Baby Brother Blues (Sammy Dick, PI Series: Book 1)

by Trudi Baldwin

  After a few delicious swallows, I made a snap decision to tell Sylvester almost everything about both cases. Our lunch lasted over two hours as I laid out Geo and my findings on both the Swann investigation and the latest events and plans in the Obsidian Towers discoveries. I outlined what we knew of his brother’s involvement in Obsidian and how Prime Squared Construction was the contractor in Phoenix but not at the two other locations. However, the obvious linkages, at least in name, between Prime Squared Construction and Prime Squared Holdings, LLC, would result in collateral damage to Sonny’s reputation, regardless if Sonny was innocent or not. I assured Sylvester that we found no link between Sonny and Soul Patch at this time that appeared illegal, but we’d only conducted a cursory search.

  Sylvester sat quietly through my narration of both cases, only asking questions now and then for facts and deeper clarification. His face betrayed no emotions whatsoever as I described the conduct of both Karl and Liang. I also made a point to describe Mai and Tomas as I saw them, innocent, concerned and trying to do the right thing in a complicated situation.

  As I described Sonny’s possible involvement in the Obsidian swindle, Sylvester’s eyes winced ever so slightly. I’d heard that because of their unusual upbringing, Sylvester was highly protective of his younger brother.

  Sylvester understood the urgency for stopping Soul Patch, the man who’d sat at our table next to Sonny at the Charity Ball, using the name Stephan LeGrande. I asked Sylvester to help me gain access to the Phoenix Tower through Sonny. Sylvester wanted to know the timing. All I could say was, “Soon. As soon as we get Soul Patch to agree to the meeting.”

  By now, Sylvester had brought out some nut bread for dessert, along with dessert plates that looked like some kind of fragile porcelain with scalloped edges. The dessert plates were so finely made I wanted to hold my plate up to check if I could see the pool through it, but decided that might be unprofessional, so I refrained. The nut bread stood on a cutting board between us, with some slices ready to eat. I’d had one mouth-watering, moist piece and decided to sit on my hands while I listened to Sylvester so I wouldn’t grab a second piece.

  At this point, Sylvester sat back, pushing his dessert plate to the side, and looked at me. His voice was quiet and firm. “I’ll get you access to the Tower, but please give me a minimum of a day-and-a-half before your proposed meeting.”

  One of the things I liked about Sylvester was that he didn’t question my decisions or planned paths of action. He treated me, not quite as what I’d call an equal—I doubted he treated anyone as a true equal—but as a true professional. If I were telling all of these plans and previous actions to my father, for instance, he would have tied me to the chair by now, hoping to keep me from any further actions because of the high potential for danger. Of course, maybe Sylvester just saw me as expendable. I studied his face, but as always it was inscrutable.

  “Just a minute, please,” he said. He stood up and left the room. I didn’t mind waiting. I hadn’t had time to observe the view much, I’d been so busy talking, so now I just sat back and enjoyed my luxurious surroundings. A female Celtic singer of exceptional clarity swelled into the room. “Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling, from glen to glen and down the mountainside…” A sad song of loss. Probably loss of a son or brother.

  Sylvester reentered the room, taking the step back down into the dining room.

  “Who is this singing, Sylvester?” I asked.

  “Hayley Westenra. Exceptional, isn’t it?”

  “So pure.” I listened a little more. “And sad.”

  Sylvester held a business-sized check ledger in his hands. After we spoke of the music, he sat heavily in his chair and rested his forehead on one hand, not speaking. Eyes closed. I felt the sadness in the room deepen. Hayley Westenra’s voice swelled through the quiet spaces, the timeless lyrics moving us both.

  But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow

  Or when the valley’s hushed and white with snow

  ‘Tis I’ll be here in sunshine or in shadow

  Oh Danny boy, oh Danny boy, I love you so.

  And if you come, when all the flowers are dying

  And I am dead, as dead I well may be

  You’ll come and find the place where I am lying

  And kneel and say an “Ave” there for me.

  Sylvester remained motionless. Perhaps grieving over thoughts of his brother or his mother? Both?

