Current Affairs (Tiara Investigations Mysteries) (16 page)

“Let’s hope so,” Victoria answered.

Tara checked out the hall a second time. “Remember, Detective Kent said to call him if we learned anything.”

“Then remember yesterday we learned our cell phones don’t work in here,” Victoria corrected. “We have to be careful.”

 
“There’s the stairwell.” I pointed to the exit sign.

I took a dumbbell out of my bag. As we walked toward the stairway, I handed the five pound weight off to Victoria, who handed it to Tara, who handed it back to me. Then we repeated the sequence.

“Wait. We don’t want to get to the top floor and then not be able to get out of there. Let’s be sure these doors aren’t locked to keep hoi polloi from entering the executive floor.” I went out and let the door close behind me. Could I get back in? No, I couldn’t. I resisted the temptation to look up to see if there were any security cameras, because if there were, my face would be seen.

“It won’t open. Let me out.” Then I waited. When there was no response I tried tapping the door.

“Open the door!” For about a half hour, or maybe just a good minute, nothing happened. My heart rate was going up, and my stomach felt warm. I desperately wanted to look around. With both hands I started flat palm slapping the door.
 

Finally, Tara opened the door. “Did it lock? Why didn’t you say something?”

“I was enjoying myself in there. Yes, it locked. And these doors must be soundproof. It looks like we’ll have to take the elevator.”

 
We pressed both the up and down buttons. We were going up to the bridge that would take us to the other building, but if Randall Valentine or Kerry Lee walked up we wanted that down button lit up.

By the time the doors opened on the top floor I had a five pound bag of sugar out of my backpack and I’d lined Victoria’s Prada with a plastic garbage bag. I got behind her, and as we walked I slowly poured the sugar. While I did that she and Tara passed a ten-pound weight back and forth.

“Victoria, tell me again you’re pretty sure that this will work.”

“This should fool the biometric sensors.”

When we reached the walkway, I pulled two light blue, queen-size bed sheets out of my bag. Holding them up we walked through the glassed in walkway, hoping the double thickness hid us rather than silhouetting us. We wanted to be just another patch of sky. At the end we put both sheets away. As soon as we took the hallway to the left we would be in a bustle of people, and there would be no more tricks, only a fib or two or three. After we passed the room divider, I saw the windows were blacked out. This meant the area housed workers with security clearances working on sensitive projects.
Or a bathroom.
How long we would be welcome there was anybody’s guess. We walked along the side of the room like we knew what we were doing—for about two seconds. Frick and
Frack
, the two geeks constantly reading their mobile devices, approached and stood blocking us. “Can we help … you?”
 
The hesitation and then the softening of their tone came when they saw our ID badges. The three of us looked down and read our own badges: EXECUTIVE OFFICE.

I looked at Frick then
Frack
. “We’re here from the auditing firm, uh, of Frick and Partners. Where’s the break room?”

 
“Down the hall,” said one.

“On your left,” said the other.

“Thank you.”

They turned to re-enter the field of cubicles, and above the half walls we could see that all eyes were on them. Frick, or maybe it was
Frack
, mouthed “Auditors!” Lucky for us he was so unnerved by our encounter that he let his breath out when he did this, and we could hear him.

Four employees stood around the combination cappuccino and coffee maker, two men that looked to be in their mid-thirties and two younger women. None looked ready for a
GQ
or
Vogue
photo shoot, but they didn’t look like minimum wage workers either.

“Hi.” Victoria said this in her cheeriest voice, and I’ve never had the heart to tell her she didn’t have to put on an act. She could never be mistaken for anything other than a nice and normal person.

“Uh, hi,” one of the men said as we approached the machine.

“Don’t
worry,
we’re just here for the coffee.” Tara chuckled.

Note to self: compliment Tara on being such a good chuckler.

My turn.
“Actually, I would like to ask you something. We’re friends with the wife of one of your consultants, and we heard something happened to him. His name is David Taylor. Did any of you know him?”

Both women nodded. “He was murdered,” one of them said almost whispering. She was African American, slim and about medium height.

“That’s what we heard. He was nice and so smart. There’s no telling what he was working on here.” Tara was doing so well, I stole a quick look at Victoria, and we let her run with it.

“We were told not to discuss him. I would like to, but I couldn’t if I wanted to. They,” here she nodded toward the other wing, “would know.” At this point she looked to the floor, and we knew she was referring to the tracking system. That got me to thinking, how long would it take for the system to report that there were unknown individuals in the building?

“No, they won’t,” Tara said.
 
