Mixed Up With Murder

by Susan C. Shea

  “So he did find something, but he didn’t agree?”

  “He got all pious about the evils of gambling.” J.P. was pissed. “Look, I didn’t kill the old guy. All I did was push him into the pond to make my point that he’d better keep quiet. I guess he wasn’t too healthy.”

  “He drowned while having a heart attack your threats brought on, and you didn’t try to save him, so you did kill him.” Maybe not the wise thing to point out at this precise moment, but making excuses for murder bugs me.

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t know that when I left.”

  I bit my tongue so hard that I felt and tasted a speck of blood. Entitled rich brat. “So your father’s cash gift to Lynthorpe is money he could lend you to pay gambling debts, is that it?”

  “Lend? No matter how much he spends, my father has more every year, like magic.”

  “Then what? You want it all? Fair enough.” Not really, but talking might calm him down. I hitched myself up on the bed and wiggled to one side a bit. If there was any chance to run out of the room, I was going to be ready.

  “Of course not, just my share. There’s nobody else, and he’s always saying how proud he is of my polo, so why not invest in me?”

  J.P. was looking at me as if I were the judge on Family Court. I wanted to tell him to grow up, but now wasn’t the right time. I remembered someone telling me J.P. was a playboy even in college and hadn’t done very well in his few semesters at Lynthorpe. I could believe it. It was obvious the son didn’t have his father’s smarts.

  He was still talking. Apparently, I was his therapist at the moment. “Such a big shot. I’m sure he’s hired the best P.R. firm already, and the slimy little president of Lynthorpe has worked up some ass-kissing statement about the great man, benefactor to mankind stuff. What do you think, Miss Do-Gooder? Is my father the biggest hero since Bill Gates conquered malaria in Africa?” His voice dripped with bitterness, but something else too. Fear.

  I had a mental picture of the senior Margoletti’s manner as he looked me over with those cold eyes, measuring me. Did J.P. not quite measure up? One of Dickie’s friends at the polo match said Vince was proud of his son, but it seemed like J.P. didn’t feel the love. Another image of Vince surfaced in my head, the tightly wound big shot who pushed hard against any holdups in the deal to transfer a fortune in art to the little college he had been only slightly involved with previously, but whose hand opened and closed spasmodically during our meeting.

  “You’re not doing this with someone from Lynthorpe?”

  “Are you kidding? They tossed me out a few years ago. And anyway, how could they help me?”

  So Coe Anderson’s ultimatum had nothing to do with Margoletti’s son. “So who’s in this with you?”

  The toothpick. The man J.P. had been talking to who could make sure the apartment didn’t hold any clues for the police. The cop who had been on the scene right after the shooting. The cop Dickie had instinctively disliked. The name clicked into my head smoothly, like it belonged there. I breathed rather than said his name. “McManus—is he involved?”

  “Shit, how did you know?” J.P. shouted. “I didn’t tell you! You remember that when he gets here.”

  Bad news. “Why would he do something illegal for you?”

  “He’s helping me get through this mess at Lynthorpe, that’s all. I did him a favor once, when I was in school here, and he’s paying it back.”

  “A favor?”

  “Some drugs. I could get them and he could sell them. Nothing major, mostly pot and pills.”

  Ah, the innocence of college days among the privileged. But, hey, nothing major. I was beginning to understand why daddy dearest was not willing to bankroll his polo-playing son for the easy life in Argentina. But I had to get out, and fast. “Why am I here? You aren’t thinking you can ransom me? Your father wouldn’t pay ten cents for me, never mind a year’s stabling costs for your horses.”

  “When I saw you come out of the building, I knew you’d heard me, so you know too much. McManus is on his way as soon as his shift is over. He’ll take care of you.”

  The cocky small-town cop who seemed to be around all the time, who watched from behind dark glasses, who liked showing off for college kids and, apparently, liked selling them drugs? Who was among the first responders when Gabby was shot, come to think of it. The image of Gabby lying on the floor, a pool of bright blood forming under her head, came back to me. Before I could stop myself, I gasped. “He killed Gabby. Or, did you?” I blinked and looked up at him.

