More words on the screen. A reporter asked Valentine a question, and then he said, “Yes, there was a possible sighting of Mr. Novak outside of Chattanooga, Tennessee. He evaded law enforcement in some type of green muscle car. We’re still working with local law enforcement to determine if we can get more information on the vehicle and track his whereabouts after he left Chattanooga.”
The live reporter came back on the air. Was he standing in front of Steve’s car-repair shop? I was sure Steve would keep my secret, but the negative publicity wouldn’t sit well with him. I wiped sweat off my forehead. In that time, the screen had changed again. They were now showing my picture—the one off my PI website.
Fuck!
A hand grabbed my arm. I whipped my head to the right. It was Mitch.
“We need to talk. Follow me,” he said, pulling me out the door.
I almost stumbled through the doorway, and we made it outside. The air was still and cold. Breath pumped into the dark sky. Mitch walked to his car, a silver Mercedes, and stopped on the driver’s side.
I was still on the sidewalk. “What is it, Mitch?”
“I said that we need to talk. In private.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Ozzie, I know.”
“Know what?” I was doing anything to put him off. But the tone of my voice was almost childlike.
He tilted his head. He looked very different now. He wasn’t joking around, firing off insensitive comments about Nicole or about having kids. He looked damn serious. He extended an arm toward the restaurant. “It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?”
I glanced over my shoulder to see if anyone was staring at me from the restaurant. Thankfully, there wasn’t. Not yet, anyway.
“It isn’t what you think.”
“I would hope not.” He opened his door and put a foot in. “You going to get in, or what?”
Part of me wondered if he had plans to be the hero and drive straight to the Bristol Police Department. “I don’t think it’s in my best interest to—”
“Would you listen to yourself, Ozzie? Dammit, I’m trying to help you out. Get in the fucking car before someone identifies you as the man on the TV screen.”
I turned my head to my car, which was parked on the side of the building.
“We’ll worry about your car later.”
“How did you know?” I asked, finally walking toward his Mercedes.
“Not many folks in Bristol own green muscle cars.”
He got in the driver’s side and turned on the engine as I opened the door. I looked again at my car—it was the only place where I controlled where I was going.
“You getting in, or do you really want to see the inside of a Bristol jail?”
“Okay, okay.” I got in and shut the door. My senses were invaded by the new-car smell, a combination of leather and probably something else scientists would eventually reveal was harmful to our health.
Mitch pulled out of the parking lot and turned onto the main road. He checked his rearview mirror twice in a span of twenty seconds. I checked the side mirror and saw headlights. “Is that a cop?”
“Just Mrs. Taylor. She goes to the grocery every night to buy her groceries for the next day.”
I looked at him.
“I’m not kidding. She actually does that. I guess retirement has its advantages. No need to plan ahead,” he said.
He flipped on his blinker and turned right.
“Where are you going?”
“To some place where we can talk in private and no one will find you. And no, it’s not a graveyard.”
“I’m really glad you clarified that for me, Mitch. Seriously, where—”
“My house.”
“Your house? But your kids are there; Cassie is there. She can’t find out, Mitch. You shouldn’t even know.”
“I have a guesthouse. That’s where I keep my office, remember?”
He’d mentioned that earlier on the phone, although I hadn’t seen it when I’d driven by. Which meant nothing—it wasn’t visible from the road, obviously. “Still, Mitch. Not wise to get your family involved.”
“They’ll never know. But while we’re driving, do you want to tell me what happened?”
I looked straight ahead. My mind was spinning, from the news report, from Mitch finding out about me being on the run. And I wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t wrapped up in this. What to do, what to do? I caught myself chewing on a nail—something I hadn’t done since elementary school.
“Ozzie, we go way back.”
“I know.” I tried to block the myriad of images from college that sat at my mind’s horizon. So many would include Nicole.
“Oz, I actually knew before I met you at Denny’s.”