Oops. I held my breath,
then
she recovered with, “The biometric sensors are overridden for us. Let’s sit down. You don’t tell we were taking a break, and we won’t say anything either.”
 
The woman refilled her cup and joined Tara while the others said their good-byes and took their cups back to their desks.
 

I leaned over to Victoria. “We should split up.”

We sauntered out of the room, and before we went our separate ways she said, “What about that Tara solving a problem we hadn’t thought about?”

“You mean these people reporting that we were here?”

“Yep.”

 
I continued down the hall, and she backtracked to walk through the cubicles, eavesdropping, I assumed.
 
In the very next room I hit the jackpot. It was the size of one of Tara’s walk-in closets, and along the back was a glass case. Several canvas bags and boxes were lined up, and peach colored cards with the year of inception written in gold stood by each.
 
I saw only Backpack UAVs, just different models.
 
The Peachtree Group logo was sewn on the flaps, their signature peach for the A.

“David was proud of those, well, sort of.” I jumped. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.” It was Frick, or maybe
Frack
.

“I didn’t mean to be startled either.” I had no idea what I meant by that.

The clock was ticking, and if he had something I could use, I needed to hear it in a hurry and get the hell out of there. “Why sort of proud?”

“There was a glitch, and that was distressing to him.” He looked at his shoes and then back to me, “I think it’s so sad he died without finding a solution.”

“Did he tell you what the problem was?”

“No, he was too professional for that. He may have told the Executive Office, but only them.” Was it my imagination, or was there a sneer when he said that?

“Well, I better get back to work.” I walked passed him, tickled pink at the information.

 
Tara was walking my way, and when she got to me we turned around and headed out looking for Victoria. She saw us and joined us at the entrance to the connecting bridge. We stepped into the niche discreetly hiding the restrooms and a stairwell door.

“Do we have to go back through the bridge to get out of here?” Tara moaned.

“Here’s an exit door, but fat lot of good
it’s
doing us. Damn thing’s alarmed.”

“Let’s switch our weight around and go.” Victoria turned around for me to pull the sheets out of her backpack, and Tara went behind me to get the weight out of mine.

“Do you think deaf people are ever startled? I was just wondering.”

“
Shhhh
.”
I looked around Victoria to see why she was shushing me. Kerry Lee was headed our way. I didn’t know whether to shit or go blind.

I mouthed this news to Tara. Her little feet started doing a cartoon run but she wasn’t going anywhere, so I turned her to face the ladies room. She tried the door but it was locked. That didn’t stop her from trying the knob over and over again. I tried the gents. No luck.

All of a sudden we heard moans, jeers and ejaculations (not the sexual kind) from cubicle-land. “What’s going on?” someone yelled.

 
“Not again!”

“Is my work backed up or did I just lose an hour’s worth?”

We heard Frick or
Frack
say, “
It’s
okay, everybody. You know the drill. When there’s a suspected security breach, our computers are shut down.” His derision earned him my esteem. “I would advise you to cover your ears before the alarm goes off.”

“What caused this?” a voice farther from us asked.

“They do it, manually.”

An alarm was about to sound? If it was possible for three people to meet eyes, we were doing it. Holding our breath we faced the exit door. “Wait,” I hissed. “The door downstairs will be locked.”

Tara wiggled out of the huddle. “Not if there’s a fire.” She had pulled her sleeve down over her hand and reached around the wall to a red fire alarm. We heard a blast of noise from the offices. Tara pulled the fire alarm and added to it. I threw the exit door open, and the volume rose again. We ran down the stairs. A few seconds later we were rewarded with air, sunshine, adrenaline and a little calorie burn.

Twelve

C
ontinuation of statement by Leigh Reed.
We were back in my car and on Highway 78 as fast as our kitten heels could take us. “So what did we get out of that?”

Tara fussed with her hair and make-up. “Randall Valentine is defensive, and Kerry Lee is suspicious.”

Victoria sat in the backseat going over the literature The Peachtree Group had bestowed upon us, occasionally brushing sugar off the page. “Understandably so, I think. They are not on the best financial footing.”

“From what I saw in the display room, they seem to have all their eggs in the Backpack UAV basket. But then again, the offices are pretty fancy. You think that’s smoke and mirrors?”

“Could be.
That makes David Taylor a rainmaker for them, doesn’t it?” Victoria was going to town with a yellow highlighter.

“Yes, but the phone call did come from their office,” Tara reminded us. “I learned more about him. Susanna told me that he was a rule book guy all the way. The strict security didn’t bother him. Actually the regular employees accepted it with a better attitude because it was okay by David.”

