Hot Tea (34 page)

“That’s just so wrong on so many levels.  I’m not sure I want to work for this guy.”

“If you don’t work for him, he’ll just hire someone else, and they may not be as respectful of Louis’s stuff.”

I raised my eyebrows, “That’s true.  A little self serving, on both of our parts, but we’ll go with it.”

Joe has a beautiful smile.  He gifted me with one, and continued, “I’m not gonna push this.  I think that you’ll do the right thing.  I’m not asking for anything that would be of value to any other person, I just want the book.”

I looked at the floor, “Actually, there are three.”

His surprise was evident, “What?”

“I brought them home with me.  There are three.  Brown leather journals.  I’d just started reading the first one when you tried to knock down my door.”

He pulled a face, “Knock down your door?  Isn’t that an exaggeration?”

“Either we can agree that you pounded on the door, didn’t knock, or I will forever be suspicious of steroid use.  Roid rage and all that.”

He had a lovely, low, sexy, laugh.  “No steroids.  This beer gut is all natural.”  He rubbed his hand over his perfectly flat stomach.

“I can’t give you the journals, but if you like, you can take a look at them.  I just made myself a cup of tea.  Would you like one?  I have soda or juice if you’re not a tea person.”

“Just some water would be great.”

“I have to warn you.  If you take the opportunity to help yourself to the journals and walk out the front door while I am getting you some water, I’m calling the police and the news media, and maybe even your mom.”

“The police, no problem.  The news media, who really believes what they read these days, a 20 second sound byte and it would be over, but my mom?  That’s low.”

“I’m just sayin’”

“I won’t walk out the door with them.  They give me a great excuse to spend time in the presence of a really interesting woman.”

My turn to blush.  I took refuge by putting my face in the fridge while I retrieved his bottle of water.

We’d been reading along for about an hour when AJ showed up.  I was practically sitting on Joe’s lap, but it was the only way we could both read the journal at the same time.

I tensed, waiting for AJ to react badly.

He didn’t.

He was perfectly fine, which made me a little bit unfine.  Couldn’t he at least pretend to be a little bit jealous?  Am I really that undesirable.  You can bet we will address that later.

I introduced them, explaining that we were reading the journal.  AJ smiled, went to his room, took a shower, and came out about fifteen minutes later.  He was still fine.  Wow.  Guess I really am that undesirable.  Dammit!

He went out the door, and Joe and I continued to read.

About half an hour later, AJ was back, juggling several bags of food. 

What a great guy!

The three of us sat at the coffee table and munched while Joe and I each tried to figure out just what the journals had to tell us.  When the silence got too loud, Joe started to explain.

“Louis was my partner.  He was one of the most dedicated cops I’ve ever met, and really smart.  A few days ago, he was driving home at about three in the morning and drove off the road.  You know where that really bad intersection is, down toward the outlets.  It’s famous for the number of people that have been killed there, and yet, they haven’t done a damn thing about it.  Anyway, Louis was one more victim of bad engineering.”

AJ listened carefully.  “Man, I’m sorry for your loss.  That’s tough.”

“Yeah.  It is.  Louis was retired, but when you’re a cop, you never really leave the job behind.  He was working his way back onto the force.  He was shot in the line of duty about 18 months ago.  The doctors had just recently told him that there was a chance that he was strong enough to come all the way back.  He was excited.  Being a cop was all he really cared about.  The whole time he’s been away, he’s still been working on a case.  That’s what the journals are about.”

AJ looked confused, “I’m lost again.  I’m still not sure how you got in the middle of all this Cara.”

I jumped in, “Billy, the priest that helped with Bernie, called this morning.”  Was that really only this morning?

I continued, “He asked me to help sort out the belongings of a guy he knows from church.  The guy turned out to be Louis.  His brother Steven can’t be bothered to come to town, so he needs someone to sort everything, just like Teagan and I are doing for Bernie.  Joe is, I’m sorry, was, Louis’s partner.  When I went over to the condo today, to sort things out, I found three journals.  Joe showed up about that time and asked me to hand over the books.  I told him I couldn’t do that.  He ran my tag number, and came over here to get the books.  I still wouldn’t let him have the books, but we decided to just sit here and read them.”

“Ok, I guess I’m up to speed.  Can I ask what the journals have to say?”

