Under that was the horizontal navigational menu. They were the standard ones you'd expect. Home, About Me, Services, Contact Me, FAQ, Photos.
I selected photos. There were twelve of them. Man, Kelly had a fine body. However, in each of them, she was clothed. In some she had only a bra and panties on, but that was the least she had on.
Besides any guy, or in her case, any woman could see clearly enough that she had a very fine body.
The whole reason for me looking at the site was I wanted to see if the picture of her naked had been taken from the website. After all, escorts often had nude photos of themselves on their websites. Never mind how I knew that.
I closed the browser.
It was possible that the photo was taken when the fiancé and fiancée were together alone enjoying each other, but that wouldn't explain why it was on some kind of a promotional, and pornographic flyer or poster.
It also didn't explain why Mickey threw me out after I saw it.
"All done," I said.
She turned around. I stood and this was the closest we'd been physically to each other.
"It's so hard," she said softly. "I'm going to my mother's funeral tomorrow." A lone tear ran down her check.
But it wasn't my job to make it easier.
"Were you at the scene of the death?" I asked.
"No," she said.
"I see," I said. "So when did you first see the body?"
"The morgue," she said.
"So, you weren't at the motel room?"
She shook her head no.
I fished in my pocket for the button, and I had a crazy idea. I was being stupid here. I was giving the person who hired me the third degree. Was I insane or something?
To top that off, I remembered that I'd forgotten to cash the check.
Well, still, I was going to do my job. I held the button out. "Is this yours?"
She looked at it for a while, but then shook her head no.
"You don't recognize it?"
"No," she said.
"Are you sure?"
She looked at me strangely. "No, it doesn't look familiar," she said.
"Okay," I said. "That's fine." I slipped it back into my pocket. She was lying. I couldn't tell by reading her features, but I could feel it. And I had the button maker's records too. She was lying. The question was a big, fat 'why'?
I left there and didn't return to my car. My bank had a branch across the way inside a very large convenience store. They only had one teller in there at a time, but it was a convenient location.
I went in and cashed the check to my account. Actually to Ray Crusafi's account, which was my identity right now.
If I had a choice, I would have spent the rest of the day digging deeper in my only case, but I didn't have a choice. Last month I'd promised the parish priest that I'd help today. Today the church was holding a rummage sale. They'd collected hundreds of donated items, and today was the big sale.
The money went to church charities and the like. And I'd promised I'd help the whole day. After all, I'm self-employed and I have freedom like that, right?
After all, who needs money?
I drove to the church. Stuff was already being set out. I parked on the outskirts and headed over to spend the day helping.
That night when I got home, Marline, my wife was there. Lights were on that I could see as I unlocked and let myself in.
Immediately after getting in, I relocked both locking mechanisms. Our door itself was solid steel. When we built the house, a crane was used to put the door in place, and the hinges on it are traditionally used on bank vault doors. We had to use them as no other hinge could support the weight of the door.
The door frame itself, while completely invisible, like the framework of any house, was not ordinary either. It was constructed of steel I-beams, and each had their own concrete footers.
"Marline?" I called out.
As is my habit when I enter my house, I reached up to the top of the coat rack and felt to see if the Glock was still lying up there. It was, and it wasn't the only strategically placed firearm lying around the house.
Marline had only known me as Ray Crusafi, for about the last five years. Hopefully she'd never have to know me as anything else, but even still I made her keep her distance from me in public. It was for her own protection, but she didn't know that.
She thought she'd married a very eccentric and somewhat paranoid man with a thing for security and safety. Again, hopefully she'd always think that and never have the truth forced on her.
Who I am needs to remain a secret.
"Hi!" she said as I entered the kitchen.
"You cut your hair?"
"I had it done. What do you think?"
I hate questions like that. Women aren't looking for an honest answer. Well, they are. But only a positive, honest answer. No other kind of answer is acceptable.
Her chestnut brown hair was now neck length and curled up at the ends. Last time I'd seen her it was almost to her waist. I liked it better the other way.
"Looks good," I said.
"You think so?" she asked.
"Yeah, yeah. Looks good," I said.
She pushed a plate of sandwiches towards me. "Your favorite," she said.
Indeed it was. It was the so-called Elvis Presley sandwich, and she made them totally authentic for me.
It's mashed banana on one side and creamy peanut butter on the other side. Then it's grilled or fried in bacon fat. Real bacon fat.
Nothing tasted this good. The king really knew what to eat.
I took a huge bite out of the first one.
"How was your day?" she asked.
I shrugged. "I got work yesterday."
She nodded. "That's great."
I had this idea in the back of my head. It was there, and I knew it was a bad idea, but that wasn't going to stop me.
"It's not a normal bit of work for me," I said. "I'm looking into a suicide."
Her face took on a look of concern.
"And I'm looking into it to see if it's more than it seems. If it was murder."
