T. Lynn Ocean - Jersey Barnes 03 - Southern Peril (16 page)

“I told you, it wasn’t like that.” Jonathan’s words were slurred but sharp with anger. “First of all, we were best friends—not lovers. And second, our age difference was irrelevant. I could make her laugh. And she could talk to me without worrying that I was listening just so I could get into her pants.”

“All those times you were out meeting someone for lunch, we thought it was another of your bimbos.” Leo’s head shook from side to side. “Nobody that mattered enough for us to meet. But
Rosemary?”

Jonathan tried to drink from an empty glass.

“It was a tragic thing that happened,” Michael said after a while.

Jonathan shook his head. “I never should have gotten Rosemary involved.”

“What?” somebody demanded. “Rosemary knew about the blackmail? Why, you’re just an outpouring of revelations today, John.”

Jonathan’s voice was close to a whisper now. “She was dealing with menopause. Tired all the time and depressed. The hormones
her doctor prescribed weren’t helping, so I gave her something that would. Then she wanted more. I realized much later that I had used her addiction to keep her reliant on me. To keep her close.”

“And?”

“And once, when we were talking, I told her about the network. I told her everything. When she found out what we were up against, she wanted to help.”

Michael wasn’t eating or drinking, and his stare was fixed tight on the shrink. “Okay, I’m trying to get this straight. First, you
counsel
Rosemary away from the office. Then you become best friends
without
benefits. Then you get her hooked on drugs and turn her into an addict under the pretense of helping her through the physical symptoms of menopause. Then you spill your guts about the mess we’re in and convince her to help.”

Jonathan nodded.

“Help how?” Leo demanded.

Jonathan’s head was down. “She was one of his runners. People picked up right here, at the restaurant.”

“You dumb drunk.” Morgan had his eyes shut now, but it sounded like Leo’s voice. “Did Garland know?”

Morgan opened his eyes in time to see Jonathan shake his head no. “Rosemary never told him. She adored Garland. Told me right up front that they would be together forever. She made it very clear that there would never be a chance for us… .” Jonathan’s voice trailed off again, and this time the sounds of sniffled crying traveled through the wire in the ceiling to land in Morgan’s ear. “But I loved her so much.”

Ignoring the nausea that pressed against the back of his throat, Morgan remained shut in the office for the duration of the Divine Image Group’s meal. Leo had dessert. Jonathan had more Scotch. And Michael tried to keep the two of them from verbally attacking each other.

At the end of the hour, Morgan had a mess of information floating
in his head, unsettled, disturbing. His mother had been having one-on-one intimate chats with one of his father’s supposed best friends—a best friend who turned Rosemary into a drug addict. The doctors were illegally writing prescriptions for patients who didn’t exist. Their practice was in danger of shutting down if they lost their medical licenses. They’d paid out a large sum of money to somebody but still owed a lot more. Hundreds of thousands more. None of it made much sense to Morgan, and when he felt that he might faint, he put his head between his knees.

He awakened hours later, cheek smashed against the desktop, neck muscles feeling like cast iron. Argo’s was dark and empty. It was after two in the morning. In a daze, Morgan slipped out, thinking that he needed to tell Jersey Barnes what he’d learned.

I’d tackled an
early morning run along the Riverwalk and was surprised to see so many people milling about at the breakfast hour. Every year, tourists seem to stick around longer than in previous years. Wilmington and the area beaches used to be a summertime destination, but now, out-of-towners keep visiting all the way through the holiday season. The day’s summerlike weather had drawn a good weekend crowd, and these folks were early risers.

When I returned to the Block, Brad was at a table with Spud and his friends. And they were playing poker. Nothing like an early morning game of five-card draw. Bobby and Hal were dressed in a polyester version of Tommy Bahama tropical shirts and shorts. Trip wore all white, except for his socks, which were black. Spud’s wiry legs stuck out of blue-and-green-striped shorts that might have been swimming trunks. He wore a muscle shirt beneath a blinding yellow short-sleeved-button-down, unbuttoned and untucked. His feet were stuffed into orange neoprene slippers, the kind of shoes
people sometimes wear on the beach so shells don’t cut their feet. Once I got beyond the collage of loud duds, I noticed an assortment of stuff in the tabletop’s center, and it didn’t consist of money or poker chips.

