The Shop (10 page)

“Do you know when Gardenia PD was dispatched to Luke’s place?”

“It wasn’t at ten forty, I can tell you that much.” He leaned forward. “What does all this mean?”

“I have no idea.”

“It was FBI shooters who took him out. Her too. You have any ideas?”

Jolie had been thinking about it since she left Mrs. Frawley’s. “Maybe he was scared.”

“So he holds a woman at gunpoint?”

“If he was scared enough. If he got away from the blond guy? The man Charly saw? He might have seen that as an option.” Jolie realized how weird this sounded. “You think the FBI picked him up for some reason and he escaped?”

“Neat trick if you can do it. Why are you dumping all this on me? Luke’s Most Excellent Adventure is the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s headache. They’re the ones who’re investigating the Starliner Motel shooting now.”

“Then you’ll have something you can give the FDLE.”

He ran a palm over his clean skull. “Tell you what. Y’all give me Mrs. Frawley’s contact info, I’ll see it gets to the right people. Then it’ll be their headache.”

From his solemn expression, Jolie could see it sinking in. And there was a lot more to this story. Jolie saw her uneasiness reflected back to her in Davy Crockett’s eyes. They both felt the same way.

Jolie said, “The little girl—Charly—said Luke was going with Will. She thought it had something to do with Will Smith, the actor. But maybe Luke told her he was going
against
his will.”

“Could be. Looks like the FDLE’s gonna have their work cut out for them.”

The waitress came and took their orders. After she left, Davy said, “Now I’ve got something for you.”

Davy knew a guy who knew a guy. The second guy did some work on Chief Akers’s house. Davy thought it was under the table. But the thing was, this guy—his name was James Dooley—used to get drunk up in a bar in Wewahitchka, where he lived, and claim he had “offed thirteen people.” He would tell anyone who listened he was a hit man in another life, but now he’d gone straight, although he still did favors from time to time.

“Do real hit men boast?” Jolie asked.

“How would I know? But you might want to check him out just the same.”

After they parted ways, Jolie tried Amy’s cell again. This time Amy’s mailbox was full. The Royal Court Apartments were only a couple of blocks from Bizzy’s, so Jolie drove by. The U-Haul was still out in front. As Jolie walked across the parking lot, she heard a thump and a scrape. She came around to the end of the U-Haul and saw Niraj Bandhu and another guy carrying a table into the apartment. Niraj struggled, his arm in a sling.

Jolie followed them in. Niraj’s face looked pale and sweat popped out on his forehead. He sat on the couch.

“You probably shouldn’t be doing that,” Jolie said.

The other guy, a skinny Southern rocker type, took one look at Jolie and said “Hey, man, I gotta go.”

When he was gone, Niraj said to Jolie, “She’s not here. She never came back. They replaced her at the office.”

“Maddy replaced her?”

“I guess so. I haven’t seen her, either.”

“You’re staying?” Jolie motioned to the coffee table and the other furniture.

“I didn’t know what else to do, and I have to get that U-Haul back or it’s going to cost me another day.”

Jolie asked, “Do you know a man named James Dooley?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Did Amy ever say anything about Chief Akers threatening his wife?”

“We didn’t talk about things like that. I knew she and Maddy were good friends, but it wasn’t really my business. She had her relationships and I had mine. Kind of hard to explain.”

“Did you ever talk to Chief Akers?”

“I don’t think I ever met him.”

Jolie asked if Niraj had ever met Amy’s brother, Luke.

“I met him a few times. Man, he was antsy.”

“Antsy?”

Niraj shifted on the couch and winced. “He had all this energy. Like he was going somewhere in a hurry.”

“He was ambitious?”

He laughed. “No, he just talked big. He’s like those people who think they’re gonna win the lottery. Always talking about how he’d strike it rich. Amy, she liked to burst his bubble. He’d be boasting about some new can’t-miss scheme, and she’d just blow him out of the water. She could be very cruel.”

