A computer system took up most of the space on the desk. It was an older model, with a large monitor and an out of date printer. There was also a stapler, a tape dispenser and an empty pencil holder sitting on a desktop calendar.
I started with the dresser, and almost missed it. Tanya had tucked the gun into the back of the bottom drawer, wrapped in a pair of jeans.
I felt a flush of exhilaration when my fingers brushed the cold metal of the gun, but my excitement dimmed when I pulled it out.
It was a beautiful gun, a Taurus Titanium 9 millimeter Millennium. My mother owns one exactly like it.
One of the features the gun offers is a side mount key operated safety lock. A quarter turn of the key freezes the firing pin and deactivates the gun until unlocked.
Considering the trouble Tanya had gone through to hide the gun, I knew before I looked what I’d find. Sure enough, it was locked, and a quick search of the drawer assured me the key was hidden somewhere else.
I stood in front of the mirror studying the rest of the room through the reflection, thinking. I needed to find the key. Without it, the gun was useless and my chances of rescuing Tanya were greatly reduced.
If I were Tanya, I asked myself, where would I hide the damn key? I was concentrating so hard on the key that I almost walked right on by the vase. It was blue, sitting on the corner of the dresser, and filled with six silk roses.
I started to turn away, stopped, and took a closer look at it. Somewhere, I’d recently seen one like it. It took a moment for me to realize that it was an exact twin to the one in which Destiny had hidden half the diamonds.
My hands shook when I reached over and plucked the flowers from the vase. They were cut short, and after I tossed them onto the top of the dresser I grabbed the vase and tipped the lip into my hand.
I wasn’t all that surprised when thirteen near-perfect diamonds rolled out into my palm. Surprised, no, but my heart raced and felt as if it were missing every third or fourth beat. I found myself thinking the unthinkable. Was Tanya more involved with Destiny than it first appeared? Had the two of them been playing me for a sucker?
I knew Destiny had spent time in the house, and she could very well have placed them there at any time. She could have given the vase to Tanya as a gift. Those were only a couple of the innocent possibilities.
Then there were the possibilities that turned my thoughts dark. Was Tanya involved from the start? Was she using me like Destiny had? Was she really in danger?
I couldn’t answer any of these questions to my satisfaction, and I had a heavy heart when I tucked the diamonds into my jeans pocket. Despite my fears, I turned back to my search for the key to the gun.
While I moved over to search the desk, I forced my thoughts away from the diamonds. Instead, I asked myself why someone would buy a gun and render it impossible to use in an emergency.
If the closeness of the gun gave Tanya comfort, she’d set herself up for a big fall. I’ve found that anyone who owns a gun and isn’t prepared to use it might as well give it away. It’s better to run at the first sign of trouble than to falsely believe you can get to a hidden or locked gun fast enough to save yourself.
I spent the better part of an hour searching without success for the key, but I did find some disturbing information about Tanya.
In the top drawer of her desk I came across a stack of past due bills. Some were over ninety days past due, others only a week. I added them up in my head and they totaled over twenty thousand dollars. On top of this, I found her checkbook. To my dismay, it was overdrawn in the amount of one hundred and thirteen dollars.
I placed the bills and checkbook back where I’d found them and shook my head. I wanted with all my heart to give Tanya the benefit of the doubt, but I was having trouble doing so. There was no way I was going to desert her, but I wasn’t going to turn my back on her anytime in the near future either.
In a fit of anger, I tossed the useless gun back into the drawer where I’d found it and stomped out of the room. I needed caffeine and I needed sugar, and I was damn well going to take care of those needs before my meeting with Elvis.
Chapter 27
I didn’t want to walk around town with a fortune in diamonds in my pocket and I wanted to find a secure hiding place to stash the stones. I wasn’t familiar enough with the house to be aware of any good hiding places, so after some consideration I decided to bury them in the backyard.
Once I’d made the decision, I headed to the kitchen. It only took a couple of minutes of poking around in the cupboards to find what I wanted, a small plastic container. I placed all but one of the stones into the container, shoved the loose one deep into my pocket, and dug around in the drawers looking for a large serving spoon. When I found one, I walked outside.
I looked around for a good spot that would be easy to find again, and my gaze settled on a small cactus planted along the back fence. Hunching my shoulders against the rain I ran across the yard, knelt beside the cactus, and began digging with the spoon.
The rain had softened the dirt and I had no trouble digging a hole large enough to hold the plastic container. Once I’d placed the diamonds into the ground, I covered the container, spread the excess dirt around, and using my fingers I raked half-a-dozen pebbles over the spot before heading back into the house.
My shorts were mud stained and my shirt and hair were soaked. I pulled off my clothes, took a quick shower and changed into my last clean pair of shorts and the Sloppy Joes t-shirt Tanya had bought me.
The last thing I did was transfer the loose diamond to my clean shorts. The stone in my pocket was my insurance policy. I knew Destiny was going to demand proof I had the diamonds before she let Tanya go. Since she couldn’t know I’d found the stash in Tanya’s bedroom, I was going to have to sell her on the idea that I managed to get away from the cops with the batch of diamonds in her purse. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the stones the police had and the ones I’d found.
I was almost ready for a cup of coffee. First, I ran back into Tanya’s room and made another quick search for the key to the gun, but I was out of luck.
I felt uneasy going through her things again. Tanya’s presence was everywhere in the room. From the lingering scent of her perfume to the stuffed animals she kept on her bed, I could feel her. Despite the circumstantial evidence, I refused to believe I’d been wrong about her. The fact that Tanya was in debt didn’t mean she was in cahoots with Destiny, or so I kept telling myself. Maybe I didn’t want to believe Tanya was capable of deceiving me, or maybe I couldn’t admit that two different women had conned me in as many days.
