The Claudia Hershey Mysteries - Box Set: Three Claudia Hershey Mysteries

by Laura Belgrave

  Booey looked around the table, to see if anyone else had shared his epiphany. He was rewarded with blank expressions, and sighed. “Maybe I didn’t explain it well. But look, the person didn’t recognize the scouring program for what it was! The person didn’t get how to kill files! Someone too inexperienced to understand that probably wouldn’t be savvy enough to pick apart a fairly sophisticated password. Whoever it was? He got in without having to break a password, dumped files, and then shut down.”

  Carella didn’t have Booey’s computer expertise, but he was no slacker. He grinned. “Hard to argue the logic, and if Booey’s thinking is on target, then it’s good news for us. We’re dealing with someone more desperate than smart.”

  “Yeah, but not altogether stupid, either,” said Moody. “Presumably he knew enough to take any Zip disks or floppies Hemmer had. None turned up in his office, right, Lieutenant?”

  “Not a one,” said Claudia, “and I can’t believe a meticulous man like Hemmer wouldn’t have backed up at least some of his files.”

  “Oh, he did,” said Booey. He told them Hemmer had a back-up program installed on both desktop computers. With more time, he could check the program log and see when it last ran, which would indicate whether Hemmer had shut down his machines prior to taking hostages, or had simply let them idle into sleep.

  Suggs tapped the last of his ice into his mouth. “That’s nice, son, but what we really want to know is what Hemmer had on his computers that someone was so damned keen to get rid of.” He crunched and swallowed. “Did you get back what got dumped?”

  Booey glowed. He did. He got it all. The files, hundreds of them, had been discarded, but not overwritten. He could queue them in a printer back at the police station and make hard copies of everything. Most of the file names suggested that the bulk of Hemmer’s documents had nothing to do with Willow Whisper. But there was one, said Booey, one that might interest the lieutenant. He paused dramatically.

  Claudia raised an eyebrow. “So? What leaped out?”

  “Ready?”

  “Don’t wait for a drum roll.”

  “Sorry.” He took a breath. “Crinkum-crankum! Mr. Hemmer had a file with that name on it.”

  They all leaned forward, so close they could feel each other’s breath.

  “Fat document?” asked Claudia. “Skinny document? What?”

  “Um, neither, actually.” Booey shrugged apologetically. “I mean, the document’s there—he generated it a week before the hostage thing—but there wasn’t a single word on it. He must have started writing something, did a save, but then erased the text before he quit the program. It could be he wasn’t satisfied with what he’d written, but planned to come back to it later. Haven’t you ever done that?” Booey paused. “No? I’ve done it. Sometimes you get stuck with your prose. Openings are especially tricky and—”

  Suggs cut him off with a look. “So we got Hemmer’s work files and a blank document he named ‘crinkum-crankum’ That about right, Boo?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you can’t tell what Hemmer mighta written before he erased the crinkum-crankum file?”

  “No, sir. He erased his own text before he stored the file, so when the file was deleted after his death, it only showed what he had saved—which was nothing. See, it’s different than if you have—”

  “Never mind, Booey. You’re making my brain hurt.” The chief glanced at Claudia. “It’d be nice if you’d call me ‘sir’ every now and then,” he muttered.

  She ignored him. “So we’re nowhere with that. Mitch, what about Kitner? He was going to drop off a written statement. Did he come by when I was out?”

  Moody shook his head. “No, but it’s possible he’s been to the station while we’ve been here.” He checked his watch. “The day’s not over.”

  Claudia wished the day was over; her eyes watered from suppressing yawns. She nodded, though, and tried to stay on track when Booey offered a few more observations that reinforced his earlier conclusions. When he lapsed into techno-speak again, she looked pleadingly at Suggs and a moment later he cut his nephew off. He told him to return to the station, back up Hemmer’s documents and leave the machines on when he left.

  “Carella here can take a gander at the documents and figure which ones need to be printed out,” he said. “But you did good here, Boo. I’m proud you’re kin.”

