“Thank you,” I said.
He walked away and I stood there for a second, relieved. Then Willie walked up.
“She got lucky,” she said, reiterating what the doctor had said. I nodded. “And so did you.” She took my hand. “Let me show you where she is.”
She led me down the hallway to a room. She held open the door and I went in. Stephanie was lying on the bed with her eyes closed. Her hair was disheveled, and she was pale and drawn. Her left shoulder was taped up and her arm was in a sling, and an IV snaked out of her right arm. Her breathing was shallow and she had an oxygen tube under her nose. Scrapes zigzagged across her face and hands from falling hard in the garage.
“She looks terrible,” I whispered.
“She’ll be okay,” Willie murmured.
I leaned against the doorframe. “I couldn’t protect her. I screwed up.”
Willie put her hand on my shoulder. “It’s not your fault.”
I shook my head in frustration. “I should’ve known someone could get into the garage.”
“How’d he do it?”
“He must’ve waited until someone went in or out, then slipped into the garage while the gate was up. I’ve watched the gate – it moves slowly.”
“It’ll be okay.” Willie gave me a quick peck on the cheek. “I have to get back to work.”
I gave her hand a squeeze. “I miss you,” I said. She smiled in surprise, then gave me a kiss on the lips and quickly walked away.
I moved into the room and dragged a chair close to the bed. I sat down and looked at Stephanie.
She may not have been the sweetest thing – okay, she was a nightmare – but she didn’t deserve this. Right there, I vowed to find who’d done this to her.
Chapter Seventeen
I was still sitting in the chair when I heard someone come into the room. I turned around and met Detective Spillman’s gaze.
She held up a paper coffee cup. “You look like you could use this,” she said.
I stood up, and little-used muscles protested. I stretched and followed her into the hall. “Cheap coffee in a paper cup. What else would a detective drink?” I said.
Spillman gave me a sympathetic smile. “Want to tell me what’s going on?”
I took a sip of the coffee and grimaced. Not very good, but I appreciated the gesture. “I really shouldn’t have called you. My employer doesn’t want to involve the cops.”
“Oh, that’s a new one.” She leaned against the wall and crossed her arms. “The gunshot wound would be reported, so I’d find out anyway.”
“I know. I figured I’d save you some time.”
“Want to tell me about it?”
“There’s not much to tell. Her father hired me to be her bodyguard, to protect her against some of his enemies. He thinks they’ll go after Stephanie to get at him. I know,” I said, warding off her look. “It sounded fishy to me, too, but that’s all I’ve got.”
“But now we might have a serial killer who’s taking out other kids, too.” Spillman shrugged. “I didn’t think there was a connection, until Stephanie showed up at the funeral. She knew both girls.”
I took another sip of coffee, then threw the cup in a nearby trash can. “They all went to college together.”
“Where?”
“Smith.”
Spillman raised an eyebrow. “Good school.”
“She’s scared of something.”
“Think she knows something that her father isn’t sharing?”
I didn’t answer because just then Forrest McMahon came down the hall, sharply dressed in a dark suit. Tyrone and Oscar followed behind. McMahon stalked up, and put his face in mine. “Don’t go anywhere,” he said sternly. He glanced at Spillman, then went into Stephanie’s room. Tyrone and Oscar stood on either side of the door in their best bodyguard poses.
Spillman barely moved her head as she took it all in, clearly unimpressed. We stood in uncomfortable silence until McMahon came back out. His steely gaze took us all in.
Spillman stepped forward and held out her hand. “Mr. McMahon? I’m Detective Spillman with the Denver Police Department. I’d like to speak to you about what happened tonight.”
McMahon hesitated, glanced at me, then shook her hand. “I’ll deal with you in a minute,” he said, his tone implying he was used to getting his way. “Right now I’d like to speak to Mr. Ferguson in private.”
