by Tracy Ellen
She continued speaking only to Luke, seeking his approval and admiration. The pride in their fixing business was obvious in her voice. I didn’t know about Luke because Mr. Tricky was still sitting there with a closed expression, but I silently agreed that what they had built from scratch was quite an accomplishment.
“I created secure routes to request a fix that protected our identities. It was my job to receive the fix requests, conduct a background check to determine they were legit, and then deliver the necessary information to Dickie.” Svettie’s voice rose in agitation. “He never directly received fixing requests.” She slapped the sofa cushion. “Never!”
Luke raised a brow and asked with seemingly bored disinterest, “Let me guess. Dickie didn’t tell you about the call because he knew you’d never agree to the fix?”
“It’s true, I wouldn’t have!” Svettie exclaimed in self-righteous hurt. She huffed, “Everything about the request was wrong. The voice was disguised with one of those whatchamacallit devices. Dickie had to promise not to tell anybody else and agree to do the fix upfront before he got any details. When he did get the handwritten instructions, he had to follow them to the letter. If Dickie was willing to do all that, they offered to pay him ten thousand in advance and the balance the day after the fix.” She sat back, shaking her head at the stupidity of her partner. “At least, Dickie made them confirm he didn’t have to kill anybody and he picked the spot where the client had to leave the details of the fix and the advance money.” Svettie shrugged a shoulder. “I guess I could understand why he agreed to the deal. It would get us out of trouble and save Dickie’s fingers from getting cut off, or worse. He told me he was going out of town to borrow the money from a friend and would be back last Friday before the Saturday deadline.”
Svettie emitted a humorless seal bark, but carefully kept her gaze lowered to her hands when she said, “Turned out Dickie’s ‘friend’ was the Anabel fix.” She glanced up at Luke and said in her little girl voice, “He wasn’t paid to kill her outright, but it could have amounted to murder if you hadn’t saved her. We both want to thank you because Dickie isn’t a killer and he’s felt miserable ever since.”
Jack didn’t take his eyes of Svettie’s face at her announcement, but I squirmed uncomfortably that the chief now officially knew Luke and I had lied about our involvement with Dickie Webster.
“After Anabel escaped the fix, Dickie finally got up the nerve to call me Friday afternoon to tell me how he botched things up. Luke knew Dickie’s identity, plus we only had sixteen thousand dollars.
“When Dickie told me about the anonymous client, I was convinced it had to be someone at DDL,” Svettie said. “That person had to get Dickie’s number through me somehow. We use cheap, prepaid cell phones and I changed them out monthly, but I kept track of the numbers in my files.” She frowned, as she looked back and forth between Jack and Luke. “Maybe you guys can figure this out, but Dickie and I believe somebody at DDL must want Anabel gone. I knew Anabel hadn’t been to Chicago yet and she hadn’t met anybody besides John Smith. We couldn’t come up with a motive, but we agreed it must concern Luke somehow, or why would anybody from DDL want to get rid of Anabel?” Svettie barked out that seal laugh again. “We even tossed around the idea it was Luke, since he arrived to save the day,” she looked directly at my boyfriend and flattered softly, “but we couldn’t imagine you, of all men, having to pay twenty-five thousand dollars to impress a woman.”
Genghis Khan II curtly bowed his head in acknowledgement of their fealty while Jack snorted and I rolled my eyes.
“Dickie and I decided too much was going on that we didn’t understand. We were going to lay low for a couple of weeks until I had access to my money. Over lunch, I packed a suitcase and went back to work later that afternoon to wait until everyone had left for the day. Then I cleared my computer and shred our files.” She smiled tremulously at Luke again, and I had to award perseverance points to the Selkie--she was a tenacious one. She said to him, “I called and left you the voicemail about the account on Prissy’s monitor, since everything happened after that. When I hung up from leaving your voicemail, I called Dickie to let him know I was on my way.” Svettie’s eyes were innocently wide when she showed off her Chiclets at us all, as if she were a proud mother speaking of her favorite child. “Dickie insisted we come clean to Luke about our partnership and Anabel’s botched up fixing, as well. We decided we would, but not until we were safely out of town. Dickie still had the handwritten instructions from the anonymous source. I told him to hide the document in a safe place and we could let Luke know where to find it when we called him in a couple of days.” She nodded at Luke. “If it was written by somebody here at DDL, we thought you could figure it out.”
