Truth & Lies: A Queen City Justice Novel (19 page)

“Hi there,” Jack said, oozing pure magnetism and appeal.

Her eyelashes fluttered as she sat up a little straighter to make the best of her assets, which were bountiful. Rey suspected she hadn’t been hired for her telephone skills. “How can I help you?” she asked.

“We’re looking for Arturo Turlucci.”

She looked at her computer screen. “Do you have an appointment?”

“We were hoping to surprise him,” Jack said.

“Mr. Turlucci is at lunch.” She looked back to her computer and clicked a few buttons. “His schedule is booked today. He normally doesn’t care for surprises.”

Rey was confident Jack would get the information he wanted. He always enjoyed watching Jack at work.

“I can’t tell you how disappointed that makes me,” Jack said. “We’re only in town for the day.” He leaned a little closer.

There you go, sweetheart. Smell the testosterone. Do what Uncle Jack wants you to.
Rey grinned.
Full compliance in T-minus five…four…three…

“I don’t suppose you could tell me where he’s having lunch?”

There went the eyelashes. She’d gotten a noseful of Jack’s love potion. “Well, you didn’t hear it from me, but I made reservations for him at Mama Rosetti’s. It’s one of his restaurants.”

Clearly she wasn’t in on the fact that she worked for someone who could have her put in concrete shoes for revealing that.

Jack winked. “Mum’s the word. What time did he leave?”

She glanced at her watch. “Less than fifteen minutes ago.”

“It was great to meet you,” he said, darting a glance at the plaque on her desk. “Candi.”

She twittered. “You too. Come back anytime.”

“You got it.”

They stepped back into the elevator.

“Is there any step in this case that’s not going to be a major runaround?” Rey asked.

“Are you starting to wonder if someone has it in for us?” Jack asked.

“Turlucci?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of God.”

They left the garage and pulled into the restaurant in less than fifteen minutes. “He’s here,” Jack said, pointing at a car in the lot.

It was a new black Mercedes limo, with a liveried driver leaning against the door, smoking a cigarette and cooling his heels. The license plate read TRULUCK1.

“True Luck?” Rey asked.

“It’s in the file. All his cars have specialty plates. True Luck one through six.”

“He only has five bays in the garage.” Rey laughed at himself. “
Only.
”

“The youngest son…
Shit
, what’s his name?—Alfonso? Alonso? Something like that—he doesn’t live with the old man, but Dad still pays for his cars and apartment and pretty much everything else.”

“He’s young?”

“Late twenties.”

“So what’s with Daddy still paying for everything?”

“Not entirely sure. Rumor has it he had some sort of breakdown a few years back, but there was no actual confirmation on that. He disappeared for about a year but came back.”

“How do you know all his?” Rey asked.

“Sometimes it pays to know your enemies,” Jack replied.

Obsessive much?
The back of Rey’s neck twinged, and he wondered if Jack was going to do something stupid when they got in there. He was pretty sure that Sherwood wouldn’t have sent them if he had any questions about Jack’s ability to handle this. He just hoped Sherwood was as right as usual.

“Let’s do this,” Jack said, climbing out of the car.

They walked into the restaurant together.

Turlucci sat with five other men at a large round table toward the back of the restaurant.

He nudged the guy next to him with his elbow when Jack and Rey walked up and the conversation came to a screeching halt. All eyes were on them.

“What brings the FBI by?” Turlucci asked.

In Turlucci’s business, it was undoubtedly an asset to be able to spot a Fed at a hundred paces.

“Special Agent Rey Rodriguez. This is my partner, Special Agent Jack Falcon.” He flipped open his badge at the same time Jack did. “We have a few questions about a business associate of yours, John Giordano.”

Turlucci’s eyes darted to the youngest man at the table before meeting Rey’s gaze. “He’s a former friend of the family, gentlemen. Not a business associate. And I believe he left town a number of years ago.”

Rey met Jack’s eyes. There was something here. And Jack agreed.

“He was really more of a friend of my son, Alonso,” he said, indicating the youngest man at the table. “But like I said, we haven’t seen him in years.”

