Embalmed (A Brad Frame Mystery Book 6)

by Ray Flynt

  “So if he’s serving minors,” Sharon began, “he’s putting his own business at risk?”

  Nick nodded, but the expression on his face told Brad the gears in his brain were turning. “What are you thinking?”

  “Something doesn’t feel right. What reason would he have to start serving underage patrons? I haven’t visited there as much since I turned captain, but the place always attracted cops. Phil took care of us. He’d have no reason to draw in other patrons. Unless cops are staying away.”

  “He definitely was serving college kids the night I was there,” Sharon said.

  Nick shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I’ll admit I saw it during my last visit.”

  Brad thought the angle of cops staying away was an interesting one. Maybe there’d been other incidents there with renegades like Sanders and Barkow that had made cops think twice about associating with the place. Brad took out his notebook. “What’s Phil’s last name?”

  “Bertolini.”

  “Thanks, Nick.” Brad made a note of the name. “You have any idea what the relationship is between Kasheski, Sanders, and Barkow?”

  Nick reiterated the working relationship he knew between Skull and Barkow. Brad was pleased that Nick appeared engaged in the conversation. He seemed anxious to talk, but as to the question Brad had asked, Nick couldn’t speculate outside of their work environment.

  Brad looked at his watch. “Come on. I’ll treat the three of us to an early lunch at Ruby’s Diner. We can map out a schedule for the afternoon.”

  After lunch, he set Nick up at the partners’ desk. Brad gave him the side he normally occupied along with codes to access the desktop computer. Nick promised to prepare notes on all the questions he’d want Ken Matheson to answer before agreeing to take him on as defense counsel. Also, Brad asked Nick to create a chart of the key players in the police department—above and below him—in the organizational chain of command.

  “Do you still have contacts in the department who’ll talk with you?” Brad asked.

  “Depends on the topic, I guess.”

  “Could you find out if the medical examiner has made a ruling on the cause of death for Sterling Haller?”

  Nick bobbed his head. “I’ll give Austin a call. He should be able to find out.”

  “Great.”

  Sharon planned to spend the weekend with her boyfriend, Oliver Reynolds. Brad asked her to go through the information she’d gathered from Sterling Haller’s computer to determine its significance and to leave him a report he could review over the weekend.

  Brad retreated to the library and called Ken Matheson to arrange a Monday visit. Ken was more than accommodating and agreed to come by at 10:00 a.m. What he hadn’t shared with Nick about Matheson was that Brad paid the attorney an annual retainer to ensure his availability.

  Brad wanted to learn more about Sterling Haller and Riley Truit. He pictured Riley Truit at Sterling’s funeral. The man he’d observed wasn’t a dispassionate bystander at a stranger’s funeral. Most men accept acting stoic as part of their DNA, but the grief Riley had exhibited at Emmanuel United Methodist appeared real.

  Having mined nearly all that he could about Riley from social media, Brad visited subscription websites where he could find more information, starting with marriage records for Sterling Haller.

  Such searches could be tedious and time consuming, as one site often produced a dead end or sent the researcher in an entirely new direction. This one seemed headed that way.

  After fits and starts, Brad learned that thirty years earlier when Haller was twenty-two years old, a marriage license had been issued in Cape May County, New Jersey for Sterling Riley Haller and Melissa Susan Kane. That marked the first time Brad had seen Sterling’s middle name.

  Haller was a Philadelphia native, and it appeared as if he’d met his bride in Cape May, a popular summer tourist destination.

  Brad found a birth record for Riley Kane Haller—nine months later—in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

  How did Riley Haller become Riley Truit?

  He plunged into divorce records. Sterling and Melissa’s marriage had lasted less than three years. Their divorce had been finalized in New Jersey, and one day later a marriage license was issued to Melissa Kane Haller and Jacob Lee Truit in Sussex County, Delaware.

