Sleight of Hand: A Novel of Suspense (Dana Cutler) (17 page)

Chapter Thirty-Six

Frank Santoro met Gloria when she was working as a dispatcher. She understood his hours and never got on him about the time he spent on the job. Frank adored Gloria, and he appreciated how lucky he was to have someone who understood the demands of police work. His first marriage had gone on the rocks because of the time Frank spent on his cases and the shitty mood he could be in after a shift dealing with the dregs of society.

Dana liked Gloria as soon as the heavyset brunette opened the door and flashed a big, warm grin at her. By the time Frank pulled into his driveway, the two women were chatting away over coffee in the living room. Frank knew they had been talking about him when the women worked to stop smiling as he walked in carrying a briefcase.

“Don’t believe a word she says,” Frank told Dana.

“Who says we were talking about you?” Gloria said. “You men always want to be the center of attention.”

Frank kissed Gloria on the cheek, then told her that he and Dana were going downstairs to review surveillance tapes. Gloria handed Dana a thermos filled with coffee.

“If you want something to eat, give a holler,” she said as Dana and her husband vanished down the steps to the basement.

“Why am I here, Frank?” Dana asked as Frank pulled a DVD out of his briefcase and put it in his laptop.

“Something has always bothered me about the keys. You weren’t close enough in court to see them, but there are three that are important. The key in the grave with Horace Blair’s prints on it and the key on the key chain we found in Carrie’s purse—they both opened the front door to Blair’s mansion. But they had something else in common. They were both dulled by wear. Then there’s the key on Horace’s key chain that didn’t open the front door: it
looked
like the other keys, but it was newer.

“Around the time Carrie disappeared on Monday there was another homicide. The guy’s name was Ernest Brodsky. He was in his seventies, didn’t have any vices, and everyone liked him. We figured it for a killing in the course of a robbery, but there was one odd thing about the case. Brodsky had a shop in the River View Mall, and the evidence points to the crime occurring on Tuesday night in the parking lot of the mall, but his body was found in a field miles away. If Brodsky was robbed and killed at the mall by some junkie, why move the body? It didn’t make sense until I remembered what Brodsky did for a living.”

“And what was that?” Dana asked.

Santoro grinned. “He was a locksmith, and he had equipment in his shop for making copies of keys! If a locksmith made a key that looked similar to Blair’s front door key but wouldn’t open the door, that key would look newer.”

“And the tapes?” Dana asked.

“They show what went on in the mall on Monday and Tuesday.”

The last time anyone had seen Carrie Blair was after court on Monday afternoon, so Santoro and Dana watched the DVD for Monday until Brodsky closed his shop. After Brodsky left the mall Santoro skipped through Monday evening and started watching again when Brodsky opened up on Tuesday morning.

“There!” he said a few minutes after they started watching in real time.

A man in a hooded sweatshirt, jeans, and sneakers walked into the picture and opened the door to the locksmith’s shop. He kept his face out of view of the surveillance camera, as if he knew where it was and didn’t want to be identified.

Santoro zoomed in. The picture was in black and white, but the resolution was grainy.

Dana squinted at the screen. “I think he’s Caucasian,” she said, “but that’s about all I can tell.”

The man stayed in the store for twenty minutes and came out holding a small paper bag.

“That’s about the right size for a few keys,” Santoro said just as the man walked out of the picture.

There was another set of tapes that covered the parking area near Brodsky’s shop. Santoro cued up the DVD for Tuesday morning and stared hard at the screen. Suddenly a Porsche drove into a spot around the corner from Brodsky’s place of business, even though most of the lot was empty.

“Carrie Blair drove a Porsche,” he said. “And it’s missing.”

Santoro froze the screen and enlarged the picture. Part of the license plate was visible.

“I can only make out two letters,” Santoro said. “What about you?”

Dana shook her head. Santoro checked his notebook.

“The L and the Q are in the right spot for her plate,” he said.

