The Lee Callaway Boxed Set

by Thomas Fincham

  Her theory was supported by the fact that Scott had asked Leslie Tillman to meet him at nine, not before. Also, Scott had been checking his phone constantly. This could only mean that Scott was scheduled to be someplace.

  Who were you meeting? Fisher thought. And did they have something to do with what happened to you?

  THIRTY

  Becky grabbed a slice of pizza, a cup of mixed fruit, and a carton of chocolate milk. She moved down the line, paid for her lunch, and took the tray to the corner of the school cafeteria.

  A girl was already seated at the table when Becky sat next to her. Becky had known Ester Chow since they were in sixth grade. Ester had long, smooth hair, a few acne blemishes on her cheeks, and she wore braces. Her lunch was nachos with cheese, chicken nuggets, corn, and a bottle of water.

  “How are you feeling now?” Ester asked, concerned.

  “Better,” Becky replied.

  “I messaged you like forty times yesterday.”

  “Sorry about that. My mom gave me medication and I passed out all day.” Becky hated lying to her best friend, but she couldn’t tell her the truth. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust her to not tell anyone, it was just that she wasn’t sure how she would react. Would she stop talking to her? Would she judge her? Would she be repulsed by her?

  Becky couldn’t imagine not being friends with Ester. Ester had been with her through thick and thin. She was there when Becky had her heart broken for the first time. She was there when Becky lost out on becoming class president. She was even there when Becky’s dad passed away.

  Becky hoped their friendship would last forever, but this could only happen if Becky never told her secret to anyone—not even Ester.

  “It’s okay,” Ester said. “I forgive you.”

  Becky smiled. “So what happened while I was away?”

  “You know Amber, right?”

  “The girl with the freckles?”

  “Yeah, her. She was bawling her eyes out yesterday.”

  “Why?”

  Ester rolled her eyes. “She was sad because Dillon Scott died.”

  Becky froze. “Who?” she asked a second later.

  “He’s some actor. Apparently, Amber’s mom had a crush on him when she was younger, and when she found out he was dead, she broke down. So, when Amber saw her mom crying, she got all emotional too.”

  “That’s so sad,” Becky said, unsure of what else to say.

  Ester shrugged. “I guess so, but you know what I really think? Amber is a drama queen. She just needs an excuse to get attention. Last year she told everyone she had throat cancer. Everyone felt sorry for her. It was really a swollen lymph node. The doctor didn’t even prescribe her anything for it. It went away on its own. The worst part was that she complained about it after the doctor had already told her it was nothing to worry about.”

  “Really?” Becky asked, surprised. “How come I don’t remember this?”

  “I think it was during the time you were away because of your dad.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “How’s your mom doing, by the way?”

  “She says she’s okay, but I know she’s not. Sometimes I can hear her crying in bed. I want to go into her room and hug her, but I don’t want to embarrass her. She feels that as a parent, she has to be strong for the both of us. I want to tell her it’s okay if she’s not, but I’m not sure how to do it.”

  They ate in silence.

  Ester smiled and said, “Guess who’s been asking about you?”

  “Who?”

  “Daniel Bailey.” Daniel was in all of Becky’s classes. He was tall, dark, and handsome. Becky had caught him staring at her.

  She blushed. “Get out.”

  “Really. He asked me twice if you were coming to school today.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “I’m not telling.”

  “Come on,” Becky squealed.

  They both laughed.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Callaway was back at his office. He could not get Frank’s words out of his mind.

  It’s not what you think.

  What did he mean by that? Callaway had caught him red-handed with another woman. He had seen this woman get in his pickup truck and go with him to her house. How else could Callaway interpret this?

  In his years as a private eye, he had captured on camera hundreds of people doing the exact same thing, and they were all cheating on their spouses.

  He pulled the digital camera from his pocket. He preferred using film because negatives could not be easily altered, but with fewer and fewer photo locations developing film these days, switching to digital was done out of necessity.

  He clicked on the images of Frank and the woman. He noticed the woman was smiling throughout their walk up to the house, but there was a hint of sadness on Frank’s face. Maybe Frank knew that what he was doing was wrong. During their brief conversation, Callaway had sensed remorse from him.

  If that was true, then why not stop doing what he was doing?

  Callaway stopped at a photo. It was a full shot of the woman’s house. There was a station wagon parked in the driveway, and the lights inside the house were on.

  Did the woman live with a roommate or a friend? If so, was the location even practical for a rendezvous?

  Something did not add up.

  He clicked through the photos and stopped at the one where the men from the cargo van were unloading goods from Frank’s truck.

  Callaway zoomed in on Frank as he watched the men drive away. Callaway could clearly see distain on his face.

  What is going on? he thought.

  He went back to the earlier photos, where the woman had first appeared, smoking a cigarette. Something caught his attention that time. When the woman had gotten in Frank’s pickup, they did not embrace. He thought it was odd, but he rationalized this by thinking they did not want their co-workers to find out about their relationship.

