Authors: James Grippando
Blood Money (21 page)
J
ack and Andie did a Saturday-morning run through Crandon Park to the beach and back. It wasn’t a race. Still, it bugged him that the only way to make his pace a workout was for Andie to run backward while pulling along a dog on a leash.
“I think Max wants to go again,” she said.
They were in the driveway, Jack hunched over with his hands on his knees and trying to catch his breath. “We’ll see how spry he is when he hits forty.”
Andie took Max for another three miles. Jack recovered in a hot shower.
Jack’s to-do list was chock-full. Sydney’s remark about Merselus—“he found me in jail”—had put one more thing on it. Jack wasn’t sure if that meant he called, wrote, or came to see her. He sent Theo to the women’s detention center to get a log of every visitor, every caller who had contacted Sydney. By the time Theo returned, Jack had killed a pot of coffee and mapped out the strategy for the upcoming hearings.
“We’ll have it this afternoon,” said Theo.
On a weekend, that wasn’t a bad job of cutting through the red tape. “We can check on it after we see Mr. Bennett,” said Jack.
A follow-up with Sydney’s parents was at the top of Jack’s task list. He’d called them immediately after his phone conversation with Sydney. Sydney wasn’t a minor, but they were her only family, and Jack felt they should know that their daughter was apparently on the run and in danger. Her mother had seemed appreciative of the call—enough so that she’d promised Jack that both she and Mr. Bennett would meet with him in the morning. But that was before her husband had snatched the phone away from her and bid Jack good night. Jack decided to show up anyway.
Theo drove. They were in Miami Gardens before lunchtime. The garage door was open, and Geoffrey Bennett was inside, lifting weights on his bench press. He was dripping with sweat, his arms and chest pumped up from too many reps. He was actually in better physical shape than Jack would have expected—a reminder that even though the Bennetts were grandparents, they were just a few years older than Jack. Still, the nylon shorts were way too formfitting for a man his age, and the thick leather weight belt was a notch too tight, as if vanity refused to let him admit that his waist had expanded even an inch in the previous ten years.
“Is Ellen here?” asked Jack.
“What’s this about?”
“I’d like to speak to your wife.”
“She’s not feeling well. What do you need?”
It was the same old story. No one got to Mrs. Bennett except through her husband.
“I need to know who Merselus is,” said Jack.
“Who?”
“Sydney says that’s the name of the man who met her at Opa-locka Airport on the night of her release.”
“You mean Merselus,” said Bennett. “I thought you said merciless.”
“It’s becoming a common mistake.”
“I like that name,” said Theo. “Merciless. Has a bad-ass rapper ring to it. Like Killa Sin or Gangster Starr or—”
“Shorty Shitstain?” said Jack.
“Whatta you know about Shorty?”
“More than I want to,” said Jack.
Bennett glanced at Theo, then back at Jack, as if not sure what to make of them. “Why would I know who this Merselus is?”
“He tried to strangle your daughter after they left the airport.”
Bennett paused before answering, staring at Jack. “That’s disturbing, to say the least. But that doesn’t mean I know him. To the contrary, do you think I would put my daughter in the hands of someone like that?”
“Sydney said they connected when she was in prison. More to the point, she thought you had checked him out before she trusted him to be her agent.”
“Well, that would be just like her to blame someone else, wouldn’t it?”
Theo grumbled. “Just cuz she’s the one doin’ the blamin’ doesn’t mean you ain’t to blame.”
“The big guy actually has a point,” said Jack.
“Look, her mother and I did what Sydney asked us to do. She told us she had a big-shot agent who was going to take care of her, but they needed us to lease the plane in my name to keep the Hollywood connection out of the press. The money landed in our bank account, and I took care of the plane. That was my whole involvement. And her mother’s. We never met the guy, never talked to him. That was the end of it.”
“You didn’t ask—”
“I didn’t ask anybody anything,” said Bennett. “I wanted Sydney out of jail and out of our hair.”
