Knock 'em Dead (16 page)

“Hello, you’ve reached Fantasy Dates, the premiere introduction service in Palm Beach. We’re sorry we missed your call but if you leave your—” I hung up on Shaylyn’s chipper greeting without leaving a message.

I didn’t relish the idea of calling Taggert, but I needed the password.

“Clark Taggert’s office.”

My feminism slipped for a second; I hadn’t expected doddering Taggert to have a male secretary. I wouldn’t have pegged him as the equal opportunity type. “Hello. This is Finley Tanner from Dane-Lieberman.”

“Yes, Ms. Tanner. How may I help you?”

“I got the box your office sent over but all the information is password-protected.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, it makes them kind of useless if I can’t access them. Did Ms. Kidwell or Mr. Davis provide the password?”

“I don’t know. Would you like me to check?”

No, I just called to pass the time.
“That would be great. Thanks.”

I cradled the receiver between my chin and shoulder as I listened to a full orchestra version of “Mack the Knife.” The brass instrument heavy rendition didn’t do the song justice. Not that I’m a raging Bobby Darin fan or anything, but one of the few gifts my mother had given me was a broad exposure to music.

“Sorry,” the male secretary said as he returned to the line. “I can’t find anything and Mr. Taggert isn’t in the office right now. Would you like me to have him call you when he returns?”

“When will that be?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Could he be at the jail with Jane Spencer?”

“I don’t know, ma’am. He hasn’t checked in and there’s nothing written in his calendar for this morning.”

I had a vision of Taggert roaming the streets of West Palm in a dementia-induced fugue. The vision got worse because for some reason, my mind had dressed him in a bright red Speedo. “I’ll try him later. Thank you.”
For nothing
.

No Liv, no Taggert, no Liam, no Shaylyn, no Zack, no password, no access. Serious amounts of frustration.

I was out of options. Well, not exactly out of them so much as completely lacking in patience. What I had was a state-of-the-art tech department a mere telephone extension away. I was pretty sure our geek squad could crack the code a lot faster than I could track down any of the principals.

While they were doing that, I would try some alternative methods. Moving the box closer to me, I opened a new document and began making a list of the names from the tidy tabs labeling each hanging folder.

They were alphabetical and color-coded by gender. The men’s names were printed in blue ink, the women’s in dark magenta. It wasn’t until I’d typed Renee Sabato and Jane Spencer that I noticed a slight flaw in the otherwise perfectly configured system. Someone had skipped a slot, leaving a gaping space between the letters
S
and
W
. I derived some small measure of pleasure from the minor mistake. Perfection is daunting.

With the list complete, I lugged the box to the tech guys and sweet-talked my way into making the password encryption their top priority. Manipulating the techies wasn’t much of a challenge. The closest most of them had ever been to a woman was the digital versions in video games. They were a nice enough group, just socially stymied with thumbs callused from years spent cyber-battling aliens in alternate universes.

When I returned to my office, I refilled my coffee mug, not really caring that hours of sitting in the carafe had turned it bitter.

I might not have passwords, but I had Google. And Lucky Charms. Separating the cereal parts from the marshmallows, I started searching.

Molly Bishop was my first target. According to the South Carolina Department of Vital Records and confirmed by an obituary, she was dead. I was glad Jane hadn’t lied about that but annoyed because by checking, I had to admit to myself that my faith in my friend had been shaken just a little.

There wasn’t anything I could find that even remotely linked the Charleston thing with Paolo’s murder. Molly’s drug abuse predated her friendship with Jane and as far as I could tell, there wasn’t anything that would make the Bishop family suddenly go psycho and frame Jane. Senator Bishop was retired and other than a few public appearances, he and his wife were quietly fading into their golden years. A recent photograph of the couple cinched it. I just couldn’t see the dignified-looking senator and his proper, staid wife lobbing off Paolo’s penis.

Along that vein, I decided not to work in alphabetical order just yet. Better to start by seeing what I could find on the dickless victim. After refreshing my memory by rereading the file stored in my in-box, I surfed the Net for anything else that might be relevant.

