Tracy Hayes, P.I. and Proud (P.I. Tracy Hayes 2)

by Susanna Shore

  “Do I have to come down and sign it? Because I won’t do that.”

  “No worries, I’ll just leave the package outside their door.”

  “Fine.” The door buzzed open.

  “Thank you.” But the woman had already switched off the intercom. Jackson got in.

  I couldn’t see him after that—and barely hear—so I concentrated on keeping an eye on the street again. No one came to the front door, but a car drove into the garage. The driver was a man though, so I didn’t warn Jackson about it.

  He was away for a long time for someone who wasn’t checking the apartment from the inside, and I felt my stomach begin to flutter in worry. When he finally emerged it was from the garage. He got into the car and I ended the call.

  “It’s definitely possible to exit through the garage. But it has video surveillance, so if the police can get a warrant, we can have the security company keep an eye on it.”

  “Was the apartment empty?”

  “I didn’t go in,” he said. “But I listened through the door and I didn’t hear anything.”

  “Are you sure?” I nodded towards the front door, where a woman who looked very much like Hannah Williams was just exiting.

  “Fuck.”

  “I guess she just didn’t want to open the door.”

  Jackson started the engine as Mrs. Williams headed towards Flatbush Avenue on foot. “Do you think she’ll take the subway there?”

  “Only one way to find out.”

  We gave her a head start before Jackson turned the car around and followed her. She walked briskly, but a car would still overtake her pretty soon. And it seemed she would, indeed, head to the subway station, because when she reached Flatbush Avenue she turned to head to Bergen Street and the station in front of our agency.

  “Get ready to get out of the car and follow her,” Jackson said, and I nodded, my guts fluttering in excitement. “And don’t forget to give me updates about where you’re headed.”

  But just as Jackson slowed down and I prepared to exit, Hannah walked past the steps leading down to the platform and entered our building instead.

  “I’ve been here before,” I said. “It ended with me being assaulted by a wanted bank robber.” Not my fondest moment.

  “Call Cheryl and warn her.”

  I was already holding my phone, so I placed the call. “A former client, potential threat, is about to enter the office. If she asks for us, tell her we’ll be there any minute now. But just in case, have a pepper spray ready.”

  “Don’t worry, I can look after myself,” Cheryl said. I didn’t doubt it for a second. Cheryl might be small and a decade older than Hannah Williams, but she was formidable when she got angry. But I still couldn’t help worrying. If Hannah Williams was our murderer, there was no telling what she might do.

  I willed Jackson to hurry.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Jackson found us a lucky free parking spot outside the 78th Precinct a street over and we were out of the car a moment later. Well, he was. My knee had stiffened while I was sitting down and I had trouble exiting.

  “You go ahead. I’ll catch up with you.” I would’ve made a lousy shadow if I’d had to follow Hannah Williams.

  “It may be better if we’re not there at the same time. Call Trevor and give him a heads up.” He broke into a run and disappeared around the corner. I limped after him, placing the call as I went.

  “Not now, Tracy, we’re about to enter Hannah Williams’s home.”

  “She won’t be there.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “Because she just showed up at our office. After she came out of the building on the 6th.”

  “That’s just great.” He sounded fed-up. “What does she want?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t walk fast enough. But maybe after you’ve checked the first apartment, you could get a warrant for the second.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “How should I know? I’m not a cop.”

  “We can’t even prove she’s connected to the place, other than the info from the gaming association. The address belongs to someone else.” So they’d checked it up too.

  “Don’t worry, we’re working on it.”

  “Legally.”

  “Possibly.”

  He growled. “You let me know the moment you learn what she wants.”

  “Will do.” I entered the elevator and ended the call. I was soon on the second floor. Everything seemed quiet in the hallway, but I crept—limped really silently—to the agency. The door was ajar and I peeked in—to see Cheryl shamelessly listening in on the conversation in Jackson’s office through the speaker.

