Lethal Trust Read online

  Stacie angled her thick torso away from the table and shifted her head as her eyes diverted to the floor. No way was that bitch gonna move in on the game. Seth was dead wrong.

  At the sound of the doorbell, Stacie lifted up off of her chair, shrugged her shoulders, and with slow steps she moved to answer it.

  “Mother. It’s not a good time,” Stacie said.

  Claudia pushed the door further open and stormed toward the kitchen. “Seth. I thought I’d find you here. The question is, why?”

  “No offense, but I’m part of the family, last time I looked at our family tree. Stacie and I had an opportunity to hang out together. So, my question is why are you so hot and bothered?”

  Claudia huffed. She stared down at her Stuart Weitzman shoes, and then raised her head in full composure. “A mother worries about her daughter. I’m sorry for the outburst.”

  “Claudia, you know I’m happily married. It’s nothing like that.”

  “No, of course not,” Stacie added.

  Taking a seat at the head of the table, Claudia asked for a wine glass. She handled the opened bottle, now almost empty. “Do you have another? Maybe one with a bit more hint of oak?

  “And what the hell is that smell?” she asked.

  Stacie pulled a bottle of Cabernet out of her rack, passed it to Seth to open, and walked over to close the French doors. “Mother, I have animals. Lots and lots of animals, and they tend to stink. Next time let me know when you’re coming and I’ll have it smelling like lavender and mint in here. Your turn. Why are you here?”

  “Can’t a mother enjoy time with her daughter?”

  “Not when the mother has never come over unannounced. But while I have your attention, I don’t think your interior designer did us a favor with these fine rattan chairs imported from the islands.”

  Claudia cocked her head to one side and saw the lifting ends of the woven material. She caught the dribble of red wine from the corner of her mouth and changed the subject. “You’re right. It’s not about you two. It’s about your sister.”

  “Taylor?” Seth and Stacie said in unison.

  Claudia’s back stiffened. “She’s convinced someone has been in her home and yet she refuses to put in a monitoring system. Her two cats are missing. She tells me several pairs of her panties are missing.”

  With that, Seth had to let out a snort. “Claudia, it’s no secret that your daughter’s panties are scattered across all of southern Arizona.”

  With her eyes squeezed shut, Claudia said, “I thought you said we are all family, Seth.”

  Seth moved his hand to clasp hers. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Has she contacted the police?”

  Stacie laughed. “You’ve been gone too long. New family rule. No police unless it’s a true emergency, and I don’t think missing cats and panties qualify. Two deaths didn’t qualify for any serious inquiries.”

  “I’ll call her in the morning,” Stacie said.

  Claudia reached into her clutch purse and retrieved a pill box. She opened it up, pulled out two white pills, and chased them down with her wine.

  “Seriously? Right in front of us, Claudia?”

  “I’ve nothing to hide. I have a damn prescription,” she said while thrusting her arms above her head. She missed her mark in the air, sending her crystal glass careening to the floor.

  Without an apology, Claudia snagged her clutch and her keys.

  “I’ve said what I came to say. You two have a good evening, and stay in touch with Taylor.”

  “Mother, we’ll call you a cab.”

  “Nonsense.”

  When the door slammed shut Stacie scooted her chair back and crossed her hands in her lap. “Man, was that weird or what?”

  “Cut her some slack. She’s lost her husband and two children,” Seth said.

  “Yeah, and I get that she might need an antidepressant and maybe a sleeping pill, but what the hell is she taking the opiates for, if that’s even what they were? She’s been taking them forever, but I’ve never seen her take two with wine.”

  On her knees, Stacie swept the shattered glass into a pan as Seth went to grab a dish towel to soak up the wine. That’s when she saw Seth’s wallet under the chair. She slipped it beneath the chair cushion.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  I HAD SEVERAL OTHER CASES in progress. Most assignments were typical. Cheating spouses. Criminal intent. A couple cases of forgery. My part-time shadow, Carson, loved working all of them, but especially the cheating spouse. A divorced woman with three young children, she always had a mission to get the assholes, have them fall down hard and cold, and that included the growing list of cheating wives. All of those cases tended to bore me, but I took each one seriously. I enjoyed a growing accomplished staff that handled the bulk of these.

