Sleuthing Women

by Lois Winston

  “Interesting.”

  “He told her she could put up some cash for her and he’d cut her in on the deal, but she was afraid. She’s at that age where a woman has to think about financial security and the real estate market seemed too volatile.” I wondered if Mom was talking about herself or Miriam. Mom isn’t the thriftiest person I know and her erratic employment history didn’t lend itself to fat IRA or 401K’s. As far as I knew, she hadn’t even worked steadily enough to collect unemployment benefits.

  “So she didn’t lose any money, right?”

  “No, she just lost a great opportunity.” Mom gave a brittle laugh. “I told her I could certainly relate to that. When I think of the directors I could have worked with, the parts I should have had.. Did I ever tell you about the time I had the chance to study at RADA? That’s the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Just think, I would have trod the boards at the Old Vic with people like Gielgud, Richard Burton, Alec Guinness...”

  Would’ve, should’ve, could’ve. Lark and I locked eyes over the table. She was too kind to tell Lola that she’d heard the story before. While Mom was regaling Lark with one of her many trips down memory lane, I decided to clear the table and take Pugsley out for a quick stroll. I’d only walked a couple of blocks when my phone chirped.

  “Hey, there,” Nick said when I’d picked up. “How’s your head doing?”

  “I still have a lump the size of a goose egg,” I told him, “but I think I’ll survive.”

  Pugsley stopped to inspect the base of his favorite banyan tree, and I stopped too. “Mom just told me something interesting about Sanjay. She ran into Miriam Dobosh who gave her an earful about life with the Guru.” I quickly related the details of his lucrative real estate deals. “It turns out that Miriam didn’t take the plunge, so she didn’t lose any money. I was thinking that if she had, it would have been a motive for murder.”

  Nick’s laugh, low and husky, eased over the line. “Maybe she didn’t lose any money, but a lot of people did. Sanjay had a nice cash cow going down in Ft. Lauderdale and Miami by buying properties and flipping them.”

  “That’s perfectly legal,” I pointed out. I never doubted that Sanjay was a shrewd businessman, just a lousy excuse for a human being. Plus he was an ex-con.

  Flipping houses used to be the thing in south Florida. When the real estate market was flourishing, I’d heard of quite a few people making easy money by buying and selling houses. A new coat of paint, some new cabinets and flooring and the houses were instantly “rehabbed” and put up for sale. A lot of them sold within a couple of weeks. If you were lucky and knew what you were doing, you could make twenty or thirty thousand over the price you had paid, in a very short space of time. As they say, “nice work if you can get it.”

  “Yes, but the plot thickens,” Nick said.

  “Do tell.”

  “Sanjay had an inside source with the Florida government. He knew which properties were going to be seized by the state, so he snapped them up first. Then he gussied them up, sold them for a whopping profit and the new buyer was left holding the bag when the state came in.”

  “Wait a minute. Doesn’t the state have to pay the market value of the property?”

  “Yeah, but they decide what it is. And it might be a hell of a lot less than the buyer paid Sanjay for it.”

  “How can the state just come in and grab someone’s property?”

  “It’s called the principle of eminent domain,” Nick said patiently. “If the state can show that the property is needed for new development, that it will benefit the citizens, maybe bring in some added revenue, they can force the owner to sell it to them. It’s being tested in the courts, but so far the state is winning.”

  I’d heard about eminent domain but never really understood it until now. “And Sanjay knew which properties to buy? How could he do that?”

  “He had an inside track. Maybe he just had good connections, or maybe he paid someone, but he was right every time. He made a killing.”

  “No pun intended.”

  “Sorry, that just slipped out.” There was a beat of silence. “But you can be sure that Sanjay had to contend with some disgruntled buyers. They paid top dollar for these properties and then had them whisked right out from under them. They may have been forced to sell for a fraction of what they were worth, and all perfectly legal. I just started going through the real estate records and it’s just the tip of the iceberg. I think there’s a big story here, waiting to be uncovered.”

  “Can you follow up on some of these people? Interview them?”

