Scottsdale Sizzle: a romantic light-hearted murder mystery (Laura Black Mysteries Book 3)

by B A Trimmer

  Border patrol?

  “Police.”

  “OK, police. Is there an intruder in your home?”

  “No.”

  “Thanks, have you been robbed?”

  “No”

  “OK, are you reporting an illegal alien?”

  “No.”

  “Thanks, have you been kidnapped?”

  “Yes!”

  “OK, you’ve been kidnapped. I’ll call the police.”

  “Thank you!”

  “I’m sorry you’ve been kidnapped. Would you like to listen to some soothing music while I call the police? Bruno Mars has a new album out and I can download it for only $7.99”

  “Just call the fricking police!”

  ~~~~

  I finally got through to the police and told them what had happened. They said they’d send help right away. From the GPS in the phone, they said I was parked on Hayden just north of Indian School.

  ~~~~

  The next ten minutes were some of the longest in my life. My legs and arms were cramping from being pinned in the same position for so long. The hot air burned my throat and lungs with each breath. My eyes had stopped stinging but that was only because I had become so dehydrated, I had stopped sweating. My core temperature was rapidly rising. Within a few minutes, I’d pass out again, this time with heatstroke.

  As I waited for rescue, I thought about Reno and how he would scold me about this. Even after everything that had happened to me in the last two hours, the thought of that made me smile.

  The minutes went on and I fought to stay awake. It was a battle I was slowly losing. I started thinking about laying in a cool swimming pool. The pain was gone and I was floating. It was a wonderful and peaceful feeling. I decided floating was nice. I told myself I would float for a while and then everything would be OK.

  ~~~~

  I was startled awake by the loud banging sound of something hard hitting the top of my car. Trapped in the trunk, it sounded like fireworks were going off next to my head.

  “Hey Laura, are you locked in your trunk?”

  The voice sounded familiar but it took me a few seconds to put the voice with a name.

  “Chugger? Is that you?” I noticed my words were coming out weakly with only a touch of panic. “Yeah, I’m stuck in here. Get me out. Hit the trunk release on the dash.”

  “Your car’s locked. I’d need to break a window. Isn’t there something in there you can pull to open the trunk?”

  “I can’t get to it,” I noticed the panic sound in my voice had risen a notch. “My hands are cuffed behind my back. It’s hot and I can’t breathe. The bullet hole isn’t letting in a lot of air.”

  “OK, hold on,” I heard him say.

  Less than a minute later, I heard the sound of metal on metal and I felt my car rock. With a loud metallic popping noise, my trunk lid opened. I felt the rush of cool air and my eyes felt the sting of the bright sunshine. Gradually, as I got used to the brightness, I saw Chugger, standing there with a crowbar in his hands.

  “Sorry about your trunk,” he said as he pulled me out. “You’ll probably need to replace the latch. I’ve got an old bungee cord in the cruiser you can have. It’ll work to keep your trunk lid shut until you get it fixed.”

  One more thing wrong with my car.

  I leaned against the side of my rear fender on wobbly legs. I looked back into my tiny prison and saw my purse had indeed been thrown in back of the trunk.

  “The keys to the handcuffs are in my purse.”

  Chugger reached in, pulled my bag out, and then used the key to unlock my handcuffs.

  I noticed Chugger’s partner, Arnie Hernandez, was also standing next to my car. He was using his walkie-talkie to call into the station. I heard him say they had freed me from the trunk and I appeared not to need EMS. Chugger then helped me into the back seat of his patrol car. Arnie handed me a fresh bottle of water, which I downed in several large gulps.

  After about five minutes of sitting in the back of the air-conditioned patrol car and sipping on another bottle of water, I was again able to think clearly and my voice had started to come back. Unfortunately, the headache was still there and a large bump had formed where the guy had hit me with his pistol.

  “Thanks for getting me out of there,” I croaked out. “I think I’d passed out again.”

  “I’m glad you were able to call us,” Chugger said. “Who did this to you? In my mind, putting someone in a trunk on a hot day like this is attempted homicide.”

  “I’m not sure. I’ve never met him before. But it somehow ties in with an assignment I’m working on.”

  “Arnie found your keys. Somebody had tossed them in the ditch next to your car. I’d suggest pressing charges this time. Give the okay and I’ll call it in.”

  “No, I’m out of the trunk and I’m alright. I don’t want this to become official. As a favor to me, please don’t report it as an attempted homicide. It’ll mess up any chance I have with Reno. He’s been touchy about my job lately and hearing about this would probably finish it.”

  “Hey, I’ve known you since the first grade at Navajo Elementary. I’d hate to see anyone get a second chance at killing you. I know how you feel about pressing charges but I worry that someday your luck will run out. But sure, if it’s important we can leave that part out of the report.”

  “Thanks Chugger. Is there a way not to mention my name in the report? Finding out I was locked in my trunk will still be enough for Reno to give me another lecture.”

  “Sorry, you already called 911, plus we called the license plate in first thing. You’re a public record. Not much we can do about that now.

  Great.

