The light was hitting the planes of his face in a manner that made him seem like the subject of a painting. That led to thoughts of how lovely a nude painting of him would look in my bedroom. I wasn’t sure I wanted the real thing in my bedroom, but a painting would be nice.
I realized he’d stopped talking and seemed to be expecting some sort of response.
“I’m sorry, Wil, I was spacing out.”
“I asked if you were hungry. Would you like to catch some dinner?”
Thinking back over my day, I realized I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. “You have some of the most marvelous ideas. Where shall we go?”
His first idea was tempting, but wouldn’t fly unless we went home to change. Reservations made a week earlier also would have helped. I made an alternative suggestion, and that was where we ended up.
On the way to our table, I spotted a couple of familiar faces, and I made sure to sit where I could see them. I hadn’t known Sophia Gonzales was dating again, but I didn’t make a point of following her life. She was two years a widow, so I shouldn’t have been surprised. Whom she was eating with was a surprise, however. Her deceased husband’s cousin, Ron Calderone.
Brian Gonzales had chafed under Alonzo’s control and what Alonzo thought was appropriate for his daughter’s husband. Brian started freelancing, getting into the drug business, which was one business Alonzo despised. Alonzo warned him, but Brian continued. His defiance was something Alonzo couldn’t tolerate. He paid me half a million to make it look like an accident and take his secret to my grave.
Seeing Sophia with Cynthia and Alice earlier, and now with Ron, stretched my acceptance of coincidence.
“You’ve been distracted all night,” Wil said. “What’s going on?”
“New information. We knew some personal relationships were involved in this thing, but the family connections are even deeper than we suspected.” I showed him the chart I’d made that afternoon.
“You think the wives are involved?” Wil sounded skeptical.
“I think we’ve had Alderette and Campbell under surveillance and we aren’t getting any closer to figuring out the puzzle. I’m sure that Blaine warned them. If they aren’t taking a personal hand in things, who do you think they trust?”
I rode my motorcycle over to Ron’s place early the next morning. All the trees on the property next to the funeral home made a great place for a chameleon to settle in and watch Ron’s operation. Around sundown on the second day of my vigil, a car pulled up to the back of the funeral home and Alice Alderette got out. Before she reached the back door, it opened and Ron came out to greet her.
He carried several boxes from her car into the building, then Alice got back in her car and drove away.
I wanted to go inside to check and see if my supposed boyfriend was loading drugs into caskets to ship all over the continent. His security was fairly basic, so getting in wouldn’t be a problem. What would anyone want to steal from a funeral home?
The lights in the business side went out about an hour later. I figured it was only a matter of time before Ron went out, as he did almost every night. I waited until midnight when the light turned off in his bedroom. It was just my luck that the one night he stayed in was the night I wanted him to go tom catting.
I went home, planning to go back to the funeral home the following night. Hopefully, he wouldn’t ship the drugs immediately.
Nellie called while I was eating breakfast. “Is your dad coming today? Aunt Amanda wants to meet him.”
Since I wasn’t fully awake yet, I blurted out, “Where?”
Her silence told me I’d screwed up, and I frantically tried to remember what I’d committed to do.
“Damnit, Libby, the concert. The orphanage. You promised you wouldn’t forget.”
“I didn’t forget it, Nellie. I forgot today was Saturday. I’ll be there, and I’ll try to talk him into coming. Okay?”
“God, I can’t imagine what you’re gonna be like as an old lady,” she said. “Try not to forget again between now and noon. And remember to get dressed unless you want to be part of the entertainment.”
“What was that all about?” Dad asked when I hung up the phone.
“The charity concert for the orphanage. Nellie said that Amanda Rollins extends a special invitation to you. She wants you to come so she can thank you.”
“Well, how could I turn that down? Sure, I’ll go.”