  “I’d like to. But right now, I’m in the middle of that investigation into the hijinks at the mayor’s office.” Nick was following a paper trail of phony expense accounts and was hot on the trail of corrupt government officials, from the mayor down to the councilmen. He was writing a hard-hitting series of articles that were making a lot of local officials run for cover and I knew he’d made a few enemies along the way.

  It was top rate investigating reporting. With any luck, Nick would be nominated for an RFK award for outstanding journalism award for his series and might be able to move to a bigger market. I’d miss him, but I knew this could be his chance to go to the big leagues, where he belonged.

  “I’ve been following your stories. They’re really good.”

  “Thanks. We’ve gotten a lot of letters to the editor and Op-ed pieces on them. So I think the paper will make me go full steam ahead with the government corruption issue. I don’t think I’ll be able to spend too much time on Sanjay’s death, it’s already considered a cold case.”

  “A cold case? He was just murdered!” I said, feeling more than a little outraged.

  “Maybe so, but don’t forget, if murders aren’t solved within the first forty-eight hours, they’re likely to go unsolved. Plus, there don’t seem to be any new developments. The police have Lark as a person of interest, and that’s all. I don’t think they have any other suspects. She was the last person to see him alive and they’re going to milk that for all it’s worth. And preliminary results show that he cracked his head on the corner of the dresser. So did he fall or was he pushed, that seems to be the question. Of course, they’re not even sure that was the cause of death.” He paused. “How’s she doing, by the way?”

  “All right. You know Lark, she has this Zen acceptance thing going. It drives me crazy. She thinks everything happens for a reason and the universe will just magically tilt back in her favor.”

  “Not everyone tilts at windmills like you do, Maggie.”

  I snickered. My mother calls me the Patron Saint of Lost Causes. “You might be right.” Lark’s laidback attitude was a perfect match for Nick’s easy-going nature and I’d hoped the two of them would get together someday. “At the moment, I’m trying to persuade her to hire a lawyer, but she doesn’t think she needs one because she’s innocent.”

  Nick let out a low whistle. “Bad thinking. She needs one if Rafe Martino thinks of her as a viable suspect. You should try to explain that to her. Even people who are innocent need lawyers, it’s just an annoying fact of life.”

  “I know you’re right,” I said, letting out a breath. “She’s like a babe in the woods. I’ll talk to her again and see what I can do. In the meantime, how can I track down the people who bought property from Sanjay? I’ve got a few days sick leave coming and I was thinking of taking a trip down to Miami. I could check some things out, if you can part with the names.”

  “I’ll fax you the names and addresses,” Nick offered. “I’ll make you a deal. Tell me what you come up with and I’ll try to keep the story alive in the paper. Maybe a new angle will spark some extra coverage in the paper and get my boss interested again.”

  “Deal.”

  ~*~

  So early the next morning, Mom and I prepared to set off on a road trip. We were headed to Ft Lauderdale, Miami and if we had enough time, I was even thinking of adding a quick trip down to the Keys. Judging from the list Nick had faxed m
e, Sanjay had conned people all over south Florida. Was one of them angry enough to kill him? Somehow I had to ferret out the truth, with Mom as my trusty sidekick.

  She was in a tizzy of excitement at the thought of playing detective.

  “I love it! We’ll be just like Cagney and Lacey.” She’d already tossed some clothes into a duffel bag and now was assembling her Avon-lady size cosmetics case. She had enough make-up to cover the entire cast of Aida, if you didn’t include the elephants.

  “Cagney and who?” Lark asked. She was nursing a cup of peppermint tea and looked like she hadn’t slept well. I hated to leave her alone in the condo, but she had Pugsley for company and she knew that finding Sanjay’s murderer had to be my focus right now.

  Miriam Dobosh, and Lenore Cooper, Sanjay’s ex-wife, were still high on my list of suspects, but I wanted to see if I picked up any murderous vibes from people he’d conned in south Florida real estate deals. And of course, there was always Kathryn Sinclair who said Sanjay had ruined her daughter’s life. Wouldn’t that be enough motive to kill someone?

