Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: An Addison Holmes Mystery (Addison Holmes Mysteries Book 5) (13 page)

I
wasn’t
as lucky finding a parking spot going back to the agency. At least not a spot that didn’t require me to work parallel parking magic that I didn’t possess. Instead, I parked six blocks away down a street where one of the buildings was under construction. I assumed there were no cars parked on the street just in case a piece of construction equipment rammed into their car. I was oddly okay with it.

The walk back to the agency didn’t take long, and when I walked up the stairs and into the foyer I immediately smelled chocolate chip cookies. Lucy was sitting at her desk, her long red nails clacking at the keyboard.

“Who has the cookies?” I asked, closing the door behind me.

Lucy ignored me and went about her typing. Her desk was a big mahogany behemoth that was shaped like a U. I approached the desk and decided to try another approach. “Anything come in for me?”

She kept typing with her right hand and picked up one of the loose notes she kept organized ruthlessly on her desk, and handed it to me.

“Did you hear me about the cookies?” I asked again, but it was of no use. Every tactic I’d ever tried failed. I’d never once heard Lucy say a single word. “They smell good. And I really need one.”

She stopped her clacking on the keyboard and I thought I’d finally gotten through the barrier. Instead she pointed her finger in the direction of the conference room and then went back to typing.

“Someday,” I said with sigh, “I’m going to get you to spill your secrets. You won’t know what hit you.”

I unbuttoned my coat and headed straight for the conference room instead of my office. I was pulling apart the Velcro to take the holster from around my waist when I pushed open the door and came face to face with Savage.

“Need help with that?” he asked, eyeing my midriff.

I froze and stared for a few seconds. He was dressed for work in his habitual black suit and white shirt, but he’d left his tie off and the first couple of buttons of his collar were undone.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

“Sure you were. You can’t dangle a case like this in front of me and not expect me to bite.”

I felt my insides do a slow roll when he said the word bite. That conjured images I wasn’t altogether comfortable with.

“Stop it,” I said, narrowing my eyes and getting my hormones under control.

He held up his hands in surrender. “I’m not doing anything.” He grinned and I knew as well as he did that he was full of baloney. “I brought cookies.”

“I should’ve known it was you,” I said, eyeing the box of cookies on the table. I could tell they were still warm and gooey.

Kate chose that moment to join us and she headed straight for the cookie box, not making polite conversation until she’d bitten into one and felt the sugar rush through her bloodstream.

“I’m glad you called in Savage,” Kate said, taking a chair. “I figure we’re working this thing wrong. We need to work it in micro levels, like a crime scene. You’re focused on Anthony Dunnegan. But he’s alive.”

“Unfortunately,” I said, making Savage snort with laughter. It was then I noticed Kate had the magnetic whiteboards out.

“We know there are several like crimes that have been committed over the last several years, but they’re in different cities and states. Working little pieces of a lot of cases isn’t going to help us solve this case. At least not to the satisfaction of our client. What we need to do is focus on the crime that happened last week. We need to treat it as if it is an active murder investigation, so that’s what you’re going to do,” Kate said, looking at me. “And Savage and I are going to try to see what we can pull together on the other victims. If we’re lucky, we can tie it all up in a big red bow.”

“You’d better let Addison eat a cookie before you get too deep into this,” Savage said. “She’s got that look.”

I didn’t have to be told twice. I headed to the table and grabbed a warm cookie. And then I grabbed another for good measure and took a seat. Kate could be long-winded in these kinds of meetings.

Kate was great at this part of the job, and I often wondered how she’d been able to give up police work. Sometimes I wondered if something had happened she’d never told me about. Because she really seemed to love it.

She set up the boards with pictures. The first had Jonathon Hunt, Anthony Dunnegan, and a woman I didn’t recognize on it.

“That’s Abby Rhodes,” Kate said before I could ask. “Our Atlanta victim with the missing heart.” Then she put up six other photographs beneath the three on top and my eyes widened. “And these are the hits that came up in just the short amount of time since you called Savage. Nine victims, ranging in age from twenty to forty-seven. All with type O-negative blood. All but two of them were killed, and all in a six-state radius—Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama.”

