by Jude Hardin
“First of all, he’s not my friend. He’s just an acquaintance. I was giving him a ride. And if you arrest me, who’s going to look for Everett Harbaugh? I’m assuming you’re still not interested.”
“I never said I wasn’t interested. I said there was no evidence that a crime had been committed. And there’s still not. Not where Harbaugh is concerned. But a crime was committed at Klein Fertility last night, and the techs lifted a ton of fingerprints early this morning. We should know later today if they match up with the people who work there. If I find out any of them are yours, even a partial one, I’m going to nail your ass to the wall.”
“Are we done here?” I said. “Because I’m getting really bored with this. And frankly, I have work to do.”
“You can leave, Colt. But I have a feeling we’ll be seeing each other again soon.”
I climbed out and walked over to my rental car and headed for Laurie’s.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I didn’t bother telling Detective Barry Fleming that Trent Appleton was the sperm donor I’d been looking for. That he was, in fact, Everett Harbaugh’s biological father. It wouldn’t have served any purpose except to get me in trouble. Klein Fertility was the only place I could have gotten that information, and I was already a prime suspect for the breaking and entering charge. I certainly didn’t want to stoke the fire that I might eventually be cooked over.
I was glad I’d taken the time to stop at the pharmacy and buy some gloves. My fingerprints are on file with the FBI. It’s one of the requirements for obtaining a private investigator’s license in the state of Florida. Touching anything at that sperm bank would have been tantamount to signing my name on the wall. As it was, I figured I would be okay. Unless they vacuumed for hairs and spent a million dollars on DNA testing and all that. But they wouldn’t. Not on a B and E, especially one where nobody got hurt. I hadn’t even stolen anything.
Anyway, Appleton was innocent, so none of that even mattered anymore. Tracking him down had been a waste of time.
It was nine-thirty by the time I made it back to Laurie’s. I quietly unlocked the deadbolt with the key she’d given me, thinking she might still be in bed. She wasn’t. She was sitting at the kitchen table, reading the paper and eating a bowl of cornflakes. I walked over and gave her a kiss.
“You want something to eat?” she said.
“No, thanks. I had some beef jerky and a box of saltine crackers and a gallon or two of Mountain Dew for breakfast.”
She laughed. “What have you been up to all night?”
It took me about fifteen minutes to tell her everything that had happened. I told her about the fight I’d almost gotten into at the rental car place, and about the close call with the cop at Klein Fertility. I told her about the squatter at Trent Appleton’s former residence, and about Nora Fetzler, the ex-girlfriend up in Georgia. I told her about finding Appleton’s current residence and getting beat up by Mr. Ribkicker, about being abducted by Fatso and crew and thinking they were going to kill me, about the big turnaround where they helped me snatch Appleton from his apartment, and about me eventually saying thanks but no thanks to their interrogation techniques.
Laurie ate a second bowl of cereal and drank some orange juice while I talked. Finally, I told her about Appleton being arrested for possession of narcotics.
“And now, I’m basically back where I started,” I said. “I’ve been through the wringer, and I’m no closer to finding Everett Harbaugh than I was when I left the apartment last night.”
Laurie got up and took her cereal bowl and juice glass to the sink. She started rinsing some things and putting them in the dishwasher.
“You’re not exactly back where you started,” she said. “You’re pretty sure Trent Appleton is innocent, but you’re thinking someone might be trying to frame him. Right? That’s something, at least.”
“Yeah. Another month or two of detective work and I might be able to narrow it down. I’ll figure everything out about the time Everett’s body turns up in a shallow grave somewhere.”
“So you’re still thinking whoever has Everett is going to kill him on his twentieth birthday?”
“I think so. If someone’s trying to frame Appleton, then it only makes sense that Everett’s murder would be consistent with the others.”
“Any suspects?” she said.
