The Falling Girl (A Private Investigator Mystery Series of Crime and Suspense, Lee Callaway #3)

by Thomas Fincham

  His monthly credit card bill was more than half a year’s salary. There were amounts for expensive clothes, luxury trips, fine dining, liquor—the list went on. Then there were the extravagant purchases he made over the years. A brand-new Ferrari, a house in the Hamptons, an ultra-modern speed boat, not to mention a Picasso from an art auction.

  Fisher could not help but think Scott was trying to give off the impression of success, while in reality, he was drowning in debt.

  Her phone buzzed. When she saw the number, she decided to let it go to voicemail. It was the third call from the same number, even though it was still early in the morning.

  She waited a minute before checking her voicemail. The first two messages were short. “It’s Holt. Call me.” The last one was interesting. “Hey Fisher, you have to get me out of here. I’m bored out of my mind. I can’t listen to another person tell me how much they love this job. I love it too, don’t get me wrong, but you don’t hear me talk like some angel came down from the sky and chose me to be a detective.”

  Fisher chuckled. Holt was not known for his sense of humor, so she knew he was genuinely frustrated at the conference.

  He said, “You got any leads on the Dillon Scott case? I’ve been reading up on it in my spare time. I’ve got some theories I think might help you solve it. If I catch the red-eye, I can be there later tonight. Call me, okay?”

  She smiled and pressed Delete.”

  FIFTY-SIX

  They were seated at the back of the restaurant. Jimmy wore dark sunglasses, but even then, the light bothered his eyes. He took a sip of coffee and made a face. “Damn, it’s bitter.”

  “I asked Joely to brew it fresh,” Callaway said.

  “It’s strong.”

  “Stop acting like a baby and drink it up. It’s the best remedy for your hangover.”

  “I don’t get hangovers,” Jimmy corrected him. “I can hold my liquor, okay?”

  “The only thing holding you up last night was me.”

  Jimmy brushed the quip off. “We had a great time, did we not?”

  “We did,” Callaway agreed.

  They had blown through most of the money Jimmy had gotten from the Wolkoffs, but there was still some left over for a good breakfast. Callaway munched on waffles, eggs, and hash browns.

  “You ever think about slowing down?” Callaway asked, concerned.

  “Why? I’m still young.”

  “If you say so. But do you remember what happened to Walter MacTavish?”

  Walter and Jimmy had entered the PI business at the same time. They even shared an office together and helped each other on cases. Walter fully embodied the spirit of live-fast-and-die-young. He was forty-two when they found his body in his home. It was the dead of winter, and he had forgotten to turn on the heating. One day, after having way too much to drink, he passed out on the floor. He eventually died from hypothermia.

  “Walter was a good guy,” Jimmy slowly said.

  “He was,” Callaway agreed.

  Joely came over and refilled their cups with coffee. “Let me know if you guys need anything,” she said.

  When she walked away, Jimmy asked, “You make a move on her?”

  “I did, but she turned me down,” Callaway replied.

  “You think I should give it a try?”

  Callaway scoffed. “She’s young enough to be your daughter.”

  “Never stopped me before,” Jimmy said with a grin.

  “She’s a good girl. She’s got a young kid. Leave her alone.”

  “Okay, okay, take it easy.” Jimmy took another sip of coffee, grimaced, and said, “You ever think about having your own family?”

  “You know I had a family once. I realized I’m not marriage material.”

  “Sure, but you can always be father material.”

  Callaway stared at him. “Is it the alcohol that’s making you talk this way?”

  “I mean, as you get older, you kind of start looking at your life differently.”

  “It sounds like you’re getting soft in old age.”

  “What I’m trying to say is that you can’t live your whole life alone.”

  “I thought you always said that in our line of work, family was extra baggage?”

  “I did, but our work can’t be all we have in our lives.”

  Callaway blinked. “Now you’re scaring me, Jimmy. You sure you didn’t hit your head somewhere? You’ve done it before.”

  Jimmy smiled. “You’re right. I’m talking nonsense.”

  Callaway went back to his meal for a moment. “I spoke to Dana,” he said.

  “Detective Fisher?”

  “When you were in the bathroom, she called me. She believes someone was blackmailing Dillon Scott.”

  “They were?” Jimmy asked, surprised.

  “You didn’t know?”

  “No, I had no idea. It never came up in my investigation.” Jimmy paused for a moment. “Did she say why they were blackmailing him?”

  “She has no clue,” Callaway replied, “and that’s why I think we should look into it.”

  Jimmy shook his head. “It might be better if we focus on Gail.”

  “What if everything is linked somehow?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what if Gail Roberts’s death is tied to the person who was blackmailing Scott?”

  Jimmy thought for a moment. “The blackmail will only distract us from our goal, and that is to find out how Gail died. If we solve that, we just might be able to solve the remaining mysteries.”

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  Fisher watched the CCTV footage from the taxi again. Scott was clutching the backpack like it contained something precious to him. She believed it was a large sum of money—something Scott’s bank statements indicated he had very little of.

  So where did he get the money? She had made a call to David Gill, the limo driver, and was waiting to hear back.