Lots of fluff pieces from various area newspapers and local magazines, but virtually nothing of substance. The one interview I did find was two years old. It was a congratulatory profile of Paolo, mainly focusing on his brave journey via inner tube from Cuba. His entire family perished in the crossing, leaving eleven-year-old Paolo all alone in the world. From that humble beginning, he’d mastered the world of finance, making his first million before the age of twenty-five.

I stared at his picture for several minutes. “Maybe one of your fellow floatees had it in for you.”

Flipping through my office directory, I grabbed the phone and called the paralegal who handled immigration cases for the firm.

“Estella Chavez.”

“This is Finley in estates and trusts.”

“Hi, Finley, what can I do for you?” she asked in heavily accented English.

Estella had only been at Dane-Lieberman for a few months. She was twenty-two, fresh out of college, and hopefully doesn’t know that firm policy requires me to submit a written request for out-of-department information. “I need the INS file on Paolo Martinez.” Doing the math in my head, I added, “DOB March 31, 1978. Immigrated sometime between 1989 and 1991.”

I heard her fingernails clicking against her keyboard; then she asked, “M-A-R-T-I-N-E-Z?”

“Yes. Middle name Diego, if that helps.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.” The little hairs on the back of my neck prickled. “Why?”

“Martinez is a pretty common name. It’s like a Spanish version of Smith. But no Paolos in that time frame.”

“Can you check 1978 to date?”

“Sure.”

I drummed my nails on my desk, staring at Paolo’s handsome face as I listened to Estella breathe in my ear.

“No Paolo Diego Martinez entered the country, at least not legally. Are you sure he’s documented?”

Switching back to the Fantasy Dates file, I found his Social Security number. Virtually impossible to get one of those without proper documentation. “Yeah. Can you tell me how many eleven-year-old Cuban males entered the country between 1989 and 1991?”

“One hundred and three. Eighty-seven right here in Florida.”

“Would you mind sending me those names?”

“Not a problem. Anything else?”

“Maybe. I’ll get back to you. Thanks.”

There were several possible explanations for Paolo’s failure to appear on the immigration registry. Maybe he lied. The whole difficult and dangerous escape from the tyranny and oppression of Cuba made for good copy and was damned heroic. Much more heroic than, say, walking in from Mexico, Guatemala, or any number of South or Central American countries. Grabbing a flight from the Dominican Republic or Colombia or anywhere else just didn’t have the same ring to it. Unfair and a tad racist, but very ingrained in the fabric of Florida’s immigrant community.

I sent Estella an e-mail, asking her to broaden her search for any Paolo from any country. Just to be safe, I widened the search years just in case Paolo was older or younger than his profile indicated. I didn’t know where he was from, but I knew one thing. The inner tube story was bullshit.

So much for Fantasy Dates doing thorough background checks. I could understand why they hadn’t bothered with a criminal check on Jane, because Liv had vouched for her. The fact that they’d missed Paolo’s faux past had alarms sounding in my head.

When Ellen told me I could use my afternoons to discreetly work on Jane’s case, I’m pretty sure she didn’t mean I could use the Dane-Lieberman account to run Paolo’s Social Security number. But, since she hadn’t specifically prohibited me from doing so, I filled out the form and faxed it to the credit bureau I used primarily to find any forgotten bank accounts, liens, or other financial abnormalities before closing probate.

Discouragement started to set in. The tech guys were still working on the CDs. The credit report would take at least a day, and Liv, Shaylyn, and Taggert were still AWOL.

On the plus side, I had the client names. On the minus side, there’s no section in the Yellow Pages for rich people, so I couldn’t even make calls.

Except for Jace Andrews. He had a real estate business. It was worth a try.

“Good afternoon, Prestige Properties.”

“Finley Tanner from Dane-Lieberman calling for Mr. Andrews.”

“He’s with a client, Ms. Tanner. Would you like to speak to one of our other agents?”

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. I should have sent out a memo to have the people I wanted to talk to stay at their desks until contacted. “No, thank you. It’s a personal matter. Would you ask Mr. Andrews to call me at his earliest convenience?” I rattled off my cell number.