Savage read off data to her while I watched and ate cookies. The pedi-cab ride had given me an appetite. Beneath each picture, Kate wrote what state the victims were found in and what organ was taken from them. On the middle board she posted what hotel each victim was found in. There were no repeats, or even the same chain used.

“Work it out hypothetically,” Savage said. “We’re running a black market organ donor ring. Who do we need in place to make it work successfully?”

“I’d say the biggest part of the job is someone who can do the surgery,” I said. “The medical examiner’s report on Hunt and the hospital report on Dunnegan both said the same thing. The surgery was done by a professional, in their opinion, as it was done so well.”

On the third board Kate wrote
surgeon
at the top.

“The surgeon isn’t the mastermind. The surgeon is a necessary tool for a successful operation,” Savage said. “Money is always the motive for something like this.”

“Ugly Mo said prices started around two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” I said.

“
Ugly Mo
?” Savage asked, shaking with silent laughter. “You’re friends with Ugly Mo Jackson? I’m sure Nick is loving that.”

“We’re not friends,” I said. “I mean, we’re kind of friendly. I think he and Aunt Scarlet had sex, but I don’t want to think about that if I don’t have to.”

“Christ, that’s a horrible image,” Kate said with a grimace.

“You’ll be glad to know she explained to me why Mo needs the cane to walk with.”

Kate and Savage both broke down with laughter.

“If I were them, I’d be shopping for clients, right?” I said. “There’s a national transplant list. The people on the list have to be ready to go at a moment’s notice, as soon as the organ becomes available. It’s a very time-sensitive process.”

“Okay, so a
transporter
,” Kate said, listing it under surgeon. “Which means they’re doing both surgeries not too far away from each other.”

“There’s no way the donor could receive the organ in a hotel room,” I said. “The recovery period is too long. They’d need equipment and they’d need to stay close by the patient for at least a little while to make sure that nothing went wrong. When you’re paying that much money for your life, you’re going to want some kind of guarantee that it’s going to work. If they couldn’t do the surgery in a hotel or a hospital, really, the only thing left is the recipient’s home.”

“It’s only been a little over a week since Dunnegan’s kidney was taken,” Kate said. “They might still be in the area.”

“The surgeon wouldn’t take care of the patient on a day-to-day basis,” Savage said.

“But a nurse would,” Kate and I said at the same time, and she added
nurse
to the board.

“That would also provide an explanation for all the medications they would need for just one surgery. Anesthesia for the victim and the organ recipient. Then all the drugs to help the recipient adjust to the new organ.”

“Why not just write a prescription and let the pharmacy take care of it?” I asked. “A lot easier to do that than try to steal the right amounts from a hospital without getting caught.”

“And that’s not something we could check because of privacy laws,” Savage said. “They could be filling prescriptions right down the street and we’d never have a clue.”

“You mentioned a shopping list,” Kate said. “That the financers would be shopping for clients who not only fit the income bracket, but also the rare blood type they need to drive the price up. Who has access to the transplant list?”

“That’s easy enough to check on,” Savage said, making a few notes and then opening his laptop.

I looked at my watch and saw it was almost four o’clock. I needed to get back in action so I could talk to someone at Charlie’s before things got too crazy. And then I needed to hit the Comfort Inn where Anthony Dunnegan’s surgery was done and talk to the night manager.

“I need to get back out there,” I said. “Seeing the big picture like this really helped reorganize things in my mind. I’ll keep y’all posted. I’m going to use Rosemarie for backup tonight if she’s available. Sometimes things don’t go as planned when we work together, so I may need you both on call.”

Kate and Savage both stared at me with identical expressions, and I waved my fingers at them and left. Then I came back inside and grabbed a few more cookies for the road. Rosemarie would be upset if I didn’t bring her any.

S
chool was
out for the afternoon, so Rosemarie answered her phone on the first ring.

“I was hoping you would call,” she said. “Guess who’s back in town?”

I could hear her nervous giddiness at being the first to be able to tell me the news. My mother had tried to call three times yesterday. I’d let all of them go to voicemail for a couple of reasons. The first being that she always called on Sundays to check to see if I’d be attending services, just in case she needed to save me a seat in the pew. The second reason being that I wanted to avoid any conversation that might include Aunt Scarlet. My mother and Scarlet got along like oil and water. Probably because they were so much alike.

