Abducted: A Jake Badger Mystery Thriller (20 page)

Chapter 40

Tuesday Morning and
Afternoon

Mrs.
Durrani
led us into her elegant formal living room. Broken nose stood in the doorway.

“Tea, please. For three,” she
said to him.

He nodded and left.
 

“What is it you want to ask
me, Mr. Badger?”

“Do you know how your son
died?”

“They told us he was shot.”

“That's all? You don't know
the circumstances or who shot him?”

“All they told us,” she said,
“is that he had been shot.”

“Would you be interested in
knowing the details?” I asked. I wasn't sure where I was going with this. I was
just trying to shake things up and see what came of it.

“And how would you know the
details of what happened to my son, Mr. Badger?”

“I know some people. CIA.
Military. I asked them.”

She considered me for a
moment. I was trying to read her, but she was a closed book. I'd hate to play
poker with her.

“And what did they tell you,
Mr. Badger?”

“The CIA targeted your son.
The marines loaned them a sniper. The CIA led the marine to a spot where they
knew your son would be, and the sniper shot him.”

Her eyes were locked onto
mine and I could see the anger building in her. Before she could say anything,
broken nose returned with the tea. As he bent over to set the tray down, his
coat came open enough for me to see the Glock 23 he carried in a shoulder rig.
He served Alex and me first, and then Mrs.
Durrani
.
She took a sip of her tea and set her cup down on the coffee table in front of
her. She folded her hands primly in her lap. She was getting ready to speak
when an attractive, well-dressed thirty-something Middle Eastern woman entered
the room and, in accent-free English, said, “Mrs.
Durrani
,
you have an urgent phone call.”

Mrs.
Durrani
stood and said, “Please excuse me.”

The young woman was quite
attractive. She was also carrying a gun under her expensive tailored jacket. I
glanced at Alex. He was watching her carefully and I could tell that he, too,
had noticed the bulge under her left arm. The young lady left the room, leaving
us alone with broken nose. He stood stoically in the doorway between the formal
living room and a family room.

Alex took a sip of his tea. Then,
to broken nose, he said, “So, how's the nose?”

“Fine,” came the scratchy,
frog-like croak.

“I understand that happened
in an automobile accident,” Alex said.

“Yes.”

“I also understand one of
your associates was involved in the same accident.”

“Yes.”

“But he died.”

Broken nose hesitated, but
finally said, “Yes.”

“So how is it that he died
and you only got a broken nose?” Alex asked.

“My throat was also injured,”
broken nose said.

“But the other guy died.”

“I was wearing my seatbelt,”
broken nose said. “He wasn't.”

“No seatbelt,” Alex said. “And
he died. Must have been one heck of a high speed accident.”

Nose didn’t reply.

“This accident was last
Monday morning?” I asked.

“Yes,” nose said.

“What time?”

I could see from his face
that he was getting annoyed.

“Around nine twenty.” he
croaked.

“Where?” I asked.

He just looked at me.

“Where was the accident?” I
asked, with a little more force.

Finally, he said, “Veteran
and Montana.”

“Veteran and Montana,” I
said. “Monday morning at nine-twenty. And there was a fatality.”

Nose just looked at me.

“Well,” Alex said, “I'm sorry
your friend died.”

Mrs.
Durrani
returned and took her seat on the sofa, a sofa that probably cost more than all
of the furniture in my apartment combined.

“You were explaining about my
son's death,” Mrs.
Durrani
said to me.

“Mrs.
Durrani
,
does the name Monica Nolan mean anything to you?”

She thought for a moment. “I
know no one named Monica Nolan, Mr. Badger.”

This woman was a stone. She
gave away nothing. I'm usually pretty good at reading people. So is Alex. But I
suspected he wasn't getting anymore from her than I was.

I stood. “Well, thank you,
Mrs.
Durrani
. I appreciate you taking the time to
talk with us. And I'm very sorry about your husband's illness. I know this is a
difficult time for you.”

