Mystery: Family Ties: Mystery and Suspense (24 page)

During the last twelve months he had worked hard to achieve the best success rate and solve as many cases as possible. Agent Scott Ferguson had prevented three minor terrorist attacks, had solved two murder mysteries and finally, had managed to find the identity of one of the most dangerous spies in the USA. His boss had congratulated him for the successful year and after a careful scrutiny he had been chosen for the most successful FBI agent of the year.

“It is a great honor to accept this award…” he said for the six time in the mirror and adjusted his tie. “For the last ten years I have been…”

Scott removed the tie and went to try a dark blue one. He had been practicing his acceptance speck for a while now, behind the closed doors of his office. Everything was looking okay, except the tie, which he couldn’t seem to choose properly.

“Scott,” his friend, agent Rupart called from the door. “Are you ready?”

“As ready as I can be,” Scott answered confidently and walked out of the office, finally satisfied with his suit and his speech.

“The ceremony will take place in the Bureau’s auditorium,” John Rupart informed him. “Do you know that there were more than twenty nominees for your award? I am very proud of you, Scott.”

“Yes, I heard,” Agent Ferguson confirmed calmly. “I worked hard to reach this point. All I want now is the next case they give me to be something high priority, something that will help me to do even better.”

“I am sure that you will get it,” his friend assured him and entered the big auditorium, filled with FBI agents and high government officials. “This ceremony would be something else, it seems.” He commented, before leading his friend towards the front rows. There were places for them, right behind the FBI bosses and Scott looked lovingly at his name, written so close to theirs.

The ceremony started with long speeches and many congratulations and praises. When it was time for Agent Ferguson to climb the few steps to the podium, he was already drunk with adrenaline from the excitement. He used all his powers to appear calm, however, and managed to recite his speech without any mistakes. Everybody laughed at the little joke he said at the end and he took a number of photos with most of the FBI officials. His award was going to remain a secret for most of the people, but in the FBI world, everyone was going to know his name now.

Ferguson biggest fear to become a failure had been defeated and he was finally able to relax. Much later that night, Scott went home to his empty apartment feeling as a winner and celebrated with a bottle of scotch. The phone call to his family was due in the morning and his boss had already called him to his office tomorrow morning to discuss his next case.

Life was good for Agent Scott Ferguson.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01BJV6D90

Rings (A Tim Brennan Mystery)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0153PO9WG

1.

The sun beat down Broad Street as I watched the bus dislodge its contents to the curb. Used paper blew down the boulevard at my feet and I looked up at the statue of William Penn on top of Philadelphia City Hall. Once upon a time no building was allowed be constructed taller than the hat on the statue. But those days were long gone and the Cira Center gleamed to the West across the river. Those were the days before corrupt builders employed pothead crane operators to knock over masonry on innocent shoppers in the next unit. How Hizzoner ever rode that one out I’ll never know. What happens in Philadelphia tends to stay put. This is the only town I know of ever to launch an air strike against its own voters.

But I had another problem and it involved Captain Donaldson down in Homicide. I’d known the man for years, ever since leaving the force to go independent years ago. We’d managed to help each other over the years and I was calling in a favor. The sun was roasting my back as I walked to the Philadelphia Police Department on Race Street. I smiled at an elderly lady pulling her shopping cart down the street. She looked Chinese and was on her way back from the market by the look of what was in her cart. She smiled back and continued on her way. I watched her go and wondered if she spoke any English. Then I heard her telling a beggar what to do with his cup and where to put in a perfect Philly accent. I love my adopted town; it never ceases to surprise me.

I had a missing person case to handle and last night’s discovery down off Columbus Boulevard might wrap it up in a neat little package. It wasn’t what my client wanted to hear, but it would fulfil my part of the contract. I don’t do grief counseling, perhaps I should. The least I can do is refer someone to a place of worship. There are quite a few churches where I ply my trade. Funny thing, they’ve increased over the past five years, but haven’t dinted the crime one bit. I suppose there is a connection, but I don’t have the time or inclination to look into it.