I started going through the alphabetical list I’d made earlier and suffered failure after failure. No wonder these people couldn’t get dates—they were impossible to reach.

I needed a new approach. A creative one.

My Internet surfing yielded a few possibilities. A handful of the dating service clients had jobs. Well, businesses. They weren’t exactly the nine-to-five types. Payton McComber was a jewelry designer with a swanky shop on Worth Avenue. For Jane I would make the trek across the bridge.

Okay, so I’d make the trek for no reason, but that was beside the point. At least I had someplace to start. In addition to Payton’s shop, Prestige Properties’ main office was on the island. As were two of the three restaurants whose major investor was some guy named Harrison Hadley.

Before I ventured over to the land of the wealthy, I needed to stop by and visit Jane.

Her days in jail were taking their toll.

“You okay?” I asked as soon as the guard left us alone in the small counsel room. I passed Jane the can of Coke I’d gotten from the vending machine on my way in.

She thanked me, then asked, “Any word on bail?”

“Becky and I are on it. Tell me about Paolo’s accent.”

Jane seemed taken aback by my question. “His accent?”

“Yes, was it more like Ricky Ricardo or Andy Garcia?”

“Neither. He didn’t have an accent.”

“Okay, so not a pronounced one?” I asked.

“No. As in he didn’t have one.”

“Did he tell you anything about himself?”

“Not really. A lot of that night is fuzzy, but he seemed more interested in me. Or rather my investment preferences.”

“Makes sense. You’re both in finance.”

Jane adjusted the collar of her ill-fitting orange jumpsuit. “I guess. I think he was just being polite.”

“Why?”

“His questions were…amateurish. Mutual funds, T-bills, really basic stuff.”

“Maybe he was more focused on getting the GHB in you?”

Jane raked her fingers through her hair. “That doesn’t make sense. Almost from the get-go, he had to know I was interested. He was a gorgeous, healthy, virile guy and Lord knows I was ready to end my dry spell.”

“You didn’t tell him that, did you?”

“I
might
have mentioned it had been a while since my last relationship. I mean, it wasn’t like I greeted him at the door by saying, ‘Hi, how are ya? I’m Jane and I haven’t had sex since the Clinton administration.’”

I held up one hand. “Okay, sorry. Did Becky tell you about the limo driver?”

“Yes.”

“If Paolo didn’t slip you the GHB, then it had to be the limo guy. Remember anything about him?”

She shook her head. “He opened the door and he closed the door.” She drew her lower lip between her teeth. “Am I going to get out of here soon?”

I reached across the table and squeezed her cuffed hands. “We’re doing everything possible. Promise.”

We were both on the verge of tears but I was determined not to cry. Drawing my hands back, I caught the edge of the nearly full can, knocking it on its side and spraying myself with soda. “Damn it!” My blouse and skirt were splattered beyond repair. Worse, my loud curse alerted the guard, who came zipping into the room.

“Everything okay in here?”

“Peachy,” I said as I surveyed the damage. Looking at Jane, I said, “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to change before I go over the bridge.”

“It’s okay. Becky said she’d come by after work. Liv too.”

I wanted to give her a hug, but the strict “no contact” rule prevented me from offering anything more reassuring than a weak smile before leaving.

Backtracking to my condo to change was going to eat nearly an hour out of my schedule. It would be close to four by the time I reached Worth Avenue. Still, plenty of time to ambush Payton, if she was at her shop. If not, I’d try Jace Andrews, then finish with Harrison Hadley. Businesses closed at five but Hadley’s restaurants would be open for dinner.

I spied the flower box and the courier envelope propped against my door even before I cut the engine on my BMW. The flowers were probably from Patrick. The courier envelope was signature Mom. It was like being kissed and slapped at the same time.

Gathering the box and the envelope, I unlocked my door and went inside. I knew the flowers would make me happy, so I decided I’d save them to salve whatever injury awaited me as I tore the perforated strip of the envelope.

Inside the stiff cardboard, I found a second sealed card with my full name scrolled on the monogrammed and lightly scented lilac stationery. The note was short and to the point: