Chapter 8 #2
“I followed Nick back to his apartment, watched him go inside, and then I drove to McDonald’s and ordered a twenty-piece McNugget meal and a basket of fries.”
“And?”
“And I ate all of it. In the parking lot. Like some kind of animal.” He sounded embarrassed. And a bit truculent. And sulky still. “I’m putting it on my expense report, just so you know.”
“You don’t have an expense report, Zach. But I’ll reimburse you for the food, if you want. Just give the receipt to Rachel when you get back to the office.”
Which would be Monday, I assumed. I work weekends when we have clients, but I don’t make my employees do it. Not unless they want to.
“All right,” I added. “Stay where you are until noon, if you don’t mind, and then you can go home. Let me know if Nick or Sal or Megan shows up. And go inside the Taco Bell and get yourself some food if you get hungry.”
“What are you going to do?”
Good question. “I’m parked down from Megan’s house, but it doesn’t look like anyone’s here. Maybe the kid does sports on Saturday mornings.”
“That’s what I did,” Zachary confirmed. “I hated it.”
“Kenny, too. David tried everything from archery to Zumba, and none of it stuck.” Krystal, on the other hand, had rather enjoyed the cheerleading she’d done in her teens, although of course she hadn’t wanted to talk to me about it.
I checked the dashboard clock. It was getting closer to eight-forty. If the kid was doing sports, they might not be back for hours. Maybe I should drive out to Bellevue and check Nick’s place, in case they were there. I could always come back here later.
But first—
“Listen, Zach…”
“Yeah?” I could tell that his ears had pricked up from the alertness in his voice.
“I ran into Detective Mendoza last night.”
His voice was bright. “Jaime? Where?” Zach idolizes Mendoza. He’s everything Zach wants to be when he grows up.
“Turns out he’s working undercover at Sambuca.”
There was a beat. “Uh-oh,” Zachary said. He’s always been quick. “What have we gotten ourselves into?”
“A spot of bother with the mob?” I said apologetically.
“Mob?” His voice rose to a falsetto. “What do you mean, mob?”
“Not the Russians. You don’t have to worry about them again.”
Zachary made a disbelieving noise, and it was hard to blame him. During the time when we’d been stalking Steven Morton on behalf of his wife Diana, Zachary had spent some time in the hospital courtesy of the Russian mob. It was no wonder the idea scared him.
“These are the Italians,” I added. “And it’s got nothing to do with us. I don’t think they know we exist. But that’s what Sal and Nick and the Body Shop are mixed up in. They’re laundering money.”
There was a beat of silence. Then—
“I quit,” Zachary said.
“Really?”
“No. But I think we should stay as far away from this as we can. People like that don’t care who they have to hurt. And they don’t care whether you’re involved or not when they hurt you. Better just to stay clear.”
He had a point.
“Tell you what,” I said, because I realized I was being unfair to him. “Go home. Nick isn’t there. Nor is Sal. There’s no reason for you to spend any more time there. Just go home and have a nice weekend and don’t think about it anymore.”
He sounded halfway worried and halfway relieved. “Are you sure?”
“I’m positive,” I said firmly.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to go see Nick. And after that I’m going to see Jacquie. And if we have to give back some of the retainer, then we will. You’re right. We shouldn’t put ourselves in danger over this.”
If it had been a simple case of a cheating boyfriend, that would be one thing.
But now we had money laundering, and whatever had generated the money that needed laundering in the first place—anything from illegal gambling to prostitution or maybe drugs—and we had Megan’s kid, who might belong to Gio Abruzzi, and Izzy Spataro, who might recognize my face, and an undercover case involving local PD…
No, Zach was right. Much better to just convince Jacquie that Nick wasn’t cheating, and then return the money she had given us and wash our hands of it, no pun intended.
“OK,” Zachary said, sounding relieved.
“I don’t know how I would prove anything, anyway. I can sit outside the Body Shop until I’m blue in the face and never see Nick cheat on Jacquie. What is it the archaeologists say? Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence, or something like that?”
Or maybe it was the opposite. In any case, as Mendoza had said, it’s hard to prove a negative. If Jacquie didn’t believe me, then it would have to come down to Nick doing the convincing, most likely. And if Jacquie didn’t trust him, then their relationship was doomed anyway.
I put the Lexus in gear. “Go home, Zach. I’ll see you Monday morning.”