Jack studied his expression, taking a read. “That’s a good story.”
“It’s the truth.”
“What do you think, Theo?”
“I’ll tell you what I think,” said Theo. “I think somebody in this house needs a good ass-kicking.”
Bennett took a step back. “Is that a threat?”
“No, that was purely an expression of opinion. See, the man asked me what do I think. I told him what I think. That’s an opinion, and if you want to get legal about it, the opinions expressed here are solely those of Theo Knight and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of Jack Swyteck, P.A., the Florida Bar, or the pansy-ass association of nonviolent white guys who keep friends with former death row inmates just in case they might need to call up an ass-kicking. You got a problem with that?”
“I—I don’t think so.”
“Good. Cuz if I was threatening you, I would—”
Jack extended his arm, stopping Theo before he could take another step closer.
Bennett made his chest swell. “Y’all need to leave my property.”
“You need to think about what I said,” Theo said.
“Let’s go,” said Jack.
They walked back to the car, and Bennett returned to his bench press, the free weights clanging as Jack and Theo climbed inside and closed the doors.
“Pansy-ass association of
what
?”
“Sorry, dude. Was just makin’ a point.” Theo started the engine and pulled away from the curb.
“I’m almost afraid to ask for another opinion, but what do you think? Does Mr. Bennett know Merselus?”
Theo put on his shades, eyes on the road. “Just like his daughter. Liar, liar, pants on fire.”
Jack glanced out the window as they passed the Bennett house. He noticed Mrs. Bennett watching from the front porch, her gaze following their car down the street. A bright yellow sundress made her perpetual tan look even darker than usual. Colorful sundresses were what she had worn almost every day for Sydney’s trial.
“The key here is to talk to someone in this family who doesn’t wear pants.”
“Then let’s do it,” said Theo.
Jack thought of all the times he’d tried to have a one-on-one conversation with Sydney’s mother. “It needs to be handled just right. Ellen literally hasn’t left the house since the trial started. She doesn’t even have a cell phone. We can discount a lot of what her husband says, but I don’t doubt that she’s battling depression.”
“Just call her, Jack.”
They stopped at the
STOP
sign. The Bennetts’ street was in his passenger’s-side mirror, and Jack could see down the block to their house in the reflection. Ellen Bennett was still standing on the porch, having watched their car all the way to the intersection.
“No,” said Jack. “Once a seed is planted, the worst thing you can do is dig it up to see how it’s growing. Give her a little more time. She’ll come around.”
A
ndie finished her three-mile run with Max in record time. She showered and spent the rest of the morning on a chaise longue in the backyard, struggling her way through one of those recorded instructional CDs that promised complete fluency in a foreign language for ninety-eight percent of users faster than you can say,
I must be part of the two percent
. Max was in a perfect “sit/stay,” head cocked, ears peaked, and a puzzled expression on his golden face. Apparently, he didn’t speak Chinese.
“Max,” she said, followed by her best attempt to say “Come” in a language she hadn’t spoken since her days in the Seattle field office. It was part of her training for her undercover assignment, Operation Big Dredge. Counterfeit goods galore from China were expected to come through the widened Panama Canal and the expanded Port of Miami. A brushup on Mandarin Chinese would be useful.
“Max, please. A little encouragement.”
He cocked his head the other way.
“I think we’re hopeless, buddy.”
Andie removed her earbuds, shut down her iPad, and went back inside the house. She was pouring a cup of green tea—that part of China she got, no problem—when her cell rang. She had a feeling about the unknown number on the caller ID.
“This is Agent Henning,” she said.
There was a slight pause, then a voice that Andie recognized, even though they had never spoken to one another: “Swyteck told me to call you at this number.”
Andie gripped the phone. “Sydney?”
“Yes.”
“I’m glad you called. You’re doing the right thing.”
“He didn’t give me much of a choice.”
