5 A Sporting Murder (13 page)

The pain in my leg had diminished little if any by the next
morning. It only added to my determination to track down whoever was
responsible for the annihilation of my Jeep, as well as the threat to my wife, and
possibly the murder of Arnold Wechsel. The newspaper included a brief mention
of the explosion “of unknown origin” that still besmirched a sizeable section
of our driveway. The story said no one was seriously injured. I had to agree,
it could have been a lot worse if we hadn’t bailed out when we did. That hardly
lessened the soreness of my stitched-up leg.

After arriving at the office in
Jill’s Camry, we replied to a few emails inquiring about the news item, including
one from our insurance agent. We discussed what to do about alternate
transportation while drinking our cappuccino.

“Do you want another Jeep?” Jill
asked.

“I haven’t made up my mind,” I
said. “It makes a good car for a PI. Not flashy, but not monstrous like some
SUV’s. Has space for hauling equipment. Yet it’s decent enough to take for a
night on the town.”

She narrowed her eyes. “When have
we had a night on the town?”

“You’ve forgotten about Red Lobster
after the symphony?”

“Oh, horrors, how could I have forgotten
that?”

“And the dancing…”

“Dancing?”

“Remember those lobsters shimmying
around in the tank?”

She turned back to her computer,
shaking her head.

Vernon Quillen of Pensacola called
to see if we were in. He was at the Music City Sheraton Hotel near the airport
and said he would be here in fifteen minutes. He arrived right on time.

About Jill’s height, some would
call it average, he wore a heavy tan jacket but no hat. Looking at his polished
dome, I wondered if his mama had told him he’d lose most of his body heat
through that egg-shaped expanse of skin? That’s what I’d always believed until I
read where research showed it was a myth. In striking contrast, his broad mouth
was circled by a black goatee. It gave him a sinister look.

I moved around my desk to greet
him. “Mr. Quillen?”

“Vernon,” he said, reaching out his
hand.

“I’m Greg. Are you in town on
business?”

“Among other things. I own a
charter bus company and work closely with a firm up here. I’d been meaning to
pay them a visit ever since we suffered all the hurricane damage back in
September.”

I introduced Jill and invited him
to have a seat in one of the client chairs that faced my desk. “Sorry we don’t
have a little more Florida-like weather for you,” I said.

“It’s been pretty chilly in Pensacola. Not quite this bad, though. Your private investigator friend said you were
interested in Louie Aregis.”

“We are. What can you tell us about
him?”

Quillen unzipped his jacket and
crossed a leg as he straightened up in the chair. “The bastard, if I may use
the appropriate term”—he glanced apologetically at Jill—“took me for two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

“Recently?”

“I just discovered it a few months
ago.”

“How’d it happen?”

“He sold me on putting money into a
new business he was helping to get started. He runs a venture capital firm, you
know.”

“What sort of business?”

“Solar power. With all the sunshine
Florida talks about, it sounded like a natural.”

“Didn’t turn out that way?”

“In a word, a big fat ‘no.’”

“And you lost a quarter of a
million dollars?”

“Yeah. Money I didn’t need to
lose.”

“Did the company go under?”

“With a thud. Obviously, Aregis
didn’t do his due diligence. He claims he lost money on the deal, too, but I’m
not so sure of that. I know he got his commission on my part of it.”

Jill came over and stood beside my desk.
“Would you have any recourse to get your money back?” she asked.

“I talked to my lawyer. He says
unless we can prove that Aregis intentionally deceived me or failed to inform
me of some material fact that put me at more than normal risk, I’m not likely
to have any luck.”

I shuffled around in a file folder
to find the data search results on Louie Aregis. “Have you done any background
checking on the man since he did this to you?”

Quillen folded his arms. “I didn’t
hire anybody, if that’s what you mean.”

“On your own?”

“I looked into his lavish
lifestyle. He had a fancy home on the bay not far from the Pensacola Country
Club. It took a big hit from the hurricane, but he’d already left. His wife was
the belle of the ball, her picture always showing up somewhere. I don’t run in
those circles, but I have a few friends who do. I asked around.”