“OK, boss.” He hung up and, I’m sure, high-tailed it away from the Body Shop and all it implied just as quickly as he could get his wheels to spin. I pulled away from the curb and rolled off down the street myself, leaving Megan’s empty house behind.
Traffic was pretty light so early on a Saturday, and I was already on the same side of town as Nick’s place, so it didn’t take me long to get there.
Even going the slow way—straight down Charlotte Pike to Sawyer Brown Road instead of making use of the interstate—it was no more than fifteen minutes before I found myself cruising down what Jacquie had told me was Nick’s street.
His blue pickup was parked in a narrow driveway to one side of a duplex, nose pointed toward the street.
The duplex itself was typical for the area—brick, probably built in the sixties, with a small covered porch and white aluminum siding around the doors and windows.
Nick’s side had a black mailbox on a metal stick tilting drunkenly to one side, and house numbers on a reflective sticker that probably lit up in the dark.
The other side had a bright orange mailbox and an old Pontiac in the driveway.
There was an orange and white bumper sticker shaped like a capital T on the back of it.
A Tennessee Vols fan, clearly. We have a lot of them in this area, and they’re easily spotted by the bright orange and white.
Nick may or may not have supported the Vols. He could have, but been more quiet about it than his neighbor. Then again, if he had worked for Sal for a decade, chances were he hadn’t gone to college.
I parked on the street and walked up the driveway, my heels sinking into the gravel. The morning was cool but pleasant, with a pale blue sky overhead and the faint smell of someone’s Saturday morning bacon drifting on the breeze. Someone somewhere was playing rap. American this time, not Mexican.
I rang the doorbell and waited.
When nothing happened, I tried again, holding the button down longer this time, and heard the buzz echo inside.
Still nothing.
I knocked. “Nick? It’s Gina Kelly. I’d like to talk to you.”
Silence.
I was just about to hop off the porch and try around the side when I heard a door open nearby.
I turned to see an elderly woman emerging from the other half of the duplex, clutching a cardigan together at her throat despite the mild temperature.
She was probably in her seventies, with white hair that had been carefully set and sprayed into submission, and she was surrounded by what appeared to be at least half a dozen cats of various sizes and colors.
They wound around her ankles and poured down the front steps like a furry waterfall.
“Can I help you?” she asked. Her voice was surprisingly strong for someone her age.
I stepped off the porch and walked a bit closer. “I’m looking for Nick Costanza. Have you seen him this morning?”
She shook her head as the cats continued their slow-motion cascade down the steps and onto the lawn. “Not since yesterday. He left for work early, came home late. Such a nice boy. Always offers to carry my groceries when he sees me.”
“Do you know if he came home last night?”
“Oh, yes.” She nodded. “I heard his truck drive up around eleven-thirty. I was watching the Late Show.” She took a few steps closer, and the cats followed her like a tidal wave of fur. “Is something wrong?”
“I’m not sure.” I looked back at Nick’s door, then at his truck. If he was home, why wasn’t he answering? “You haven’t heard anything unusual this morning? Any arguments or loud noises?”
She shook her head again. “It’s been very quiet.”
“Does he usually go off in someone else’s car? Or does he have another vehicle? A motorcycle or even a bicycle or something?”
“He has a girlfriend,” the old lady said. “They take her car sometimes.”
Jacquie? Or Megan? “Brunette?” I asked. “Or blonde?”
“Oh, a dark-haired thing.” She flapped her hand. “Same coloring as his.”
Not Megan, then. Probably Jacquie, unless Nick had another Greek or Italian girl on his string.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Don’t mention it, dear. Are you sure nothing’s going on?”
I wasn’t sure of that at all. Nick’s truck was here. Zachary had said he’d seen Nick go inside last night. So where was he?
I thought about calling Jacquie and checking with her, but then I thought about Megan and her silver Accord, the one that wasn’t parked outside the house in Charlotte Park this morning.
If the kid was playing soccer, and the kid was Nick’s, what were the chances that Megan had stopped by and picked him up so they could go watch the kid together?
When I put it like that, the chances were pretty good, I thought.
But since I was here— “Does this place have a back door?”
The old lady nodded. “Goes into the kitchen. Around the corner, halfway down the side. Living room in the front, kitchen in the middle, bedroom in the back.”
And a bathroom somewhere along the way, no doubt. I thanked her again. “I’m going to take a look. Maybe bang on his bedroom window, in case he’s just asleep.”