“Excuse me, Mrs. Greer, I heard you were closing the theater. We’re planning an auction and fashion show for HAT—the Homeless Advocacy Team, that is. We don’t want to cancel it. My friend Tessa and I are willing to make it happen, if you’ll let us continue. The gala would bring in a lot of money for a good cause.”
“Ah, I see. One thing you must realize about the Greer family is that we don’t like to be in the spotlight. Austin, however, was an exception to the rule, if you will. The poor, dear man—just look what happened because of his foolishness.”
“I don’t understand.”
“My dear, those of us with money, we can be targeted. I don’t want to be paranoid, but there truly are people out to get us.”
I had the sudden realization that Amanda Greer was not well. No wonder Austin had told me to come here. I didn’t think Amanda would have ever left her house to visit my studio, or anywhere else, for that matter.
“Is that what you think happened? That someone killed Austin because of his wealth?”
“Of course it is. Serves him right for venturing out into the world, I’d say. That amazing chandelier—it just crashed to the ground. What are the chances it would hit Austin and not someone else?”
It was a good question, actually. According to Zachary, the support cables had been tampered with, but no one could be sure Austin had been the intended victim.
“HAT really needs the money. It sounds like there are a lot of really beneficial programs that won’t get funded without the money they need to raise. And there are a lot of hardworking volunteers who are going to be disappointed if the event is canceled. HAT was important to Austin—I thought you might want to continue with the event in his memory.”
“Jax, you have been so kind in coming today. How can I say no? Of course—carry on! Just don’t plan on seeing me at the event. Nika, please call Daniel and have him get in touch with me about continued funding for the theater.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Nika.
“Oh! And since it’s an auction, I have a wonderful idea. How would you like a donation of an auction item?” Amanda asked.
“That would be terrific. We are a little short on jewelry for the models to wear ever since Frankie Lawton left and took his necklaces with him.”
“Good riddance to bad rubbish. That’s all I have to say about Frankie. So, now, let’s see what we can find for you that would be truly spectacular.” Amanda entered a small storeroom, which contained necklaces made from extra-large silver beads. “Now, I didn’t make this necklace, but it was made by a wonderful designer in Thailand. I’m sure it will bring in top dollar.”
Amanda handed the strand to Nika.
“Please wrap this up for Jax,” she told her.
“I’m wondering if perhaps you’d like to donate something else. These are for a special order,” Nika said, taking the necklace and attempting to put it back with the others.
“Oh, I’m sure we can let one go,” Amanda said, placing her hand on top of Nika’s and stopping her from returning the necklace to the shelf in the storeroom. Nika hesitated, then did as she was told.
TEN
As I crossed the Greer’s vast driveway, I got a call from Zachary.
“Hi. Did you get my message? I want to explain what you saw yesterday at my house. You see, that was my vet, well, actually—”
“Jax, can you slow down a minute? We need to talk.” Zachary sounded serious, more serious than usual, which made me nervous.
“Perhaps you should take me out to lunch?” I said with a laugh, trying to lighten up the mood.
“Sure. Seafood? We could go to the new restaurant out in Ballard.”
“Sounds divine. Pick me up at noon?”
“See you then. And Jax, I’m sorry I was so stern yesterday.”
I nearly laughed, hearing him use the word I’d used so often to describe him. I was nervous about what Zachary wanted to talk with me about. Could this be a break-up lunch? I hoped not. I’d find out soon enough. In the meantime, I was going to have to practice my speech about why he’d found me half-undressed with a strange man drinking wine in my living room.
I spent the time before Zachary picked me up cleaning up around the house. I wasn’t really a neat freak, but I did like things orderly, at least in the house. In the studio, it was another story. It was often in a state of moderately controlled chaos. I also took some time to get dressed for my lunch date. I wasn’t sure what kind of date this was—perhaps it was even our last—but I didn’t want to think about that. I slipped on a Val-approved lavender T-shirt. She approved of it because it hugged my curves nicely, more than many of the other baggy shirts I owned, and had a nice deep-V neckline. I slipped into my stretchy cropped black pants and put on a purple teardrop-shaped glass pendant on a short silver chain. I didn’t think my lime green high top sneakers would be appropriate for the restaurant, so I slid on my favorite red leather clogs. Then I went to the bathroom to put on some makeup, what little of it I wore, and fixed up my hair with a little dab of styling wax Val had insisted I use.
Zachary picked me up as planned, and we headed toward the restaurant.
“So. I’m going to come right out and say what we need,” he said, looking straight ahead as he drove. His sunglasses masked his eyes, giving me few hints about what was on his mind.
“‘We?’”
“The department. You see, Jax, you’ve stumbled into something we’ve been trying to break open for over a year.”
“Break open?” I breathed a sigh of relief. This wasn’t about him breaking up with me, at least not yet.
“Yes, you see, there has been a suspicion for a long time that the Chanticleer Theater is some sort of a money laundering operation. As you can imagine, the murder of Austin Greer must be taken in the context of what else we know about his family and business. And, of course, it means this is more than just a homicide case.”
