Who Killed Tiffany Jones? (6 page)

She decided that now was a perfect time to try again.

Thankful to have something concrete to do, Kim strode around her wide mahogany desk, sat back in her plush black-leather chair, and grabbed the phone. She dialed Klaus on his private line at home, thinking that that would be the easiest way to catch him.

The phone rang five times before a woman’s voice came on the line and instructed her to leave a message.

That was strange. Even if Klaus wasn’t taking any calls, his personal assistant Denise always picked up the line, usually before the second ring. Kim didn’t want to start worrying over nothing, but this was strange. Where was he?

That thought made her remember that she’d also planned to call Tiffany’s personal assistant Maria. Kim flipped open her Palm Pilot and scrolled to Maria’s name. Maria lived with her mother and younger sister in an apartment up in Washington Heights.

Someone picked up the phone almost before Kim heard it start ringing and said, “Hola?”

16470_ch01.qxd 7/12/02 4:33 PM Page 36

36

W H O K I L L E D T I F FA N Y J O N E S ?

“Good morning,” Kim said. “I’m looking for Maria Casells.”

“Who is this?” the woman asked in a heavily accented voice.

“This is Kim, Kim Carlyle—I was Tiffany Jones’s manager. Rita . . .

is that you?”

“Oh. Si, Miss Carlyle. It’s me. I’m sorry. I thought I recognized your voice, but I wasn’t sure.”

“Rita, I’m looking for your sister. I haven’t seen her since the other night and I wanted to make sure that she’s okay.”

“Maria’s gone, Miss Carlyle.”

“Gone? What do you mean?”

“She’s gone. She left the country and said she was going home.”

“But when? Why so suddenly?”

“I don’t know, Miss Carlyle,” Rita said. “We were surprised too. I actually thought you might be her calling to tell us where she’s staying.

We called my dad’s family in Santo Domingo but she hasn’t shown up there and my mom’s family hasn’t seen her yet either. Me and my mom, we’re getting worried.”

“When did she leave?” Kim asked.

“The morning after Tiffany died, God rest her soul. She said she had gotten a hold of some money and she was going to use it to go away because the reporters were too much. The phone didn’t stop ringing that night or the next day. They kept trying to say things about my sister that weren’t true.”

“You haven’t heard from her since?”

“No. Nothing. If she gets in touch with you, will you ask her to call us? My mother isn’t handling this too well. She’s scared now.”

“Of course, Rita. Anything I hear, I’ll let you know immediately.”

Kim hung up the phone feeling more uneasy than before. It made sense that a shy, sensitive girl like Maria would run from the unwanted spotlight. But why wouldn’t she tell her family where she was? It didn’t add up.

16470_ch01.qxd 7/12/02 4:33 PM Page 37

“ M a v i s K a y e ”

37

As she sat with her hand resting on the receiver, the phone rang again. She glanced over at the caller I.D.; it was Universal Studios.

So much for having nothing to do.

Atlanta

Although he wasn’t certain of any immediate danger, Ruff Daddy decided to change his schedule. If anyone had found out where he was supposed to be, changing the schedule might throw them off. The plan wasn’t foolproof because, besides Audrey Chung and, maybe, Mo, he wasn’t certain he could trust anybody. Instead of waiting until after the concert to talk to Brixton, at 7 P.M. he went unannounced to the Westin Peachtree Plaza where the rapper was staying.

Brixton agreed to join Ruff and his posse, and make a quick trip to the in-home studio of one of Ruff Daddy’s friends, where they could listen to more of Brixton’s demo tracks.

Candido drove the Lincoln Navigator. Sitting with him in the front passenger’s seat was Freddy Carmichael, the off-duty Atlanta detective referred by Kim. They had decided to celebrate and party a little, so they brought Lil’ Luv, a voluptuous dark-skinned exotic dancer with a very flattering short blond bush-baby hairdo. She sat in the second row of seats.

As the only female in the posse she had already made it known that she was “down for whatever with whoever.” Brixton and Mo sat on either side of her, talking across her.

“Hey, you know it’s funny,” Mo shouted above the sound of Dr.

Dre’s “Rat-tat-tat-tat, late at night with my gat” coming from the CD

player. “I can’t help it. Every time they tell me some dude is British, I expect to see a little fem white guy, and then we roll up on a big black nigga like you with a British accent.”

