Money To Burn (30 page)

I jumped when he said my name. I couldn’t help it. He had a way of spitting it out that made you think he was one step away from hitting you with it.

“Fire away,” I said, perhaps a poor choice of words.

“In the course of your investigation, have you uncovered a shred of evidence that would indicate that I was involved in the death of Thomas Nash in any way, either directly or indirectly?”

I pretended to think it over. It didn’t make him sweat.

“No, I have not,” I finally said. “I have seen some evidence, but I believe it was manufactured.”

“Have you uncovered any evidence that would lead you to believe I attempted to influence his relationship with my daughter in any way?” he then asked.

“Well,” I began, wondering how to word it. “It depends on how you—”

“What Mr. Talbot means,” his lawyer [,” “0”>

interrupted, “is whether or not you have any reason to believe he discouraged Thomas Nash from seeing Lydia.”

“No, I have not,” I said truthfully. “Nor have I uncovered any evidence that Thomas Nash was unfaithful to Lydia or anything but a deeply caring fiancé.”

Lydia’s eyes had glazed over and I wasn’t sure how much she was hearing.

“Have you uncovered anything that would lead you to believe I ordered anyone else to harm Thomas Nash?” Randolph Talbot persisted.

I shook my head no. What was he getting at?

“Do you personally believe I had anything to do with it?” he asked me, showing me he had some guts after all.

“No, I do not,” I admitted. “I think you were set up.”

Talbot let out a long sigh, one of the first signs since I had met him that he was human after all. He seemed to grow smaller then, maybe a few years older, too, as if he had been somehow humbled by admitting that my answer mattered.

“Did you hear that, Lydia?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, the single syllable ringing through the room.

“Does it convince you at all that I am innocent of having had anything to do with the death of the man you loved?” Talbot asked her, and though he tried to sound authoritative and in control, his words trembled as he spoke.

Lydia stared at me for a long time, as if I were the suspect and not her father. Perhaps she was trying to decide if she could trust my judgment after all. Or, maybe, she had simply taken too much Valium that morning.

“Yes,” she finally said. “That does convince me.”

“Good.” Talbot settled back in his chair. His lawyer emitted a nearly inaudible grunt and uncrossed his legs. Now the games could begin.

“I want there to be no misunderstanding about what I’m going to tell you next,” Talbot said.

I knew what was coming an instant before the words left his lips.

“I am going to settle the two lawsuits with the family of Thomas Nash,” Talbot said. “For sixteen mill [ sior=“blacion. It will be announced in the press tomorrow.”

“What?” Lydia asked, looking from her father to his lawyer. “You just said you were innocent.”

“Innocence, unfortunately, has nothing to do with the law,” Talbot’s lawyer jumped in, using his most pompous courtroom voice. Where was a paperweight when you wanted one? The man needed a good beating about the arms and face.

“It’s a business decision,” I interrupted, just to let them know that I was no stranger to corporate-speak.

“Exactly.” Talbot gave me a grudging glance. “The Nashes have agreed to settle for less than one-tenth of the original amount and my insurance company has advised me to take the deal. They will cover the entire amount if I do, both my personal and corporate liability. The risk of fighting the matter in front of a jury is simply unacceptable. As your friend Miss Jones has said, I have been set up and the evidence, while manufactured, may nonetheless be convincing.”

So now I was his daughter’s friend, Miss Jones, eh? It would be Casey and Randy next.

Lydia looked at me for guidance.

“It will keep your name out of the newspapers,” I explained.

“Exactly.” Talbot’s lawyer beamed at me. I was such a quick study. And I’d taken the bait with an open mouth, too.

Fuck him and the horse he rode in on. “What do you want from me?” I demanded.

All three of them stared at me.

“What is it?” I insisted. “You didn’t summon me here to be polite. What do you want from me?”

The lawyer’s nose wrinkled in distaste at my approach, but Talbot couldn’t have cared less.

