Buried Leads (A Headlines in High Heels Mystery) Page 9

  “Have you met me? I am nothing if not tenacious.”

  “If it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t be here,” he said. “Your ability to dig up dirt is exactly what has me worried.” He laid a hand on my arm. “Back off.”

  “I can’t.” I stepped past him and started toward my house, warmth lingering on my skin where his hand had been. “This dead lobbyist could turn out to be the story I’ve dreamed of my whole life. What if Grayson is the missing piece? I just have to...”

  I faltered. The lobbyist’s half-eaten face flickered in my memory, right behind an image of Joey standing in my driveway after the discovery of the body, which according to the coroner had only been out there for a few days at the most.

  “You were here.” My chili threatened to come back up. “Oh, God. Tell me you didn’t.”

  “This would be more fun if you’d stop assuming I killed every dead person in five states.” He didn’t look away. “I did not hurt anyone. But your dead guy was in over his head. And you’re about to get in over yours.”

  “Kyle already arrested someone for killing the lobbyist,” I said. “They had a bond hearing early this morning. I have a story in tomorrow’s paper about it.”

  “Who was it?” Joey’s eyes widened slightly, his voice flipping from pleading to tight.

  “James Billings. He’s a veep over at Raymond Garfield.” Puzzle pieces rained into place as I talked, Allison and Kyle echoing in my head. “I think he’s the one paying Grayson off, and I think the dead guy was the go-between. Kyle is sure Billings is his man. He got the CA to take on the case himself, and the judge didn’t give them the no-bond they asked for, but he made Billings wear an ankle monitor. So they’ve got to have something compelling.”

  “I’ll be damned.” Joey matched his stride to mine, shaking his head slowly.

  He kept his head down the rest of the way back to my house, not talking. From his wrinkling brow and twisting mouth, he was either deep in thought or having some kind of internal conflict.

  When we turned up my sidewalk, I broke the silence.

  “Thanks for coming by,” I said. “I’d rather you avoid any more chest thumping competitions with Kyle for obvious reasons, but I really do appreciate your concern.”

  He stood under the unlit coach lamp next to my front door and leaned one shoulder against the wall.

  “I don’t want you to get hurt. Follow the Billings story. You’ll be safe. And if that agent has a thing for you, you’ll stay ahead of your friend at the TV station, too. An executive going up for murder because of dirty money is a hell of a lead.”

  “It’s not bad, but why do I get the distinct feeling that there’s something better here?”

  “It’s not better if you don’t live to see it printed, is it? Make yourself ignore it. You told me once I saved your life. I can’t stand the thought of anything happening to you.” He snatched my Blackberry from my hand and tapped the keys for a few seconds, then handed it back. “Call me if you need me. If your old ‘friend’ can keep you safe, then that’s where I want you to be. Consider it payback: forget you ever heard Grayson’s name.”

  I unlocked the door and opened it.

  “I’ll be careful,” I said.

  “Dammit, this isn’t a game.” He grabbed my arm and spun me around. “Nobody wins if you get yourself killed, and there are people in this up to their eyeballs who won’t give a shit if I say to leave you alone once you piss them off. Leave it.”

  I couldn’t concentrate on anything except the feel of his breath on my face and the smell of his cologne, which seemed slightly insane, given the urgency in his eyes. I leaned back against the doorframe. He moved his hand to the wood behind my head, leaning on the wall with his arm alongside my cheekbone. I stared into his eyes for half a second and stumbled backward into the house.

  “I won’t get hurt,” I said. “I swear.”

  I closed the door before he could say anything else, and watched him go down the walk through the trio of little windows that ran along the top.

  Darcy barked behind me and I jumped.

  “Talk about playing with fire,” I said. “Let’s get you a snack and me a cold shower and a good night’s sleep, huh, girl?”

