Fatal Luck

by Dorothy Howell

  There’s something comforting about your place of employment. It’s familiar. It’s secure. You can sit at your desk amid your things and feel accepted, knowledgeable and competent. You have direction, goals, purpose. Everything else was put aside for those eight hours while you focused on handling the problems put before you, all for the sole gain of the faceless company’s bottom line.

  I’d worked all sorts of jobs in the past few years, everything from administrative assistant to piercing ears at the mall. The one really good job I’d had was with a major corporation but it went under, dragging me down with it.

  So I’d taken the job of asset manager for Mid-America not long ago. The position required that I telephoned customers who were behind on their payments and work with them to get their account up to date. I was okay with helping people get back on their financial feet, especially since I’d experienced some of those problems first hand growing up in a working class family. I’d been trying to manage my own finances, too, in a difficult economy.

  It helped that I worked in my hometown. Santa Flores was blessed with a great location halfway between Los Angeles and Palm Springs, at the foot of the mountains leading up to some of the country’s best ski resorts. Unfortunately, not much of the good mojo from those fabulous places had rubbed off on Santa Flores. Most of the major industry had moved out years ago, leaving unemployment, gangs, violence and crime in its place.

  I’d lived here for as long as I could remember. My folks lived here, I’d gone to school here, I knew the people here. I understood them. I fit right in.

  Mid-America expected me to take whatever steps were necessary to collect their accounts, including pursuing legal action and repossessing collateral. No way was I doing that, so I put my own spin on the position.

  I was nice to people. When they ran into financial trouble and couldn’t make their payments, I sometimes fudged a bit on Mid-America’s policy. I dished out good karma, allowing my customers to slide a little on our payment, giving them as much wiggle room as I could—as long as my supervisor didn’t catch on.

  But I liked that about the job. It gave me a chance to be judge, jury, and executioner, at times, to mete out a little justice for my customer’s benefit and, occasionally when I was completely out of options, for Mid-America’s benefit.

  For me, life was all about spreading a little good luck whenever possible.

  As I crossed the parking lot and went into the office, I was more than ready to ease into my daily routine and leave murder, mayhem, and manic Janine behind.

  That was not to be.

  Carmen Hernandez, our cashier who worked at the front counter, leaped to her feet when I walked in.

  “Is it true?” she asked, her big brown eyes growing wilder and darker.

  Carmen was a few years younger than me but she was already married with children. She looked great, with a fabulous figure and long, dark hair.

  The only thing that spread faster than bad news was terrible news. Someone from the Bonita branch, probably Misty, must have called Carmen with a heads-up on what happened to Jerry Donavan.

  “Jerry was hit by a car in the alley behind the Bonita branch,” I said.

  “Is he going to be okay?” Carmen asked.

  “No. He’s … dead,” I said, and headed toward my desk at the back of the office.

  Manny Franco, my slightly overweight, severely stressed-out supervisor, occupied the desk near mine. He was a great boss. If he ever quit Mid-America, I might have to leave too.

  Manny was on the phone when I walked past. He gave me an eyebrow bob, which I’d learned long ago meant that we’d talk in a minute.

  Inez Marshall, the office manager and Mid-America’s version of the Crypt Keeper, wasn’t as subtle. She followed me to my desk.

  I was usually pretty good at ignoring Inez. I’d been practicing hard at it. As our office manager—just one rung on the corporate ladder below our branch manager, Mr. Burrows, whom we almost never saw—Inez handled the lending side of the business and supervised our two financial reps.

  Since, from the look of her, she’d worked for Mid-America since shortly after that huge meteor wiped out the dinosaurs, she’d also put herself in charge of the routine aspects of office life—supplies, timesheets, inter-office memos, meetings. Inez managed to bring new depth to the phrase “daily grind.”

  Never married and with no children, Inez’s entire life was Mid-America. Most of us wished she got out a little more often, preferably on company time, and do something fun, such as clothes shopping.

