Dog Gone And Dead

by Colleen Mooney

  “There were a couple of guys who came around looking for Rascal,” Jiff said.

  “Whatever you do, don’t give them that dog,” she said and looked very alarmed. She turned the key in the ignition, thanked us, and said she hoped we could find Rascal a good home. “He’s really a great dog,” she said tearing up, and then she sped out of the marina parking lot.

  “It seemed like she was in a big hurry there at the end, don’t you think?” I asked Jiff.

  “She didn’t ask about those two guys and she didn’t seem surprised that they were looking for Rascal,” Jiff answered. “I wonder what she didn’t tell us along with the flash drives she didn’t mention. Speaking of a big hurry, I bet Daniel is anxious to get underway. He said he wanted to leave early and I don’t want to detain him back any longer. We still have to look at those drives and decide who to give them to.”

  I put my hand on Jiff’s arm to keep him there a minute longer as I watched Ashley’s car driving away. “Let’s just make sure no one is following her,” I said, and we watched her turn out the marina parking lot. We lost her for about a block before we saw her car turn onto Highway 98 eastbound. We didn’t see any other cars turn in after her or look like they might be following, so we headed back to help Daniel and say goodbye.

  “No, she didn’t seem surprised about the two guys and if her sister told her that much, I wonder why her sister didn’t tell her about those flash drives?” I was thinking out loud.

  “She said they went to an attorney for those wills and her sister instructed the attorney to mail the envelope she left with him if anything happened to her,” Jiff said. “I wonder how we’d ever find out what law firm they went to? There’s a ton of attorneys here judging by the number who have ads on billboards all along I-10 and Highway 98.”

  Jiff and I went back to the boat to see if Daniel needed any help casting off. “Too bad I’m leaving. I wouldn’t mind sticking around to help keep an eye on that one,” Daniel said nodding up the pier toward the direction Ashley left in. “She’s hot, and she sure went to a lot of trouble to find us to make sure Rascal gets to a good home.”

  “Well, I have her number if your plans change,” I said and winked at him.

  “Man, if her sister got here Thursday, it sounds like those two were busy over the last day or so,” Daniel said coiling one of the lines on the pier.

  I nodded in agreement thinking the same thing.

  What Daniel said was one more thing added to what was already niggling at me. The way this woman acted wasn’t adding up. It seemed the two sisters fast tracked a boatload of changes in her last day. It was only one day they did it all in—the day after she arrived from New York. We found her dead yesterday, so that meant all these changes happened on Friday, the first day she was here. That was after a long, two-day drive from New York to the Florida panhandle. If what Ashley said was true, her sister arrived on Thursday. She was killed on Saturday morning.

  Daniel might be on to something with this gal who surrendered Rascal to me. She seemed to know a lot about Rascal, rescue, and microchips, a lot more than someone who doesn’t have a pet and just got added on the registration. I started to worry about Rascal being left alone in the condo.

  Jiff looked at me and must have been thinking the same thing because he said, “We need to get that dog back to New Orleans… the quicker the better. Those goons will keep looking for him while we’re here. Some good Samaritan might see us walking Rascal and tell them where to find us thinking they are doing a good deed.”

  “Guys?” Daniel said. “I’m already past my departure time.”

  We hugged, helped him untie lines as he got underway, and waved goodbye.

  Chapter Seven

  Jiff was driving faster than usual and watching the rearview mirror a lot.

  “Did I make you paranoid suggesting someone might follow Ashley?”

  “I was already paranoid when she showed up,” he said. “How do we know she isn’t working with them?”

  “That didn’t occur to me. She seemed genuinely upset over the sister’s death and said all the right things to try to get the dog to a safe place,” I said. “But one thing is bothering me, well more than one really.”

  “What?”

  “She said the sister came here two days ago with the dog and she didn’t want to give us her address because the sister’s ex might come looking for her? I’m sure he will come looking for her if he hasn’t already, unless he’s just glad she’s gone. He might want that dog back even if it’s not legally his. He lived with it for three years, you know how that is, even bad guys get attached to a dog.”