  He then skipped to the photos of them getting out of the pickup and making their way up to her house. They were still not holding hands or even talking to each other. The woman was in front. Frank trailed behind her. He didn’t look like a man who was looking forward to spending time with his mistress. He looked like he wanted to be anywhere but there.

  Did Frank get himself into something he should not have?

  He did say he loved his wife and his children, and from his tone of voice, Callaway knew he was telling the truth. Callaway thought it was odd that he would throw it all away for another woman.

  He turned his laptop on. While it loaded, he left the office and went down to the variety store around the block. He bought a granola bar from the vending machine—the only thing he could afford with the loose change in his pocket.

  He returned to his office and sat down behind the laptop. He punched the woman’s address into the online phone directory. The name that came back was Sandra Wolkoff. There was a second name under the same address: Carl Wolkoff.

  What the hell? Callaway thought. Is this woman married?

  That explained the sedan parked in the driveway.

  He conducted an online search and discovered that three years back, someone named Sandra Wolkoff and her husband, Carl, had been indicted for fraud and theft in the state of Michigan. They were both given a suspended sentence.

  Callaway pulled up the department store’s website. There was a Search button in the top corner. He decided to try his luck. He punched in Sandra Wolkoff. There were no hits. He then punched in Sandra.

  Several names popped up. There was a Sandra Baker, a Sandra Levin, a Sandra Hoffman—and then there was a Sandra Ledford.

  Why does that name sound familiar?

  He went back to the articles from Michigan, and after searching for a moment, he found what he was looking for.

  Sandra Wolkoff’s maiden name was Ledford.

  He clicked back to the department store’s website. Sandra Ledford was the account manager at the shipping department.

>   Isn’t that the department Frank works in?

  Callaway suddenly had a feeling this was not about a man cheating on his wife. This was something far worse.

  THIRTY-TWO

  The boots were tagged and ready to be sent to the lab for further testing. Fisher was certain the mud on the soles could have only come from the dirt outside the house. She couldn’t see any matching boot prints in the dirt, however. After Scott’s body was discovered, over a dozen people had searched the area.

  She spent an hour scouring the house again. She hoped she might find something that would explain why Scott had left on that fateful night. If she had Scott’s cell phone, things would be easier. She wasn’t worried, though. She had contacted Scott’s cell phone provider, and they were going to courier her the call logs within a day.

  When she was satisfied that she had checked every nook and cranny, she stopped by the front door and stared at the crowd by the entrance.

  The press was waiting on her to give them an update. The fans were waiting on her to make sense of why their idol was gone.

  She sighed. She was as much in the dark as them. She had no idea why someone would hurt a beloved movie star. She had no motive and no suspects.

  She was turning to shut the door when her eyes caught something. There was a large potted plant next to the door. Inside the clay planter was a white piece of paper. She reached down and picked it up.

  It was a taxi receipt. The amount was forty dollars, but with a tip, the total came to fifty. Her eyes widened when she saw the date and time at the top. The date was two days earlier, and the time was seven twenty PM.

  The receipt had to have belonged to Scott. He must have taken a taxi from the house, and when he was dropped off, the driver must have given him a receipt.

  But how did it end up in the planter? she wondered. The only explanation she could think of was that Scott had the house keys and the taxi receipt in the same pocket. When he reached to pull out the keys, the receipt must have fallen into the planter.

  The receipt was a customer copy, and it showed that it was paid with cash. The receipt did not have the name of the taxi company, but it did have the medallion number and the driver number. It wouldn’t be hard to find out who had picked up Scott and where he had been taken.

  She realized it was her first big break in the case.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Callaway considered everything he had just discovered. The woman with Frank Henderson was Sandra Wolkoff. Sandra was going by her maiden name of Ledford. This explained why the department store had not picked up on her past when they had conducted a background check.

  Now that he knew who she was, he couldn’t understand how Frank was involved with her.

  He could tell Frank was not happy with the arrangement. Whenever he was around her, his posture was that of a defeated man. He was being forced to do something he was not proud of. Callaway had a feeling it involved the men in the cargo van.

  His ears perked up when he heard a noise coming from outside. Someone was making their way up the stairs.

  I’m not expecting company, he thought.

  He opened the desk drawer and removed his gun. As a responsible gun owner, he always locked up his weapon upon returning to the office. He was fortunate he didn’t need it when he had met Frank, but now his weapon could be very useful.

  He got up and slowly made his way to the closed door. There was no window for him to know who could be outside.

  He cocked the hammer.

  “You’re not going to shoot me, are you, kid?” a man on the other side of the door said.

  Callaway’s mouth dropped. He blinked. He had not heard that voice in years. “Jimmy? Is that you?”

  “Of course it’s me. Who else would it be?”

  Callaway returned the gun to the drawer. He tucked his shirt in his pants. He patted his hair down and then opened the door.

  Jimmy Keith was five-ten with a protruding belly and broad shoulders. He had deep wrinkles on his face, a handlebar mustache, and a white mane that was slicked back. His dull gray eyes were focused on Callaway, and his face was sporting a grin.

