Lethal Trust

by Lala Corriere

  “Have you tried to contact the deputy that signed this report?”

  Schlep wiggled his eyebrows and said, “I’ve done everything. Three times. He’s retired and gone off the radar. His partner said he’d seen enough of man’s inhumanity to man and was just going fishing and hiking until he died somewhere up in the woods. No family. No friends. No contacts.”

  “Great. Could mean something. Could mean nothing,” I said.

  “Maybe something,” Schlep said. “That’s only the beginning.”

  He pulled up another first responder’s report.

  “Back to the hit and run? We’ve seen this,” I said.

  He clapped his hands above his head and dropped them back to the keyboard.

  “We’ve seen it but we didn’t scour it. Look down at the comments,” he said.

  I did as told. “Nothing.”

  “Aha. But that’s where we went wrong. He zoomed in on the section.

  “Okay. I see a smudge.”

  “Yeah, a smudge. Now watch my magic as I enlarge it as big as I can and then do some enhancements.”

  After a few quick keystrokes Schlep jumped out of the chair and told me to scoot over so that my face would be directly in front of the monitor.

  “Now look!”

  I could barely make it out and yet it was undisputable. Someone had used some skill and a great ink eraser on the report to block out the officer’s comment.

  J.D.L.R.

  “We can reasonably deduce that someone high up there doctored this document. And, a logical hypothesis would be to cover up a possible intentional vehicular homicide,” Schlep said.

  “I agree, but we still have a rabid wolf staring us down. We’re talking about the Tucson Police Department where somewhere along the line someone altered the report. As for the drowning, that’s county. Cochise County Sheriff’s Department. If we think we’re on to something then I’d say our killer has the whole damn state under his or her control. The deputy sheriff down there told me he’d sent the complete file and we had nothing further to discuss.”

  I suggested we go back out to the pool. In seconds, Schlep had exited the hallway sliding glass door and stripped off his shirt and pants. He deserved to cool off in the pool, but my mind wasn’t done running. I walked over to dangle my legs in the tepid water so that we could still talk in-between laps. It was his idea.

  After lap one: “I would have never engaged Stacie Childs based on the facts. Those facts, as are in the police records would tell me she’d be wasting her money,” I said.

  “And?” Schlep asked.

  “My mind tells me that the Childs’ Family Trust is maniacal. I have come to understand the reason Paul Childs set it up that way in that he wanted the one and only. The one that was most like him. Driven, if not relentless. But it sucks.

  “My instincts and a wicked feeling in my guts tell me that evil is lurking, Schlep. I know in my bones that this list of heirs apparent, or heirs not-so-apparent, contain a probable murderer and more potential victims.”

  Lap two: “I do have more news,” Schlep said as he reached for the end of the pool.

  Sometimes I think he loved to see me squirm with curiosity and that’s what I did when he made the flip turn for another lap.

  Lap three: “You asked me to investigate the drowning of Angela Fine, and I did. There’s just one more thing,” Schlep said.

  “What would that be?” This time I put my foot down on his fingers holding onto the side.

  “There was another girlfriend. It goes back to when Nick Childs got his divorce. Soon afterward he started dating a woman and it quickly grew pretty serious. I’m not sure what if any family pushback there might have been—”

  “—but likely Claudia Childs did not give her approval,” I interrupted. “Where is she now and why do you bring her up?”

  “She’s from a rural village of about six-hundred residents in Veracruz, Mexico. Fluent in English, of course, but the population there are Spanish speaking only. You can imagine it’s a primitive lifestyle. Next, I’ll tell you why she chose to move back down there. Let me do my laps and I’ll jump out and tell you.”

  “You don’t like my idea of boardroom conversation?”

  Schlep didn’t bother to reply and finished his laps.

  While he was drying off I adjusted the table umbrella and refreshed our juices. Schlep knew where to help himself to a cold bottle of water.