  “I think it’s time to call our Beach Patrol pal and get him to meet us at the condo,” Jiff said. “You have his number?”

  “Yes, but I wanted to look at the files first and we won’t be able to do that until we get back to New Orleans and our computers,” I said.

  “There’re some computers downstairs in the concierge office they might let us use, if I ask real nice. They should be open by now. I’ll see if they’ll let us login there for a few minutes,” Jiff said.

  “That will give me enough time to copy the files and email them to both of us,” I said.

  “That’s what’s worrying me. With that guy’s name, from Brooklyn, and he has goons down here already, along with hidden flash drives full of some kind of data, I think it could be related to some sort of racketeering, tax evasion or some other criminal activity,” Jiff said and his face was set. “The comment she said about her sister finding him with young girls could mean he’s involved with human trafficking. None of these are anything we need to get involved in so let’s call the Beach Patrol guy Daniel said was working some undercover deal here and let them have it.”

  “There are a lot of Italians in New York. There’s a lot in New Orleans for that matter. It doesn’t mean…”

  Jiff cut me off. “That’s exactly what those flash drives mean.”

  “We don’t know if the ex-husband even knew she had the flash drives. He kicked her out with no money and no worldly possessions. Maybe those are recipes on the drives. She had them hidden in the dog’s collar and could have made those copies long before he wanted a divorce. We have a civic duty to know we should hand them over or if we are wasting law enforcement’s time.”

  “You have a point. As much as I would like to give those drives to the authorities and wish I had never seen them, let’s take a look at what’s on them and then we can make a better decision of what to do,” Jiff said.

  “I want to check on Rascal first. Ashley has me concerned at what length that ex-husband will go to,” I said.

  “Ok, let’s get him, take him outside and then go see what’s on those drives.”

  All the way to the Penthouse I was worried someone got in and kidnapped Rascal, but he greeted us at the door, tail wagging and spinning in circles enthusiastically. I found a beach towel, wrapped him in it and we went down the service elevator, covertly, to walk him around the grounds. We found a patch of grass somewhat obscure from the road in the parking lot alongside the condo tower. I let Rascal down on the ground using his leash made from sail ties.

  “I’ll get you a proper leash here soon, boy,” I said to him.

  After he sniffed around and did what I thought he needed to do, he started to be more interested in playing with us. I wrapped him back up in the towel and took him up to the Penthouse.

  Jiff tried to schmooze his way past the front desk clerk who had the worst comb over or wrap around I had ever seen. When we walked up to him, his head was bent down looking at something behind the counter so the top of his head was facing us. His hair was coiled around the top point of his head the way Daniel had coiled the boat lines on the pier. It made the top of his head look like a bull’s eye. He didn’t look up even though our presence had to cast somewhat of a shadow in his direction.

  Finally, Jiff said, “Excuse me.” It also didn’t seem to impress Comb Over once he noticed us even afte
r Jiff introduced himself and his penthouse condo number. He was clearly annoyed at having been interrupted from whatever it was that had his undivided attention. I looked over the counter and saw it was a crossword puzzle in the local paper.

  He replied without a smile or even the attempt at an apology, “It just isn’t allowed for anyone to come behind the registration desk.” He started to look back to his crossword puzzle when a lady walked up to the counter from a back office. She recognized Jiff as the resident of the Penthouse. After a polite greeting, she walked over to where she raised the counter, allowed us to come through, and invited us back to use the computers in the rear office, her office, “for as long as we liked.”

  Comb Over offered a stiff smile which caused his eyes to squint but didn’t even turn up the farthest corners of his mouth. Then, she said loud enough for him to hear that her name was Victoria and to ask for her if we needed anything else.

  Jiff was a lot more adept at finding his way around the drives than I was so he took the lead. The first thing he did was send the files to ourselves in emails. Then he just had to go into his email and start scrolling through them.

