Dropped dead, p.16
Dropped Dead, page 16
LJ let out a deep sigh. “What do you want me to tell you? It’s not like I can prove it.”
“No, you can’t,” I said. “But you can start with the fact you and Olivia were at the hotel together. And then Ted hits the pavement out back. Olivia snorts a line of coke laced with fentanyl. So now it just so happens you’re the last man standing. You want to tell me that’s just a coincidence? Or dumb luck?”
“If you’re trying to accuse me of—”
“I just want the truth, LJ. Lying to me about it doesn’t do anything. And your wife’ll need some convincing herself.”
“Vanessa has always believed I was cheating on her. But I never have. Now she’s got it in her mind that me and Olivia were sleeping together. But she’s wrong.” He pulled a kerchief from his pocket and used it to wipe the back of his neck. He looked down at the sidewalk. “I love my wife, you know. But she’s a jealous person. Paranoid, even.” He raised his eyes to mine. “And I have no idea who this Conrad Sokolov guy is. It sounds like maybe Olivia did, if he’s who sold her that cocaine.”
“Then why don’t you tell me what your meeting was about?”
“At the hotel?”
“Yes, the afternoon before Ted was killed.”
LJ paused. “Ted was the one who set it up. He asked us to meet him there. Olivia, too.”
“About what? The three of you sit around getting wasted in the hotel room?”
“No!” LJ snapped. “Wasn’t my game. I told you that. And Ted… I wouldn’t say he was straight or anything, but he didn’t do drugs. Not that I’m aware of. He liked his booze. Drank Maker’s Mark. That was his thing.”
“So if you weren’t there to sleep with Olivia, and you weren’t there to party, then what was this so-called meeting all about?”
LJ looked back into his car. “Ted wanted me to come back into the business. But I told him I couldn’t handle the secrets. The goddamn formula. If he couldn’t trust his best friend, then I didn’t see how it could work. He told me Olivia had it locked up at her house.”
“The briefcase?” I said. “There was money inside it. And a couple of guns.”
“I don’t know anything about money… or guns.” He put up his hands. “Not my thing.”
I looked at his Beemer. “Money’s not your thing?”
He cracked a slight smile. “Guns.”
I wasn’t sure I believed him.
“Ted didn’t trust Tucker. He knew he couldn’t trust him and knew Tucker would need the original formula to maximize profits if he could persuade Ted to sell. So Ted and I would meet, even after I’d left Chemcore, and discuss how to get Tucker out of there.”
“But why meet at the hotel when you both live in Jax. I don’t get that. There are dozens of places all over Florida. Like coffee shops and… ”
“Olivia didn’t have an office and spent a lot of her time on the road. Even if it wasn’t that far of a drive for her, she’d have a few drinks…” He let out a slight laugh. “She could drink anyone under the table. But then she’d use her credit card miles, stay at whatever hotel she was at for free instead of getting behind the wheel.”
“So if you had already left, then why was Olivia still there later that evening?”
“Maybe she was with Ted?” he said.
“With Ted? You mean—”
“Oh no, I don’t mean together like that. That would never happen.” He shrugged. “I guess I can’t answer why he stayed that night. Maybe he just didn’t want to go home to Lynn. Their marriage had been on the rocks for some time, although for some reason they stayed together.”
Chapter 32
I walked up the backstairs to my office, surprised to see a dim light turned on inside. I was the last person to ever leave a light on and knew I’d turned it off. Of course, Conrad was dead. But I wasn’t about to take any chances. So I pulled the Smith & Wesson from my pants and reached for the knob. I turned it, slowly, to see if it was unlocked.
And it was.
I raised the gun and pushed open the door.
What sounded like a vicious bark scared the hell out of me. I was glad I didn’t pull the trigger because Alex’s dog, Raz, charged at me and stuck his nose in my crotch.
I patted him on the head and turned to Alex, seated on the couch with her feet up, the laptop open in front of her.
