by Dana Dratch
So what was worth that kind of protection?
“Gabby, I think we might need your expertise over here.”
“Gotcha, sugar,” she said, ambling over and sizing up my find. “Your real estate lady really loves her locks, doesn’t she?”
“Can you get into it?”
“Sure thing,” she said, digging through her bag. “I just need the right tool.”
Pulling out something that looked like a dental pick, she went to work on one brass lock. After two seconds, I swear I hear a soft ping.
“Is that it?” I asked.
“For the first one. Sugar, this thing is double locked. One lock on the entire cabinet, then separate locks on each of the drawers. Whatever’s in here, your lady didn’t want anybody getting their hands on it.”
Please let it be bank books.
I heard a second ping, and Gabby grinned. “First drawer is open. Just a shake, and I’ll get the other one.”
After another soft click, she stepped to the second filing cabinet and started all over again.
While she worked, I yanked open the top drawer of the first cabinet. Only one item: a large, worn, leather-bound organizer. I carefully lifted it out and opened it.
It appeared to be set up numerically. I flipped to a random page.
#2516: No dog. Sec sys: 2516#. Loves jazz & tequila. Family summers in the Hamptons—conservative! 2nd mort. Secretly gay (photos). Occasional pot—gym bag MB clst. Regular 9 to 5. Gym M, W & F: 6:15 to 7:30 am. Out late TH nites. MB ovhd lt.
#2517: Stupid dog—Pickles. No sec sys. $$$ in savings. Painkillers—MBth med cab. Petty cash—LR flower vase. Walks dog @ 7, 12 & 5. Other outings irregular. Sometimes dogwalker. LR elec out nr balcony.
Number 2517 was Ethel’s place! Painkillers and petty cash—that’s what the burglar stole from her unit.
The notes went on and on—page after page. Thumbnails of schedules, likes and dislikes, and gory personal details—usually followed by “photos.” Whatever that meant.
And what was her obsession with dogs?
The book was heavy. But it was also a blueprint of Leslie’s mind. And, with any luck, her movements. I hoisted it carefully into my satchel.
“Ooooh, girls, check this out,” Gabby said. She turned and unlatched the second file cabinet’s doors. But though this looked identical to the first cabinet, it was very different. The entire front face swung open in one piece, revealing a pegboard decorated with keys. Each key and peg was carefully labeled and numbered.
Annie lifted one out and read the tag. “Six seven one two—this is Dennis and Gracie’s place! That witch!”
“You said she was pushing you for keys to your unit. It looks like you’re not the only one. And some of the residents complied.”
“Of course they did,” my sister said indignantly. “She claimed she was collecting them for the management company.”
“Yeah, and she claimed the money was for the homeowners’ association,” I said.
I tapped the satchel. “She’s also got a slam book that details everyone’s personal profiles, schedules—and some other weird stuff I can’t quite decipher.”
“She was going into people’s homes,” my sister seethed.
“Looks like,” I said. “At least, the ones who gave her keys. That’s probably how she got whatever she got on your friend Dennis.”
Gabby’s eyes widened. “She was blackmailing him?”
“That stays between us girls,” Annie said quickly. “That’s how she got him to sign off on everything. He made a stupid mistake. But he swears he didn’t go through with it, and I believe him. And now he and Gracie are starting a family.”
“Gotcha,” Gabby said blithely. “So what do we do with these?” she asked, gesturing at the key cabinet as if it was a game-show prize.
“Leave them,” Annie and I said at the same time.
I moved on to the bottom drawer in my file cabinet. Nada.
But the space was only a few inches deep. And the drawer went at least a foot. I knocked on the bottom. Hollow.
It took me a minute, but I finally figured out that the “bottom” of the drawer folded back like a partition, revealing two items: a gold key and a small rubber mallet.
Most door keys I’d seen were cut with a series of divots. That’s how they turned the locks. But this one was completely smooth.
Gabby glanced over my shoulder. “That’s a bump key, sugar.”
I’d heard of bump keys, but I’d never actually held one in my hand. Theoretically, you stuck it in a lock, hit it with something heavy—like a mallet—and boom, you were in the door.
“It’s not as nice as the thingies I use, but it’ll get the job done,” Gabby said with professional detachment.
“Will this open any door?” I asked.
“Any door that uses that kind of lock,” she said, studying it. “It looks like the model they used for this whole place.”
“So with this . . .” I started.
“Your real estate lady wouldn’t need a key,” Gabby said. “She could open any door in the building.”
CHAPTER 40
The three of us spent the rest of the night in Annie’s apartment poring over Leslie’s leather binder.
Leslie had just four phone numbers listed in the back. Each with a different first name. No last names. And nothing that pointed to where the money might have gone.
We did puzzle out some of her shorthand, though. “Sec sys,” obviously, was “security system.” And the poor guy in number 2516 apparently used his apartment number as his system password.
“Rookie mistake,” Gabby declared, yawning.
Annie worked out that LR was “living room,” and MB was “master bedroom.” That meant Ethel kept petty cash in a flower vase in her living room. And her pills were, obviously, in the “MBth med cab”—master bathroom medicine cabinet.