  Booey blushed and nearly knocked over the table as he stood. He waved and said his goodbyes, then headed off, bobbing with every step. From the back, his ponytail looked like a spent firecracker.

  “So much for crinkum-crankum,” Suggs said. Then he stood. “Come on. Let’s take a break. I need to stretch my legs and check in with Sgt. Peters, make sure that fart of a mayor hasn’t already bulldozed the police station.”

  * * *

  When they reassembled, Claudia with a tall iced tea and a candy bar from the vending machine, Moody and Carella pulled out notebooks and laid out what they’d learned in background checks on Bonolo and Addison. The process of gathering information could be numbing, and their recitation was delivered in monotones that reflected hours of plowing through official databases and trying to make nice with surly records clerks. Neither Bonolo nor Addison had police records or fingerprints on file. Good guys usually didn’t. But no one believed Bonolo or Addison were good guys, which meant they’d either been incredibly lucky in not getting nailed for something or the right databases simply hadn’t been found yet.

  “We’re hitting a stone wall, especially with Bonolo,” said Carella. He’d thrown water on his face during their break, and the hair around his ears was still damp. “We’ve been everywhere federal—AFIS, NCIC, ATF, Customs—you name it, we’ve been there. We’re still wading through state and local agencies, but that could take a lifetime. We don’t know where to isolate our searches and anyway, half of the places we’re checking don’t have but the last five years of information on computer databases. Imagine how thrilled clerks are to dig through archived paper files. I ran into one who didn’t even know where they were stored.”

  “Not to mention that we don’t have probable cause on anything,” said Moody. “I don’t even want to think about what could come back on us if we raise red flags with the wrong person.”

  Claudia understood. Most people assumed police could get information from any government office anywhere, at any time, merely by placing a phone call. But some records couldn’t be accessed without a court order, which required justification that no one could provide, at least not yet.

  “Bonolo’s social security number was issued in New York,” Moody said. “We’re still working it, but it looks valid.”

  “Tread lightly,” Suggs growled. “All we need next is some kinda privacy do-gooder to get riled. Bonolo would love it, and so would the mayor.”

  With the lunch hour long gone and the dinner hour not yet started, the bowling alley had been all but abandoned. Even the resurfacing machinery on the lanes sat silent now.

  “What about interviews at Willow Whisper?” Claudia asked. “How’d Bonolo manage to get himself on the homeowners board, anyway? And why would he want to be on it?”

  “Glad you asked.” Carella grinned. “The same thing bugged me, so I talked to the treasurer and the secretary of the homeowners association. Then I read through the Florida law until my eyes watered. You want the long or the short of it?”

  “The short.”

  “Okay. Bonolo’s on the board because the developer of Willow Whisper put him there.”

  “Say again?”

  “Basically, a developer can elect at least one member of the board as long as he still holds a minimum of five percent of the parcels for sale in the community.” Carella consulted his notes. “In other words, the developer doesn’t have to turn over the whole association to the homeowners until he’s pretty much out of it. That’s how Florida law reads and guess what? Willow Whisper is only seventy percent complete.”

  Suggs groaned. “Tell me that’s no
t true.”

  But it was. Carella explained that the builder, Hercules Homes, began Willow Whisper as a three-phase community. The first two phases, both complete, held two hundred and forty homes. Ground had yet to be broken for the third phase, which would include seventy-two more houses and a community park.

  “That wooded area behind Hemmer’s house? It fronts onto eighteen houses in the phase two section of Willow Whisper. It creeps back quite a ways behind the houses, then sort of parallels Old Moogen Road.”

  Claudia tried to picture it. Old Moogen Road was a long and lightly traveled two-lane road with woods on both sides. It fed a network of dirt roads that led to farms and ranches. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d driven it, but did remember the ruts in it were deep enough to rattle her teeth.

  “Apparently,” Carella continued, “the delay in moving forward had to do with laying in more infrastructure—plumbing, electricity, that sort of thing—and for a while there was a flap over whether access from Old Moogen into Willow Whisper would be private or public. That’s all been straightened out. Hercules should break ground before the year is up.”