I turned my head slowly. “What the hell did you just say?”
“You heard me.”
“Was that all an act back there?”
“I wasn’t sure what to think. I just knew something was up. You don’t show up in a town across the country and call someone at almost midnight without any warning. I did a quick online search, and I saw stories. But here’s your chance. Tell me what really happened.”
My entire head felt like it was on fire. “I’m not sure I can trust you.”
“What? Are you crazy?”
“Right now, it feels like the whole fucking world has been knocked off its axis, Mitch. Nothing makes sense. So, I’m probably more than a little crazy.”
Silence for a few seconds.
“Ozzie, it’s been a long time, I realize that. But I’ve kept in touch with Nicole some because of the conference.”
Another wave of heat washed across my body. Just hearing her name made me feel like I was breaking out in hives. But I had to stop. I couldn’t let seemingly innocuous things impact my ability to think straight. To find her killer, I had to get it together, to assess people and statements with the utmost logic. Minimize, if not eliminate, the emotion.
“I have questions about the marketing conference,” I said.
“Good. I’ll tell you everything I know, but can you throw me a bone, man? I mean, Nicole was my friend too, and I read these bizarre stories about her…well, I’ll let you tell me.”
I almost didn’t want to repeat it, but I did. Every last detail, right up to the part of walking into the apartment after Nicole had died and feeling like I’d just had my soul carved out of my being.
“Holy crap, Oz,” he said, catching his breath a moment at a red light. “How…I mean, who…?”
He looked like he’d been punched in the gut.
“I know. It still seems like I’m stuck in the vortex of an alternate universe, as if none of this is actually real.”
“Divers found her finger with the rings still on it?”
I nodded as he pushed the gas pedal, and the Mercedes purred away from the light as if we were floating in the air. “When Valentine showed it to me, I wasn’t sure what to do. Hold it, not hold it.” The image of her finger flashed before my eyes. It wasn’t a clean cut. That made my stomach churn.
“Whoever did this, Oz, is sick.”
“‘Sick’ doesn’t even begin to describe it. Someone planned this, planted evidence to make it look like I’d orchestrated the killing. It’s just…” My voice trailed off.
“Tell me more about this planted evidence.”
I gave him as much information as I knew about the emails, which wasn’t much.
“So you’ve never kidded around with anyone online about—”
“Hell no. I’d never joke about killing Nicole. And on top of that, these emails supposedly show me soliciting some guy to kill her. So, apparently, the emails aren’t about me ‘joking around.’ They’re more explicit. They’d have to be if the DA’s office told Arie that they had a slam-dunk case.”
“Arie?”
“Oh, he’s my attorney. Used to be my dad’s one and only partner at Novak and Novak.”
He gave me a double-take.
�
��It’s a long story. I don’t want to get into it now.”
He turned down his street. “Do you know if they’ve found her body yet?”
“Honestly, I’ve had very little contact with the real world since I took off. Did you see anything in the stories you read?”
“Come to think of it, no.” He tapped a finger on the steering wheel.
“What are you thinking, Mitch?”
He sighed. “Lots of things. Lots of memories of Nicole, back in the day with you at school, of seeing her at the conference. How normal she was, and how happy she was as well. And now seeing you on the run. It’s a lot to deal with. And I’m just wondering how to take it all in, how to help you, man.”
Mitch seemed genuinely upset, although his act at Denny’s threw me off, made me question his authenticity. He’d probably just been trying to figure out if he was sitting across from a murderer. “Hey,” I said, drawing a glance from him. “I appreciate you not jumping to conclusions and giving me an opportunity to explain what really happened.”
Another sigh. “I didn’t really think about it. I just went with my gut. The news reports weren’t talking about the friend I knew. And now I’ve confirmed it.”
He slowly turned the Mercedes into his driveway, which had a few carefully placed landscape lights on each side. Very subtle. The driveway went farther back than I’d thought possible. As we slowed to a stop, I could see the small cottage down a path amongst a bunch of thick shrubs. The pines behind the property towered into the sky, a full moon casting a glow across the treetops.