“No wonder Leslie went ballistic when Ethel hired her own locksmith to change the locks on her door,” I said. “If he used a different brand, even Leslie’s bump key wouldn’t have worked.”
“Then Leslie socked that poor woman with a five hundred dollar fee—and pocketed it.”
I finally worked out that “ovhd lt” was “overhead light” and “elec out” was “electric outlet.”
What did it mean that Leslie’s shorthand was a lot like my own? And why was she so obsessed with lights and outlets?
But the book—and Leslie’s office setup—did explain her weird antipathy for dogs. It was a lot harder to go strolling into an apartment if there was someone on the other side of the door with sharp teeth and a nice, loud bark.
I flipped through the book looking for Annie’s place. It was near the back:
#10001: No dog. Sec sys? Irregular visits, irregular hours. Always guests. Airbnb?
Need more info!
I showed it to Annie.
“Airbnb? I asked.
“No, but I lend it out to anybody I know who’s coming to Miami,” she said. “And the models are always camping out here.”
Unfortunately, the more we learned about Annie’s neighbors, the less we wanted to know.
Larry on two really did have a drinking problem. He also had three DUIs, a suspended license, and a case of cut-rate bourbon under his bathroom sink.
One couple on five was headed for the rocks. The stay-at-home mom lost most of their kid’s school tuition playing online poker. The dad had two secret credit cards and a sports car hidden in a garage across town.
A single woman on four had a crush on Dennis Chu—and invited him to her apartment when Grace was out of town. Apparently a glass of wine had turned into an extended snogging session. Like a lot of the juicier bits, that one also had the mysterious notation “photos.”
Including the notes on Dennis and Grace:
#6712: No dog. Sec sys: #0214. Both 9 to 5. DC home F’s. Multiple rounds IVF. $ trouble. 2nd mortgage. DC drunken make-out with #4315 (photos).
“That’s awful,” Ann
ie said. “I mean, I know all of that already. Well, except for the bit about the girl on four. But I know it because Grace chose to confide in me. This is just wrong. Leslie was stealing people’s lives. She had no right to any of this.”
“From what Dennis said, she wasn’t just stealing secrets, she was monetizing them,” I said.
Gabby had gone silent, which wasn’t like her at all. That’s when I noticed she’d fallen asleep sitting on the floor with her back against the sofa. Lucy’s head was in her lap.
“She can have my room,” I said, nodding toward our new guest. “I can take the sofa.”
“Nonsense,” Annie said. “The sofa in my office pulls out to a queen. And it’s comfy. I slept there before the beds were delivered.”
We returned to the book. I kept hoping something in it might somehow show us where Leslie had squirreled away the missing money. But what if she’d just spent it on mortgage payments, home electronics, and that awful pink fainting couch?
In the back of the book, Leslie’s mysterious phone numbers all belonged to men. First names only. Andy, Jake, Eddy, and Thom. With their extension numbers following their phone numbers. I’d be calling them later. Could be family, friends, or coconspirators, take your pick.
She also had several pages of strange notations. Groups of numbers—which looked like condo numbers. But, at the very top of each column, some weird combination of letters that didn’t look familiar. And some of the condo numbers were listed under more than one cluster.
I’d looked at them when we first got our hands on the book. And I’d been puzzling over them in my head off and on for the past forty minutes, but none of it made any sense. Not to me, anyway.
“Here, look at this,” Annie said, pointing a perfect blush nail at Leslie’s synopsis of #3612. “We’ve deciphered it, but it doesn’t make any sense. Leslie has a note here at the end that translates to ‘master bedroom phone.’ ”
“Oh geez,” I said.
“What?”
“I know why Leslie McQueen was obsessed with electric outlets and lights. And phones. She was planting bugs. And, as I learned the hard way, a listening device needs juice. You have to put them somewhere people won’t find them. But you also need a power source.”
“So she was breaking into people’s homes and bugging them? That snake!”
“An overhead light would have a good line of sight on the bedroom,” I said. “We might be looking at cameras, too.”
“Her notes mention photos.”
“She’d need pictures to get any leverage in a case like Dennis’s,” I said. “Otherwise, it’s just he said/she said. But we were all over that office of hers. We didn’t find any photos.”
“They’re probably on the computer—and it’s password protected,” Annie said, her face a thundercloud. “I swear if that woman wasn’t already dead, I’d strangle her myself!”
CHAPTER 41
“We need a technology expert to crack that computer,” Annie said as she spooned coffee into her coffeemaker the next morning.
Gabby was sleeping in after our late night.
I’d already taken Lucy for her morning constitutional. And we’d come back with doughnuts.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” I admitted. “For someone who uses electronics and bugs, Leslie seems to have preferred old-school storage methods. How old do you think she was?”
“Leslie? I’m guessing midfifties. Why?”
“Young enough to make the most of technology. Old enough not to trust it completely. I mean, the woman kept her blackmail profiles in a leather-bound organizer.”
“Easy to pick up and carry,” my sister said. “You think there’s another one of those things with photos?”
“I think she was going to a lot of trouble to gather information on people. And some of the folks in this building have some serious money and technical know-how. If one of her pigeons realized that she was storing her blackmail goodies on a computer, they could have possibly hacked in and wiped her files.”