  Inez was still mixing and matching Labor Day’s orange/yellow/brown wardrobe pieces, with no chance of anything different until Christmas, when she rounded out her three annual clothes-buying trips.

  “Now, Dana,” Inez said, taking off her glasses and letting them dangle from the chain around her neck. “I’ve already called Corporate about what happened this morning.”

  “I’m doing just fine, Inez,” I said, as I dropped my handbag in the bottom drawer of my desk. “Thanks for asking.”

  “You’ll have to talk to legal,” Inez said, then lowered her voice. “Now, Dana, there’s a certain decorum that must be maintained when talking with our legal department. You’ll want to—”

  “Maybe you could put it in a memo so I can refer to it often,” I said.

  “Excellent idea.” Inez pursed her lips thoughtfully. “I’ll ask Mr. Burrows what to do about your timesheet for this morning.”

  “That’s great, Inez,” I called as she trotted back to her desk. “That’s exactly what’s on my mind right now.”

  Manny hung up the phone and gave me his come-here head tilt. I settled into the empty chair beside his desk. Carmen joined us.

  The other branch employees didn’t, but I wasn’t surprised.

  Jade Crosby, mid-thirties, divorced, mother of two neglected children and one of Mid-America’s financial reps, didn’t care about anything that didn’t directly involve—or benefit—her.

  Our other financial rep had resigned so Dennis Bowman had been hired, which meant that a village somewhere was missing its idiot.

  Dennis was a little taller and a little older than me, with limp brown hair and glasses that always slid down his nose. He was probably really smart, so smart that he couldn’t seem to function in this universe with the rest of us.

  I gave Manny and Carmen the rundown. They looked solemn and clucked sympathetically for a few minutes, then Carmen returned to her desk at the front of the office.

  “That’s rough, real rough,” Manny said. “And Janine saw the whole thing?”

  “She wasn’t handling it well,” I said.

  “Now, Dana,” Inez called, hurrying to join us. “What have you done with the appraisal reports you got from Jerry?”

  “They’re in police custody,” I said. I’d seen them fluttering in the breeze near Jerry’s body and knew they’d been taken as evidence.

  “You’ll need to get them back right away,” Inez said.

  “I can’t get them back.”

  “I have customers waiting,” she said. “I can’t process their home equity loans without the appraisal reports.”

  “Don’t you ever watch Law & Order re-runs?” I asked.

  “Dana, you’re going to have to figure out something right away,” Inez said. “Our branch is expected to book our required number of loans this month. We can’t do that without those appraisals. Corporate is expecting us to meet our monthly goals.”

  She walked back to her desk.

  “How did this get to be my problem?” I asked Manny.

  He just shrugged.

  “I’ll get duplicates,” I said.

  I went to my desk, anxious to put the disturbing morning behind me. I logged onto my computer and pulled up my collection route, ready to begin calling my customers who were behind on their payments.

  Nothing like hearing about someone else’s problems to take your mind off of your own troubles.

  I’d made it abou
t halfway through my list of calls when I saw Jade’s long blonde hair start to swing from shoulder to shoulder. She did that whenever a good looking man came within fifty feet.

  I looked up, never one to ignore the sight of an attractive man, and a thousand little tingles ran up my spine.

  Nick Travis stood at the front of the office. He didn’t approach the counter, didn’t speak. He just waited. I knew what he wanted.

  Me.

  I walked to the front of the office. As I approached Nick, warmth washed over me, as if he gave off some sort of magnetic beam, drawing me closer.

  I made myself stop a few feet from him. He had on his cop face. Not good.

  “Solved the crime already?” I asked. “Wow, that’s great.”

  He ignored that.

  “You left the scene of a murder,” he said.

  My stomach rolled but I pushed up my chin and said, “Yeah? So?”

  “So Donavan was coming to meet you this morning,” Nick said. “He was in the alley where he was killed because of you.”

