Murder On The Menu: The 1st Nikki Hunter Mystery (Nikki Hunter Mysteries) (14 page)

I let them flirt with each other for another ten minutes while I watched Candy make love to a pole on stage. When I finally pointed to my watch, indicating it was time to go, Elizabeth looked disappointed. We said goodnight to Frank and he told Elizabeth what days and hours he worked, and asked her to come back. She giggled again.

When we were outside and the door had closed behind us I said, “Cradle robber.”

“He’s not
that
young,” she countered. “Besides, it’s flattering when a younger man is attracted to you.”

We were in the parking lot walking toward my car when I heard the crunch of gravel behind us. I cast a casual glance over my shoulder as a stocky man wielding a knife stepped out from behind an SUV. He was dressed all in black and wearing a ski mask. It was much too hot for a ski mask. I reached for the Glock, but before I could draw the gun Elizabeth kicked him in the balls and then slammed him in the face with her shoulder bag. He dropped the knife and fell to his knees, and we ran like hell.

We made it to the BMW and turned to look back. The man was still doubled over, but he was on his feet limping in our direction, and he’d retrieved his knife. We jumped in the Bimmer and I almost ran the guy over trying to get out of the parking lot.

Later, when the adrenaline wore off, I kicked myself for not yanking up his mask before running away. In fact, I could have held him at gunpoint while Elizabeth called the police. You know what they say about hindsight. Besides, would I have shot him if he’d tried to get away before the police arrived? Probably not. It wasn’t worth it.

“Jesus Christ,” Elizabeth said, pulling off her wig and scratching her scalp.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I’m fine. That’s never happened to me before. It was kind of exciting.” She checked the toe of her new boot for scuff marks.

“Almost getting mugged, and who knows what else, is not exciting. It’s life threatening!”

She was enjoying this far too much. I was still trembling.

I’ve had one or two close calls in my career as a PI. The most frightening incident involved an unfaithful husband I was tailing, who was six-four and over three hundred pounds. This was back when I worked for Sam Pettigrew. We were double-tailing the guy because we had the time and it’s safer that way. One car stays close to the subject for a while and then drops back when the other car comes forward. We stayed in communication by cell phone. I was driving the green 2002, which I have to admit is easy to spot. These days I rent a Toyota or a Honda when I want to be inconspicuous.

The subject pulled into a strip mall and I parked nearby. He got out of his car and I got out of mine and walked over to a pay phone so I could watch him without looking out of place. He lit a cigarette and walked right up to me. I pretended to be talking on the phone and turned my back to him. He tapped me on the shoulder and I half turned, saying I’d be done with the phone in a minute. He jerked the receiver out of my hand, slammed it down in the cradle, and placed one hand on either side of the booth, trapping me between his huge arms.

“
Why are you
following
me
?”
he bellowed.

I turned to face him and felt a surge of anger I was about to unleash with a fist to his windpipe when Sam appeared on his right. Sam is black and just under six feet tall. He was in his early sixties at the time, and weighed about two-fifty. I held myself in check long enough to see what he was going to do. What he did
was yell at me.

“
There
you are!” he shouted. “Where the hell have you been? ’Scuse me fella.” He nudged the subject out of the way. “I’ve been waiting here for two
hours
!”

“I was just trying to call you,” I whined.

“Well, come on then,” he said, reaching around King Kong and taking my arm. “That’s the last time I trust you to be on time.”

Sam escorted me into the nearest bar, bought me a Guinness, and talked me down.

“It happens, Nicoli,” he said. “If someone has a guilty conscience they expect to be followed. Sometimes they spot you. Can’t be helped.”

It’s the only time I remember Sam being gentle. He’s gruff and abrasive by nature.

“You think he wanted our purses?” Elizabeth asked, interrupting my thoughts.

“I don’t know.”

I rolled down my window and lit a cigarette. I hoped it was just a random mugging. I wasn’t crazy about the idea of being attacked by someone who knew me.

I checked the rearview mirror. No one appeared to be following us, but I got on the freeway just in case. I took the Whipple Avenue exit and pulled into a car dealership on Bair Island Road, turned off my lights, and waited to see who passed by.

Less than a minute after we parked a jeep drove by, turning in at the marina. About thirty seconds later a VW Rabbit passed, followed by a Mercedes sedan. The Mercedes pulled into the car dealership and the VW passed the marina, apparently going someplace farther down the road. Bair Island is a dead end. Anyone going back to town or to the freeway would have to drive past us.

The car dealership was still open and one of the salesmen approached the 2002. I leaned out my open window and told him we were having an argument about whether or not we could afford a new car, and he left us alone.

