T. Lynn Ocean - Jersey Barnes 03 - Southern Peril (13 page)

“You’re Karen, right?” I said before she could hang up.

Hesitation. “Yes.”

“Well, I’ve got a delivery for you. The sender is Argo’s. Isn’t that a restaurant? Anyway, it’s a gift basket. I spilled a soda on my delivery sheet clipboard and half the addresses are smeared. Will you confirm your address, so I can get on with my route?”

She did’nt say anything.

“Look, I don’t care one way or the other. I’m just a driver. I can take it back to the store and they’ll make the calls and it’llgo out again tomorrow. But if there’s perishable food in there, it could go bad.”

She gave me an address. “Leave it on the front porch, please.”

“You got it.”

My Garmin navigation system directed me to a gated neighborhood with sprawling brick homes and lots of professionally landscaped lawns. I told the gate guard that I was making a delivery.

“Of a body?”

I’ve gotten so accustomed to tooling around in the corpse caddy that I sometimes forget what I’m driving. “Nope, not a body. Just a gift basket.” I sat up straighter and turned toward the window to give him a better shot of cleavage. “The hearse makes a perfect delivery vehicle. Lots of room in the back. Of course, we’re going to repaint it a bright yellow and put the store logos on there.”

He waved me through without bothering to check inside the back of the wagon. Lucky me. I parked in a cul-de-sac in front of a home under construction and hiked three blocks to Karen’s house. A two-story contemporary, it had a circular drive lined with flowering bushes. A yard crew of three crouched in the hedges, spreading
mulch and trimming and weeding. I waved and followed a brick pathway to the rear. A woman sat on the covered patio, reading a paperback. A half-empty frozen drink was on the table beside her, next to a cell phone.

“Karen?”

She looked up with a start. “Yes?”

She wore a cloth visor—the expensive kind with a designer logo stitched on the bill. Her face was smooth and flawless, and her hair was pinned up in a twist. Manicured fingers and toes. Gold earrings. Casual skirt and top-quality sandals. Store-bought boobs, about the same size as mine. Giant rock on the ring finger.

“My name is Jersey. May I sit and talk with you for a moment?”

She put down the book. “Your voice sounds familiar. You just called, didn’t you? About a delivery.”

“Guilty,” I said. “I lied. There’s no delivery.”

“What do you want?” She picked up the cell phone, ready to dial someone. A neighbor. Or the police, maybe.

I helped myself to a chair and propped my elbows on the table so she could see my hands. Friendly, nonthreatening. “I just want to talk, Karen. I want to know about the special items you’ve gotten at Argo’s. You know, the ones that come in pill form and aren’t on the menu?”

Her posture went rigid. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I’d like you to leave. You’re trespassing.”

I studied her melting drink. It looked like a margarita. “Here’s the thing, Karen. You can either talk to me, right now, a simple chat. Or you can talk to the DEA agents when I bring them back here with a warrant to search your house. Imagine what the neighbors will say. Not to mention your husband. What’s he going to think when he gets home from work to find the law crawling through his belongings?”

She went to an outdoor summer kitchen, rummaged in a drawer,
and returned with a pack of cigarettes. She lit one with shaky hands and inhaled deeply. “Who are you?”

Somebody helping out a friend, I told her. Not a cop. But there would be troubles for her, I said, if she chose not to help me. She chugged her drink and stubbed out the barely smoked cigarette into a wet napkin. After a beat, she lit a fresh one. Probably a closet smoker, I guessed, since she didn’t have an ashtray and stashed her nicotine sticks in a drawer next to the gas grill.

She exhaled a stream of smoke. “What do you want to know?”

“I already know that you were illegally buying drugs,” I lied, “but I need the details. Not only what you’re using, but what else is available.” I’d learned long ago to let the person I’m questioning think that I knew much more than I did. If I backed up my approach with the right attitude, a guilty person’s imagination often went into overdrive. Fortunately for me, it worked with Karen, and I caught a glimpse of fear as her mind fast-forwarded through all sorts of potential repercussions.

“I’m not
using
anything,” she finally said. “You must think I’m a druggie or something.”

I did a hands-out gesture. “Hey, I’m not here to judge you. I’m after information. Your personal life is your business.”

