by Libby Klein
“We’ll take my car, bella.”
“Are you sure? Mine is right here.”
Gia furrowed his eyebrows. “I am a man. The man drives the car for the lady.”
I laughed. Then stopped. “Oh, you’re not kidding.”
“Bella. If you drive me around I will be zimbello.”
“What does that mean?”
“Everyone will laugh.”
“Okay, vanity thy name is Giampaolo. Where is your car?”
Gia grinned. “Come with me.”
He took me around the block to a pay lot. He gathered the key from the attendant and led me to the back, where his car was encased in a giant blue car-shaped sock. He pulled the sock off, revealing a gorgeous silver convertible.
“Wow. What is this?”
He gave me a look like I was either crazy or blind. “It’s a Spider.”
“A Spider?”
“Sì. Alfa Romeo Spider. From Italy.” He wiggled his eyebrows.
I felt like James Bond on a secret mission in the passenger seat. I gave Gia directions, but failed to mention that we didn’t need to break the sound barrier to get there on time. “You know the speed limit on the Parkway is sixty-five.”
“That’s just a suggestion.”
“I’m not sure that it is.”
Gia gave me a wink and sped up.
We arrived at Freeman and Furman about five minutes faster than mathematically possible. I tried to flatten down my Tina Turner hair, and I felt around to make sure all my parts were where they were supposed to be.
“You want me to do that?” Gia offered.
I giggled. “You just focus on what you are supposed to say to Ken Freeman.”
“Okay, but if you change your mind …”
I handed him the Bluetooth earpiece, and we tested the connection on my phone. “I’m going to listen from the stairwell. Here is the folder with the flash drive and the documents.”
Gia tapped the earpiece and gave me a thumbs-up.
We headed into the building, passing Madame Zolda. She was dressed in a blue caftan and turban. Several long necklaces made out of crystal beads were hanging around her neck and arms. She went around in a circle under the PSYCHIC READINGS wooden sign in the yard, lighting candles. Muttering in spooky tones, she reminded me of Ursula the sea witch taking the Little Mermaid’s voice.
We made momentary eye contact, and she paused in her ritual. An owl came out of nowhere and flew right into the wooden sign, knocking it to the ground. Her eyes flew at me. I pushed Gia on the back and we rushed into the building before she made a scene.
From my hiding spot in the stairwell, I heard Gia introduce himself to Judy as Mr. Nesbitt, here for his meeting.
Judy’s voice came over the phone loud and clear. “Wow. You’re Mr. Nesbitt?”
“That’s right. I’m Mr. Nesbitt. Why are you circling me like this?”
“You’re just. Wow. I gotta find out where Poppy hangs out.”
“Is Mr. Freeman ready for me?”
“Oh, yeah. I’ll take you into the conference room.”
A moment of silence followed by Gia. “Don’t you want to lead the way?”
“No, I’m going to follow you. It’s just through that door over there. Lord have mercy.”
I heard Gia let out a quiet chuckle to himself.
“Right in here, Mr. Nesbitt.”
“Thank you.” Then after a couple minutes, “Shouldn’t you go tell Mr. Freeman I’m here?”
“Right. I should probably do that.”
Gia whispered into the Bluetooth, “I thought she was going to sit in my lap for a minute.”
I stifled a giggle.
“Hi. Ken Freeman. Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise.”
“Judy was a little vague about the reason for the appointment. Do you have some investments you want me to take over, or are you starting a new portfolio?”
“Actually, I’m here as part of a private investigation into the murder of your coworker Brody Brandt. I have something you need to see involving the charges of embezzlement.”
I could hear the shuffling of papers. Then Ken’s voice. “What is this?”
“These documents implicate Mr. Brandt as the agent moving the funds into this account. But we’ve done some digging, and we don’t think this is a genuine account. We believe it is … bogus.”
I smiled to myself at Gia’s use of his new word.
“I absolutely agree,” Ken said. “The only thing my investigator can find under Wit’sec is the Witness Protection Program. I think Brody set up a fake account and was funneling client investments to it.”
“Have you followed the account number here to see where the money went?”
“I’ve tried, but it’s tied to an offshore account for this Wit’sec Industries. I haven’t been able to get any information on it at all. We need to get that money back to our clients. We have an umbrella policy that will cover our losses if we can’t recover the funds, but my reputation will be ruined forever. My auditors have checked into Brody’s U.S. accounts and they can’t find a link or a trail anywhere.”
Ken sounded truly distressed about his clients’ money. Maybe he wasn’t in on it with Kylie after all.
Gia continued. “That may be because of this. These are backup files dated three weeks before Mr. Brandt was killed.”
Ken hollered, and I had to move the phone away from my ear. “Judy! Bring my laptop!”
There was a moment of silence while they waited for Judy. I was so busy concentrating on my phone that I never heard her sneak up behind me.
“You! This is all your fault!”
Madame Zolda grabbed my shoulder and jerked me around.
I covered the phone with my hand. “Shhhhh!”
She poked at me with a white crystal shard. “Why are you here?”
I whispered and cut my eyes toward Judy’s desk in the office. “Please go away. This is important.”
