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Authors: Leslie Esdaile Banks

BOOK: Shattered Trust
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James and Laura nodded together on cue.
“Then how do we stop it? What if there's some deranged individual trying to wipe us all out?” Donny's eyes went from bewildered to feral.
Laura placed a hand gently on his arm. “That's why we're here,” she assured him. “If they'd wanted you, they could have gotten to you. There's more to it than that, and we can't figure out what it is.”
“Yeah,” James said calmly, sipping his wine. “Whoever did this isn't just some deranged fool looking to whack people. It ain't the mob, either—but don't ask how we know. We have sources. Period. This was planned and done with purpose. If we figure out the purpose, we can get ahead of the curve, feel me?”
“Well, what's this got to do with me? How am I involved?” Donny's gaze shot from Laura to James in sheer panic.
“We know what was in your father's adjusted will. We know who he had originally slated to receive assets before that ... but what we don't have is insight into who he originally did business with before he started moving pieces around on the game board well before I came onto the scene.”
Donny fervently shook his head no. “I can't go prying into all of that. I wouldn't even know where to begin, and frankly, if they're not looking for me, then—”
“You have access,” Laura said, sitting back and picking up her glass of chardonnay.
“To what?” Donny said in a tight whisper, leaning forward.
“To whatever Alan Moyer's son—”
“No,” Donny said, snatching his napkin off his lap and flinging it onto the table, ready to stand. “He's in prison for life for trying to kill me for my inheritance, being involved in my father's death, and then going after a material witness ... for ... I'm done with him, with that entire travesty, and—”
“You owe us,” James said, his tone menacing. “We saved your ass a while back, and now—”
“You want money, I'll give you money. You want—”
“To live,” Laura said quietly, coming between both men, who'd reached a dangerous stalemate. Her tone was urgent and for once contained the brutal truth. “
That's all
.” She set her gaze on him hard, but her expression was gentle in an attempt to break through to him. “Donny, I have sisters, family, nieces and nephews, an elderly uncle ... I don't want to die; I don't want them to die—not over money, not for any reason. I want to find out who's been wronged so I can rearrange the money just as it was before, so we can all sleep at night. Can you seriously tell me that by just getting up from this table and leaving us with a target on our foreheads, when you could have done something about it—a very small thing—that you'll be able to sleep at night? If so, then let's just order, eat, and call it a night.”
She glared at James, sending him a warning not to move or speak during this extremely fragile negotiation. If he pressed Donny, their ace in the hole would bolt and run.
“I don't even speak to Alan anymore,” Donny murmured, slumping in his chair, hedging. “I don't visit that place. After the trial was over, I stopped any form of communication. I rarely even say his name.”
Laura could feel a rush of hope beginning to make her palms moist. She practically bit her tongue to keep from speaking, and forced her gaze to remain serene.
“After all that ugliness came out at my father's funeral. . . and he was taken into custody, once the media onslaught was over, I packed all his belongings into a public storage unit and delivered the key to his father by courier. I never want to have anything to do with him again in this life.”
Laura and James briefly stared at each other.
“You wouldn't happen to remember where you got a storage container, would you—or the number to the bin?” James glanced at Laura again. “Could be a long shot, but worth a try.”
“It's engraved in my mind,” Donny said, tears rising in his eyes, causing them to glisten. “How does one pack up a lifetime with one's lover? ... each piece that the movers shoved in there had a memory.”
Laura slowly reached across the table and squeezed Donny's hand in support. “I cannot imagine having to do that, but it's important that we know.”
He sniffed and looked out the glass enclosure. “There's a large storage warehouse down on Delaware Avenue, near the Home Depot.”
“I know where that's at,” James said, sitting back in his chair.
“Bin twelve-seventy,” Donny said softly. “But that was over a year ago. I doubt anything of his is still there.”
James rubbed his face down his palms. “Fifty-fifty chance that old man Moyer was so upset by his son's behavior that he could have either left it there to rot, and not paid the bill—in which case, it's been sold by now—or cleaned out the unit and sent whatever was allowable to his son in the pen, keeping the rest as a—”
“He wouldn't have set up a shrine for him in his old bedroom at home, if that's what you're implying. His father was like mine, and would have burned it all first,” Donny said bitterly, grasping the bottle of chardonnay by its neck and pouring a sloppy glass of wine to quickly down. “Besides,” he pressed on, his hurt gaining momentum as he spoke through a gulp of wine, “what would seeing those old documents prove? I didn't even bother to open his lock box when I found the key hidden during the move. I'd already seen enough and didn't want to be devastated any more.” Donny abruptly leaned forward, and spoke between his teeth. “I'd been through
hell
. I taped the key on the top of it with duct tape. I was through with all of it, and him.”
Donny sat back, seeming spent. Laura poured a glass of wine for her and James, and waited patiently as the waiter came over to merrily take their orders.
“I've lost my appetite,” Donny told the server, and turned away.
“A beef pot pie and the salmon,” James said, eyeing the now confused and nervous server. “We're still hungry, even if our friend isn't. Maybe bring him the potato soup so his ulcer doesn't act up.”
The server nodded, hurriedly took the order, and departed from the table. Glad that the small diversion had given her a chance to think, Laura picked up the threads of the conversation, coming in at a different angle.
“In each set of documents, there have to be social security numbers for the distribution of assets,” she said as calmly and quietly as possible. “Through those, and with names, partnerships, etcetera, one might be able to track investment partners, and whomever else they're tied to.”
Oddly, Donny blinked and leaned forward, but his gaze no longer just held pain and fear. A strange level of angry determination seemed to complement those roiling emotions as his brilliant legal mind briefly rose out of its traumatized state.
“Yes, you would be able to do that,” he said carefully, appraising Laura. “I hadn't thought of that, because I never cared who my father used to do business with ... but from the current will that held up, compared with the two before it, those documents should show his very mercurial dealings.”
“We can track who got cut out, and then backward trend who suffered the greatest losses without repayment from that,” she said, never taking her eyes off him.
Raking his fingers through his hair, Donny uncomfortably shifted in his seat. “That's all I have to do? Tell you where Dad's very old and outdated will drawn up by Moyer Senior is? All you want is the location of Alan's lock box?” Donny let out a hard exhale and rubbed his palms down his ashen face.
“That's all we want. You and I both know Alan had gotten old, confidential papers from his father when he'd clerked for him years back. You told me that out of your own mouth,” Laura said, no judgment in her tone. “We had the most recent wills, but never had the one your father had Alan's dad prepare originally when they were still friends. Someone has to be mentioned in there that has federal ties, with enough juice and connections to call in the types of hits that they did. Someone with serious immunity. Icing a state senator isn't a trivial thing.”
James smoothed his palm across his chin. “I'd put money on it that Alan's father never knew he had those docs, given their close relationship,” he said sarcastically. “So, if the stuff in the unit where you stashed his belongings is still there, chances are, so are all the important papers.”
Laura raked her hair with her fingers. Fatigue clawed at her. “Now all we need is a good hacker—once we get those social security numbers.”
“A hacker?” Donny sat back. “Shit. That's illegal.”
“So is breaking into a public storage unit,” James said without emotion.
“So is putting a hit on innocent people to service a vendetta, but we're trying to keep the police and media out of it,” she said, her gaze locked with Donny's. “This needs to be handled quietly, efficiently, and be permanently put to rest. Isn't that what we all want?”
After a long pause, Donny nodded but remained silent for what seemed like an eternity. “I have a friend at Penn,” he eventually admitted as the server brought their meal. He looked down at his soup with disinterest. “Assuming you can get the papers, and assuming they show you anything worthwhile, making this just disappear as quietly as possible gets my vote. She's a pro on databases, and can hack. I trust her, and if I explain that it's something very personal for me, she might do it. She wouldn't breathe whatever you discover to a soul.”
Laura and James shared a skeptical glance.
“I take it you've used her services before as an attorney,” James said, ignoring the way Laura blanched when he accused Donny with his tone.
“I won't dignify that,” Donny said icily. “My ex did things off the record and not always by the book to gain the advantage—even used my friends from time to time. His ambition knew no bounds, and Megan thought she was helping me. Alan called in markers he didn't own, but that's how I learned what she could do. Don't judge me.” He glanced down, focusing on his cooling soup as he began to bring the spoon to his lips.
Then he suddenly looked up at both Laura and James, holding his spoon just before his mouth. “I don't want the police or media in this to start the whole scandal all over again. The next time will literally kill me.”
 