She inhaled, sighed out the smoke. “My father-in-law, Daniel, passed away recently. Before he died, he was housebound. Confused and angry. Liked to throw things. On oxygen and insulin, among other things. Wouldn’t take a bath. Going deaf and blind.” She flicked cigarette ash into the makeshift ashtray. “My husband refused to put his father in a nursing home. Instead, he hired a private nurse to help me out.” She spat out a laugh. “Problem is, the nurses would never stay because they couldn’t handle Daniel. My maid wouldn’t even clean his room anymore after he threw a lamp at her. So guess who got stuck doing everything?”

“You,” I answered, because it was what she was waiting for.

“Exactly. Me. I had to sedate the man to brush his teeth and clean him up and give him his shots every day. Oh, the nurses would come and go. But who was tied down to this damn house as a caretaker? Me, while my husband headed off to work each morning for his important meetings and power lunches. I couldn’t deal with it. I started taking the old man’s medications, to cope.”

“So you were sedating yourself, too, so to speak.”

She nodded. A woman—presumably the maid—came out of the house to ask Karen if she wanted a drink refill. Karen did, then asked me if I wanted anything. I declined. The maid returned in an instant with a fresh, full glass and left with a promise not to tell “the mister” that Karen was smoking again.

“Yes, I suppose I was sedating myself to keep from shooting myself. Or Daniel.”

“Why didn’t you go to your family doctor and ask for a prescription?”

She laughed. “There’s a limit to what you can talk a doctor into giving you. It was easier to take Daniel’s drugs. Pain pills and sleeping pills, mostly. And sedatives. When a patient is as bad off as my father-in-law was, the doctors keep the prescriptions coming. Anything I asked for. All in the name of keeping him comfortable while everyone waited for him to die.”

Karen’s backyard was spacious and loaded with creatively placed garden beds. The faint sound of a pump drew my attention to an in-ground hot tub surrounded by teakwood chairs. The lawn crew appeared and went to work with hand trimmers.

“Then he died,” I said.

“Yes.”

“And you lost your supply of prescription drugs,” I said.

She nodded. “I thought my life would get better. That I wouldn’t need the pills anymore.”

I waited.

“Things didn’t get better. I found out that while I was stuck at home caring for his father, my husband was in Puerto Rico with one of his clients.”

“Business?”

“Apparently more pleasure than business. They shared a hotel room.”

“That had to hurt,” I offered.

She eyed the cigarette pack, decided against a third. “He’s had affairs before. But not since he brought his father into our home. I was so angry, I couldn’t stand to look at him.”

I asked Karen how she discovered Argo’s.

“I had a massive migraine one day, at the hair salon, when I was getting my color done. A woman in the next chair offered me a Vicodin. We ended up having lunch together and I told her all about my jerk of a husband and we got to bitching about men in general and she told me about the network.”

“Network?”

“That’s what she called it. The network. Theresa told me to buy one of those cell phones that are preloaded with minutes? So we bought one at a convenience store after lunch and I gave her the phone number. A few hours later, a guy called me. He gave me a phone number to call whenever I needed ‘party supplies.’ Anyway, I’d call the number and tell them what I wanted. Then they’d call back, tell me how much money, and when and where to go to pick the stuff up.”

“There were other places besides Argo’s?”

Karen went to Argo’s only twice, she said. There were other local restaurants. Once, the pickup place was a coffee bar, where she was supposed to enter the drive-through at precisely one o’clock in the afternoon. When she asked for a latte with seven shots of vanilla
and put three one-hundred-dollar bills in the tip jar, the barista handed over a bottle of amphetamines, complete with a label detailing usage instructions. And as far as the choices, Karen told me, the network had whatever she wanted. She didn’t even have to name a specific drug. She could say she was feeling tired and depressed, and the person on the other end said they’d take care of it. Prior to completing an outpatient rehab program—she’d told her husband it was a photography course—Karen had purchased a variety of painkillers, sedatives, and uppers. She would swallow an amphetamine with her morning coffee and toast, pop a few painkillers during the day, and take a sedative to help her sleep at night.

A worker appeared to ask Karen if she wanted the hedges around the hot tub trimmed.

“Sí,”
she told him, and finished her second drink. At least it was the second since I’d been there.

