Hoarded to Death (A Jamie Brodie Mystery)

by Perry, Meg

  We said our goodbyes, and Jon headed for Liz's office. I finished up a few things at my desk and shut down for the day. I got home a little early. Pete was in the kitchen, just starting to gather ingredients for fish tacos, so I told him about the developments as he did.

  By the time I'd finished, the tacos were ready. Pete put our plates on the table and we sat. I dug in. "Mmm, so good."

  "Thank you." Pete ate for a minute. "Jon's right, it could be some other Australian guy. There are probably several thousand Australians in LA."

  "Sure, it could be. But I doubt it, don't you?"

  "Yeah. You know, when we were at his shop that day, I had a look around while he was examining the copy of the torn page. It didn't look like a lot of inventory had been moving recently."

  "How could you tell?"

  "The dust on the shelves. Nothing had been moved for a couple of weeks, I'd guess."

  "So maybe he is having financial problems. Although, in that business, one big sale can probably keep you going for a while."

  "True. But if you've grown accustomed to a certain lifestyle, it's hard to economize when times get tough. Especially if he's got lovely ladies to impress."

  "Yeah. I bet the lovely ladies in this town are hard to impress."

  Pete laughed. "Yeah, I'd guess so."

  We both had some work to do, then we watched a little TV. I was yawning my head off by 9:00. Pete dragged me to bed and I fell in.

  Our sex life had suffered since Christmas. We were still practicing our “other skills,” but the frequency of our practice had dropped from four or five times a week to about two. I was hesitant to initiate anything, and Pete didn’t seem to be in the mood very often. But tonight he was, and pretty soon he had me stirred up too. Everything was fine until he rolled me over on my back. Oh yay, the missionary position again. The thought flashed through my head so fast that I barely recognized it; most of my attention was focused on my dick. But I must have twitched, or made a face, or something, because Pete raised up on his arms and said, "What?"

  "What, what? Nothing."

  He gave me a look, but I reached down and took hold of his dick, and pretty soon he forgot about "what."

  Afterward, Pete fell asleep almost immediately, with his head on my chest. I went to sleep pretty quickly too, but I had one last thought before I did.

  This therapy had better work.

  The next day, Jon called at 12:30. “I’m running about 15 minutes late. Is that a problem?”

  “Nope. Call me when you get here.”

  At 1:00, Kevin texted me. “On my way. Tell Eckhoff ballistics from Brashier match Wallace and Lindsey.” Jon called again at 1:10. “I’m outside.” I went out and got in the car; he was driving an unmarked LAPD car today. “Sorry I’m late. Got hung up in a meeting with the lieutenant.”

  “No problem.” I gave him Kevin’s message. “So, what’s the plan?”

  “I figure we’ll go easy. Tell him about Brashier, tell him we’re looking at all of Brashier’s business associates, and ask him for an alibi. If he gives us one, we say thank you and call it a day. I’ll check it out, and if it doesn’t pan out, Kevin and his partner can go back and ask him nicely to come in for a lineup. If he refuses, they’ll take him in for questioning.”

  I nodded. “Sounds easy enough.”

  Famous last words.

  We were at a stoplight on San Vicente when Jon’s radio came to life. “All units, shots fired.” She rattled off an address that sounded very familiar. “Customer being held at gunpoint. Suspect believed to be the business owner. Suspect armed and dangerous. SWAT responding.”

  I looked at Jon in horror at the same time he looked at me. “That’s Kendall’s shop.”

  “Shit!” Jon hit the lights and siren and pulled out into the next lane over. He eased through the red light and we started flying. When we got near Kendall’s address, the patrol cars already had the area blocked off. Jon slammed the car into park, checked his weapon, and got out. “Stay here.”

  “Yes, sir.” I had no intention of getting any closer to whatever was happening down the block. I could see a cop with a bullhorn and heard the sound but couldn’t distinguish his words. In another minute, the SWAT van pulled up behind Jon’s car, and the SWAT team piled out and scrambled into position. I could see Jon, talking to one of the cops that was standing back a bit from the others. Eventually, Jon started back toward me. He opened the door and leaned in. “It’s Kendall with the gun, all right. A customer walked in and found him holding a gun on a woman. When the customer saw him, Kendall shot at the customer and missed, then grabbed the woman and put the gun to her head. The customer bolted and called 911.”

