T. Lynn Ocean - Jersey Barnes 03 - Southern Peril

by T. Lynn Ocean

  “Vehicle’s fine,” he said.

  “We need to get to Pat Viocchi’s house, don’t we.”

  Brad nodded, thinking the same thing. Somebody had tipped off the network to the fact that an agent was going to try to make a pickup at Bob’s Mini-Mart. If that someone was Pat, she could be in danger. To them, she was now a problem.

  “Give me the address from that checkbook you lifted,” Brad said.

  I did. He entered it into a nav system. After calculating our route, the device told us we’d arrive in fourteen minutes. We got there in eleven. Pat’s address belonged to a quiet neighborhood consisting of two-story brick town homes woven along golf course fairways. Brad headed to the back while I knocked on the front door. A lapdog—by the sound of it—started yapping. Nobody answered. I knocked again and rang the bell. Nothing. After a minute, Brad opened the door to let me in, a terrier bouncing around his ankles.

  “Back slider wasn’t locked,” he said. “Looks like somebody jimmied it open.”

  Weapons ready, safeties off, we searched both levels, starting downstairs. We found Pat Viocchi on the upstairs master bathroom floor, her head twisted at an unnatural angle. Grayish skin contrasted sickly with the white terry robe wrapped around her body. Milky, unseeing eyes stared up at the vanity.

  “Oh, crap,” I said, panic crushing my lungs. “I’m out of here.”

  Ten minutes later, Brad found me outside, sitting in Pat’s small courtyard behind the town house, watching a foursome of men hit golf balls off the red tees. “You okay?”

  “It’s the dead body thing,” I said.

  He almost laughed but stopped himself. “You were serious about that?”

  I nodded. “Strange considering what I used to do for a living.”

  “And yet you drive a hearse.”

  “It’s a long story,” I said. “What happened to her?”

  He joined me at the patio table. “Broken neck. Shower is damp, so it probably happened when she got out. Her place was searched. Neat job of it, but whoever killed her was looking for something.”

  I felt my spine crumple and I slumped in my seat. “She double-crossed me, didn’t she.”

  “Junkies are unpredictable, Jersey. After she had a chance to think about it, she decided that she didn’t want to lose her supplier of drugs.”

  “So she called the network and tipped them off about me going to the minimart,” I said. “Guess you can’t trust a drug addict, regardless of how well groomed and coiffed they are.”

  Brad nodded. “Probably thought she’d score some brownie points. Earn herself a freebie or two. Teacher’s pet syndrome.”

  “But the network had other ideas,” I mumbled. My actions had resulted in the death of a woman. “They couldn’t chance her talking.”

  “Look, in an operation like this one, everyone is disposable except for the person or people at the very top,” Brad said. “That’s the reason it works so well, and that’s the reason this case has been frustrating the hell out of me. They operate by using disposable people. The buyers, the stationary runners who make the deliveries. The brain running the network will never let any one person know too much. That’s why the pickup locations rotate and the phone numbers constantly change. If a user gets too needy or problematic, the network drops them. Simply doesn’t give out the new phone number. Same thing with the runners. They start demanding more of a cut or steal product, they’re dropped. Anyone talks too much, they’re dropped.”

  “Or in this case, killed.”

  The golfers finished taking turns from the tee box and headed noisily down the cart path. Brad gripped my chin and turned my face toward his. “Question for you. Say you’re at home and a hyped-up junkie breaks in to search for something he can pawn. He needs forty bucks for his next fix.” He stared into my eyes. “You yell for him to stop, to go away. Instead, he keeps coming at you. He has a gun. What do you do?”

  “I shoot him,” I said. “He probably dies.”

  “Right. But you didn’t kill him. Bad decisions killed him. Same goes with the woman in there. She made a string of bad choices.”

  I understood what Brad was trying to do, but it didn’t make me feel better.

  “Stop second-guessing yourself,” he said. “We’ve got work to do.”

  “We?”

  “If I know you, you’re going to stay on this thing, right? Get some answers for your judge friend?”

