Chapter 3
3
“ T hank you. That was delicious.” Garth pushed his plate to the side while Amber shoved a laptop in his face. She’d been sitting across from him through the entire dinner, tapping her foot erratically on the tile floor. He’d barely had a chance to enjoy the penne pasta with a white cream sauce and some chicken.
Her cooking was about as good as going home just for his mom’s cuisine.
“Glad you liked it.” She snagged the plate, nearly dropping the utensils on his lap. She’d barely spoken and when she did, it was like little daggers were being shot out of her mouth and stabbing him in the heart.
“What am I looking at?” He could only imagine the grief she must be experiencing. In a way, he understood why she’d pushed herself to believe her brother had been murdered. She’d mentioned to him more than once how proud she’d been that he was finally moving forward with his life.
But often, people fell back on old, bad habits, and her brother had been a bit of a deadbeat with no real goals for a long time.
At least according to the stories she’d told him.
“Some of my brother’s notes I found on his laptop. The weird thing is, it starts out as a letter to me.” He glanced over the screen, catching a glimpse of her backside while she did the dishes. Her round hips filled out her miniskirt and her legs, damn they went on forever.
But it wasn’t only her pretty face and hot body that Garth liked. Amber could hold her end of an intelligent conversation. She had to be the smartest person in any room.
And kind.
He’d watched her on more than one occasion go out of her way to help a neighbor. She had a heart of gold.
But she also had the kind of sheer determination that once she went after something, she’d never let go, and in the case of her brother, she was going to need to find a way to move past all this.
The least he could do was look at the documents.
Amber,
If you’re reading this, then a couple of things happened. You looked under your bed, which you never do, not even to clean, and found my laptop, and I’m still alive and we might laugh over this.
Or not.
Or. I’m injured, and I told you about the laptop.
Or, more than likely, I’m dead and you do what you always do when you’re upset, you clean.
“You don’t clean under your bed?” He lifted his eyelids.
“That’s what you’re focusing on?”
He shook his head. “No. I’m asking because of what your brother said about what you do when you’re upset.”
“My garage is spotless, every closet has been organized, and my bathrooms have never been cleaner, but I hadn’t gotten to moving furniture and cleaning under it.” She cocked her head. “Read on.”
It starts with the incident at Ivan Moore’s residence, a local businessman who lives on Blount Island. I’ve been to the house when I was dating Ashley, who is friends with his daughter, but I only met the man in passing and didn’t have any real contact with him.
A few years ago, it was suspected that Ivan Moore was involved in securities fraud and embezzlement. That accusation disappeared about a year after his son-in-law became an assistant district attorney.
A year ago, the police were called to the residence during a party when my ex-girlfriend took ill. The story is that Ashley Hanover died of anaphylactic shock after consuming a dish she was unaware had peanuts, and she’d forgotten her EpiPen that evening.
I call bullshit. Ashley never went anywhere without that thing, and the Moore’s knew about her allergies. She was also deathly allergic to shellfish and bee stings.
“You didn’t tell me any of this when your brother died.” Actually, all she had said when her brother died was that someone killed him because he didn’t do drugs, so no way could he have overdosed. Nothing about the party or his friend.
Amber waved a bottle of wine.
He nodded.
“I didn’t know anything about this until I found his laptop under my bed this morning.”
“When the hell did he put it there and why?” he asked, taking the glass of red wine she offered. He swirled the rich liquid, letting it hug the sides before taking a long sniff. The thick, rich, dry scent hit his nostrils with the force of a gust of wind. Nothing beat a nice Cab.
“I assumed when he came by two days before he died, telling me if anything happened to him, it wouldn’t have been an accident.” She sat next to him, setting the bottle on the table. “I only saw it because I finally got to cleaning under my bed.” Her sarcastic tone wasn’t lost on him.
“What was she doing at Moore’s house the day she died?”
