The Question of the Felonious Friend (20 page)

Twenty-Three

“I don't mind driving
you home, Samuel, and you know that.” My mother sat behind the steering wheel, driving at the speed limit, which in this case was thirty-five miles per hour. We were headed back to our home, two-point-eight miles from the Questions Answered offices. On occasion when there was no ride available, I have walked home, and it is not difficult. I would have done so tonight, but there was work to be done and I did not know when to expect to receive a visitor at the house. “My point is that you can drive yourself and should start thinking about doing that. You're making money now. You should buy a car.”

This was an ongoing conversation. Mother and Ms. Washburn had apparently discussed the subject at some length, as each had broached the subject of my driving more regularly. I own a valid driver's license, which I maintain, but I have not driven in four years. It makes me unusually nervous to have that much responsibility at my disposal, so I avoid the practice.

“Normally, I would have asked Mike for a ride,” I told Mother. “But as you know, he is doing something very important for me at this moment.”

“I don't understand that one,” she answered. “You just said he was following someone.”

“You'll see very soon.”

I believe I saw the hint of a smile on Mother's face. She likes to believe that I am more intelligent and capable than I actually am. I have given up trying to convince her otherwise. She said nothing for the rest of the short drive.

We were clearing the table after dinner when Mike the taxicab driver knocked at our back door, which is located in the kitchen. When Mike drives me home, he parks in the driveway, which is closer to the back of the house, so he uses it as his entrance, with our permission. I let him in and he sat at the table, accepting Mother's offer of some cold water but declining any leftover roast beef we might have.

“Maybe now I'll find out exactly what you were up to all this time,” Mother told him as she handed him the glass.

It had been only fifty-three minutes since I had phoned Mike with a request to follow Sandy Clayton Webb from the Questions Answered office and report back on where she had gone and what she had done, but concepts of time are not objective. So I did not comment on Mother's remark.

“I was following this woman around in her car, but Samuel never told me why,” Mike answered her. They both looked to me so I assumed they wanted an explanation.

“The woman is named Sandy Clayton Webb,” I told Mike. “She is the sister of Tyler Clayton and Mason Clayton, the man who asked me who shot Richard Handy at the Quik N EZ convenience store in Somerset.”

I thought that was sufficient, but neither Mike nor Mother said anything for eight seconds (which is actually quite a long gap in a conversation) after I spoke.

“Why did you need me to follow her?” Mike asked. “Do you think she killed this Handy guy?”

I shook my head. “If Sandy had been present in the convenience store at the time of the shooting, she either would have been visible before the security cameras were disabled or there would have been audio of Tyler speaking to her as she entered. I do not believe Sandy was there, or that she could have shot Richard Handy.”

“So why are you suspicious of her?” Mother asked. “And don't tell me you're not, because you wouldn't have had poor Mike here gallivanting around central New Jersey when he should be home after a long day.”

“Actually, I'm working until eleven tonight,” Mike said. Mother looked concerned, but he waved a hand. “Taking a friend's shift for him.”

“Please,” I said to Mike before more small talk could be offered, “tell me what Sandy did after she left Questions Answered.” Mother began to ask another question, but I held up a finger, indicating I would answer after Mike did. Which I was sure he would do as soon as he finished drinking the glass of water.

He nodded, realizing I had been waiting for the information. “Sorry. Sandy drove out of your parking lot just as I got there. She didn't ride around; her route was very direct. She drove to an address in Franklin.”

“What was the address?” I asked.

Mike glanced at a small notebook he carries in the pocket of his denim work shirt. He looked at my face after reading the address and told me what it was; I think he wanted to see my reaction.

I would probably not have been able to read my own expression if I'd had a mirror, but I was feeling something like a small amount of validation. It was one of the places I'd suspected Sandy might go.

“That is Billy Martinez's address,” I said.

“Billy Martinez!” Ms. Washburn had barely made it into the office the next morning when I'd told her the results of Mike's surveillance the night before.