“You keep coming here and bringing your dark energy.”
“Please leave me alone before someone hears you.”
Madame Zolda raised her voice. “No! You have a black aura around you. You are the harbinger of death.”
I tried to find the mute button on my phone but the psychic was shaking me. “Look, lady, I will talk to you in a minute, now please be quiet until I am finished here.”
Madame Zolda’s eyes rolled back in her head and she started to wave back and forth. “You will be cursed for what you have done to Madame Zolda.”
“I haven’t done anything!”
“Madame Zolda sees all. Destruction and misery will follow you all the days of your life.”
“Okay, you’re twenty years too late. Now, please, this is important.”
“Everywhere you go, for the rest of your life, you will find nothing but death.”
I rifled through my pockets. “I will give you twenty-two, twenty-seven dollars to go away.”
Madame Zolda started screeching, “Yip yip yip yip yip!”
Ken Freeman flung open the door to the stairwell. “What the devil!”
Madame Zolda grabbed the twenty-seven dollars from my hand and took off down the stairs. “And you owe me a new sign, lady.”
I hollered after her, “I don’t control the owls.”
Gia crossed his arms and leaned against the doorjamb. “Poppy is the one who discovered the truth for you, Mr. Freeman.”
Ken glowered at me. “Well, come on then.”
Chapter 46
I was force-marched to the conference room where Kylie had joined Ken and Gia. She was in tears, slunk down in an office chair. Her face was blotchy and her nose was running.
Ken placed his hands on the table and leaned down toward Kylie. “All I want to know is why. Why did you do this?”
“I’m sorry. I know it’s no excuse, but I’m desperate.” Kylie looked from Ken to Gia to me. “I have to get out of here before he kills me.”
Ken asked, “Who?”
I answered for Kylie. “Frank Trippett, her boyfriend.”
Kylie started crying harder. “You don’t understand. He’s violent. I never know who will come home at the end of the day. Sometimes he brings me roses, and other times … If dinner isn’t to his liking, or he doesn’t like my tone …”
“What happened the day he accused you and Brody of having an affair?” I asked.
Kylie wiped her nose on her sleeve. “In here, he made a scene. He threatened Brody to stay away from me. He punched a file cabinet and generally made a fool of himself. At home, he burned me with cigarettes and called me a whore.” She lifted her blond hair to reveal a few round scars on the back of her neck.
Ken was ashen. “Why didn’t you tell me what was going on?”
Kylie sobbed. “I’m ashamed.”
Judy ran in from the hall with a box of tissues. She ran to Kylie and put an arm around her. “You aren’t the one who should be ashamed. That monster is.”
I wanted desperately to help Kylie, but I needed to clear Aunt Ginny first, so I had to bring the conversation back. “So you skimmed the money and framed Brody for it?”
Kylie’s body shuddered with the anguish of one weighed down with utter hopelessness. “I didn’t know it would be discovered so soon. I thought I’d be in Iceland before the auditors’ review. By my absence you would have figured out that I was the one who borrowed the money from our clients. I was going to try to pay you back one day. I never meant for Brody to get fired.”
“Did you kill Mr. Brandt to throw the auditors off?” Gia asked.
“What? No. I didn’t kill anyone.” She looked around the room. “I’m not a violent person. I just want to run away and hide. I never would have hurt Brody; he was my friend. I’ve been living with so much shame over what I’ve done to him, how I changed the records to blame him for the transfers. He tried to get me to leave Frank after that day. He even offered me five thousand dollars to help me make a fresh start.”
“Why didn’t you take it?” Gia asked.
Kylie shuddered. “If Frank ever found me, and found out another man had given me the money to get away, Brody and I would both be dead.”
Gia and I looked at each other.
“Where was Frank the night Brody was killed?” I asked.
“At the bar with his friends. Like every other night. He told me you were looking into Brody’s murder and if you asked, I was to say he was with me all night, or he would dislocate my shoulder again.”
I winced. “Do you think Frank killed Brody?”
“I wouldn’t doubt it. Frank has a violent temper, especially when he drinks, and he always drinks. I can’t say for sure that he did it, but I can’t say that he didn’t either. All I know is that I was home alone when it happened.”
Ken covered his face with his hands like he was trying to wash away the grief that sat before him. When he looked up he said, “Kylie, I really am sorry about this. I will do everything I can to help you. But if the insurance company or the auditors find out that I knew you stole that money and I didn’t fire you, they’ll put me away for insurance fraud.“
Kylie sniffled. “I understand.”
A police officer appeared in the doorway of the conference room. Kylie started to cry again. She was joined by Judy, who was crying with her now. After getting statements from all of us, the officer took Kylie into protective custody.
*
Only the three of us remained in the conference room. A heavy silence hung in the air.
Gia swiveled his chair toward Ken. “When did you call the police? We never left this room.”
“One of the officers is on the board of directors at the animal shelter. I texted him and told him what was going on and asked him to send someone over.” Ken pointed a finger at me. “That’s why you wanted to see my humanitarian award, isn’t it? You thought I killed Brody.”
