Be Careful What You Wish For (22 page)

I shone a torch on the filing cabinets as we rifled through.

Vinnie’s tax returns, another bumper pack of toffees, photos of Vinnie with various fighters and celebrities, contracts between Vinnie and several other people I’d never heard of. Boring. Although I was impressed with the tax returns. I was pretty surprised that Vinnie actually filed them. Maybe he’d learned a lesson from watching an Al Capone film.

‘Levi’s contract has got to be in here,’ I said impatiently.

‘It’s not.’ Brad slid the last drawer closed and we turned our attention to the desk.

I rummaged in the drawers. Lots of toffees (I’m surprised all his teeth hadn’t fallen out), biros, staples, paper clips, legal documents, and stationery, but no contract.

‘There’s got to be something in here.’ I eyed the brass box on top of the desk. It was the only thing we hadn’t checked.

I lifted it up and tried to open the lid. It was a bit stiff, like it had been sitting there unused for a long time. I yanked the lid as hard as I could and it suddenly popped and flew off with the momentum of my tugging.

‘Oh, crap!’ I said, watching the black dusty ash from inside fly all over the desk and onto the cream carpet. ‘I think that was one of Vinnie’s cat’s ashes.’ My jaw flew open involuntarily as I took in the scene. It looked like Mount Vesuvius had just erupted everywhere on a windy night.

‘Shit.’ Brad stared at the carpet.

Much as I hated Vinnie, poor Casper was now scattered all over the room. What if he haunted me for it? I had enough bad luck without being haunted by a poor little moggie whose resting place had been disturbed. Also, if I didn’t get it cleared up pronto, Vinnie would know someone had been in his house. And it wouldn’t take him long to guess it was me.

‘Did you see a Hoover anywhere?’ I asked Brad.

Brad blinked a couple of times. ‘No, but we haven’t checked all the house yet.’

‘This place is huge, it could be anywhere. You check the kitchen and I’ll check the utility room. We haven’t looked in there yet.’ My brain cranked into panic mode as I flew out the door.

I could hear Brad opening and closing cupboards in the kitchen as I searched the utility room next door.

I pulled open one cupboard.

A mop and bucket.

Next cupboard.

A washing basket and sundry washing liquids.

Shit!

Next cupboard.

A monster bag of dried cat food.

Next cupboard.

Hurrah!

A Dyson!

‘Got it!’ I yelled and dragged it towards the office as fast as its little wheels would go.

Brad came in behind me as I plugged it in, switched it to turbo mode, put on a pointy nozzle and vacuumed the surface of the desk for dear life.

I watched the sooty ashes getting sucked up into the clear cylinder of the Dyson at speed.

So far so good.

The only thing left on the desk was just a hint of dust.

I turned my attention to the cream carpet. I had a sneaking suspicion this was going to be more difficult.

Back and forth I went over the carpet like I’d had an overdose of speed until my arm started aching.

When I finally stood back and surveyed the carpet, it looked as good as new. ‘Wow! I think I need one of these. They have superb sucking ability.’

Brad raised an eyebrow at me as he wiped over the desk with his elbow to get rid of any dusty residue.

‘Now I have to put the ashes from the cylinder back in the brass box.’ I bent down and peered at the clear cylinder. ‘Uh-oh.’

‘What?’ Brad stopped wiping and looked at me.

‘Vinnie must’ve been using the Dyson for vacuuming up spilled crisps.’ I narrowed my eyes at the cylinder. Jumbled up in between poor Casper’s ashes were about a million crisp crumbs. It would take about three weeks to pick that lot out.

‘We haven’t got time to get rid of the crisps’ Brad said. ‘We’ll just put all of it back in the box and hope he never notices. I bet Vinnie never looks in there anyway. And if Thuggy looks in there, he’d just think Casper ate a bag of crisps before he died.’

I nodded firmly. ‘You’re right. My auntie had her dog cremated and the ashes put in one of these boxes in a display cabinet. She never ever looked inside. I often wondered, you know, how she knew it was really her dog in there and not someone else’s. I mean, how can you be sure? What if she thought she had Jonathon’s ashes in her box but really they were from Tiger the cat?’ I undid the latch from the cylinder and released it, taking it and the box outside to pour the contents in. No way was I going to go through that again if I spilt some more on the carpet.

As it happens, I did spill some on the grass as I completed the transfer, but the wind was really whipping up now, so it was pretty safe to say no one would notice.

I breathlessly replaced the Dyson in the utility room and put the box back on Vinnie’s desk. There, as good as new. Unless you counted the crisps.

‘Your aunt named her dog Jonathon?’ Brad stared up at the oil paintings on the wall with a look of concentration on his face.