Santoro pressed
PLAY
and the man in the sweatshirt got out of the Porsche, working hard at keeping his head down so that his face wouldn’t show.

Santoro watched him walk around the corner, and kept watching until he returned to the car and drove off.

The man didn’t return on Tuesday and Santoro fast-forwarded through the day. Dana and Santoro watched Brodsky lock the door of his shop at 5:30 p.m. and walk into the lot. The cameras didn’t cover the whole lot and Brodsky had parked out of the camera’s range.

It was after midnight and Santoro’s eyes were about to fall out of his head. He leaned forward to turn off the machine just as a Mercedes drove across the screen. Santoro froze the picture and ran the DVD back.

“Can you make out the license?” he asked.

“No,” Dana answered. “The car’s going too fast. I couldn’t see who was driving, either.”

“Too bad. But this wasn’t a total loss. Charles Benedict drives a Mercedes-Benz.”

“Tell me what you’re thinking, Frank.”

“After Benedict kills Carrie, he decides to frame her husband for the crime by leaving a clue in her grave that points to Horace. He takes Carrie’s house key off of her key chain, drives Carrie’s Porsche, with the body in the trunk, to Brodsky’s store in the mall. Benedict has Brodsky make a key that looks like the real house key but won’t open the front door to the Blair mansion. After he buries Carrie, he figures out a way to switch the key that won’t work for Horace’s front door key, which has Horace’s fingerprints on it. Benedict puts Carrie’s house key back on her key chain before he buries her. Then he returns to the grave and plants Horace’s house key in the grave where we’ll find it. Now, the key in the grave opens Blair’s front door, but no key on Blair’s key chain opens the door, and we are going to conclude that Blair must have lost the key when he was burying his wife.”

“That makes sense, but how did he switch the keys?” Dana asked.

“That is the million-dollar question.”

“Which we won’t be able to answer as long as Benedict represents Horace Blair.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

The next morning, before breakfast, Dana and Jake loosened up with calisthenics before running five miles. Dana had gotten home from Frank Santoro’s house a little after one in the morning and she was groggy during their workout. Jake showered first, then made breakfast. When Dana came into the kitchen, her hair was damp from her shower and she was dragging.

“Have I told you recently that you are a genius?” Jake asked.

Dana perked up. “No. What did I do that’s so smart?”

“Remember telling me that I should use my photographs from the Arctic expedition for a show? Yesterday, I phoned Louis Riker at the Riker Gallery. He called back while you were in the shower, and we’re meeting this morning.”

“That’s great!” Dana said, breaking into a grin.

“It’s not a done deal.”

“I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”

After breakfast, Jake left for his meeting and Dana went down to the basement office. She booted up the computer and did an Internet search for “Charles Benedict.” There were several articles about cases in which he had served as defense counsel. There was also a piece in the
Washington Post
that had been written in connection with one of the attorney’s high-profile cases.

Dana had no trouble learning that Benedict was a member of the D.C., Maryland, and Virginia bars and had earned a degree in economics from Dickinson College in Pennsylvania. At the University of Virginia Law School, Benedict made the law review and graduated fourteenth in his class. He should have been able to land a judicial clerkship or a position as an associate in a high-powered law firm, but he chose to hang a shingle and specialize in criminal defense. By all accounts, he had been a success from the get-go, experiencing none of the hardships usually encountered by sole practitioners.

What Dana found odd was that no article contained an account of Benedict’s life before college. She was unable to find out where he was born and grew up, or anything about his parents. It was as if Charles Benedict did not exist before he went to
Dickinson
.

Dana called the
Washington Post
and asked to speak to Shawn DuBurg, the reporter who had written the profile of Benedict. After introducing herself, Dana explained why she was calling.

“Yeah, I remember writing the piece. Why are you interested?” DuBurg asked.

“I’m working for a client who’s thinking of hiring Mr. Benedict and he asked me to check him out.”

