Cap's Place: A Jack Nolan Novel (The Cap's Place Series Book 1)

by Robert Tarrant

  I replied, “Sure, I’ll have a coffee. Black.” She was gone as suddenly as she had appeared.

  PJ looked me directly in the eyes and said in a tone totally devoid of the firmness I had experienced on the phone, “Thanks for meeting with me Jack. We really haven’t had a chance to talk, at least not in person, since this whole thing started. I want you to know how much I appreciate everything you’ve done for Sissy. Sissy is my friend. She has been for several years now. Maybe that’s clouded my judgement a little. You evidently have her tucked away some place safe and that’s all that really matters.”

  First the smile, now those penetrating green eyes. I was dead meat. Mesmerized. Sorry Justin, if she ever asks me I’ll probably give you up in a heartbeat. Finally, I found a response, “I know that. We all just want Sissy to be safe. I’ve probably made a couple of errors in judgement myself the last few days.”

  PJ chuckled, in obvious agreement with my understated self-criticism.

  I asked, “Anything new from the snitch?”

  Before PJ could answer, the waitress was back with my coffee requesting our orders. PJ ordered a salad of some sort. Very predictable. Women never eat anything but salad in public. Equally predictable I ordered a burger and fries. Justin had told me when I called and told him I was meeting PJ that he had already planned to eat my share of the steamers. After the waitress left the table PJ said, “That is one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you. The investigators leaned on him some more and he admitted that it was not Muskof. What he says now is that he heard that a contract was out on the bartender at Cap’s and he added Muskof to the story.”

  “Wait a minute! Did he say the contract was on Sissy or just a bartender at Cap’s? It could be someone else. It could be Marge?”

  The cop face came back, “Couple of things. His exact words were that the contract was on ‘some good looking babe that tends bar at Cap’s.’ I don’t mean to be judgmental, but that’s not probably how most guys would describe Marge. Additionally, if the contract was on someone else it wouldn’t explain the attack on Sissy at Pinnacle.”

  I sighed, “Sure, you’re right. I feel like nothing is as it seems. Things just don’t fit together.”

  PJ leaned forward toward the center of the table and lowered her voice. I leaned forward to hear her. I detected the aroma of a light floral perfume. “When I tell you what comes next you are really going to be confused. From the beginning, everyone thought Allison was mistaken for Sissy but we kept probing Allison’s life. Turns out that Allison was working on a journalism degree at Broward College. For the past few months, she’s been involved in an internship on investigative reporting with a reporter named Weston at the Miami Herald. Some type of expose′. Her mother told us that Allison was very excited about the project but she couldn’t tell her anything about it. We thought that if we took a look at her computer we could see what it was about. We wanted to look at her email and internet usage anyway to see if that might give us any leads. No one can locate her computer. Her roommate says it was an Apple laptop and Allison always had it with her. Her phone is also missing. Her purse was in the car when they recovered it, but no computer or phone. Her mother has searched, we have searched, her roommate has searched, Marge even looked all around Cap’s. Nothing. Nowhere to be found.”

  “You think this investigative reporting has something to do with Allison’s death? Have you talked to the reporter she was working with on her internship?”

  PJ glanced around. No one seemed to be paying any attention to us. “We wanted to talk to him but that’s the thing. He hadn’t been to work for a couple of days so we asked a Miami detective to see if he could run him down. Didn’t take long. Found him dead in his apartment. Looks like he had been dead since Wednesday. The apartment had been torn apart as if someone was looking for something. No one can find his laptop either.”

  I swallowed hard, “How did he die?”

  “Single gunshot to the head. Contact entry. Execution style. Medical examiner says he had been beat up before he was killed. All the signs of someone looking for something.”

  The dour spell was broken with the arrival of our food. We both focused on our food for a few minutes. PJ was giving me time to process everything she’d told me. I needed time. Finally, I put my half-eaten burger down and asked, “So, do you think that Allison was the target all along and that Sissy was a mistake?”

