Courage Matters: A Ray Courage Mystery (Ray Courage Private Investigator Series Book 2)

by R. Scott Mackey

  Then I got mad. Trujillo had pushed me around already. Now somebody had the nerve to break into my own house, not bothering even to conceal the fact, and here I was considering options. No way. The option: go deal with the scumbag—whoever it was—now.

  I unlocked the side door to the garage. The sun had just set leaving enough dim light shining through a window to maneuver around the garage without having to turn on the overhead lights. I found the old Wade Boggs Louisville Slugger that I hadn’t swung in earnest in probably 25 years and then headed for the door that led to the utility room.

  The utility door creaked so I opened it extra slow, entering head and shoulders first, all senses at the ready. The intruder moved around in the kitchen, beyond the next door, and I could hear cabinet doors opening and closing, a clattering of plates as he nosed through my stuff.

  What the hell? I said to myself, taking a deep breath, and shoving open the door into the kitchen, the baseball bat loaded to swing.

  Startled, she jumped about a foot in the air and screamed. I lowered the bat, aghast at what I’d almost done.

  “Sara, what are you doing here? Why aren’t you in LA?” I said, at once relieved, surprised and happy.

  “You scared the shit out of me, Dad. What are you doing?”

  “I thought attacking a burglar, but it turns out just making a fool out of myself.” I set the bat down, went to her and we hugged, long and tight. When we separated I kissed her forehead.

  “This is such a great surprise. Don’t you have classes?”

  “I can miss a day now and again, especially for my own father’s birthday. Happy birthday, Dad.”

  I just then noticed that the kitchen was in full production mode. Pots and pans that hadn’t been used in years were simmering on the stove. The oven was aglow and utensils and mixing bowls cluttered the usually bare kitchen countertops.

  “I completely forgot. Is it today?” Living alone and without a significant other, my birthday didn’t get much attention in the Ray Courage household.

  “Yes, it’s today you goofball. You are so clueless sometimes.” She wore an old apron, which I hadn’t seen in the house in years, over black pants and a beige top. She remained the image of her mother: trim, with green eyes, light brown hair, and a quick, warm smile. “I was going to fly up and take you to dinner as a surprise, but I was able to catch an earlier flight so I thought I’d make you dinner instead.”

  “Even better. How did you know I wasn’t going to be out on a hot date?”

  “I decided to roll the dice.” She giggled.

  “Very funny.”

  “You haven’t exactly been Cassanova lately. I figured my chances were good.” She walked over to the refrigerator. “Do you want some wine?”

  She reached into the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of Kunde Chardonnay. She started towards the cabinet where I keep the glasses.

  “No thanks. I’ll stick with beer,” I said.

  She shrugged, filled her own glass about half full, and returned the bottle to the refrigerator.

  “You look tired,” she said. We were sitting at the kitchen table. I sipped a glass of Newcastle Pale Ale. “Retirement is supposed to be relaxing.”

  I shrugged and let the comment go. It had been months since I’d seen Sara and I didn’t want to spend our night together rehashing recent events. Instead, she brought me up to date on law school, her new boyfriend, and her summer job offers in San Francisco and Los Angeles. We might have sat there for hours had the timer not started beeping.

  “I forgot to ask,” I said. “What are we having for dinner?”

  “Well monsieur, we are starting with an appetizer of crab cakes with a very nice lime aioli sauce.” Her bad fake French accent reminded me of Pepe Le Pew. “’Zen for the second course we will be enjoying a papaya-shrimp salad, followed by an entre of poulet a l’orange accompanied by braised broccoli rabe and chateau potatoes. And for dessert tonight we will be serving fruit torte from Freeport Bakery along with a very, very nice Cotto Vintage port from your neighborhood Raley’s Supermarket.”

  “Wow, I’m impressed,” I said. “And I’m guessing by the smell that the food will be better than that accent.”

  She threw a kitchen towel at me that I managed to duck. God, it was good having her home again, if only for one day. If I did nothing else in my life, I got one thing right. I’d raised, along with my wife, a terrific human being. If that was my life’s work, my major accomplishment, then the world would be a better place and I would die a satisfied and happy man.

  She insisted on serving the entire meal herself, but I wouldn’t let her, helping set the table and toting out the serving dishes. The meal was better than billed. Somehow between law classes, working part-time as a municipal court clerk, and volunteering at the local elementary school four hours a week, Sara had time to become an accomplished cook. I ate too much and we agreed to rest before attempting the fruit torte and the Cotto Vintage. I started a pot of coffee before we began clearing the remaining dishes.

  “I ran into Jill Stroud the other day,” I said as I bent over to scrape the remains of my plate into the trash bin under the sink.

  “You did? How is she?” Sara seemed surprised, either because I had run into Jill or that I had brought it up.

  “Fine. She’s doing well. She knew I had started my PI firm so she gave me some work. For her father actually.” That was as far as I wanted to go into the business with Lionel Stroud and Andrew Norris.

  “When was this?” Sara continued casually putting dishes into the dishwasher but I could tell the subject interested her more than she let on.

