Chapter Twenty-one
“Ho-lee she-it,” Anna says. “This is…”
She’s at a loss for an adjective. None of us supply one; we’re in shock.
I shake off the woozies emitted into my brain by the cash. “Okay, now there’s no doubt Nona’s been blackmailing people. Trouble is, there’s no indication where this particular cash came from because apparently, whatever information she gathered on that person, she turned over to them when they gave her the cash.”
“I guess that’s her guarantee that she’s not going after them again.”
Whitney giggles. “So, she’s an honest criminal.” Then she shakes her head, negating the kind words, and offers something interesting, “If I were her, I’d have acquired doubles or triples of the data. That way I could target them a second or third time somewhere down the road.”
“And that, my friend, would give that person a true motive to kill her. I mean, if she promises this shakedown is the one and only time she’s going after them, they can kinda let it go,” Anna offers, “but then she comes back again.”
“That is mega-evil.”
Whitney stands and picks up the envelope by the corners. “For the time being, I’ll stow this in the safe.”
“Yeah,” Anna says, “wouldn’t be good if Eddie or Jakob come in right now and take it before we get to look at it fully.” She giggles.
“I assume we are taking this to the cops,” I say.
“Of course. I just want to make sure we learn everything we can from what we’ve found.”
“Maybe the victim’s prints are on the money.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. They would have to be careful. Let’s look over the other stuff in depth then call Jak—” Anna stops short then changes to— “Eddie. We’ll call Chief Wagner.”
“You think he’ll be less mad than Jakob?” I ask.
“Wow, you’re right,” offers Whitney, “maybe it’s better to call Jakob. As a matter of fact, if you want to stay out of sight, he—”
“I’m okay,” I say. “I can take whatever he’s got to dish out. I deserve most of it anyway.”
“How do you figure that? He was keeping you prisoner on—”
“No, he was protecting me.”
Anna thinks a moment. “I guess you’re right. He’s got a reason to be pissed. And then he’s gonna kill you.”
“Thanks for your vote of support.”
We dump out Whitney’s envelope. “This is stuff on Hank’s brother,” she observes.
We fan through it using pencil erasers, turning and positioning the articles so we can read them.
“Man, this guy really got around,” Anna says. “I wonder how he had time to run a successful electrical business.”
“The company was probably a front,” I offer.
“Yeah. No real electrical work. He hired himself out for people who wanted to rig guitars to explode at the sound of a single note.”
The notion makes me shiver.
“I checked,” Anna says without reacting to my statement. “It is successful. Pretty well known.”
“Wow,” I say, reading what’s in front of me, “this is a long piece on the Sinaloa Cartel, out of Mexico. They’re into opium and marijuana, money laundering, and, gee, what a surprise, organized crime.”
“I guess all those things go hand-in-hand. One thing leads to another.” Whitney leans back and sips her coffee. “Does it say how Kenneth is tied to that group?”
Anna reads from another piece. “His name isn’t specifically mentioned, but his alias Cheetah is. Apparently he’s one of their major traffickers. The law—what passes for it in our country anyway—has been after him for a very long time.”
“So—” Whitney waits until she has our undivided attention— “Nona planned to blackmail the guy. What part of this makes sense? Didn’t she know how he’d react? I mean, he’s got dozens of people tracking him on a minute-by-minute basis. What made her think she could—” She doesn’t bother finishing.
“Right. He would kill her without even thinking about it. Her threats would mean nothing to him.”
I have an alternate thought. “What if she planned on using this against Hank instead of the brother?”
“To what end?” Anna asks.
I know I’m grasping here, but sometimes if I throw stuff on the table, the others add to it and we come up with an answer. “How about this? To make him agree to remain home and work in the studio? Maybe he was so adamant about being on the road, she felt she had to force him.”
Anna wiggles her hand, palm down.
“Okay, let me ask you this. You’ve heard him play a few times. Do you think he’s such a remarkable drummer that she couldn’t replace him?”
“In a heartbeat. He’s just average.”
“Which makes you ask why Nona wanted him around.”
I shrug. “Love?”
We spend a moment with that idea and can’t see any meat in it. We come up with nothing else.
“What about Philip? He wanted to stay home, use his talents as a studio musician. Here’s a question. Is there any future in that?”
“Maybe he wasn’t looking for permanence. Just income and an easier life.”
“If running a studio is an easier life.”
“You’ve got a point there.”
“Guess we have to talk to each of them again. Ask harder questions.”
“After we search their places. That might give us even more ammunition, er…questions to ask.”
Laughing, we shoved the papers back in the envelope. Whitney glances toward the back room, probably thinking of the safe, but stows it instead under the cushion.
