Family Can Be Murder

by Karen Singer

  “See for yourself.”

  Pierce followed him back to the little closet and waited until Ray started the video. He saw the two men enter. He saw one of them looking around while the other one talked to the manager. And he saw the man reach across the counter, grab the manager, and shove a knife in his chest.

  “I want copies of every video you’ve got there. I’ll see if one of our lab guys here has something you can put them on.” He hadn’t recognized either of the two men who had done the killing, but he had recognized one thing about them. They were professionals.

  Chapter 13

  Once again, Jenni and Sally were sitting together in the hotel restaurant. And they were sitting there with the rest of the family…minus Grandma, Ashley, and Greg and Lilli Finch who had gone to Miami when they took Ashley and Grandma to jail the night before. Greg and Lili hadn’t returned yet. But now the police had ordered everyone else in the family into the restaurant, so everyone was there now, waiting.

  As far as Jenni could tell from what little she could hear of everyone else talking, everyone knew that something must have happened, but like her, nobody knew what. The looks she was getting from everyone else in the room seemed to range from outright anger, to a few of them looking rather ashamed. Jenni didn’t care. She only worried about what was going on. And then she saw Detective Pierce striding purposefully into the restaurant. All noise stopped and all eyes turned toward him.

  Pierce looked around the small crowd. “I’m going to be talking to each and every one of you individually. When I’m done, unless I tell you otherwise, I want you to pack your bags and go home. Get off the island.” He turned toward Jenni. “You Jenni, need to stay until later. After last night, I have more questions for you.”

  “How about Aunt Sally?” Jenni asked. “We came together.”

  “She can stay as well if she likes.”

  “What happened?” Andy asked. “Did Kyle over there screw up again? You took the wrong person to jail?” Pierce didn’t appreciate the way he laughed at what he said.

  “No!” Pierce replied. “We had more murders last night. At least two of them that we’ve been able to find so far. I’m very relieved that none of you were among those who were killed.”

  Andy laughed. “Why don’t you get Kyle there to solve it all for you? He’s the one that seems to know more than anyone else. Or maybe it was him that murdered them!”

  “No it wasn’t!” Pierce replied, growing angry with him. “In fact, the way it looks right now, Jenni was the one they were after.”

  “And they missed?” Andy replied. “Darn. They should have asked me. I would have given them all the help they needed?”

  Pierce was pissed at his attitude and decided to take Andy down a peg. He turned toward one of the policemen standing in the doorway. “Arrest Mr. Andy Finch here,” he ordered. He turned back to Andy. “And you Mr. Finch are now my number one suspect!”

  “I didn’t do it!” Andy argued.

  “And now you’re going to have to prove it!” He waited until the policeman had cuffed Andy’s hands behind his back. “Take him back to the kitchen. I’ll talk to him there. Then we’ll bring in everyone else, one at a time.”

  --- §§§§§§§§§§ ---

  Robbie Bosch hadn’t slept well. His wife hadn’t either. Despite the way the movies and TV shows depicted things, having a gun stuck in your face and coming that close to having your life ended was very troubling. Peaceful sleep after something like that would take some time. Weeks…or even months. Sometimes, not ever. As a cop, or former cop, and after his time in the military, Robbie had no doubts he would get over it pretty quickly. But his wife was another matter.

  His wife was still in bed when he got up and got dressed, much earlier than usual. He knew she was only pretending to sleep. At least she was still trying.

  “You’re up early,” Shirley finally said.

  Robbie turned and saw her looking at him. “Couldn’t sleep.”

  Shirley said nothing to that. Robbie came over and sat on the side of the bed right next to her. “What are your plans today?”

  “Just the office,” she replied.

  “Don’t come in yet. Not till later. And don’t make any other plans.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve got some things to do, and then I’ll come and pick you up later.”

  It was a moment before Shirley replied. “Okay.”

  Robbie kissed her and got up from the bed. Then he did what he had rarely done since he had started out as a private investigator. He grabbed the shoulder holster for his gun and strapped it on over his shirt. He stuck his gun into it. And he put a sport jacket on to hide it. He knew his wife had watched it all. He had no doubt she knew why. But he was sure she didn’t know his entire reason. He would tell her later. He had done a lot of thinking last night. Almost being killed…Shirley almost getting killed…had made a big impression on him. He had gotten lazy. Complacent. Stupid. And stupid could leave you dead.

  He kissed his wife one more time and said he loved her. Then he went out, making sure the door was securely locked behind him.

  As he walked to his car, he was aware that he was searching everywhere with his eyes. Searching. Looking for threats. Any threats. Even as unlikely as he knew the probability of them was. When you come close to being killed like that, you automatically look for things like that for a while. But he had gotten lazy. Sloppy. And it had almost cost him everything.

  Once in the car, he pulled out his cellphone and selected a phone number from the long list. It was only moments until someone answered. “Hey, Philly?”

  “Robbie,” Philly replied. “What’s up?”

  “Got a few minutes? I’d like to come down and talk.”

  “Sure,” Philly replied. “I’m here. But we just heard the damn FBI is sending a couple of clowns over to talk to us sometime this morning, so I can’t guarantee I won’t be busy.”