“That’s consistent with what someone told me. He also said there was a glitch in David’s product, and it really weighed on him.”

“Hmm.”
We thought about this while I drove just over the speed limit.

“What about us?” Tara patted my shoulder. “We lied, we penetrated their defenses,
we
escaped. No,
wait, that
would be when we follow husbands.”

Victoria looked up from her reading material and gazed out the window. “Did he say anything else about that glitch? I used their wireless network to see what kind of security they have. I can stop their production line if I need to, like if the malfunction is on an important component.”

“Uh-h-h, Victoria, sweetie, I think that may be a little over our pay grade. I mean, shutting down production of a defense contractor during a war?”

“But we can’t report it to the Army. They would do background checks on us and find out who your husband is.”

“True. Anyway, let’s jump off that bridge when we come to it.”

Victoria was adjusting and readjusting her glasses. “Maybe we could be anonymous informers to the FBI. I mean, if they can break away from that vital and dangerous
DVD
piracy work they do.”

Tara took a deep breath. “Those people were so nice. I’d hate to have them lose their jobs, but I know we might have to do it.”
 

“Victoria, you just might get your wish to find out more about the malfunction when we go to David Taylor’s office.”

“I intend to spend some quality time with his computer.”

The Tiara line had been transferred to my cell phone, and it had been vibrating like crazy while we were in the meeting, but only one message had been left. I retrieved it.
 

“It’s a text message from Savannah Westmoreland, and she wants us to go to the Mall of Georgia this afternoon. She has reason to believe her husband will be at Nordstrom with his girlfriend.”

“What the hell? Did she say why she stood us up Monday morning? And we don’t even know what the husband looks like.” Tara was getting worked up.
 

“Actually, we do.” I showed them my telephone screen. She had sent me a photo of the wanderer.

“Let me see that.” Tara grabbed my phone. “Ordinarily I love a man in a uniform, but come on. Her husband works at T.G.I. Friday’s, and he can afford to take his mistress to Nordstrom?”

“When we finish at the hospital and Taylor’s office, let’s go to the Friday’s across from the mall for lunch and see if he works there. After all, we are detectives. Speaking of uniforms where can we change into our scrubs?” There was no e-mail from my husband this morning, and I was happy for so many excuses to stay busy rather than returning to an empty house. I didn’t care if it did have six bedrooms.

“There’s a fast food place down the street from the hospital.”

“Sweetie, are you okay with this?” I was concerned about someone recognizing Victoria.

“It’s hot,” was her reply. Tara looked at her like a proud mentor. We drove back toward the other end of Gwinnett County.

Within the hour we were in the medical field, at least in a fashion manner of speaking. The only unauthentic part of our get-ups was that we had poked holes in our shoe covers to accommodate our heels. That was in case we needed to run like hell. Or as we like to say in the medical field, first do no harm.

“This is great. I’ve always wanted to be the one in a uniform, and here I am. I love myself.” Tara was grinning ear to ear.

I was stowing our handbags in the trunk and took Tara’s from her. “Weren’t you in Girl Scouts?”

“What do you think?”

“I worked at Six Flags
Over
Georgia when I was in high school,” Victoria said.

“Did it give you this being-in-uniform high?” Tara wanted to know.

“You know it.”

We entered, pretending to discuss the medical files we carried. I was trying to be inconspicuous. Tara doesn’t know the meaning of the word. “Hmm, this is an interesting symptom. I don’t believe we can cure him. He’s a dead man.”

“Are we doctors or nurses?” I whispered.

Victoria had learned the room number and led us that way. “I don’t know. Don’t worry about it. If we were either, we would know which one we were.”

“Excuse me, doctor.” A man the size of a door stepped into our path, and we stopped, like we had a choice. “We play for the Falcons, and my buddy here is in for a follow-up on his torn meniscus. Can you come in and have a look at his leg?”

“Yes! Yes, I can!” Tara blew past Mr. Hunky Football Player and into the room.

I took her by her shoulders. “We’re on our way to operate on someone who probably won’t make it. We’ll get someone for your friend.”

Our next stop was the cardiac unit and the room of my attacker. Sure enough, there was a police officer at the door. We nodded at her and walked in. My attacker looked small but mean with a stubbly beard, gray skin, sunken cheeks and a full head of gray hair. For the life of me, I couldn’t feel angry. I saw a human being with very few choices who might now be at the end of the line.

He woke up and saw us hovering over him. He smiled as he looked first at Tara and then Victoria. When he got to me his eyes widened, and his mouth opened to an O.

