Matter of Trust (28 page)

‘Just call me Parker,' he said. ‘In fact, all I need is the hat and the uniform and . . .' But he was interrupted by the ring of his cell. ‘I should have left the damn thing on its charger,' he said.

‘But it might be Lady Penelope needing a lift to her country estate,' joked Arthur.

‘Well, in that case.' David picked up the call to say, ‘Cavanaugh.'

‘Cavanaugh? Oh gosh, I'm sorry, I must have the wrong number.' There was a laugh at the other end of the line.

‘That's okay, who were you after?'

‘Well, this is going to sound silly, but . . .' The voice sounded like that of a young girl, probably about eighteen. ‘I was hoping you were Rob Lowe – you know, the actor.'

The breath went out of him, just like that.

‘How . . . why?'

‘We found this cell phone, me and the other housekeeper. It was kinda water damaged but my boss told me to soak it in alcohol which sounded kinda hokey to me but I guess it worked.' The girl took a breath. ‘Anyway, I used one of the office chargers to charge it and try and find out which guest it belonged to. It's one of those regular Nokias. People leave them in the rooms all the time – and hardly ever come back for them.'

‘You said it belonged to a guest?' asked David, trying to take it all in.

‘Yeah, I'm in housekeeping at the Grand Summit.'

‘In Newark?' asked David, and he noted Sara's eyes flash toward him.

‘Yeah. So like I said, I charged the phone and we scrolled through the contacts which were a little faint but still readable. And I was trying to pick one to ring – you know, to see if I could locate the owner and it was a toss-up between you and Matt Dillon.'

And in that moment he knew exactly who the phone belonged to.

‘I think it belongs to a friend of mine,' he said then, trying to keep his voice even. ‘The movie star thing was her way of giving people nicknames.'

‘You look like Rob Lowe?'

‘She used to think so.'

‘Well maybe I should keep your number in my phone as well.' She laughed. ‘Sorry, I kind of have this weird sense of humour.'

‘No offence taken,' said David.

‘You wanna call her and get her to pick it up?'

‘I would but . . .' David hesitated. ‘Listen . . . um, Miss . . .'

‘Oh, sorry,' said the girl. ‘My name is Garner, Garner Hancock, but people call me Gigi.'

‘Okay, Gigi, my name is David Cavanaugh and I'm an attorney from Boston. The woman who owns the phone, she's away right now, but I could give it to her when I see her – if you don't mind posting it to me.'

‘Sure,' said Gigi. ‘I guess that would be okay.'

‘Thanks Gigi,' said David before giving her his address. ‘Just one more thing, Gigi. Where exactly did you find my friend's phone?'

‘Behind the bedhead in room 302. It's probably been there for some time. We only took the bedheads down as part of the refurbishment. The hotel's looking hot.'

‘That's great,' said David. ‘Do you think you could send the cell express?'

‘Sure,' said Gigi. ‘If you tell me one more thing.'

‘Okay.'

‘Does Matt Dillon really look like Matt Dillon – and if so, is he available?'

‘Ah . . .' David hesitated. ‘Yes he does, Gigi – but no, no he's not.'

Boston, Massachusetts; two days later

‘N
o.'

‘No?' replied David. ‘Come on, Joe. It's not like you'll be doing anything illegal here. All we need you to do is make a few enquiries. That's all.'

It was Wednesday and David and Sara were in Joe Mannix's Boston PD headquarters office. Marilyn's cell had arrived by express post earlier that morning and they'd spent the past two hours scrolling through her text messages – which were enlightening and frustrating all at the very same time.

‘This isn't my case, David. In fact, it isn't
yours
either. You need to hand that cell over to the Newark PD, and you need to do it now. It's part of an ongoing investigation.'

‘No, Joe. It should be, but it's not,' said David, now sitting forward on Joe's office sofa. ‘You said it yourself. McNally was locked out of this case by the FAP. Elliott Marshall is gunning for Chris Kincaid, and my guess is, this cell doesn't play into his strategy.'

