“Well, I don’t want to speculate, but if he left his car behind . . .”
“It was stolen and stripped, that’s what the police said.”
“I hear you, but it’s possible he left it somewhere, maybe an airport or someplace. If he was coming back you know he would’ve kept it safe or something. I don’t know, maybe even sold it.”
“How the hell would selling it be a sign of his intention to come back?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Shit, I don’t know what to think anymore. You know, I miss him like you do.”
“This is a bad dream, a nightmare.”
“I know, it’s crazy. Hey, you wanna grab a bite to eat later?”
“What? How can you think about eating at a time like this?”
I should’ve waited, or called her back.
“I don’t know, I just didn’t want you to be alone after hearing about the car and all.”
“I’m sorry, I know you’re trying to help.”
Man! That was a damn good recovery. Maybe Valentine’s Day could be salvaged.
***
Around five o’clock my cell buzzed. It was her! She probably did want to go out and eat!
“Hiya doing, Robin?”
“The cops must think Phil is dead.” Her voice cracked.
I guess I’d be eating alone tonight and could forget about Valentines.
“What are you talking about?”
“Detective Luca came here with a forensics team.”
“What? Why?”
“To collect Phil’s DNA.”
“Oh, of course. It’s probably routine. I’m surprised they didn’t ask earlier.”
“You think so?”
“Of course. On CSI: they do it all the time. What did they take, a hairbrush, toothbrush?”
“Yeah, they took his toothbrush. Went through his closet and combed through the rug by his side of the bed. They even took his flip-flops.”
“Makes sense. They say DNA is all over the place.”
“What do you think this means?”
I had no idea, but I couldn’t rule out that they might have something. “Don’t panic, Rob. I really think it’s routine.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“Look, don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m starving. You wanna get something to eat with me?”
“I don’t feel like eating.”
Chapter 21
Luca
When I got back to my desk, the report I’d been waiting for was sitting in my in-box. I had the DNA from the car cross-checked against Florida’s database of known criminals, hoping for a break in the case.
I ripped the brown envelope open. Bingo, there were two matches. As I pulled up the first rap sheet, I wondered how they caught anyone in the old days.
Twenty-six-year-old Diego Bosque had done two stints behind bars, both for grand auto theft. He’d been busted for several petty thefts, but nothing to suggest Bosque was violent. It wasn’t surprising to link him to the theft of the car, but I didn’t give a rat’s ass about the car unless it led to what happened to Gabelli. I doubted little Diego had anything to do with the vanishing, but we’d have to check him out. Hot-hands Bosque was in Fort Myers and was going to get a visit. Hitting the print icon, I moved on.
It felt strange, but when Jamil Johnson’s file came up I felt a surge of optimism. Jamil was thirty-two with a rap sheet that read longer than The Old Man and the Sea. Covered in jailhouse tattoos, Jamil was an ugly mother-jumper prone to violence. The thug was part of an Orlando drug gang and had been in and out of jail his entire adult life. With all the assaults, many with a deadly weapon, he appeared to be a gang enforcer.
The Orlando gang angle was confusing, though. We’d never had a run-in or even a report of gang activity from anywhere but Miami. It didn’t make sense, but this Gabelli dude was complicated. Who knows what kinda crap he got himself into?
Checking the dates, I confirmed Jamil had been out on the streets when Gabelli went missing. Even though the crooked line of crime straightened a hair, this cretin was a solid four hours away. I didn’t really want to be sitting in a car, hoping my bladder wouldn’t burst, and come up with another zero. Besides, Vinny Colavito, an old buddy from the academy, had been on the Orlando force for the last ten years.
Even though we had never made good on the promise to get together after I moved to paradise, Colavito and I jumped right back into the dorm room days. Colavito wasn’t working the gang unit, but he’d have Jamil Johnson questioned and, if there was something there, hold him.
***
Going to Baleen for a bachelor party really threw me off. I was surprised how it affected me. It must have been obvious, as a couple guys from the station asked me if I was okay. I paused before I’d gone into the bathroom. That was where it all started.
A night filled, make that overflowing, with promise was turned upside down in less time than it took for a tissue to burn. Fact was, I didn’t need the reminder of how fragile life was. I learned years ago to enjoy it when you could. But the reality was I never expected it would be my tail caught in the trap at such a young age.
It was clear to me that sooner or later everyone gets their time with misery in this life. I thought I was in touch with my death, but I was no better adjusted than anyone else walking around in denial. It was embarrassing; I’d been an outspoken advocate of planning your own funeral, even picking out your casket, as a reminder we were going to die. Turns out, like most advice, we didn’t want to walk the walk. Egg on the face? I had a couple of cartons dripping off me.
Dragging me down further was the Kayla reminder. No one had to tell me it was the first inning, but there was no question we clicked. I felt we were going places together. She seemed as interested as I was. She’d reached out when it happened, so she cared. I should’ve tracked her down, but with my mechanics not working, it seemed futile. I don’t know why I didn’t reach out to her. My doctor said my physical issue could lead to depression. Maybe that was it.