  I gulped but kept my chin up. “Yeah? So?”

  “So your car was identified by the only eyewitness to the crime,” he said.

  “Are you going somewhere with this?” I asked.

  Nick leaned in a little.

  “I’m here to interview the prime suspect,” he said. “You.”

  Chapter 3

  So much for good mojo.

  Barely past ten o’clock on a Monday morning and here I was the prime suspect in a murder investigation.

  Nick pushed open the office door. I stood there and let him hold it for a few seconds, then walked outside. The sky was still overcast but it wasn’t cold—it’s seldom cold in Santa Flores. We might have a lot of murders, but our weather was great.

  Nick led the way around the corner of the building to the parking lot.

  “Why did you leave the crime scene?” he asked, his cop face still firmly in place.

  “What makes you so sure it was a murder?” I asked. “I mean, how do you know it wasn’t an accident? Maybe the driver was too scared to stop? Or blinded by the morning sun? Or distracted, or something?”

  “Why did you leave the scene?” Nick repeated.

  I guess I hadn’t done such a hot job of throwing him off. I tried again.

  “You’re trying to say that makes me look guilty?” I asked.

  “No, you’re managing to look guilty all on your own.”

  “I can’t believe you’d attach one ounce of credibility to what Janine Ferris told you,” I said. “She was hysterical.”

  Which was also the way I was starting to sound, I realized.

  I drew in a breath to calm myself.

  “Look, Nick, Jerry could have been in that alley for reasons other than coming to see me. Maybe he was meeting someone else? Or going to the deli? Or having a smoke?” I said. “And, yeah, whoever ran him down might have been driving a car similar to mine. It’s a black Honda Civic. There must be a million of them on the road.”

  “A million, huh? That’s your alibi?”

  The great thing about relationships was the subtle nuances involved. Not that I’m great at anything subtle, but I had this one figured out.

  When you got to know someone you discovered all sorts of little tells that gave them away. A crooked grin. Tightly pressed lips. A quirked eyebrow. All the silent cues that spoke volumes.

  Nick had his. I’d learned a few of them and saw one now. That little twitch in his left cheek that told me he was just messing with me.

  I think Nick liked to yank me around, sometimes, in the hope that I’d offer to have sex with him to get myself out of trouble.

  Not a bad idea.

  Yet not necessary, at the moment.

  “If I’m your best suspect, Sherlock, you’re in trouble,” I said.

  Nick leaned a little closer and his killer smile appeared.

  “Maybe I like being in trouble,” he said.

  Oh, boy. I was the one headed for trouble here. There was no real defense against the Nick Travis smile. It sapped the strength, neutralized vital brain cells, and wiped out the willpower of any female on the receiving end. I felt myself giving in. Nick looked away, releasing me from his sexual tractor beam, and backed up a little. He knew what he was doing.

  I did too. And I’d already been messed with enough today.

  “Look, Nick, some of us have real jobs,” I told him. “I need to get back inside.”

  “Tell me about Jerry Donavan,” he said.

  I should do just that. I’d witnessed a murder—almost—and I knew the victim. It was my duty as a citizen to cooperate with law enforcement.

  But I wasn’t in the mood to cooperate with Nick Travis.

  “You first,” I said.

  I gave him my now-I’m-just-being-stubborn eyebrow lift.

  I guess Nick recognized that little tell—he’d seen it a number of times before—because he didn’t hesitate but a few seconds before answering.

  “It wasn’t an accident,” he said. “No evidence of an attempt to brake or avoid the victim. The only tire marks were at the entrance of the alley. The driver gunned the engine, hit Donavan at high speed.”

  Yuck. Now I wished I hadn’t asked.

  But since I’d started this, I pushed on.

  “Any witnesses, other than Janine?” I asked.

  “An employee at the deli saw a car—probably the suspect vehicle—speed through the alley. Black, no make or model, no plate number,” Nick said.