  “Just the other day. It’s no big deal. You seemed to like her back when we dated so I thought I’d mention it.” Mr. Casual, cool as hell.

  “And…”

  “And nothing,” I said. “Just saw her a couple of times is all.”

  “Oh, a couple of times is it now?”

  “Geez, Sara, you sound like Yoda all of a sudden.”

  “Are you two, you know, like…”

  “No.”

  “Is she dating anyone at the moment?”

  “Not that I know of,” I said. “But that doesn’t really matter.”

  “Sure it matters. I never really understood why you two broke up in the first place.”

  “It was a lot of things. I was busy finishing that damn text book, her team had made it to the NCAA regional, and she had bought that rental house and was stressing out about the cost to fix it up.”

  “That’s called life. Those aren’t reasons for breaking up.”

  I laughed. Sara called bullshit and she got me.

  “We were fighting a lot. With your mom I never fought. Oh, maybe once every two years when we happened to be in bad moods at the same time but never days in a row. Jill and I, we argued.”

  “What about?” Sara had finished loading the dishwasher and started back towards the dining room to retrieve the final couple of plates.

  “I don’t know. Stupid stuff. We were both used to calling our own shots, you know. She runs a successful softball program, I was a half-way decent college professor with a fair amount of clout on campus. It was probably just a clash of egos.”

  “When I saw you two together I never saw that. I thought you loved each other”

  “We did.”

  “Then what do you think really happened?” Sara said. She stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room, both hands holding dirty plates.

  Maybe it was the couple of beers and the half glass of Kunde that I decided to drink with dinner. Maybe because I just needed to say it to someone for the first time. Whatever the reason, I told Sara.

  “She said that I had never gotten over your mother. And that until I did there would never be a place for her in my life.” I turned to the sink and rinsed off a plate, blinking back a tear.

  “Dad,” Sara said and she came up from behind and hugged me. “I love you so much.”

  eighteen


  After I drove Sara to the airport in the morning and headed back into town through the early rush hour traffic something Rubia told me earlier in the week struck me. I called her as soon as I returned home.

  “You said something the other day about Norris investing money with some investment firm,” I said.

  “What time is it?” she said.

  “Late enough for you to be out of bed and at the office.”

  “I had a long night.” She moaned. “I think I may have found Mister Right. At least if I remember correctly.”

  “I’m happy for you. Now, what was the deal with the investments?”

  “Just a minute.” I could hear her over the phone, padding across the room, riffling through papers. “Here it is, in his bank records. Shows that for the last two months Norris has had automated transfers to an investment firm. Five grand a month.”

  “Who was he making the payment to?”

  “Let’s see. Looks like an outfit called Ziebell Financial Services, LLC.” She spelled Ziebell for me.

  “Does it say where they’re located?”

  “No, man, it’s just a line on a checking account statement. You want me to find out where they are?”

  “No, that’s okay.”

  I hung up the phone and fired up the computer in my home office. I entered Ziebell Financial Services into the Google search box. This yielded more than a dozen firms of the same name, located in various parts of the country. The firms did not appear to be part of a chain or franchise, with differing logos and color schemes on their respective Websites, and while the principals at each firm shared the same surname the first names included Walter, Richard, Thomas and Mark on the first four links I checked out. The fifth name on the list appeared to be the one I was looking for. The company was located in Fair Oaks, less than thirty minutes away. Their Website did not list office hours, but I did learn a little about the firm’s owner, Craig Ziebell, including that he belonged to Del Paso Country Club.

  Two blocks after pulling out of my driveway, I noticed a white Honda Accord pull behind me and continue to follow as I merged onto Highway 50. I held a steady 65 miles per hour in the middle lane, the Accord, now several cars behind, kept pace in the same lane. Approaching Sunrise Boulevard I eased into the right lane and took the exit, turning left onto Sunrise and continuing about three miles to Ziebell’s address. The Accord continued to follow at a distance, though when I pulled into the parking lot off Sunrise it continued on. I looked over my left shoulder as it passed, but the Accord’s speed and tinted windows denied a view of anyone in the car.

  It wasn’t the same car that Trujillo drove the day before. Still, he could have changed cars. Maybe it was someone who worked for Trujillo. I put the odds of a pure coincidence at about one in five. If it was Trujillo or someone who worked for him, I doubted they would put Ziebell’s address together with Norris unless they thought something might be amiss with the investments as I did. Even if they had linked Ziebell and Norris, there was nothing wrong with me wanting to talk with a broker about my 401(k).

  I parked and walked to Ziebell’s office only to find the front door locked, the blinds drawn. The morning’s Wall Street Journal lay rubber banded and undisturbed on the mat at the front door. A second Journal, this one from the day before, lay next to it. I returned to my car and called the phone number listed on Ziebell’s Website. No answer, not even an answering machine. I decided to wait in the car where I could watch the office entrance.