  “Whoa.” I was stunned. In spite of what Paulo had said, I still hadn’t completely believed that Kendall had anything to do with the murders. “So it’s not looking good for Kendall.”

  “No. The question is, who’s this customer that he’s holding a gun on?”

  “Another accomplice?”

  “Don’t know. We may not find out until this is resolved, and that might take a while. He’s refusing to come out. Can Pete come pick you up?”

  “Yeah, probably. I’ll text him.” I sent the text – “Call me asap” – then peered out the windshield again. There seemed to be some action near the front of the store. Jon still had his door open, and I could hear the bullhorn voice clearly now. “Kendall McEwen. Let the woman go. Drop your weapon and come out. We can resolve this peacefully. No one has to get hurt.”

  No response.

  Another fifteen minutes passed. There was no sign of Kevin. I thought he might be at the other end of the block, or maybe he hadn’t gotten here yet. The guy with the bullhorn kept telling Kendall to come out, to no avail. I saw a SWAT cop with a riot gun position himself behind a squad car. Jon leaned into the car again. “They’re going to tear gas him.”

  The cop shot the canister through the window. After a couple of seconds, the door to the shop flew open, and Kendall emerged, coughing. “Back off!” He was holding the gun to the head of the hostage, and using her as a shield. I got a good look at the hostage.

  It was Jennifer.

  I bolted upright. “Shit! Jon, that’s…”

  “I see her. Stay put.” Jon closed the door and ducked down to scurry back to the cop he’d been talking to earlier. He said something quickly to the cop, who passed it on to someone else, who apparently passed it on to the guy with the bullhorn. “McEwen. Release Ms. Graham and drop your weapon.”

  “No!” Kendall must have squeezed Jennifer tighter because she yelped. “All you mob, back off! This bitch has cost me a lot of money. I don’t give a rat’s arse what happens to her.”

  Oh, God. I pinched the bridge of my nose. I couldn’t believe this was happening. Once this was over, if anyone ever spoke the name Jennifer Graham to me again, I was going to run the other way. I hoped Kevin wasn’t in sight.

  Kendall started inching away from the door of his shop, down the street, staying pressed against the walls and windows of the businesses he was passing, keeping Jennifer firmly in place in front

  of him. Fortunately he was moving in the opposite direction from where Jon had parked. My cell phone rang, and I jumped so high I nearly hit my head on the ceiling of the car. It was Pete. “Hey, what’s up?”

  “We’re at Kendall’s shop and he’s holding Jennifer hostage at gunpoint. SWAT is here, and Jon thinks I should probably get away from the scene. But we came in his car.”

  “Wait, what? Kendall is holding Jennifer? At gunpoint? What the fuck??”

  “I know. Do you have another class or office hours or something?” I knew Pete’s schedule, but I couldn’t call it to mind right now to save my life.

  “No, I’m done for the day. I’ll come get you. How close are you to the shop?”

  “About a block. We’re right outside the police blockade.”

  “Okay. Sit tight, I’ll be there in a few.” He hung up. He’d have to walk home to get the c
ar, but then it wouldn’t take him long. The shop wasn’t all that far from the Santa Monica city limits.

  I slouched down in my seat a little, but not so far that I couldn’t see the street clearly. As I watched, Kendall came to the corner of the block. As he started to ease around the corner, things started happening fast. I couldn't tell for sure from a block away, but it looked like Jennifer might have stomped on Kendall's instep. At the same time, a SWAT guy yelled something at Kendall. Kendall howled. His grip on Jennifer loosened, and she ran back toward the shop. Kendall swung his gun around in the direction of the SWAT guy, and the SWAT cop fired. He hit Kendall in the shoulder, and Kendall went down. About four guys were immediately on him. Another couple of guys grabbed Jennifer and hustled her away. The cops had Kendall on the ground, restraining him, and he was yelling and thrashing. They finally got him restrained enough that the paramedics could come in and start treatment on his shoulder.

  I sagged back into the seat cushions in relief. I saw Jon say something to the cop he'd been talking to, then he walked back to the car and leaned in. "Jennifer's kind of hysterical. I need to question her, but she's gotta calm down first. Think you can talk to her?"

