21. Cuff Check List
TWENTY-ONE
CUFF CHECK LIST
Ian
Between the lane closures, detours, and reduced speed limits due to road construction, I didn’t reach Atlanta until three in the morning.
It was a long drive that was exacerbated by all the work calls and meetings I had to attend by phone.
Plus the hundreds of emails I answered whenever I stopped for gas or food.
My head had barely hit the hotel’s pillow when my alarm went off.
A shower and five cups of coffee later, I’m feeling somewhat capable as I pull into Gary Ranos’ office parking lot located next to an abandoned Blockbuster building.
That’ll take you back.
The Audi bottoms out in a pothole I failed to see, and the hard shock jars both the suspension and my back. I used to love my car— the speed, the luxury. But as I swing the door open and get out, my muscles and bones creaking like they’re twenty years older, I have an urge to burn it.
I head toward the door that reads Gary Ranos, Discreet Inquiries, where a flickering neon light depicting an eyeball wearing a fedora blinks in the window.
Atlanta weather isn’t much different than Houston weather—hot and humid. The only thing I have going for me is it’s before noon, so it isn’t sweltering yet.
The door chimes when I enter. “Hello?”
No one answers.
Something bangs from an office door behind the empty receptionist’s desk, followed by a curse and then the door swinging open and crashing against the wall.
“Kincaid?” A small man with a large mustache blinks at me.
“Uh, yes. That’s me.” I close the door behind me and reassess my previous opinion of the private eye. I’m not sure I should trust a man whose facial hair is wider than his face.
“Come on back.” Without waiting, he turns and walks into the office. “You must’ve caught an early flight.”
I step into the small room. “I drove.” A large window provides an amazing view… the cement wall of the abandoned video store.
He stops in front of his desk, his eyes frowning. His mouth probably is too, but I can’t tell with the mustache. “You drove?”
“Yes.” He has one of those A Christmas Story lamps, the ones with the net stocking leg and tassel shade, standing in the corner.
“Why the hell would you drive?”
When I answer him with only a stare, he raises his hands in apology. “Never mind, none of my business.” He shrugs. “Rich people do crazy shit all the time, I guess.”
“Rich people?” I clear the metal fold-out chair in front of his desk of manila folders and sit down. “So you know who I am?”
I’m not sure if the look he gives me is supposed to seem superior or offended, but to me it comes off as stupid. “Well duh, it’s what I do.”
I can’t remember the last time someone “duh’ed” me.
“Son of a judge, now son of a senator.” Ranos whistles, the bristles of his mustache fluttering in the wind. “Patty’s got good taste in men.”
A tilt of my head is all it takes for him to duck his head over his desk.
“Sorry, sorry, that was uncalled for.” He rearranges the files on his desk into some organizational system that only a hoarder could understand.
“You’re not the only one with no sleep, you know.
Stayed up all night doing the research you asked for. ”
Yesterday, after I had packed my bag and hit the road, I called Ranos and told him I’d be in town today. Paid him a lot of money in advance for him to get together all the information he could on the Mitchells and the supposed theft for me by this morning.
Picking up the file that was sitting on top of his mess the entire time, he shakes it. “And you’re going to be very interested in what I found.” He hands it to me over the precarious piles of papers.
Sitting back, I flip through it. My blood pressure rises with each page turn.
Mitchell & Watkins LLP is located in the heart of Atlanta on Peachtree Street. By three in the afternoon, clouds have moved in, and the hottest part of the day is finally past, but in my three-piece suit it still feels ten degrees hotter than it is.
Even in my rush to Atlanta, I still took the time to pick out my nicest suit. I’m playing the role of dutiful son of a senator, after all.
“Mr. Mitchell will be right with you, Mr. Kincaid.” The secretary, an attractive woman in a skirt suit, gestures to a plush armchair along the wall, where a waiting area is arranged like something out of an interior design magazine.
“Thank you.”
“Would you like a cup of coffee?”
“Yes, please.” I sit, crossing an ankle on my thigh. “Black.” The only thing keeping me going since Trish left is caffeine. And like my car, I’m running on fumes at this point.
She scurries off, presumably to get my coffee, but before she can return, a man of average height, medium brown hair, and relative fitness comes through an office door.
“Mr. Kincaid?” His hand reaches out before he gets to me. “I’m Chad Mitchell.”
