by Karen Rose
“I know,” he said. “I just don’t know how.”
“Yeah, you do.” He met David’s eyes. “I’ve watched you for seven months and you don’t sit still, boy. You run all the time, doing for other people. According to your mama, over Martino’s lasagna and a couple of glasses of red wine, that’s the story of your life. St. David, defender of the helpless, fixer of broken stuff.”
David gritted his teeth. Not again. He couldn’t have this conversation again. “There’s nothing wrong with doing for others.”
“There is when it keeps you from facing yourself. You’ve been running from yourself so long, all you see is your own ass. Eventually, that’s all anybody else will see.”
David started to get up. “Good night, Glenn.”
“Sit your ass down, boy,” Glenn snapped, and, rolling his eyes, David obeyed. “Do you care about her?”
David crossed his arms over his chest. “Who?”
Glenn huffed his displeasure. “Your pretty blond cop.”
David pictured the hurt in Olivia’s eyes and his anger abruptly fizzled. “Yes.”
“Why?”
David drew a breath, letting the scent of roses calm him as he considered his answer. “I felt like I’d known her forever the first night I met her. There was something there. I can’t explain it, but it was like… home.”
“Yet, knowing you shouldn’t, you drank too much and said something that hurt her. You wanna know what I think?”
David stole a glance at Glenn’s craggy face. The old guy was staring at him with a mixture of pity and wisdom that he missed so much since his father passed. “Why not?”
“I think you recognized something special and you got scared. You’d been pining for this other woman for so long that being alone had become comfortable.”
“But I don’t like being alone.”
“Didn’t say you liked it. Said you were comfortable. Big difference there. One thing I learned in all the years I was married is that good relationships take time. They take heart. And they take trust. Maybe you didn’t want to give her that.”
David swallowed hard. “How long were you married, Glenn?”
“Almost forty years. Miss her every day. She made my life… good. And a man can’t ask for more than that.” He started for his apartment, but looked back. “Heard buzz on the scanner before I came out. Warehouse fire. Might be arson. Definitely homicide. And they found another glass ball.”
David came to his feet. “They mentioned that glass ball on the scanner?”
“Nah. Your captain’s there, at the scene. He tried to call your cell, but it went to voice mail, so he called me. Asked me to tell you to call him.”
He shoved his hand in his pocket, looking for his cell. Then remembered it was inside his apartment, charging. “Why didn’t you tell me that first thing?”
Glenn shrugged. “Your mama is worried about you, so I wanted to say my piece. Your pretty blond cop will be at the fire scene. Be careful.”
David waited until Glenn had his hand on the back door. “Thank you, old man.”
Glenn looked over his shoulder. “You’re welcome. Don’t fuck it up again.”
• • •
Monday, September 20, 11:59 p.m.
Sitting in his easy chair, he reached for the cell he used with Eric when it beeped. There was no message with Eric’s text, only an attachment. It was grainy, but he could see the flames consuming Tomlinson’s warehouse. They’d taken a while before sending it to him, as close to a “fuck you” as they dared. Part of him had to admire their pluck.
you almost missed your deadline. wait for your next assignment.
He closed the phone and went back to his nightly task of combing through his customers’ e-mails, working through potential clients who were ready for first contact. Ah, here was one who was almost ready for the plucking.
An office flirtation he’d been following seemed to have taken the next step, the man sending the woman a link to a quaint bed-and-breakfast off the beaten path. There was no invitation, no details, yet. But there would be, he was quite certain.
At the beginning the two had come in for lunch, talking about nothing but their office project. But the moment he’d seen them together, he’d known. He could always pick the couples who’d end up together. Sure enough, after a few weeks they were sharing personal details. A few weeks later, she told the guy she was unhappy with her husband, and then the guy was covering her hand with his. Whether they’d started out intending to have an office affair or not, it didn’t matter. That’s where they were headed.
And once they did the nasty, he’d be in business. Ka-ching.