I decided to wait for Zachary to say more, but he didn’t. And I had no idea what to say. Driving in silence, we arrived at the marina a few minutes later. Being a gentleman, he opened the car door for me, and we walked together into the Neptuna Restaurant.
“Reservation for three,” Zachary told the hostess.
“Three?” I asked.
“Jax, I invited you here because I want you to meet my partner for this investigation, Bev Marley,” he said as we approached our table.
Bev Marley was pushing sixty years old, with brassy highlights on a well-lacquered helmet of hair and a black pantsuit that looked like it came from the clearance rack at Sears. She reached out and shook my hand with a ferocity commensurate with her solid stature.
“Officer Marley, but you can call me Bev. I’m from the Washington State Financial Crimes Unit,” she said.
“Wait. I don’t understand.” I turned to Zachary. “Don’t you usually want me to stay far, far away from your investigations? This seems like you actually want me to be involved.”
“That’s because we do, hon,” Bev said. “I can’t go sneaking around that theater. I would stick out like a sore thumb. And my boy Zee, here…” My boy Zee? I wanted to burst out laughing. “He’s not much help; everyone gets real skittish when there’s been a murder and he comes snooping around.”
“And so you want me to do what, exactly?”
“We want you to find out where the Greers’ money is coming from. What are they bringing into the state and selling—drugs? Girls? Weapons? And if they’re bringing in money from some illicit source, how are they laundering it?”
I looked at Zachary for support.
“Jax, I have all the confidence in the world in you,” Zachary said, taking my hand and giving it a smooch. Annoyed, I pulled my hand away from him. I was in no mood for him to sweet talk me into helping him when he’d spent so much time discouraging me in the past. Still, I was intrigued.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked again.
“We need you to get onto the computer systems at the theater—see if you can find their financial statements,” Bev said.
“I can’t believe you are actually asking me to help you. Isn’t this dangerous?”
“We will always be close by,” Zachary said.
“And here’s the thing, hon,” Bev said. “We’re going to mic you up. That way if you get into trouble, we can get there, hopefully quick enough.”
“Hopefully quick enough?” This whole thing was making me nervous. I felt like I was chum being thrown off the stern of a boat to lure in a great white shark.
Bev pulled a plastic bag out of her purse. It contained a small, cylindrical black microphone, about the size of my pinkie fingernail, attached to a thin cable and battery pack. She slid it across the table to me.
“This is the mic? Isn’t it sort of obvious?” I asked.
“Sorry, we don’t have anything else. Usually people just stick it in their cleavage if they can. Of course, that assumes you’re wearing some sort of open neck blouse and have somewhere to hide the battery pack.” She pushed the mic closer to me. I picked it up and put it in my purse. “Glad you’re on our team.”
“Do I have a choice?” I asked.
“Of course you have a choice,” Bev said, “but from what I’ve heard from my boy Zee, you’re a pretty good sleuth. I figured you would want to help us catch the bad guys.”
“That’s right. Jax has helped solve three other murder cases. Strictly speaking, she should have left it to the professionals, but she did some amazing work,” Zachary said. I wanted to kick him under the table for saying I should have left the work to the professionals. Although it was nice to hear him say I’d done some amazing work in catching some murderers.
I’d been wanting to help. I just didn’t realize I was going to have to catch bad guys while wearing a microphone and having police listen in on my every move. I had high hopes Zachary would come to appreciate my sleuthing skills if I was successful in helping on this case. It was a lot to wish for, but I was going to try my best to help Bev and Zachary.
“Now, Jax, hon. I want you to keep that mic on whenever you’re going to be at the theater or the Greer residence, okay? You just act natural and try and find out what you can. This is not what you’d call our usual protocol, so I think you need to keep this on the down-low. Got it?”
“Gotcha.”
A waitress appeared with a to-go bag and handed it to Bev. “I’m going to leave you two lovebirds alone. I’ve got my lunch here,” Bev said, taking the bag of food and peeking inside.
We said our goodbyes to Bev, and Zachary opened his menu.
“Excuse me,” I said, hooking my finger over the top edge of his menu and pulling it down. “So, is this Bev’s case now?”
“No. I’m still working on the homicide aspect.”
“Are you really considering the girls as suspects?”
“Unfortunately, yes, they remain under consideration, but some of the cast and crew members from Hamlet were at the theater after the models were, so I’m focusing on them as well.”
“So the girls aren’t in the clear?”
“No. Not yet. But we do have a clue from Austin that I’m working on, so you’ll be relieved to hear Tessa’s girls are no longer at the top of my person-of-interest list.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? He’s sent a message from beyond the grave?” I asked.
“He tried to write a message as he lay dying after the chandelier fell, but we don’t know what it means.”
“How? What did he write?”
“He scraped the letters M and O into the stage floor with a broken piece of glass. So far, we haven’t been able to determine who that might be. There are no teen models with those initials, nor any Hamlet cast members. For all we know, it could mean nothing.”
“Seems to me it’s not nothing—it would have taken a lot of effort to write those letters,” I said, wracking my brain to come up with who or what MO could be.