The next car to go by was Bill Anderson’s red Mustang. I pointed it out to Elizabeth. “My date,” I said.

After that, we sat in silence, trying not to jump out of our skin.

Five minutes later the jeep came back out. The windows were slightly tinted so I didn’t get a good look at the driver, but I could see enough to know it was a man. I wrote down the license plate number.

Chapter 19

D
etective Anderson was waiting outside my office when I arrived. He sniffed the air around me and said, “You smell a little smoky, but nice.”

“Thank you, I think. Sorry I’m late.” I fumbled with my keys. “My friend and I got mugged coming out of the
Fanny Pack
.”

He took hold of my shoulders, spun me around so I was facing him, and looked me over.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “I
told
you to be careful! What happened? Did you call the station?”

“One question at a time, please.”

I found the right key and unlocked the office. We went inside and I flipped on the lights.

“We’re both fine. Unbeknownst to me, my friend Elizabeth is an expert kick-boxer and purse-wielder. She knocked the guy down and we ran for the car. I think he followed us though. Can you check a license plate number for me?”

He hesitated, probably wondering if I knew the RCPD could lose access to the DMV network if it was discovered civilians were being given confidential information.

“Maybe,” he said.

Close enough. I dug my notebook out of my purse and read him the plate number I’d copied off the jeep. He grimaced slightly as he wrote it down.

I unlocked my Pendaflex drawer and slipped the photographs and yearbook pictures into Laura’s file, then glanced at my answering machine. No messages.

I took a deep breath and made eye contact. “You feel like a beer?” I asked.

“Sounds good.”

We drove to Otto’s again, in Bill’s Mustang. He held the door open for me when we entered the restaurant, and I smiled. I’m not one of those women who is offended by this type of behavior. I think it’s sweet. I hold doors open for people all the time.

There was one unoccupied booth in the lounge. I sat while he went to the bar.
He came back with our drinks and after a few sips of Guinness I began to relax.

“How well do you know Jack McCarthy?” I asked.

“Why?”

“No one can tell me how Laura knew he was Vice before she propositioned him.”

“She told her attorney she knew he was a cop. That doesn’t make it true.”

He was right about that. Although some people can just tell. I can spot a cop from fifty paces.

“What about the attorney?” I said. “What can you tell me about Gerald Kuhlman?”

Bill looked out the window and took a sip of his beer.

“You can talk about the investigation, but you can’t talk about the attorney?” I snapped. The adrenaline rush was burning off and I was moving from fear into anger.

“I don’t know anything firsthand,” he replied. “And I don’t repeat gossip.”

I stared at him, saying nothing, for about a minute. A minute is a long time to stare at someone in silence.

Finally he relented. “I’ve heard he’s politically connected. When he makes a request it always filters down the chain of command. I don’t know from how high. I do know it makes my boss very edgy.”

“Thank you,” I said, and let the subject drop.

I filled him in on everything I’d uncovered so far – the fiancé who’d refused to let go and who may have been stalking Laura, the half-brother, and the inheritance. Since he’d trusted me with the info about Kuhlman, I even told him what Rod had said about Derrick molesting Laura when she was a child. He started taking notes. I told him about Fred Marcus Wulf and the Supra condoms I’d found in his medicine chest. I didn’t have a motive for him, but he’d been dating Laura and I believed she’d known her killer.

“You’ve been busy,” he said. “I assume you know there’s been another murder.”

“You mean the man in the bank parking lot? I heard about that on the news. Is there a connection? Same knife again?”

“Possibly. The puncture marks were there. The male victim was a hairdresser. Andrew McConnell. So we have two women, different types and ages, and one man, all Caucasian. In each case a knife was involved and all three appear to have been killed where the bodies were found, outdoors, in public places.”

“Do you think there’s a chance the librarian and the hairdresser might have been killed to cover up a personal motive for killing Laura?”

“It’s feasible. Although that might make more sense if she hadn’t been the first victim. There were no defensive wounds found on Andrew McConnell or on Laura, though McConnell was stabbed in the back, so he wouldn’t have seen it coming. The librarian, Barbara Herbert, was kind of beat up. Some of her teeth were chipped from being pushed face first into a brick wall. All three victims had just had intercourse, and in each case their companion used a Trojan Supra condom.” He waited for my reaction.

“Wait,” I said. “Andrew McConnell’s
companion
used a condom? Are you saying McConnell was gay?”

“Or bisexual.”