I wasn’t sure he would go, but I was glad to see him get out of the house. We took his car and swung by Lilith’s Palace to pick up Glenda. She knew the kids at the orphanage, and a lot of the kids from the new neighborhood would be there. Mom and I thought it would be good for her to meet some normal kids.
It was the first time Glenda and Dad met, and he was entranced. Her face had filled out, and her hair had grown out enough to be shaped into a very short pixie cut. Her new jeans even showed a little teenage butt. When we arrived at the school and parked the car, I took her off to the side.
“Here are the rules. No sex, no drugs, no alcohol. If anyone makes you uncomfortable, you find me, or Dad, or Miz Rollins, or Nellie. Understand?”
Glenda nodded, her attention fixed on my face as if I were handing down the word of God.
“Don’t go outside the fence. When the concert is over, find my dad. Got it?”
“Got it.”
I handed her a ticket and a card with twenty creds on it. “For food. Only for you. You can buy candy and ice cream, but you have to eat at least one substantial thing. A hamburger or hot dog or poutine or chicken sandwich. Something like that. Understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Go have a good time.”
Her smile lit up my day. Then she lunged toward me and gave me a hug that about cracked my ribs. “I love you, Miz Libby,” she said, then turned and surveyed the scene before us. My eyes were a little blurry. I must have gotten some dust in them.
They had raised a bandstand near the back of the school. A ticket stand sat just outside the fence, and inside, along the fence, were a dozen booths selling food and drink. One booth had chips with the bands’ music. Additional booths showed art, jewelry and other crafts.
It was three hours before the show started, but a guy on the stage was juggling. A man and a woman in clown costumes roamed through the crowd of several hundred who were already inside.
“See Nellie over there?” I asked Glenda, trying to keep my voice steady.
“Uh-huh.”
“Go ask her to introduce you to some of the kids in her family.”
“Okay.” She took off running.
I walked over to where Dad was watching us. “Come on. Let’s find Amanda,” I said.
“You’re doing a good thing with that girl,” he said.
“Getting her a job in a brothel?”
“A job in the kitchen. We both know what kind of mother Lettie is. Very few people get that kind of chance in life.”
I shrugged.
Dad looked around. “I’m proud of you, Libby.”
“I didn’t do anything. This shindig is all Nellie.”
“Yeah,” he said, “I remember Nellie building the school with her bare hands and giving it to the orphanage. Very nice of her.”
“We should name the place after Kahlil Carpenter. Come on.”
I took Dad around and introduced him to Amanda and Richard O’Malley, Nellie’s corporate sugar daddy who was sponsoring the event. When we drew closer to the stage, I saw the sponsorship banners included Calderone Funeral Home.
I whirled on Nellie. “Ron is going to be here?”
“Yeah, he donated five thousand creds.”
“Oh, Lord,” I breathed as I looked over her shoulder and saw Wil heading toward us. “You invited Wil?”
“Honey, I invited everyone. The name of the game is money. No people, no money. If you had twenty boyfriends, I would have invited them all, but you invited Wil. Remember that night at Pinnacle?”
The crowd grew th
roughout the afternoon with a combination of neighborhood residents and young corporate types who would be comfortable at The Pinnacle. The Pinnacle bouncers and some of the larger men from the neighborhood provided security, but we didn’t have any problems that required them to step in. Miz Rollins had nixed the idea of selling beer, and that probably helped. So did the fact that so many mothers and young children were there. Children under fourteen got in free.
While Amanda took Dad inside to show him the school, I rounded up all of the kids who lived there and herded them over to one of the booths. Amanda had twelve orphans at her old location in the slum. Now that she had room and some help, that had grown to twenty kids in a very short time.
Amanda found us just as the last kid and I received our ice cream.
“Oh, dear Lord,” she said, throwing her hands in the air and glaring at me. “What are you doing? These children don’t need all that sugar.”
I grinned at her, handed her the sundae I was holding, and turned to the vendor. “One more, please.” I turned back to Amanda. “I’m spoiling them. That’s what spinster aunts do, isn’t it?”
