"Yes, it is," she said. "Probably about a fifteen-minute drive from your bakery."
"When did he first tell your husband about it?"
Laura paused for a moment. "David first told Evan about it sometime in January. We signed the papers on the twenty-fourth. Since it was brand-new and we paid cash, we were able to close in only a couple of weeks. David had the building permit when we first met him and obtained the Certificate of Occupancy once the house was finished. There was no reason for us to think anything was wrong." Her tone sounded concerned. "Evan wants to know what's going on. Did they do something to the house that we don't know about?"
"I don't think there's anything structurally wrong with your home," I said with all honesty. "We believe that David was embezzling money from other businesses—including my husband's—to build these houses. The man who did the construction work was in on it too."
She sucked in a sharp breath. "The one who was killed?"
"Yes. Was anyone else involved with the transaction? Did you have a real estate attorney?"
Laura sounded surprised by my question. "Sure we did. We're not stupid. Evan doesn't like to take chances with that stuff. Our attorney arranged for the transfer of title. We also had all the proper inspections done—structural, termite, and radon. Everything passed with flying colors. Since we paid cash, there was no need for a bank." She paused. "David didn't tell us that he wanted a cash payment until after we'd seen the house. It wasn't mentioned in the ad online."
"Weren't you at all suspicious?" I asked.
"Not really," she replied. "Like I said, we were convinced the house was structurally sound. He was offering a twenty percent discount to anyone who paid cash. We assumed he needed the money as soon as possible. Let's face it, the housing market hasn't been the greatest in New York State this winter."
That was true enough. Josie and Rob had recently listed their home in hopes of buying a larger one, but they'd had no bites so far.
"Oh, I totally forgot," Laura murmured. "Evan said that David once told him that when the house on Fairlawn sold, he was going to be moving on. Not sure what that meant."
I had a fairly good idea. "So he may not even be in the area anymore." If David had been one of the gunmen, why stick around? "Most likely he was going to try to find another honest business owner to scam."
"I'm sorry," Laura said. "If we hear from him, I'll be sure to let you know."
"Thanks for your help." After I disconnected, I sat there with the phone between my hands, debating what to do. There was a chance that the house on Fairlawn hadn't sold yet, so it was worth checking out. I dialed Josie's cell. Gianna had offered to help in the bakery this afternoon if I needed her. Although I hadn't planned to take her up on it, Johnny's school was closed today, and she said he would help too.
"Yo, girlfriend," Josie said. "It's dead here. Don't worry about coming in."
That was not encouraging to hear. "Gianna and Johnny will be there shortly. Want to do a little detective work with me? I might have a lead on this David Webb guy."
"Absolutely," she said. "I'll be waiting for you."
I went into the kitchen and found my grandmother stirring something in a large steel pot on the stove. Smells of oregano and basil wafted through the air, and my stomach began to growl. I reached down to pet Spike, who was snug in his bed next to the stove. "That smells wonderful."
"Pasta fagioli." She smiled at me. "Mike's favorite."
My grandmother was truly amazing. "I'm going out for a couple of hours to run some errands. Mike's asleep."
Grandma Rosa gave me a sharp look. "Errands, bah. What you really mean is that you are going to snoop." She offered me a taste, but I shook my head. Grandma Rosa sighed. "You need to eat, cara mia."
"I had a bagel at the hospital this morning." I grabbed my coat off the back of one of the dining room chairs. "Do you need anything while I'm out?"
Grandma Rosa shook her head. "No, I am fine. Do not worry about Mike. I will look in on him in a little while."
I gave her a kiss on the cheek, and she patted mine in return. "Tell Josie I said hello."
She'd already guessed that Josie would be accompanying me. There were days when I was certain my grandmother was psychic. Or maybe she knew me better than I knew myself. There was no time to waste if I was going to find the men responsible for shooting my husband and helping Trevor carry out his scheme. The more days that passed, the more of an opportunity for these gunmen to get farther away. True, I didn't even know if this David Webb was linked directly to Trevor's killing at the mini-mart, but I had a strong suspicion that he was.
