Evelyn David - Sullivan Investigations 01 - Murder Off the Books (13 page)

Chapter 19

“Hello? Is anyone here?”

Banging his head on the underside of the desk, Mac swallowed a curse and with all the grace of a crippled cow, pulled himself to a standing position. Two hours of sleep and too much coffee hadn’t improved his disposition.

“Hi. Sorry if I….” Julianna Jarrett, dressed in her black funeral outfit minus the boots, used a rolled newspaper to point towards the desk and the computer boxes filled with packing foam scattered around it. “New computer?”

“Yeah.” Mac blinked a couple of times, thinking maybe he’d hit his head harder than he’d thought. He couldn’t think of any reason why Lenore Adams’ secretary would be standing in his barely furnished office. He stared at her feet. Black hightop sneakers. Interesting choice with the black tights and short skirt.

“Mr. Sullivan?”

Mac raised his eyes from his contemplation of a time when shoes like that belonged only to teenage boys pounding up and down a basketball court. The young woman looked at him as though he’d missed part of the conversation. Maybe he had. Clearing his throat, he said, “This is a surprise. What can I do for you?”

JJ smiled. “I’m here for my job interview.”

Mac’s eyebrows moved upwards an inch. “What job?”

“The secretary job. The one you advertised in the newspaper,” JJ added when Mac’s blank expression didn’t change.

He shrugged. “Must be a mistake. I didn’t place an ad.”

She unrolled the college newspaper and showed him the circled lines.

He couldn’t see the print but noticed an angry red scratch on the palm of the girl’s right hand.

“Hey, Mr. Sullivan? You still with me?”

“What?” He definitely needed to get some sleep–soon.

“The old guy at the funeral home told me to come over here at 5 P.M. I think I might have woken him up. Maybe he forgot to call you.”

“Let me see that!” Mac squinted at the small print, self-consciously grabbing a pair of reading glasses off the desk. “Secretary/Assistant wanted for PI’s office. Must like dogs and changing tires. Computer skills a plus. Salary based on commission. Inquire at O’Herlihy’s Funeral Home for appointment.”

JJ tugged on her skirt and walked around behind the desk, taking a look at the cords he’d been trying to attach to the back of the computer tower. “What’s that mean? Salary based on commission?”

Mac turned to watch her. “How would I know? I didn’t place the ad. Some crazy Irishman who decided to meddle in my business is behind this.”

“Oh.” JJ looked disappointed. “You don’t need a secretary? ‘Cause I think it would be pretty cool to work for a private detective. I know how to change tires. I mean, it’s not like it’s one of my favorite things to do, but it’s not a problem if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Mac chuckled. “Jeff was making a little joke with the tire thing. You wouldn’t have to change any tires.”

“What would I do?”

“You–no, wait!” He held up a hand in protest. “There is no job. I can’t afford a secretary and I sincerely doubt my good friend Jeff is planning on picking up your salary. Sorry.”

JJ disconnected a couple of computer cables and reconnected them in different places. Then she sat down behind the desk and powered up the unit, waking up the monitor he’d been trying to turn on for the past two hours.

“I could set this up for you. Take about twenty minutes.” She smiled. “Bet you have something else you’d rather be doing.”

Mac grunted. He needed to make a dinner meeting with the Widow Malwick and he should check in with Rachel–see if she’d admit to any more contact with her brother–maybe apologize for his manners the night before. He also needed to pick Whiskey up from the vet’s before the night was over. When he and Jeff had dropped by the clinic earlier the doc had insisted Whiskey stay until he got some blood test results back. Mac looked around at the computer and the half-unpacked boxes littering the room and considered that maybe he could use a secretary–just on a trial basis. See how it went.

Mac cleared a spot and sat down on the edge of the desk. “Are you still working at the college?”

JJ shook her head. “I quit yesterday. Lenore missed an important meeting and I got chewed out for not reminding her. Hey, it was on her desk calendar and is it my fault she hadn’t listened to her voice mail in over a week? If she’d come into work once in awhile I’d have told her in person. Anyway, I’d had enough–more than enough.”

