T. Lynn Ocean - Jersey Barnes 01 - Southern Fatality (17 page)

I swallowed some tea. “Do you know where Barb lives?”

“Somewhere in New York. She demands money by phone.”

“How long have you lived here?” I asked, wondering if the kid had followed Jared to Wilmington. Steven noticeably blushed. He explained that he’d lived in Charleston, where he first met Jared, and moved to Wilmington when Jared graduated. He didn’t say who actually followed who to Wilmington. Jared could have asked Chesterfield to put him in charge of the Wilmington branch office. Either way, it wasn’t my business.

“Has Jared ever had a DNA test?” I wanted to know.

“I don’t think so,” he said with a crinkled forehead. “You mean a DNA test could prove if Barb was lying?”

“Of course.”

Spud and I were silent while Steven moved off to take orders from two businessmen who’d sat at the bar. Returning, he picked up where he’d left off without prompting. “There was something else, too.”

“For crying out loud,” Spud said, almost choking on a swallow of soda. “There’s more?”

“Jared told me about an old roommate at the Citadel. I think the guy knew Jared was gay. But he was cool with it, like, it was no big deal and the secret was safe with him, you know? But then, right around the time of graduation last year, he wanted Jared to give him some information from Chesterfield Financial. His reason was that he wanted to go to work for a brokerage firm, and
having inside information would help. When Jared told him he wouldn’t do it, the guy threatened to out him.” So not only was Chesterfield’s ex-secretary and surrogate mother blackmailing the kid, but an ex-roommate was, too. Greedy people seemed to be feeding on Jared.

“What information did the roommate want?” I asked.

“Jared didn’t tell me but he knew it wasn’t the right thing to do. He couldn’t figure what the guy wanted with the information, anyway. But after he thought about how my father pretends I don’t exist, he gave in.”

“Who’s the kid? The Citadel roommate?” I asked.

“Jared never said a name. He told me about it, but didn’t want to talk about it. You know, like he was sorry that he’d confided in me to begin with? So it never came up again until last month. Jared said he would make up for what he’d done. He got the memory stick back—the same one that he shouldn’t have given out to begin with.” Bingo! “But then he couldn’t open the files on it, so either it wasn’t the right memory stick or it had been changed. He was going to talk to some accounting guy to determine if there was a problem before he told his dad what he’d done.”

Eddie Flowers. The accountant must have surmised that there was, in fact, a problem.

“Do you know anything else about the roommate?”

“All I know is that the father was some sort of big politician, or something. Like maybe a congressman?” he said and headed to the kitchen.

Walton Ralls. The senator’s son. The one who got himself kicked out of the Citadel. I’m pretty sure the Citadel always has several students whose fathers are politicians, but the fact that Senator Ralls was on the finance committee that oversaw SIPAs, and Chesterfield’s and Ralls’s sons were enrolled at the Citadel at the same time was certainly curious. Plus, since Jared was being
groomed to work alongside his father in the business, he would have had access to the SIPA databases at Chesterfield Financial.

Steven came back with four sandwiches. Two went to the businessmen at the end of the bar and the remaining two were mine and Spud’s. They smelled delicious. He studied me with worried eyes. “Can you get Jared back?” It was the same sound of desperation that Samuel Chesterfield displayed when he asked the same question.

“Going to do my damnedest.”

Steven nodded and I figured he was what he appeared to be—a bartender and a boyfriend—but I’d do some checking to be sure. I quizzed him further while Spud and I ate. Steven said he couldn’t think of anyone who would want to kidnap Jared, except maybe Barb Henley, because she was money hungry.

“Feel
like a ride to Wrightsville Beach?” I asked Spud when we were back in the car.

“Sure, why not?”

I called Soup and asked for an address on a home in the Wrightsville Beach area. I gave him a name. He put me on hold, got into the tax records, and had an answer in less than five minutes: a street address for the only home in the area owned by a Sigmund Ralls. Soup also gave me the permanent mailing address in Georgia and, just to show off, rattled off the purchase prices, property taxes, and heated square footage of both. Since the permanent address was in Georgia, it had to be the senator. The one from Chesterfield’s grand-opening party who was on the finance committee, and whose son got kicked out of the Citadel.