Josie had a copy of the real estate section from the paper when I picked her up. "We may have hit the jackpot," she said as she got into the car. "It says that there's an open house at 22 Fairlawn Avenue from noon to two today." She checked her watch. "It's exactly 1:30. We should make it in time."
I stopped for a red light. "Is it listed for sale by owner or with a broker?"
Josie squinted down at the paper. "It's with a broker. Some place called Hospitable Homes."
In confusion, I drew my eyebrows together. "I thought they went out of business."
"Not the local office. Their branch in the Albany area closed down a couple of years ago," Josie explained as she rustled the pages. "I remember reading about it. A real estate agent was found murdered at that office. One of the female coworkers found her body, and the killer then tried to frame the agent for it."
I shuddered. It sounded eerily familiar to some of the experiences I'd been through. This woman and I needed to talk and compare notes sometime. "Well, it can't be the right house if it's with a broker. Besides, I thought weekends were the most popular days for an open house?" Today was only Thursday.
"Yeah, I've heard that too," she admitted. "But if David knows there's another one going on in the same neighborhood, he might take full advantage of the free advertisement. He could hold one and then sell it under a fictitious company name."
If the house hadn't already sold, that is. "It feels like we're looking for a needle in a haystack, but we don't have much else to go on right now." I flicked the blinker to turn right on Fairlawn and spotted the open house sign in front of number 22. There were three cars in the driveway, but none of them were BMWs.
"Want to go in?" Josie asked.
"Let's check out the rest of the street first." There was a fork in the road after the home for sale, and I maneuvered my car to the right, which turned out to be a dead end. The very last house on the left-hand side had a generic For Sale sign on its front lawn. The house appeared new and was the same design as Laura's, except this one was a beige-colored Cape Cod with an attached one-car garage. Pay dirt.
Josie bounced in her seat excitedly. "This has to be it."
I pulled my car across the street and parked it in front of a brown raised ranch house. Underneath the For Sale for the Cape Cod, someone had written, Open House from 12-2 pm on Thursday. There was no phone number or agent name listed on the sign. How interesting. It looked like David—if that was even his real name—was attempting to lie low.
There were two cars in the driveway, and one was a black BMW. Praise Mrs. Gavelli. "I think we've found our guy," I whispered.
"Should we call Brian?" Josie wanted to know. "Could he at least bring him in for questioning?"
"I'm not sure." While we chatted, a young couple emerged from the house, each one carrying a toddler in their arms—twins from the look of their matching pink jackets. They were adorable, but I was more interested in the man standing behind them.
The couple waited for him to lock the door. He was tall, well over six feet, with broad shoulders apparent through the black overcoat that he wore. My pulse quickened as I watched him. I didn't have much to go on, but the description of the car that Mrs. Gavelli had given me matched perfectly. One of the gunmen had been taller than Mike and prominently built. If he had a cobra tattoo on his wrist, like the one Mike had seen, there might be probable c
ause for Brian to arrest him or, at the very least, bring him in for questioning. But how could I manage to see his wrist?
We watched as the man shook hands with the couple and they exchanged a few words. He waved to them as their car pulled out of sight, then got into the BMW and zoomed down the street. I placed the car in drive. "Sit tight," I warned Josie and accelerated.
Her mouth fell open. "Are we going on a high-speed chase? You're going to follow him?"
"Get Brian on the phone. I'm not about to lose this guy. It may be our only chance to snag him." The couple had already turned off to the left, while David was gunning it down the main road that branched off to the right. With the highway in the other direction, he was clearly headed into the center of town. Did this mean he'd stop soon? We started to pass strip malls, hotels, and a couple of bars. Maybe David was holed up in a hotel somewhere.
"What should I tell Brian?" Josie clutched her cell in her hand. She leaned over in my direction and gasped. "Holy crap, Sal. You're going seventy in a forty-mile-an-hour zone. You're going to get a ticket for sure."
