by Dan Padavona
Chelsey softened her voice. “You won’t go through this alone. I’ll take the case.”
Georgia released a held breath and relaxed her shoulders. “Thank you.”
“Is there someone you can stay with for a few nights?”
“Not that I can think of.”
“I have an unoccupied house in Wolf Lake. You’re welcome to stay there until we figure out what’s going on.”
“I can’t. That’s too much, but thank you for the kind offer.”
Chelsey brought up an image of Georgia’s house in Google Maps. Her legs bounced beneath the desk as she formulated a plan in her head. “Let me speak with my friend. He’s an ex-cop with the Syracuse PD and knows a lot about security systems. We’ll come up with ideas and visit you before you leave for work.”
“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your help.”
Chelsey walked Georgia to the door. “We’ll sort this out, Georgia. In the meantime, call me day or night if you feel threatened.”
19
The fiery ball of the sun smoldered low in the sky as LeVar merged with highway traffic. He tapped a Doritos bag to get Scout’s attention.
“Rip that bad boy open, and let’s chow. We won’t stop for food again for another three or four hours.”
Scout opened the bag and popped a cool ranch chip into her mouth. “Health food. I love it. Tell me about our target.”
LeVar spoke as he passed a tow truck dragging a crumpled sports car. “Osmond Bourn. He’s a private contractor. His wife, Rosemary, is convinced Osmond is cheating on her.”
“Did she tell you why?”
“The wife spoke to Chelsey. Apparently, the guy disappears from the house at all hours of the night without telling his wife.”
“Yeah, that sounds like a cheater.”
“Problem is, I keep losing him. No matter how careful I am, he must see me. I swear, he has eyes in the back of his head.”
“So what’s the plan?”
“Hang out in his neighborhood, this time at the end of the block. I don’t want him spotting my vehicle.”
“You brought binoculars?”
“Two pair under the seat.”
This spring marked the first time Scout had accompanied LeVar on surveillance missions. She barely weighed a hundred pounds, so LeVar had no problem carrying her from the wheelchair to the car and strapping her into the seat. She had the sharp mind of an investigator, and he wanted to involve her. But he didn’t want to mess up like he had outside the Flamingo Inn motel. He never should have left Scout alone and tackled the would-be bank robber.
The houses on Riverwalk Drive grew to the sky. Mansions with privacy fences, professional landscaping, ivy running up the sides of two brick homes. A sprinkler on an automatic timer came alive as the Chrysler coasted down the road. A couple walking along the curb gave him a wary eye as he passed. He parked beneath a tree at the end of Riverwalk Drive and handed binoculars to Scout. Watching Bourns’s house through his own pair, he felt energy tickling his spine and legs. Surveillance always gave him a rush. But there was something about Osmond Bourn that made him hesitate. A hidden danger he couldn’t put a finger on.
He didn’t wait long before Bourn made his move. As the clock ticked past eight and shadows spilled down from the trees, Bourn strode to his SUV in dress slacks and a fashionable short-sleeve shirt that accentuated his arms. The man had the baked-in tan of someone who spends all day working outside. Bourn backed the SUV into the road, straightened the vehicle, and shot toward the stop sign.
“Show time,” LeVar said, pulling the Chrysler off the curb.
He remained two blocks behind Bourn as the contractor traversed Wolf Lake. They trailed him to the highway, where Bourn picked up speed, forcing LeVar to weave between tractor trailers to keep pace. It was almost dark when Bourn took the Syracuse exit. LeVar allowed a woman in a pickup to pass. He wanted several vehicles between the Chrysler and Bourn’s SUV, just in case the contractor was on to him.
Scout lifted herself up in her seat and peered over the cars. “He looks like he’s going out on a date, dressed like that.”
“Either to a restaurant or a club. That’s my guess.” He passed the camera case to Scout. “How good are you with a DSLR? I might need you to shoot pictures while I drive.”
“No problem. Mom owns a Nikon, but I’m sure I’ll figure out the Canon.”
