by Nora Kane
“I like being called an ‘attack dog’ less than I like being called ‘little lady,’” Margot told him.
Mattis ignored that and said, “Armstrong had a pal, name of Strickland. You may have heard of him.”
“From where?” Margot asked.
“From when you were a cop. He was a snitch.”
“Not one of mine and that's not the kind of thing everybody shares. It’s not healthy for the snitch if too many people know about him.”
“Yeah, well, it wasn’t healthy for Strickland either. Somebody put two in the back of his head as he was getting out of his car to pick up his kid from school.”
Margot nodded. “I do remember that one. Murdering a guy in front of a kindergarten class takes a special kind of scumbag.”
“Which is why I’m guessing the shooter never saw a courtroom. You guys don’t mess around, do you?”
“I wasn’t there, but if I remember correctly, he was a suicide.”
“Sure it was.”
“Like I said, I wasn’t there.”
“Hey, I’m not criticizing. Just keeping it real.”
“Okay, so Armstrong and Strickland were friends,” Margot said, trying to get back on track. “Are you saying their murderers are connected?”
“Maybe I let you figure that part out.”
“The kindergarten shooter was the same guy who killed Armstrong?” Cassie asked.
Mattis shrugged. “Could be.”
“They were both snitches?” Cassie guessed again.
Mattis shrugged again.
“No, not likely,” Margot told her. “If Armstrong was someone’s snitch, they would have handled the investigation differently. They’d have had some ready-made suspects right off the bat, and they don’t like to let that kind of thing go since it makes it harder to talk the next guy into it.” She turned to Mattis. “Did they work together or were they just friends?”
“That will cost you,” he said.
“Fine, but it still isn’t going to be upfront. Do you think I don’t know how to investigate this kind of shit? Do you think you found something out I couldn’t? She’s paying you so she doesn’t have to pay me for my time.”
Cassie nodded. “That pretty much sums it up.”
“Okay, they were muscle and transportation for a local hood.”
“Stone.”
Mattis looked surprised.
“I told you this is what I do. I take it I'm correct.”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
“If Strickland was a snitch in Stone’s organization, he wasn’t a very good one. Stone never did a minute of jail time.”
“Sure, but people around him sure as hell did. I’m guessing since Stone provided regular work and regular cash, he kept him out of it,” Mattis explained.
“Okay, so they both worked for Stone and someone put it together one of them was talking out of school, so they took them both out just to be safe?”
“It gets better. The day Armstrong went missing, he was supposed to meet Strickland to do a job. Driving a truck full of something to somebody.”
“That’s not in the report.”
“Yeah, criminals can be liars. Anyway, according to my witness, one of them didn’t show up for the job.”
“Armstrong?”
“Nope, Strickland. Armstrong called this girl Strickland was seeing; he figured he was with her and that’s why he didn’t show up on time. He wasn’t and that’s the last time anybody ever heard from Armstrong.”
“This girl have a name?”
“Now we’ve reached the part where I need to get paid.”
Margot put a hundred-dollar bill on the table.
“I’m going to need to see you put about nine more of those on the table, at least.”
“You get those when I confirm this girl exists and you’re not just making all this shit up.”
“Okay, is my back end deal still good?”
Margot was going to tell him no, but Cassie said, “Sure, assuming this checks out.”
“Rosalina Nelson. She wasn’t a Nelson back when she was Strickland's side piece, and she definitely traded up. She probably won’t go on camera, but if you ask nicely, she’ll tell you the story. Especially if you promise not to bring up her shady past to her rich husband.”
“Do you have more?” Margot pressed.
“I’ve got a lot more, but we can save that for next time.” With that, Mattis slugged down his drink and snatched the C-note off the table. “See you all next time. Bring money,” he said as he took a business card out of his pocket and held it out to Margot.
She took it, even though she didn’t see why she’d need it. It had his name and the title 'Unique Situations Consultant’.
He smiled as he saw Margot read it. “When you don't know who else to call, call me.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Do you have a card? It never hurts in the USC business to know a private detective.”
