by T. J. Jones
"Angie told him, I'd bet. I told Mom not to tell him she was back in the hospital but she did. I give it a week, she'll be back home and I'll be babysitting again."
"How long until you get your car back?"
"Not sure, a few more days. But guess what? I may have another case for us, the word is getting out that we're private investigators."
"That's not surprising, you keep telling everyone."
"Well, I'm the PR person, you're the muscle."
"You're the dreamer, I'm the sane one."
She ignored me. "Five grand in it if things work out, plus expenses. Do you know who Maryanne Thatcher is?"
"No, I don't know that many millionaires."
"Then how'd you know she's a millionaire?"
"If she's willing to give us five thousand dollars, she has to be rich or crazy."
"We have an airplane, that's the important part."
"I have an airplane." I corrected her.
"I had a car." She deadpanned.
"Alright, you may have a point. What's the job?"
"Maryanne's granddaughter is going to be in Atlanta next week. She called Maryanne and talked her into letting her stay at their summer place north of the city. I guess she's fallen in with some biker, a guy twice her age. Maryanne thinks she's ready to dump the guy and come back home."
"Why wouldn't she just send her a plane ticket like a normal grandmother?"
"The girl's mother is Divine Thatcher."
"The one on the internet? Porn star turned business tycoon?"
"Same one. The girl left home two months ago and she's been a wild child ever since. Divine wants nothing to do with her, but she doesn't want any bad publicity either."
"Divine and Jasmine? With names like that, how could anything go wrong?" Maggie scowled at me. "Sexist? So, two things. Why doesn't Divine just call her daughter? And if there's a biker gang going to shack up in Maryanne's house, why not just call the cops and have them tossed out."
"Publicity. Don't you read?"
"No, I don't read about celebrities. How many Kardashians are there anyway? Divine Thatcher sure wasn't worried about publicity when she was showing her girl parts in all those movies. I know, sexist again, I just don't care."
"Granted, but the point remains, they want to keep Jasmine's name out of the press. She just turned seventeen and she's shacking up with a thirty-four year old Henry Fonda wanna' be, it doesn't look good."
"Peter Fonda. Henry's kid Peter was the guy in Easy Rider. Henry rode horses not Harleys."
"Slater, I'm too young to know the difference, and I don't really care. The point is, it's a job."
"It's a job for the cops. Thirty-four and seventeen, isn't that statutory rape?"
"Probably, but they don't want to press charges, they just want her out of that mess."
"Seems like if this girl wants to come home, she would just do it."
"She needs a little convincing. Maybe she's like Davey, maybe she's been brainwashed."
That earned her a dirty look. "Not fair using that. I'm not kidnapping anyone, even with her mother's permission. How does the Piper figure in?"
"There's an airstrip at the house. It's a big place, that's why the bikers want to stay there. I thought we could fly in and land, maybe act like the plane's having trouble and we had to put down. That'll be our cover story. We hang out, I convince Jasmine to leave with us, and we fly home."
"What if Jasmine has had a change of heart and tells these bikers what we're up to? I'd get beat up and you might get worse. How many bikers are we talking?"
"Where's your sense of adventure? Isn't that why we want to be Private Investigators, have adventures and make a few bucks to boot?"
"We again? I would be perfectly happy to figure out what happened to Davey, and call it a day."
"Slater, the poor girl is only seventeen."
I knew she was playing me, but I couldn't look in those blue eyes and tell her no. "Why is the grandmother letting them stay there in the first place?"
"Part of the plan. If Jasmine's there, at least we know where to find her. And if things don't work out, we can always call the cops."
"Maybe, alright? Tell Maryanne to get on the phone and keep trying to convince her granddaughter to come home on her own. Your plan sounds pretty shaky to me."
Maggie was excited. She jumped around and hugged me and gave me a kiss on the cheek, so it was kind of worth it. The whole thing sounded like trouble to me.
