Sleight of Hand: A Novel of Suspense (Dana Cutler) (9 page)

Chapter Fifteen

On Wednesday afternoon, Sarah Gelfand rushed from her part-time bookkeeping job to the grocery store. She was almost at the checkout counter when she remembered that Bob, her husband, wanted her to buy chips and salsa because he was having some of his buddies over to watch football on Sunday.

By the time she found the chips and bought a jar of salsa it was almost time to pick up her eight-year-old twins from their karate class. She arrived at the dojo just in time, drove home, and was starting to unload the groceries from the station wagon when Bob pulled into the garage. He was helping her carry the groceries into the kitchen when the phone rang.

“Is this Sarah Gelfand?” a man asked when Sarah picked up.

“Yes.”

“My name is Stuart Lang. I manage the River View Mall. Your father, Ernest Brodsky, rents space from us.”

“Yes?” Sarah said. She was not certain why Lang was calling her, but the mention of her father worried her. He’d had some problems with his heart lately.

“I apologize for calling you but Mr. Brodsky’s rent is way overdue. I talked to him about it at the beginning of the month and he assured me he would pay me today, but there was no check in the mail and his shop was closed when I went by.”

“What time was that?”

“I stopped by twice. Once around eleven, when the mail was delivered. Then I went back at three-thirty.”

“And it was closed both times?”

“Yes. I could see mail on the floor just inside the store.”

Sarah was concerned. “Dad never misses a day.”

“Do you have any idea where he is?” Lang asked.

“Have you called his apartment?”

“I called the number on the rental agreement.” He rattled it off.

“That’s Dad’s number. Was he there?”

“That I can’t say. But he didn’t answer the phone. I wouldn’t have bothered you but this isn’t the first time he’s been late with the rent, and he was very specific about paying today. I have someone who’s interested in the space and I need to know what Mr. Brodsky is planning to do.”

“I understand. I haven’t talked to my father since last Tuesday. I’ll try to reach him and I’ll tell him you called.”

“Who was that?” Bob asked as soon as Sarah hung up.

Sarah told her husband about the phone call.

“Call your dad,” he said. “Maybe he has a cold and skipped work.”

“A cold has never stopped him before,” Sarah said. She dialed her father’s number and got his answering machine.

“I’m worried,” Sarah said.

“Then you better get over there. I’ll watch the kids.”

Sarah grabbed her coat and sped across town to the garden apartment where her father was living. She parked in front in his reserved space, worried because the space was not occupied.

Wednesday’s
Lee County Journal
was lying on the doormat, which meant that her father had not been home since Tuesday.

Sarah rang the doorbell twice, then knocked twice more. She shouted her father’s name. When there was no response, she opened the door with the key her father had given her. Her father was a good housekeeper and the kitchen looked clean and tidy. Sarah walked through the living room and found nothing amiss. In the bedroom, the bed was made and she didn’t think any clothing was missing from her father’s closet or drawers. She looked in the hall closet and found his suitcase.

Sarah sat down on the sofa in the living room. Why wasn’t her father home and why hadn’t he gone to work? Where was he? If he’d gone on a trip he would have called her so she wouldn’t worry. Something was wrong. She hoped he had not had a heart attack. She worried that he was in a hospital somewhere.

Sarah had met the neighbors who lived on either side of her father. They were both friendly with Ernie, but neither one knew where he was. Sarah decided to drive home and ask Bob if he thought they should file a missing-person report.

Part II

The Key

Chapter Sixteen

Dana got a seat on a red-eye out of Seattle. She tried to sleep on the cross-country flight but she couldn’t stop thinking about the way she’d been played. Why hadn’t she seen that Laurent’s story was ridiculous? The obvious answer was the twenty-five grand. It wasn’t logical to think that someone would pay that much money to play a joke on her. But someone had paid her twenty-five thousand dollars, and the Seattle actors another twenty thousand, to make sure that she would run around in circles for a week. A person would only pay that much to send her on a wild-goose chase if they were going to make a hell of a lot more money if the prank was successful.

A cab let Dana off at her house an hour before the sun rose on Thursday morning. She dropped her duffel bag in the entryway and was about to turn on the lights when her instincts told her that something was wrong. She looked around. At first, nothing seemed amiss. Then it dawned on her that there should have been mail lying on the mat under the mail slot.

Dana closed the door quietly, took out her gun, and looked around the living room. Nothing. She slid around the wall into the kitchen and again sensed that something was wrong. It took a moment before she figured out what was bothering her. When she’d left for Seattle, all four chairs had been pushed in at the kitchen table, but one of the chairs was a few inches away from the table now. She surveyed the kitchen slowly. Nothing else was out of place.