"Is it safe?"
"Nothing I do is safe." She had no idea how true that statement was.
"How is it going?"
"I've got more questions than when I started. The last several jobs I had were straight surveillance. Honestly a patient monkey could do that."
She smiled.
"This really requires thinking and getting inside people's heads. I don't know."
"You don't know what?" she asked.
"The last person to see the deceased alive is a woman."
She stared at me blankly.
This was a bad idea. I knew it. "I want you to help me. Maybe you can get her to open up to you."
She stood up and looked at me strangely.
"I don't think so," she said.
"She's hiding something. I want to know what it is, and I don't know how to get it out of her," I said.
"I think you'll figure something out. You always do," she said.
I shrugged. My way usually involved someone's blood getting loose, but I had a thing about doing that to women. Usually.
"Another thing," I said. "My client is the daughter of the dead woman."
"Okay," she said.
"And she's lying to me too."
"About what?"
I took the button out of my pocket and scooted it across the granite countertop to her. Yes, the countertop was granite. I had more money when we built the place. I spent it building this house. Dumb move, I know.
"That's a big button," she said and picked it up.
"I know," I said. "It's handmade by an old man right here in town."
"Really?"
"Not only that, but there's like a serial number real tiny on the back of it. He knew exactly who he'd sold it to."
She squinted at the back of the button trying to see the tiny numbers.
"He sold it, and six like it, to my client. I found that button at the mo
tel where the deceased died."
"So?"
"She claims she was never there," I said.
"You said they were mother and daughter, right?"
"Right," I said.
"Girls share clothes, you know."
I didn't know. "You think the mother may have been wearing whatever this came off of?"
"It would make sense to me," she said. "By the way, you never mentioned who the deceased was."
"Kelly Brandt," I said. I picked up another sandwich with greasy fingertips. "She was a pricy prostitute that only did women, but was engaged to a local businessman."
The look on her face was priceless, and she really had nothing else to say to that. As she planned to get up early, she headed to bed.
She slept fine as usual, but I wasn't able to sleep when I finally went to bed. I tried to sleep, but all the questions about my current work wouldn't leave me alone.
I was especially bugged by the fiancé. He seemed to be hiding something, well all my suspects did, but he especially.
Finally, I decided I was going to take this into my own hands. If he wasn't going to show me what that poster or flyer was, I'd look for myself. Right now.
I got up and dressed silently. Of course, I had to turn the perimeter alarm off before I could leave the house.
And I did check the extreme wide angle peephole lens before I stepped out. All was clear. Outside I had to walk to my car. This time it was parked up on the main road and in a sandwich shop's parking lot. I had left it there because I noticed that there were always cars in it overnight for some reason. I figured mine would blend in there. I figured right.
At my car, I set to driving all the way across town to the Brass Works Wholesale business.
When I arrived, my watch read 12:57am. No one was there. I didn't even see a security guard anywhere. Not that it was strange to be without a security guard. Lots of businesses didn't have security guards.
In short, this was going be relatively easy.
I parked on the street. I hadn't seen another car anywhere in the industrial park.
The first thing I did was look for windows. I didn't remember them well, as I hadn't been paying attention with the idea of breaking in on my last visit.
Windows did line the office space, but not the warehouse side. I take that back. There were windows of a sort, fixed panes, near the top of the warehouse. No way would I be climbing to those.
The windows to the office were also fixed pane glass. No movable parts. The only way through one of those was to smash it. That was more work then I was looking to do.
I walked around to the far east side where the main entrance was. I yanked on the glass door. It was securely latched. So, I wasn't going to get in there. Not unless I wanted to bust the door open. The glass in doors is much harder to break than most realized. I realized and I didn't want to have to put that effort in to breaking in.
I walked in the direction of where I left my car. Back over there were the loading docks. The semi-trailer that I'd seen getting loaded was gone now and the three loading dock doors were pulled shut.
One of those was going to be my entry. I jumped up onto the ledge of the first. I felt the door to see if it was unlocked. It wasn't.
Carefully, so as not to lose my balance, I hopped over to the ledge of the central door. It too was locked. This was the one that the trailer was getting loaded from earlier that day.
I hopped to the ledge of the last door. It was locked as well, but it had some give to it. It would actually move up an inch before stopping. That was all I needed.
I jumped down and went to my car. There I rummaged around in the trunk and found the tire iron. I know it's supposed to be used for changing tires when you get a flat, but that has never happened to me, and I've never used the thing.
It was heavy and roughly the shape of a crowbar, and that was what I needed right now. So with it in hand, I went back to the last overhead door in the loading dock, and I thrust it under.
Then I got up on the bumper and I heaved on it. After two heaves, the door came loose. Something snapped inside or gave way. The overhead door rolled up, and I was inside.
Chapter 5
I closed the door behind me. Now I had to give my eyes time to adjust to the darkness. It was really, really dark inside.