James closed Laura's passenger-side door and strolled around the parked vehicle to the driver's side and got in. They both secretly held their breaths as he started the engine, and let out silent exhales when the motor turned over without incident.
He put the gears in reverse without looking at her, keeping his focus over his shoulder.
“Laura, I'm only going to ask you this one last time,” he said, maneuvering the car into oncoming traffic. “Baby, how do you do that amazing shit?”
Chapter 8
H
is nerves pulled wire-taut, Akhan walked around the rooms of his daughter's home, thinking. No. Sitting and waiting for fate was not an option. He knew of places to go to hide that even his shrewd niece, Laura, couldn't fathom. The only problem would be getting Steve to blend in.
Akhan rubbed the newly appearing stubble on his chin as he gazed out of the sliding glass doors. If a black senator was killed, then it had to be because the man knew too much, and was therefore being cut out of deals he could no longer deliver on. The weak link in the food chain was always the first to go.
It's a shame bourgeois Negroes hadn't learned that lesson by now,
he thought, becoming irate.
Laura and James were going about this all wrong, the hard way, as young people often did. Getting a peek at Haines's original will would prove a dangerous proposition ... whereas digging into a dead black man's effects by merely appearing to be his distant and vicious family, wouldn't raise any particular red flags. The key was to find out who the silent investors might have been in whatever supposedly minority contracts were apportioned to the dead senator and his also-deceased son.
Moving methodically through the house, Akhan stopped at the doorway of the small office. Steve, Najira, and Jamal glanced up from the security system plans.
“Dad?” Najira said, her eyes searching his face with concern.
“Leave everything as though we're just going out for the day,” her father said calmly.
“What's up, Pop?” Jamal said, standing, causing Steve to slowly set the blueprints down on the desk.
“Call it age, but I have a bad feeling. I want the three of us to drive to the airport.”
“Hold it, Daddy,” Najira said, standing and going to his side. “Laura and James said to—”
“Have I ever been wrong?” he asked in a tender but firm tone.
The threesome glanced at each other nervously. “No,” Najira said in a quiet voice. “I know we're all jumpy, but—”
“Get your purse and some money,” Akhan ordered. “I'll be in the car.”
He left the room without further argument. Within moments, Steve was behind the wheel with Jamal and Najira in the backseat.
“Where are we going?” Steve asked, nonplussed but curious.
“To Jamaica,” Akhan said flatly. “I know some underground brothers there from the old days.”
Mrs. Melville hoisted her purse up on her shoulder and turned to leave her home. Her husband gave her a quizzical glance.
“Where ya going, love?”
She smiled. “I know Mrs. Carter said she didn't need a ting, but ...”
He stood, but didn't smile. “Don't.”
Her smile faded. “Why not? I don't understand your mood.”
“It's more than young people needing space to be intimate. Somethin' is wrong over dere.”
She set her purse down with care. “Those nice people? You tink dey are into somethin' illegal?”
He nodded. “Cousin Bruce down at the airport said they got on a flight the next day after an elderly family member came. Now, if they had company arriving, wouldn't you tink dey would need our services?”
His wife leaned against the wall for support. He simply nodded again and stood up from the sofa to go to her.
“Whole family in town, then she and her new husband go out of town. Doesn't jive. But I tink dat gurl is good of heart, because she got us out of the way.”
“What should we do?” Mrs. Melville began wringing her hands. “If there's somethin' untoward happening in dat house, we cannot go back.”
“I called cousin Hayward about it,” her husband said, drawing her into a comforting embrace. “He deals with all sorts of tings like this in his bureau. Let the authorities quietly investigate, and if all is well, we can go back. If not, then we are out of harm's way.”
Mrs. Melville tearfully nodded and rested her head on her husband's shoulder.
“I hope we're wrong,” she whispered. “I liked them so much.”
 
