Tuesday. Wednesday was skydiving. He said he went up in the airplane but got sick. I never thought of checking it out. What if he didn’t get sick from the airplane?” It was too awful to contemplate.

  “You’re saying he could have been sick from killing Shane?”

  “He hates blood sports.” I glanced out the window to see that Grandpa and Lola were talking to Nikki. Random pictures of Fletch and Grandpa over the years popped into my mind, and I remembered something. “Guns. Grandpa and Fletch joined the NRA, then blew up our garage. They both dropped out then. Fletch can’t shoot.” A giddy relief welled up inside me. Grandpa cared about Fletch; he’d be devastated if Fletch killed Shane.

  “I can find out if he really did drop his NRA membership,” Gabe said.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Fletch is a klutz. You saw his bruised leg from the motorcycle shop.” I shut up when I saw Grandpa and Lola turn and head this way. The passenger side door opened. Lola got in the back, then Grandpa sat in the passenger seat. “Nikki still wants you investigating for her, Sam. This is really important to her. She feels like she has to do the right thing, get on the right path, for the baby.” He buckled his seat belt and asked, “What did Vance say, Sam?”

  I really admired Nikki and hoped she wasn’t a killer. I answered Grandpa’s question about Vance. “We’re meeting him in twenty minutes at the stadium.”

  He looked at me, then at Gabe. “What?”

  I couldn’t tell him that it might be Fletch. Not just yet. “Gabe’s going back to the office to research the hit man.”

  “Okay if we keep the laptop for now?” Grandpa asked.

  “You never know, we might need it.” He leaned past me a little bit and said, “It has the wireless modem, right?”

  Huh? I turned to look at Gabe.

  “Yes. I have accounts everywhere. You should be able to get online in Starbucks or any place that has the technology.”

  I could barely use my cell phone. I had no idea what they were talking about.

  “Call me when you have something or are finished. I’ll do the same.” Gabe shut the door and stepped back.

  I started the Jeep and backed out of the driveway. There was something about the way Gabe listened to me. He was done backing away. He was engaged and listening. That gave me strength to see this through.

  To find the killer.

  16

  Shane had two trailers—a prop trailer and one that he used as an office. Vance was being testy and wouldn’t let us in the prop trailer. Evidence, chain of custody, yada, yada, yada . . .

  We walked across the black pavement of Storm Stadium parking lot to the office trailer. “Put these on,” Vance ordered, handing us gloves. “Hurry.” He unlocked the door.

  Poor Vance was breaking his tried and true procedures, and he was not happy. He was so distracted that he barely even looked at Lola.

  As I pulled on the gloves, I watched Vance unlock the door. He had on his nicely cut suit pants, but he’d taken off his coat and tie and rolled up the sleeves of his silk blue button-down shirt. He looked yuppie rugged.

  He opened the door and ushered us inside. “Don’t touch anything you don’t have to.” He came in and shut the door, then turned on a light.

  This was another custom job. Built-in desk, small kitchen and bathroom, very nice. The laptop computer sat closed on the desk. Vance opened the unit and started powering it up. I walked over to watch.

  He stood up, and we were chin to nose.

  “I’m putting my career in serious jeopardy for you, Shaw. And if I go down, you are going with me.”

  His jaw was clenched tight, and his brown gaze bore into me. “We’re just trying to help.”

  “Your grandfather better be as good as you say he is.”

  I lifted my chin. “He’s better.”

  A vein in his temple throbbed. “Computer hacking is not something to brag about.”

  God. “Vance, you can’t have it both ways.”

  “If you two let me through, maybe we could find out how good I really am,” Grandpa said.

  I tried not to blush. Vance just pushed my buttons. “Sure, Grandpa.” I moved over to let him sit down. I stood back behind his chair next to Lola. Vance hovered over Grandpa like an old woman.

  With a cute ass.

  Caffeine withdrawal. That was it. I needed more coffee. I had Gabe. He was all the man I could handle.

  I focused on the computer screen. A dialog box popped up asking for a password.

  Grandpa looked up at Vance. “Have you gotten past this?”

  “No.”

  Short and clipped. Annoyed.

  “What have you tried?” Grandpa asked.

  Vance reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out his little spiral notebook. He flipped some pages, then set it down on the desk.

  I looked over Grandpa’s shoulder. There was a neat list in dark block printing. Magic, show, spoiler, superstar . . .

  Grandpa turned the page, reading the entire list. “Does the computer lock up after a few attempts?”

  “Three.”

  He nodded. “Shane has good firewalls,” he said, and leaned back in the chair.

  “What are you doing?” Vance demanded.

  Grandpa answered, “Thinking like Shane.”

  This was going to take forever. I sat down on a leather couch.

  Lola sat next to me. “Maybe I should take the car and run over to see Michelle again while he’s working on this.”

  I didn’t want her going anywhere alone. Grandpa sat up and started typing.

  The computer beeped at him.

  He typed again.

  Beep.

  A headache took root. I answered Lola. “Let’s just sit tight for a little bit and think about Shane. What might he use for passwords?”