“Lenore hasn’t been into work lately?” He wondered how closely
Greeley was keeping track of the Computer Lab Director’s comings and goings. Maybe he’d better give him a call, plus with JJ’s job vacant the lieutenant might want to slip a cop in undercover.

The young woman’s fingers danced over the keyboard and a menu of preloaded programs appeared. “No. The last few days, I’ve talked to her housemate more than I’ve talked to her. Lenore’s hardly been in at all since Malwick’s murder. I think she’s either got a new boyfriend or is having a nervous breakdown.” JJ looked up and smiled. “With some people it’s hard to tell the difference.”

“I know I’ve asked you this before, but maybe now that you don’t work for the lady, your memory might have improved. Did Lenore and Dan Thayer have a personal relationship?”

JJ shifted her eyes back to the screen, leaving Mac to stare at the shaved spot over her ear.

“JJ? This is important.”

She sighed. “Yeah. Well. Maybe. I mean it’s not like I ever saw them going at it or anything but there were vibes. And he was always calling her.”

Mac nodded, thinking he’d get Ray to translate for him later. “Okay. Thanks.”

He got to his feet and walked over to a file cabinet pushed against the far wall, removing an overstuffed file folder. “If you can collect payment on these jobs I finished last month, you’re hired. I can’t pay you much yet, but I’ll give you $400 a week plus five percent of what you collect for me every month. If you want health insurance, research some options and if you’re still here in six months, we’ll renegotiate. In the meanwhile, you set up an accounting system that will keep me out of IRS hot water, take phone messages, and schedule appointments. No guarantees. We’ll try it for a month or two and see how we get along.”

“Six percent.”

He frowned, but nodded.

JJ grinned. “Do I get to carry a gun?”

Mac grabbed his jacket off a nearby chair. “First, let’s see how much money you can collect without it. I’ll be back later. When you leave, lock the door behind you. There’s a spare set of keys in the desk.”

She nodded–her smile firmly in place.

***

“How’s your steak?” Gina Malwick asked, eyeing the half-eaten slab of beef still covering most of the surface area of his plate.

Mac put down his fork. “Fine. But there’s too much of it; seems like they made a mistake with my order and gave me the whole steer. I can feel my arteries clogging as we sit here.”

Gina gave him a slight smile and took another bite of her salmon. Swallowing, she commented, “Vince loved their steaks. This was his favorite restaurant.”

Mac had been waiting for the right moment to broach the subject of her dead husband. This appeared to be it. “When was the last time you and Vince were here?”

“Last week–Wednesday night. He had the prime rib and pie for dessert.” She paused for a moment, then added, “Apple.”

Wondering if she really thought he was interested in the menu, Mac reviewed what he knew about Vince’s second wife, Gina Woodward Malwick: twenty-seven years old; former model and spokesperson for a local car dealership; and
Concordia College alumna.

“How did you meet Vince?” Mac sipped at his beer, watching her face for clues as to her true feelings about her deceased husband. He knew the answer to his question–Gina had met Vince when she’d starting working in the Accounting Department while she was still a student. His research indicated that Gina wasn’t the first or the last student to get some extra attention from old Vince during his tenure at the college. What Mac didn’t know was if Vince’s philandering had concerned his young wife.

Gina laughed and flipped her blonde hair over her shoulder. “At the college. He was the worst boss I ever had. A stickler for time–he docked me for every minute I was late getting to work and then wouldn’t trust me to do anything but filing.”

“Doesn’t sound like love at first sight.” Mac prompted.

“Hardly.” Gina dabbed at her lips with her napkin leaving angry red slashes of lipstick on the linen cloth. “I couldn’t stand him or the old bat that worked for him.”

Mac’s eyes were drawn to the stain, the red reminding him of the blood covering Angela Lopez’s face. “You’re referring to Mrs. Lopez?”