  “No,” he said, sounding startled, “I didn’t kill her. Who thinks that?”

  My ears were buzzing and I was feeling faint. “You killed Larry, and it was either you or McManus who shot Dermott.”

  “Not me, he said sharply. “You make me sound like some serial killer. I don’t even own a gun.” I looked at the gun in his hand. “This is McManus’s.”

  So J.P.’s job was to hold me there until McManus arrived to deal with me. That meant I had a few minutes or maybe longer, depending on what the crooked cop was up to right now, to get out of here. I needed to make this count.

  “J.P. listen to me.” I made my voice as soothing as possible. “You’re a decent guy caught up in something that got too complicated, aren’t you? You would never kill someone deliberately, but bringing McManus in has raised the stakes. Maybe too high? What was your original plan, before McManus went rogue and killed the researcher?” I tried to sound reasonable, as if we were not having a conversation that might be the last one I’d ever have.

  He didn’t exactly calm down, but his shoulders slumped a bit and he leaned against the door, the gun in his hand still pointed at me. “I told you. I need money. There’s no not paying these people, especially because they know who my father is. He has over a hundred expensive paintings just sitting in a storage facility. All I wanted was to take one or two, sell them, and head back to South America. No big deal.”

  The ones Larry and Gabby couldn’t find on the list sent to them by your father’s accountant? They were pieces you stole, the auction purchases?”

  “I only took one. I haven’t got it yet, but I will as soon as I get out of here.” He ran a hand through his hair.

  “I didn’t get it and neither did Gabby. We were just trying to come up with a tally for insurers.”

  J.P. licked his lips. “Good try. You know those paintings were payoffs. Why else was she copying them?”

  “Payoffs? Wait, you’re saying they were payoffs to you?”

  J.P. glared at me. “Of course not. Dear old Dad made sure the CEOs knew they had to keep him happy if they wanted to avoid being investigated for stealing intellectual property.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Sure. His way of making money. High risk, high reward, he told me. Except when I did it.”

  I remembered Ethan Byrnstein using the same words, the Silicon Valley mantra.

  “So,” I said slowly, “your father’s squeezing the clients he helped by having them buy the paintings at auction, a way to launder the payoffs. You figure it out, and now you want to blackmail your father.” I looked at my watch. “We don’t have much time. McManus is a loose cannon. We can figure out how to present this so you don’t get into too much difficulty—”

  “No way. You know too much.” The gun snapped back up to point at my chest.

  “So do you, as far as your corrupt cop is concerned.”

  “I need to finish this last deal.”

  “J.P., trust me, I am not as dangerous at McManus right now. Sitting here waiting for someone who isn’t going to want either of us as witnesses isn’t smart.”

  “McManus doesn’t get his share of the money until I’m safely in Argentina. In fact, his plan is to go with me.”

  “Someone will figure this out, especially if I’m dead, you and McManus have disappeared, and there are two unsolved homicides at Lynthorpe. There will be a full on investigation and someone will remember you had access to the family stora
ge facility, even if it was high security.”

  When Margoletti Senior found out the Hopper painting was gone he’d have the FBI and Interpol all over looking for the trail. Whoever bought it would either ditch it or get caught and go to jail.

  “And,” I continued, talking fast as I pieced it together, “if the auction items that were listed as gifts were lumped together, he’d be worried about his own exposure, so he was eager to get the gift booked and the documents accepted without question. But Bart Corliss enters into this somehow. Was your father pressuring him for a painting too?”

  J.P. gave me a hard look. “Why should he get all those pieces? If I just asked for one, I’d be set. In his name, of course.”

  Vince must have figured out that J.P. got to Corliss, and wanted desperately to shut down the deal. He couldn’t call in the police, but when Corliss committed suicide, the threat of discovery was imminent. Vince had to get all the remaining paintings out of his—and therefore his son’s hands—before J.P. tried anything else. If any of the missing art was noticed, J.P. might be linked to it. But with their relationship so poisoned by J.P.’s fear and sense of entitlement, Vince couldn’t talk to him directly. So, he decided to give it all away.