Jack immediately asked Svettie for the location of the handwritten instructions. Of course, that had been my question when I heard her story. I smiled when Svettie winced and responded in a small voice that she didn’t know.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” Jack demanded.
“I’m sorry, but since it could possibly be used as evidence against us, as well, Dickie said he wanted to know we had a deal with the police before he’d give it up.”
Svettie hurriedly assured us that Dickie Webster was on his way to his new house to stay out of sight. He had no cell phone, but he would call her when he arrived.
Her lisp was pronounced when she winced again and admitted, “But that will be in two days.”
Jack said irritably, “We can’t wait that long. Where is Webster’s house? I’ll have some patrols track him down.”
“I don’t know where his house is located, it’s his secret getaway,” Svettie responded in a faint voice, darting a quick look at Luke’s tight mouth.
Jack clamped his mouth shut at her answer, but he was furious. Those instructions could possibly identify the killer in the time it took the Kenosha Police to send a picture to Luke to see the handwriting, or compare it to samples from paperwork at DDL.
I’d already spent futile time thinking of how to reach Dickie sooner. I spoke up from corner and said quietly, “Go on, Svettie. What happened after you told Dickie on the phone to hide the evidence?”
She flashed me a look that on anyone else I’d say was gratitude. “I told Dickie to get packed and be ready to go. When I hung up, I swore I heard footsteps. I ran to my office door. Nobody was there, but the stairwell door made that little whoosh noise it does when it’s closing. I ran down there and looked, but nobody was in the stairwell. I got spooked. I got out of that office and drove straight to Dickie’s apartment in Kenosha.”
Luke asked, “Were you followed?”
“I didn’t think so, but I figured out later I must have been. Dickie, of course, was not packed and was running around the apartment having fits.” She smirked and said softly, “Dickie’s a great fixer but can barely tie his own shoes without direction. I cleaned up the mess in Dickie’s kitchen.” She said to Jack, “That must be how my prints got on the butcher knife. Dickie didn’t have any food, so I ran out to the store to fill up a cooler for our drive while he finished packing.
“I had only gone a block when I heard Dickie honking behind me in his car. He was scared to death because he had glanced out his apartment window and saw our unpaid client coming up from the parking lot. It was Friday night, and not our Saturday deadline. Dickie said the client carried a red cloth duffle bag that bulged, as if it had tools inside. Dickie didn’t wait around to find out, but took off to find me and figure out what to do.” Svettie spoke to me directly for the first time in her recital. “When he found me, Dickie said he had been calling you, but left his cell phone on the bed when he ran out.” She wrinkled her long, pointy nose like she smelled something foul. “Dickie took a liking to you after the kidnapping. He wanted to let you know he wasn’t backing out on your deal.”
Out of the corner of my vision, I saw the black thunderclouds had begun to swirl around Jack Banner’s head while he stared at me with dead s
hark eyes. I kept my face politely inquiring, as if Svettie’s words had no meaning. It probably wouldn’t fool Jack Banner, but I didn’t care.
Was I wrong to believe Chief Jack should be sharking at Luke, too? Shouldn’t he be too busy concentrating on important cop stuff such as the identity of the real culprit that wanted me dead, instead of wanting to kill me for holding out on him?
I agree, he shouldn’t blame civilians like Luke and I for wanting to keep a cop safely out of our business and on the sidelines to not get hurt.
‘Our tax dollars pay for his job,’ the accountant voice pointed out.
‘It could be said you are his employer,’ the detective voice agreed.
‘Somebody may need a yearly review,’ the mean mommy voice suggested slyly.