  Fuck. "I'll try." I got out of the car and found that my legs were a little shaky. Adrenalin, I guess. Another ambulance crew on our end of the block, just outside the police barricade, was attending to Jennifer as she sat on the bumper of their truck. She was crying, like Jon had said, hysterically. As I walked toward her, I saw Pete pull up and get out of his Jeep. He headed toward Jennifer too, and we got there about the same time.

  Jennifer looked up at me. "Jamie-" She stopped and gulped. "What are you doing here?"

  "I was coming with Detective Eckhoff to talk to Kendall. What the fuck are you doing here?"

  She looked at Pete, tears streaming down her face, then looked back at me and started with the hysterical crying again. "He didn't come!"

  Pete, Jon, and I all looked at each other in puzzlement. I said, "Who didn't come?"

  "K-K-Kevin! He didn't come to save me!" More sobbing.

  Oh, for God's sake. I couldn't say anything for fear I might laugh, which would probably be incredibly inappropriate. Pete said, not very gently, "Jennifer. Wake up. Kevin's not going to come save you. You've been divorced longer than you were married. Kevin has someone new in his life, and there will be no reconciliation between him and you. Ever. It's time to let it go."

  I said, "You've got a new boyfriend now, right? Call him."

  She cried a little more, then started settling down. "I'm so stupid."

  Pete sighed. "No, you're not stupid. Just naive. And in denial."

  Jon said, "Jennifer. I need to know what you were doing here today."

  Jennifer nodded and blew her nose. "The collection agencies have been hassling me nonstop, so I was trying to find out how much I was going to get from Trinity College for the manuscript page. I'd been looking online, doing some searches, and asking for information. I got a call from Mr. McEwen who said he could give me a quote, if I could come in and take a look at some similar items so he'd have a better idea what I had, so I got a substitute for today and came to see him. At first he was nice, but when I told him the page I had might be from the Book of Kells, that's when he pulled out the gun, and stuck it right in my face, and said, "Where is it?" And it was right then that the other customer opened the door and he shot at her, and she ran out. And Mr. McEwen came around the counter, and he was yelling at me, "Where is it?" But he scared me so bad I couldn't get out that I didn't have it, it was in Dublin already, and then we heard the sirens and he grabbed me. And he said he'd kill me if I didn't take him to it, and we were headed out the back door, but the cops were there already."

  Jon had been taking notes. He said, "Did he show you anything that looked like the page you had?"

  "Not exactly. He had a couple of pictures, but he didn't show me the other section of the page from my apartment."

  Jon looked at me. "It'd be nice to recover that. Want to go look?"

  "I can’t. The tear gas would set off my asthma."

  "Okay. Be right back." Jon went to the shop, which had crime scene tape strung over the door already. He spoke to the cop in charge of the scene for a minute, and the cop let Jon in.

  In just a minute, Jon came out with an evidence bag and came back to us. “I found it, right in plain sight in one of Kendall's desk drawers.” He showed it to me. "Think that's what we're looking for?"

  "It sure looks like it to me."

  "Me too. Let's go see if we can have a word with Kendall now."

  At the other end of the block, the cops and paramedics had Kendall cuffed and strapped to a gurney, getting ready to transport him. His shoulder wound didn't appear to be life-threatening. He glared at me. I ignored him.

  Jon showed Kendall the page he'd found. "You really should have put this someplace less accessible, Mr. McEwen. This is going to match the other section of the page we found in Mr. Wallace's hand, isn't it?"

  Kendall glowered. "I'm not saying anything. I want a lawyer."

  "All righty, then. Kendall McEwen, you're under arrest for the murders of Michael Lindsey, Howard Wallace, and Quentin Brashier, and the kidnapping of Jennifer Graham. You have the right to remain silent..."

  Everything started to clear out pretty quickly after that. Kendall’s ambulance took him off to wherever they took injured arrestees. The paramedics with Jennifer’s ambulance made sure she was okay, then left. Jon and I walked back to where Pete and Jennifer were standing. Jennifer was still teary, but a good bit calmer. “Did he kill Wally?”

  Jon nodded. “That’s what I just arrested him for.”

  “Oh my God.” Jennifer’s lower lip trembled for a moment, then she pulled herself together a bit more. “Can I go home?”

  “Yes, as soon as we get your formal statement. I’ll take you back to the station to do that, then I’ll take you home.”

  “What about my car?”

  Pete said, “After you get home, call your boyfriend. He can drive you out here and you can get the car.”

