Murder Across The Ocean

by Charlene Wexler

  "Suzanne Green."

  "You are a citizen of the United States?"

  “Yes.”

  "Why are you entering the United Kingdom?"

  "Pleasure."

  "How long are you staying?"

  "One week."

  "Where?"

  “The Strand," she answered, naming a mediocre hotel. She stayed calm and courteous, though she almost wished the police would pick her up. She was more afraid of her Chinese employers and the men they hired than the authorities. They did’t care when they were reaping in a large share of Wheeler’s money, but they went wild when things went belly-up and Josh tried to run. What an arrogant ass he’d turned into. Oh, well, she did have a good run with him these last five years: Vegas, Paris, the Orient, jewelry, private parties, yachts… There was no limit to his spending, or his sexual appetite. I’m not gonna miss that, Suzi mused.

  She had met Josh while working as a model in L.A. When she had mentioned growing up in Chicago as a Brill, he had interrogated her about her family, admitting to knowing her aunt, Lori. She had initially thought his concern had centered on her cousin, Lori’s daughter who had died at the age of seventeen. Now she was putting two and two together. Josh and her Aunt Lori had been lovers when they were young. What a crazy world. Aunt Lori had been the only person in the Brill family who was nice to her; she wouldn’t let the kidnappers kill her.

  Suzanne Green—in sneakers, blue jeans, sweatshirt hoodie, mousy brown hair in messy pigtails, and carrying a plastic purse from Wal-Mart—was no resemblance to Suzi the playgirl who traveled first class, with manicured nails, black hair coiffed just right, designer dressed, and met by an entourage the minute she stepped off the plane.

  After the immigrations employee concurred with another officer, Suzanne Green passed through immigration and was on her way out of the airport to her waiting driver.

  ***

  FBI agent Jordan Gould’s picture of Suzanne Brill from her teen years proved useful in identifying the woman with the Suzanne Green passport who had disembarked the Delta Flight from Shanghai. His hunch had paid off. As this case progressed, Jordan’s suspicion of Lori Brill’s involvement looked more and more positive.

  Too bad. He had to admit it. Holmes had correctly detected Jordan’s feelings towards Cate. She turned him on. Oh, hell, every time he was near her, he wanted to get into her pants. Being in close proximity to both her and her rumpled bed made the prospect all the more enticing. He couldn’t possibly picture her marrying that Englishman. She had too much passion, too much fire. And it wasn’t just his regular attraction to sexy women, although he found her very attractive; this one was different. She needed someone in her life that could match her wit and brains, as well as her passion, and he did not think the barrister would be the one to do that.

  Who was he kidding? He needed someone like that in his life. And she was causing more trouble in his life than anyone ever had. He could not stop thinking about her. He completely forgot Ginger, the young thing he had been hanging out with in D.C.

  ***

  Scotland Yard, along with Jordan Gould and the FBI, were carefully watching and following Suzi Wu, hoping she was somehow on Wheeler’s money trail. Her arrival also gave them hope that Lori was still alive.

  When a young man in an orange Volkswagen bus picked up Suzi, the police made sure there were two different cars tailing it. When they checked the license plates, they found the car was registered to a seventeen-year-old, Nate Fillmore, living in London proper with his mother. Surprisingly, he had no record, rap sheet, or history of accidents.

  ***

  Suzi got in the car and looked over at her driver. He was a tall lanky kid with light brown wavy hair and small, rough looking hands that showed signs of working outdoors. He sat quietly, waiting for her to speak or possibly waiting for orders from her. She needed him on her side. Sizing him up took only seconds. She would know how to win him over.

  “You’re just a kid. What’s your name? How old are you?”

  “Nate, and I’m seventeen. You aren’t so old yourself.”

  “Twice your age.”

  “Fancy that,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Where did they get you?”

  “They’re staying in me family’s warehouse.”

  “How is she?”

  “You mean the lady they’re holdin’?”

  Suzy pulled her hair loose from the elastic ponytail holders, raked both hands through her knotted hair, and leaned back. “Yes, Mrs. Brill, the lady they are holding.”

