by Robin Mahle
“Montoya doesn’t want me within a mile of his investigation. You either. He has made that crystal clear. If we hand over the video, we’re out. Both of us. You and I know he’s laser-focused on Carlos Diaz. He’s not paying attention to what happened with me or the car I saw because I didn’t give him enough detail.”
“That could change depending on where the leads take him,” Shane replied.
“Sure. But we can run with this now. If we don’t get a plate or can’t identify the men in the video, then I’ll make sure to hand the footage over to Montoya myself.” Allison reached for Shane’s hand that he had pressed on the countertop. “I would never put your job in jeopardy. If it comes down to it, I’ll say you knew nothing. I won’t let you take the fall for my decisions. But Montoya could be overlooking the obvious. I don’t think he or Alvarez are looking into Tommy’s murder the way they should be.”
“That’s not a fair assessment.”
“Maybe not, but that’s how I see it. Just a day, maybe two. Can you give me that? Let me do what I promised Lucy I would do. I’m not interfering with their investigation. I’m not getting in their way.”
Shane held her gaze. “On one condition. You’re not doing this alone.”
“You, me and Charlie. I couldn’t ask for anything more.”
Detective Montoya scratched his temple and eyed Carlos Diaz once again. “Why did you go to a private investigator when you had concerns about your wife’s fidelity?”
“As I said, I wanted proof she was cheating.”
“You didn’t think to just ask her if she was having an affair?” Montoya pressed on.
“I have a lot to lose, Detective. I’m a wealthy man. Evidence would be necessary to move forward on divorce proceedings and ensure Tracy wouldn’t see a dime of my money.”
“Of course. And the fact that she was cheating with the man who you trusted most with your company’s finances, that didn’t play into your equation?”
“Of course it did. The easy solution would have been to fire him. Again, I needed proof and I chose to hire a private investigator to obtain it for me which is within my legal rights.”
“Mr. Diaz, did you suspect Harlan Goodfellow of embezzlement or otherwise trying to harm your organization?”
Diaz pulled upright and thrust back his shoulders. “No. I had full trust in him.”
“Then it must have been very difficult to learn of his deeply personal betrayal.”
“It would throw anyone for a loop, Detective Montoya, I assure you.”
“I have no doubt.” Montoya pressed the stop button on the digital recorder. “Mr. Diaz, I can’t imagine what you must be going through right now. Learning of your wife’s betrayals and then knowing that she was murdered along with her lover. A double blow like that can make a person feel hopeless.”
“What is your point, Detective?”
“I want to find your wife’s killer, Mr. Diaz. That is my number one priority. And in order to do that, I’m going to need to dig deeply into your relationship with her. I have to rule out the possibility of you being a suspect.”
“How can I possibly have done such a thing?”
Montoya raised a preemptive hand. “Crimes of passion are nothing new, Mr. Diaz. But my point is, you’re going to need to turn over everything you have regarding your contact with Tommy Boyce, who, I’m sure you’re already aware, was found dead the day after your wife and her lover were killed.”
“I am aware, yes,” Diaz replied.
“I have reason to believe Mr. Boyce was acting on behalf of another when working the task you hired him for.” Montoya watched as Diaz appeared confused. “What I’m saying, sir, is that this is a two-pronged approach. I need to look at why Boyce was targeted in addition to your wife and Mr. Goodfellow.”
“I will tell you everything I know about Tommy Boyce, Detective. My wife is dead. Regardless of her betrayal, I would never have wanted this to happen. You have to believe me.”
“Then I will also ask for your help regarding Mr. Goodfellow.”
“Anything,” Diaz added.
“You two were close friends and colleagues. I’m going to need any records you have. Receipts of hotels, purchases, whatever, that your wife might have made in conjunction with their affair. I’ll need Goodfellow’s employee records, any stocks he held with your company, anything relating to his work here too. And I’ll need to know if Mr. Goodfellow had enemies.”
“Unless he was screwing someone else’s wife, I can’t think of anyone who would have wanted him to be murdered.”
Montoya nodded. “Before I turn on the recorder again, I need to ask you a final question and this will be off the record, so I need you to be as straight-forward as possible.”
“Okay,” Diaz replied.
“You already stated your whereabouts on the night of your wife’s murder. Your alibi checks out. But what I want to ask you is when you last saw Tommy Boyce.”
Diaz eyed the recorder. He returned his sights to Montoya. “I did go and see Mr. Boyce earlier in the day just to confirm everything was on track. However, on my arrival at his office, he wasn’t there. I tried his cell phone too.”
“Did you notice if his office had been broken into when you arrived?”
“No. It was locked up and everything looked fine. Why?”
Montoya nodded. “It had been broken into later in the night. We’re working on getting Boyce’s phone records so any calls you made to him will show up just so you’re aware. Let’s continue.” Montoya turned on the recorder once again.