  The silence deepened. The song filled every corner. Then it ended and a happier tune took its place. Sylvester righted himself as if nothing had happened and laid open the huge checkbook. The air in the room switched abruptly from sadness to business and action.

  I’d already been salivating over the nut bread, but I tried not to openly salivate now as Sylvester wrote out a check. The checkbook was one of those business ledgers with four checks to a page. This one recorded through to create a copy while he wrote. I watched his elegant cursive unfold as he wrote Dick Investigations. For the sum of $9,000. He signed the check. Tore it out carefully along the perforated lines and handed it to me.

  “Nice work, Sammy.” Apparently Sylvester was accustomed to showing his appreciation in dollars. Okay by me. Next, he shut the checkbook and raised his index finger, signaling me to wait a few minutes more. That was good. I needed a few minutes to collect myself.

  As I collected myself, my thinking went something like this, Holy shit, this is the best lunch I’ve ever had—in every way possible!

  I watched his back recede, then I quick sneaked one more piece of nut bread off the plate and gobbled it up.

  My cheeks were stuffed to the brim when Sylvester returned. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to carry on a conversation when his cell rang. Saved by the bell!

  “Sonny? Thanks for calling me back so quickly. Listen, I’ve got some fairly urgent information to impart. Let me call you back in five minutes.”

  Apparently, he’d already phoned Sonny in one of his trips out of the dining room earlier.

  Sylvester pocketed his phone. “Please allow me to escort you out. I need to have a conversation with my brother right away. I promise to gain you access to the Tower project by late afternoon. Hopefully, at a later date, you can come out and ride if you’d be interested?”

  You betcha! And Delilah too. “I’m looking forward to it, Sylvester, and my pleasure for the lovely luncheon, as well. Thank you for being such an excellent listener. Hopefully, all turns out well.” Little did I know just how far off I could be.

  Sylvester guided me back through the house. I exited through the actual front door this time, near the eight-car garage, jumped in the Mazda3 and zoomed down the winding road to the gate, turning on the AC as I waited for the gate to slowly open. Whether it opened automatically or some hidden security person let me out, I didn’t know, but the heavy, ornamental gates swung slowly open, and I slipped back out onto Charter Oak and back into the real world.

  Chapter 40

  As promised, Sylvester called me by 5:30 P.M. with instructions for gaining access to the Tower. He was mum about Sonny’s involvement, but he let me know the electricity was on in the penthouse, since the soaring Tower required warning lights for airplanes exiting and entering Sky Harbor air space at night. Sylvester had also explained how to turn on the electricity for the entire building and given us the security code.

  Geo, Kathy, and I had been waiting at the Biltmore office. As soon as I got off the phone with Sylvester, we jumped into two cars and Geo, Kathy and I converged at the construction site to set up the sting. The enormous Tower had a three-level, underground parking garage. Sylvester instructed us to park in the lowest level where no one else would think to park, so we’d be hidden and take the working elevator up to the Penthouse Eye. The construction phase was at a standstill, since Soul Patch’s goal was to sit back and sell and re-sell the Eye as he amassed the multiple escrow deposits.

  I tried to hypothesize how it had all evolved. At some point, Soul Patch h
ad gotten away with one or two dual sales, and, instead of depositing the escrow monies, he invested them. That small, undetected success led to another one and then another, reinforcing his behavior, until he must have just turned the corner into pure, unbridled greed and grandiosity. He probably thought he’d invest the escrow deposits short-term, make a big profit, then tell one of the dual owners the sale had fallen through and give them their money back.

  But after getting away on his first mild foray into multiple escrows, and probably fueled by big profits and/or big, unrecoverable losses, he must have just said, “Fuck it,” then headed full steam into the moneymaking scheme, keeping all of the deposits until he was in way over his head and couldn’t extricate himself.

  I’d investigated a few, much smaller cases where a similar downward spiral had occurred. Someone starts embezzling pocket money, gets away with it, then swells with the elicit sense of power. They’re driven by greed and self-rationalization, and before you know it, they’re embezzling on a grand scale.

