T. Lynn Ocean - Jersey Barnes 01 - Southern Fatality (27 page)

“I’m still not hearing this,” Dirk said, using his napkin to wipe Cracker’s drooling mouth. “Any coffee left?”

“Then you had to go and mess it all up!” Spud threw the accusation at Dirk. “Can’t you just leave well enough alone and let a man earn a living?”

“Sorry Spud,” Dirk soothed, “but I earn my living by stopping the bad guys—oh, like car thieves, for example—from earning their living.”

Ox’s guffaws had simmered down to a wide grin, but Trish had the giggles. Spud turned his angry glare, full force, on her.

She smiled sweetly at him. “Spud, why don’t you find a cute sugar momma to take care of you? Keep the Chrysler so she can cart you around in it?”

The color in his face toned down a few notches as Trish’s suggestion sunk in and his mouth moved from side to side in contemplation.

“Our car thief is cuffed and resting comfortably in the backseat of my unmarked. Thanks for the breakfast, but guess I’d better go check on him. By the way, Spud, what is your official position? Is he a friend of yours? You did give him a key in a roundabout way, through the bookie.”

“I don’t even know the guy! And what kind of an idiot would steal a car in broad daylight, anyways?” Spud said.

“The kind of guy that doesn’t plan on getting caught,” Dirk answered. “He paid a fine and did community service for the prior. Picking up a car for a friend so he can wash and wax it isn’t doing anything illegal,” Dirk said offhandedly. “On the other hand, insurance fraud is
very
illegal.”

It took a few seconds for Spud to clue in.

“Yeah, yeah, for crying out loud,” Spud said. “I know the guy, er—”

“Michael Lowes,” Dirk supplied.

“Michael, right,” Spud continued. “Yeah, Mike’s a good kid—”

“He’s sixty-two,” Dirk interjected.

Spud forced a laugh. “At my age, I call everybody kid. So I guess you’d better let my good friend, ah …”

“Mike.”

“Right, Mike. You’d better let Mike out of your police car so he can go wash and wax the Chrysler.”

“I’ll make sure he drops it back here and leaves the key at the Block,” Dirk said.

“Ask him to vacuum out the trunk, would you?” Spud said, always one to push his luck. “And put that shiny stuff on the wheels.”

“Thank you,” I told Dirk, since Spud hadn’t. “What were you stopping by for when you happened upon the car thief?”

“I almost forgot,” Dirk said, turning at the top of the stairs with a Columbo move. “The beautiful Mrs. Sigmund Ralls and
her son appeared at the Wrightsville Beach police station this morning. The kid maintains that Barb Henley and a friend were in town and dropped by to talk with his mother, thinking she might be at the summer house. They stayed for fifteen minutes. He swears they didn’t do any drugs. Supposedly, the Henley woman met the senator’s wife at some social function. Hanna Lane Ralls says that Henley was probably trying to solicit support for a new environmental charity.”

I tried to digest this new information, but it disagreed with me. Barb Henley wasn’t the type to donate her time or energies to a charitable cause.

“Who’s the supposed friend?”

“Walton said he didn’t know her. For that matter, he said he didn’t know Barb, other than he met her once at a political thing. What’s interesting, though, is that when we were questioning the kid, he tripped up and called them sisters. Then, he said that he meant friends—not sisters—and reiterated that he’d never met the woman in the hat before.” Dirk relayed the information to five sets of skeptical ears. Anticipating my next question, he continued, “Walton says the women arrived together and left together. He has no idea why Barb drove off and the friend walked away.”

“What did they talk about?”

“The senator’s political rally. The weather. The annual kingmackerel fishing tournament.”

“Is anybody actually buying their story?” Trish asked.

“Of course not. But the senator has some powerful lawyers, who by the way, convinced a judge that the search of the beach house was illegal. Since their rights were so abhorrently violated, they’re threatening to sue the Wrightsville department.”

“Our judicial system at its finest,” Ox said.

“So as of now, no charges are pending against Walton Ralls and
mommy has indicated that all future correspondence and/or questioning will be coordinated through daddy’s lawyers.”

“Walton is living back at the beach house, then?” I asked.

“That’s the address they gave as a current residence for the kid, but I doubt he’s really staying there.”

