“Jack, hi; it’s Brent.”
“Hey, Brent. I don’t have any leads yet, if that’s what you need to know.”
“No, no. I know it’s too early for that. I’ve got one, though. It might be nothing, but I have a sneaking feeling that the bulletin board stalkers know something about Allen’s mysterious will. They’re all talking about making claims on the estate. And I got an email from Gerald Finegan, Bekker’s nemesis. I’ll forward it to you.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Follow up on what you got from the tracking company. Talk to all these cyber-stalkers and find out their stories. We also might have to rattle old Gee-offrey’s cage again.”
“You got it.”
Brent locked up the office and headed for home. Angela would be there tonight, and Brent would return the favor that she had done for him many times. He would be the chef ce soir and would make his special “Canard en croute,” which sounded a lot fancier than just baking a breast of duck in a crust of bread dough.
***
Brent’s hands were covered in flour and the kitchen counter had been doused with a thin layer of white dust: the fallout of his labors. He heard the phone, the enemy of peace, ring in the distance.
“Brent,” called Angela. “Dr. Orozco’s on the phone.”
Brent quickly washed and dried his hands, then took the phone from Angela.
“Brent, I’m sorry to call you at home, but there’s something I knew you’d want to know right away.”
“Of course, doctor, what is it?”
“Allen Bekker was murdered.”
CHAPTER TEN
A morgue was not the ideal place for Brent to begin his day, but in this case, he made an exception. The place smelled like a dirty locker room mixed with the pungent smell of formaldehyde. Dr. Jaime Orozco smiled, greeted Brent, and shook his hand. Then, bulging with anticipation wider than his own ample frame, he waddled over to the cooler and pulled out the drawer. Then he uncovered the dead face of Allen Bekker down to the Y-shaped incision, sewn up with thick sutures. Brent resisted the urge to vomit. Calm down, he told himself.
“Like I told you on the phone, see here?" Orozco asked, excitedly, pointing to bruise marks on Bekker’s neck.
“See these bruise marks, here? They’re post-mortem ligature marks from the bathrobe they said he hung himself with. Oh, Bekker was asphyxiated alright; but he couldn’t have done it himself with his own hands. He was strangled.”
Orozco pointed to what he said were another set of bruises, covered up by the post mortem hanging. “You see here?” (Brent didn’t see.) “You can see finger and thumb impression contusions with hemorrhages surrounding them which they tried to mask by the ligature of the hanging.”
Brent leaned in to look as best as he could without gagging. Orozco lifted up the eyelids.
“No hemorrhages in the eyes. He was hung after he was strangled. But, to be extra thorough, I’m going to dissect the neck. I waited for you before I began that procedure.”
Brent cleared his throat. “Uh, Doc, that’s okay. You can just give me your report.”
Doctor Orozco looked surprised, smiled, and then said, “Alright.” He could distinguish the bruises on Bekker’s dead body, but apparently could not see that Brent was turning blue.
“When do you think we can have your report for the D.A.’s office?”
“Oh, you’ll have it by tomorrow morning.”
***
When Brent hit the fresh air, he was thankful to inhale a deep breath of it. He sat in his car, whipped out his cell phone, and called Jack.
“Jack, the autopsy results are in. Bekker was murdered.”
“Really? Well that puts a different spin on things, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. It puts in question the holographic codicil/suicide note. Raises an inference of duress.” Cruella was right. Someone probably did hold a gun to his head.
“So, should I shift gears on the investigation?”
“Shift. It’s a murder investigation now. The D.A. and the police will have Orozco’s report in the morning.”
“What about the crime scene?”
“Exactly what I was thinking, Jack. You’ve got to get over there and secure it, right away. And call some of your cop buddies to let them know they’ve got a murder on their hands.”
“On my way.”
“And Jack?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t let up on the Internet crazies. As soon as you’ve got the scene secured, get back on that lead.”
***
Brent couldn’t open his email without receiving one or more messages from Gerald Finegan demanding his $250,000. He was becoming a nuisance. He also seemed to have a presence on Hotstocks.co, under the anonymous handle “Defrauded.”
Shyster lawyer Brent Marks still refuses to make me whole. He should have been hanging right next to Bekker. IMHO of course – Defrauded.
The stack of snail mail that Melinda had put on his desk was even worse. As Brent skimmed through it, throwing the junk mail in the round file, he came across a letter from the State Bar of California. It was a disciplinary complaint from Gerald Finegan – aka Defrauded. “Great!” Brent muttered to himself.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The next day, Brent flew off to Scottsdale to meet with Gerald Finegan. From Santa Barbara, he transferred at LAX for the short flight to Phoenix. Even though it was evening, a wall of heat hit him right away as he stepped off the plane. Phoenix was an oven compared to Santa Barbara.