  In the meantime, the taxi footage answered a lingering question: Why didn’t Scott just have Gill take him to Yonge Avenue instead of taking a taxi?

  The answer was simple: Scott did not want his actions leaking to the press. He was likely aware of what had happened during the last movie shoot, where the driver was suspicious of him leaving a duffel bag under a park bench. Scott figured by taking the taxi, he would leave no traces of where he was going and why.

  The blackmail may be the motive she was searching for. What if Scott was not able to meet all the blackmailer’s demands? What if the blackmailer later decided to teach Scott a lesson?

  There were so many what-ifs, but they were all she had to go on at the moment.

  Her cell phone buzzed. It was David Gill.

  “Mr. Gill, I know you’re busy, but I have a few questions to ask you,” she said.

  “Um… okay, sure,” Gill replied.

  “You said you had picked up Mr. Scott from the airport.”

  “I did.”

  “And when you did, do you remember what luggage he brought with him?”

  Gill paused for a moment. “He had two large pieces of luggage.”

  Fisher remembered seeing them in the bedroom.

  “He was holding a hand-carry and…”

  Fisher’s back arched.

  “I think he also had a backpack with him.”

  “A backpack?” she repeated in case she didn’t hear correctly.

  “Yes. It was blue. I put the two pieces of luggage and the hand-carry in the trunk, but Mr. Scott wanted to keep the backpack with him.”

  “Was he holding it tightly?”

  Gill paused again. “I’m not sure, but I can tell you that he did not let me touch it once, even when I unloaded the rest of the luggage and carried it into the house.”

  Fisher mulled this over. “Okay, one more question.”

  “Sure.”

  “Mr. Scott arrived in Milton two days ago. During this time, did he ask you to take him to a bank or an ATM machine?”

  “No, never,” Gil
l quickly replied. “For the past two days, I’ve taken Mr. Scott straight to the studio from his home, and then back. He never asked me to take him anywhere else.”

  “Thank you.”

  Fisher hung up and leaned back in her chair. She now had a better idea of why Scott was at Yonge Avenue, but she still didn’t know who he was meeting.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  “Tell me more about Gail Roberts,” Callaway said. They were still at the restaurant. Callaway was done with breakfast. Jimmy had ordered a boiled egg and more coffee.

  “What would you like to know?” Jimmy asked.

  “How did she get involved with Dillon Scott?”

  “His previous assistant had abruptly quit, and Scott’s agent had hired Gail to replace her.”

  “Why did the previous assistant quit?”

  “I spoke to her on the phone, and she said she wanted to go back to school and finish her degree in communications.”

  “What did she have to say about Scott? I mean, what kind of a boss was he?”

  “She found him pleasant, albeit a little demanding. But he was a big star when she worked for him, so he was under a lot of stress.”

  Callaway mulled this over. “What was Gail like?”

  “I spoke to her friends and family, and they all said she was caring, pleasant, and outgoing.”

  “Was she suicidal?” Callaway asked.

  “Absolutely not,” Jimmy replied. “On the day she died, she had gone out with her friends, and not one of them is convinced she committed suicide. She was stressed about something, but she was not depressed.”

  “What was she stressed about?”

  “They don’t know, but they said she was thinking about doing something else with her life. She had aspirations to be a writer.”

  Callaway raised his eyebrows. “Writer?”

  Jimmy nodded. “She had started work on a novel when she was in college, but she didn’t finish it. She figured she needed more life experience before she could write the great American novel. After leaving her job, she was hoping to pick up the novel from where she had left off.”

  Callaway looked down at the table. He then looked up. “The authorities believe her death could also have been an accident. Why are you so sure it was not?”

  “I checked her apartment.”

  “You broke in?” Callaway asked. Jimmy was never good with rules, but being a private investigator, he did not have to follow procedures like he had to as a cop—or so his superiors kept telling him.

  Jimmy smiled. “I gained access to it, okay? The balcony railing in the apartment building is at least four feet in height. Gail was five-two, and she was a little on the heavier side. It just doesn’t seem logical for someone like her to—" Jimmy made air quotations with his fingers, “—accidentally slip or fall over.”

  “Was she drinking?”

  Jimmy shook his head. “I checked the police report, and the police found no open bottles of alcohol in her apartment. I went further and queried her friends, and they said she did not have a single drink while she was with them that night.”

  “Out of curiosity, how did you manage to get your hands on the police report?” Callaway asked.

  “You have Detective Fisher at the Milton PD, I have someone at the Bayview PD.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “I also read the autopsy report—again, courtesy of my connection at the police department—and according to it, Gail had very low traces of alcohol in her blood stream. She must have likely had wine or some other alcoholic beverage the day before.”

  “What about drugs, prescription or otherwise?”

  “She was clean. She didn’t even smoke.”

  Callaway was quiet. He had thrown every imaginable question at Jimmy, trying to see if there were any holes in the police’s theory.

  By all accounts, Gail was a fully functioning person who was not inebriated, depressed, or under the influence of narcotics.

  Then how did she fall fourteen floors to her death? he wondered.