 
He cruised by the lavish villa twice. The house seemed vacant, save the landscaper who was out front busily pruning shrubs. Excellent. Why Vladimir could-n't have found the targets and dispensed with them was stupid and very sloppy. The dumb bastard deserved to die.
Gaining access to the back entrance would be a cakewalk. Planting a cell-phone activated explosive near the stove gas line, no problem. Then ditching his suit in exchange for touristwear and sunning himself on the beach until the occupants returned home was just another easy job. In fact, the gardener looked so numb that he could probably just walk right up to the man and ask him when James and Laura Carter would be coming home. He'd play it off as an insurance salesman, whatever. The help always responded to authority figures.
Picking up his briefcase filled with paraphernalia, he sauntered up to the man working on the front lawn.
“Excuse me,” he said, in his most courteous, salesman voice. “I had an insurance appointment today with Mr. and Mrs. Carter. Would you happen to know what time they will return?”
The gardener surveyed the man with caution and deflected his gaze, playing dumb. “Why, no suh. They didn't tell me. But you could leave your information, and if I'm here when they come back, I'll be sure to tell them.”
“No, never mind. I wouldn't want the papers to blow away. Mind if I step around to the back of the house to leave them some literature under their deck chairs?”
The gardener shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
He smiled. It didn't get any easier than this.
The gardener watched the man in the sweat-creased khaki suit as he rounded the house and went toward the back. He took his time going to his truck, carefully hiding his hands behind it as he pulled out a walkie-talkie unit from his baggy trousers.
“Hayward, here. Got a very suspicious character here snoopin' around the Carters' property. Tall, athletic, six feet two. Brunette. Caucasian male. Car is an airport rental. He's carrying a metal briefcase. I'll call in the tags, run a check, and send me some backup in marked cars, immediately. I want him to open the case for you. Keep your two-ways on while you go behind the house so I can hear the conversation.”
 
