Dead Men's Tales (Olivia Grant Mysteries Book 2) (7 page)

Brad and I continued to look at each other for a few minutes, but I didn't really see him. In my mind's eye, I saw Carl Novotny walking out of my office with a briefcase in his left hand.

"I thought he took his." I skirted around Brad to peer through the open door into his office. "Whoops! No, he didn't. He took yours."

Brad came up behind me and stared at the place on the floor next to his desk where he always left his. "Son of a gun. Amanda
said
they looked alike."

I stated the obvious. "He must have forgotten he left his out here and took yours by mistake. Too bad."

"Whaddayamean, bad? That's good news. Because it isn't his. It's Hammond's. Now I can return it to Amanda. She asked me to find it, and it walked right into my office."

I returned to the desk and glanced again at Hammond's initials on the briefcase. "I hope your success as an investigator doesn't always hinge on such fortuitous circumstances."

He sounded a little defensive. "I searched long and hard for this thing. I deserve a bit of luck."

"Yet, you can't return it to Amanda. You have to give it back to Novotny."

Brad frowned. "Actually, I may have to turn it over to the police."

"And they'll keep it forever and hamper business, just what Amanda didn't want."

"I'll call Amanda and tell her that we have it. However, if the cops think it's evidence, I can't withhold it."

"We don't know that it
is
evidence. It may never have been at the crime scene at all. Maybe Novotny found it somewhere else. Besides, Amanda said it contained only business papers."

"Nevertheless, I have to follow the rules."

"It seems a little nitpicky to me. Where did you learn that?"

"Those three years on the police force." He didn't look up for a minute, then added. "You expected it, didn't you? Isn't that why you, Samantha, and I were sent to Sunday School?"

I'd never been able to determine when Brad was serious and when he was pulling my leg, and our parents had been strict about our attending church all through our teens. Church and Sunday school attendance had not ranked high with their fellow baby boomers, but our mother believed in it and continued the tradition raising Brad, Samantha, and me. Since then, I often wondered if the proliferation of crime among younger and younger children had anything to do with their lack of moral education on weekends. As for Brad, I remembered his attendance stopped after he turned sixteen, but at least the lessons had apparently not gone in one ear and out the other without ever touching brain matter.

He picked up the case and strode into his office, placing it on top of his desk. He grabbed the phone with his free hand before he sat down. He soon had Amanda on the line, and then he opened the briefcase, which, as it turned out, hadn't been locked.

I jumped up from my chair and hurried after him, leaning across his desk to look at the contents. While he read off the names on the file folders inside, I removed a video cartridge. Neither it nor the slipcase bore any kind of label, so it didn't appear to be a rented movie. That piqued my curiosity.

I turned it over in my hands. It was a VHS tape. Very old school. Who had used it and what for?

Brad made notes on one of his yellow pads, and I heard his half of their conversation.

"Maybe not," he said into the phone. "Depends on whether they think it's important. I'll call my friend Tom Ortega and ask him." I heard only a lot of silence on Brad's end, and then Amanda apparently agreed he could talk to Tom, and he hung up.

"What about the videotape?" I asked. "Did Amanda say what that's all about?"

"She says it's just pictures of fancy jewelry. You know, necklaces, bracelets, things like that."

"But who uses VHS? Does Amanda know it's an old tape?"

"Yes."

He picked up the phone again, and I heard him ask for Tom, so I put the recorder on the desk and went back to the outer office again.

After another five minutes, Brad came out and told me to call Novotny and arrange to swap briefcases with him. "Find out how he came to have it, and tell him to give it back to Amanda right away."

"Tom doesn't think the police need to see it? Is he sure about that?"

"I described everything in it, and he said they already had all the information about who Hammond visited in Los Angeles."

"And the videotape?"

"Tom said that unless it showed the murderer committing the crime—which is hardly likely with no camera in that hotel linen room—he'd just believe Amanda's statement that it contained pictures of jewelry."

That surprised me, but who was I to question the workings of the law?

Brad had his hand on the knob of the outer door when I stopped him. "I have to teach a bridge class this afternoon, so I'll be out for two or three hours."

He turned back. "I'll be having lunch out myself."

"Who's your lunch date with?"

"If you must know, it's with Ms. Dillon."

"Oh? What for?"

"I need to know everything about Hammond's business affairs in Los Angeles. I'm planning to fly down tomorrow to interview his contacts."

I decided to challenge his motives. "You can't con me, Bradley Featherstone. You just want to see the gorgeous Amanda Dillon again. And the fact she's smart and has a prestigious job doesn't hurt."

His mouth turned up, and although the light from the window was behind him, his face got a little pink. "I admit I like working for her. Who wouldn't? And I'd like to prove I'm a good investigator."

He lingered in the room for another moment, biting his thumbnail, then took a look at his wristwatch, saluted in my direction, and headed out the door.

As soon as he'd gone, I called Novotny at his office, but he wasn't in, so I left a message. Then I called his home and left a message on his voicemail there.

Having done all I could for the moment to contact the man, I went to the coffee shop on the first floor of the office building for an early lunch. Velma Edison sat at the counter, and she called out loudly and patted the empty stool next to her, so—unless I wanted to be rude—I had no option but to take it.

Velma's in her forties and has never been married, which is probably a good thing, since she's the sort of person who could give wife-beaters a good name. She's a gossipy troublemaker who could win an Olympic gold medal for pessimism, but I hated eating in restaurants alone, so I sometimes put up with her.

"I see you're working for your brother again today," she said. "How's business?"