She started laughing.
*Miz Libby is the best,* Walter announced to the whole group. I wasn’t sure if he was getting the majority of his sundae inside him, but a lot of it was smeared on his face and chest.
Things got a little awkward after Ron showed up and both he and Wil wanted to hang out with me. I started bugging Nellie to give me things to do. As the afternoon progressed and the crowd grew, it became easier to get lost. I was one of the few people allowed behind the stage, so I could effectively disappear when the music started.
I was standing off to the side of the stage when Glenda walked up and handed me a soy dog. She had one for herself, and we stood there together eating and listening to the music.
“Enjoying yourself?” I asked.
“Uh-huh. Do you know Betsy?”
I had to think a moment. “Oh, Nellie’s little sister?”
“Yeah. She invited me to visit her at her house. Do you think Miz Lilith will let me go?”
“Tell her you’ll do double work on your reading for a week if she lets you. She’s a sucker for stuff like that.” Betsy’s mother was one of Mom’s closest friends, so I doubted there would be a problem, but it was always good to take advantage of opportunities.
Glenda took off to find her new friend.
At the end of the night, I turned down two invitations for a drink, begging off because of Glenda and Dad. I made a note that the girl made a great excuse. I wondered how much Mom used me for an excuse when I was young. I knew she never let me get in her way when she wanted to do something.
Chapter 19
The following day, I arrived at the funeral home at around noon and waited. My persistence paid off. Ron fired up his motorcycle and rode off down the street soon after sunset. The funeral home and the house were completely dark, and I slipped through the shadows to a small door in the back of the building.
The door wasn’t intended for people, being only three feet high. A truck usually pulled up several times a week, and men wearing hazmat gear pulled sealed containers of biomedical waste through the door. I had watched the process that afternoon.
For my purposes, the door had only a simple latch and a single alarm contact. The security system designers had treated that entrance as an afterthought.
I bypassed the alarm contact, jimmied the latch, opened the door, and slid through. The small room opened into the embalming laboratory. From there, I knew where I was going. Making my way through the sales room, I turned into the short hallway leading to the house next door.
There weren’t any caskets or anything else where I’d seen them before. I stopped and thought about everything I’d observed while watching the building.
A door at the back of the chapel led to a small warehouse filled with caskets. I searched it, but didn’t find the boxes I’d seen Ron receive from Alice Alderette.
I didn’t know how much time I had. Ron and I always got to his house around midnight or a little later, and it was eleven o’clock. I decided to take one more chance at finding the drugs. I didn’t want him to suspect that someone was there looking for drugs, so I decided to stage a conventional burglary.
The first thing I did was disable the alarm system to the house and then short-circuit it. Next, I opened the window in a spare bedroom behind a door that was always closed. From the appearance of the room, it hadn’t been used in a long time. I found the family silver, an antique brand I recognized, where I expected—in the sideboard in the dining room. It all went into a bag, and I left the drawers open. Too bad about the burglary. Karma for drug dealers.
My exit route and cover story secured, I first searched Ron’s bedroom. I hadn’t been with him for a while, but the wastebasket next to the bed showed someone had. I also found a ten-pack of jet injectors with four missing and a small box full of white powder. He’d never offered me drugs, but he evidently used them. I was finding it harder to remember why I wanted to date him. An antique jewelry box with what I assumed was his mother’s jewelry went into the bag with the silver.
I tried the door to a room that I assumed was another bedroom. Since it was the only locked door inside the house, I immediately picked the lock to see what he was hiding there. Alice Alderette’s boxes were stacked against one wall. I opened one of the boxes on the bottom of the stack and found it full of ten-packs of jet injectors. To make sure I wasn’t jumping to conclusions, I took one pack for analysis, sealed the box, and stacked the other boxes back on top of it.