She stood. “Yes, Mr. Badger.
It is a difficult time.”

She turned to broken nose and
said, “Please show Agent Watson and Mr. Badger out.”

He nodded, and she turned and
walked away. Broken nose gestured us toward the front entryway.

The rain had stopped and
patches of blue were clawing their way through the gray shroud that had
temporarily depressed the radiance of summer.

“What do you think?” I asked
Alex as he pulled out of the
Durrani
driveway.

“Hard to say. Mrs.
Durrani
is very hard to read. Makes me nervous. I think
she's hiding something.”

“I agree.”

“But maybe she's just really
angry,” Alex said.

“Could be,” I said.
“Certainly has reason to be.”

“But then there's the matter
of having an armed household staff. Why do they need their help to carry
concealed?”

“And the automobile accident
that I suspect didn't happen.” I said.

“Yeah,” Alex said. “Won't be
hard to check that.”

“Frank can help with that,” I
said, taking out my phone.

“Frank,” I said, when he
answered. “Can you check something for me?”

“What do you need?”

I gave him the details about
the accident that was supposed to have happened the previous Monday morning. He
said he'd check and get back to me.

We drove back to Westwood and
went to lunch at 800 Degrees Pizzeria. As we ate, Frank called back.

“No accident reported last
Monday morning at Veteran and Montana,” Frank said. “No traffic fatalities
anywhere in that area.”

“That's what we expected,” I
said. “Thanks, Frank.”

I went back to eating and my
phone rang again.

“You’re a popular guy,” Alex
said.

“It’s because I’m charming,”
I said, as I took my phone out.

“Sure. That’s what they
called you at the Academy, Mr. Charm.”

The call was from my
insurance adjuster. A couple of the slugs had penetrated the cab and had done
extensive damage to the dashboard electrical system, and one of the slugs had
hit the engine block and damaged the fuel intake system. They were declaring it
a total loss.

I told Alex.

“Did you have that
replacement feature in your policy,” he asked.

“Fortunately.”

“So, you just go buy a new
one, right? No big deal.”

“I suppose.”

“You don’t sound pleased.”

“I’m not,” I said. “That one
was exactly the way I wanted it. Special tires, a heavy-duty wench, a custom
sound system, a holster mounted under the driver’s seat for my little .357. Now
I have to do all that stuff over again. Takes a lot of time.”

“You’re going to get a brand
new vehicle without paying for it. Most people would be happy about that.”

“I’ve been paying for it for
several years,” I said, “in the form of additional insurance premiums. Besides,
getting a new vehicle is like getting a new girlfriend. It takes time to get
comfortable with each other. The beginning of the relationship can be kind of
awkward. And think about Wilson. All of his old familiar smells will be gone.”

He looked at me for a moment
and then said, “He’ll get over it.”

Just as we were finishing the
last of our pizza, Mildred called.

“Got another note,” Mildred
said.

“Another note,” I said to
Alex.

He had his own phone out,
checking messages. He looked up.

“What does it say?” I asked
Mildred.

“It says,
You
were so close
.”

Chapter 41

Tuesday Afternoon

From the restaurant, we went
to Alex's office so I could pick up my Jeep. By the time we got back to my
office, the clock was inching toward two. Wilson greeted us at the door and I
paused to say hello. When I crossed the floor to Mildred's desk, she handed me
the small envelop with the note in it. I opened it. Like the others, it was
handwritten in all capital letters. It read:

YOU
WERE SO CLOSE

I handed it to Alex. He
looked at it, thought for a moment and said, “So, we just have to figure out
where you were when you were so close.”

“Okay,” I said as I walked
into my side of our office suite. “Let's see if we can do that.”

I made a fresh pot of coffee
for Alex and mug of tea for me. There were a few donuts left so I took one and
sat down at my desk.

