Chuck waited for Clint’s reaction.
Clint stared at nothing. After a few seconds, his gaze wandered around the coffee shop. “You think they have any of those cookies left?”
When they’d finished their second cookie, Chuck said, “Clint, I want to spend the night with Terry tonight. I haven’t seen her in over a week.”
He grinned. “You getting horny, ain’tcha?”
“Clint, we don’t talk like that about the people we care about. It’s disrespectful.”
“Sorry, Chuck. I should have said that you don’t want to get crosswise wit’ you woman.”
“I’m glad you understand. I hate to leave you alone. What are you going to cook for dinner?”
Clint grinned. “Spaghetti and meatballs.” That was one of the first meals Chuck had taught him.
“When we get home, you check the pantry and make sure you have everything you need.”
“Already did, man. We good.”
Chuck shook his head. “I feel like I’m abandoning you.”
“I been alone a lot. I’m used to it.”
#
Chuck spent a quiet evening with Terry at her apartment. It went well enough, but she never said what she thought about Chuck’s arrangement with Clint.
Chuck let sleeping dogs lie.
In the morning, Chuck left early to take Clint to school on time. Terry said she understood, but Chuck wondered.
Chapter 44
Chuck hoped that Ted Smoot was feeling smug after his pissing contest with Kelly and Bigs. Maybe he had lowered his guard a little. It would help if that were true. I’m getting nowhere fast, Chuck thought, and I need a break in the case.
The sign on the door said “Smoot Investigations.” But it didn’t say “Private Investigator” anywhere, so maybe it squeaked inside the letter of the law. As a convicted felon, he couldn’t get back his PI license. Smoot could claim he investigates UFOs or paranormal phenomena. Or not. But what the hell is he really doing for money?
Smoot’s office occupied the space of a former small bookstore in one corner of the Everglades Mall, an obsolete shopping mall that dated from the twentieth century, the kind that newer stores had deserted.
Snoop had given Chuck a file that contained Smoot’s vehicle information. Smoot owned a minivan and a car. Chuck found them both in the mall parking lot and put GPS trackers under the rear bumpers.
Often, Chuck couldn’t place a GPS tracker. If the target vehicle parked in too obvious a spot, he wouldn’t take the risk that someone would spot him. But, on the occasions when he stuck a tracker on the target vehicle, it was so easy it was almost boring to follow it. But in the PI business, boring is sometimes good.
He parked around the corner where Smoot’s vehicles were out of sight. That meant that Smoot couldn’t see him either.
Chuck watched the tracker screen from his minivan and waited for one of the red dots to move. This is like watching paint dry. He listened to his favorite music downloads from the last fifty years. He was about to fall asleep when the red dot for Smoot’s car blinked into motion. Chuck let him get two hundred yards ahead before he put the van in gear.
Game on.
Smoot crossed the Beach Causeway and headed north up A1A. He’d left just after five o’clock and an hour later pulled into a neighborhood bar opposite North Beach. Chuck knew the neighborhood well because he and Terry often went to North Beach on the weekend, but he’d never been inside this bar.
Chuck had never met Smoot. Nevertheless, he stuck a worn Pilots baseball cap on his head and headed into the bar.
Smoot took a booth toward the back corner. He slid into the bench where he could watch the front door.
Chuck picked a barstool where he could watch Smoot’s reflection in the mirror behind the bar. Looks like he’s waiting for someone. Chuck pretended to watch the closed-captioned sports news show on the TV above the mirror.
Smoot ordered a scotch; Chuck ordered a draft. Both waited for something to happen.
It didn’t take long. A forty-something man in a two-thousand-dollar, pin-striped suit slid into the bench across from Smoot.
Chuck videoed Pin Stripes and Smoot in the bar mirror with his smart phone. He left his beer and headed for the restroom. As he came out, he paused in the hallway and took a couple of more shots of Pin Stripes and Smoot before he returned to his barstool.