‘Yep. She’s Dad’s sister. She got the crazy genes, too. I’m glad it wasn’t just me.’ I followed Brad’s gaze. ‘Hmm. If he went to the trouble of putting a copy in his safety box, he’d want to make sure any other copies were hidden pretty well, wouldn’t he?

Brad lifted the corner of the first painting, checking behind it.

The wall was bare.

I tried another one.

Nothing, apart from some cobwebs.

Brad went to the third one and lifted the corner. He grinned at me. ‘Here’s his safe.’ He lifted the painting off the wall, resting it on the floor.

I peered over Brad’s shoulder.

A safe about fifty centimetres square stared back at us. It had a keypad with letters on it.

Ooh, hello.

 ‘What do you think the code is?’ I asked.

Brad shrugged. ‘Could be anything.’

I pursed my lips together and tapped my foot. ‘OK, if most people have to use letters for a password, it’s normally something like their kid’s or partner’s name.’

Brad glanced at me. ‘Vinnie hasn’t got any kids. And who would want to be his girlfriend?’

‘Myra Hindley?’

‘I bet they’d have a lovely conversation over dinner.’

‘OK, what else?’ I stared at the safe, concentrating on it so hard in the hope that the password would somehow be telepathically sent into my brain.

Brad folded his arms and stared at it. ‘What about his mum’s name?’

‘Good idea. Except I don’t have a clue what it is.’ I pulled my mobile out of my pocket, rang Hacker and waited on the line while he conjured up the information from the depths of cyberspace.

‘Muriel,’ Hacker said a few minutes later.

I relayed it to Brad who punched in the sequence of letters.

Nothing happened.

‘Damn,’ I said. ‘What else?’

‘His dad’s name was Sam,’ Hacker said in my ear.

‘Try Sam,’ I said to Brad.

He went through the motions again. Nothing.

‘What about Lee?’ Hacker suggested.

‘Good idea.’ I told Brad who punched in the letters.

Nothing.

‘Shit.’ I stamped my foot, thinking. ‘I know, try Coco.’ I waved my arm excitedly at Brad.

Nothing. Not even a mini click.

‘I’m still thinking,’ Hacker said in one ear.

I bit by thumbnail, staring around the room for a flash of inspiration. ‘Casper!’

Brad punched it in and the safe door clicked open.

‘Thanks, Hacker.’ I hung up.

Yay! Go me!

Brad pulled out a bundle of A4 sized buff envelopes and put them on the desk. Flicking through them, he saw one with Levi’s name on. He glanced up at me briefly before emptying the contents onto the desk.

I sucked in a breath when I saw what was inside.

Chapter 14

Photos. That’s all they were.

Simple, non-threatening glossy pieces of paper. Unless you counted what was in the photos. Then it would be pretty scary and threatening to Levi.

I was right in my theory that Levi had been involved in a car accident, but I was so wrong about it being with Edward’s car.

The first photo showed a stationary Range Rover in the middle of a road left in a wonky position. It was a dark night and the road looked like a quiet country street. Levi was slumped in the driver’s seat of the car, his chest resting on the steering wheel. His eyes were closed. But that wasn’t the scary part.

Lying in the road, in front of the car and lit up by the headlights, was the lifeless, bloody body of a woman. Her eyes were wide open in a haunted death glaze, and her bare arms and legs stuck out at funny angles. The bonnet of the car was dented and had obvious traces of blood on it. There were several other close-up shots of the car, Levi, and the girl, taken from different angles. The woman looked to be in her forties, wearing a red cocktail dress. Her shoes had fallen off in the collision and they were lying on the ground near her body.

****

‘Shit,’ I said as I stared at them again later on in the safety of Brad’s kitchen. ‘These are pretty powerful photos.’

‘Do you think these were taken the night Vinnie threw the party for Levi?’ Brad tapped one of the photos spread out on the breakfast bar.

‘That would still make sense.’ I stared at the photos with a sense of dread. ‘It looks like Levi didn’t have anything to do with Edward’s accident, then.’ But I didn’t know which was a worse thing for him to have done. Killed this woman or caused a horrendous spine injury to Edward. They were both disgustingly awful. ‘Maybe Edward was at the party that night and drove himself home drunk and ended up down the embankment all by himself.’ I thought back to Janice Skipper’s flawed traffic accident report and her investigation into Vinnie Dawson. Maybe I’d been jumping to conclusions about something sinister going on. Maybe she hadn’t been a dirty cop, just a useless one.

Brad tapped the photo of Levi. ‘So Levi decides to drive home drunk in his brand new Range Rover, hits this woman and kills her. But who took the photos? Someone else was there, too.’

