Saltwater in the Bluegrass (33 page)

“Now hold it everybody,” Rusty shouted in a professional tone of disbelief while looking over the three board members and semi standing to show his muscles, as both hands were placed on the table as he got up.

“What are you thinking about? I brought you a client that is ready and wants to buy the sixteenth floor unit at the price you want, and you people need a moment to collaborate, about what?”

Rusty was finally earning his commission.

He had risen up from a lackadaisical daydream of salesmanship, and before I knew it had quickly reminded me of the great prolific words of Ben Rumson from No Name City. There are only two types of people in this world: those that are going somewhere, and those that are going nowhere, and until now I was not sure where my real estate agent had been.

Rusty had suddenly put his sales pitch into overdrive and wanted this sale wrapped up. He wanted it wrapped up immediately.

“Mr. Hypes, we just wanted a moment to talk it over. I agree that I, too, am impressed and pleased with the thought of Mr. Stringer living here with his family or his clients or his assistant. I do not care,” said Mrs. Kennedy. “If the other two are in agreement, then we have a deal. Mr. Downard, Mrs. Long, if the two of you are in agreement?”

“Yes, yes.”

“Then we have a deal?”

All three members stood up, sticking out their hands for Texi and me to shake.

“Congratulations, Mr. Stringer. Welcome to the Ingram Towers.”

“Thank you. I would like to sign the papers immediately so I can start moving in this evening. I have plans of getting started living in this lovely community real soon. It was a pleasure meeting the three of you. I look forward to meeting the other tenants over the next few days.”

By five o’clock, Texi and I
were
on our way down to the river. We were heading towards a comfortable night of relaxation down at the Captain’s Quarter Restaurant. Kristy and Sally arrived, sitting down and joining us around five thirty.

Texi and I had arrived early enough to sit in the lower section nearest the water. The best seat in the house for viewing the turn of the inlet that runs into the mouth of the river where the boats come and go. Drinking, celebrating, and toasting to the power of persuasion and influence of a job well done by all.

It had been close to three o’clock by the time all the papers had been signed and the second certified check for two hundred and fiftytwo thousand dollars had been delivered to the Louisville Title Company, giving me clear ownership.

From there, I had hurried across town to meet Kristina upstairs at the offices of Reynolds, Reynolds, Burton & Young to have John Reynolds draw up the necessary quick-claim deed and short sale paperwork turning ownership of the condominium over to a Mrs. Kristina Stringer Ingram.

It would be at least seven business days before the signed affidavits, rightful ownership titles and registered declared decrees from the city clerk’s office would make their way from the title company to the office of the board of tenants at the Ingram Towers, letting them know what had transpired under their watchful eyes. By then the damage would be done and we would have the evidence we needed.

In all estimations, we figured we had at least one week before it would be known to Katherine Ingram that her sweet, darling, widowed sister-in-law, the one she had tried to have killed, now lived in the same building as she did and would once again be sharing space with her on a daily basis.

The elevator door quickly opened.
It opened on the backside of the sixteenth floor of the lavish Ingram Tower Condominiums as the scheduled move in for Kristina Stringer Ingram began taking place, commencing with a furious charge of orders, processional manners, time, and determined pride. The employees made their way into the condominium. One by one the men marched throughout the many rooms of the luxurious living quarters. They were listening to orders and instructions from their supervisor and from Kristina. She directed the group and the change, in simplicity and straightforwardness, from a state of emptiness to an embellished, larger-than-life furnished home.