13
Lucy Boyce was alone. Her mother was gone and now her father. For the girl of only nineteen, returning to normal seemed desperately out of reach. In the eyes of the law, she was an adult. The burden of dealing with the estate fell on her. Not that there was much of an estate. The house, the car, her dad’s business. This was what she had to deal with now, along with arranging for her father’s funeral. There was extended family to whom she’d already made the heart-breaking phone calls. An uncle, her father’s younger brother, and a cousin who lived in New York. The uncle offered to help Lucy through the painful time but Lucy, being her father’s daughter, refused the help and insisted only on his attendance at the funeral at a time and place to be announced soon.
An impossible weight to endure, Lucy had no other choice than to confront the duties head-on. She recalled the time spent sorting through her mother’s belongings. Now it was time to rifle through her dad’s bedroom and figure out where he had left off. What bills had been paid, what tasks were left undone.
It was almost noon on Saturday. It was the day she and her father sometimes sat around watching movies or going out for lunch on the beach. That was over now. This day, she stood in the kitchen with her eyes still swollen from two days of tears and steadied herself enough to enter his room. He had a desk inside where she knew he kept files. His laptop rested on it. So far, Lucy had only been approached by a detective named Alvarez. She gave him her statement and hadn’t heard anything since. She supposed these things took time but was surprised by the detective’s lack of interest in her or their home. He seemed more interested in the office where she hadn’t yet had the conviction to visit since it had been broken into the night he disappeared.
The time since the death of her mother was long enough such that when she entered the bedroom, Lucy no longer saw it as her parents’ room, only her dad’s. The two had long ago rid themselves of all that belonged to Lucy’s mother. He couldn’t handle the pain of seeing anything that she had touched. Lucy kept a picture and old photo albums in her room, out of sight from her dad.
With a deep intake of breath, Lucy made her way to the small desk pressed against a large picture window overlooking the screened-in pool. She opened his laptop and peered at the sign-in screen. Tommy never kept secrets from his only child, but Lucy didn’t know his username and password. This was the only computer that hadn’t been turned over to the police. She knew they had his laptop f
rom the office and the other two desktop computers. They also had plenty of smart people to figure out how to gain access to those computers. She didn’t have that sort of expertise. So, her only solution was to search for someplace he might’ve written down the details, if he had written down anything.
She started first with the drawers in his desk and rummaged through them to find any clues. “Of course there’s nothing.” She continued to search, making her way to his bedside table. The drawers contained nothing out of the ordinary and nothing that gave away his passwords. “Come on, Dad. I could use some help here,” Lucy pressed on.
She walked around to the other nightstand where a photo of the two of them sat in a frame on the top. A tear fell down her cheek and she set down the frame again before opening the top drawer. Her brow knitted as she delved through the papers inside. “Letters?” Her lips quivered. She discovered several letters written by Tommy addressed to her. “Dad, what are these?” She opened the one on top and began to read. Her eyes consumed the words as they welled with tears. “Oh my God. You knew something was wrong. You knew something was going to happen.”
In the letter, Tommy instructed her on what to do with the house, his car, everything he owned, including where he kept his will. “Dad,” she cried. And at the bottom of the letter, there it was.
“You’ll need access to my laptop, assuming you still have it, so here’s my password.”
Lucy wiped away the tears and walked over to his computer again. This time, she entered the password.
File folders dotted the screen’s wallpaper which was a photo of her and her dad sitting at a table overlooking the beach. Tears streamed on instinct. Lucy sat down in the chair gazing at the files and wondering if any of this meant anything.
She hadn’t known what case he had been working that night. They didn’t talk about it in any great detail. Lucy only knew he had been working on an affair situation which was the bulk of his work anyway. She never thought much of it. Upon studying the screen, she spotted the names of the people who were probably his clients. There were too many to know which were or were not important. Maybe she could ask the woman who had seen him last that night. Allison Hart had been kind and helpful. Her dad had trusted Allison, so maybe she should too.
“I’m on my way.” Allison ended the call and swiped her keys from the entry table. She peered into the living room where Nolan had just awakened. “I’m heading out. I won’t be long.”
He slowly turned his head to her, confused. His sleepy eyes and disheveled hair looking almost comical as he sat in front of the television holding a bowl of cereal. “Okay.”
She didn’t stop to explain, only opened the door to a blast of tropical air and started toward the driveway. Lucy had reached out to her. That alone was enough to add fuel to her fire to keep pursuing Tommy’s death no matter how hard Shane tried to hold her back. A murderer was still free.
The house she had visited twice now was just ahead. Allison pulled to a stop along the front of the home and cut the engine. She peeled herself off the driver’s seat and started toward the front door. But before she could knock, the door opened. “Lucy. Hi.”
“Hi, Ms. Hart. Thank you for coming.” She stepped aside. “Please, come in.”
“Thank you, Lucy. It’s good to see you.” Allison noticed Lucy’s puffy eyes and reddened cheeks. She had been crying and it was no wonder. “I’m so glad you called me.”
Lucy closed the door. “You’ve been so kind to try to help me and I was hoping that maybe you could take a look at something for me?” She walked into the hall. “The last time you were here, I mentioned I couldn’t get into my dad’s laptop. Well, as I was starting to clean out his room, I found where he had written down his password. So, I opened his laptop and saw a bunch of files on there. They look like case files, but you might know better than me.” Lucy continued to Tommy’s bedroom. “Please forgive the mess. I only just got started.”
