Tina Whittle_Tai Randall Mystery 01 (4 page)

Chapter 6

Nothing about Phoenix Corporate Services LLC screamed elite security firm. Its location was in the unsexy industrial area north of the Perimeter, and the building matched its surroundings—three bland stories and a smattering of overlygroomed shrubs. Somewhere I heard the burbling of a fountain against the mono-drone of I-285 traffic.

I shouldered my tote bag and stepped inside, the automatic doors opening and closing with a pneumatic hiss. The receptionist swiveled toward me.

“Hi,” I said. “I’m here to see Kent Landon.”

She made a check in her book, then looked up. She had a sweetheart face framed with tumbling coffee curls, soft round eyes, and the straightest, tightest mouth I’d even seen on a human being. She handed me a clipboard and an ugly badge the size of an index card that proclaimed
VISITOR
in bright blue letters.

“Do I really have to wear this?”

“That’s the rule.”

I fastened it at the hem of my sweater. “I am so sick of rules. Everywhere I’ve turned the last twenty-four godforsaken hours, there’s been someone there spouting off about rules.”

“Take the elevator to the second floor, third office on the right. Mr. Seaver will be waiting.”

I looked up. “I thought I was seeing Mr. Landon?”

She shook her head.

***

Trey’s office was, without a doubt, the most freakishly neat piece of square footage I’d ever seen. More like a MOMA exhibit than a workspace, it featured matte white walls and a slick black floor. Late morning sunlight cut the room into acute angles.

Trey himself was seated at his desk, dressed once again in a black suit and tie. He glanced up as I knocked.

“I thought I was seeing Mr. Landon,” I said. “Then the woman out front told me to find you instead.”

“That’s Yvonne. She’s the administrative assistant.” He returned his eyes to his computer. “Landon assigned me to answer your questions, since your brother’s case was filed under premises liability.”

“What about Mr. Landon?”

“All field work comes under him. But I’m your contact for this matter.” He gestured toward the client chair in front of his desk. “Have a seat.”

I sat. His desktop was a study in geometric precision: mechanical pencils in a row, meticulous stacks of papers with the edges exact. He wheeled his chair backward, pulled something from the printer and handed it to me. It was a formal release of information request with an X where I needed to sign.

“I’ve got an appointment with the firearms certification team in…” He checked his watch. “…twenty-seven minutes. What can I tell you about the case before then?”

I borrowed one of his pens. “You could tell me what’s going on for starters.”

“Starting when?”

“Starting at the beginning.”

“That would be the day before yesterday. Wednesday.” Trey laid a manila folder exactly in the center of his desk. “I met your brother as he was returning from lunch, and he mentioned that he would be working late that night.”

I waited for the rest of the story. There was none. “Okay, so…”

“So he was lying.”

“What makes you say that?”

Trey’s shifted his gaze to the wall behind me. “When he was speaking, his eyes slanted to the left and up, with too much blinking. The rest of the time, his eye contact was too direct and—”

“What does any of this have to do with why he hired you people?”

“Once Eric learned that you’d discovered the body, he requested that I be assigned a level-one personal protection order.” He slid the folder across the desk to me. “Read the case notes so far.”

I did. Mostly it was a repetition of what he’d just told me, all of it time-stamped and cross-indexed—the suspicious conversation, Eric’s request, Landon’s clearance to proceed, official yada-yada, yeah, yeah, yeah—at which point I noticed my name.

“Why am I on the—what is this, the personal protection order?”

“Because you’re the protected party.”

“My brother hired you to be my bodyguard?”

“That’s not the official term, but yes, he did.”

I examined the fine print at the bottom. It looked very official and bloodless, completely at odds with the churning in my gut. “I needed guarding? I was in danger and nobody told me?”

“The danger was hypothetical. My job was to get you from your brother’s house to your hotel room, safely, with no complications.”

“You could have told me!”

“Not without violating client confidentiality.”

“But I was your client!”

“No, your brother was. Is. And I’m certain that he’ll eventually explain—”

“But he’s not explaining anything, not to me, not to you! He’s on a boat somewhere in the Caribbean sipping daiquiris while I’m dodging cops and robbers and—oh yeah—a murderer!”

Trey almost frowned at that, but caught himself. “As I said—”

“I heard what you said. I just don’t like it” I slapped the folder shut and slid it back to him. “So what the hell were you and Landon doing at the house last night?”

“Your brother requested that Phoenix collect his files and computer records for safekeeping. Simpson is the technical expert, but since I’m premises liability, Landon thought I should assist even though hardware is not my field of expertise.”

