“Cat, are you okay?” Leah called.
“You were in the military?” Catrina took a quick step to her right, ignored Leah and planted a right to the side of Junior’s head.
The audience cheered.
“The Air Force.” He shook off the blow. “I was in an MP battalion. Iraq for eighteen months.” His eyes were steady, his breathing measured. No signs that he was lying. Yet...
Junior tried to grapple with Catrina, but she spun away. “And your dad had a criminal background check agency, as well as the barista stands?”
Leah was moving around the outside of the ring, pushing and shoving big men out of her way, as much as Catrina was moving inside of it.
“Hey, kid,” a large black man shouted. “You know what you got yourself into?”
“Jeah,” José added. “Ju got a tiger by the tail, man.”
“Yeah.” Junior backed off and lowered his guard. “I started out helping him with that when I got home from Iraq. I did all of the Internet searches for him.”
“And when he opened his barista stands?” Catrina moved in close.
“I just sorta stepped into that too.” Junior continued to back away. Obviously he couldn’t fight and think at the same time. “He traveled a lot. Flew down to LA every week or two. When Dad wasn’t here, someone needed to stay on top of things.”
“Um hmm.” Catrina lowered her guard. Junior saw the opening and rushed at her.
“Cat!” Leah yelled.
Catrina sidestepped and tripped him as he went by.
“Hey, no fair. Foul.” Junior cried as he picked himself up off of the canvas.
“Ju gonna get jour ass handed to ju, kid,” José yelled.
“And why did he fly to LA so often?” Catrina asked.
“He said it was for business.” Junior stood flat footed. “He was investigating expanding his chain to the SoCal market. I knew better. It wasn’t business, it was a bimbo. There wasn’t that much money coming in from the coffee stands, he just did it to get laid.” Junior took a breath and looked up at the ceiling. “You know the problem. Dad couldn’t keep his dick in his pants. He’d screw anything wearing a skirt.”
Catrina could have decked him. He was totally vulnerable. “Um hmm,” she said, backing around the ring.
“Hell, he’d been married six times. I don’t know why he remarried Karen. That bitch must have something on him. Anyway, Dad had a weakness for the ladies and probably had someone new stashed down there. It was only a matter of time before he divorced Karen and brought her up here.”
He’s always talking about his dad in the past tense. Does that mean something? “Did he ever talk about divorcing your step-mom?”
“No. Never talked about his women at all. I think he thought it would be a bad influence on me. Hell, what did he think I was? A kid?”
Catrina saw the anger rising in her opponents face.
“When was the last time you saw him?” She raised her hands to guard her face again.
Leah climbed up to the edge of the ring and held onto the ropes.
“The day before he flew to Vegas.” Junior launched a punch. “He was really upset about the court case.” He threw a combination. “Told me was going to have to do some time and that I’d have to watch the business for him.” Junior was fighting for real now. No sparring. “He was going to Vegas to pick up an expensive espresso machine he had stored there.” It was obvious he wanted to hurt Catrina. “We were going to open up a new coffee shop. Not a coffee shack, but a walk in place.” Junior threw what was supposed to be a knockout punch. “This espresso machine was supposed to be all brass or something. It was going to be the centerpiece of the new coffee house.”
Catrina easily dodged the punch and studied Junior as he talked. He maintained eye contact with her and didn’t appear to be nervous. His breathing was even, his voice steady.
“So, what do you think happened?” Catrina threw a weak counterpunch, catching Junior in the stomach.
“She killed him.” Junior expelled his air as Catrina’s punch landed. “Nothing else makes sense.” He threw a kick that grazed Catrina’s shoulder. “Why drive himself to the airport? If Dad knew that he was driving his truck back, he’d have taken a cab.” Again with the left jabs. “It didn’t make sense to leave his Excursion in airport parking. He would have had to get someone to take him to the airport to pick up his car.” Junior danced back from Catrina’s reach.