Rey studied Alonso carefully. There was something studiously casual about the way his arm was draped over the back of the empty chair next to him.
Hey, look at me. I’m talking to the Feds, but I’m cool as a cucumber.

“Not since that murder rap a few years ago,” Alonso agreed. “We parted ways then.”

“We understand that your attorney represented him?” Jack prompted, his voice holding none of the warm affability it had when he’d talked to Turlucci’s receptionist.

“Yes, my father helped him out, ’cause he was a friend. But he had a hard time, uh,
showing his appreciation
.”

Rey suspected that was supposed to be some sort of implied threat. But a threat to what, he wasn’t sure. Giordano was clearly still among the living, so it wasn’t like they’d offed him because he’d shown disrespect.

“I see,” he said, staring down the younger Turlucci, waiting to see if he’d spill more.

He didn’t. Rey suspected he was just a little bit smarter than he let on.

Jack piped in. “Are you familiar with Michael Milton? He owns a dating service north of Cincinnati.”

A shield came down over Alonso’s eyes. It happened so fast, Rey almost didn’t see it. Then Alonso smiled. “Nope. Never heard of him.” He winked, though it seemed forced. “Never needed a dating service.”

He suspected Alonso was used to getting by on his looks. He had one of those faces with a gleaming, boyish smile and dark eyes that women tended to flock to. While his father had gone a bit soft around the middle, Alonso looked like he spent more than his share of time in the gym.

Unfortunately for Alonso, good looks weren’t exactly a deciding factor in whether someone was under investigation by the FBI. Of course, he’d answered all the questions they’d posed to him. This was a giant waste of time.

There wasn’t anything here. He wanted there to be, but some years-old association meant squat.

Much like every lead they’d followed in this godforsaken case.

“What’s he done?” Alonso asked suddenly with a little too much interest. He didn’t seem to notice his father’s sharp look.

“Tax thing,” Jack said. “Thank you for your time, gentlemen.”

They left, and Rey felt six pairs of eyes boring into the back of his neck all the way out.

Neither spoke until they climbed back into the car.

“Let’s get Emilie on Alonso,” Jack said.

“You’re reading my mind.”



Wednesday, December 10—11:00 a.m.

Oakley Neighborhood, Cincinnati, Ohio

Time was running out.

He was no longer certain he could trust his associate. And he wanted her.
Draghana.
It was possible she was even more spectacular than Anka, who had been less than demonstrative with him the last time he’d seen her.

The picture of Draghana that he carried with him was showing some signs of wear. Which was why he needed to see her in person. Maybe get some new pictures.

He gave a fleeting look at the camera with its zoom lens sitting on the car seat next to him before dragging his eyes back to the road. It wouldn’t do to die in an accident before he could even meet her. Fate
could
be that cruel, he was aware.

As he merged into the left lane and cranked up his speed, he couldn’t help but glance back at her picture. Those dimples and bright eyes gave her an open adorableness that he couldn’t resist.

He already had her address committed to memory. He’d been there once, sitting out on the street as she walked her dog. Obnoxious yappy thing.

She’d walked about a block, stretched a little, and then taken off at a fairly aggressive run. She was athletic. He liked that. There would be no flaccid skin on her body. Only miles of smooth, tight flesh.

His body responded with the embarrassing speed of a schoolboy’s.

Which meant he had chosen the right one.

He wanted to meet her.

Needed
to meet her.

It was too soon to pick her up. He wanted to get to know her first. Before he committed, he wanted to hear her voice, to touch her skin and see if it was as soft as it looked, to see if she smelled as good as he hoped.

But
how
to meet her?

He made it to her neighborhood even faster than he’d anticipated. She lived on a quiet street with lots of towering trees. Sidewalks lined both sides of the road, and he could see a couple of people on each sidewalk as he looked down to the end of the street. Two had dogs, a mother was meandering along with a baby stroller, and a male jogger moved toward him at an ambitious pace, nearly colliding with one of the trash buckets parked on the curb and awaiting pickup.

It gave him an idea. His eyes scanned to the spot in front of the old firehouse.

Excellent.

