The Swamp Killers

by Sarah M. Chen

  “No.” She shook her head, but there wasn’t much conviction behind the effort. “I don’t think so. He called me a few times after we broke up and wanted to meet. Said he’d change.”

  “Did you meet with him?”

  “No.” She shook her head again. “I don’t think it’s Patrick.”

  “Okay.” I let it rest for now. “Tell me about your new boyfriend.”

  “Well, it’s not serious or anything. Not yet.” She pursed her lips, tilted her head. “I met him at my church. He doesn’t drink or smoke like Patrick did. And he’s…he’s just nice, you know?”

  “Does Patrick know you’re seeing this new guy, what’s his name?”

  “Matt Navelle. I don’t remember if I actually mentioned his name to Patrick.”

  “Okay. Is there anyone else who might be feeling animosity toward you? Guys who’ve asked you out and you’ve said no? Someone you’ve had a fight with? Notice anybody following you around?”

  “Not that I can think of. I try not to make too many enemies.”

  “Good strategy. What’s your daily routine like?”

  Jessica sighed. “I work most nights. At O’Boyle’s in Fairfax. From around 5 until midnight. During the days, I just do regular stuff—go to the gym, volunteer at the church, go shopping. You know, hang out.”

  “Sure. Here’s what I want you to do. Give us all the information you can—names of the gym and the church and the stores you usually shop at. Facebook passwords, stuff like that. And make a list of all your friends, too, okay?”

  She sighed. “Okay. Whatever you need.”

  “And there are a few more things you should do. Do what the police suggested; mix up your routine. Go to the gym a different day or time of day. Do your grocery shopping at a different store. Use another gas station. I know it’s inconvenient, but we need to be smart—and careful—about this. Whenever possible, use the buddy system, so when you go out someplace, do it with a friend in tow. I know he hasn’t approached you yet, but…it’s possible things will escalate.”

  “Possible or probable?” Jessica asked. Now her lip trembled slightly.

  “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.” I smiled, the warmest, most comforting one I had in my arsenal. Jessica smiled back, but hers was a tentative, low-wattage one that tugged at me. “Okay, then. That’s enough for today. Carrie will get you set up with an information sheet to fill out and then we can get started. Don’t worry, Jessica. We’ll get this guy.”

  Forty-five minutes later, Carrie returned to my office and plopped down in the guest chair by my desk, like she always did. Creatures of habit, both of us. “Jessica’s done and on her way home.”

  “Good.”

  Carrie put her feet up on my desk. “She’s hot. Probably got guys crawling all over her.”

  “Perhaps.” Jessica’s appearance hadn’t escaped me. About twenty-five. Stylish blonde hair, model-perfect cheekbones, piercing blue eyes, a body honed on the Stairmaster. But I knew being attractive and attracting trouble weren’t necessarily correlated. Plenty of plain Janes got harassed, too. “Did she give us her info?”

  Carrie tapped a manila folder in her hand. “She concisely summarized her entire life, with names, phone numbers, passwords, addresses, and other vital bits of information, right here. Her whole life on half a dozen sheets of paper. And such neat handwriting.” She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth twice. “Heck, I could fit my life on the front side of a three-by-five card, and you’d have some room left over for a grocery list.”

  I put my feet up, too, and fingered a stack of poker chips I kept on my desk. I thought better when my hands were busy. “FYI, Virginia is a commonwealth, not a state.”

  “Tomato, potato.”

  “And the Investigator Oversight Department? That’s a new one.”

  “Come on, where’s a restaurant hostess going to get the money to pay us? We can afford to spend a few hours helping her out. She’s terrified.”

  She also knew which of my sister’s buttons to press. “You think she’s telling the truth?” For a variety of reasons, sometimes a client wasn’t forthcoming. It was the first question that had to be answered. Satisfactorily. Once it was, then the real work could begin.

  Carrie hit me with a laser beam stare. “You’re kidding, right? You are such an a-hole sometimes. Have you forgotten? I was where she was once, broke and scared and young. And tormented. I could have used some help then.”

  At the time, I’d been unaware of my sister’s problems. Unfortunately, those problems begat problems still affecting her. “And look how you turned out.”

  Carrie’s eyes narrowed. “If we do our jobs well, we won’t waste much of your precious billable time.”

  “Easy there. That billable time pays your rent.”

  “There’s more to life than money.”

  I had two kids and a mother to support; Carrie had no one to think about but herself, and even that seemed like an afterthought, judging by how she lived. “Thanks for the life lesson, dear sister.”

  She waved it off, like she always did when she didn’t feel like getting into a sibling argument. After thirty-some-odd years, I was used to it. “Where would you like me to start?” she asked.

