Hot Wives Investment Club Ch. 05

"So you went back to the main room, then went to 'find' your friend, screamed when you 'found' her, and everyone came rushing in. Later, your associate threw the package back up above the ceiling tiles after we'd searched for them, and you intended to come back and get them and dispose of them later, when the investigation began dying down. Will it do, Mrs. Clausen?"

Cat said nothing. The lawyer thundered "Why in the hell would she kill her friend? What motive could she possibly have?"

"Money." I said. "Cat's been hooked on drugs for years. She'd been getting off light by bringing other women to the pushers, and also by having sex with them. But her debts became a bit too large, and her suppliers began demanding green dollar bills in payment for their drugs. Cat was offered the chance to wipe out her debt, get some money to start fresh somewhere else, if only she'd take care of her benefactor's problem and kill Trish, who was not as much a friend to her as people believed.

"In fact, I suspect Trish had denied Cat the money Cat needed and asked to borrow in order to pay for her drug debts. For that matter, Trish was not too far behind Cat in being hooked on drugs and needing money herself. So Cat... who was your benefactor? I suspect that if you don't tell us and let us protect you in custody, that you're going to end up with the same fatal throat injuries you applied to Trish."

"Watch your threats, buddy." said the lawyer, menace in his voice and eyes. I matched his look.

"That's not a threat, Counselor. It's a prediction, and Mrs. Clausen knows it." I said. "Why don't you tell your client what happened to her associate, Mr. Lundquist."

"Lundquist is dead." the lawyer said. I noted Catherine's look of shock as the lawyer continued "I got the call about that almost immediately after the police went into the Club to arrest him."

"Ahhh, so you have been anticipating me catching up to your clients." I said, glomming onto the lawyer's admission. He said nothing, but his face gave himself away as surely as if he'd stated a confession out loud.

"Trey is dead?" Cat asked, her voice shaking.

"Hush, don't say another word!" the lawyer demanded.

"Yes, Catherine," I said, quickly seeing the path I needed to walk upon. "Trey committed suicide rather than give up whoever hired him. He knew he was going to die. And I think you know what this means for you."

As neither Cat nor her lawyer said anything, I said "Ms. Patterson, I think we should give Cat and her lawyer a few moments to discuss her rather dire situation." We got up and went into the anteroom, which was full of stunned Detectives.

"So much for those high-priced lawyers." I said to the group in the hallway outside the anteroom. "He really fucked up, there."

"I thought you'd trapped him into saying that." said Cindy, who'd joined her fellow Detectives after I'd gone into the Interrogation room.

"I could pretend to take credit for that," I said, "but in reality he screwed up on his own."

Five minutes later, Cat Clausen was banging on the anteroom door. Her lawyer's face was red-faced, furious with anger, and he was shouting at her.

"Twenty-five to life with possibility of parole if I confess and cooperate?" asked Cat. To my total astonishment, the lawyer got up and left the room.

"Yeah, give it to her." I suggested to Paulina. Paulina nodded.

"Do you want new legal counsel?" I asked.

"No. I'll take the deal and confess." Cat most wisely said. "What do you want to know?"

"Who hired you, Cat?" I asked.

"Honest to God, I'm not sure." said Cat. "The manager at the Club, Trey, was my contact. He gave me the cash to pay my drug debts, which I did."

"Did he say why he wanted you to kill Trish?" I asked.

"He just said that Trish had betrayed his employer, and she had to die. He also said that I'd end up dead if I didn't kill her. I didn't really have a choice, so I took the money to get out of debt and get free. I was planning to move away, leave my husband if I had to."

"You murdered her, even though she was your friend?"

Cat peered at me. "You were more correct a minute ago. I thought Trish was my friend, but I realized that she'd delivered me to drug hell just as she'd delivered Margo Bailey and Carol Carlington, who is lucky not to be dead herself. Then when Trish wouldn't loan me the money I needed, and was a real bitch telling me that it was my own fault I got hooked, I realized she was no friend of mine. I didn't want to kill her, I don't want to hurt anyone... but I did what I had to do, and I haven't cried about it yet."

"Cat," I asked, "are you aware of Trish being involved in other criminal activities? Industrial espionage, for example?"

"No sir." said Cat, looking genuinely surprised. "She never said anything about anything like that. Of course, most of our time together we were on our backs, getting fucked..."

