Client On The Run (A Nick Teffinger Thriller) Read online

  A pause.

  “I’ll get right on it,” Raspen said.

  “That would be sweet. Time’s ticking.”

  “I know.”

  “Remember, this stays between you and me.”

  “Absolutely,” Raspen said. “I have a lot more riding on it than you do.”

  True.

  “Have the cops called you?” Dalton asked.

  “No,” Raspen said. “I don’t think anyone’s opened a file yet. As far as I know, the only thing going on so far is that every reporter in the world is snooping around.”

  “Be careful what you say to them.”

  “They won’t get anything, don’t worry.”

  Dalton hung up and sprinkled shrimp into the aquarium. If this actually worked—and Raspen was able to find out where Malcolm was staying—Dalton might have to plug the leak later.

  Meaning Raspen.

  Time would tell.

  58

  T effinger woke before sunrise and jogged through humid New Orleans streets. He passed a mom-and-pop restaurant with the lights on and swung over to the window to have a look. An hour later, he brought Jessie-Rae there for pancakes smothered under more strawberries and whipped cream than the law allowed. The waitress—a 60-year-old black woman—figured out his coffee addiction after the third refill and didn’t let the cup get empty again.

  He tipped her $20.00 and told her he was going to come back and marry her someday.

  She chuckled and said, “You wish.”

  Then they headed to the New Orleans Police Department and—after a lot of explaining to the gatekeepers—ended up in the office of a homicide detective by the name of Max Moniteau.

  Teffinger liked the man from moment-one.

  He was about fifty, white, five-feet-eight, bald on top, gray on the sides and 150 pounds soaking wet. Suspenders held up brown pants. His shirt was crispy white and long-sleeved, in spite of the impending heat. He had a gold tooth, a Timex watch and a simple wedding band.

  Teffinger shook his hand and found the man’s grip a lot tighter than he expected.

  He showed the man the voodoo dolls and the newspaper article of Teffinger that was found with one of the dolls. He explained that there had been two recent attempts on his life.

  One by bullet.

  One by rattlesnake.

  He told Moniteau what he knew about the black woman who escaped when Teffinger got hit in the head with a rock. He told him about their plan to have the black woman follow him here and then figure out her name from the airline manifests.

  Moniteau listened patiently and tapped his fingers on a book called Bangkok Laws.

  When Teffinger finally stopped talking, the man put a solemn expression on his face and said, “You’re out of your league down here. You’ll be dead within 24 hours. My advice is to get back to Denver while you still can.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, let’s suppose you’re right,” he said. “Let’s suppose there’s a voodoo priestess, and he or she—let’s just say it’s a she—lives in New Orleans, and let’s suppose that she put a death curse on you at someone’s request.”

  “Ryan Ripley’s,” Teffinger said.

  Moniteau shook his head.

  “The name isn’t important,” he said. “What’s important is that you now show up in New Orleans very much alive. That’s a slap in the face; a total slap in the face. How do you think she’s going to react to that?”

  “I don’t really care.”

  “Well you should,” Moniteau said, “because she has a reputation to maintain. And in that line of work, reputation is everything.” The man sipped coffee and looked Teffinger directly in the eyes. “My advice to you is to slip out of the city as soon as you walk out the front door. You don’t necessarily have to go back to Denver. Go wherever you want. Maybe you’ll still get your manifests without putting your neck on the block.”

  “So does that mean you’re not going to help me?”

  The man stood up.

  “I just did,” he said.

  Teffinger set his coffee cup on the detective’s desk and headed for the door.

  Jessie-Rae fell into step.

  “Thanks for seeing us,” Teffinger said.

  “No problem. Good luck to you. Don’t turn yourself into my next case.”

  Outside, he told Jessie-Rae, “I can’t believe I actually liked that guy at first.”

  She frowned.

  “Maybe we should just do what he said.”

  “He’s an idiot. We’re going to Plan B.”

  “What’s Plan B?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t even know we needed a Plan B until just now.”

  59

  D awn Hooker lived on a 5-acre horse property off Highway 93 between Golden and Boulder. Yardley maneuvered the 4Runner down a long gravel driveway, parked behind three Harleys and killed the engine. A black lab sniffed her briefly when she stepped out, and then escorted her to the front door of a modest house that looked to be fifty years old.

  The air was quiet.

  She knocked.

  No answer.

  She was about to rap again when the door opened and a woman appeared; barefoot, wearing jeans, a black T and a sleepy pre-coffee face.

  Very attractive.

  About thirty.

  With long chestnut hair.

  The cowgirl next door.

  She stepped outside, closed the door and said, “The guys are still sleeping. They’re not exactly what you call morning people.”

  Yardley chuckled and wanted to ask who the guys were, but didn’t want to get nosy. “Thanks for meeting with me,” she said.

  Not a problem.

  “You want coffee?”

  “I’d kill for coffee right now,” Yardley said.

  “Come on in, just be quiet.”

  They headed inside.

