Dead Money Run (7 page)

Whe
n
I reached the car, Hilary had all the windows rolled down and was fanning her face with a piece of cardboard.

“Where did you get the card
board?”

“See that trash dump over there,” pointing with the piece of cardboard. “There.”

I
got in the car, took off the gloves and threw them in the center console and started the engine.

“Where’s Lockman?”
Hilary said reaching over to put the air conditioning on high.

“
He was tied up and said he would meet us later.”

“
I take it he’s dead?”

“
That might be one way of describing it,” I said.

“When are you going to stop shooting people?”

“As soon as I get answers to my questions.”

“What did you find out?”
Hilary said.

“Nothing much,” I said. “How about you?”

“It seems Susan was real quiet and did not have a lot of visitors, according to some busybody named Martha Allright. She said that Susan never socialized with any of the other people in the building. Susan drove a little red sports car that Allright didn’t know the name of. I checked to see if there was a red car parked in Susan’s parking space and there isn’t a red car in the whole place. Just our car and the car Lockman drove up in. People that live here must take the bus or ride bikes.”

“Does this place have an association?”

“Yes. And get this. Susan is current on her dues. In fact, she paid them for the year, which I thought was a bit unusual.”

“Must have planned on taking a long trip.”

“Maybe, but here is the best part. She paid them after she died.”

“That’s not easy to do,” I said. “Did they know who paid them?”

“Some corporation from Atlanta called Sixty-Six, Partners. But I’m sure that is all in some police report somewhere.”

“Then that’s what we need. The police report.”

Hilary thought I was nuts and said as much.

“How are you going t
o get a copy of that Buddy Boy?”

“I don’t know. Going to have to figure it out
somehow,” I said.

What I
really needed was some official information on my sister. The kind of information one might find in an investigative file. Since police reports were public information I figured I could get it online. All I needed was a computer. I also wanted to know who owned the Timucua Castle and Casino Resort. One thing for sure, it wasn’t just a bunch of Indians.

“Where
to now, Kemosabe?”

“Public library,
Tonto,” I said, driving out of the Silver Sands parking area.

Chapter 19

Th
e
Jacksonville Beach Public Library looked like it had been built with Legos. The sign on the front door said that it was open from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. five days a week and 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Saturday.

After
I parked the car, and we entered the library, Hilary said she was going to walk around and find out what she could about the casino.

“What are you going to be doing?” she said.

“Try and figure out how to get online without a library card.”

The library had everything that
I needed. Past the checkout desk on one side of the room was a row of computers. Once I got on line, accessing the public records would be easy. Looking around, I saw just what the doctor ordered. A person with spiked hair and a lot of face metal was working on a computer. Walking up behind him, he sensed my presence, but fought the urge to say anything. He was playing a computer game and I decided to give something a try.

“Hey Bud, want to do me a favor?
” I said.

“What?”
he answered as if he was in an important meeting.

“
I need to use your computer.”

Metalface looked at me with a shit eating look.

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“No,
” I said. “I’m from out of town and I don’t have a library card to gain access to some information. I’ll give you twenty-five bucks for the use of your computer for about twenty minutes. How does that sound?”

I saw the little shit’s eyes narrow and I knew it was just a matter of price. “Fifty bucks and you got a deal
,” he said.

When I handed him
two twenties and a ten, I watched his eyes light up like he had never seen fifty bucks before.

“I’ll write down my log
in info in case you get knocked out. Fifty bucks buys you an hour.”

After he left
, I sat down and logged in to the criminal data base for the Jacksonville Beach Police Department. If they flagged the hits then the little shit would be on the hook. I typed in Susan’s name and there was nothing. Then I put in the name, Kandi Kain, and three records came up. It looked like she had been picked up for soliciting and let go under a nolo. Next, she was picked up for possession and served ten days. Her lawyer was a guy named Silvio Chancez. I wrote down his contact information.

The next report was the one on her death. The investiga
ting officers were Sal Ramiro and Stan Goodnight. I had to give a few minutes thought on how I was going to talk to these two cops. Before I shut down the computer, I clicked on property records to see who owned Susan’s condo. She owned it out right and there was no mortgage on the place. Lockman didn’t have his name on it. That made it easy. Shutting off the unit, I got up and looked around for Hilary. I saw her talking to a woman wearing a uniform with a badge. Walking out of the building, I didn’t look her way. I just got up and walked out the door to wait by the car. After about thirty minutes Hilary walked out with the woman and started walking toward our car. Now what?

When Hilary reached t
he car with the woman, I pushed off the side of the car and put a hundred dollar smile on my face. Hilary looked up at me and smiled back. Turning toward me, she said, “John, this is Shelia Marks. She’s part of the Tribal Police Department at the Timucua Casino here. The Timucua Indians have jurisdiction over the casino and she’s Billy Marks’s wife. I told her about Susan being my cousin and she had some interesting information. I told her how I was trying to find out what happened to her.” The Indian cop put out her hand and I shook it.

“Mister Ad
dams, I am glad to meet you. Your wife has been telling me about your quest. My husband, Billy, and I were good friends with Susan. We met her at work.”

“Work
,” I said. It was almost a question, but not quite.

“Yes, Susan worked at the casino as a part time dealer.
She filled in when someone was off or taking a vacation. We had become very close and I miss her. I am very sorry about your loss.”

“Yes,” I said. “We are still in a bit of a shock.” Shock
was one way of putting it.

“I can understand,” said Shelia. “We are happy to help in any way we can.”

Suddenly it hit me. Maybe she could get a copy of the actual police report and the autopsy without me getting into the act with the local yokel gendarmes. Since she was part of the police department at the casino maybe she could get it for us.