  I nodded.

  “Well then, we may as well help each other and work together. Unofficially, of course.”

  I nodded again.

  Brad made a phone call. Within minutes, we heard the wail of approaching sirens. He had to make a report to his boss, he told me, but my name wouldn’t be on it.

  “Thank you,” I said, and headed out on foot, leaving Brad to wait for the police.

  “Jersey,” he called. I stopped and turned. “Have you told me everything you’ve found related to this case?”

  “Yes,” I answered, close enough to see his eyes in the fading daylight. Mostly everything. “Can you say the same?”

  The sirens grew closer. “You’d better go,” he said.

  SIXTEEN

  The divine image doctors were back at the Green Table, and Morgan couldn’t resist learning more. A secret from their past had come back to haunt them, and Morgan wanted—no, needed—to know what it was. He craved the information and justified his action of eavesdropping by telling himself he might gain insight into Argo’s mysterious secrets. The doctors’ past could explain why somebody had rummaged through his apartment and searched his car and why the Drug Enforcement Agency was keeping tabs on the restaurant. After all, the doctors had been good friends with his parents. Garland was “like family” to them, they’d said. And if that was true, then Morgan had every right to learn what the doctors were up to. He had a vested interest. Even though he and Garland never acted like family, he still carried the man’s DNA. And now he owned Argo’s. His father’s legacy, really. The more he learned about the restaurant and read past reviews, the more he realized that Garland had left his mark on Wilmington. At first, Morgan wasn’t sure what he planned to do with the eatery once the estate was settled. Now, he knew he’d keep it. Maybe even expand. And once he learned what he needed to know, he would destroy the hidden microphone. Until then, Morgan told himself, he was going to do something that would make Garland proud. Perhaps his father had put the microphone in place at the Green Table for a reason. If so, Morgan was the only person left to figure it out.

  The earbud practically pulsed in his ear when Morgan shut himself in the small office and settled in to eavesdrop. Out of habit, he hit a combination of keyboard strokes to tab through the various security camera views on his monitor. He paused on the front-entrance camera when he spotted a bum walking in. The man bypassed the hostess and went to the bathroom. The doctors were talking about their receptionist—nothing that interested Morgan—so he kept his attention focused on the monitor. The bum came back into view and stopped, as though looking around the dining area. His pants were baggy, held up by a tightened belt, and his shirt appeared dirty. A line of unkempt curly black hair escaped from beneath a baseball cap, and when the man turned to go, Morgan caught a glimpse of a face that looked just like his father’s. This man was much thinner than Garland had been, and his posture was slumped instead of robust, but he could have been Garland’s double. Or brother. Except Garland didn’t have any brothers.

  Morgan braced himself on the desk as a blast of vertigo rolled through his core. When he opened his eyes, the bum was going back outside. Morgan’s mind was playing tricks on him. He had hated his father. Yet he’d decided to keep Argo’s once the estate was settled, in memory of Garland’s accomplishments? And now he was seeing the dead man in a stranger’s face? He wondered if the bum was hungry and thought about taking a container of food outside. But he knew the man had already disappeared.

  Once his dizziness passed, Morgan switched the monitor back to the dining ro
om view and located the doctors. He probably needed sleep, Morgan figured. And exercise. Sleep and exercise would do him good.

  “Seriously, John, you really need to lay off the booze,” Leo was saying, “and whatever else you’ve been prescribing for yourself.”

  Jonathan told Leo to shove it.

  “He’s right,” Michael said.

  Michael seemed to be the peacekeeper of the group, Morgan thought, while Leo was their leader. Jonathan was the resident drunk.

  “It may or may not have been your student ID that allowed him to track us,” Michael continued. “Either way, it doesn’t matter. We’ve been a team since the beginning, and we’ll still be a team when we decide to retire. That means we’ve got to stick together to get through this mess. And that means that you keep your act together and keep treating patients as usual.”

  Jonathan mumbled something indecipherable, but on the monitor he appeared to nod his agreement. Then he took a long swig of whatever he’d ordered on the rocks. He kept his head back until the glass held nothing but ice.

