Burning Justice (12 page)

I
went home
frustrated and confused. The case had me running in circles and there were no answers in sight. I wondered if I should head over to the hospital and see if Nathan had recovered. The police probably had a guard at his door, though, and wouldn’t let me talk to him. Even if I could talk to him, would he give me straight answers?

And where
was
Jenny? She was deep into this, I knew it. I bet I wouldn’t get straight answers from her, either. But sometimes even when suspects aren’t being straight with you, you can read between the lines and figure out little pieces of the truth.

I arrived at my apartment to find Artemis sitting on the couch, frowning down at my tablet.

“What’s going on?”

Artemis looked up at me. “I was just trying to see if I could come up with any clues given the juxtaposition of the new information against what you already had.”

“New information?”

Artemis straightened, looking quite pleased with himself. “Yes. I was able to complete the searches you requested. And I found something very interesting about Evangeline.”

“Oh, really?”

“She also does not have a past.”

“What do you mean, she doesn’t have a past? You mean, like Jenny?”

“Exactly. She must have been using a fake identity.”

“A fake identity? But she was married to Nathan. How long have they been married?”

“Five years. It’s likely he did not do a background check on her. Most people don’t.”

I flopped down on the chair. This was an interesting development. No wonder I’d felt she hadn’t been straight with me that day in my office. She wasn’t even who she said she was. But, she
was
the one that had been murdered, so what did that prove?

“Maybe Evangeline and Jenny
did
know each other before. Maybe they were scammers together.” I shot up from my chair and started pacing, the ideas flowing. “What if Evangeline got her new identity and went straight, or at least pretended to. Somehow she gets her hooks into Nathan … he
is
rich, after all. Then Jenny finds out and blackmails her. Makes Evangeline pay up or she’ll tell Nathan about her sordid past. Maybe
that’s
why Evangeline was paying for expensive facials and treatments and who knows what else.”

“So, then how does Evangeline end up dead? You’d think Jenny would want to keep her alive if she was a cash cow. And why would she be working as their domestic helper?”

“Good questions,” I said. “And why would Evangeline tell me about the supposed affair and not mention the blackmail? Maybe Evangeline was trying to pull a fast one, too. That would explain why my internal lie detector went off when she was in my office.”

Artemis nodded slowly. “Right. All four of them were up to no good, and then something went drastically wrong and Evangeline ended up dead.”

“For all I know, they were all trying to get rid of each other.”

“But why would they do that?”

“Money. We already know that at least one of the Barrows brothers was siphoning money from the investment company. What were Nathan’s and Evangeline’s finances like? Did you get a chance to check them?”

“Their finances were apparently in very good shape. They had a lot of money in their payment accounts and quite a bit of retirement investments.”

“And they hadn’t moved any money around or made any big withdrawals recently?”

Artemis shook his head. “No. The only thing that came up was that Nathan had emptied out a safety deposit box at seven a.m. on Tuesday.”

“Seven in the morning? How could he have done that? The bank isn’t even open then.”

“They have one of the newfangled safety deposit boxes with thumb print access. There is a special access door at the back of the bank and you can get into your safety deposit box twenty-four hours a day in complete privacy with no humans even having to be there.”

“They have that? I didn’t know.” I felt like my grandmother, not keeping up with modern technology, but apparently computers were replacing humans in all jobs now, even at the bank. “So, you know it was definitely Nathan from his thumbprint, then?”

“Either Nathan or Evangeline. They were the only two who would’ve been able to get access … but by seven a.m. on Tuesday, Evangeline was already dead.”

“So Nathan killed his wife and then ran off to the bank to empty out the safety deposit box? What was in it?”

“That, I cannot tell you. But I can tell you it did weigh almost exactly the amount of one hundred thousand dollars if the denominations were in hundred dollar bills.”

Artemis must have noticed my quizzical look, because he added, “I had a lot of time on my hands while you were gone and I, too, wondered what was in the box. The bank does not have any cameras in the rooms so as to provide complete privacy. But one thing they do record is the weight of each box when it is put in and removed. People only keep things that are valuable in the safety deposit box, so I just sent my programs off to determine what type of valuable would match the weight difference.”

