“Miss me?” I asked in greeting.
“The women just came out of the house and the blonde is walking like she’s wasted. She can barely stand up … hang on, let’s see what they’re doing,” Trish said, reporting a live play-byplay. “They’re walking to the Buick. The boy isn’t with them. You want me to follow them if they leave? Oh, wait. Hang on. The one in the hat just helped the wasted one into the driver’s seat and shut the door. But she’s not getting in on the other side, she’s walking off. Crap, the car is pulling out.”
The women hadn’t been in the house long enough for one of them to get stumbling drunk, and smoking pot wouldn’t make somebody lose that much physical coordination. And why had the mystery women arrived together but left separately?
“Are you in a position to block the car?”
“No, she’s already moving.”
“Stay with her then, would you?” I asked. “Call the Wrightsville Beach P.D. Tell them you’re behind a dangerously drunk driver and see if you can get some blue lights on her. We’ll go check out the beach house.” Although the Wrightsville Beach Police Department was a small one, an officer could get to any location quickly since the island was only about four miles long.
“Will do,” Trish said and hung up.
Minutes later, Ox and I found the beach house empty. We circled several blocks surrounding the senator’s summer getaway, and found the sidewalks empty as well. There was no sign of Jared or the mystery woman in the floppy hat. I shot Ox a look of frustration, hoping for a dose of his spiritual intervention, but none was forthcoming. He shrugged his shoulders and said something witty about me having to actually make use of my investigative abilities. I wondered if he somehow already knew the outcome, but didn’t want to let me in on it. He caught me studying him and raised an amused eyebrow.
“You think me and my guiding spirits are withholding on you?”
I didn’t have a chance to reply because my mobile rang and an out-of-breath Trish was on the other end. I put her on speaker-phone. The Buick had run a stop sign, been clipped by an intersecting concrete truck, and crashed into a light pole. A cop had pulled in behind the car just in time to witness the accident. Trish stopped along with the cop and was inspecting the scene as she talked. Emergency Medical Services hadn’t yet arrived, but Trish was certain the driver no longer had a pulse.
“At least now we have a place to go where we’re sure to find a clue,” I said, thinking that it might be easier to view a dead person with Ox by my side.
“Clues are good,” Ox agreed.
Heading to the accident scene, our thoughts were on Jared. He was running out of time.
TWENTY
Trish, Ox, Soup, and Spud were gathered around my kitchen table sharing a box of early morning Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Oddly, Spud kept glancing at his watch. I wondered what he was masterminding, but had more important things to concern myself with at the moment. The calendar had rolled into a new month and my nerves were taut.
It was July first. SIPA transfers would begin flowing at noon and continue throughout the day. Social Insecurity would awaken on cue and its tentacles would snake out to amass a fortune. In response, Soup’s planted code would quietly place the funds back where they belonged. It would all occur in an electronic battlefield, quietly, invisibly, discreetly. But Jared’s battle would take place in a more tangible arena. We had to find out where, and do so soon.
There was no need to study the photographs Trish had taken in front of the senator’s beach house yesterday because, despite all the blood at the accident scene, I had immediately recognized the dead woman. It was Barb Henley. Jared Chesterfield’s surrogate mom. The angry, bitter one who had been blackmailing him for petty change. I was perplexed. What was Barb doing in town, and more importantly, how did she know the Ralls family?
Trish and I had been politely questioned by both the Wrightsville Beach cops and a detective from New Hanover County Sheriff’s Department. I refused to say why I’d employed Trish to watch the place, but cooperated in passing along the fact that Barb Henley had been in the senator’s beach house just prior to the car accident, and that she’d been there with Walton and another, unidentified woman. Thanks to Trish’s meticulous record keeping, I was able to supply the exact times and photographs.
A surge of scandal-fueled curiosity rippled through the police department immediately after it became known that the prominent senator from Georgia, Sigmund Ralls, might be involved in what was presumed to be a lethal party scandal. It made no difference that the senator and his wife were out of town at the time, attending a fund-raiser.