Their body language indicated that they were having a heated but quiet conversation. At least Pin Stripes was heated. He scowled when he talked and ignored his white wine. His face got redder as he tried to make a point with Smoot. Smoot sipped his scotch with a small smile, a man calm and in control.
When Pin Stripes paused for breath, Smoot placed his left hand on the man’s right forearm. His face lost all expression. He said something to Pin Stripes that Chuck couldn’t make out. His last words were “…the way it is. Your call.” Smoot leaned back and dropped his hands below the table, his eyes as cold as a glacier.
Pin Stripes tugged at his collar. He started to raise a hand but stopped with it an inch off the table. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He placed both hands on the table as if he needed to steady himself. Even in the bar mirror, Chuck could tell that the man was shaking.
Smoot waited as motionless and silent as the Sphinx.
Pin Stripes dropped his head. His hands relaxed. He nodded. Chuck read his lips in the bar mirror. “Okay,” he said. Pin Stripes reached inside his jacket, pulled out a thick envelope, and pushed it across the table to Smoot.
Chuck dropped a few bills on the bar and walked back to his van to wait for Pin Stripes. Smoot must be up to his old tricks.
Pin Stripes left the bar and drove off in a Mercedes S600 Sedan. List price: Oh my God.
Chuck followed the Mercedes, but he didn’t have far to go.
Within minutes, the Mercedes turned onto North Bay Road and stopped at an ornate, wrought-iron gate in a terra cotta masonry wall with broken glass on the top. Well-maintained landscaping filled the area between the two-lane street and the wall. The gate swung open, and Pin Stripes drove down a brick driveway that led to a Mediterranean-style waterfront mansion on the west shore of Seeti Bay.
It was the sort of house God would own, if He had the money.
Chuck looked up the house on the Atlantic County Property Appraiser’s website. The assessed value was eight figures.
Prime blackmail prospect indeed.
Chapter 45
Pin Stripes was Charles Headley Morrison III. A quick search of the Press-Journal online subscription service revealed that his fashionable friends called him Trey. High society, politically well-connected. Married to Allison Throckmorton McIntosh, also high society, for ten years.
“I’m here to see Mr. Morrison. I don’t have an appointment.” Chuck handed his card to the sexiest woman he had seen all day. Of course, it was first thing in the morning and he had not yet seen Terry.
“Please have a seat, Mr. McCrary. I’ll see if he can see you.” Sexy Woman stood and pirouetted like a dancer, not easy in four-inch heels on a plush carpet. She glided toward the door behind her. Her skirt was so short that Chuck hoped she would drop his card and bend over to pick it up.
Alas, she did not.
Chuck appreciated the skillfulness of her performance, and the view of her derrière made the trip worthwhile. He didn’t know what Smoot was blackmailing Trey for, but it would be a safe bet that it somehow involved Sexy Woman.
Trey’s private money management firm occupied a four-bedroom condo on the twenty-fifth floor of a beachfront high-rise. Chuck guessed he hadn’t run afoul of zoning laws because he didn’t have a sign or invite outsiders or strangers to his office.
Chuck wandered over to the window wall and watched the sailboats on Seeti Bay. Some yacht club was throwing a regatta and most of the boats flew their racing spinnakers in a kaleidoscope of patterns and colors.
Sexy Woman soon returned. “Mr. Morrison asks what this is in regard to.”
“Of course.” Sexy Woman pirouetted again and glided through the same door. This time he detected a whiff of Halston fragrance in her wake.
Chuck enjoyed her performance again.
It took five minutes for Sexy Woman to return this time. I guess Trey had trouble opening the envelope. Or else he and Sexy Woman had a quickie on the office couch. Maybe not.
She posed like a model, one foot forward, hip swung out slightly, as if she were showing a car at the state fair. “Mr. Morrison will see you now.” She gestured gracefully toward the open door behind her.
Trey didn’t stand when Chuck entered his office, nor did he offer his hand.
I guess they don’t teach manners at Stanford. Or maybe his arms aren’t long enough to reach across a walnut desk the size of New Hampshire.