Part 19 - The Solution

I managed to spend over an hour with Molly and my new son late that afternoon. We talked extensively about our lives, about baby Ross and my desire to be involved in his life, about Cindy and their parents and the issues there.

"Okay," I said, "I've got to go tell everyone how I solved this case. I'll come by in the morning. When are they letting you out of here?"

"They're releasing me tomorrow afternoon if all continues to go well." Molly said. "I'll spend the night at The Cabin if Cindy wants to spend time with us. I hope she will, but like you said, she's hurt and I don't know what to do about it. I'm between a rock and a hard place."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The back room of the Cop Bar contained myself, Chief Griswold, my Lieutenants Three a.k.a. 'Crowbar's Angels', those being Tanya Perlman, Teresa Croyle and Cindy Ross, Martin Nash and Sandra Speer, Diana Torres, J.R. Barnes, Bobby Patrick, Christina Cho, my mother Phyllis, Sheriff-Elect Daniel Allgood and his wife Melina, and Jack Muscone, whom I'd invited to join us.

"Handbags, ladies!" I said loudly. "Handbags! I've got 'Crowbar's Angels', I've got other female Detectives and Technicians," I looked pointedly at Torres and Cho, "and none of you saw it! Even Mycroft Holmes here missed it at first." I pointed my thumb at my mother.

"Rub it in, why dontcha." said Cindy acerbically.

My mother put a reassuring hand on Cindy's shoulder. "He's right, my dear." Mom said. "We did miss it, and it's something to learn from. We won't miss it next time, ladies, will we?" Cindy nodded acquiescence.

"So what about the handbags?" asked the Chief, understanding the importance of the lesson.

"There were sixteen women at the meeting." I said. "Of those, thirteen had handbags no longer than six inches at the most, too small to carry very much. Two women had no handbags at all. But Cat Clausen had a massively large handbag."

"So that's what got you on her track?" asked Martin Nash.

"Yes." I said. "I realized when I kicked her handbag while questioning her that not only was it very large, it was virtually empty. So why was she carrying a handbag of that size? Now my wife carries a big bag like that, full of diapers, changes of baby clothes and the like, and when I tripped over that bag at home, it only confirmed what I'd been thinking: the Tyvex suit and footies and gloves used by the murderer, as well as the murder weapon, had to be imported, and a large handbag would do the trick."

"In addition," I continued, "several other ladies noted that Cat was putting down her bag when she said she'd go look for Trish. That infers that she had been carrying that bag into the bathroom/kitchenette area. So I let my imagination wander as to what story might fit Cat going into the bathroom with Trish, being able to put on the Tyvex suit without Trish being alarmed, and the story I presented during Cat's interrogation was pretty much what actually happened."

"What about Lundquist?" asked Daniel Allgood.

"One reason I have J.R., Bobby, and Christina here is to buy them dinner, because I had to do them the dishonor of making things look like they'd missed the evidence, when in reality they had not... and for that I apologize. I did need to do it though, because I very much suspected a mole or helper within the ranks of the employees, and telling that story kept the helper off guard and calm until I was ready to strike with an arrest warrant."

"I realized that Cat must have had help." I continued. "She was barely tall enough in high heels to reach the ceiling tiles from the top of the toilet, and thus to throw the evidence package through the gap in the ceiling tiles into the janitor closet. Of course, it would've been too extraordinarily lucky for her to make a blind shot that would've gone into the mop bucket, but fortunately you all were so amazed at me finding the evidence that you did not consider the magnitude of the luck that would've had to be involved.

I felt the ice-cold blue eyes on me. "Yes, Cindy," I said, looking at my partner, returning her stare, "I deceived you all on that one, and you can beat me up later about it."

"See you in the gym tomorrow morning." Cindy replied. She was not kidding.

"Ouch, I am soooo looking forward to that." I joked, getting a few laughs. "Meanwhile, let's talk Trey. When Trey Lundquist came up missing a key from the locker, I realized that he was likely the one that had made it disappear in order to make it look like it had been stolen, thus giving credence to someone coming in to put the evidence up in the ceiling tiles again. But it was a horrible mistake on his part: in saying the key was missing, it necessitated us getting his fingerprints... and when I had the FBI run those, they came up with all sorts of good stuff on him from his days in Florida. In addition, Myron found that he had some serious money issues, being in debt to the wrong people, so he was easy to hire by the person who really wanted Trish Donolan dead. More on that in a minute."