“Wow. So, it seems like Nathan was trying to make a break for it. He bought those tickets to get out of town the week after Evangeline’s death. He set it up to look like an accident and probably figured the police would have been fooled and the investigation would be over by then. Then he cleaned out the safety deposit box for spending money. He already had the money in an offshore account that he’d siphoned out of Barrows Investments. But, then why did he try to kill himself?”

“And why would he have to run off if the case was already closed?”

“Wait a minute. When did you say he cleaned out the safety deposit box?”

Artemis didn’t have a chance to answer me because just then my phone went off. I rummaged in my tote bag. It was Gerta Barrows.

“Callie Justice,” I answered.

“I’m so glad I caught you.” Gerta’s voice was laced with excitement. “You asked me to call if I saw or heard anything from Jenny.”

My heartbeat kicked up a notch. “She came back?”

“Well, I haven’t actually
seen
her. But she must be fixin’ to come back because the delivery drone just dropped off a package for her. She must’ve ordered something and timed the delivery so it would be here when she got back.”

“So she could be back at any minute.” I grabbed my tote bag and shot up from the chair. “Thanks a lot, Gerta. I really appreciate it.”

“No problem. I’ll keep a watch out in the hallway and give you a call if I see anything. I don’t know what she’s up to, but I think you should come quick because she may not be home for long.”

“How do you know that?”

“It looks like she’s going to a costume party.”

That stopped me in my tracks. My brows snapped together. “Costume party? Why do you say that?”

“Why? Because the delivery is from costumes online dot com.”

“Oh. Right.” I snapped the phone shut and stared at it, my brows still drawn tight. Something stirred in the back of my brain … why would Jenny order a costume?

Why would Nathan try to kill himself—and with whiskey, of all things … he’d said he hated whiskey.

And
how
could he possibly have started the boat fire and emptied the safety deposit box when he was in his car several hours away.

And then it all clicked into place.

I grabbed my tote and ran for the door, shouting instructions to Artemis over my shoulder. “See if you can get into Dr. Richfeld’s patient database and poke around. Check the patient numbers.”

“What? Why? What am I looking for and
where
are you going?”

I ignored the concerned tone in his voice as I ripped the door open. “I'm sure your computer brain can figure it out. I'm going to the hospital. If my theory is correct, Nathan Barrows is in extreme danger!”

M
y mind whirled
with the possibilities all the way to the hospital. If I was wrong, then so be it. But if I was right … I just hoped that I wasn’t too late.

I’d had to pull the plug on Agatha. Her incessant questions were wreaking havoc with my thought process. I needed to concentrate.

I squealed into the first parking spot and ran into the building. Shoot. What room was Nathan in?

I barked the question at the startled desk clerk, practically running in place while she looked up the room number. Three-seventeen.

I snagged an empty elevator, then stood inside stabbing my finger into the button for the third floor as if jabbing it would make the elevator go faster. It might have, though, because it was only a few seconds until the doors whooshed open, spilling me out on the third floor. The smell of rubbing alcohol and bleach made my nose tingle as I ran toward room three-seventeen.

Surprisingly, there was no police guard. The room was dark, all the lights turned off, and the curtain pulled around the single bed beside the wall.

Was I too late?

But the beep, beep, beeping of the machines sent relief flooding through me. Nathan was still alive.

I quietly peeked around the curtain. A nurse was bending over the bed, her back to me. She was fixing his IV line … or so it appeared. But if my fears were correct, the brunette nurse with the newfangled haircut wasn’t
fixing
the IV line, especially not with a syringe in her hand!

I lunged for her hand.

She spun around, the syringe up in the air, stabbing downward toward my neck.

I lurched to the right, narrowly avoiding the deadly needle. She leaped toward me and I ducked down just in time, plowing my head into her stomach and sending us both toppling to the ground.

We grappled on the floor. Adrenaline shot through me as I felt the prick of the needle in my arm. I swatted it away wondering, if I’d been too late. Had whatever toxic serum was in there gotten into me?

“You won’t get away with this!” My tongue already felt thick, but I wasn’t about to give up and let her finish me off. With the last of my strength I grabbed onto her hair and brought my knee up, crunching it into her face.

When I pulled my hands away, the brunette wig came with it.

