Jay Giles (22 page)
It felt like somebody had hit me with a truck.
“We’re calling to notify you that a fire is in progress at a property we believe you own on Palm near Coconut.”
Thirty minutes later, I turned the Saab off SR41 onto Palm. I went only a block on Palm before being stopped by police barricades. I slammed on the brakes, pulled to the curb, got out of the car. A policeman stopped me almost immediately.
“That’s my building that’s on fire.”
He nodded, let me continue on. Ahead, I saw what was left of the building illuminated in the eerie white light of halogen spotlights. There was a haze of smoke, the smell of wood burning in the air. I didn’t see any flames, but that was because there wasn’t much left to burn.
Most of the roof was gone. All of the windows and the front door were gone. Big black scorch marks ran up from the openings. The yard and the parking area were littered with charred remains—a sofa, a visitor’s chair, wallboard. Firemen walked around with hoses, squirting things that still smoldered. Exhaust fans blew a constant stream of smoke and noise from the building.
I stood on the curb and watched, feeling helpless and angry. D’Onifrio hadn’t needed to do this to make me feel the pressure.
A fireman in full gear came over, stood next to me. “Are you Mr. Seattle?” he shouted over the noise of the exhaust fans.
I nodded.
“I’m Captain Harris. Sorry about your place. We got here less than two minutes after the alarm was turned in. Flames were already shooting out the roof. Not much we can do when it’s that far along. It’s going to be a total loss, I’m afraid.”
I knew he was right.
“There’s a fireproof safe in the back left room,” I shouted, telling him where my office had been. “Is that safe okay?”
He shrugged. “If it’s fire rated, it should be. When things cool off, we’ll take a look. In the meantime, there’s a man who needs to talk to you.” He pointed to a group of men standing by one of the fire trucks. “See him? The guy with the windbreaker that says Sheriff’s Department. He’s the arson investigator.”
I nodded, headed over, and introduced myself.
“Jack Fines. Arson,” he said and handed me his card. “Let’s go over to my vehicle, get out of the noise. It’ll be easier to talk.”
I followed him over to a police cruiser. He got in the driver’s side, I got in the other side, pulling the door closed behind me. He was right; it did cut down the noise.
“Mr. Seattle, I don’t mean to alarm you,” he said, “but this fire was set. Do you know of anyone who might want to harm you?”
I shook my head, tried to look bewildered and buy a little time to think. I couldn’t tell him anything about D’Onifrio. That would only make matters worse. Saying I couldn’t think of anyone who had a grudge against me sounded fake.
“Think back. Has there been any trouble at work? At home?’
A terrible idea surfaced. One I should have rejected immediately. Instead, I put everything I had into selling it. “Actually, there has,” I said tentatively. “But I can’t believe he’d do anything like—”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Well, it’s really sort of a misunderstanding. I can’t believe it has anything to do with this.”
“It might. Tell me about it.”
I made him pull the story of the Wakeman/Nevitt suit out of me a detail at a time. Each time he got a nugget of information, he wrote it down in a small notebook. “You say you had this meeting with the negotiator just a couple of days ago,” he repeated, writing furiously. “What was her name, again?”
“Sue Ann Tansky. She’d be a good person to talk to. She can tell you how upset Nevitt was when we asked for financial documents.”
He finished writing, looked over at me. “Any other problems or people you can think of?”
I pretended to ponder that for a few moments. “No, I can’t think of anything else.”
“We’ll start looking into this. Is there a number where we can reach you if we have further questions?” I gave him one of my cards. He looked at it, tucked it in his notebook. “If you think of anything else, you’ve got my card.” He opened his door. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Seattle.”
“Thank you. I appreciate your effort to track down whoever did this.”
He gave me a final we’ll-get-’em nod and got out of the car. I did, too.
I stood on the curb and watched the firemen pull things out of the building and throw them on the lawn. It was still too soon to go back into the building, and watching didn’t seem very productive. I looked at my watch. Four-twenty. It had been a long night. It was probably going to be an even longer day.
I headed for my car. I needed to let all my clients know what had happened. The easiest way would be a fax alert. I could do that from my machine at the condo. As I walked, I considered headlines:
“Seattle’s Stock Picks So Hot, Building Burns.”
Or
“How Can You Be Sure
Seattle
Has The Hottest Recommendations?
Hey, Who Else Has Had A Building Burn?”
Or
“
Seattle
’s Stock Picks Are On Fire.
(Oops, The Building Just Went Up In Smoke.)”
When it came time to actually do it, however, I chickened out, used the more bland:
“Building Destroyed By Fire.
Won’t Stop
Seattle
Service.”