  “Cagney and Lacey were before your time, dear,” Mom said breezily to Lark. “They were two gutsy female cops on television. How I would have loved to have been in that show.” Her tone was wistful as she buttered a piece of wheat toast. “I even took lethal weapons training so I’d look believable packing heat. I’d hoped for a part in Charlie’s Angels, but sadly, that little minx Farrah Fawcett beat me out of the part.” She leaned across the table. “All the blonde hair, you know, that’s what turned the tables. Just like Janis Ian said in her song, “the girls with the lemony hair win in the end.”

  “Wait, back up a little. You said something about packing heat?” Lark raised her eyebrows, a hint of a smile touching her lips.

  “It’s all about realism,” Mom told her. “Viewers are very knowledgeable and I learned my way around a gun and how to squeeze off some shots.” She turned to me. “Maggie dear, do you think we’ll need lethal weapons? I still have my permit someplace. I renew it every two years to keep it current. I have a license to carry a concealed weapon in the state of Florida,” she added proudly.

  Mom and a concealed weapon. A scary thought. In any state.

  We drove into Ft. Lauderdale around lunch time and stopped for a quick lunch at an outdoor café on AIA to fortify ourselves. It was a perfect day. The sky was a paint box blue with just a few wispy clouds to add interest and across the street, the flat green ocean glittered in the sunlight. Everywhere, beautiful girls in bikinis were strutting their stuff along Ocean Drive, checking out the shops, leaving a trail of coconut Hawaiian Tropic in their wake.

  “Don’t they worry about their skin?” Mom whispered across the table. “They’ll be leathery old hags by the time they’re forty. Nothing ages you quicker than the sun, you know.” Mom instinctively touched her own face, still taut and unblemished.

  I smiled. “Forty seems like a long way off to them. A whole lifetime away.” I looked at them and envied their carefree grins, long swingy hair and perfect bodies. Life would catch up with them soon enough.

  “Who’s first on the list?” Mom asked when our pizza marinara and iced tea arrived.

  “Ray Hicks. He’s actually south of here, near a town called Briny Breezes.”

  Mom frowned. “Briny Breezes. That sounds familiar somehow. Isn’t that the place where a couple of guys from New Jersey made a killing? They each bought a trailer and a tiny spot of oceanfront property. It was minuscule, the size of a postage stamp, but they bought it anyway. And then a developer came in and offered them half a mil or something like that?”

  “That’s the place. It was written up in all the papers. But Ray Hicks wasn’t involved in any of that. He’s just someone who’s living in a double wide because he got screwed over in one of Sanjay’s business deals.”

  “Does he know we’re going to pay him a visit?”

  I tossed her an innocent grin. “I thought it would be more fun to surprise him.”

  TWENTY

  Nearly an hour later, we spotted Brentwood Bay Village, a “Manufactured Home Community,” that offered “Resort Living at an Affordable Price.” In case you’re wondering, a “manufactured home community” is code for trailer park.

  According to the signs dotting the highway, Brentwood Bay was nirvana for boaters and anglers, including fishing for largemouth bass, bream, speckled perch, red-finned pike, and bluegill.

  “Are you sure this is the right place?” Mom had her head hanging out the window like a cocker spaniel, checking out the sad little development. A Welcome to Brentwood Bay sign was riddled with bullet holes and hanging off its hinges. It seemed more humid here than it had at the ocean and heat was rising off the black tarmac as we edged slowly past a row of dilapidated trailers.

  “I’m positive. Nick got the address from the Florida courthouse records. Ray Hicks lost everything because of Sanjay and he’s reduced to living in this place.”

  Mom was frowning, reading the travel guide as we crept along, her eyebrows locked in concentration. “But there’s been some mistake. There’s no water here, what are they talking about? There’s not even a bay! How could anyone go fishing?”

  “Maybe the bay is somewhere around the back,” I said, checking out the depressing lanes of rusting mobile homes lined up side by side. “Or maybe they shoot fish in a barrel here, who knows?” The whole place had a distinctly Grapes-of-Wrath feel to it.