“I want you to drop the investigation,” Lydia’s father said.

“Why?” I asked, wondering how much he knew about how very little I’d gathered in my so-called investigation.

“Because it is time to let this thing die,” he said, not even noticing that his choice of words made his daughter wince. “My family has been through enough. It’s time we got back to normal. I will not tolerate a continuing cloud of suspicion over our heads.” He appealed to his daughter. “Lydia, darling, I don’t know who killed To [whoidtm or why, and there is nothing I can say or do that will bring him back to you. But sixteen million is a lot of money and his parents are donating the entire amount of their proceeds to a foundation to educate children against smoking. The money will go to a good cause. Someone has paid for his death. I have paid for his death. Please accept the situation as over. Our family has gone through enough.”

Don’t do it, Lydia, I willed her silently. Grow a backbone, girl, grow a backbone.

She was staring at her father. As an outsider, I could not even begin to fathom what unspoken message was passing between them. I would never know, I realized. I lived in a different world.

“All right,” she said calmly, rising to go. “Come on, Casey. We can have a cup of coffee and settle up your fee.”

“No need,” the lawyer interrupted smoothly. He was a human snake with a rattle so faint you’d never notice it until he bit you. He passed me a white linen envelope. “I’m sure this will more than take care of her fees and expenses.”

I should have crumpled it up in a ball and bounced it off his condescending forehead. But if I did that, I’d never know what price Talbot thought I could be bought for— and that was something I had to know. Clearly, he assumed I was a whore. Whether I was an expensive one or your garden variety street walker remained to be seen.

“A pleasure doing business with you,” I said calmly, accepting the envelope and joining Lydia at the office door.

The two men watched us go without comment.

We rode down in the elevator in silence, then walked to Main Street, still without a word. “Okay,” I finally said. “What gives?”

Lydia sighed. “My father is right. Nothing is going to bring Tom back. It’s time to let it go.”

“How can you say that?” I asked angrily. “Don’t you want to know who killed him?”

“I thought I did,” she said, then her voice slowed. “But now I’m not so sure.” She looked at the envelope in my hand. “Does that cover it?” she asked.

I pulled open the flap and peeked inside. “Yup,” I said. “That covers it. And then some.”

“Cash the check,” Lydia ordered me. “You earned it. Take my father’s conscience money. If you don’t want it, give it away. Or use it to forget you ever knew a Talbot. This family is nothing but bad luck.”

She turned around and walked away, leaving me holding a check for $25,000 in my hand.

“How much?” Bobby D. asked me again, still incredulously, when I told him about the payoff on Monday morning. “That’s a lot of money.” He whistled as visions of expensive spy devices danced in his head.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “So what did I find out that’s making Randolph Talbot so nervous? Hell if I know what it is.”

Bobby D. considered the problem. “Who have you been looking at?”

“No one,” I admitted. “I’ve been too busy protecting Lydia from threats, wearing stupid-looking dresses and pulling people out of fires.”

“Does Talbot know that?”

“I don’t think so. I get the feeling Lydia’s not telling him much.”

Bobby chewed thoughtfully on a licorice stick. Bits of black candy studded his teeth like he’d been eating ants. “Have you said anything to Talbot that might have tipped your hand or given him an idea of what you were up to?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Nope. Yesterday, I said jack shit to him. When I saw him the night before, I kept it quick. Before that, I was my usual smart mouth, but I didn’t give away any information.”

“You saw him the night of the shindig?” Bobby asked.

“Yeah. While you were romancing your future ex-wife, I was on the job. I followed Jake Talbot to the parking lot and ran into his father on the way back in. He was standing on the sidewalk smoking a cigar and looking important.”

Bobby wagged the licorice stick at me. “Well, there you have it, Casey. He saw you following his son.
Capiche?”

I capiched. “He thinks his son has something to do with it, and wants to stop me from looking at him further,” I realized.

“You got it. So what are you going to do?” Bobby asked.