  “Why don’t you follow up on the police report? Might be helpful to get their notes. Then you can do what you do best. Cozy up to your friend Google.” Although Carrie’s official title was Office Manager, she was the worst office manager I’d ever had—and it wasn’t even close. But she was my sister and possessed plenty of other, more valuable skills, like being a top-notch researcher and out-of-the-box problem solver. It was a pity she’d never fulfilled the licensing requirements to become a full-fledged private investigator—never took a course, never took the tests, and there was that pesky conviction for felony assault in her past. I kept a close eye on her because I needed to stay on the good side of the State Licensing Bureau.

  “You got it. And what are you going to do?” she asked.

  “I think a face-to-face with Jessica’s ex-boyfriend is in order. With any luck, we’ll have this whole thing put to bed in a few hours and we can get back to some cases that will pay the bills around here.”

  “How come you get all the fun?”

  I riffed the poker chips in my hand. “I’m the boss.”

  “Sure you are,” she said.

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  Here is a preview from I’m Dying as Fast as I Can, the twelfth mystery in the Nick Polo series by Jerry Kennealy.

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  Chapter 1

  “I’m dying as fast as I can,” Gabriela Maoret said. “That’s what I’ve been telling them. At first it was kind of a joke and got a laugh, but not anymore.”

  Gabriella was five-four or so, slim, and had the upright posture that comes from a lifetime of yoga or disciplined exercising. She had a face that cried out for a black-and-white photo portrait by Mark Coggins or Richard Avedon, weathered by too much sun, with too many laugh and frown lines, but full of life. The color of her eyes shifted somewhere between gray and green and still had a twinkle when she set her mind to it. Her nose was narrow, her mouth full, her shiny white hair hung straight down and ended with an inward curl below her chin. Her raspy voice signaled an affection for cigarettes.

  She was wearing creased denim slacks, a black silk turtleneck and gray corduroy slippers that curled up at the toe.

  She looked familiar, and I was searching my mind to try to remember just where I’d seen her before.

  We were sitting in the living room of a three-story stucco-front early Art Moderne house that had been built in the 1930s at the dead end, that was before the Realtors started calling them cul-de-sacs, of the steep incline on Greenwich Street, in the posh Telegraph Hill area of San Francis
co. It was a fully detached home, rare in most parts of San Francisco. The east side of the property butted up against Pioneer Park, five acres of pine and cypress trees that surrounded the circular drive leading up to the famed Coit Tower.

  It was a large room furnished with low, comfortable chairs and couches upholstered in warm autumn colors.

  The ceiling was latte colored. There was no way to tell the color of the walls—every inch of space was covered with paintings in a variety of styles or framed photographs of people hunting, fishing, swimming, playing tennis or golf, at a racetrack or just staring pleasantly at the camera lens.

  To the left was an open arched wall showing a small dining room with a walnut table and five Danish modern chairs.

  She tapped the ashes from an unfiltered Lucky Strike into an ashtray shaped like a violin and said, “Call me Gaby, everyone does. What do I call you? Mr. Polo?”

  “Nick works fine. But why did you call me, Gaby?”

  “Jimmy Feveral suggested I contact you. He thought you could help me.”

  She ground out her cigarette in the ashtray and smiled. “It’s all Jimmy’s fault, anyway. He’s the one who wrote up the lifetime estate agreement years ago, so that I could live in this beautiful house until I kick the bucket.”

  James Feveral was a topnotch attorney and one of my best clients. He’d sent me an email with Gabriella’s address and phone number, but without any background information, just a short note: “Good luck. You may need it.”

  Jim had taken off for a three-week vacation in Paris, to meet with his daughter Laura. Laura and I had a “relationship” but she had scooted off to Paris over a month ago to study art in Montmartre. I was beginning to get the feeling that she might have become more interested in the artists than their paintings.

  Gaby lit up another Lucky, blew a smoke ring and put her index finger through it. “I’m going to be sev-en-ty five years old next month,” she said with an exaggerated stutter. “I remember going to friends’ birthdays when they turned seventy and feeling sorry for them. Old age.”

  “They say that seventy-five is the new fifty, Gaby.”

  “Yeah, and that nine-thirty is the new midnight. Let me put you in the picture. This house belonged to Gaucho Carmichael. Have you heard of him?”

  “No. Should I have?”

  “He was a character,” she said. “Ethan Carmichael. His father, Ian, was Scottish, his mother Argentinian. He was born in Argentina. They moved to Texas when Ethan was nine or ten. He quickly adopted the ‘Gaucho’ name. It gave him some color, made him stand out from the crowd, and he loved that.”

  The Lucky got a deep inhale before she continued. “His mother died young. She’d had some money, her family owned a cattle ranch near Entre Rios, on the pampas, but his father went through that in a hurry. He was an oil wildcatter and a gambler, a bad one. Lost everything they had. He dug his own grave in the backyard, laid down and shot himself in the head. I guess he didn’t want to make a mess.