  Brad tried to put two and two together and came up with five. He confirmed that Rehoboth Beach, where Riley Truit started in real estate, was located in Sussex County. Brad had taken the ferry ride across the Delaware Bay from nearby Lewes, Delaware to Cape May, New Jersey many times.

  Further searches revealed that Riley was adopted by his stepfather at age five and that his stepfather died when he was twelve years old. Brad could find no indication that Riley’s mother ever re-married.

  There were too many unanswered questions. Why was Riley Truit identified as Haller’s nephew? Why did Hamilton Grayson react so sharply to my inference about Riley’s likeness—when the public record demonstrates he is Sterling’s son? If Riley will soon inherit Sterling’s estate, what was the relationship between them during Riley’s formative years?

  Brad breathed a sigh.

  He paused and redirected his attention to another mystery man—Saul Kasheski.

  Nick had mentioned that Saul had been injured in an explosion, and Brad searched for news accounts involving the detective. He found the following from nine years earlier on a TV station’s website:

  DETECTIVE MEDEVAC’D TO BURN UNIT

  Saul Kasheski, 32, a detective with the Philadelphia police department, was taken by helicopter to the Temple Burn Center this evening.

  Kasheski was injured as he prepared to throw a concussion grenade into an abandoned row home where police had cornered a kidnapping suspect. The grenade detonated prematurely and exploded in his hand.

  A police spokesman had no word on his condition.

  He searched in vain for other news of the same incident but came up empty-handed. Nor could he find any follow-up reports on Kasheski’s condition. It was as if a lid had been placed on the story.

  As he did all of those searches, the time got away from him. It was already 5:30 p.m. when he looked at his watch.

  Brad heard a door slamming and the rumble of a car engine. He imagined Nick Argostino heading home.

  Moments later Sharon appeared in the library doorway. Her face was flushed, and she looked exhausted. “You have to do something,” she pleaded. “Nick is driving me crazy.”

  Didn’t those exact words tumbled out of Ruth’s mouth when she talked about her husband?

  10

  Brad invited Sharon to come and sit in one of the wingbacks adjacent to the library’s fireplace.

  Sharon slumped in the chair and stared at him with wide-eyed exasperation.

  He used the remote control to fire up the gas logs and take the chill from the air. Maybe this will help warm up Sharon’s disposition.

  In the process, he experienced a déjà vu of when they’d used the library as a temporary office a few years earlier. At that time, Sharon had angrily confronted Brad, trying to shake him from the malaise, which had overtaken his life. It gave him an idea.

  “Would you like something to drink? Soda, iced tea?”

  Sharon shook her head.

  “A Bloody Mary?”

  The corners of her lips curled up. Brad grabbed a bottle of the mix from the nearby mini-fridge, poured two glasses, and then added vodka.

  “I don’t have any celery,” he apologized, as he handed Sharon her drink.

  “Not a problem.” She closed her eyes and sipped.

  Brad settled in the wing chair opposite her. “On Monday, you can work here, and I’ll put up with Nick over in the office.”

  “Oh, thank you.” Sharon rolled her eyes. “You have no idea. He kept wanting to know what I was doing, needed my help with a new feature of Word, and when he wasn’t bothering me directly, he mumbled. I can’t tell you how many times I’d say, ‘What do you need?’ because I
thought he was talking to me—when it was incoherent babble.”

  “Nick’s in a rough patch right now. I remember a few years ago when both of you pulled me out of my emotional nosedive—after I’d attended the execution of the man who killed Mom and Lucy.”

  “Well, you might have been tough to hang around back then, but Nick is being a royal pain in the ass.” Sharon lifted her glass. “We should have these every Friday afternoon.”

  Brad smiled.

  “Maybe Monday through Thursday afternoons, too.” Sharon laughed, and moments later said, “I get that Nick needs our help. I tried my best to be patient with him this afternoon, but it felt worse than babysitting when I was a teenager.”

  “I understand,” Brad said, as the phone rang.

  He stood, crossed to his desk, and picked up the receiver. He recognized Ruth Argostino’s voice and, after his talk with Sharon, feared the worst.