“The exposure settings are on automatic. All you need to do is focus. Oh, and don’t forget to remove the lens cap.”
Scout shot him a pointed look.
“Okay, that’s something I would do. I’m sure you’ll do fine.”
Bourn entered a parking garage in the center of the city as LeVar stopped along the curb. The Chrysler idled as he waited for Bourn to appear. Five minutes later, the contractor pushed through the glass exit doors and crossed the road. A busy club called Level 13 stood across the street, and Bourn made a beeline for the entrance. LeVar eyed the bouncer at the door. The line of people waiting to get inside stretched around the block.
A group of women in their late teens and early twenties mingled outside Level 13. Dressed in miniskirts and high heels, they showed plenty of leg. There was something about the women that tickled LeVar’s memory. He’d seen them before, but where? As Scout clicked pictures, Bourn pinched a brunette woman on the backside. Instead of slapping the contractor, she giggled and touched his shoulder. The other three women fawned over Bourn. They all knew him.
“What the hell?” LeVar asked. “Does this guy moonlight as James Bond or something?”
Bourn walked straight at the bouncer, who motioned him through.
Scout lowered the binoculars and patted LeVar’s arm. “He walked right in.”
“That’s an exclusive club. Bourn has connections.”
LeVar scratched behind his ear. He’d already lost sight of Bourn. The contractor might be inside with his date.
Scout set the camera on her lap. “Are you going in?”
“And leaving you alone? No way in hell. Besides, I’m illegally parked.”
“So pay for the parking garage and go inside.”
“Your mother told me to keep you safe.”
“She was referring to you playing superhero and running down bad guys while I’m in the vehicle. She never said you couldn’t leave me alone.”
LeVar paused and tilted his head at Scout.
Scout shrugged. “Okay, she probably won’t be happy. But what will Chelsey say when she finds out Bourn visited an exclusive club in Syracuse and you didn’t follow him?”
“I might be inside the club for a half-hour or longer. I can’t leave you in the car.”
“What could happen? I’ll be fine, and I promise I won’t take candy from strangers.”
LeVar scraped a hand through his dreadlocks. “I don’t know about this.”
“Just go. If you don’t, you’ll never catch Bourn cheating on his wife.”
LeVar hung his head.
“There’s pepper spray in the glove compartment. You know how to use it?”
“Mom showed me.”
He paused with his hands curled around the steering wheel.
“LeVar, I’ll be safe. Go, or you’ll regret it.”
LeVar lifted his phone and tapped the screen. “I want a text from you every minute. No exceptions.”
“I understand.”
Scout held his eyes with expectation. He glanced toward the club. The line had thinned. Strobe lights flashed inside. Resigned, LeVar pulled up to the parking garage, grabbed the ticket, and drove to the second level. He parked the Chrysler at the end of the row so he could see the vehicle from the club.
“You’re sure about this?”
“LeVar, please.”
“If anyone approaches the car, text me immediately.” He started away and swung back to her. “And call Raven and Thomas. They’ll know what to do if anything happens.”
He handed her the pepper spray and locked the doors. LeVar refused
to take his eyes off the car until he descended the stairs. As he crossed the street, he turned and waved. Scout lifted a hand. She appeared tiny from this distance.
Next question: how would he get inside? No way he was waiting in line. He inhaled and scrubbed a hand down his face. After he hopped over the curb, he walked past the waiting customers and headed straight for the bouncer. Someone shouted at LeVar, asking why he got to skip the line while everyone else waited.
LeVar removed his wallet. “How much to go in?”
The bouncer, a heavyset man with a bushy beard and country-strong arms, had been staring at his phone when LeVar approached. “Fifty.”
“Fifty just to go in?”
“Twenty to go in, fifty to skip line without me breaking your jaw.”
“So it’s twenty then.”
The bouncer lifted his head to argue, took in LeVar, and dropped his mouth open.
“Shit. I know who you are.” The bouncer concealed a gun in his pocket, but he didn’t reach for it. “You run the Harmon Kings.”