She eyeballed the gun in my hand. “What the hell are you doing with that? Don’t you think I’ve been shot enough?”
I walked to my desk and placed the Smith & Wesson on top. “What are you doing here?” I said.
She sat up straight on the couch.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you’d be happy to see me.”
I plopped down next to her and leaned my head back on the cushion behind me. “Aren’t you supposed to be home, resting?”
“I’ve rested enough,” she said, a big smile on her face. “I feel pretty good.” She turned her computer screen toward me. “I just got the results from the lab. They were all clean.”
“Clean? There was nothing?”
She shook her head. It doesn’t mean she didn’t try to poison you.”
“Actually,” I said. “I don’t think she did.”
“Why not?”
I took a moment before I answered. “Because it makes no sense.”
“Do you think she tried to poison Ted? And maybe failed?”
I rubbed my tired face up and down. “Right now, we have no motive. And I can’t come up with a single reason why she’d hire us to see if Ted was having an affair if her real goal was to have him killed, or do it herself.”
Alex sat quiet, closed the lid on her laptop and placed it down next to her.
I got up from the couch and looked out the window at the St. Johns. “I met with LJ over at Memorial Park… before I came back here. Turns out, if he’s telling the truth, the three of them met to discuss LJ going back to Chemcore. From what LJ said, Ted wanted to get Tucker out of the business.”
“So if Tucker got wind of what Ted was up to… ”
“He wouldn’t be happy, to put it lightly.”
Alex got up and put a mug of water in the microwave. She waited with her back to me without saying a word. The bell dinged and she turned with her mug. Steam poured off the top, and she dropped a tea bag inside. She walked back to the couch and sat down. “Something doesn’t make sense,” she said. “What happened to Olivia’s company wanting to buy Chemcore? Wasn’t that the original story?”
“From what I was told,” I said. “But it doesn’t mean Olivia was all for it though. Maybe she was more interested in helping Ted keep control. Or if Tucker was the one pushing for a sale, it’d make sense Ted would do whatever he could to stop it.”
I left Alex at the office and took a ride out to Westside Industrial Park where Chemcore’s offices were located. I parked in front of the Chemcore Incorporated sign and walked into the lobby of the building. A security guard I didn’t recall seeing before sat in a bar-height chair. He didn’t have much of a neck, and his fat hung over the edge of the stool. He stared back at me without a word.
“I’m here to see Tucker Dennison,” I said.
He didn’t answer right away as if to set the tone that he was the authority in the room and wasn’t going to be pushed around. He sniffled his nose and shook his head. “Not here today.”
“No?” I turned and looked out the glass door into the parking lot. “Isn’t that his car out there?”
The man stood from his seat, and towered over my six-two frame. He held his gaze on me for a moment, his eyes narrowed. He looked toward the parking lot and nodded. “Yup, that’s his car. But like I said… he’s not here.” He folded his arms and rested them on the mound of a stomach over his belt.
“Can you just tell him Henry Walsh is here?”
The man dropped his trunk-like arms by his side and eased up from the stool. His skin was covered in tattoos. I looked for a match to the one I saw on the back of Conrad’s wrist but didn’t see anything other than some dragons and crosses running up and down his arms.
He turned and opened a door behind him, walked through, and closed it shut.
But a moment later the door opened again. Another uniformed man walked out behind the other. I recognized him from the first time I’d stopped to visit Tucker.
“Mr. Walsh?” said the man.
“That’s me.”
He looked me up and down. “Come with me.”
I followed the man through the doorway and down a long hall until we got to an elevator.
The man didn’t say a word, and I stayed quiet, assuming I’d have another face-to-face with Tucker Dennison.
We stepped on the elevator when the door opened and took it down below ground level.
“I’m not here alone,” I said. “So if you’re planning to do something I’m not going to like, just keep that in mind. They’ll be here in no time.”
The man turned and glanced at me, then gestured for me to walk ahead of him when the door once again opened.
A strong, burning chemical smell filled the air.
I followed the security guard down the hall and stopped.