But there was also the possibility that she’d been wanting to pass on whatever news it was that Rosemarie was about to tell me. There wasn’t a lot to do in Whiskey Bayou, so gossip was a big pastime. And my mother always prided herself on having the most up to date information. She was better than TMZ.

“Who?” I asked, not really caring. People didn’t really leave Whiskey Bayou. It was like a black hole. You might try to escape, but familial roots would suck you back in eventually.

“Veronica Wade. She came driving through town, proud as punch in a little white BMW yesterday. Even had the top down to make sure everyone saw her passing through. Had a man with her in the passenger seat. Poor fellow.”

I’d headed back to my office to change clothes. I couldn’t exactly go out to a bar and hope to get any information dressed in yoga pants and a sweatshirt, but Rosemarie’s news stopped me cold.

Veronica Wade was my archenemy. I
loathed
her. And it wasn’t just because she was the one my fiancé had decided to consummate our non-marriage with. We’d gone through school together and she’d been a terror. She was worse as an adult, and I hadn’t been able to escape her, because we’d taught together at James Madison High as well.

“She was visiting her mother,” Rosemarie went on. “I’ve heard Delores is in a real bad way after the scandal with you and Veronica last year. Apparently she’s become a recluse and a hoarder, and now she’s bedridden because her heart can’t take the strain. Doctor Chance’s wife told my mother that they were expecting her to keel over at any moment. I guess Veronica was just paying her last respects.”

I grunted noncommittally. I didn’t have anything nice to say, so I figured it was best to keep my mouth shut. I closed my office door behind me and put Rosemarie on speaker so I could change clothes.

“And Carol Labo saw her at the gas station and told me that Veronica got her implants fixed and they were bigger than ever, and that she got a new nose job. You know there’s bad blood between Carol and Veronica, so Carol said she just smiled sweetly and asked Veronica if they meant to put her new nose on crooked like that. Stunned Veronica speechless long enough that Carol was able to drive away without Veronica clawing her eyes out. I would’ve like to have seen it myself.”

“Veronica’s all in the past,” I said, pulling on a pair of leggings and a little black skirt. “What she does is no concern of mine any longer. I don’t have to see her little beady eyes staring at me from down the hall anymore, so I consider that a win. She’s a miserable and unhappy woman who finds pleasure in trying to destroy others. She’ll reap what she sows one day.”

“That’s a very adult way of looking at it,” Rosemarie said, surprise evident in her voice.

“Thank you. Besides, I heard from my mother who heard from one of the ladies that works in the gynecologist’s office that Veronica contracted a really stubborn case of the clap. I figure that’s just karma being a bitch.”

I didn’t have a huge variety of clothes in my suitcase, but I found a long-sleeved, stretchy, black wrap shirt that made my cleavage look good, and I found a silver necklace with a dangly pendant that hung between my breasts to break up all the black.

“I need some backup tonight,” I told her. “You in?”

There was silence on the other end for a few seconds and then I heard Rosemarie’s excited exhalation of air. “You bet. I’m heading that way now. Give me fifteen minutes.”

“Take thirty. You’re going to want to come dressed for a night out.”

“Like a superhero?” she asked.

“No, like a normal person going out for the evening,” I said. “We don’t want to attract too much attention.”

“Got it. Incognito,” she said.

I sighed and pulled out the black high-heeled booties with the silver buckles and slid my feet inside them. Incognito could mean any number of things to Rosemarie.

“Oh, by the way,” I said. “Tell Magic Mike thanks for the paint job. I didn’t expect him to not charge me.”

“You were right about letting him be on the bottom. Didn’t have to worry about his lack of rhythm at all. Of course, he hurt his back toward the end there. I told him I had things under control, but you know how men are. They don’t listen worth squat.”

I just agreed to keep her from going into any more detail. We decided Rosemarie would park at the agency in half an hour and we’d leave from there in the van. Oddly enough, I still felt comforted by Ugly Mo’s assurance that he was going to take care of things with Fat Louie.