“Who didn’t?”
“Jack,” she said, and just the mention of his name seemed to bring an edge to her voice. “He thinks he can just pass me along to you, like I’m not his problem. I
am
his problem. He’s part of this. He’s as much a part of this as I am.”
“Okay. I understand you’re angry.”
“I’m angry, I’m tired, I’m fed up with the whole fucking world treating me like I’m some kind of monster. Tell Jack he needs to help me.”
“Jack can’t help you. Work with me and the FBI will—”
“No, this isn’t a call to the FBI. I’m talking to Jack’s girlfriend. You tell Jack that if he wants to find out what happened to his
other
girlfriend, he needs to help me, okay?”
“What do you know about Rene Fenning?”
“I know I don’t want to end up like her. And I’m guessing you don’t want to, either. So you take off your FBI hat, you have a nice talk with your fiancé, and you tell him that when Sydney Bennett calls him, he better listen. You got it?”
“Sydney—” she started to say, but Andie could tell she wasn’t there.
Andie put her cell down. Max came to her and put his head on her leg, seeming to sense her stress.
“Yup,” said Andie, rubbing his neck. “I think we got it, all right.”
W
hoa,” said Theo. “She is hot, hot, hot.”
Jack was waiting with him outside the Patti & Alan Herbert Wellness Center on the University of Miami campus. A creek and rocky ravine circled the center like a castle moat, and the narrow footbridge over it was the only access to the main entrance—which made the bench at the end of the bridge a prime viewing spot for the endless stream of co-eds on the way to or from a workout. The clingy black spandex left little to the imagination.
“Down, boy,” said Jack. “She’s probably twenty years old.”
“And your point is . . . ?”
Jack didn’t even try to explain. For more years than he cared to admit, beautiful twenty-year-old women had been mere girls to him.
“I mean, dude, it’s not like I said I want to buy her a bottle of vodka or go vote with her.”
“Theo, I get it. And by the way, you don’t have to be twenty-one to vote. It’s eighteen.”
“Since when?”
“Since before you were born.”
“So she could vote to have sex with me.”
Jack massaged that aching spot between his eyes. “You know, it’s a good thing only half the things you say are serious, or we just couldn’t be friends.”
“It’s not that half the things I say are serious. It’s everything I say is
half
serious. There’s a difference.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. Well . . . half.”
Jack kept an eye on the main door. It had taken several phone calls from Celeste Laramore’s father, but Celeste’s roommate had finally agreed to talk to Jack. The plan was to meet outside the wellness center.
“That’s her,” said Jack.
“Whoa. She is totally—”
“Quit,” Jack told him.
Jenna Smith seemed to recognize Jack as she crossed the bridge. She was dressed like all the other young women on parade, though it was impossible not to notice that she spent a few more hours a week in the gym than most. Her hair was in a ponytail. De rigueur, a cell phone was in her hand.
“Hi, I’m Jenna.”
She extended her free hand, and Jack shook it. “Nice to meet you, Jenna. This is—”
“Theo Knight,” he said, “head of voter registration.”
“What?”
“Ignore him,” said Jack. “Thanks for meeting with us.”
She nodded once, more acquiescence than enthusiasm. “Mr. Laramore said it was important.”
“It is,” said Jack. He led her to a picnic table beneath a stand of palm trees where they could talk. She laid her pink workout bag on the bench beside her and placed her cell phone on the table in front of her. Jack and Theo sat opposite her, the afternoon sun warm on their backs.
“How is Celeste doing?” asked Jenna.
Jack wasn’t sure how to answer. “We’re still hopeful.”
“That’s the same thing Mr. Laramore told me.” Her phone chime sounded like a bicycle bell. She glanced at a new text from someone and quickly thumb-typed a response. “He also said you wanted to talk about the night Celeste got hurt.”
