Deed To Death

by D. B. Henson

  Toni sat down at the kitchen table. She still wasn’t sure she should trust Brian, but his answers did seem plausible. And he had passed up the perfect opportunity to kill her. “Who do you think murdered Scott?”

  “Right now, I’m guessing Clint. Besides you, he has the most to gain. If you sell him Scott’s half, he’ll have total control of the company.”

  “What if there’s another reason?” She pulled the computer disk from her purse and spread the tax documents out on the table. She relayed the contents of the Excel file, making sure to tell him Gloria’s apartment complex was on the list. She also told him about Gloria being in Mexico and about visiting her apartment and seeing the pictures of her with Nico. “What do you think?”

  “I’m not sure. I’d like to look at the numbers on the spreadsheet.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t print it. And there’s no computer here.”

  “That’s no problem. I’ve got a laptop back at my hotel.”

  Toni tapped her index finger on the water glass. “Considering all the years that have gone by since you saw Scott last, you really didn’t even know each other anymore. How did you figure out he was murdered when no one else did?”

  “I felt it from the beginning. I was at the hotel. I saw the balcony. Your cop friend tried to tell me Scott was depressed. Something about a business deal. But no matter how much time passes, a person’s core personality doesn’t change. I managed to get a copy of his medical records. Once I was sure he had never suffered from any kind of chemical imbalance, I knew their story was a crock. Scott would never kill himself.”

  “They told me the same thing. That he was upset about a contract that almost fell through. The company buying the hotel, water something … no, aqua something – wait a minute.”

  Toni shuffled through the tax documents. She held up one of the papers. “AlquilaCorp! That’s the company buying the hotel. They own one of the apartment buildings.”

  “Hmm. Never heard of them. You realize this could just be a coincidence? That’s what investment firms do, buy properties.”

  “I don’t think so. I think it means something. I think there’s some kind of link between Scott’s problems with the hotel and this list of apartments.”

  “Maybe. We’ll never know unless we do some investigating into AlquilaCorp and the owners of the other properties. We can probably get a little information from a web search. But for the real dirt, I’ve got a friend back in Washington with all kinds of connections. There’s nothing he can’t find out. Luckily, he owes me a lot of favors.”

  Toni gave Brian the computer disk and tax printouts to take back to his hotel. She hoped he would be able to make sense out of the columns of numbers. See something she had overlooked.

  “I won’t be long,” Brian said. “I’ll go ahead and check out of the hotel and bring my stuff back here. When I leave, lock the doors. Don’t go outside for anything. I was able to find you. Nico could too.”

  After Brian left, Toni paced the house like a caged tiger.

  Despite being up all night, she was full of nervous energy. She felt certain they were finally on the verge of putting all the pieces together. She just wished she had been able to talk to Gloria. There was still a chance Toni could persuade the blonde to cross over to the good side. She could mention AlquilaCorp. Pretend she knew more than she did.

  The idea gnawed at her.

  Although Brian told her not to leave, Toni felt compelled to go. Nico had not seen her wearing the wig and glasses. There was no way he could recognize her. If she hurried, she could get to Gloria’s and back before Brian returned.

  West End Avenue writhed with Friday morning traffic. Cars packed bumper to bumper squeezed from one lane to another. Horns blared. Birds flew. Nashville drivers. They were enough to make you crazy.

  After consciously hitting her signal far in advance, Toni turned onto the street that wound past Gloria’s apartment. With most of the tenants off to work or classes, few cars remained in the lot. She parked at the far end of the complex and made sure Nico wasn’t around before going up to Gloria’s building.

  Toni pounded on the door.

  “She ain’t home.”

  Toni turned to see a middle-aged woman standing in the breezeway. She wore a tattered pink housecoat, a lit cigarette in her hand.

  “What?” Toni asked.

  “Gloria. She ain’t home.”

  “Do you know when she’ll be back?”