  Darcy’s pawing at the bathroom door popped the broken latch loose before I even got the shower curtain closed. I turned on the water and made a mental note to call the landlord about the doorknob. Standing under the showerhead, I ran back through the conversation with Joey, way too relieved that he hadn’t killed the lobbyist. It wasn’t until I was halfway through rinsing my hair that I realized what Joey had said without saying it.

  James Billings hadn’t killed anybody, either.

  Sleep eluded me for the better part of three hours. When I’d tossed and turned to the point that every pillow I owned was scattered on the floor around my cherry four-poster, I threw off the covers and went back to the living room.

  Carrying a glass of Moscato to the sofa, I picked up a puzzle piece and turned it every which way, trying to finish the border. But it didn’t fit. Closer inspection told me that it was one of those they’d cut from the middle with an almost-flat edge, so it wasn’t really a border piece.

  “Where the hell is the other one?” I muttered, studying the two thousand or so that littered the coffee table, most of them close to the same color. I loved puzzles. The harder the better, so I bought lots of monochromatic ones.

  While my eyes searched the pieces on the table, my brain tried to order the week’s events into a mental jigsaw.

  If Billings didn’t kill the lobbyist, who did? Grayson? My gut had sensed the senator was shady for days, and Joey all but confirmed it.

  But murder? I shook my head. Not impossible, but I’d put it in the unlikely column at least until I knew more about him. Bribes are one thing. Murder is in a whole different league. I’d met and spoken to more than anyone’s fair share of killers, and they are almost always motivated by one of two things: insanity or passion. Grayson didn’t get where he was being ruled by his emotions.

  But Joey wouldn’t have looked so surprised—or been so damned noncommittal—when I told him about Billings’s arrest if he thought the tobacco executive did it. And while I didn’t want to think my way-too-sexy mob friend was involved, it was looking like he knew too much about the inner workings of this case.

  Kyle’s comment about the cigarette taxes floated through my head. Were there federal taxes on cigarettes, too?

  I dropped the puzzle piece and reached for my laptop, typing “federal tobacco tax” into Google. Pay dirt: forty-five cents a pack.

  I deleted that and typed Grayson’s name in again, scrolling past all the same stories I’d seen the first time, looking for a mention of taxes or tobacco.

  Halfway down the fourth page, I found something.

  In a Washington Post article dated the previous October, Grayson’s name was mentioned in discussion of a bill that would raise the federal excise tax on cigarettes. The reporter called him a swing vote because he was a moderate who might vote for the higher tax, earmarked for education, a pet project of Grayson’s.

  I copied the bill number and clicked over to the Senate website, pasting it into the search box.

  Oh, shit.

  The bill had spent nearly a year bogged down in committee. Until last week, when a retiring senator who was one of the co-authors forced it onto the voting calendar for a week from Monday.

  But I was staring at my screen with a slightly loose jaw because Ted Grayson was the sole dissenting vote on sending the bill to the floor.

  The Post’s analysts expected Grayson to lean on this bill. Tobacco companies were increasingly unpopular with the public, but they had deep pockets and old friends in D.C. They needed someone on their side, and Grayson was a popular guy on Capitol Hill.

  He also
represented a fair number of farmers, here in tobacco country. He was the perfect target. The information in front of me was just enough to make a person curious about why education had suddenly taken a backseat to tobacco. And give me a bad feeling that I already knew.

  Allison had said, “Asked what they were paying him for.” I sat back in my chair, my eyes on Grayson’s Colgate-commercial-perfect smile as my mind clicked puzzle pieces together.

  Tobacco was Virginia’s biggest agricultural product, and had been since Thomas Jefferson held state office in Richmond. Farmers depended on being able to sell their crops. And the company that turned those crops into marketable product was an industrial giant. I had no trouble believing that either would be willing to pay for votes to stop a new tax that could hurt their sales. But how did the lobbyist end up dead? He was part of Team Tobacco, too, right? Was I looking in the right place? My gut said yes, because Kyle had arrested Billings, who was a tobacco executive.

