by Diane Capri
The pub wasn’t ancient, but it was decorated with typical sports-bar atmosphere. Lots of dark wood, kitschy memorabilia, and an array of pull handles sporting labels for various micro-brewed beers. Multiple screens in various parts of the rooms replayed games like football, baseball, basketball, soccer, horse racing, dog racing, and finally, the Victoria’s Secret channel. I raised my brow at that, but didn’t mention it to the hostess who showed me to the table. If I remembered right, that same giggle network had been on the last time I was here, too.
George and Ben were already seated in the cozy booth for four. George took my hand as I slid in beside him and kissed me fast on the lips. “Missed you, Mighty Mouse.”
“Missed you, too,” I said, smiling.
Ben ducked behind his menu.
A pink-and-blue-haired waitress appeared to take our orders. I ordered my regular—a sinful cheeseburger with fries, a side salad, and unsweetened iced tea—while George went for an Angus steak salad and water with lemon.
Ben got a huge basket of sliders with fries and a diet soda, which made it my turn to roll my eyes.
After the server brought our drinks, I disposed of the small talk. “I met with the Haydens last night.”
George still held my hand under the table. His warm fingers felt reassuring laced with mine. “How did that go?”
“As well as could be expected. They’re mourning their son.” I swallowed hard against the surprising lump of sadness in my throat when I remembered his mother’s tears. I cleared my throat. “Anyway, I’ve got a couple of new leads for you, Ben.”
“Great.” His flat tone suggested the exact opposite. “Don’t know how we ever managed to do our jobs without you, Willa. I can’t imagine what we’ll do when you get back to work.”
I nodded to acknowledge the sarcasm. “I know you guys are working hard on this case, but my job is on the line here. You know CJ’s started impeachment proceedings against me, and I’ve got a special judiciary investigations committee breathing down my neck for answers. I need to find out what really happened fast before I lose my seat on the bench. And that’s before we even get to the fact that I’d really like to get back to my own home as soon as possible.”
As always, George was the voice of reason, calming me down. “No one’s disputing you have a vested interest in seeing this case solved. Ben’s just trying to tell you to be careful and don’t jump to conclusions before all the evidence is gathered. Right, Ben?”
The police chief gave my husband the facial equivalent of a rude finger gesture, which made George chuckle.
Ben sat back and crossed his arms. “What’ve you got?”
“I texted you the name of Evan’s girlfriend last night, remember?”
“I do. We’re running that down.”
“He had a girlfriend?” George asked.
“So they said,” I nodded. “Her name is Cindy Allen.”
“What else?” Ben prompted.
“His parents say their son was pretty chummy with some of his clients. Some of those relationships were positive, some weren’t. One client in particular was described as a very good friend and spent a lot of time with Hayden recently.” I paused to be sure they were both listening and lowered my voice to avoid the chance that we might be overheard. “Mitch Rogers.”
“Wait a minute. The Mitch Rogers?” George asked, pausing mid-sip of his tea. “The greatest pitcher Texas baseball has ever known?”
“That’s the one. Apparently, Hayden was his financial planner.” I sat back as the waitress brought my salad and a basket of crackers to the table. “According to the parents, Rogers and Hayden had become good friends of late. Rogers introduced Hayden to his girlfriend.”
Ben tore open a packet of saltines with his teeth. “From the way everybody we’ve talked to except his parents described Hayden, I’m surprised anyone could stand him. Let alone a guy like Rogers. Or any decent female on the planet whose main hobby isn’t full body contact roller derby.”
“Does seem strange,” I admitted, pouring raspberry vinaigrette over my greens before digging in. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until now. The food wasn’t the same five-star gourmet cuisine George served, but it was tasty all the same.
