First Kill: An Eli Quinn Mystery Page 7

  “Sore, but yeah. I’m fine.”

  “What happened?”

  “I got whacked in the head.”

  “You told me that,” she said.

  “Amnesia?”

  “We’ll see. If you start asking me things over and over, I’ll let you know. Did you see him?”

  I shook my head. Gently. Solo sat at my feet, moving his head back and forth as we talked.

  “So he broke in?”

  “I hadn’t locked the slider.”

  “Not a lot of crime in Pleasant,” she said.

  “Until recently.” I’d solved a murder, figured out who tried to assassinate a state senator, and now this, all before the official start of summer.

  “What’d he hit you with?”

  “Not sure. A stick. Maybe a bat.”

  “Maybe a Mets bat?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Jesus,” Sam said. “You’re lucky, then.”

  I raised my arm to show her the bruise that was forming.

  “You blocked it.”

  “Partly.”

  “Good reflexes.”

  “Master Choi taught me well.”

  “He must not have known you had Solo,” she said.

  “Solo’s a good deterrent. If Solo’d been at home, the guy would never have broken in.”

  “Why didn’t Solo tear him apart?”

  “Not what he’s trained to do. Trained to attack on command, but also to protect me.”

  “So he chased the guy off,” Sam said. “Just enough force…”

  “And maybe a little more.”

  “But then he came back to protect you.”

  “Per his training.”

  Solo waited patiently. She petted his head and he closed his eyes and leaned into it. I understood. I told Sam I had to call Jack Beachum. Beach picked up on the second ring.

  “Beach, I need two favors.”

  “Hallelujah,” my friend said. “At your service.”

  “See if you can find Bo Rollins.”

  “And what do I do if I find him?”

  “Look for bite marks.”

  “Come again?”

  I told him what had happened.

  “You’re lucky he’s a pitcher, not a slugger,” Beach said.

  “He never could hit,” I said.

  “Most pitchers can’t.”

  “You’ll look for him?”

  “On it,” he said.

  “And don’t tell anyone I’m alive.”

  “Swinger think you’re dead?”

  “Might.”

  “And that gives you an advantage,” he said.

  “Might.”

  “You’re dead to me,” Beach said.

  “Thanks. And can you keep an eye on Madison Mack?”

  “You suspect her, too?”

  “No, but she might be in danger.”

  “You tell her that?”

  “No. I don’t know what the hell is going on. We got one missing person. His wife and daughter can’t stand each other. The guy looking into it gets smacked in the head. Two of my three prime suspects are sleeping together. Hell, maybe all three of them are. I don’t know. But somebody’s nervous and stupid things are being done.”

  “You stirred it up,” he said.

  “That was the plan.”

  “I’ll get somebody to watch Madison,” Beach said. “Nobody’ll get near her.”

  “Thanks Beach. I owe you.”

  “Let me count the ways.”

  I laughed. “You get anything on Donovan Fisk?”

  “Nothing damning. Twenty-seven, lives in Scottsdale. Rich kid. Dad started and sold some internet thing, made millions. Donovan works at the Troon North golf course in Scottsdale. One DUI, otherwise no priors.”

  “Cell phone?”

  Beach read the number off and I memorized it, said goodbye and put my phone on the end table. Sam walked to the kitchen. I marveled.

  “We should go to the hospital,” she said over her shoulder, opening the fridge.

  “No we shouldn’t.”

  “Get you checked out.”

  “I just got out of the hospital.”

  “As a precaution.”

  “I’m fine, Sam.”

  “Beer?”

  “Not tonight,” I said, surprising myself. Sam took out a Sierra Nevada, popped the top, took a pull longer than any I’d ever seen her take. She came back and sat on the arm of the chair.

  “You could’ve died, Quinn.”

  “But here I am.”

  “Sometimes I don’t like what you do for a living.”

  “You got me into it.”

  “And you’re good at it,” she said. “But it’s dangerous.”