“A bunch of them. Too many. But not one that really stands out at this point. I was so sure that it was the donor father. I was positive. I put all my eggs in that basket, which of course turned out to be a huge mistake. Now, like I said, I’m pretty much back to square one.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I need to lie down and shut my eyes for a while.”
She walked over and stood behind my chair and started rubbing my shoulders with her fingers. She was very good at it.
“I’ll go do some shopping and let you sleep,” she said. “How does that sound?”
“Okay.”
Normally, I would have invited her to come to bed with me, and I would have kissed her and held her and made love to her in the morning light. Part of me wanted to, the part that wasn’t on the brink of total physical and mental exhaustion. But the tank was empty. I was running on fumes. A sleek and beautiful racecar named Desire had gotten lapped by a rusty bucket of bolts named Fatigue, and the latter managed to take the checkered flag this time. It wasn’t even a close race.
I kissed Laurie and walked to the bedroom, took my clothes off and climbed under the sheets. I needed a shower, but I didn’t have the energy. You know you’re exhausted when you can’t even muster enough strength to wash yourself. I was beat. I was as tired as I’d ever been in my life, and I was completely disillusioned with the circumstances of this case.
And with life.
And with myself.
Nothing seemed to make sense anymore.
I’d given up music fourteen years ago. It had been a cruel, ruthless whore, and I’d walked away from it in the same way I would have walked away from a pile of maggots. It had taken my wife and my daughter and my best friends, and I’d vowed to never put my hands on a guitar again. And I’d kept that vow. It had been fourteen years since I so much as strummed a chord. I still had my instruments in storage, but that’s where they were going to stay. Forever.
I’d thought about music a lot of times, about the camaraderie of being in a band and the magic of being on stage when everything goes just right. When it’s good, it’s great. There’s nothing like it. I missed it, longed for it, but I refused to give in to its seductive temptations. Music had betrayed me in the worst possible way. It had killed my family, and then it had made a cocaine addict out of me. I’d dealt with that for a couple of years after the crash, and had ended up losing all my worldly possessions. But music had taken more from me than just things. It had taken a piece of me that I would never be able to get back.
The guitar and I had gotten a divorce. I was done with it. For me, music just wasn’t the driving force it had once been. It was difficult for me to even imagine that lifestyle anymore. We practically lived on the road back then. Sometimes we traveled on a bus, other times on a plane, and we always ended up in a hotel room that could have been anywhere. I was on stage six or seven nights a week, singing backup and shredding licks through a fifty thousand watt sound system, sweating and shouting and playing my heart out for thousands of screaming fans.
But that was yesterday. Today, I was Nicholas Colt, PI.
I’d been a private investigator for ten of the past fourteen years, and I was good at it. I’d been to conferences, and I’d gotten awards. I planned to write a book someday about all of my experiences as a detective. Maybe more than one. I was good at what I did. One of the best.
At least that’s what I’d thought before Everett Harbaugh walked into my life. Now I wasn’t so sure anymore. Was this really what I was cut out to do? Would someone better than me have been able to figure this out by no
w?
I didn’t feel like a private investigator at the top of his game anymore. I felt like a bumbling idiot.
Those were my thoughts as I closed my eyes and drifted off into blackness. It was the kind of sleep where your mind just completely shuts down. You don’t dream, and you don’t turn. You just lie there in one spot, oblivious to anything and everything. With every beat of your heart, another hour flies by. It’s like falling into an abyss. It’s the sleep of the dead.
When I finally regained consciousness, the clock on the bedside table said 2:03. I’d slept for almost four hours. I took a deep breath and tried to get up, but my arms and legs felt as though lead weights had been tied to them. Just ten more minutes, I told myself.
I closed my eyes again, and a million thoughts went swirling through my head.
Like a tornado.
A million thoughts, but only one that kept whizzing by repeatedly.
Shelby Spelling.
There was something very dark about her. She had totally trashed my Airstream camper, and she had popped the tires on my car. All because I’d smeared a bun full of hamburger sauce and a couple of packets of ketchup on her windshield.