  Soul Patch had rocketed to new heights, though, far beyond mere embezzling. When Kathy Keach and Franklin Leary independently began to get suspicious, exploring records, piecing together the story that would eventually deal a death blow to the future of American and International Title, Soul Patch must have uncovered evidence that their nets were closing in on him. His out-of-control greed had vaulted up several swift notches as he shifted gears into explosives, arson and murder to cover his trail. The only one left standing in his way was Kathy Keach.

  I had no doubt in my mind that he’d stop at nothing to silence her.

  If there was no evidence to bring him in, we’d need to create our own. We were all eager to set up the sting, and I knew I could get Mountain to play his part. Montaigne would be taking a risk, because he would be operating off-duty in a high danger environment, but I’d talked him into this kind of thing before, and we’d survived. Besides, when revealed, it would be a high-profile coup for his department. That is, if we made it through. Soul Patch was a dangerous sociopath, but there were four of us against one of him. What could go wrong?

  I silenced a voice in my head that sounded strangely like Delilah’s and said, Yeah, right, Sammy, what a ridiculous question! Everything could go wrong and you’re putting a bunch of the people you care about all at risk. Just like you always do. Everything could go wrong. Dead wrong.

  “Oh, shut up!” I said out loud and swung open the Mazda3 door just as Geo’s rusted, gold metallic Camry slid into the bottom floor parking space next to mine. Geo scooted out of the driver’s side, hopped around and opened Kathy’s door gentleman-style. They both turned to face me, a look of grim determination in their eyes.

  “Let’s set this up!” Geo barked in a command and control voice as he flipped open the trunk of the Camry.

  Whoa, I thought, Kathy must be turning him into a German Shepherd. I was just about to crack a joke about it, when my brief attention span was arrested by the two sacks he extricated from the trunk. One said Best Buy. The other said Babies R Us. I pointed to the Babies R Us bag. “Is there something you two aren’t telling me, Geo?”

  He didn’t even laugh. Instead, he retorted gravely, “Listening devices are really hard to get on short notice. We’re going to need several of them. It just so happens that some of the cheapest and best listening devices immediately available are baby monitors. Kathy and I purchased five of them.”

  “Ah,” I said, trying not to crack a joke of any kind as I inserted the construction key into the elevator panel to get the doors to open. As the elevator ascended, Geo barked out the plan in his newly acquired German Shepherd voice. I stifled an urge to say, “Aye, aye, Big Doggie!” Instead, I just listened and tried to find flaws. There were many, but I couldn’t think of a better plan, not without weeks of preparation, and Kathy’s life was at risk, so I just nodded my head as I listened.

  The elevator panel indicated we had reached the 30th floor. Sylvester had explained that when the Obsidian Tower finally officially opened, the Penthouse Eye would have double-restricted access. But for now, to facilitate the coming and going of the construction workers, the floor stood wide open. we stepped right into the vast entryway of the Penthouse Eye. Since the Eye comprised the entire floor, the elevator opened up in the foyer.

  What a view! No wonder Soul Patch was able to sell and resell the Eye. By now it was 6 P.M. and even though the brown smog of pollution hung heavily over the city, the view to the southeast stopped us in our tracks. For a minute all three of us forgot about Soul Patch, the five baby monitors, and the impending danger. We just stood in silent awe of the view and the extraordinary architecture.

  Finally, I broke the silence. “How would you keep from burning up in the Phoenix sun up here with all these windows?” It was pleasantly cool in the Eye as I asked this, so the air conditioner must be on. Prime Squared Holdings LLC, or at least Soul Patch, must authorize air conditioning for the showings of the Eye and probably a few other showcase condos.

  Kathy, who had been studying the website in detail to set up the sting explained, “The triple-layered glass contains superfine, nearly undetectable electronic filaments within the outer layer of glass that can block sunlight to any degree the owner desires.”