He could always spot the philanderers and the ones who were up to something more. Doers of the naughty often realized it was better to conduct their illegal business in plain sight, rather than to skulk in the shadows, drawing attention to themselves. Sometimes they got away with being naughty in plain sight, but not if I’m listening.
He logged into his offshore account and smiled. Right on schedule. He studied each line of his statement and nodded. Most of his clients paid regularly and on time. Except one. Dorian Blunt had missed a second payment. He’d been patient last month when Dorian had complained of mounting medical bills for his child and his out-of-work wife. He’d begged for more time.
And I gave him more time. Once. Grabbing a new disposable phone from the box next to his easy chair, he texted Dorian Blunt’s personal cell phone.
you’re late. While he waited, he checked Dorian’s checking account. The man did have a lot of bills. His balance was disturbingly low. Still, a deal was a deal. After a few minutes, he got a response.
I’m broke. 100K will have to be enough. No more.
He sucked in both cheeks, annoyed. Broke? Hardly. Dorian simply hadn’t dipped into his illegally gotten gains for fear of getting caught. If the man didn’t want to play by his rules, he shouldn’t have embezzled company funds. And he definitely shouldn’t have left a paper trail that I could have found blindfolded. He knew where Dorian kept his stash of embezzled cash. He could take it at any time. But that would be stealing.
He looked at blackmail as a kind of poetic justice with a twist of irony. That makes me rich. If people didn’t want to get blackmailed, they shouldn’t do bad things. Or they should be smarter about it. Calmly, he texted back.
i would reconsider. you have 12 hours. watch the news and be “plumb” afraid.
That should do it. If Dorian didn’t pay, the College Three would have their next assignment. Then, he’d go in and clean out Dorian’s stash of cash, leaving Dorian’s life insurance for his grieving widow. Whenever possible, he always left something for the widow, grieving or no. It was the right thing to do.
Tuesday, September 21, 12:20 a.m.
Olivia was one of the last ones to the warehouse, having gone home to change her clothes first. No way she was arriving on a scene dressed like she’d been for David.
And? Sonofabitch. The fact he’d screamed another woman’s name when she’d been giving him… Well, he was an ass. She slammed her car door then stopped abruptly, realizing she was at the scene. Her gut had been so churned up over David, she hadn’t had any churn left to worry about the body she was about to view.
Like Wile E. Coyote suddenly realizing he was standing in midair, Olivia’s stomach dropped and she leaned against her car, momentarily weak-kneed. Now she had dead-body churn on top of David churn. And there was a mojito rolling around in there, too, along with some greasy chicken fingers from Sal’s Bar. She swallowed hard.
Throwing up at the scene would not be good.
Move your body. Find Kane. She took a deep breath and immediately regretted doing so. Acrid smoke hung heavy in the air, burning her lungs. Fuck this night.
She made her feet move. At least David wouldn’t be here. He didn’t work again until Wednesday. As always, she found Kane easily in the crowd, his “fire fedora” pushed to the back of his head. He waved her over when he sa
w her headed his way.
“We have another one,” Kane said. He stood with Barlow and Captain Casey, from the fire department. Casey wore his gear and looked grim.
“Appears they used gasoline this time,” Barlow said. “They left four empty cans inside the building. Entered through a broken window in the back door.”
“The victim?” Olivia asked, focusing on the words, not the churn.
“Probably Barney Tomlinson, the owner of the company,” Kane said.
“Probably?” The warehouse’s concrete walls still stood. “Was the fire that bad?”
“Pretty bad,” Casey said. “But there’s a good bit left inside. Lots of melted chrome.”
“Tomlinson sold plumbing fixtures,” Barlow explained. “No known connection to KRB Corporation or Rankin and Sons’ construction—not yet anyway.”
“So the fire burned Tomlinson up?” Olivia asked.
Casey shook his head. “No, ma’am. He was shot. He’s still in his office, sitting at his desk. Most of his face is gone. He was shot in the back of the head.”
Her stomach pitched. “Who discovered the body?”