The press had gotten access to supposedly confidential blood-test results, which showed that Barb Henley’s body held lethal amounts of cocaine and PCP, more commonly known as angel dust. A speculating morning news reporter surmised that Barb Henley didn’t die from crash injuries, but rather drugs obtained at the senator’s house. Walton Ralls was wanted for questioning but had seemingly vanished. Nobody, including his shocked parents, knew of his whereabouts.
“Somebody give the dog a bite of doughnut, for crying out loud,” Spud said. “He’s drooling all over the place.”
I pinched off a piece of glazed doughnut and fed it to Cracker, who had shoved his snout into my lap. As I often did when a case had me stumped, I’d called for a brainstorming session with the few people I trusted implicitly. Our small group of assorted genius collectively mulled through the facts and assumptions. Quite a bit had transpired in a two-week time period.
It seemed only days ago that I’d officially retired and was meeting Bill for dinner. He had introduced me to an old college friend, Lolly, who engaged me to find out if Samuel Chesterfield was having an affair. He wasn’t, but his firm’s computer system was infested with the Social Insecurity virus. His accountant was killed. His son was kidnapped. His assistant died of an overdose. The alleged kidnappers arranged to collect their ransom cash at Fort Fisher tomorrow, a day after the SIPA transfers. Barb Henley was dead. And the Feds were still treating the case as a kidnapping.
“This virus is going to fire up in a few hours,” I told the assembled group, “and won’t finish doing its thing until late today.”
“At which point, they will have no more use for Jared Chesterfield, if in fact he was kidnapped and not in on the whole thing from the beginning,” Trish said.
“Either way,” Ox said, “they won’t need him anymore.”
Between mouthfuls of sugary doughnuts and coffee, we considered all angles and made zero headway with the original conundrum I’d been working on since Chesterfield handed me a retainer check: where was Jared Chesterfield?
Dirk appeared at the door and rapped his knuckles against it twice before letting himself in. “Spud, you’ve got to be more careful about where you and your poker pals park the Chrysler.”
A veil of red appeared beneath Spud’s tanned face and his jaw froze in mid-bite of a lemon-filled.
“Lucky for you I was dropping by to see Jersey, and came the back way, through the alley,” Dirk continued. “I just caught somebody trying to steal your car! He looked suspicious, so I questioned him. He said he’s a friend of yours, but I didn’t recognize him so I ran his name.” Dirk reached for a jelly-filled. “Turns out he has a prior for auto theft.”
Veins pulsed in Spud’s forehead and his ears glowed a bright shade of red. His lips moved for several seconds before words came out. “Damn it!” A string of curses spewed forth, entwined in an unintelligible, rambling sentence that ended with, “Oh, for crying the hell out loud!”
Expecting a much different response—a thank-you perhaps—Dirk raised his eyebrows at Spud.
Trying not to laugh, Ox spewed some coffee. At first, it was a grin that displayed even, white teeth beneath olive skin. Then it turned into a deep chuckle that became a full-blown laugh erupting from his midsection as the weight of his body tilted the kitchen chair to rest on its rear legs. It was unusual to hear Ox laugh uncontrollably and Trish coul
dn’t resist joining him. Soup sat back and Cracker sat up to watch the developing scene unfold.
I glared at Spud with disbelief. “What have you done now?”
“Rainbow said this guy would know what he was doing! I paid him three hundred bucks! And gave him my spare key so his thief wouldn’t waste time trying to hot-wire the dad-blasted thing.”
“You know Rainbow?” I asked.
“Paid who three hundred bucks?” Dirk asked.
Already having figured it out, Ox and Trish doubled up laughing and got Soup going, too.
Spud stood and waved his arms around like a maniac. “Of course I know Rainbow! Everybody knows Rainbow!”
It was news to me. I thought only gamblers knew Rainbow.
Losing his balance, Spud sat back down to keep from falling over. “I paid him three hundred bucks to have this guy steal that piece-of-crap sedan of mine. He said it would be taken to one of them chop shops where they cut it up for parts. So I could be rid of the thing and get my insurance money!”