  Jennifer sighed heavily. “Okay.” She looked at me. “I’m sorry for getting you involved in this.”

  I shrugged. “It’s okay.” A lie, but I wasn’t going to get into it with her.

  Jon said to me, “I’ll talk to you soon.” He led Jennifer off.

  “Wow.” Pete looked at me. “Do you need to go back to work?”

  “Yeah. I left my computer bag there.”

  Pete drove me back to campus and waited while I picked up my belongings. Liz and Clinton were in her office, and I told them what had happened.

  Clinton shook his head sadly. “Such violence because of such a precious object.”

  Liz said, “Yeah. As the newly minted girlfriend of a cop, I’m finding that’s more the norm than I ever knew.”

  It turned out that Kevin had been on the scene that day, on the other side of the police blockade. As soon as he saw Jennifer, he’d jumped in his car and gotten out of there. I didn’t blame him.

  Kendall continued to refuse to talk, and his attorney entered a plea of not guilty on all counts. The judge denied bond, though, stating that Kendall was a flight risk since he wasn’t a U.S. citizen and that he was still a danger to Jennifer. So he was sitting in jail until trial.

  Kevin and Jon believed they had enough evidence for an airtight case. An examination of Kendall’s financial records showed that he was indeed near bankruptcy, and his house was in foreclosure. They also found several checks written to Wally from Kendall’s business account. Stan the Junk Man was able to show from his records that each of those checks was written immediately after Wally had been on a hoard clean with Stan. So it looked like Wally had been taking valuable things from hoards and selling them to Kendall, who then re-sold at a profit. It had been going on for about a year. There wasn’t any way to tell how Kendall and Wally had come to know each other, since Wally was dead and Kendall wasn’t talking.

 
About a week after the showdown at Kendall’s shop, Jon showed up at the library. Liz wasn’t expecting him, and the way her face lit up when he approached the reference desk was wonderful to see. Jon winked at her and grinned at me. “Hey, Deputy Brodie. How’ve you been?”

  I laughed. “Happily retired from police work, thank you. What brings you here? As if I didn’t know?”

  “Just came to say hi to my best girl. And, to give you some good news.”

  “Give me good news? What?”

  Jon looked smug. “We’ve got our murder weapon.”

  “Excellent! When did that happen?”

  “Several days ago, some sanitation workers turned in a gun they found in a dumpster near Brashier’s shop. It was registered to Michael Lindsey, but it had Kendall’s prints all over it. We got the ballistics report this morning, and the gun matches the bullets from Lindsey, Wallace, and Brashier.”

  “That’s great.”

  “Yep. As it turns out, Kendall has an airtight alibi for Wallace’s murder. That’s the one thing he has told us. So we think now that maybe Kendall sent Lindsey with Wallace that morning to search, and Lindsey shot Wallace when they fought over the page. Then Kendall probably killed Lindsey because the page was torn, and he didn’t get the other fragment out of Wallace’s hand. He dumped Lindsey’s body on Brashier’s property to point a finger at Brashier because he didn’t like Brashier. Plus, according to some of the other book dealers, they’d accused each other of dirty dealings in the past. And, obviously, Kendall shot Brashier when they argued, and he dumped the gun shortly after he left Brashier’s shop.”

  “So you have to drop the charges against Kendall for Wally’s murder.”

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t matter. Between the evidence and Paulo’s testimony, we’ve got him at the very least for Brashier’s murder, and then of course there’s Jennifer’s kidnapping, which was witnessed by an entire SWAT team.” Jon stuck out his hand. I shook it, and he gave me another grin. “Case closed.”

  February

  It was Valentine’s Day. I leaned my head against the cool window of the bus and watched Wilshire Blvd. crawl by. Traffic was heavier than usual – probably guys who’d forgotten the date and were out buying last-minute cards and flowers. I’d gotten Pete a card, and a nice gift – new hiking boots – both of which were hidden in the trunk of my VW at home. I’d considered sending him flowers at work, but then decided against it. Pete hadn’t said a word to indicate that he remembered what day it was, and he’d invited Kevin and Abby to dinner. They’d accepted, which wasn’t that strange – I knew from living with them that neither Kevin nor Abby were fans of Valentine’s Day and its crass commercialism. But the first time we dated, Pete had made a big deal of Valentine’s Day, even sending me flowers at work. So I had no idea what he was thinking this time.