In the text, I told everyone to contact me at my cellular number and that we’d be back in touch as soon as we had a new location. I turned the fax program on send and went to the kitchen to get something to eat.
I made coffee, dumped Cheerios into a bowl. As I poured a glass of orange juice, my hand shook. I was used to getting a bad night’s sleep, not to getting no sleep. I sat, ate, tried to hold myself together.
At seven-thirty, I called Rosemary at home and broke the news to her.
“How horrible,” she said angrily. “What can I do to help?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ll know more after I talk to the insurance company. I’ll call you back.”
I hung up and dialed Shelby Simms, my agent, gave him the details. He had a plan of action.
“Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll have a portable office trailer brought to your location. Fully furnished—desks, phones, computers, fax. You’ll be back in business by noon. Let me get going on that. Once we get that set up, we’ll start on your claim. How’s that sound?”
“Sounds great,
Shelby
. Can you let Rosemary know when the unit will arrive? She’ll get things going on our end.”
He agreed. I called Rosemary back and filled her in on the plan while I had my third cup of coffee. Tired and wired.
As soon as I hung up, the phone rang. It was Tory. “Matt, I just saw your building on the morning—”
“Yeah, it was a pretty bad night.”
“Do they know who did it?”
“They don’t, but I do. It was D’Onifrio.”
I heard a little gasp at her end, then she said, “I’m afraid I’ve got more bad news, too. Frankie fell off the wagon last night.”
“I just got off the phone with him. He is really hung over. Apparently, he had a couple of beers before he met her because he was nervous. A couple more while they were eating, a couple more while they were dancing.”
“How many is a couple of couples?”
“I asked him that. He thinks he may have had fifteen or sixteen beers. He really doesn’t remember.”
I groaned. “He’s supposed to have chronic liver damage. He can’t drink like that.”
“Well, he did.”
I tried to think. My head felt like mush with a lump of pain behind my eyes. “Can you call him back? Tell him to stay in the condo, not take any calls or make any calls to Janet. Maybe we can turn this to our advantage.”
“How?”
“By pretending he’s deathly ill. That’s going to take a plan. Could we get together over lunch, put something together.”
“Where?”
“The Pier Grille is easy. Quarter to twelve?”
“See you there.”
I hung up and dialed Julian’s number. “He’s taking a deposition,” Amanda said. “Can I help you?”
“I need to fill him in on some late-breaking developments. Have him call me as soon as he can, will you, Amanda.”
“Sure.”
“Oh, and tell him to call my cell number. The office burned down.”
“What?”
“One of those late-breaking developments I need to talk to him about.”
“I’ll definitely have him call you.”
I poured my fourth cup of coffee, looked at it, dumped it in the sink. I set the timer on the oven to go off at quarter after eleven, went into the living room, and stretched out on the sofa.
Brang, brang, brang brought me back to reality. The damned oven timer. Still groggy, I jumped up, shut it off, went to the bathroom, splashed some water on my face, brushed my teeth, tried to feel human.
It wasn’t working. Looking back at me in the mirror was a drawn and haggard face. I didn’t dwell on it; I had more to worry about than my appearance.
Tory was waiting in a booth, iced tea in front of her. Her hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing a Day-Glo orange tee-shirt. I slid into the other side of the booth.
She made an exaggerated face. “You do look like hell.”
“And just think, I look better than I feel.”
Our waitress arrived and handed me a menu. Tory already had one. I handed it right back to her. “Cheeseburger and a Diet Coke.”
“Want fries with that?”
I shook my head.
“You, ma’am?”
“Cobb salad, please.” She watched the waitress leave with our orders, then turned to me. “What happened?”
I started with my meeting with Paul Raines, moved to the evening’s abduction on the beach, finished with my conversation in the police cruiser with Jack Fines.
She laughed at the last. “Nevitt is going to be pissed.”
That made me laugh, too. “I hope so. I hope they haul him down to headquarters, work him over with rubber hoses.”
Our food arrived. We ate in silence for a few minutes, then I asked, “Were you able to get Fish to stay inside and not answer the phone?”
She finished a bite of salad. “Yeah, he didn’t care. Said he’d stay in and watch the tube. What are you thinking?”
I swallowed a bite of hamburger. “For a guy who wasn’t supposed to drink, he put away a lot of beer last night. If he were sick, he’d have had a reaction to all that beer. I’m thinking that we make it look like he spent the day at the hospital.”
“How are we going to do that?”
“We need just a few trappings to draw the picture—a hospital bracelet around his wrist, a home health nurse at the condo.”
“I’m not sure I see where you’re headed with this.”
