Paper Bullets

by Reed, Annie

  I took a deep breath and opened the laptop, and went back to work.

  CHAPTER 18

  I GOT THE FIRST GLIMMER that I might be suited to life as a private detective when I was college. I’d uncovered the identity of the thief who stole my wallet through a bit of deductive reasoning, some legwork, and a bit of luck, with an assist from Ryan and his friend, Jimmy Fisher.

  That had brought me to the attention of Ed Hastings, then a detective with the Reno Police Department. Ed told me I had a talent for detective work and if I ever thought I might like to pursue a career in law enforcement, to give him a call.

  Ryan and I got married in a church in downtown Reno during our senior year at the University of Nevada-Reno. After we graduated, Ryan enrolled in McGeorge School of Law, and we both moved to Sacramento. I lost track of Ed, although I never threw out his business card.

  The three years Ryan and I lived in Sacramento while he attended law school and I waited tables at a restaurant near the campus convinced us both that we had no desire to make California our home. We returned to Reno where Ryan went to work as a very junior associate at an insurance defense firm and I found myself in need of a real job to augment Ryan’s very junior salary.

  I remembered Ed, but when I called the number on his card, I discovered that he’d retired from the force soon after we met and started his own agency. Just as well. I’ve never been a fan of guns. Although Ed had mentioned that detectives handled white collar investigations, I knew I’d still have to become a cop, complete with gun, before I could work my way up to a detective’s shield.

  Ed’s experience as a cop enabled him to get a private investigator’s license, and he was also licensed to serve process for the courts and private attorneys. The only work experience I had was refilling customers’ drinks and making sure I didn’t trip with their food before I had a chance to serve it.

  To get my own investigator’s license, I needed to apprentice with a licensed private investigator. Ed agreed to take me on at a salary that made Ryan’s look majestic by comparison.

  What I didn’t earn in wages I more than made up for in experience.

  Ed turned out to be the best mentor I could have asked for. I learned more about the world from him than I did from all the classes I’d taken in college, but he was more than just a teacher.

  Ed pulled waiting room duty at the hospital when I gave birth to Samantha, and he nearly killed Ryan when he shoved a lit cigar in my then-husband’s unsuspecting mouth to celebrate our new arrival. He taught me the value of play-acting when trying to serve a witness who didn’t want to be found. He even knew when it was time to kick me out of the nest so I could start my own business.

  When Ed died of cancer after a long and happy life spent smoking the cigars he knew would eventually kill him, I felt like I’d lost my best friend.

  One of Ed’s favorite sayings had been “trust your instincts.” What my instincts were telling me now was that Lewis Richards was a dirty cop.

  Kyle hadn’t come right out and said that. In fact, all he’d said was that Richards was a hot head and he’d been told to clean up his act, the implication being that all the drugs Richards had taken while he was undercover finally got to him, and it was time to admit he was an addict and get some help.

  I wasn’t naive enough to think that just because a cop had a drug problem, he had to be dirty. Some highly-regarded attorneys I’d met when I’d been married to Ryan were battling substance abuse problems of their own.

  Litigators were Type A personalities for the most part who worked in a high-stress environment. Drug addiction wasn’t uncommon, even among judges. For most alcohol was the drug of choice. Not surprising in a town like Reno where the casinos and bars and liquor stores never seemed to close.

  For some, though, the drugs they abused—heroin and cocaine and designer drugs that changed street names as fast as they changed chemical compounds—were only available from dealers or junkies or people with wrong kind of connections. Professionals, if they wanted to stay professionals, at least managed to stay away from meth.

  I wondered if Richards had, since when Kyle had busted him, he’d described Richards as a skinny little prick. The few meth heads I’d had the unfortunate pleasure of running into during my process serving career had all been skinny as a rail with bad teeth, bad complexions, and bad attitudes.

  No, it wasn’t the drugs that made me think Richards was dirty. It was the way he’d smiled at me when he took my picture outside Melody’s gym. Like he’d just learned my worst secret and couldn’t wait to use it against me.

  After I cleared my browser’s history of the research I’d done on Melody—I didn’t really need to save anything that I’d learned on her Facebook page—I ran a background check on Lewis Richards.

  I wasn’t surprised to find very little information.

  At first glance, his current address looked like an apartment building, but I recognized the address as a mail drop where the apartment numbers were really post office boxes. He had no current credit history. The few credit cards he’d had at one time had all been closed, and the loan for the white SUV had been paid off early. He had no bank accounts in his name, had never filed for bankruptcy, and the only court history was a fifteen year old divorce case that looked like it had breezed through the courts without a hitch.

  According to the court docket, his ex-wife’s name was Gloria and she hadn’t been represented by an attorney during the divorce.

  On a whim, I ran a search on Gloria Richards. It apparently wasn’t an uncommon name, and I came up pages and pages of hits for women that might have been Richards’ ex. Without further information, I couldn’t be sure, and I wasn’t going to get the kind of information I needed from Richards’ background check. His wife’s name hadn’t been on any of the few credit accounts he’d had when he’d been married.

  I scrolled through the first few pages to see if any references to Gloria Richards caught my eye. I quit scrolling when I hit a link for a news story out of Boca Raton, Florida.