  “More trees comin’ down and more people comin’ in,” Suggs muttered. “Just what we need.”

  “Anything sleazy about Hercules?” Claudia asked.

  “That’d make it convenient, but no,” said Carella. “The state shows Hercules as a privately held subsidiary of LH Builders in Coral Gables. LH does commercial buildings. Hercules is its residential arm. They’re not publicly traded, so there isn’t a hell of a lot of information to be had.”

  “All right. Who’s on site for Hercules?”

  “Guy by the name of Boyd Manning,” said Carella. “He’s been the prince of construction here since day one.”

  Claudia fingered her candy bar wrapper, disappointed to see there was nothing left. Manning’s name rang a bell, but she couldn’t place it.

  “Anybody know what the connection is between Bonolo and this Manning?” she asked.

  “Uh-uh. And nobody much cares,” said Carella. “The homeowners association vice president is on vacation in Europe, and all I got from the secretary and treasurer was a lot of whining about how no one participates in the HOA. The secretary said they’re lucky if fifteen people show up for meetings, which are held monthly.”

  “All right,” she said. “One more angle for us to check. What’s the story on Addison?”

  “We got a little luckier with her,” said Moody.

  Carella nodded. “She’s been more visible, mostly because once upon a time she obviously had no clue how to handle money.”

  He told her that Addison’s house, one of Willow Whisper’s original model homes complete with decorator upgrades, had been bought outright in cash. So, too, had the Alfa Romeo Spider. But before she’d ever surfaced in Indian Run, her only known earnings came from office jobs provided through temp agencies in the Miami area. Twice she had maxed out on credit cards and once she got evicted from an apartment for being three months behind on rent. Somehow, though, she paid off her debts in full shortly before moving to Indian Run.

  “We’re talking about someone born and raised in Davie who barely graduated from high school,” Carella said. “Davie’s in Broward County, maybe an hour north of Miami. Miami’s not very far as the crow flies, but compared to Davie it probably seemed downright exotic. She moved to Miami when she was nineteen and started with the temp agencies right off. The last agency she worked for is going to fax me a list of the jobs they put her on. Maybe it’ll hint at who gave her the glass slipper that turned her life into a Cinderella story. It sure wasn’t a husband; our gal Gloria is twenty-five and she’s never been married.”

  Our gal Gloria. Claudia pursed her lips, thinking. Lean muscles aside, Addison hadn’t worn her years all that well. She looked like she was in her mid-thirties.

  “Hershey,” said Suggs, “I been waitin’ all day to hear about how you got your feet made nice ’cause I suspect it has to do with whatever theory you’re about to lay out. I imagine I’m gonna like the feet story best and the theory not at all, but either way, don’t keep me in suspense anymore. Spell it out for all of us.”

  “You had your feet done?” said Moody. Carella chuckled.

  Claudia shut them up with a look, then described Addison’s unexpected arrival at the police station and their subsequent conversation at the salon.

  “So this was like interrogation by pedicure?” Carella said. He hooted at his own joke. Suggs and Moody laughed with him.

  “All right, all right,” said Claudia, but she smiled slightly. “Look, a couple interesting things came out of it. For instance, Addison swore she wasn’t being manipulated by Bonolo. And she got really hot at the suggestion that she was having a relationship with him, but for all her protests she sure knew he wore a concealed knife at his ankle. My thinking? If they weren’t lovers, then they were team mates. And if they were team mates, then they had a coach.”

  She sat back, watching them take in the idea. Suggs picked at a scab on his arm, then looked up.

  “Conspiracy is an ugly word, Hershey, but it sounds like that’s where you’re headed.”

  “Try this out for size. Addison registered an unmistakable jolt when I said that if the two of them weren’t manipulating each other, then maybe a third party was controlling both of them. I was only being facetious, but she shut up instantly. In fact, she bolted from the salon so fast it was like watching someone being shot out of a cannon.”