***
I worked around the house all afternoon, dwelling on what we'd uncovered in Miami, and what it might mean for my future. Being a Private Investigator sounded romantic and fun, especially if Maggie Jeffries was my partner, but I knew the realities would be different. Most of the time investigating anything took months, maybe years, and the conclusions were seldom what you hoped for. More often, they were what you expected. Every day the newspapers or the internet detailed stories of abduction and murder, of bodies found and identified to stop the wondering but not the grief. I wasn't sure that was something I wanted to be a part of.
Rita Jeffries had been right. Investigating Davey's death was shedding light on things that might have been better left in the dark. She was right for the wrong reason, and I wasn't sure I wanted to know what she'd been talking about; more secrets undoubtedly, secrets that were only likely to make more people unhappy.
The truth had always been the ultimate goal when I was in the Navy. People's careers hung in the balance sometimes, but things were usually black and white. If Petty Officer 1st class had indeed smashed a bottle over the head of that Marine in that bar, then he would spend thirty days in the brig and come out a Petty Officer 3rd class. I talked to witnesses and gave the evidence to the officer in charge. It was black and white and there were no choices for me to make. That was the beauty of it, it was simple. Luckily, I never knew the Petty Officer who lost rank and pay due to his night of stupidity, so I never had to make any moral judgement as to whether or not he deserved his punishment. The Navy did that for me.
But the truth about Davey was getting complicated, not one mistake made during a drunken night on the town. I couldn't hand my findings off to JAG and wash my hands of his Discipline Hearing. My findings this time, if I decided to share them, would define the remaining years of a woman's life. If Davey had done what it seemed he might have, it wasn't one night of drunken debauchery, it was a pattern, possibly a lifestyle. I had promised Edith Templeton I would tell her what I found out, good or bad, and I already regretted that. I would lie to her if necessary, to make Davey seem more the victim than he appeared.
What I really regretted, was even starting the investigation. The truth, it was turning out, might be worse than anything I could have imagined. But, unlike a drunken seaman's wild night, this truth was nuanced. Life had been more difficult for David Templeton than I had ever imagined.
Somewhere along the line he had fallen in with, or fallen victim to this White Devil person. Everyone has neuroses and most of us cope with the minor ones; they don't affect our lives much, or at all. But some people need help and don't get it, and sometimes other people recognize whatever need that is and use it, take advantage of it. I could see how that might have happened to Davey. He had needed help, and all I ever did for him was hit a kid that called him a name. The truth was that clocking Tommy Ackerman had been more for me than for Davey, just because I could.
By the end of the day I had talked myself full circle. The Davey Templeton I knew hadn't been capable of what Rosalyn Cabello said he'd done. Somehow, through threat, intimidation or brainwashing, the Diablo Blanco had made Davey do things that he would never have done under normal circumstances. If after years of abuse, the White Devil had killed Davey, I was going to find him and make him pay dearly for that. That was my truth.
***
The next morning, I pulled everything out I had regarding Davey's case again, minus the missing cards. There was one question that plagued me. If you were looking for s
omething that Davey had hidden, why look at my house? Since the intrusion I'd taken to hiding things in case my curious assailant returned, and I had ordered a good handgun, a particular model that I was familiar with and very good at using. I had a permit to carry and if I stayed in the Detective business, having a gun would come in handy sooner or later. But breaking into my house indicated the person knew that I was looking into Davey's death, probably knew I was his friend, and might even know that I had cleaned out Davey's room. That had to be a short list.
Maggie had called. As predicted, she was busy picking up her sister and moving her back to the house. I would be alone, which meant I could look over the bank records without the pleasant distraction of the Jeffries sisters. My brain definitely worked better that way. I made coffee and started going through them line by line, comparing what Davey had done prior to changing banks with what he had done recently.