  “I think poorly. I tried to smuggle some food to ‘er, and I did loosen her ties. You know she’s an old lady,” Nate repeated, concerned.

  Yes, I know, Suzi said to herself while turning her head away.

  “One thing I gotta warn you about. It’s Roland.”

  “What about him?” she asked.

  “He’s got a scar on his face. He’s sensitive about it.”

  “I’ve spoken to him before. He doesn’t seem the sensitive type.”

  “He’s sensitive enough to bash your head in if you mention his fuckin’ scar. You’ve been warned, is all.”

  “Thanks.”

  ***

  “We have the car in line, sir. Should we pick ‘er up? Only a young driver in the car with her. It would be an easy pick up,” the constable said in his mobile call to Jordan.

  Damn, they’re careless, Jordan thought. “NO! My God, you idiots, if you pick Suzi up, they will kill Mrs. Brill. Let them lead us to the hideout.”

  ***

  When they arrived at the warehouse, Nate directed Suzi to the office, where Roland was waiting. The sweet earth smell of pot permeated the room. Suzi realized she had to act tough and take control right at the start, so she stormed into the room and faced Roland, ignoring the long scar that ran from below his right eye down to the corner of his mouth.

  In an angry voice, she said, “Well? What the hell went wrong here? Josh contacted me from O’Hare Airport, telling me he struck it lucky. An old friend was traveling with him, so he was able to hide the keys and codes to the Swiss bank in her things. He was supposed to meet me in Switzerland in two days.”

  “We found nothing in her things,” Roland stated, matter-of-factly.

  Suzi ignored him and continued, “When plans changed, you were then directed by Wu to follow them and steal the items from the old lady’s belongings, not to kill Wheeler and kidnap the old lady.” Suzi paused long enough to glare at Roland, who sat silent, glaring at Suzi.

  Who did this little monkey think she was, talking to him this way? Roland eyed the tiny woman, her worn jeans hugging her thin frame, her shapeless, dark blue sweatshirt covering what he knew would be two small, perfect breasts and a flat belly. He listened to her, musing how easy it would be to take her down with a well-paced backhanded smack across her stupid face. Another boring, easy target. Of course, he knew how to make this one more enjoyable.

  “Wu, of course, is not happy. But he was willing to forgive your terrible mishandling of the events if you could produce the items in question. You were to give me the items and disappear. But Scotland Yard probably has all her shit now, and that’s because one of you fucked up and went into that room and shot Wheeler! How stupid can you be? So, now I’ve been instructed to take over, and you can just forget the rest of your money since you do not have the keys or the numbers. Eventually, they’ll release her stuff, it will be back in her possession, and she’ll be ready to tell us where the keys are. If she knows. She may not even know where he stashed the keys. If anything, you should have kidnapped her after she got her stuff back from Scotland Yard. She wasn’t going to be a suspect long. Who’s the hothead around here who called for this to take place? Was it you? Bad move.”

  When Roland heard, “you can forget your money,” his face clinched and his hands rolled into fists. Only the sudden appearance of Tony stopped him.

  Hand outstretched, the young Asian man turned to Suzi. “So… I finally get to
meet the famous Suzi Wu. Ooh, lookit you, Suzi Wu. You look different.”

  Roland slipped out of the room as Suzi’s attention turned to Tony.

  “Yeah? Different than what?” Suzi made her way to the desk and sat down.

  “Than your usual Posh Spice self. The one in all the pictures and videos.

  “Huh. I had a long flight,” Suzi replied dismissively as she grabbed her purse off the office desk, fished for a small hairbrush, and began smoothing out the knots still present in her long hair.

  ***

  Nate returned to the room and completely untied Lori, for no apparent reason. Fear seized her, and she began to shake. They are done with me. It's over, she thought.

  "Nate, am I going to die now? Make it quick. Don't let Roland torture me."

  Nate reached down and helped Lori get up. “Its okay, mum. The girl’s here, and she wants to see ye.”