“His truck was found on highway 395, the main drag from Vegas to L.A.” Catrina pressed in on him. “What was he doing there?” She launched a left, right, left combo.
“I don’t know.” Junior absorbed the blows. “If he was bringing the machine back to Seattle, that wasn’t the right way to go.” He countered with a couple of jabs of his own. “He was really worried about going to jail. Maybe he wanted to see his chippie before he got locked up.” Junior landed a hard right on Catrina’s chin.
She staggered back and shook her head.
“Cat! That’s enough.” Leah was jumping up and down. “You don’t have to prove anything.”
Catrina was okay. She’d been hit harder than that by her grandmother. “How come his truck was found burned out on the highway?”
“To hide the evidence.” Junior tried to press his advantage. “I don’t know how Karen found him out there. Maybe she followed him. Whatever. But she shot him.” The blows were coming fast and hard. “She has a long history of shadiness. She’s capable of anything.”
Catrina easily blocked the punches. “You think she really could have done it?”
“Hell, yeah.” Junior slipped in close and landed several blows on Catrina’s mid section. “She had no problem forging documents or lying to Dad.” He threw a furious right, which Catrina ducked.
She caught him in the stomach as he flew by.
“She forged my signature on the adoption papers.” Junior was breathing hard now. “I think she forged Dad’s divorce papers. She bragged about it.” He came back after her, hard. “She wanted to take over Dad’s business.” A kick glanced Catrina’s head. “She wasn’t satisfied with her allowance. She never had enough. I think she figured out that Dad was going to divorce her and wanted it all.”
Catrina retreated, defending herself. “She seems to have slipped into running the business rather easily.”
“Yeah. I don’t understand that.” Junior kept coming. “Dad had shown her picture to all of his employees, told them that she wasn’t allowed to come close to his businesses. I was running them then one day, I’m out. I don’t know how it happened. She’s one tricky broad.” He punched through Catrina’s defenses and landed a hard blow on her cheek.
Catrina decided to play her final card. “You know, she hasn’t been heard from in days. Her house is empty. She doesn’t answer her phones or email.”
“Good. I hope someone took her out.” He pressed in hard. “She deserved it. She had lots of people who wouldn’t lose any sleep if she disappeared. I hope she rots in Hell.” With this, Junior launched what was supposed to be his knockout punch.
Catrina darted left, ducked and landed a hard right on Junior’s chin. He staggered and dropped to his knees.
****
“Mrs. Flaherty, Catrina, I’m really sorry about what happened to your office.” Dan Anderson sat in one of the unmatched chairs in front of Catrina’s desk.
“Well, at least no one was hurt. It didn’t really impact our business either. You had to make your way up those tired old back stairs, but you can see that the office is still up and running.”
“Do you know why someone would want to bomb your office?” Anderson’s eyebrows twitched slightly.
“I got a call just before the bombing. It was a bomb threat actually. But the caller warned me to drop your sister’s case, to stop looking for Dick.”
She scrutinized Anderson as he replied. Anderson was dressed in business casual: slacks, a dress shirt and a blazer, but no tie and looked every inch the accountant.
“And are you going to? Aren’t you a little scared?”
“If you think something like that is going to stop me then you don’t know me very well. It just pissed me off. I’m more determined than ever to figure out what’s going on?”
“But,” Anderson rubbed his hands together. “It’s dangerous. That was just a warning. Maybe the next time, he’ll try to harm you.”
Catrina leaned back in her swivel chair and steepled her fingers. “Mr. Anderson, you just don’t get it. I’ve been threatened by experts and never backed down. You’re brother-in-law disappears and your sister asks me for help. Now your sister disappears and you want me to back off of this case?”
“Well, not really. I mean, I want to find out what happened to Dick as much as the next guy. I want to know about Karen, but, you know, maybe you should just let the police handle it. They’re the experts.”
Catrina let out a little laugh. “There’s a reason your sister hired me. She knew it wasn’t a high priority on any police department’s radar. The case is spread across multiple jurisdictions. The police haven’t even established that a crime has been committed. No one has filled out a missing person report on your sister.”