“First, according to Steve, she’s good friends with his daughter Lisa. And she worked for Mr. Moore for a couple of summers. I guess that she was helping my brother with this story.”
“He’s been working on it for over a year?”
“I really don’t know. I mean, he’s been writing articles for the last eighteen months, and he’s told me in the past that some took months and months to collect all the information needed to make it so the editor would accept it. The last time I talked to him, he had five stories on his desk.”
“Sounds like a hard way to make a living.” Garth rolled his neck. “So, your brother thought they put peanuts in her food intentionally?”
“That’s the thought.”
“But why?”
“Not exactly sure, but it gets better. Keep reading.” With a delicate touch of her finger, she smoothed a strand of hair behind her ears as she raised one leg, resting her heel on the chair, hugging her knee with one hand and holding a flute of wine in the other.
He turned his attention back to the computer screen.
I managed to snag an interview with Sandra Creeco about six months ago. She was the receptionist at Moore Industries. She had also attended the party the night Ashley died. She had told Ashley to back off the digging and poking into Moore’s business dealings. That she was going to get herself in trouble. After Ashley died, Sandra became more suspicious and started looking for information on her own, keeping me in the loop.
She was killed in a freak car accident three days after she contacted me, letting me know she found something. She said she would either bring it by or mail it to me.
I have no idea what that something was. I never got it. I tried going to her house, but her roommate wouldn’t let me in. Slammed the door in my face. She won’t take my calls. I’m concerned for her safety if she has anything or knows anything.
However, Sandra had managed to get me a list of names from the party.
I got ahold of a junior associate, Eddy Green. He had nothing to say. Nor did a copywriter named Finn Tor and of course, Moore, his daughter, or Lisa’s husband, Jeff Bellen, the assistant district attorney, wouldn’t speak to me.
The day after I spoke to both Finn and Eddy, someone broke into my home. I don’t know how they got in, but my desk had been ransacked. All the drawers open. Papers missing. Thankfully, my computer goes with me wherever I go, and I haven’t left one piece of paper regarding Ashley or my thoughts on how she died.
The cops did nothing. Officer Riley and Dani arrived about ten minutes after I called. They dusted for prints, but they found no forced entry anywhere. They asked if maybe an ex-girlfriend or someone with a key could have come in and done this out of spite.
Yeah. Probably Moore, since I suspect he’s the one who made sure there were peanuts in Ashley’s food, but I didn’t say that, and he didn’t have a key.
Though Ashley had one.
I made more phone calls to the people on the list from the party, but I would have to find someone to talk to me.
A couple of weeks ago, I got a phone call from Kelly Rines, that’s Sandra’s roommate. She said she found something and would bring it to me. I met her at a diner, and she gave me a folder. Inside were copies of ledgers and billings that didn’t add up. Ashley had made notes, showing all the discrepancies, but what jumped out at her had been a company named HCV Limited, a heating and cooling company owned by Rocco Tias, a known drug dealer, who had just recently been arrested. Then two days later, his case was tossed out on a technicality. I did a quick search, and he’s been arrested four times in the last two years, all tossed out.
That seems odd.
Then I got an email message. It came from [email protected]. I have no idea who that is, and thus far, I haven’t been able to figure it out.
Here is the email, for the record:
I strongly urge you to stop your investigative piece on Ivan Moore. If you don’t, you’re putting yourself in grave danger. You’ll understand in due time.
I have to say, that’s an oddly worded threat. However, it’s a threat nonetheless.
In this folder, I have scanned all the documents.
Amber, I wouldn’t take this to the local police. Or the district attorney’s office. Please take it to someone you trust. Someone who might have connections. And then walk away. Don’t look back.
Love,
Your pain in the ass little brother.
“That’s a lot to take in,” Garth said.
“And it doesn’t sound like it’s coming from a man addicted to heroin, does it?”
He nodded. No arguing that point.