  “Party clowns,” Lola said. She looked over at Barney.

  “That’s what he called a lot of magicians.”

  Grandpa had just rebooted the computer. He turned around to look at us and said, “He called magic ‘party tricks’ when we talked to him, remember Sam?”

  I nodded that I did remember and suggested, “Try them.”

  When the dialog box popped up, Grandpa typed in “Party Clowns.”

  Beep.

  I was ready to bash that computer with my purse.

  Grandpa tried again. “Party Tricks.”

  Beep.

  I could almost hear Shane laughing. It gave me the creeps. “That two-bit imposter,” I muttered just to shake off the creepy feeling.

  Grandpa said, “two-bitpartyclowns.”

  Beep.

  The computer locked up.

  Grandpa rebooted and was muttering nonstop. “You will not beat me. I was a magician before you were born . . .”

  The computer was back up with the hated dialog box d
emanding a password.

  Grandpa leaned forward. “What did Shane love?” He typed in “Houdiniblack.”

  The dogs, a combination of their names, I thought to myself, and held my breath.

  No sound.

  I looked at the screen. It was filled with icons. “You’re in!” I stood up and smirked at Vance.

  He gave me a look of supreme patience. “Just getting started, Shaw. I’m sure that he password protected each of these files. Shane Masters was the paranoid type.”

  I sat back down. “Grandpa got farther than you.”

  The next hour passed in agonizing frustration as we watched Grandpa painstakingly crack the passwords on four files. But each time, the files turned up nothing. The up-and-down roller coaster was wearing on all of us.

  We all jumped when Vance’s cell phone rang.

  Vance answered the phone and walked to the other end of the trailer. When he returned, he was finished with the call. He swept his gold-dotted brown gaze over us, then looked at Grandpa. “We’re done here. I have to go.”

  Grandpa typed faster. “I’m almost there. I know it.”

  Vance said, “We’ve opened four files, and they are all useless. I have work to do.”

  Grandpa looked up. “Fine. Let me shut this down. Just stop hovering over me.”

  I could tell Grandpa was tired and cranky.

  And up to something crafty.

  I stood up. “Vance, I thought you wanted to find Shane’s killer!”

  He took a step toward me. “I have a real expert coming in, Shaw. I’m not about to let him find out that I let an amateur try to get into the computer. As it is, I’ll have to claim I was doing all this work. Experts can track a computer’s usage history. Now, do you have anything else that might be helpful?”

  “Yes.” I didn’t dare look at Grandpa. I was stalling so he could do whatever he was doing. But he was going to figure out my suspicion about Fletch when I told this to Vance. “Fletch Knight.”

  “Sam?” Grandpa said.

  I ignored him. “He’s a magician. He’s been in town since Tuesday. I forgot to mention him because he’s, well, he’s Fletch. Besides, he has an alibi, or I thought he did.” Quickly I told Vance about Fletch’s skydiving plans and explained about his show at the House of Cards and that he’d been planning this visit with Grandpa for a while. I left out the part where they had once blown up our garage.

  Okay, not blown up. But they could have. It had been a little fire that required a bomb squad to remove the unstable gunpowder.

  “Shaw, I could strangle you.” He reached over and snatched his notebook off the desk. He pressed his pen down so hard on the pages, I wondered why they didn’t tear as he made notes.

  I patiently answered his rapid-fire questions. Fletch was staying at the Night Haven Motel. Grandpa was his mentor. I didn’t think Fletch had even met Shane, but I didn’t know for sure. He’d been helping Grandpa look for a magician that hired a hit man in the professional magician organization that they both belonged to. . . . I was a fountain of information.

  Until Grandpa stood up. “Let’s go, Sammy. The detective’s expert will crack this faster than I can.”

  Now I knew Grandpa had been up to something. We skedaddled out of there before a tired and harassed Vance caught on.

  We all piled into the Jeep. Since we were literally just around the corner from the office, I headed that way and said, “What did you do back there, Grandpa?”

  “I was trying to copy the files to a CD. I slipped it into my pocket.” He pulled it out and held it up, then set it on the floorboard by Gabe’s computer. “What’s this about Fletch?”

  I had to tell him, so I outlined the quick version of why I thought we had to look at Fletch as a possible suspect. As I parked the Jeep, I said, “But if we can establish that he was at the airport yesterday at the time of Shane’s murder, we’ll drop him.” I felt guilty. We were suspecting all of Grandpa’s friends.

  Grandpa leaned down and picked up the CD and the computer. “Let’s see if I was able to copy the password-protected folders.” He looked at me. “Shane came here because of me, Sam. He was going to prove that he’s the better magician.”

  “By spoiling the show of someone you care about in your hometown.” I’d put it together while sitting in Shane’s trailer as Grandpa worked to crack Shane’s passwords. I reached out and touched his arm. “Are you okay?”

  He nodded. “When you live as long as me, you know that some people will break your heart. Others, like you, will fill your heart. Let’s get going.” He turned and opened the door.