“Yeah sure,” Margot told him as she dug a card out of her purse. She handed it over and he smiled and winked at her as he put it in the same silver business card case he’d retrieved his card from.
They let Mattis leave.
“Do you think you might have been too hard on him?” Cassie asked.
“Hard? How?”
“You told him you were going to break his nose.”
“Sure, but I didn’t actually break his nose. Shall we find Rose Nelson?”
“Sounds like a plan. How do we find her?”
“Unless she doesn’t want to be found, it will take me about ten minutes on the computer. Let’s go.”
Chapter 4
“Did you used to have that show on YouTube?” Rose Nelson said, no more than three seconds after she opened the front door to her spacious home on the coast. It wasn’t far from Margot’s old apartment, but it probably had ten times the square footage and the Nelsons weren’t sharing any walls with anyone. Margot had been right: It had taken about ten minutes to get an address and another ten to find out that Rose’s employment these days was housewife. They took a chance she might be at work, drove over, and rang the doorbell.
“Coastal Crime?” Cassie replied.
“Yeah, that’s the one. Why do you want to talk to me?”
“Strickland and Armstrong,” Margot stated. She preferred to get right to the point.
Rose didn’t look as happy to see them anymore. “I already paid your friend.”
“My friend?” Cassie asked.
“I’m going to close the door, and if you’re not gone right away, I’m going to call security. We have our own, and they’ll be here within minutes. It’s not like they’re doing anything else.”
“Is our friend named Mattis?” Margot asked.
“You should know, he’s your friend.”
“I’m asking because if it is him, I’m going to kick his ass,” Margot told her.
Rose seemed intrigued. “Short guy with broad shoulders who wears his shirt open to show off his gold chain and chest hair like he’s at a disco circa nineteen-seventy-eight?”
“That’s him. I take it he was blackmailing you?”
Rose looked around. She looked a little nervous all of a sudden. After she finished scanning the area, she said, “Why don’t you come in? We can talk, but if I say I’ve had enough then I’ve had enough? Got it?”
“Sounds fair to me,” Cassie agreed.
Rose stepped aside and they entered the house. She led them to the backyard.
“I like to sit by the pool when it’s nice,” she told them.
Margot couldn’t help being reminded of Phoebe Masterson, another housewife; well, at least until she had her husband killed and took over his business. Rose was older, but she put off that same gold-digger vibe.
They sat down at a table with a good view of the hot tub.
“What did Mattis tell you about me?” Rose asked.
“Not much. He said you knew Armstrong and Strickland and
were the last person to talk to Armstrong before he disappeared.”
“He didn’t say anything else?”
“No, but I’m guessing if you were involved with two criminals, you might have done some things back in the day you’d rather stay there?”
“Yeah, that’s the deal. I’d prefer my current husband stay in the dark when it comes to certain details about my past. What is this about?”
“I’m doing a new show, more a cold case unsolved mystery thing.”
“I guess you’re doing Armstrong then since everybody knows what happened to Strickland.”
“Yeah. So what do you remember…?”
“I can’t be doing your show. Did you miss the first part about keeping the past in the past?”
“I’m fine with that. We’re just looking for information.”
“I don’t have much of that. I can offer some advice though. Leave this one alone. Find another unsolved crime, I’m guessing there’s plenty of them.”
“Why would you say that?”
“I think we’re getting to the part where I ask you to leave.”
“If you’ve got a good reason why Cassie should leave this one alone, I think you owe it to her to tell her.”
Rose thought on this for a second and then said, “Armstrong never did anything wrong, at least in the world he was operating in, if you know what I mean.”
“He was a criminal, but he was a criminal other criminals could trust?” Margot asked.
“Yeah, a stand-up guy. He’d rob a liquor store, but he wouldn’t short the driver on the cut, which to these assholes was all that mattered.”
“Strickland not so much?”
“Yeah, pretty much the opposite of a stand-up guy.”
“But you were dating him?”
