Rescued

by David Rosenfelt

  “Have you done any checking to find out where the dogs were going? Because we haven’t had any luck doing that.” I ask because it’s been bugging me that there was no one waiting for these dogs. If Zimmer had nowhere to take them, what the hell were they doing on the truck in the first place? He didn’t have anyone on the other end to pay for them.

  “Why would I bother checking?” Davenport asks. “I don’t have the dogs, remember?”

  With that ultra-helpful conversation behind me, my next stop is in Short Hills to meet with Christine Craddock, one of Kramer’s more recent clients. I hope he was charging her a healthy fee, because based on this house, she can afford it.

  Short Hills is one of the more exclusive areas of New Jersey, and Ms. Craddock lives in one of the more exclusive parts of Short Hills. Not surprisingly, I am greeted at the door by a butler type. I’m dressed in jeans and a pullover shirt, and he looks at me like I am the hired help, the irony being he is actually the hired help.

  “Mrs. Craddock is expecting you,” he says.

  I nod. “And I am expecting Mrs. Craddock.”

  I’m led to a room that appears to be a library, since the walls are primarily made up of bookshelves filled with books. The only reason I hesitate to call it a library is because it doesn’t have those cabinets with Dewey decimal file cards or newspapers on those wooden sticks.

  After a few minutes, the door opens and Mrs. Craddock comes in. She is surprising to me in a couple of ways. First, she’s younger than I’d expected; the house is furnished in a conservative, old-money kind of way. But Mrs. Craddock can’t be more than thirty-five, with a terrific, welcoming smile.

  The next thwarter of Carpenter expectations is the fact that Mrs. Craddock is in a wheelchair. It gives me a wave of guilt; despite my own wealth, I’ve caught myself begrudging her obvious privilege. The fact of the matter is she is clearly not skating through life on a wave of unending good luck.

  “Mr. Carpenter, I’m glad you’re here,” she says.

  “Really? I don’t get that kind of a welcome very much.”

  She smiles warmly. “I find that hard to believe. You’re representing Dave Kramer?”

  She asks the question even though I told her I was when I spoke to her on the phone. “Yes. He did some work for you?”

  “He did; two separate assignments.”

  “Can I ask in what capacity?” I basically know the answer from Kramer’s lists, but I like the person I’m interviewing to give me as much information as possible. Sometimes it reaffirms what I know, and sometimes not.

  “It’s somewhat embarrassing, but I asked him to confirm for me that my husband was having extramarital affairs; I guess cheating is the word you would use.”

  I know from Kramer’s notes that her husband was some kind of big shot in the computer industry, but I’d never heard of him. “You use the word confirm,” I say. “You had reason to believe it was the case, but you wanted to know for sure?”

  “Yes, something like that. And Kramer validated my suspicion in a matter of a couple of days. He was quite good at his job, and I must say quite sensitive in how he conveyed his findings to me. He said he had photographic evidence, but I declined to see it.”

  “That must have been upsetting,” I say.

  “Yes, but not for the reasons you might imagine. Since my accident, I am simply not the person I was, nor could I be the wife I was. I had no problem with John seeing other women; they were not a substitute for me. He still loved me, which is really all I cared about.”

  “So why were you upset?”

  “Because he wasn’t honest with me about it. Honesty was something we always promised each other, and I regretted that betrayal.”

  “You said you employed Kramer for two assignments. What was the other one?” I ask the question knowing the answer, and not looking forward to hearing it.

  “John passed away almost three months ago.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you. He was hiking in the mountains and slipped and fell to his death. That’s what they said.”

  “You don’t believe that?”

  “No. John loved being out in the natural world. He craved it; we shared that before my accident. But he also had great respect for that world; he understood the dangers and was totally careful. He would not have put himself in that position; I just don’t believe it and never will.”

  “He was out there alone?”

  “Yes. He loved the solitude. He said it cleansed his mind and body.”

  “Do you know of anyone who might have wanted him dead?”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t. My suspicion is that it might have to do with his business life. John was brilliant, and that was reflected in his success.”

  “So you hired Kramer to find out what really happened?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he?”

  “I would doubt it, because he would have told me. But it was very early; I would expect it to take longer.”

  “What will you do next?”

  “I haven’t made a final decision, but I suspect I will find someone else to undertake the job. It’s difficult in that it’s a world I am completely unfamiliar with and rather intimidated by.”

  “Would you like me to have someone call you who could offer you advice?”

  “Certainly, yes.”

  “I’ll do that. Her name is Laurie Collins.”

  I thank her and leave. I hope she gets her answer, and I hope she can ultimately accept that her nature-loving husband who was so successful did one other stupid thing in his life besides cheating on her.

  He got too close to a cliff.

  Anthony Orlando is the proprietor of a car wash on Route 17 in Paramus. He’s on Kramer’s list not as a client but as someone who might have held a grudge against him. If he has a grudge against anyone, it should be his parents, for giving him that name.

  He agrees to talk to me in the office of the car wash. He’s a big guy, at least 240 pounds, with a weathered face. He might have spent too much time going through the wash himself. I have to admit that if I owned a car wash, I might be tempted at least once to walk through it naked as a way to take a shower.

