A Quarter for a Kiss

by Mindy Starns Clark

  He reached out, picked up a box, and opened it to reveal two rows of tiny black disks—12 in all.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  I took the box from him and studied the contents, my heart suddenly in my throat. They were bugs. Eli knew better. Any PI caught with a bug in his possession faced the automatic loss of his investigative license.

  “Ah, Tom,” I said softly, “Eli was treading some dangerous ground here. These are so illegal. I can’t believe he was willing to risk everything for the sake of this one investigation.”

  I put the box back and reached for a small pile of similar disks with wires.

  “More bugs,” I said, shaking my head.

  “They’re all so tiny.”

  “They probably come with some kind of transmitter. Yeah, here.”

  I grabbed a square, camouflaged container about the size of a small toaster.

  “You plant the bugs throughout the house, and then you put this somewhere within range, maybe fifty feet away. The signals are sent from the bugs to the transmitter, and then from there out to a listening station.”

  I bent down to point at the biggest box, at the bottom, which had a digital recorder and headphones and looked like a suitcase.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “Why a transmitter? I thought they made bugs nowadays that can transmit for several miles all by themselves.”

  “They do,” I said. “But here’s the thing. You want the signals to be strong enough to transmit, but weak enough that they won’t be detected by antibugging devices. This kind of bug is much less likely to be discovered. Very clever, considering the level of security on Nadine’s house. I bet she has built-in sweepers.”

  Tom knelt down next to me to inspect the listening station more closely.

  “Callie, if this stuff is so illegal, how come you know so much about it?”

  I shrugged.

  “When I was first starting out with Eli, he taught me everything he knew about electronic surveillance. But laws have changed since then. The world has changed. No PI in his right mind would touch this stuff nowadays.”

  “Wow.”

  “The only way I would ever use bugs would be if I were working in cooperation with the police and I had a Title Three warrant in my hand.”

  “Really.”

  We went through the rest of the closet, noting that most of the tools were for watching and listening: binoculars, cameras, bugs of all kind. Eli had a telescoping directional microphone, pinpoint cameras, and several different sets of disguises. On a low shelf was a dog bone, and when I inspected it more closely, I realized that it contained a small bugging device as well.

  “Here’s a clever one,” I said, handing the bone to Tom. “You let the dog plant this bug for you by throwing it in the yard and hoping he’ll carry it into the house.”

  “Incredible.”

  I played with the listening station a bit, checking the wires, fooling with the dials.

  “I bet Eli was hoping to get a better feel for what was going on inside that house before he made any sort of overt move.”

  “But near the end of his notes, didn’t he say something like ‘the surveillance tools will have to wait for now’?”

  “Yeah. ‘Risk factor high.’ They must’ve figured out he was onto them.”

  Tom stood up and stepped away from the closet, brushing the dust from his knees.

  “So what’s the plan, Callie?” he asked. “Any ideas?”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “Let’s leave this stuff alone for now.”

  “And?”

  “And…maybe we should pay a visit to Windward Investigations. See if they can give us a better idea of what they know about the situation.”

  Nineteen

  We pulled out Eli’s file and carried it to the kitchen table. I also had his address book, which was falling apart at the seams.

  I turned to the last page of Eli’s notes and reread the entry:

  Windward calls to tell me subject has gained knowledge of their security inquiry. Not good. Surveillance tools will have to wait for now. Must convince Stella we’ve got to go back to States a week early. Risk factor high. Need to approach from different direction.

  That certainly sounded to me as though Eli felt he might be in danger.

  I pulled out the initial security report and looked at the header information. Windward Investigations was located on Redhook Road in St. Thomas, and the report had been provided by a man named Chris Fisher. I didn’t want to cross back to the other island unless we had to, so I hoped we might be able to do this by phone. It was late in the day on a Monday, but as I dialed, I prayed that someone would still be in the office.

  A tough-sounding woman answered, and when I asked for Chris Fisher, she said, “Speaking.”

  “Oh, good,” I replied, trying not to sound surprised that Chris was a woman. I told her my name was Callie Webber and I was a friend of Eli Gold’s. I said I was following up on an investigation he had been working on regarding a house on Turtle Point, and I was hoping she could help me to understand some of the notes in a report she had done for him.

  Not surprisingly, the woman wasn’t exactly cooperative. She let me go through my whole spiel, and then she said curtly, “Sorry, can’t help you.”

  “I’ll gladly pay you for your time,” I replied quickly. “I just need to ask you some questions about the report you did for him.”

  “I’m not sure I remember the case in question.”

  “You’re the one who put together this report,” I said. “You signed off on it, anyway.”

  Knowing her reluctance might simply be a matter of needing to verify my identity, I gave her my license number and explained that Eli and I had worked together for a number of years. I said she could contact his wife in Cocoa Beach, if she wanted a reference.

  “Nope,” she said simply. “That case is closed.”

  “Maybe I’m not making myself clear,” I said, glancing at Tom. “Eli Gold has been shot. I’m here trying to follow things up on his behalf.”

  At least that seemed to give her pause.