  “I’ll take my chances and come now.”

  “Great. See you soon.”

  --- §§§§§§§§§§ ---

  Pierce was moving quickly through each of the family members now. He knew his questions would probably yield him nothing, but it was important to check everything. He had purposely leaned extra heavily on that stupid drunk Andy Finch, just because his loudmouth questions and attitude has pissed him off. The stupid guy had still been drunk. He had threatened both him and his wife with obstruction of justice, and he had been very close to charging Andy with it. His wife had fallen in line the moment he threatened her with it too. Now they both were fingerprinted, like everyone else, and out of his hair. And hopefully, very soon, they would be off the island and out of his investigation…and his life. He didn’t need dumb shits like that in his way, even though a major part of his job was dealing with idiots just like him. And he was Jenni’s father? Maybe she had been adopted, because Jenni didn’t behave anything like either of them.

  “How many are left?” he asked the policeman who was helping him.

  “Just two. Sally Finch, and Jenni Finch.”

  Pierce nodded. “I’ll go out there to talk to them. Bring the print box, you can do them out there too.” He got up and left the restaurant kitchen where he had been working and went out to the dining room. Jenni and Sally were the only family members left. They were still sitting at the same table together. He went over and sat down with them. He nodded toward the policeman who had come with them. “Let him get your prints, then we can talk.”

  Jenni and Sally both had to sit through pressing their fingertips against the electronic print scanner. It only took a few minutes before the policeman had their prints and all the pertinent information stored with them. Only then did Pierce send the policeman away so he could talk.

  “I meant what I said earlier, when I told everyone that I thought you were the one the murderers came to find,” he said to Jenni.

  “Me?” Jenni asked. “Why?”

  “You tell me?”

  “How
should I know?”

  “You seem to know a lot more than anyone else.”

  “That doesn’t mean I know what’s going on now? How do you know they were after me?”

  “Two people killed just to get here and erase their tracks. And as far as we’ve been able to tell, the only thing they did was to completely trash your room.”

  “My room?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “What do you mean, trashed?”

  “Everything dumped over and broken. The mattresses cut up. Trashed!”

  Jenni stared at him in shock for a moment. “My room? Why?”

  “That’s what I’m asking.”

  “Well I don’t have a clue.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “How can I know what’s going on…if I don’t know what’s going on?”

  Pierce shook his head at that. Coming from her, it was a stupidly worded question. But he understood the frustration behind it. “Right now, your room is off limits so the crime scene people can go through it. I don’t know how long that’s going to take, but once we can get in there, I’m going to need you to go through the entire room carefully with me and try to figure out if anything was taken.”

  “Okay,” Jenni replied, still trying to picture what might have happened to her room.

  “What are we supposed to do in the meantime?” Sally asked.

  Pierce shrugged. “Wait.”

  --- §§§§§§§§§§ ---

  Robbie Bosch knew a major portion of the people at the police station. And most of them knew him. Walking back through there was like coming home. Except he didn’t work there anymore. In many ways, he missed it and he regretted his choice to leave the force. In other ways, he was glad to be gone and working for himself now. His wife was certainly a lot happier…or she had been, until yesterday.

  “Robbie!” Philly called the moment he saw Robbie walking in. He went over and shook his hand. “No problems after last night?” he asked.

  “Lots of problems,” Robbie replied. “But Shirley and I are the ones who have to deal with them.”

  “I hear you,” Robbie said.

  “Any identification on the body yet?”

  “None! Nothing! Nada! So far anyway.”

  “I know he was one of the guys who was with Todd Granger at the storage garage. That didn’t bring up any leads?”

  “You mentioned it last night, and I caught it too. But so far, we haven’t figured out who he is yet, or who the other one was either.”

  Bosch shook his head. “I got sloppy Philly. Complacent. I almost got both me and Shirley killed. And then I let him get away when I shouldn’t have.”

  “I hate to agree with you,” Philly said, “but you of all people shouldn’t have let him get the best of you.”

  Robbie pulled open his sport jacket exposing his gun. “It won’t be happening again. And I’ll be taking other measures from now on too. I made a mistake that could have gotten me, and Shirley, killed. I learned my lesson from that. And we’ll both be forever grateful to you for getting us out of it.”

  “No prob man. That’s what we’re here for. Protect, and serve. And shoot a few bad guys in the process.”

  Robbie smiled at the small joke.

  “Detective Phillips?” Gonzalez called. “FBI is here.”

  “Shit!” Philly exclaimed. “Stick around so we can talk. Let me go schmooze the feds.”

  As Philly walked off, Robbie’s phone rang. “Hello?”

  “Mr. B?”

  “Jenni. How are you?”

  “Not good Mr. B.”

  “Why?”

  “There were two more murders here last night. And according to Detective Pierce, they were after me.”

  “What?”

  --- §§§§§§§§§§ ---

  Captain Glacier led the way into the conference room, followed by Philly and Gonzalez. There were two men already in there, the men from the FBI. He held out his hand. “Captain Glacier,” he introduced himself. “This is Detective Phillips and Detective Gonzalez. They’re the ones assigned to the Todd Granger murder.”

