Skies of Ash (27 page)

“I gave Christopher
money
,” she shouted. “It was a
gift
. Is that against the law?”

I scribbled on my pad and then turned the pad to Colin.
Is she that mystery $100K?

“And it’s no one’s business anyway,” the woman continued. “And Ben Oliver is a sneaky motherfucker, and he’s done some awful,
awful
shit, and you need to be harassing
him
and poking around in
his
private business.” Then, she wept into the phone.

I offered lots of, “Ms. Kemper, please” and “Please, calm down.”

Finally, she took several deep breaths, sniffled, and hiccupped.

“Ms. Kemper,” I said.

“I have nothing else to say to you,
bitch
.”

And then dial tone—she had hung up on me.

“So?” I sat the receiver back into the cradle.

“I’ll book us a flight to Vegas later today,” Colin said, tapping on his keyboard, “and an economy sedan.”

“Perfect. Now, what number am I thinking?”

“Thirty.”

“Sixty-three.” I grabbed the phone and scanned a tacked-up list of my favorite ex-LAPD police officers.

“Who you callin’?” Colin asked.

“Gus Lebo,” I said. “Left us for Vegas a few months before you came.”

No answer.

“Hey, Gus. It’s Lou Norton. I’m working a case that’s leading me into your new territory. Me and my partner will fly in later today to talk to her. Name is Melissa Kemper. We’re just talkin’, but I wanted to give you a courtesy call cuz I’m courteous. Hope you’re well.”

I clicked into the public records database and typed “Melissa Kemper.” “She’s such a pleasant woman. Like a delicate orchid perched upon a single strand of silk.” Her driver’s license picture filled my computer screen.

The joker in drag (as Nora Galbreath had nicknamed Kemper so long ago, or so it seemed) lived in North Las Vegas, on 4821 Wisp o’ Willow Way, in a four-bedroom, two-bathroom house. She had no felonies, but she did have three outstanding parking tickets. Most important: no guns had been registered in her name.

“You think she’ll freak out on us?” Colin asked.

I stared at the woman’s driver’s license photograph. “If she does, then we’ll have friends who know we’re there.”

MY DESK PHONE CHIRPED AGAIN.

Colin covered his face with his hands. “The harpy’s back.”

“Nope. A plain, ole 323 area code.” I grabbed the receiver. “Lou Norton.”

“Sounds like your horse came through,” the male caller said.

“Mr. Benjamin Oliver,” I said. “So nice to hear your voice this morning.”

“Likewise. I’m down in the lobby, here for my formal interview where you make me sign forms and lock me into a story. May I come up?”

As we waited for the attorney, I took Colin’s elbow. “Do not mention the stolen boxes, understand? You mention those boxes, and that’s it for us.”

“I won’t, Lou.”

I held his gaze a moment more, then released him.

Three minutes later, Ben Oliver stood over my desk holding two coffee cups. He wore a frosted-gray suit tailored by Italian gods and black wingtips cobbled by Italian virgin she-elves.

“Hope one of those coffees is for me,” Colin said.

Ben regarded Colin as though he were a fallen leaf from a common tree. Then, he turned back to me. “I didn’t know if you took cream and sugar.” He offered me the cup in his right hand. “So, I said, ‘screw it,’ and told the girl to give me one of those caramel machi-whatever those are.”

I smiled at him. “You Irish this up like you did yesterday’s cider?”

Colin lifted an eyebrow. “Yesterday’s cider?”

Ben gasped, faking shock. “What type of man do you think I am?”

I knew what kind of man he was, and knowing that made me want to run my caramel macchiato through tox screening. Twice. “Shall we?”

Ben grinned. “Let’s.”

I headed down the hallway to interview room 3.

Ben turned to see that Colin was trailing us.

“Next time,” Colin fake whispered, “choose Italian. She likes shrimp scampi and Lambrusco.”

Interview room 3 smelled like stale popcorn and two-day-old mac and cheese left in a pot on a hot summer day. A rose garden compared with the stinks haunting the other two rooms.

“So,” Colin said, “what’s shakin’, Counselor?”

“Despite Detective Taggert’s inference,” Ben said to me, “I’m here on business. Juliet’s parents are flying in from Mississippi sometime today, and I wanted to talk with you both before they came… And before heading to arbitration proceedings with lawyers from MG Standard.”

