Gone at Zero Hundred 00:00 (20 page)

“Help with what?”

Cody knowingly moved me to the
side, and began to pick the lock. “We both know I’m faster…

I stood there and gawked at him.

He said, “Well, are you going to
just stand there with your mouth wide open, or give me some light? I can’t see
the damn thing.”

I pulled my penlight out, and
held it over the lock. “How’d you know I’d be here?”

He began to work the tools.
“I’ve been following you for quite some time. You keep giving Carter’s guys the
slip, so I took over. It’s a lot easier for a motorcycle to weave in and out of
traffic, keeping out of sight of your roving eyes. Besides, I was worried about
you. It is McSwain and Beck, you know.”

“I would have asked you to come
along, but I thought you’d be busy entertaining your fan club.” I averted my eyes
so he couldn’t see how much seeing him with the cheerleaders really bothered
me.

“Oh, so that’s why you sat alone
at the game.”

A few seconds later, I heard the
sound of the click. Then, Cody looked up at me and gave me a cocky smile as he
opened the door. I let the penlight lead the way in.

“So, where do we start?” He
asked me, and he started nosing around.

“I don’t know, exactly.”

Cody chuckled. “Good to know you
have a plan.”

“That’s kind of the way this case
has gone from the get go. One minute Summer walked into the office. I trailed
her step-brother like she paid me to. I got the call from Tamara Marquez.
Things have spiraled since then. Nothing has been planned.”

Cody walked down the hall
towards the front, while I browsed through the kitchen.

“The kitchen was used earlier in
the evening,” I said.  “There are still pans soaking in the sink.”

“So what’s your take on this
place?”

“I think it’s a private club
that fronts for criminal activity?”

“Such as…”

“Escorts, gambling, and probably
a lot more that I haven’t even considered.”

“What? Are you kidding me? 
So an escort service has been operating in Sutter Beach, right under law
enforcement eyes?”

“Those gals in Beverly Hills got
away with it for some time, didn’t they?”

Cody laughed. “Those gals in
Beverly Hills are still doing it; just without the help of Heidi Fleiss.”

Cody opened a couple doors and
checked inside. When he came back out, he let out a whistle. He opened another
door. “Whoa, come check this room out.”

I joined him in the room that I
discovered earlier. The one that looked like a casino and ski-resort in one
room “You weren’t kidding. There is definitely some illegal gambling going on
in this joint.”

“It’s pretty high class,
considereing,” I said, while roaming around the room and checking out the
tables. “It’s like being at a Vegas casino.”

“No problem. I bet Sutter Beach
P.D. has a high-class jail cell waiting for the proprietors.”

I couldn’t help myself. I
laughed. Cody always had a way to make me laugh. “I don’t care about the poker
games, or the young women who willingly became dancers and escorts. If they
chose that life, why should I care?” I glanced at the cages, where young women
were encouraged to dance and entertain the men while they gambled, and partied.
“But, Tamara wasn’t murdered because of illegal gambling. She was murdered
because of something far more sinister. Maybe some of those women were forced
into dancing?”

“Maybe,” Cody acknowledged.
“Okay, so we’ve covered this floor. What else?”

“We need to check the basement.”

“There’s a basement?” Cody said,
and he looked at me with surprise. Not a cellar, but a full-on basement? That’s
a rarity in Southern California.”

“Well, I haven’t been down
there, yet. But there were too many voices for it to be a cellar.”

I led Cody back through the
kitchen and into the pantry. I frantically looked around for the panel I found
earlier, only I couldn’t find it.

“Oh no … Cody, it’s gone!”

“WHAT ARE you talking about,
Syd?”

“When I came in here earlier to
get a feel for the place, there was a panel on the wall. There was a button for
a basement door. “Now, it’s gone.”

Cody looked at me like I was
nuts. He grabbed the penlight and thoroughly inspected the wall. A few seconds later,
his fingers moved vertically up and down a seam on the wall.