  I took a call on such a case I didn’t turn down because of additional possible felony implications.

  Now I found myself in a precarious situation. Barely after midnight. I squirmed to find my cell phone without room or ease for much bodily movement.

  “Schlep. Help!”

  “I always have your back but you’ll owe me overtime. What’s up?”

  “I think I’m screwed.”

  “I was heading that way until you called.”

  “Okay, lover boy. This is serious. This is my panicky voice because I’m panicking. I’m inside the home on Diamante Street. Remember our new client?”

  “Sure. Domestic case with looming possible crimes. Carson’s on vacation. As is often the case in this town, some loose connection to the Childs’ family. Connected by copious amounts of money. If I remember you took the case and the maid died in front of—”

  “Stop! Help me, here! My sources said I could enter the home through the doggy door. I’m in the kitchen and there’s this huge canine slobbering all over me.”

  “I guess it’s not a guard dog. Are you serious? Your antics can be annoying, Cassie,” he audibly yawned.

  “I’m in the house on a hard Saltillo tile floor with dog saliva all over my face. I thought my concern might be the damn dog but now I’m staring at three red lights blinking on an alarm panel.”

  “Gotcha. Do you know which alarm company?”

  “One with a lot of fancy flashing lights and likely a silent alarm.” I reached for my phone, slowly, and gave him the name of the company.

  “Might be you’ll have to do a meet and greet with our fine officers, but hold on.”

  I could hear him touching the keys on his computer within seconds.

  “What do you see?” he asked.

  “Steady green,” I sighed.

  “You need to stick around just in case I didn’t intervene in time. Meanwhile, get the hell up off of that floor and do what you broke into that house to do. Motion detectors are disarmed. No silent alarm. No alarms to the garage but don’t open the overhead. There’re cameras out there. And, you owe me one.”

  I had already made it to the bottom of the favored private investigators list by our new chief of police. Things couldn’t get much worse but I would have rather not spent the night in the pokey.

  “Thanks, Schlep, and you’re right. I owe you.”

  God, I deplored cheating spouse cases. This time the wife was in Seattle and told me I could get into their home that night up until three in the morning while her husband played poker on his regular night. She’d received the cheating spouse’s tell-tell card in the mail. A post card from a nearby mid-range motel known for equally mid-range prostitutes arrived, addressed to her husband. The motel card read something about a discount for his next overnight stay. She had never stayed there.

  And, the case intrigued me. I always remember Tucson hinges between being a big town and a small city. Hell. New York City is small when it comes to its private circles. The alleged cheater was the same asshole that had burst into my office to keep me out of his company affairs. Bill Michaels. The general manager of the Tucson Scorpions.

  I found what I had been sent to sear
ch for in the garage occupied by two Harleys. Both bikes had touring bags on the rear, a small sailboat, unorganized boxes and an organized workbench. First, I headed toward the bags. The smaller bike’s bag held a silk scarf, a pair of women’s riding gloves, dark coral blush, scented hair gel and a brush with long black hairs. The crumpled paper was a folded map of old graveyards in New Mexico. These were the riding necessities of my client. I knew she had grown up in Gallop, and she had a dark complexion with long black hair.

  The second bag held the male version of riding gear. A kerchief. A large pair of riding gloves. Three cigars and a box of matches.

  I moved toward the tidy workbench and the husband’s tool chest which I opened gingerly as if it were a Fabergé egg. The regular crap lay inside. Pliers, screwdrivers, and thingamajigs. Not so obvious was the small black woven cord that peeked out from under the tray lining.

