Diners, Dives & Dead Ends (26 page)

“Sorry, Rose, but I didn’t
know who else to call.  I was too embarrassed to call my friends, and Pack
isn’t answering his cell.”

I didn’t know if I should be
flattered or insulted.  “No problem.  What happened?”

  We walked toward the main
entrance.  “First I tried to buy some sheets,” she said, her arms flapping in
the air, “sheets.  But two of my cards were declined.  In fact, they cut them
up.”  Her voice got higher with every word.  “I thought it must be a mistake. 
But then I go out to the parking lot and find this fat man with tattoos hooking
my car to a tow truck.  He had paperwork and everything.  Said we were four months
late with the payments.  Four months!” 

I guided her to my car and
opened the passenger door for her before sliding into my seat and starting the
engine.  The temperature had been dropping all day and the sky was overcast.  I
flipped the heater on and hoped it worked. 

“Why don’t you have a
window?”

“Long story. Does Packard
handle all the money?”

She looked at me with her
mouth open.  “Of course.”

“Sheila, I told you, Packard
has a gambling addiction.  The night we followed him, he was losing.  Big time. 
When he asked for more credit, he was thrown out.”

I glanced over at her.  Her
skin was ghostly white.  She held a shaking hand to her mouth.  “Oh my gosh. 
What am I going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

She was quiet as I pulled
out of the parking lot and drove toward her house.  Then she suddenly sat up
straighter than my mother in the Episcopalian church on Easter morning.  “No,
not home.  Take me to his office.  That son-of-a-bee has some explaining to
do.”  

 “I don’t think that is such
a good idea right now.  Maybe you need to wait until you’ve calmed down a
little.”

Her light brown eyes sparkled
with anger.  “Take me to his office.  Now.”

I didn’t argue any further
but drove to a tall office building next to the highway.  The mirrored windows
reflected the stormy gray clouds overhead.  If Sheila was going to confront Packard,
now might be a good time for me to do the same.

I had barely pulled into a
parking spot before Sheila leaped out of the car.  I quickly shut off the
ignition and ran to catch up to her. 

Marching into the office building,
she made her way to the elevator and punched the button. Tension and anger made
her petite frame stiff, and as we stepped into the elevator and waited for it
to slowly climb to the fifth floor, she crossed her arms and tapped her foot. 
Phil Collins sang a tune as we made our journey upward.

As soon as the doors slid
open, she stalked toward the glass office door that bore Packard’s name and
threw it open.  The receptionist looked up, startled.  “Mrs. Graystone?”

The waiting room was full.  Two
teenagers with bad skin, their mothers, an elderly man, and a woman in a business
suit.  All eyes were riveted on Sheila.

“Where is he?” she asked the
receptionist.

“He’s…he’s with a patient.”

Sheila stormed through the
waiting room door that led to the back. 

“Packard,” Sheila called
out. She began opening doors, one after the other.  I heard the startled
voices.  I followed along and kept quiet.  “Where are you, Packard?”  She was
definitely using her outside voice.

The door to the fourth room
on the right opened and Packard stepped out, holding one of those long Q-tips
in his hand.  “Sheila?  What are you doing here?”

“I want some answers,” she
said.

Packard glanced at me,
before looking around.  All of the patients had come out of their rooms and stared
at us. 

“Sheila,” Packard whispered,
“I’m with a patient.  Go home and I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

“No,” she said, loudly,
“either we talk right here in this hallway or we go to your office.”

An elderly man stood next to
me.  He had on a hospital gown and a pair of dark socks.  “What the hell is all
the shouting for?” he asked.

“Right now, Packard.  Choose,”
Sheila said.

Packard’s ears turned red. 
“Everything’s fine, everyone.  Go back into your rooms and I’ll be with you in
a few minutes.  Just a small family emergency.”