Next we open Anna’s packet with the blackmail documents on Isaac Thurston.
“How long have you known Isaac?” I ask her, because she’s the only one of us who’s been here longer than a few months.
“Since he came to town, around three years ago, I think.”
“Which matches with the information in the package because he was arrested four years ago.”
“I always liked him,” Whitney says. “Sure, he’s a bit of a ladies man, but really, when you look like he does, and women throw themselves at you…”
“They do?” I ask.
Anna throws back her head and laughs. “Oh my god, you haven’t noticed the reverend and all the ladies in her church group?”
Guess I’ve been oblivious. Does this also mean I’ve missed other things about him?
“He is definitely handsome,” Whitney admits. “And he’s always well-dressed.”
“Not to mention that great hair.”
“And dumb hats.”
We chuckle a bit thinking of them the pork-pie and panamas he wears outside of the shop.
“I am surprised to see him included in Nona’s stuff,” Anna says, disappointment shooting from her. “He made friends quickly. He wasn’t forthcoming about his past, but nobody asked questions. We all liked—like—him. And, so what if he didn’t want to talk about his history. Nothing wrong with that.”
“Until now,” Whitney says.
I have trouble with this also. I met him when I arrived four months ago and he’s always been friendly and welcoming and generous. He’s never done anything suspicious around me. Or…because he was nice, was I blind to what he might have been up to?
Whitney seems to be on the same thought pattern. “Is Really Good a cover for something nefarious? Is it a way for him to launder money?”
I shake my head. “Can imagine that. Wouldn’t he live in a busier town, a place where the money can turn over faster?”
“Not if he’s also hiding out.”
“Damn, this shit-storm is getting rough,” Anna says. “Okay...” She reads from a news clipping. “This says his name was Gerald Farraday, from Minneapolis.”
“Hang on.” Whitney searches on her phone. We wait while a page loads. “This is interesting. Mr. Farraday, as I told you this morning, was accused of stealing an old woman’s pension.”
“Which could explain how he had the money to open the coffee shop.”
“Yes, but here—” she taps the pencil tip on the page— “in a less mainstream newspaper, he’s interviewed, saying the woman was his grandmother and he moved in with her and used the money to hire caregivers to make her last days comfortable.”
“Sounds reasonable,” I say, “depending on how much money we’re talking about.”
“It’s not stated,” Whitney volunteers, “but apparently his brother laid claim to half, and that’s where the problem arose.”
We are silent absorbing the news.
I don’t want to believe Isaac’s done anything wrong, but like with Whitney’s possible guilt in Nona’s murder, I have to remain open-minded. “Let’s add him to the suspect list.”
“And then go talk to him.”
Anna checks her watch. “He’ll be closed now.”
“Well, he lives upstairs.”
“Let’s see him in a bit,” I say. “I do question, though, whether he even knows about this because it seems she’s still collecting information. Which means it’s probably not Hank’s brother either.”
“Right.”
“I want to know what’s in the diary we found.” Whitney gets up to retrieve it.
“Unless, like I said, she goes back for a second round. But for now, let’s go with that theory, that she gets her money and closes the so-called file.” Whitney lays the book on the table. “I agree with Joy. Since we have the stuff she collected on the two men, I assume it means they haven’t seen it.”
“And probably don’t even know what she’s up to.”
That is, kind of, a load off my mind. “We still need to talk to Isaac. Maybe he can shine some light on things.
Anna pours more coffee and doctors hers while Whitney leans back on the couch, legs crossed indian-style, the diary clutched between two tissues. It’s not long before she’s got an announcement. “This isn’t a diary. It’s a ledger.”
Whitney and I lean forward—me wincing a bit and wondering if I should’ve brought pain meds—curious to hear more. She turns page after page, frowning at first. Then her blue eyes grow wide and she flips back to the first page.
“Come on, girl!” shouts Anna. “Get on with it!”
Whitney slaps the cover shut and lays the book on the coffee table. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to drag things out. I was thinking. It appears as though we’ve stumbled onto a brand new criminal. A virgin. Nona had only collected money from one individual so far. And that was just two months ago.”
“I assume that’s the envelope we found with the cash,” I say.
“Probably.”
“Is there a name anywhere to indicate the target? Or did she use code names and numbers?”
“There is a name.” This is said with a measure of bewilderment and sadness.
Oh boy, it’s got to be someone we know. Trouble is, whom do I know that’s got twenty thousand dollars?
Whitney looks out the window at something on the street. Anna and I are growing frustrated at her continued delay tactics. I reach for the ledger book the same moment Anna shouts, “Who?”