by Geonn Cannon
“Maybe now that she knows you’ll be affected, she can turn it off.”
“Maybe.” She took Dale’s hand. “I have to give her an answer by Monday. We’ll consider it together over the weekend. I don’t even know how I would explain half the things I do without revealing the wolf’s part in it. Maybe it would be better to just stay with you. Grow the agency, make something I can be proud of instead of just folding in with someone else.”
Dale rested her head on Ari’s shoulder. “I’ll follow wherever you go, puppy.”
Ari said, “That’s all I need.”
“Me too.”
#
Stuffed from their meal and Dale’s cornbread, they decided to devote the rest of the day to recovery. Ari was reclining on the couch with Wilcox’s iPad while Dale napped off the effects of the tryptophan. She did a search through the tablet for any mention of the Murphy brothers, but came up empty. She tried ‘Creep Cousins’ but that was a bust as well. She scrolled through the encoded notes hoping something would leap out at her now that he had an idea what some of the words might mean. Murphy, Michael, Mike, Joel, M&J… anything that might possibly connect and open the door to further information.
She was about to give up when she saw one entry listed as MM/F. Behind that was 500/00. She scrolled back to the search bar and entered /F and found multiple entries. MM/F, JM/F, KF/F, FP/F, and TC/F. They were all followed by amounts she felt comfortable assuming were monetary, prices between two hundred and a thousand dollars. After those marks, Wilcox had written some sort of code to indicate exactly what they had been paid for.
She sat up and found a pen and a scrap piece of paper. Working on the assumption that MM was Mike Murphy, she took the extra step to JM being his brother Joel. The slash-F was connecting them all to the Flex gym. The iPad handily kept track of when each note was made, so she made a list of the dates to crosscheck them with Wilcox’s memoirs and his case files. If she knew which cases required payment for hired goons, then she might be one step closer to cracking the code.
He didn’t know how long she had been working until Dale came shuffling out of the bedroom. She leaned against the entrance to the living room and held out her arm.
“Need my puppy.”
Ari looked at the time. “Wow. I didn’t realize it was so late.” She turned off the iPad and set it aside. “I’m coming.”
Dale came to join her on the couch as she organized everything so she could start again in the morning. “What is all of this?”
“This is the start of figuring out Wilcox’s idiotic code. Once I know what all these annotations mean, maybe I can work backwards and figure out what he was into. Something in this iPad got him deep enough that suicide seemed like the only escape.”
Dale kissed Ari’s cheek. “Bring me some water when you come to bed.”
“Okay. Go warm the bed up.”
Dale nodded and went back down the hall. Ari examined the progress she had made, the rows of names, dates, and payments. Somewhere in that mess was the answer to Clark Wilcox’s death. She was determined to find it and give the man some measure of peace, despite the hell he had given her in life. She knew he would never have done it for her if their roles were reversed, but that was why it was important that she give it her all. Clark Wilcox was not her role model, and she would do right by him no matter where the trail led her.
She sighed and got up, turning off the light before she went to get a cup of water for Dale.
Chapter Fourteen
Ari waited until Monday morning at the office to call Flex. She asked for Patsy and identified herself. “You might not remember me…”
“Oh, I remember you! Yeah. The, um. Weirdness.”
“Right.” Ari was hoping they could have ignored that. “I want to apologize again—”
“No, it wasn’t you. Over Thanksgiving, I thought about it some more. I think it was more my fault than yours. A friend and I had a conversation. It was really good. I didn’t think I’d get a chance to thank you. So thanks.”
Ari smiled. It was always nice to help a woman discover her latent desires. “Sure. I hope it works out for you.” She tapped her pad with the tip of her pen. “Listen, I’m actually calling for business reasons. And to confess. I wasn’t really checking out the gym yesterday. I’m a private investigator. The case I’m working on led me to your gym and to the Creep Cousins.”
Patsy snorted. “Why’d you have to go and ruin a good conversation?”