Tucker stepped in front of me and wore a white lab coat. He nodded to his friend. “Thank you, I’ll take it from here.”
The security guard nodded, then turned and walked down the hall and stepped back onto the elevator.
Tucker turned and walked ahead of me down the hall. “Follow me,” he said.
We walked past windowed laboratories and conference rooms. The light overhead was as bright as sunlight and reflected off the white walls. The only sounds down there were of doors opening and closing. Voices could be heard from the other side of the walls.
“I’ve been expecting you,” he said, still at a pace a few steps ahead of me. He stopped at a large steel door and put his palm up on a black pad-like device on the wall. A red light flashed and something beeped. Tucker pushed open the door.
I followed him inside the room, white and sterile like the hallway. A long glass table took up most of the space, surrounded by at least a dozen black office chairs.
Tucker sat on the far end of the table and gestured toward the chairs. “Please, have a seat.”
I looked around, unsure where I was or what was about to happen. After a brief moment, I sat and removed the 9mm in my waistband. I placed it up on the table.
“I don’t think you’ll need that,” he said. He held his gaze on me for a moment. “I must admit, you’re very persistent, although I’m not exactly sure what you’re even after at this point.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I want the truth,” I said. “And nobody seems to know what that is around here. I want the truth about what happened to Ted. I want to know about you and LJ and what the hell the story is with this goddamn formula everyone’s after.”
Tucker leaned forward on the table. “Maybe I can clear some things up for you,” he said.
“How about you start by admitting you didn’t like Ted destroying your chance to cash in on millions of dollars because he refused to sell the company.”
Tucker stared at me without a word, like he was holding back a smile. “I can tell you the truth you’re after.”
“And what makes you think I’ll believe a word coming out of your mouth?”
Tucker held his hands out, his palms toward me. “Give me a chance to explain.” He got up from the table and turned to the wall. He tapped a panel of buttons, and the entire wall shifted and slid open like an elevator door. Tucker reached inside the opening and turned around with a notebook in his hands. He tossed it down in front of me on the table. “Go ahead. Take a look.”
I opened the notebook and flipped through the pages. What I saw, as far as I could tell, looked exactly like what I’d found in the briefcase inside the trunk of the Cadillac. “Where’d you get this?” I said.
Tucker nodded toward the hidden opening inside the wall. “It’s been kept inside this wall since we started Chemcore.”
“But this is what was inside the briefcase. My partner was shot because of this.”
Tucker shook his head. “What Ted took to that hotel room was a fake,” he said.
“You set him up?”
“Did I set him up?” Tucker shook his head. “I wouldn’t do that to Ted.”
I stared at the numbers and figures in the notebook. “I don’t understand. I thought Ted gave it to Olivia and LJ to keep it from you?”
“Is that what you heard?” he said. “Let me guess. LJ told you that?”
I didn’t answer. “Are you going to try and tell me you’re the only one who’s not lying? That you were Ted’s real friend? Because everybody claims to be his friend, but I’m not exactly sure if anyone was.”
Tucker sat down in the chair at the end of the table. “You said you wanted the truth. I’m trying to give it to you if you’d give me a chance.”
I leaned forward and pointed my finger at Tucker’s face. “Then tell me what the hell’s going on.”
“LJ wanted revenge.”
“Revenge? For what? Because you forced him out?”
“Not at all. In fact, Ted and I were on the same team. LJ was the one who was going to destroy this company. Everything we built here. All LJ wanted was the glory. And the money.”
“That’s funny,” I said. “It’s my understanding you were the one after the money. Ted and LJ were the ones who—”
“I’ll give LJ credit. He can weave quite a tale. He’s always been quite the storyteller. Which I guess made him the ideal salesman. If anyone could sell ice to Eskimos, it was LJ.”
I still couldn’t wrap my head around what was going on. And I had no way of knowing if Tucker was telling the truth or not. I picked up the notebook. “So this is the same one I showed you outside your tennis club?”