  “Ain’t coming back. I saw the moving truck load up all her furniture. They got a new gal in the office now.”

  “The office?”

  “You hard of hearing or something? The office. Where you pay your rent? They don’t open till nine though.”

  “Right.” Gloria had worked at the apartment office. “Did she tell you where she was going?”

  “Nope.” The woman took a draw from her cigarette. “Didn’t know she was leaving till I saw the truck.”

  “Have you lived here long?”

  “Going on three years.” She gestured toward the apartment directly across from Gloria’s.

  “Did you know Gloria well?”

  “Talked to her a couple times a week. She let me slide a few days on my rent every now and then. She was good that way.”

  Toni searched in her purse for Scott’s wallet. She flipped it open to a small print of the photo she kept on her nightstand. Toni, Scott, Clint, and Jill in Mexico. “Have you ever seen either one of these men around here?”

  The woman studied the photograph. “Can’t say that I have.”

  Although Toni didn’t expect the tenant to know Scott, she had hoped the woman could identify Clint. “You’re sure? You’ve never seen the dark-haired man before?”

  “Nope.”

  Toni sighed and slid the wallet back into her purse. “Thanks for talking to me.”

  “No problem. Sorry I don’t know those men.” The woman puffed the last of her cigarette, dropped the butt on the concrete, and ground it with her house shoe. “Her sister used to come around a lot though.”

  “Her sister?”

  “The blonde in your picture. Name’s Sylvia.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Sylvia?

  Could it be true? Was Jill Gloria’s sister? Could she have been living a double life all this time?

  Before speaking with the woman at the apartments, Toni had thought Clint was the connection to Gloria. That he was the one having the affair with her. That could explain her being in Mexico.

  Toni never would have guessed Gloria was actually related to Jill. That meant that the four of them, Clint, Jill, Gloria, and Nico were probably all working together. And whatever criminal activity they were involved in, it must have something to do with the rental properties.

  Toni pulled into Josh’s garage and found Brian waiting for her. He sat on the steps leading up to the kitchen door, a less than happy look on his face.

  “Where have you been?” Brian asked. “I distinctly told you to stay put.”

  “You’re not going to believe what I found out.” Toni related the information garnered from her visit to Gloria’s apartment.

  “I have to admit, that’s a bombshell,” Brian said. “But you should have waited for me.”

  “I’m okay. And you’re forgetting, I have managed to take care of myself these last few days.”

  “Just barely.”

  Toni tried to push past Brian into the kitchen.

  “Wait,” he said. “Give me your keys.”

  “What?”

  “Your car keys. Hand them over.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “No, I’m not. I don’t want you running off by yourself again and getting killed.”

  “And I don’t like being treated like a child.”

  Brian touched her shoulder. “Please. Just this once, humor me.”

  Toni realized he needed to feel like he was protecting her since he hadn’t been able to protect Scott. “Fine.”

  She dropped t
he keys into Brian’s palm. Once in the kitchen, she noticed two grocery bags on the table. “Did you look at the Excel file?”

  “Yeah. The numbers don’t make any sense to me either. I emailed it to Sam, my friend in Washington. As soon as he finds out anything on the investment firms, or the spreadsheet, he’ll call.”

  Toni peeked into one of the grocery bags. “Jill oversees the entire property management division for Chadwick & Shore, and she put Gloria in charge of collecting the rents. What if they’ve been underreporting the funds they received?”

  “That thought occurred to me too. Maybe Clint isn’t involved after all. It’s possible Jill is planning to divorce him and has been putting aside a little cash for herself. Do you know if they have a pre-nup?”

  “I have no idea. But I do know Clint’s not stupid. He tends to be a little on the arrogant side. It wouldn’t surprise me if he had a plan in place to cut her off if they ever divorced. But if Jill wanted to kill someone, it looks like it would have been him.”

  “Then she’d be the prime suspect.”

  “True.”

  “Maybe she never planned to kill Scott.”