  At this point, Kathy stepped over to the entryway wall and examined an extensive control panel. Apparently, Penthouse owners required much more than a mere light switch when they entered their home. She found what she was looking for. “The website has an action demo illustrating this feature.” She gently spun a switch that looked like some kind of high-tech dimmer. The entire floor grew pitch black as something in the windows blocked out all the sunlight. Kathy then rotated the switch back to the half-way mark. The city grew visible again, but it was as if we were sitting in a shaded forest. “The glass is also specially constructed to provide 100% UV protection, a necessity in a city like this. The website says each room has its own dimmer switch, so one room can be in total darkness while another is bathed in sunshine. Room-by-room automatic environmental controls turn on and off as you enter and leave each room, too, regulating to your pre-set preferences and saving energy at the same time. Nice for the environment, but also nice for the owner, as the Eye is three floors of ten thousand square feet livable space. The bedrooms, play areas, workout rooms, offices, media rooms and more are all above this area.”

  “Hey, Kathy, if your title company job falls through, maybe you should be a Realtor. You’ve sold me already.” Nobody laughed again at my winning sense of humor. I gave up, switched the lights back up even more and stepped out of the covered entryway and into the living room. The ceiling soared up to the tip of the glass pyramid. The living room appeared to take up one entire side of the four-sided pyramid, extending up all three stories. “This place would be worth it just to watch the sunrise and sunset alone.” I was now in my third amazing domicile of the day. I loved my job!

  “Hey, there’s even a balcony. Let’s check it out. Kathy, do you know how to slide open these windows to get us out there? I don’t even see a door.” Ever competent, Kathy joined me, quickly searched and found a button on the wall. She pressed it and voila! one of the floor-to-ceiling windows magically slid open at her touch. We all rushed out onto the balcony area together.

  The balcony appeared to extend all around the Tower like a lighthouse observation deck. “I think this seems kind of dangerous,” Kathy said, running her hand along the hot steel railing and then pulling back quickly from the stinging heat. “A child can’t crawl through it, but a child could sure find a way to pull out a chair and crawl over it.”

  “Or if you need to commit suicide because all of your wealth has drained away from owning a place like this, you have a built-in platform,” I chimed in helpfully.

  At this point, Geo the German Shepherd jumped in to halt the unacceptable frivolity of the conversation. “No time to talk about architectural details, Sammy. Let’s figure out how to strategically place these baby monitors so we
can provide backup to Mountain if he needs it as he’s closing the deal.”

  I wanted to say Hey, Kathy’s also frivolously describing the architectural details here, but I knew better. Besides, protecting Mountain was high on my list, although Mountain had been known to provide his own protection, and mine, on several occasions. Instead I said, “How long do you think it will take? I need to set up dinner with Mountain to let him in on the plan’s specifics.”

  After consulting with Geo, I speed-dialed Mountain Man and suggested I meet him at Tuscan Pizza at eight. Kathy asked to speak to Mountain to instruct him on his role of prospective buyer. Kathy and Geo had already set up a trail of paperwork, excellent credit scores, and huge lines of “available funds” connecting to Montaigne’s pseudo-buyer-name of Constantine Friar. Following Kathy’s suggestions, Geo had connected to the paper trail of a recently deceased individual by the name of Constantine Friar to tie into his accounts. Should Soul Patch conduct an extensive credit check, Constantine Friar would come across as a global mover and shaker, easily able to afford the Eye for his part-time residence when visiting Phoenix, Scottsdale and the surrounding area during the mild winters. Phoenix had long been the southwest region’s hub of choice for conducting U.S. based business and was still growing.

  My guess, though, was that Soul Patch, if he even fell for our scheme and was still in town, wasn’t very interested in the bigger picture of Constantine Friar’s credit. Soul Patch’s main interest was simply getting his hands on the escrow deposit check: a cool million. He’d then immediately cash it, and, if he was smart, exit the country if he hadn’t done so already. Hard to tell what he’d do or where he was, though, since his belief in his own powers must be reaching new heights. From his perspective, his power to control events was now unstoppable, and for good reason: no one had caught him in the act yet. In his mind, he was invincible. Except for one little factor: the presence of Kathy Keach.