I Spy - Mark Kane Mysteries - Book Six: A Private Investigator Crime Series of Murder, Mystery, Suspense & Thriller Stories - A Murder Mystery & Suspense Thriller

by John Hemmings

  “Let me look inside the briefcase,” Jimmy said. I lifted it on to the table and flipped the locks open. He looked at the contents carefully.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  We walked out the restaurant and across the road to a dark blue Audi sedan. Jimmy climbed into the drivers’ seat and I sat at the back. Joey slid in next to me. We left the city and headed north. There was plenty of traffic, but I’d allowed a couple of hours for the journey. It was almost six when we neared Fitchburg and Joey took out a blindfold.

  “You gotta wear a cloth from here,” he said. “No hard feelings, eh?”

  Twenty minutes later we turned into Costa’s driveway, and the car lurched a bit as we approached the house. We went inside and Jimmy unfastened the blindfold. I looked at my watch. It was six fifteen.

  They led me to the study which was on the right-hand side of the front door. Al Costa was seated behind the glass-top wooden desk. He smiled.

  “You see,” he said. “There’s no need for any unpleasantness. We’re all businessmen, right Mr. Kane?”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Please, sit down and make yourself comfortable. Jimmy, get Mr. Kane a drink. A scotch?”

  “Thanks, that’ll be fine.”

  “Let me tell you Mr. Kane, you made a wise decision coming here,” he said. “Did you check the briefcase Jimmy?”

  “Sure, the stuff’s all there,” he said.

  Al Costa made a gesture with his hand. “Bring it here, Jimmy,” he said.

  “He can’t. It’s cuffed to my wrist,” I said, holding up my arm so he could see. I glanced at my wristwatch. “I’ll give it to you myself,” I said, “just as soon as you give me an assurance that you’ll let the matter rest there.”

  Al Costa laughed mirthlessly. “You hear that boys? He wants an assurance.”

  Jimmy and Joey laughed in unison.

  “Mr. Kane, I’m afraid you’re really not in a position to make demands.”

  “You gave me your word, or your son said you agreed that if I returned the stuff you wouldn’t take the matter any further.”

  Costa laughed again. “I said I was a businessman, Mr. Kane, not a gentleman.”

  “Don’t you think there’s been enough violence?” I said.

  “In my line of business Mr. Kane I can’t afford to let people steal from me and get away with it. I’d, how shall I put it? Lose respect.”

  I glanced at my watch. “You didn’t have to kill her,” I said.

  “Trish O’Connor? She was a junkie. You think I’m going to let a junkie make a fool of me?”

  “She was tortured.”

  “Yes, well, perhaps my boys got a bit carried away,” he said.

  “She wouldn’t talk,” Jimmy said.

  “I’ll say one thing for her, she was a tough bitch.” Joey said. “She kept her mouth shut. I seen a lot of guys couldn’t take what we did to her.”

  “So it’s no deal?” I said.

  “Give me the case, Mr. Kane. And then perhaps my sons can persuade you to tell us where you got it.”

  I sighed. “Okay, Mr. Costa, I didn’t get to be this old by being a hero,” I said, taking out the key and unfastening the cuff.

  I walked over to his desk, put the case on the desk in front of him and then backed away from the desk. He smiled and made a move to open the briefcase.

  And then all hell was let loose.

  A series of explosions in the front yard rattled the windows and almost simultaneously the window behind Costa shattered and the glass on top of the desk shattered too.

  “Jesus,” Costa said. His sons were frozen on the other side of the room. “Stay where you are, all of you,” I said.

  Al Costa made a move to get out of his chair. A rifle shot rang out and a bullet slammed into the wooden desktop a few inches from him.

  “I said to stay where you are. Let me show you something,” I said. I walked over to a shelf beside the desk and picked up a narrow vase. It was no more than three inches wide. I placed it on the desk beside Al Costa, just inches away from him. As I moved back a third shot shattered the vase.