I squinted at him.

He shook his head. “Unrelated to the Chatman case. I talked with Christopher before coming here. He believes he may have come off as a jerk last night.”

“These are extraordinary circumstances,” I said.

Ben tapped the lid of his cup. “Guess there’s no right way to act in situations such as this.”

Colin chuckled. “The hell there is.”

I gave my partner the eye.
Not now.
Because there
were
correct ways and less correct ways to act. But I wouldn’t share that knowledge with Ben or anyone under investigation.

The attorney stared at Colin, curious about those mysterious ways. Then, he tore his eyes away from my partner to meet mine. “Did Christopher answer all of your questions?”

Colin placed his hands behind his head. “In other words, are we finished investigating him?”

Ben waited for my response.

I cocked my head but didn’t speak.

Ben sighed. “Don’t do that, Elouise.”

I gaped at him. “Don’t do what, Benjamin?”

“Act as though my question is more than what it is. If you were an auto mechanic and I were your customer, and I asked if my car was ready, that doesn’t mean that I thought you were being indolent on the job. Sometimes a lollipop is just a lollipop.”

“Sometimes, it is,” I conceded. “And to answer your ‘just a question,’ no, we’re not finished talking to Mr. Chatman. We have a few more items to cross off the list.”

“Like finding out whose blood that is in his car?” Ben asked.

“For instance,” I said.

“Seems a little… plethoric, wouldn’t you say? To serve a warrant on a man who just lost his family to a fire? Asking him for spit? Blood?
Pubic hair? Really?
”

“And when would be the right time?” Colin asked. “A month from now? A year?”

Ben kept his gaze trained on me. “We’ve had this discussion, haven’t we?”

I gave him a one-shouldered shrug. “And by me having DNA from Mr. Chatman, we may find out that the blood does
not
belong to him, and
that
knowledge may point me in the direction of someone else, thus further expanding my list of suspects. Correct?” I leaned forward in my chair. “Why don’t you want him to cooperate with my very simple request?”

“Very simple…?” He shook his head in disbelief. “First, I didn’t tell him to not cooperate. He’ll do what you’ve asked of him. Second, do you want to know why I’m about to have this meeting with three jackasses from MG Standard?”

“I’m sure you’ll tell us,” Colin said, smirking.

“Last year,” Ben continued, “my client’s son—a twenty-four-year-old private in the U.S. Army—was killed by a car bomb in Afghanistan. A week later, his mother, my client, received a letter from MG Standard saying that William’s insurance-policy payout had been put into an interest-bearing account. They included a checkbook that was linked to that account. But my client didn’t touch the money right then—she’d just lost her son, and she couldn’t even think about spending what he had left her.

“Last month, she finally decided to spend from the account, and she sent a check to Macy’s to pay off a credit card. She wrote a check from her dead son’s so-called interest-bearing account, and guess what? The check
bounced
.”

The smirk on Colin’s face vanished.

“William’s four-hundred-thousand-dollar payout wasn’t sitting in the bank,” Ben explained. “His four hundred thousand was sitting in MG Standard’s corporate account, earning interest for the
company
but not for the family of Private First Class and now deceased William Ramos. And the money still isn’t in the kid’s account. Where the hell is that money, and why hasn’t the family received it yet?”

Colin cleared his throat, then said, “We can’t speak to that. I mean, we don’t know—”

“The protean schemes of insurance companies,” Ben completed with a nod. “And I don’t expect you to—that’s
my
job. I’m only sharing this with you both so that next time, when I ask about the status of the investigation involving this perfidious insurance company, you don’t regard
me
as the villain. I’m more of the guard dog.”

“But again,” I said, “
you
called MG Standard on the morning of the fire. We didn’t.”

“Indeed,” Ben said with a nod. “Again: I know how they treat their customers. Better to do it when the situation’s just happened.”

“So what are you gettin’ out of this?” Colin asked. “Being the guard dog?”

“Nothing,” Ben said, glancing at his wristwatch. “I am not engaging in sleight of hand. I’m not a beneficiary on the home policy, nor am I on Juliet’s life policies.”

“You know about Juliet’s policies?” Colin asked.

“I helped her select them.”

“We’re only going where the evidence points us,” I said.