  “I accept the risk.”

  “Because it’s worth doing. Because it’s meaningful.”

  I nodded.

  “I understand that,” she said. “And I have to accept the risk.”

  “Can you?”

  “I must.”

  We sat in silence a moment. Solo decided the excitement was over and the petting had come to an end. He went to the corner of the living room and curled up on his bed.

  “You’ll stay?”

  “I didn’t bring anything,” she said.

  “Maybe you won’t need anything.”

  Chapter 16

  Sam Marcos pressed against me, an arm around my waist, a leg over mine, long black hair spread across my chest. Morning sunlight bounced off the pool, danced in baubles on my bedroom ceiling. Sleep had been long and deep. The sex defied description, confirming all the expectations that had built up over the past year.

  I lifted the sheet, saw Sam’s perfect backside naked for the first time, acknowledged I was now officially the luckiest man in the world, and shook my head. That hurt. I groaned. Sam woke.

  She looked at me with half an eye, snuggled back into my chest. “Eli Quinn,” she said. “Goddamn.”

  “So we can do it again sometime?”

  “Forever,” Sam said.

  She closed her eyes. I closed mine. We lay still a moment.

  “You must be hungry,” she said. “You didn’t eat last night.”

  “Starved.”

  “How’s your head.”

  “Hurts.”

  “How many?” She held up three fingers.

  “Six,” I said.

  “You’ll be fine.”

  Reluctantly, I slid my arm out from under Sam, got up and showered. I dressed, came out and went to the kitchen. Sam was wearing one of my button-up dress shirts, the sleeves rolled up, long muscular legs one-hundred percent on display, scrambling my brain while she scrambled some eggs.

  She turned her head. “Toast?”

  “You cook?”

  “Of course I cook.”

  “We’ll see,” I said. “Toast, sure.”

  She poured a cup of coffee and handed it to me. I wasn’t sure what to do. My head hurt, I was hungry, I needed coffee, but most of all I wanted to hold Sam Marcos. I put the coffee on the counter and did the smart thing. She held me back, then she pushed away. “I think you have a killer to go look for.”

  “Could be a kidnapping,” I said.

  “Either way.”

  “Looking less and less like Joe Mack just snuck away of his own free will.”

  “Still possible,” Sam said.

  “Three percent chance.”

  “Two.”

  “That shirt looks fantastic on you,” I said.

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “Will you wear it again some morning?”

  “It’s becoming a favorite.”

  She put the toast and eggs in front of me. The toast was undercooked, soggy with butter. The eggs were runny, over-salted.

  “Delicious,” I said through a mouthful. My scrunched face must’ve suggested otherwise.

  “Screw you, Quinn.”

  “That shirt looks fantastic on you.”

  Sam smiled.

  Chapter 17


  Jack Beachum and I sat down at Lulu’s for breakfast, the second one for me and one I hoped would erase the memory of Sam’s cooking. Beach was still in civilian clothes, fire engine red cargo shorts and a clashing peach-colored t-shirt, green socks and black Velcro Tevas.

  I put up a hand to shield my eyes from the glare. “Who dresses you?”

  “Wife usually signs off before I go out in public. She’s out of town a couple days.”

  “You need to get your uniform back,” I said. “Before you cause a traffic accident.”

  Beach ignored me. “Rollins’ wife hasn’t seen him since yesterday afternoon.”

  “You go talk to her yourself?”

  “Yep,” he said. “Buddy on the posse tipped me off.”

  “I thought you’re not supposed to be doing posse stuff.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You think she was telling the truth?”

  “Unless she’s an excellent liar,” he said.

  “Lotta people are.”

  “My five decades of experience in law enforcement gives me a keen sense for bullshit. I’d say she was genuinely worried.”

  “Your posse sense.”

  “Exactamundo,” Beach said. “I think she’s worried there’s more going on with her little Bo than she knows.”