Brent checked into a small motel in Scottsdale and then hit the streets to begin the process of finding out everything he could about Gerald Finegan. He spoke to the neighbors, who knew Finegan as a loner who didn’t go out much. He spoke to his ex-wife, who related that Finegan gambled away most of his money on the stock market and was two months behind on child support for his two twin daughters. And he spoke to his employer, a swimming pool contractor who refused to divulge any information about Finegan except that he was one of his best pool salesmen.
After his afternoon of sleuthing, Brent caught a quick dinner at The Mission Mexican restaurant, and then went back to his motel to catch up on his phone calls and emails.
***
Finegan had selected a neutral location to meet. Although Brent didn’t relish the thought of sharing a meal with Finegan, the meeting place was Panera Bread. Besides the bread, it was a junk food joint that probably served less junk than any other. The blast of cold air as he walked in was welcome as Brent pushed the door into Panera. A cross-section of business people were seated at the plastic tables, either eating their soups, salads or sandwiches, or waiting for delivery, marked by the tables with the numbers on them which were protruding from aluminum clips on tall, thin poles. Brent recognized a man in a purple shirt and blue tie sitting alone at a corner table with neither a number nor a plate of food. He was sipping on a cup of coffee (or some hot beverage). The last thing Brent could think of in this heat was drinking something hot.
Brent approached the middle-aged man. “Mr. Finegan? I’m Brent Marks,” he said, holding out his hand. Finegan, not moving from his chair, held out his hand and gave Brent’s hand a reluctant pump, and Brent sat down.
“Do you want to get something to…”
“Not hungry,” Finegan spurted out, his beady eyes glinting with a cocky expression. “I hope this isn’t about the complaint to the State Bar.”
“No, Mr. Finegan. I’ll discuss that with them. This is about the demands you’ve been making on the Estate of Allen Bekker. I wanted to cover them with you.”
Finegan’s eyebrows raised as if the steam from his coffee had lifted his forehead. “No need to discuss them. Bekker stole my money. I want it back. It’s that simple. I told the FBI all about it, and I told them about you, too.” He took a sip of the hot liquid.
“Me? What could you possibly tell them about me?”
“That you were Bekker’s patsy. An unethical attorney who would do anything he
asked you to do - for the money, of course.”
Of course.
“Now, Mr. Finegan…” Brent was fuming and repressed the urge to punch Finegan in the nose.
“There’s nothing more to say, Marks. Just make sure I get paid or you’ll be sorry.”
“I’m afraid there is more to say, Mr. Finegan. Allen Bekker was murdered.”
Brent searched Finegan’s face for his reaction. His eyes widened, as if he was shocked, but his eyebrows drew together and his lips stretched, as if he was more scared than surprised.
“Murdered? How do you know?” His eyebrows raised and his mouth opened, looking worried now.
“As executor, I ordered a second autopsy. He was strangled, Mr. Finegan; and that puts the so-called handwritten will in jeopardy.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because the evidence is that it was written shortly before his death. If it was written in the presence and at the direction of the killer, it will be invalidated for duress.”
“You don’t think that I had something to do with his death, now, do you?”
Finegan avoided Brent’s eyes. He had definitely shaken his cage.
“You tell me, Mr. Finegan. I see threats on the Internet against Bekker and then he turns up dead.”
“A lot of people hated Bekker.”
“Still, I’m giving you a subpoena for your computer records.” Brent handed Finegan an envelope. “And there’s a preservation of evidence notice in there as well. Don’t erase anything. All of it has to be preserved for trial.”
Finegan looked at the envelope like it was the hand of a leper. Brent rose and left without saying good-bye. He paused outside the window and noticed Finegan frantically texting on his phone.
“Brent Marks, the lawyer, just confronted me. He says Allen Bekker was murdered. WTF??”
“Brent Marks is in Phoenix, accusing me of murder.”
***
Once he was back in his rental car, Brent called Jack. “Jack, we struck pay dirt with Finegan. His expression was practically a confession when I confronted him. Then he got right on his phone and started texting or emailing.”
“Okay, I’ll give the information to the Detective in charge.”
“Who is it?”
“Detective Arnold Gray of the LAPD. We’ve got some common friends. And he’s letting me stay close to the case, since we were the ones who opened it up for him.”
“Less embarrassment for the medical examiner.”
“Exactly.”
***
Brent waited at the United Express gate during his one-hour layover at LAX. He was famished, but resisted the urge to grab something to eat from one of the airport restaurants. It was safer at home. While Brent was waiting for his flight to be called for boarding, he had the strange feeling that someone was watching him. Before he shook it off, he casually scanned the area around him as he looked at his iPhone. Nothing unusual. Must be paranoid.