“Sorry. I know you probably can’t divulge client names, but in the interest of cooperation, if I gave you some initials, maybe you could confirm full names.”
“Hm. I could maybe be persuaded…”
Ari said, “Okay. I know Mike and Joel Murphy.”
“Uh-huh.”
“T.C., K.F., and F.P. Can you confirm those are Cousins?”
Patsy said, “We have several clients with those initials, ma’am. Tommy Carrow, Kevin Forrester, and Frank Pearl, for instance. I’m not sure how much help it would be, just having the initials.”
Ari wrote the names down. “Yeah, probably a dead end.”
“That’s Forrester with two Rs, and Carrow is spelled C-A-R-R-O-W.”
“Got it. They wouldn’t happen to be at the gym now, would they?”
“No, it’s still too early in the day. They usually come in after five o’clock.”
“Thanks. You’ve been a big help.”
Patsy said, “Sure. It might have been a breach of confidentiality to tell you Tommy and Kevin do something involved unloading down at the docks, and Frank works for a moving company called World Movers. Or maybe not, since that’s not exactly privileged information. Either way, you never asked, so…”
Ari smiled and wrote the extra info down. “Damn. Maybe I’ll find it some other way.”
“I hope so, Ariadne. And hey, if you ever want to come down for the free trial membership, I’d be happy to show you around. Our saunas are, ah, real private.”
“That’s a sweet offer, but my girlfriend says I have to decline.”
“Bring her. I can just watch.”
Ari’s cheeks flushed. “Wow. I woke a sleeping giant, huh?”
“You sure did.” Patsy laughed. “Hope to talk to you soon. Even if it is just case-related.”
Ari hung up and looked up the number for World Movers. She dialed and settled into her Harriet the Harried Housewife persona.
“World Movers, we move your world. How can I help you today?”
Ari said, “Hello-o, yes, I’m sorry, I’m calling… one of your men was at my home this morning on a job? I think his name was Fred or Frank or something?”
The receptionist, guarded: “Uh-huh?”
Ari assumed she’d gotten more than a few complaints about him, judging from that reaction. She decided to take another angle. “He left behind a pair of gloves. They look brand-new, and they have F PEARL written right on the cuffs. I would hate for him to think they’d been lost! And I was about to head out on some errands, so if he was nearby on another job, I could return them without making him backtrack or miss any work.”
“Oh!” The guardedness was gone now. “Well, isn’t that sweet of you! Hold on, let me see.” Ari could hear the sound of typing over the phone. “Kev is working alone today, and he’s at Eighth Avenue, off Crockett. And listen, honey, because he sure as shooting won’t say it, thank you so much. It’s so kind of you.”
Ari said, “Oh, just doing what I’d want someone to do for me, you know.”
She hung up and grabbed her coat as she headed out. “Off to see one of the Creep Cousins.”
“Take precautions,” Dale said.
“Always.” She blew Dale a kiss as she left the office.
Crockett was in Queen Anne, which meant Ari would most likely have to walk uphill at some point. She changed into a pair of comfortable shoes in the car and made the drive across town.
The houses were all built in the style that gave the neighborhood its name. They
were all elevated, perched on higher tracts of land with stone or wooden steps leading down to the sloped sidewalk that popped and cracked with overgrown roots and weeds. The World Movers truck was blocking the traffic on Eighth Avenue, so Ari parked on the side street, took her precautions out of the trunk, and walked up toward it. As she drew near, she saw Frank Pearl carrying a large end table across the lawn, biceps bulging against the sleeves of his uniform shirt.
Ari waited for him to put it down in the back of the truck before she spoke. “Yo.”
He turned, dabbing at the sweat on his brow. “You the lady who called Viv? I don’t know what to tell ya, ‘cause I’ve been here all day and I’ve got all my gloves.”
“I’m not here about gloves. I want to talk to you about your friends.”
“What friends?”
Ari stopped just out of his reach. He had the higher ground which she hoped meant it would be easier for her to evade him. If he swung, he would be throwing his weight downward. She could just sidestep and knock him down. Maybe he’d roll. That would be fun to watch.
