Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 09 - The Crystal Skull Murders (20 page)

“Wear. So, how did he know the uniforms were delivered a week early if he was in Dallas?”

At that moment, two officers emerged from the jewelry store and climbed into their cruiser.

We waited, but the black and white didn’t move.
“Come on,” I muttered impatiently. “Take off.”

Her eyes fixed on the black-and-white cruiser, Doreen
muttered, “Do you think he was at the Somalia Sunrise?”

“Huh?” I looked around. “What?”

“Getdown Joe. Do you think he was really at the Somalia Sunrise Club in Dallas?”

I had to admit, she was bright and perceptive. “Makes
you wonder, doesn’t it? Maybe we ought to give the
club a call.”

A satisfied grin played over her lips. “I’ll do it.”

“And while you’re taking care of that, there’s another
thing we need to find out. Remember last night when Buck told us about the guy offering the skull to Getdown?”

“Yes”

“What happened to that guy? Where’d he go?”

She nodded. “I wondered that myself. If the skull
was so valuable, he wouldn’t run off and leave it.”

“Not if he had a choice.”

She studied me a moment. “You think…” Her voice
trailed off and her forehead wrinkled with concern.

At that moment, the police cruiser sped away. I
opened my door. “Let’s go. We’ll tie this up later.”

Crime scene tapes were still strung around the vault
when we entered.

J.C.Towers gaped at us when we barged into his office followed by a stuttering secretary who had tried to
stop us. “Boudreaux,” he muttered.

My eyes narrowed. “All right, Towers. What happened?”

He waved his secretary from the room. “I’ll call if I
need you, Miss Heath. Close the door, please.” He gestured to the leather chairs in front of his ponderous
desk and then plopped down in his. He fished a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped at the perspiration
beading on his forehead. Nervously, his gaze darted
back and forth between Doreen and me. His Adam’s
apple bobbed. “I know what you’re thinking.”

I snorted. “If you did, you wouldn’t be sitting there facing me. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Mrs. Bernie
kicked that door open and came after you with Max!”

His thin face blanched, and he swallowed hard. He
punched the speaker on his desk phone. “Miss Heath,
send Mister Sheffield in. Immediately!” He looked up at
us when he clicked off. “Sheffield can tell you what happened. He was the one who was forced to open the safe.”

Moments later, the door opened, and a pale-faced
man about my height opened the door. If it were possible, he was even thinner than Towers, and if Towers
turned sideways, he wouldn’t even throw a shadow.
“You wanted me, Mister Towers?”

“Come in, George” He introduced us, then said, “Tell
them what took place last night.” Sheffield frowned, but
Towers nodded. “It’s all right.”

“If you say so, sir.” He addressed us. “This morning
just after four, I awakened to find a man wearing a ski
mask holding a gun on me.”

A ski mask! I remembered the driver of the Lincoln
who had tried to smash me between two Dumpsters behind the Blackhawk Towers. Could it have been the same
person? Of course, I knew that was a stretch for just
about everyone on Sixth Street had his own wardrobe of
ski masks.

Sheffield continued. “Well, not exactly like a ski
mask. It was like one, but it didn’t have a top. He had an
Afro haircut. He forced me to dress and said he’d kill
me if I didn’t get the keys to the store”

An Afro? That narrows it to fifty or sixty thousand, I
told myself wryly. “Why you?”

Sheffield shrugged. “I suppose he knew that I opened
and closed the safe.”

Towers confirmed Sheffield’s remark. “Only the two
of us know the combination, and I’d trust George with
everything I have.”

Doreen chuckled. “Looks like you already have”

I gestured to Sheffield. “Then what?”

“Then he blindfolded me, and put me in his car.”

Remembering the yellow Jeep with black fenders
and lightning bolts, I questioned him. “What kind of
car?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I told you, I was blindfolded.”

“Maybe so,” Doreen interjected, “but, did you have
to step up into it or down; was it rough riding or easy
riding; noisy or quiet?”