“Yeah. She was a real bitch.” Gina’s face flushed with emotion. “She was always watching me. Criticizing what I did and how I dressed. And anytime I’d go into Vince’s office, she’d be two steps behind. I think she was jealous of my relationship with him.”

“Doesn’t sound like you had much of a relationship. When did,” Mac’s voice trailed off as he tried to decide how best to ask when sex with her boss was added to her job description.

“Oh, go ahead and say it. You’re not the first to think I slept with Vince before I graduated–and before he was divorced,” Gina bitterly exclaimed. “His ex-wife has certainly told anyone and everyone that I’m a slut. But it didn’t happen. Vince and I got together a couple of years later when he came into the car dealership while I was there shooting a commercial.” She picked up her wine glass and took a healthy swallow. “To celebrate his divorce, he bought the latest model BMW and asked me to dinner. We were married a month later.”

“Why?”

“Why what?” Gina switched glasses. She sipped her Perrier, then plucked out the lemon slice and popped it in her mouth. Mac winced at the tartness he could almost taste.

“Wasn’t it sort of a whirlwind romance considering you thought he was…that he had been…that Vince wasn’t exactly
….”

“Why did I marry a son of a bitch like Vince?” She smiled demurely.

“Well, yeah.”

“Okay. Maybe I didn’t exactly love him when I married him. But we had a good life together.”

“Perhaps you shared a love of opera? Or drag racing?” Mac finished his beer and waited, hoping she’d continue. He also hoped his skepticism at her Cinderella story wasn’t etched on his face.

Gina laughed. “Hardly, but we did share a love of fine wine.”

He watched as she switched glasses again and sipped some Chateau St. Jean Merlot.

“We both adored five-star hotels in the
Caribbean with room service at midnight, and to be honest….” She stared into Mac’s eyes, “Vince ranked in the top twelve of the best lays I ever had.”

Mac dropped the roll he’d started to butter, then struggled to recover. “Didn’t crack the top ten?”

“No, but that one time in Aruba….”

Mac held up his hand. “Thanks for sharing. So Vince was a loving husband who will be sorely missed and
….”

“Absolutely not,” Gina interrupted. “The son of a bitch stole my money.”

Mac’s head snapped up. “Your money?”

“Damn right,” Gina said sharply. “In the five years I’d been modeling, I’d managed to save close to a hundred thousand dollars. My money, in my name. Vince understood that from the get-go. Anyway, last February Vince tells me about a real estate deal he thinks is going to pay off big. Suggested I put my money to work instead of just hanging around in Treasury Bonds. The deal sounded good. Basically it was picking up on the cheap some crummy condos in this building out on
Sixteenth Street. But Vince knew that Jack Starling was planning on buying the whole building and turning it into a luxury apartment house. It was going to be a fast flip on money and Vince promised…son of a bitch convinced me to put my money into the deal and….”

“Starling is a trustee of the college, right?” Mac asked, wondering if Starling was the man Lenore mentioned that Gina had her sights set on. He also made a mental note to round up a photo of Starling.
Greeley might be satisfied with the guy’s alibi but it wouldn’t hurt for him to double-check a few things.

“Yeah. He and Vince had chatted at a trustee meeting and it seemed like a sure thing.”

“But….”

“But the son of a bitch put his name and his name only on the deeds. I’d found them when I went through his desk last Thursday. I couldn’t figure why I hadn’t heard from Starling’s company since they had started buying out the current owners, so I decided to look around a little. Didn’t take me that long to pry open that bottom drawer and discover that Vince was about to make a fortune with my money.”

“And you?”

“And I was going to earn zero. Me who’d stood on a freezing soundstage in a yellow polka dot bikini hawking time shares in
Kissimmee, I was going to end up with zip. Hell no.” Gina said, bitterness oozing from every pore. “I confronted him that night. He claimed it was all a clerical mistake. He was going to take care of it. Like I was going to believe him. I learned a long time ago, the only one who takes care of Gina is Gina.”

“Did he change the title on the apartments on Friday before he was killed?”