“I’m not hearing this,” Dirk said, polishing off his doughnut. Cracker sidled up next to Dirk, gave him a pitiful starving look, and was rewarded with a pinch of sugary treat.
“Do you realize how much money this car has cost me?!” Spud yelled at nobody. “A lot! It’s the car from hell! From hell, I tell you!”
Dirk cleaned his sticky fingers with a napkin. “I take it you’re still trying to sell your car, Spud?”
“How can I sell it when nobody wants it?”
“Let me get this straight,” I said to my father. “You paid Rainbow to have a thief steal your car.”
“When I put it out there for the hoodlums to steal, they took it for a joyride and returned it. You need a job done right, you hire a professional.”
“I’m still not hearing this,” Dirk said, using his napkin to wipe Cracker’s drooling mouth. “Any coffee left?”
“Then you had to go and mess it all up!” Spud threw the accusation at Dirk. “Can’t you just leave well enough alone and let a man earn a living?”
“Sorry Spud,” Dirk soothed, “but I earn my living by stopping the bad guys—oh, like car thieves, for example—from earning their living.”
Ox’s guffaws had simmered down to a wide grin, but Trish had the giggles. Spud turned his angry glare, full force, on her.
She smiled sweetly at him. “Spud, why don’t you find a cute sugar momma to take care of you? Keep the Chrysler so she can cart you around in it?”
The color in his face toned down a few notches as Trish’s suggestion sunk in and his mouth moved from side to side in contemplation.
“Our car thief is cuffed and resting comfortably in the backseat of my unmarked. Thanks for the breakfast, but guess I’d better go check on him. By the way, Spud, what is your official position? Is he a friend of yours? You did give him a key in a roundabout way, through the bookie.”
“I don’t even know the guy! And what kind of an idiot would steal a car in broad daylight, anyways?” Spud said.
“The kind of guy that doesn’t plan on getting caught,” Dirk answered. “He paid a fine and did community service for the prior. Picking up a car for a friend so he can wash and wax it isn’t doing anything illegal,” Dirk said offhandedly. “On the other hand, insurance fraud is very illegal.”
It took a few seconds for Spud to clue in.
“Yeah, yeah, for crying out loud,” Spud said. “I know the guy, er—”
“Michael Lowes,” Dirk supplied.
“Michael, right,” Spud continued. “Yeah, Mike’s a good kid—”
“He’s sixty-two,” Dirk interjected.
Spud forced a laugh. “At my age, I call everybody kid. So I guess you’d better let my good friend, ah …”
“Mike.”
“Right, Mike. You’d better let Mike out of your police car so he can go wash and wax the Chrysler.”
“I’ll make sure he drops it back here and leaves the key at the Block,” Dirk said.
“Ask him to vacuum out the trunk, would you?” Spud said, always one to push his luck. “And put that shiny stuff on the wheels.”
“Thank you,” I told Dirk, since Spud hadn’t. “What were you stopping by for when you happened upon the car thief?”
“I almost forgot,” Dirk said, turning at the top of the stairs with a Columbo move. “The beautiful Mrs. Sigmund Ralls and her son appeared at the Wrightsville Beach police station this morning. The kid maintains that Barb Henley and a friend were in town and dropped by to talk with his mother, thinking she might be at the summer house. They stayed for fifteen minutes. He swears they didn’t do any drugs. Supposedly, the Henley woman met the senator’s wife at some social function. Hanna Lane Ralls says that Henley was probably trying to solicit support for a new environmental charity.”
I tried to digest this new information, but it disagreed with me. Barb Henley wasn’t the type to donate her time or energies to a charitable cause.
“Who’s the supposed friend?”
“Walton said he didn’t know her. For that matter, he said he didn’t know Barb, other than he met her once at a political thing. What’s interesting, though, is that when we were questioning the kid, he tripped up and called them sisters. Then, he said that he meant friends—not sisters—and reiterated that he’d never met the woman in the hat before.” Dirk relayed the information to five sets of skeptical ears. Anticipating my next question, he continued, “Walton says the women arrived together and left together. He has no idea why Barb drove off and the friend walked away.”