On my way out I noticed a compact umbrella hanging from a hook in the kitchen and I grabbed it. It was still raining, a fine drizzle that had a dimming affect on paradise and my mood.
Since The Bad Ass Coffee Company was located only a couple of blocks from where my mother was staying, I called and asked her to join me. It was time to fill her in on what was happening, and I was glad when she answered. She agreed to meet me and said she would be there in thirty minutes.
The rain put a damper on foot traffic. The cars were bumper to bumper on Duval. I watched a long-legged woman pushing a baby stroller and carrying a blue and white umbrella dart in front of a gray Mercedes. The impatient driver braked, honked at her, and then opened his window and started shouting obscenities in a loud voice. Their actions made me shake my head, at the woman who thought nothing of endangering her child, and the driver who would arrive at his destination perhaps thirty seconds later because of her.
I arrived before my mother, which didn’t surprise me in the least. I ordered a cup of coffee and a muffin. Someone had left a copy of USA Today on a table next to the window, so I sat down, opened the paper, and dug into my muffin.
According to the paper, nothing much had changed in the world since Nick had been murdered on
Smathers
Beach. That was the big picture. In my own little snapshot of life I was overcome with the feeling that my world had gone topsy-turvy.
Death had been stalking me across the city. I’d lost a close friend. I’d fallen a little bit in love with Tanya. Of course, being a little bit in love is a lot like being a little bit drunk. You look at things through a hazy filter. When you come down off the high, you wonder what was real and what wasn’t.
I wanted to believe there was something between us, but I knew that if Tanya had helped Destiny steal the diamonds, it wasn’t going to work. Even if she had nothing to do with the murders, her participation in the theft would be a deception I couldn’t accept.
I glanced up twice when the door opened and watched strangers walk in. The third time I looked up, I saw my mother. It looked like she’d been crying. Her makeup was askew, her eyes were dark, and she appeared to have aged. I felt sorry for her. Besides me and work, Nick had been the only constant in her life for as long as I could remember—my life too. I was not surprised arranging for Nick’s cremation had taken a toll on her. Life’s a bitch, I thought, pushing the paper aside. And then it sometimes gets bitchier.
I felt an ache in the back of my throat and was overwhelmed with empathy for my mother. I stood and said, “Have a seat mother, and I’ll get you a coffee. Lots of cream, one sugar, right?”
She nodded, gave me a weak smile, and sat down while I grabbed my cup for a refill. When I returned with our coffees, she was staring at the front page of the paper.
“How are you holding up?” I asked.
She folded the newspaper and set it aside. “It was harder than I thought, seeing Nick’s body. I’ve been in this business a lot of years and I’ve seen a lot of bodies. This was different.”
I reached out and touched her hand. She seemed surprised. “I’m sorry, mother. I cared for Nick too. He was the closest thing to a father I ever knew.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m going to pick up the urn this afternoon and fly back to Detroit this evening. Why don’t you come home with me?”
“I can’t. I’m not cut out for this kind of work. I wish you would realize that I’m much happier down here.”
“Living on a boat and tending bar? You’re capable of so much more.”
“The business was eating me up, mother.”
“Now you’re being overly dramatic, Wes. Besides, you’re damn good at it. And I’m not just saying that because I’m your mother.”
“I hate it. Besides, this isn’t over yet.”
“I’ll give the client his money back,” she said. “All I care about is that they found Nick’s killer.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“The cop I talked to, Davies, seemed pretty sure.”
“And she could be right. But there’s a lot more involved than it appears.”
“What do you mean?”
And so I told her about Destiny. I told her our client was dead, and I told her about Bob and Willie, and finally I told her about Tanya.
“I like her, Wes. She’s got spunk.”
“She might be involved in this whole thing.”
“I don’t think so. Call it woman’s intuition. Do you want me to stick around?”
I shook my head no. The last thing I needed was someone else to worry about, but there was something more I needed from her and I wasn’t sure how she was going to react.
“I need a favor, mother.”
She furled her brow and gazed at me across her coffee cup. I sat and waited. The next move was hers and I was glad when she said, “Tell me what’s on your mind.”
“I want you to put an investigator on Myron Stewart. I want to know about his past, his relationship with his wife and daughter. Was she his birth daughter or was she adopted? Any information they can dig up on him.”
My mother looked at me like I was crazy. “Let me get this straight. You want me to re-open the Stewart case on a whim?”
“It’s more than a whim. Some information came my way. I want it checked out.”
“So where did this information come from?”
I hated to lie to my mother, but if I was a skeptic, my mother was the queen of cynics. I didn’t even want to think about how she would react if I told her my informant was a phobic psychic. I decided a little fabrication was necessary.
“I got a call from a source back in Detroit this morning. He said he met someone who was friends with the gardener.”
“What’s this guy’s name?”
“Mother, I’m not going to tell you who it is. I promised him anonymity.”
She finished her coffee and digested what I was saying. “If I go ahead with this, will it get rid of all this guilt shit?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
There was more silence. “Will you come back to work?”
“No.”
“What’s in it for me?”
“How about if you do it because I’m your son.”
She smiled. “How about if you come back to work because I’m your mother.”
“I don’t want to talk about coming back to work,” I said.
“And I don’t want to re-open that case.”
Stalemate. There was only one way I was going to get what I wanted and we both knew it. “All right,” I said. “We’ll talk. When this case is over, I’ll fly back to Detroit and we’ll talk about anything you want to talk about. But I’m not promising to come back to work.”