A nurse in pink scrubs
covered with cartoon kittens rushed down the hall and began ushering patients
back into their rooms.  The elderly man next to me turned around and I saw his
ass.  His bare, wrinkly, saggy ass.  I shuddered thinking about why he was
pants down in a dermatologist’s office.

Packard and Sheila were already
at the far end of the hall, so I hurried to catch up.  Packard opened the door
for Sheila, but glowered at me.  “You,” he pointed a finger in my face, “stay
out.”

Sheila grabbed my hand.  “Oh
no.  She’s coming, too.”  She pulled me into his office.

A large picture window
looked out over the parking lot.  The walls were painted hunter green and
covered with framed diplomas and pictures of Packard with various political leaders,
including Mayor Briggs and the governor. 

Packard retreated behind his
desk.  Sheila plopped into one of the chairs in front of it and yanked me down
into the other. 

Photos of Sheila and Jordan,
their mysteriously gendered child, sat on the desktop.  There was also a
picture of Mary Graystone and a man I figured was her current husband, because
he wasn’t Axton’s dad.  And no pictures of Axton at all.

“What is so important that it
couldn’t wait until I got home, Sheila?  And what is she doing here?”  He
stabbed a finger in my direction.

She sat on the edge of her
chair, leaning forward.  “Two of my credit cards were declined today.”

“Is that all?  It was
probably a misunderstanding.”   He pushed away from his desk and started to rise. 

“No, that is not all.  They
cut them up.  And then, I went to the parking lot, the car was being towed.   Repossessed,
Packard.  What the h-e-double-l is going on?”

He sank back into his chair,
distracted and pale as all the color drained from his face.  “I just needed a
little more time.  I could have paid them if they gave me a little more time.”

Sheila jabbed a thumb at me. 
“She saw you the other night.  Gambling.  You didn’t have a committee meeting,
did you?”

He started to bluster, his
eyes fixed on me.  “You followed me?  How dare you?  Who do you think you are?”

I glared back at him.  “The
only one who cares about Axton.  And you know exactly why he was kidnapped.”

“Who said he was kidnapped?  He’s
probably just done a runner.” 

“Cut the crap.  I know about
Sullivan.”

All the bluster went out of
him like a deflated balloon.  His eyes skittered between me and the door, as if
he was thinking about making a run for it.

“Wait,” Sheila turned to me,
“who is Sullivan?”  She glanced back at Packard.  “That’s the guy who called
nine times, right?”

“You checked my phone?  My
God, Sheila—”

“Oh, shut the eff up, Pack,
and answer the question.”

Since I wanted to know more
about Sullivan, too, I sat back in my seat and crossed my legs.  “Yes, Pack,
tell her who Sullivan is.”

“He’s a guy I owe money to,”
he choked out.

“That’s not the whole story,
though, is it?”

“Someone tell me what is
going on.  Who is this Sullivan?  And how much do you owe him?”

“Almost two hundred thousand,”
he said.  He rubbed his eyes and sighed.  One hundred ninety-six thousand to be
exact, but I didn’t correct him.

“But why did he take Axton?”
I asked.

He lowered his hands and
tears welled up in his eyes.  “I didn’t know they would kidnap him.  I needed
Ax to do me a favor. I didn’t know it would go so wrong.”

Finally, I was getting
somewhere.  “What favor?

“There’s a rumor Sullivan
keeps a list of all the people who owe him money.  Prominent people.  Sometimes
he takes favors in lieu of payments.  I thought if I had the list, I’d have
leverage over Sullivan.  So I asked Axton to get me the list.”

“Is that what’s on the hard
drive in Axton’s backpack?”  I knew it was, but I was playing dumb.  Sadly, it
wasn’t that much of a stretch.

“Yeah.  Axton was supposed
to make a copy of Sullivan’s drive, not take the whole thing.  Idiot.  He
ruined a perfectly good plan.”

Sheila looked back and forth
between us.  “I don’t understand.  This is why Axton is missing?”