16470_ch01.qxd 7/12/02 4:33 PM Page 38

38

W H O K I L L E D T I F FA N Y J O N E S ?

“I love the way you talk,” Lil’ Luv said, grinning to show off her gold-capped tooth, which matched her gold nose ring and gold tongue ring.

Ruff Daddy sat silently in the third row of seats. He listened to the conversation, but his mind was elsewhere. What had really happened to Tiffany, and where the hell was Klaus? Was the forced landing in Baltimore of his lease jet just an accident? Who was John Williams?

Were the guys in North Carolina really cops? His mind was racing with unanswered questions.

Ruff Daddy stared out of the window trying to come up with answers when suddenly the deafening sound of real gunfire and shat-tered glass and metal exploded in his ears. Candido ducked and swerved the Lincoln across on-coming traffic to escape the Jeep that had pulled alongside them. Before Ruff ducked he saw what looked like a Mac-10 submachine gun and an AK-47 assault rifle belching fire from the window of the Jeep.

Both Freddy Carmichael and Mo Hump drew their guns, but by the time the Lincoln came to a halt the Jeep had sped away. Candido had sideswiped two vehicles before he pulled the SUV to the curb on the other side of Piedmont Avenue. Lil’ Luv started screaming when she saw that Mo Hump was bleeding from an arm wound and Brixton’s head had nearly been severed from his body.

16470_ch01.qxd 7/12/02 4:33 PM Page 39

,

<

<

,

FOUR

Dallas—Wednesday, July 18

K . J . H u n t e r
insisted that he had been involved with only one foreigner—Brigette Nguyen. Of course being from South Texas that did not include “Wets,” or “Wetbacks,” as Mexicans were called by the locals. They were called Wets because, according to the widely held view, most of them had, or their parents had, waded across the Rio Grande to get into the United States. Still, they were not considered foreigners; there were too many of them and, by now, more than a few had genuine Texan blood. The way K. J. saw it, Brigette was his first foreigner, even though he’d slept with plenty of Wets since his high- school days.

On the morning of the Lone Star Jewelry Show and Diamond Expo International, K. J. was busily working the phone as he waited for Brigette. He called her the “little Korean,” even though she was from Vietnam and really wasn’t that small. Subtle distinctions didn’t mean 16470_ch01.qxd 7/12/02 4:33 PM Page 40

40

W H O K I L L E D T I F FA N Y J O N E S ?

much to him. To him she was just a hot little yellowish-brown woman whose country the U.S. of A. had once been at war with back before he was born. When he met her four months ago, he had only been interested in sleeping with her. But once he discovered she knew more about diamonds than he did, he brought her into the business. It was a perfect arrangement; her work was more than satisfactory on every level.

K. J. was only twenty-seven but he was a self-made millionaire, with, of course, the help that his family’s oil industry millions gave him. But it had been almost two years since he dipped into the family vault. He had his own fortune now, and it was growing every day. The 2001 drop in the market had barely fazed him since he never had any faith in trendy high-tech stocks and had sold the few he owned before the crash on the advice of his brother, Bryan, a lawyer with deep Wall Street connections. He had learned to stick to the basics with stock investments, which for a Texan meant oil and cattle. But he also had the instincts and unblinking gall of a crafty, frontier-town saloon gambler. And of late it was his proprietorship in the gemstone business and major holding in a national mortuary company with funeral homes in thirty-two states, a doubly profitable enterprise, that were the sources of his quickly accrued capital. In addition, he owned a booming Dallas-based luxury used-car dealership that was a consistent money-maker.

He was thinking about Brigette as he sat on the side of his bed at the Fairmont, a four-star, European-style, twenty-five-story hotel located in the Dallas Arts District. The Fairmont was the best that a cowboy town like Dallas could come to mustering a London/Paris flavor.

The district surrounding the Fairmont was touted as the largest urban cultural district in the nation. It was dotted with galleries, theaters, performing and visual arts schools, art museums, and the Meyer-son Symphony Center, where cowboys, trying to acquire a taste for Bach and Beethoven, often fell asleep listening to the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. On a few occasions, K. J. himself had been coerced 16470_ch01.qxd 7/12/02 4:33 PM Page 41

“ M a v i s K a y e ”

41

into showing up at Symphony Center and listening to what he scorn-fully called “operatic music.”