“It’s not gone. They blocked
it.” He aimed the penlight up close so I could see. One-inch sheets of birch
paneling were nailed over the existing wall to cover up the panel.

“Wow! They’re sure going to a
lot of trouble to hide whatever is down there.”

Cody and I looked at each other
at the same time. “Do you think … could they be here?”

A determined look crossed Cody’s
face. “Start moving the food out of the way,” he said, and he marched back into
the kitchen.

While I moved food off the
shelves, he rifled through cabinets and drawers. A few minutes later, he came
back with a hammer, and proceeded to pry the nails from the wall. It took a
while. Once the nails were removed, we flanked opposite sides of the paneling
and pulled if from the wall; then moved it out of the way.

I opened the panel and hit the
button labeled basement.

We exchanged glances when a door
that was built into the floor, started to slide open. I directed the penlight
down into the opening. A spiral, stone staircase led down, like something from
a vampire lair back in another time. This wasn’t something new. The stones have
been underground for a very long time. Cody followed me down the steps. We
ended up in a hall about four-feet-wide, and seven-feet deep, with one light.
There were several doors to adjoining rooms off the stone corridor.

The place gave me the creeps,
but it was updated, and had full power and lighting.

I continued along the corridor,
and opened the first door on the right. I aimed the penlight inside. It was a
storage room filled with cleaning supplies. “Nothing useful in this room,” I
said.

Cody opened the second door. It
was a second kitchen. It was smaller than the one on the main floor, but had
appliances and a farmer’s table in the center of the room with ten chairs
around it. He walked toward the dishwasher, and placed his hand on top of it.
“This room was used. Dishwasher is warm.”

The next door we opened; the
floor was covered with sand with a ring in the center. Boxing gloves and white
tape sat on wood benches. Blood stains were in various sections on the ground.

“It’s obvious what went on in
here,” Cody said.

“Fight-club type expeditions,” I
said.

“Obviously, they wanted another
sporting event to bet on.”

There were two doors left. Cody
opened the next door, and I pointed the penlight inside. The room was huge.
Cody felt around for a light switch and turned it on. It was a large den-style
room with video equipment and a flat-screen TV. One entire wall was covered
with built in bookcases with locks on front. Another wall was lined with a
studio entertainment system. Male and female mannequins were set up around the
room. A single wood chair sat opposite a wall of windows. At first, I didn’t
get what that was all about.

I walked over to the video
equipment, and checked to see if there was a DVD inside. It was empty. I looked
around, confused. “With the big party room upstairs, what do they do down
here?”

Cody looked at me with raised
eyebrows. “Syd, I don’t think you’d like the answer.” He walked over to the
bookcase. “There’s only one reason they would need locks.”

“I guess we need to find out.”

He proceeded to pick the lock.
When he opened the door, we knew we were getting closer to answering some questions,
only they were answers we didn’t want to find. Inside, there were several
shelves of DVD’s. Each one had a label on it with a person’s name.

While Cody was busy looking over
the DVD’s I checked inside the drawers. “Look at these,” I said, as I pulled
out a set of documents.

“What is it?”

“An invitation for membership
into the club,” I said. It was made with expensive crème-colored card stock
paper, written in red calligraphy and an image of the same devil tattoo that I
had seen on the wrists of several guests; was stamped on the top:

You have been carefully
selected by the president of our elite organization, to attend a private
invitation-only, social gathering to see if we deem you worthy of membership
into this exclusive and confidential club.

“I wonder how they came up with
the names, in order to send them an invitation,” I said.

Cody looked through the other
documents I had, and found an application. “By the look of the applications,
I’d say they probably did a search for people with money, who like to party and
throw money around - people who have no problem looking the other way when
criminal activity is involved. Looks are only critical if they don’t meet the
financial status.”

“What?” I said, unclear of what
he was trying to say.

Cody smirked. “If you’re
butt-ugly, you can still be a member, as long as you have mucho bucks. I’m
guessing that’s so they can spend it all here.” He shook his head. “Whoever
runs this joint is a major jackass.”