In and out, one by one, the movers began the job at hand, picking up piece after piece of the newly-unpacked furniture and assorted boxes of designer décor from the elevator. They entered the spacious six-thousand-two-hundred-square-foot luxury suite, placing each piece where instructed, time and time again making the same monotonous journey, and when the elevator was empty, they would return to the large panel truck outside for another load. The electronic circuitry board of the number two elevator was locked into place. The maintenance man hung a sign that read, “Stay out!” He hung padded panels inside the elevator protecting the sides and then disappeared for the day into one of his little private cubbyholes in the building, staying obscure from the tenants. With a number of buttons turned and a program set, the movers from several large furniture outlets now had total access to and control of the elevator. It would be for the time they had specified or at least from nine o’clock in the morning until three o’clock that afternoon, whichever came first. Until then, everyone in the building, other than the moving crew, had to use the number one elevator. It was an inconvenience for some of the people that lived on the top floors, but they could surely withstand the tempestuous thought of being put out for a few hours. Besides, it was policy. On the first day of moving in, the new owners received special privileges and preferential treatment with regards to the elevators and the delivery docks.

While Kristina and Sally were busy in the suite, I took the elevator back down to the parking level and started some of the preliminary work. I removed the operations key from the control panel of the elevator, locking it in place.

I had Texi take the key outside to the van that Sally had driven and make a copy of the key with the makeshift key machine Sally had brought with her.

I had combined a B&D T-111 bench grinder unit with a doublenecked phase three mounting vice housing a carbon-tipped cutting turn bit with two sided accuracy. I had all three pieces bolted onto a three-quarter inch board of plywood, a crude but functional apparatus for cutting keys.

It is not that we could not have taken the key to a local hardware store, but it is illegal for stores to make copies of manufactured elevator keys, and why take the chance?

I figured it was just another one of many high-tech talents that made me proud to say Texi Conover was my trusty sidekick assistant. It was her gift for the abnormal.

Her sub-directory mechanical works of life came in real handy. Her daddy would have been so very proud of her.

This was just one of the next steps in a group of steps we had planned out for the evening. Our end goal was checking out the actions of Katherine Ingram from her little hideaway and find out what she might be keeping locked away or laying around on the twenty-third floor.

While Texi went to the van to make the key, I walked to the back corner of the basement and found the maintenance room. I needed to check out the audio circuitry links for the surveillance security equipment.

The plan was to override the relay output feed to the surveillance equipment at eleven o’clock p.m. By turning off the twenty-third floor security camera and tapping into the line, I could show a revolving prerecorded loop, as if nothing was wrong, when I entered and exited the suite. It is basic, first-year, entry-level procedures for unlawful entry called C.Y.A.

The whole procedure would not take more than a minute to set up, but then again, it was not worth the chance of the guard downstairs actually doing his job and seeing me on the twenty-third floor and then coming up to investigate.

Our plan during this portion of the scheme was to have Sally downstairs at the front gate at eleven p.m. sharp. She was to be in a very short, one-size-too-small cocktail dress, asking questions and acting like an overanxious school girl playing up to the seven-dollaran-hour security guard. Just another course of diversionary tactics we were using to make sure Joe Friday had his eyes turned towards Sally and not looking at the six roving security cameras on his desk.

Sally would, if necessary, make sure her forty-five-hundred-dollar silicon enhancements did the trick, graciously finding their way out of her dress by eleven o-five.

Kristina once again
stopped me in my tracks. “Jimmy Chase, please stop calling me Kristy.”

“Whatever.”

“Whatever,” she said. “How many times do I have to ask you?”

“Okay, okay, I get the picture. I forget you have gone uptown. Mrs. Ingram Towers the Second.”

“And another thing; do not, for a minute, think you are going snooping without me. I have waited way too long to find something that I can use against that bitch of the Ivory Tower, and you are not going to stop me.”

“Okay, okay, Kristina. You made your point. You can go with me. We’ll switch roles and have Texi stay here and do your part of the plan.”

“That’s more like it.”

Daddy told me there would be days like this, but I wouldn’t listen. I was once again right smack dab in the middle of a case, and I had the client calling the shots and tagging along acting like Kato in the Green Hornet.

There is definitely something to be said about showing excitement, but breaking and entering is not one of them, and now I had to worry not only about not getting caught myself, but also Kristina not getting caught.