Rose paused and Margot wondered if they’d struck a sore spot but then she admitted, “I used to have a thing for the bad boy and he fit that. Thankfully, I got over that phase and started looking for other things in my men.”
“Do you remember what Armstrong said that day?”
“A lot of curse words. Whatever they were supposed to do that day, he wasn’t happy doing it alone.”
“He say what they were doing?”
“No, he would never speak out of school. Strickland would have told me the whole thing in detail. He always figured there was no use being an outlaw if he couldn’t brag about it. I have to admit, at the time it worked, at least on me. It’s what made the next part weird.”
“What’s the next part?”
“I called him. He wasn’t answering Armstrong’s calls, but he answered mine. He probably thought I wanted to get back together so he picked up.”
“You weren’t together at that point?”
“Heck, no.”
“He wasn’t a good boyfriend?”
“No, he wasn’t even a good side piece.”
“He was married at the time wasn’t he?” Margot asked.
“Yeah, had kids. I knew all about that. I was good with him having a wife. I surely wasn’t going to marry him.”
“Do you remember what he told you?”
“I asked why he was giving Armstrong the high hat and he told me not to worry about it. I mean, if he said he just didn’t feel like it, I wouldn’t have thought twice, but here was the guy who couldn’t shut up getting all cryptic on me.”
“You never got anything else out of him?”
“No, I didn’t even try. I didn’t really think about it at all until I heard about the eye coming in the mail. I called him again and then all he told me was the same shit, ‘Don’t worry about it.’”
“Do you think he knew something bad was going to happen that day?”
“I do, and it was bad enough to make a guy who loved to run his mouth shut up. Which is why I’m thinking you should leave it alone. Strickland was usually too dumb to be scared, but even he wasn’t stupid enough not to be terrified about this one.”
“Do you think he set Armstrong up?”
“I don’t know if he set him up, but he knew something was going down and he made sure he wasn’t around for it.”
“Why didn’t you tell the police?”
“They never asked, and I wasn’t going to go to them. Talking to the police was frowned on in the circles I was running in back in the day.”
“Did Strickland have a problem with Armstrong?”
Rose thought on that for a second. “Not that he mentioned to me so I would say no. He wasn’t shy about talking shit about people. If Armstrong did something to piss him off, I would have heard about it. Why? Do you think Strickland set him up?”
“Just seeing if you thought it was possible. If he knew something was up, why didn’t he warn him?”
Rose was slow answer. For the first time since they’d sat down, Margot got the feeling she wasn’t being completely honest with her as she said, “I don’t know.”
“Do you think whatever he thought was happening was more about him than Armstrong?”
Rose shrugged. “Yeah, like I said, he ran his mouth a lot. I wouldn’t be surprised if he said something to the wrong person.”
“The wrong person? Like maybe a cop?”
“I don’t think he would do that, he hated cops.”
“Most if not all informants do. It’s not something people do very often out of civic duty.”
“If he did talk to the cops, he kept it himself.”
“Anything else you can remember about that day?”
“Honestly, considering all the cocaine I was snorting and booze and I was drinking, I’m surprised I remembered this much.”
“Is that what Mattis is holding over your head?”
“Let me worry about that. I don’t think that has anything to do with your show.”
“No,” Cassie chipped in, “I suppose it doesn’t.”
“Have I been helpful?”
Cassie nodded. “Yeah, good background.”
“But my name stays out of everything?”
“Of course.”
Rose looked at her phone and then said, “I have somewhere I need to be.”
“No problem,” Cassie replied. “Thanks for talking to us.”
They walked out the front door just as a dark sedan pulled up next to Margot’s Prius. A tall guy in a security guard’s uniform got out of the car and wrote something in a small notebook. Margot noticed his shirt was at least a size too small to show off his pumped-up arms. She immediately didn’t like him but told herself not to judge. On his right bicep was a black band of ink. It looked like he’d had a tattoo at one time he’d lived to regret, probably a girl's name. She was thinking he should have gotten a more artful coverup when he turned and looked at the three women through mirrored sunglasses.