‘How do you know this Marshall didn't requisition Maloney's cell phone records as part of his investigations? He doesn't need the actual cell to do that, David. If I was the lead investigator on the case, I would—'

‘But you're
not
, Joe – and McNally was benched, and Marshall has Chris's phone records showing he was trying to locate Marilyn on the day and night of her death, so the last thing he wants is someone throwing another possible suspect in the mix – thorough investigation or not.'

Joe took a breath. He was perched on the edge of his birch laminate desk. The moral dilemma facing him was clear on his olive-skinned face.

‘Listen, David, nobody feels worse about McNally than I do. He's a good cop – the best, but he didn't exactly elaborate as to why the FAP got him bumped from the investigation.'

‘But he
did
tell you he had some reservations about the restrictions that were placed on his enquiries.'

‘Maybe so, but I don't know what those enquiries involved. Maybe he was overstepping his mark. Maybe his wife's death had taken its toll on him. This Marshall has his own squad on the case, so—'

‘You don't believe a word you're saying, Joe.'

In the end Joe had to concede. ‘I guess not.'

There was silence until Sara chimed in. ‘Listen Joe, at first I tended to agree with you. I wanted David to hand the phone over to the Newark PD, figuring Marshall already had Marilyn's cell records – in which case, we had nothing to gain or lose. But then I did some research into the average longevity of cell phone records – and believe it or not, due to all the cell congestion, it stands at barely a matter of weeks. So even if Marshall
did
look into Marilyn's cell history, chances are, considering she wasn't identified until weeks after her death, the records he requested wouldn't show what we have here, Joe – which is definitely something.'

Joe's brow furrowed.

‘All we ask is that you listen to us, Joe,' Sara continued, pushing the point. ‘Just let us explain why we want to investigate this ourselves, before we share the information with others who might not have Marilyn Maloney's best interests at heart.'

David looked at Sara with pure admiration. He was so grateful to hear her utter the word ‘we', for he had feared the reintroduction of the Kincaid case into their lives would cause her nothing but angst. But when he'd asked her straight out what she thought he should do, she'd not only told him that she did not want him to change himself for her or Lauren's sakes, but that he should take on any case his conscience told him too.
She also indicated that she had no intention of letting him do such chasing alone – they were a team, she had stressed, and always would be – and for that, no-one was happier than David.

‘All we're asking is that you listen, Joe,' Sara repeated.

‘You guys kill me,' Joe finally said with a nod.

And so Sara began at the beginning.

Upon trawling through the cell phone's memory, David and Sara discovered there had been nine messages sent to Marilyn Maloney's cell phone on the day of her death. All were received after midday. Three appeared to be voice mails from Chris Kincaid's home phone number and two were texts from his cell.

‘Which corresponds to exactly what Chris told me,' said David. ‘He said he called Marilyn a number of times during the day. She was pretty upset after he broke up with her, so he wanted to check how she was doing.'

Sara went on to explain that the other four messages were all in text form and all sent later in the evening and into the night. All came from the same unidentified cell number, and all appeared to be saying roughly the same thing.

‘Appeared roughly?' asked Joe. ‘What do you mean?'

Sara shot a look at David. ‘Well,' she said, ‘we can't exactly read them.'

‘You can't
read
them?'

‘No, I mean . . .' Sara pulled the cell from her handbag and handed it to Joe.

‘It's rusted,' observed Joe.

‘Yeah, the housemaid said they'd been steamcleaning the carpets for the refurbishment and given the phone was on the floor under the bed . . .'

‘And the SIM card?' Joe turned the phone over to see the red rim of rust around the battery cover.

‘It's partly damaged too,' said David. ‘It rusted into the phone.'

Joe was shaking his head. ‘David, this is . . .'

‘I know, Joe. It sounds like a wild goose chase, but having stared at the mangled messages for the past few hours, we think the sender was asking Marilyn to meet with him that night.'

Sara stood to take the cell back from Joe and scrolled to one of the messages from the unidentified cell. The message was an odd combination
of numbers – with the letters thrown in at random.

‘Is this supposed to mean something to me?' asked Joe as Sara held the screen in front of him.