I had already looked at the statements that I got from Sam closely. Davey had amassed three million dollars in a hurry. But the statements Edith supplied me with told a different tale, the account didn't continue growing. There were months when he had added pretty good sums, thirty, or forty thousand dollars. But there were months when that same amount, or more went out. Most of the deposits were cash, but a lot of the withdrawals were cashier's checks. Good as cash once he signed them, but a safe way to move money around.
Over the five years I had records for, he had added just over a million dollars and paid out a half million over and above that, all in cashier's checks, most of them written to himself. But the signature on two of the checks had a different first name, a familiar one. It meant a leap of faith on my part, but I had to know if my hunch was right. I grabbed one of Davey's cards and dialed the number.
"Hello, Miami Talent, this is Susy." I recognized the voice.
"Hi Susy, I didn't get your last name when we met, it's Foster, right?" There was a Foster on Davey's list of seven women.
"If this is a sales call, I'm not allowed to take those during business hours."
"No, not a sales call. My name is Eric Slater. I was in last Friday with Maggie Jeffries, the pretty woman with the reddish hair?"
"Oh sure, I remember. Has she changed her mind about dancing?"
"That's a big no, but I actually wanted to talk to you."
"Yeah? I don't date guys with girlfriends."
"That's not it either. I need to talk to you about something important. Is now a good time?"
"Andy's out of town and I'm running the place, such as it is. What's up?"
"We misled you the other day, and I did when we talked about Mr. Templeton. I knew Davey very well, spent half my childhood swimming in his pool most summers. Truth is, we're looking into his death, Maggie and I. I don't think it was a suicide, I think he was murdered."
"Are you trying to con me? I know Davey had money, but that all went to his folks, I don't have any of it."
"Edith and Edward, they live at 4028 Point Road, and they have a horse barn in the back where he supposedly hung himself. Only he didn't. And I also know he gave you money, Susan. I really am an old friend of his and I'd like to figure out who killed him. He got involved in some really bad things, maybe even did some bad things himself, and I think it got him killed."
"That money wasn't for me, I just delivered it."
"Obviously he trusted you. I need to know what happened to him Susy, how things went so bad. I've uncovered some things that are, very ugly. I'd like to think the man I knew couldn't have been involved in something that horrible, not Davey."
"Do you know where Titusville is Mr. Slater?" She asked suddenly.
"Sure, off 95, near the Space Center."
"Could you meet me there today? There's someone I would like you to meet. I know it's quite a drive, it is for me too, but I'll close up shop right now and head up there."
"It's about the same for both of us, will one o'clock work for you?"
"Take 406 east off 95, there's a Seven-Eleven about two miles down on your left. I'll be waiting in the parking lot. It's just a few blocks from there."
***
I was early, but so was she. She was standing by her car waiting and told me to park my pickup and ride with her. Susy Foster was all business, chewing her gum obsessively as she drove through the back streets to a quiet neighborhood half a dozen blocks from the main road. She glanced at me as we walked up to the single-story stucco. "Did I tell you I'm from Los Angeles originally?"
"No, and you still haven't said what we're doing here."
She smiled and pushed the doorbell. "I wasn't completely honest with you the other day either. I want you to see who David Templeton really was, Mr. Slater."
The door swung open and a pretty young girl pushed the screen door open and stepped back. She looked a dozen years younger than Susy but she had the same light brown hair and as soon as she spoke, I knew they were sisters. We sat down in the living room and she came back from the refrigerator with sweet tea. She poured us each a glass then sat in a chair across from us, perched on the edge, rocking back and forth nervously.
"This is Sandy, Eric Slater. Sandy is my younger sister, and she's one of the girls that Davey Templeton brought back from hell." She paused to let that sink in, then nodded to her sister. "Tell him everything Sandy, you said you could do this, it'll be okay."
The younger girl tried to smile. I've seen dogs, shy and nervous because they've been kicked one too many times show their teeth and people think they're snarling when actually they're just afraid of being kicked again. That's how she smiled at me, like a dog that's afraid of being kicked. Her sister reached out and handed her a stick of Juicy Fruit. She popped it in her mouth and started chewing. Her next smile seemed more genuine.