“Crap,” he said.
“What?” I followed his gaze back to the house.
A light was on.
“That’s the kitchen. Cassie’s up. She might be wondering where I went, what’s going on.”
“Maybe one of the kids woke up.”
“Yeah, maybe.” He blew out a breath. He still didn’t seem too enamored with family life.
“Let me go in, take care of her, and I’ll meet you in the guesthouse. The door is unlocked.”
We agreed to open and shut the car doors at the same time. It worked flawlessly. I ducked down and quickly scooted down the path until I was out of sight from the lighted kitchen.
Questions still bounced around in my head, but for the first time since I’d dropped off Mackenzie at Tito’s place, I felt like I had an ally in this fight to find Nicole’s killer. I wasn’t in this alone.
18
I took the last bite of a tuna sandwich and then washed it down with a Diet Coke.
“I could tell you were hungry,” Mitch said, sitting at his desk in the front room of the cottage. The back of his leather chair rose above his head. “Hell, you look like you’ve lost weight.”
My jeans were a little loose. “I guess it could be all the stress. I don’t know. But thanks for the sandwich. Cassie didn’t think anything weird was going on?”
His shoulders and head moved, but the signal was ambiguous.
“Do I need to leave? I don’t want to get you guys involved for harboring a fugitive. And I can’t afford to get caught. As I told you earlier, if they pick me up, I might never have the chance to find out Nicole’s real killer, the person who set me up. And I might not see Mackenzie as a free man for a long, long time.”
He held up both hands. “I’m handling Cassie. Don’t worry.”
Handling Cassie. Sounded like he viewed her as more of a nuisance than a wife. Reminded me of my attitude toward some of my old lawyer clients, the ones who fought against every bit of advice I gave them.
And look at me now. The antithesis of someone working within the system to seek justice.
“Everything okay?”
He moved folders from one side of his desk to the other, squeezing them under one of two monitors. “Remember me telling you that you don’t want kids? Well, that part was true. I love them and all, but it’s put a strain on us…actually me.”
I wanted to ask more questions, but I wasn’t sure I had the emotional bandwidth.
“No worries, though. Every relationship has its ups and downs.” He stared at me an extra second.
“So you know about the, uh…history between me and Nicole?”
He pressed his lips together, leaned his forearms on the desk. “Nicole opened up after everyone left the first Happy Hour. She started telling me how happy she was, both of you were, but that it had been a difficult path to get where you are now. She then kind of spilled everything out. She was still so ashamed of what she’d done. Could have been the wine talking, I suppose, but she seemed to still have guilt about it all.”
It felt odd that she’d shared so much with Mitch, but at the same time, a lot of people in Austin were aware of what had happened just because of the public nature of dealing with the conniving murderer, Calvin Drake.
Calvin Drake. That was someone who seemed to have the wherewithal to pull off something like this. He was behind bars, as far as I knew. But I’d heard of a few people who’d been able to make things happen from inside the walls of a prison. He had money, and he definitely had motive. Nicole and I had teamed up to uncover his scheme to try to bribe an FDA official to push his Alzheimer’s drug through the approval process. He’d killed several people and was about to do the same to us. Thankfully, my APD friend Brook and a local FBI agent named Bowser stepped up just before Drake and his goon squad finished us off.
“What are you thinking, Oz?”
I told him my theory about Drake.
He nodded, grabbed his keyboard, and started clacking away.
I asked what he was doing.
“I can’t remember my phone number unless I write it down. It helps me retain the information and think through it.” He stopped, stared at the screen. “The question for me comes back to how we get our hands on the email evidence.”
“Not sure it’s possible.”
“You said you know someone on the APD. You don’t think she’d do you a favor?”