After Dirk left, our assembled group mulled over the situation. We mulled and talked and mulled some more. When the coffee ran out, Ox went downstairs to prep the Block for the lunch crowd. Soup headed back to his apartment to do some genealogical research on Barb Henley in search of a possible sister, but only after reminding me that my tab was approaching the size of a Royal Caribbean cruise rather than a mere week on my boat with Captain Pete. Trish agreed to monitor both Walton’s and Chesterfield’s mobile phones. Spud called Bobby and Hal to see if they’d drive him to Tippy’s, where he was going to ask Rainbow for a refund of his three hundred dollars. And I put on a tank top and my favorite ratty pair of sweats. I thought about hitting the salon for a half-hour massage but decided to go for a run instead.

The familiar network
of sidewalks and streets in the historic district that paralleled the river glided by as I fell into a comfortable rhythm. I paced myself with medium strides that would take me three or four miles before I’d slow my gait to a brisk walk. I concentrated on breathing, filling my lungs to capacity with the balmy Wilmington air while I tried to think about nothing except breaths going in and out. Annoyingly, my thoughts strayed to Bill. We hadn’t spent much time together lately and I missed his company. But at the same time, I couldn’t fathom growing old together. I had no desire to hold his hand after our joints had turned knobby and arthritic. I didn’t even like the thought of shopping together for new furniture or sharing a bank account. On the other hand, he adored me. After a few blocks of this internal struggle, as if I’d conjured him up by magic, my mobile rang and it was Bill
on the other end of the tower. I’d taken the time to strap the Sig to my ankle and the phone to my elastic waistband. Whenever I saw someone sitting atop a Lifecycle at the gym chatting merrily on their phone, I thought it looked ridiculous. I wondered if right now, a bystander might think I looked ridiculous, jogging and talking.

“Hey, what’s up?” I said, a bit breathless.

“Calling to say hello, Jersey. I miss you.”

“Just think, we’ll be on
Incognito
soon,” I said, daydreaming about our upcoming excursion. Calming water, sunshine, booze, food, Bill in a bathing suit, and no worries. Except for the concern that he might start talking marriage again. I approached an intersection and jogged in place a few seconds to let a horse-drawn carriage pass.

“You’re breathing really loud, Jersey. Is this going to be an obscene phone call? Because if it is, you should probably tell me what you’re wearing.”

“I’m out jogging, to clear my head. But I’m all for getting obscene with you soon.”

“Looking forward to it,” he purred. “Until then, anything I can do to help?”

“Just be ready for my postponed retirement celebration.”

I stepped off the curb to cross a cobblestone street when I heard a compact explosion, a whistling hiss, and the jarring sound of a bullet hitting metal, seemingly all at once. I dove and tucked into a roll, protecting my head with my arms. Landing on my feet, I zigzagged to the other side of the street where I took cover behind an illegally parked car. From my crouched position, I retrieved the Sig and scanned the streets, adrenaline pumping, senses on maximum alert. Screaming tires caught my attention, but all I could make out was the tail end of a white compact vehicle turning the corner. I
couldn’t see the plate number or the driver and wasn’t positive about the make of the car. Thoughts of chasing it on foot were immediately quelled by the realization that it would be a futile effort.

Gripping the Sig, I unfolded my body and stood, realizing that I still held the mobile phone in my other hand. I was really getting tired of being shot at. The mix of tourists and locals passing by curiously checked out their surroundings for evidence of a disruption. Finding none, they carried on with their day, assuming the sound they’d heard was a car backfiring or perhaps a mischievous teen playing with firecrackers. Drive-by shootings just didn’t happen in Wilmington. I put the phone to my ear.

Bill remained on the other end. “Jersey? What’s going on?”

“Nothing. I tripped and fell, but I’m fine. I’m heading back to the Block, so I’ll catch you later.”

“Okay,” he said. “Love you.”

I flipped the phone shut without answering and returned to the other side of the street where I found a damaged black-and-white ONE WAY street sign. The bullet had punched a hole through the center of the arrow shape and lodged itself in the bark of an aged oak tree just beyond. Using a stone, I pried the bullet out and pocketed what appeared to be a flattened chunk of lead that might have traveled from a .38 Special. I gave the majestic tree a pat of apology for enduring a nasty assault and jogged back toward the Block. I took several unnecessary turns and scrutinized each approaching vehicle. When I got closer to home, I dialed Ox and, after explaining what had happened, asked him to take a look around the Block for anyone idling in a white car.