“I spent some time with the databases this morning. Like a lot of other sports types, Rogers has a house here. He and his family live out in North Tampa during the off-season.” After swallowing a few bites, I continued. “And there was another client, too…a basketball player with the local NBA team. The parents said he and Evan had a falling out a few months back. The guy accused Evan of financial hanky-panky. They settled the claims before a lawsuit was filed. Probably hushed it up with confidentiality agreements, too. Which is why it didn’t come up when I searched the court records before.”
“Now that sounds more like Hayden.” Ben crumpled his empty cellophane and reached for a second packet of crackers. Our police chief came by his burly figure honestly. “And I remember that. Johnny Rae was the guy.”
“Johnny Rae? Seriously?” George asked, like a fanboy waiting for an autograph.
Ben nodded. “Yeah. He accused Hayden and his company of cheating him out of millions of dollars through bad investments in a bar one night. Hayden said Rae had lost the money gambling in Vegas. A fight ensued. We broke it up and didn’t arrest either one of them. Probably should have.”
George whistled. “Losing that kind of money could make a hothead like Rae homicidal, I guess.”
“Hotheads like Rae don’t need an excuse.” Ben finished off another pack of saltines before sitting back and brushing the crumbs from his shirt. “But in the end, Hayden and the finance company settled it, like Willa said. No clue how much money got paid out.”
“Maybe the guy held a grudge, though,” I suggested as I finished my salad.
“Possible. But not likely. He got his money. He also got traded. Johnny Rae doesn’t live here anymore.” Ben took a swig of his soda. “We got another lead on a suspect, too. A guy that Hayden got into it with at a bar the same night he was killed.”
The waitress cleared my salad bowl and refilled our drinks. The air in the pub filled with the aroma of grilling burgers and caramelized onions. My stomach growled loudly enough to be heard all the way over in Pinellas County.
“What did they fight about the night Hayden died?” I asked.
“We’re still interviewing witnesses, but it sounds like there was a dispute of some kind. Over a woman or money or something else, we’re not sure yet. As soon as I find out, I’ll let you know.”
Our food arrived, and we all dug in. Even connoisseur George, who tried a bite of my cheeseburger, raved about the deliciousness. I devoured my food like a starving woman. Sometimes you craved caviar and champagne. Sometimes you craved melted cheese and mustard and crunchy dill pickles.
Ben ate each of his sliders in one bite, like a hungry bear. No one spoke for a while as we enjoyed our food and our company. Finally, stomach full and mind racing, I pushed my empty plate away.
“Oh, speaking of that girlfriend…” Ben wiped his hands and mouth on his napkin then reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out his phone. “I found these pictures of Cindy Allen in our database after you texted me her name. Seems she had a couple run-ins with the law back in Pittsburgh. And, wait for it…a past addiction problem with heroin.”
He passed me his phone, and I stared at the images on the screen. She was pretty. A willowy body and bright green eyes. Her smile was sweet, but there was an aura of sadness there, as if she’d seen the darker side of life and it had left its mark. If she’d been a heroin addict, that could explain it.
I sent the photos to myself and then handed his device back and pulled her photo up on my phone. “Evan’s parents said she and their son met after they’d moved to Tampa. She might have been the one who gave him the toxic heroin if she was using again.”
“Could be,” Ben said, swallowing his last slider. “We’re checking it out.”
The more
I looked at the photos, the more familiar Cindy seemed, as if I’d seen her before. To my knowledge, she’d never appeared in my courtroom. I might have seen her almost anywhere, though. Tampa’s population was well over 350,000, not including the metro areas. Chances were slim that I’d remember seeing her face in a crowd.
And yet…her eyes, her hair, the shape of her mouth. I felt almost certain that I’d seen her somewhere. I closed my eyes and let my mind float, trying to relax and not fight to remember.
It worked. Because I had seen her recently. Under emotional circumstances. The kind of memory that is most likely to stick in the brain. I remembered her and the place and a few more details, too.
The hospital. That night in the ER lobby. The couple in the corner.