Sara used her pointer finger to direct Joe's eyes to a set of six numbers in a grouping of four and two. ‘6338 and 63,' she said. ‘The same combinations appear in three of the four texts.' She scrolled through the other three messages to show him. ‘The numbers correspond to the words “meet me”,' she said. ‘And in the first text the words are followed by the configuration “t66i4h8” – “tonight”.'

‘So he was setting up a meeting?' asked Joe.

‘We think so,' said David, now also getting to his feet. ‘Now look,' he added, pointing at another sequence of numbers and letters. ‘There's another repeated series – “h6te5”.'

‘Hotel,' said Joe.

David nodded. ‘The only reference to time being the word “m43n4te”.'

Joe's brow furrowed. ‘He wanted her to meet him at midnight?'

David nodded. ‘But which hotel, under what name, we're not sure.'

‘Jesus,' said Joe, ‘this is going to be like finding a needle in a haystack. I've seen the guys from our crime unit work with garbled cells before, David. Once these things are stuffed, they're generally stuffed for good.' He shook his head. ‘Did Maloney reply to any of these texts?'

‘Yes,' said David. ‘One. At about seven-thirty pm.'

‘And what did she say?'

David shot a glance at Sara. ‘She said “65”.'

‘65?'

‘OK,' said Sara.

‘She agreed to meet with him?'

‘We think so. But we don't think she ever turned up. She was working at that nightclub until midnight – after which she drank some more and went home. The super helped her up to her apartment at about quarter to one in the morning.'

‘So she stood the mystery guy up?'

‘Looks like,' said Sara.

‘And people don't like being stood up,' said David.

Joe nodded. ‘I'm sure I'm going to hate myself for asking this but . . . what else can you garner from these garbled messages?'

‘There's a dollar sign,' said Sara. ‘Followed by a full stop and the numbers 005.'

Joe ran his hand through his thick dark hair. ‘What letter does the dollar sign correspond to?'

‘It doesn't. It's a separate symbol.'

‘So it can only mean dollars,' said Joe.

‘Right,' confirmed David.

Joe nodded. ‘And the full stop 005. It sounds like a blood-alcohol reading.'

‘To a cop maybe,' said David. ‘But “.005” could be “100K”.'

‘The $100,000,' said Joe, seeing it then. ‘But how in the hell did this guy know about the money?'

‘We're not sure.'

‘You think he was trying to rip her off?'

‘One hundred grand is a motive for murder in anyone's language, Joe.'

Joe nodded – but his nod soon turned into a shake. ‘Hold on a moment, four texts coupled with Kincaid's five – and I'm gathering Kincaid's texts were also garbled?'

Sara nodded.

‘Okay,' said Joe. ‘So what's to say all the messages weren't from Kincaid and he simply used another cell to send them?'

‘We don't think so,' said David. ‘For two reasons.' He moved to the far corner of Joe's office, before lifting up two fingers, so he could count them off. ‘First up, it's the $100,000.'

‘But from what you told me, Marilyn Maloney blamed Kincaid for the six-figure payoff.'

‘Yes, and to be honest, when I saw what Marilyn had written on that satchel, I blamed him too. But I don't think Chris knew about that money until after Marilyn's death.'

He could see Joe was not convinced.

‘I know it sounds crazy, Joe, but the whole concept of Chris using his cash to get rid of his girlfriend just doesn't sit right. Paying people off isn't Chris's style. His mother is a master at it, but Chris . . .' David shook his head.

‘But Maloney knew him well, and she saw fit to point the finger at him.'

‘True,' said David. ‘But I think that was just a consequence of the
timing. I believe somebody else tried to pay Marilyn off, and when Chris broke it off with her that morning, she assumed he was okay with the transaction – condoned it even.'

‘What does Kincaid have to say about the money?' asked Joe.

‘To be honest, we didn't really get a chance to talk about it before I walked out.' David took a breath. ‘But when I went to him to tell him I was quitting, I called him on the satchel and he swore to me that he knew nothing about the $100,000 and, in hindsight, I'm inclined to believe him.'

‘Oh come on, David,' said Joe. ‘You said it yourself – the guy was spinning lies faster than a carnival ride on the fourth of July.'