  “Don’t make me ask you,” I said in my most stern voice the instant he sat down.

  He laughed, “It’s right on the tip of my tongue. The girl moved back to her tiny little village after she dodged a few bullets here in the Old Pueblo. Literally.”

  “Trouble in Tucson?” I prompted for more.

  He smiled broadly, “Now I have you where I want you. Could be unrelated, of course.”

  “Of course,” I said, thrusting my arms across the table and leaning in as close to his face as I could get.

  “The girl was a Realtor and holding an open house. She was about to close up when a person in black, with the ski mask to match, stormed in brandishing a gun. According to police reports the girl ran to the back door as the perp was throwing lead. She screamed. The neighbors were having a BBQ and already alarmed at the sound of gunfire. Several good Samaritan men responded. One man was packing. He jumped the fence and raced into the house. Nothing. The police recovered twelve nine millimeter shell casings from a semi-automatic.

  “Now, this isn’t television. If this was a professional assassin the gun of choice might be one that didn’t leave behind shell casings. In the end, it didn’t matter. They never found a gun, they never matched the shell casings to a gun used in any other crime, and essentially it’s a cold case,” Schlep said in a barrage of words.

  “And the girlfriend?” I asked.

  “The woman decided America was not safe enough for her.”

  I dropped my head to stare at a small spider weaving its web between two fence rails. I thought, oh the wicked webs we weave.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “YOU AND I BOTH KNOW THE information didn’t just pop out of your computer. You had to be doing some deep digging,” I said.

  “My specialty,” Schlep said.

  “And why?”

  We both knew why. There seem to be a lot of accidents, near misses, and deaths that surround the Childs clan and those near it. There is no way a woman like Claudia Childs would be tolerant of a boracic woman from a poor Mexican village snaring the interests of her son, in spite of the fact Claudia herself came from meager means.”

  “Cassie, I’ve known you for years. I’m on your team and I have your back. What’s really going on in that mystic mind of yours?”

  “This time it’s not about feelings. It’s about good old-fashioned detective work.” I looked across at the two thin police files.

  Schlep reached for the file tagged Nicholas A. Childs, moved it nearer toward him and perused the contents he had likely already memorized. I already knew he didn’t just look at photographs and documents, but zoomed in on them and took brain-scan impressions.

  I let him do his thing as I fielded an incoming phone call and returned another. The caller wanted to know if I would sell her GPS tracking devices. Plural. She was certain I could provide her with the best quality and she assured me she could easily afford a professional.

  “No, I don’t operate that way. You can find them online.”

  I returned the call that left a message. “Yes. We do asset searches. I’ll have my co-worker, Shepard Brown, get in touch with you.”

  Schlep rolled his eyes. “I just love how you sic me onto a new job using my formal name.”

  I forwarded the original message to him and continued, “Back to these wretched files, there are two things. First, the hit and run. Even though there were no eye-witnesses to describe the car that left the scene a BOLO, Be-On-the-Lookout, alert still should been issued for a car with fresh major body damage. Maybe a dab of blood here an
d there.”

  Schlep shook out his unruly head of hair. “Every body shop in southern Arizona should have been notified. All the cops would have had to do is take the VIN numbers of incoming cars with body damage and compare those with police reports.”

  I reached over and pulled out three photographs. “Here’s a biggie. These are clean tire tracks at the scene and those tracks identify tires. More so, you can tell which direction the vehicle moved by the skid marks.”

  Schlep scrutinized the images. “They’re darker on both ends.”

  “That, they are. These photographs indicate that homicide detectives should have been called to the scene.

  “The driver was beyond the point of impact and slammed on his brakes. That left the darker tracks at the end. He or she clearly backed up and took a direct hit on the victim, then sped away. This darker tread near the body indicates the tires were digging in and the brakes had to be screeching.”

  Schlep placed the photographs in a row in front of him.

  He took his time.