He joked that they called it operatic music because it was the kind of music they played in a hospital operating room when you were brought in to be patched up after a gunshot wound or a snakebite.

Dressed only in silk boxer shorts, a Stetson hat, and $600 Lucchese calfskin cowboy boots, K. J. Hunter picked up the phone and gazed out at the impressive skyline of downtown Dallas. Forbes magazine had cited it as one of the “Best Cities for Business” in the United States, and K. J. had taken full advantage of the city and his substantial connections. In Dallas, K. J. ruled.

Smiling, he dialed up his old friend Billy Ray Farley. His secretary said, “Hold on a minute, Mr. Hunter, he’ll be right with you.” Three minutes passed. K. J. thought Billy Ray was keeping him waiting intentionally. Bastard!

Suddenly Bill Ray’s voice boomed through the phone “K. J., how are you?”

“Never mind how I am. What the hell took you so long and do we have a deal or not?”

“Sorry ’bout that, K. J., I was on the line to New York.” Billy Ray was speaking from his office atop the Bank of America Tower in downtown Dallas. “Yeah, of course the deal is on!”

“Then where the hell is the delivery?”

“It’s on the way, K. J.”

“If I don’t see the goodies soon I want my damn money back.” K. J.

used the term “goodies” in telephone conversations to refer to anything that was being delivered to him. It was a well-ingrained precaution. He didn’t want the Feds snooping into the affairs of an enterprising businessman like himself. Not that he was dealing with illegal goods.

While he seldom turned down a lucrative deal and occasionally slipped over the line, he usually traded in perfectly legal commodities—spot oil, Arabian and thoroughbred horses, precious metals, gem-16470_ch01.qxd 7/12/02 4:33 PM Page 42

42

W H O K I L L E D T I F FA N Y J O N E S ?

stones, art objects, antique cars, cash. It was the source of origin and his

“alternative” means of distribution that were sometimes questionable.

“K. J., I told you I already advanced the cash. I can’t give you your money back.”

“Take it out of your pocket or I’ll take it out of your hide, but I want my damn money back if I don’t see all the goodies by next week Friday.”

“K. J., I told you, the deal’s in the works. We’ve got to wait for someone to die.”

“Goddamn it, Billy Ray, people die every day.”

“Were waiting for someone to die in Europe.”

“People are dying in Europe every day, Billy Ray, don’t trifle with me. I’m not a man to be trifled with.”

“Did the Vietnamese dame get there?”

“Oh, is that what she is? I thought she was Korean.”

“Damn, K. J., you’re screwin’ her, you should at least know what country she comes from.”

“Why?” K. J. laughed for the first time.

“One of these days your sex life is going to get you killed,” Billy Ray said. “You always was a crude bastard. That’s what’s wrong with you.”

“Listen, Billy Ray, ain’t a goddamn thing wrong with me except I want the goodies. I want ’em PDQ, you understand!”

“Next week.”

“Next week! I ought a come over there and pistol whip your butt all up and down the expressway, boy. Goddamn, you piss me off Billy Ray.”

Billy Ray didn’t react to the mock threat since he and K. J. had been friends since high school. They had played football at A&M together, and besides, in Texas Billy Ray was nearly as powerful as K.J.

“How ’bout the colored boy?” Billy Ray asked. “Where is he?”

“Ruff Daddy? I like that boy. He may be the only straight shooter in the goddamn bunch. Yo! Old buddy, there’s someone at the door.

16470_ch01.qxd 7/12/02 4:33 PM Page 43

“ M a v i s K a y e ”

43

Probably the Korean. Friday week? Goddamn, boy. Okay, Friday week, that’s when you get your ass kicked if I don’t have my goodies.”

He hung up. Just as K. J. headed for the door the phone in his hand rang. “K. J. Hunter here,” he said.

“Yo! K. J., this is Ruff Daddy.”

“Yo! Ruff Daddy, old buddy. How’s the hop-hip business? I thought you was gonna send me some of those hip-hop CDs. Oh, man, man! I heard about that thing in Atlanta. You all right?” K. J. swung open the door, reached out, picked Brigette up in his arms, and carried her into the room as if she were a nine- or ten-year-old child.