  “Sorry,” she said finally, sounding almost as if she meant it.

  Then she hung up.

  I sat with my cell phone in my hand for a minute, wondering why the conversation had gone so wrong. Fellow investigators were usually quite helpful and certainly more than willing to spend time—especially paid time—doing something as simple as going over notes.

  “What now?” Tom asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said, flipping through Eli’s file. I looked at the notation for December 31:

  12/31 7 P.M.—Bring bottle of good champagne to A. to toast the New Year; convince him to run plates; leave with name and address info from lic. plate.

  “Let’s figure out who ‘A’ is,” I said. “Maybe he’ll talk to us.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “That he’s a cop. He ran a plate for Eli, so he has to be either someone official or some kind of hacker. Either way, he’s a resource.”

  “I hope he is a cop,” Tom said. “It would be good to visit him and get the local police perspective.”

  Handling the old address book carefully, I flipped through it page by page until I came to an entry under “R”: Ruhl, Sgt. Abraham, St. John Police Department. The listing included a phone number and e-mail address.

  “Here’s our boy,” I said. “I’d bet the ‘A’ is for Abraham.”

  I was just about to dial his number when the phone rang in my hand.

  “Callie Webber,” I said.

  “Use a landline,” a man’s voice said.

  Then he disconnected the call.

  “What was that?” Tom asked, noting my perplexed expression as I hung up the phone.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Somebody said, ‘Use a land line,’ and then they hung up on me.”

  We looked at each other.

  “Windward Investigations,” we both said at once.

 
Going as fast as the speed limit would allow, Tom drove us toward town, both of us looking for a pay phone along the way. I was so accustomed to using my cell phone that I sometimes forgot it wasn’t all that secure. A person with the right equipment could easily intercept my conversations.

  “There’s one,” Tom said, slowing to turn into a small parking lot. It looked like a body shop/mechanic’s garage, and there was a phone booth to the side of the lot, near the road.

  Fingers shaking eagerly, I dialed the number for Windward Investigations. Chris answered the phone.

  “This is Callie Webber,” I said. “I’m at a pay phone.”

  “You’re in St. John now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Take the next ferry to Red Hook,” she said. “I’ll meet you there.”

  Twenty

  The sun had set by the time we walked off the ferry into the small St. Thomas town of Red Hook. The area looked a bit questionable, with a string of bars along the waterfront and a vagrant sleeping on a nearby bench. We weren’t quite sure where to go now that we were here, so we simply followed the crowd down the ramp and toward the parking lot.

  There was a queue of taxis waiting for passengers, with a lot of good-natured shouting between cabbies. We turned down several offers for a ride until one fellow greeted me by name.

  “Callie Webber?” he said softly. “Come with me. I will drop you at your destination now and return a little later to pick you up again.”

  Tom and I glanced at each other and then followed, wondering if we were making a mistake.

  The man held open the door of his cab for me and then seemed surprised to see Tom getting in behind me.

  “Wait a minute, who are you?” he said, putting a hand to Tom’s chest.

  “Tom Bennett,” he replied calmly. “Where she goes, I go.”

  “It’s okay,” I added from inside the cab. “He works with me.”

  The man hesitated for a moment and then let Tom climb inside. Switching off his meter, he pulled out of the parking lot and drove for about two miles without saying a word. Finally, he slowed and made a right turn into a small park. It looked deserted.

  He drove to the far end, passing a silent playground and a row of built-in barbecue grills, finally coming to a stop at the edge of a beach.

  “Chris said to wait at that picnic table,” he told us, pointing. “She will be right along.”

  Tom and I looked over at the table and then at each other. With the area so deserted and the sun now fully below the horizon, this didn’t seem like the safest place for a rendezvous.

  “Not to worry. I will be back for you,” he added. “Go ahead.”

  Tom and I hesitated and then did as the man instructed, getting out of the car and walking over to the table as he drove away. We didn’t sit but instead stood there on the sand, looking around anxiously. We had closed up Eli’s spy stash back at the house, but I was wishing we had brought along one of his weapons for protection. I wouldn’t use a gun, but a billy club seemed like a good idea right about now.

  Just to be on the safe side, I picked up a big stick for one hand and a pinecone-looking thing for the other. While I was scoping out the place for possible exit routes, another car turned into the park and drove to where we had been dropped off. Once it was parked, the door opened, and a man got out.

  He was pretty scary looking, bald with a goatee, heavily tattooed, and at least 250 pounds of pure muscle. We watched as he walked to the passenger side, opened the back door, and took out a wheelchair. Then he opened the front door and lifted a woman from her seat into the chair. She was a big woman, but he seemed to handle her with ease.

  He shut the car doors, wheeled her over to where we were waiting, and then walked back to the car and stood facing us, arms folded across his chest.

  “Callie Webber?” the woman said in a deep voice. “Chris Fisher.”

  I introduced Tom and we all shook hands. Then Tom and I both sat so that we would be down at her level.