“We’re trying to determine if the suspect took Austin Greer’s cell phone prior to killing him, to prevent him from contacting someone.”
“I know for a fact Mr. Greer didn’t carry a phone, but his assistant Nika did,” I said.
“Yeah, Nika. We’ve not been able to uncover much about her so far. My team is working on it, but we’ve got more to do. But right now, I’m starving,” Zachary said, opening his menu again, and holding my menu up for me. “Oh, and Jax, thank you.” He leaned in and kissed me, which was surprising, and wonderful, since he wasn’t always the best at public displays of affection. I did notice we were hiding behind tall menus, so perhaps we weren’t so public after all.
The kiss was amazing, and it left me wanting more than just seafood for lunch. But what I really wanted was to know what Austin was trying to tell us in the message he’d left behind.
ELEVEN
After lunch, Zachary brought me back to my house, and parked out front. As we came in the front door, we were back in the same spot where he had witnessed me just the day before running down the hall without a shirt on.
“About yesterday, I just want you to know that the man you saw here—”
“While you were half-undressed.” Zachary had a bemused expression on his face, I was glad to see. I ignored him and carried on.
“That was Gumdrop’s vet, Buff Brown.” I said, as I headed to my studio to check on my cat.
“You have a vet who makes house calls? Impressive.” Zachary followed me down the hall.
“Yes, and you should see the motorcycle he drives. It’s really unique. He brought Gummie home to me in its sidecar.” I found Gumdrop in his usual spot, sleeping in the sun on my worktable. He seemed like he was doing okay.
“He took your cat for a ride on his motorcycle? Now that is amazing. I’m surprised the man didn’t end up sliced to ribbons from Gumdrop’s claws.”
“He has a special compartment, you’ll just have to see it. Anyway, I slipped and spilled wine on my shirt, and so I took it—”
“Hey, it’s okay. I’m not mad. I had a little moment there, but I thought it was pretty funny when I thought about it. Besides, I didn’t think he was your type.”
“Oh, really? And what is my type?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Someone like me?”
“Yeah, someone just like you.” I smiled at him and pulled him into a hug.
“So, you’re feeling okay about the microphone?” Zachary asked.
“I guess so. But, I was wondering, can we have a secret mayday word?”
“You mean something you can say to get us to come and rescue you? Sure, what do you want it to be?”
“Ice cream,” I said.
“Ice cream? Okay, I’ll make sure Bev is monitoring for those words. But you better stay out of any ice cream shops in the meantime. I wouldn’t want the entire Seattle Police Department showing up because you went to Molly Moon’s.” Molly Moon’s was my favorite ice cream shop in Seattle. I could never decide between strawberry balsamic and lavender honey. Darn, now I wanted ice cream.
I dug around in my purse trying to find the microphone Bev had given me. Instead, I found the business card I’d gotten from the owner of the boutique near the theater.
I gasped when I saw the name on the card: Cassie Morton.
“Here’s something you need to check out,” I said. “There’s a boutique on the corner near the Chanticleer Theater, and the owner’s name is Cassie Morton.”
“That could be the MO we’re looking for,” Zachary said. “Then again, I don’t think I can go around putting everyone whose name starts with MO on my person of interest list. Otherwise, I’d have to add Molly Moon to the list.”
“I don’t think Molly Moon is a real person,” I said, as I continued pawing through
my purse looking for the tiny listening device. “That’s what I’m thinking.”
I was also thinking how nice it was for Zachary and me to be working together. I’d spent so much time in the last year feeling like we were working against each other when it came to murder investigations. And this felt good, but I knew it wouldn’t last.
I found the mic and handed it to him. “How does it work?”
“It’s voice activated, so unless you’re talking, all we’ll hear is silence. Now, if you’re talking with someone, and you want us to hear what they are saying, you don’t need to get too close. This mic has a range of about twenty feet. Here’s the power button, just press it once to turn it on, and press it again to power it off.” Zachary showed me the little button on the side of the power pack.
“So, let me show you how to attach this mic somewhere discreet. It would be nice to see where you might tape it,” he said, running his index finger gently, seductively, from my collarbone to my cleavage. Zachary had never been very good at talking sexy to me. He must’ve been improving, because I was definitely starting to feel flushed in all the wrong places—or maybe they were the right places.
“I’m really nervous about this little microphone. I’m worried about taping it to my body—what if I need to take it off? What if it comes unglued?” What if I became unglued was the real question, but I wasn’t going to go there.
“You’re going to be fine, and if you decide you don’t want to do this, you just say the word. We want you to be comfortable.” Zachary dropped his hand away from my chest.
“Could I just make a boutonnière out of it? You know, a pretty floral brooch. I could pin it to my jacket.” I pulled the tiny listening device from its bag. It would be easy to camouflage. Hanging from the mic was a slender six-inch-long cable attached to a matchbox-sized battery case. “I can pin the hidden mic on the breast pocket of my denim jacket and pop the power pack inside the pocket.”
To Bead or Not to Bead, Glass Bead Mystery Series, Book 4 Page 8