I slipped out the window in the spare room, jumped to the ground, and rolled. As I slipped through the shadows toward the trees on the other side of the funeral home, a single headlight appeared down the street.
I handed Wil the package of jet injectors and asked, “How soon can you get these analyzed?”
“I’ll put a rush on it. We can probably get results today.”
“Good. Next item, put a couple of drones on the Caldarone Funeral Home.”
“Your boyfriend?”
“He’s not my boyfriend. We just went out a couple of times. You want to watch for coffins shipping to anywhere other than a local cemetery. If you want to know who’s distributing the drugs in other cities, track the coffins to their destinations.”
Wil’s eyebrows rose, but he didn’t say anything.
“Then put tails on Cynthia Campbell, Alice Alderette, and Sophia Gonzales.” I motioned to the jet injectors I’d given him. “Alice delivered those to Ron on Friday.”
“Just these ten?”
“Nine boxes with four hundred of those ten-packs each. The outside of the boxes are printed with a brand of antacid marketed by a CanPharm subsidiary.”
“Holy smokes,” Wil breathed.
“Yeah. Three hundred and sixty thousand doses. Thirty-six million street value. I figure between seven and ten million split among the people making it.”
Wil pulled out his phone and started issuing orders.
When he hung up, I asked, “Are you sure all your people are solid?”
“Yeah, all my staff came from out of town. People I’ve worked with for years.”
“I thought you lived here.”
He grinned and winked. “No, Chicago. But I’m thinking about moving up here.”
I wasn’t so sure that was a good idea.
To help alleviate the boredom, I played the recordings from the bugs I planted on Liam Campbell. He and Cynthia were an entertaining couple. Between bouts of copulating like rabbits, they argued about sex, money, and drugs. As far as I could determine, they were made for each other. I couldn’t figure out why they got divorced.
The tracker on Campbell’s limo was a waste of time. His travels took him home, the office, to a few meetings at other CanPharm offices, his secretary’s apartment, and the cottage he owned in the country. Wil’s operatives checked out the country cottage and pronounced it clean of any covert laboratories.
The day after breaking into Ron’s house, I checked my bugs right after breakfast. For a change, something was happening. I could envision the scene from what I heard.
Cynthia answered the door. “Oh, my God. What are you doing here?”
Other woman’s voice. “It’s so good to see you, too, my dear.”
The door slammed.
“Where’s Liam?” the other woman asked.
“He went to work.”
“Bullshit. He went to pick up a load at the lab, didn’t he?”
“The lab’s shut down. Everything went crazy.”
“Don’t lie to me, Cynthia. You can either tell me where it is, or I’ll blow your bloody head off. Doesn’t make any difference to me. When Liam comes home and sees your body, he’ll know I’m serious and quit messing with me.”
A woman let out a short cry. I heard someone or something bang into a piece of furniture, then the sound of someone being slammed against a wall. A woman started crying.
“I’m warning you, bitch,” the unknown woman said. “You’ve got about ten seconds to start talking.”
“Oh, God, please,” Cynthia sobbed. “Please don’t hurt me.”
“Talk.”
“The cottage.”
I heard a sound that I imagined might have been Cynthia’s head being slammed into the wall a couple of times.
“Don’t try and pull that crap on me. I’ve been to the cottage. I’ve screwed your husband in every room. There’s no lab out there.”
Diane Sheridan? I’d seen pictures of her, but never heard her voice.
“The barn,” Cynthia said. “About a hundred yards from the house, through the trees, is a barn. That’s what he turned into a lab. He hired some grad students to make the stuff.”
Silence, then, “Well, I’ll be damned.” More silence except for Cynthia crying.
I about jumped out of my skin when the gun went off. In the aftermath, the silence was total. Cynthia wasn’t crying any more.
When I reached the Campbell’s apartment building, I assumed Liam’s form and let myself in. The door to the apartment itself wasn’t locked.
Chameleon Assassin (Chameleon Assassin Series Book 1) Page 18