I wondered what else she had planned for me.
Getting someone back for a harmless prank is one thing, but Shelby seemed intent on taking it to an unreasonable extreme. And if she had gone batshit ballistic on me for such a small thing, I wondered how far she might go for something bigger.
Something much bigger.
Something hurtful to her self-esteem.
Something emotionally devastating.
Something that drilled into the core of her being, speared her heart, plucked it out and discarded it like yesterday’s news.
Shelby had been jilted by a man. A man she was obsessed with. A man who consumed her thoughts every minute of every day.
A man named Everett Harbaugh.
Shelby had acted genuinely surprised when I told her that Everett was missing, but I was beginning to think it was just that. An act. I knew all along that what she felt for Everett wasn’t love, but I’d believed her when she said she would never do anything to hurt him. Now I wasn’t so sure.
I opened my eyes. I was fully awake now. Four hours of sleep had somewhat rejuvenated my capacity to think, and I started putting some things together quickly.
Whoever was trying to frame Trent Appleton must have had access to Everett’s information on the Sibling Boards, and I had a strong feeling now that it was Shelby. She could have gotten his user name and password from the receipt in his wallet, the same receipt I had gotten them from. And with a little research, she could have found out that Philip Davenport had been stabbed to death outside a convenience store on the night of his twentieth birthday. Philip’s death had been a random occurrence, a coincidence, and Shelby used it to her advantage. She drove down to Cocoa Beach and killed Stephanie Vowels on her twentieth birthday, knowing that someday, when the police finally put two and two together, it would appear as though a pattern had been established. Knowing it would appear as though the donor father was targeting all of the siblings created from his cryogenically preserved sperm.
There would have been no way for Shelby to know Trent Appleton’s identity at the time, but it didn’t matter. She didn’t need to know who he was. His identity was not important, and neither was his motive. All Shelby needed to know was that someone would eventually be blamed for murdering Philip Davenport, Stephanie Vowels, and Everett Harbaugh, and that it wouldn’t be her.
It was all very clear to me now. I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t seen it before. The perfect murder. It was genius, in a way, and Shelby Spelling certainly had the talent to pull it off. She had the talent, and the motivation, and the cunning devious mind. She had everything it took to make it all come together like clockwork.
I knew better than to be certain about anything. The Trent Appleton debacle had taught me that. I knew better than to be certain, but I definitely needed to take a second look at Shelby Spelling, and I needed to do it as quickly as possible.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I climbed out of bed and took a quick shower. It was 2:38 by the time I was ready to leave Laurie’s apartment. Edgar stood on the back of the couch meowing, begging me not to go. He’d really gotten attached to me. He loved me. That’s what I thought until I looked in the kitchen and saw that his food dish was empty. I dumped some dry cat food into his bowl, raked my fingers through his fur a couple of times, and hurried on out the door.
I shook my head as I walked past my vandalized Jimmy in the parking lot. The two flat tires made it look old and junky. Shelby had gotten me back, all right. Now she was going to get hers.
The Woof-A-Burger in Gainesville was a little over an hour away. It was Friday, and Shelby’s day off was Tuesday, so I figured she would be there. Rush hour hadn’t kicked in yet, so I didn’t think traffic would be an issue.
About halfway there, my cell phone vibrated. The caller ID said Bradley Harbaugh.
“This is Colt,” I said.
“I wanted to let you know that we got a phone call from the kidnapper a couple of hours ago. He’s demanding a ransom in the amount of twenty million dollars.”
“Are you sure it’s a he?”
“I’m just assuming it is,” Bradley said. “But maybe not. The voice was altered electronically, so I don’t know for sure. Why do you ask?”
“I was positive that his donor father kidnapped him,” I said. “Now I’m positive that he didn’t. Long story. Anyway, now I’m thinking that his ex-girlfriend is involved. I’m almost sure of it.”