"Lundquist substituted a recorded tape of a blank hallway, as the equipment could be manipulated to have a false timestamp. He went down the hallway and into the janitor closet, got the wrapped evidence package, and hid it in his office, likely inside the flowerpot holding the small tree in the corner of the office. No one, including myself, thought to search his office that night other than a cursory look at the trash cans, and that is a reproach to my management of the case, and also to all of us."

"Anyway, Lundquist later threw the package back up into the ceiling tiles, and I'm sure he was shocked when we came back to the location and found it. As I said earlier, he had taken the precaution of making the master key in the keybox disappear, so he thought he was covered."

"Why did he commit suicide?" asked Martin Nash.

"He knew the game was up when we came for him. He had vowed to himself to never return to prison, and I would imagine that his 'employer' promised to take care of his family if he killed himself rather than be taken alive. That's an old mob tradition, but we've seen the cyanide poisoning before when that bozo snuck into our Evidence rooms wearing a replica of my Lieutenant badge. The capsule was analyzed by the Crime Lab, and was of the same type in both cases. Ergo, the cases are connected to that extent."

"So why was Trish killed, then?" asked Teresa Croyle. "She doesn't have any connection to all that crap that went on then, does she?"

"Well..." I said, considering what to say, then decided my team deserved to know. "I'll be talking to Jack and his FBI team more about that, but I'll just say this to all of you: in the last few weeks, we've had the Diane Lang murder case, the Barry Blair suicide, and the exposure of the disavowed CIA agent Alicia Foster and her husband Spence. All of these have had a common thread weaving through them, that of industrial espionage, either at DynaCorp or at Lightsource Industries."

"And ultimately, that was why Trish Donolan was murdered: someone is cleaning up the remnants of the mess we created when we whacked Jody Corrigan and his rogue agents at the County Airport, and Trish might have been involved in that. Blair was not the only one being paid to steal secrets from Lightsource; I suspect Trish was involved in that, as well. As to who is behind all this, I don't know yet, and it'll likely be the FBI's case instead of ours. Anything else?"

"Mr. Donolan." said Tanya Perlman. "He wasn't involved?"

"No, not in his wife's murder." I said.

"What about the photos he had in his possession?" Tanya asked, persisting. "I noticed you dropped the charges against him yesterday. What's going on with that?"

"Coincidence." I said. "As an aside, I have told Mr. Donolan to be on his guard, that whoever wanted his wife dead and wanted his fellow swingers Diane Lang and Barry Blair dead might also want him, Donolan, dead; and one reason I took him into custody was to prevent him from being murdered.

"Beyond that, certainly someone wanted him and his wife being hostile to each other, and those pictures may have been the way that was being done. I think we'll say no more on that for now, though. I just hope we won't be investigating Mr. Donolan's murder anytime soon..."

"Another brilliant piece of work, Crowbar." said the Chief, which was followed by loud acclaim until the Chief continued: "Daniel, you're a lucky man to have this guy on your Police Force, and I'm sorry to be retiring and not be able to watch him work. Give him every bit of support you can, even when it seems like he's bat-shit crazy about something... I've learned many times that he's not the crazy one, and there's method to his seeming madness."

"I hear ya, Chief." replied Allgood. "Melina, is Don bat-shit crazy?"

"I'm taking the Fifth on that one." Melina replied, her eyes wickedly cutting to me. "And I'm going to change the subject by offering a toast to Molly's new baby arriving in the world."

And so we drank a toast to Molly's new baby, then someone burned a doll of Judge Nance in effigy for Guy Fawkes Day, which set off the fire alarm and generally got us into some trouble...

Part 20 - Solution to the Purloined Photographs

"Before you whip my ass," I said to Cindy the next morning as we donned the light armor for our black crowbar battle in the boxing ring of the gym, "I do want to ask you something. Molly is being released from the hospital today, and she wants to spend the night at The Cabin before going home to Midtown tomorrow. She wants you to stay there with her. And I'd like for you to do that, also. I want you to get to know your nephew, really be a part of his life."