“Who did you ask for when you went to Argo’s?”

She removed the visor and rubbed her eyes. “Started with an ‘R.’ Rose, I think. That was a long time ago. She was blond, I remember. Really pretty. I made reservations for me and my husband at the designated time. We ate dinner. Before we left, she met me in the bathroom and gave me the stuff. Anyway, she’s not there anymore. I ate at Argo’s a few months back with friends and, just out of curiosity, asked about her. They said she died.”

“Rosemary?”

Karen nodded. “That was it. Not Rose. Her name was Rosemary.”

We watched the young men in the yard. Each wore wide-brimmed hats, and although the day’s air was pleasant and tinged with a Confederate jasmine-scented breeze, their shirts clung to their torsos. And they didn’t look as though they were enjoying the smell of the blooms.

“What is the network phone number?”

“I’m not using the network anymore. I do outpatient rehab visits, and I’m working on getting sober. I threw out the most recent number. Besides, it would have been changed by now anyway. It changed all the time.”

“When you used to call the network, who did you talk to?”

“I would talk to whoever answered the phone. They never gave a name. And the people changed, at least by the sound of their voices.”

“So you would call the designated phone number. You never got the name of who you were talking to, but they would tell you who to ask for at the pickup location.”

A leaf blower fired up, but Karen didn’t offer to take me inside. “One place I went,” she said loudly, “they told me to sit at the bar and that either bartender could help me. At Argo’s, of course, you can’t get in without a reservation. So I had to call in advance and make a dinner reservation, then see the hostess lady.”

Karen waved at the yard crew, mimicked putting her hands over her ears. The leaf blower stopped. “I don’t know how you got my name,” she said, “but I don’t use the network any longer. And I really would like for you to leave now.”

I nodded, stood. I’d gotten more than I’d hoped for. But not enough. “Are you still friends with Theresa?”

“I never saw her again.”

“The name of your hair salon?” I pushed.

She stood with crossed arms. “CC’s Hair Boutique. Please go.”

I waved when the gate guard did a double take at my exiting corpse caddy. Long gift basket delivery, he probably thought.

On a roll, I tried the second phone number on my list, only to learn that it connected to nothing except a service provider error message. Bad number.

I chugged a bottle of water and tried curtain number three. Its
owner, Pat, hung up on me when I told her I had a delivery. I dialed again. “Don’t hang up on me, lady. I’m just the driver and I have a network delivery for you. I need an address.”

“That’s not the way it’s done,” she said. “I’ve already been given instructions.”

“Yeah, well, things change. People get fired. People quit. Your pickup location is no longer valid, so they’re having me make deliveries today.” I laughed. “Hey, you ought to appreciate the special service. No extra charge.”

The line remained silent.

“You want the stuff or not? Makes no difference to me.”

“Not at my house,” she said after a beat.

“Fine, pick a restaurant.”

“Boca Bay on Eastwood?” she asked. I knew the restaurant and, based on the selection, guessed that she probably lived in Wrightsville Beach. It was close to her home, but not too close. And a relatively upscale, busy place. Lots of tourists.

“Sure,” I agreed. “I’ll be at the bar. I’m wearing a red tank top and tan jacket. And be there in half an hour. I’ve got four deliveries after you.”

Boca
Bay is a basic seafood and pasta restaurant with great Mediterranean dishes, fresh sushi, and a unique tapas menu. I sat at the bar and ordered some Spanish brochettas and a Beck’s Light. A lone woman slid into a bar stool right on time, to my right, leaving an empty stool between us.

“You Pat?” I said.

Frowning, she nodded yes and slid a pack of Dentyne Ice chewing gum my way. It was the kind of gum sealed in a blister pack, and I could see folded bills stuck between the chewing gum and cardboard wrapper. “I’m in a hurry.”

The bartender appeared. “My friend will have a glass of wine.” I looked at Pat. “White okay?” She looked like a Chardonnay kind of woman. Late forties, maybe fifty. Different color hair and plumper build than Karen, but the same designer labels, manicured fingers, pampered skin, and expensive jewelry. Sizable emerald-cut rock on her ring finger. Another well-kept, upper-class druggie.

“I told you I’m in a hurry,” she said when the bartender moved away to pour her wine. “Give me my stuff.”