Scratch that; make it two other people I had to worry about. Apparently after Texi and I had left the Captain’s Quarters the night before, leaving Kristina and Sally alone, Lamar Jr. had shown up. Either through too many drinks, bad judgment, or the fact that these two women together were like talking parrots working for crackers in a carnival, they had not kept their mouths shut. They had, within minutes, told Lamar Jr. everything—everything that we were doing, what we were planning, and what we had thought. Why, I do not know.

Ten thirty, thirty minutes before I was to go upstairs, Lamar Jr. showed up down at the guard gate.

“What’s he doing here?” I asked.

“I don’t think it’s so bad. He wanted to help,” Kristina said. I just shook my head. My imagination for wondering why hadn’t sunk it.

Before I had a chance to stop Kristina or tell her not to pick up the phone, she had buzzed him in, and Lamar Jr. was on his way up to the sixteenth floor. He thought it was a great idea.

Now to paint you a picture of the experience, it is sort of like having a once-in-a-lifetime meteor shower in the sky right above your house, and just as the show begins, the clouds roll in to block your view. That pretty much tells you how I felt at that very moment. Reverting back to my International House of Private Eye’s Handbook in the chapter on Subsequent Changes and Proceedings that Follow, when caught in a tight spot, I remembered the elusive words printed in the glossary near the back of the book. It clearly states how to handle situations like this in bold capital letters.

RULE # 1 GET OVER IT.

RULE # 2 REMEMBER RULE # 1.

It was now eleven o’clock.
Kristina gazed at the darkness, studying the shadows, forcing herself to continue. There was a dry, musty smell to the unfinished concrete floors. We high stepped our way through the open door on the twenty-third floor and working our way past the hordes of boxes and crates that were lying around. Sally was down at the guard station.

Texi was down in the sixteenth-floor suite waiting for plan B if necessary. Kristina, Lamar Jr., and I were making time looking through Katherine’s private regalia of crap. We were looking for anything that might help our crusade and put a damper on Katherine’s lifestyle.

There were boxes of canceled checks, ledgers, pictures, minutes from past meetings, and board meeting reports. There were evaluations on employees, profiles on clients, criminal checks on the history of tenants living in the building, résumés, and briefs on associates. There were background checks on friends and follow-ups on family members and bullet-point descriptions of surveillances and ultimatums that had been made on just about everyone Katherine had come in contact with over the last ten years.

Katherine was obviously in the big leagues, pitching gas and not salad, when it came to undercover work.

There was certainly no need for a mediator because all the information was based on one sided conversations and takedowns. A regular pile of underworld espionage, high-class detective work that almost anyone in the spy game would be proud of. It was all housed neatly on the twenty-third floor of a downtown, upper-crust high rise. It was safe and secure, well almost.

Six hands were definitely quicker than two, and it was not long before we had what we were looking for. Or, at least enough to get the local authorities interested in looking into a case that was, up until now, not even open.

“Over here, I’ve got something,” I said, placing my flashlight on the floor, glancing at my watch.

Kristina whirled.

“What is it?” she asked.

In one of the corners, in the shadows, where the master bedroom would have been if the suite had been finished, sat a box of telephone records. Not surprising that records were kept, but Katherine had made a log to go with each of the records. What we found was proof that a call to Brazil had been made only minutes before the explosion occurred that killed Lamar.

Coincidence, maybe, but we also found phone records and a note showing a call to Brazil on the day Joseph Bowen disappeared. It was an elimination list, a hit list.

Then we found an entry, a call she had made to Fort Lauderdale the day that Uncle Buddy died.

We also found, in a ledger, payouts to politicians and members of the Board of Alderman and payouts to Patrick Lane and Owen Hensley, Katherine’s goons for less-savory jobs.

Within twenty minutes of rummaging, we had hit the mother load, discovering enough circumstantial evidence to at least have an investigation started.

We were really pleased with the information we had taken pictures of. We made sure that everything was left organized and in the manner in which we had found it. Now it was time to turn over our copies to the authorities and state our case. Well, almost. We still had to get off the twenty-third floor. We had to get out without being seen and back downstairs to the sixteenth floor before Sally had to pop all the way out of her dress.