  “I think she’s right,” I said. “What’d you tell her?”

  “That I thought there was more going on with her little Bo than she knows.”

  “And?”

  “Genuine fear in her eyes.”

  “You’ll get a track on their cell phones, check the records?”

  “I’m off-duty, remember. Supposed to be like a vacation.”

  “But you’re on it.”

  “I got a guy coordinating with Scottsdale Police. Need a warrant or some crap like that. Shouldn’t be a problem. He calls anybody, we’ll know where he is.”

  “And you’ll tell me.”

  Beach just rolled his eyes.

  “Hey also, I need Donovan Fisk’s cell.”

  “I gave that to you last night,” Beach said.

  I remembered the call with him from last night. All of it. Except the phone number. I could have worried about that, but I had plenty of other things to worry about.

  “I forgot it.”

  “You never forget things,” he said.

  “Was bonked on the head, remember?”

  “And you didn’t go to the doctor.”

  “No need. I’m fine. Doc would’ve just told me to sit out a few plays. Can’t do that right now.”

  Beach nodded, gave the rubber ball a good squeeze. “You’ll tell me if this happens again. The forgetting.”

  “Will if I remember,” I said.

  Beach sighed. He pulled a notepad from his hip pocket and gave me the number and I memorized it again. He leaned forward and drank some coffee. Leaned back and bounced the ball off the patio. “I got something else for you. Remember I said there was no activity on Joe Mack’s phone after the 11:30 a.m. call? Well, turns out the digital forensics guys dug deeper into the carrier data and were able to figure out where Joe went.”

  “That’d be helpful,” I said.

  “You think? Phones are always pinging towers, so these guys don’t need you to use your phone to figure out where you’ve been. Just takes some arm-twisting to get the data from the carriers.”

  “Privacy,” I said.

  “Right. Anyway, Joe Mack left the hotel and went through Cave Creek, then on out into the desert, apparently.”

  “Apparently?”

  “Went beyond reach of most cell towers.”

  Most people thought the cops could pinpoint a person’s location from cell phone data. The technology was not that accurate, unless you used GPS records from a phone that used location services. On the other hand, a person didn’t have to make a call or text for their general location to be discovered. Accuracy was the problem. In rural areas, a phone might be in range of only one tower. The data can’t be triangulated, and would reveal just a big circle of possibility. In this case, Beach explained, it became a cone of possibility, “and no way to know how far the wide end stretches.”

  “Can I see this cone?”

  Beach pulled a folded envelope from his shirt pocket and slid it across the table. “No,” he said. “I can’t share stuff like that without permission. Heck, I can’t even have stuff like that given my current status.”

  I nodded. “Sheriff search this cone?”

  “Yep. Helicopters, some door to door. Zippo. Like I said, a big area.”

  I scratched my head. There was a lot of information on this case, but none of it adding up to anything yet. I thought about Joe’s wife. I’d asked Beach to find out how many times she’d tried to call her husband the day he disappeared. “What about Joanne Mack’s calls?”

  “She called him around 11:30 a.m., like I said. Since his phone seemed to go dead, there’s no record after that. But from her records we found she tried him again around 1 p.m., but he didn’t pick up.”

  “That’s it? One call?”

  “Yep,” he said.

  “Doesn’t sound like a worried wife to me.”

  “Nope.”

  “She told me she’d tried calling him several times,” I said. “She lied to me.”

  “Shocking.”

  “She call anyone else that day?”

  “Bo Rollins. Twice. Once around 11 a.m., again around 2 p.m. Couple short conversations.”

  I nodded.

  “Sheriff investigators don’t know what to make of all this,” Beach said. “But that’d be what I call a clue.”

  “Indeed.”

  ***

  Pleasant’s Number Three real estate agent, Jimmy Mendoza, was sitting behind his desk in a windowed office down the hallway. I walked past his secretary, who tried but failed to stop me. Jimmy saw me coming and stood. I let myself in and closed his door.

