T. Lynn Ocean - Jersey Barnes 01 - Southern Fatality

by T. Lynn Ocean

  “Sure you are,” Rita and I replied in harmony.

  “What does your Honda need?” I said.

  She looked sheepishly at the floor. “He’s fixing the air conditioner and installing a power sunroof.”

  “You go girl,” Rita said, waving her pen in front of a desk chair that was wired with a microphone. I couldn’t see or hear the pen’s vibration, but Rita motioned me over to check it out. The pen vibrated just enough for my fingers to detect the movement.

  “Where’d we get this?” I asked.

  “From Steroid. I traded him some stuff we don’t use for the pen and a really cool digital camera. It’s smaller than a pack of chewing gum,” Rita bragged.

  Steroid, so named because he has no neck and more bulges of muscle than any man ought to, is in the gadgetry business. Rita loves to drop in on him and haggle, like other people get off bargain hunting at Saturday morning garage sales.

  “Hey, can I borrow the camera sometime?” Trish wanted to know.

  “Sure,” I said. “But if you’d dump the mechanic and date Steroid,” I told her, “you could probably get your own camera. Maybe a vibrating pen, too.”

  Her middle finger went up. “Vibrate this.”

  “Actually, dating Steroid might not be a bad idea, Trish,” Rita said. “Then you could talk him out of a wiretap and return the one you borrowed back in January.”

  “Crap,” Trish said, smacking her gum. “I thought you forgot about that.”

  Rita never forgot anything. She shook her head from side to side, once, in answer.

  “Listen, I’ve got to scoot,” Trish told us, smart enough to realize when it was time to vacate. “Retirement agrees with you, Jersey. I dig that paisley shirt. You blend right in with the geriatric crowd.” She smiled brightly and closed the front door behind her.

  I updated Rita on the Chesterfield case and she updated me on her two cases in progress. Although she pretended otherwise, I think she enjoyed being in charge. As if to prove that nobody—not even the founder of a business—was indispensable, everything flowed smoothly. The bills were being paid, the new business was coming in, and the existing clients were happy. Plus, Rita was relaxed, at least on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays because she’d made good on her threat to hire a masseur instead of a clerical temp. I knew because his massage table was set up next to the coffee machine.

  “I guess you’ll be glad to get the Chesterfield thing wrapped up,” Rita said, “so you can get back to the business of retirement.”

  “Absolutely,” I answered, puzzled by a tinge of regret. I was definitely ready to be on the boat with a hunky man and without phones, responsibilities, or guns. Well, maybe one gun. But I’d expected to be missed at the agency, at least a little bit. I asked Rita how the search was going for a new partner.

  “Haven’t found anyone worth talking to yet. But we’ve got some feelers out.”

  “Good,” I told her. “Stay in touch.”

  I went out the way Trish had and stepped into a sunny morning. The air was crisp and the birds sang. It was the type of day to get things done. Not wanting to disappoint Mother Nature, I got busy.

  I was in my car heading to the Bellington Complex when Soup called with the skinny on Barb Henley. I pulled off the road, put on my wireless headset, and found a pen and notepad.

  He gave me the name of her doctor when Jared was born and the name of her current doctors. She had eight of them. Either she had some major health problems or she was a hypochondriac. Or, she might have been addicted to prescription drugs and found it necessary to rotate doctors to keep herself in ample supply.

  Soup gave me her previous three addresses and her current address. She worked part time at a retail store and I wondered why, if she was in such desperate need of money, she didn’t work full-time. A late-model Porsche 911 Turbo was registered in her name and her driving record revealed two speeding tickets and one DUI. A person with a history of drinking and driving shouldn’t be behind the wheel of that much raw power. And since she was toting herself around in a new Porsche, she either had very good credit or she had a source of funding other than the petty cash she was blackmailing from Jared.

  “Get this,” Soup said, saving the best for last. “She had a condition called tubal infertility. Both of her fallopian tubes were blocked up. Even though everything else worked fine, her eggs couldn’t get through. So there’s no way she got pregnant by Chesterfield having sexual intercourse with her.” He paused to slurp something.