  PJ rested her fork on the edge of her salad bowl and took a deep breath, “We don’t know. Allison was already dead before Sissy was attacked. It just doesn’t add up. If Sissy had been attacked and then Allison killed it would make sense that Sissy was a mistake and the mistake was corrected with Allison’s death. In that case Sissy would no longer be in danger. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen in that order. Allison died during the early morning hours Wednesday and Sissy was attacked in the early morning hours of Thursday. Things just don’t fit.”

  I knew that Sissy was still in danger. At least she had been as late as Friday night, but I didn’t know how to tell PJ without putting Justin in a world of trouble. Besides, I had no real evidence that the guy Justin told me about ever existed. PJ obviously felt that Sissy was still in danger, so best if I just leave things as they are. Besides, Justin didn’t seem like the kind of guy you wanted to disappoint. I asked PJ, “Where do we go from here?”

  “We continue to work all theories. Miami is really pushing on the investigation into the death of the reporter and with the tie to Allison we have Broward County and ourselves. While having all of these jurisdictions involved can make things complicated, it means we have resources to follow-up on anything we develop.”

  I took another couple bites of my burger and let everything roll around in my head for a few minutes. The waitress stopped by and asked if we needed anything and PJ asked for another glass of tea. I had noticed a beer sign on the wall at the end of the room, so I ordered a Landshark. Got to love South Florida for lots of reasons, none the least of which is that you can get beer almost anywhere. Even the food court at the malls.

  When my beer arrived, I took a long drink. PJ looked across at me and smiled again, “My sentiments exactly. The whole thing is very unnerving. I would join you but I’m meeting Tim later. He’s with the Miami detectives and wants to update me after he gets back.”

  I asked, “Do you want me to ask Sissy if she knows anything about the project Allison was working on with the reporter? Maybe Allison talked to Sissy about what she was doing. I don’t see how it could hurt to ask Sissy.”

  PJ slowly finished chewing a bite of her salad and replied, “I think that’s a good idea. What I’d really like to do is have Sissy sit down with Tim and me sometime tomorrow so we can ask her ourselves. We’ll have more information that may help jog Sissy’s memory by then, but there is nothing wrong with you asking her tonight so that she can start thinking about it.”

  So there it is. Bring Sissy in to meet with PJ. I just sat there looking back across the table into those disarming green eyes. The silence hung in the air. Finally, PJ went on, “Look Jack, we can meet some place just like this. Wherever you want to meet. Sissy can continue to stay with you. We won’t press to let us protect her. If she’s comfortable with the situation that’s fine with us. Our offer to protect her stands but we aren’t going to force her. I do think it could be helpful to our investigation into Allison’s murder if we could talk to her.”

  I stalled with another pull on my beer, “Sure. I think I can get Sissy to agree to meet with you and your partner. Just no one else. I want to be able to assure her that you two won’t tell anyone else you’re meeting with her until afterwards. She trusts you two but she is worried about a leak somewhere else in your department.”

  PJ’s eyes narrowed in disapproval but she said, “Fair enough. Any ideas when and where you would like to meet?”

  “I’ll talk to Sissy tonight. I’ll call you tomorrow and we’ll pick a time and location then.”

  “OK. Just give us a couple of h
ours notice. We have a number of balls in the air at the moment.”

  I agreed to call PJ in the morning so we could set a meeting with Sissy to talk about Allison. We finished our meals. While PJ was making a stop in the restroom, I paid the check. Out in the parking lot she turned to me and smiled, “It was good to sit down and talk about things for once. And thanks for dinner.” A light rose in her eyes from somewhere deep inside. “I’m not sleeping with you though.” The eyes now sparkling, “Not yet.” With that, she got into her car. I was standing in the center of the parking lot with my mouth open as she drove out.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  I was sitting in the parking lot of the Moonlite Diner replaying the conversation with PJ in my mind, when it occurred to me that I should give Cap’s a call to see how things were going.

  To my surprise, Moe answered the phone. As I started to speak he cut me off, “Boss, I’s so glad yu called. I got something to shows yu. Something real important. Yu gots to come by here.” Moe was very excited, “Boss, I think I got a picture of a guy who’s watching Cap’s.”