I never discussed Brad's business with anyone. In Velma's case, I took a perverse delight in making up outrageous stories of his investigations, which she seemed to believe. Once before, I invented a couple of murders he supposedly solved, so—now that he actually had a murder case—I said he was chasing an international jewel thief. While I waited for my lunch, I described scenes from the old Cary Grant movie,
To Catch a Thief
, which she failed to recognize.

Velma worked in a flower shop. I'd often wondered how a person with such a naturally sour disposition became a flower shop owner—an occupation I assumed required some joy and love of life. But what did I know? Apparently not wanting to leave her shop unattended for long, she finished her lunch quickly and hurried across the street to her store.

When she'd gone, Parry Williams, who owned the art gallery on the first floor, called and waved to me, and I joined her in a side booth. Parry was named for a place near where she was born in Canada and had a trace of what passes for a Canadian accent, mostly in the vowels, in her voice. She greeted me warmly the first day I worked for Brad and was the closest thing I had to a girlfriend in the building. Both of us single—she was widowed with five grown-up children she seldom visited—we sometimes went to dinner together or to a movie. Unfortunately, she liked films with sad endings, which you'd never guess from her otherwise jolly disposition.

"So you managed to get rid of Velma." She raised her eyes.

"She had to get back to her shop. Apparently left the door unlocked." I took a bite of the sandwich I'd brought with me to the booth. "So how's
your
business?"

"This is slow season."

"Is an office building a good location for an art gallery?"

"Yes, it works out very well. This building is still only partly occupied, and new renters for the offices upstairs need art to hang on their walls."

Much as I liked her personally, I found most of her merchandise consisted of large abstracts of the
guess what I'm supposed to be
variety and heaps of trash that someone had mistakenly dignified with the name of sculpture. Naturally, I hadn't been one of her customers. Impressionism is as far from photographic realism or even representational art as I cared to go. Nor had I seen any reason to buy her realistic painting of a roll of toilet paper.

"So long as you sell enough to pay the rent."

"Amen to that." She raised her hand and showed me crossed fingers.

I laughed, finished my coffee, and slid out of the booth. "I'd better get back to my office. I have to check for messages, and then I'm going to teach my bridge class."

"How's the investigation going?"

Having read everything about it in the newspapers and seen interviews on PBS, she asked if Brad was on the case, and I admitted he was but told her none of the details. Then I waved good-bye and took the elevator upstairs.

At one-thirty, Novotny called.

"You seem to have picked up Mr. Featherstone's briefcase by mistake," I told him.

"Yeah, I know."

"Can you come back to the office and return it?"

"Sorry. I have no wheels today. My car went into the shop. They dropped me off at your office, and afterward I took a cab."

"In that case, I'll come to
your
office."

"I'm not in the office now."

I waited for him to be specific about his location, but it took him a long time. "Tell you what," he finally said, "we could do it tonight, after I get my car back. Would you meet me at Tino's at seven? Since I'm unexpectedly solvent this week, I'll buy you dinner."

"Of course. I'll meet you there." I knew Brad would want me to. "But you don't have to buy my dinner. We'll just exchange briefcases."

"No, I'd like to. I hate eating alone. Unless you have other plans."

After thinking for a moment, I told Novotny I'd meet him at Tino's. That still gave me plenty of time to teach my bridge class at the Kozy Kard Klub.

I liked to play bridge as well as teach it. I was one of those rare women who paid more attention to the cards than the girl talk at the table. It was not always thus. When I was a child, my parents played bridge with their friends, and I could hear them from my bedroom before I fell asleep. I mentally added it to the other strange activities that adults engaged in and decided it was a game for people who had nothing better to do with their time.

Nevertheless, when my mother's sister came to live with us when I was a teenager, I was forced into learning in order to make a fourth for them. That's when I discovered I liked it. Not too dependent on chance, like most card games, it challenged me and made me think and plan ahead. After Stephen and I married, we played bridge with friends. When he died, I found I could earn money teaching the game to others at the recreation center. The extra income came in handy when Brad and Samantha were in college at the same time and needed to borrow money.

I wished they would take up the game, but they were ten years younger, and by then, they had computers, worked out at a gym, or watched some of the seven-thousand channels on television. When I heard Bill Gates played bridge, with Warren Buffett no less, I felt vindicated and decided they were probably responsible for restoring the game to a semblance of popularity. The Kozy Kard Klub had added ten new members that very year.

Thinking about playing bridge with Stephen reminded me that I planned to meet Carl Novotny later that day. In fact, I recognized the real reason for my eagerness. Brad had teased me about not dating, and now I had a chance for a rendezvous with an attractive man.

I hadn't dated in quite a while. After Stephen died, I became even closer to Brad and Samantha, but when they were both out of the house, I felt abandoned and lonely. Brad was at the police academy, and Samantha had a job as a clothes buyer for a very froufrou shop where apparel was displayed on a jungle gym. Plus, both had apartments of their own. Then I met and fell in lust with Lamar Grant, married him, and discovered his brain handled little more than remembering his ATM number. He also thought toilet paper grew on the holders, didn't know the difference between a laundry hamper and the floor, and might have had a talent-ectomy. Since our divorce almost a year before, I was gun-shy.

However, Novotny was apparently eligible. He worked for Hammond's company, and only wanted companionship for dinner. Okay, so maybe the police suspected him of the murder. That only made it more interesting. I could do some detecting. Perhaps I could find out things that Brad hadn't. And anyway, what could happen to me in a restaurant with a hundred other people? It wasn't like he asked me to meet him at a deserted rest stop on Interstate Five.