Chapter 72 Jordan
SEVENTY-TWO
JORDAN
FACT: Sheriff Jordan Burke let Cara Campbell escape from Madera County. Do you want a sheriff who says, “Not my job?”
—Silverman for Sheriff Facebook page
Stretched out on the bed at the Starlight Inn, Jordan swiped through pictures on his phone of the documents he’d found at the Campbell house. Why had Cara left them behind? What had she taken with her?
He took a long pull on the half-empty bottle of beer sweating on his nightstand. After Wen dropped him off, he had walked to a nearby 7-Eleven to pick up a six-pack and a couple of sandwiches. The other five bottles were cooling in the sink under a mound of ice.
It had been a long, fruitless day. After their latest close call with Campbell, Jordan and Wen had pounded the sidewalks and knocked on doors until they found an eyewitness who said “two chicks in a red Porsche Carrera took off like they were in Formula One.” The car was right, and the time was right.
Cara Campbell was with Stephanie van der Lind.
While Ellett, ensconced at some mysterious site, searched traffic-camera video and frustratingly sporadic hits from license-plate readers, Wen and Jordan drove to van der Lind’s home off Sunset Boulevard.
Crosby and Hart had already checked out her Wilshire Boulevard office and reported there was no indication she had visited it in days.
She wasn’t at home, either. Jordan and Wen discovered a perplexed husband, a handsome male assistant, and an excited twelve-year-old son who right away made the connection that his mom might be aiding and abetting her most famous friend.
But none of them had any idea where she was.
“If you were neighbors and not cops, I’d be guessing she’s at Pilates, therapy, or book club,” Noel van der Lind told them privately on a patio that looked like an outdoor lounge at a four-star hotel.
“Maybe even a showing. But I’ll be honest: we don’t have that kind of marriage where we check in with each other all that often. ”
Jordan didn’t trust his gaydar much but thought the body language between Noel and his young assistant seemed less like boss and employee and more like boyfriends. Which could have meant he was telling the truth.
Crosby and Hart had shown up, and Wen told Crosby to watch the house and sent Hart back to the office. When Jordan asked what she wanted him to do, she said, “Get some rest,” and dropped him off at the motel.
Jordan adjusted the pillow under his aching lower back.
A quick web search revealed that Evelyn Marsh was Karl’s 89-year-old aunt.
A longer search told him she had more or less raised Karl after his mother died and that the two of them were very close.
It made perfect sense he would have wanted to provide for her long-term care—and from all outward appearances, he had been able to afford it at the time the arrangements were made.
The promissory note was more intriguing. Jordan had never taken so much as a payday loan, but he guessed most contracts for twelve million dollars weren’t usually handwritten.
He got up and opened another beer, then started looking at the Gionis, who right away looked shady as hell.
He knew a similar family in Madera, American born, that used a hodgepodge of legitimate businesses to hide the fact they were trafficking prostitutes and fentanyl throughout the Central Valley.
Even though the Gionis had apparently been in the country for a long time, he had to wonder if they had connections to the Albanian mafia.
If Karl Campbell had taken mob money and failed or refused to pay it back . . . Some rich people really thought consequences would never come to them. Or maybe there was another angle. They could have simply gotten their hooks into his business and drained it for all it was worth.
Jordan knew he was already on dangerous ground for withholding information from Wen.
And she would probably be pissed when he told her.
But if he was right, and Cara Campbell was headed where he thought she was, he had to bring Wen in.
Only in a Hollywood movie would an out-of-jurisdiction sheriff tackle the mob in the big city alone.
A notification appeared at the top of his screen.
California Death Trip had just released a new episode.