Chapter 4 #2
I pulled out my phone and dialed. He picked up on the second ring.
“Taco Bell parking lot,” he said brightly. “Zachary speaking. I’m in position.”
I smiled. Zachary’s enthusiasm for boring surveillance never fails to charm me. “Jacquie just came and went. She wanted an update.”
“That’s too bad,” Zachary said. Hard to say whether he was talking about missing Jacquie or the fact that nothing was likely to be going on where he was.
“Everyone’s here again today. All the same people as yesterday.
Nick’s working on a Toyota. Megan showed up about twenty minutes ago and went into the office. Nick stopped her on the way there.”
Oh, really? “What did they talk about?”
“No idea,” Zach said. “I couldn’t hear them from where I’m parked. But Nick’s been acting weird. He keeps looking over his shoulder. And she was patting his arm like he was ready to bolt and she had to work to keep him there.”
Interesting. “Did talking to her calm him down?”
“Not so much as you’d notice,” Zach said. “He’s still doing it. Looking around like he thinks someone’s watching. He did it yesterday too, but it’s worse today.”
He paused. “You don’t think he knows that I’m here, do you?”
Of course he might. I’d already tipped Nick off that Jacquie was suspicious, and Megan might have—likely had—caught Zachary’s attempt to tail her home yesterday.
If either of them had paid attention yesterday or today, they might have noticed Zachary’s car lingering in the Taco Bell parking lot for the second day in a row.
“How long have you been there?” I wanted to know.
There was a slight pause while he checked the time. “Since before they opened. About two hours now.”
That was probably long enough to make anyone paranoid. “All right,” I said. “Pack it in and head back to the office. I don’t want to spook him any more than he already is.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. You can try again later. I’ll take over for now.”
I hung up and looked at Rachel. “Can I borrow your car?”
She blinked. “My car?”
“Nick’s already seen the beater. And if he’s as paranoid as Zachary says, he might remember the Lexus, too. Your Toyota is different enough that he won’t connect it to me.”
Rachel hesitated, then reached for her purse and pulled out her keys. “Fine. But if you get so much as a scratch on it, you’re paying for the repairs.”
“Deal.” I stood up and grabbed my coat. “We should probably spend the money on a company car. Something normal and non-descript that no one will notice. Can do some research on what the most common car in Nashville is this year? Make, model, color, year? Or ask Zachary to do it when he gets in?”
Rachel said she could. “Leave Edwina here. You don’t want her giving you away again.”
She smirked. I made a face. No, I didn’t.
Rachel’s Toyota was about ten years old and had definitely seen better days, but it drove smoothly enough as I made my way across town toward Charlotte Avenue.
I found a spot with a clear view of the Body Shop’s parking lot, but far enough away that I wouldn’t be immediately recognizable. Then I settled in to wait.
Without Edwina or Zachary for company, surveillance was even more tedious than usual.
I spent the first hour watching cars come and go, customers dropping off vehicles and picking them up again.
You know you’ve been sitting a long time when you’ve seen someone drop off a vehicle and then come back for it later.
Nick appeared occasionally, visible through the open bay doors as he worked on one car after another.
He moved with the easy grace of someone who knew exactly what he was doing, who could do his job in his sleep—but Zachary was right, there was something off.
He kept looking over his shoulder, and every so often he’d stop what he was doing to peer up and down the street.
I kept the windows closed and stayed behind the tint so he wouldn’t notice me sitting there, but the longer I watched, the clearer it was that he was either extremely sensitive to surveillance, and could feel my eyes on him, or something else was going on.
Around eleven, I decided I needed coffee and a better vantage point. I drove down to the Taco Bell and went inside, ordering a coffee and a burrito I didn’t really want, then claimed a table by the window. From there, I had a perfect, and much closer, view of the Body Shop.
Twenty minutes later, an older man emerged from the office and walked toward the bay where Nick was working. He was maybe in his fifties, with graying hair and the build of someone who’d spent years doing physical labor.
Sal Gomorra, I assumed. The olive skin and thinning black hair seemed right for someone Italian, and the dark circles under his eyes matched Nick’s.
I zoomed my phone in as far as it would go and clicked the shutter a few times, so we could try to match the gentleman’s face to anything we could find online later.
It was most likely Sal, no reason to think it wasn’t, but it was just as well to make sure.
I watched as he approached Nick, who straightened up and wiped his hands on a rag.
The two of them talked for a few minutes before Sal put a fatherly hand on Nick’s shoulder.
The gesture seemed designed to calm and comfort, although I didn’t get the impression that it helped much.
Nick nodded in response to whatever Sal said, but his shoulders stayed tense.
As Sal made his way back toward the office, Megan emerged.
He caught her before she could walk away, and they had their own brief conversation.
Sal disappeared into the office, and Megan got into her car and took off.
I thought about following, but I wasn’t getting paid to watch Megan, so I stayed with Nick.
She came back fifteen minutes later, anyway, with a thin plastic bag and a couple of Styrofoam containers.
Lunch for herself and Sal, I assumed. She disappeared back into the office with it.