“Retirement doesn’t seem to agree with you, Jersey,” he said before hanging up.

The remainder of my run was without incident and my home telephone was ringing as I climbed the stairs to my residence
above the Block. Plopping down at the kitchen table to remove my running shoes and ankle holster, I answered it.

“Barb Henley’s sister is Lisa Wentworth,” Soup said in greeting. “Same father, same mother. You want the full story?”

“Soup, you are amazingly good at what you do. I’ll take the dime version.” I drank Gatorade from a liter bottle and listened.

“Barb is two years older than her sister. They were born and raised in Long Island. Father shot himself in an apparent suicide when they were teenagers. The newspaper blurb didn’t say why he shot himself, but apparently Lisa witnessed it. The mother reverted to her maiden name, Brown. Lisa kept her dead father’s name, Wentworth. And Barb changed her name to Henley after the man her mother remarried, even though the mother kept using Brown. The mother got herself arrested twice for driving under the influence. After crippling another driver in a wreck, she went to a judge-ordered alcohol rehab. She divorced a year after that, and it appears that both girls left home and went separate ways. Barb was seventeen, Lisa only fifteen.”

“What might Lisa be doing now?”

“Oh, that’s the best part,” Soup said after a slurp of something, mentally calculating my tab, which was growing by the minute. “It’s going to cost you more than a dime.”

“Give me the quarter version.”

“Lisa hooked up with an elderly boyfriend who took her in, made her finish high school, and then put her through college, according to a disapproving neighbor. I found the street address through DMV records for learner’s permits, and then rounded up the neighbor who, luckily, still lives in the house next door. The benevolent boyfriend has since died. Anyway, Lisa passed Sugar Daddy one-o-one with flying colors, and got pretty decent grades in school, too. Grew into a beautiful, leggy, natural blonde. Became a
successful model, but never quite made it to the supermodel category. Ringing any bells yet?”

“Good God.” When Bill had first introduced me to Lolly, he’d mentioned her real name was Lisa.

“You got it. Lisa is Lolly. She had her first name legally changed to Lolly, I guess for a modeling stage name. I ran a basic background on Lolly and Samuel Chesterfield the first go-around and you already saw those results. They revealed prior employers and no criminal activity. I didn’t dig further.”

“Well, I didn’t see a need to,” I said to us both, the implications seeping in.

“There’s more if you want it, but nothing crucial. You’ve got the meat.”

“I’m not upping the ante to fifty cents.” I thanked Soup for what seemed like the umpteenth time in the past few weeks and disconnected with a promise to add a bottle of Corazón tequila to the supplies for his upcoming week on my boat.

Cracker materialized and nudged my hand with a wet nose, then chest-butted my chair, his way of demanding attention from his humans. I scratched him between the eyes, right on top of his snout. It was one of his favorite places to be rubbed and he angled his head so I could have a better reach.

“You and the Sig have a nice run?” Spud asked, ambling into the kitchen. My discarded running shoes were on the floor and backup weapon was on the table.

“Just being careful, like you said,” I told him. He clicked his teeth a few times and made a sound that ended in “harrumph.”

“You know, kid, I been thinking …” he began and I knew by his tone of voice that a revelation was forthcoming. “Since the LHS has been all cleaned up and waxed and has that shiny stuff on the wheels, it’s a pretty nice-looking ride. I might just keep it to
have something for my girlie babes to carry me around in, like Trish suggested. Plus, Bobby can drive it pretty good.” He watched for my reaction over an upturned chocolate Yoo-hoo bottle.

“That’s a fine idea, Spud. Just keep your insurance policy up to date.”

“You think so? Even though I can’t legally drive it?”

“Sure,” I told him, not much caring either way. His ongoing love-hate relationship with his car was the last thing I cared to ponder at the moment. “You can always sink it or blow it up later, if you decide you don’t want it anymore.”

“You’re right,” he said. “I’ll keep it for a while and see how things go.”

“Barb Henley’s sister is Lolly Chesterfield,” I told him.

“Holy friggin’ cow!” Spud responded. “You think she’s in on the missing kid? Her own stepson?”

“Odder things have happened.”

“That’s reminds me. Samuel Chesterfield wants you to call him at home, and it’s urgent. Said you didn’t answer your mobile.”