Jolie didn’t doubt it. “When was the last time you saw him?”

“It’s been months.”

“What did Luke do for a living?”

“Worked for a landscaper. Blowing leaves, trimming hedges, that kind of stuff.”

“I take it he didn’t want to be a leaf blower forever.”

“No kidding. He talked about getting his own tree-trimming business and stealing his boss’s main client.”

“Main client?”

“The attorney general of the United States, you believe that? Luke thought he could shut out his employer, offer him a better deal.” He let out a short laugh. “Quintessential Luke. He knew nothing about running a company—totally out of touch with reality.”

“Did you know about his underage girlfriend?”

“Riley? That was one of his plans. He said he was going to knock her up and marry into all that money.” He grinned. “If Luke owned a store, it’d be called Schemes ‘R’ Us.”

Jolie asked him if he was surprised Luke had taken the woman at the motel hostage.

He thought about it. “I was and I wasn’t. Luke wasn’t the violent type.”

He scratched his arm. The sleeve of his T-shirt rode up, revealing a peacock tattoo. “One thing I wasn’t surprised about, though—he sure got himself into a shitload of trouble.”

Jolie was about to run an NCIC search on James Dooley when Skeet came by her desk. “I need to talk to you,” he said.

“Okay.”

He had a weird smile on his face. “How about we go to my office?”

Jolie pushed her chair back to get up. Just then she heard a voice out front and recognized it immediately. Riley Haddox. “I need to do one thing first.”

Skeet said, “That’s fine.”

“You sure?” Jolie glanced in the direction of the front room.

“It’s been waiting all day. It can wait a little bit longer.”

He had some kind of secret. Jolie knew from experience it didn’t bode well for her.

“Anytime in the next couple hours.” He rapped his knuckles twice on her desk before walking down the hallway to his office.

Jolie went out to meet Riley.

Zoe was with her. Did Riley take Zoe with her everywhere?

The contrast between the two girls was dramatic. Riley was beautiful. Blonde hair, lithe body, the works. Zoe, on the other hand, was just pretty. There were some people you pegged as likeable before they opened their mouths, and Zoe was one of them. She was shorter than Riley and heavier, but, taken altogether, attractive. Jolie found her attention going to Zoe, which Riley clearly sensed and didn’t like.

Riley took back the spotlight. “Do you know if the police have the phone? Can you get them to give it back?”

“Why don’t we go to my desk?” Jolie couldn’t say “go to my office” because she didn’t have one, just the desk pushed face-to-face with Louis’s desk. But since Louis was taking vacation time, they’d have a modicum of privacy.

Riley clacked behind her.

Jolie motioned to one chair and pulled another from around Louis’s desk.

Riley sat down, then Zoe. Riley said, “Why didn’t you call me back?”

“Because I didn’t have anything until just a while ago.”

“You
were
going to call me, weren’t you?”

This girl needed a good talking to. Through Kay, Jolie knew that Riley’s father was at his wits’ end with her. He couldn’t control her and apparently didn’t even try. At this point, she wasn’t even going to college—any college. “If I’d had anything, I would have.”

Riley’s eyes narrowed.

Clutching her purse to her chest, Zoe leaned forward. “It’s been so good of you to help us. Riley’s just so scared—”

“I can’t imagine if those photos got out!” Riley said. “What would I do? It could hurt us—hurt my family. It would be humiliating!”

Jolie didn’t think it would be any more humiliating than being forced to resign as head of the DOJ after he was charged with failure to report a substantial amount of income on his tax returns. But she didn’t say that. Her own daddy had brought her up to be better than that. “I wish I could help you, Riley, I really do. But there’s some question where the phone is. It was not put into evidence by the Gardenia PD. It’s not with the FBI, either.”

Riley’s mouth dropped open in shock. “Are you serious? What am I going to
do
?”

“I don’t know.”

