Chapter 15 #2
She made a noncommittal hmm. “You and a friend?” By the way she asked, she knew about Asher.
“He’s a bodyguard who’s getting me safely back to Maine, where I live. You’re on speaker, and he’s listening.”
“His name?”
Seated in the hard-back chair, Asher gave her a go-ahead nod, so she said, “Asher Rhodes. He works for GBPA out of Boston.”
“You always travel with bodyguards?”
“No. I just said he was hired—”
“Why did you think you needed a bodyguard?”
“Because I witnessed a murder.” Cici kept her voice level, though her blood pressure shot higher than the cabin’s low ceiling.
Asher leaned forward, eyebrows hiked.
She guessed he wanted to say something. “Go ahead,” she said.
“Detective Harris, I was hired Friday afternoon by Forbes Ballentine to protect Cici and get her back to Maine. Do you want to know what we’ve learned or not?”
“Learned about what?”
“The men who killed Mr. Delvecchio and burned down his store.”
“Okay, shoot.” She sounded skeptical, but at least she was willing to listen.
Asher nodded to Cici.
She took a breath and began. “There were two men in the store Friday afternoon. We haven’t ID’d one, but the man who I think was in charge is named Wendall Gagnon.
He’s a majority shareholder in a tech company in Philadelphia.
” She shared how they’d gotten the information and what they knew about him, including his connection to Leo Taggart, one of the people who murdered Forbes’s parents.
“You’re saying what happened Friday night is related to the Ballentine murders?” Harris sounded as if she found their investigation amusing.
Cici stifled irritation and explained about the necklace.
“I was in the back room when Gagnon came in. He wanted to know if the other clerk was there—Mr. D’s niece.
He said his son had dealt with her earlier in the week.
Mr. D had already told me that the bag of stuff he wanted me to appraise—including the necklace—had been purchased by his niece.
I can only assume she bought it from Gagnon’s son. ”
“Which is why you wanted us to protect the niece,” Harris said.
“I explained all of this to the 911 operator.”
“Sometimes they don’t take great notes. I can listen to the call.”
Seemed she should already have done that, but what did Cici know about detective work?
“Did you?” Cici asked. “Protect his niece?”
“She was pretty distraught about her uncle. We recommended she get out of town. Far as I know, she did.”
“You need to make sure! She’s in danger.”
“So you said, Ms. Wright. We’re not a protection agency. All we can do is warn people. We can’t force them to do anything against their will.”
The police could’ve protected her. They could’ve put her in a safe house or something. Assuming they had safe houses.
“Tell me about this necklace,” Harris said.
Cici gave her the short version. “I took it and the whole bag of stuff the niece had bought.”
“You stole it?”
“If not, he’d have it, so you’re welcome. I’m giving the necklace and the rest of Grace Ballentine’s things to Forbes. Everything else, I’ll send back to you. I’m not a thief.”
The remark earned a long silence.
“What do you know about Wendall Gagnon?” Asher asked.
“Uh…” After a pause, she said, “Far as I can tell, he runs a legitimate business.”
“Not sure everyone in your department would agree with that. His name was forwarded to me when I asked for people in Philly with ties to organized crime.”
“I’ll look into it. And we’ll keep our eyes out for him.”
“He was in Massachusetts yesterday, tracking us,” Cici said. “Only by the grace of God did we escape.”
“Oh. Well…” Papers shuffled in the background. “I’ll do some digging. I can reach you at this number?”
“No,” Cici said. “If you need to reach us, contact my father, Gavin Wright. We should be at his house—”
“The Gavin Wright.” Harris sounded almost awed.
As if Dad were some sort of celebrity. “I guess.” She gave the detective her dad’s number. “We’ll be in touch.”
“Okay. Stay safe.” The detective ended the call.
“She’s not exactly a fount of knowledge,” Cici said.
“At least now she can focus on the actual killers and quit looking for you.”
“One less hound on our heels.”
He smiled, the expression transforming his face. He was gorgeous when he smiled.
“I need to check in with Alyssa.”
“Just change burners.” He handed her another one, then opened his laptop. “I’m going to connect to the hotspot and see if Bartlett has any more intel for us.”
Cici’s hands trembled, though the little gas fireplace had warmed the room considerably.
The cold didn’t have her shaking so much as the weight of it all, the realization that they weren’t close to the end of this, no matter how near they seemed to Shadow Cove.
Gagnon wasn’t going to quit searching for her until he was behind bars or dead.
She dialed Alyssa, again putting the phone on speaker. “Hey, sis. You’re on with Asher, too.”
“You two okay?”
“We’re fine. Just hiding from bad guys and bad storms.”