  “I’m amazed these aren’t encrypted,” he said.

  “If this is a mob thing, are they that sophisticated? Or maybe she copied them for insurance or leverage long before he decided to divorce her,” I said. “A lot of men make a big mistake by underestimating how smart a woman really is. We can get a lot of mileage out of blonde hair by acting ditzy. Most men are all too quick to believe it,” I said. “Maybe, Abby decided to put her own insurance plan in place and got the dirt on him before he brought up the divorce. She may have made copies of that info even before she married him.”

  “Sometimes you scare me with the way you think,” Jiff said and looked at me.

  I just shook my head and rolled my eyes.

  Jiff was concentrating on the screen at the first file to open there. It looked like a ledger sheet or computer spread sheet. Whoever managed this business, kept records on a computer. It showed columns of odd words. The only one that I was sure of was DATE. There was one with a list of initials maybe or parts of a name, like three or four letters of a first name and three or four letters of a last name.

  My name, Brandy Alexander, would look like branalex if it was on there. There was a column with no heading but initials and a number in each row. Finally, the dates added were in no chronological order and all the dates were in the past. The last column used letters and numbers opposite the previous column that had numbers, then initials. The final column had codes that were all different, BSLG112 or GPM211 or PCBMT121.

  Lines looked like this:

  DATE

  2/26/16 BrowManu 10 /MP DHM108

  12/15/15 GalvAnth 25/MP BSLG112

  3/3/17 GartLarr 20/VM GPM211

  “This all must mean something incriminating to old Donnato or whoever maintains this spreadsheet,” Jiff said. “Unless you know the code, it’s going to be meaningless.”

  “Wait.” I printed out what looked like the most current pages yet all the dates were at least a year old. “This looks like old business.”

  “Now that we’ve satisfied our curiosity and, in all likelihood, managed to put ourselves in the crosshairs of a major mob hit, let’s give this to Mike, our resident beach bum, undercover, Special Forces guy, whoever he is,” Jiff said shutting down the file, clearing the history and was about to turn off the computer. “Call him.”

  “Wait. Before I do that, I want to do one thing.” I looked up Abigale Westlake on Facebook. Abigale was a pretty girl, thin, and attractive with long dark hair. There were several pictures of her with Rascal, with friends at a beach that looked like a Florida beach with pristine white sand, and some on what I assumed was the New Jersey shore. She held up a Stone Pony coaster with a few friends in one photo so I guessed it was New Jersey.

  It sure looked like Abby was a party girl from all the bar photos taken and posted with friends. There was another post of her having drinks at a Tiki Bar and one riding next to a big hunky guy in a convertible along a beach that clearly was not in New Jersey. The resemblance to the woman who died on the beach and the woman we met on the pier was striking.

  “I want to see one more thing,” I said. Then I looked up Ashley Westlake on Facebook. Her Facebook posts looked more professional, standing with models wearing her designs or with an arm around a client who looked stunning in the outfits they were both wearing. They could have been twins they looked so much alike. I showed the screen to Jiff.

  “Is that the woman we met this morning?” he asked. Then I showed him the Facebook page for Abby and he said, “It’s hard to tell them apart from photos. I wonder if it was easier if you saw them side by side.”

  “That’s why we are going to the Tiki bar in these photos and ask around about her. That guy in the photo looks like he was a good friend or a boyfriend,” I said still flipping through the Facebook photos. “He was wearing a T-shirt with the name of a bar on it in Destin. Let’s go there.”

  “I guess you’re thinking what I’m thinking,” he said.

  “Do we tell Mike?” I asked. “It might get her killed.”

  “I think not telling Mike might get her killed. She can’t pass as her sister with work colleagues, but she could live in her house. If she doesn’t have a job, that won’t last long,” Jiff said.

  “If we do figure out she was trying to pass as her sister, it won’t be long before her ex-husband figures it out or the FBI, and goes looking for her,” I said.

  “Maybe they need to find her and ask if she knows what these codes mean on these flash drives,” Jiff said. “It might save her. Call Mike.”