  I tried to get in quietly, but Misty spotted me and began yapping with her usual enthusiasm, so Cheryl had to drop the intercom. It was no use pretending that I wasn’t there after that.

  Cheryl gave me a thorough once over, not having seen me the whole day. “What’s with the sweatpants?” She was always carefully dressed and made-up, and wouldn’t be caught dead in sweats.

  “I have stitches in my knee,” I said, sinking into the guest chair, happy to take the load off my leg. I told her the story, making her laugh so hard I feared she would smudge her makeup as tears began to fall.

  The intercom beeped. “If that’s Tracy there, send her in.”

  I went into Jackson’s office, where the sight of tearful Hannah Williams met my eyes. She was slumped on the guest chair, wiping her eyes with her hand. Jackson was behind his desk, trying to keep his professional mask on, but I detected irritation around his eyes. I limped to the couch and gave him a questioning look.

  Before he could say anything, Mrs. Williams gave me a horrified look. “Are you injured? It’s not because of my case, is it?” Her tears began to fall again. “I knew I shouldn’t have involved other people in this.”

  “That’s okay. It was another case entirely,” I said, perplexed, not understanding the waterworks at all. She had looked perfectly calm—determined even—when she headed to our office, so what had happened during the past five minutes to bring out this pitiful creature?

  I dug into my messenger bag, pulled out a clean tissue, and gave it to Mrs. Williams, who started mopping her eyes with it.

  “I’m sorry I’m such a mess, but I’ve just been told by my husband’s lawyer that he won’t be released yet because his alibi won’t hold. I was so angry with him for having an affair, but if it had helped free him, it wouldn’t have been so bad. Now I’m starting to believe that he … that he actually did it.” She looked at me with eyes so full of pain that I absolutely believed her. She was really good.

  “Mrs. Williams wants to hire us again, this time to find evidence of her husband’s guilt. I told her we’d do our best to get involved in the investigation.” He kept his voice even, but I got the message: she didn’t know that we already were.

  “Of course. Is there, perhaps, anything you’d be able to tell us that would help direct our investigation?”

  “Well, I found this when I went through his things this morning.” She opened a large handbag she had sitting on her knee and pulled out a small black notebook. “It’s my husband’s.”

  She gave it to Jackson over the desk, who took it and gave her a reassuring smile. “I’m sure this will be really helpful.”

  “Will you let me know how things are progressing?” she asked, getting up.

  “Absolutely.” Jackson got up too and walked her out.

  He’d barely closed the door after her when he rushed back into his office, grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair, and rushed out again, shouting to me as he went: “I’m going to follow her. Keep an eye on her from the window and let me know where she goes.”

  I limped as fast as I could to the window and attempted to see the street right below. It proved impossible, because the ledge blocked the view, so I lifted the window up and reached my upper body through the opening. Still nothing, so I climbed on the sill, knocking my injured knee as I
did, making me almost curse aloud just as Hannah Williams emerged on the street. She was standing tall again, her tears wiped. She didn’t look up, and didn’t head back to her fancy apartment either, but briskly rounded the corner and disappeared from sight.

  “I think she went down to the subway platform,” I told Jackson on the phone the moment he picked up.

  “Thanks. Hold the fort while I’m gone, and try to find Carol Marr’s mother. And call Trevor.” He hung up. A moment later I saw him round the corner too.

  “That was a truly weird meeting,” Cheryl said, shaking her head amazed as she came in. “And I’ve witnessed a lot in this office. I worked for Jackson’s uncle too, you know.”

  I climbed back into the room, knocking my knee again. This time I did curse as a jolt of pain shot from the wound to my brain, making bright spots dance in my eyes.

  “I think Hannah Williams is either a very good actor or a psychopath. Or possibly both,” I said when I was able to think clearly again. I sat on Jackson’s chair and called Trevor. “Have you found anything at Hannah Williams’s home?”

  “Nothing whatsoever. How did the meeting with her go?”