She surveyed him for a moment. “Sure, I’ll give you a few minutes.” Her tone implied she didn’t take orders from civilians and she was being gracious to allow him time to speak with me.
McMahon and I walked down the hall to the waiting room. Then he whirled around and lit into me.
“I hired you to protect my daughter, and you didn’t do it,” he said, his voice low and controlled. He put a finger in my chest. “The level of incompetence you’ve displayed is appalling. This is not a joke.”
“I know that –” I began.
“Don’t waste time with excuses because you’re fired. Send me a bill and then I never want to see you again. You haven’t helped one bit. Not one damn bit.”
“Maybe I could help if you’d tell me what’s really going on,” I said, fighting for restraint. “If you hadn’t jerked me around, maybe Stephanie wouldn’t have been shot.”
He stared at me, taken aback by what I said. “What are you implying?” he finally asked.
“You know who this so-called enemy is, don’t you? But you’d rather keep it a secret, making it impossible for me to do anything. What’d you think, that Stephanie would just sit at home and twiddle her thumbs until you get this situation, whatever it is, resolved? You put her life in danger, and mine too.”
He looked away, and when he spoke, I could barely hear him. “You know I manage a hedge fund?”
I nodded.
He hemmed around for a bit. “There’s a situation with some of the money…I can’t tell you more.” His voice cracked. “They’re already threatening my family, and damn near succeeded. I’m trying to work it out. I’ve sent my wife and sons overseas, but Stephanie refused to go. I just wanted someone to protect her until I can get things resolved.”
“Who’s after you?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know for sure who. When I heard about Avery’s death, I figured Stephanie would be next, but she wouldn’t let Tyrone and Oscar stay with her, so I tried you.”
“You knew about Avery’s death and you didn’t tell me?” I was fuming.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But I need to keep this as quiet as possible.”
I stepped back, opened my mouth and then shut it again. I couldn’t believe he held back such important information. “How the hell…” I threw up my hands.
“This didn’t turn out like I thought it would, but Stephanie will be safe here. Tyrone and Oscar will be with her around the clock. Once she’s out of the hospital, I’ll call you about what needs to happen next.”
With that, he strode back down the hall to speak with Spillman. I watched his retreating back. For a moment, I didn’t move, still stunned by this turn of events. He approached Spillman and they went into Stephanie’s room. Oscar and Tyrone remained outside the door. Oscar turned his head and stared at me coldly. I waved at him but his expression didn’t change. I shook my head and went to the front desk to say goodbye to Willie.
“Are you going back to your place?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “But I don’t have a car.”
“I’d let you take my car, but I don’t think you want to pick me up in a few hours.”
“I appreciate the offer, but you’re right, I wouldn’t want to come back. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.” She smiled as she grabbed her cell phone. “I’ll see if Ace or Deuce can come get you.” She dialed and waited a second. One of the brothers answered, and she quickly explained the situation, then hung up. “Deuce is on his way now.”
“Thanks. I’ll call you in the morning.”
I went to th
e emergency room entrance and waited for Deuce. By the time his truck rolled up, I had a horrible headache and my knees throbbed from hitting the concrete floor of Stephanie’s parking garage.
“Hey, Reed, how are you?” Deuce said as I got in.
“I’ve been better. I just want to take a shower and go to bed.”
“Okay.” For once he seemed to know to keep quiet.
It was midnight when Deuce parked in a space beside our building.
“Do you need anything?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I’m fine. I just want to lie down.”
“Okay, go watch one of those film now things you like, that’ll put you to sleep. If you need anything, call me.”
I laughed quietly. No matter how many times I tried to explain that it was film noir, Deuce just didn’t get it. But he tried. “I’ll do that,” I said.
Chapter Eighteen
Tuesday morning I awoke to the sound of my phone ringing. I shook myself awake, feeling groggy and sore, then answered the phone. And sure enough, because I was dazed and out of sorts, it was my mother. I swear she had some kind of motherly radar that detected when I’d been in danger.