“Let me guess. Your ‘field of expertise’ is the James Bond stuff while Simpson gets to rewire things.” And then I remembered. “Until you got him fired.”

Trey narrowed his eyes. “He was negligent enough to desert his post, which allowed you to infiltrate the premises—”

“I didn’t infiltrate anything!”

“—which then created an unpredictable situation that could have ended badly.”

He had a point there. Nothing like an edged weapon through the gullet to end things badly.

Trey continued. “Simpson was entirely unsuited for surveillance work, and I have no idea why Landon assigned him to my cases. However, it’s immaterial now. He’s been terminated.”

I scanned his features. Was he hiding something behind that professional blandness? Or was I just getting paranoid? I rubbed my temples against an encroaching headache.

Trey stood. “I’m fielding a conference call with your brother and Landon tomorrow morning. You’re welcome to join us. In the meantime, wait here. Yvonne is on her way with the last of your paperwork.”

He walked around the desk and stopped right in front of me, uncomfortably close. I stood too, toe to toe, refusing to be muscled.

“Look,” I said, “I want to work with you on this. A woman is dead, and my brother is involved, which makes me involved, like it or not. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is this: I’m sorry I threatened you with a sword, and I’m willing to forget the whole thing if you are.”

He shook his head. “I don’t forget.”

And then he walked out of the office, not even looking over his shoulder, leaving me standing there furious, but unsurprised.

Chapter 7

I had a perverse desire to trash his office, maybe dump his pencils on the floor, toss some paper around. Instead I sat at his fancy desk and put my feet up, then took off the stupid badge and threw it in his in-box.

Trey Seaver. Who the hell did he think he was?

Who the hell was he?

The hallway was quiet, the door half-closed. The opportunity was irresistible. Keeping my eye out for Yvonne, I tried the file drawers on Trey’s desk. As expected, they were locked up tight. But then I tried his top drawer, and to my utter astonishment, it slid right open.

Too damn easy, I thought. Probably a trap, probably being recorded on some hidden camera. I didn’t care. If anyone asked, I would say I was looking for a pen.

There wasn’t much to inventory, however. One bottle of prescription medicine—Topomax, half-empty—and two bottles of over-the-counter pain reliever. A black silk tie, neatly laid out. Four fountain pens. A box of pencil lead. And two manila folders, one labeled
LEGAL
and the other labeled
MEDICAL.

I checked the hallway. Still deserted.

The first folder contained a stack of official papers, including a last will and testament, a power of attorney, and a living will, all of them in Trey’s name and recently updated. In every case, the name Dan Garrity featured prominently, as beneficiary, as executor, as carrier of Trey’s final wishes concerning his departure from this world.

The medical file was even heavier. I paged through an ominous alphabet soup of words: Glasgow coma scale, Serum S 100 B readings, ICP monitor. There were copies of x-rays and MRI scans too, head shots, all of them listing the patient as Trey Seaver, and all of them featuring gray squiggles and gray fuzzy spots and gray blotches.

What was it Garrity had said the night before, about Trey?
This explains some things, but not all.
I hadn’t had a chance to ask him what he meant then, not with Landon stomping around like Alexander the Great. But I knew one thing—I was gonna make that chance as soon as I got out of Phoenix. Most people didn’t have a desk drawer full of cranial scans, and I wanted to know why this one did.

“Miss?”

I jerked. A man slouched in the doorway, silver hair swept across his forehead, white teeth brilliant under a matching slash of a mustache. I casually slipped the folder back into the drawer, but one of the papers slipped to the floor. I covered it with my tote bag.

Then I stood. “May I help you?”

“I was looking for Trey.”

“He just stepped out, Mr.…?”

If this gentleman knew I was snooping, he wasn’t showing it. He had an odd face, like Cupid gone bad, but the rest of him was tastefully dressed in stone-colored trousers, white shirt open at the neck. His entire manner said that even though it was obvious I knew who he was, if I wanted to play like I didn’t, he could be a regular joe about it.

He came into the office and stuck out his hand. “Mark Beaumont.”

He was right—I should have recognized him. Mark Beaumont was Atlanta’s version of Donald Trump, and he walked, as they say, in tall cotton. If I remembered correctly, he was the owner of Beau Elan, the apartment complex where Eliza Compton had worked.

An interesting development, this.

I took his hand. “Tai Randolph. Pleased to meet you.”

“Same here.” He gave me the up and down. “You must be new.”

“You could say that.”

“So I can leave these with you then?”

He pulled a stack of photographs from an envelope and handed them to me. The top one gave me goosebumps. It was Eliza, a black and white headshot. She looked serious and pleasant; only the tilt of her head revealed the playfulness I’d glimpsed on Facebook.