  “I think she’s a real psycho. She’s decided to blame her husband now. And she gave us his notebook.” I picked it from the table where Jackson had left it and opened it. I blinked. “This is some sort of cipher or something. The entire notebook is filled with series of numbers and letters.”

  “A gambling code?”

  “I don’t know. Could be. Would this prove he’s guilty?”

  “Of the gambling scam perhaps, but not the murder.”

  “Then why did she give it to us? Surely it would implicate her too?”

  “She doesn’t know that we know about her gambling,” my brother reminded me. “Maybe she thinks it’ll give him a plausible motive for murdering Sheila Rinaldi if we think he’s gambling.”

  “But couldn’t she just plant the weapon somewhere only he had access to, like Carol Marr’s apartment, if she wanted to blame him for the murder?”

  “We still don’t know it was her and not her husband. But you said she’s a psycho. Who knows how she reasons.” He sighed. “How’s the other line of inquiry going?”

  “I haven’t heard from our special researcher yet.”

  “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.”

  I smiled. “Anyway, Jackson’s following Hannah Williams now and she went into the subway. Could be she’s headed your way.”

  “We’ll keep an eye on her.”

  When the call ended, I turned to Cheryl. “I guess I’ll try to locate Carol Marr’s mother, then.”

  In the three weeks that I’d been Jackson’s apprentice, I hadn’t really mastered the art of a thorough computer search, but luckily Cheryl knew everything. We had Carol Marr’s employee ID from her pay stub—Jackson had ‘accidentally’ kept it—and with that she was able to pull quite a lot of information.

  Like the fact that Carol Marr’s mother was dead.

  “I think we can rule out that she’s gone to her mother’s, then,” I said to Cheryl. So did this mean Larry had killed her after all? Why else would he have lied to the neighbor? “Are there any other next of kin we could contact?”

  “There’s a sister, but she lives in Connecticut.”

  “Carol might have wanted a change of scenery after losing her job.”

  But I wasn’t holding my breath when I picked up the phone and called her sister. It took her a while to answer, and when she did I could hear children screaming in the background. Not a location I’d choose for a change of scenery. I decided to keep the call short. And the phone away from my ear. Ouch.

  “No, I haven’t heard from her for at least a month,” the sister said after I’d introduced myself. “Why?”

  “She’s an eyewitness to a crime and the defense wants to interview her.” I didn’t want to worry her before we knew for sure something had happened to Carol Marr. “Could you ask her to contact us if you hear from her?”

  “Sure.” I gave her the number and hung up. I slumped in my chair. “Nothing.”

  “These things don’t happen as fast in real life as they do on TV,” Cheryl consoled me. “What you need right now is a cup of coffee and a donut to feel better. Let’s go.”

  Chapter Twenty

  I could do with fewer donuts in my life, but this was a special case, so a few moments later—ok, a slow limping later—I parked myself on the small terrace outside the Doughnut Plant across the street with Misty while Cheryl went to fetch us all the gooey goodness. As I waited I leafed through Larry Williams’ notebook I’d taken with me, but it made no more sense to me now than it had earlier.

  “Anything interesting in there?”

  I really shouldn’t have been surprised to see Jonny Moreira taking a seat on the chair next to me, but I was. He leaned down to scratch Misty’s head and she preened happily for him.

  “She’s doing well,” he noted.

  “You’re not getting her back.” He had originally adopted Misty to aid his boss’s nefarious plans, but Jackson and I had rescued the dog and given her to Cheryl.

  He smiled, straightening. “I’m not trying to. Why so suspicious?”

  “I wonder.”

  “Does that have to do with the case?” He pointed at the notebook.

  “Yes, but it doesn’t tell us who killed your cousin. It doesn’t tell us anything,” I added, disgusted with the stupid book. “It’s in code.”