I took a sip of my coffee—it had gone lukewarm in the time I’d been sitting here—and kept watching.
With the start of lunch hour, the Body Shop’s parking lot cleared out. Most of the mechanics left, leaving only a skeleton crew behind. Sal and Megan in the office, Nick and one more mechanic in the bays.
Nick was taking his time on what looked like an oil change for a beat-up Ford Explorer while the other guy finished whatever he was doing to a Honda Accord before slamming the hood down.
He said a few words to Nick, who nodded, and then took himself off as well.
Instead of getting into a car, he dodged cars on his way across the street to the Taco Bell, where he pulled the door open came inside.
He didn’t look in my direction even once, so I didn’t think he was here for me.
Instead, I watched as he ordered a meal at the counter and took it to a table in the back, near the restrooms, where he took bites between scrolling on his phone.
Unlike me, he didn’t seem interested in what was going on at the Body Shop at all, because he had positioned himself in a spot by the wall where he couldn’t see across to it.
I left him alone and focused my attention back across the street.
It was just before one o’clock when a mint condition vintage Porsche Boxster in gleaming silver zipped down the street and into the lot outside the Body Shop.
My spine snapped straight.
I won’t claim to know a lot about cars. I know what I like, and that’s pretty much it.
I love my Lexus. I had traded in the convertible David gave me for it, when I decided that the sports car was too eye-catching for undercover work.
But aside from that, I’m hardly a connoisseur.
I did know, however, that this car had most likely cost more than the average person’s annual salary.
I also knew it wasn’t the kind of car you took to a discount oil-change place in West Nashville.
The driver’s door opened and a man unfolded himself.
He was in his early forties: a decade and a half older than Nick and about the same younger than Sal, with black hair so glossy it shone in the weak November sunlight.
Like both of them, his complexion indicated either a Mediterranean heritage or a recent trip to somewhere sunny and warm.
He carried what looked like a well-filled leather briefcase and moved with the kind of confidence that comes from never having been told no by anyone in any circumstance.
A lawyer? The briefcase suggested as much, and if Sal had run into legal trouble, that explained the tense atmosphere at the Body Shop. It also explained why he might have wanted most of his employees out of the way before the lawyer showed up.
I glanced at the mechanic at the back of the Taco Bell. He was paying no attention to what was going on outside.
I raised my phone and captured a few photos of the newcomer as he walked from the Porsche to the office. He had his back to me, so I didn’t capture his face, but at least I could get a picture of car and license plate.
When he pushed the door open, I saw Megan’s head snap up.
The door closed behind him, and then, just a few seconds later, it opened again and she scurried out.
She headed for the Ford Explorer and Nick, and no sooner had she arrived in the bay than they both disappeared from view, deeper into the shadows.
I couldn’t see what they were doing back there, but I would have bet David’s entire fortune—or at least the part of it I had inherited—that they weren’t in the process of making out. Whatever this was about, it wasn’t romantic.
Not that one thing necessarily precluded another, of course.
Nick and Megan might still be carrying on behind Jacquie’s back, even if I hadn’t seen any sign of it.
But this—the arrival of the well-to-do possible lawyer with a briefcase—this was what Nick had been nervous about.
It was obvious to anyone with a modicum of intelligence that this wasn’t any kind of routine business transaction.
Wealthy men with briefcases and thousand-dollar suits don’t take their vintage Porsches to Sal Gomorra for an oil change.
I turned my attention back to the office door.
Two minutes passed. Then two more. Finally, after what felt like an eternity but was probably just five or six minutes, the office door opened again.
The man in the suit emerged, and I lifted my phone and started taking pictures.
The briefcase was still in his hand, I noticed, although when I gave it a more intent look, it was immediately obvious that it no longer appeared as well-filled as it had been.
Had he brought paperwork for Sal to look over? Had Sal received an offer he couldn’t refuse, and he was selling the place, and he didn’t want his employees to know about it before the transaction was complete? Was that why everyone had scattered?
Or—alternative scenario—had the well-filled briefcase contained something other than paperwork? Had it contained… a gun, say, and now Sal was slumped over his desk inside the office, with an untraceable gun near his hand that he hadn’t pulled the trigger of?
If the man in the suit had just committed murder, he showed no sign of it. He looked perfectly calm as he walked toward his Porsche, and that was when I made a split-second decision and jumped to my feet.
Nick wasn’t going anywhere—he was still at work, and I had his address if I needed it later.
Sal wasn’t going anywhere, either. He was either dead in the office or he wasn’t, but either way, what happened was already done.
And Megan would most likely be here when I got back, too.
But this man, whoever he was, might lead me to something useful.
I grabbed my phone and keys and headed for the Toyota, dumping my half-eaten burrito in the trash can on my way past. The Body Shop mechanic in the back of the Taco Bell didn’t even look up when I walked out.
By the time I had cranked Rachel’s engine over, the Porsche was waiting to merge with traffic on Charlotte Pike.
I got myself into position on the other side of the street and waited for him to go before I followed.