I jotted down the information before telling Soup I needed medical information and a doctor’s name for Barb Henley, who used to be a secretary for Chesterfield Financial. I told him why.

“Your tab’s growing faster than a kudzu vine, Jersey,” Soup warned me. “You weren’t pestering me this much before you retired.”

As usual, I could hear computer keys clicking in the background. He slurped on something and the telephone handset amplified the sound of him swallowing. “You know I’m good for it,” I said.

“I can mosey back into Chesterfield’s system, see if personnel has an address on her. The quickest way to get her doctor’s name would be to get into the pharmacy’s system where she fills her prescriptions. They’ll have the prescribing doctor’s name and her insurance information. From there I can get into the insurance files, check on claims, too. See if anything interesting turns up,” Soup said. “Do you want her current doctor’s name or the doctor she used when she was still with Chesterfield Financial?”

“Whomever she used twenty-three years ago,” I said, since Jared was twenty-two.

He slurped again. “Might take some time,” he said. “If we get lucky, a few hours. If not, probably tomorrow.”

I told Soup that I owed him.

“No shit,” he said and hung up.

The overcast morning had blossomed into a gorgeous afternoon. A cooling breeze held the humidity at bay and a partly cloudy sky kept the temperature from surpassing the high eighties. Traffic flowed nicely as I drove to Wrightsville Beach with Spud riding shotgun. Many drivers had their windows down and sunroofs open and their bodies moved to music blaring from their favorite radio stations.

“If I’d known we were coming to the beach,” Spud grumbled, “I’d have brought my fishing rods.”

I didn’t understand the appeal of surf fishing, other than the fact that the fisherman could enjoy the beach under the pretense of
partaking in a sport. When Spud did it, he rarely came home with any fish.

Wrightsville Beach, a small island that was home to less than four thousand people, was typical of the state’s many beaches. Multicolored and multistyled raised beach cottages and scattered community shops and restaurants decorated the strip. Rolling sand dunes peppered with long wispy sea oats, clumps of seagulls resting at the high water mark, and pelicans skimming the water for schools of fish were a common sight. And nothing could compare to the first deeply inhaled breath that smelled of warm sun and sea as we approached the beach from a block away. Best of all were the brilliant sunrises: a free gift of pure art available to anyone who cared to look. As soon as I retired, I planned to relish many sunrises.

We found the address without trouble. Even though a Mustang convertible sat in the driveway, indicating an occupant, Spud and I took the liberty of walking the perimeter. The home was an oceanfront wood-framed two-story with wraparound porches and two levels of covered outdoor decks in the rear. Like most neighboring houses, it was plain in the front but elaborate in back with lots of glass to enhance a coveted view of the Atlantic. The lower deck sported a hot tub and lots of outdoor furniture. One corner housed a summer kitchen with a built-in grill and wet bar. The upper deck contained tables with umbrellas, several chaise lounges, and a lone sunbather. He spotted us and did not return my friendly Southern wave.

“Hi, you must be Walton,” I called up to him. “Your father told me you’d be here,” I lied. Spud and I made our way up the first flight of stairs and didn’t have to navigate the second up to the upper deck because the kid hurried down. He wore nothing except a pair of baggy shorts and a nervous expression as he pushed too-long stringy bangs out of his eyes. He asked who we were and
I caught the faint but unmistakable odor of pot clinging to his skin. He’d been on the deck smoking a joint. I explained that we were friends of the senator and wanted to see the house.

“What for?”

Since he didn’t question the senator comment, I knew we were at the right place. Without asking, I walked through a glass sliding door into a large family room and motioned for Spud to follow. He did. After a puzzled moment, Walton did, too.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Since your father is thinking of selling the beach house, he said we were welcome to take a look around before he decides to list it with an agent,” I improvised.

“Dad is selling the beach house?” the kid said, buying into my lie.

“Yeah, and I may want to buy it. I been thinking about getting me a beach pad,” Spud explained with a wave of his walking cane, happily joining my ruse. “They’re good babe magnets.”

“Dad never said anything to me about selling,” Walton said.