  “The next one goes through the back of your head,” I said. “If you think that was a lucky shot why not try to move again?”

  Costa’s face was a paroxysm of rage. “You…will…pay…for…this,” he whispered.

  “I’ll take my chances. Right now I’m going home. If anyone moves in the next five minutes this room will be torn apart,” I said. “They’ll be scraping pieces of all of you off the walls. I’d say arrivederci, but I don’t think I’ll be seeing any of you again.”

  I turned and walked out of the study, into the hallway and out through the front door. I heard no sound as I walked up the driveway. At the end of the driveway a Land Rover drew up. I climbed in. “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

  As we drove down Elm Ridge a fleet of half a dozen police cars raced by us in the opposite direction, sirens whining, lights blazing.

  Duncan looked at me and smiled. “There must have been some kind of disturbance,” he said.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Lucy’s Case

  It was almost nine when we arrived home and Duncan pulled into my driveway. I’d left my car downtown; I’d have to collect it tomorrow. I’d telephoned Lucy on the way home and she had a snack waiting for us. Duncan had been wearing camouflage and needed to go and clean himself up, so I walked down to Lucy’s alone.

  “So it all went off without a hitch?” she said.

  “Like Duncan said, it was a blast.”

  “I wish I’d been there to see it,” she said.

  “I’ll get the news from Will in the morning. He’s the one who set it all up,” I said. “Short notice, too.”

  “You think there’ll be enough to put them all away for good?”

  “More than enough,” I said. “In due course.”

  “What does that mean?” Lucy said.

  I lowered myself into Lucy’s recliner and tossed my cell phone down on the table.

  “I got enough to amount to a confession to Trish’s murder from all of them,” I said. “Although there are parts of the recording I’ll want to discard. I wouldn’t like the police to think that I had anything to do with the drugs.”

  “So you think Paddy will be safe now?”

  “He’ll be okay. But I’m going to need to have a heart-to-heart with him. I think it would be wrong to keep the police in the dark about his role; and anyway his evidence will be needed to complete the picture. I’m going to talk to Martin Scholes in the morning.” Martin Scholes was an attorney.

  “I think, given the circumstances, he can probably cut a deal − an immunity from prosecution for his theft of the briefcase in return for his cooperation in the investigation. He can fill in the gaps, see? He can link everything neatly together.”

  “Well I’m glad that’s all over,” Lucy said. “Now we can concentrate on my investigation.”

  “Yours?” I said.

  “Yes, the Hughes case.”

  “How come that’s your investigation? Because you saw the client first? You only made her a cup of coffee.”

  “Because I was the one who found out about the doppelganger,” she said.

  “Fair enough,” I said. “Any more news?”

  “Not much. Malone called to say that George doesn’t have a record, and their inquiries with the pawnshops haven’t turned anything up. But of course it’s only a matter of time before they find him.”

  “And then the real investigation will start; trying to make sense of everything.”

  Duncan had arrived. “Well let’s not worry about that for the moment,” she said. “Let’s eat.”

  “I laid all the charges in the yard last night,” Duncan said. “Or rather in the early hours of this morning. Then I drove back there this afternoon and at dusk I took up a position in one of the elm trees. We decided it would be b
est in the evening. Because the house is isolated it seems that they weren’t in the habit of closing the drapes. With the illumination from the lights inside the study I had a perfect target. Kane reckoned he’d need about ten minutes after entering the house to set them up, and we decided that as soon as the briefcase was put on the desk I’d let the fireworks off and drill a hole in the desk. Then I called the cops. They were already standing by.”

  “Sounds like the nightmare on Elm Ridge,” Lucy said. “You know, like the movie – Nightmare on Elm Street.”

  Duncan and I looked at each other.

  “Yes, Lucy,” I said. “We get it.”

  “But what if they hadn’t taken you into the study? What if they’d conducted the meeting somewhere else?”

  “Well we had a plan B. We’re not stupid,” I said, in my best mimicry of little Claudia’s voice.