Dana took a deep breath and edged down the hall, hugging the wall on the same side as the bedroom door. When she reached her destination, Dana crouched low to make a smaller target and spun into the room. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark and she could make out a shape on the far side of the bed. In one smooth motion, Dana flipped the light switch and aimed her gun.

Jake Teeny rolled on his side and squinted at her for a moment. Then he flashed a sleepy grin.

“I didn’t know you were into role-playing. What are we doing, the lady cop and the handcuffed prisoner? Personally, I prefer woman in chains and the sex-crazed warden.”

Dana expelled a breath and the hand holding the gun dropped to her side.

“Why are you home?” she asked, angry at Jake for scaring her, and angrier at herself for almost shooting her lover.

“It’s great seeing you, too.”

It occurred to Dana that she should be happy that Jake was home and safe.

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t expecting you for two more weeks and I thought someone had broken in.”

“I left a message on the machine. Didn’t you get it?”

“No. I’ve been out of town on a really weird assignment.”

“Oh?”

“I’m too beat to talk about it now, and I’m really glad you’re home, but why aren’t you freezing your ass off in the Arctic?”

“The whole expedition was a disaster,” Jake said as he sat up and leaned against the headboard. “There was bad weather, then one of the scientists broke his leg.”

“Did you get some good pictures?”

“Yeah, but I don’t think they’ll publish an article, so the magazine probably won’t use them.”

“Maybe you can put them together for a show.”

“Maybe.”

Dana put her gun on the end table, dragged herself across the bed, and kissed Jake.

“I missed you,” Dana said.

“I’m glad,” Jake said as he nuzzled her neck.

Dana laughed. “Down, boy. I was on a red-eye—I smell, and I haven’t slept a wink in twenty-four hours—so I’ll take a rain check on the sex until the morning.”

“Nuts.”

“I plan to make it up to you, so you’d better get plenty of rest, because you’re going to need it when I wake up.”

Dana and Jake slept until a little before noon and were still in bed at twelve forty-five. They made love again in the shower. Then Jake headed for the kitchen so he could start breakfast, although, as Dana noted, it was technically the afternoon.

Dana had a big smile on her face when she followed the delicious scent of freshly brewed coffee into the dining room, where a full mug and the morning paper were waiting for her. She was so glad to have Jake home. She really loved him, and it didn’t hurt that he was one of the sexiest men she’d ever seen. Jake, who was in his mid-thirties, was an inch shorter than Dana at five nine, and had wavy brown hair and liquid brown eyes. His skin was always tanned because he was outdoors so much of the time. Jake’s job could be physically demanding, so he stayed in shape. Dana grinned as she remembered the feel of his rock-hard body.

Jake saw how happy Dana looked, and he couldn’t help smiling, too. Not so long ago he had wondered if he would ever see her smile again.

“So, what’s this weird case you were working on?” Jake asked as he set down plates loaded with scrambled eggs, bacon, and buttered toast at their places.

Between bites, Dana told Jake about her meeting with Margo Laurent, her trip to the West Coast, and her discovery that the search for the Ottoman Scepter was a prank.

“I think calling what happened to you ‘weird’ is an understatement. The whole thing is downright bizarre.”

“I agree.”

“Are you going to try to figure out what happened and who was behind it?”

“When I can. I had to put several cases on the back burner, and I’ve got to dig myself out.”

Jake grabbed the sports section so he could catch up on what happened to his favorite teams while he was away. Dana took the first section and read the depressing news about the Middle East, the failing economy, and congressional gridlock. When she got to the part of the paper that reported on local news, she found herself looking at a picture over a headline that read:
COMMONWEALTH ATTORNEY STILL MISSING
. Dana was struck by the resemblance the prosecutor in question bore to Margo Laurent. Then she froze when she learned that the missing woman was Carrie Blair, wife of industrialist Horace Blair.

There was that name again.

The article told how Carrie Blair became the “Society Prosecutor” and concluded by stating that the last time anyone had seen the missing woman was Monday afternoon. Dana felt very uneasy. The last time she’d talked to Margo Laurent was Friday. After that, all of Dana’s calls had gone to voice mail.

“What’s up?” Jake asked when he noticed the intensity with which Dana was reading the story about the missing prosecutor.

“My weird case just got a whole lot weirder.”

Dana walked down to her basement office and booted up her computer. She found a good photograph of Carrie Blair on the Internet and used Photoshop to change Carrie’s blond hair to black and add dark glasses. When she was through, Dana maneuvered the before and after photos so they were side by side.