Joe’s turn to explain, “Every cop has a theory, a process, or a way that they work through a case.  Louis believed that there is no such thing as a random murder, at least not multiple murders.  He was adamant that the same person or people killed several young women that have died in the last several years.  He believed that if you look at enough of the minutia of a person’s life, you would eventually find that little tiny fact that puts together the crime.  You’ll see where the life of the victim and the life of the murderer intersect.  Louis was convinced that people simply are not random, and that there is always a hook.  He was in the process of doing very detailed research on each of the murdered girls, trying to find the tiny little thread that pulled them together.”

AJ looked at me, “Sounds dangerous.  Why are you, a non-cop, involved?”

“I’m not involved, I’m just cleaning out Louis’s condo.  Once his brother Steven gives me permission to hand the journals over to Joe, I’m out of the loop.  I was just giving Joe a head start, and I’m nosey.”

AJ  pulled a face and said, “It’s none of my business, but I’m not sure I like you being that close to anything to do with a serial murderer.”

I pulled a face, “Statistically, your chances of being killed by a serial murderer are pretty damn slim.  Think about it.  If I’m going to be involved in a statistical anomaly, it’s going to be winning the lottery, not getting wiped off the face of the planet by some whacko.  You’re only allotted one outrageous anomaly a lifetime, and this lifetime, the lottery is mine.”

AJ was calm and patient, “Can we talk about it later?”

I smiled, “Sure.”

We talked about the journals, and all the detail they seemed to cover but didn’t come up with anything interesting.  The conversation meandered from one topic to the next.  We covered everything from Rory’s being a fellow cop, to dinner wine, to roller-skating. 

When we were done munching, AJ stood and started to clear away the refuse from our impromptu meal.  After several trips back and forth, he bid us a good night, and said he had work to do on his computer.

Joe and I were at the door when he said again, “I just need to go over all this stuff once more and then once more again and keep looking at it till I find it.  Louis was convinced that it was there.  I just have to look harder.”

I had to put in my two cents worth, I can’t help it, it is who I am.  “I see it the other way around.  You need to stop trying to connect the dots.  You know how you look at those pictures, the optical illusion type things, and it isn’t until you let your eyes go out of focus that you see the real image.  I think it’s like that.”

“What?”

“If you keep your eyes open, and don’t try to assign importance to any one thing, or any group of things, then all kinds of things will jump out at you.  If you don’t look for the connections, they will just kind of smack you in the head.  Sometimes the connection is where you least expect it.  Sometimes it is so obvious you miss it.”

“Can you give me a for instance?”

“Sure.  A couple of weeks ago, I was all about figuring out who killed that socialite, Lily Ivy-Rosenbaum.”

“It’s Rosenbloom, I worked on the periphery of that case myself, go ahead.”

“She was the start of my three.”

“Your three?”

“I’m very Irish.  I was raised to believe that all things, good and bad, come in threes.  I’m not sure if it’s an Irish thing, or just my mother, but that holds true for most of my beliefs.”

“Threes.”

“First I was focused on Ms. Rosenbloom.   Then my mom’s friend Bernie died.  Then Louis.  I would bet big money that if you were reviewing their lives, you would never see a connection, but a connection is there.”

 “You knew Rosenbloom and Louis?  You’re the connection?”

“Ok, you need to listen and stop trying to smoosh everything I say into what you have already decided is valid.”

“Sorry.”

“No, I didn’t know Ms. Rosenbloom or Louis before they died.  That’s the point.  You take three random people like that and still they already have more than one connection.”

“More than one?  I thought you were the connection.”

“Well, I guess I’m the first connection, kind of, cause I actually came second, but it’s the second one that smacked me, the one that actually came first.  I see it now because I wasn’t paying attention.”

“What?”

“When I did a search on Ms. Rosenbloom, when I was thinking about solving the case to collect the reward money, one of the things that came up on the search was that her husband spent a lot of money on her. He was always buying her art and he started a foundation in her name so that she could do charitable works and keep herself busy.  The name of the charity was the Ivy-Rosenbloom Foundation.  They had a big shindig and there was a picture of the Ivy-Rosenblooms arriving in some kind of exotic car.  The reason it stuck in my brain is I would have thought they would drive up in a limo, but they drove up together in a regular type car.  The license plate tag was IRF, it was a personalized plate.”

“Ok.  So?”

“So, my mom’s friend Bernie had a personal tag too.  It was IRF IOH.  I’m pretty sure it stood for Ireland Remains Forever In Our Hearts.”