“Morning, Jersey.” Brad used his hand of playing cards to point at his opponents. “The boys are breaking in their new clothes for the cruise.”

The boys?
They looked like lost old men who’d wandered into a Ringling Brothers dressing room. I shook out my leg muscles and almost bent over to stretch before I realized Brad was watching me watch
the boys.

“Uh, good morning,” I said, straightening. Spud’s friends took turns acknowledging me. Eyes on his cards, Spud grunted his greeting.

“I’ll raise a brand-new sleeve of Titleist golf balls and a sample pack of Viagra.” Bobby fished around in a plaid backpack for a moment before tossing the goods into the pot.

“None of us play golf,” Trip reminded him. “Besides, the balls are pink.”

“Yeah, well,” Bobby said. “You win this hand and get the Viagra, you might start hanging out at the driving range to meet some ladies. Then you can use the pink balls as a gift. They’re a good conversation starter. I read that in the AARP newsletter, that it’s important to start conversations if you want to make new friends.”

“I’ve already got me a lady,” Spud announced. “And by the way, that Viagra ain’t cheap. Use the sample pack and then you’ve got to go buy some more. Although it does work pretty good, so it’s probably worth the money. Problem is, you don’t know exactly when it’ll kick in.”

“I
so
did not need to hear that,” I said to nobody in particular. No wonder Fran had been spending a portion of her nights sleeping above my bar. Or rather, not sleeping. Cracker sauntered over to
greet me and nuzzled my legs. On the other hand, I thought, at least somebody around here is getting some.

Brad folded his hand of cards. Trip fished around in a fanny pack and tossed in a coupon for two free China Buffet early bird specials, arguing that they easily matched the raise value. Spud spread out his cards and fanned his face, looking sweaty and goofy at the same time.

“Hey, kid.” My father gave me the once-over. “In that getup, you look like one of those chicks on TV, on the exercise channel.” He fanned his face again, newly grown mustache twitching from side to side, its tips still aspiring to be handlebars. “I’d bet that people would watch you jump around on TV.”

I looked more closely at my father and instantly recognized the zoned-out look in his eyes. He was still taking the pain pills. I wanted my old father back. The cantankerous, loud, unreasonable one who didn’t spurt out off-the-wall compliments. I held out my hand. “Let me have them, Spud.”

“Have what, for crying out loud?”

“Your pain pills.” The plastic prescription vial had disappeared from my kitchen counter, and I thought he’d finished the pills and thrown it away. Apparently not. “Hand them over.”

“I hurt my leg,” Spud explained to Brad. “Had to go to the hospital ER.”

“You keep taking those pain pills, Spud, and you’re going to do something crazy.” I kept my hand out. “Like ask Fran to marry you.”

“Funny you should mention that,” Spud said dreamily.

“Fran is mad at him,” Hal said. “She found out that we joined the New Age Babes and we’re going on a cruise with a gaggle of women.”

“Yeah, we went shopping for our cruisewear, and Spud brought Fran to help us pick out clothes,” Bobby said. “She wasn’t too happy when she found out what the clothes were for.”

“So your daddy took her next door to the jewelry store to look at
rings,” Hal said. “Told Fran that they could have an engagement party on the ship if she’d join the NAB and go on the cruise with us.”

“What happened?” I heard myself ask.

“Frannie told me I could take the cruise and shove it you-know-where.” Spud cocked his head. “Although I don’t see how you could actually shove a big ship anywhere, much less up there.”

“Fran was wound up tighter than a rattlesnake on a highway,” Trip said. “Said she wouldn’t stand by and watch a bunch of women in swimsuits fussing over your daddy out in the middle of an ocean.”

“I wasn’t thinking right or I’d never have talked them into accepting men into their club,” Spud said. “I don’t even remember being inducted as their president, for crying out loud.”

“My point exactly,” I said. “Give me the pills.”

Muttering, my father produced a prescription container and dropped it in my outstretched hand. The label told me there were no refills left. Thank goodness for that. I dropped the remaining four pills into a glass of water. Spud eyed the glass and licked his lips, much like Cracker when staring at a bowl of peanuts.