  “Anyway,” Soup continued, “medical records don’t show any pregnancies except the one where she had the egg implanted as a surrogate and the time frame is consistent with Jared’s birth. She’s single, no children, doesn’t claim anyone as a dependent on her tax return.” He paused and the faint sound of fingers rapidly punching computer keys came through the telephone. Soup always worked on two or three things at the same time. “Oh, and check this out. Chesterfield Financial has been providing her with insurance all these years, even though she’s not on the payroll.”

  Why would Chesterfield pay medical insurance for an ex-secretary, even if the woman did lease out her uterus to carry Jared? I wondered if Barb Henley had something on Chesterfield, and was blackmailing the father the same way she was blackmailing the son. Or, perhaps continuing medical insurance was part of the original surrogate mother agreement. I supposed that if one wanted children badly enough and one had wealth, they would pay just about any amount to have a baby.

  Flipping the notepad shut, I looked in the rearview mirror to see a small white car pull off the road behind me. I couldn’t tell whether it was a Ford or Chevrolet. For that matter it could have been a Kia or a Hyundai. Brands of cars were no longer easily distinguishable by sight, and it was angled so I couldn’t make out the logo on the grille. A slender man wearing a cowboy hat and baggy T-shirt emerged and approached my car. Longish hair flowed from beneath the hat, mirrored sunglasses concealed his eyes, and a flaky skin condition covered his cheeks above a scraggly mustache. As he walked up from the passenger side, he motioned for me to roll down the window. I reached for my Glock instead.

  “You’re going to have to put me on your payroll, Jersey,” Soup was saying in my ear.

  “I don’t have a payroll,” I told him, loading a round into the chamber. “I’m retired, remember?”

  “Shit,” he said, and drew the word into three syllables.

  From ten feet away, the stranger shrugged at my noncompliance, pulled a revolver from the waistband of his jeans, and fired two shots into my passenger window. They pinged off, leaving pockmarks on the bulletproof glass. A third shot hit before it dawned on the shooter that his bullets weren’t penetrating the glass. He emptied two rapid shots into my right front tire and ran back to his car. A professional would have known how to defeat bullet-resistant glass by firing three shots in a tight triangle pattern, but this guy’s shots were all over the place. It’s why I didn’t chance an accident by peeling out and forcing a merge into traffic.

  “What was that?” Soup said. “You in the surveillance van? You really ought to get the backfiring thing fixed.”

  “Listen, I’ll catch you later.” I clicked off my headset, jumped into a crouched position behind the door, and fixed the Glock’s sight on the runner, waiting for him to turn and fire at me again. But he didn’t and as his car squealed into traffic, cutting off another driver, I couldn’t safely take aim at his wheels and I didn’t get a tag number.

  Sighing, I opened the hatchback to retrieve a jack and the spare. With the government, I always had run flat tires on the Mercedes, but now I had plain off-the-shelf Michelins. I should have spent the extra money, I thought, removing a lug nut and wondering who’d just tried to kill me. In the instant the shooter pulled a handgun from his waistband, I had caught a glimpse of hips that looked curvy beneath the baggy denim fabric. Whether male or female, the black hair and flaky skin was most likely a disguise.

  I called my travel agent and had her book t
wo seats on the next flight into New York’s LaGuardia Airport. We’d have to connect through Charlotte, but then, you had to connect through somewhere to get anywhere out of Wilmington. She also reserved a room at the Hotel Sofitel, a thirty-story French joint in Manhattan’s theater district that had a super view of the city and a fully stocked minibar in every room. Next I rang Bill, thinking that an overnight trip would be a good test of his promise not to push the marriage thing. Plus, I hated to eat out alone.

  “Hiya, gorgeous,” I said. “How’d you like to accompany me on a quick trip to New York? Have a nice meal with a big city view.”

  “Love to, but only if I get to choose the restaurant.”

  “Deal.” I had just enough time to pack an overnight bag, see Spud, and have a talk with Chesterfield before Bill and I headed to the airport.