  FIFTY-NINE

  At the veterinary clinic, Becky’s duties were to feed the animals, assist the veterinarian during clinical and medical procedures, restrain the animals when needed, and also keep the clinic clean by vacuuming and mopping the floor, sterilizing the lab, and doing laundry.

  The clinic had a full-time receptionist, but when she was off or away from her desk, Becky would answer phone calls, schedule appointments, bill clients, and sell products. This was on top of restocking animal food, which required her to lift heavy boxes.

  It was a lot of work, but Becky loved every minute of it. She couldn’t wait to come to work, and if need be, she would stay late, even though she was not getting paid for the overtime. Whenever she did that, the veterinarian would thank her in other ways. She would give Becky gift cards, movie passes, and dinner vouchers to various restaurants. She didn’t have to, but Becky was appreciative.

  Becky fed a labradoodle who had been abandoned by its owner. She was thinking of adopting the dog. She used to have a Jack Russell terrier, but it had so many health issues that Becky and her parents were always bringing it to the vet. Perhaps that was why she wanted to be a vet. The terrier died several years earlier, and Becky didn’t have the heart to get another dog.

  Maybe now’s the time, she thought as she scratched the labradoodle behind the ears. A new dog would fill the empty space in the house left by her dad’s death. A dog would also give her mom company when Becky was at school or at the clinic.

  “Do you want to come home with me?” Becky said to the labradoodle. She had named the terrier Calvin, and she was thinking of naming the labradoodle Hobbes. Her dad loved reading Calvin and Hobbes, so it would be a nice way to remember him.

  The vet came over. She was short, slim, and she wore thick prescription glasses. “I just received a call from animal services. The police raided a house and they found a dozen cats inside. They’re asking if we can take some in. I said yes.”

  “Oh,” Becky said. “Is anything wrong with them?”

  “There is a chance they are malnourished and unhygienic. We’ll need to wash them and have a place for them to sleep.”

  “How many are we getting?” Becky asked, excited to help.

  “Let’s prepare for half a dozen. It could be less or it could be more. I’ll find out once I visit the house. Can you work late tonight if we need extra help?”

  “Of course,” Becky said. It broke her heart whenever she heard of animals being abused. These creatures hurt like us, but they can’t complain like us, so why torture them? she always thought.

  “Make sure you let your mom know,” the vet said.

  “I’ll do that right now,” Becky said as she pulled out her cell phone and dialed her mom’s number.

  SIXTY

  Fisher was at her desk when an officer came over and informed her that someone was looking for her in the police station’s main lobby.

  Fisher took the elevator down and found Rachel Scott seated in the waiting area. She was wearing a long brown dress that went down to her ankles, a light jacket, and she had on overly large sunglasses. She also had on a lot of makeup, just like last time.

  “Mrs. Scott,” Fisher said.

  Rachel did not remove her shades. She said, “I apologize for dropping in unannounced.”

  It was not uncommon for the grieving to show up unexpectedly at the police department. They were anxious for answers as to who could have harmed their loved one. Fisher was always courteous to them. She couldn’t imagine what they were going through.

  “It’s absolutely fine,” Fisher said. “Why don’t we sit down?”

  They sat on hard plastic chairs. Rachel finally removed the sunglasses. Fisher could see stress on her face. There were heavy bags under her eyes. Even with the foundation, it was easy to see her skin had started to break out. Her lipstick was caked on her dry lips.

  Rachel said, “I wanted to know when I can take Dillon’s body back to Bayview. His f
amily wants to see him, and we still haven’t decided if it’ll be a private or public funeral.”

  “I’m sorry, but we need to conduct more tests.” Fisher couldn’t tell her the medical examiner no longer believed the cause of death was blunt force trauma.

  “What kind of tests?” Rachel asked.

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  Rachel nodded in understanding.

  “Mrs. Scott, can I ask you a few questions?” Fisher said.

  “Okay.”

  “Does your husband have any foreign bank accounts?”

  Rachel frowned. “I’m not sure. If he did, he never mentioned them to me.”

  “Do you have a separate bank account?”

  “Of course I do. It was Dillon’s idea. After we got married, he wanted me to have financial independence. I think it had more to do with the fact that he didn’t want me knowing how much money he was spending on a regular basis.”

  “So you are aware of his financial situation?”

  “He didn’t tell me much, but I could sense that we were living beyond our means.”

  “The reason I ask is… did your husband ask you to withdraw a large sum from your bank account?”

  She shook her head. “No, he did not.”

  “Nothing in the last couple of days?”

  “No. If he did, I would have asked him why.”

  Fisher nodded. “Do you and your husband have a prenuptial agreement?” she asked.

  “No, we don’t,” Rachel replied, surprised. “However, I can tell you that Dillon has more debts than assets. His lawyer is currently looking into it and will let me know how bad it is.”

  “But he must have life insurance,” Fisher said.

  “He does.”

  “And are you the beneficiary?”

  “As his wife, I am.” Her lips suddenly quivered. “Are you saying I had something to do with what happened to Dillon?”

  “I didn’t mean it like that…”