  “I guess I am your best suspect, after all.”

  Nick shrugged. “Tell me what you know about Donavan.”

  Each of Mid-America’s thousand nationwide branches made real estate equity loans to customers. A vital part of the process was the property appraisal, so the company had a list of approved appraisers who covered nearly every city, town, and community in the country. Jerry Donavan had been on Mid-America’s list for the Santa Flores area for a while. I explained that to Nick.

  “Since I live nearby, I always stop to pick up the appraisal reports when he finishes them,” I said. “Mid-America is hot to get the loans on the books, so it saves time if I pick them up.”

  “Did you get to know him?” Nick asked.

  I’d hung out with Jerry at a somewhat seedy bar a couple of times, but that was strictly in my official capacity as asset manager for Mid-America. I didn’t see any reason to explain that to Nick.

  “Jerry rented a space in the back of the insurance office in the same strip mall as the Bonita branch,” I said. “The manager of the insurance office was weird about having anybody but Jerry and his assistant in there, so I met him in the Bonita branch.”

  “He had an assistant?” Nick asked.

  “Marsha. She’s a real nice lady. She came in a couple of days a week to do office work,” I said. “Does she know about Jerry?”

  “Nobody’s been notified yet,” Nick said. “Donavan always knew ahead of time when you were coming?”

  “He, or Marsha, would call to let me know the appraisal reports were finished,” I said. “Jerry called last Friday, so I stopped by this morning to pick them up.”

  “Who else knew you two were meeting there?” Nick asked.

  I thought for a few seconds. “Maybe Marsha knew. I told Manny I’d be late this morning. Everybody in the Bonita branch, probably.”

  Even though the Bonita branch was part of the same company as the Santa Flores branch and I knew everyone who worked there, going to their office was sort of like visiting a distant cousin’s house. You didn’t just show up unannounced.

  Nick was quiet for a minute or so. “Who would want to kill Jerry Donavan? Any ideas?”

  “Take your pick,” I said. “He was married three times, that I know of. His ex’s are after him for back alimony and child support. There’re problems with his kids, his relatives, his friends. He has a drinking problem.”

  “Sounds as if you knew Donavan well,” Nick said.

  And i
t sounded to me as if Nick was trying to make me look guilty.

  “Not that well,” I insisted.

  Nick gave me cop stink-eye.

  “He was a talker,” I said.

  “So him getting run down in an alley doesn’t surprise you?” Nick asked.

  I hoped I’d never be not-surprised by someone being murdered. Routine stuff for a homicide detective like Nick. But me? Never.

  “There was something likeable about the guy,” I said. “Besides, none of that stuff was so bad that he deserved to get run over in an alley.”

  “As far as you know,” Nick said.

  A little jolt went through me. Nick was right. As far as I knew, Jerry didn’t deserve to die like that. But what else was there about Jerry that I didn’t know?

  Nick seemed to read my thoughts.

  “Stay out of this,” he told me.

  I tried for my innocent look but that one hadn’t worked for me in a while. It wasn’t working for me now.

  “I don’t want you poking around in this investigation,” Nick said.

  “I have to get back to work,” I said and headed across the parking lot.

  “Dana,” Nick said, walking alongside me. “I don’t want you involved in this.”

  I stopped near the office door and glared up at him.

  “But you do want me to give you any information I might learn, right?” I asked. “Office gossip? Rumors?”

  “I’m always anxious for your cooperation.” Nick gave me his little grin. “Your full cooperation.”

  My heart did a little flip-flop. I hadn’t given my full cooperation to Nick when he’d been at my apartment a few weeks ago, but I’d come close. Still, the image pinged around in my head.

  The office door opened and Carmen leaned out.

  “You have a phone call,” she said, then giggled. “It’s Ronald.”

  “Who?”

  “Your boyfriend, silly,” Carmen said, then disappeared inside again.