Unfinished Sentence (The Charlie Davies Mysteries Book 2)

by Clare Kauter

  “I guess in that case, I’d better call it in.”

  I nodded. “Thanks. I don’t really have a lot to go on, I know, but I’m kind of panicked about what’s he’s going to do to them.”

  “Aren’t they kind of, like, your three least favourite people?”

  Joe knew me from high school, so he knew the backstory of the James and Celia situation. He was also good friends with Lea, so I guess he’d heard about my lack of affection for Adam from her.

  “Um, I think they might have been usurped by the crazy gangster who’s trying to kill me,” I said.

  He nodded. “Fair enough. OK, I’m going to call it in to Harcourt.”

  My blood ran cold.

  “You can’t call it in to someone else?”

  Joe sighed. “I know you don’t like him, Charlie, but he’s a good detective.”

  “He’s not even a good person,” I answered. “And he’s an even worse cop.”

  Harcourt and I had something of a history. He had been the investigating officer in my brother’s disappearance as well as the hit and run I’d been involved in (I got hit, if you were wondering). He hadn’t managed to solve either case – not that he ever really seemed to try to figure out who tried to mow me down. He’d grown obsessed with my brother’s disappearance; way too obsessed. The thing was, I just didn’t trust him.

  “Charlie, it’s not his fault that your brother ran away.”

  I wasn’t so sure that was true.

  During our conversation, Joe had driven to the city centre. Sheila would be waiting nearby for me, unless something had gone wrong.

  “Don’t call it in,” I said. “I made the whole thing up. Just drop me off here.”

  “Charlie –”

  “Let me out.”

  “You need to come to the station and make a statement. We need to find them. They’re in danger.”

  His voice was so urgent that I almost felt bad doing this to him. In the long run, though, everything would work out better if I didn’t involve Harcourt. I know it might seem rash or stupid – or even downright dangerous – to cut the police out of this and go it alone. But if Harcourt got involved, Celia, James and Adam would end up dead. I was sure of it. I knew this guy.

  “James, Celia and Adam have taken an impromptu holiday together. I will make a statement to that effect.”

  Joe pulled into a parking space and turned to face me, looking me square in the eye, probably in the hope of trying to talk some sense into me.

  “You need the help of the police. You can’t do this alone, Charlie, and we need to find them,” he said, urgency apparent in his voice. James was his best friend, and I didn’t want to do this to Joe, but it was the only way I could save them. I unbuckled my seatbelt and opened the door.

  “Sorry,” I said, stepping out of the car. It was true. I was. But I was also very stubborn. I knew what I needed to do.

  “What’s his name?” Joe called out as I walked away from the car. “The guy who’s got them. At least tell me that.”

  I turned back to him and shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Up until now, I hadn’t been all that involved in the whole Lionel case. I didn’t really know that much background on him, other than what Adam had told me. I didn’t read up on him, since my job was basically just to spy on him and Stacey and report back with what I’d seen. I hadn’t really wanted to know what he was capable of. Now, though, the situation necessitated it.

  Stepping into the dimly lit café, it took my eyes a few seconds to adjust, even though it was a gloomy, wet day outside. I scanned the room, and when I spotted Sheila I exhaled a breath I hadn’t realised I was holding. Under the table sat my Hello Kitty bag.

  “I thought I looked ridiculous lugging that thing around with me, but now that I see you I feel much better,” she said. She had a point. I hadn’t looked in a mirror, but I’d gone to bed with my hair wet and I was still wearing pyjamas and no shoes, plus I’d just been rained on and had walked over enough wet concrete to leave black, muddy footprints wherever I stepped. (There were Keds in my bag, but my feet were already beyond saving – no point putting them on now and ruining a nice pair of shoes.) Several people on the street outside as well as in the café had turned their heads as I walked by, and I suspected it was not in a good way.

  “I don’t think either of us should go home,” I said. “Lionel could be waiting for us.”

  “Lionel?” she repeated, confused. “Who’s that?”

  “He’s a club owner. Your accountant – the guy who turned up dead – also worked for him.”

  “So why is he after me?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, but seeing as he trashed your yard, I’d say he’s got something against you.”

  “And why is he after you?”

  “Because I’ve been spying on him for Adam.”

  “Right. And you think he knows where we both live?”

  “I think there’s a definite chance.” It was lucky Sheila had managed to escape my room before he showed up looking for me there. I was sure he’d try my house next, so it was not a good idea to –

  Oh, shit.

  Lea.

  I rifled through the Hello Kitty back maniacally, searching for my phone. Eventually I felt my hand touch the smooth screen and yanked it from my bag, dialling Lea’s mobile.

  “Where are you?” I demanded the second she answered.

  “At my parents’ house,” she replied. “Celebrating, because – drumroll – I have a job interview tomorrow!”

  “Lea, that’s awesome, but I can’t really talk right now. Can you just stay at your parents’ tonight? Don’t go back to the house, OK?”