“Everything I know is in the article,” DuBurg said.

“I was interested in what wasn’t in it. For instance, you didn’t write about Mr. Benedict’s childhood, where he grew up, that sort of thing.”

“That’s because it wasn’t relevant to the article. It was about his legal career.”

“I’m having a hard time finding out anything about Mr. Benedict before he went to college. Do you know any of that stuff?”

DuBurg was quiet for a moment. “You know, I think I did ask him but he said he’d had a rough childhood and didn’t want to discuss it. Like I said, I was mainly interested in his legal career, so I didn’t push him.”

Dana thanked the reporter and ended the conversation. She tried to think of ways to get what she needed but every idea she had was a dead end, so she called Andy Zipay.

Zipay was an ex-cop who had left the D.C. police department under a cloud while Dana was still on the force. Dana had been one of the few officers who had not shunned him, and she’d sent business his way when he went private. When Dana got out of the mental hospital and decided to work as an investigator, Zipay returned the favor by sending her work. It was one of the assignments Zipay had referred to her that eventually led to Dana’s discovery that the president of the United States was involved in a series of murders. Zipay was a very good detective and an excellent person to present with a puzzle.

Dana listened to the radio during the drive to Zipay’s office. She turned up the sound when the announcer said there was a decision on bail in Horace Blair’s case.

“Judge Gardner agreed with the defense that Mr. Blair was a prominent member of the community but he cited several reasons for denying bail. The judge held that the evidence produced by the commonwealth pointed to a strong possibility that Mr. Blair would be convicted of the murder charge. He recognized that the defense might call this evidence into question at trial but he said that he was forced to decide the issue of bail on the evidence presented in court.

“Another factor that Judge Gardner said weighed heavily in his decision was the possibility that Mr. Blair might be a flight risk. Mr. Blair’s business takes him to all parts of the world, including countries without extradition treaties with the United States. Assistant Commonwealth Attorney Rick Hamada produced evidence that Mr. Blair had homes in many foreign countries and assets overseas that would enable him to live a life of luxury as a fugitive.

“Charles Benedict, Mr. Blair’s attorney, said that he planned an immediate appeal of the court’s decision.”

Dana was a little surprised that the judge had denied bail to a person as powerful as Horace Blair, but Gardner, who had a reputation for being arrogant and self-important, also had a reputation for integrity.

Andy Zipay worked on the third floor of an older building with a respectable address. Dana was expected and Zipay’s secretary sent her into Zipay’s office as soon as she arrived. The investigator was seated behind a large oak desk in a small office cramped by metal filing cabinets and secondhand bookshelves. He was a few inches over six feet tall and had a pasty complexion. A narrow mustache separated a hook nose from a pair of thin lips, and his black, slicked-down hair was showing some gray.

“Long time no see,” Zipay said with a smile.

“Too long, and I apologize for asking a favor the first time we’re getting together.”

“You stood by me when everybody else treated me like shit, so I’m always gonna owe
you
. What’s up?”

“Have you heard of a lawyer named Charles Benedict?”

“Sure.”

“What have you heard about him?”

“Nothing good. When I was in vice and narcotics his name would pop up on occasion, mostly in connection with the Orlansky mob. But the guy is smooth and no one ever got anything on him. Why do you want to know?”

“His name has come up in a case. I tried doing background on him and I’ve run into a stone wall.”

“How so?”

“There’s plenty about him from college on, but I haven’t been able to find anything on him before then. I thought you might have a bright idea.”

“You looked for a birth certificate, high school records?”

“I got nada. It’s like he was born on his first day of school.”

Zipay spaced out and Dana sat back and let him think. Suddenly, Zipay smiled.

“Maybe you’re looking under the wrong name.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Dana decided to talk to Barry Lester’s girlfriend before attempting to talk to his lawyer. Guilty or innocent, Arthur Jefferson, a member of the bar, would refuse to divulge attorney-client communications, or anything that could harm his client. Tiffany Starr’s only connection to bars was the time she’d spent behind them or danced in them.