Cindy exhaled. "I dunno." she said. "I'm still pissed that she's not making our parents come here. She could help by telling them to come here and accept me, rather than letting them dodge me and Jenna."

"I think you're being unfair to Molly." I replied. "She's worked really hard to forge a good relationship with you. She wants you in her life and her baby's life. She's walking a tightrope between you and your parents. If she does as you suggest, her parents will simply walk away from her, also. Give her a chance, my friend. She's trying to bridge the gaps without getting herself crushed in the process." Cindy thought about it.

"Okay, I'll hang out with her. And it's a good thing her son takes after her instead of his father." Cindy said, the underlying challenge intended to rile me up.

"Oh really?" I said, taking the bit, glad to see Cindy into the spirit of things. "We'll see about that." And we did.

Let's just say that I got a lot of practice being on the very defensive, on the downside fighting for my life. It was a solid beatdown, and I knew what the local University's Bulldogs felt like at the end of that game against the Wildcats. All of Cindy's frustrations came out in the clanging of iron and the whacks of her crowbar on my body armor, which was barely adequate to the task. But I took it, every bit of it, for my own improvement in weaponless defense, but more for the sake of my teammate...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Vice Lieutenant Teresa Croyle walked into my office, wearing her uniform of blue pants with light blue piping, a light blue shirt with Lieutenant ranks on the shoulder epaulettes, "TCPD" insignia on the collars, her badge above her let pocket and the Purple Order insignia over her nametag on the right pocket. In addition, she wore the thin belt sash denoting a heightened level of formality. Something was up as she came to attention in front of my desk and began speaking.

"Commander, I hereby submit myself for disciplinary action--"

"STOP!" I yelled. "Not another word!"

Teresa looked at me in total shock as I stood up, my finger over my lips in a 'hush' sign. Silently, I got out my bug-catching device. It lit up bright green when I scanned the frame around my window to the outside, and around the overhead fluorescent light. Internal Affairs' bugs were not only there, but they were actively listening in, and I pointed to the glowing green light with yet another silent signal to not speak.

"Walk with me, Lieutenant." I said, walking out of my office. Teresa followed me down the hall and out the side door to the parking lot. We got into my SUV, where I again cautioned her to be silent, and we drove down the road, past the Old Mill where the 2nd Precinct would be headquartered, and down County Road 2.

"Here's where Jefferson Jackson was found dead. You can leave your radio in the car." I admonished, getting out of the car near the spot where his body had been found. I proceeded to walk another 50 feet away from the vehicle, Teresa again following.

"Don't say anything about this, ever." I said. "Not a word to me, not a word to Cindy, not a word to a priest in confession, not a word to anyone at all, ever. If you have to talk about it, do like the old Japanese proverb and whisper it down an empty well at noon, making sure no one else is around."

I continued: "I know it was you, Teresa, that put those pictures of Trish fucking those black guys under Donovan Donolan's door for him to find. I know you've been watching both Donovans as well as Cat Clausen since the night Margo Bailey died, waiting and watching for a chance at revenge. I know you took your shot when you got those pics, hoping to cause them to fight, maybe to divorce, maybe to get physical and then you could step in and take them down."

Teresa's eyes glowed with understanding as I continued: "I understand why you did it, and it was just sheer bad luck and pure coincidence that she was murdered later that day. You've been worried that giving him those pics is what caused her to be murdered, but of course that wasn't the case. As for what you did, I've figured it was you from the time we found the pics, and I've said nothing for a reason. I'm trying hard to forget the whole thing, I hope you will also, and while I understand and respect you for submitting yourself for disciplinary action, I do not want to be placed in a position of needing to take that action."

I looked around, then said "That's why I brought you out here: Internal Affairs was listening in and would've heard you if I had let you say anything more. I don't want I.A. knowing about this matter. I worked my ass off getting you back into my Police Force, I want you continuing to lead the Vice Squad, and that's that. Am I making myself abundantly clear, Lieutenant?"

"Yes, sir." Teresa said. "Thank you, sir. I'm sorry I let you down. It won't happen again."

"Unless you take up a career as a porn photographer, of course." I said, grinning. "You didn't let me down. You made a mistake, and we'll move forward from it. Now if anyone asks, I brought you out here to see the Jefferson Jackson crime spot and to talk about the finer points of the lessons learned from that case. Okay... let's go home and solve some crimes."