  “Sure. Why? Have you got a boy over?” she asked, before starting to cackle like an aged witch. Oh, sure, it was a big joke. As if Charlie would ever have a boy over. Well, actually I’d slept with two different boys in the last two days (sort of) so –

  Right, back to the matter at hand.

  “Look, just stay away from the house, OK?”

  “OK,” she said, no longer laughing. “Are you alright?”

  “I will be.”

  Probably.

  Maybe.

  We’d see.

  I hung up and turned back to Sheila. “Do you have anyone in town you can stay with?” I asked. “If you haven’t met Lionel then maybe he isn’t after you. It could be your husband instead.”

  She groaned. “That’d be right. He’s probably racked up some massive gambling debt and now the gangster’s coming after my business. I have friends I can stay with.”

  “You should head there now,” I said. Maybe Lionel wasn’t after her yet, but if he saw us together then he would be.

  Once she left, I ordered a soy latte (hey, I was tired, and damned if I was going to die without at least one last delicious coffee in my system), and picked up my phone. Normally I would have called Tim, but he wasn’t in town and his phone was turned off, so I took the next best option: I called Baxter & Co.

  I wasn’t game to go there in person, since I knew Lionel would be able to find me there too easily. The voice that answered the phone was someone I didn’t know.

  “Baxter & Co.”

  “Hey, it’s Charlie.” Silence. “From reception.”

  “Aren’t you off sick?”

  “Yes, I am, but I just wondered if I could talk to someone.”

  More silence.

  “I guess. Who?”

  “Panther.”

  Panther wasn’t a talkative kind of guy, but he usually trained me a couple of times a week and I felt like we’d bonded. Maybe that was a one-sided thing, I don’t know, but I was pretty sure he’d help me out if I needed it.

  “Hello?” said a voice on the other end of the line.

  “Panther! Thank god!”

  There was a pause. “Charlie?”

  “Yes, oh man, you have no idea how much I need you right now.”

  Another
pause. “You will have to take me out to dinner first.”

  I snorted. English wasn’t Panther’s first language, so his speech was a little stilted, but it wasn’t often Panther made jokes. Even in spite of the current situation, I was very proud of him. “Look, I need you to email me everything you can on Ruslan Volkov.”

  “Spell that at me?”

  Like I said, a little stiff on the English.

  I spelled it aloud as I listened to him typing away on the other end of the line.

  “This is going to be a big file,” Panther commented.

  I gulped. Great.

  “You’d better send me anything you’ve got on Lonny Lionel, too.” Maybe he owned some properties around town where I could start looking.

  “You need some help, Charlie? What is wrong?”

  “I’m on the run.”

  “From who? Adam?”

  Normally I would have laughed, but I was too on edge.

  “No,” I answered. “From the guy who has Adam.”

  “Has Adam? Adam has been taken by somebody?”

  “Yes.”

  I heard murmuring on the other end of the line, and I guessed Panther was talking to someone.

  “Charlie?” said another voice. Panther must have put me on speaker. “It’s Harry. I need you to tell me exactly what’s going on.”

  Harry Baxter was back in the country?

  Excellent. Now we had a chance.

  “How much do you know already?” I asked.

  “About your involvement with Lonny Lionel? Nothing,” he said. “It seems Adam decided not to brief me on this particular operation.”

  Oh, dear. Adam was going to be in trouble from his daddy when he escaped from the Russian gangster. Honestly, I didn’t know which would be worse.

  I filled them in on everything that had transpired in the last few days (leaving out the bits where Adam was shirtless, of course, because that would be weird considering Harry was his father).

  “It was a good call to not involve Harcourt,” said Harry. “I don’t trust him.”

  See? I told you Harcourt was a dishonest scumbag. Harry Baxter said so himself. (I know you were silently judging me for not involving the police. In your face.)

  “Stay where you are, Charlie,” said Harry. “We’ll be there to get you soon.”

  My phone pinged shortly after hanging up, and I found that Panther had emailed me the files so I read through them while I waited. Past victims of Volkov/Lionel – I was no longer in any doubt about whether they were the same person – were usually shot, execution style. There had been a couple of cases where he’d drowned them by leaving them tied to a pier and waiting for the tide to come in. It was lucky we lived in an inland city, because I didn’t want any of my friends going through that.

  He’d also done some other pretty awful stuff while trying to extract information from people – pulling teeth, burning with a cigarette, tying people to a chair and beating them with a baseball bat. You get the picture. Speaking of pictures, there were forensic photos of some of his victims in the email that were making my soy latte not sit quite right. I soldiered on through it, though, ever the martyr.

  OK. Now I knew what I was up against.

  I opened the Lonny Lionel file, which was significantly shorter. Nothing really in there until recently, not that I was interested in anything earlier than the past couple of years, since it was all obviously fake. I looked at his list of properties. Obviously Rift was on there, a couple of houses – then one address caught my eye.

  Lionel/Volkov owned a plot of land along the same strip as Sheila’s construction site. Interesting…

  Harry, a tall, greying and slightly rotund man, walked into the café and made his way to where I was sitting, stopping by the counter to order something to be sent to our table. He handed over the money, and I watched him put his change in the tip jar.