I took a drink of my Diet Coke. “We need to accelerate the marriage. D’Onifrio torched my building to let me know he was serious about not waiting any longer.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Absolutely sure. It’s what Raines warned me about. D’Onifrio’s turning up the heat as the meeting with Enrico gets closer. I’m also sure his next hurry-up message will be something worse. I’m thinking we use Fish’s drinking and the resulting illness as a way of letting Janet know he could die at any time.”
“You think that will hurry her up?”
“Can’t hurt. If she thinks she might lose a big score, she might move things along faster. Especially if Fish dangles some money in front of her.”
“Like a big diamond ring?”
I took a bite of burger, chewed, thought. “A ring feels like rushing things. Maybe we have him start looking at really expensive houses. Maybe he tells her his condo is only temporary, he’s looking to buy a place, but he wants to know if she’ll share it with him.”
“Back into a proposal. That might work.”
“If she thinks she’s picking out a million-dollar house—”
Tory nodded a couple of times, digesting what we’d just talked about. “When are you thinking all this is going to happen—her seeing him sick and all?”
I swallowed the last of my hamburger, pushed my plate aside. “I’m hoping when she can’t reach him today she’ll wonder what’s going on. When he finally answers the phone—or better yet, when the home health care person answers it—I’m betting she’ll want to come over and see how sick he really is.”
“So you’re thinking tonight?”
I wanted to do as much as I could as fast as I could. “It would be good if it happened tonight. If it did, we could do the real estate tomorrow.”
Tory finished her salad, took a drink of tea. “You want me to hire a nurse, prep Frankie and the condo?”
I nodded. “That’d be great. I’ll arrange for a realtor who can take them to some expensive houses tomorrow.”
“What time do you want him to start taking calls again?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Seven?” I looked at the check, left money on the table. I slid out of the booth. “I’ve got to go check on my new digs.”
She stood. “I’ll call you when I’ve got it lined up.”
I thanked her as we headed out to the cars.
From the Pier Grille to the office was a thirty-minute drive. I talked on the phone the entire way. By the time I turned onto Palm and got my first look at the trailer, I had a realtor friend clearing her schedule for the next day.
I pulled the Saab to the curb and parked. The trailer was larger than I’d expected, probably thirty feet long. It took up the entire length of our little parking garden. Rosemary was standing in the doorway. She waved when she saw me pull up, walked down the three steps, and headed my way.
I met her half way. “It’s bigger than I expected.”
“It’s not half bad inside, though right now it’s hotter than blue blazes. They’re working to hook up the air conditioning. The man who will hook up the computers said he’d come back when we’ve got air. It’s too hot for computers now; he said they’d fry.”
I nodded. “How about phones?”
“He was a real man, not afraid of the heat. They’re hooked up.”
I looked over at the burned-out building, roped off with yellow accident-scene tape. “Anybody here about the building?”
She made a face. “A gentleman from the building inspector’s office was here. He looked at it from his car, condemned the place. Said it’d have to be bulldozed.” Dislike was evident in her voice.
“How about
Shelby
?”
“He’s been here all morning. You just missed him.”
“Many client calls?”
“A good many. Everyone calling to say how shocked they were to hear the place burned. A lot offered help.”
“Any business?”
“A bit. I didn’t know when I’d see you, so I had your friend in
Detroit
handle the trades.”
A flatbed truck carrying a port-a-potty pulled up. The driver leaned out the window. “Anybody know where they want this?” He said gruffly.
I pointed to the far side of the trailer. “Put it over there. Thanks.”
Rosemary shook her head. “A loo. He thinks of everything, that
Shelby
.”
“Well, I’m going to see if the fireproof safe really was.” I stepped over the yellow tape, around the debris in the yard. Inside the shell of the building, the smells of burned wood and wet plaster were almost overpowering. I made my way to what had been my office. There wasn’t much of it left. The sofa and chairs had been thrown outside the night before. Some charred wood was probably what was left of my desk and credenza. Surprisingly, several of the photos that had been on the wall above the credenza were still there. Grimy, soot covered, glass broken, but still hanging.
I made my way to the closet. The door was gone. The safe had fallen part way through the floor, but it looked intact. I unlocked the top drawer, pulled it open. The computer backup disks weren’t discolored from the heat. I took a handful, carried them back to the trailer.
“It worked,” I told Rosemary as I dumped them on one of the desks. “Best five hundred dollars we ever spent.” By the time I had the contents of the safe transferred to our new workspace, the air conditioning was working, the technician had hooked up the market feed on my computer and was working on Rosemary’s.
I sat at my desk and took stock of my new domain. It had all the ambience of a tin can, was noisy as hell, and smelled of industrial cleaner. I was thrilled to have it.