  “Until he figured out what she was doing. Then she felt she had no choice.”

  “Either prison, or murder.”

  Toni pulled a loaf of bread from one of the bags. “I know he thought he was protecting me, but I wish Scott had told me what was going on. He might still be alive.” She fought to keep her eyes from watering.

  “There’s some fried chicken from the grocery deli in the fridge. I picked up a frozen pizza too.”

  “You must really feel cheated. You had only one day to try to get to know Scott again.”

  “You’re right, it sucks. But I can’t let myself think about what could have been. I need to focus on the here and now. And so do you. Once we find out exactly what was going on – Jill, Nico, maybe Clint – whoever is responsible will pay.”

  They carried the fried chicken, a bag of chips, paper plates, and two sodas into the den. Brian opened his laptop computer on the coffee table. “You know, Jill may have already been in prison. We have no idea who she really is,” he said.

  “Try doing a search on Sylvia Keith.”

  “Let me send an email to Sam first. I’ll ask him to dig into Jill’s background. See if he can find out where Sylvia ends and she begins.”

  “I wonder if Clint knows Jill’s real name, and that she has a sister?”

  “Until we find out different, I think we should consider Clint just as guilty as anyone else.”

  Toni watched as Brian typed out his email and hit send.

  “I hate having to wait on your friend,” Toni said. “Did you Google AlquilaCorp and the other apartment owners?”

  “I didn’t want to take the time. I figured we could do it here.”

  Brian keyed Sylvia Keith into the search engine. Several ancestry pages came up for a Sylvia who died in the eighteen hundreds. Another Sylvia owned show dogs, and as expected, her picture didn’t match. They waded through hundreds of hits, only none of them fit Jill.

  Next, Brian tried to retrieve information on AlquilaCorp.

  Your search did not match any documents.

  “That’s strange,” he said. “You’d think there would be at least a few items. A business profile, a chamber of commerce listing, a phonebook entry, something.”

  One by one, he typed in the remaining property owners. A few pages came up for companies with similar names, but none matched exactly.

  “I don’t get it,” Toni said. “Except for owning the apartments, it’s like these companies don’t even exist.”

  “Maybe they don’t. Have you ever heard of a shell company?”

  “That’s like a fake company owned by another company?”

  “Pretty much. Most of the time, they’re used to hide someone’s identity.”

  “You don’t think Jill owns all these companies, do you?”

  “I don’t think so. If she did, she sure wouldn’t need Clint’s money.”

  “Maybe Clint owns them and he’s just trying to keep them separate from Chadwick & Shore.”

  “Could be.”

  “Maybe the rents aren’t involved at all. What if Clint was siphoning off Chadwick & Shore funds to buy the properties?”

  “And Nico shot JFK from the grassy knoll.”

  “Very funny.”

  Brian picked up a chicken leg. “Look, there are a million different scenarios we could come up with here. We’re going to drive ourselves crazy if we don’t stop this. Instead of speculating, going off on wild tangents, let’s just wait and see what Sam uncovers.”

  “Fine.” Toni dumped a mound of chips on her plate.

  Brian chuckled. “You can’t do it, can you?”

  “What?”

  “It’s all over your face. Your brain is spinning faster than the teacup ride.”

  “Shut up, I can’t help it. I just want to know.”

  “You will. I promise, you will.”

  Kneeling, Detective Russell Lewis stared at the skid marks on the pavement. Something wasn’t right here. He felt it all the way to his toenails. Although he wasn’t an accident scene investigator, he could tell the tire tracks indicated more than a driver merely losing control. Even if it had been raining.

  He walked to the guardrail and watched as the wrecker service prepared to haul away Toni Matthew’s BMW. The forensics team had done a preliminary examination at the scene. Whoever had been in the car broke the window from the inside.

  A dive boat rocked in the middle of the river, kept in place by a tether to the shore. They searched for a body now. Neither the men on the force, nor the group led by Mark Ross, had found anything to indicate Miss Matthews was still alive.