  Boca Raton. That was where Justin Sewell came from.

  The coincidence was too weird not to look. I clicked on the link, but instead of a webpage, I got a page not found error message. Undeterred, I checked to see if I could find a cached version of the webpage the link pointed to.

  I got lucky. The image links were broken but the text of the article was still there.

  Antonio “Gordo” Gordino Makes Waves

  Long-time Boca Raton resident Antonio “Gordo” Gordino returned home Friday afternoon following an extended stay up north courtesy of the federal government.

  As previously reported, Mr. Gordino had been held without bail awaiting trial on charges of racketeering, money laundering, and tax evasion.

  When all charges were abruptly dropped, Mr. Gordino was released from custody Thursday morning. Federal prosecutors declined to comment when asked why the charges were dismissed.

  Asked the same question, Mr. Gordino simply replied that it was good to be home.

  Employees at the Boca Bay Breakers might not be so happy to have the boss back in town. Inside sources tell this reporter that Mr. Gordino, who purchased a controlling interest in the resort hotel two years ago, made a clean sweep of all upper management personnel upon his return.

  “We’re moving ahead in a bold new direction in keeping with the new century,” said the Breakers’ Public Relations manager Gloria Richards.

  While Ms. Richards did not confirm the ouster of CEO Phillip Conroy and CFO Walden Spears, she stated that the Breakers would be expanding, adding attractions and amenities that would not only increase the number of tourists expected to visit the resort but benefit residents of the community as well.

  “We’re very excited,” she said.

  The expansion of the Breakers might draw sharp opposition from the city council...

  The rest of the article dealt with local politics and the city’s strict development code, which regulated the size of c
ommercial buildings within the city limits. While fascinating reading, it was a rabbit hole I didn’t want to go down.

  The original article was published in a local paper in May of 2001. Could that Gloria Richards have been Lewis Richards’ ex-wife?

  I searched combining Richards and Gordino, but all I got were a few more hits to cached pages detailing the progress of the resort’s expansion.

  A resort owned by a mobster.

  I spent a little time searching for information on Antonio Gordino. I wanted to know if he had any ties to Nevada, specifically to northern Nevada.

  From what I found, he appeared to be strictly an east coast wise guy. He was still alive and kicking back in Boca Raton. No other federal cases had been brought against him, and it looked like even the tax evasion charge had gone away.

  He had two daughters by two different wives, and a couple of grandkids. Neither the daughters nor the wives were named Gloria. He operated the Breakers under a couple of different holding companies owned by other holding companies owned by trusts and LLCs.

  The paper trail wasn’t just a rabbit hole, it was a maze, and I had to draw a diagram to keep it all straight. Eventually the paper trail pointed back to Gordino. Complex and convoluted, yes, but if the feds hadn’t been able to make a case against him stick, it was probably all legal.

  I was about to close out the browser windows I had open when something made me go back to the organizational documents for one of the LLCs.

  The members of the LLCs were more LLCs except for one—Widows and Orphans of Southern Florida Irrevocable Trust Dated June 26, 1982.

  I’d seen the name of that trust before.

  I opened up the background check I’d run on Justin Sewell. In his LinkedIn Profile, he’d listed various charitable organizations for whom he’d done volunteer work in the past, some dating as far back as when he still lived in Florida. Locally he’d volunteered at the Food Bank and Habitat for Humanities. While the charities looked good on his resume, I wrote those off as “volunteer” work the bank required all its employees to do.

  I’d first learned about mandatory volunteer work when I’d gone to a Relay for Life event once as a chaperone for Samantha and Maddie. I’d been surprised by the number of local businesses—especially banks—who’d shown up to support the event. I’d even spotted my favorite teller, a middle-aged woman named Debbie who had pictures of her Chihuahuas inside her window at the bank, working at the bank’s tent along with a bunch of other people all wearing tee shirts advertising the bank’s new loan programs.

  I’d stopped by the tent to say hello, and I’d asked her who she was supporting in the relay since many of the teams in the relay ran in honor of a cancer survivor.

  She’d given me a disbelieving stare. “I get six hours of community service for being here today. That’s half my yearly quota. Don’t get me wrong. I think this is a worthy charity and all, but I have two jobs and I like my Sundays off.”

  “At least we get paid for it now,” another woman in one of the bank’s tee shirts said.

  All the business tents were set up on the grassy infield at a local high school track where the relay was being held. Some of the tents featured amateur carnival games, and others offered handmade trinkets for sale. I even saw a man making balloon animals for little kids. A fair amount of people staffed each of the tents, most wearing matching company tee shirts, and I saw more people wearing company tee shirts out walking the track.

  “You mean everyone out here is conscripted help?” I asked.

  “It’s called public facing. The companies like the publicity, but they know they’d never get anyone to come out to these things if they didn’t require us to ‘volunteer,’ so...” The woman shrugged. “At least this is a nice, low-key event, and there’s not much work involved.”

  No kidding. I’d expected a regular relay race, with baton passing and sprints for the finish line. It looked like anyone who wanted could walk on the track. Samantha and Maddie had walked a couple of laps before they retired to the bleachers where they could watch the boy who was the real reason they’d wanted to come here today.