Jake walked in carrying two coffee mugs. He set one down next to Dana and pulled up a chair.

“I think I’ve found my mystery woman,” Dana said. Then she told Jake about the missing prosecutor.

“Horace Blair owns the house on Isla de Muerta and the condo in Victoria. It’s too big a coincidence. I think Margo Laurent is really Carrie Blair.”

“Do you know the Blairs?” Jake asked.

“Not that I remember.”

“So what’s going on?”

“I have no idea. This whole business is giving me a headache.”

Chapter Seventeen

Charles Benedict’s office was in a two-story house with a wide front porch that stood on the border between the commercial and residential sections of downtown Crestview, Lee County’s county seat. It had been built as a residence in 1875. When Benedict bought it, 130 years later, he kept the exterior but completely remodeled the interior.

Nikolai Orlansky loved meeting at Benedict’s office because nothing he said there could ever be used against him. Benedict had the house swept for listening devices every time Nikolai dropped by for an attorney-client conference but Nikolai was paranoid and he imagined that government agencies using NSA/CIA-developed technology were probably listening in. He delighted in pressing his finger to his lips, giving Benedict a wink, then spewing out confessions about the Kennedy assassination and any other weirdness he would think up on the spur of the moment.

Benedict put up with Orlansky’s shenanigans because he was a steady source of income and a good person to know if you needed untraceable weapons, high-grade narcotics, and beautiful young whores, or had a desire for animate or inanimate objects to disappear.

Nikolai Orlansky didn’t look like a crime lord or a psychopathic killer any more than his dapper lawyer looked like a hit man. The Russian did not have an imposing physique or cold, heartless eyes. If anything, he looked nonthreatening; a roly-poly fellow with a kind smile, a full head of floppy black hair, and a hearty laugh.

Orlansky and Benedict had met when Nikolai hired Charlie to represent a trusted lieutenant who was facing a murder charge. Two unimpeachable witnesses had been making out in a car two down from the scene of the crime. Orlansky’s man had not seen them, and he had been standing in a pool of light, so the witnesses had been 100 percent certain when they picked him out of a lineup.

Orlansky was a realist. He knew the prosecution had an airtight case. He told the lawyer that he did not expect miracles and had hired Benedict out of loyalty to a friend who had been at his side since they were teenagers in the Ukraine. Benedict had listened carefully. When Orlansky was through, he told him that he could make the friend’s problem disappear for an additional thirty thousand dollars.

“These people cannot be bribed,” Orlansky said.

“I don’t intend to bribe them,” Benedict had said. Then he’d held out his palm, dropped a quarter into it, and closed his fist. When he opened his fist, the quarter was gone.

“I said I would make the problem disappear. Once I have the cash, the witnesses will join the quarter in never-never land.”

Orlansky had missed the literary reference but had gotten the idea. Two weeks after he paid Benedict, the witnesses failed to appear for a court hearing and the charges against his man were dismissed. The witnesses were never heard from again.

Benedict had a real knack for practicing law, and he won a lot of his cases fair and square. But every so often he needed an edge. Nikolai was prepared to pay extra for special services, and Charlie loved being the recipient of his largesse, but today they were meeting because Orlansky’s lawyer needed a favor.

“I can do this,” Orlansky said when Benedict finished his explanation. “In fact, I have someone in place.”

“Oh?”

“You know Gregor?”

Benedict smiled.

“He beat up some asshole in a bar. I am pissed because it was not business, but who can talk to Gregor?” Nikolai shrugged. “So I don’t bail him out. Is a lesson.”

“Gregor is perfect.”

“So, it is done,” Nikolai said. “But we are in America, Charlie, the land of the capitalist, where no lunch is free.”

Charlie wrote a figure on a piece of note paper, which he planned to burn as soon as Nikolai left. He anticipated collecting a lot more from Horace Blair when the millionaire hired him to defend him against a charge of murder.

Nikolai steepled his fingers and stared into space. Then he crossed out Benedict’s number and wrote another that was two thousand dollars higher. Charlie had anticipated Orlansky and even with the new number he was one thousand dollars ahead of what he’d been prepared to pay.

“Done,” Benedict said.

“I like doing business with you, Charlie. You are a no-bullshit guy. So, when do you need this favor?”

“Soon. I’ll let you know.”

Nikolai stood up. “Good, and you got that atomic bomb planted at Langley for me, the one disguised as a meatball hero?”

Benedict shook his head. “I wish you wouldn’t do that shit. One of these days, guys in Ninja outfits are going to crash through my windows and smoke both of us.”

“Ah, but that would prove I was right and you were wrong about the bugs, so I would have the last laugh.”