“Shelby?”
“Yeah. She might be acting alone, or maybe she has an accomplice. With everything that has happened over the past couple of days, it would make more sense if there were at least two of them working this thing. So you know Shelby?”
“Everett mentioned her a few times when they were going out, but I’ve never met her.”
“She’s obsessed with him,” I said. “She was stalking him. I guess she figures if she can’t have Everett, then at least she can tap his family for some money. Have you notified the police yet?”
“Yes. And I’m expecting to hear from the FBI any minute.”
I was glad to hear that the feds were going to be involved now. This was working out better than I’d expected. Of course we still needed to find Everett, and nobody had a clue where he was, but he had a better chance of surviving now that the cavalry was on the way.
“Do you know where the ransom call came from?” I said. “Did it show up on your caller ID?”
“It was a local number. The police said it came from a pay phone outside a convenience store. They’re checking it out. They’re hoping to get some pictures of the caller from a surveillance camera.”
“Okay. And was there a time limit on the ransom?”
“Midnight tonight,” he said. “The money is to be transferred to an offshore bank account. The kidnapper said that once the transfer is confirmed, he’ll give us Everett’s location.”
“And you’re sure Everett’s still alive?”
“Yes. The kidnapper let me talk to him. We only exchanged a few words, but I know it was Everett that I spoke to. I’m one hundred percent certain of that. Supposedly, he’s tied up in the backseat of his own car, and there’s an explosive device planted in the trunk. If the money’s not transferred by midnight, the bomb will be detonated remotely with a cell phone.”
It made sense that Shelby had stolen Everett’s BMW from my lot at Lake Barkley. She’d probably had a key made on the sly back when they were dating. It just seemed like the kind of thing she would have done. Or Everett might have even given her a key. That was another possibility.
I looked at my watch. Midnight was the deadline for sure now, and it was only a little over eight hours away. Thinking about it put a knot in my stomach.
“We don’t have much time,” I said.
“Of course I’m going to pay the ransom. No
matter what the FBI suggests, I’m going to pay it.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell Bradley Harbaugh that his son was probably going to die whether he paid the ransom or not. That it was crucial we find him before midnight, regardless of what happened with the money. If Shelby was part of the team that had kidnapped Everett, he would be able to point the authorities in her direction immediately. Even if she planned to leave the country—which she almost certainly did—she wouldn’t want her identity known right away. She would need at least a day to move from one place to the other, a day without the hindrance of being watched for at all the airports.
That’s why Shelby had carefully planned for Everett’s donor father to be the primary suspect. While the police were chasing their tails with that false conclusion, as I had, she would have plenty of time to escape unnoticed. Of course Shelby didn’t know what I knew, that Trent Appleton was the donor and that he’d already been ruled out. As far as she knew, the police and the FBI would just now be starting to examine her bogus little trail of bread crumbs.
“I’m on my way to Gainesville right now,” I said. “When the FBI calls, tell them that Everett’s donor father had nothing to do with anything. It was Shelby all along.”
“Pardon me?”
“Just tell them that. I’ll explain it all later.”
“Okay.”
“Tell them Shelby works at the Woof-A-Burger on College Avenue. She’s the manager there. I’m guessing she’ll finish her shift today. That way, everything will appear to be normal. Plus, it will give her an alibi if she’s ever questioned. She couldn’t have called from a Jacksonville pay phone if she was working in Gainesville at the time the call was made, right?”
“Right. So if she didn’t make the call, it means there’s definitely more than one kidnapper.”
“Yeah. Nothing’s for sure yet, but that’s the way it looks right now. To tell you the truth, I’m figuring some of this out as we speak. Tell the FBI what I told you, that she was stalking Everett. I’ll try to make sure she sticks around until they can get there to question her. She and I have some unfinished business anyway, so it’ll seem natural that I paid her a visit.”