I rise and shake his hand, unable to help myself from comparing the two of us. At one point, Trish did love the guy, after all.
“Good to meet you.” I shake his hand firmly, irrationally annoyed when he does the same. “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”
Letting go, he waves away my thanks. “Not at all, not at all.”
He gestures to the door he came out of and lets me walk ahead into his cushy corner office. The tall ceilings, city view, and expensive furnishings are a far cry from the mobile home park in Norcross that I visited after my meeting with Ranos.
I’m sure the exact trailer that Trish lived in isn’t there anymore, but I felt closer to her just driving down the cracked asphalt, as though I’d found another piece of the puzzle. I watched two kids playing soccer on the blacktop and wondered what her childhood there had looked like.
Afterward I made the thirty-minute drive north to Alpharetta, where the Mitchells live.
Large estates with southern mansions, complete with wide, white columns, lined the roads of the one-percent town just north of Atlanta.
They’re more similar to my own home than the trailers in Norcross, and I wonder if Trish made the same comparison when I blackmailed her into moving in with me back in Houston.
Is that why she wanted to live in her trailer in the garage instead of in my house? Was she worried about getting too close to yet another silver-spooned kid?
“I have to say, I was surprised when I heard you had called, Mr. Kincaid,” Mitchell says, making me blink away from light pouring in through his floor-to-ceiling windows.
He rounds his large, heavy desk, waving me to sit in one of the two smaller chairs in front.
“Obviously, anyone who watches the news knows who your father is, but I didn’t think us folks here in Georgia would get the pleasure of Senator Kincaid’s business.
” His southern accent gets heavier the more he talks.
I sit, ignoring the mention of my father and the blatant large-chair-small-chair power move. “I understand you recently lost your father.” I slide my phone out from my inside jacket pocket. “Sorry for your loss.”
This time Mitchell nods, and his noncommittal attitude in regarding his father mirrors my own. “Yes, the stroke was quite a shock.”
Sliding my phone open, I send the email I’d prepared earlier. “I’m sure that wasn’t the only shock.”
“What do you mean?”
Replacing the phone, I lean back, crossing my legs. “Check your email.”
Frowning, Mitchell turns toward his screen and moves his mouse. I can tell the exact moment he opens the pictures attached to the email I just sent.
The ones Ranos had ready for me this morning.
“These are pictures of my wife and me at my father’s funeral.” He clicks his mouse a few more times. Frowning harder, he turns to me. “I don’t understand.”
“What if I mentioned the name Patricia LaRue?”
He goes so still I wonder if he’s breathing.
I nod at his computer. “Funny how your wife is wearing your late mother’s favorite ring at the funeral, considering your father reported it stolen years earlier.”
Mitchell swallows.
“In fact, after Judge Mitchell accused Patricia LaRue of stealing it, he received sixty thousand dollars from the insurance company.”
“I…” Beads of sweat glisten on his upper lip.
“I wonder what the great city of Atlanta and all your well-connected and influential clients will say when they learn your father committed insurance fraud to help fund his campaigns.”
Still, Mitchell remains speechless.
“Or that your wife is okay with wearing criminal evidence on her finger as she lunches with high society while the accused is running for her life, unable to stay in one place for too long because she’s afraid she’ll go to prison for a crime she didn’t commit.
” By the last word I’m on my feet, shouting.
Mitchell retreats back into his oversized desk chair. “I didn’t know.” His voice is a shaky whisper.
“What exactly didn’t you know, Chad?” The facade dropped, I can’t help the disgust in my tone.
“I didn’t know she didn’t steal it.” I must look incredulous because he sits up, palms out. “Honest. It wasn’t until my father died and I had access to his personal safe that I found the ring.” He mumbles something about his wife insisting on wearing it.
“You mean you actually thought that Trish stole the damn thing?”
“Trish? You mean Patty?” He shrugs. “I mean, she’s a stripper, so…” He trails off when he sees what I’m sure is a murderous look in my eyes.
Taking a breath, I remind myself that killing him would only prolong what needs to be done and sit back down. “We are going to fix this.” I fix a hard glare at him. “And by we, I mean you.”
He wipes his sweaty brow but nods.
“But first, I want you to tell me what happened. From when the judge accused Trish of stealing to you hiring Gary Ranos to bring her back to Georgia.”
Mitchell blinks at the mention of the private detective, but he starts talking.
Trish