Two days ago a couple of Philly cops were called to the scene of a crime. A waiter from Guatemala taking out the trash at a popular sports bar near Penn’s Landing found a body stuffed into the dumpster. The poor man was terrified and almost didn’t report it for fear the cops would want to ask questions about his own background. But he came to his senses and managed to tell the hostess what he’d found an hour after closing.

The evidence unit had taken pictures of everything and interviewed anyone they could find around the place that evening. No one had seen a thing, which wasn’t hard to believe. The cops were still going over the security cameras, but I was guessing the feed would have been interrupted that evening. Someone was familiar with how the trash was disposed and knew the garbage truck would arrive the following morning. If the waiter hadn’t been observant, the body might never have been found.

The victim was a Caucasian male in his late forties or early fifties and was wearing an expensive tailored suit. The police had discovered the man’s identity by tracing the suit back to the small Main Line shop which had made it for him two years previously. He had greying hair and a Rolex watch on his left wrist, which, amazingly, no one had lifted before the evidence unit arrived.

But the condition of the body was what caught my attention. The death was later ruled to be the result of a prescription drug overdose, but every single finger and toe had been smashed by a blunt object. Still, this wasn’t the only crazy thing about the victim.

Every last one of his fingers was wearing a different ring with a gemstone on it. Ten rings, each one valued around five thousand dollar minimum. The diamond ring alone would fetch a retail price of a hundred thousand cash. The other gems were star sapphire, tanzanite, emerald, alexandrite, red ruby, turquoise, topaz, opal and one I had never heard of before called bixbite. Each was set in a fourteen carat gold band. The rings varied in size, but it was probably because they were meant to be worn by women, guessing from the diameters. Some of the rings were pushed down to the base of the victim’s fingers, but the smaller ones barely made it down to the first knuckle.

The victim was identified the next day as a fifty-year-old hedge fund manager named James Jameson. As you might guess, his nick name was “Jay-Jay”. I assumed his parents; typical Main Line old money types, had lacked imagination or wanted to confuse their son’s peers. It didn’t matter, because the man was now dead and this is where I entered the story.

Jameson’s ex-wife had hired me to find him two weeks ago and I was working on tracking him down when news of the death hit the Internet. DNA matching confirmed it was him less than two days after the body was discovered. Once the cops located the tailor, they were able to get a confirmation from the picture they showed him. He had an older suit the man left to be repaired and it was simple for the crime lab technicians to find a sample of DNA from it. Once the match was made, his family was notified.

Jameson’s ex-wife, Alameda, was trying to locate him to get some papers signed. She hadn’t spoken to him since the divorce and was happy with her settlement. The former Mrs. Jameson had caught him with his secretary trying to play the long short on something other than the stock market and demanded a divorce. Well, this is what she claimed. I heard other stories from people I talked to trying to locate him. The best explanation was the secretary was an innocent pawn in some game being played out between the husband and wife. They had some kind of “open” marriage and the secretary had been picked out by the husband to be his wife’s birthday present. She was outraged when she found out the secretary was dipping from both ends and wanted out of the marriage. In her way of thinking, so I was told, it was okay for them to be playing around outside the marriage, just not with someone currently being bedded by the other partner. And she had threated to make certain pictures public which were taken at a drunken orgy in the basement of an estate in Chester County. Pictures which had him clipping the hedges of two young men in a hot tub while the crowd cheered him on.

I couldn’t figure out why someone would kill Jameson. Couldn’t be his wife: she had all the money out of his estate she was going to get. With him dead, there would be no future chance of reconciliation. She seemed to have plenty of cash when she came to see me, Salvatore Ferragamo boots with a designer dress and a Coach bag. When I told her how much my expenses were, she didn’t even gasp, but pulled out a purse and produced a wad of cash, which I had to take to the bank later that day. My office is near the art museum district, so the rent isn’t cheap, but you can never be too careful in Philly. I looked out the window when she left and watched her strut into a fancy SUV and head down the street after our meeting. She had a boy toy sitting in the passenger seat who was too busy playing with his cell phone to notice when she opened the door. I watched her backhand him across the face once she had the door closed, so perhaps the lad was still learning who paid the bills.