“Hello, dear,” she said in her ever-cheery voice. “How are you? You sound tired. You keep telling me you’re not doing drugs, but when you sound like, well, how you sound now, what am I supposed to think?”
My mother has three worries where I’m concerned: that I’m doing drugs; that I’m in permanent danger because of my job; and that I’ll die unmarried, never having given her grandchildren. And so I teased her relentlessly about those concerns.
“I was doing drugs all last night, Mother, it was great. You should’ve been here.”
“Don’t be fresh, dear.” She sniffed, her way of showing scorn for my humor.
In the past, I’d tried to gloss over my befuddled state, but that only seemed to worry her more, so this time I tried a different tack. “I’m on a case, and I got hit over the head last night. I’ve got a concussion.” I left out that I’d been in a gunfight. No way she needed to know that.
“I wish you would choose a better profession, like that investment firm. I don’t know why you didn’t stick with that.”
I sat up, suddenly alert. “Why are you bringing that up?” She hadn’t mentioned Chancellor Finance in years, so why was she now?
“I got the funniest call a week or so ago, someone asking about Chancellor Finance and what you did for them.”
“Who was it?”
“He didn’t say. Forgive me, dear, but I bragged about you.”
“Mother…”
“You did such a fine job for them. I still don’t understand why you all shut the firm down.”
“It’s complicated.”
“That’s what you said then. Anyway, I wanted to catch up with you…”
And so we chatted for a little bit, and I got all the news on how she and my father were doing in sunny Florida. When we finished, I sat on the edge of the bed, thinking about what she’d said. Someone had called her about Chancellor Finance, and I’ll bet it was Forrest McMahon’s people. They wouldn’t have found out anything from my mother, but it was unsettling that they had contacted her. I knew Cal would be researching McMahon, but I made a mental note to do some more myself. I needed to know how he knew about Chancellor Finance because I didn’t want him, or anyone, to blackmail me again. But there was something else I needed to do first: figure out who exactly was after Stephanie.
I got dressed and gingerly combed my hair, noting that the cut on the back of my head still hurt, and then I headed over to Stephanie’s condo.
I’d done something I shouldn’t have last night at the hospital: while I was waiting in Stephanie’s room, I’d taken her keys from a bag with her clothes in it. I knew as I was sitting there, watching her breathe, that I needed some clue as to who was trying to kill her. And I also knew she wasn’t telling me everything, anymore than her father was. So I figured I would look around her place, not exactly sure what I hoped to find, but something that would put me on the right track. And even before my talk with McMahon, I knew he wouldn’t let me into her place…and so my subterfuge.
As I parked on Bassett, I mulled over my next problem. I had the key to her condo, but I needed to get past the doorman. One thing I’ve learned in my vast – okay, minimal – time as a private investigator is that if you act like you have the right to do whatever you’re doing, most people will go along with it without questions. So I marched up to the door of Glass House Denver and flashed my badge at the doorman. It wasn’t a badge with any authority – you didn’t need a license to practice in the state of Colorado – but one I bought on the Internet that said “Private Investigator.” I sometimes used to appear as if I had more authority than I did. Before he had a chance to look at it, I pocketed it and introduced myself.
“I’m Philip Marlowe,” I said, using the name of the fictional detective in The Big Sleep. “I don’t know if you’re aware, but Stephanie McMahon was in an accident last night.”
“Yes, I heard about that,” he said, smiling sympathetically. He was rotund, with round cheeks reddened by the cold and a jolly demeanor that would impress St. Nick.
I held up her keys. “I’ve been hired by the family to retrieve some things from her apartment.”
“Perhaps I should call them, just to verify this.” The smile never left his face.
“If you think that’s necessary. However, I’m tracking a potential murderer, and every second counts.” I made a show of pulling out my cell phone. “If this is absolutely necessary, I can call Mr. McMahon right now and you can speak with him.”