“Yes. Mike reported that Sandy went to the front door of Billy's home, rang the doorbell and was admitted by someone Mike could not see. It could have either been Billy or one of his parents, I suppose.”

“What would Sandy want with Billy Martinez?” Ms. Washburn asked, removing her jacket and sitting behind her desk. She hung the jacket on the back of her chair despite my having offered to install a coat rack in the office. Ms. Washburn says it helps her to feel like we're doing something urgent when she can pull the jacket off the back of her chair as we leave to do research. I don't entirely understand the concept, but I accept it helps feed some emotional need of Ms. Washburn's.

“That is indeed an interesting question,” I said. “Mike told us Sandy stayed inside for approximately ten minutes, then got into her car and drove directly to her residence in Somerset, went inside and didn't come back out. He said that, in violation of all New Jersey traffic regulations, Sandy was talking to someone through her cellular phone during her trip home. Mike drove to my house to report. But he couldn't possibly know the intent or content of the meeting.”

“I was asking for your opinion,” Ms. Washburn said. She got up from her desk and walked to the vending machine. Every morning she gets a bottle of green tea when she arrives, although diet soda is her preference the rest of the day. She claims it is “too early” to drink a soda before eleven a.m., which I am unable to understand. “I didn't think Mike had answered the question for us all by himself.”

I considered what she had said. “My opinion is that there is a connection between Sandy, Billy Martinez, and an unknown third party that involves some contraband merchandise being sold illegally, possibly through the Quik N EZ. And it is becoming increasingly clear that is the reason Richard Handy was killed.”

Ms. Washburn took a moment to absorb the information while sitting back down at her desk. “I get the connection between Sandy and Billy Martinez, because she immediately went to see him—and we didn't even know they'd ever met—after you talked last night. And I get the unknown third party from the phone call on Sandy's way home, although that could be you stretching a little bit because for all we know she was calling her dry cleaner. But the contraband merchandise? Stolen merchandise? Is that from Richard's little skirmish over the cigarettes he was stealing from the convenience store a while back?”

“Yes,” I said. I had activated a software program I'd been working on that would run deep Internet searches in the background while I was working on other areas and inform me when a relevant match was found. So far there had been nothing, but what we were looking for was fairly obscure and had very narrow parameters. “I suggest we talk again to Mr. Robinson, the owner of the Quik N EZ. He is not often present on the store premises. Did you get his contact information?”

Eighty-five minutes later Ms. Washburn and I were in the office of Raymond J. Robinson on the eighth floor of a building he owned in Bridgewater Township. The view, which mostly featured Route 22 running east to west, was unspectacular, but the corner office and the expensive furnishings (including a photograph of Mr. Robinson with a past president of the United States) were clearly meant to impress. It was, plainly, not the image that would have been conjured after seeing Mr. Robinson sweeping the floor of his convenience store in Somerset (even in a business suit), and I mentioned that to him as we sat down in chairs upholstered with leather.

“If you want to be successful in business, you have to know what your employees are doing,” Mr. Robinson said. “If you don't do it yourself even for a short time, you won't know. I take a week every once in a while and go work at one of my businesses. I have my assistant call and say an older gentleman needs a job and is coming in to work. Some of the managers balk at it. They don't like having the boss tell them who to hire. They treat me with a vengeance like it's my fault—which it actually is, but they don't know that—and that tells me what the job is like and what the manager is like. It's invaluable.”

“That's very interesting,” Ms. Washburn said. I have noticed that people often say exactly that when something is not the least bit interesting at all, but it was not the case in this instance. “You just happened to be working at the Quik N EZ the week Richard Handy was shot?”

Mr. Robinson dropped his brows and held up his hands. “Oh no,” he said. “I wasn't working there this week. You just saw me at the store because of that horrible incident. I was looking after my employees and my property.”