Sheffield pondered the question. “It was a big car,
comfortable. Is that what you mean?”

“Yeah,” I replied, knowing he wasn’t talking about
the yellow-and-black Jeep. On the other hand, the lifter
could have stolen the larger vehicle just in case someone spotted him. “Anything else?”

His brow knit in concentration. “I had to step down
into it, and it had automatic locks because I could hear
them click.” He paused and then shrugged. “That’s all I
can remember about the car, except it had that new
smell, you know what I mean?”

“That’s fine, Mister Sheffield,” said Doreen. “So what
happened then?”

“When we reached the store, he took off my blindfold. He made me turn off the alarms and then open the
safe. Then he blindfolded me again and tied me up”

“Before he blindfolded you again though, you saw
him.”

“Yes.” He shot a glance at Towers, then continued.
“But he was still wearing the ski mask.”

“But, he had an Afro”

Towers cleared his throat. “Tell them exactly what
you told the police, George. They’re here to help us”

I had a feeling Towers’ last remark was just a tad gratuitous. I wondered why at the time.

Sheffield glanced uncomfortably at the carpeted floor.
“Yes” He hesitated. “I think the hair looked like it, but
the other features-you know, his lips and nose-they
didn’t look African.” He paused and shrugged. “Anyway,
after he blindfolded me, I heard him going through the
vault, and then he left.” He nodded to J.C.Towers. “I
managed to free myself and immediately called Mister
Towers”

The diminutive jeweler added, “I rushed right down
here, inspected the vault, and we called the police.”

I studied them a moment. I looked at Towers, my
eyes asking the question foremost in my mind.

He dropped his eyes and nodded. “Yes”

“Was the skull the only thing missing?”

Sheffield shot Towers a furtive glance as the diminu tive storeowner replied, “No. We checked our inventory.
There’s almost two million in uncut diamonds missing.”

I whistled softly. “How much would they be worth
on the street?”

Towers arched an eyebrow. “Full value. It would be
next to impossible to identify them. If they were some
of the made-twin crystals, it would be simple. But they
were primarily the spherical crystals from Brazil.”

Taking a step toward Towers, I said, “I want to see
the vault.”

He hesitated.

“The police have finished. And I want to look at it.”
Ducking under the tapes, I entered the vault. The
stainless steel shelf on which the skull had rested was
empty. Along one side of the vault was a bank of drawers. “What are those?”

Towers explained. “That’s where we place our inventory of stones every night.”

I noticed that only two drawers were open, one in the
top row and the other in the bottom row.

Towers’ licked his lips and stared up at me nervously.
“Is there anything else?”

I studied the interior of the vault a moment longer.
Something was out of place, but I had no idea what. After a few years dealing with the underbelly of society,
lawmen and PIs develop a sixth sense of sorts that sets
off an alarm. And that alarm was clanging in my head.
I had the sneaking suspicion that J.C.Towers and
George Sheffield were holding something back.

Back in the pickup I put in a call to Billy Joe Martin
at the Travis County Morgue. While waiting, I had
Doreen use her cell phone to call information in Dallas for the Somalia Sunrise Club. “Find out if they
were auditioning rap groups Monday and Tuesday of
last week.”

She grinned and nodded. “You bet”

My connection came along. “Martin. County Morgue”

“Hey, Billy Joe. It’s Tony. I got a question.”

“You’re turning into a good customer, Tony. What is
this, the second time this week?”

“Gotta make sure you guys are earning your money” I
paused. “Listen, you got any stiffs from a couple weeks
back that you haven’t put a name on? White guy”

He thought a moment. “Nope. The last one was the
wino you stuck a label on”

“I’m trying to locate a short man with a big nose.
Probably Jewish.”