I was feeling pretty good, despite the continued stiffness down the left side of my body from my fall, but the Icy Hot had helped tremendously and I could mostly move without groaning. I slicked on some sassy red lipstick and added some silver dangle earrings that matched the pendant.

I still had twenty minutes until Rosemarie arrived, so I decided to call the pedi-cab companies and see if there was a way to find out who’d been working the area outside of Charlie’s on the Friday night Anthony lost his kidney.

I did an internet search and came up with two different pedi-cab companies that served the Savannah area. I was dialing the first number when I noticed something glaringly obvious.

Tri-Star Pedi-Cabs served the downtown Savannah area, and their cabs were red with the Tri-Star logo on the back along with their phone number. Moji had been an employee of Tri-Star. The other company was called Garden City Pedi-Cabs and their cabs were a dark hunter-green with gold writing on the back. From what I could tell, there were no other companies listed. Which begged the question, who was the dreadlocked guy in the yellow pedi-cab and what company did he belong to?

It was still ten minutes until Rosemarie arrived, and I was starting to get antsy. The pedi-cab angle was really niggling at me, and I could’ve kicked myself for not trying to talk to the dreadlocked driver when I’d see him earlier in the day.

I grabbed my red Kate Spade clutch and shoved my lipstick, keys, money, and ID inside, and then headed toward the front lobby. It was almost five o’clock and it was starting to get dark outside. Lucy was away from her desk and the halls were quiet. I was assuming that Kate and Savage were still working the other angles and that they’d call if anything new came up.

My cellphone rang just as I reached the door and I saw it was Aunt Scarlet.

“Addison,” she whispered. “You’ve got to rescue me. Get me out of here.”

“What happened? Are you okay? Give me an address and I’m on my way.”

“I’m calling from the bathroom at The Ballastone. I’ve changed my mind. I
do
want to go back. I can’t take it anymore. I’m ninety years old, even though I’ve been told I could pass for sixty-five, but I’m just plum worn out.”

I was trying to grasp what she was talking about. And then it hit me. Mo had told her once she went black, she’d never go back. I stopped and thumped my head against the wall.

“I found out he takes those little blue pills. What the heck does he expect me to do with that sucker for four hours? I can’t feel my lady parts anymore. They’re completely numb. I don’t think I’m meant for an anaconda. I’m good with a plain old boa constrictor any day of the week. Or maybe I need to switch to garden snakes, but I hate to set my sights so low.”

“Please, Lord,” I said while my head was still pressed against the wall. “If you have any mercy at all, just strike me dead.”

“I told Mo he’d have to use that pill on somebody else tonight, because I’ve got to go out with you. He said he appreciated my work ethic and that maybe his wife was home. So can you come get me? He’s waiting here to make sure I get out okay. I think he’s worried about me, which is sweet, but annoying. I was so tuckered out after the last go around that I passed out for a little while. I think he thought he’d killed me.”

“I’ll come get you right now,” I said, just to get her to stop talking. “Meet me out front.”

I sent Rosemarie a text and let her know I had to run a quick errand and that I’d be back in a few minutes, and then I ran outside and remembered I’d had to park six blocks away.

“Dammit,” I said. I was in heels and in a hurry.

My phone buzzed again and I looked down to see the Nick alarm. A black muscle truck slid to a stop in front of me and the passenger side window rolled down.

“Need a ride?” Nick asked.

“Actually, I do, if you don’t mind.” I hitched myself into the truck and told him where I’d parked. “I’m kind of in a hurry.”

Nick gritted his teeth and smiled, and I could tell he was still annoyed with me about the Ugly Mo thing.

“I’m going to assume you’re heading out to work,” he said. “I can’t imagine where you’ve got your gun hidden in that outfit.”

I pinched my lips tight and said, “Wouldn’t you like to know.” But I wanted to roll my eyes. I’d been in such a hurry that I’d forgotten to put it back on after I’d changed.

“Because I know you wouldn’t be dumb enough to be traipsing around unarmed after you and Ugly Mo have become such good friends.”

I sat up very straight in the seat. “Of course I’m armed,” I lied. “And Mo is actually a very nice man. As far as I can tell,” I said as an afterthought. “I think he and Aunt Scarlet are kind of dating.”