  “Hi, Ruth.” Brad listened patiently, bobbing his head a few times. Finally, he found himself knitting his eyebrows as Ruth wrapped up the call.

  “What’s going on?” Sharon asked after Brad hung up the phone.

  “You’re to be congratulated! Ruth wanted to thank me. She said Nick was like a new man when he got home. He couldn’t stop talking about how helpful we’d been, ‘especially Sharon.’ Ruth insisted I quote him directly to you.”

  Sharon beamed. “Isn’t that sweet.” Following a pause, she burst out, “But can I still work in the library on Monday?”

  “Of course. When are you getting together with Oliver?”

  “Not till tomorrow.”

  Brad checked the time. “If I order a pizza, can you fill me in on what you’ve learned from the information on Sterling Haller’s computer?”

  “Sure. But keep the Bloody Mary’s coming.”

  Brad placed the pizza order—half veggie, half pepperoni, sausage and extra cheese—and was told to expect a forty-minute wait. He pressed the button to open the wrought-iron gates creating a clear path for the delivery. He fetched plates, napkins, and forks from the kitchen before freshening Sharon’s drink.

  Sharon reviewed the particulars of her search, explaining how all of the documents had come from the older laptop stowed in Haller’s bedroom closet.

  “I downloaded more than seven thousand files, so I haven’t had time look at all of them. But from the directory, most appear to be copies of files from The Burnham Group.”

  “As I understand it,” Brad said, “he’d been the managing partner, but had stepped away from day-to-day duties since taking over responsibilities for Grace.”

  “There were far more spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations than documents. The work files all had a distinct system for naming, beginning with TBG, followed by the date, then the subject matter with underlines separating words, like Report_on_Pension_Options.

  “More interesting to me was a list of websites and passwords I found under the laptop in the front hallway. Which reminds me…” Sharon had an accusatory tone in her voice. “Where did you get the password for his computer?”

  “Phyllis showed it to me. It was written inside the drawer on the same table where the computer was located. All the caregivers knew about it.”

  Sharon muttered, “Duh.”

  “What?”

  “When I found the mouse on the left side of the computer, I leaped to the conclusion that Haller was a southpaw. One of the caregivers had moved it, I’m sure.”

  “No big deal,” Brad said. “What titillating websites had he used?”

  “Get your mind out of the gutter.”

  Brad flashed his best “Who, me?” expression.

  “Well, there were investment sites, which you might imagine. But what I found fascinating were a couple of homeopathic remedy sites where he registered and provided a password.”

  “Did he have to register to get information?” Brad asked.

  “No. I was able to see their content without signing in, but registration was required to purchase any of their products.

  Brad thought about his visit with Wes Taylor. “I may not have mentioned this before, but the funeral director told me it was apparent to him that Haller had liver cancer. If Nick can get the autopsy reports, we’ll know for sure.”

  “That would certainly explain why he registered with those sites. Two of them sold herbal remedies. Another offered colonic hydrotherapy.”

  Brad cringed. “You mean enemas?”

  “Uh-huh. Oh, and while I was on their web page a pop-up appeared on the screen asking me if I wanted to chat. But I didn’t.”

  “Are they located in Philadelphia?” Brad asked.

  “Yep. They’re called CHT Visions.” Sharon laughed.

  Brad ran his fingers through his hair. “I’ve been speculating that Sterling either knew the person who killed him or was lured to the place where he was attacked and disabled. Honestly, I figured he hooked up for sex and found a killer instead.”

  “I thought the same thing,” Sharon said.

  “But the idea that he voluntarily showed up for…what did you call it?”

  “Colonic hydrotherapy.”

  “Yeah. I mean how much more vulnerable could you be?”

  “According to their description,” Sharon explained, “it’s like going for a massage. You undress, lay on a padded table, and cover yourself with a sheet.”

  Brad’s sphincter muscle tensed as he thought about what would happen next.