“No apologies necessary.” Allison followed her inside. It was strange to stand in the bedroom of a man she hardly knew but whose daughter tugged so hard on her heartstrings.
Lucy made her way to the laptop and signed in again. She stepped aside and waved over Allison. “Will you take a look?”
“Absolutely,” Allison drew near.
Lucy pointed to the home screen. “I’m pretty sure these folders are all cases he worked on. I couldn’t tell you how far back these go, but the reason I wanted you to see this is that I’m wondering if any of the names on these folders might mean something to you.”
Allison pulled her reading glasses from the handbag that still hung off her shoulder. She leaned in for a better look and examined the names. There must have been fifty at least; all crammed onto the screen in seemingly random order. “Let me see.” She recalled the names of the people she photographed that night, Harlan Goodfellow and Tracy Diaz, and looked for them. “This is it.” She looked over her shoulder at Lucy who gazed intently at the screen. “Diaz. Your dad hired me to photograph the wife.”
Lucy nodded. “Okay. I guess we should open it then.” She clicked on the folder and a list of file names appeared. “There’s a lot of information here. Should we give this to the police?”
“That would be the right thing to do. Lucy, I’m not a cop, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to find out who killed your dad. I feel responsible.”
“Please don’t. You couldn’t have known what was going to happen,” Lucy replied.
“Be that as it may, yes, you should hand this over as soon as possible. But with your permission, I’d like to copy the files before you do.”
“Why?”
“I’ll be honest with you, Lucy, there are other people involved in this that the cops aren’t focusing on just yet. But I think they could be key players. I guess you could say it’s a hunch that I would really like to pursue without getting in the way of the police. I’ll tell you what, I have a friend who happens to be a detective, and I know he’d be just as interested in seeing what’s on here as I am. We can take a look, copy anything we think could be important, then I’ll hand over the laptop to him. He’ll see to it the detective in charge gets it. But I want you to be a part of this if you’d like. I think your dad would’ve wanted it that way.”
“Like now?” Lucy asked.
“The sooner the better. I can have him meet us at my house if you’d like to come over. I’m sure you don’t want people here right now.”
“Not really. I suppose having him take a look would be a good idea,” Lucy replied.
Allison smiled. “I agree.”
Allison opened her front door. “Thanks for coming. There’s someone I’d like you to meet.” She walked back into the kitchen. “Lucy, this is Detective Shane Sullivan. He’s a good friend of mine. Shane, this is Lucy Boyce, Tommy’s daughter.”
“I’m very sorry for your loss.” He offered his hand. “It’s nice to meet you and thanks for letting me be here.”
“It’s nice to meet you as well.”
“Should we take a look at these files now?” Lucy asked.
“No time like the present.” Allison pulled up to the counter and Shane stood next to her.
Lucy opened the laptop once again and clicked on the files. “I don’t know if there’ll be anything important in here or not.”
“That’s what we’re here to find out,” Allison replied.
They began to examine each file and each one seemed insignificant to the murder of Tommy Boyce.
When Lucy came upon the Diaz file, she opened it. “This was the client who hired him, right?”
“It is,” Allison began. “Hey Lucy, can you open this one here.” She pointed to the file named “City Deal.”
Lucy clicked on the file and copies of contracts appeared. “What is this?”
“Perry Construction. What does this have to do with the affair of Diaz’s wife?” Allison added. “Lucy, do you mind if I set up my printer on this? I’d like to print this out to get a better
look.”
Lucy turned the laptop toward Allison where she connected her home printer.
“Okay. Let’s print out this puppy.” She pressed the button and in the back hall somewhere came the sound of a printer spitting out paper. “I’ll go get it.”
On Allison’s return to the kitchen, her brow furrowed as she peered at the document.
“So?” Shane asked.
“It’s a copy of a contract with Perry Construction.” She looked at Shane. “Franklin Perry? And it’s also signed by the City of Tampa and Carlos Diaz’s development firm.”
“It has to be Franklin Perry. That name can’t be a coincidence. And it’s included in the Diaz file. Why?” Shane asked.
“I have no clue.” Allison leaned in closer to the laptop. “Is there anything in there regarding the Diaz firm?”
Lucy listed the files again and scanned the names. “What about this one? It says, ‘Pay Deal.’”
“Sounds dubious,” Allison began. “Open it up.”
Lucy clicked on the file and an image of a bank statement appeared. “You want me to print this out too?”
“Yes, please.” Allison started back into the hall again to retrieve the document. And, getting the first look at it, she already spotted the problem. “Oh, no.”
“What is it?” Shane asked.
Allison set it on the counter. “There’s a $50,000 deposit on here.” She continued to examine the statement. “It’s from an anonymous account and this account belongs to Carlos Diaz. See for yourself.”
“Payment for a construction contract? Does it match with this document here?” Shane pulled the other paper toward him and reviewed it again.
“I don’t think you’re understanding me,” Allison added. “This money went into Diaz’s personal bank account. Not his business. Look.” She pointed to the name on the account. “And it doesn’t have his wife’s name on it either. But what’s scarier is that we don’t know where it came from. The payor is unidentified.”