“One of the firefighters out of Company Forty,” Barlow said. “The office was in the center of the warehouse, self-contained with walls and a separate eight-foot ceiling. Inside was the victim, facedown on his desk. The team tried to keep the scene as intact as possible while putting the fire out.”
“When you called, you said they found another glass ball?”
“Covered in gel,” Barlow answered, “like before.”
“When the firefighters saw it, they told their captain, who called me,” Casey said. “They’d all heard about the glass ball Hunter caught yesterday. Nobody plans to talk to the press, although I’d be surprised if we kept it secret for too much longer. When they saw the ball tonight, they called me. I called Barlow.”
“I asked him to bring Hunter over,” Barlow said and Olivia’s gaze shot to his face. “I wanted Hunter to walk through and tell me how the place looked compared to last night’s fire. I needed the info fast, before they’d let me go in. Hunter’s in there now.”
“All right,” Olivia said calmly, although her heart had started to pound with the first mention of David’s name. “What about video surveillance?”
Kane pointed to a man standing next to the uniformed cops on duty. “That’s the warehouse manager. I haven’t talked to him yet. There was also a guard dog.”
Olivia grimaced. “They killed it?”
“No,” Barlow said. “Appears the animal was drugged. The warehouse manager dragged him to the edge of the fenced area, then called 911. The dog was unconscious when the firefighters responded. I called a vet. I think the warehouse manager is more worried about the dog than his boss. Tomlinson didn’t seem very well liked.”
“We’ll want to talk to Hunter and the firefighters who discovered the body,” Kane said. He looked at Olivia. “But first the manager.”
She nodded. “Let’s go.”
“I didn’t know Hunter was here until just now,” Kane murmured as they walked toward the now-pacing warehouse manager. “Did you, um, get my field glasses?”
“No. I… left early. I’ll get your damn glasses later, all right? You want me to lead with the manager?”
“Knock yourself out, kid.”
The warehouse manager stopped his nervous pacing when they approached. “I’m Detective Sutherland. This is my partner, Detective Kane. You are?”
“Lloyd Hart. Is that vet here yet?”
“I don’t think so,” Olivia said. “But I know he’s been called. Is the dog yours?”
“No, but I’m the one who takes care of him. Have for five years. His name is Bruno.”
Olivia wrote it down. “I’ll make sure the vet knows you’re the contact, Mr. Hart. You can tell him Bruno’s medical history and make sure he gets the best care.”
“Thank you.” He swallowed hard. “You probably think I’m a horrible person, being more concerned about the dog than Tomlinson, or this fire.”
“I have a dog, too. So, what can you tell us about this fire and Mr. Tomlinson?”
He rubbed his hands over his face. “I left at my usual time, about six. Barney was still here. He was doing the books. They said he was shot. How?”
“We don’t know yet, and we haven’t been in there. So Mr. Tomlinson was doing the books. Was the business in any trouble?”
Hart rolled his eyes. “Oh, yeah. Tomlinson and the missus were in the middle of a messy divorce. He’d been cheating and she had pictures. She made sure everybody knew she had pictures and who Barney’d been doin’ it with. Young woman he’d hired as a temp. Nobody was surprised because we all knew why he’d hired her. The girl never did a lick of work except on him.” He winced. “Sorry, Detective.”
“It’s okay. Was the divorce the reason the business was in trouble?”
“Not the whole reason. We were hurting before, with construction slowing. Most of our customers buy for commercial building. But Weezie had just ordered an audit of the books, and all of our spending had to be approved. I guess she figured he’d been buying things for the other woman from the business accounts.”
“Was he?” she asked.
“Yeah. I tried to tell him to stop, that he was gonna get fried, but he didn’t listen. He was a fifty-year-old man with a twenty-year-old on the side. They never listen.”
“Mrs. Tomlinson’s first name is Weezie? Short for Louise?”
He nodded. “It’s a real shame. I like her. She didn’t deserve this.”
Olivia met Hart’s eyes. “But Mr. Tomlinson did?”