  “That’s right,” Debbie said. “I did an early Saturday morning shift at Habitat, and they had me hauling lumber and climbing in and out of a trench. This volunteer stuff was a whole lot easier back when they let us donate blood.”

  I didn’t know for sure that the Food Bank was on the approved list of charities at Justin Sewell’s bank, but I had an idea that if one bank wanted its employees to volunteer at Habitat for Humanities, his did too.

  He listed the American Cancer Society and the Special Olympics as the charities where he’d volunteered when he’d been living in southern California. I scanned further down the list until I came to the name I was looking for.

  When Justin Sewell had still been living in Florida, he’d done volunteer work with an organization called the Widows and Orphans of Southern Florida.

  I sat back in my dining room chair, trying to make sense of what I’d just discovered pretty much by accident.

  Justin Sewell had a connection to a charity with the same name as a trust that had an interest—several times removed, but still an interest—in a resort hotel in Boca Raton owned by an east-coast mobster.

  A woman with the same name as Lewis Richards’ ex-wife had worked at the same resort hotel. Not only worked there, but had managed to hold onto her job even after her boss fired pretty much all the rest of the existing management staff, right down to the guy in charge of employee parking. The clean sweep had made the local news for weeks.

  That couldn’t be a coincidence. Reno was a small town, but it wasn’t that small.

  I pulled up Justin Sewell’s credit history and looked the report over again. The first time through I hadn’t given much thought to the numbers except to note that he didn’t seem to outspend his income or have a lot of extra cash in the bank.

  This time I looked more closely.

  I’m not an accountant by any stretch of the imagination. I didn’t have the kind of training the cops who investigated white collar crimes had. Even Ryan knew when he was in over his head when it came to squeezing information out of the reams of accounting reports that flowed hot and heavy in the big business lawsuits he handled and it was time to call in a forensic accountant. All I had was common sense and that gut instinct Ed Hastings encouraged me to follow.

  I looked up the apartment complexes where Sewell had lived during the time he’d been in Reno, this time with an eye toward the amount of the monthly rent.

  The cost of living in Reno wasn’t exactly cheap, and the apartment buildings Sewell had called home were on the high end, just shy of luxury.

  Most of the complexes required one-year leases. Sewell had moved every six months, which meant he would have had to pay at least a penalty if not the remainder of the lease whether or not he lived there. That was a big chunk of money for a guy who was just a personal banker.

  Plus, he probably hadn’t started out at the bank as a personal banker, but rather as a teller.

  I knew from talking to my favorite teller Debbie at the Relay for Life event that she had to work two jobs to make ends meet. Banks weren’t notorious for over-paying their employees. Unless Sewell was raking in enormous sales bonuses, he had to have another source of income.

  Something related to the Widows and Orphans of Southern Florida Trust?

  I had just started to think about how I could figure that out when it hit me.

  None of this mattered.

  So what if the trust was paying him? It was an interesting theory, but what did it have to do with Melody? At best, it meant Sewell was getting a little extra disposable income for his past good deeds. He’d probably picked up the check for his lunch with Melody. He’d probably picked up a lot of checks for lunches and dinners and room service champagne for lots of pretty women over the years.

  At worst it meant Sewell was laundering money for the mob.

  Even if I confirmed that
, which I doubted I could since the feds with all their manpower and experts couldn’t make a charge of money laundering stick against Gordino, following the mob’s money wasn’t going to lead me to who’d killed Melody. I kind of doubted that a semi-retired east-coast mobster would order a hit on a personal trainer just because she’d had lunch with Sewell. Especially not a hit that would garner the attention of the press.

  I’d let myself get off track.

  If I really wanted to find the man who’d sent Melody roses, who’d taken pictures of her, who’d written her a note on one of those pictures telling her she was a bad girl because she’d been talking on her cell while she’d been driving, I’d have to go talk to her friends. See if any of them had noticed anything out of the ordinary. If they remembered who’d delivered the roses.

  My subconscious knew it. I should have known that too, but I’d been stalling because I knew those conversations weren’t going to be pleasant. I’d have to talk to people who were still in shock over her death. People who were grieving. People who knew Melody hadn’t liked me, and who probably knew Ryan and I had both been interviewed by the police in connection with her death.

  Well, I couldn’t put it off any longer, not unless I wanted to waste more time tracking down some mysterious connection between Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. It was time to go do one of the things I did best. Talk to people, and listen to what they had to say.

  I was going to have to go visit Melody’s friends at the gym.

  CHAPTER 19

  SAMANTHA HADN’T BEEN HAPPY when I told her I had a little work I had to do.

  I could have made things easier on myself if I’d explained to her about where I was going and why, but I didn’t want her to know that the police suspected her dad was involved in Melody’s murder. If it looked like the cops were going to arrest Ryan, we’d talk about it then.

  Until that happened, Samantha had enough to deal with. In a couple more years she’d be eighteen and heading off to college. Right now she was still my baby girl, and I wanted to protect her. Although something told me I wouldn’t be able to switch off the protective mom gene when she hit eighteen.