The Legacy: A Kimberly & Sykes Mystery Novel
Read The Legacy: A Kimberly & Sykes Mystery Novel Online
Authors: Kasey Mulligan
Table of Contents
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, and events are presented in a world of the author’s
making. Any resemblance to a real person, name, place, or event is purely coincidental and should not be construed as real.
The Legacy
A Kimberly & Sykes Mystery Novel
Copyright © Kasey Mulligan, 2015
No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner, except as allowable under ‘fair use,’ without the express written permission of the author.
Frank Daniels had a bounce in his step as he skipped the elevator and took the stairs up to Mike Kimberly’s apartment. He hadn’t been this happy since he competed in the Olympics some thirty years earlier. In another few minutes, he would be done with Mike Kimberly, done with the bloody corporation and back in the game under his own terms. Ivan Volkov may perceive he had the upper hand, but Daniels chuckled aloud knowing he would have the last laugh.
Daniels, irritated Kimberly didn’t respond to his knocking, tried the handle. The door opened to his touch and Daniels walked right into the living room. Kimberly was asleep, slumped in his armchair.
He stretched out his hand to give Kimberly a shake but he faltered when his brain registered something was odd. Daniels stopped, his hand falling as he watched Kimberly’s chest.
Nothing.
Daniels’ head shook from side to side. He
knows
he saw Kimberly take a breath. He kept his eyes on Kimberly’s chest, stretched out his hand and tapped his shoulder.
“Kimberly? Mike, don’t piss around! I’m too busy for this.”
Kimberly didn’t move a muscle. At that moment, Frank Daniels was aware he had witnessed Mike Kimberly take his last breath.
Lauren caught herself daydreaming again as she sat at her desk. Lauren Kimberly was a social worker, and a very good one. That’s why she kept being assigned the difficult cases. She looked at the top of her desk and knew she had to find a way to focus. Scattered across the surface were her case notes and files for a child custody case due in court in two days time. Though only a secondary witness in the case, Lauren always made sure she was well prepared.
Daydreaming came all too often in the last week and it wasn’t getting her anywhere but behind in her work. Maybe it was time to quit and do something less stressful and more soul enriching. Life is far too short, she thought as a sudden tear ran down her face. Lauren backhanded the tear away and shook her head in self-admonishment. The ringing phone sounded loud in the quiet apartment and brought Lauren firmly back into the present.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Ms. Kimberly,” said the voice at the other end of the phone.
“Who is this?” Lauren didn’t have a clue who was calling. She spilled red wine over the open case files as she put her wine glass down. She hadn’t been aware she had the glass in her hand. Lauren’s hand shot out and pulled several tissues from the box on her desk. She mopped up the wine while listening to the man on the phone continue to speak.
“My name is Smith, Adam Smith. Your father worked for me before he died.”
Lauren frowned as she waited for more, but the voice at the other end of the line was silent. Shit, I hate these condolence calls she thought as she dropped the sodden tissues into the waste bin next to her feet.
“Well, thanks for calling Mr. Smith.… I didn’t know my father had been working.”
“Indeed? Well, this isn’t a social call Ms. Kimberly. I want you to find some corporate equipment that your father… borrowed.” Lauren’s frown deepened as she picked up an unwelcome inference from his pause.
“You are asking the wrong person I’m afraid. As I said, I didn’t even know my father had a job. I hadn’t seen him for several years. You need to ask his colleagues where your equipment might be as I have no idea.”
“Believe me Ms. Kimberly, we have already done so, that’s why I am now calling you.”
“Look Mr. Smith,” Lauren paused and rolled her eyes – Smith, what kind of name is that? – “I’ve had a long day. I hadn’t seen my father in a long time before he died and I really don’t know who his friends were. I’m afraid I can’t be any help.”
“I understand, but, he… shall I say ‘borrowed’ a few… items… which belong to us. Items that are very valuable. We need to find them. Immediately.”
Lauren’s grip tightened on the phone. Her ears became more alert as she picked up the threatening nuances. “I’m not sure how I can –”
Smith overrode her, his voice gravelly with tension, “What that means, Ms. Kimberly, is that you need to help us find the items. Before someone else does. My driver, Sykes, will pick you up tomorrow at 6:00pm so we can discuss this further.”