  “What? How?”

  Having a story to tell seemed to calm Moe, “I got to thinking about maybe someone being in the parking lot looking for Sissy. I knows our outside cameras ain’t working so I went to sees Johnny at the marina. I told him we’d been having break-ins in the parking lot and asked if I could watch some of his video from the last couple of nights. He’s a decent guy. Didn’t hurt that I slipped him a bottle of Johnnie Walker from the back room. He made me a copy of the video from the last three nights. One from each of the two cameras that shows the parking lot. I comes back here and looked at them on the computer in yu office. It tooks Marge and me a while to figure out how to go back and forth, but we gots it. It tooks me a couple hours going back and forward but I found it.”

  Now I was the one excited, “What did you find Moe?”

  “Thursday night yu can see one of them big SUVs sitting in the lot. It drives in and parks, but no one gets out. It just sits there for over an hour. Even looks like smoke coming out the driver’s window. It’s open a couple inches. Yu can’t see in because of the dark windows. Then the SUV just drives out and leaves. No one ever gets out.”

  “Moe, that does sound like something. What time was it Thursday?”

  “Boss, that’s just it. It’s while yu’s here that night. That’s when Sissy called yu. Told yu about them finding Allison’s body. Marge told me. Maybe they heard yu and Sissy talking. Maybe they taps the phone or something,” My mind was spinning. Thursday. Sissy called me. Sissy called me from the main house. The land line at the main house. That’s how the guy got the location. Moe interrupted my analysis, “There’s more Boss. I know it’s when you was here because the pictures shows yu driving out at the same time the SUV leaves. You’re right behind it.”

  “Really. Shit.” Damn, nothing as sophisticated as a wiretap, he just followed me back to Sissy.

  “There’s still more Boss. The one camera got a good picture of the back of the SUV. I can’t read the license plate, but I bet the cops can magnify it and read the plate.”

  “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  The traffic gods were favorable. Ten minutes later I parked in the lot at Cap’s and went up the outside stairs to my apartment. I walked directly through the apartment and down the inside stairs to the hallway in front of my office. I didn’t want people to know I was around. I didn’t know why but I just didn’t. The apartment seemed foreign. It had only been a few days since I last slept there but it felt strange even just walking through it. Moe was standing at the end of the hallway next to the bar. He saw me and followed me into the office.

  I knew Moe was excited to show me the video so I stepped aside and he sat down in front of the computer. It was all cued up to the point where the SUV enters the lot and backs into a spot in the back. Even with the grainy picture I recognized the vehicle as a Lexus. Moe jumped the video ahead several times until we got to the point where it leaves the lot with me right behind it. I knew that I had seen a Lexus LX 570 somewhere the last few days because I remembered thinking about how I had considered leasing one. For the life of me I wouldn’t have remembered it was here that I saw it. Obviously, it was. Moe froze the picture at the point of the best shot of the license plate but he was right. It was just too fuzzy to read. Maybe PJ could get it enhanced so the plate could be read.

  I told Moe that I would call PJ and tell her about the video from the security cameras. She could meet with him to get a copy. It took Moe a few minutes to warm to the idea of meeting with PJ. At first he refused. I pointed out to him that because we saw this vehicle on the security video we thought it was important. When the cops follow up it may turn out the guy has a perfectly good explanation. Maybe he was waiting to meet someone who didn’t show. He was not happy, but he agreed to meet with PJ.

  I started to reach for the phone in the office to call PJ but caught myself. I used the prepaid cell and called her cell. She answered in her cop voice but when I identified myself her voice lightened noticeably, “Oh, hi Jack, I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon.”

  I explained what Moe had found and PJ told me that she was just sitting down with Tim to go over the entire case but that they would stop by Cap’s within the next couple of hours. In spite of the fact Moe was standing over me shaking his head back and forth mouthing the word, “No” I gave his cell number to PJ so she could call him when they got close.

  After I hung up, Moe just stood glaring down at me, “What yu do that for? Give her my number? Why can’t yu be here to meet with them anyway?”