When he paused, I prodded him.
“What was their reaction?”

“They viewed him as a shifty
character. They’d take his money if he wanted to buy something, but they
weren’t about to give him any of theirs. Wish I’d talked to them first.”

“Did anybody get specific about
it?”

“One thing. I don’t know if anybody
had any solid information, but they said his mother’s family in Miami had Mafia connections.”

“Interesting,” I said. “We hadn’t
heard that.”

“What are you folks after him for?”

“We’re looking into his
relationship with a deal to bring an NBA team to Nashville.”

“Crap. I wouldn’t touch that with a
pair of ten-foot poles.”

“He’s got some pretty big guns
behind him,” Jill said.

Quillen gave a disgusted shake of
his bald head. “If they’re smart, they’ll use the guns to blow off his lying
head.”

Shortly after Quillen left, Buddy
Ebsen, the fire investigator with the famous name, called. “I’m over at your
place with an ATF agent, Mr. McKenzie. We’ve found evidence that someone may
have hidden in the wooded area at one side of your driveway. He could’ve waited
there and triggered the explosion. There’s a trail through the trees that leads
out to the road. He likely parked his car in a smooth area across the street
that may have been a driveway or access road at one time. According to the
police, nobody saw anything, though.”

“I know the place you’re talking
about. Somebody started to build a house over there a couple of years ago, then
changed his mind. We have to complain to codes now and then to get the weeds
cut.”

“If the guy who did this parked over
there, he didn’t leave any evidence of what he drove. The area’s graveled, so
there were no tire tracks.”

“Did you turn up anything along the
trail?”

“Yeah. Near where our man must have
hidden, we found a piece of white tape with handwriting on it. My ATF buddy
says it contains a designation that indicates it came off a mobile ham radio
transceiver.”

“Could a radio have been used to trigger
the explosion?”

“That’s exactly what I think
happened. We looked for cell phone debris but didn’t find any. He could have
used a very small receiver to trigger the detonator that would have been
destroyed by the explosion. One tuned to the frequency he used on his handheld.
Do you know any ham radio operators?”

“Nobody comes to mind. What about
that box beside the driveway? Did you learn anything from it?”

“No. It was a generic corrugated box
you can buy at any office supply store. It had no writing on it. No
contamination from explosives, except for being blown several yards away. Also
no fingerprints. It could have been used as a lure, but I’d say the guy was
careful enough to wear gloves.”

“Are you through with the scene? Is
it okay to fill the hole in the driveway?”

“Sure. We’ve got all we need.”

“Thanks for calling,” I said. “Let
me know if you find anything else. Okay?”

“I’ll do what I can, Mr. McKenzie. Call
me if you think of any connection with a ham radio operator. It’s a long shot,
but you never know when something like that might pay off.”

“What’s the story?” Jill asked when
I put the phone down.

I repeated what the investigator
had told me.

“Does any of that match with what
you know about Lieutenant Isabell?”

“No,” I said. “I never heard anything
about him being involved in amateur radio.”

“Do you think they might find additional
clues from the wreckage?”

“I would hope so, but don’t count
on it.”

“What’s next?”

“Why don’t you give Nikki a call? See
if you can coax something else out of her with what we learned about Nick
Zicarelli.”

She picked up her phone, and I
turned to my computer, experiencing a return of that uneasy feeling about
Arnold Wechsel. There was something about him that I was missing. What it could
be still stumped me. I decided to try the old routine that had worked well in
the past. Rather than use the computer, I took out pen and pad and began
listing major points in the investigation. It started with finding the body at
the repair shop. I added the visit with Pete Lara, the talk with Wechsel’s
neighbor, the questioning of Richard Ullery, right down to the identification
of Nick Zicarelli. I had begun to look for common threads among the information
we had gathered when I heard Jill approach my desk.

She had a troubled look on her
face. “Problems?” I asked.