“What’s that I smell on you?” Spud said to throw the kid off guard, even though he knew exactly what the odor was. You work as a cop, you learn what dope smells like. “You smoking that funny weed up there on the deck? Your daddy wouldn’t like that.” Walton tried to decide whether or not he should be scared.

“I don’t do drugs,” he said defensively. Checking out the large room, I spotted a huge flat-screen television. A news anchor was blurbing the upcoming evening news and a photo of Jared flashed on the screen above text that read FULL REPORT TONIGHT. Perfect timing!

“Hey,” I said, pointing at the TV. “Your dad said you attended the Citadel. You didn’t know that Jared kid, did you? You know, the boy who was kidnapped from some financial firm? I read in the paper that
he
graduated from there.”

“Uh, yeah, I guess. I mean we were actually roomies for a little while.”

“You’re kidding! How wild is that?” I said, turning on my dumb blonde—or in this case, my dumb brunette—appeal and looking at him with wide eyes. “I’ll bet that the cops will want to talk to you, then. The newspaper said they’re talking to everyone who knew him at school.”

“Well, yeah.” Walton grinned and stole a long, stoned look at my tits. “I already did talk to them and they were real assholes, you know?”

Spud and I started touring the home, trying to look like interested shoppers. Not knowing what else to do, Walton followed.

“Cops can be such jerks,” I said, stretching my lower back and jutting out my chest. “They’re all on a power trip, or something. What did they do to you?”

“Kept asking me the same questions over again, just in a different way, like they were trying to get me to change my answer or something, you know?”

Spud made exclamation noises as he opened kitchen cabinets and closet doors and turned on and off lights. He could play a role, I had to give him that.

“Oh, man.” I gave Walton the wide eyes again. “So what did you tell them?”

“I told them that I didn’t know anything about the kidnapping, you know? Except what’s been on TV, I mean. We weren’t even good friends or anything. I just roomed with him for one semester, right before I got kicked out.”

“I heard that military academy is really tough. What did they kick you out for?”

“Well, I didn’t really get kicked out. Officially I’m suspended for a year.” He lowered his voice so my father couldn’t hear. “For
smoking pot. But I never wanted to go there anyway. My dad made me, for the discipline and all that bullshit,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said, going for empathy. “Parents can really suck sometimes.” Spud shot me a squinty look from beneath raised bushy eyebrows.

Walton pushed the bangs from his eyes. “Well anyway, getting snatched was just a bad break for Jared, I guess. I mean, those kind of things happen to really rich people, right?”

I nodded, agreeing.

“What do the utility bills for a place like this run each month?” Spud said.

“Uh, my dad takes care of all that,” Walton said. “Bills go to his house in Georgia.”

“Wow,” I said, going for awe. “You’ve got it really good! Living right on the beach, the house all to yourself, and no bills. You want to trade places?”

He grinned at his good fortune.

Spud and I continued forging our way through the house but didn’t see anything unusual until we got to Walton’s room. It held a desk with a computer and a bunch of equipment similar to the stuff in Soup’s efficiency apartment and I spotted a few flash drives lying next to the keyboard. But memory sticks were becoming like cell phones—most everybody had one.

“Wow,” I said again. “Were you majoring in computer science or something? I can barely work the remote for my TiVo. I’d never know what to do with all this stuff!”

He blushed. “No, I just, uh, use it for the general stuff. You know. Internet surfing and all that. I want to design video games, but my dad said I was going to law school and that was that. I told him he was crazy, so he enrolled me in the Citadel to straighten me out. Guess I showed him, huh?”

I asked to use his phone, and he pointed to a cordless home phone that sat on an end table.

“Can I use your cell phone? I’m thinking of getting a new wireless service, and I thought I’d see how your reception is here on the beach.”

“Help yourself.” He retrieved the phone from a baggy shorts pocket and gave it to me. On cue, Spud motioned Walton over to a bathroom to ask about the water pressure. I ducked outside and installed a tracker on the kid’s phone. Then I pressed a few buttons to see his preprogrammed speed dial list. There were only three numbers and I jotted them down. I hit the redial button, and made a note of that number when it appeared in the window. I ended the call before it had time to connect and punched in a random telephone number just in case Walton wanted to see who I’d called. I got a recorded message telling me that the number I dialed was not in service. Perfect.