"Good," I breathed heavily. "Then the cops can pick this guy up. They sure haven't done much so far."
Josie waved me off. "Oh. Hi, Brian, it's Josie. What's that? No, Sal just said that her Pop wasn't doing much today."
I struggled not to roll my eyes. Josie went on to tell Brian about our chase as I watched the BMW make a left-hand turn into the paved parking lot adjacent to a one-story building with gray, clapboard siding. I drove into the next lot, which happened to be a McDonald's, and then waited there until he'd gone inside, not wanting him to see us pull in right behind him. Once David was out of sight, I drove back into the other lot.
Josie stared at the lit-up sign on the building and gulped. "That's right," she said into the phone. "He's stopped, and we're going to follow him inside."
I also stared at the sign and cringed. Of all places, why did he have to come here?
"The address?" Josie was still talking to Brian. Her eyes went wide with alarm as they focused on mine. "Uh, we're at Bottoms Up." She let out a small sigh. "Yeah, that's right. The strip club."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Bottoms Up had a storied and sordid reputation to go along with its name, which pretty much said it all. Like my bakery, the club always seemed to be in the news. Fights over strippers, strippers fighting amongst themselves, and a robbery attempt once engineered by a stripper were just some of the headlines I recalled. The club claimed that it was strictly an entertainment venue, but everyone knew that there were back rooms where the "dancers" provided other things for the male population in return for extraordinary amounts of dough.
My skin started to crawl as I stared at the building. The sign displayed next to the road featured an outlined silhouette of a woman bending over—way over—as she served up a drink on a tray.
I cleared my throat. "Ah—I've never been in one of these places before."
"And you think I have?" Josie cocked an eyebrow at me.
"No!" I said quickly. "But—didn't you tell me that Rob—um, he had his bachelor party here, right?"
Josie's nostrils flared. "Don't get me started on that. When I found out about the so-called party, I almost knocked his head through a wall. But he swore to me that nothing happened, and I believed him. I've always been able to tell when he was lying anyway." She calmly pulled out a compact to check her hair, then glanced over at me slyly. "Has Mike ever been here?"
My cheeks burned at the question. "He's never mentioned it." Still, what did I know? It wasn't a question that came up at the dinner table. We were apart for ten years after high school while I'd been dating and then married to another man. I'd never asked Mike about the women he'd dated during that time because, truthfully, I didn't want to know. Plus, if he'd been lonely for female companionship, all he had to do was walk down the street. Women flocked to him wherever he went. As Grandma Rosa often said, "Why buy the cow when you can have the butter for free?"
"Honestly, I can't see Mike in a place like this." I quickly changed the subject. "What did Brian say?"
Josie opened her car door. "He's in the middle of an investigation right now. There was a break-in a few streets away from the bakery. He said he'll get here as soon as he can."
"You're kidding, right? Can't he send someone else?" I asked in alarm. Lord knows I didn't want to wait for him inside.
She came around to my side of the vehicle. "He didn't come right out and say it, but I'm guessing he thinks this might be a wild goose chase. Brian probably doesn't want us wasting someone else's time on the police force. He said to sit tight and keep this guy in our sights until he gets here." Her lips twisted into a sneer. "Then he said, and I quote, 'Try to be inconspicuous and don't do anything stupid.'"
"Great," I muttered under my breath. We had no choice but to go inside. How the heck would we make ourselves inconspicuous? Two young women going into a strip club in the middle of the day. No, that didn't look weird. "God, I hope no one thinks we're part of the entertainment."
Josie locked her arm through mine as we climbed the steps, our boots thudding loudly on the concrete. "Try to think of it as a compliment. We're over thirty, remember? Our best years are behind us."
"Jeez, I was hoping that I still had a few good ones left," I remarked as she opened the door.
The main room of the club was poorly lighted, most likely on purpose. To our left was a three-sided oak bar, where a couple of patrons were seated. There were mismatched plastic chairs and tables scattered over a black-and-white-checkered floor. It was obvious no one came here for the décor.