“Well Shelia, there might be something you can do. We would like to get a copy of the police report and the autopsy on Susan before she was buried
, if there was one done. Do you think you could do that for us?”

I waited as Shelia gave my question s
ome thought. Finally she said, “I think we may already have a file with that information in our office. I’m not sure if you know this or not, but Susan was killed on Casino property. That being the case, and the fact that the Timucua Indian Tribe has jurisdiction over the property, the investigation fell into our lap, so to speak. The local police just serve as advisers.”

Now we were getting someplace.
Hilary and I made arrangements with Shelia to meet her at her home later that night to pick up the report and to meet Billy, her husband. She said Billy would be able tell us about Susan and her work arrangement. She also offered to comp us a room at the casino, but I declined. As I walked to the car I thought about going back into the library and get my fifty bucks back from Metalface, but figured I was ahead of the game.

Shelia had given us a card with her home address and telephone number on the back. Sitting in the car we watched her drive off.

“What do you think,” Hilary said.

“
I’m thinking that maybe there is a God after all,” I said.

“
I think she’s sincere.”

“We’re sincere
,” I said, “and so far that hasn’t gotten us a lot. The good news here is we know where we can get a copy of the report and not have to go through channels. At this point, it’s a question of money and time. Both of which we have plenty of at the moment.”

Since I believed in the old theory that an ounce of pr
evention was worth a pound of cure, I drove to the address on the back of Shelia’s card to check out the neighborhood while there was still daylight. It was simple to do since the car Eddie sold me had a GPS in it.

As we drove through the Marks’s neighborhood, Hilary said, “Not a cheap looking neighborhood
.”

“
The cheapest place had to be well over five hundred thousand,” I said.

“
Lot of money for a casino guard’s paycheck,” Hilary said.

“I wonder what her h
usband does at the casino. I doubt she’s carrying the place on her salary.”

“Lou,
quit being a sexist. Are you ever going to trust anyone?”

Looking over at Hilary,
I said, “Let’s put it this way, I have a lot of reasons not to trust people.”

“You trust me, don’t you?”

“If this was a horse race, you would be moving up ahead of whoever was in second place. So let’s just say I am keeping an open mind to see if you win the race.”

Looking at the clock on the dashboard, it was almost four
in the afternoon. We had to meet Shelia at her house at seven. We needed a place to eat and a place to stay, in that order. I punched into the onboard sat system a request for area restaurants that served steak and I took the closest one.

After we ate,
I found a quality court type motel that offered free TV in all the rooms. I paid cash for one night. The room had two double beds that looked like a couple of buffalos had mated on them. We slept like rocks, buffalos and all.

“
I
tell you, Sal, this is connected to the woman killed a couple of months ago. Remember the body those Indians found at their casino?”

“
Maybe,” said Ramiro. “We get the name of the person who called this one in?” Ramiro said.

“Yeah,” said Goodnight
, as he checked his notes from the call. “A lady named, Allright. Let’s see. She said she was the office manager of the Condo Association.”

Standing
in the victim’s apartment, Ramiro was due to retire in twelve months and he needed this case like he needed a hole in the head. He had worked homicide in Atlanta for thirty years. Retired at age fifty-five and moved to Jacksonville Beach because it was a quiet place and the only thing you had worry about was some old fart in a golf cart running over someone’s cat. Now he had two murders that he believed were obviously connected. He wanted to go out with a clean case load and didn’t want something like this laying around. He had to get these cases solved. His partner, Stan Goodnight, was young and wanted to solve every case that hit his desk. Ramiro knew that was wishful thinking, but solving these two cases would give Ramiro the chance to go out on a high note.

“Stan, don’t touch anything until
Roscoe from CSI gets here. Let’s step out of the crime scene and let CSI do their job. But, I agree with you. The two killings look to be connected.”

“
I’m going to check around to learn if any of these old farts saw anything. It’s probably going to be a waste of time, but you never know. Lighting might strike.”

“Yeah
, Stan,” said Ramiro. “Good idea. Make sure you talk to, Allright.”

Ramiro
was sure no one in the place saw a thing and didn’t know anyone who did. The pattern was always the same.

Standing in the front
walkway outside the crime scene area, Ramiro smoked a cigarette. If Roscoe saw him doing this he would chew his ass out for tampering with a crime scene, but he might as well get one in before Roscoe arrived.

After about twenty minutes and two more cigarettes, Ramiro heard the elevator door open and saw his partner step out with
a person who looked to be the oldest person in the world.

“Sal, this is
, Missus Allright. She works in the office downstairs. She is the one who called it in. Says she may have talked to the killers.”

Pushing away from the railing, Ramiro’s interest level went up a notch.

“That right, Missus Allright?”

“Well, I don’t think the nice young woman was a killer. She said she was Susan’s cousin and
that since she was in the area, she to drop in and see her. I felt so bad when I had to tell her that her cousin was dead.”

“Who’s Susan,” said Ramiro.

“Susan Malloy. She was the one that was killed at the Casino a few months ago.”

“Do you know a Kandi
Kain that might have lived here?” Ramiro asked.

“No one by that name has ever lived in our buildings.
”

“You sure about that, Missus Allright?” Ramiro said.

“I would know.”

“Yeah, I bet you would
,” said Ramiro. “Stan, take Missus Allright’s statement and then wait on Roscoe to do his thing. If Missus Allright’s up to it, I’d like her to see if she knows the stiff laying inside the place”

“Where are you going
, Sal?”

“I’m going back to the o
ffice to check on something. You finish up here and get a ride back with Roscoe.”

When Ramiro reached his car, he called his office.

“Mandi, this is, Sal. Yeah, everything is fine. How about pulling that Kain file for me and put it on my desk. We may have caught a break.”