Fatal Game

by Diane Capri

  “Can you tell me anything about her?”

  He looked at his screen. “Looks like she kept in touch for a few weeks after she left here. Mostly to say she was still interested, but couldn’t return to The Art Market anytime soon.”

  He shrugged. “We like to keep up with our clients. There’s always the chance they’ll come back.”

  “But she didn’t?”

  He shook his head. “She stopped responding to our emails about two months after she moved out.” He scrolled up and down a list on his screen. “Looks like we never heard from her again.”

  “Thanks for your help.” She returned to the parking lot and started the Mustang. With the air conditioning running, she looked through the calls on her phone and found Mercer’s number.

  “Mercer here.”

  “It’s Jess. Are you off the case?”

  “I’m assisting. Not that it means much. But they have been drip feeding me some information.”

  “Like what?”

  He hummed. “What have you been doing?”

  “Looking into Melissa Green’s life before she moved to Bear Hill. She was an artist.”

  “I heard that said.”

  “Did you ever see any of her art?”

  “No, but the closest I get to art is painting the house.”

  Jess grinned. She told him what she’d learned from her morning of poking into Melissa’s life, which was not much. “That’s all of my news. What have you been drip fed?”

  “Nothing really new that we didn’t know already. We knew she had no landline telephone. If she had a cell phone, we can’t find a record of it. Before she moved, she announced on social media that she was taking a break. Then nothing after.”

  Jess coughed. “Ties up with what I’ve heard, but it’s kind of unusual for someone who was making a living.”

  “Yeah,” Mercer said. “And I don’t know what she did for work once she moved out here, but she paid her bills on time. Gas, electric, and water.”

  “What about credit cards?” Jess hadn’t found any credit card history for Melissa Green, but Mandy was still checking.

  “One. Used sparingly. Last time was about a month ago.” Mercer paused. “The curious thing is, she used it to buy gas at the station here in Bear Hill.”

  Jess frowned. “Why is that significant?”

  “Did you look in her garage?”

  Jess remembered the separate structure which hadn’t burned down. “No.”

  “She had no car. At least not on the property, and nothing registered in her name has turned up, so far.”

  “Maybe buying gas for a friend? Someone giving her a lift. Like maybe her plumbing friend?”

  “I know old man Bartlett over at the DIY store. I’ll see what I can get out of him about the mysterious plumber’s helper. But even if I find out, it doesn’t explain why she’d booby trap her house like that. What was she trying to hide?”

  Good question. Jess pulled the Mustang onto the main road and headed back to Bear Hill, not much wiser about Melissa Green than she had been yesterday.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Tuesday, May 23

  Santa Irene, Arizona

  Hades took the steps into the basement rapidly and switched on the fluorescent lights at the bottom of the narrow stairs. Pony followed behind. Hades leaned down and pulled the felt blindfold from Simon Lawson’s eyes.

  Simon blinked, attempting to clear the spotlights from his night vision.

  Hades touched his face. “I still have my mask on. You will survive. You understand, yes?”

  Lawson gave a single nod.

  Hades smiled. “Good. You have to do something for us.”

  “What?” Lawson said through the tape across his mouth.

  Hades reached down and ripped off the tape. “Your international broker is insisting on a signature.”

  Lawson groaned. “You’re never going to let us live.”

  Hades grunted. “This mask is itchy and unpleasant. It’s hot. I could happily take it off, but I haven’t.”

  Lawson looked away.

  Hades nudged Lawson with his boot. “I have no desire to kill either of you. You are going to survive.”

  Lawson breathed hard. It was a good thirty seconds before he spoke. “All right. Get me a pen.”

  “Good.” Hades pursed his lips and nodded. “We have to sign the document in Tucson.”

  Lawson looked up at Hades. He struggled to keep his facial muscles in check. His lips still curled down at the ends, but his eyes had widened a fraction. Not much. But enough to betray a change in his internal state. Not fully formed hope yet, Hades was sure. Not yet.