The last thing I registered before I blacked out was the angry face of Evangeline Barrows.

“
G
od dammit
, Justice, you are just as stubborn and meddlesome as your father.” I thought the voice sounded like Sgt. Hale but I couldn’t be sure. Was I dead? I sure hoped Sgt. Hale wasn’t lurking around in the afterlife.

“She’s coming 'round now. She’ll be okay.” This was a female voice.

I tried to open my eyes but someone had weighted them down with five-pound lead sinkers.

“I should have her PI license pulled.” Hale again.

“Oh, come on, she actually did us a favor. If she hadn’t come when she did, we would have been too late.” That voice sounded like Royce.

What were they talking about and where the hell was I?

Sensation started to return to my body. I was lying down on something soft and scratchy. Sheets? Hospital sheets. The incessant beeping of the machines confirmed that I was, indeed, in the hospital.

I managed to formulate what I thought was a word, “Wha???”

A warm hand covered mine. “Callie? You’re okay. You’re in the hospital.”

I wrestled one eyelid open to see Tony Royce’s face hovering over me. His concerned expression made my heart give a little hitch. I struggled to open the other eye while trying to unstick my thick tongue from the roof of my mouth.

Someone handed me a plastic cup full of ice chips. Hale? That seemed like an awfully nice gesture for him.

I sucked on an ice chip while I drifted back to reality. My other eye popped open.

“Nathan!” I shot up in the bed.

Royce pushed me back down. “Nathan is fine. Evangeline is on her way to jail.”

My eyes jerked to the spot on my arm where she’d jabbed me with the needle.

“Luckily, she only got a few drops of etorphine into you. Not enough to be fatal. You’ll be fine.”

I frowned as my mind ran over the events. I was grateful I'd arrived just in the nick of time, but I still had some unanswered questions.

“What are you guys doing here?” I asked.

“We should ask you the same thing. What’s the matter with you, running in here to confront a killer? You should have called us.”

He had a point. “One of Jenny Sparks’s neighbors called to tell me a costume had been delivered to Jenny’s apartment, then it all clicked in place. But it was still just a theory. I didn’t know if you guys would believe me. So I came by myself. But I thought you guys would have a police guard at the door, seeing as Nathan was a confessed murderer.”

“See. That’s where your meddling screws things up.” Hale leveled me with a stern look. “We pulled the guard off on purpose. So we could catch the killer red-handed.”

“So you knew it was murder and that Nathan didn’t do it all along?” I asked.

“Well, not
all
along. But we can read the clues as easily as you can. And we are the police, so it’s our job to interpret them,” Hale said.

My brows pushed together. “How did you know about the costume?”

“We put a tap on Evangeline’s and Jenny’s online shopping and delivery accounts. We saw the purchase come through from Evangeline’s account but the address was Jenny’s.” Hale shrugged. “It was a nurse costume and since we knew someone had already tried to kill Nathan, we just put two and two together along with the other clues and came to the same conclusion you did.”

“Okay. So then where were you all the time I was fighting with her?” I looked back down at my arm, which was now turning purple. “You guys could have saved me from getting injected.”

“Sorry about that.” Royce grimaced. “Our timing was a little off, but it all worked out in the end, right?”

“Right,” I said. “So, Nathan wasn’t involved in this at all? He wasn’t having an affair with Jenny and he wasn’t stealing money from his company?”

“Nope. He’s an innocent victim. We have solid proof he wasn’t anywhere near the house when the boat burned.”

I cocked a brow, not wanting to mention that I did, too. I was pretty sure hacking into the drones was illegal. “Oh?”

“Yeah. Drone surveillance. Interesting thing, when we subpoenaed the videos, they thought we’d already seen them. Apparently, someone got into their system and viewed them.” Hale’s eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

I ignored his question and asked, “Was his brother David involved?”

Royce nodded. “Our forensic computer scientist found some discrepancies at Barrows Investments when we were investigating as part of our standard procedure. Then, at the wake, when you mentioned that David had told you the neighbors claimed Nathan wasn’t at the cabin, we started to get suspicious. There was only one reason David would lie to try to make Nathan look guilty.”