  Chris Fisher was a hefty woman, quite muscular, with a square jaw and long blonde hair. She flipped the hair back from her face, and in the dim light I could see that her eyes were bruised and swollen.

  “So Eli Gold got shot, huh?” she said, shaking her head. “Tough break. He was a nice guy.”

  “He’s still alive,” I said. “But just barely.”

  “Yeah, I know. After I hung up with you, I called his wife in Florida to verify things. She said you’re on the case.”

  “What can you tell us?” I asked.

  “Not a lot,” she said. “If I were you, I’d pack up my bags and go home.”

  I was having a little trouble reading the situation. I wasn’t sure if she was threatening us or warning us.

  “Why do you say that?” Tom asked gently, obviously giving the woman the benefit of the doubt.

  “I don’t know what Eli was getting into here, but it is some nasty can of worms. If I could do things over, I would’ve turned down his business the minute he walked through my door.”

  “Why don’t you tell us about that?” I said.

  She wheeled her chair back a bit, rested her elbows on the arms, and brought her fingertips together at her mouth. She seemed torn between leveling with us and calling her man over to get her out of there.

  “About a month ago,” she said finally, “Eli came into my office. He asked me what it would cost for me to evaluate someone’s home security system and give him a full report. Not the kind of work I usually like, but the electric bill was due. Life in paradise doesn’t come cheap, you know.”

  “You took the case,” Tom said.

  “Don’t think I didn’t check him out first,” she said, pointing a finger at us. “I wasn’t about to hand some thief a blueprint for breaking and entering. But from what I could see, he was a legitimate PI working a case. I didn’t know what that case was about, but he seemed earnest. It wasn’t any big deal for me to make a few calls. I know all the security companies around here because we refer people out.”

  “You called your contacts.”

  “Yeah,” she said, rubbing the space between her eyes. “A girlfriend of mine works for Island Protection Systems. IPS. She looked up the house address for me on her computer, and it turns out it was one of theirs. She printed out the work order and faxed me a copy. I wrote things up on a report of my own and gave that to Eli. End of story. An easy couple hundred dollars.”

  Things were quiet for a moment. There was so much more here she wasn’t saying.

  “Did you tell Eli where he might be able to buy a few handy tools?” I asked. “Like, surveillance stuff?”

  She hesitated and then shrugged.

  “I told him about a guy in San Juan I’ve used from time to time. I don’t know what Eli was buying, but this fellow has a nice selection.”

  Tom and I shared a glance. A nice selection indeed.

  “So what did you think of the security report your friend faxed you?” Tom asked. “That was a pretty significant list of security protections for one house.”

  “Tell me about it,” she replied. “IPS does a lot of business in the islands, mostly corporate security. But I haven’t ever seen a house that protected.”

  “What do you think that’s about?”

  She laughed, a loud, sharp bark.

  “It’s about none of our business,” she said. “None of our business. Whatever’s going on there.”

  I cleared my throat, leaning forward.

  “When Eli left the island, he seemed to feel he was in some danger,” I said. “In his notes, it sounds like you warned him they might be onto him.”

  She nodded, her features grave.

  “My friend at IPS, the one who faxed me the work order? She got fired.”

  “Because she sent you details about the security of that house?”

  “Yeah. Somehow, someone found out what she’d done. Her boss said if she’d tell them who had been inquiring about the house, she wouldn’t lose her job. She g
ave them my name and they fired her anyway.”

  “Wow.”

  Chris exhaled loudly.

  “Soon as she called and told me, I contacted Eli and said I was sorry but that my little investigation for him hadn’t gone unnoticed. He didn’t sound surprised. He just said don’t worry about it; he would try to get at it from some other angle. I thought that was the end of it.”

  “What happened?” Tom asked.

  “Last Thursday, some men came to see me. One of them brought along a baseball bat.”

  Tom and I gasped.

  “They wanted to know who hired me to run that report. I wouldn’t tell them, so they busted in my kneecaps.”

  I felt a surge of nausea.

  “Then what happened?”

  “When they started in on my face, I told them what they wanted to know. I gave it up—Eli’s name, phone, address. The whole thing. I felt really bad, but I thought they were gonna kill me. I would’ve called and warned him they were coming, but I was in and out of consciousness for two days myself. I just got out of the hospital yesterday.”

  “What did the police do?”

  “Not much. They had me go through mug shots, but I didn’t spot them.” She gestured toward the man by the car. “My brother got his hands on some company photos from IPS, but they weren’t in there, either. We hired a sketch artist at our own expense, but that’s about all we have. Just some drawings of two thugs who are somehow connected to an estate on St. John that’s closed up tighter than Fort Knox.”

  “Did you bring the sketches with you tonight?” Tom asked.

  She called out to her brother, saying she needed the pictures.

  He opened the car door, reached inside, and brought out two photocopies of the drawings. He handed them to Chris, who gave them to Tom.

  “The only reason I came here tonight,” she said, “is to give you these drawings and ask you to keep your eyes open. If you spot these two characters in the course of your investigation, I want to know about it. Names, addresses, anything you can give me. Nobody messes me up like this and gets away with it.”