  The house was small, neat and girly. Dawn noticed one of the bedroom doors open, tiptoed over and peeked inside. Then she said, “They must be sleeping in the barn. We can talk.”

  “They sleep in the barn?”

  “They saw a rattlesnake in there a couple of days ago,” Dawn said. “Then they started daring one another to sleep out there. They’re worse than little kids.”

  “Who are they?”

  “One of them, I’m embarrassed to say, is my brother John,” Dawn said. “The other two are his buddies. Believe it or not, they’re all schoolteachers from Cleveland.”

  On a road trip.

  Must be nice.

  Dawn turned out to be the manager of the Grizzly Flower, the cowboy bar of Denver, given to rocking country bands and a huge wooden dance floor that got more than its fair share of abuse.

  Yardley knew the place well.

  She used to go there in her early-20s to get beer in her gut and get her ass slapped and dance until her legs collapsed.

  They ended up in the shade, leaning against a cottonwood tree by the corral with their legs stretched out, sipping coffee. Yardley fired up her laptop and opened the Excel spreadsheet that contained the names from the Ink Spot receipts. Dawn put the computer on her lap and scrolled down, looking for a name that rang a bell.

  The name of the pirate.

  Something moved on the ground to their right.

  Yardley saw it in her peripheral vision and turned her head.

  A rattlesnake!

  A huge one.

  Coming right at them.

  She punched Dawn and said, “Rattlesnake!”

  Dawn looked over.

  “That’s a bull snake,” she said. “It won’t hurt you.”

  Yardley jumped to her feet and got out of the way. The snake kept coming, slithered over Dawn’s legs, and headed for the barn.

  Dawn tossed a pebble at it and said, “Go on, get out of here.”

  60

  G-Drop’s manager, Alan Raspen, called Dalton shortly before noon with interesting news. Namely, Malcolm Smith had a good friend in Denver
by the name of Jason Lynch. Maybe Malcolm was staying with him.

  “You got an address or phone number or anything?”

  “No, just the name.”

  Luckily, Lynch was in the phone directory. A quick Google search showed him to be a lawyer with a downtown firm by the name of Radcliffe & Snow. He lived in Genesee. Dalton called the man’s home number from a payphone on the 16th Street Mall and got an answering machine.

  He didn’t leave a message.

  Then he called Radcliffe & Snow and was told the man wasn’t in. “When do you expect him?”

  “He won’t be in today. He’s actually out of town.”

  “Do you know when he’ll be back?”

  “Let’s see—it looks like he has an 8:30 appointment tomorrow morning, so you might try him after that.”

  “So he’s probably coming back sometime tonight,” Dalton said.

  “That’s my guess.”

  Dalton headed back to the loft, changed into jeans and a T, grabbed a baseball cap and shades, and pointed the BMW west. He kept the radio off.

  His pulse raced.

  Thirty minutes later he veered off I-70, into the twisty mountain topography of Genesee. Expensive homes sat on large lots, well separated from one another. Almost no one had grass. Except for the houses and the roads, the area maintained its original organic state, which meant plenty of aspen trees, ponderosa pines and wildflowers.

  Dalton drove by Lynch’s house and gave it a once over.

  There were no cars in the driveway.

  No one was in view.

  The windows were closed.

  It turned out to be near the orgasmatron house used in Woody Allen’s “Sleeper,” on the I-70 side of the mountain, which meant a lot of traffic noise. It had a contemporary mountain design and looked to be about 5,000 square feet. It sat a good distance from the narrow asphalt road, behind a thicket of trees. Dalton turned around a half mile down the road, doubled back and pulled into the driveway.

  He got out, rang the bell and waited.

  No one answered.

  He looked around for security cameras and saw none. He tried the doorknob and found it locked.

  He swallowed, looked around, saw no one, and headed towards the back.

  If he ran into anyone, he already had a story—namely that he was with Martin Productions and that he was trying to track down G-Drop, who didn’t show up for a concert last night. Someone said that G-Drop’s right-hand man, Malcolm Smith, might be staying here.

  The house had vertical sliding windows.

  Every one in the back was up three inches.

  No doubt to vent the heavy Colorado sun.

  He raised a screen and climbed inside.

  Silence.

  Perfect.

  Come on, Lindsay Vail.

  Be here somewhere.

  He was five steps into the structure when a German Shepherd bounded around a hallway corner and leaped at his face.

  61

  A fter the Max Moniteau letdown, Teffinger came up with Plan B, and set it in motion by calling Jena Vellone. Most people in Denver knew her as the TV 8 roving reporter, the charismatic blond with the big green eyes who wasn’t afraid to get in the middle of the mess. Teffinger knew her from the old high school days in Fort Collins, when she was the ticklish younger sister of Teffinger’s best friend—Matt Vellone.

  As he dialed, Jessie-Rae asked, “Who you calling?”

  “Your co-host’s older sister,” he said.

  When Jena answered, Teffinger said, “I’m in New Orleans.”