“How many businesses do you own?” Ms. Washburn asked. This was meant to ingratiate herself with the subject—we had already gained this information through a simple search before leaving our office.

Mr. Robinson leaned back in his chair, thinking. “Besides the Quik N EZ chain, with those eleven stores, I own three frozen yogurt franchises, a small electronics chain that I'm about to close, two dance studios, and four food trucks in Manhattan.” He seemed especially proud of that last item, perhaps because the trucks were located in New York. Some New Jerseyans suffer from an inferiority complex concerning the city to the north and east.

“Why didn't you tell us about all your other businesses when we met before?” Ms. Washburn asked. The question was valid and intelligent.

“You didn't ask,” Mr. Robinson said. His answer did not live up to the question.

But I was not inclined to spend time building a rapport with Mr. Robinson; I was more interested in getting to the heart of the matter quickly so I could exercise upon my return to the office and then get home in time for lunch. “Mr. Robinson, with all your effort to remain aware of the inner workings of your businesses, is it not odd that a black market was operating through your convenience store and you were unaware of it?”

Mr. Robinson stopped leaning back in his chair. Ms. Washburn, who was accustomed to my style of questioning, did not look at all surprised, but our subject appeared stung by my words.

“What exactly do you mean, a black market operating through my convenience store?” he demanded.

It was an odd comment, since none of the words I'd used was at all obscure. I assumed Mr. Robinson was simply trying to delay having to answer me by asking a question to which he obviously already knew the answer. So I did not answer, simply letting him process the statement.

“You're saying someone was selling illegal merchandise under my manager's nose?” he said, apparently thinking changing the words would somehow also alter their meaning. In this case, that was not going to happen.

“We never met the manager,” Ms. Washburn noted. “May we talk to him or her?”

“You'd have to talk pretty loud,” Mr. Robinson answered with an odd look on his face. “The manager at that particular location was Richard Handy.”

That was news to us, and it shouldn't have been. I looked at Ms. Washburn reflexively. Her eyes widened.

“We were told Richard was the assistant manager,” I said.

“It was a symbolic thing. I had just promoted him.”

“Richard was only twenty-two years old,” I said. “He was the store manager?” Left unsaid was the fact that Richard Handy had also been implicated by the police in a previous incident of illegal sales, in that case of cigarettes he had embezzled from the Quik N EZ stock.

“He was an ambitious kid and he knew the store backwards and forwards,” Mr. Robinson said. “When the previous manager quit, he was the logical choice. I believe in promoting from within.”

That was an admirable business plan, perhaps, but it had no relevance to the conversation. “So you had no idea someone was involved in selling some sort of contraband items through your convenience store?” I said, trying to redirect Mr. Robinson to the topic at hand.

He looked startled. “Of course not,” he said. “You don't know what was being sold?”

“I have a few ideas,” I said. It was an attempt at being evasive, or at least appearing to be speaking from a stronger empirical position than I was capable of doing at the moment. “But I am not able to list items definitively.”

But Mr. Robinson's eyes narrowed. He had not been fooled. “What evidence do you have?” he asked.

“I prefer not to name specific individuals,” I said. The expression to “name names” is simply redundant. “But I can say that I am aware of where some stock was being kept, and at least two of the people we believe to have been involved.”

“This is serious, Mr. Hoenig,” the entrepreneur said. “If you have some proof that this sort of illegal activity was being perpetrated in my business by my employees, I will have to take actions against those people and make sure it can't happen again. Now what can you tell me?”

I stood up. Ms. Washburn, who no doubt found the move unexpected, took a moment to follow. “I'm afraid I've told you everything I can at this moment,” I said. “But you can rest assured that as soon as I know more, I will be sure to let you know.”

“I don't think that's good enough,” Mr. Robinson answered, not standing nor proffering his hand to shake (which was something of a relief to me, actually). “I'm going to need names and I'm going to need facts, not innuendoes. Now please sit down and tell me what I need to know.”