 
He had been able to easily find the lines to the security system, mimic a power dip so common in the Caribbean, and use his little black box and clamps to restore it before the alarm even sounded. Perfect ... just like the very swift installation of the explosives had been. He slid the glass doors shut, dropped some brochures he'd picked up at the airport on the deck table beneath a Citronella candle, and smiled.
Footsteps made him quickly look up and remain still. He could see through the house that the gardener was still out front. Two Cayman Islands police officers walked down the side path. He remained cool. Perhaps he'd underestimated the paranoia of the Carters and they had installed a double system that he'd missed. He sighed. Maybe the silent secondary alarm did go off on a silent sensor. No problem. He had the gardener as a witness. His alibi would be simple: He tried the back door to attempt to slide his information onto the kitchen floor, rather than allow it to blow away on the deck. He'd shake the incompetent assholes in no time, and then be on his way without incident. Two dead officers would flush his targets and make them flee. That would be sloppy.
“Good afternoon, officers,” he said brightly.
“Sir, may we see some identification?” the bolder of the two said, eyeing the man with outright suspicion.
“What brings you to this house today?”
“Oh,” the man said, slapping his forehead and chuckling. “I had an insurance appointment with the Carters, they weren't in, and like a dummy, I tried to push the brochures through the door to the kitchen floor. Should have known that people this well off would have had alarms. The gardener said it would be all right.” He motioned toward the fluttering brochures with a humble shrug. “ID, sure. My apologies for getting you worried for nothing.”
As he reached into his suit breast pocket, the officers took a stance that now concerned him. They had guns, not a normal occurrence in the islands, and their holsters were at the ready.
“Gentlemen?” he said, feigning surprise, and halting his movements. “Aren't you taking things a bit far for an insurance guy just trying to make a sale?”
“Open the briefcase,” the second officer said, no nonsense in his tone.
He watched beads of perspiration rise on shiny black faces. This was getting very complicated.
“OK,” he said coolly. “Here's my identification.”
He continued to reach into his jacket slowly, and then squeezed hard twice. Two silenced shots ripped through his suit. Two grunts and nearly simultaneous thuds sounded softly. Messy. He'd ruined a good suit. He was just glad that their brains had blown out onto the furniture behind them, and hadn't splattered his good shirt and tie. He glanced down at the two bodies with disdain. The lawnmower in the front yard was music to his ears. But a small, very distinct popping sound, followed by a burning sensation in his back jolted him to a stop, spinning him around to look at the gardener's menacing face.
 
 
“Who are these people?”
Two men sat in the drawing room of a Chevy Chase home and sipped their brandy with concern.
“I don't know,” the other murmured. “They have nine fucking lives.”
“Maybe we should call this off for a little while. Let things cool off, before we go at it again?”
The other shook his head. “It's too late for that. We have to clean all of this up quickly. Need I remind you how much we've lost in real estate investments in the Gulf? Goddamned storms, natural disasters ... if we lose key development opportunities in a major city like Philadelphia, too, we'll all be in the poor house.”
The other man simply threw back his drink, wincing as the alcohol slid down his throat, and nodded.
 
 
“You are Detective Sullivan,” James said, as he reached over Laura's lap to open the glove compartment.
She sat back in the passenger's seat and simply stared at her husband when he dropped a shield in her lap.
“You asked
me
how
I
did that shit?” she murmured, ogling the leather billfold that contained false ID that would put her on Philadelphia's finest team as a veteran detective.
“Don't ask, don't tell.” James smiled and flashed his old shield. “Helps to have friends that have keys to certain rooms.”
She shook her head as they exited the car in the abandoned lot. Her line of vision immediately went to the security guard booth, where a young man was sleeping and the blue flicker of a mini-television was visible.
“I've got this,” James said. “Lemme speak the jargon, you look mean.”
“Mean?”
He chuckled as they approached the booth. “Just give him that sister-girl-don't-play grit you gave me when we first met and I'd crossed you wrong.”
Laura cut him a glance from the corner of her eyes.
“Yeah. Just like that,” James said, smiling. “Mean as a rattlesnake, and about as deadly, too.”
There was no time to respond as James knocked on the booth hard. The sound startled the sleeping guard, and she wondered if they trained cops to knock in that bone-jarring way.
“Yo, what's up, man?” the guard said, glowering at James. “We closed.”
“And we're Five-oh. Got a tip down at the department someone was stashing drugs in a unit. Need you to walk us around to bin twelve-seventy, and open it up.”
The young man held both hands up before his chest. “Hey, man, I don't have the authority to—”

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