Money To Burn (35 page)

“It’s a miniature tape. You can’t see it without an adapter,” I explained. “And I don’t think it would help you to look at it, anyway.”

“Will the police have to see it?”

I nodded.

“And the people in court?” Her voice faltered.

I considered it. “The judge will probably agree to let the jury view it privately, if they get to see it at all. It may not come to that. Once this boy’s lawyer knows I have it on tape, he may convince him to take a plea. You may never have to testify.”

“That’s good,” she said hopefully.

“It’s only a chance,” I said.

There was a silence and I could hear the steady tick of the big industrial clock on the wall of the room. Thirty seconds passed like an hour.

“Okay,” she finally said, “I want to press charges. Because of what you said about the next girl.”

I patted her hand. “You’re going to be fine,” I told her. “I can tell you’re strong. And now I know you’re brave, too. You were definitely worth saving.”

She smiled at me tentatively. “Where are the cops?” she asked.

“Outside. Want me to tell them to come in?”

She nodded. When I opened the door, I found both detectives standing on the other side, noses practically glued to the door, like impatient guests who’ve been kept waiting.

“She wants to press charges,” I said as the men entered the room and stood on either side of her bed.

“His name?” the plump one demanded impatiently.

“Jake Talbot,” I said. “His father is Randolph Talbot. Of T&T Tobacco.”

The two men exchanged long glances, then stared at me. The short one looked disgusted.

“You wanted to know,” I said with a shrug.

“You’re absolutely sure?” the tall detective asked. “You have proof?”

I nodded and held up the video camera. “Film at eleven,” I promised.

When it comes to memorable encounters, some people will always have Paris. But Marcus Dupree and I will always have the third-floor men’s room of Durham Police Department headquarters.

Six hours after leaving the hospital with the two detectives, I was crouched in a stall waiting for Marcus to take his morning cigarette break. I was bruised and grumpy from lack of sleep. Three hours snoozing on a bench had done nothing for my temperament. But that wasn’t what was bothering me.

What was bothering me was that I knew there had to be a connection between Jake Talbot and the murder of Thomas Nash. What was it?

I was perched on the lid of the toilet pondering this mystery when the main bathroom door opened and the clean scent of vanilla floated across the room, soon followed by the pungent aroma of Virginia Slims.

“Marcus!” I called out in a deep voice. I was rewarded with a squeak. I burst from the stall and found him frantically waving the air with long fingers, trying to diffuse the smoke.

“Smoking in a public building is a misdemeanor, even in North Carolina,” I informed him. “I’m going to have to place you under house arrest.”

“You scared the bejesus out of me,” Marcus complained as he took a deep drag on his cigarette. “Plus you look terrible, I’m sorry to say.”

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“I feel terrible,” I said. “I was up all night long.”

“Happily, I can say the same thing,” he said with a satisfied smile. “Fortunately for me, engineers are every bit as precise as rumor has it.”

“Yeah?” I was interested. “Tell me more.” I needed to try on a few new professions for size. Policemen and firemen were starting to bore me, and potters were proving to be a problem.

“Sorry. A lady never tells.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “What are you doing here. What if someone sees you?”

“Relax. I’m on official business.” I told him about Jake Talbot and my long session with the two detectives. I called them Frick and Frack. Marcus informed me they were actually Joyner and Jones.

“You’re mixed up with that rape case?” His eyes opened wide in disapproval. “Lord, Casey. That’s causing a shit storm in the department this morning. And you’re telling me it’s all your fault?”

“All his fault,” I corrected him.

“Are they putting the squeeze on you?” he asked hopefully.

“Worse, they’re demanding the truth.”

Marcus shuddered. “Never tell them the truth, Miss Casey. They’ll use it against you. I ought to know.”

“I know,” I agreed. “But I can’t wiggle out of it.”

His voice dropped to a whisper. “I hear they have videotape.”

“I’m the one who took it.”

He looked genuinely shocked. “You really are in it up to your elbows.”

“I need your help,” I told him.

“Of course you do.” He stubbed out his cigarette. “Why else would you be lurking in here?”

“Is it safe for you to pull up any files the department might already have on Jake Talbot?”

He considered the question. “Today may be the safest day of all to do it,” he decided. “Since everyone and his brother is interested in the file. They probably won’t even bother to track wh kr te safeso’s getting access. I’ll use someone else’s code, anyway. I don’t like this homophobic new sergeant. Think I’ll use his.”

“Good. I’m interested in any reports involving Talbot that didn’t result in an arrest, incidents that never made it to the official stage.” Maybe I could find a connection between Jake and Tom Nash that was off the record.

Marcus nodded. “In that case, I’ll need to search the paper files. It will take a little longer. I can’t just go pawing through the cabinets without an excuse.” He looked in the mirror and straightened a tightly coiled curl so that it dangled over his left eyebrow. “What else?”

“Have they gone to arrest Talbot yet?” I asked. “Frick and Frack are being jerks. They pumped me for all the information they needed and now they won’t tell me anything.”

Marcus eyed me speculatively. “How unusual for you not to be the one doing the pumping.” He managed to make it sound obscene. “But it so happens they went to arrest the gentleman in question. About two hours ago.”

I nodded, satisfied, but slightly pissed I had snoozed through all the action. I’d endured the foreplay and been screwed out of the finale. Still, having Jake Talbot in custody would buy me time to figure out what the hell was going on.

“Listen!” Marcus commanded, a finger to his lips. “Someone is coming.” Heavy footsteps echoed down the hallway, accompanied by off-tune whistling. “Sounds like that new sergeant.”

I hustled into a stall with Marcus pressed close behind me. I climbed up on the toilet bowl and balanced there as Marcus turned around so that his feet were facing the right way. “Don’t even breathe,” he ordered me in a whisper.