Dana used false names and disguises on occasion because she had gotten a lot of publicity from the stories about her cases that had run in
Exposed
. Before leaving home, Dana put on glasses and a blond wig. Tiffany Starr might spot the wig, but Dana guessed that a stripper would wear one from time to time and wouldn’t think anything of it.

Dana parked on a litter-strewn street in one of D.C.’s seamier neighborhoods. Starr lived on the third floor of a five-story brick apartment house decorated with gang graffiti. The elevator was broken and the odor of garbage and bad cooking permeated the stairwell. Dana held her breath until she was in front of Starr’s apartment.

A rail-thin woman with straight blond hair opened the door an inch and peered at Dana over the security chain. Cigarette smoke curled up from somewhere behind the door.

“Tiffany Starr?” Dana asked.

“Who wants to know?” the woman asked. There were dark circles under her eyes and her skin had a sickly pallor. Dana thought that Starr might have been attractive once upon a time, before drugs and hard living blunted any appeal she may have had.

“My name is Loren Parkhurst and I’d like to talk to you about Barry Lester’s case.”

“Why should I talk to you?” Starr asked.

“I’d prefer to tell you inside, where the neighbors can’t hear, if you know what I mean.”

Starr hesitated. Then she slipped off the chain and opened the door. She wore a T-shirt that stretched across breasts Dana was certain had once been smaller. The tight T-shirt and tighter jeans were knockoffs of high-priced brands. The tip of a tattoo peeked above the top of the T-shirt but Dana couldn’t make out what it was.

The apartment’s tiny front room was surprisingly tidy. The furniture was cheap but Monet and Picasso prints hung from walls with peeling paint. The pictures hinted at a past far different from the stripper’s present. Dana also noticed editions of
People
and several screen magazines stacked on an end table along with a Danielle Steel novel. That gave her an idea.

“You have a nice place here,” Dana said to break the ice when she was inside with the door closed.

“What’s this about Barry?” Starr asked, ignoring Dana’s attempt at small talk.

“Do you read
Exposed
?”

“Yeah, once in a while.”

Dana handed Starr a business card that identified Dana as a reporter for
Exposed
named Loren Parkhurst.

“I’m working on a story we plan on printing.”

“About Barry?”

“And you.”

“Me?” Starr said. Dana could see the woman’s eyes widen at the idea that she might become a celebrity.

“Would you mind if we sent a photographer up here to take some shots?”

“Uh, that would be okay, I guess,” Starr answered, trying to stay cool even though Dana could tell that she was thrilled by the attention she thought she’d receive from a national publication.

“Great. When is a good time? I know you’re probably busy.”

“I work nights, so I’m home most of the day.”

“Oh, where do you work?”

“A club. I’m a dancer. That’s how I met Barry.”

“Okay, then. I’ll have Oscar call to set up the shoot.”

“So, what’s this story about?”

“Do you mind if we sit down?” Dana asked.

“Take the sofa,” Starr said. A recliner faced the TV. Starr sat on it and looked expectantly at Dana, who sighed and suddenly looked very serious.

“I don’t want to alarm you, Tiffany, but you could be in
trouble
.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Barry told the police that Horace Blair confessed to him that he killed his wife, then told him where Carrie Blair was buried.”

“So?”

“We find it hard to believe.”

“That’s Barry’s business.”

“That may be true, but you can see that it’s important that we get your side of the story to set the record straight.”

“There is no ‘side.’ Barry got himself in this mess. I don’t know anything about it.”

“Don’t you?” Dana asked.

“What would I know?”

“There are two possibilities here, Tiffany. One is that a prominent and powerful businessman with degrees from Harvard and Princeton confessed to a man he barely knew that he murdered his wife. That, to put it mildly, is highly unlikely.”