“I’ve met a couple of jackasses,
recently,” I responded; then my eyes went wide when I discovered something
else. “Wait a minute … oh my God.”

Cody glanced over my shoulder.

“These are from the pension
fund!” My hands started to shake when I thought about the implications.

Cody looked at me, stunned.
“Isn’t that the case your mom was investigating when she was killed?”

The new revelation struck a
chord with me. I rifled through the documents. They were the same documents my
mom had in her files. There were also bank account numbers. I was getting angrier
by the minute.

Cody put his arm around my
shoulder. “The object of this club was about money and power, using any illegal
means they could to get it. It looks like they started with the pension fund,
and worked into a major criminal enterprise.”

Tears welled up in my eyes. “We
need to gather evidence and give it to Carter, so he can get a warrant and shut
them down,” I said. I started flashing picture after picture of the documents
with my Blackberry. Then, I stopped when a thought occurred to me.

“So why did Tamara send my mom
the photos and the DVD, to guide her here? Is this what she wanted her to
find?”

Cody shrugged, unsure. “What I
want to know is; how did she know what was going on here at the club; then get
inside to film the DVD without being stopped?”

We turned our attention back to
the shelves of DVD’s. Cody grabbed two. The name, Bradley, was on the label.
“Let’s see if this can tell us anything.”

While he slipped it into the
machine, I read through all the names on the DVD’s and gasped when I discovered
another surprise. There were three with the name, Tamara, in bold letters.

CODY AND I stood in front of the
TV. He hit play on the remote. An innocent-looking teenage boy appeared on the
screen. We assumed it was Bradley. He stood next to a mannequin that was
dressed in jeans, t-shirt and leather jacket. The boy just stood there, not
doing anything. At least that’s what we thought. Then, before we realized what
was happening, Bradley’s fingers slipped into the pants pocket of the
mannequin, and pulled out a wallet.

“Stop!” a male voice ordered off
screen. “Not fast enough. Do it again.”

Bradley’s face looked dejected,
as he shoved the wallet back in the pocket; then repeated the performance.

Cody and I looked at each other,
stunned. “He’s teaching him to be a pick pocket? You weren’t kidding. This
place is a front for criminal activity. But that doesn’t make sense. Sutter
Beach is not really a place where a pick pocket could thrive.”

He exchanged the first DVD with
the second one. Then, we watched as the same boy, Bradley was forced into the
boxing ring with another teenager. At the sound of the bell, bets were placed
and the two teenagers fought with a vengeance, as hoots and hollers sang all
around.

“That’s disgusting,” I said, and
had to turn my eyes away from seeing all the blood that was splattering.

“Here, switch them. Let’s see
what he has her doing.”

Cody exchanged the DVDs, and hit
play. The face of Tamara Marquez filled the screen. She was standing behind the
wall of windows, as if on display. She was dolled up to perfection, with eye
shadow to give her an exotic look. Her long hair was piled on top of her head,
with wispy curls dangling around her face. She was dressed in a satin gown,
like something you would wear to a prom, or a ball, with matching stiletto
sandals. She was posing, but her eyes looked vacant and sad, as if she hated
what she was doing, or she was drugged.

“She was difficult,” we suddenly
heard a female voice say, “but in the end, she became compliant. We will get
top dollar for her at the new resort.

A male voice responded, “Yes,
you’ve outdone yourself. You’ve created the perfect specimen. She will bring us
huge profits.”

Both voices were devoid of
emotion. They talked about Tamara as if she was just a commodity, and not a
human being.

Cody stopped the DVD. “Tamara
was one of the victims,” he said, disgusted by what we just watched.

At first, I was sad; then the
anger and defiance spurned me on. “We have to stop these nut-jobs,” I said “I don’t
know how she got involved in this, and I may never know, but she was trying to
put a stop to it. That’s why she sent my mom the photos, and DVD.”

Cody nodded. “We’ll see it
through, Syd. But, we better wrap things up, before our luck runs out.” He took
the DVD out of the machine, and put them back in their place.