The only light came from off to the side about chest high. It had been a pin of green light when I first came in, and now it was a pinpoint of red light. I had a sinking feeling that I knew what that meant, but I went over to it to confirm.
Indeed, it was an alarm, or the motion sensor to an alarm. I should have noticed that before, but I didn't.
I'd set off an alarm, and the cops most likely would be showing up soon. If I was going to discover anything, I was going to have to discover it fast. Of course, the sane thing to do would be to get out of there now, but I wanted to start getting some answers, and I'd already taken the trouble to get in.
First, I ran back outside and moved my car to a parking lot nearby and I ran back.
No police yet. Back inside the warehouse, I moved through it as quickly as I could, which wasn't very quickly seeing as how I couldn't see anything.
The warehouse was much bigger than the office, and it took me more time than I expected to work my way through it.
The cops were going to be here any minute now, and it was making my heart beat faster and my palms a little sweaty.
I got to the front of the warehouse, and I found the door that led to the office. It was unlocked and I let myself in. I was very close to Mickey's office, as the shop entrance to the office was on the opposite end from the front entrance.
First thing I did in Mickey's office was close the window shade. Then I turned his light on. I knew it made my location in the building conspicuous from the outside, but I couldn't do any hunting without light.
I checked the floor first where he'd dropped the item. It wasn't there. Then I checked his desk. It wasn't there either.
So, I checked his trash. It was stuffed with papers. Under the first pile, I found the item.
It was about the size of a normal sheet of paper, but it was glossy like a magazine cover.
It was an advertising flyer, and it looked like a direct mail stuffer. Like something that would come with a package or other advertisements.
Either way, it was designed to advertise a certain website. That was plain enough.
The site was listed in big letters as www.TrueVoyeurLive.com. Underneath, the text said something about how most voyeur sites were set ups, but how this site was totally true to the voyeur niche. It even went so far as to say none of the models had given consent because they didn't know that they were being filmed.
A hard rap on the window made me jump. I could see the outline of a flashlight beam as someone tried to peer in.
It was the police. They were here and it was time to get out. Past time for that actually.
I stuffed the advertising flyer in my pocket and headed out. I started back for the warehouse and opened the door to it, but stopped. What if they knew what door had caused the fault?
But I thought, they probably didn't know that, and even if they did, they would be focusing on the office window with the light on in it, Mickey's office.
So I made my way back though the dark warehouse, and did so without injury to myself. Considering I couldn't see anything, I thought that was pretty good.
Back at my opened garaged door, I looked out first. It would seem they did know where the fault in the alarm had come from. There was a squad car parked right under the door.
No one was outside it, and I couldn't tell for sure, but it looked like the inside was empty too.
Like moths to a flame, they'd all been drawn to the lights. I heaved the door up, dropped down onto the hood of the squad car, and got all the way down.
I started running across the lot and for the road.
Another police car started down the main road to the building right as I got to the mid
dle of the road.
I was caught dead in the middle of the headlights. The bar lights on top went on.
Crap!
Running to my car was a really bad idea now. If they knew what vehicle was mine, they'd know who I was in moments.
Crap!
So, I started running right at the squad car. It slowed. The siren came on like a warning blast. For sure, he'd radioed his buddies. The squad car window came down as I got close.
"Excuse me, sir?" It was a woman cop.
"We need to talk," I said. "I saw someone running away from here minutes ago. I was giving chase when all the police started showing up."
She got out of the car, and shined a flashlight in my face.
The only thing I could think of is she was new. That had to be the only explanation for why she let me stand so close. It would probably be the last time she'd make that mistake.
My hand shot out and the heel of my palm caught her on the chin. It didn't quite take her off her feet, but it was close. She stumbled backwards and lost her balance as she hit the side of her car.
I'll give her this. She was already getting her gun out, and I didn't see it until it was completely free of the holster.
Quickly I sprang in on her. We were shoulder-to-shoulder, and then I head-butt her. Hard.
My forehead cracked against her face, and I could feel her nose implode on the force, but it didn't make much noise.
Neither did she. She crumpled to the ground, hands on her face. I dragged her to the side, and like an idiot I set her gun next to her, but lucky for me, she was in no condition to use it. Then I got in the squad car and I backed it up and then pulled it forward, and when I was done adjusting it, I had it blocking the road.
I hopped out and sprinted for my car. Now I had to get out of the industrial park before the other cops realized what had happened and had their buddies set their own road block to keep me in.
That would be a serious crimp in my plan. My plan of getting home without getting arrested, that is.
I got out of the industrial park without seeing another cop, and I headed for the main highway to head back in the direction of home.
But, as I turned on the highway, I decided that I didn't want to go home yet. Not just yet. I didn't want to check out the voyeur website on my home computer.
Death of an Escort Page 4