Garth clicked on the scanned PDF with all the handwritten notes, then looked at the email. He struggled to keep all the names in his head. This was certainly above his paygrade, even with his work for the Aegis Network. When Timothy assigned him a case, it was generally bodyguard-type work. Other missions were to get in, get an asset, and get the hell out. It didn’t require this level of investigative work. That was left up to others.
He lowered the top of the computer. “Do you know if he talked to anyone else about all this?”
“No idea,” she said.
“You said he was here two days before he died. What exactly did he tell you?”
“He thought someone was following him. When I asked him why, he said he couldn’t tell me, but to watch my back and that ominous statement about if something happened to him, it wouldn’t be an accident.”
Garth pushed back his chair, took his wine, and moved across the room, knowing she might toss something at him for his next question. “Is it possible he was on something? Was he acting unusually paranoid?”
“Not on something, but definitely paranoid,” she said behind gritted teeth. “He was freaked out.”
“Then why didn’t he tell you about all this stuff?”
“I think he wanted to protect me. Hell, two people are dead.”
That didn’t make for murder, but he’d keep that thought to himself. “When he came over that day, did he have a bag? Did you see him go into your room?”
She shook her head. “We sat outside. He was always looking over his shoulder, and he jumped every time he heard a car. He didn’t go in the house.”
Garth arched a brow. “Then how the hell did that”—he pointed to the computer—“get under your bed?”
“My brother had a set of keys. He could have put it there anytime.”
“Well, at least we changed the lock on the back door.” He glanced at his watch. “The hardware store is still open. I can run down and get a new lock for the front door tonight.”
“You don’t have to do that, but does it mean you believe me?”
“To be frank, I don’t know what I believe. Your brother has gotten some bad press, and some of it is true. An autopsy doesn’t lie, and the evidence is pretty damning with the amount of drugs they found in his body and in his house.”
Her eyes narrowed to tiny, little slits as she opened her mouth.
He wasn’t about to let her ream him out again.
“Let me finish. Even if all the stuff about your brother is true, it doesn’t change the documents he has that point out some miscalculations with Moore’s business and the ties between the two dead girls. We’ll need to call someone to help us figure this out.”
“Are you nuts? We call the cops, and we’re both probably dead.”
He bit his tongue. Part of him knew there was something to the information, but he couldn’t do any digging alone. He didn’t have that skill set and he didn’t want to upset her any more than she already was. “I have connections because of my time in the Air Force and through the Aegis Network. I know people who can help who aren’t local cops. I’m thinking of someone at my other job, and I’d like to call and forward this information to him. He doesn’t have any skin in this game. He’ll be impartial and can dig where no one else can.”
“Oh. I see.” She gulped her wine. “By all means. Thank you.”
Closing the gap, he rested his hand on her shoulder. “I need you to promise me two things if I ask my buddies to help me poke into this.”
“What’s that?”
He held up his index finger. “First, you will stay out of it. No detective work on your part at all. If even a little bit of what you say is true, or what your brother thought happened to his friend, you could be next.”
She opened her mouth, but he pinched it closed with his fingers, leaning over. “And second, if something weird happens or you think someone is watching you, anything, you call me immediately, day or night. Got it?” He dropped his hand to his side.
“I can live with that.”
“Good. Want to come with me to the store and pick out the kind of lock you want?”
“Actually, I like the one you got for the back door. Can you just pick up something like that?”
“Sure, but make sure you lock the door. I’ll be back in a half hour.”
He stepped outside and let his mind mull over the documents he’d scanned on Steve’s computer. He had to admit that the paperwork looked fishy, but they were talking about white-collar crimes. The addition of Rocco Tias, well, that made murder less of a stretch.
But Kaelie West, the wife of one of his best friends, had been the lead fire investigator for the fire at her brother’s house.
No way would she compromise evidence.
So, where did that leave Garth and his quest to help Amber find the answers she wanted?
He let out a long breath. Talk about a lose-lose situation.