  “You will need to shave and dress,” Hades said.

  Lawson gave the barest of nods. “I understand.”

  Natalie’s eyes were flicking between Hades and her husband behind the blindfold. Lines wrinkled her forehead. She was almost hyperventilating.

  Hades smiled to himself. She knew her husband well. She should. They had been married for years. But over the past few hours, she had realized, finally, something she hadn’t admitted before.

  He put himself first. No doubt. No hesitation. The flicker of hope that he had accepted was no opportunity for her. It was a death warrant. Even if her husband tried and failed to escape, she would be the hostage. She would be the one sealed in their basement. The money was all in her husband’s name. There would be no reason to keep her alive.

  They would dispose of her quickly. No doubt or hesitation about that, either.

  Hades smiled again. He’d wondered how long she would remain willfully ignorant of these facts. Longer than he’d expected.

  Pony cut Lawson free from the tie-downs. Simon groaned as he rolled over into a fetal position.

  Hades waited.

  Lawson flexed his limbs, restoring the blood flow and reviving his muscles. After a while, he rolled into a sitting position.

  Pony cut the tape around his wrists and ankles.

  “You’re going to Tucson to sign and transfer the money this afternoon. I will be with you. We will have a guard outside the building.”

  Lawson nodded.

  “You try anything, and you’ll be shot. And the news will come back here.”

  Natalie swallowed.

  Lawson took a deep breath and nodded again.

  “Do this right, and we will be gone tomorrow. Do it wrong, and there will be no mercy.”

  “Simon,” Natalie murmured behind the duct tape.

  He didn’t look at her. “It’ll be okay.”

  “Just…”

  He shook his head. “We’ll just do exactly as they say.” He stood up. “We will be okay.”

  Hades smiled. “That’s the idea.”

  Lawson looked at his clothes. “I need to clean up.”

  “In a moment.” He reached down and removed Natalie’s blindfold and waited for her eyes to adjust.

  The door bumped open. Shorty slid a roll of carpet down the stairs. A loud grunt was forced out when it came to a thudding halt on the concrete floor.

  Shorty cut the tape holding the carpet roll in shape.

  Simon frowned.

  From her place on the floor, Natalie strained to see.

  Shorty unrolled the carpet with his boot. The last of the bundle’s spirals flipped over with a jaunty kick, leaving Amanda lying face up.

  Her hair was matted around her face, and her eyes were crunched up, shielding her from the light. Her arms were taped to her sides, and her feet were bound at the ankles.

  Natalie burst into tears.

  Lawson swallowed. His lower lip trembled. “No.”

  “You bastards,” Natalie sobbed, behind the duct tape that covered her mouth.

  Amanda’s eyes widened, adjusting to the fluorescent lights. She forced herself up to a seated position.

  Pony dragged her to the tie-downs.

  Shorty took Lawson by the arm and pushed him toward the stairs. He stumbled, his bare feet dragging on the concre
te.

  Hades pointed upstairs. “You can get cleaned up. Wear a suit.”

  Shorty shoved Lawson. He didn’t lift his feet, and he fell onto the stairs. Shorty kicked him.

  Lawson’s head hung down. He barely looked able to support his own weight. He climbed the steps on his hands and knees.

  Hades waited until he was halfway up. “You’re a strange one, Lawson. We go to all this trouble, and you don’t even say hello to your daughter.”

  A strangled noise escaped from Lawson’s throat.

  “Don’t worry. She’ll be here when you get back,” Hades said. “Assuming you do a good job.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Tuesday, May 23

  Santa Irene, Arizona

  Jess found a diner. She ordered coffee and a cranberry bagel. The waiter returned with her order a moment later.

  She pulled out Carter’s notes and reread everything. Nothing significant jumped out, and there was nothing she’d missed when she’d read the file earlier.