I’d been going for injections to help reduce scar tissue. The doctors said that a buildup of scar tissue was responsible for dulled nerve endings that contributed to being unable to get an erection. I was hoping he was right and they hadn’t cut something else down there.
He said he was one hundred percent certain that Viagra would solve my problem, but, since bladder pain and increased urination were possible side effects, he wanted to try the injections first. It made sense, but he wasn’t the guy unable to get a hard-on.
My reasoning was nothing more than stupid and immature. If she was the one for me, she’d help me through this and be okay with me taking a pill to get my mojo back. Don’t piss away the opportunity, Luca. Find a way to reach out to her.
***
I hung up the phone.
“Another dead end, Vargas.”
“Who was that?”
“That old buddy of mine in Orlando. They brought Jamil Johnson in and hammered him. But it looks like Diego was telling the truth for a change. Jamil was seeing his cousin and he gave him a ride. Said he was going to kick Diego’s ass all over Lee County for not telling him he was riding in a hot car. You can’t make this shit up.”
“Well, at least Gabelli wasn’t mixed up in some drug thing.”
“I’m gonna have Diego picked up on this.”
“But we promised we wouldn’t if he talked.”
“We can’t look the other way, this guy’s too brazen. We need to take him down a couple of pegs.”
“I don’t know, we might need him some day.”
“With his history, we’ll always have plenty of bait.”
Chapter 22
Luca
Simmons Construction occupied three floors in a glass office tower on 41, just south of Park Shore. For a large, international construction company, the offices were unimpressive and bordered on shabby. The chair I sat in cried to be reupholstered, and the coffee table was marred. The only redeemer was the view. I focused on a sl
iver of the gulf that shined in the distance until a shapely young lady asked me to come with her.
I followed her swaying tail as she escorted me to the corner office of John Conner, who was Gabelli’s boss. The office was filled with models of buildings and framed architectural drawings. It was a hip-looking place to work, except it was too cold for me. Spring was a couple of weeks away, yet they had the AC blowing like mad.
Conner was a Brit, but his accent had toned down considerably in the fifteen years he’d been here. He was another one of those guys who opted to shave his head to cover balding. Conner wore thick-framed glasses and a lip beard. He looked like he collected wines. Nothing big, but he’d be a good guy to know if I was right.
“How long did Mr. Gabelli work here?”
“Phil started a couple of years after I got here, so I’d say about a dozen. I’ll have HR get an exact date for you.”
“What were his responsibilities?”
“He was, uh, is one of our project managers.”
“What was he managing when he went missing?”
“Phil was on the Sweet Bay project.”
“What type of a project is that?”
“A mixed-use development, some retail, office, and a slice of residential. It’s the bulk of what we do here at Simmons.”
“Where is this Sweet Bay?”
“Down in Santiago, Chile.”
“I understand Mr. Gabelli did quite a bit of travelling.”
“Travelling? No, Phil didn’t visit the job sites. That’s the superintendent’s responsibilities.”
“Mr. Gabelli never travelled on company business?”
“I don’t like to say never, but it’s been probably ten years or so since we separated things, so if he did any travelling it was a long time ago.”
“That’s interesting. His wife said he did a lot of travelling.”
“I don’t know where she got that impression. Maybe Phil could’ve been covering something with her.”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
“I hope you do.”
I nodded and said, “By the way, you like wine?”
His eyes gleamed. “Big time. You?”
***
I was stopped at the light on Vanderbilt and Airport when it hit me that I might be wasting my time. It looked like Gabelli had taken off. He had a history of disappearing for a few days at a time, usually holing up with different women. Maybe he found a new squeeze at the same time he’d run up a gambling debt and decided to run off for good. The combo seemed to be a decent motivator.
We’d been chasing this too long; it might be time to put the Gabelli case on hold. Especially now, when we could be of use elsewhere.
The department was pushing back aggressively to keep the Miami-based gangs from even thinking about crossing Alligator Alley. The effort was successful, but it drained a lot of officers from their regular duties. Nothing had gone wrong as a consequence, and the brass wanted to be sure it stayed that way. As a result, they were now asking us not to waste time on cases that were truly dead-ended. The Gabelli case seemed to qualify.
***
I waited for Vargas to get out of a meeting to kick it around with her. Unless she totally disagreed, I was going to hit the pause button on the Gabelli case. I was reading my e-mail when Sally, who manned the TIPS hotline, popped her red head in.
“Hey, Frank, call came in on the Gabelli case.”
“Are you kidding me?”
She shook her head. “Some guy, who wanted to remain anonymous, said the wife is about to receive a couple-a-million-dollar payout from a policy on her husband.”
“And how did he know this?”
“Said he worked at the insurer, Lincoln Life Insurance.”
“Wow.”
“And here’s the best part; he said the policy was in effect less than two years.”
“I wonder if there’s a way to verify this.”