He almost lost the smile in his nervousness, but then he made quick decision. “No, that won’t be required, sir,” he said and opened the door.
I strode to the elevator without looking back. He might have second thoughts about letting me in, but I hoped to be long gone before he contacted McMahon.
A few minutes later, I let myself into Stephanie’s condo. I shut the door and stood in the entryway, listening to the silence. I almost expected to hear her whiny voice zinging me with some sarcastic comment. I sighed, then went down the hall to her bedroom.
The room was big, with a king-sized bed, furniture piled with jewelry and clothes, and a large flat-screen TV that hung on the wall opposite the bed. I walked across the room and looked at some photos on the window ledge. Some were of Stephanie with her father and a woman I assumed was her mother; one was of her with Brittany, sitting on a beach; and there was a group photo with Stephanie, Brittany, two other women, and three guys. It looked like it was taken in college, as Stephanie and Brittany seemed a bit younger, and they all wore sweatshirts with college logos on it: the girls with Smith, the guys with Amherst. I checked the nightstand. The drawer contained magazines and a box of Kleenex. Next to a bedside lamp was a note printed on cream-colored paper: “A secret is a secret, that must remain.” Some kind of poetry? A little saying to help inspire her? Did Stephanie have a side I hadn’t seen yet? I shrugged, then went into the walk-in closet, feeling a bit like a voyeur as I looked through her clothes and in dresser drawers. Everything reeked of expensive, even her underwear. Not that I dwelled on that.
A shelving unit held more clothes and tons of shoes. I glanced down and spied some books tucked in the bottom shelf. I got down on my knees to look closer: some yearbooks and a couple of photo albums. I thumbed through them. The first was trip pictures, and the second was more of a scrapbook of college, with invitations to sorority events, pictures of parties, and headlines cut from papers. I kept turning pages. On one page, she’d taped in an article about the death of a co-ed, a girl named Rebecca Thorndike, who’d been found dead at a lake a few miles from Smith. She’d been drunk and had cocaine and heroin in her system. The authorities speculated that she hadn’t been partying alone, and asked anyone with information to come forward. I assumed she’d been a friend of Stephanie’s, and I found myself shaking my head. Stephanie had expe
rienced more than her share of death. The rest of the scrapbook was filled with more photos, a graduation notice, and the like. An interesting look into her past, I thought as I put it back, but how does it help me?
I stood up and went into the master bath. It was as big as the bedroom, with marble countertops, a glass-enclosed shower and a deep tub. Bottles of perfume, hair products, and other beauty supplies were strewn across the counter next to the sink. I opened the drawers to find more of the same, and a bag of pot, and another with a white substance in it. I picked it up and examined it. Had to be cocaine. I put it back, then placed my hands on the counter and stared into the mirror. Am I missing something? I sighed and left the bedroom.
I walked through the rest of the house, wishing the walls could speak to me. But everything was the same as when I’d last been here, and nothing struck me now as noteworthy. This seemed to be a fruitless endeavor.
I locked up and took the elevator downstairs. The doorman let me out with a smile and a wave. As I walked to my car, something caught my eye, but I resisted the urge to turn and stare. Instead, I got in the 4-Runner and then took a good look in the rearview mirror, down the street behind me. Parked on the other side of the street, near the corner, was a brand-new black Toyota sedan. And someone with a baseball cap was sitting in the driver’s seat. What were the odds?
My mind raced. Should I go back and confront him? What if I were wrong? I’m sorry, sir, I thought you were my stalker. I’m sure I’d be a great help to Stephanie from jail. And what if I was right? These people had killed before. Confronting the guy wouldn’t solve anything. I needed to prove he was involved.
I pulled out my phone and called Cal.
“What’s up?”
“I think I picked up your tail.”
“Huh?”
“The black Toyota. It’s parked behind me.”
Reed Ferguson Mystery series Box Set 2 Page 23