  “So far, your mistakes are all in the area of what is called ‘white collar’ crime,” I said, Larry Saylor’s heart attack aside for now. “It’s McManus who’s in deep trouble. And, J.P., think about it. He plans to kill me because he thinks I know more than I do. But he can’t let you go. I think we should get out of here right now and go to the police. Well,” as J.P. stirred and pushed off the wall, shaking his head violently, “maybe not the local police. I know a San Francisco cop I trust.”

  He glanced at the door, and then at the window. The gun, still aimed at me, was unsteady. I was right. J.P. was afraid of McManus. The way he handled the gun, like it was a prop, and the fact that he hadn’t simply taken me to an isolated place and shot me when he grabbed me in the parking lot, told me he wouldn’t kill me.

  A flush darkened his face. “I haven’t got much time. We have to get out of the country before my father figures it out and calls the cops.”

  If he didn’t have time, then I didn’t. I forced myself to stop thinking of the gun and concentrate on getting away from here fast.

  CHAPTER 28

  I needed my phone. I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  He had been about to speak and my simple request stopped him as suddenly as if I had screamed. He looked at me as if seeing me for the first time and realizing I spoke only Urdu.

  “I’ve been here a long time. Please.” In movies, the female spy doesn’t have a bladder and can stand pressed up against a concrete wall in her remote desert jail cell, knife drawn, for hours waiting for the bad guy to walk through the door. I’m not her and this wasn’t a movie. I hadn’t been thinking about it, but now that I had said it to J.P. it was real. The bathroom thing was the only way I could think of to get my phone, sure, but I didn’t have to fake the need.

  “You can’t. I mean, not without the door open,” he said, although he sounded a bit embarrassed. I hoped the idea was as unappealing to him as it was to me. I hoped he wouldn’t decide to shoot me because it was simpler than maintaining good manners.

  “Open? No way. Where am I going to hide? Come on,” I pressed, whining a little. “It’s urgent, J.P. You have my word I won’t try to escape.”

  “You can’t escape,” he mumbled. “There’s no window.”

  Damn, one option gone. “Okay then. What’s the problem?” I stood up, raising my hands in the air to reinforce that I had nothing hidden in them.

  He stood there, gun still aimed at my chest, and thought. By now, I understood he was a slow thinker. There were beads of sweat on his forehead and his hair looked damp. I felt the stifling heat in the room, the result of the closed window and door and two highly stressed occupants. Cold water on my face would be nice. Get a grip, I told myself. This isn’t really a bathroom break.

  He was saying something and I jerked my attention back to the room. “…two minutes, no locking the door. I warn you, I’ll come in if it’s any longer.”

  “It might be three.”

  “All right, three,” he said in a sharp voice. “But I’m counting and that’s final. Let’s go.”

  “I need something from my bag.” I tried to look embarrassed. I knew he had it somewhere, and I needed to get my phone back.

  “What?”

  “You know, my time of the month.”

  “Oh, geez,” he said. But his upbringing prevailed. He grabbed my arm and marched me out of the room, to the doorway into a living room, where he scooped up my bag and jammed it into my chest before hauling me down a short hall. We stopped before an open door and he shoved me in, pulling the door closed behind me.

  “I’m counting,” he yelled through the door.

  Nature called so I multi-tasked, digging the phone out of my bag and turning it on. Six messages, probably all Charlie. I didn’t dare listen since the sound might be picked up by my captor. Instead, I hit “call back” and prepared to whisper while flushing.

  “In or near Bridgetown,” I hissed. “Margoletti’s son grabbed me but someone else killed—”

  “Three,” yelled the voice outside. Frantically I pulled up my slacks, pushed the phone back in the bag, and was buttoning the waistband when the door opened.