  “May I see?” I handed the book over. It wasn’t like he could make the case more messed up than it already was. He leafed through it like I had, frowning. “If this is about the gambling angle you mentioned, I’d say someone’s been counting cards.”

  My brows shot up. “I thought you’d have to be one of those savant types to count cards.” And Larry Williams hadn’t struck me as one. Then again, he had to be some kind of smart to pull off the scam in the first place. If he was involved. This could be Hannah’s notebook just as well. We only had her word it belonged to her husband.

  “It’s easier if you can do it in your head, especially if you’re at the table playing yourself. You can’t keep a book then. But if you have a partner this might work.” He gave the book back. “Was that helpful?”

  I frowned, my theories collapsing one after another in my head. “This case officially stopped making sense ages ago, so I have no idea.”

  “But a gambling scam is why Sheila was killed?”

  “We think she might have exposed it and got killed because of it, but that’s just the most plausible explanation. We still have no idea who killed her or where the weapon is.”

  “I thought her head was … bashed.” He didn’t seem like a skittish type, but now he looked pained.

  “Turned out she was shot.” I decided not to mention that she’d been dropped from a high place too.

  He blinked at me slowly. Then blinked again. “You’re right. This is a mess of a case.” He noticed Cheryl exiting the shop and got up. “So how did it go last night?”

  I sighed. “We were arrested.”

  He grinned. “Aren’t you a criminal. Bailed out?”

  “Nah, my brother came to the rescue and he had Jarod and me freed.”

  This made him laugh aloud. “Maybe next time you’ll think twice before going against a guy that big.” With that, he headed down the street and soon disappeared around the corner.

  “Was that the nice young man who gave me Misty?” Cheryl asked, placing her tray on the table on my other side. She’d been really taken with him when he came over to bring Misty’s papers, and had remained so even though I’d told her who he was. But he was good looking and had been on his best behavior, so who was I to blame her for it. And he seemed to have a way with middle-aged women, because Cheryl wasn’t the only one to call him nice.

  “What did he want?”

  I sighed. “I wish I knew.”

  We were halfway through demolishing the full tray of donuts—Cheryl had go
ne nuts with the selection—green tea flavored glazing, anyone?—when Jarod called.

  “I have the information you need. Can you come over?”

  “I can, but I’d rather not. My knee is giving me enough trouble as is.”

  “I’ll come to you, then. Are you at the office?” I said yes and he hung up.

  We were back at the agency, feeling slightly nauseous—okay, really nauseous; I shouldn’t have eaten that third donut—when Jarod showed up. His face looked worse than the previous day, and Cheryl went into instant mother-hen mode over it. But he didn’t seem to be suffering, and his eyes were shining with excitement. We gathered around Cheryl’s computer and he uploaded documents from an USB-stick.

  “Okay, this is Miller-Hollis Holdings. It’s a pretty obscure company with offshore accounts and subsidiaries that only exist on paper. But listen to this: the one thing in common with them is that Alisa Strand sits on the boards of all of them. She’s the only named member, actually.”

  “And who is she?”

  “No one. She doesn’t exist except on paper.”

  My shoulders slumped. “Great. So how do we prove she’s connected with Hannah Williams?”

  “That was slightly trickier,” Jarod said, looking pleased with himself. “But I cracked it.” He opened a new document. “Turns out, Miller-Hollis Holding was originally based in Las Vegas. Hannah Williams came under scrutiny of the gambling officials there, and she gave as her occupation personal assistant to Alisa Strand.”

  “Who doesn’t, in fact, exist.”

  “Exactly. So I dug a little deeper and it turned out that every large transaction Alisa Strand made in Las Vegas was handled by Hannah Williams.”

  I nodded, impressed. “And what about the property here?”

  “Miller-Hollis bought it two years ago when the company relocated here, converted the house into three apartments and rented out two of them, perfectly legitimately. And then one apartment was rented to Alisa Strand.”

  “Who still doesn’t exist. So who lives there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is Hannah Williams still listed as her assistant?”