I snickered imagining that review, but only raised my brows when Svettie added her glare to Jack’s.
“Svetlana?” Luke prompted, impatience lacing his tone.
“Oh, yes, sorry,” she replied quickly and then shook her head with a disgusted grimace. “Dickie left behind not only his cell phone, but his wallet and backpack that carried almost all of our available cash--about fifteen grand. I only had a thousand, so I said we had to go back. I had my gun, so Dickie was willing because he also hadn’t packed any clothes yet.”
I smiled slightly because I could picture Dickie scared to death, but not willing to leave behind his flashy wardrobe.
“We parked a block away. The client’s car was still in the apartment’s parking lot. So we approached from the back entrance and snuck up to Dickie’s apartment.” She barked out a short laugh and said, “I’m not sure what we expected to do then, but the door was half open. Glancing in, we could see the bad client’s body on the floor.”
Svettie’s voice picked up speed when she said to the men, “He had been stabbed in the back, right up under the ribcage. He had Dickie’s empty wallet in his hand. Whoever killed the client took everything in it, and the backpack, but they left the empty wallet. There was blood all over the floor. We got the hell out of there right away,” she grimaced again, “and forgot to look for Dickie’s cell phone, but we did close and lock the door behind us.
“While in hiding, we heard the news on Sunday that Richard Webster was found dead and I was a suspect. Somehow the police had misidentified the bad client as Dickie. Yeah, they were both curly-haired blondes of similar heights, but that was crazy.” She threw up her hands in bafflement. “Neither Dickie or I had ever seen a dead person that was lying around for two days. Dickie mentioned something about trapped gases and said maybe the corpse blew up or something. We never actually checked, but maybe his wallet still had Dickie’s license inside. Or maybe it was a trap set by the police for some reason. We didn’t know what to think about the whole thing,” her voice raised a little and she waved a hand at Luke, “but we wanted whoever had intended to kill Dickie to stay thinking he was dead.”
It was my second time hearing Svettie’s story, but I still felt the same satisfaction again knowing Dickie had gone through a little of the same hell he had put me through this past week. There was nothing fun about being the target of an unknown killer for an unknown reason.
Svettie met Luke’s eyes, hers feverishly bright. “The only person that wanted to hurt Dickie was already dead on his apartment floor, and he didn’t want Dickie dead. We think it was somebody from DDL.”
Luke’s return gaze was calm when he quietly paraphrased Svettie’s story for her confirmation. “Tell me if I’ve got this right. You think somebody at DDL learned of your fixing business and was the anonymous client that hired Dickie to fix Anabel. They did this through a phone call and never saw Dickie. A week or so later, they overheard you on the phone at the office discussing with Dickie how everything got screwed up. When they knew your plan was to eventually tell me what had happened, they followed you to Dickie’s apartment. For some reason, they stabbed the man they thought was Dickie with Dickie’s butcher knife, stole all the money from his wallet and backpack, and left before completing the job by killing you. Is that correct, Svetlana?”
Svettie held her hands together in prayerful thanks. “Oh my gosh, yes, Luke, that’s exactly what Dickie and I think!” She fell back against the back of the sofa, exhaustion evident on her face. “We’ve been hiding out this past week waiting for a chance to get in touch with you through Anabel.” She kept a straight face, but the satisfaction dripped from her words. “I’m sorry to drag her into this, but we had no idea you had broken up until today. Can you and Chief Banner help me clear my name?”
Luke’s voice had no inflection when he didn’t answer her, but asked instead, “Was there anything else at DDL that seemed wrong over the last few weeks? Anything that caught your eye or seemed out of the ordinary, but not necessarily suspicious at the time?”
Svettie put her head back for a moment’s reflection. “Not anything specific, but both Dan and Daniel have seemed stressed lately. Dan’s always wound tight and by the book, but he’s a good boss. I’ve noticed these past few weeks he’s been…I don’t know, extra anxious or nervous maybe? Is that what you mean?”