  Lori's legs went wobbly as she walked with Nate's help. Nothing could adequately describe what she felt when her blindfold was removed. At first, her eyes couldn’t adjust to the light, and she quickly closed them. When she could focus, she saw a man walking out of the office. Lori eyed him carefully. Every time this man named Roland approached her, a feeling of panic took over. She recognized his cold deep voice, his enormous hands. She guessed he was Josh and Bly’s murderer. She had made friends with Nate. He had smuggled food to her, but he panicked whenever Roland was around. The other one they called Tony also seemed afraid of Roland. She was glad the girl named Suzi was here. It had to be to her advantage to have a girl in charge.

  Nate walked her towards the office and told her to sit down on the chair by the desk. Shocked by the appearance of the girl sitting across from her, she just stared while her mind made the connection. The Suzi Brill she last saw was a thin, gawky, bespectacled, coal-black-haired Chinese teenager with large, black, almond-shaped eyes and her father’s dimpled cheeks. Could this be the same girl, her brother-in-law’s estranged daughter? Tears of joy and fear flowed from her eyes.

  “Is it really you?” she finally asked.

  Suzi ignored her question and looked towards the guard at the door.

  “Tony,” Suzi said, snapping her fingers a few times, “bring some food and something to drink, and then leave me with Mrs. Brill.”

  “My orders are to guard her at all times.”

  “And this is how you’ve done it? Jesus, Tony, this poor woman looks like death warmed over. She doesn’t need a guard. She needs a doctor. What good is she to us if she fucking dies, Tony? You think Scotland Yard’s gonna hand over her shit to us in a tidy package?”

  Suzi had a hard time recognizing Lori. The Lori she knew had been tough, taking no shit from the crazy Brill family, but now she looked old, small, and vulnerable in a wrinkled, soiled dress and torn stockings.

  “No food in this place,” Tony answered, shrugging.

  Suzi’s face hardened into a scowl. “Then go get some. There is a small store about a mile down the road. I remember passing it on the way here.”

  He stared at her with narrowed eyes, clenched mouth, all the while fingering the gun he held close to his side.

  Suzi stood up and pointed towards the door. “What the hell are you standing there for? Gonna squint at me all day because I’m right and you’re not? Get going! Go now!”

  When he left, she turned to Lori, leaned in closer, and in a whisper said, “Just listen and do what you are told to do. I am going to try to get us out of here alive. Do you think Nate will help us?”

  Lori couldn’t help staring at the girl talking to her. Was this really Suzi Brill, her brother-in-law’s daughter?

  “Who are you?”

  Suzi ignored the question and went to the window, standing there until she saw the car pull out of the driveway. Then she looked at Lori and said, “Yes, I am your niece. Believe me, I was forced to help the Wu’s. They are my family, and they are furious with me for connecting them to Josh.. Stay here. Let me see what is going on.”

  She would look for Nate to help them. He was young and dumb, and he never realized that they were being followed on their way from the airport, most likely by the law. If she could get Lori out alive, maybe the law would go easy on her and protect her from the Wus, who blamed her for their loss of millions. What a mess this had turned into. She had Josh thinking she would run away with him after he cleaned out his European accounts, while at the same time she was being forced to double cross him and lead Wu’s men to Josh’s hidden money. Once Lori Brill entered the picture, things really changed. But even so, that was just a hiccup in the plans. Well, to Wu, it was a hell of a lot more than a hiccup. But still, Wu’s men were supposed to go through Lori’s stuff, no big deal. What in hell went wrong?

  Lori sat in the room, in shock. Things were moving like a scripted horror movie. What was Suzi doing here? Lori had heard Tony and Roland talking about their Chinese bosses, and Suzi’s mother was Chinese. Lori shook her head in disbelief as flashes of the past went by in her mind. Almost forty years ago, her brother-in-law had divorced his wife of twenty-odd years to marry a very young Chinese prostitute. Suzi was the child of the young prostitute and her brother-in-law, Steve. She had not heard from nor seen the mother and daughter since Steve died years ago. How the hell did Suzi Brill get mixed up with Josh Wheeler? Maybe Suzi was thinking the same thing about Lori.

  “Suzi, I don’t have what you are looking for.”