  “I just asked them to bring you another of whatever you were drinking. I hope that’s OK.”

  It had always confused me how a guy as nice as Harry had spawned a creature like Adam. All Adam’s goodness was on the outside. Well, almost all of it.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “You must be worried.”

  I looked across the table at him. He was unbelievably calm considering the state of things. He was like Dumbledore (book version, obviously) – completely unruffled even though everything was falling down around us. At least, that’s what it felt like to me.

  “You must be worried, too,” I answered. His son had been taken by a Russian racketeer. He certainly had reason to be concerned.

  He smiled and shrugged. “Adam can take care of himself. I’m sure James will be OK, too – he strikes me as someone who can look after himself.” I wasn’t so sure about that, but I held my tongue. “Your other friend, though – Celia? – Yes, she might have a harder time. Can you tell me anything more about her? Anything you might have seen in her room that could give us a clue?”

  I shook my head. “The room was messy, like there’d been a struggle, but nothing really stood out to me.”

  He nodded. “When did you last see her?”

  “Um…” My stomach sunk. “Last night.”

  Oh no. She hadn’t answered her door last night when I’d gone back to her room. I’d thought she’d fallen asleep, but now it seemed more likely that she’d already been taken. What did they want with Celia, though? She wasn’t even involved. Maybe it had something to do with the marketing work she was doing for Lionel/Volkov – that was how Stacey had said they’d gotten back in contact. Not that it mattered if we didn’t find her soon.

  “OK, so she’s been gone for the longest. I think we should really focus on finding her first, although if she’s been gone since last night…”

  He didn’t have to finish his sentence. I knew what he meant. Chances weren’t good. Of course, Celia had to go and get murdered right after we became friends again. Just my luck.

  “Where do we start?” I asked.

  “Why don’t you tell me if you spotted anything in those files?” he said as a waiter sat our coffees down in front of us. A long black for Harry, another latte for me. “Thank you.”

  “Thank you,” I said to the waiter before turning back to Harry. “There was one thing, actually. When I was looking through the list of Lionel’s properties, I came across one that was near the site where we found the dead body a couple of days ago.”

  He nodded. “Any reason you think we should look there?”

  Shrugging, I answered, “Not really. Just seemed like it could mean something. Maybe there will be some clue there.”

  “Why do you think he took your friend?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “She was doing some work for him. Maybe she overheard something.”

  “And that construction site was where his other employee’s body was found?”

  I nodded slowly. Of course – the other guy had been his accountant. Maybe Lionel would take Celia there too.

  “Sounds like something we should check out.”

  He picked up his coffee cup and stood.

  “Um, I don’t think you’re meant to take the glassware with you,” I said.

  He pulled a fifty from his wallet and strode over to the counter.

  “This should cover the cups we’re taking,” he said, handing the fifty to the confused-looking person at the register. I picked up my cup and bag and hurried out after him, thanking the lady at the counter on my way.

  On second thoughts, maybe I could see some similarities between Harry and his son.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Slurping down a lidless latte in a moving car was not an activity without its issues. By the end of the trip, in addition to my muddied bare feet and crazy hair, my pyjama outfit was covered in coffee stains and my skin was red from where the hot liquid had splashed me.

  I was sitting in the passenger seat next to Panther (who was driving), as Harry had insisted that I should sit in the front. Panther o
ccasionally glanced disgustedly at me as I flailed around, coffee splashing on every possible surface. Harry sat in the middle back seat, sipping serenely on his own coffee, lost in thought.

  Eventually we reached the lot that Lionel was registered as owning. Other than a small, temporary site office, there wasn’t that much to see. I stepped out of the car, leaving my latte glass behind, and sank ankle-deep in a muddy puddle. The rain hadn’t let up since it began storming last night, and I was beginning to see why the weather people had been making such a big deal out of it. This was practically a monsoon.

  No longer caring even slightly about what I trod in (what was the point?), I walked up to the site office and tried the door. Locked, of course.

  “Fucking fuck,” I said. I turned back to Harry and Panther, who were picking their way across the mud much more carefully than I had. “It’s locked. Anyone got a brick?”

  They both smiled a little at that, although I wasn’t joking. I heard a noise behind me and turned back to the door, which was now open, a tall, slim figure standing in the doorway.

  “Charlie?”

  “Os?” I replied. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Lionel asked me to look after his books. Apparently his last accountant wasn’t that good, so he hired me instead.”

  “His last accountant ended up encased in concrete a couple of lots down.”

  “Ah.”

  “You don’t seem all that shocked.”

  “If you’d seen his bookkeeping skills, I don’t think you’d be all that shocked that someone had murdered him either.”

  There were times when I didn’t think that Joanna and Os had that much in common, but then he went and said something like that and I realised they were perfect for each other.

  “Do you mind if we come in and have a look around?”

  “Not really sure that –”

  I pushed past him and walked in, tracking muddy footprints across the grey carpet of the small office. “If anyone asks, just say I overpowered you.”

  “What are we looking for?” asked Panther, appearing in the doorway.