My boyfriend’s fingers drummed once on his right thigh while he nodded approvingly. “Yes, that’s what I mean. Do you have any ideas why Daniel would be stressed?”
Svettie hesitated, as if reluctant to say what was on her mind. “I saw Daniel bitch out an employee over a minor incident, something he would never usually do.”
“Really? That is strange,” Luke agreed mildly and Svettie relaxed a little when he didn’t seem angry at her gossip. “Do you know why?”
She nodded. “I think he pretends it doesn’t bother him how Priscilla is with other men, but inside it does.” At Luke’s encouraging raised brow, she expounded, “At DDL’s holiday party, Priss was all over one of our clients while Daniel stood by smiling,” she shrugged with a small moue, “you know, like he always does. I went to get more ice, and he came into the employee lounge a few seconds after me. He thought the room was empty. I saw him punch the wall hard enough to make a hole.” She crossed her arms over her lanky frame, as if cold. “He was so mad. The look on his face scared me enough that I hid in the kitchen closet until he left.”
I’ve heard Svettie pull the routine of being frightened to get a man’s sympathy before, but I believed her fear when she described Daniel’s rage was genuine.
‘Well, crap!’
Hearing the Selkie speak of being scared of a man’s fist, I felt like a complete basswipe. I’d solar plexus struck an abused woman.
I didn’t know what an alternative would be to violence to deter adults that have messed with my life, held me at gunpoint, and threatened my family and friends with harm. I couldn’t see how a time-out in the corner after a good talking to would show people like Svettie or the un-cousin that I meant business.
Even though I hadn’t killed the ex-cousin--yet--I had a clearer understanding of what Luke meant when he described the little piece of your soul that got eaten with each act of new violence a person perpetrated. Like anything else that belonged to me or that I loved, I was feeling protective of my newly discovered soul and didn’t want it chomped away in black little bites of evilness. I was going to have to think more on the subject when I had some alone time.
Jack showed Svettie upstairs to a guest bedroom. The Chief had decided Svettie should remain hidden in his house for tonight while we tried to corner the killer or killers.
Luke quickly filled me in on the general plan that he and Jack had concocted. Yes, I was going to be the bait to lure out the killer, if it was one of the people from DDL staying on Luke’s farm.
Luke would go back to the farm after this meeting and explain to his partners the police’s version of what was happening, as told by his local friend, Chief Jack Banner.
After seeing a picture of the deceased Richard Webster on TV, I had identified him to the police as the man who had abducted me. Luke would tell his partners the police believed Svettie had attempted t
o have me killed over her jealous love for Luke. The police deduced Svettie had killed Dickie after I escaped to shut him up. An investigation into Svettie’s background had turned up her identity was fake and she had been involved with the Russian mob.
Tonight, an anonymous tip from a Russian CI, confidential informant, reported to the police that Svettie was in the area of Northfield. She was overheard trying to arrange a way to get to Luke Drake and Anabel Axelrod to prove she was innocent of Dickie’s killing. The police believed that was bogus, and she really planned to try to kill me again, and maybe even Luke Drake, before she went underground for good.
To capture the fugitive, the cops had asked for Luke and me to agree to be bait, but on Luke’s farm where they could control their surroundings and minimize the civilians involved.
Under those circumstances, I would be escorted by the police to the farm under the cover story that Luke and I had reunited. We would lure Svettie out into the open.
For a big man, Jack could move light on his feet. When he came downstairs from tucking the Selkie into bed, he walked in on Luke and me passionately making out.
For the first time since I’ve know Luke, I noticed our surroundings first. I looked up dazedly and grinned at the scowling Chief.
“Uh, Luke and I are practicing our parts.”
Chapter XIX
“To Sir With Love” by LuLu
Sunday, 12/16
9:40 PM
Jack was off making arrangements while I walked my new fake boyfriend to the back door.
I hugged him close, and breathed in deep the clean scent that was the essence of the man I loved. “It’s not for sure that one of your friends is involved.”