Cindy Allen was the woman I’d noticed that night, the ringer for Sheryl Crow. Allen looked so much like Crow that they might have been sisters. They say we all have a doppelganger somewhere. An apparition or double of another living person. Cindy Allen was Sheryl Crow’s doppelganger.
“She was at the hospital that night, Ben,” I said, meeting his gaze over the top of my phone. “There was a couple in the lobby while I waited for George to get the car. They were off in the corner, consoling each other. I thought at the time that she looked so much like Sheryl Crow. I recognize her face plain as day. It was her, Ben. Cindy Allen.”
“Interesting. But who’s Sheryl Crow?” Ben tapped a few keys on his phone and found a couple of good photos of Sheryl Crow. He flipped back and forth between the two women, nodding. Then he clicked his phone off, shoving it back in his pocket as he slid out of his side of the booth. “Looks like I’ve got more leads to follow up on, then. See you guys later.”
“Keep in touch,” I said to him as he made his way to the door. He waved the back of his hand to show he’d heard me, but I didn’t take that gesture as any kind of promise.
George settled the bill while my thoughts whirled. Was it pure chance Cindy Allen had ended up at the ER the same night Hayden died? Not likely. I didn’t believe in chance. Which could have meant she’d been there because she knew Hayden was there. But how would she have known? She was already in the ER when I arrived. Which was before the accident story had appeared on the local news.
Was it possible that Cindy Allen had witnessed the accident? Had she been at the scene? Did that mean she was with Hayden before he died, too?
If all of my speculations were true, why hadn’t she come forward once she knew Tampa PD was looking for help to identify Hayden’s body?
But if she hadn’t been present at the scene that night, how did she know Hayden was at the hospital? My questions were going around in circles.
Only one person knew the answers. Cindy Allen. She couldn’t be that hard to find.
George and I walked toward the pub’s exit hand in hand. It was too risky for us to be seen together outside. The vultures were still swarming over me, and there was no sign of it letting up anytime soon. But they’d stopped protesting at the entrance to Plant Key Bridge when I didn’t show up for a couple of days. So our plan was working.
I pulled him over to a shadowed corner and kissed him sweetly on the lips. “Thank you for lunch.”
“Thank you for setting this up. I meant it when I said I missed you.”
“I know. I miss you, too.” I patted his chest and smiled to make him feel better. “Don’t worry. I’ll be home soon. This thing feels like it’s coming together.”
We stood there, hugging like teenagers for a moment before leaving the pub separately and going in opposite directions, with a promise to talk again soon.
All the way back to my rental, I kept running through questions in my mind. How did Cindy Allen know what had happened to Hayden? Why had she arrived at the hospital so quickly? Who was that man with her? And on and on it went.
So many questions, so few answers.
But at least I had a new witness to locate, along with plenty of time on my hands to do it. Things were looking up.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Monday, November 14
5:45 p.m.
Locating Cindy Allen proved more difficult than I’d expected. I spent a couple of hours with my keyboard without any luck at all.
There were several different Cindy Allens on the various social-media sites, but none of them was the one I wanted to find.
She had no Florida driver’s license, which was not too unusual, actually. When people relocated to Florida, they often kept their driver’s license from their home state. Even though Florida law required them to change over, many new residents didn’t know or didn’t care, or simply didn’t get around to it.
Florida has so-called “motor voter” laws, but in this case, she wasn’t registered to vote, either. At least, according to the voter registration rolls I could access.
I checked the property records, but she didn’t own a home in Hillsborough, Pasco, or Pinellas counties.
Florida doesn’t have a state income tax, so there was no reason for her employer to list her anywhere. If I’d had a social security number, I might have located a federal tax return or health insurance records, but I didn’t have her social security number.
If she was licensed to do any kind of business in the state, I could find no evidence of it. I hadn’t thought to ask the Haydens what kind of work Cindy did, but they didn’t seem to know much about her. They probably had no idea. I wasn’t going to bother them with the question until Ben Hathaway struck out, too.