  “You could always take a leave of absence,” Leo suggested. “Sign up for a continuing education course, someplace warm and tropical. Get your head clear.”

  The shrink said something about paying the monthly fee. “Plus, who’s going to write the scrips if I’m not around?”

  A server, Hank, delivered a calamari-and-artichoke-heart appetizer along with three small plates. He asked about drink refills. Everyone declined except for Jonathan, who ordered a double Scotch, neat. On the monitor, Morgan saw Leo and Michael exchange a look over their partner’s drunken binge.

  “First of all, we can swing the monthly payment with or without you. It’s just one more office expense. And as for the scrips, Leo and I can write enough to keep him happy,” Michael said. “Besides, it’s not like we’re the only physicians he’s got. I told him right off the bat that we wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize our licenses. That means no excessive scrips, other than the standard painkillers that our plastic surgery patients need anyway.”

  Jonathan let out a sloppy laugh. “Right. So I refer my patients elsewhere and take off for a month. Which of you is going to prescribe the psychotropic stuff like Ritalin and Adderall? Might seem odd to the medical board that a lipo or bleph patient would need stimulants.”

  The men ate their appetizer in silence, Jonathan picking at the same piece of calamari for several minutes. His Scotch arrived. Without ice it was easier to gulp, and he did.

  “I miss Rosemary so much sometimes I can’t stand it,” Jonathan suddenly said.

  Morgan’s spine tingled at the mention of his mother’s name. How many Rosemarys could the doctors know?

  “We all miss her.” Leo pushed back his appetizer plate. “Her and Garland both. It’s not the same around here without them. What’s your point?”

  The psychiatrist sucked down more Scotch while the two cosmetic surgeons waited for an answer. After a beat, Jonathan realized his glass was empty and put it down. He wiped the back of a hand beneath both eyes. Was the man crying? Morgan wondered.

  “Oh, sweet Jesus,” Leo said, his voice filled with disgust. He leaned across the table and forced Jonathan to look at him. “Tell me it’s not true.”

  “What?” Michael asked. “What’s not true?”

  Leo pointed at the shrink. “You were screwing Rosemary, weren’t you, John.”

  “No, of course not. She would never have been unfaithful to Garland,” Jonathan said. “But we could talk to each other, tell each other anything.”

  “So then, you were counseling her as a patient?” Michael asked.

  The shrink’s slight nod of confirmation was visible to Morgan on the monitor. The office walls started spinning around him like an amusement park ride.

  “We always met somewhere outside of the office and just… well, we just talked. We talked about the baby ducks and the weather and relationships and life in general. It started as patient counseling, I guess, but turned into something much more. It was an affair without the sex, I suppose. I’ve never been as intimate with anyone else, ever.”

  “You stupid idiot,” one of the doctors said. “You were seeing Garland’s wife away from the office? She was almost old enough to be your mother.”

  Through the hot buzzing in his ears, Morgan could no longer tell which man was saying what. He closed his eyes to steady the walls.

  “I told you, it wasn’t like that.” Jonathan’s words were slurred but sharp with anger. “First of all, we were best friends—not lovers. And second, our age difference was irrelevant. I could make her laugh. And she could talk to me without worrying that I was listening just so I could get into her pants.”

  “All those times you were out meeting someone for lunch, we thought it was another of your bimbos.” Leo’s head shook from side to side. “Nobody that mattered enough for us to meet. But Rosemary?”

  Jonathan tried to drink from an empty glass.

  “It was a tragic thing that happened,” Michael said after a while.

  Jonathan shook his head. “I never should have gotten Rosemary involved.”

  “What?” somebody demanded. “Rosemary knew about the blackmail? Why, you’re just an outpouring of revelations today, John.”

  Jonathan’s voice was close to a whisper now. “She was dealing with menopause. Tired all the time and depressed. The hormones her doctor prescribed weren’t helping, so I gave her something that would. Then she wanted more. I realized much later that I had used her addiction to keep her reliant on me. To keep her close.”