  Was it his fault?

  When Toni Matthews had come to the station, begging him to look further into Scott Chadwick’s death, he thought she was just in denial. That it had been a part of her grieving process. Now, he wondered.

  Within the span of a week, three people, all related in some way, had turned up dead. Chadwick, the pretty red-haired real estate agent, and now Matthews.

  His radio crackled to life. The call was for him, one of the officers at the station.

  “Go ahead,” Lewis said.

  “The man you asked me to locate, Brian Chadwick, he’s already checked out of his hotel.”

  “When did he leave?”

  “Early this morning.”

  After she finished eating, Toni had gone into the guest room to take a nap. She didn’t sleep long, a little more than an hour. She lay there another thirty minutes with her eyes closed, but remained awake.

  How could Jill do this? Pretend to be her closest friend? She had played the part so well. Toni remembered the twice-weekly lunches, shopping trips to Atlanta and New York, the late nights spent discussing the merits and foibles of the male species over a couple bottles of wine. She hadn’t been that open about her life with another female since Kellie Snow.

  Kellie’s family had moved into the house across the street from Toni when they were both in kindergarten. The petite brunette was the only girl Toni had ever talked to about her mother. They remained best friends throughout high school, but lost touch when Kellie left for college out west and Toni chose to stay in Alabama with her father and attend Auburn.

  Over the years, Toni made several casual friends, but had never allowed herself to form any strong bonds with anyone. She had never been willing to trust. But after she met Scott, she began to change. He had been able to break down so many of the walls she had built around herself. He made her believe it was okay to put her heart out there again. So she had allowed a friendship to grow with Jill.

  Although she never discussed her mother, she had shared her feelings about Scott, her beliefs about life, and the dreams she had for the future. And what about all the details Jill had shared about her life? Were they all lies? She thought she knew Jill well. But the woman she had known didn’t even exis
t.

  And how did Clint fit in? Had Jill played him as well? Or was he another character in this charade? Playing his own devious role?

  One thing was certain. For as long as Toni had known him, Clint had been all about the money. He always had to be first to own the newest electronic gadget. Had to trade up to a new car every year, live in the most exclusive neighborhood, throw the most lavish parties, and be known for giving the largest annual donation to his church. The emphasis on the be known part. Clint didn’t believe in giving anonymously.

  Maybe Toni had been right earlier. What if Clint had embezzled funds from Chadwick & Shore to purchase those apartments? He could have killed Scott on his own. Jill might not even be aware of it.

  There was only one problem with that theory.

  Gloria.

  Jill had said she didn’t know her. She had said it so easily. Toni had never suspected for one second she was lying. If Jill had nothing to do with Scott’s death, then she would have no reason to hide her sister.

  Toni rolled over and opened her eyes. There was no use in lying there awake. She just couldn’t get her mind to turn off. Brian was probably sleeping soundly in the next bedroom. She could go downstairs and do some more investigating online.

  When she entered the den, Toni found Brian awake on the sofa, his computer in his lap.

  “You couldn’t sleep either?” she asked.

  “Nope, and I really should. I’ve been up more than twenty-four hours now. I just can’t get comfortable.” He gestured toward his bandaged arm.

  “I’m really sorry. I was just so scared –”

  “I know. It’s okay. If I had been you, I probably would have gone for my chest.”

  “Oh, I thought about it.”

  He smiled, and she saw Scott again. The resemblance tore at her heart. She had to look away. Had to get out of the room. “You want something from the kitchen?” she asked.

  “No thanks.”

  Toni opened a Coke and leaned back against the refrigerator.

  It had been so much easier when she thought Brian was guilty. As long as she hated him, she could ignore all the little mannerisms he had in common with Scott. Tell herself the two brothers were nothing alike. Now she knew that wasn’t entirely true. The more time she spent with Brian, the harder it was to be around him.