  “I’ll call him, but I think he needs to figure it out. He’s not gonna want us sticking our nose in it,” I said.

  Just then a Security Guard walked by as we left the Concierge Office and stopped when he spotted Jiff.

  “Mr. Heinkel, I’m glad I ran into you,” he said.

  “Hello Wallace. This is my girlfriend, Brandy Alexander,” Jiff said by way of introducing us.

  I smiled.

  “Nice to meet you, Ma’am,” Wallace said and nodded his head.

  He was holding his security uniform hat under his arm, and his hair was so short I can only describe it as military issue. I guessed him to be early thirties.

  “Same here,” I said.

  “Mr. Heinkel, two men came by here this morning saying they are friends of yours and you were holding their dog for them,” Wallace said. “They wanted me to let them into your unit. I told them to contact you and set up a time to meet you here or elsewhere. They left, and they were not happy, but if they stayed around, I was going to call the police. These guys didn’t look like anyone you or this lady would socialize with.”

  “They’re not and we think they might have had something to do with the murdered woman,” Jiff said.

  “I see,” said Wallace. “Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll take care of it if they come around again.”

  “Wallace is with the Military Police at Hurlburt Field. That’s the Air Force Base we pass on our way to Ft. Walton and Destin,” Jiff said. “We’re lucky to have him here. How’s the wife and kids?”

  “Family’s great, sir. We are expecting our third in a couple of weeks, Thanks for asking,” Wallace replied.

  “Congratulations and thank you for your service,” I said to him.

  Wallace smiled, said “Ma’am,” and went about his patrol.

  Before Jiff could say it, I started dialing my cell, “Okay, I’m calling Mike right now.”

  Chapter Eight

  Mike rang the bell. When I opened the door he was wearing a black suit, button-down shirt with a tie and wingtip shoes. He had on the standard issue of the aviator type sunglasses my imagination had all special forces or special agents wear.

  “Special Agent Mike Perricone,” he said.

  “We met Sunday morning… at the beach… we found the dead girl… remember?”
I asked.

  He walked right past me and went over to Jiff to shake his hand.

  “Wow, you go from the surfboard to the Board Room with such ease,” I said. “Don’t mind me, I just get the door.”

  “Funny girl. This is not funny business,” he said in a flat tone.

  “I see. You change clothes, you change persona. I guess you left the magic personality with your dune buggy and jams.”

  He ignored me.

  After Jiff picked up on how rude I thought Mike was acting, he schmoozed him a bit and mentioned how we all have a mutual friend, Daniel.

  Special Agent Mike Perricone said we could call him Mike since we were all friends with Daniel.

  Did he want us to think, Oh boy! How cool is that! We get to call the Special Agent by his first name! Who does this dude think he is? He was too impressed with himself.

  I also refrained from mentioning that we found the dead body, the dog and the flash drives, not him.

  Jiff must have picked up on my body language since I was mentally winding up like a baseball pitcher to throw the drives at Mike’s pinhead. He said, “You should thank Brandy. She found those drives sewn inside the dog’s collar. They might have gone unnoticed for quite some time if someone else found him or if he lost that collar.”

  “Really?” was all Mike, who now lacked any magic, could muster.

  “Yes, she has worked with homicide in New Orleans as a consultant on several cases,” he added. “She really knows this breed since she does rescue for them specifically. We both have Schnauzers as pets.”

  Okay, Jiff, I think you’re laying it on a little heavy, but I was glad to hear him bragging on me to Mr. Special Agent, Moron Mike.

  “How exactly does she consult?” he asked Jiff.

  “I’m right here so you can ask me,” I said and stepped a little closer to him. “I consult because I see things or patterns others miss. I only get involved when, like this murder or situation, I started out as a witness to the crime or if I come across pertinent information that the police miss or did not find. Like the body, the missing dog and the flash drives. I might even see a pattern to what’s on those drives since we now met and spoke to the sister of the victim.”