Death of an Escort (5 page)

"You were asking about my mother's website,"
she said.

"I was," I said. I pointed at the computer on
the far corner of the desk. "Could we look at it briefly?"

She pressed her lips together firmly and
nodded, but then she abruptly turned to me.

"Could you look at it alone? I don't think I
can," she said.

I nodded.

She booted the computer up and then turned
around and faced the other way.

"What was her web address?" I asked.

"KellyBrandt.com," Macy said.

I typed it in and a website with a black
background came up. The header was a headshot of Kelly and her name
along the top. The headshot was fuzzed out around the edges and the
whole picture had been softened.

Under that was the horizontal navigational
menu. They were the standard ones you'd expect. Home, About Me,
Services, Contact Me, FAQ, Photos.

I selected photos. There were twelve of them.
Man, Kelly had a fine body. However, in each of them, she was
clothed. In some she had only a bra and panties on, but that was
the least she had on.

Besides any guy, or in her case, any woman
could see clearly enough that she had a very fine body.

The whole reason for me looking at the site
was I wanted to see if the picture of her naked had been taken from
the website. After all, escorts often had nude photos of themselves
on their websites. Never mind how I knew that.

I closed the browser.

It was possible that the photo was taken when
the fiancé and fiancée were together alone enjoying each other, but
that wouldn't explain why it was on some kind of a promotional, and
pornographic flyer or poster.

It also didn't explain why Mickey threw me
out after I saw it.

"All done," I said.

She turned around. I stood and this was the
closest we'd been physically to each other.

"It's so hard," she said softly. "I'm going
to my mother's funeral tomorrow." A lone tear ran down her
check.

But it wasn't my job to make it easier.

"Were you at the scene of the death?" I
asked.

"No," she said.

"I see," I said. "So when did you first see
the body?"

"The morgue," she said.

"So, you weren't at the motel room?"

She shook her head no.

I fished in my pocket for the button, and I
had a crazy idea. I was being stupid here. I was giving the person
who hired me the third degree. Was I insane or something?

To top that off, I remembered that I'd
forgotten to cash the check.

Well, still, I was going to do my job. I held
the button out. "Is this yours?"

She looked at it for a while, but then shook
her head no.

"You don't recognize it?"

"No," she said.

"Are you sure?"

She looked at me strangely. "No, it doesn't
look familiar," she said.

"Okay," I said. "That's fine." I slipped it
back into my pocket. She was lying. I couldn't tell by reading her
features, but I could feel it. And I had the button maker's records
too. She was lying. The question was a big, fat 'why'?

I left there and didn't return to my car. My
bank had a branch across the way inside a very large convenience
store. They only had one teller in there at a time, but it was a
convenient location.

I went in and cashed the check to my account.
Actually to Ray Crusafi's account, which was my identity right
now.

If I had a choice, I would have spent the
rest of the day digging deeper in my only case, but I didn't have a
choice. Last month I'd promised the parish priest that I'd help
today. Today the church was holding a rummage sale. They'd
collected hundreds of donated items, and today was the big
sale.

The money went to church charities and the
like. And I'd promised I'd help the whole day. After all, I'm
self-employed and I have freedom like that, right?

After all, who needs money?

I drove to the church. Stuff was already
being set out. I parked on the outskirts and headed over to spend
the day helping.

That night when I got home, Marline, my wife
was there. Lights were on that I could see as I unlocked and let
myself in.

Immediately after getting in, I relocked both
locking mechanisms. Our door itself was solid steel. When we built
the house, a crane was used to put the door in place, and the
hinges on it are traditionally used on bank vault doors. We had to
use them as no other hinge could support the weight of the
door.

The door frame itself, while completely
invisible, like the framework of any house, was not ordinary
either. It was constructed of steel I-beams, and each had their own
concrete footers.

"Marline?" I called out.

As is my habit when I enter my house, I
reached up to the top of the coat rack and felt to see if the Glock
was still lying up there. It was, and it wasn't the only
strategically placed firearm lying around the house.

Marline had only known me as Ray Crusafi, for
about the last five years. Hopefully she'd never have to know me as
anything else, but even still I made her keep her distance from me
in public. It was for her own protection, but she didn't know
that.

She thought she'd married a very eccentric
and somewhat paranoid man with a thing for security and safety.
Again, hopefully she'd always think that and never have the truth
forced on her.

Who I am needs to remain a secret.

"Hi!" she said as I entered the kitchen.

"You cut your hair?"

"I had it done. What do you think?"

I hate questions like that. Women aren't
looking for an honest answer. Well, they are. But only a positive,
honest answer. No other kind of answer is acceptable.

Her chestnut brown hair was now neck length
and curled up at the ends. Last time I'd seen her it was almost to
her waist. I liked it better the other way.

"Looks good," I said.

"You think so?" she asked.

"Yeah, yeah. Looks good," I said.

She pushed a plate of sandwiches towards me.
"Your favorite," she said.

Indeed it was. It was the so-called Elvis
Presley sandwich, and she made them totally authentic for me.

It's mashed banana on one side and creamy
peanut butter on the other side. Then it's grilled or fried in
bacon fat. Real bacon fat.

Nothing tasted this good. The king really
knew what to eat.

I took a huge bite out of the first one.

"How was your day?" she asked.

I shrugged. "I got work yesterday."

She nodded. "That's great."

I had this idea in the back of my head. It
was there, and I knew it was a bad idea, but that wasn't going to
stop me.

"It's not a normal bit of work for me," I
said. "I'm looking into a suicide."

Her face took on a look of concern.

"And I'm looking into it to see if it's more
than it seems. If it was murder."