I glanced at Sheila.  “Axton
stole a hard drive from Sullivan’s computer so Sullivan kidnapped him to get it
back.”  I shook my head at Packard.  “Ax even called you for help.” 

He shrugged.  “How was I
supposed to help him?  If he’d followed my instructions, he’d be fine.”

“You knew I had the hard
drive,” I said.  “But you broke into my apartment and destroyed everything.” 

Packard eyed me like I was
crazy.  “What are you talking about?  I never broke into your apartment.”

Damn.  He sounded sincere. 
I now officially believed in the innocence of all my suspects.  But someone
sure as shit broke in and spilled my milk.  Who did that leave?  Manny?

“By the way, was anything on
the hard drive?” Packard asked.

“No.”  The last thing I
needed was Packard getting his hands on that list.  I didn’t trust him with
even the smallest amount of information.  He was a screw-up and he’d gotten Ax
kidnapped. 

Packard ran a hand through
his hair.

There was a knock at the
door.  We all turned to stare at it.  The nurse with the cartoon cats poked her
head in.  “Doctor Graystone?  The patients are getting restless.”

Packard sighed and slumped
in his chair, rubbing his forehead.  He appeared tired and drawn. 

Sheila didn’t look much
better.  Her skin was ashen and her eyes glimmered with unshed tears.  Poor
Sheila.  This son-of-a-bee just crushed her whole world.

“I’ll get there when I can,
Jean.”  He held his hand up and gestured, like he was trying to push her out of
the office.  “Give me a minute, okay?”

She withdrew her head and
shut the door.

“Exactly how damaging is
this list supposed to be?” I said.

“It gives details about
everyone who owes Sullivan money.  I was hoping it had the favors people had done
for Sullivan, too.” 

I knew it didn’t.  “Go on.”

“I know for a fact that
Charles Beaumont rammed through a development deal for the Crab Apple apartment
complex.  There’s been debate about that complex for the last year, but all of
the sudden Charles has the votes to make it happen.  And he was against it in
the first place.  I can’t prove it, but I think Sullivan owns it. 

“And a new construction
company nobody’s ever heard of got a contracting bid to renovate the country
club.  They weren’t the lowest bid, either.  I can’t prove the construction company
is owned by Sullivan, but I do know that two of the board members who pushed for
approval spent a lot of time losing money at Sullivan’s tables.”

I agreed with Packard. 
Sullivan probably did own that construction company, and he probably was behind
the apartment complex approval.  But the man was too damn wily to leave an
evidence trail. 

“So Sullivan just wants the
hard drive back?”  I asked.  “Then he’ll let Axton go?”

“And a quarter of a million
dollars,” he said bitterly.

My jaw dropped.  “Wait, you
said you owed two hundred thousand.”

“Sullivan says I owe more for
all the aggravation I’ve caused.”

Yeah, I could see Sullivan
saying that.  For some reason it almost made me smile.  

“Well, I can get the hard
drive.”

Sheila finally piped in. 
“We need to go to the police.”  It was as if someone had flipped her “on”
switch. 

“No.”  Packard pointed a
finger at his wife.  “We are absolutely not going to the police.  Don’t even
think about it, do you hear me?”

Sheila stared at him
defiantly, lifting her chin in the air.  “Why not?”

“Shit, Sheila, he has all
sorts of people in his pocket.  Powerful people.  We do not want to piss this
guy off.”

“Maybe you should have
thought about that before you lost so much money,” I said.  “What else do you
know about Sullivan?”

Packard frowned at me. 
“What the hell does it matter?  He’s the kind of guy you don’t want to be
indebted to.”

“Answer the question,
Packard,” Sheila said. 

“He runs floating poker
games.  I don’t really know him, okay?”

She jumped up, pounded her
hands on the desk, and leaned forward.  “You don’t really know him?  You don’t
really know a man you owe hundreds of thousands of dollars to?  A man you
gambled our son’s future on?”  

Okay then.  Jordan was a
boy.  Good to know.