  Finally, he said, “To reiterate, again, if handled correctly, the police would have known they had a probable homicide on their hands, they would have known to look for certain tires with certain treads and a vehicle with rear-end damage.”

  I asked Schlep if he wanted to take a breather and get in a few more pool laps before we continued. Instead, he reached for the file labeled Manuel R. Childs.

  Below, the name of his also deceased wife followed.

  The contents in the folder documented a house fire that claimed the lives of the husband and wife.

  “Another insubstantial thin file,” I said. “Like, we don’t even have one burning twig from the bonfire.”

  “Ridiculous.”

  I let Schlep takes his time, which on Schlep-time is super fast, going over the documents. I swear the guy spent more time ironing his shoelaces than normal people took to go out to buy a new pair.

  I spoke, “Again, there were no witnesses. A neighbor took her dog outside at three o’clock in the morning and saw the raging flames. Summer in the desert. Even at night no one had a window opened so no one smelled the thick smoke. The home was fully engulfed and began to implode when first responders arrived at the scene.”

  Schlep said, “I see that the fire was originally reported as suspicious.”

  “And, the inspection report concluded no accelerants were used. The report now deems the fire to be of unknown origin.”

  “Shit. That’s preposterous! Schlep yelled. And he rarely cursed. No match for me.

  “In this day and age? What faulty wiring? Gas leak?”

  “The report is inconclusive. And you can bet that, although not officially closed, no one is going to take a look at what they already are calling a cold case.

  It was then that I remembered what Stacie had said to me.

  “Let’s just say this is something, with my family and their ties, that wouldn’t be swept under the carpet. It would be sucked out of the air before one speckle of dust fell.”

  STACIE CALLED ME with an unexpected invitation.

  “Mother Claudia is throwing one of her famous fiestas on Saturday. I wondered if you would be my plus-one?”

  I hesitated, remembering that she was my client and I didn’t do that mixing business and pleasure thing.

  She must have picked up on my pause, “Join me. I think all of my brothers and sisters will be there, and that includes our brother, Seth, flying in from New York. He’s usually here for the big holidays, but my mother seems to have created her own major holiday with her annual fiesta.”

  I paused, again, and I could feel my young seer reading right through me.

  It boiled down to worrying if anyone would recognize me but the more I thought about it I realized it would be a good thing for me to see all of the family gathered together for a casual affair, and not in disguise.

  I don’t know if my game was on or if I just felt feisty and looking for trouble, but I accepted the invitation.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  THAT SATURDAY STACIE insisted upon picking me up at my office. I thought about wearing one of my many disguises, but decided it would be better for me to present myself to everyone and do that cocktail-talk crap. So what if they found I was staring at them? Eavesdropping? My game would be to see who might be a bit fidgety, or even defensive, or both.

  “A limo?” I said.

  “Mother Claudia likes her children to arrive at her affairs in style, I think it’s part of her enticement game so that we’ll actually show.”

  Game on, I thought.

  Once settled into the stretch in my long Mexican-style dress, Stacie handed me a flute of champagne. She said, “Dad loathed Mother’s fiestas. He would say that the decorations were tacky and the food too spicy.

  “A couple of years ago I stumbled upon the expense receipts. Mother had spent over ten-thousand dollars on those gaudy balloons, flowers, and the mandatory piñatas. I never did see the catering bill,” she laughed. “No wonder Dad hated the fiestas.”

  Rather than entering the home through the grand foyer we were escorted to the grounds from the side of the estate grounds.

  A long row of jasmine trees in full bloom lined the walk. They were beginning to exude their sweet evening scent.

  Turning the corner, I quickly understood what Stacie meant about her mother’s fiestas. A mariachi band greeted us. There were so many helium balloons I thought the property might make lift off into space. Grand floral arrangements graced every table and corner. And, yes, a zoo of piñatas seemed equally ready for take-off or crashing to the floor with their candies.