“I never ran the Kings,” LeVar said, keeping his voice low. A woman complained he was holding up the line. “And I gave up gang life.”
“Bullshit.”
“Check me. I ain’t packing.”
The bouncer narrowed his eyes. He patted down LeVar the way he might touch a snarling dog. “What are you doing here, Hopkins?”
“Just meeting a friend.”
“A friend? Right. I don’t want trouble.”
Even when he ran with the Kings, LeVar detested violence. But his reputation preceded him, and he could make it work in his favor. LeVar lifted his chin. The veins in his arms stood out as he flexed.
“Let me pass, and there won’t be trouble. Aight?”
The bouncer glanced around LeVar at the impatient crowd.
“Oh, hell. Go on in.”
LeVar pushed past the bouncer, hating himself for intimidating the guy. The bouncer was just trying to do his job, even though fifty dollars was a swindle. In the end, LeVar had entered without paying. He gave one last glance at the Chrysler on the second level of the parking garage. He raised a thumb. Scout messaged LeVar with a raised thumb emoji.
Inside the club, LeVar shifted sideways to squeeze past the throng. EDM thumped through the sound system, and laser lights flashed over the crowd. The dancers seemed to bounce as one entity. Why would a middle-aged contractor visit Level 13?
LeVar raised himself onto tiptoe until he spied Bourn beside the bar, a drink in hand as he held court with several people. The young women from outside the club milled around the bar. LeVar rubbed his nose. He remembered where he’d seen them before. They worked for the 315 Royals. Call girls, prostitutes. Did the Royals run Level 13? If so, LeVar was a dead man.
He glanced around the club, expecting trouble. The woman behind the bar polished a glass as she leaned close to her coworker. Her gaze traveled to LeVar a second before she raised the phone to her ear and spoke to someone. LeVar slipped behind the dancers. The song changed, and the beat shifted to something faster and more frenetic. The energetic crowd jostled him as he stumbled toward the back wall, confused by the light and sound. He checked his phone for messages. Scout last sent a text a minute ago. She was due. What was taking her so long?
A thick-necked man in a black T-shirt stood against the wall with his arms folded. He wore a radio on his belt. LeVar ducked behind a woman colored with glowing glitter. Too late. The second bouncer glared at LeVar as he spoke into his radio. As the muscular man pushed himself off the wall and started toward LeVar, the teenager merged with the crowd. His phone buzzed in his pocket. Hopefully, that was Scout announcing she was fine. He looked back and didn’t see the bouncer anymore.
Across the dance floor, a staircase ascended to an upper level. Bourn slipped an arm around a sharp-dressed man’s shoulder and whispered in his ear. The man laughed and slapped Bourn on the back. A second later, the two men climbed the stairs and disappeared around the corner. Two guards waited at the staircase. No chance LeVar would talk his way past. Hell, they were looking for him.
A shout pulled LeVar’s head around. The crowd parted as three gigantic figures pushed across the dance floor.
LeVar searched for a restroom, assuming security awaited at the exit. His eyes landed on a server with a tray of food balanced on her hand. She pushed through swinging double doors. The kitchen.
He stood aside for the server and shoved through the doors. Greasy food scents and smoke assailed his senses. A man’s voice called out behind him as he rushed past the cooks.
LeVar found the exit and shouldered through the doorway. More guests mingled in the parking lot outside the club. They stared at him in surprise. He climbed over a chain-link fence as the door whipped open behind him. More shouts.
LeVar took off running down an alley. His phone hadn’t made a sound in the last two minutes, but he couldn’t stop to check on Scout. Heavy footfalls trailed him through the shadows.
He turned down another dark alley. A homeless man huddled beneath a ratty blanket. The alley opened to a thoroughfare, and LeVar breathed a sigh of relief when he recognized the parking garage. He took the stairs two at a time. Breathless, he sprinted toward the Chrysler. The tension fled his shoulders when he spotted Scout in the passenger seat.
He threw the door open. She jumped as he piled into the car.
“Why didn’t you text me?”
“I did,” she said as he revved the engine. “Didn’t you get my messages?”