“That one’s for the press release,” Mark said. “The rest are for Trey, that one especially.”

He pointed to the second photograph in the stack, a glossy 5X7, the kind of party shot popular with society magazines. I recognized Mark Beaumont, looking tan and fit, in a handshake with Trey, looking pale and stiff. An auburn-haired beauty I didn’t recognize stood at Trey’s side, her hand resting on his shoulder, and there was a woman next to Mark too, a dark-haired exotic creature.

Mark tapped it approvingly. “Not bad, huh? This new guy took them. Trey doesn’t usually do photos, but look, he’s almost smiling in this one.”

Mark was wrong—Trey was nowhere near smiling. There was something subtly alert in his expression, however, and I suspected it had to do with the redhead at his side. She was barely five feet tall, as delicate and exquisite as a music-box ballerina, and unlike the others in the photo, she had no interest in the camera. She had eyes only for Trey.

I nodded like I knew what Mark was talking about. “And this was taken at the…”

“Blue Knights Mardi Gras Ball.”

Mardi Gras. Tuesday night. Three nights ago.

“It was Charley’s first time chairing the event, but she did great. The police chief himself said so.”

Charley Beaumont, the black-haired woman in the photo. Mark’s wife. I paged through the rest of the shots. The framing was always askew and the subjects looked startled, as if the photographer had bounded at them from behind a bush. There were more of the Beaumonts, including a shot of them with the mayor, Mardi Gras masks in hand. And then, sudden and startling—

My brother.

He looked every inch the society guy—black tux, champagne glass, an open smile on his face. Utterly at ease, even with strands of purple and gold beads around his neck. When had he gotten this life, these friends? When had I stopped knowing anything about him?

As I studied the photograph, Charley Beaumont herself came through the door. I recognized her even before she slinked her arm through Mark’s elbow. Sharp-featured with high maintenance hair, she looked older in person, pushing forty easily. A red sheath dress skimmed her size-two frame.

Mark waved in my direction. “Meet Trey’s new assistant.”

I didn’t correct him, just stuck out my hand. “Tai Randolph.”

Charley took it silently, still holding onto Mark. She had no grip whatsoever, and I felt self-conscious, like someone had handed me a Ming vase. Her eyes dipped to the photos in my hand. “What’s that?”

Mark explained. “It’s the shots that new photographer sent over, from Mardi Gras.”

“When did you get these?”

“Wednesday morning.”

“Let me see.”

I handed the photos over. She took them to Trey’s desk and fanned them across the surface, like a magician performing a card trick. “I didn’t like that photographer. He kept lunging at people.”

“So don’t hire him again.”

“I didn’t hire him this time.” She restacked the photographs into a sloppy pile. “I just spoke with Landon. He’s not going to make the meeting.”

So I wasn’t the only one Landon had stood up. I wondered what he was up to, and didn’t like any of the answers that sprung to mind.

Mark’s expression sobered. “I’m sure you’ve heard about the young girl who was murdered. She was one of our employees at Beau Elan, our newest development. She was a tenant too, a fine person. Charley and I are offering a reward.”

I waited for him to recognize that I was the woman who’d found his murdered employee. It didn’t happen. He was too busy waiting for my reaction.

“Wow,” I said, “that’s very generous.”

“The least we can do.”

Charley removed Eliza’s black and white from the assorted other shots and placed it in Trey’s inbox. The rest she shoved in her purse. I tried to sound curious and not confrontational.

“You decided not to leave them?”

Charley froze. “What?”

“The Mardi Gras photos.”

Her eyes snapped with annoyance. “I prefer more traditional shots, not this paparazzi crap.” She took Mark’s elbow again. “We’ll find a better one for Trey, sweetheart. In the meantime—”

“I know. The interview at Channel 11.” He exhaled loudly. “It’s such a tragedy, a young woman’s senseless death.”

“Eliza Compton.”

“Yes. So young.” He shook his head somberly, then held out his hand for a final shake. “Very nice to meet you, Tai. I assume we’ll be seeing you next weekend? At the reception?”

I had no idea what he was talking about.

“Of course,” I said. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

***

Yvonne came to walk me out before I could return the fallen MRI to its proper place, so I left Phoenix with the contraband tucked in my tote bag. I hadn’t planned it that way, and was convinced alarm bells would go off and burly men would take me by the elbow as soon as I went through the doors.

To my astonishment, nothing happened. It was ridiculously easy.

I cranked the car and breathed a fervent wish that returning the thing would be just as easy. But first, I needed some answers. And that meant a call to Detective Garrity.