  “So Gaucho took over the family, which consisted of his two younger brothers, Logan and Niven. And he did well. Oil, at first, then he branched out. Radio stations, real estate and construction, flipping homes and commercial properties. He made a fortune.

  “When we met it was lust at first sight. There was lots of sex, lots of drinking, lots of fighting, lots of makeup sex and more fighting. We traveled everywhere. All over Europe, Africa, and the Far East. He was going through an Ernest Hemingway stage of his life: fishing, hunting, racetracks. We’d be together for a while, then break up, and get back together.”

  Gaby pushed herself to her feet and crooked a finger at me. “Take a look.”

  She pointed out a photograph on the wall. “That’s us after a run with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain.”

  A younger version of Gaby was leering at the camera, her arm wrapped around the waist of a broad-shouldered man with a black mustache similar in size and shape to the one Kevin Branagh wore in the latest version of Murder on the Orient Express. They were both dressed in traditional bull-running attire: white pants and shirts, red scarfs and waistbands, as well as black berets.

  “Gaucho said I saved his life that day. He’d gotten too close to the bulls and I yanked him into a doorway.” Her finger tapped a nearby photo. “Here we are in Africa, after a hunt.”

  It was a campfire scene. A good-sized animal was being roasted on a spit. Both Gaucho and Gaby held drinks in their hands. He was bare-chested and wearing a pair of those pleated Gurka shorts that Hemingway favored. His hair was dark, thick and curly.

  “That’s an impala on the spit. Gaucho liked playing the big white hunter. He owned all kinds of guns: rifles, shotguns, pistols. He loved the shooting part, but left all of the dressing and butchering to me. I made sure he only shot animals we could eat and give to the natives. If he wanted lions or giraffes he had to shoot them with his Leica.”

  The photo tour continued through India, Paris, South Africa and the Bahamas, the two of them standing on a fishing pier alongside a huge marlin hanging from a rope. They both aged gracefully, Gaby never seeming to put on a pound; Gaucho’s hair turning gray, but his monster of a mustache remaining black.

  “You two seemed to have good times together,” I said.

  “We had great times. We started living together off and on when I was forty-one, eight years older than Gaucho. It wasn’t a big deal at first, but as time passed, it started to matter.”

  “You never married?”

  “No. We both thought that would have ruined the relationship, and I think we were right. Gaucho had two marriages, and both of them were disasters.”

  I pointed to one of the paintings on the wall, a muted abstract of gold and blue. “I like this one.”

  “Thanks. It’s one of mine.” She waved a hand in the air. “All of them are. I taught for years at the San Francisco Art Institute. That’s one of the things Gaucho admired about me. I gave him a real education on the art world. He wasn’t interested in the paintings themselves, he purchased them as investments.”

  She closed her eyes and sighed. “God, I led him to some wonderful Picassos, a Monet, a few by Degas and Coubet, as well as some great abstract artists like Rothko and Kline, before they became so disgustingly expensive. He’d hold on to them for a few years and then put them up for auction. ‘Better than real estate, and you don’t have to put up with labor unions or crazy tenants,’ he liked to say.”

  Another of the photos caught my attention—two young girls in modest one-piece swimsuits on a sunny beach.

  “Is that you?”

  “Yes, me and my sister Ava, on the beach in Sanremo, Italy. She’s still there.”

  “You look like twins.”

  “No, I’m eleven months older than Ava.”

  “You’re both beautiful. Give me a little background, Gaby. Are you married?”

  “No. Never have been.”

  “Children?”

  “No. Infertility. That’s one of the reasons I never married. What was the sense of it? But Ava made up for me. She’s a real old-fashioned Italian mama. Six kids. Four girls, two boys.”

  She ground out the half-smoked cigarette and said, “I could use a drink. Want one?”

  It was close to the lunch hour and she seemed like someone who would rather not drink alone.

  I followed her into the kitchen, which was nothing fancy: faded wooden cabinets, a white, four-burner stove, a small refrigerator and a Formica-topped table and two chrome legged side chairs with vinyl-padded seats. Everything had a 1950s’ look. The counter held an oak knife block with seven black-handled knifes. A colander sitting in the sink held a mixture of lettuce, cherry tomatoes and what smelled like basil. She took a half-full bottle of white wine from the fridge, filled two stemmed glasses to the brim and said, “Salute!”

  My response sent a wave of smiling wrinkles across her face.

  “Che tu possa vivere fino a cento.” May you live to be a hundred.<
br />
  “No, no,” she laughed. “I don’t think that’s a possibility, but I don’t want them pushing me in front of a bus, or running me over. Polo. You’re Italian?”

  “Sicilian.”

  She crossed her thumb over her heart. “Ti perdono. I forgive you. I’m Genovese.”

  “Who is the them that you mentioned?” I asked.

  She gulped down half of the wine in her glass and said, “Let’s go out on the deck and I’ll give you all of the gory details.”

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