“But keeping hard copies?” my sister asked. “That would take an awful lot of space. And we’ve already searched her apartment.”
We had, too. After we locked up Leslie’s key cabinet, Gabby, Annie, and I had spent the next hour going through every inch of Leslie McQueen’s impersonal, yet expensively furnished digs, looking for anything resembling a bank book.
Nada.
I’d found a stack of mail—or, more correctly, junk mail—in one of her kitchen drawers. I put it in my satchel, just in case. It wasn’t as if Leslie was going to need it anymore.
With Gabby’s help, I even trolled through the electronics store in Leslie’s bedroom. The DVD player was empty. And the DVR player must have been new because she hadn’t even had a chance to record anything on it yet.
“What about her storage locker?” I asked.
“That would be perfect,” my sister agreed. “But how do we find out which one is hers?”
“Are they coded? You know, by apartment number?”
Annie shook her head. “Totally random. First come, first served. At least, that’s what we were told. And now we all know what that’s worth.”
We fell silent.
My sister eyed me with concern. “What strength of sunblock are you using?”
“The sunblock’s fine—it’s SPF 45. But apparently I wasn’t as regular with it as I should have been when we first arrived. So the sun kinda got a head start. I’m being really careful now though.”
I was, too. Not that it seemed to make any difference.
“Look,” I said, finally, “if what we deciphered is right, Ethel has a bug or a camera planted in her living room wall outlet.”
“I know,” my sister said. “I’d love to rip it out. But I don’t know how to do that without letting her know it’s there. And if we tell her . . .”
“Then we have to explain everything else—including what Dennis and Geoffrey did,” I finished. “But I think I might have an idea. And it’ll let us test our theory about Leslie’s surveillance equipment at the same time.”
Annie smiled. “So what kind of gloves will I need this time?”
“You? None at all,” I said. “All you have to do is invite a nice neighbor and her pup for tea.”
CHAPTER 42
While Annie entertained Ethel Plunkett, Gabby and I broke into her condo.
Annie and I had worked out a code ahead of time. I’d text her “” when we were clear of the place. And she’d text me “911” if Ethel and Mrs. Pickles cut out early.
I just prayed Ethel’s earlier brush with burglary hadn’t prompted her to install some kind of silent alarm. Or a camera of her own.
Red hair looks lousy with an orange jumpsuit.
“Oh, sugar, this place is cute,” Gabby said, glancing around. “Neat as a pin and homey, too. I could move right in.”
I was hoping that was a figure of speech. But, given what we were doing already, I wasn’t about to ask.
I headed straight into the living room. Next to the balcony door there was an electrical outlet. Bingo.
“This has to be the one,” I said.
“Where’s the fuse box?” she asked.
“Why do you need the fuse box?”
Gabby grinned and shook her head. “If I don’t cut the power first, your nice neighbor lady is gonna come home and find a couple of crispy critters.”
“Hallway?” I guessed.
“Got it!” she called from the other room a minute later. “They hid it in a closet. And we have to reset the clocks before we leave. Otherwise, that’s a dead giveaway.”
Clearly, this was not her first rodeo.
“OK, sugar, we’re good to go,” Gabby said, reappearing in the living room.
I fished a screwdriver out of my satchel and unscrewed the plate on the outlet. I had no idea what to expect. The extent of my knowledge on the subject—aside from the bug I’d pulled off the base of my own phone—was searching “hidden listening devic
es” on Annie’s computer this morning. Too bad I couldn’t call Ian for a quick lesson.
Unfortunately, when the plate came off, it brought powdered wallboard with it, forming a tell-tale pile on the floor.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got a little hand vac for that,” Gabby said, patting her oversized purse.
I didn’t know whether to be concerned or grateful. Instead, I peered into the outlet.
“Yowza!” Gabby exclaimed, looking over my shoulder.
“Is that . . . ?”
“Yup—a big ol’ nasty bug,” she said happily.
“Can you tell if it’s a microphone or a camera?”
“Looks like just a microphone,” Gabby said. “But I’m no expert.”
Could’ve fooled me.
“Do I just yank it out?” I asked.
Hand it to Ian, the one he used in my house was a lot easier to remove. Although, I’d been pretty steamed at the time.
“Honey, let me,” Gabby said, stepping in smoothly.
It took her less than a minute to produce wire cutters, clip what looked like stray threads, and lift the bug out of the wall.
“All set.”
As I replaced the plate, she turned the device in her hands, studying it.
“Why on earth would a real estate big-shot want to bug a sweet little old lady?” Gabby asked.
“No idea,” I admitted. “But I think Leslie was popping into people’s apartments and swiping stuff. She discovered Ethel kept prescription meds in her bathroom and some spare cash in the living room. I’m guessing the mikes helped her keep track of when people were away from home. And if she picked up a little information she could use, that was icing on the cake.”
It also explained how Leslie McQueen had known the minute Ethel Plunkett changed the locks.
Now if we could just find the money Leslie had looted from the association. And her stash of photos.
CHAPTER 43
Gabby placed the tiny microphone in the middle of Annie’s living room table.