‘Vinnie. It has to be him. I bet he seized the opportunity to have something on Levi. Think about it…Levi had just won his first title fight. Vinnie knew he was going to be a big cash cow for him and wanted to make sure he could keep him in line. The perfect way to make sure Vinnie would always be his manager and promoter was to blackmail him with these.’

Brad nodded. ‘Vinnie could kill two birds with one stone. He could make sure Levi was tied to him for as long as his career lasted, and he could also make sure the contract was stacked in his own favour financially.’

‘You’re also forgetting that Vinnie could blackmail Levi to throw his fight with this information, too, so Vinnie ended up with even more money from the illegal betting scam.’ I exhaled a long, slow breath as I thought. ‘But why ask him to throw the fight all of a sudden? It seems like Vinnie’s never asked him to do it before, and since Levi’s only twenty-four, he’s got a few years of his career left yet.’

‘Maybe Vinnie suspected Levi was going to come clean about this accident and he wouldn’t have any leverage over him anymore. Also, EJ told me all of Levi’s world champion fights before have had a clause in the match contract that state if Levi loses, he gets a rematch within six months. Because the odds were around thirty-to-one on Levi winning, obviously Vinnie and his cronies would’ve made a substantial amount when Levi took a fall if they bet on Ricky. And then within six months Levi would get his title back on the rematch. Vinnie wins both ways then.’

 I picked the photo up, studying it closely. ‘OK, so let’s assume that a copy of this was in Vinnie’s safety box. This must’ve been what Carl was shouting about to Levi at the boxing match.
I know what you did to that girl
. That’s why Levi got distracted by it, and that’s why both Levi and Vinnie looked so scared.’

‘That’s a pretty good motive for Vinnie to kill Carl.’ Brad sat on the stool next to me, one foot resting on the bottom rung, the other outstretched.

‘Yep. That’s true, but what if Carl wasn’t in on the illegal betting scam at the bank and he suddenly found out about it and confronted Edward? Edward would have a motive to shut him up then, too. And what about everything else that’s been going on? If Carl found copies of these photos in Vinnie’s safety box, then either he was involved in the robbery or Edward or Deborah were.’ I paused, digesting this. ‘It’s unlikely that, if Deborah was involved, she would have told Carl anything, since she was going through a nasty divorce with him and was trying to dig into the whereabouts of his assets for her settlement. So that leaves Edward and Carl. And if either of them were involved in the robbery, what was it in those boxes that they were looking for specifically in the first place? Were they looking for what was in Vinnie’s box all along? Or were they looking for something else completely and just came across these photos?’

‘The only box we’ve found with any kind of connection to Carl is Deborah’s girlfriend, Eleanor Jones. Carl must’ve wanted what she had in her box and stumbled on these pictures in the process,’ Brad said.

I yawned. ‘I think she was probably hiding something for Deborah. What was it, though? And if it was something Carl wanted, why would she hide it in his own bank?’

Brad shrugged. ‘Sometimes the best hiding place is the most obvious.’

‘And why didn’t Carl just steal it from that box when he was at work? As the CEO of the bank, he’s got easy access to all the master keys.’

‘It’s not quite as simple as that.’ Brad ran a hand over his hair. ‘When Hacker checked into the bank’s systems, he discovered that the safety box vault must be opened by three members of staff. All three have to give a thumbprint ID simultaneously for the vault to open. Obviously, both Edward and Carl are on the access list, but even if they were both involved in it, they’d still need to drag someone else into it as well. It would look pretty suspicious if they got access into the vault during the bank’s opening hours and started rummaging around in the safety boxes. They’d alert other members of staff to the fact that something weird was going on.’

I chewed on my lower lip. ‘Right.  So Carl or Edward had to mastermind a full-scale robbery to get in it.’

‘Unless it really was Levi who organized the robbery to get these photos from Vinnie’s box.’

I stretched my arms above my head. ‘It’s a possibility, but somehow it doesn’t really fit. He’s put up with it all this time; why would he suddenly try and do something about it now?’

‘Everyone has their breaking point. Maybe he’s just had enough of being manipulated by Vinnie. Maybe Vinnie asking him to throw the fight was the last straw.’ Brad stood and rummaged around in the cupboards. He switched the kettle on to boil and scooped out a couple of spoonfuls of aromatic coffee grounds into a French press. ‘No wonder Levi bolted if he thinks his hit-and-run is going to be exposed.’