  She ran back through the pages again until she found the statement she wanted. Dr. Warner had worked at Santa Irene General Hospital. He had a medical staff and assistants working for him.

  Several of his colleagues had testified at his trial. They’d all been supportive, of course. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been called to testify in his defense. One of his assistants on the stand had worked for him for a number of years. Her testimony was overwhelmingly positive.

  It was often assumed that the people at the top knew what was happening in a hospital, but in Jess’s experience, those at the opposite end of the power spectrum were the ones who really knew what was going on.

  Jess finished her food, paid her bill, and left the diner. She drove through downtown Santa Irene to the medical district and parked in a multi-story garage outside Santa Irene General.

  The hospital was a modern five-story building with mirrored windows. The wide entrance deposited visitors inside where colored lines on the floor led to different departments.

  Jess took a business card from her bag and approached the front desk. A large man sat behind the counter. He examined her through thick eyeglasses.

  She held out her card. “I wonder if I might talk to Melanie Franklin?”

  The receptionist’s gaze flitted over the card, and back to Jess. “Appointment?”

  Jess shook her head.

  The man huffed and turned his back on Jess.

  He dialed a number. “Franklin?” he said.

  Jess couldn’t hear the reply.

  The man uh-huh’d. “Got another one for you.”

  Another uh-huh. “Not local. Magazine.”

  He was quiet a few beats.

  “Uh-huh. Okay, I’ll tell them.”

  Jess leaned over the counter and whispered. “Tell her the police might have found Karen.”

  He rotated his head to look at Jess from the corner of his eye and raised his eyebrows. “Karen who?”

  “She’ll know,” Jess said.

  He grunted and turned back to the phone. “Woman says the police might have found Karen. Says you’ll know who she means.”

  He hung up a moment later. He pointed to a group of worn beige armchairs in one corner of the lobby. “She’ll be out soon.”

  Jess took a seat. Five minutes later, a woman arrived dressed in the kind of impeccable, classic nurse’s uniform, complete with white shoes and stockings, that Jess hadn’t seen in a couple of decades. She held out her hand. “Nurse Melanie Franklin.”

  Jess gestured to the chair beside her. Nurse Franklin sat, her back straight, and smoothed out her uniform. “You asked to speak to me.”

  “You worked for Dr. Warner until he was arrested?”

  She nodded. “Five years, but I’ve been with Irene General for twenty.”

  “That’s a long time to work as a nurse.”

  “Started as a secretary. But I liked to help. I wanted to do more than just take names and such.” She cleared her throat. “It was Dr. Warner who encouraged me to take night school classes, and, well…”

  “Was that when you worked for him?”

  “I only started working for him after I qualified.” She rubbed her hands together. “I wasn’t the quickest at school. Took a while, but,” she shrugged, “it worked out in the end.”

  Nurse Franklin checked her watch. “I’ve only got five minutes.”

  “Were you surprised by his arrest?”

  “Completely shocked. We all were. First he, and we were trying to come to terms with what had happened to Karen, and then he’s arrested.”

  “At his trial, you testified in his defense.”

  Nurse Franklin nodded and swallowed. “You said…the police have found Karen.”

  “Might have.”

  Nurse Franklin frowned. Slowly, she closed her eyes. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”

  “Nothing is definite yet.”

  Her eyes snapped open. “But you thought you’d come here and try and get some headline—”

  “Did you hear that Karen Warner’s sister is missing?” Jess said.

  Nurse Franklin’s glower softened a fraction.

  “It’s a big coincidence that two sisters should vanish two years apart. The two situations may be connected, and in the second case, Dr. Warner was in jail. So…”

  Nurse Franklin took a deep breath. “You think he’s innocent?”

  Jess shook her head. “I don’t know. I keep an open mind. Which is why I’m here.”

  Nurse Franklin curled up one side of her lips, but it wasn’t quite a smile.

  “I’m wondering whether you felt something wasn’t right between him and his wife?” Jess said.