“Barry’s very persuasive. You can’t believe how good he is at conning people.”

“Horace Blair deals with the top executives in corporations and heads of state. I find it hard to believe Barry could convince Blair to spill his guts in the space of a few hours. But Barry would know where Carrie’s grave was hidden if someone told him where she was buried. You and his attorney are the only people who visited him at the jail.”

Starr took a drag on her cigarette. Dana could almost see the wheels turning.

“Horace Blair has powerful connections, Tiffany. If the authorities find out that Barry set him up, it will go hard on Barry,
and
anyone who helped him. If that someone is you, you can save yourself by coming clean.”

“I have nothing to say because I didn’t do anything,” the woman insisted, but Dana didn’t believe her.

“Did Charles Benedict ask you to talk to Barry?”

As soon as Dana asked the question she knew she’d made a mistake. Starr’s already pale complexion lost any color it had and she jumped to her feet.

“I want you to go.
Now
.”

Dana rose, too, and looked Starr in the eye. “My number is on my card. Think about your situation and call me if you want to talk. It will be easier talking to me than the FBI.”

Dana was halfway out the door when Starr asked, “Is that photographer still coming?”

“From what you’ve told me, there’s no story. If you change your mind, you know where to reach me.”

The door closed behind Dana, and Starr put her eye to the peephole. When Cutler started down the stairs, Tiffany started pacing. She hadn’t signed on for this, she told herself. All she was supposed to do was tell some stuff to Barry that was going to help him get out of jail. Nothing was supposed to happen to her. Reporters weren’t supposed to be coming around. Parkhurst had mentioned the FBI, for Christ’s sake. No one had said the FBI was going to be involved.

Starr lit up a cigarette and wished she had some blow in the apartment. Fucking rehab! She really wanted to get away from that shit, but a little powder would calm her down, and she needed to be calm to think this through.

Starr flopped onto the recliner. She stared at the ceiling as if she believed an answer might appear there. She took a deep drag on her smoke and thought about the FBI. She definitely did not want anything to do with the FBI. Someone was going to have to fix this because she was definitely going to look out for number one if the F-fucking-B-fucking-I came to call. And there was only one person who could fix this, the person who had gotten her into this mess in the first place.

Starr levered herself out of her chair and grabbed her phone.

“We have a problem,” she said as soon as Charles Benedict answered. “I just got a visit from a reporter for
Exposed
. She knows I talked to Barry at the jail.”

“I don’t think it’s wise to discuss this matter over the phone, do you?”

“What I don’t think is wise is for me to go down for Barry’s shit.”

“Let’s meet someplace and talk about this calmly.”

“I’ll meet, but you better be prepared to sweeten the pot, because the reporter was talking about the FBI, and she mentioned your name.”

“She mentioned me?”

“Yeah, Charlie. She wanted to know if you told me to talk to Barry.”

“I’m sorry if the reporter bothered you, but you have nothing to worry about. I’ll take care of you. I have meetings all afternoon, but we can meet tonight. That will give me time to go to the bank.”

Starr hung up. The possibility of getting some cash got her worked up. She was almost sorry Barry would be getting out, too. All Barry had brought her was trouble. She danced her ass off at the club and brought home peanuts, which that son of a bitch always managed to sweet-talk her into giving him. And there were his big schemes, the sure things, get-rich-quick plans that never panned out.

Tiffany was sick of being broke, and she knew Barry screwed anyone who’d let him. Fucking Barry. He was the root of all of her problems. Maybe she should rat him out. If she made a deal with the feds they could put her in witness protection. She’d be able to get out of this shithole. Maybe they’d send her someplace nice, like Hawaii or Las Vegas. She really liked Las Vegas.

Tiffany made a decision. She’d meet with Benedict and see what he had to offer. If it wasn’t enough, she’d call the reporter, rat out Barry, and get the fuck out of Dodge.