  “And what about the dolphins and manatees at play? It’s a dust bowl!” Mom craned her neck to get a three-hundred-sixty degree view of the place. “And where are the state-of-the-art exercise facilities and spa? I don’t see a trace of anything like that.” She gave a delicate snort. “False advertising, that’s what I say. It should be illegal to get peoples’ hopes up.”

  “I don’t think people like Ray Hicks have too many hopes.”

  I pulled up to number forty-six, a pale blue mobile home that looked so ancient I figured a good wind could topple it over. Weeds had taken over the tiny area in front of the trailer along with a collection of old tires and hubcaps. A bouquet of pink plastic flowers made a valiant stand in a battered terracotta pot and a tabby cat sat cleaning himself in the sunshine.

  A scrawny man in his early fifties was standing outside, fiddling with something on a smoking grill. He had dark greasy hair and was wearing a wife beater with a pair of dirty jeans. He looked up suspiciously when my Honda crunched noisily on the gravel and he scowled by way of greeting. The trailer had two grimy windows and a battered screen door. The metal door to the trailer was open, which made me think he didn’t have air conditioning, and was hoping to catch a breeze.

  “Whadda want?” he yelled, not moving from the grill.

  I flashed him my brightest smile and got out of the car gingerly, keeping a tight hold of the handle. I heard a wild barking coming from close by. For all I knew, a pair of pit bulls would come racing around the battered trailer any second and tear us to shreds. I wished I’d thought to tuck a can of mace in my purse.

  “Mr. Hicks? Can we speak to you for a moment?”

  “Whatever you’re sellin’, I don’t want any. And if you’re a damn bill collector, I cut up my credit cards. You can go look in the garbage if you want.”

  What a charmer.

  “What a beautiful area, Mr. Hicks,” Mom said, suddenly appearing at my side.

  She always did a like a challenge. Mom likes to pick the most boring person at a party and engage them in conversation. She wants to see if she still “has it,” as she says, if she can still work her fabled charm on men.

  I bit my lip to keep from laughing. She had her work cut out for her with Ray Hicks.

  “I’ve just been reading about your lovely development. It’s such a pleasure to see it for myself. It is absolutely charming.” She clasped her hands together dramatically. Charming? You would think she was talking about a thirty-room mansion in Boca, not a double wide in the middle of nowhere.

  “Well,
it ain’t for sale.”

  “No?” She gave a little moue of disappointment. “I can see why. Who would want to sell a such a lovely slice of paradise?” I noticed her spike heel was slipping into a brownish pile of what I hoped was mulch. She reached out for my arm to steady herself, but her smile never faded. A faint smell rose up from the pile.

  It wasn’t mulch.

  “Exquisite!”

  Ray Hicks merely grunted at her extravagant praise, but Mom was undaunted. Maybe because she’s dealt with rejection as an actress, (“There were two hundred girls there, auditioning for a three line part!”) maybe it’s her strong personality, but she’s persistent to the core. I grinned, wondering what was coming next.

  She waved the Florida Travel Guide at him, giving him her best Hollywood smile.

  “Homosassa,” she said enthusiastically.

  “What’s that?”

  “Homosassa.” She gestured to his rusted-out trailer and sandy yard.

  “Who you callin’ a homo, lady?” He waggled a grilling fork at her as if he’d like to skewer her and she backed up swiftly, stepping on my peek-toe shoes.

  “Homosassa. It’s an Indian word, it means land of many fish.” She gasped her indignation.

  “Yeah? Well, you ain’t gonna see too many fish here,” he said grudgingly. “Unless you count these catfish my fishing buddy gave me. They were so little, he was going to throw them back but I told him, I’d fry them up with some hush puppies.”

  “They look tasty,” Mom said politely.

  “If we could just have a few moments of your time,” I began. “We need to ask you about Sanjay Ginjii.”

  Ray Hicks turned a violent shade of purple. “That con man!” he said, jabbing the air with his giant fork. “Give me five minutes alone with him. That’s all I want, five minutes alone.” He grinned menacingly, showing a mouthful of missing teeth. “There won’t be enough of him left to bury, I promise you.”