His phone buzzed with several message receipts. He must have lost coverage inside the club.
Tires squealed as he motored toward the exit. As he fumbled with his credit card, two men in black shirts emerged from Level 13.
“Come on, come on,” he willed the credit card reader.
Finally, the machine spat his card. He shifted into drive and raced around the corner. In the mirror, the two men gave up and stopped running.
“What happened in there?”
“Level 13 is 315 Royals territory.”
“Uh-oh.”
“And I think Osmond Bourn pays to take the girls upstairs.”
20
So Wade Tenny was an accountant stuck in a nowhere, middle management position. What a surprise.
Kaylee lowered her sunglasses as Tenny crossed from the parking lot to the accounting firm, his white button-down shirt sagging and wrinkled, his slacks tight around the waist and as loose as bell bottoms around the ankles. He looked like a clown.
She snickered and checked herself in the Alpha Romeo’s mirror. Today she disguised herself with a black wig, fashioned after Uma Thurman’s character in Pulp Fiction. Red lipstick bloomed like roses on her lips. She puckered and gave her reflection a mock kiss.
Tenny was utterly predictable and always had been. During high school, he began the day by shoving some unfortunate boy into the lockers as he strutted down the hallway, flanked by bullies from the basketball and football teams. Between classes, whenever he spotted some kid running late, he slapped the books out of the boy’s hands and stood over him, laughing. At lunch hour, he was the jerk who knocked over boys while they balanced a tray of food. During gym class, he considered wins and losses as matters of life and death, screaming at teammates who screwed up, firing dodge balls at people’s heads.
He was equally predictable as an adult, and Kaylee knew this, for she’d followed him for two weeks. Tenny would sneak out of the firm at nine-thirty and purchase a pastry from the shop across the road. Either a cherry turnover or a blueberry muffin. At lunch, he’d leave work five minutes early and drive across town to a restaurant with tablecloths and a wine menu. There, he’d stuff his face with sheer gluttony, leave a paltry tip, and arrive at work ten minutes late, full of apologies and promises to finish his work before quitting time.
The man was a loser, from his unkempt appearance to his balding head and the paunch hanging over his belt buckle. The days when Wade Tenny turned girls’ heads as an all-state
basketball star seemed a million years ago.
Kaylee hopped out of the car and followed the concrete sidewalk past the firm. She paused long enough for Tenny to notice her in her new flower-print skirt. Pretending to fix her heel, she stood on one leg. The wind rippled through her hair with playful fingers. He set his briefcase down—and that was another thing: why did a lowlife accountant need a briefcase?—and gawked as she brushed the hair out of her eyes. She turned her head and smiled before walking away. The windows outside the corner grocery market displayed Tenny’s reflection. He never stopped staring until she disappeared around the corner.
She was tempted to walk past his window, but didn’t want to overplay her hand. Tenny’s cubicle sat at the back of the office, beside the other losers who’d never amount to anything.
Some hotshot accountant. She smiled to herself.
Kaylee purchased a smoothie at a juice bar. As she sipped her drink, one leg crossed over the other and the skirt dangling over her upper thigh, she scanned the news. The sheriff was still treating Tina Garraway’s death as a murder. No mention of Harding Little falling off a cliff.
She ran a Google search on Thomas Shepherd and perused the results. Oh, my. The sheriff had Asperger’s syndrome. Another article depicted his recovery after a Los Angeles gang member shot him in the back during a raid. He’d grown up in Wolf Lake, moved away for a decade, then returned to Nightshade County as a deputy before becoming sheriff. He also owned Shepherd Systems, a business he’d inherited from his deceased father.
Kaylee scrolled through pictures until her eyes locked on the girl in the wheelchair. The teenager she’d seen in Thomas Shepherd’s yard. She wasn’t his daughter. The crippled girl lived next door, and her name was Scout Mourning. Last year, she helped the sheriff’s department catch serial killer Jeremy Hyde through an online sleuthing website. Another article showed the proud sheriff posing for a picture with his arm around Scout’s shoulder.