Warning bells rang in Lauren’s head as she took a few seconds to process what she had just heard. As a social worker, Lauren had received her fair share of threats, but none had made her heart feel as cold as ice. Moreover, none had caused the hairs on her neck to prickle in warning. Who was this man, she wondered, and why was he threatening her?
“Look, suppose I don’t want to meet with you?”
“Oh, you will meet with us Ms. Kimberly,” Smith said, sending chills down her spine, “it is in your best interest to do so. And, Ms. Kimberly, keep this to yourself. The missing items include proprietary equipment. It is imperative that we keep our loss out of the media. Think of it as protecting your father’s name.”
The line went dead.
Lauren’s mouth was hanging open. “Who the hell…? What the… who the hell is Adam Smith and what the heck was that about?” she stammered aloud.
Puzzled, Lauren stood and looked down at the phone in her hand. Almost immediately, the phone emitted a rapid beep. She hit the ‘off’ button and put the phone in its cradle, noticing her hand tremble as she did so.
Picking up her wine glass, Lauren walked across the den to her armchair and plunked down. She’d saved for over a year to afford the Eames armchair and footstool and ordinarily, she felt safe and protected sinking in to it. Tonight, safety had flown out the window, and all Lauren felt was unnerved.
‘Breathe, Breathe, And Breathe. Just take a few deep breaths and calm down before your heart explodes,’ she whispered to herself.
Her years of meditation practice came into play, and within a short time, Lauren felt herself calm down. She replayed the conversation over in her mind a few times, yet still didn’t have a clue who had called or why. Her mind tried to come up with some explanation for the phone call, but nothing made sense.
Lauren’s glass was sticky from the wine she had spilled. She eased herself up and went to the kitchen for a clean glass and a top-up. Back in the den again, she sat into the comfort of her favorite chair casting her eyes around, letting the view of the familiar stabilize her.
The den was large and doubled as her home office, though she rarely worked at home, preferring to maintain the sanctity it provided from the daily stress of her demanding job. Her vintage wooden teacher’s desk was in front of the window and the drawn curtains blocked out the evening darkness.
Lauren liked being a social worker because she knew she made a difference, but she hated having to appear in court on the few occasions her clients found themselves in front of a judge. She had planned to review her notes this evening but the call from Adam Smith had put a halt to that.
Lauren’s eyes turned to the corner of her room and rested on a pile of boxes filled with her father’s belongings. Tall letters made by thick black marker listed the key contents in each box – bathroom; papers; sheets and towels; papers; tax files; kitchen; papers. Lauren closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers. Why did he have so many papers!
Her father had committed suicide a couple of weeks earlier.
Lauren recalled feeling shocked and angry when the police knocked on her door that night: shocked, because his death was so unexpected; angry, because according to the police, it was most likely suicide. All Lauren could think was her father was dead by his own hand, and she would never be able to speak with him again.
When she got the news, Lauren had been at the tail end of another child custody case and had no time to clean out her father’s rented apartment, nor deal with his belongings. With month end only a few days away, the apartment manager suggested she could save paying another month’s rent if her father’s belongings were dealt with quickly. Lauren accepted his offer of help, letting him pack her fathers’ personal effects and dispose of the furniture. Mike Kimberly’s thrift store bric-à-brac, though quaint, was no longer her style. When the courier arrived with his boxes of belongings she put them in the den, and there they had sat, untouched.
Lauren leaned back in the chair and looked at all that remained of her father’s life. Mike Kimberly had been an inventor. A man who professed to have brilliant ideas, his inventions, typically built on the kitchen table – to the constant dismay of her mother – never seemed to be as brilliant to anyone else. When she was twelve years old, Lauren blamed her father for causing the aneurism that took her mother’s life. From her young viewpoint, the stress of trying to bring in enough income to keep the family together, and pay for her husband’s continual material and equipment needs, led her mother, Marie, to an early grave. Though she came to know the unpredictability of aneurisms, Lauren had never fully shaken the blame she placed on her father.
Running her hand through her long auburn hair, Lauren stared at the boxes. The grief that rose every time she looked at them was enough to overwhelm her and keep her out of the den. For the last few years, she had been able to go for months on end without thinking about her father, but now that he was dead, she couldn’t get him out of her mind.
The police were waiting for toxicology reports to confirm their initial suspicions: her father probably died from alcohol poisoning after drinking a couple of bottles of his favorite Scotch. The consumption of high volumes of alcohol in a short period of time was a common method people used to kill themselves.