  ~~~~

  Chugger and Arny took off. I sat in my car for a few minutes and waited for the world to stop spinning. I keep a bottle of Advils in the car and I downed four of them along with another bottle of water. After about fifteen minutes, I felt somewhat better and I drove over to the office.

  The bungee cord Chugger had given me worked to keep the trunk closed. Unfortunately, every time I hit a bump, I heard a loud thump as the lid bounced up and down. Each time it thumped, I felt a fresh bolt of pain in my head.

  ~~~~

  I parked behind the office and saw the only car there was Sophie’s yellow Volkswagen. I went in the back security door and walked up to the front offices. Sophie was working away at her computer and didn’t see me until I was almost on top of her. She then looked up with a start.

  “Jeeze, I thought you were Lenny. Don’t sneak up on my like that.” She then looked closer at me. “Damn, you look terrible.”

  “I’m having another shitty day.”

  Sophie looked me over from top to bottom.

  “Well, no knife wounds. No gunshot wounds either. But your hair’s funky and your clothes are a mess. Is that dirt or grease all over your top? Either way, it’s probably ruined. You don’t smell bad, so you didn’t get peed on by a dog again. You stunk real bad the last time that happened.”

  “Hey, that was two years ago. How long are you going to remind me about that?”

  “Like forever, it was hilarious. Let’s see, your makeup’s gone. I’m thinking kidnapped.”

  “They took Les and I got tossed in the trunk of my car.”

  “I hate to tell you,” Sophie said, “but whenever you take on someone as a client, they tend to get kidnapped. Remember Alex? Oh, there was Jackie too. Maybe you’re bad luck or something?”

  “It’s not funny. A guy pistol-whipped me and my head is killing me. Would you take a look and see how bad it is?”

  I turned so Sophie could examine the lump. She stood and felt around on my head where the pistol had struck me. I winced every time she touched the lump.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “Well, I always took you for the kind of person who matched their panties and their shirt. But your shirt is yellow and your panties are blue.”

  “Why are you looking at my panties?”

  �
�It’s not like I’m trying to look. You have a hole the size of paperback book in the back of your pants. Half your ass is hanging out.”

  “What about my head?”

  “Well, the good news is they didn’t break the skin this time. No blood anywhere. The bad news is you have a lump the size of a walnut. Maybe this time you should have it looked at, by a real doctor?”

  “No, it’s OK. It’ll go down in a day or two. If I go to the hospital, they’ll poke at it, take an x-ray, and tell me I need an MRI. After all of that, they’ll tell me the lump will go down in a day or two and then send me a bill for fourteen hundred dollars. Besides, that would take all night and I’m supposed to go out with Reno in a couple of hours.”

  “What about the guy that did this to you? Are the police getting involved or did you forget to press charges again?”

  “You know having the police snoop around will only drive everyone underground. The guy wasn’t after me personally. He had no clue who I was. I was only someone who was in his way. Besides, Reno would flip if he found out what happened.”

  “You know, it’s a good thing you always pass out at the slightest tap to your skull. Otherwise, the guy would have needed to beat you senseless and you’d be a mess. Although I’ve been thinking we should probably start a concussion-protocol on you whenever you take another blow to your head, like they do in the NFL.”

  “Shut up. Where’s Lenny? I need to tell him about this.”

  “He’s down at the Phoenix district station sniffing around to see what he can find out about the murder. He should be back soon.”

  “When’s Gina coming back? I could use her advice too.”