  Lifting up the bottom sheet of metal, I pulled out a black velvet pouch and retrieved its contents. The black braided leather with silver beads showed no signs of wear. The set of keys all look like house keys. I’d left my tin of modeling clay in the car so I couldn’t get imprints and returned the keys, along with the bracelet, to the velvet pouch. The crisp linen handkerchief had been folded immaculately. I unwrapped it to discover the red stain of smacking red lips. The white tissue paper, also neatly folded, revealed six photographs.

  I grabbed my light with the built-in magnifier. The photos were of a fat baldy man I knew to be the husband, and each photo featured different drop-dead gorgeous babes. One photographed captured the couple on the Vegas strip. Another photo, another woman, clearly portrayed Aspen as their destination, while others evidenced trips to the London Bridge, the Space Needle, somewhere in the tropics, and somewhere in the desert on a motorcycle ride. The man appeared to be lining the women up like a polygamist-in-waiting.

  One of the photos showed two men. The husband of interest stood next to a guy wearing mirrored aviator glasses. I focused on the second man. Something about him seemed familiar.

  Even if he scored big at the poker table that night, this cheater was not going to win in divorce court. I had enough photos of the jerk with beautiful babes globetrotting to nail him.

  As a normal procedure, I took photos of the photos, wrapped them back up in the tissue, and put the incriminating photographs back exactly in the place where I had removed them from the tool chest.

  I AGAIN QUESTIONED my deep involvement with Stacie Childs but it beat crawling through a doggy door. Two accidental deaths within a family are not uncommon. Shit happens. My grandmother used to preach to me that bad things came in threes. If one plane went down, that was fact, but if two planes went down in succession there would be a third. I started paying attention to her belief. Damn. That Slavic woman was right.

  I reviewed Schlep’s report on the hierarchy of the NFL’s Tucson Scorpions. I had no idea that all teams in all divisions operated in different ways in terms of responsibilities and duties.

  The head coach for the Scorpions reported to the general manager, who in turn reported directly to the owner, Paul Childs. It was unclear as to who controlled the game day roster, salary cap negotiations, roster, and day to day operations. It seemed that this gray area involved a lot of movement in the power structure. Maybe because they were a new team.

  I made notes regarding the fact I had already met the team’s highest standing employee, the not-so-charming general manager, Bill Michaels. I didn’t realize that this dickhead was in charge of the hiring and firing of the entire coaching staff and team. This must have fueled his sense of supremacy, but I doubted it grounded his loyalties. Schlep, still busy conducting his own background investigation on the man, offered me teasers into his personal life. Loser. Went straight home after work. Six months ago he abruptly left his church of over ten years, which appeared to have been his only social activity outside of his job. I summed up his attitude as being that of having a Napoleon complex, at least when at work.

  The man appeared to be clever in his conquests. Schlep found no credit card, no receipts, no one saw or knew anything, and you gotta know he was paying for these women. The people around him considered him the everyday accountant dweeb.

  It appeared that his sudden performance as a cheating spouse might be new. And dweebs make for good wallflowers. What triggered it?

  My thoughts returned to Stacie. She paid me handsomely, but I needed to know if she was playing me. For now, I had plenty of other avenues to pursue.

  I felt it.

  When I really feel it my bones go cold, even in the desert.

  I drew myself a steaming bath and held my arms tight across my chest with three white candles lit and a cup of hot chamomile tea at my side.

  This much I knew. The trust was rock solid. I’d read through it twenty times. Breecie, a dozen. But, what would be workarounds?

  It was the most heartless family trust I’d ever seen. A lethal trust.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  THE FAR SOUTH SIDE OF TUCSON hosted the best of authentic Mexican restaurants, vivid culture, lively gatherings that often turned into all night festivals, and drive-by-shootings, gang rapes, and drugs. While an adventurous tourist might enjoy the colorful flavors of this community by day, at night they best head back to their hotel rooms across town.

  Muratore still looked and felt green, although he’d awakened in a stupor more than once in a dingy home full of strangers all sprawled out in any corner they could find on the dark south side. He looked down at a pile of his own vomit and decided the time had come to get up and try and find his way back home.