“Right,” said Jack. “I watched a recording of your interview on TV. You told Faith Corso that you and Celeste had just come from a Sydney Bennett look-alike contest. Of course, now we all know there was no such contest.”
“And you want to know why I lied.”
“That’s about the size of it,” said Jack.
She glanced at Theo. “Is he a cop?”
“Him? No. He’s my investigator. You can talk freely.”
Jenna drew a breath. “I lied because . . . well, because that was the story Celeste gave me.”
“Say that again,” said Jack.
“We went out that night, and she looked so much like Sydney Bennett it was freaky. She said we were going to a look-alike contest on South Beach. I say, ‘Okay, cool.’ Then she started driving and I say, ‘Hey, aren’t you going the wrong way?’”
“What did Celeste say?”
“She says, ‘Jenna, can you keep a secret?’ I say ‘Of course.’ And then she tells me that there’s no contest. That we’re going to the women’s detention center.”
“Did she say why?”
She shifted nervously. “She said she was getting paid a thousand bucks just to be in the crowd, act like Sydney, and get on television.”
“Didn’t she realize how dangerous that could be?”
“Well, we knew people were a little crazy about this trial, but most of them were, you know, women who like a good soap opera. We didn’t think anyone would be crazy enough to hurt her. And this was a
thousand
dollars, for like an hour’s work. Celeste really needed money. Her dad lost his job, so she was getting no help from home.”
“I’m very aware of that,” said Jack, thinking of the health insurance problem. “But back up a second. I’m still not sure why you lied to Faith Corso. Why did you tell her you had just come from a look-alike contest?”
“I was scared. I wasn’t sure if what Celeste did was illegal. She lied to me, so I figured she was covering up something. It wasn’t up to me to blow any whistles on her. We were BFFs. I went with her story. I mean, like I said, she asked if I could keep a secret.”
“Do you know who paid her the thousand dollars?”
“No idea. She never told me.”
“Do you know if she got the money? Or was she supposed to get paid afterward?”
“Honestly, I don’t know.” Jenna’s phone chimed again, and she checked it. “My friend’s getting tired of waiting. Is there anything else?”
“Actually, yes,” said Jack. “Celeste’s dad e-mailed me some photographs of Celeste—about a half dozen or so from high school to the present.” He pulled them up on his iPhone, showing them to her.
“So?”
“I’m struck by the transformation,” said Jack. “She cut her hair. Changed the style. Darkened the color. The makeup got more noticeable. She seemed to favor tighter clothing. It seems like, over time, she was looking more and more like Sydney Bennett.”
She scrolled through the pictures. “I can see your point. But what of it?”
“That’s what I’m asking you,” said Jack. “Did you ever have a conversation about that? Was it something she was consciously trying to do?”
“I don’t know about that. I mean, she was definitely interested in the case. More than most people I know, anyway.”
“When you say ‘the case,’ do you mean the trial? Or was she interested before the trial?”
“Before.”
“Do you know why?”
“Not sure. She had a criminal-justice class she was taking. I figured it was that. She even went and talked to Sydney’s lawyer, the guy before you.”
Jack did a double take. “Neil Goderich?”
“I don’t know his name. The guy who died.”
“That’s Neil,” said Jack. “Celeste met with him? Do you know why?”
“Not really. Like I said, she had that class she was taking. Or maybe she wanted a job. Working for a lawyer is lot more interesting than flipping burgers.”
“When did they talk?”
“Six months ago, maybe.”
Jenna’s phone chimed again. Another text from her workout buddy. “I really have to go,” she said, rising.
Jack and Theo rose. “You’ve been helpful, thanks,” said Jack.
“No problem,” said Jenna.
Jack and Theo stayed at the table as she crossed the bridge to the main entrance and disappeared inside the wellness center.
“I take it you didn’t know she met with Neil,” said Theo.
“You got that right,” said Jack.
“What do you make of that?”
He glanced at Theo, then back at the entrance doors. “I need to dig for some missing notes.”