  “Can I wash my hands?” I said, turning to the sink without waiting for a reply. Hastily, I threw some cold water on my face. It was still dripping off my chin as J.P. dragged me back to the bedroom, yanked my bag away and tossed it on the floor without noticing that the phone was in there, or that I hadn’t turned it off. If there was a heaven, Charlie would be able to make something of this, like they do in the movies, and send in the Bridgetown police.

  “Where are we?” I said, as loudly as I could for the microphone.

  “What does it matter?” J.P. said. “You won’t be calling a cab.”

  Not a happy thought, but I ignored the implications. “J.P., let’s call your father. I bet if he knew how tough your situation was, he’d come up with the money you need right now.”

  “It’s way too late.”

  “I don’t believe that. I saw how proud he was of you at the polo match. Come on, we can solve this problem if we do it together now.” Now, as in before some cold-blooded dirty cop drug dealer gets here. “Look, your father can help with any police charges too. He has pull, and if you’re telling me the truth, that you didn’t shoot anyone—”

  “I didn’t,” he burst out. “It wasn’t me.”

  “Okay, I believe you, but you need to tell the police. If you keep me here, if anything happens to me, it’ll be too late and even your father won’t be able to protect you. Let me go and I’ll call him myself.”

  “Shut up and let me think.” He was darting around the room, so jittery that I was afraid the gun would go off if anything made him jump. It occurred to me I didn’t know enough about guns to know if the safety was still on. My inner voice reminded me that J.P. might not know either, which might have been comforting but wasn’t. He was mumbling. “It wasn’t supposed to happen, but he said she recognized him.”

  “And because of that, he killed her. Think about that, J.P.”

  J.P. wavered, uncertain of his best move. But then he pulled a cell phone out of his jacket pocket and tossed it to me. “You do it. Get my father over here, but nothing else. No cops. I’m locking the door and the windows.”

  Good. We were on the same side now. I had to keep him thinking like that. I found Vince’s personal number in J.P.’s directory and punched the glass face of the phone so hard I almost dropped it. Vince answered. “Son, where are you?”

  I began to talk so fast I was panting. “Call the Bridgetown police. We need help, your son and me.” Oh, shit, I didn’t know where we were. “J.P.,” I yelled, trotting to the bedroom door. “Where are we?”

  Margoletti
senior wasn’t buying. “Who are you? How did you get my number? This is absurd.”

  “Not absurd. This is Dani O’Rourke. I’m with J.P. and we’re in danger.”

  “My old apartment,” J.P. said, appearing in the doorway, licking his lips and looking back and forth between me and the living room. “The complex is being torn down, but I was able to use my key to get in.”

  “A crooked cop named McManus is on the way to J.P.’s old college apartment, where we’re hiding. He’s going to kill me, and your son too. Sooner rather than later.” J.P. darted back to the living room, waving the gun around so loosely that I might have told him to watch it if I hadn’t been consumed with getting through to his father.

  “You’re insane,” Vince Margoletti said in a cold, hard voice.

  “Listen, there’s no time to waste. J.P. has a gun. He’s in big, big trouble and he’ll need all your influence to avoid going to prison. But first we need you to call the chief of police in Bridgetown, now. Do you know where this place is?”

  He wasn’t impressed. “You expect me to believe this?”

  “J.P. seems to think I know something worth killing me for. He let Saylor die—”

  “This is ridiculous,” Margoletti said, sputtering. “Is this extortion? Have you kidnapped my son? Is that why you called my office?”

  I could have wept, or beat the phone against the wall. “Listen to me. Your son kidnapped me.”

  “He’s in Argentina,” Margoletti said. “In South America.”

  Duh. I knew where Argentina was. I didn’t know as much about where I was, and it didn’t sound like this man, in major denial, was going to help figure it out.

  “No, he’s here,” I shouted, wondering why I had bothered.

  “Wait, wait,” he said, the first measure of doubt creeping into his voice. “I still don’t believe you, but…Let me speak to him.”

  J.P. was back in the doorway. I held out the phone and looked my entreaty.

  “No way,” he said and stepped out of sight.