If there was one killer, that meant we were dealing with either a bisexual man or a woman packing a dildo. That might explain the absence of foreign pubic hair on the victims. I tried to picture Charles the jock having sex with another man, and then did the same with Rod, Derrick, and Fred/Marc. The next image to invade my consciousness was Candy in a strap-on. Not all that unlikely if you thought about it. I didn’t want to think about it.

“Nicoli?”

“Hmm?” I turned to face him. “Call me Nikki.”

“Okay, Nikki. What are you thinking?”

“Oh…I was just trying to picture it.”

His laugh was warm and contagious.

After we finished our drinks, Bill drove me back to the marina. He walked me from the parking lot to my office and gave me a lecture about being more careful. I unlocked the door and turned to face him. I had an impulse to kiss him, but I managed to control myself. I shook his hand instead.

“Lock this behind me,” he said.

I locked the door and watched him round the corner, then turned to my desk. I had two new voice-mail messages. The first call was from Marc, a.k.a. Fred, saying he’d had a good time the previous night and asking if we could do it again next Friday. I made a note to call him back. The second call was a whispered message from Buffy.

“Hi. This is Buffy, from the
Fanny Pack
. I couldn’t say anything in front of the others, but I know how Laura found out that guy was a Vice cop. I told her. I knew him from before. I just meant to warn her, you know, so she wouldn’t do anything to get herself in trouble. Anyway, I thought you should know. Don’t tell Candy, okay?”

I sat at my desk thinking about what Buffy might have done that caused her path to cross McCarthy’s. Then I remembered I wasn’t getting paid to investigate Buffy’s lifestyle.

I checked my e-mail. The financial background on the Howards had come in from CIS. There was also a soft copy of an invoice. I printed the file and the invoice, set the invoice aside, and read the report. It was confusing at first. Assets were listed in many forms, including Derrick’s stock in his own company and its current market value. Finally I got to the liquid assets column. That didn’t look so good. If you took away their property, the company, and their stock portfolio, they were only worth a little over seven hundred thousand. Hard to believe, considering their lifestyle.

Could Derrick have killed his own daughter, or paid someone else to kill her? He was controlling and abrasive, and possibly a pedophile, but he didn’t strike me as the type of person who would kill
for money. Of course, half of Laura’s inheritance was probably more than four million with the accrued interest, and it did appear Derrick was low on cash.

I lit a cigarette and opened the computer file on the case. It took me almost an hour to enter all the new information and I was yawning by the time I’d finished. I copied the updated file onto a flash drive and tucked it into my purse. Then I shut down the computer, locked the office, and headed for my boat.

Before I reached the bottom of the companionway Elizabeth’s door slid open and she poked her head out.

“You just getting home?” she asked.

“I’ve been up in the office for a while.”

She came outside and perched on her dock steps. “What did you find out from Detective Anderson?”

“Can I tell you tomorrow? I’m beat.”

Elizabeth’s face fell, so I sat down and gave her a quick summary. When I had finished, she sat quietly for a moment, and then said, “What do you think?”

“I don’t know. It’s hard to picture Laura’s father having the imagination to pull it off. Did I tell you Laura’s half brother said Derrick molested her when she was a child?”

Elizabeth tilted her head to one side. “No. You forgot to mention that.” She said this with some degree of sarcasm.

Elizabeth is originally from New Orleans, where her mother still lives. During her first year of college she worked evenings and weekends answering a suicide hotline. She was unsuccessful dissuading one teenage girl, who had been repeatedly raped by her father, from taking her own life. The girl hung herself while Elizabeth listened on the phone. A coworker called 911 while Elizabeth tried frantically to get the girl back on the line, but the EMTs were too late. She takes incest issues very seriously.

“I have no way of knowing if he’s telling the truth,” I said.

“You don’t think she told anyone else?”

“It’s not something you just bring up in casual conversation, is it? Besides, according to Rod she’d just started recovering the memories in therapy.”

“There are support groups, but they’re extremely protective. They’d never confirm whether or not she was a member. Suppose we assume Rod is telling the truth. How does he know? Did he see this happen?”

“He says Laura got drunk one night and spilled the whole story. She apparently described what happened in a way that convinced him.”

“
Ugh
.”

“Yeah. So if it’s true, it might make Derrick a suspect if he thought of Laura as his property, and, you know, she was taking it off for the unwashed masses. But I don’t trust Rod not to make the whole thing up. I’m waiting for a background report on him. That reminds me, I have to be up early to follow Charles to work tomorrow. I gotta go.”

“Okay. Sweet dreams, honey.”

After a much-needed hug from Elizabeth, I trudged down the dock to my boat, tossed my clothes on the stateroom floor, set the alarm
for 5:00 a.m., and climbed into bed.