“I can’t wait to hear the whole story.”
“Did you learn anything?”
“You doubt me?” Her voice held a hint of humor. “You already ID’d Gagnon. The bald guy he was with outside the police station is Gustavo Souza, a low-level criminal out of New York City. He’s tied to a gang there.”
“Is there a connection between that gang and Gagnon?”
“I see no link between them.”
“Obviously, there is one, or between them personally.”
“Whatever it is, it’s not detailed on the internet, at least nowhere I’ve been able to find.”
“What’s the name of the gang?”
“They’re called the Fourth Hood. I guess they’re an offshoot of the Bloods.”
The Bloods? That was a real thing? The name alone was enough to give Cici the chills.
“There’s a guy running the Fourth Hood, Maxwell Pierce,” Alyssa continued. “According to a report, he’s a community activist, but the NYPD believes he’s dirty. No proof, though.”
Sounded a lot like Wendall Gagnon. “Can you dig into that leader? See if he’s connected to Gagnon?”
“Already on it,” Alyssa said. “Nothing yet, but I’ll keep looking.”
“You learn anything about Gagnon?”
“Yeah, lemme just…” Her voice faded. “Here we go. He grew up in Waterville, Maine, one of seven kids. Single mom. I guess the kids had a few different dads. She was on welfare, food stamps. Gagnon dropped out of school at sixteen and started working construction. Here’s something interesting.
He applied for a software patent when he was nineteen, some kind of cybersecurity.
” She made a little hmph sound. “Ahead of his time, it seems. He was denied, but obviously, he was tinkering with programming. Then he got arrested… Oh, in Shadow Cove.”
“We know about that. Check out the arresting officer.”
A pause, then, “Ah, I see. Our own Leonard Taggart, back before he was chief.”
“Before the murders,” Cici explained. “We think it’s how they got connected.”
“Gotcha. Okay, so after that… let’s see. He moves to Philly and starts a tech company at the tail end of the bubble. Suddenly, he’s a successful, wealthy businessman.”
“Seems his cut of the smuggling operation was enough,” Cici guessed.
“I don’t know.” Asher’d been quiet, but he’d lifted his gaze from the laptop to her. “Why get out of the business if it was so profitable?”
“Maybe he got spooked by the murders,” Alyssa suggested.
“Maybe he thought the necklace was his ticket to riches.” Cici was sure the necklace was related, somehow.
“Guys like that… Would he have been investing his take? My guess is he was a grunt, being paid a pittance compared to the value of what they were moving. And we already know he didn’t sell the necklace, so… What happened? What changed?”
Cici had no idea and guessed by Alyssa’s silence that she was just as stymied.
All the questions only led to threads in a huge web she couldn’t follow. “Anyway, this is great info, sis. We’ll keep digging.”
“I’ll do the same and let you know if I learn anything.”
Cici ended the call. “It’s all so convoluted.”
“True stories usually are.” Asher leaned back in his chair, the front legs tipping off the floor, his gaze distant. “How’s a guy like that go from dirt poor to filthy rich?”
“Maybe he took out a loan against the necklace?”
“Maybe.” By Asher’s doubtful tone, he didn’t think so.
“He must’ve leveraged it somehow, either—”
“That’s it.” Asher’s chair legs hit the floor with a thud. “He leveraged the necklace. Not with a bank, but with Taggart and Stratton. The necklace was proof he was involved with the smugglers, proof that he knew who the murderers were.”
“Well, yeah, but if he’d turned them in—”
“He would’ve implicated himself, sure.” Asher stood, dropped the laptop on the end of the bed, and paced the tiny path between his chair and the far wall.
“But he could’ve made a deal, the names of the murderers and everyone else involved in the smuggling ring for immunity.
He might’ve gotten off scot-free. Meanwhile, Taggart and Stratton would’ve gone to prison for murder.
The whole thing would have been solved a quarter century ago. ”
“So he blackmailed them?”
“Why not?” Asher froze a few feet from her.
“Think of it. Here’s this poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks making peanuts compared to what the big bosses were making.
Maybe even working for them because Taggart offered him a deal—maybe the kind of deal he felt he couldn’t say no to.
He was arrested, but no charges were brought.
Maybe the deal was that Taggart would “lose” any evidence he’d collected in exchange for Gagnon’s labor.
So Gagnon does what he’s told, gets paid next to nothing.
Then gets lucky. The night of the murders, he finds the jewelry and pockets it, his ticket out.
Maybe he was friends with Taggart, maybe not, but what’s friendship when there’s money involved? So he starts blackmailing them.”
“The seed money for his business.”