“Well, with Karen missing, who’s going to pay your fee? I certainly haven’t contracted with you.”
“Dan, right now, that’s the last thing on my mind. I was hired to do a job and I’m going to do it. Even if my client is missing.”
She paused and looked at Anderson. “That brings up an interesting question. Why haven’t you filed a missing persons report on your sister?”
Anderson sat still for a moment, obviously thinking.
“I... I didn’t think about it. I mean, you were the one who told me she was missing. I wouldn’t have known about it myself. Like I said, we don’t communicate every day. And, if you were on the case, why should I fill out a report? You were clearly already doing something about it.”
Little beads of perspiration formed on Anderson’s brow.
“And are you concerned about your sister?”
“Of course. I don’t know what could have happened. I need to talk to her. There’s business decisions to be made.”
Business decisions? “Aren’t you worried about your sister’s well being?”
“Mrs. Flaherty, I told you before. Karen is a drama queen. When she calls me and tells me she’s going to jump off a building, I ask her where she is so I can send the coroner. If she says she’s going to shoot herself, I ask if she wants to borrow my gun. So you see, I’m used to her histrionics. It’s absolutely no surprise to me that she has gone missing. It’s good theater.”
Catrina took this in. Could her client just be grandstanding?
“I asked you before, but can you think of anyplace she might go to hide out? To get away from it all?”
“No. Only Vegas and you’ve already checked there. What do you think happened to her?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Did someone get to her?” Anderson’s voice dropped. “If the Mafia iced Dick, could they have killed her too?”
Chapter 22
“Ted, I think you better get in here,” Catrina shouted as she put her hand over the telephone receiver.”I’m going to put you on speaker, detective, so my partner can hear you.”
Ted rushed to the office, Surface tablet in hand, and settled into a chair.
“Ted, I have Detective Wainwright of the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department on the line. Detective Wainwright, I have Ted Higuera, my partner, in the room.”
“Mornin’, Detective,” Ted said.
“Mr. Higuera.”
Catrina leaned back in her chair and put her boots on her desk. “So, Detective, you were about to tell me about the lab report on Randall’s truck.”
There was a moment of silence. “I don’t know who you know,” Wainwright said. “We usually don’t share this kind of information with civilians.”
“Sheriff Dodd and my dad are old buddies. They went to the academy together.” Catrina grinned.
“Well, whatever. I have my orders.”
Catrina could hear papers shuffling on the other end of the line.
“Okay, here’s what we’ve got: You already know that the truck belonged to Richard Randall. We don’t need to go there. Our lab boys found traces of blood under the truck. As a matter of fact, they found a lot of blood under the truck. They can’t say for sure, couldn’t testify to it in court, the soil was too sandy to hold the blood, but they estimate that there was at least a couple of pints. No one’s gonna live long losing two pints unless they get a transfusion right away.”
“That don’t sound good,” Ted said in his best barrio accent.
“We got a bullet.”
“A bullet?” Catrina asked.
“Yeah. A .45. Slug went through the front seat and lodged in the back seat. It’s mostly intact. We could do a match on it if we had the gun. It wasn’t in any database that we can access.”
“Jeez.” Ted stopped taking notes and leaned towards the phone on Catrina’s desk. “That doesn’t sound too good.”
“The Sheriff thinks we have a homicide on our hands. He’s launching an all out investigation. He’s callin’ in his posse, Boy Scouts, cadaver dogs and all, to do a major search of the area. If Randall’s body is out there somewhere, we’ll find it.
****
Cap’n Jacks Bar & Beanery was a dive. The gray coral block building sat on Gulf side of Duval Street in Key West since Hemingway was a regular. It hadn’t been updated since.
The walls oozed cigarette smoke and grease. The high-backed wooden booths and low light offered a little bit of privacy and no one seemed interested in what anyone else was doing. Just what Clayton was looking for. He needed a place where no one would bug him and no one would remember him.