He pulled his car around the block and parked. From the backseat, he grabbed a duffle bag. From it, he took an oversized jacket and a ball cap. In a small case in a side pocket of the bag, he extracted a fake mustache. On close inspection, it wasn’t very realistic, but from ten or more feet away, no one would be able to pick him out of a lineup.

Mirrored aviator sunglasses completed his disguise.

He couldn’t believe he was about to be so bold.

The air was cold against his exposed face and hands as he climbed out of his rented sedan.

Shit.
Leaving fingerprints would be a huge mistake. He grabbed leather gloves from the map slot in the door and slid his hands into them.

He’d intended to wear the gloves any time he was in the car, but they were lined and had proven too warm for the long drive. He’d just need to be careful that no one ever had a reason to look inside the car.

He wandered up the sidewalk as if he were out for a casual stroll. A quick glance around showed no one near and no one at the windows of the old fire station. He accidentally-on-purpose tripped on the uneven sidewalk, bringing their trash with him as he went down. It was cake to spill the garbage out of the bag and onto the sidewalk from there.

It took only moments for him to find a receipt, buried in a disgusting pile of coffee grounds and what looked like leftover spaghetti.

Bingo.

Now he knew which grocery she shopped at. And because luck was on his side, the address was printed at the top of the receipt. He righted the trash bin, dusted himself off, and continued on his way, having palmed the receipt.

No one would have caught that. He’d been taught to pick pockets from the best. You never knew when knowing people for whom crime was a way of life would pay off.

It happened more often than not.

He returned to his car and removed his cap, jacket, gloves, sunglasses, and mustache quickly before pulling the car around the block so he could observe the front of the house from underneath a large tree a few houses down the street.

Now, if only she’d head to the grocery store.

Chapter Fourteen

Wednesday, December 10—1:00 p.m.

Cincinnati FBI Field Office, Kenwood Neighborhood, Cincinnati, Ohio

“Where are we on John Giordano?” Andrew asked. The clock was ticking. He couldn’t go to one more crime scene to see another woman sliced to shreds without losing his mind.

Eric shook his head. “Nowhere. He stopped hanging out at Dream Come True. He hasn’t received any calls from any place that we suspect Michael Milton has been. In fact, he’s only made or received two calls in the past few weeks. He received one from an unpaid cell phone with a Cincinnati area code. And he made one call to a laundry service.”

MacQuaid added his two cents. “One of the times I tailed him, he ran errands. Grocery store, gas station, and the aforementioned laundry.”

“This guy married?”

“Nope. But he had a big bag of laundry for one person.”

“That’s interesting,” Andrew said.

“The warrants for his financials picked up nothing interesting. In the past six months, he’s made fairly regular trips to the grocery, laundry, gas station, made rent and car payments, and paid off his visa, which he rarely uses. One charge in June at Lowes. They were able to tell us it was for a couple of locks. They were good locks, probably pricier than he had cash for. Every once in a while, he pays for dinner out with his card.”

“Money coming in?” Andrew asked.

“Same amount comes in every two weeks like clockwork. Direct deposit. Exactly the same amount. $1643.20. Must be on salary.”

“What work does he do?”

The whole room got quiet. He could feel his face form into “the-boss-is-gonna-blow” look.

Thompson and MacQuaid started digging through folders of paper in front of them.

Emilie, her fingers never far from the keys, started clicking. “His paychecks come from a company called Weaver Solutions.”

Before he could ask, her keyboard started clicking again. “Weaver Solutions, according to their website is a computer consulting firm.” Her eyes, visible above the lid of her laptop, darted around the screen in front of her.

“Weaver Solutions is operated by Merrit, Ltd…” There was a pause and more clicking. “Which is in turn owned by Laurence and Associates.”

Andrew raised an eyebrow. “Okay. I want you to follow up on that. See how far it’s buried and what’s at the top.”

She nodded her head. “Got it, boss.”

“MacQuaid and Thompson, I want you guys to bring Giordano in. Maybe he’ll give us Milton. Maybe he’ll confess to the whole enchilada. Just get me
something
.”



Thursday, December 11—9:00 a.m.