He hadn’t called yet, which could mean he was busy. Or it could mean he hadn’t started looking for Cindy Allen yet. Who knew?
There was only one more thing I could think of to do. I’d seen Cindy Allen at Tampa Southern. Maybe someone working that night would remember her. With any luck at all, she’d have filled out information for a visitor badge or something.
Tampa Southern was within walking distance of Le Meridien, but with the November days so short, driving would be better than walking back in the dark. I pushed my chair back and closed my laptop. I slipped my feet into my shoes, dropped my phone into my purse, and picked up my keys.
If I couldn’t find Cindy Allen, I’d have no choice but to leave it to Chief Hathaway, which was never my first choice. I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best as I made my way to the SUV.
Almost a week had passed since the incident. I planned to go back to work tomorrow. The vultures had stopped camping out at our bridge, but a few were still hanging around the courthouse, Augustus said when I last talked to him. Today might have been their last day. Surely they were tired of waiting for me to show up and had found something else to do. I hoped.
Thanksgiving was next week. I intended to be back in my own home by then. One way or another.
I’d forgotten that a Celine Dion concert was scheduled at Amalie Arena later tonight. It seemed everyone in three counties was attending. Which wasn’t possible since the arena’s seating capacity was only twenty thousand or so. But twenty thousand vehicles on our roads all at once, all going in the same direction, snarled traffic like a child’s hair with bed head.
Bumper to bumper, vehicles were gridlocked all the way from the hotel on every surface street, all funneling into the arena. Vehicles barely moved an inch every five minutes. The drive would normally take five minutes. Tonight, I consumed forty-five minutes to simply reach the Kennedy Street Bridge and travel across the Hillsborough River.
Traffic didn’t move any faster on the west side of the river, either. I navigated toward the Davis Islands Bridge only to see a ribbon of headlights stretched out along Bayshore all the way past our bridge to Plant Key. Poor George couldn’t catch a break.
A helicopter overhead was broadcasting the traffic report. I turned on the radio. The reporter’s observations were the same as mine. I’d make it to the hospital eventually, but the return trip to my hotel was destined to be a logistical nightmare, too. Which didn’t make any difference at all because I couldn’t simply turn around.
&nb
sp; Nothing I could do now but grind it out. Going back was as impossible as going forward. Which was probably some sort of cosmic joke of a metaphor for my life at the moment, I figured. I didn’t laugh.
Another forty minutes later, I’d finally parked at Tampa Southern and walked to the emergency room. As it had been last Tuesday night, the place was almost empty. Only one patient was seated. A young boy with a cut on his arm. His mother was holding a damp cloth on the cut for pressure.
“How long have you been waiting?” I asked the mom.
“Not too long. About an hour, I guess,” she replied.
A frustrated curse almost crossed my lips, but I nodded and bit my tongue. I went through the doors into the ER and stopped at the registration desk. A form on a clipboard was perched on the counter next to a plastic sign that said, “Please sign in.”
After ten minutes, a young man dressed in surgical scrubs returned to the clipboard. He glanced down to see that I hadn’t written my name. He frowned and pursed his lips.
“How can I help you, ma’am?” he asked.
“I was a patient here last week. Tuesday night about midnight. I’d like to talk to whoever was working at the desk that night. Was that you?”
He shook his head. “Shift changes at ten o’clock. Joey Smithers works that shift. But he’s off on Mondays. So he won’t be in tonight.”
I glanced up at the clock. It was already eight thirty. “I’m really trying to find a woman I met in the waiting room that night. I have something that belongs to her. I need to return it.”
He frowned and cocked his head. “Was she admitted to the hospital? I might be able to look her up for you.”
“I don’t think so. I think she was…waiting for someone who came in on an ambulance that night,” I replied. Which was apparently the wrong thing to say because his quotient of helpful attention instantly dried up.
“If she was waiting, not a patient, we would have no record of her,” he said, putting some distance between us.