  The smell of paint was still strong enough to scorch our lungs. The painters were all done. Gabe, Cal, and Blaine had fans set up to dry the paint and air out the fumes. I could hear noise from both sides of the offices, so I assumed they were cleaning up, moving furniture, and replacing hardware like the light switch plates.

  I stood inside the door to the Heart Mates side and looked around. Taking out the wall between the suites had doubled the space. The cream paint gave it a fresh feel. It would look inviting and professional once the carpet was done and the furniture delivered.

  Cal walked out of Gabe’s side of the office. He had on his low-slung jeans, a T-shirt, and a tool belt. The scowl on his face made me wonder if he’d hit himself with the hammer. “Hi Sam. I’m going to replace the fixtures in your office.”

  I could see his was angry. “Cal, what’s wrong?”

  Gabe came out from his side and said, “You told me to talk to him. But he’s not talking. He’s got it all under control, isn’t that right, Cal?”

  Cal’s shoulders went up two notches at the sarcasm. “Did it ever occur to you that I don’t want to be a fireman anymore, Gabe?”

  Lola said, “Uh, Sam, maybe we should—”

  Cal cut her off. “Stay. I don’t care who hears this.” He strode up to Gabe so that they were nose to nose. Two furious Italian brothers. “I didn’t need your self-defense lessons, little brother. And it’s damned insulting that you think one man could do this much damage to me. But I don’t really give a shit about your opinion of my fighting skills. I will not be a part of a brotherhood that hides men who beat their wives. So save your breath and leave me the hell alone.” Cal pivoted, stormed into my office, and slammed the door.

  The echo washed over us as we stood there dumbfounded.

  Then Blaine stormed out of the interview room and right up to Lola. “What did you do now?”

  “Nothing,” she said softly. Then she firmed up her spine. “And stop being so damned mean to me, Blaine. I left you. I was wrong and I am sorry. But I’m not going to take your nastiness.”

  “So you’ll leave?”

  “No. I’m staying. Lake Elsinore is my hometown.”

  Blaine opened his mouth, then snapped it shut and huffed off back into the interview room.

  Good God, what was wrong with these men? I focused on Gabe. He looked like he’d been gut punched. He stared at the door Cal had slammed, his eyes dark and stormy. I could see that he was thinking. I had to fix this somehow. I walked up and touched his arm.

  He turned his gaze to me.

  I had a sudden stomach cramp of worry that he would emotionally shove me away again. But I’d be a coward not to try. “He’s just upset. I’m sure he’ll calm down and talk to you soon.”

  Gabe held my gaze for long seconds. I was aware of Lola and Grandpa watching in thick silence. Finally, Gabe said, “Damn right he will, or I will handcuff his ass to a chair until he does.”

  “That’s a step up from fighting, I guess.”

  Gabe’s mask of anger cracked. “We weren’t fighting. He walked in with a cut lip and black eye. I was giving him a refresher course on self-defense.”

  I rolled my eyes. His reaction to my own black eye and bruised cheek had been extreme too. “You are a violent man.”

  He actually looked proud. “When necessary.” He looked over at Grandpa and Lola, then back at me. “Let’s go into
my office and you can tell me what you found out with the computer. I have coffee in there.”

  The magic words for me. I followed him, along with Grandpa and Lola. Gabe’s office was rich with the light-pecan-colored walls. His desk was on the left side of the room facing out. His computer was on. He’d been working. The coffee was on a TV tray on the right. Gabe and I went to get two folding chairs from his storage area.

  Away from the others, Gabe picked up both the chairs and said, “I need to know one thing about Cal, Sam.”

  I wondered if I should tell him everything Cal told me. “What’s that?”

  “Cal didn’t attack Dirk without provocation, did he?”

  His face was cop blank. He was trying to get information and see if he could build a defense for his brother. He could. “No. There were two others involved.”

  His face tightened. “I should have known.”

  “Cal has torn loyalties, I guess.”

  He nodded. “Let’s get back in there. I’ll fix this with Cal later.”

  I blinked. “Don’t you want to go talk to him now?”

  He shook his head. “He’ll cool off. He has a right to be pissed. But he’ll cool down. Cal never stays mad for long. Right now, we need to focus on Shane’s murder.” He turned and walked back into his office, carrying the chairs.

  We got settled around his desk while Grandpa explained that he hadn’t gotten anything off the computer yet but that he had copied the files to a CD.

  Gabe sat in his chair and looked at Grandpa. “I’m doing some checking on Fletch.”

  Grandpa nodded. He sat across from Gabe and had the laptop open on the desk. It was still booting up.

  Gabe went on. “I made some calls. Fletch was definitely at the motorcycle shop and did knock over a row of bikes. That doesn’t prove anything though, because the hit man wasn’t killed until later Tuesday night.” Gabe looked at me and Grandpa. “After the dinner at your house.”

  “What about skydiving yesterday?” I asked.

  “I can’t get any information on that yet. The owner is out of the office but will call me back later. In the meantime, I’m looking at a couple things. A man using Fletch’s ID registered at a hotel in Vegas last week.”