  Forty-five minutes later, overnight bag in the backseat of the Benz, I sat with Chesterfield in his office. A new assistant who was probably a temp sat at Darlene’s old desk in the lobby and the office across the hall, the one designated for the branch manager, sat empty. A Citadel jacket was thrown over a chair in one corner and a trio of marina prints hung behind it. I dove right in by asking Chesterfield about Barb Henley and the question totally threw him.

  “My, my. You have been busy,” he said with a touch of anger. “The FBI agents already quizzed me about Barb, but they came up with nothing on her. What does she have to do with anything?”

  It was my turn to be a little angry. Samuel Chesterfield’s son’s life could be on the line and he withheld pertinent information from me.

  “Maybe nothing,” I said. “Or, maybe everything. I’m working for you, remember? I’m the good guy. And when I agreed to work for you, you agreed to my terms. Tell me about her.”

  He told me everything I already knew and some I didn’t. She’d gone to work for him right out of high school. Was sweet and friendly but underwent an immediate change as soon as she was carrying his and Lillian Chesterfield’s child. Began making demands that were unreasonable, but Chesterfield chalked it up to hormones. She immediately quit her job and demanded full pay, even though the original agreement was for her to work until her third trimester. She had plans to start college after the baby was born.

  “Tell me how this surrogate mother thing works,” I said.

  “Well, you know that Lillian couldn’t bear children, even though her eggs were fine. A doctor took my sperm and fertilized one of Lillian’s eggs, then implanted it in Barb’s uterus. Basically, we hired Barb to carry our child for nine months. We paid all of her medical bills, and believe me, she had the best medical care. We also continued paying her full salary and benefits, even though she quit work immediately—said she had to rest. She got a fee of one hundred thousand dollars after Jared was born.”

  “What did she have to do, other than let her body take over?”

  “She signed a contract and agreed to not smoke, drink, or do drugs. She had to follow doctor’s orders and couldn’t do anything to harm herself or the baby during the term of the pregnancy. Also signed a confidentiality agreement and signed papers stating that she understood that she had no rights to the baby.” Chesterfield rubbed his eyebrows between thumb and forefinger as though he had a headache. The jacket of his custom-tailored suit hung on a coatrack and I noticed that he wore silver-and-ruby cufflinks. Not too many men wear cuffinks anymore, but Chesterfield was sticking to his routine. Despite the circumstances, he was continuing to function as best he could. He ran one of the most powerful brokerage firms in the country and he still dressed the part. It was what he did.

  “Where is she now?” I wanted to know.

  “Jared was born healthy, I paid Barb, and that was it. For whatever reason, she sends a Christmas card every year, to the family. Last card came, she was living outside of Manhattan.”

  “Yeah, she still is,” I told him. “I’m going to pay her a visit tomorrow morning. By the way, I add travel expenses to my fee.”

  Chesterfield dismissed the travel expenses with a wave of his hand, but after a beat, did a double take. “You think she’s involved?”

  “Let’s just say she’s involved with your family more than you know. I can’t elaborate, but I’ll tell you everything I’ve found out when the time is right. For now, you’re in a holding pattern and I’m trying to find your son.”

  Chesterfield blew out a frustrated sigh. “I don’t think the agents are getting anywhere. They’ve been talking to a bunch of Jared’s old classmates and instructors at the Citadel. And they’ve interviewed just about everyone at Chesterfield Financial. They’ve spoken to my clients and past clients. That’s a lot of people.”

  “They find anything?”

  “Nothing that they’re telling me.” He looked out a window and rubbed his forehead again. “What’s going on, Jersey? Give me something.”

  “How about you give me the rest of the story on Barb.”

  “There is no more.”

  I waited. Chesterfield met my gaze for a few seconds, then sighed and looked out the window. “It’s just hearsay, but one of the other secretaries said that Barb fantasized about marrying me. The girl walked up on her in the employee lounge—this is over twenty years ago, you realize—and Barb was writing out a name on a napkin. Mrs. Barbara Chesterfield.” He shook his head to dismiss any significance. “There were a few incidences when Barb was carrying Jared. She told me that she wished it was really our baby—mine and hers—and that she would have made me a good wife. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I just kind of played along. I didn’t tell her she was totally nuts because I didn’t want to upset her and cause something to happen to the baby. Plus, I just chalked it up to the hormones. You know, food cravings and irrational mood swings and all that? I read a book on it.”