“No,” he said. “Nobody deserves that. But I won’t lie to you. Barney was a prick. He cheated on Weezie, he was rude to employees. Never made eye contact, always either on his cell phone or using it to surf the Internet. Probably looking at porn. And he hated Bruno,” he finished, as if hating the dog was the most egregious sin of all.
“What about you, Mr. Hart?” she asked. “Did you hate him?”
“Sure. He was racist, sexist, every bad ‘ist’ you can name. But he was my boss, and I said ‘yes, sir’ when he gave an order. The only time I ever held my ground was over Bruno. And before you ask, I was with my wife and some friends playing bridge when the fire started. I can give you their names.”
“That would be great. We can cross you off quickly. Sergeant Barlow said you were the one to call 911. How did you know to come here?”
A sheepish expression stole over Hart’s face. “I installed a smoke detector in Bruno’s run. Just in case. It sends an alert to my cell phone. We were just finishing our last game when my phone went off. I got here, saw the fire, called 911. I dragged Bruno beyond the fence. I didn’t want him to get burned or trampled on by the firemen.”
“Why the dog?” Kane asked. “Did you have a problem with theft?”
“We used to store porcelain fixtures out here and had some vandalism. Kids, with too much free time. They’d break up porcelain, that kind of thing. Barney got the dog, hoping Bruno would bite one of them. The kids went elsewhere and Bruno stayed.”
“Video security?” Olivia asked.
“Cameras outside, none inside. Feed goes straight to a recorder inside. Old-fashioned. Barney didn’t think he needed anything fancy as long as he kept Bruno.”
“We’ll need a list of your clients and employees,” Olivia said.
“Talk to Jake Mabrow. He does our IT. I convinced Barney to set up an outside server about a year ago so that we’d have a backup. Jake will have access to our files. So will Weezie. She came in and made copies of everything on Barney’s computer the day before she filed for divorce. He didn’t know she knew about the temp.”
“What about you?” Kane asked. “What will you do now that this place is gone?”
“Retire. I’d been planning to anyway. Weezie promised me Bruno.” Hart’s head whipped to the side, focusing on a minivan that had just arrived. “Vet’s here.”
Olivia recognized the vet immediately. “Barlow called Brie’s dad,” she told Kane. “He’s a good vet,” she told Hart. “He takes care of my dog. Bruno’s in good hands.”
“I can go?” Hart asked and was gone with Olivia’s first nod.
“We need to get Tomlinson’s customer list,” Kane said. “See if KRB Corp or Rankin bought plumbing supplies from them.”
“We also need to pay a visit to the Widow Tomlinson. Sounds like she won’t be so grieving. This one shouldn’t be as hard as Mrs. Weems. It’s my turn, isn’t it?”
“It is. You did good with Mr. Hart, by the way.”
One corner of her mouth lifted. “You’re just saying that so I’ll give you my turn.”
His brows lifted. “Did it work?”
“No.”
“Damn.” Then his eyes narrowed. “Firefighters at your six.”
Olivia looked over her shoulder at Barlow and three firefighters coming their way. David was one of them. That her breath backed up in her lungs and her stomach rolled was an annoyance she’d just have to get used to. David Hunter was handsome. Gorgeous. Total eye candy. And a jerk. So live with it and do your job.
By the time the men reached them, she was steady.
“I’m Cunkle and this is Sloan,” one of the firefighters said. “We’re with Company Forty. And this is Hunter. He’s with Company Forty-four. Barlow said you wanted to talk to us.”
“We do,” Kane said. “Tell us what you saw inside.”
“Fire was fully engaged,” Cunkle said. “The office walls were burning and the ceiling crashed in. Sloan and I pulled the walls down and there he was.”
“He wasn’t alive. He’d been shot.” Sloan pursed his lips hard. “Face was gone.”
“What about his desk?” Olivia asked. “What did you see?”
“A bunch of papers, splattered with his blood. They hadn’t completely burned, so I checked with my flashlight. They were hard to see, but they looked like sex pictures.”
“Sex pictures? You mean, like porn?” Olivia asked and Sloan shook his head.
“No. Looked like the guy was him. Pudgy, lots of white skin. Really white.”