The main door swung open with a bang and heavy footsteps entered the room. Someone belched softly as the footsteps wandered over to the urinal. We waited, holding our breath, while the interloper took a piss that could have flooded the Ganges.

“Good Christ,” I muttered, unable to help myself. “You guys need to cut back on the coffee.”

Marcus made a tiny mewing sound of amusement that caught the visitor’s attention.

“That you, Dupree?” a gruff voice called toward the stall. “I would have thought a sissy like you would be hanging out in the ladies room. Trying to sneak a peek at my pecker?”

The bastard laughed and I could feel Marcus cringe. He endured a lot from people in general, but most of his coworkers had learned to live and let live. This guy was the type that would never quit. I w kver height=“anted to punch him.

“That’s a pecker?” Marcus answered politely. “I thought maybe you had a pet worm and were just giving him something to drink.”

The guy made a kind of growl and zipped up his pants. “People like you make me sick with your—” he started to say. I cut him off at the pass.

I took a deep breath and belched as loudly as I could, punching it up from deep in my diaphragm. The effect was astonishing, if I do say so myself. A deep rumbling filled the stall as the long burp built to a crescendo, culminating in a final series of rapid pops louder than a Mustang backfiring.

When I was done, a profound silence filled the bathroom. Marcus was crouched, convulsed in silent laughter. I smiled, pleased at my effort.

“You ought to get that checked, Dupree,” the sergeant finally said. There was something akin to a mixture of awe and respect in his voice. “I think you blew a gasket.”

“Just peppers in my breakfast omelet,” Marcus managed to murmur.

“Yeah, well, Jesus, man.” The sergeant was silent, reconsidering his assessment of Marcus as a sissy. “Hey,” he finally offered as a sign of friendship. “Did you hear about the Talbot arrest?”

I thumped Marcus on his back, willing him to say something.

“What about it, Sergeant?” Marcus asked with polite interest in his voice.

“He’s gone. Took a powder. Hit the road. They went to that apartment where he was last night and, when he wasn’t there, they served a warrant at his father’s house. It was a hell of a place, Joyner said. But the kid was gone. Someone warned him. They’re checking flights out of RDU right now.”

“You’re kidding?” Marcus answered, sounding suitably grateful to be treated like one of the guys.

“Nope.” The sergeant’s footsteps moved toward the exit door. “Just goes to show you that the poor get poorer and the rich get away.”

The door slammed shut behind him and I thumped Marcus on his back. “Out of my way!” I hissed. “Move, move, move!”

“No need to be a ruffian about it,” Marcus complained, squeezing against the wall as I dashed out the stall door. “Glad to be of help!” he called after me, but I hardly heard his words.

I wanted to get to Lydia quick.

The guard at the front gate to the Talbot compound wasn’t letting anyone in, and that included me.

“Come on,” I pleaded. “She might be in danger.”

He was a beefy guy who liked his cushy job and wasn’t about to do anything that might endanger it. “Sorry, Miss. I’ve got my orders. No one except family.”

“Can I call her?” I asked, staring at the phone on the wall of the guardhouse.

His lips tightened.

“Look, you know me,” I pleaded. “Just let me call her. I’m not from one of the newspapers or a television station, for godsakes.”

He reluctantly moved his big butt out of my way, like he was doing me a huge favor. I found the code for Lydia’s cottage on a list by the phone, and dialed it, pretending I didn’t notice that the guard was breathing down my neck.

“Winslow?” I asked, when the butler answered. “This is Casey Jones. We met a few days ago?”

“I remember you, Miss Jones,” the butler said, ominously stripping the words of any inflection whatsoever.

“Is Lydia there? I really need to talk to her.”

“Miss Talbot is sleeping,” he said politely, but then his voice deepened. “The doctor was just here.”

Oh shit. She’d gone off the deep end. Who wouldn’t after losing a fiancé and finding out her brother was a rapist in the span of less than a month?

“Has anyone else been to see her?” I asked.

“Her father. And her little brother is staying with her in the cottage. Under the circumstances, I think it’s for the best.” His tone changed just enough to let me know he was telling me information he knew was inappropriate to divulge to outsiders, but that he felt I needed to know.

“And her grandmother?” I asked.

“Mrs. Talbot is up at the big house.”

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“Where is Jake?”

The butler cleared his voice and said carefully, “I do not know Master Talbot’s whereabouts, Miss Jones.”

“I need to speak to Lydia,” I told him. “I’m concerned she may be in danger. I believe she must leave town now.” Until I knew the connection between Jake and Tom Nash’s death, I wanted Lydia safely out of the way. For all I knew, her own brother might hurt her.

“I’ll have her call you when she awakens,” he promised. “It won’t be for at least three or four hours, I would imagine.”

“Winslow,” I warned him. “It’s very important. She must call me.”

“Miss Jones,” he said solemnly. “You have my word that she will.”

It was the best offer I would get. “Tell her I’ll be at my apartment,” I said. I hung up wondering what I could do next. Go home and get some sleep. Or, go to the office and start from the beginning, looking for a missed connection.

I headed for Raleigh, rumpled clothes and all.

Bobby was AWOL. He’d left a note saying he was driving down to the coast with Fanny to eat their way through Calabash, a tiny town on the edge of the South Carolina border that consisted of a dozen restaurants specializing in lightly battered seafood. Even Bobby and Fanny would have difficulty eating their way through Calabash. I wouldn’t expect them back for a couple of days.

I was happy to have the office all to myself. I put my feet on my desk, stared at the poster of Jeremy Northam in Emma that I kept on my wall, and thought about the chain of events that had occurred. Nash dead. Randolph Talbot sued. Jake Talbot in trouble with the law.