  “And?”

  “And once, when we were talking, I told her about the network. I told her everything. When she found out what we were up against, she wanted to help.”

  Michael wasn’t eating or drinking, and his stare was fixed tight on the shrink. “Okay, I’m trying to get this straight. First, you counsel Rosemary away from the office. Then you become best friends without benefits. Then you get her hooked on drugs and turn her into an addict under the pretense of helping her through the physical symptoms of menopause. Then you spill your guts about the mess we’re in and convince her to help.”

  Jonathan nodded.

  “Help how?” Leo demanded.

  Jonathan’s head was down. “She was one of his runners. People picked up right here, at the restaurant.”

  “You dumb drunk.” Morgan had his eyes shut now, but it sounded like Leo’s voice. “Did Garland know?”

  Morgan opened his eyes in time to see Jonathan shake his head no. “Rosemary never told him. She adored Garland. Told me right up front that they would be together forever. She made it very clear that there would never be a chance for us… .” Jonathan’s voice trailed off again, and this time the sounds of sniffled crying traveled through the wire in the ceiling to land in Morgan’s ear. “But I loved her so much.”

  Ignoring the nausea that pressed against the back of his throat, Morgan remained shut in the office for the duration of the Divine Image Group’s meal. Leo had dessert. Jonathan had more Scotch. And Michael tried to keep the two of them from verbally attacking each other.

  At the end of the hour, Morgan had a mess of information floating in his head, unsettled, disturbing. His mother had been having one-on-one intimate chats with one of his father’s supposed best friends—a best friend who turned Rosemary into a drug addict. The doctors were illegally writing prescriptions for patients who didn’t exist. Their practice was in danger of shutting down if they lost their medical licenses. They’d paid out a large sum of money to somebody but still owed a lot more. Hundreds of thousands more. None of it made much sense to Morgan, and when he felt that he might faint, he put his head between his knees.

  He awakened hours later, cheek smashed against the desktop, neck muscles feeling like cast iron. Argo’s was dark and empty. It was after two in the morning. In a daze, Morgan slipped out, thinking that he needed to tell Jersey Barnes what he’d learned.

  SEVENTEEN

  I’d
tackled an early morning run along the Riverwalk and was surprised to see so many people milling about at the breakfast hour. Every year, tourists seem to stick around longer than in previous years. Wilmington and the area beaches used to be a summertime destination, but now, out-of-towners keep visiting all the way through the holiday season. The day’s summerlike weather had drawn a good weekend crowd, and these folks were early risers.

  When I returned to the Block, Brad was at a table with Spud and his friends. And they were playing poker. Nothing like an early morning game of five-card draw. Bobby and Hal were dressed in a polyester version of Tommy Bahama tropical shirts and shorts. Trip wore all white, except for his socks, which were black. Spud’s wiry legs stuck out of blue-and-green-striped shorts that might have been swimming trunks. He wore a muscle shirt beneath a blinding yellow short-sleeved-button-down, unbuttoned and untucked. His feet were stuffed into orange neoprene slippers, the kind of shoes people sometimes wear on the beach so shells don’t cut their feet. Once I got beyond the collage of loud duds, I noticed an assortment of stuff in the tabletop’s center, and it didn’t consist of money or poker chips.

  “Morning, Jersey.” Brad used his hand of playing cards to point at his opponents. “The boys are breaking in their new clothes for the cruise.”

  The boys? They looked like lost old men who’d wandered into a Ringling Brothers dressing room. I shook out my leg muscles and almost bent over to stretch before I realized Brad was watching me watch the boys.

  “Uh, good morning,” I said, straightening. Spud’s friends took turns acknowledging me. Eyes on his cards, Spud grunted his greeting.

  “I’ll raise a brand-new sleeve of Titleist golf balls and a sample pack of Viagra.” Bobby fished around in a plaid backpack for a moment before tossing the goods into the pot.

  “None of us play golf,” Trip reminded him. “Besides, the balls are pink.”