  “Did you have an affair with her?”

  “Heck no!” he said in a hushed voice. “She was barely nineteen when she gave birth to Jared…. She kissed me once at a company party. I might have kissed back, I’m not sure. But that was it. That was after Jared was born. She wasn’t even working for us anymore, she just showed up at the party. I made it very clear that I did not fool around on Lillian and that was that.”

  I asked Chesterfield if Barb had been in touch with anyone in his firm or his family recently. As expected, his answer was no. I’d gotten all I was going to out of him for the time being. I had just enough time to hook up with Bill and make the New York flight.

  Approaching LaGuardia, we had a snapshot view of New York City from the sky. The night was sliding into dusk and Bill had a hand cupped around his eyes, shielding the glare from cabin lights as he peered through the miniature window at a buffet of twinkling lights. I cringed at the idea of occupying the claustrophobic window seat, but Bill loved it.

  He swiveled in his seat. “This was a great idea, Jersey. We might just have to stretch out in the hotel room before we change clothes and head out to Times Square. You know, to test out the bed.”

  Already, New York City’s energy was an aphrodisiac and luckily Bill seemed to be back to his old self, the one who was looking for a good time instead of a wedding chapel.

  “Always important to check out the bed first thing,” I agreed.

  “I’ll make dinner reservations for nine thirty or ten? That gives us plenty of time for you to have your way with me.”

  “Perfect,” I told him. “When in New York, do as the New Yorkers do. It’s posh to eat late.”

  “It’s posh to eat anytime,” he said, “if it’s you I’m eating.”

  There was a slight bump when tire tread met runway and the brief swaying motion caused us to do a mini synchronized tango in our seats.

  FOURTEEN

  The next morning, I left Bill lounging at the hotel and hired a car to take me to the address that Soup had given me.

  It was evident that Barb Henley was at one time a knockout. Her facial features were perfectly proportioned—wide mouth with full lips, dainty nose, and eyes that turned up at the
outer corners just enough to give them an exotic appeal. But her skin had an unhealthy pallor to it and her nose had the bloated, reddish look of someone who drinks way too much booze. Her eyes were bloodshot and at least an inch’s worth of dark growth at her scalp stood in contrast to the rest of her bleached hair. There was something familiar about her.

  She lived on the fifth floor of an apartment building that wasn’t upper class, but respectably had a doorman and a nicely decorated lobby with a security guard. When he called her on an intercom, she promptly told the guard to let me up as though strangers called on her every day.

  “My name is Jersey, and I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes,” I said when she opened the door to get a look at me. Without asking why, she shrugged her shoulders and headed back into her apartment, leaving the door open. I took it as an invitation to enter. When we were seated across from each other in her living room, she asked who I was. She wore cutoff jean shorts and a long-sleeve cardigan sweater over a tight tank top. A half-drunk glass of what appeared to be a Bloody Mary, complete with a wedge of lime and ground pepper floating on the top, rested beside her. It was not quite ten in the morning.

  “I’m working with Samuel Chesterfield and I think you can help.” I’d often found the direct approach worked best when I wasn’t sure where I wanted to go with something. Things had a way of playing out, telling me what I needed to know.

  She didn’t act surprised. “Another cop? I’ve already spoken to those dreadfully boring people from the FBI. At least this time they sent a woman instead of a stiff suit.” She looked me over from beneath morning-puffy eyelids and I didn’t correct her assumption that I was a cop.

  “What can you tell me about Jared?”

  “Nothing, except what you probably already heard. I was the surrogate mother for the kid. Gave birth to him. Got paid to do it. What else do you want to know?”

  Why you’re blackmailing him, I wanted to ask.

  “When’s the last time you spoke with him? Or had contact with him?”