The customers were busy watching the lone woman dancing on the crudely constructed wooden stage to my right. There were two shiny poles, about six feet apart from each other, and the woman was busy shimmying up and down one. She had nothing on save a pink G-string. Ew. I gasped and quickly swerved my head in the opposite direction. "This is embarrassing," I said to Josie in an undertone.
She smiled hesitantly in return. "Just act like you're having fun. Come on. Maybe the bartender can give us some information."
A heavyset man behind the bar was polishing glasses while he watched a small television that was perched on the edge of the counter. David Webb was nowhere to be seen. Another man sat alone in a darkened corner of the room, sipping a beer while he watched the woman perform. He never took his eyes off her, and the creepy expression on his face made me think he was either a serial killer or a pervert. Maybe both.
"Hey, beautiful ladies." One of the patrons at the bar winked at us and twirled his handlebar mustache while he spoke. He looked close to my father's age. "Want to join us for a drink—and whatever?"
"When hell freezes over," Josie spat out.
The bartender laughed out loud at Josie's comment. He had greasy, sparse hair and small dark eyes set close together. When he flashed us a sly smile, I couldn't help thinking how he was similar to the club—seedy looking and dark. Despite his appearance, he was surprisingly cordial. A nametag on his black polo shirt identified him as Stony.
"That's what I'd expect one of the dancers from The Fuzziest Navel to say. Hello, ladies. Want a drink before your shift?"
"Oh, we're not—" I started to say before Josie kicked me in the shin. "Ouch!"
Josie ignored me and smiled coquettishly at Stony. "Hi, sweet thing. Yeah, dancing does make a girl thirsty. Rum and Coke for me, please, and a ginger ale for my friend." Josie knew I didn't drink. "She never has hard liquor before a shift because it makes her extra giddy with the customers."
Oh, this nightmare needed to be over soon.
Stony started to prepare our drinks. "You ladies must be the ones that Roger hired for tonight's private party. He's not expecting you for a couple of hours, though. He just phoned and won't be here until four o'clock himself."
"Roger—he owns the place now, right?" Josie asked carefully.
"Yeah, for the last ten years," Stony said. "Ever since he bought it from Old Lady Wils
on's family after she croaked. Remember? Choked to death on her prime rib one night."
Holy cow. Old women owned strip clubs? What was happening to this world? Did she come here to watch the dancers perform? Did she—no. I needed to remove that mental image from my brain. For some strange reason, I tried to imagine Mrs. Gavelli at a strip club. Nope, that wasn't working for me either.
"We always like to be early so that we can check the place out first," I explained. It might be easier than I thought to snoop around and locate David. "Uh, is it okay if we go into one of the back rooms to wait until Roger gets here and tells us what we need to do?"
Stony shot me a puzzled look while my shin took another beating from Josie. "You ladies should already know what to do. Same thing you do at The Fuzziest Navel. Lap dances, pole dancing, and you know—whatever else you work out privately with the customers."
I started to cover my mouth in horror, then faked a cough at the last second. There was no way in hell I was giving some sleazebag customer a lap dance. I wasn't even sure that I knew how. This was so not my area of expertise.
"Cool." Josie winked at Stony. "Yeah, we know what to do. But we would like to freshen up first. Oh, and by the way"—she looked around the room and lifted her nose in the air—"what happened to that hot guy who came in right before us? He looked like my type."
"If you mean that he's got money, then yeah, you've pegged him right." Stony chuckled in an undertone and gave her one of those looks that said she wasn't fooling him. "David's a regular here. He's in the private back room, waiting for Indigo to finish on stage and give him a lap dance. Unfortunately, Indigo isn't feeling well. Wants to go home. She must really be sick if she doesn't care about losing out on a pile of money."
If I had to wear that disgusting G-string in front of leering strangers, I'd be sick too.
Stony stroked the unshaven stubble on his chin thoughtfully. "Say, do one of you ladies want to step in? I'll tell Roger about it when he gets here, but I'm sure he won't have a problem."
Sprinkled in Malice Page 13