Lauren looked at the wine glass in her hand and wondered if she was following in her father’s footsteps. The thought went as quickly as it had popped into her head. Still unsettled from the call from Adam Smith, she knew she couldn’t put it off any longer, she needed to go through the boxes.
When the boxes first arrived Lauren wanted nothing more than to load them up and dump them at the recycle centre, but she was curious about what they contained. Not curious enough...until now.
Lauren would have to go through her father’s papers to see if there was any indication what the missing items were or, what he had done with them. Her mood shifted, and she felt angry. She’d wanted to deal with the boxes, and her father’s death, in her own time, when she was ready to delve into the detritus of his miserable life. Not forced into it like this. The phone call had made rifling through the boxes an immediate priority.
Why did he have to drink himself to death! Why did he leave her with his mess when it was obviously too much for him to deal with himself - otherwise why would he kill himself?
Lauren downed the remainder of her wine. Dragging the top boxes off the pile, she took the first one labeled ‘papers’ and placed it on the floor. She tried to wrench open the top but her hands shook and her fingers fumbled with the tape. Lauren rummaged through her desk drawer and retrieved a pair of scissors. Using one blade of the scissors like a knife, she cut through the packing tape. It was only when unbidden tears streamed down her cheeks that Lauren knew that she wasn’t doing OK. She wiped away the tears with the back of her hand, almost cutting her face with the open scissors.
“What the hell did you get yourself into old man? What did you do!” Lauren shouted at the ceiling. A strangled sob caught her by surprise as she yanked handfuls of papers from the box. Were her tears a reaction from her conversation with Smith, or were they sparked by her anger with her father, or both? Lauren didn’t know.
A stack of papers in her hand, Lauren paused and allowed a memory to assault her. The last time she’d contacted her father, five years earlier, she’d left him a voice message telling him of her upcoming graduation ceremony. She was graduating with a Master’s in Social Work. Lauren had worked hard to put herself through school, at one point working three jobs, and wanted to share her achievement with him. With her mother dead, and being an only child, her father was all she had. Her graduation was a major milestone, however, after sending him an invitation, he never showed up.
Lauren remembered searching the faces in the audience from her vantage point on the podium, but he wasn’t there. Neither did he call her afterwards. Best let sleeping dogs lie, Lauren had decided at the time. Her father hadn’t been there for her for years and her invitation had been a last ditch attempt at reconciliation.
Bringing her thoughts back to the present, Lauren continued to work her way through all the boxes that held paperwork. By the time she had gone through the third box she had worked herself to a state of frenzy. She had to find something - anything - to help her figure out what her father had been involved in and why Adam Smith thought he could have stolen something, after all, wasn’t that what he was implying? Surrounded by papers, so far nothing of importance had passed through her hands. Undaunted, Lauren ripped the top off a box labeled ‘Misc’.
The first thing she saw was a white envelope with
Lauren
printed on the face. Her hands shook as she reached inside and removed the envelope with her fingertips.
Lauren didn’t realize she held her breath until she gasped for air. She swallowed hard and visualized her father’s hand writing her name. With a deep sense of foreboding, Lauren carried the envelope into the living room and placed it on her coffee table. Reaching for her wine glass, she realized she had left it in the den. Lauren really wanted a glass of wine but tonight she was especially aware of how much she drank.
Who drinks themselves to death?
Walking to the kitchen Lauren looked at the half-empty wine bottle and hesitated.
Before she could change her mind she put the kettle on and made a cup of black tea and carried it back to the living room. She had seen enough of her den for the evening.
Lauren wanted to open the envelope, but, at the same time, she wasn’t sure she wanted to read what was inside. From the weight of it, it was quite expensive paper stock. After tapping the edge of the envelope in her palm for a few minutes, she took a deep breath, counted to three, and used her fingernail to lift the glued edge.
Lauren gently removed a sheet of crisp white paper and carefully examined it, front, and back. The paper was folded perfectly in half – that particular skill was beyond her, another reason she preferred email to letters; no paper to fiddle with and fit into an envelope.
Having run out of delaying tactics, she read her father’s words.
Dear Lauren, if you are reading this it means I am dead, or at least incapacitated. I wish I knew where to start, but I would have to go too far back in my mind and the memories are too difficult for me to face. I’m sorry honey, but I really wanted to get my life sorted out once and for all and get back on track.