  “I guess you never use ‘Tony,’ huh?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “Not since I was a kid. I got tired of people asking me where Dawn was, or if I tied a yellow ribbon to the damn oak tree.”

  “I can sympathize,” I say. “A girlfriend in high school named Karen dumped me because she was afraid she’d wind up Karen Carpenter.” I leave out the part about her also telling me I was an asshole.

  He doesn’t seem that interested in my high school dating issues. “So they nailed that scumbag Kramer, huh?”

  “He’s been arrested and is facing trial.”

  “Good.”

  “You don’t like him?” I ask.

  “What tipped you off?”

  “Instinct. Why do you feel that way?”

  “I got in a bar fight; I beat the hell out of a guy who deserved getting the hell beat out of him. Kramer showed up with a few other cops and arrested me.”

  “Wasn’t he just doing his job?”

  “On the arresting part, yeah. But he tased me when I had already backed off; there was no reason for that. You ever been tased?”

  “No. Lawyers try to remain tase-free.”

  “Well, it is the worst, believe me. You feel like your whole body is going to explode. Did they tase Kramer when they caught him?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad. So what do you want?”

  “I’m just trying to track down and talk to people that might have had a grudge against Kramer.”

  “There will be a lot of them,” he says.

  “Maybe you can rent a hall and have a reunion.”

  He laughs. “Yeah, we can all wear name tags, and … hey, you think I might have something to do with what’s going on with him?” His tone changes as he asks the question; he’s starting to see me as mo
re of a threat than a buddy to chat with.

  “Somebody set him up,” I say. “You swore you would get revenge on him.”

  “Man, you’ve got to be kidding. That was three years ago.”

  “It took a while to plan this.”

  “Get the hell out of here. I don’t have time for this. I got a business to run.”

  “Can I take that as a denial of involvement?”

  “Here’s what you can take,” he says. “You can take your ass off this property. Because if you don’t, a bunch of cops are going to come tase me for kicking that ass.”

  “Tell me the truth. You ever take a shower in the car wash?”

  “Do I need to warn you again?”

  No. He doesn’t.

  There are two possibilities regarding our progress in preparing our case. One, and it seems most likely, is that we’re not making any. The other is that we are in fact making progress but don’t know it. The difference between the two possibilities simply would relate to the depth of shit that we’re in.

  But either way, it’s deep.

  It’s possible that someone on Kramer’s list is in fact responsible for his current plight, and it’s even possible that one of our team has talked to that person. But we certainly haven’t identified anyone as a suspect.

  Once I’ve gone through the remainder of my portion of Kramer’s list, I call a meeting with Laurie, Marcus, and Hike. We do it at the house; it’s ninety-five degrees outside, and air-conditioning is essential.

  Hike is the first to arrive.

  “How’s Darlene?” I ask.

  “She’s good, Andy. But she went back home. We’re going to slow down a little.”

  “Well, I hope things work out. She seems perfect for you.”

  “I think so too. But she’s nervous. She’s not sure I’m ready to settle down; she doesn’t think I have a serious side.”

  “You hide it really well,” I say.

  He nods his agreement as Laurie and Marcus come into the room. Hike actually backs away slightly; his body language always reveals that he’s even more scared of Marcus than I am.

  We go through the names on Kramer’s list one after the other. Laurie does the talking for both her work and Marcus’s, which is a good thing, because Marcus doesn’t talk. Although I bet when he was double-dating with Laurie and Kramer, he was a regular raconteur.

  She sees two possibilities on her list; one is a guy who Kramer roughed up when called to his house on a domestic violence situation. The guy hit his wife again after Kramer arrived, and Kramer decided he needed to be taught a lesson. He and his partner later claimed that Kramer manhandled him because he was resisting arrest, but that’s not how the husband sees it.

  The guy has since served time for another assault and has been rather open about his hatred for Kramer.

  The other one Laurie considers worth following up on is a drug dealer that Kramer put away for five years. He got out of prison just two months ago and also does not conceal his bitterness. Laurie said that he threatened her for helping Kramer, and Marcus had to convince him that talking that way to Laurie was not a particularly healthy thing to do.

  Neither Laurie nor Marcus have any confidence that either of their candidates was involved in the Zimmer killing, and I feel the same way about the only two I have that are even worth mentioning.

  One is Anthony Orlando, the tased car wash owner. I just don’t buy that after all this time, and after starting and operating a business, that Orlando would suddenly have gone to these lengths to frame Kramer. It also seems a bit subtle; I think if Orlando was set on revenge, he would have taken it more directly.

  The other is the case in which Kramer was trying to find out whether John Craddock accidentally fell off the cliff to his death. I lay out the situation, and Hike says, “Kramer was called in afterward just to examine the facts. How could that have anything to do with Zimmer?”

  “I don’t see how it does,” I say. “I’m mentioning it because it includes two factors: potential violence, if Craddock was murdered, and money, because Craddock was a very successful businessman. I’d also like to look into it a bit to give his wife some closure.”