  “By the way,” Sharon began, in a way that screamed pay-close-attention, “I didn’t mind going to Ruddigore’s for undercover work, but don’t even think of sending me for a colonic treatment.”

  Brad laughed. “Don’t worry. I want to figure out the best way to pass this information on to the police. You had the URLs of the sites from that paper Haller left, but sooner or later they’ll be able to discern the same searches from his browser history.”

  “If they’re smart enough to put it together,” Sharon said. “Skull Sanders doesn’t seem like the sharpest knife in the drawer.”

  “Do you remember the URL for that site and Sterling’s password?”

  “No. But I e-mailed them to you.”

  “Maybe our new recruit, Nick, can leak the word to the department.” Brad stood and returned to the desk where he brought his computer out of sleep mode. “If Nick can break open this embalming case, it might help his chances with the internal investigation.” He found the e-mail Sharon had sent and clicked on the hyperlink for the hydrotherapy program.

  The doorbell chimed.

  “That’ll be our pizza.” Brad took twenty-five dollars out of his wallet and handed it to Sharon. “Do you mind grabbing the door while I work on this?”

  “No problem.”

  “They can keep the change,” Brad called out as Sharon left the room.

  Brad clicked on the login button and entered Haller’s username and password from the information Sharon had provided. A new window opened with the words “Welcome back, Sterling.”

  He had barely had a chance to read their promotional materials when a pop-up appeared with the message: “Hi, I’m Miranda.”

  In the empty box, Brad typed, “Hello.”

  His response then appeared below Miranda’s next to the word, “Sterling.”

  Sharon returned with the pizza and opened the box to unveil the enticing aroma of yeasty crust, tomato sauce, and mozzarella cheese.

  Brad tilted the computer screen so that Sharon could observe his chat.

  Miranda: How can I help you this evening?

  Sterling: I’m a customer.

  Miranda: Yes, I know. We appreciate your business.

  Sterling: I’d like to schedule an appointment, but…

  Miranda: I hope there hasn’t been a problem.

  Sterling: No. I liked the therapist I had the last time. I can’t remember the name.

  Miranda: One minute, Mr. Haller, I can look that up.

  Sterling: Thanks. I appreciate it.

  Mira
nda: Your therapist’s name is Guido. When would you like to come in?

  Brad closed the pop-up chat window and logged out.

  He and Sharon looked at each other and repeated in unison, “Guido.”

  11

  Brad walked out of the kitchen that Saturday morning and into the foyer of his mansion in time to see Sharon pull out of the driveway. She was headed off to West Chester, Pennsylvania for her weekend with current beau, Oliver Reynolds.

  Brad envied her.

  He’d hoped to spend the weekend with his fiancée, Beth Montgomery. She’d changed jobs and moved from New York City to the Washington, DC, area to manage the office for Whitman Associates, Architects/Engineers.

  Her new duties intensified the work and cut their opportunities to spend time together by a third. She would be leaving early Sunday morning for an engineering conference in San Jose, California, and had suggested to Brad that he not try to visit.

  Beth’s labor-intensive schedule had also delayed their wedding plans. Brad advocated eloping.

  In the library, he found the empty pizza box from the previous evening. He vowed to take it to the trash on his next trip to the kitchen but for the moment sat at the desk and took another look at the colonic therapy website.

  Customer service blurbs on their landing page read like ecstatic endorsements from cruise line patrons: “Your treatment made me feel like I was losing all the cares in the world.” “The herbal colonic reinvigorated my whole body.” “My wife called me a ‘new man’ after the procedure.”

  Brad shook his head. He couldn’t imagine being a colonic hydrotherapy customer. People actually pay for that? He’d avoided having a colonoscopy because of the uncomfortable prep involved.

  The doorbell rang.

  Brad realized he’d forgotten to close the front gate after leaving it open for the pizza guy the night before. It seemed he could go weeks at a time without hearing the bell. It had rung three times in two days.