  “You again,” he said. He stood straight, eyes narrowed, trying to look tough but lacking the bravado I’d seen before. Happens when you beat a man and he knows you can do it again.

  “Probably see a lot of me,” I said. “Until I figure out what’s going on.”

  “I told you, I got nothing to do with this. I don’t know where Joe Mack is. I haven’t seen Joanne since Joe disappeared.”

  “Somebody tried to kill me last night. Know anything about that?”

  “What? You’re kidding?” The slight accent was more pronounced.

  I considered telling him about the weapon, but I still wasn’t sure who all was involved in what, so I kept that to myself for now.

  “You seen Bo the last couple days?”

  “No. Haven’t seen him since the night you, ah…”

  “Saw you.”

  “Right. Why, you think Bo did something?”

  “Crossed my mind. You’re on my list, too.”

  “Look, man, I told you. I didn’t do nothing.”

  “How do I know that?”

  “I was at the conference all day. Several agents saw me. I can give you a list.”

  “I’ll take that list,” I said. “Have your secretary email it to me this afternoon. Names, phone numbers.”

  “You call around, start asking questions, I start losing business.”

  I shrugged. “Get me the list. Help me out. Maybe I don’t need to call them. How long Bo and Joanne been sleeping together?”

  Jimmy stared at me, hands on his hips.

  “Two ways this can go, Jimmy. One way is you help me. You know how the other way goes.”

  He looked down. Took a deep breath. “We don’t talk to outsiders about the lifestyle. Isn’t cool to do that.”

  I waited. He looked up at me, then over my shoulder, then back at me.

  “It used to be just getting together, fooling around in a safe place where we all knew where everyone was. It was supposed to be just about sex. I love my wife. Joe loves Joanne. I know he does. But Bo and Joanne started getting serious.”


  “When?”

  “Few months ago,” he said.

  “What’d serious look like?”

  “Joanne was drinking too much. More and more. Joe and Joanne would fight when it was time to leave. Sometimes Joe would go home, Joanne would stay.”

  “Your place?”

  “My place. Bo’s place. We all knew what was going on. I don’t know how Joe put up with it.”

  “Joanne is persuasive.”

  Jimmy nodded.

  “Bo have money problems?”

  “Bo’s a fuckup,” he said. “Fun to hang out with. But he blows his money on cars, women, booze. Living the life.”

  “And the lifestyle.”

  Jimmy shrugged. “Doesn’t make him a killer.”

  “Bo in debt?”

  Jimmy hesitated. I gave him an expectant look to remind him what happens when I don’t get answers. Jimmy looked at the floor. “Up to his eyeballs,” he said.

  “Doesn’t invest?”

  “Has some piece of shit bar in Cave Creek, rents it out. But otherwise, no.”

  “What about Joanne?”

  “What about her?”

  “She got any reason to want her husband out of the picture?”

  “I dunno. Maybe. Jeez. You think Bo and Joanne killed Joe?”

  “Thought crossed my mind,” I said. “Would Joanne want the business?”

  “Jeez, I dunno. I mean, she can sell houses, but Joe runs the business.”

  “And with Joe gone?”

  Jimmy thought about that. “Joanne gets the business.”

  “But she can’t run it,” I said.

  He shook his head. “Probably thinks she can. Maybe she’d bring Bo in.”

  “Can he run it?”

  “Hell no,” he said.

  “But he probably thinks he can.”

  “Probably. Egos are big in this business.”

  ***

  Joanne Mack opened her door and took a quick step back, eyes wide. “Quinn?”

  “Surprised?”

  “No, I, um….” She regained her composure as swiftly as she’d lost it, brought her voice down an octave, all business. “I thought I told you to leave me alone. We were clear about that.”

  “That was before your lover tried to kill me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I think you know. Seen Bo?”

  “As a matter of fact, no,” she said. “I haven’t seen him since yesterday afternoon.”