"Is it safe?"

"Nothing I do is safe." She had no idea how
true that statement was.

"How is it going?"

"I've got more questions than when I started.
The last several jobs I had were straight surveillance. Honestly a
patient monkey could do that."

She smiled.

"This really requires thinking and getting
inside people's heads. I don't know."

"You don't know what?" she asked.

"The last person to see the deceased alive is
a woman."

She stared at me blankly.

This was a bad idea. I knew it. "I want you
to help me. Maybe you can get her to open up to you."

She stood up and looked at me strangely.

"I don't think so," she said.

"She's hiding something. I want to know what
it is, and I don't know how to get it out of her," I said.

"I think you'll figure something out. You
always do," she said.

I shrugged. My way usually involved someone's
blood getting loose, but I had a thing about doing that to women.
Usually.

"Another thing," I said. "My client is the
daughter of the dead woman."

"Okay," she said.

"And she's lying to me too."

"About what?"

I took the button out of my pocket and
scooted it across the granite countertop to her. Yes, the
countertop was granite. I had more money when we built the place. I
spent it building this house. Dumb move, I know.

"That's a big button," she said and picked it
up.

"I know," I said. "It's handmade by an old
man right here in town."

"Really?"

"Not only that, but there's like a serial
number real tiny on the back of it. He knew exactly who he'd sold
it to."

She squinted at the back of the button trying
to see the tiny numbers.

"He sold it, and six like it, to my client. I
found that button at the motel where the deceased died."

"So?"

"She claims she was never there," I said.

"You said they were mother and daughter,
right?"

"Right," I said.

"Girls share clothes, you know."

I didn't know. "You think the mother may have
been wearing whatever this came off of?"

"It would make sense to me," she said. "By
the way, you never mentioned who the deceased was."

"Kelly Brandt," I said. I picked up another
sandwich with greasy fingertips. "She was a pricy prostitute that
only did women, but was engaged to a local businessman."

The look on her face was priceless, and she
really had nothing else to say to that. As she planned to get up
early, she headed to bed.

She slept fine as usual, but I wasn't able to
sleep when I finally went to bed. I tried to sleep, but all the
questions about my current work wouldn't leave me alone.

I was especially bugged by the fiancé. He
seemed to be hiding something, well all my suspects did, but he
especially.

Finally, I decided I was going to take this
into my own hands. If he wasn't going to show me what that poster
or flyer was, I'd look for myself. Right now.

I got up and dressed silently. Of course, I
had to turn the perimeter alarm off before I could leave the
house.

And I did check the extreme wide angle
peephole lens before I stepped out. All was clear. Outside I had to
walk to my car. This time it was parked up on the main road and in
a sandwich shop's parking lot. I had left it there because I
noticed that there were always cars in it overnight for some
reason. I figured mine would blend in there. I figured right.

At my car, I set to driving all the way
across town to the Brass Works Wholesale business.

When I arrived, my watch read 12:57am. No one
was there. I didn't even see a security guard anywhere. Not that it
was strange to be without a security guard. Lots of businesses
didn't have security guards.

In short, this was going be relatively
easy.

I parked on the street. I hadn't seen another
car anywhere in the industrial park.

The first thing I did was look for windows. I
didn't remember them well, as I hadn't been paying attention with
the idea of breaking in on my last visit.

Windows did line the office space, but not
the warehouse side. I take that back. There were windows of a sort,
fixed panes, near the top of the warehouse. No way would I be
climbing to those.

The windows to the office were also fixed
pane glass. No movable parts. The only way through one of those was
to smash it. That was more work then I was looking to do.

I walked around to the far east side where
the main entrance was. I yanked on the glass door. It was securely
latched. So, I wasn't going to get in there. Not unless I wanted to
bust the door open. The glass in doors is much harder to break than
most realized. I realized and I didn't want to have to put that
effort in to breaking in.

I walked in the direction of where I left my
car. Back over there were the loading docks. The semi-trailer that
I'd seen getting loaded was gone now and the three loading dock
doors were pulled shut.

One of those was going to be my entry. I
jumped up onto the ledge of the first. I felt the door to see if it
was unlocked. It wasn't.

Carefully, so as not to lose my balance, I
hopped over to the ledge of the central door. It too was locked.
This was the one that the trailer was getting loaded from earlier
that day.

I hopped to the ledge of the last door. It
was locked as well, but it had some give to it. It would actually
move up an inch before stopping. That was all I needed.

I jumped down and went to my car. There I
rummaged around in the trunk and found the tire iron. I know it's
supposed to be used for changing tires when you get a flat, but
that has never happened to me, and I've never used the thing.

It was heavy and roughly the shape of a
crowbar, and that was what I needed right now. So with it in hand,
I went back to the last overhead door in the loading dock, and I
thrust it under.

Then I got up on the bumper and I heaved on
it. After two heaves, the door came loose. Something snapped inside
or gave way. The overhead door rolled up, and I was inside.

Chapter 5

I closed the door behind me. Now I had to
give my eyes time to adjust to the darkness. It was really, really
dark inside.

The only light came from off to the side
about chest high. It had been a pin of green light when I first
came in, and now it was a pinpoint of red light. I had a sinking
feeling that I knew what that meant, but I went over to it to
confirm.

Indeed, it was an alarm, or the motion sensor
to an alarm. I should have noticed that before, but I didn't.

I'd set off an alarm, and the cops most
likely would be showing up soon. If I was going to discover
anything, I was going to have to discover it fast. Of course, the
sane thing to do would be to get out of there now, but I wanted to
start getting some answers, and I'd already taken the trouble to
get in.