  Lucy laughed, nearly choked on her sandwich and had to rush to the kitchen for a glass of water.

  *

  “Can’t you stay a bit longer?” Lucy said to Duncan at breakfast.

  “Not this time; but we’ll get together again soon.”

  “You remember that case you got for us in January?” Lucy said. “Don Maddox.”

  “Of course.”

  “That was my first case,” she said. “Kane and I are a real team now, right?” she said, kicking me on the ankle under the table.

  “Indubitably,” I said.

  “Where the hell does he get all those ridiculous words from, Duncan? Why can’t he talk like the rest of us?”

  “He can if he wants, Lucy; he enjoys joshing you − and he likes to show off. He was educated in England y’know,” he said, in a parody of a refined English toff.

  “Hah,” she said, tossing her head.

  “He only does it to annoy, because he knows it teases,” I said. “That’s a quote, by the way.”

  “Alice in Wonderland,” Lucy said. “I know.”

  “The movie or the book?” I said.

  “Time for me to go,” Duncan said, smiling.

  We waved him goodbye as he disappeared down the street and we went back inside.

  “I need to report back to my client,” I said.

  “What will you tell him?”

  “The truth; that I haven’t uncovered any evidence to suggest that his son’s death was other than a tragic accident.”

  “Do you really believe that to be true?”

  “I really don’t know. There’s no evidence to contradict what Paddy told me. I think we just have to leave it there.”

  “But suppose he really did push Freddy?”

  “I don’t believe he would have done that intentionally. Maybe, as he says, he didn’t do it at all. But whatever he did he’s suffered for it, there’s no doubt about that. And whatever you may say about Trish she deserves credit for not giving him up. And she didn’t give him up – I know that from the Costa brothers. So at the end she did something brave and selfless. And the knowledge that she did that for him is something he’s going to have to live with for the rest of his life.”

  Lucy looked at me and smiled. “You know what Kane?” she said, “You’re okay.”

  I leaned over and kissed her. “Now let’s not get carried away,” I said.

  Nothing much happened for the rest of the day. Angela called to see if we’d had any luck tracing George. Lucy told her that we’d let her know as soon as we heard something ourselves.

  I drove over to see Mike Kingsley together with his children, and even Audrey put in an appearance. I didn’t tell them everything. I left most of it out. It had been a tawdry, squalid affair and I wanted to spare them that. I told them what they needed to know.

  “It seems it was just a tragic and unfortunate accident,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “In a way it’s a relief to hear that,” Mike said. “It means we can now put it behind us and move on with our lives.”

  I placed Paddy in the capable hands of Martin Scholes. I dropped in to see Will Bryan. The police had discovered more cocaine in Costa’s home. All three of the Costas had been taken into custody. It wasn’t Will’s jurisdiction, but he’d keep me informed. Al Costa was keeping his mouth shut so far, but they were putting together a watertight case against him. Joey and Jimmy were talking but denying everything. I told him about the tape. He referred me to the DA’s office. I went there and made a lengthy statement. I told them I’d gone to investigate the death of Trish O’Connor with a view to obtaining evidence of their involvement. I gave them the tape. I didn’t tell them that I’d found Trish’s body and they didn’t ask me how I knew about that; but I did tell them about Paddy O’Connor and that Scholes would be contacting them.

  The next day I treated Benny, Len and Blue to a steak lunch and gave Benny a grand. He thought he’d won the lottery.

  It was early afternoon by the time I got home, and I met a very excited Lucy. George had been picked up and they were bringing him in for questioning.

  “Malone says he owes us an apology,” I said. George was wearing the Blancpain watch. At least, they assume it’s Angela’s watch, but they need her to identify it. Call Angela and ask her to come to the office.”

  *

  “They need you to confirm that the watch George was wearing is the one you gave Bob,” I told Angela. “Obviously that’s something you can do easily because you have the serial number and all the insurance details.”

  “Thank you both so much,” she said.