“You sure about that?” Ben tossed his empty cup into the wastebasket in the corner of the room. “I have no dog in this fight, Detective Norton. It is axiomatic that I want my friend to heal
and
to have access to resources that will help him do that. It is also axiomatic that we need your help for him to receive those resources.”

“So when will Mr. Chatman be available for DNA?” I asked. “As I told him, we can come to him, anytime.”

Ben shrugged. “I’ll talk with him today. Don’t worry—you’ll get your precious swab of spit.” Then, he rubbed his hands together. “Now, should I give a formal statement of what I know about this unfortunate situation?”

Colin waved. “You’ll be working with me on that.”

Ben’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Exciting for you.” Then, he turned to me and his smile broadened and his eyes crinkled. He offered me his hand. “Detective Norton, always a pleasure.”

I took his hand into my smaller one.

He squeezed my hand. “Thanks for taking time out to talk.”

“And thanks again for the coffee,” I said, even though I had yet to take a sip.

He ran his thumb across my thumb. “No problem.” He squeezed again and let me go.

SOMETIMES A LOLLIPOP IS JUST A LOLLIPOP.

You always see drama where there ain’t none.

Sure, sometimes I needed to mute the voices in my head and ignore my tingling Spidey senses. Those times, however, were few and far between. I had a job to do—uncovering the truth, even if that kept Christopher Chatman from “moving on” with his precious “resources.”

Colin wandered back to the squad room and found me at my desk. “So he came all this way to bring you coffee and sign a form?”

“Scalawags and insurance attorneys kiss the ground I walk on.”

The red voice-mail light on my phone was blinking. Gus Lebo’s deep voice—southern minister meets numbers runner—boomed over my speaker. A lot of “honey,” “pleased,” and “crazy-ass broads” in his “thanks for givin’ me a head’s up” message.

I kept the phone to my ear and dialed Greg’s cell.

He picked up on the third ring. “Didn’t think I’d hear from you today,” he shouted over the clatter of kitchen sounds.

“Phones work both ways,” I said. “It’s loud in your world. Where are you?”

“Grabbing food for everybody,” he said. “Long day.”

A female giggled in the background.

The hair on my body bristled. “So I have to fly to Vegas.”

Silence. Then: “When?”

“This afternoon, but we will—”

“We?”

“
We
will be back after we finish the interview.”

Silence. Then: “Hunh.”

“What does ‘hunh’ mean?”

“Friday night in Vegas,” he said. “Convenient.”

I closed my eyes. “It’s a Friday
afternoon
in
North
Las Vegas. Big difference.”

“Whatever, Lou. So you’ll be back tonight—unless Taggert has another bright idea to interview this person tomorrow morning?”

“Of course,” I snapped. “Lena’s recital is tonight, and I can’t miss it. So good-bye, and tell whoever the hell is with you to stop laughing so much. She sounds like a hyena.”

Back to work.

I grabbed the manila envelope that had been left beneath my Christmas tree and emptied it onto my desk. Copies of checks… more copies of checks… a crumpled wire-transfer receipt with the print almost faded.

The first check copy came from the account of Vandervelde, Lansing & Gray. Dated April 9, the check had been made payable to Peggy Tanner for $10,103.96. It had been endorsed by Ms. Tanner and then deposited into Pacific Western Bank in Thousand Oaks.

Peggy Tanner…

I rolled my chair over to the filing cabinet and pulled off the top of a box marked
CC HOME OFFICE
. After a few seconds of browsing through the contents, I found that prospectus prepared by Christopher Chatman for Peggy Tanner.

Dot connected.

The warmth of satisfaction rolled over me, but I didn’t linger in it.

Back to the Christmas-gift envelope.

The next check copy, dated July 12, had also come from Vandervelde, Lansing & Gray. Payable to Sol Y. Hirsch for $7,997.41. Endorsed by Sol Hirsch in big loopy letters and deposited into Pacific Western Bank.

Pacific Western…
Christopher Chatman had an account at Pacific Western.

Another dot.

I picked up a wire-transfer receipt and peered at ghost print.
Banco… Central de… Venezuela.
A transfer of $107,500 from L.O.K.I. Consulting Services on September 20.

“Hey,” I said, calling out to Colin, “these docs you pulled. Where’d you find all of this? In the boxes we grabbed from the storage unit?”

Colin blinked at me. “Guh?”