  That was the thing he didn’t get. His two worlds. The same insidious drugs he now called his friends were the same drugs he saw in his neighborhood on the other side of the street lined with pricey houses. Just maybe, a bit more discreetly delivered and consumed. Somehow he was able to meander in and out of both of those existences.

  He had never expected this to be his life. He held the title of class nerd, from all high school accounts. The kid most likely to continue to be a nerd. He knew it. He didn’t mind being labeled.

  He grabbed the key fob tucked neatly into the front top zipper of his cargo pants, intent on not hearing the vacuum noise that was running through his brain. Or ears. Or somewhere. He needed a fix. Bad.

  After dropping to the curb, he remembered. He’d left his car at an upscale club in midtown.

  He called his brother. His brother wouldn’t come but would send a cab or an unwary Uber driver to collect him and deliver him back to his home.

  Stacie

  NEXT UP ON MY LIST was to do a cursory background check on Stacie, herself. It sucks, but it’s a part of my job. She hired me, but I had to understand her agenda. My instincts told me I needed more from her.

  Stacie may or may not be a player in this game. So, why did she contact me? Perhaps she truly did fear for her life.

  She had been the star; the flyer at the top of the cheerleading pyramid. She was the one balancing upon all of the other girls’ shoulders.

  With a killer body at the time and feminine presence, her self-esteem seemed to be hanging on to a roller-coaster. One day she’d appear assertive, and the next time I’d see a willow of shyness. She would be dressed to the nines or in sweats with no makeup. Odd that her confidence level was independent of her choice in wardrobe, I thought. She could be brazen in either corporate room heels or old sweats.

  She demonstrated smarts. She graduated from the University of Arizona with a BA in anthropology. Not odd, living in southwestern Arizona as there’s plenty of history here with buried cultures, secretive rituals to be discovered, and both historic and current legends. I took the legends seriously. Maybe we had that in common.

  She asked me again if I was psychic. I was psychic enough to know that she had the gift. Undeveloped, but she felt things others glossed over. I replied that I had the gift of paragnosis, but I had no control over it. It came and went. I didn’t tell her it seemed to
be real iffy at the moment.

  “Most good private eyes and detectives have some sense of strong intuitions,” I reminded her, trying to table the discussion.

  Stacie Childs had no police records. Not even a traffic ticket. She had a string of romantic interludes but nothing that lasted over a few months. Her entertainment came from a group of friends that loved crafting. They would learn to crochet and knit together. They’d make decorative vases and pots out of discarded cans and jars. While exploring weaving some stuck to the basics while others went on toward investing the time to create large rugs and blankets.

  She had no means of income beyond her father’s monthly gifts that were generous if not exceptional.

  As if she knew what I was up to behind my desk at the office, I received the text. Stacie Childs wrote that she would be revoking our agreement and all representation by me with the one exception that she wanted bodyguards, 24-7.

  By the time I arrived home and rechecked my text messages, Stacie had done a 360 degree change of mind and wanted me to continue to work for her, but no bodyguards except for when specifically requested.

  No problem but that my mind went bonkers. Why the huge swing in her wants and needs of my services? The last time I saw her she wore a dour face. Now, with the last text that in effect rehired me, she attached an emoji of a smiley face donning sunglasses.

  MY PERSONAL LIFE NEEDED a boost and that boost would be arriving soon. Marcos Julian and I were an item. When we could be. My hours were crazy and my man Marcos, now an international investigative reporter and on assignment in Israel, made me feel like a slacker. His last text said that he would be back in Tucson at the end of the months for five days. Then he’d be off to Morocco.

  Five days of erotic sex and exotic meals and hypnotic cocktails with Marcos suited me well. I guess some would call our lifestyle alternative. I considered it perfect. We were two busy professionals with a voracious appetite for being entangled around each other’s legs. Kundalini yoga knew none of our positions.