“Yeah. I remember him. We got him Monday or
Tuesday. Hermie Abraham, out of New York. Fell off
the balcony on his room on the tenth floor of the Blackhawk Towers”

I whistled softly. No wonder the manager at the Blackhawk was nervous when I approached him. I drew a deep
breath. I couldn’t blame him. It would never do for the
public to know one of his guests jumped from a balcony.

Still, I told myself, we’ve got us a ski mask, Blackhawk Towers, Dumpsters. Maybe some of my loose
ends were starting to come together. I thanked Billy Joe and punched off just as Doreen clicked her cell close
and shook her head slowly.

“No auditions, and the club just reopened this week
after being closed for a month by the ATF.”

We stared at each other several seconds.

She arched an eyebrow. “Now where do we go?”

I considered our next step. Speaking with Getdown
might be a little premature even though we knew he
lied about being in Dallas or at least about the auditions. And Doreen was also right when she surmised
that he had to be in the back room of the Hip-Hop
sometime after Monday when Abdo had delivered the
laundry that included the uniforms that were not due
until the following week. Otherwise, how could he have
known the uniforms were there?

Perhaps, Ivory Washington could be our next step. I
was curious as to what he knew about Hermie Abraham’s demise. Of course, finding him might be tricky.
Maybe that could wait until tomorrow.

“Let’s head back to the office. I want to check my
e-mail. Besides, it’ll give us time to collect our thoughts”

She shrugged. “Fine with me.”

At the office, I checked my personal e-mail. Mostly
spam: health enhancements, singles opportunities, even
a couple notes from some third world countries generously offering me a share of forty million dollars and
all they needed was my social security number and
bank account.

Then my eyes lit up when I spotted a message from J.
Adkins-Manor. “Here it is,” I muttered, waving Doreen
to my desk. “Take a look”

Mister Boudreaux.

In response to your inquiry regarding the Nelson-Vines
Crystal Skull, there was a second skull of such quality and
technique that is cut against the natural axis of the crystal.

The skull was the religious centerpiece of the Mesoamerican
Lemurian sect, but it disappeared twenty-eight years ago.

If this is the Lemurian Crystal Skull, I would recommend
efforts be made to return it to the sect.

Being a close acquaintance of the Vines, I mentioned your
e-mail to them. Despite my efforts to discourage them with
respect to the Mesoamerican Lemurian sect, the Vines
would be willing to make a most generous offer for the skull.

Doreen was leaning over me, reading the message.
She had one hand on my shoulder and the other on the
desk, and the fragrance of her perfume enveloped me.
What was so remarkable was that this was the first time
I whiffed the aroma of perfume on her.

She pointed at the monitor. “What’s that Mesoamerican Lemurian religious stuff?”

I shrugged. “I’ve heard some about it. A bunch of fanatics. Like those suicide crazies in the Middle East.
Crazy, and scary. Let’s see what we can find”

An online search turned up several articles concerning
the Mesoamerican Lemurians, a religious culture that
existed in the Pacific Ocean. According to one article:

Once a tropical village society involving a land
mass from Hawaii to Los Angeles before sinking
beneath the Pacific Ocean, its society was made up
of pods of clairvoyant seers, oracles, and holy
people to whom the members of the group could
turn for guidance and justice, the latter being dispensed by squads of Holy Warriors.

The International Headquarters for the Mesoamerican Lemurians is located in Los Angeles. The vibration of that ancient land, which was creatively
based, is ample explanation as to why there has
been such an influx of higher consciousness ideas
from the West Coast.

I raised a skeptical eyebrow. Higher consciousness,
my hind leg.

Doreen whistled softly and stood up. “I don’t believe
any of that nonsense”

Looking up at her, I replied, “Remember what Buck
said. He had some religious nuts that wanted the skull.
Maybe this is them” I shook my head, remembering
some of the chilling stories I’d heard about the group
over the years. “And maybe for his own sake, it won’t
be them”

She studied the monitor a few moments, then blew
out through her lips slowly. “Then maybe we’ve stumbled onto something big.”