“Follow his son around,” I said. “Of course.”

“Of course,” Bobby agreed.

One thing Bobby D. and I both belie [ I

It would cause Lydia pain but, on the other hand, her little brother Haydon would probably rejoice.

“I don’t have much on him,” I admitted. “Only the fact that I can’t stand his snotty rich ass, that he’s downright cruel to his little brother and that he zoomed off with Franklin Cosgrove last night after meeting with some tall drug dealer in the parking lot.”

“You sure it was a drug dealer?” Bobby asked.

I nodded. “The guy handed over something to Jake in exchange for cash, and he was wearing a top hat with a striped shirt like a poker dealer in an old-time saloon. What self-respecting black guy in Raleigh, North Carolina would wear something like that unless he was a dealer?”

“I know that guy,” Bobby D. sputtered, little bits of black licorice tumbling from his mouth as he spoke. “He’s a fixture at the Pony Express. I ought to know. I spent two nights there secretly taping the joint.”

“You sure?” I asked skeptically. I’d forgotten that Bobby had spent Thursday and Friday nights playing tourist at a gay bar while I was out battling killers.

“I’m sure,” Bobby insisted. “You never see him without that hat. Look, Casey, it makes sense. The Pony Express is only a block from Memorial Auditorium. The guy
probably is a drug dealer who works out of the bar, and if he’s Jake Talbot’s connection…” His voice trailed off and he looked at me, eyebrows raised.

“I don’t think so,” I said firmly. “I saw Jake boffing some babe behind a sofa with my own eyes, and if you’re insinuating that Franklin Cosgrove is his boyfriend, forget it. I have lots of proof he’s just a plain old heterosexual slimeball, though in my humble opinion he’d screw a poodle if it stayed still long enough.”

“So what are the two of them doing together?” Bobby asked.

“Drugs,” I told him. “That has to be it. They’re drug buddies. Birds of a feather snorting coke together.”

“So find the dealer and ask.”

“Are you sure it’s the same guy?” I said.

“See for yourself.” Bobby hefted himself from his chair and trundled [ anend, over to an empty desk against one wall. He slipped a micro video cassette tape into a standard cassette converter, then popped it onto a VCR that was connected to a television on top of the desk. Ever since the Rodney King incident, half the world walked around with video cameras on their shoulders. So Bobby spent a lot of his time with potential clients explaining that their footage of the little wifey gardening in a tube top and flirting with the next-door neighbor was not grounds for divorce in a North Carolina court.

“This is the tape from a couple of nights ago at the Pony Express.” Bobby explained. “Watch. My client’s boyfriend is that blond guy at the end of the bar. He came in alone and I was hoping to catch him with the health club instructor, but no one ever even came up to say ‘boo’ to him.”

“Instead, you got tape of a bunch of closeted Raleighites trying to act like they weren’t all nervous as hell to be hanging out at a gay bar?” I guessed.

“You got it, babe.”

I watched, impressed, as Bobby’s tape played. For a camera shaped like a fake cigarette pack, it did a damn good job.

“I propped my lighter up under it,” Bobby explained. “To get a better angle. Little things like that distinguish a great detective from a mediocre one.”

Yeah, so did getting off your duff once in a while, but I didn’t bring it up. I’d gotten off my duff plenty on this case and it had gotten me nowhere.

“Hey,” I said. “That guy in the green golf shirt is on the city council, and that guy’s on some sports show that runs on Channel Five.”

“That’s nothing,” Bobby said. “Wait until you see the guy who lives with—”

“That’s him,” I interrupted. “It’s the guy in the top hat. Play it back.”

The image was grainy because of low lighting conditions, but there in the corner of the picture behind Bobby’s mark was a row of bar stools arranged along a side wall near a cigarette machine. The drug dealer was leaning on the chair closest to the machine and every time someone came up for a pack of smokes, they’d try to feed in a couple of dollars without success, then appear to ask the guy for change and hand him a fistful of money.