  “Um, duh.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means Geneva’s been mentioning that on Hot Talk about every five minutes,” Jena said. “What the hell’s going on?”

  Teffinger explained.

  He was trying to get someone to follow him there.

  “Here’s the reason I’m calling,” he said. “I need an in to one of the TV stations down here. Do you have any connections I can tap?”

  “Maybe,” she said. “What’s in it for me?”

  Teffinger chuckled.

  “What do you want to be in it for you?”

  “I want you to take me out and get me drunk.”

  “Be careful,” he said. “I’m going to call your bluff one of these days.”

  “Start calling.”

  She gave him a name and number; he jotted it down.

  “How’s Alley?” he asked.

  “Alley’s fine.”

  When he hung up, Jessie-Rae looked at him and asked, “Who’s Alley?”

  “Alley’s a cat,” Teffinger said.

  In front of the courthouse, an hour later, a TV van pulled up and a well-dressed, petite, black-haired woman stepped out the passenger door. “You my story?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” Teffinger said. “You my storyteller?”

  She grinned.

  “Tammy Bahamas,” she said.

  “I’ve never been to the Bahamas,” Teffinger said.

  “It’s a nice place.”

  “I can see that.”

  Jessie-Rae punched him in the arm. “Teffinger, you’re flirting with this woman and I’m standing right here next to you.”

  “I’m not flirting, I’m talking geography,” he said.

  She rolled her eyes and shook hands with the reporter.

  “I’m Jessie-Rae.”

  “Yes you are,” the reporter said. “So are you guys new to the city?”

  They were.

  “Do you have anyone to show you the sights?”

  They didn’t.

  “Well, we need to change that.”

  The driver—a heavyset man who looked like Paul Kwak—walked over with a camera perched on his shoulder and handed a microphone to the raven-haired one.

  Then they did the shoot.

  It was a fairly simple story. Nick Teffinger was a homicide detective from Denver. He was in town to get information on the man on the screen who is wanted for questioning in connection with the murder of one woman and the disappearance of another in Denver.

  If anyone knew who the man was, they should call the number at the bottom of the screen.

  The number was also posted on the station’s website.

  The man on the screen was the pirate, emailed to the station by Sydney at Teffinger’s request.

  Teffinger really didn’t know if the man from the restroom last night was the guy he was searching for but he didn’t care that much either.

  The important thing is that Teffinger got his name and face on the news.

  If the black woman was from New Orleans, someone in town would know that she was after Teffinger.

  They would call her and she’d return.

  The day was getting hot and humid.

  “Now what?” Jessie-Rae asked.

  Teffinger kissed her.

  Then he said, “Now we start paying a visit to the voodoo shops.”

  62

  Y ardley left Dawn Hooker’s house with the corner of her mouth turned up slightly. The list of names jogged Dawn’s memory—Robert—that was the man’s first name. As soon as she remembered it, she did a word search and moved from one Robert to the next. There were nineteen of them. None of the last names rang a bell; probably because the man never mentioned it.

  Luckily, Yardley had been smart enough to throw the original receipts into the back of the 4Runner before pulling out of the marina.

  She got them and brought them inside to the kitchen table. They refilled their coffee cups, then went through and pulled out all the Robert receipts to see if they had any additional information that might spark something.

  None had an address or phone number or anything to set off a spark.

  But, still—

  Nineteen was a manageable number.

  Dawn’s pencil sketch of the tattoo that she gave the pirate—Robert—sat on the passenger seat of the 4Runner as Yardley drove east on the C-470 freeway, parallel to the foothills. It depicted a dead
woman with a knife imbedded in the side of her head, almost up to the handle.

  Blood dripped down.

  Very hateful.

  The product of a seriously disturbed mind.

  She pulled off at the Morrison exit to gas up. While the tank filled, she called her client—Aspen Asher—and brought her up to date.

  “I’m floored that you’ve come up with all this,” Aspen said.

  “Me too, sort of,” Yardley said. “When I get back to the sailboat, I’ll scan the tattoo into my computer and email it to you. Just be ready for what you see. I’ll also send you a list of all the Roberts with their last names and see if any ring a bell. Get back to me ASAP. If you don’t recognize any of them, I’m going to start running them down. ”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Yardley said. “I suppose I’ll start with the phone book and Google.”

  The gas pump clanked.

  The humming stopped.

  As Yardley pulled the nozzle out, she said, “This guy’s starting to scare me.”

  “You want out?”

  “No, that’s not what I’m getting at,” Yardley said. “All I’m saying is that we need to be careful.”

  “Agreed. We should meet and brainstorm everything. How are you looking tonight?”

  Good question.

  Would it be a Coyote night?

  It didn’t matter.

  She could fit it all in if she had to.

  “Tonight’s fine, but not at the boat. Check your email in thirty minutes.”

  Coyote waved from the Searay when Yardley got back to the sailboat. She waved back, headed into the cabin and sent the email. Two minutes later her architect-client called and said, “Nada on the Robert names.”