  “She’s up in Sedona chasing down a lead in one of her cheating spouse cases. There was a fresh credit card hit from a hotel up there.”

  “It figures. This assignment is really getting weird. What have you been able to find out about Lester and Elizabeth?”

  “Nothing on Elizabeth, she seems to be just as she appears. She has a mid-level management job at a respectable Chicago marketing firm. She has a nice car and a nice house. Both are paid for. One unusual thing is she has three brokerage accounts with about a hundred thousand in each. She opened these up not too long after her dad died, about fifteen years ago. The brokerage accounts each started out at about a million dollars, but they all fell rapidly to where they are now.”

  “Les and Elizabeth talked a little bit about their dad’s inherence. Apparently, Les did something with that and it pissed off Elizabeth. Do you know why they lost so much?”

  “Not yet, I’m still looking.”

  “What about Les?”

  “Les opened up three brokerage accounts at about the same time as his sister. His also started out at about a million dollars per account, but they all gradually went down and have been zeroed out for several years.”

  “As if he gradually pissed it all away?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “What else did you find out about him?”

  “His apartment and car are leased by a financial group out of Chicago. The normal software doesn’t know anything about the group. The magic software says the group is a front for an organized crime outfit based in south Chicago. Not nice people.”

  “Ok, that explains some things,” I said.

  “You’re thinking the Chicago gangsters are down here? So, why exactly are Chicago gangsters in Arizona? That might piss off Tough Tony.”

  “Les owes them money plus they know about the jewelry. I’m assuming the jerk who shoved me in my trunk was one of these Chicago guys. What were you able to find out about Les from last night? Was there a cab from the Tropical Paradise to his grandfather’s house?”

  “I’ve been making some calls. Not only did Les take a cab from the Tropical Paradise to the house on Camelback at about six-thirty, he had the cabbie sit there and wait for over half an hour. Then he took the same cab back to the hotel at about seven-thirty.”

  “Ok, so Les was at the house and had just gotten back to the hotel. He would have barely had time to take a quick shower before I showed up.”

  I got the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that happens whenever a client of ours is shown to be involved with a serious crime.

  “Damn,” I said. “So, it’s possible Les was involved with the murder.”

  “Well, that will make Lenny happy. You know how much he loves rich clients who kill someone.”

  “Unfortunately, I also found out Les is flat broke. Worse, he owes a lot of money to the gangsters.”

  “But what about buying a hotel in Vail?” Sophie asked.

  “He made that up. He didn’t want us to know how badly he needed the money.”

  “Ouch. That’s going to piss Lenny off something fierce. Poor clients can’t pay their fee. No fee means no Lenny and that means no us.”

  “I know. But there’s still twenty or thirty million dollars in jewelry floating around somewhere. Maybe we can keep Lenny focused on that.”

  ~~~~

  I needed to tell Lenny what was going on but I couldn’t until he came back. I’ve learned when he’s outside the office he doesn’t like to talk on his cell phone, unless it’s something important. Telling Lenny the new client couldn’t pay his fee didn’t strike me as something I wanted to tell him over the phone.

  I went back to my cubicle and turned on my computer. Since I had some free time, I decided to go through the surveillance tapes from George Anson’s house. I had hidden the cameras on Monday so they had been transmitting pictures for almost three full days. The office computers now had a file that had been downloading from each of the five video cameras I had placed in the various bedrooms.