The desk matched the walnut side chairs, walnut coffee table, and walnut bookcases decorated with books no one had ever read or ever would. The interior decorator must have selected them for the color of their bindings. Chuck thought they looked impressive though.
“How’d you find my office? It’s not listed anywhere.”
Chuck sat in a white silk visitor’s chair that cost more than his suit. “I was outside your home at 2056 North Bay Road at six o’clock this morning. I followed you when you left. When you pulled into the parking garage here, I researched the Atlantic County Property Appraiser’s Website from my car to see if you owned an apartment here. Turns out you own two. I tried this one first. Voila.”
“Humph. What’s this about you helping me with my Ted Smoot problem? Who’s Ted Smoot?”
Chuck pulled out his smart phone, leaned as far across the desk as he could, and showed Trey a picture of him with Smoot the previous day. “If you don’t like this picture, I have others. Or I could show you the video I took of you and Smoot.”
Trey’s shoulders slumped a little. “What do you want, Mr. McCrary?”
“A cup of coffee would be good.”
Trey punched a button on his desk and Sexy Woman opened the door. “Please tell Helena how you take your coffee.”
He did and she blazed a dazzling smile in Trey’s direction before she left.
“Now what else do you want, Mr. McCrary?”
“Call me Chuck.”
Trey studied his card. “You’re a private investigator. You followed me from home. Are you in the same business as Ted Smoot?”
Chuck scoffed. “God no. He was convicted of a felony and lost his PI license when he was sentenced to ten to fifteen for blackmail. We are not in the same business. I try to solve people’s problems; Smoot causes them.”
Trey placed the card on his desk and steepled his hands.
Maybe they taught him in Stanford that steepling your hands made you look intelligent, like having lots of books in your office.
“I repeat. What do you want, Chuck?”
“Smoot is blackmailing you. I may be able to stop him.”
“And if he were blackmailing me—and I’m not saying he is—how would you stop him?”
#
Trey seemed satisfied with Chuck’s plan and gave him a fat retainer check.
“What do I do now?” he asked.
Chuck pulled out a notepad. “First, tell me what he’s got on you. I presume it’s a girlfriend. Helena at the reception desk?”
Trey looked a little embarrassed. “Uh, she’s one of them.”
“Of course, I should have thought of that. If one girlfriend’s good, two’s better, and three is…”
“Exhausting.” He laughed. “But I work out, and I’m in good physical shape.”
“So, do the three include the wife or is it three in addition to Allison?”
“Tell me again why you need to know this.”
“You wouldn’t begrudge an ordinary man a little vicarious thrill, would you?”
He laughed. “Okay, I have three girlfriends, but Smoot only knows about two. Helena is what you’d call a conventional mistress and Barbra Bamby in Chicago is just a girlfriend.”
“Spell both girls’ names,” Chuck said.
Trey did. “And please don’t make the obvious ‘Bimbo’ joke. She’s quite a successful real estate broker. The only money I give her is to subsidize her apartment in Chicago.”
“How much a month?”
He told Chuck. Chuck had paid less for his used, late-model minivan.
“Chicago rents are very high.”
“I’ll bet. How long has this been going on?”
Trey frowned in thought. “Maybe six years or so. We met at an investment conference in Chicago.”
Chuck wrote that down. “What about Helena?”
“She lives in a two-bedroom condo on the twenty-seventh floor.” He pointed toward the ceiling.
“Very handy. How long has that been going on?”
“Ever since I bought the two condos—about four years ago. Helena was a sales agent for the condo developer. Actually, I was only going to buy this one condo for my office.”
“But…?”
“Helena was so…so…friendly that I asked her to lunch and things progressed from there. I decided to hire her and bought her a condo too.”
“So you’re living the dream, huh?”
“It’s just that I crave variety. I get bored easily.” Trey grinned. “What’s the good of having money if you can’t enjoy it?”
“Indeed.”
“I also have a less frequent girlfriend in Atlanta—she’s more of a ‘friend with benefits.’ I have to go to Atlanta on business once in a while and she comes down here for a few days to escape Atlanta winters. As far as I know, Smoot doesn’t know about her.”