  “Special Agent Conifer,” the lead agent identified himself as he shook Glacier’s hand. “And this is Agent Monroe.” The men all sat down with the FBI agents on one side of the table and the detectives on the other.

  “We’ve been asked to look into the theft of a hard drive from Proto Dynamic Industries,” Conifer started. “We’re here because we understand the problem is attached to an investigation that you’re currently involved in.”

  “Yeah,” Philly replied. “The whole thing started with a break and enter case of one of their employees, Frederick Granger, and it kind of escalated from there. Turns out, the theft of the hard drive, along with all the rest of his electronics and his wife’s jewelry, was perpetrated by his own damn nephew, Todd Granger. That was all well and good, especially when the merchandise was all found in a storage garage along with a bunch of other stuff. But Granger claimed he was still missing a hard drive that contained all his personal financial info. Except as it turns out, it didn’t contain that at all. And then his nephew Todd got murdered and that’s the part that we’ve been assigned to look into.”

  “So you’re not interested in finding the hard drive at all?”

  “It’s not our case, but the truth is, we’re very interested in it. A good friend of mine almost got killed last night because of it.”

  That surprised the two FBI men. “You say because of the hard drive?”

  “Yeah. Robbie Bosch. He used to be a detective here before he went into the private investigation business.”

  “And what did he have to do with the case?”

  “He’s the one…well, as it turns out, it was a girl who worked for him, found out where the storage garage was. And then later, the same girl figured out that we were probably looking at a case of industrial espionage.”

  “How did she do that?”

  “Don’t know. That isn’t part of our investigation. But I did hear that she’s on vacation down south in the keys, and now she’s involved in a murder down there too.”

  That part surprised the two FBI men even more. “Was your friend, the private eye, hired to look into any of this?”

  It was Glacier who replied. “Robbie Bosch was first hired by Frederick Granger to look into the theft of his property. I guess he didn’t think we would give it enough manpower, which I hate to say, is probably right. Of course, now we know why he hired someone else to look into it instead of just claiming everything on his insurance. After that, since Granger was basically making an ass of himself, and Robbie was involved, we here at the department asked Robbie to kind of keep his ear to the ground in case he heard anything pertinent. Robbie was one of our best detectives here for years. He’s got a lot of friends here, and they all have a lot of respect for him.”

  Conifer nodded. “Since the girl isn’t here, how can we get in touch with this…Mr. Bosch did you say?”

  “He’s out by my desk right now,” Philly replied. “He came in to talk about the murder attempt against him and his wife last night. Luckily, I happened to show up and I killed one of them. The other one got away.”

  Both FBI agents looked at each other. “I think there’s more here going on here than we were told,” Conifer said. “Can we get Bosch in here too?”

  Two minutes later, Robbie Bosch shook hands with both FBI men. “What can I do for you?”

  “First of all,” Conifer started, “what happened last night? Detective Phillips said it was related to the Granger investigation.”

  “Yeah. Todd Granger was working with two other guys to rip places off. Mostly electronics and jewelry. Todd was caught, as far as I know, they never found the other two, or even who they were. Last night, those same two, jumped my wife and I as we were coming out of work. They wanted to know how we found out about the storage garage, and how we found out about the hard drive. Once my wife spilled the beans to them, they were getting ready to sho
ot both of us when Detective Phillips showed up to invite us to dinner. He killed one of them and the other one is still in the wind.”

  “Have you made any identification on him yet?” Conifer asked Phillips.

  “Not yet. All we know is that he’s male, mid to early twenties, and we’re pretty sure he’s foreign. Robbie here noted last night that he couldn’t place the accent.”

  “No idea?” Conifer asked Robbie.

  “None. I wasn’t familiar with it at all,” Robbie confirmed.

  “And they were interested in finding out how you knew about the hard drive?”

  “Very much so,” Robbie told them.

  “According to what Detective Phillips told us earlier, we understand there’s a woman who works for you who somehow figured out that this was an industrial espionage case. How did she do it?”

  “Yes. Jenni is a researcher, and a damn good one. That’s how she did it. Hard work and a good eye for details. And she’s got a knack for putting things together. She literally looks at everything as a mystery to solve, and she goes crazy trying to solve it. She just solved the murder of her own grandfather down in the Florida Keys.”

  “She did?”

  “Yeah. Except she just called me and let me know there were two more murders at her hotel last night. And the murderers were evidently after her!”

  --- §§§§§§§§§§ ---

  Pierce was standing outside of Jenni’s room watching the crime scene people go through it. With the mess, it was a slow and painstaking process, but it had to be done. He was surprised when his phone rang. He was even more surprised to see who was calling. “Philly? What’s up?”

  “What the hell is going on down there?” Philly asked.

  “What’s going on? I’m ass deep in dead bodies, and I don’t have a clue as to why.”

  “Pierce,” Philly said. “Listen to me. I’m sitting right here at a table with my captain, two guys from the FBI, another detective who works with me, and a friend of mine, Robbie Bosch. That girl you asked me about last time, works for him. And we’re looking at a big mess up here, and somehow, we’re thinking that that girl, Jenni, is involved.”