I couldn’t help thinking how this would affect Letitia. It was bad enough for her that she carried around the crushing depression of desperately wanting children and not being able to have them. Levi’s affair wasn’t doing her stress levels any good, either, but for her husband to have killed someone in a drunken hit and run and kept quiet about it all these years. How would she cope with that? Someone would have to tell her, and I was hoping that someone wasn’t going to be me.

‘And if Deborah
was
murdered, who killed her?’ I took the mug of coffee Brad handed me, complete with chocolate sprinkles. The sprinkle touch made me smile. Chocolate – the way to a girl’s heart. ‘Was she killed because of what she put in Eleanor’s box? And if so, what was it? Or did Vinnie kill her because Carl told her what was in Vinnie’s box?’ I eased my tight neck round in a circle.

‘Have you got knots in your shoulders again?’

‘I’ve got knots on my knots.’

‘You should learn to relax more.’

‘How can I relax when I’m running around town trying to solve a case?’ I said, but I knew that was the problem with me. I tried to give the impression of being kick-ass but really, I just held a lot of my vulnerabilities under the surface. My mind was constantly dissecting and analysing things, which on the one hand made me a good investigator, but on the other hand, I tended to do it in my personal life, too. Keeping things in, worrying about stuff (stuff equates to Brad and Romeo), and thinking too much wasn’t good on a personal level, was it? Judging by the tension in my shoulders that would be a definite no. What if I was looking too deep inside myself for answers that I couldn’t see what was on the surface? If I only thought about things and never did them, wasn’t that a wasted opportunity?

Brad took the mug from my hand. ‘How about a massage?’

Well, I didn’t need to be asked twice.

****

A phone call woke me early the next morning. I reached my arm out of the warm duvet with slitty eyes, trying to find my mobile on Brad’s bedside cabinet.

‘’Lo,’ I mumbled, glancing over at Brad’s sleeping face. Awake or asleep, he looked sexy and strong and, well, pretty kissable.

‘Did I wake you?’ Carole Blake said.

I sat up, rubbing at my eyes. ‘No, I had to get up to answer the phone anyway,’ I drawled. ‘What’s up?’

‘I’ve got the post-mortem results for Deborah Thomas, and it was a faked suicide. She’d already been strangled before she was strung up.’

‘OK, thanks for letting me know. Any forensic evidence yet?’

‘No, they’re still working on it.’

Brad let out a deep, sleepy moan, and I put a hand over his mouth. His eyes flew open.

There was a pause from Carole before she said, ‘Shit, Amber. Who’s that? Brad?’

Oh, God. I knew I’d have to tell Romeo about Brad and me, but I was hoping to delay it for…well, indefinitely would be good. I knew he’d have a broken heart, and I just didn’t want it to be me that did it.

Aghhhh!

I was such a horrible, horrible person. And the sad and crazy part was that I still loved Romeo, too. I couldn’t just turn off my feelings for him in an instant. The only problem was that I loved Brad more. And if I was honest with myself, truly honest, there was something missing with Romeo that would never be there. That unique spark and passion. The utter belief that I’d die without him. That was missing with Romeo. Why did my life have to be so complicated?

‘Don’t tell Romeo,’ I said to Carole, avoiding Brad’s gaze. ‘He needs to hear this from me.’

‘I’m not saying a word. But, Amber, are you sure?’

No. That was the problem. I wasn’t sure about a lot of things. The only thing I did know for sure was that after all this time, I still couldn’t get Brad from under my skin.

‘Is anyone ever?’ I asked, being deliberately vague.

‘I guess not. Well, good luck with telling Romeo. I’ll let you know if I find anything else.’ Carole hung up.

Brad rolled onto his back. ‘So, are you going to tell Romeo about us?’

‘Yes.’ I flipped back the covers and headed towards the shower.

****

‘Whoa!’ Hacker said when I spread the photos of Levi on his desk.

‘That’s one word for it,’ I said. ‘There’s a license plate visible in this shot. Can you check it out to see who owned this vehicle four years ago? I’m pretty certain this is the new Range Rover that Vinnie bought for Levi that night, but I need to be sure.’

‘Give me two secs.’ He turned to a smaller screen on his desk and got to work.

I leaned back in my chair, chewing on the end of my pen, trying to make sense of the jumble of information in my head.

‘It was registered to Levi.’ Hacker looked at me.

‘Can you check out any hit-and-runs from four years ago?’ I flicked through my notes. ‘I’m thinking this happened the night of his first title fight on February fourteenth or the early hours of February fifteenth.’ Hmm, Valentine’s Day. Poor woman, she’d never be seeing another Valentine’s Day again. Did she have a husband or children out there still grieving the loss of her life?

‘OK, will do. There’s still no activity on Levi’s or Amanda’s bank or credit cards.’