Where was Randall? He was supposed to be here at eight pm.
Clayton had stumbled onto Dick Randall at Cap’n Jacks a week ago. The poor schmuck was on the run too and needed to get out of the country. Clayton was just the guy to help him.
Clayton had never met Randall before, but his sister worked for him, so he knew about him.
“Mind if I sit down?” Randall had asked when he spied Clayton sitting at the bar.
Clayton eyed him suspiciously. He’d had a bad experience in a bar down the street. Only after he’d sat down and ordered with his fake ID did he realize it was a gay bar. This old geezer looked just the type to hit on a good looking young guy.
“Why? Do I know you?” Clayton asked.
“No, but I know you.” Randall took the stool next to Clayton. “Your sister works for me. Matter of fact, she got me into a lot of trouble.”
“You know Tammy?”
“Yep. Pretty little thing. She talked about you. I read about you in the papers. You’re the Fly Away Bandit, aren’t you?”
Clayton looked around for cops. There was no good way to get out of the bar.
“Don’t worry, kid,” Randall said. “I don’t want cops anymore than you do.”
Clayton didn’t realize he’d been holding his breath. “Why don’t you want cops?”
“They’re looking for me too. Let’s just say that the jam your sister got me into has screwed up my life.”
“Yeah, Tammy’ll do that to you.”
A sultry bartender wandered over. “What can I get you?”
“A beer’s fine,” Randall said and turned back to Clayton. “What’re you doing in the Keys?”
Clayton took a sip of his beer. Did he trust this dude? What the hell. He was a long way from home; it would be nice to have someone to talk to. “Hidin’ out. The folks back at Camano hired a bounty hunter to bring me back. I needed to put some space between me and him.”
“I’ve been following your story on the news.”
The bartender shoved the glass of beer in front of Randall. “That’ll be three fifty.”
Randall handed him a five. The bartender didn’t offer any change.
&nb
sp; “Let’s move to a booth where it’s a little more private.” Randall picked up his beer and didn’t wait for Clayton to follow. “You’ve been getting around.” Randall said when Clayton was seated. “I hear you can fly?”
“Yeah. I flew from Camano to Indiana. I had to stop stealing planes when the bounty hunter was usin’ them to track me. I had to ‘borrow’ a car to get me down here.”
“Smart. How did you know he was tracking the planes?”
“My lawyer told me.”
“Hmmm...” Randall brushed back his newly grown mustache. “Listen, I got a proposition for you. I need to get to the Bahamas and I can’t fly in on my passport. How would you like to earn a little money?”
Bahamas? That was outside the country. That was a tropical island, just what Clayton was looking for. “What do you have in mind?”
“How about you fly me to the Bahamas? Fly in low, under their radar or something. Sneak me in. Once I’m there, I’m okay. I’ve got a British passport I can use from there, but I gotta get there first.”
Clayton’s mind was in overdrive. He’d scoped out the airport on Sugarloaf Key. It wasn’t much. There wasn’t a terminal, no fixed base operator. Just a runway and a few planes tied down. He could put the gleep on that Cessna 172 at the end of the runway and fly up the coast then cut across the Florida Straits to Grand Bahama.
He couldn’t land at an airport, the customs dudes would be all over him. How to find a place to land?
“What would it pay?” Clayton decided it was doable.
“How about twenty grand?”
“Twenty thousand dollars?” Clayton struggled to maintain his breathing. It was hard to imagine what he’d do with that much money.
“Yeah. US greenbacks.”
“Make it twenty-five. I’m gonna have some expenses.” Why not be a little greedy? Push the old dude; see how far he’d bend. “And I’m gonna need a passport. If you can get yourself a fake passport, you can get one for me too.”
“The passport won’t be easy. I know a guy here in Key West, but I’ll need a passport photo then it’ll take at least twenty-four hours.”
Bikini Baristas: Ted Higuera Series Book 4 Page 22