  I began to go through the videos, starting with the two guest bedrooms. I knew these would be the easiest since George and his mistress seemed to prefer the Master bedroom. By hitting the fast forward button, I was quickly able to scan the events of the last seventy-two hours.

  In less than fifteen minutes I was able to determine that neither of the videos from the guest bedrooms had any activity relevant to the assignment during the previous three days. Since neither file was pertinent to the assignment, I erased the videos and made a notation of the time and date when I had erased each one. This was per terms of the contract the client had signed. It wasn’t in anyone’s interest to have unrelated sex tapes of the client in our possession.

  I then went to the files with the videos from the master bedroom. I knew I would need to pay closer attention to these to make out who was actually in the room and what they were doing.

  For the first two hours after I had left on Monday, no one entered the room. Then there was a blur of activity. I stopped the fast forward and played the video at normal speed. I could see that Debbie had come home and was going between the bedroom and the bathroom, changing her shoes, fixing her hair, and redoing her makeup. She left the room and there was no further activity until about nine that night.

  Debbie and George entered the room at the same time and there were the usual activities of a couple getting ready for bed. I was slightly relieved when I saw both Debbie and George changed their clothes in the bathroom and I didn’t have to watch. I was further relieved when I saw there wouldn’t be any sex.

  At about ten-thirty, Debbie turned off the TV and the room was dark for the rest of the night. I watched them wake up on Tuesday morning at about six-thirty.

  Tuesday morning showed nothing but the normal activities of Debbie and George getting up and getting ready for work. They both got dressed and were both out of the bedroom by seven forty-five. The room was quiet until Debbie briefly came in around five to change and freshen her makeup. No one entered the bedroom again until both George and Debbie entered together sometime around eight on Tuesday evening. They each went in and out of the bedroom several times before settling down at about ten. Fortunately, there was still no sex and they both liked to sleep in pajamas. The TV went dark about ten-thirty.

  I fast-forwarded the tape
through the night and past the normal activities of George and Debbie getting dressed for the day. I was eager to see what went on in the master bedroom yesterday afternoon. My fingers were crossed that George would come back with his mistress and have a nice long romp. I was curious who she was, of course, but I was more eager to be done with the assignment. Unfortunately, there was no activity in the room until Debbie came back from her charity events at about four-thirty.

  The video from the last night showed that Debbie and George seemed to have a nightly routine of getting dressed in the bathroom, crawling into bed, then watching TV until Debbie turned it off at ten-thirty. I was again relieved they didn’t have sex. Of course, Debbie knew there were cameras in the room and she wouldn’t want to be recorded. Unfortunately, George didn’t have a clue and if he were persistent, Debbie would probably have to go along with it.

  Once again, I crossed my fingers as I then watched the video of the master bedroom from earlier in the day today. Unfortunately, no one came into the room after Debbie and George had left at about eight this morning.

  Come on George, have sex with the woman one more time so I can finish this.

  I erased the videos from the cameras in the master bedroom and made the proper notations in my logbook. I then turned off my computer and went back up to the front offices. Sophie was still working steadily away on her paperwork. She looked up as I walked closer. She gave me the once over and she got a look of concern.

  “You still look like shit. Your head still hurting?”

  “Actually, that’s starting to feel better. I’m feeling a little glum because I was reviewing the video files from the George and Debbie Anson assignment. The one where the husband likes to cheat in the same bed he sleeps in every night with his wife.”

  “That’s just wrong. I can see sleeping with someone else and all, but not in the same bed. Debbie may suspect but if she actually finds out for sure, it will totally gross her out. She’ll need to go out and buy a new bed. ”

  “Well, I can’t tell her without proof that’ll stand up in court. I’ve done that before and all it does is upset the client.”

  We heard the faint sound of the rear door opening. A minute later, Lenny came into the front offices. He was swinging his briefcase and seemed to be in a good mood. He went to his office door and turned to me. He used his index finger to give me a come here gesture, then disappeared into his office. Almost immediately, the clink of ice cubes into his glass rang out, the Jim Beam couldn’t be far behind.