  “Well we haven’t really done much,” Lucy said.

  “But you never doubted me. I’m grateful for that.”

  “The case is far from over,” I said. “There are a lot of questions to be answered.”

  “I’m a bit nervous. Could you come with me?” she said. “Would you mind?”

  “Sure,” I said. “If that’s what you’d like.” I called Malone and he asked if we could go right over there. They didn’t want to start the interview until they were sure about the watch.

  We drove over there, the three of us, and went up to Malone’s office. Angela gave him the paperwork for the watch. There was a photograph, but most importantly the insurance certificate with the serial number of the watch recorded on it.

  “Where did they find him?” Angela asked.

  “In Syracuse,” Malone said.

  “Can I see him?” Angela asked.

  “Sure we’re waiting to interview him.” He led us through some swing doors and down a corridor. There was a room with a one-way window and we could see a subdued and nervous-looking man sitting on the opposite side of the room.

  As Angela looked through the window, she gasped. “Bob?” she said; then her legs buckled and before I could get hold of her she fell to the floor.

  Chapter Twenty

  Feeling Down

  “It must have been a terrible shock for her,” Lucy said. “It’s just so sad that after all her concern to exonerate Bob all she achieved in the end was to prove the opposite.”

  After we took Angela home we’d returned to Malone’s office. Following Angela’s dramatic identification of Bob Hughes, he had told the interviewing officer the whole story. There would be a further interview later, but Malone related to us the gist of what he’d told them.

  “He says that George had incurred serious gambling debts and was having the squeeze put on him,” Malone said. “He’d never lost touch with his brother despite the estrangement between George and his mother. He said there’s a bond between twins that nobody else would understand. I guess that’s especially true with identical twins. The amount George said he owed was too much for Bob to find, but George told him that he could pay it off in instalments and begged him to help. But the money he required kept increasing and Bob started to take money from his company.

  “At first he thought he could pay it back, but it was too much. In the end he told George that he just couldn’t help any more. That day George came to the house. He told
Bob that if he couldn’t pay he’d tip the police off about Bob’s thefts from his employer. Bob begged him to talk to his creditors, to get them to back off. George had laughed at him. There never had been any creditors apparently – it was all a scam from start to finish.

  “Bob said he couldn’t think of any way out. He was ruined. George had brought a bottle of Vodka with him – he was drinking heavily and eventually passed out. Bob says he sat there for a long time wondering what to do. He couldn’t think of a way out of the mess he’d gotten himself into. Even if George didn’t carry out his threat he knew the auditors were breathing down his neck. He got some sleeping pills from the kitchen, mixed them with the vodka and poured it down George’s throat. He dragged him into the garage, and strung him up. George didn’t jump, he said. Bob hoisted him up there and watched him die. Said it was like watching himself die. Then he went back into the house and waited for Cynthia to come home from work. He said he couldn’t bear the thought of her finding everything out. She came home in the middle of the afternoon and he struck her on the back of the head, then waited until it started to get dark, went out to George’s car and drove off. He had nowhere to go, so he drove to George’s place and stayed there.”

  “My God,” Lucy said. “If he hadn’t taken the watch he probably would have gotten away with it.”

  “I guess he wasn’t thinking that straight,” Malone said. “He told the interviewing officer that he never intended to assume George’s identity, but after the killings he said he needed to get away, to think – to buy himself some time.”

  “What will happen to him now?” Lucy asked.

  “I don’t know. It’s not my job to wonder about things like that,” Malone said.

  *

  “Seriously,” Lucy said, “did it ever occur to you for a moment that the man Claudia saw was Bob after all?”

  “No, it never crossed my mind,” I said. “It should have. I’m always telling you how important it is to keep an open mind. If something can’t be dismissed as an impossibility then it should be considered. I was remiss on this occasion; but I guess in the long run it didn’t really matter.”

  “Well the pathologist got it wrong too – she assumed that Cynthia died before Bob – I mean before the man in the garage.”