  I clicked last fall’s Post article back up on my screen, reading the rest of it but finding no mention of the victim, Amesworth, or Raymond Garfield, the tobacco company.

  Back to Google.

  On page fourteen of my results, Grayson’s name popped up in an article about a bill that made it illegal to smoke in restaurants in Virginia—because he’d written the bill. The story on my screen was written by the Telegraph’s retired opinions editor, praising Grayson’s dogged pursuit of the change. Said the Senator’s favorite uncle died of lung cancer in his forties, and quoted Grayson as calling Raymond Garfield “Virginia’s moneygrubbing, murderous devil.”

  It made no sense. If he’d flipped on such a major issue, someone would have noticed. A search of the Post’s editorial archives turned up nothing.

  I went back to the senate site and searched for bills concerning tobacco farming, subsidies, taxes, or smoking.

  There’d been seven introduced in the past three years. Four that actually made it to the floor for a vote. I held my breath as I clicked into the voting record and scanned for Grayson’s name. I found him on the first list and blew the captive air out through my bottom lip, fanning a wayward strand of hair off my forehead. Damn. He didn’t vote.

  I found him on the second list. Not there that day, either. I clicked quickly to the third. Blank. So was the fourth.

  “They’re paying him to not vote against them?” I shook my head at the screen. Bob would never buy it. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that money, tobacco, the dead lobbyist, and Grayson were thicker than Eunice’s cream gravy.

  “Why would this guy be in bed with the tobacco lobby?” I said under my breath, sitting back in my chair.

  My gut said money, and my inner Lois Lane wholeheartedly agreed. It was always money. Well, when it wasn’t sex. I clicked back to a picture of Grayson’s smiling family, arms raised after his first senate election, and stared.

  Why did Ted Grayson need money badly enough to take it from the devil?

  I wondered if Agent Evans might be able to find out anything I could use without causing too much of a stir at the Bureau. A crooked senator could have friends God-knows-where, and I didn’t want to get Evans in trouble.

  With no good answer for that, I slammed the computer shut, turning back to my actual puzzle.

  “Dammit, where is the last edge piece?” I grumbled.

  I dropped to my knees on the geometric-print rug under my coffee table and poked my head underneath. The puzzle piece was lying next to the carved oak foot of my table, on top of a red Bicycle playing card. I picked both up and clambered back onto the couch.

  “King of spades,” I mumbled, flipping the card over. “How appropriate.”

  I snapped the puzzle piece in place and tapped the edge of the card on the table, something tickling the back of my brain.

  Of course.

  I flipped my computer screen back up, drumming my fingers on the arm of the sofa for the whole three and a half seconds it took the machine to boot up.

  Opening the photo file Larry had given me, I clicked onto the image of Amesworth and Grayson. At casino night. Scrolling through the other photos, I watched for the senator’s face, finding three shots of him playing cards. Two of them showed a somber, focused Grayson, his brow crunched as he studied his cards like he could will them to change.

  “Why so serious, senator?” I whispered, clicking over to Google and holding my breath.

  “United States Senators earn a base salary of $174,000 annually. Plus various allowances, speaking honorariums, and other sources of income,” I read aloud.

  Amazon told me Grayson had written a bestselling book on clean energy policy.

  So why does that guy need money—especially money that the Mafia has a hand in?

  “Cards,” I said aloud.

  What if Ted Grayson played cards somewhere else—for more than charity chips? What if he was a gambler on an unlucky streak? I couldn’t tell if it was brilliant or insane, but it jived with what Allison said about risk, and following hunches had ended well for me in the past.

  I made a list of everyone I might be able to wheedle information out of on that front, starting with Allison and ending with Joey. He wouldn’t want to tell me, but if I could see his reaction when I asked, it might be all the confirmation I needed.

  I gulped the rest of my wine and tried to slow my thoughts. If Ted Grayson was even remotely linked to a murder…that was the kind of story that could make a career.