“She’s lying on a beach in the Caribbean right now. She just went through a tough time. Real tough. She’s out of pocket. So, that’s why I’m trying to take another angle. Figure out who might have the motive. It’s weird that I traveled across the country to realize that Drake, of all people, could be behind this.”
“Funny how the mind works, or doesn’t, when it’s under stress,” Mitch said.
I removed the folded packets of paper from my back pocket. “I got this list from the events coordinator at the Grand Hyatt. I was wondering if any of these people might be connected to what happened to Nicole. I knew it was a long shot.”
Mitch picked up the attendee list and sifted through it for a moment; then he grabbed the sessions list. “How’d you convince…. What’s his name?”
“Joshua.”
“Right, Joshua.”
I grinned. “I put on my actor’s hat and did a decent job of convincing him he had to help me solve some unrelated crime to make sure we kept everything from going public. You know, sex scandal.”
“But he knows your name?”
“He thinks I’m David Lee. Well, he did until his blockhead security guy came after me.”
I explained the whole getaway sequence. “You’re a cat, Oz. Nine lives, my man.”
“I just wish I could give one to Nicole.”
Neither of us moved for a moment. Then Mitch broke the silence. “Oz, I’m so sorry for your loss. The world is not the same without Nicole.”
I glanced down at the hardwood floors, ran a finger along the wood on the arm of my chair. I kept my emotions in check and huffed out a breath. Mitch picked up the attendance list. His eyes focused on the first page. He rubbed his chin.
“See anything?”
He twisted his lips. “Well, I know we have this idea that Calvin Drake might be behind it. But I’m wondering…”
“What?”
“Well, Nicole mentioned this Elsa Brady person.”
“You know what happened with her?” I sat taller in my chair.
His cell phone buzzed on the desk. He glanced at it and then set it back down.
“A client texting you this late?”
“No, just the ball-and-chain.” He said it like Cassie was an IRS agent. Another dig at Cassie. Marital strife—I wasn’t sure I could deal with more drama.
“Anyway, this Elsa Brady sounds like she’s the vindictive type. I met her a couple of times. Wow, she’s a handful.”
“Do you think she’s capable of taking a vendetta that far?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Normally, I’d say no. But people, in their private lives, might know someone who’s a little shady, and then….you never know.”
Sounded as if Mitch had read his share of conspiracy novels. But that was why I needed his mind on this case. “What do you think, Mitch?”
He clacked on his keyboard. “Making a list of suspects and any next steps we can take.”
Damn, he’s organized too. I felt re-energized even if it was after one in the morning.
A few minutes later, Mitch was reading through the list. He popped a finger against the page. “Harvey Reese. Can’t believe I didn’t think of this guy earlier.”
“Never heard Nicole mention his name.”
“Yeah, he’s a strange one.”
“How so?”
“Just odd. Most marketing people, outside of the data-analysis types, are extroverts. They mingle with others naturally and just blend into the conversations. This guy…”
“You said he was ‘strange.’ So what? How does that matter regarding Nicole?” I wanted him to stop thinking and start talking, but I also knew there was a mental process for working through the possibilities. Plus, it seemed like he was getting tired. When he looked up from the monitor, his eyes appeared to have sunken in a bit.
He wiped his face and leaned his elbows on the desk. “I keep thinking you can read my mind or that Nicole gave you the exact rundown of everything that happened at the conference.”
Nicole keeping secrets. I was hoping we wouldn’t have to travel down that path full of mines.
“Wait,” he said. “Come to think of it, Harvey’s been doing this the last couple of years. At least.”
“Doing what?”
“And for that matter, I saw something last year,” he said, nodding and staring off toward the corner. I turned and saw a picture of the San Francisco Bay, with a trail of thick fog hovering above the lapping water. I could practically smell the salt coming off the pier as Nicole and I stood near the end, my arms bear-hugging her.
ON The Run (An Ozzie Novak Thriller, Book 6) (Redemption Thriller Series 18) Page 9