  Suzi took a long hard look at the dehydrated, pitiful old woman in the soiled, torn dress. “I believe you, Lori. You wouldn’t have held onto it this long, even if you did. Wu”s men checked your home in Arizona and your granddaughter’s flat, before they kidnapped you.

  ***

  In a van a half-mile from the barn, Jordan Gould and Inspector Reginald Tuttle kept the building under surveillance with telephoto lenses and up-to-date microphone devices, while a few miles back, two officers in another car waited for instructions.

  At around seven o’clock that night, a big black car pulled out of the driveway. The driver was male, possibly Asian, with dark hair. “Follow him and pick him up about a mile from the house” were the orders Inspector Sanders received, so he and his partner, Constable Ferris, took off.

  At first, Tony was oblivious to the car following him. Normally, he would have looked around cautiously before pulling out, but he was angry about being first ordered around by Roland, and then by a girl, a tiny Asian girl with a mouth that needed slapping. When he heard the sound of a car behind him, he looked over his shoulder and saw an unmarked police car. Instead of slowing down, he sped up, and the chase began around the winding narrow roads of the English countryside. By the time he reached the narrow wooden bridge, his car was moving over ninety miles per hour.

  Tires skidded on the wet surface of the bridge, and the black Renault broke right through the wooden railings and plunged at least fifty feet down into the river. The car sunk quickly in the fifteen-foot deep end of the water. Tony, not wearing his seat belt, was propelled headfirst into the windshield upon impact, became unconscious, and drowned quickly. When the Scotland Yard divers arrived later, they pulled out of the black car a dead 5’10”, 180-pound male with black hair. When the information on his driver’s license was entered in the police car computer, he was identified as Anthony Hundai, small-time criminal, arrested for possession of drugs twice and once for a DUI. He had a dual citizenship, English and Chinese. The car had been reported stolen from a Heathrow long-term parking lot only four days ago. It belonged to a dentist who couldn’t find it after returning from a trip.

  Jordan answered the phone and listened to Constable Sander's report. "Do you know if he was on a mobile before the car went over the bridge?” he asked.

  Jordan wanted to wait for an opportune time to have his men enter the warehouse, but now he couldn’t be sure that the Hundai fellow hadn’t alerted the others before his car went over the bridge. He knew his primary job was to get Mrs. Brill out alive, for the press and for Cate, thou
gh he was from the school that would concentrate on capturing the murderers first. He asked Holmes for permission to go in. Jordan was going over the evidence in his mind. This really had turned into a mess. The FBI had been trailing Wheeler in anticipation that he would lead them to his hidden money. Lori Brill really messed things up. He guessed Wheeler might have known the FBI and Wu’s people were following him, so he used Lori to distract everyone. Now that Suzi was here, he could guess the Chinese hired the kidnappers. How would they prosecute the Chinese, and why would they kill Wheeler before getting the money? There were still a lot of loose ends.

  Better to capture the other kidnappers alive to get some answers, Jordan thought, but not at the expense of the Brill woman’s life. He had a very difficult decision to make.

  Chapter 17

  Pounding footsteps echoing off the cold cement made Suzi think Tony had returned with the food. She left Lori alone in the office to look for the restroom.

  “I’ll be right back, Lori. Tony should be here any moment with some food. I think I heard him come in.” She closed the door and made her way out of the room, then turned when she heard a voice behind her.

  “Looking for someone?” Roland sneered. Suzi felt the hairs rise on her body at his sudden appearance. He quickly grabbed her around the neck and dragged her through the hallways and into the main floor of the warehouse. As soon as he loosened his grip, she spun around and kicked him under the chin. He dropped his hold long enough for her to take off.

  Roland made a quick recovery. He ran after her across the warehouse floor, his eyes wild, his breath deep, running like a tiger after his prey. No woman was going to get the best of him, especially not this tiny little shit. He laughed gleefully, knowing the hunt was on. Finally, something fun to do!

  Though Suzi was skilled in martial arts, Roland had a weapon and was so much larger. Her only defense against a monster like him was to run, and she did. He caught her by grabbing her long silky black hair. She screamed as he pulled her towards him.

  “Gotchya!”