“So, it was David all along? Where did Evangeline and Jenny come in?” I shivered, thinking about Jenny’s burned body buried in Evangeline’s grave. Had she been an innocent victim?

Royce and Hale exchanged a look. I swung my legs over the side of the bed, letting myself ease into the standing up process.

“That’s the part that had us confused. Since we thought Evangeline was dead, the clues we had pointed to the whole thing being planned by David and Jenny, but we just couldn’t figure out why the two of them would kill Evangeline,” Hale admitted.

“Not until that anonymous call today,” Royce added.

“Anonymous call?” I stopped halfway off the bed and shot them a quizzical look. “You guys got a call?”

“Yeah, some English dame and some guy. At first, I thought it was a prank. They were arguing like a bad Laurel and Hardy act.” Hale shrugged. “We get a lot of prank calls. Anyway, they were yammering on about Evangeline and some dentist and how Nathan could be in trouble.”

“We almost hung up on them, but then they patched in Dr. Richfeld and he verified it.”

“Verified what?” I thought I knew where they were going because I’d figured that clue out myself. That’s why I’d had Artemis check up on the dentist. But I wanted to find out if I’d been right.

“The body on Nathan Barrows’s boat had been so badly burned that the only thing left were the bones and titanium cheek implants. We couldn’t identify the victim by the teeth because they’d had no dental work done. But titanium implants have serial numbers. Dr. Richfeld was the surgeon and he was able to identify who the patient was by the serial number,” Hale said.

“Both Evangeline and Jenny had cheek implants done by Dr. Richfield," said Royce. "Evangeline must’ve been planning this for quite some time as she paid for Jenny’s surgery. Anyway, Richfeld keeps paper records which are transposed onto the computer weekly. Somehow, Evangeline had gone in and changed the patient numbers when no one was looking in the office. She switched her number with Jenny’s knowing it would get transcribed into the computer eventually. She planned all along to kill Jenny and make it look like the victim had been her.”

“That way she’d never have to worry about being accused of murder or anything else she was into,” I mused.

“Those two who called seemed awfully concerned that we get to the hospital right away. They were insistent and very dramatic about it, like they might have known
someone
would be in trouble here. Luckily we were on the way anyway.” Hale’s eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t happen to know these people, would you? The guy had a deep voice and the woman was chirpy with an English accent.”

I pretended like I was focused on standing up so I could avoid eye contact with Hale. “People? No I don’t know any
people
that fit that description.”

Hale made a noise like maybe he didn’t believe me while he grabbed my elbow to help steady me. “I have to say, you did a good job figuring out these clues. Your father would be proud.”

My gaze snapped in his direction. His voice had a soft tone to it, almost like a friendly uncle. Did he think I would be flattered that my father would be proud or was he getting in another jab, knowing what a jerk my father was?

I was about to say something sarcastic, but when I saw the compassion and concern in Hale’s eyes, I bit off my reply. Or maybe I just thought I saw concern because the next second, his expression shuttered into the mean, disapproving one that I was used to.

I pulled my elbow away, swaying only slightly, but managing to stand on my own.

“But, on future cases, you need to stay out of our way. I could have you put in jail for obstruction of justice. Maybe even get you a cell next to your dad. We don’t need your help solving cases. In fact, you almost blew this one for us.” Hale shot a pointed look at Royce and jerked his head toward the door.

I resisted the urge to stick my tongue out at his retreating back. He was just jealous that I’d solved the case. Sure, the police had found the same clues, but I was the one who had figured out that Evangeline had done the switch.

I still had some unanswered questions, like why Evangeline would have tried to hire me in the first place, but I didn’t yell after them to come back. I was feeling fine and my first order of business was to get a doctor in here, so I could check out. The answers could come later, after the police had questioned Evangeline. Maybe I’d find out more during my meeting with Tony Royce.

I pressed the call button for the nurse and sat on the edge of the bed, tapping my feet on the industrial tiled floor as I waited.

I was brimming with energy now. My brush with death and the solving of the case gave me renewed vigor. I’d figured out who the killer was and saved an innocent man.

This case was now closed, and I was anxious to get to work on the next one. Hale’s warning to butt out of police business on future cases echoed in my head.

Would I heed it?

Heck no.