  Stacie told me she would stay be my side and make introductions with no need to ante up what I did for a living. Some would know me. Most would not.

  First on the list would be the mandatory walk up to see the mother, Claudia. Easy. Claudia Childs paid scant attention to me as she devoured the sight of her daughter.

  Claudia quickly said, “Darling, I think all of the children are coming tonight.”

  I thought to myself, minus two.

  “Hunter and Seth are standing at the bar across the pool. Do go see them,” she urged.

  “Seth’s back in town?” Stacie’s eyes lit up.

  “It took some doing, but I have my ways,” Claudia said. “He’ll be staying here this time, Stacie.”

  I took Stacie’s lead and followed her around the pool, noticing that the scent of the jasmine’s white petals was overshadowed by searing beef, cumin, and other exotic spices. We stopped at the guacamole station where the guacamolier offered us five samples of his prepared wares, or he would make one for us. Stacie wanted to grab some and head to the bar, so we loaded up a couple of plates of what he offered to take with us.

  I was good with that. Scanning the crowd already gathered I didn’t recognize a soul. I saw the mariachi’s setting up in that same corner by the far bar. I took note of the two brothers. I hadn’t personally interviewed either. Seth’s excuse is that he lived in New York and between work and family he had little time. Hunter was another story. I had called him several times. He guffawed and claimed he was too busy for me. He had golf games and tennis matches and needed to spend a lot of his time at the Scorpion’s headquarters. Although I recognized him from photos, he did stand out in the growing crowd. While other men wore Mexican wedding shirts and huaraches, Hunter had chosen to wear black gabardine pants, a starched formal dress shirt, and a red silk neck scarf. The two brothers’ rigid stance suggested that they weren’t close. Maybe an obligatory conversation going on. Stacie, with all of her charms, would easily add to the moment.

  She waltzed up and was immediately in a deep squeeze with the brother I knew to be Seth. The Wall Street guy. Handsome. Almost regal. He must have had the Tucson casual dress-code down pat with a colorful camp shirt, khakis, and loafers with no socks.

  “Crackerjack,” he called to Stacie. “You are so grown up and beautiful.”

  “Shit. You just
saw me. I don’t think I’ve changed but you have. We got you out of that suit! I appreciate that you were able to strip yourself of your fancy business attire,” she said, loud enough that Hunter could hear her.

  I think he whispered to her something about a wallet. Stacie shrugged and nudged me over to make the formal introductions.

  Keenly aware some may think I had no right to be looking into their family business, Seth gregariously shook my hand and provided convivial conversation.

  Stacie had pecked Hunter on the cheek. I watched as he took a gulp of dry air and turned toward the bartender for a refill.

  Families always interest me, but especially those blended families. Some of the siblings seem to bond instantly, singing Kumbaya and holding hands and circling around any outdoor fire pit. Others were clearly not of the same stock and had no intention of claiming their relationship. Full blood. Half-blood. No blood. What is blood good for but a bloody mary?

  Seth explained that his wife elected to stay in New York with their twins to see to all of their activities.

  Soon, Mason Childs joined our little group. I noticed that Hunter had turned around and winced with a slight drop to his jaws. His shoulders pulled back and he raised his head. What that was about, I have no idea. Mason was yet another attractive Childs’ offspring, with a trendy day-old-beard and shabby chic hair. His vibrant blue eyes with a chiseled chin and a brilliant smile framed by dimples seemed to challenge his timid, quiet voice that turned to a quaking groan as Claudia approached her four children.

  She poised her body between myself and Mason and slightly in front of me. Maybe it wasn’t a cold shoulder but my knowings told me otherwise. Still, Claudia could project a thunderous voice and apparently she didn’t care who heard her.

  “You’re late, Mason.”

  “Traffic accident,” he replied.

  “Not that gorgeous car we gave you?”

  “No, Mother. Both me and the car are fine.”

  “You look a little too thin. Handsome, but thin.”