The little vein in Nick’s temple throbbed. “He’s a criminal. He brokers every illegal deal in the Southeast United States.”

“He told me he was a broker,” I said primly. “But it’s not like I’m hanging out with him on purpose. All I did was buy a car from the man. I wasn’t expecting Scarlet to seduce him and bring him along for the ride. None of this is my fault.”

Nick grimaced and turned onto the street where the van was parked. It didn’t look like it had been damaged and there were no new messages spray-painted along the sides.

“It’s never your fault,” he said. “But you somehow always end up right in the middle of things. I’m hearing whispers that Kate put you on the Anthony Dunnegan case. I asked around. George Carmichel was the officer who responded when the ambulance brought Anthony to the hospital. The department really tried to put pressure on Dunnegan to file a report, but he wouldn’t do it. He was scared shitless.”

“Considering he’d just had his kidney surgically removed, I’m not all that surprised.”

“Something as well-orchestrated as the Anthony Dunnegan job wasn’t done by amateurs. It’s a network that would need constantly moving parts and contacts. Do you know who facilitates those kinds of jobs?” Nick asked.

I was getting a sinking feeling in my stomach, but didn’t say anything.

“A
broker
does,” he continued. “It’s funny your acquaintance with Ugly Mo started at the same time you picked up this case.”

I wasn’t totally convinced, but Nick had planted seeds of doubt in my mind. Mo had admitted to having knowledge about the organization. Maybe he was more involved than he’d let on.

“My point is,” Nick said. “I love you. I want you safe. And when I see you in potential danger I just want to protect you. Can you understand that?”

He’d taken the edge right off my anger. “Yes,” I told him softly. I felt the same way when he went to work every day.

“Good.”

He grabbed me by the back of the neck and pulled me toward him, kissing me long and hard, until I was breathless and couldn’t quite remember why I’d been in such a hurry to begin with. And then I did remember. Scarlet was with Ugly Mo. And she could be in more danger than she thought.

“I’ve got to go,” I said, pushing open the truck door.

“Be safe. And call me if you need anything. Don’t be stubborn because your deadline is ticking.”

“You just had to throw that in there, didn’t you?” I asked.

Nick grinned and I felt my heart flip slowly in my chest. I waved bye and hopped in the van. The good news about parking six blocks from the agency was that I was closer to The Ballastone. I peeled out into the street in my haste. I didn’t breathe a sigh of relief until I saw Scarlet standing at the base of the stairs next to the bellman. Ugly Mo was nowhere in sight, and I felt myself relax.

And then I saw the horrified look on the bellman’s face and realized the reason. Scarlet was wearing black leggings, a black long-sleeved shirt, and a white, rabbit fur vest. She had on knee-high riding boots and a black-and-white silk scarf tied artfully around her perfectly coifed hair. She looked like a perfectly respectable grandmotherly type, in the style of Jackie Onassis. The only problem was that she had a giant bag of ice between her legs that came up the front and back like a sanitary napkin and she had it fastened to her body with black duct tape. It looked like she was wearing an ice diaper.

My eyes met the bellman’s, and I could tell he was going to need a lot of therapy to recover, but he opened the passenger side door for Scarlet and held her arms as she got settled in.

“Umm,” I said once we pulled away from the hotel and were headed back to pick up Rosemarie.

“Ingenious, isn’t it?” she asked. “I figured it’d at least help the swelling go down. It reminds me of back in the war days when all I had was my wits and the materials at hand. I once made a catapult out of branches, my undergarments, and rosary beads. I sent a coded message right into the general’s bedroom. Saved a lot of lives with that one.”

I pressed my lips together and circled around Telfair Square so we’d pull up directly in front of the agency. I spotted Rosemarie from the other end of the block.

The word incognito must have multiple definitions. She was wearing a long-sleeved, canary-yellow, one-piece jumpsuit and black wedge heels. I couldn’t decide if she looked more like the guys that collect hazardous waste or a Teletubby, but whichever it was, incognito she was not. Her hair was back to its Farrah Fawcett glory and she was wearing fake eyelashes that looked a little like spiders.