“You’d probably need a court order to get Lincoln to open its books up.”
“Do me a favor, Sally, and tell Vargas I’ll be back in an hour or two.”
***
I struggled to avert my eyes from the plunging neckline on Robin’s blouse as I said hello. Boy, I liked the way they dressed in the advertising business.
She flashed a smile with her perfect teeth. They had to be bleached. Robin looked even fresher than I remembered her. Was it a bit of Botox? I tried to place her perfume as I brushed past her; it reminded me of something my wife used to wear.
We sat across each other in a conference room that was freezing. The walls were full of colorful prints by Leroy Neiman, in a poor attempt to disguise the fact the room was windowless.
“Sorry about the room, but this place is filled with nosy bodies.”
“Fine by me.”
“What did you want to see me about?” She tilted her head.
“Lincoln Life?”
“What?”
“It’s come to my attention that you’re about to collect a couple of million from a policy on your husband.”
“And what about it?”
“How come you never mentioned it?”
“You never asked, and frankly it’s none of your business.”
“Look, when you filed that missing person report you made anything to do with your husband my business.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“A couple of million dollars makes a pretty strong motive.”
“Are you saying I did away with my husband to get the insurance money?”
Her choice of using ‘did away with’ rather than ‘killed’ was interesting. Was she subconsciously softening her actions?
“I’m not saying anything. I’m just trying to understand why, almost ten months into his disappearance, it never came up.”
“It just didn’t.”
“Was this policy in effect a long time?”
After a split-second hesitation she said, “A couple of years.”
I expected her to be nonspecific but didn’t want to press her on that.
“Do you have life insurance?”
“You mean on me?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“That seems a bit unusual, to have a policy on your husband but not on you, even though I understand you earn more than him.”
“That’s right.”
“Mind explaining that?”
“I was supposed to get covered, but I never went for the medical exam and the application lapsed.”
It not only made sense, but it was something I’d done myself, despite the badgering from the insurance salesman. I moved on.
“What made you file for the payout now, while there’s an active investigation going on?”
Anger flashed over her face. “Active? You got to be kidding me.”
I was surprised by the outburst; it seemed genuine.
“What made you file?”
“A friend of mine mentioned it to me. She said that after a year an insurance company had to pay and that I could file ninety days before the year was up. Why shouldn’t I get the proceeds as soon as I’m entitled? They had no problem taking my premiums.”
“That friend happen to be Dom Stewart?”
She narrowed her eyes. “No.”
“You have any plans for the money?”
“You seem preoccupied with money, Detective.”
She sidestepped the bait, so I said, “In my business you learn pretty quickly that more people have been murdered over money than lust.”
She smiled. “Greed is powerful.”
“Hope you don’t mind me asking, but exactly how much insurance was on Mr. Gabelli? Two, three million?”
“Three.”
“Wow. Three million dollars. Boy, where I come from, that’s a lot of money.”
She shrugged.
“That was a nice commission for the sales guy.”
“I guess so.”
“What’s the na
me of the salesperson?”
“Why do you want that?”
I heard a trace of panic in her voice, so I said, “Routine. Nothing specific. I don’t need it.”
“It’s no big deal. I can try and look it up for you.”
Look it up? You’d go straight to the salesperson to collect on something like this. Why try to navigate a behemoth insurance company alone?
“Okay, thanks. I guess it’s the same guy you filed your application with.”
“Uh, I, uh. You know what? I used a different agent than Phil.”
“Really? Why was that?”
“A friend of a friend had a kid starting out and I wanted to throw him some business. You know how that is.”
Friend of a friend? “That was nice of you.”
“I try to help when I can.”
“Only trouble is, you never went through with it, so the kid didn’t make a dime.”
She couldn’t hide the flicker of anger that ran across her face. “Well, I tried. It’s more than most people do.”
I stood. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Gabelli. When you can, I’d like the name of both insurance salesmen.”
I didn’t know what to make of this seesaw. It was three million dollars, and she never mentioned it? I didn’t like her answers about her insurance; she was hiding something. Yet she truly seemed pissed that we’d been unable to find out what happened with her husband. She was smart, and there was no doubt she could be a bitch, but a killer?
Chapter 23
Luca
Cruising on Golden Gate Parkway, I was headed to yet another doctor visit when my radio crackled:
“Request officers in the Golden Gates vicinity to respond to a possible seventy-one underway at 16715 Tropical Way.”
The address was vaguely familiar. “This is Detective Luca. Ten-fifty-one. ETA in five minutes. What can you tell me?”
“All’s we know is a little kid called in saying his mother was being beaten up. It seems real, but, as usual, be on ambush alert.”
By the time I holstered the handset, an uneasy feeling erupted in my belly, and it had nothing to do with my bladder. I tried to tamp down my rising fear as I turned onto Santa Barbara Blvd. The area was too damn familiar and I prayed for the best as I pulled up, knowing it wasn’t a setup.
Luca Mystery Series Box Set Page 29