"I quit smoking six months ago but when I get anxious, I really want one."
"No problem." I tried to look reassuring and sympathetic. "Take your time, whatever you need."
She took a deep breath. "We lived in LA when I was a kid. Susy was gone and my folks didn't get along so great. I was fifteen and out of control, drinking and running around with older guys, a lot of older guys. It got to where I wasn't ever going home, always said I was at a girlfriend's house when really I was shacked up with a guy twice my age, snorting coke and getting so wasted I got passed around like a party favor when the money ran low."
I nodded. "It happens, you're not the first teenager to go down that road."
"One night, I was all dolled up for some reason, don't remember why, but my asshat boyfriend, Adrian, he introduces me to this big guy, Whitey. Really big heavy guy, and his hair was snow white, like he was eighty years old, only he wasn't. Anyway, they're both talking shit about how he's a big time Hollywood agent and he can make me a star." She stopped and took a swallow of her tea, then glanced at her sister.
"Go ahead Sandy, I've heard this, and Slater's a big boy."
She cringed again, then continued. "So, before I know it, Adrian's gone and this Whitey guy, he says come back to my place, I don't promote girls unless I get something out of it. Right then I knew I had to fuck him, you know, if I wanted to be famous. By then I'd already slept with lots of worse guys, so I thought what the hell, who doesn't want to be famous, right? We go back to his place, and have a couple drinks. Next thing I know, I wake up gagged and tied up in the back of an airplane."
"On the way to Dubai?" I guessed.
"I wish. Not sure, but some place over there in the desert at least. There were six of us, locked in an old palace, more of a prison actually. Two of the girls were from Taiwan, a couple from Brazil, one girl was from Seattle. Chrissy, the Seattle girl, she was thirteen. Thirteen years old and she's a sex slave for some Sheik! He mostly kept her to himself, the rest of us were just there for general entertainment, for whoever wanted us." She started crying a little, but wiped her eyes on the back of her sleeve and continued. "Other than the fact we were prisoners and basically human sex toys, we got treated okay. We got fed and could listen to CD's and watc
h movies, talk to each other as best we could.
Sometimes they drugged us. I'm not sure why because we couldn't go anywhere anyway, but I had stretches where I couldn't remember anything, days sometimes. Sometimes the guys were decent, but we were never allowed to speak to them. Mostly rich old Arabs. If you talked about being a prisoner, or wouldn't do exactly what you were told, it wasn't good. One of the girls told a client she had been kidnapped. She trusted him because he seemed really nice, and they came and took her away. The guards said she was executed for being a spy."
"My God, where is this place? How can this happen in this day and age?" I asked.
"I never found out, not even what country I was in. Can you imagine? For a year and a half, I was a slave, basically raped on a regular basis until I was rescued, and to this day I couldn't tell you for sure where I was."
"How? How did you get out and back here? Jesus, we're at war all over the world, why aren't we there, killing the bastards that did this?"
"War? Some of the other girls, the girls that were from Taiwan, they were servicing Americans, rich Americans!" I couldn't speak, I had no idea what I would have said.
"One night, out of the clear blue, one of the guards woke me up and took me out of there. I was sure he was going to rape me, then just kill me and leave me somewhere out in the desert to rot. But we drove into the desert in a jeep and he put me on a helicopter with a couple of other girls. I don't know where they were from before, but they were slaves too. They didn't speak any English and I'd never seen them before. The helicopter took us to another place, an airport somewhere and they gave us clothes and fed us. Then they put us on an airplane, like a corporate jet. There was a man on that plane, and he told me that I could never tell anyone about what had happened. He said that if I told, all the girls who were left behind would be tortured and murdered. He said if he could do it, maybe someday it would be their turn to be rescued."
"That man, was it Davey Templeton?" I asked.
She nodded, tears streaming from her eyes. "He brought me back to Miami and even let me stay at his place for a couple days while I got my head on straight."