  I replied, “Think about it Moe. Not like your cell number is a secret. No big deal. I can’t be here because I need to get back to Sissy. You’ll be fine. Just meet with them, show them what you showed me, and give them a copy. Nothing to it.”

  The scowl on his broad black face morphed into a silly grin, “Man, life’s sure funny. Now the cops coming to ol’ Moe for help.”

  I stood, slapped him on the back, and said as I was retreating out the door, “Hell Moe, you’re really one of the good guys. You just don’t want to admit it.”

  I knew that Marge would be unhappy that I was at Cap’s and didn’t talk with her, at least ask how things were going, but I really didn’t want to be there any longer than absolutely necessary. So I went back up the inside stairs, through the apartment, and down the outside stairs to my car. I would deal with the wrath of Marge later.

  On the way back to Lighthouse Point, my paranoia reached full bloom. I found myself spending more time looking in the rear view mirror than out the windshield. Not a safe practice anywhere. Borderline suicidal in South Florida. Several times I exited I-95 and wandered the surface streets before going back to the expressway. I drove into crowded parking lots and drove up and down the lanes several times before exiting the other side. If someone was following me I was at least going to make them nauseated.

  It was ten-thirty before I got back to the guest house. Justin opened the front door as I parked my car. When I reached the door he said, “Sissy and I were just having a nightcap on the patio, grab a glass and join us. We’re interested to hear what you learned from the cops.”

  As I walked toward the kitchen, I looked out to the patio and saw Sissy sitting in a chair with her legs tucked up under her. She was wearing a white halter top and black gossamer skirt. A bottle of what looked to be single malt scotch was sitting on the table. I found a glass and came out onto the patio. Sissy looked up at me with glassy eyes, “Hi yu Jack. Glad yu home. Join us for a drink.”

  “Don’t mind if I do.” As I reached for the bottle I added, “Didn’t know you were a scotch drinker Sissy.”

  Sissy waved her glass in Justin’s direction in an exaggerated toast, “I’m not. Justin shhays it’s an acquired taste. Imma learning.” With that she was overcome by a series of hiccups.

  Justin looked at me and shrugged his shoulders. Looking back to Sissy he said, “Sissy,
why don’t you go take a long drink of water and stretch out on your bed until those hiccups go away. The detection system is all set. Nothing to worry about. Jack and I’ll be right here.”

  Sissy hiccuped, “G-G-Good i-i-idea.” With that she nearly fell getting out of her chair, caught herself on the table, and staggered into the house through the open patio door.

  I looked at Justin, “How much has she had to drink? I don’t think I’ve ever seen her this lit before.”

  Justin held up his hands in defense and said, “She’s only had a couple of short pours. Look at the bottle. We’ve hardly dented it. I think it’s just the combination of the alcohol mixed with the adrenalin. She’s so keyed up. Nights are the worst time. I thought a little scotch would relax her. Help her sleep.”

  I chuckled, “No doubt she’ll sleep. If she gets rid of the hiccups.”

  Justin poured an inch of scotch into his glass and said, “So, what did you learn from the cops?” In contrast to Sissy’s, his words were not slurred in the slightest.

  For the next hour we discussed everything PJ had told me as well as Moe’s discovery. When I described the Lexus on the security video I noticed the slightest frown cross Justin’s face. If I hadn’t been looking directly at him at the time, I would never have seen it. It was fleeting, but it was real.

  Justin agreed that it would be good to have Sissy meet with PJ. Maybe Sissy would know something that might help with the investigation into Allison’s death. Maybe somehow Allison’s death was the key. He looked directly at me and said, “We need to impress on Sissy the importance of keeping my involvement here quiet. I know she’s friends with the cop and trusts her, but it would just be better if I wasn’t mentioned. Me nor my equipment. No sense distracting the cops from their real focus.”

  I said, “I don’t think that’ll be a problem. Even though Sissy doesn’t know about everything that has gone on here I’m confident she’ll keep your presence between just the three of us. I’ll talk with her to make certain.”