  “Absolutely not.” Franklin scowled. “He was an attentive husband. They talked a couple of times every day.” She mimicked typing on a phone. “And text messages. He took good care of her. Looked after her. He’d buy her presents. We all knew because he’d come back from lunch with a bag, or smelling of some perfume. You don’t do that if you’re not…well, he was a good husband. I’m certain.”

  “You sure he wasn’t trying to cover something up?”

  “Like what?”

  “An affair?”

  Franklin scoffed. “He wasn’t like that.”

  “He might have been trying to apologize. Or to distract her from what was really going on.”

  Nurse Franklin shook her head. “Definitely not. He wasn’t into all that stuff. He didn’t mess around with the secretaries or join gambling rings or…anything.”

  “Is there a lot of gambling here?”

  “It happens, but it’s a hospital. Lots of things happen.”

  “Like what?”

  “Everything. The place is full of doctors. They have God complexes, or get-rich-quick schemes, or any number of things. But he wasn’t that sort. He had his head on straight.”

  “Who was he most friendly with in the hospital?”

  Nurse Franklin shrugged. “He was a hard worker. Didn’t socialize much. Dr. Palmer and Dr. Lawson some. They would go out to eat fairly regularly. But that fell apart. The pressure of work, I guess.”

  “Dr. Palmer testified for his defense.”

  “I should think so. Dr. Warner had an excellent reputation. Dr. Palmer definitely knew all about his work.”

  “So, they were still friends?”

  “I guess. They weren’t close or anything. I always thought their relationship was mostly professional respect.”

  “You make him out to be something of a loner.”

  “Not really. Just very intense. Dedicated to his patients. The staff had to arrive at work ready to go. No drinking coffee to wake up. He worked one hundred percent from the moment he walked in through those doors to the moment he left in the evening. He expected all of us to do the same.”

  “Long hours?”

  “Always. Seven-till-seven. He’d leave here dead on his feet and come back the next day to do it all again. The poor man must have passed out the minute
he made it home and slept like the dead.”

  “You’re thinking about the late-night phone calls to The Devil Kings?”

  She shrugged. “That never made sense to me. Really, if a doctor wants to get rid of someone,” she held her hands out to gesture to the whole hospital, “the place is full of ways.”

  Jess nodded. “Did he work weekends?”

  “Not usually. Except for emergency surgeries. And he was on call once a month.”

  “An all-round dedicated guy, then?” Jess lifted her voice at the end of the sentence, giving Nurse Franklin another chance to open up if she was so inclined.

  Nurse Franklin nodded. “Certainly seemed so to me. It’s what I’ve always said. I can’t explain what happened, but the prosecution’s theory didn’t line up with the Dr. Warner I knew.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Tuesday, May 23

  Santa Irene, Arizona

  The Mustang’s engine rumbled impatiently while Jess waited in line to exit the hospital’s parking garage. She dialed her assistant.

  Mandy answered on the second ring. “What’s up?”

  Men thought Mandy’s greatest attribute was her runway model looks, but really it was her straightforward demeanor that made her everyone’s friend. She and Jess had formed a bond that allowed them to go months without direct contact, and instantly pick up where they’d left off.

  “I need everything we have on an Arizona gang called The Devil Kings. And their leader, a guy who calls himself Hades, but his real name is Norman Kemp. I’m looking for gossip. Stuff we have that the cops don’t. And I’m also interested in places he’s lived, prisons he’s been in, and every crime he’s committed.”

  “Sure. Won’t take long.”

  Taboo’s archives were legendary. If Hades or The Devil Kings had ever been noticed, even once, Taboo would have access to the information. Mandy was a genius at searching and sorting.

  “That it?” She said.

  Jess rolled forward in the exit line. “I also want to know where Mrs. Karen Warner spent her spare time. She didn’t work, and her husband was a workaholic. So what did she do with herself all day every day?”