  I just had to make damned sure I was right. And beat Charlie to the headline.

  I climbed back under my duvet a little after two, Joey’s pleading eyes floating through my brain as I drifted off, swearing I could still smell that cologne.

  9.

  All work and a little play

  My Saturday started before sunup, thanks to a vivid nightmare about being tied to a table and burned alive. I took Darcy outside for a game of fetch and then scrambled a couple of eggs, trying to slow the heart-pounding adrenaline rush that accompanied those dreams.

  The sun still hadn’t peeked over the eastern horizon when my scanner bleeped off an all-call on a missing person. Which, in and of itself, may not have required my presence. But when four patrol cars, the K-9 unit, and a deputy police chief were on their way to the most exclusive (and expensive) assisted living facility in Richmond at o’dark-thirty on a Saturday, there was bound to be a story.

  Thankful I’d showered the night before, I twisted my hair up in a clip and jerked on khakis and a sweater, shoving my feet into eggplant Nicholas Kirkwoods that were almost the same shade as my top.

  I stuffed my gym clothes into a bag just in case I made it away from the scene in time for body combat and tapped my fingers on the counter while my Colombian Fair Trade brewed into a mug Jenna’s little girl had picked out for my birthday. I added a shot of white mocha syrup and ran out the door.

  Skidding my tires on the turn into the nursing home parking lot, I scanned the cars for Aaron’s unmarked police sedan.

  It was near the doors, just in front of the Channel Four satellite truck. How Charlie could look camera-ready at six a.m. was beyond me, but she managed it on a consistent basis.

  I hung back and waited for her to finish talking to Aaron, admiring her Donna Karan suit and bright eyes. It was too early to be perky.

  “Good morning.” Aaron shook his head when he turned toward me.

  “How are you, Detective Unavailable?” I asked.

  “Come on, Nichelle,” he said, raising both hands in mock surrender. “You know how this works. Do you have any idea what kind of shit I’ll get into with the feds if I give you anything on this break-in at the Graysons? They’re acting like we’ve got our own little Watergate over in the Fan.”

  “You could at least call me back and say ‘no comment.’” I gave him a half smile, not wanting to figh
t with him.

  “And give you a chance to badger me into saying something I shouldn’t?” He laughed. “I’ll take my lumps, thanks.”

  I thumped his shoulder lightly. “Consider yourself chastised. What the hell is going on here?”

  “Alzheimer’s patient wandered off,” he said.

  “Bullshit. You’re here. I heard Mike say he was on his way. And while I was driving one of the dispatchers said Chief Lowe had called in for a status update.” I gestured to the pillared marble entryway on the other side of the open doors, the double staircase straight out of Twelve Oaks. “An Alzheimer’s patient who’s pretty important has wandered off. And I didn’t drag myself out this early and possibly skip my workout for you to give me the runaround. Spill it.”

  He rolled his baby blue eyes skyward.

  “You people and your damned scanners. I have to be careful what I say, though you already know a good bit about it. Remember that hearing you called me about yesterday? James Billings’s mother is a resident here. She saw your story when she got up this morning. Apparently a member of the early to bed and early to rise generation. They don’t know how she slipped past the staff, but they found the newspaper open on her coffee table and she’s gone.”

  I sucked in a deep breath and looked around. We were just on the outskirts of the city, in a surprisingly rural area. And it was unseasonably cold. Shit. I pulled out a notebook and jotted down Aaron’s comments, fighting the urge to join the search party.

  “Anything yet?” I asked. “They let him go, you know. He’s got an ankle monitor, but he’s not in jail anymore. The CA was pretty pissed about that, actually. It was all in the story.”

  “I know. We’ll find her. K-9 is searching the surrounding area. She didn’t have more than a half-hour head start.”

  “Thanks, Aaron.”

  “They said you can wait inside if you don’t want to stand out here in the cold.”