I discovered later the late Mr. Jameson had a musical son named Harry who was living on daddy’s money. Like all the other trust fund kids, he hung out in Old City and could be seen with the other fashionistas on club nights. Harry was a saxophone player who had dreams of becoming the next John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman or Nick Turner, depending on the time of day or whatever music he had discovered. I had gone to a jazz club near Spring Garden just to hear him play and he wasn’t that bad. I had decided against interviewing him directly when I was searching for his father, since I had the distinct feeling his mother wasn’t talking to him. I did notice a pretty young lady named Lucinda who was watching him with her big brown eyes that night. After I slipped him two twenties, the bartender told me how Harry’s lady liked to spend her boyfriend’s money. Lucinda kept referring to Harry, the horn player, as her “fiancée”, but she had yet to sport a ring and people close to the two claimed he was avoiding asking her to marry him.

So far, no one knew very much about the reasons for the killing or the rings. Some of the tabloids were trying to play up the “ring killer” angle, but no one was on the look-out for a maniac trying to get middle-aged men to put rings on their fingers or bells on their toes. The rings had to symbolize something that was only known to the killer and the victim. I’d phoned my old buddy Detective Donaldson down at the sixth district police headquarters at Eleventh and Winter. He was surprised that I was working on finding Jameson as part of a private missing person’s case and wanted me to come down to police headquarters and meet a few people. I figured there was nothing to lose and I needed to make a few notes in the file to inform his ex-wife that my work was finished.

I looked down at my cell phone and saw an email. I run a small office with very few employees. Actually, there is only one full-time employee: me. In spite of what you might think, not all Shamus’ have hot secretaries named Velma who sit behind the desk doing their nails when they’re not orally cleaning the boss’s pistol. I have an answering service I sometimes use, but the voice mail and email referral system takes care of what I need when I’m out on a case or running security for some Center City lawyer. Gunner Security, my company, is a very tight operation, even though my mother likes to call it Gumshoe Security.

I waited to go through the metal detector to get inside police headquarters. Once they saw me, the desk sergeants knew who I was and sent me down to the homicide office. I walked down the marble halls and looked at the pictures on the wall: the fallen officers who had learned what it meant to protect and serve the public. At least they were being honored someplace. I found the door I was looking for and went inside.

“Tim Brennan!” A voice called out to me and I looked to see Donaldson sitting in a chair next to a medical examiner. “You old private dick! Where is the fedora? In the shop being cleaned? And why no trench coat? I thought you had an image to protect.”

“I wear a beret when it’s cold,” I reminded him. “I’ve never owned a trench coat, you’re older than me and the only real dick I know is the one I’m looking at.”

Donaldson stared at me for about two seconds and burst out laughing.

“I love working with you Brennan!” he shouted. “You know how to make me smile!” He turned to the man sitting by him. “This is the guy I was telling you about.” He turned back to me. “You know Dr. Ashton, don’t you?” He’s with the medical examiner’s office looking into the case. He’s excited to be working on this one, aren’t you doctor?”

Dr. Ashton was an older man I’d worked with over the years. He hired on with the city after graduating medical school and doing his residency. Dr. Ashton was known all over the world for his forensic work and analysis of gunshot wounds. Army medics would sometimes be sent to work with him to learn how to assess wounds and to recognize trauma injury.

“It’s a change from matching Uzi shells to innocent bystanders,” he grumbled. “I actually get to use my reasoning powers in this case. Last week I had to help identify a hit-and-run on a transsexual street-walker. Took me five minutes to prove the man they picked up for drunk driving an hour later was the perpetrator. I still don’t know why the city hasn’t filed charges.”