“
No one
knows where the phone is? How can that be? Mrs. Frawley said—”

“Mrs. Frawley said the police searched Luke’s apartment, but she didn’t see what they took.”

“But what do I do
now
?”

The phone’s GPS could be tracked, but all Jolie’s requests to date on tracking phones had been denied due to privacy issues. Law enforcement agencies big and small didn’t want to touch that hot potato unless it was absolutely necessary. “I don’t think there’s anything you
can
do.”

Riley stood up. “Well, thanks,” she said, her voice like ice. “I guess I should’ve expected you wouldn’t help me.”

“Could you sit down for a moment?” Jolie said.

Riley sighed. “What now?”

“How close were you to Luke?”

“We were going to get married.”

Jolie looked for an engagement ring, but didn’t see any.

“We were keeping it a secret.”

Because he was eight years older than you
? Jolie thought.
Or because he worked for a landscaper blowing leaves?

Riley said, “I need to be somewhere.”

“Just a couple more questions. Do you have any idea why Luke would take that woman hostage at that motel?”

Riley stared at her.

She looked stricken.

“Riley?” Jolie asked gently. “You must have wondered about that.”

“They framed him. He wouldn’t do something like that. Why would he?”

“Who framed him? The FBI? The police?”

Riley said nothing.

“How do you think that happened?”

“They framed him. They made it up.” She stood up. “I’ve got to go.”

Jolie said, “You must have thought about this. If they framed him, you must have a theory how they did it?”

“I don’t know how they did it. That’s your job. We loved each other, and now he’s gone—why can’t you just leave me alone?”

“Was he afraid of someone? Did he ever mention that someone was after him?”

“Am I under arrest? Because if I’m not, I’m going. Come on, Zoe!”

She walked out the door—clack, clack, clack.

Zoe rose, purse clutched to her stomach. “I’m sorry, Aunt Jolie. She doesn’t mean to be rude. She’s just upset. She…”

Jolie stood up too. “Do you think Luke was framed?”

Zoe looked miserable. “All I know is something was going on.”

“Something?”

“What I meant was…” She looked around for help, but there was none.

“Zoe, if you know anything, you owe it to your friend to tell me. Does Riley know why he went to the motel?”

“No! There’s no way she’d know.”

“Why is that?”

Zoe looked miserable. “Because they broke up Memorial Day weekend.”

When Jolie got to Skeet’s office, he was standing by the window. “Look at that,” he said. “You’d think the president was just here.”

Jolie saw the two black SUVs follow Riley’s Boxster Spyder out of the parking lot.

“Is it true you’re related to those people?”

“Tangentially.”

He stuck his hands in his pockets and gazed at the solar system poster that took up one wall of his office. “Hope you’re not planning on getting a security detail for yourself,” he said. “We’d have to move Louis into the cleaning closet just to accommodate them.” He nodded to a chair. He had his copy of Chief Akers’s case file in front of him on the desk.

“You know we’ve been having budget cutbacks,” Skeet said. “We’re shorthanded. Everybody is, but with Louis out…Tim and I talked early this morning. We agreed that we just don’t have the manpower to keep up surveillance on Maddy Akers.”

In a way she’d been expecting it. Maddy had done nothing except go to places like the Piggly Wiggly and the car wash for three days. Jolie was disappointed, but it had not been out of the realm of possibility. Jolie wasn’t ready to bring Maddy in for questioning yet—she needed more evidence to make an interview worthwhile. She needed something that would rattle Maddy, trap her into giving something away. But now Skeet had taken away Jolie’s ace in the hole.

Skeet stood. “I hope this doesn’t put a crimp in your investigation.”

“Life goes on.”

Skeet nodded sagely. “Life
does
go on.”

Jolie thought of Chief Akers lying on the bed in a hotsheet motel, blood soaking into the mattress underneath his head.
Life goes on,
she thought.

Sometimes
.