“What are you doing here?” he croaked. Then he did a double take at Tara. “You the one I swapped spit with? Thanks.” Some thanks this was for the CPR she’d administered.

“Don’t mention it.”

I leaned over to his ear, “What did I ever do to you?” He looked up at the ceiling and stuck out his lower lip like he was pouting. What kind of criminal does that?
 
“Who hired you?”

“It’s not worth my life to tell you that.”

“Give us something, and I won’t testify against you.”

“You won’t testify
?
You
kiddin
’?
Look who’s in the hospital bed. You could get ten, twenty years for what you did to me.”

“You started it!”

“Maybe.
Okay, I’ll tell you
somthin
’. How about this? Don’t worry, ladies. Old detectives never die. If I wanted you dead, you would be.” I kept eye contact with him, because I knew Tara and Victoria would be grinning at this exchange, and I didn’t want them to get me tickled.

“So you were just trying to scare us? You did make it easy for me to see that you were tailing me on Sunday.”

“You did what I wanted you to. You called these two. That way I could give the message to the whole trio at the same time. I’m trying to do you a favor. Leave what you know nothing about alone. One person’s already been …”

Victoria moved up to the bed. “Killed by you?”

“Not by me! Now get out.”

As we turned to leave, he called to us. “Hey, how old are you anyway?”

“How old are you?” Tara shot back.

Victoria pretended to make a note on a chart and headed for the door. She ignored him. “You all look a little long in the tooth to me.”

I was headed out, but I backed up a step. “We’re closer to Medicare than to jail bait.”
 
Then there was a loud bang.

“
Awwh
!” he yelled.

“Did you kick his bed?” Tara asked me.

“Maybe.”

“Old detectives never die,” he said again.

We returned to the hamburger joint and changed back into our suits. Then we got three half-sweet, half-
unsweet
teas to go. Sitting in the parking lot we remembered what we do for a living and started trying to analyze Mr. Goody’s comment. “His parting remark was a take-off on ‘old generals never die.’ Do you think he was referring to my husband?”

Tara was neatly folding her scrubs. “That little squirt had better think twice before messing with him.”

She handed the scrubs to Victoria. “Just keep them. We might use them again. He can’t get to your husband anyway. I think he was talking about us.”

 
“It’s pretty clear now that his sorry attempts are related to David Taylor’s murder.”

Tara tied her straw wrapper in a bow. “How do you figure that?”

I tore off one end of my own wrapper and blew it at her. “Simple, we only
know
one murdered person.”

Tara opened her laptop and looked up David Taylor’s office address. “Push has come to shove.”

“Well, what’s our next move?” I started the car and waited for instructions.

“We need to figure out how to get into David Taylor’s office and snoop around. If we call Kelly, I bet she’ll take us over there.” Victoria was dialing before she finished her sentence.

~

Beatrice said Kelly would be busy that afternoon, but if we would come now she would give us the key to David’s office and the directions.
 

From Kelly’s house we drove south on Peachtree Industrial Boulevard to Peachtree Corners at the same end of Gwinnett County. I looked in the rearview mirror, and who did I see but Detective Kent.

“I was about to start missing him.” Victoria was tapping away, updating our record on the case.

We read off the street numbers until we came to the cluster that included David Taylor’s place of business. A small brass sign on the door told us we had found Flow Network Design. The office was small, in a medium size building, but we guessed with a large rent since it was near The Forum, a chic outdoor mall. It was close to his house in Duluth, and that plus the upscale address may have made it appealing to the late Mr. T. There was a reception area, a private office and a bathroom. We doubted the outer office had ever been used. The walls were bare, and there was not
so
much as a throw pillow in the way of decorative accessories.

“I would love to get my hands on this place.” Mail had been dropped through the slot, and I helped myself to it.

“You and me both.”
Tara sat at the receptionist’s desk and played with the fifty or so buttons on the telephone.

“Let’s decorate it. He’s dead, he won’t know.”
 
I was a little surprised at Vic saying this, because she doesn’t enjoy decorating the way Tara and I do.

“Really?
Okay,” Tara said.

“No, not really!
I was being sarcastic.” Victoria went back to David’s office and started pulling files out of his desk drawers.

“Damn.”

 
The mail consisted of a phone bill and three sale flyers. Back in the day, this would have meant he didn’t have much going on, but today it just meant all his correspondence was done with e-mails. I took a seat in one of the two jade leather upholstered chairs.
 
“Look through that Rolodex and see if any of them are written in Chinese.”