  “Kid,” he said.

  “Jimmy,” Callaway replied with a big smile.

  Jimmy took in the office. “Small but cozy. I like it.”

  Callaway’s mouth was dry. “What… what are you doing here?”

  “I came to see how you were doing,” Jimmy replied.

  Jimmy Keith was the reason Callaway had become a private investigator. As a deputy sheriff, he was bored out of his mind when he stumbled upon an article about Jimmy.

  Jimmy was hired by a family to investigate the murder of their daughter and son-in-law while they vacationed in the Dominican Republic. The couple had been found bludgeoned to death inside their rental property. The Dominican police believed the murders were a result of a robbery gone horribly wrong. The house had been ransacked of all money and jewelry.

  When there were no leads for over a year, Jimmy was brought in to find out what happened. He flew to the Dominican Republic and began his own investigation. He started with the local police, who were not too happy to see a private investigator poking his nose into their business. But after lining their pockets with American greenbacks, they were more than willing to let him at least see what they had on the case. To his horror, no work had been done on the couple’s murder. The police had in fact closed the case as unsolvable. It was another statistic of tourists caught in the country’s high crime rate.

  He spoke to the couple’s neighbors. They said they hadn’t heard or seen anything. He even spoke to low-level criminals, but none of them had anything of value to add. After months of hitting walls, and with money running out, he returned to the United States, deeply dismayed.

  But Jimmy never gave up.

  On the second anniversary of the deaths, he caught a break. Someone had filed a claim on a life insurance policy for the daughter. When Jimmy investigated, he found it was her ex-boyfriend. He was the beneficiary on her insurance policy. But the ex-boyfriend was in the States at the time of the murders. He had a solid alibi.

  Jimmy spoke to the family who had hired him, and they had nothing but positive things to say about the ex-boyfriend. The breakup was amicable, and the ex-boyfriend had even spoken at the couple’s wedding. In fact, he had also purchased the trip to the Dominican Republic as a wedding gift.

  This was all Jimmy needed to hear.

  He dug deeper and found out the ex-boyfriend had visited the country twice before the wedding. Jimmy spent money out of his own pocket and found out that the ex-boyfriend had also visited the local police. In particular, he met the officer who ended up investigating the murders.

  Jimmy then discovered that a large sum of money had been transferred from the ex-boyfriend’s account to an account in the Dominican Republic.

  Armed with this information, the family flew down to the country. With the help of the American consulate, they pressured the state police to look into the case. They found that the officer had indeed received the large sum of money. He had also been spotted at the scene around the time of the murder. No witnesses had come forward because they feared retribution from the officer, but with the state police’s assurances, they spoke up.

  Meanwhile, back in the United States, the FBI brought in the ex-boyfriend for questioning. With all the evidence piled up against him, he confessed. He was bitter about being dumped, and he decided to kill the daughter and cash in her life insurance. He paid the officer in the Dominican Republic to carry out the crime.

  The ex-boyfriend was now serving life in prison for conspiracy to commit murder. The officer was sentenced to prison in the Dominican Republic, but two months later, he was found with his throat slashed. Apparently, there were criminals who could not wait to get their hands on an ex-police officer, even if he was a crooked cop.

  In Callaway’s eyes, Jimmy was a legend. He was also his mentor.

  “Aren’t you going to buy an old man a
drink?” Jimmy asked.

  “Yeah, sure, absolutely,” Callaway quickly replied. “I know a great place around the corner.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Fisher parked the SUV and got out. She was at Yonge Avenue, one of the busiest downtown streets in Milton. Businesses and retail stores lined both sides of the street.

  After finding the taxi receipt at Scott’s house, she was able to track down the driver. He was a new immigrant to the country, and in broken English, he confirmed he had picked up Scott at his home after six thirty in the evening. Fisher had pushed him for the exact time, but he wasn’t sure.

  The security cameras confirmed that Scott was dropped off at his house at precisely 6:32 PM by the limo driver. The time printed on the taxi receipt read 7:20 PM, which meant the taxi driver had arrived at Scott’s house shortly after 6:45 PM in order to make the twenty-minute drive to Yonge Avenue.

  Why was this timing so important? It explained that right after the limo driver had driven away, Scott had called a taxi. This raised a couple of questions: Why didn’t Scott just have the limo driver bring him to Yonge Avenue? And why did he leave his house right after he had just arrived?

  The answers were simple. He did not want anyone to know where he was going, and he was meeting someone at a precise time.

  She was able to get the taxi driver to show her the footage from his taxi cab. The latest CCTV systems were equipped to store footage up to five days.

  In the footage, as Scott got into the cab, he was wearing the clothes he had been found in. He was also wearing large aviator shades. He was carrying a backpack, which he placed next to him. Fisher had not found any backpack in the house. The way Scott held the backpack close told her it contained something of value to him.

  The driver tried to engage in small talk, but Scott was not interested. He kept staring at his cell phone. It looked like he was waiting for a call or a text message. Fisher couldn’t be certain. The footage was black and white and had no audio.