“What did they talk about?”
“The senator’s political rally. The weather. The annual kingmackerel fishing tournament.”
“Is anybody actually buying their story?” Trish asked.
“Of course not. But the senator has some powerful lawyers, who by the way, convinced a judge that the search of the beach house was illegal. Since their rights were so abhorrently violated, they’re threatening to sue the Wrightsville department.”
“Our judicial system at its finest,” Ox said.
“So as of now, no charges are pending against Walton Ralls and mommy has indicated that all future correspondence and/or questioning will be coordinated through daddy’s lawyers.”
“Walton is living back at the beach house, then?” I asked.
“That’s the address they gave as a current residence for the kid, but I doubt he’s really staying there.”
After Dirk left, our assembled group mulled over the situation. We mulled and talked and mulled some more. When the coffee ran out, Ox went downstairs to prep the Block for the lunch crowd. Soup headed back to his apartment to do some genealogical research on Barb Henley in search of a possible sister, but only after reminding me that my tab was approaching the size of a Royal Caribbean cruise rather than a mere week on my boat with Captain Pete. Trish agreed to monitor both Walton’s and Chesterfield’s mobile phones. Spud called Bobby and Hal to see if they’d drive him to Tippy’s, where he was going to ask Rainbow for a refund of his three hundred dollars. And I put on a tank top and my favorite ratty pair of sweats. I thought about hitting the salon for a half-hour massage but decided to go for a run instead.
TWENTY-ONE
The familiar network of sidewalks and streets in the historic district that paralleled the river glided by as I fell into a comfortable rhythm. I paced myself with medium strides that would take me three or four miles before I’d slow my gait to a brisk walk. I concentrated on breathing, filling my lungs to capacity with the balmy Wilmington air while I tried to think about nothing except breaths going in and out. Annoyingly, my thoughts strayed to Bill. We hadn’t spent much time together lately and I missed his company. But at the same time, I couldn’t fathom growing old together. I had no desire to hold his hand after our joints had turned knobby and arthritic. I didn’t even like the thought of shopping together for new furniture or sharing a bank account. On the other hand, he adored me. After a few blocks of this internal s
truggle, as if I’d conjured him up by magic, my mobile rang and it was Bill on the other end of the tower. I’d taken the time to strap the Sig to my ankle and the phone to my elastic waistband. Whenever I saw someone sitting atop a Lifecycle at the gym chatting merrily on their phone, I thought it looked ridiculous. I wondered if right now, a bystander might think I looked ridiculous, jogging and talking.
“Hey, what’s up?” I said, a bit breathless.
“Calling to say hello, Jersey. I miss you.”
“Just think, we’ll be on Incognito soon,” I said, daydreaming about our upcoming excursion. Calming water, sunshine, booze, food, Bill in a bathing suit, and no worries. Except for the concern that he might start talking marriage again. I approached an intersection and jogged in place a few seconds to let a horse-drawn carriage pass.
“You’re breathing really loud, Jersey. Is this going to be an obscene phone call? Because if it is, you should probably tell me what you’re wearing.”
“I’m out jogging, to clear my head. But I’m all for getting obscene with you soon.”
“Looking forward to it,” he purred. “Until then, anything I can do to help?”
“Just be ready for my postponed retirement celebration.”
I stepped off the curb to cross a cobblestone street when I heard a compact explosion, a whistling hiss, and the jarring sound of a bullet hitting metal, seemingly all at once. I dove and tucked into a roll, protecting my head with my arms. Landing on my feet, I zigzagged to the other side of the street where I took cover behind an illegally parked car. From my crouched position, I retrieved the Sig and scanned the streets, adrenaline pumping, senses on maximum alert. Screaming tires caught my attention, but all I could make out was the tail end of a white compact vehicle turning the corner. I couldn’t see the plate number or the driver and wasn’t positive about the make of the car. Thoughts of chasing it on foot were immediately quelled by the realization that it would be a futile effort.
T. Lynn Ocean - Jersey Barnes 01 - Southern Fatality Page 21