  I say that I promised Christine Craddock that Laurie would call her to help her plan her next steps, and Laurie says that she will.

  Laurie thinks that our best lead so far is the fingerprints of Eric Benjamin that were found on the truck. “We need to find him,” she says. “He could have been the third person on the truck.”

  “On the other hand, he could have been on that truck a year ago, before Davenport even bought it. He was a cop; maybe he stopped the truck to search for illegal cargo and left his print then. Right now, we have no way of knowing when he was on there.”

  “So we need to connect him to Zimmer,” Laurie says.

  “Right.”

  Laurie updates me on a rare piece of good news. “I called the convenience store down in Little Rock where the phone was purchased. I’m sure it was sold to Zimmer.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The owner of the store is a very nice Southern lady named Betty Stuart. I emailed her a photo—I used one of Zimmer’s mug shots—and she said she remembers him very well. Said the reason she does is that he pulled into the strip mall with a tractor trailer. Nobody else could get in or out until he left. She said he seemed not to care that he was causing a problem.”

  “Would she come up and testify?”

  “She’d love to.”

  I’m very pleased by that news. It means we can show that Zimmer called Kramer. It doesn’t prove anything, but it sure would have been a lot worse had Kramer initiated the contact.

  I tell Hike to go down to the jail and ask Kramer if he knows Benjamin. They were both cops, albeit in different police departments, but they certainly could have run into each other. Maybe they were hated enemies, and Kramer just forgot to put him on the list.

  We should be so lucky.

  I head down to Sam’s office to see how he and his team are doing. As I’m walking through the hot sun to my car, I’m afraid that the Bubalah Brigade is going to collapse in a heap in the un-air-conditioned office. I’ve got to get them a hotel suite to serve as their base of operations.

  But when I arrive there, I am very pleased to feel a burst of cool air as soon as I get in the hallway. And Sam’s office is positively cold. I greet the brigade and immediately dive into Hilda’s rugelach. Once I’m stuffed, I say to Sam, “So Sofia finally came through and had the AC fixed, huh?”

  “Sofia? Eli Mandlebaum fixed it; turns out he was a master electrician.”

  Eli overhears us talking and says, “No problem; there was a short. Been retired twenty-three years, but electricity is electricity.”

  Now that that’s been settled, I ask Sam how the gang is doing. “They dove right in, Andy. They’re amazing.”

  “When do you think you’ll have something for me?”

  “Preliminary by tomorrow.”

  “Please focus hard on Eric Benjamin.”

  Sam nods. “Hilda’s on it. She’s like a dog with a bone.”

  “What a complete and total pig,” Laurie says.

  I’m just entering our bedroom from the bathroom when I hear her say this. My natural assumption is that I just left toothpaste residue in the sink again, a pet peeve of hers, but then I wonder, how could she know that already? There are two possibilities: she has a bathroom sink webcam set up, or she’s not talking about me.

  “Which pig are we talking about?” I ask, cringing slightly.

  She points to the television, which is tuned to Good Morning America. On the screen is a photograph of one Victor Andreson, and the chyron at the bottom of the screen says, “Under arrest on multiple charges.”

  “Who is he?” I ask.

  “The head of Victor’s Donuts.”

  “Uh-oh,” I say. “We own some of their stock. I hope one of the charges is not doughnut poisoning.” Our investments are handled by Edna’s broker cou
sin, Freddie, who has done very well for us. He’s knowledgeable and a hard worker, the latter a trait he does not share with his cousin.

  I’ve given Freddie pretty much free rein to buy and sell as he sees fit; very often I don’t even know what stocks we own. I only know about Victor’s Donuts because Freddie mentioned to me how well we did on it.

  “Why would we own his stock?” Laurie asks.

  “Because we didn’t know he was a bad guy, and he sells a gazillion doughnuts. Not necessarily in that order. By the way, what is he charged with?”

  “Soliciting prostitution and then physically assaulting the woman. They showed a picture of her injuries; he beat the hell out of her. Now that we know, I don’t think we should be supporting this guy or his company.”

  “Are we disregarding the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ concept?”

  She nods. “We are.”

  I stop talking to watch the rest of the piece. They refer to the amazing success story that Victor’s Donuts has become and how the stock soared as a result. Andreson was apparently a brilliant businessman, knowing exactly where to place his stores and how to price out the competition.

  He was also considered a “doughnut genius,” a population subgroup I never realized existed. He created types of doughnuts that were unique and that people went crazy for.

  We benefited from all of this; it was one of Cousin Freddie’s best moves.

  The news anchor mentions that he is claiming to be innocent, but I don’t think anyone is taking that too seriously. As evidence of that disbelief, the announcer also says that the stock is down 22 percent in pre-market trading, meaning it’s time to call Freddie.

  “Hey, Andy,” Freddie says when he hears my voice. “Not a good way to start the day.”

  “I assume you’re talking about the doughnut stock?”

  “I am,” he says. “We’re long the stock.”

  I’m not familiar with that expression. “Obviously ‘long’ is bad?” I ask. “We’d rather be short?”