He shook his head. “You never gave it to me, did you?”
“No, but… ”
“Well, then, there’s your answer. I’m telling you, Mr. Walsh, the real formula hasn’t left this building. It hasn’t left this room. We wanted LJ to have it. I don’t mean this one… the, uh, fake one. Ted wrote up all those formulas just to throw LJ off. I mean, it took some convincing. Ted didn’t want to believe LJ would turn on him like he did. So that night in the hotel… he set him up. Olivia was there to help him do it.”
“And it cost her her life,” I said.
Tucker looked down at his hands on the table. “I had no idea LJ would take everything to the extreme.”
“By taking it to the extreme, you mean having anyone killed who got in his way?”
Tucker shook his head. “I don’t believe LJ killed Ted.”
Chapter 33
Lynn Parker stood outside her front door when I stepped from the Jeep parked in her driveway. She didn’t move or invite me inside when I walked toward her.
“Are you going to try to blame me for anything else?” she said.
“No,” I said. “I’m here to apologize.”
“You honestly believed I would have poisoned you, Henry? I just wanted you to have a drink with me. There was nothing more to it.”
“I know,” I said. “But the reason I want to say I’m sorry is because I didn’t give you the information you hired me to find.”
Lynn shrugged. “Well, I don’t think either of us ever expected Ted would have—”
“I’m afraid you were right,” I said. “You were right from the beginning… about Ted. Because he was having an affair.”
Lynn had a blank stare on her face, clearly caught off guard by what I’d said. She turned and opened her front door. “Maybe we should go inside.”
I followed her down the hall and into the living room, with the TV on the wall and two leather couches facing each other.
“Please, have a seat,” she said. “Can I get you a drink?”
I didn’t find it funny, but I let out a slight laugh. “No, I think I’ll hold off for now.”
Lynn looked like she took a moment to understand what I meant. “Oh, right.”
We sat down across from each other; a square maple-colored coffee table between us.
“You never mentioned a word about Olivia to me, so I’m going to assume you never once suspected there could have been something between them?” I said.
Lynn’s eyes opened wide. “Ted and Olivia?” She shook her head, placed her hand flat over her chest. “Those two were like brother and sister.”
I looked up at whatever was playing on the TV. The volume was turned off. “They were sleeping together,” I said.
Lynn busted out a short, ear-piercing squeal of a laugh. “Ted and Olivia?” She shook her head. “Not a chance in hell that would ever happen. If you knew the things Ted used to say about her, back when she was married to Jack.” She kept the smile on her face, but it started to fade as she gazed back at the stone-cold look on mine.
“I’m sorry,” I said after a brief pause. “But it appears to be true, from what I’ve learned. Ted and Olivia were having an affair.”
Lynn stared back at me. She opened her mouth to speak but stopped. She swallowed hard. “It… it can’t be true. I don’t believe it. And Ted… Ted would never do that to his brother.”
I sat, quiet. “I’m sorry.”
With a slight tilt to her head, she said, “You’re serious? But… but if Jack ever found out, he’d... ” She didn’t finish her thought. She didn’t have to.
“Do you know the last time Jack was here?” I said.
She took a moment before she finally shook her head. “No, I don’t. I don’t know. Why?”
“Can you just try and remember the last time you saw him? Maybe out back? Having a drink with Ted?”
Lynn sat back on the couch and stared straight ahead. She turned to the window and looked out toward the yard out back. “He was here a couple days before Ted’s death.”
“Was he here with Ted?”
She had a blank look in her eyes. She took a moment before she answered. “No. He came during the day, when Ted was at work.”
“For what? To see you?” I said.
“He sat right there on the couch, where you’re sitting. I remember thinking he’d acted strange. Fidgety. I mean, he was always a little odd but… ” She put her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide open. “Jack was outside. He went out back by the pool. He told me he had to make a business call. He went outside so he could have some privacy.” She stared back at me. Her breathing sounded erratic, like she had trouble catching her breath.