“I’m hardly making any progress
with Nikki.”

“What did she say about grandpa?”

“She admitted we were right about
Nick Zicarelli, but she wouldn’t confirm any connection between Arnold and her
grandpa. Anything I asked along that line, she would reply with something like,
‘I don’t think that’s germane.’”

“Did she give you anything at all to
go on?”

“She said Arnold had just about
saved enough to attend the school in North Carolina. Which was good because he
had just lost his second job.”

I had an “aha” moment. “That must
have been what prompted the draft letter in his computer.”

One hand went to her face as if
brushing away the shadows. “And if he had been working for grandpa, that could
have caused the complications he mentioned in the letter to his mom.”

I nodded. “Sometimes two and two do
add up to four. I think it’s time to put on a full-court press. Let me call
somebody to patch our driveway, then we’ll see if we can pry some answers out
of Miss Nikki.”

We drove out to Green Hills, parked beside the Miata, and
rang the doorbell. A startled Nikki Columbo, dressed in jeans and a red sweater
emblazoned with prancing reindeer, opened the door and greeted us with wide
eyes.

“Has something happened?”

“That’s what we came to find out,”
I said. “May we come in?”

She hesitated a moment but stepped
aside and invited us in. The small apartment looked as orderly as a rank of
soldiers on parade. The living room was flanked by a bar-like counter that
separated it from the kitchen. Gleaming white cabinets matched the appliances. A
mauve-colored sectional sofa arranged in a U-shape faced a large-screen TV, an
audio deck placed to the side.

Nikki pushed the long black hair
over her shoulder and motioned toward the sofa. “Please sit down and tell me
what this is all about.”

After we were seated, I gave her a
solemn look. “I know this past week has been very difficult for you. We don’t
want to make it any worse, but there are some important points we need to clear
up. You know we’re involved in the investigation of Arnold’s murder.”

“But you aren’t with the police.”

“Correct. We’re private detectives working
in cooperation with the police. When she called earlier, Jill didn’t tell you
what happened last night. It pushed this case into a serious new dimension for
us.”

Her eyes shifted to Jill and back
to me.

“Somebody tried to blow up our
car…with us in it.”

“Oh, my God!” Her hand darted to
her mouth.

I pulled up my pants leg to show
the bandage. “That’s all the damage it did to us, but the car caught on fire.
It’s totaled.”

“Do you know who did it?”

“Afraid not. The fire and
explosives experts are still looking into it. We have to assume that it has
some relation to our investigation of Arnold’s murder.”

It wasn’t all that certain, of
course, but she didn’t need to know that.

She sat in stunned silence.

“It appears fairly obvious from
what you’ve told us, and what we’ve learned from other sources, that Arnold was doing some kind of work for your grandfather Zicarelli. What was it?”

I gave her the most penetrating
stare I could muster, one that had loosened the resolve of many a suspect
during my OSI career.

Her chin quivered. “I…I can’t talk
about that.”

“Do you think he had anything to do
with Arnold’s death?”

“No…no!” She sounded panicky.

“You want to expose the murderer,
don’t you?”

Tears began to flow. “I don’t
know.” She lowered her face into her hands and sobbed.

Jill quickly moved to her side, put
an arm around her shoulder, and began to comfort her. “A young girl like you
shouldn’t have to go through this, but some people have no regard for human life.
We have to stop them. We’re trying to do what’s best for you, Nikki. We have to
know all the facts so we can help.”

Thinking back over what we did
know, I quickly put the pieces together as best I could. Arnold was definitely
interested in the betting game, and his mother believed the new job somehow
involved gambling. After the interview with Freddie Ford, we were almost
certain her suspicions had been right on. According to Wes Knight, Nick Zicarelli
was still involved in the wagering business in some manner. Nikki had given
Jill the impression that Arnold worked for Zicarelli until he left following
some sort of disagreement. The letter in his laptop, if it had been intended
for Nikki’s grandpa, indicated it involved money. Money for gambling debts he
was to collect?