“The Murphys? Mr. Carrow and Mr. Forrester? You guys hang out at the Flex, right?”
His expression hardened. “Cop?”
“Private investigator. Like your other friend, Clark Wilcox.”
Pearl snorted and threw his head back. “Wilprick. Right. That dude wasn’t a friend.”
“He wrote an awful lot about you for you two not to be friends.”
He looked at her again. “You read what he wrote? You have it?”
Ari said, “I wouldn’t come any closer.”
“Why? You got a gun?”
“Guns are a bluff. I pull a gun, at some point I have to pull the trigger to make it a worthwhile threat. That either brings cops, or I put a bullet in your head and that’s the end of your usefulness. It also makes me a murderer. I’m not a murderer, Mr. Pearl. Are you?”
He narrowed his eyes. He looked toward the house as a diversion, then lunged at her. Ari backed up a step and swung her right arm out from behind her hip. The stun baton ratcheted out to its full sixteen inches and she pressed the button on its handle. Blue electricity arced across the tip as she jabbed it toward Pearl’s midsection. His eyes widened and he aborted his attack, twisting to the side with his hands out to the side to avoid grazing the weapon accidentally. When he was back on his feet, he retreated a few steps with his arms still out to the side.
“Okay… okay, sorry.”
“Right,” Ari said. She had seen the shock stick the other Cousins had taken to Wilcox’s apartment and hadn’t been thrilled at the idea of ending up on the business end of it. Still, turnabout was fair play, and it was a lovely negotiating tool. “Can we have a conversation, or am I going to have to use this?”
“Easy! Put the cattle prod away!”
Ari said, “I think I’ll leave it out until we’re nice and friendly. Clark Wilcox. What’s his connection to you and the other guys I named?”
Pearl said, “If you got his files, you already know.”
“I was always a lazy reader. Summarize it for me.”
“I’m not going to insinuate myself.”
Ari tried hard not to laugh. “I’m not asking you to incriminate yourself. I just want the details. Maybe give them to me as a hypothetical. That way, no one has any proof you’re selling out your buddies. It’s just a story you’re telling.”
He considered that for a moment, or maybe trying to work out the meaning of ‘hypothetical.’ Either way, he eventually decided to talk.
“Let’s say there’s this group of guys. On weekends they do bodybuilding competitions. You know, like Arnold used to do all the time.”
“They still have those?” Ari asked.
Pearl said, “They have plenty, all right? All around Washington, some down in California, points in between. These guys do okay. I mean, they’re not winning the whole thing, but they’re getting recognized. Maybe a magazine cover or an interview. It’s nice. And then one day, some prick of a private eye comes around. He gets pictures of these guys in the gym after it’s closed, and pictures of their gear. Prick breaks into our lockers and takes the moral high ground? Right! Whatever.” He exhaled sharply a few times, hands on his hips.
“So anyway… anyway, he goes… and he tells these guys he’ll keep quiet if the price is right. He’ll tell whoever hired him that there was no evidence of drug use and we can keep on performing. Then one month we’re a little bit late. We showed up to pay him, and his office is covered with cops. We figured he was making good on his threat. We tried to find the videos so we could destroy them, but then we found out he was dead. All that evidence was out there in the world somewhere. So we started looking for it. That’s all we were doing with the girl.”
“Tiffany Knight?”
He nodded. “We weren’t going to rough her up or anything. Tommy even got us all to pitch in so we could give her some money for the info. Four hundred and sixty-two dollars. We would’ve just driven her in a circle and then dropped her off with four Benjamins in her pocket. But because of that bitch getting in the way, Mikey and Joel are facing a kidnapping charge. If they talk, we’re all screwed.”
Ari said, “I’m sorry your failed kidnapping is causing you problems.”
“Hey!” He took a step toward her.
“Hey.” She lifted the baton
He backed off, hands in the air. “Do you know where his evidence is? If you handed it over, that would be it. You know, his secretary… we wouldn’t have to ask her about it.”