  The office complex housed maybe two dozen different businesses in its single story. I counted four of the shingle-sided buildings clustered in neatly landscaped grounds shaded by tall pines and leafy maples. A look at the directory had showed a mix of financial services companies, a couple of lawyers, at least three accounting firms, several psychologists, some marketing communications firms, and others whose company names gave no indication about the nature of their business.

  The early morning clouds had moved east, revealing a deep blue sky and the promise of a nice spring day. For the better part of two hours I watched the occasional car drive up, the driver entering one of the many external doors that led to the individual office spaces. Now and again, someone would leave. I skimmed a brochure I had picked up from a plastic document holder on the side of the office directory kiosk. I learned that Fair Oaks Executive Suites featured monthly or yearly leases, shared conference rooms, free parking, single, double and triple suite spaces, a shared kitchenette and restrooms, and a daily cleaning service. Fascinating stuff. At one point, I counted sixteen crows on the cyclone fence at the far end of the parking lot. My powers of observation continued to dazzle me.

  As bad as I felt for Andrew Norris, I wasn’t convinced that he was the pure innocent that he appeared. It was more hunch than anything, but it did strike me as odd that he would suddenly start investing five thousand dollars a month with another broker when he worked for the most prestigious and successful brokerage firm in the region. Why would he suddenly do that? Maybe because he didn’t trust Stroud and he stopped making investments with his own brokerage and started doing so with this Ziebell. That was the most plausible explanation. But it didn’t ring entirely true because Norris’s bank statements didn’t show any previous transfers to a Stroud account.

  After another thirty minutes my patience had run out. Rather than waste the drive, I got out of the car and went to the business located directly next to Ziebell’s. Evergreen Mortgage and Loan consisted of a reception counter with two offices directly behind it. No one staffed the reception area and one of the offices was unlit.

  “Can I help you?” a portly bald man said. He had heard me enter and emerged from the lighted office carrying a legal-sized piece of yellow paper in one hand. He looked at me over a pair of reading glasses.

  “Sorry to bother you,” I said. “I had an appointment next door with Mr. Ziebell but he isn’t there. Have you seen him?”

  He shook his head.

  “Any idea where he might be?” I said.

  “I don’t know anything about the man. He comes by maybe once a week, stays an hour or so and leaves. Coming and going is the only time I see him. He keeps to himself.”

  “You’ve never talked to him?”

  “Tried to once,” he said. “The guy looked at me like I was speaking Martian or something. He just turned and went into his office. After that, I figured why try to be friendly with a jerk like that.”

  “So you’ve never seen clients visit him?”

  “I told you all I know. I see him on rare occasion. Never seen anyone else come or go. Sorry I can’t help you.” He started to read the paper in his hand, his cue for me to leave.

  I started driving back home, thinking about my next steps, maybe how to track down Ziebell, when I was distracted. The same Honda Accord pulled into traffic three cars behind me. I downgraded the odds of it being coincidence to one in a hundred.

  nineteen

  Back on the campus of Sacramento State University, I realized how much I liked the place. The unrushed ambiance of students coming and going on a beautiful spring afternoon soothed and reinvigorated even someone my age. Jill’s flight had come in at noon and she and I agreed to have a mid-afternoon lunch at the faculty diner. We met at her office and started the half-mile or so walk across campus.

  “What do you think it means?” she said.

  “I don’t really know,” I said. “It might really be that Norris thought he was better off investing with Ziebell instead of your father.”

  “I suppose. Especially if he was telling clients that there was some question about my dad’s firm.”

  “I just don’t get why all of a sudden two months ago he starts investing five grand a month.” The only way to answer that, I knew, was to track down Ziebell.

  We crossed the street fronting the Athletic Department, waiting as three cars drove past, likely in search of the rare afternoon parking space. We then turned right and walked toward the library.

  “Are
you tired from traveling?”

  “I’m fine. We had to make-up two games from rainouts in February. So we played a doubleheader yesterday and it was worth the trip. Winning both games in Idaho puts us in first place, a game ahead of Loyola.”

  “Nice. Your dad would be proud.” I regretted the words as soon as they had come out of my mouth.

  We walked in silence until we reached the library, where we turned left to the Student Union complex.

  “Jill, I’m sorry. I know—”

  “You don’t need to apologize,” she said. “I’m over all that. My dad is a jerk about some things. Make that most things.” She laughed. “But he is, in the end, my father. And being daughter to Lionel Stroud isn’t like I’m disadvantaged.”

  “And you were worried enough about him to have me help him,” I said. “And what a job I’ve done. Gotten one of his employees killed, become a murder suspect, royally pissed off a police detective, and alienated your father. All in a day’s work.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up. None of it is your fault. If anyone’s to blame it’s me for getting you in the middle of it.”

  “I will figure this whole thing out,” I said.

  “Ray, I really think you should back off. Let the police take care of it. You’ll just get yourself into trouble.”

  “It’s what I do best.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Jill, if I don’t figure this out I’m afraid the police will find a way to charge me. Hell, they think that your dad hired me to kill Norris. All I need to do is find out who might have wanted to kill him, then I’ll turn that information over to the police and be done with it. But until I do, every time I look over my shoulder Trujillo will be there.”