Trey looked at the floor. “Look, I’m not proud of it.”
“You could’ve fooled me.”
“Okay, I guess I am proud of it, but it’s not like I neglect Allison. I actually do love her. And I’m always there for anniversaries, birthdays, dinner with her parents, stuff like that.”
He looked at Chuck with a straight face and added, “I’m a good husband.”
Chapter 46
Chuck went straight to the bank with Trey’s check. The check was too large to deposit with his cellphone ap. Chuck remembered his father’s advice: The deal’s not done until the check clears the bank.
Back in his car, he called his computer researcher. “Flamer, I’ve got two jobs for you.”
“Who?”
“First is Charles Headley Morrison III. Just a routine client background check.”
“Spell it.”
He did. “Next is Theodore P. Smoot. He’s the target. He’s a former PI here in Port City.” Chuck spelled Smoot’s name and recited Smoot’s office address. “Get me a top to bottom report. Everything in the public records, of course. And your specialty, everything private.”
“How soon?”
“No hurry. My client’s check won’t clear until tomorrow.”
Flamer’s logo disappeared from the screen. No “good-bye,” no “okay.” That’s Flamer. What he lacks in social skills, he makes up for in spades with his computer savvy.
Chapter 47
Chuck sat with Terry at a waterfront table sipping Pinot Grigio and watching the occasional boat glide by on the Intracoastal Waterway. She stabbed a coconut shrimp with her fork. “How’s the case for Jorge coming?”
“Dan Murphy—”
“That’s Jorge’s partner?”
“Right. Murphy put me onto a guy named Ted Smoot. Smoot has a grudge against Jorge. He’s a former police detective who has the smarts to frame Jorge for murder. Say, I’ll swap you a taste of my grouper for a bite of that coconut shrimp.”
Terry stabbed a shrimp and placed it on Chuck’s plate. “Is Smoot involved?” She cut off a bite of Chuck’s grouper and stuck it in her mouth. “Mm, mm, good.”
Chuck cut the shrimp into
two bites and took one. “Can I dip it in that orange sauce?”
“Help yourself.” She slid the dish toward him.
“Don’t know whether Smoot’s involved in Franco’s murder, but I followed him and discovered that he’s blackmailing at least one wealthy man.”
“How wealthy?”
“Wealthy enough to own a seventy-foot yacht and a waterfront mansion with 150 feet of frontage on Seetiweekifenokee Bay.”
“Wow. Who is the guy?”
“That doesn’t matter. Just that he’s a victim.”
Terry laughed. “I could stand to be a victim like that.”
“Now he’s my client.”
“Your client?”
Chuck smirked. “He hired me to get Smoot off his back.”
“You found him while working on Jorge’s case and he’s also paying you to work this case?”
“Separate case. Smoot may not be connected to Jorge’s case. Dan Murphy told me that Smoot could be after Jorge. This blackmail victim is a separate case. Besides, Jorge’s not paying me right now. Maybe he never will—not that I care. At least this other case pays. I gotta make a living. And it might help Jorge’s case.”
“What’s Smoot got on this guy?”
“A couple of girlfriends.”
“More than one?” She laughed. “What’s he running, a harem?”
Chuck smiled. “Sort of. Anyway, I got a big retainer check from him today and it hasn’t cleared yet.” He took a bite of grouper.
She picked up the Pinot Grigio bottle and topped off her glass. “And how’s Clint coming along?”
“Pretty well. His tutor tells me that he’s quite smart. He has maybe an eighth or ninth grade education. I’m thinking about enrolling him as a resident student at Port City Prep once school starts.”
“That can’t be cheap.”
“Fortunately, the Simonetti case paid off like hitting the lottery so I can afford to indulge myself in a little missionary work.”
“If he’s willing to go to school.”
“Yes, that.”
Chapter 48
Double Fake, Double Murder (A Carlos McCrary, Private Investigator, Mystery Thriller Series Book 2) Page 11