Ari said, “She doesn’t know. And if any of you guys go after her, that bitch who stopped you at McGraw Square is going to become a real thorn in your side.”
His eyes widened with recognition. “Hey…”
She waved the baton again. “Remember, I knocked down your two boys unarmed. You really want to feel what this thing is like? Even through your clothes, it packs a heck of a wallop.”
“We don’t want to hurt anybody. We just paid Wilcox every month. Sometimes we were a little late, but we paid. And we were going to pay that little… th-that receptionist of his. We don’t even want to keep the damn computer. We just want our parts of it erased. We paid for it to be put aside. Just because Wilcox decided to eat a bullet, we got to suffer?”
Ari said, “Yeah, it’s a real tragedy.” She lowered the stun baton. “Okay, look. I have the videos he threatened you with. If you leave Tiffany alone, you don’t have anything to worry about. But if I hear anything about you guys hassling her…”
“We’ll back off. We promise. We just want to keep everything quiet.”
“Okay. Then you have my word.”
He exhaled with what she thought might be relief. “Look, we’re just keeping up with the competition, you know? Everyone’s juicing at least a little bit. And it’s not like we don’t put in the work, too. You can’t do this kind of work—”
Ari held up her hands and patted the air. “You don’t have to justify anything to me, pal. Just keep away from Tiffany. Nothing else has to happen with Wilcox’s files.”
He nodded and turned back toward the truck. Ari started to leave, but then a thought occurred to her. “Hey. When you tried to grab Tiffany, how did you know where to find her? You guys loaded up your Kidnapper Special van… but how did you know she was in McGraw Square. I assumed one of you was watching her, but you were all in the van. At least all the names I have.”
Pearl shrugged. “What names do you have?”
“You, the Murphys, Forrester, and Carrow.”
“You got us. But we’re not the only ones who had a beef with Wilcox. You saw that damn computer. He’s full up on enemies. One of them was watching the girl, and he knew we were watching, too. He figured we had a better chance of snatching her than he did, so he called us in.”
“Okay. Care to enlighten me on this mysterious third party?”
He shook his head and turned his back to her. “I don’t know his name. He called Mikey, did all the plan
ning with him. But whoever he is, lady, he’s dangerous. And he’s seen you, after that little trick you pulled saving the girl. You might want to watch your back.”
Ari feigned indifference. “Yeah, I’ll do that. Thanks for the advice.”
She waited until she was at the car, well out of sight from the moving van, before she took out her phone and dialed Dale’s cell.
“Hey, puppy. Everything okay?”
“For now. Listen, I need you to get out of there.”
Dale’s voice lost its lightness. “What’s going on?”
“Maybe nothing. But the Creep Cousins might not be the only ones we should be concerned about. Get Wilcox’s iPad and go somewhere safe. Go…” She closed her eyes and wrinkled her nose, but she knew it was the only option. “Go to my mother’s.”
“Are you sure?”
“No one would think to look for you there. Go.”
Ari could hear Dale going into the office to retrieve the tablet, so she got into the car.
Dale said, “How dangerous is it right now?”
“I don’t know. The Creeps were only part of the threat. I think I’ve neutralized them… to a degree, anyway. We shouldn’t have to worry about them. But there’s someone else on that iPad that we don’t know anything about. He set up a kidnapping to get the iPad once. If he knows we have it, he might do something else drastic. I would rather play it safe than sorry.”
“Me too.” There was a pause and Dale said, “Okay. Street looks clear. I’m heading over now.”
“Okay. Be very careful. Watch for tails. Don’t let anyone follow you.”
“I’ll be careful, puppy. Promise. Where will you be?”
“I’ll be right behind you.”
Dale said, “See you there.”
Ari sighed and hung up. Sending Dale to her mother’s was the only real option, but it meant that the truth about what was said at the cabin would come to light. She knew it would happen eventually, but now she felt like she was being forced into it. If she couldn’t prevent it, she wanted to at least be there when Dale heard the story.