I answered him frankly. “I’m still not sure that you didn’t.”
Ken bristled. “What would make you think that?”
“Well, you thought he was stealing from you, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You probably assumed that he was using the money for drugs.”
Ken sat back in his chair and gave me a sideways look. “Why would I think that?”
“Because of his history with drug abuse.”
Ken stared openmouthed.
Gia asked him, “You do know that he was an addict, don’t you?”
Ken stammered, “Wh—I—it didn’t come up on his background check. His record was clean. Are you sure?”
I nodded my head. “Yes, I’m positive.”
“I wouldn’t have hired him had I known. The auditors would never have allowed that.”
“Then why do you have such a chip on your shoulder every time his name is brought up?” I asked.
Ken ran his fingers through his beard. “Because he lied to a lot of people.”
“About what?”
Ken was avoiding eye contact. “I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Why not? You can’t hurt him now.”
Ken shifted in his seat. “I found something. I can’t tell you what it was, because I promised Brody I would never speak of it. He may be gone, but a lot of people could still be hurt if the information got out.”
“Unless you know something about who killed him, you have my word that I won’t tarnish his reputation.”
“All I will tell you is this. A few months ago, a woman stormed into the office demanding to see Brody. He took her into the conference room, but we could all hear her screaming, How could you do something like this! You are going to get us shut down. After everything we worked for, how could you jeopardize it like this? She threatened to blow the whistle on him if he ever did whatever it was again. He pleaded with the lady to let it go. He said it was for the good of the Teen Center, and he promised it would never happen again.
“A couple of days later, we had the toner changed in the copier. The machine recalibrated and spit out the last ten pages that had been saved in its memory. I found a document with Brody’s name on it, that he shouldn’t have had. I knew it had influenced the humanitarian award committee, and I figured out that it was what that lady had been so upset about.”
“What was on the document?”
“You’d have to ask the woman.”
“When you say woman, do you mean a young girl who looked like she was skipping first period? Dirty blond hair?”
“No, this was a big gal, with spiky pink hair.”
“Really? You’re sure about that?”
Ken cocked an eyebrow. “That’s not a look you easily forget.”
Judy appeared and knocked on the open conference room door. “I’m so sorry to interrupt, Mr. Freeman, your four o’clock is here.”
Ken promised that he would call Gia if he learned any new information that could help us find Brody’s killer. I guess he was still holding a grudge against me about that cactus.
The PSYCHIC READINGS sign was still lying on the ground. The owl was dazed and wobbly. His foot was stuck in the center of the P in PSYCHIC.
I climbed into Gia’s prized Spider for my breakneck ride home, and as I was snapping my seat belt into place, an eerie feeling drew my attention to my right. There, through a crack in the blinds of the first-floor office, a pair of piercing eyes watched me, unblinking. Like the eyes of God over Long Island. It sent a chill up my spine and gave me the oddest feeling. I never wanted to come here again.
Chapter 47
When I pulled up in front of the house, Officer Consuelos was nowhere to be seen. That’s strange. Maybe they pulled Aunt Ginny’s detail because they caught the real killer and she’s no longer on house arrest.
I opened the door and Kim called out, “Did you find her?”
“Aw, not again!”
Kim was sitting on the couch in the sunroom, her face the shade of her pink Hello Kitty T-shirt.
“I may have underestimated your aunt
’s level of determination to break out of here.”
“How long has she been gone?”
“Fifteen minutes, maybe. She said she was going to take an aspirin for a headache. The cat started to howl and roll around like it was hurt, so I was distracted trying to figure out what was wrong with it. The next thing I knew, Officer Consuelos came in and said her anklet was going off.”
Figaro was standing guard in the hall outside the kitchen. He stretched and rubbed up against my legs.
“So, this time she used an accomplice.”
Figaro froze.
“No Friskies treats for you, one week.”
He blinked, and flopped over.
Kim paced back and forth across the hall from the sunroom to the kitchen and back. “I watched her very carefully. Didn’t fall for any of the excuses. I kept her distracted with game shows. I don’t know how she planned it all out.”
“I think she’s been running drills in her head for years in case something like this ever happened.”
The front door swung open and Officer Consuelos had Aunt Ginny by the elbow. He was joined by another officer whom I hadn’t seen before.
Aunt Ginny was wearing flippers and carrying a surfboard. She shrugged out of the officer’s grasp and marched down the hall. “Commie pigs!”
“Where was she this time?”
Officer Consuelos finished making a note in his flip book. “She was at the end of the block trying to hitchhike to Higbee Beach.”
Kim chuckled. “That would explain why she didn’t take her bathing suit.”
Officer Consuelo’s eyebrows shot into his police hat. “You know it’s not a nude beach anymore. Not since 1999.”
Kim smiled. “I’m willing to bet Aunt Ginny doesn’t know that.”
“I’m willing to bet she does, and doesn’t care,” I said. “She’d have been stripped down before you could call it in to the station.”
“I can hear you!” Aunt Ginny hollered from down the hall. “This anklet didn’t make me deaf.”
Officer Consuelos responded on his police radio that the package was delivered, and resumed his post outside the front door.