As the flight was boarding, Brent got on the bus first, so he could watch the parade of other passengers and check out each one of them. Nobody seemed to be out of the ordinary. There were families, businessmen, and the usual assortment of college students. All of them looked very “Santa Barbarish,” but there were still a few who did not fit in. He kept a peripheral eye on them: a nervous woman with a huge purse, a middle-aged balding man, and a short, fat man hauling an oversized carry-on bag.
During the short flight, Brent kept his eyes peeled for his three imaginary suspicious characters, but they all seemed to be behaving themselves in their own respective seats. Brent looked out the window as the plane began its final descent into the Santa Barbara airport over the Pacific Ocean. The sky was clear and he could see the tiny lights of the Santa Barbara harbor twinkling below them as the sun dipped beautifully behind the horizon.
The plane touched down and Brent made sure to keep an eye out for his three suspects. Only one – the woman with the large purse - joined him at the baggage claim, which took an extraordinarily long time. Finally, when Brent recovered his bag, he made a note never to check in anything on such a short flight, strapped his laptop on top of the suitcase, and headed for the parking lot.
Brent rolled his bag behind him, all the while looking for the three suspects as he stepped into the crosswalk over the pickup lane toward the parking lot. Suddenly a green Toyota Corolla sped toward him. Brent jumped out of the way and the Toyota obliterated his bag and kept on going. Brent looked for the license plate, but the car was going too fast as it left a trail of clothes, papers, and plastic and metal pieces of Brent’s laptop in its wake.
Brent picked up what was left of his belongings, shoved them into the shell of his broken suitcase, and went inside to report the incident to the airport police. He flipped his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed Jack.
“Jack, I think someone just tried to kill me.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Don’t go straight home,” Jack said. “I’ll go over and stake out your house. Call Angela or something.” The police report took another half hour to complete, and the airport police only half-listened to Brent’s theory that he was marked for death and that it somehow was connected to the Allen Bekker murder. They thought it was just someone who didn’t see Brent in the crosswalk, panicked, and took off. When they were finally done with their paperwork, Brent placed a call to Angela. His hands were still shaking when he dialed her number.
“Jack’s right. Don’t go home. You must be hungry anyway. Why don’t you meet me at Arigato? We can have a light dinner there, then I’ll come home with you and stay over.”
“My FBI protection?”
“Free of charge.”
Brent threw the remnants of his belongings in the trunk of his Jaguar and headed for the freeway, all the while looking around for the green Toyota or anything else that may seem suspicious. Was it a coincidence? Am I just being paranoid?
Brent had been thinking that he had overdone it with Finegan, but now it seemed that he had turned over a rock, and all the nasty things that were under it were crawling out. He finally made it to Arigato and found Angela seated at a table on the restaurant’s patio among a forest of potted trees, twinkling with lights. As they dined on jeweled gems of sushi, lobster rolls, and Japanese delicacies, their conversation focused on the bizarre trip to Phoenix and back.
“It’s true that Finegan, the pool salesman, has the biggest and most public beef with Bekker, but I just don’t see him as a killer.”
“Maybe he hired someone to do it.”
“He’s behind two months on his child support.”
“Maybe that’s why.”
“There has to be more to it than what it appears.”
“There always is.”
Angela was right. Finegan was the only lead they had. After their dinner, they drove together in Angela’s car to Harbor Hills so that Brent could be properly guarded. Jack met them there.
Brent served drinks on the terrace for Angela and Jack as they briefed each other on the case. It was no surprise to Brent that Detective Grey had no interest in following up on the Finegan lead. That would be up to Jack, since Angela and Jack had officially prohibited Brent from conducting his own investigations - at least until they were sure that nobody was trying to kill him.
***
As they cuddled in bed, Angela said: “So, don’t you feel safer here with me to protect you?”
“So much safer,” Brent said as he caressed her cheek, brushing strands of her long golden auburn hair behind her ear as he gently kissed her on the mouth, then planted a series of small kisses on her neck. As they moved, the cat, sensing her cozy spot had been violated, flew off the bed. She would have no part of this foolery.
Their hands flowed over each other, caressing every soft and wonderful spot, as the anticipation built. Then they shifted positions, each kissing their way to the other’s most sensitive place, lingering there until the last possible second.
Angela sighed as Brent enter
ed, and their bodies melded into one; one heart beating, one pair of lungs breathing in and out; two bodies perfectly meshed together until the final crescendo.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Not long after the news of the second autopsy was released, Gee-offrey called to say that he was representing a group of investors who had been defrauded by Bekker in a contest to Bekker’s Trust and Will.
“So, who are the names of the plaintiffs?” Brent asked him. “Defrauded, Truth Seeker and 007?”
“Very funny, Marks. Will you accept service of the papers?”