“Don’t even think about it,” I said.

Spud harrumphed. “Killjoy.”

“You’ll thank me later.”

Brad extricated himself from the poker game and we went to the outside patio. After I explained my father’s use of pain pills due to his recent brush with yoga, the conversation progressed to more important things. Like whether or not Argo’s was still being watched by the DEA. It would be nice to have something good to report to the judge.

“Every location we consider suspect is still potentially under surveillance,” Brad said, careful in his selection of words. “Argo’s is just another on the list. We’re certain there was a link in the past.”

“Meaning Rosemary?” The earless thug had first mentioned
Morgan’s mother. The list of names I’d found in the safe was in her handwriting. And Karen, the housewife I’d questioned, had said that Rosemary met her in Argo’s restroom to trade drugs for money. Then, of course, there was the telling fact that she had died from a drug overdose.

Ruby brought us two glasses of iced tea and moved off, ears straining for tidbits.

“Yes, meaning Rosemary,” Brad said.

“Obviously you’ve seen the autopsy report,” I said. “You know she died of an overdose. So she was selling
and
using. Okay. But why stick with this now? She’s dead, Garland is dead, and Morgan obviously doesn’t know anything.”

Brad positioned his chair to stay in the umbrella’s shade. “You got part of that right.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Never mind.”

I drank half my tea with one tilt, rehydrating after my run. Brad was just doing his job. Obviously he had kept certain details from me, but there was no need to get overly irritated about it.

“Was it you who searched Morgan’s car and apartment?” I asked.

Brad shook his head no. “We’ve watched him closely. Listened to his phone calls. If we decide to search his place or the restaurant, we’ll do it with a warrant.”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Excuse me?”

I reminded Brad that my interest was to protect the judge’s family, namely Morgan. I didn’t think that people traipsing through the establishment would be good for business or for employee morale. Not to mention Garland and Rosemary’s postmortem reputation.

“Are you trying to tell me what I can and can’t do?”

I smiled, studied my nails, noticed some chipped polish. I needed a manicure. “I’m simply noting the fact that you don’t have
nearly enough to convince a judge to sign a search warrant. All you have is hearsay, from me. And I’ll deny the list ever existed. For that matter, I’ll say you’ve misunderstood the retelling of my conversations with Karen and Pat.”

Brad’s arms folded across his chest. He repositioned his chair again, this time moving into the sunshine. The muscles in his jaw worked.

“Besides,” I continued, “didn’t you conveniently leave me off the incident report from Bob’s Mini-Mart? How will you explain that to your bosses when they find out that not only did I tip you off, but I was there helping you?”

“If it came to that, you’d end up contradicting yourself to cover your ass.”

I gave him my best, most brilliant smile. “So?
I’m
not the one with a career on the line. I’m simply a concerned citizen.”

He mumbled something to himself that might have been “bitch.”

“Did you just call me ‘babe’ again?”

The arms came uncrossed, and the hazel eyes seemed to be reassessing their initial impression of me. “Hardly.”

I
used the Block’s kitchen to make sandwiches, and when I returned, the early-arriving lunch crowd had begun to claim patio tables. Several regulars waved at me. A woman I didn’t recognize wore a tee with a message imprinted on the back: “I ain’t from the South, but I got here as fast as I could.” Her companion wore a New York Mets baseball cap.

I spread out two identical plates: sliced turkey with provolone and horseradish mustard on whole wheat with a side of fruit salad. I felt like eating healthy. And I enjoy a nontraditional breakfast sometimes. Brad seemed the type to eat just about anything at any time.

“Your resourcefulness continues to impress me.” Brad stabbed a chunk of cantaloupe and chewed. “One minute I want to see that enchanting thigh holster again, and the next I wish you’d never dropped into my life.”

“Thanks,” I said. It may have been a compliment. “So what did your people find in Pat’s place?”

Whoever killed the woman had searched her place afterward, Brad said. If there were any drug stashes, they’d been taken. Pat had no criminal record, not even a traffic violation. The DEA was interviewing her social clubs, friends, and husband. Took her computer and BlackBerry, but so far, nothing except old, invalid phone numbers.