  “Oh, man, Hershey. We don’t need this.”

  “But it might be what we’ve got.”

  Carella held up a straw wrapper that he’d tied into knots. “Crinkum-crankum. ‘Full of twists and turns.’”

  They left it at that.

  Chapter 18

  Thankfully, Sydney was out when Claudia finally dragged home at four o’clock. She’d been awake for thirty-three hours straight and though she couldn’t afford to sleep, she couldn’t afford not to. The mayor’s claim that she was too worn out to operate effectively wasn’t true when he made it. It was now. She knew it. She knew he dared not find out.

  Sydney had left a note. “You make lousy coffee. I drank it anyway. See you tonight.” Claudia crumpled it and threw it away, then checked her answering machine for messages. Nothing. She set the air conditioner to a lower temperature, fed Robin’s cat, took a fast shower, then systematically closed any curtains her sister had opened. With luck, she could simulate nighttime well enough to sleep. But her yearning for bed paled beside her longing to connect with her daughter. She dialed Robin’s camp and waited endlessly for a counselor to fetch her. Finally the phone clattered on the other end.

  “Hey, Mom, what’s up?” Robin asked, her voice breathless. “We’re just about to line up for dinner. I’m supposed to stay with my group.”

  “Nothing’s up, honey. I just wanted to say hi.”

  “Mom, nobody’s parents check in.” Robin’s sigh filtered across the phone lines. “We’re practically adults, you know.”

  Practically adults? No. Not even close. Claudia resisted saying anything, though. Everything was negotiation with a fourteen-year-old, and words were triggers.

  “I’m not checking in,” she said. “I miss you, that’s all. Are you having a good time?” She waited. “Robin? You still there?”

  “It’s . . . okay. They keep us busy here.”

  Claudia sensed the unspoken words. “You know, it’s all right to enjoy yourself, hon. It’s not a betrayal. I got to know Sandi a little. I’m pretty sure she would want you to have fun.”

  “I guess. She more or less said the same thing.”

  “She called?”

  “Last night. She wanted to thank me for the Pooh bear. I guess her grandparents are getting ready to take her back to Maine.”

  “Oh. I was under the impression they’d be around a little longer.”

  “Sandi thought so, too. But someone’s already offered to buy the house, so that’s like this big r
elief.”

  Claudia assumed Robin had misunderstood her friend. Once tainted with violence, even the best houses in the best neighborhoods sat on the market forever. But she was glad to hear that Sandi got in touch. Maybe the girl was trying to find a way to reconnect with a gentler world.

  “We didn’t talk long, but she told me about the boots her dad got made for her. I probably ought to get some too, Mom. I’m the only person here wearing sneakers on a horse.”

  Claudia tried not to think about the balance in her checkbook. “So you like riding, huh?”

  “It’s better than great, and the riding instructor here said I’m a natural. When I get back, maybe we can go riding together. I know a place where we can rent horses and go out on a trail.”

  We? Not me and a friend. Not you drive me there and I ride. We! Together!

  They talked for a few minutes more, then said their goodbyes and hung up. Claudia savored their conversation over a half glass of wine, then crawled into bed and was asleep instantly.

  * * *

  She didn’t see him coming. In the convoluted world of her dream, he was twice her height and weight, and in the half-second it took to understand that he would kill her, he was on her, throwing her down with no more effort than he might have used to flip a playing card. She felt the breath knocked out of her and lay paralyzed, watching his knife move toward her face. He laughed and teased her with the blade, waving it back and forth in front of her eyes. But he took too long, played too casually and in the second before she expected to die she felt a whisper of strength return. The next time he moved in with the knife, her arm shot out and connected. She heard him howl; his weight moved off her.

  “Hey! Get a grip! Claudia!”

  She flailed again, her heart thudding.

  “Ow! Stop! It’s me, it’s me. Wake up.”

  Claudia blinked, coming awake. Sydney stood a foot away, massaging the side of her face. “You startled me,” she said.