Alex also took a donut and
sat in one of my guest chairs and said, more to
himself
than to me, “Delivered today.” He was holding the note and the envelope. He
happened to look at the envelope. “There's no postmark,” he said. “A stamp, but
no postmark.”

“Is it possible for it to be
delivered without it being postmarked?” I asked.

“Not by the Post Office.”

I called Mildred. She came
into my side of the office.

“Did the note get delivered with
the mail?”

“I assume it did,” she said. “But
I couldn’t swear to it. I took Wilson for a walk. When we came back, the mail
had come. That was laying on top of the pile.”

“So someone could have
slipped it through the mail slot after the mail was delivered.”

Her bottom lip came out a bit.
She wagged her head from side to side and she shrugged. “Could have,” she said.

I thought for a moment and
then opened my office security program on my computer. I backed up the video a
couple of hours and watched the monitor that showed activity at the front
office entrance. The mail slot is in the front office door. The mailman came
and went, and in a few minutes a young woman approached the door and put a
small envelope through the mail slot.

I backed it up and looked at
Alex. He appeared to be lost in thought. “Look at this,” I said.

Alex watched the activity on
the monitor.

“She
look
familiar to you?” I asked.

“It's not a good angle for
getting a good look at her face,” Alex said, “but it looks a lot like the young
lady we saw this morning at the
Durranis
.”

“I agree.”

“Why deliver it like that,
risking that kind of exposure?”

“Mrs.
Durrani’s
tired of waiting,” I said. “I pissed her off this morning. She sent that woman
out right after we left. She’s a cat playing with a mouse and she's getting
tired of the game.”

Alex sat for a moment,
thinking. “Shall we go back?”

“No,” I said, after a moment.
“If we tip our hand, she may kill Monica.”

“Are we sure it’s Mrs.
Durrani
?” Alex asked.

“It's her. I can feel it. I
don’t think Mr.
Durrani
knows anything about what
she's done. She had her people take Monica to get to me because she knows I'm
the one who killed her son.”

“You think broken nose took
her?”

“I think he and his dead
associate together might have been able to take her.”

“You think Monica's the one
who did the damage to his nose and throat?”

“Well, we know he wasn't in
an automobile accident, so, yeah. She probably killed the other guy.”

“I know she's tough,” Alex
said, “but doing that kind of
damage ...
?”

“I've sparred with her,” I
said. “She's fast and strong and she knows how to fight. She could easily have
done it.”

We were both quiet for a
moment, thinking about options.

“If you don't think
confronting her is the right approach, what do you think we should do?”

“They can't know we're
coming. We've got to go in at night and get her out before they have time to
react.”

“How are we going to do that?”

I thought for a moment. “I
think the first thing we need to do is get the plans for the house.”

Alex said, “Mr.
Durrani
said that an architect in Beverly Hills drew up the
plans.”

“Mildred,” I called loudly.

“Architects in Beverly Hills,”
she called back.

Alex looked at me, surprise
etched in his face. “Mildred,” he said, “if you ever get tired of working for
Jake you come see me. I need someone like you in my office.”

“I don't think so,” she said
from her desk. “Too many rules to follow when you work for the Feds.”

Her
comment
made both of us smile
.

After a moment, Mildred said,
“Nine. I just emailed the list to each of you.”

“You need to raise her pay,”
Alex said.

“Yes, he does,”
Mildred
said from her side of the office.

“You just got a raise,” I
said. “Remember? Krispy
Kremes
every Friday morning.”

“Donuts?” Alex said. “Her
compensation increase comes in the form of donuts?”

“Fringe benefits,” I replied.
“A legitimate and crucial feature of all compensation packages.”

Her email came through. I
opened it on my phone. Alex opened it on his.

“We can work faster if we
divide it up,” Alex said.

“You take the top four, I'll
take the bottom five.”

“What's your plan?” Alex
asked. “What are we trying to accomplish?”

“We need to find out which
firm designed the house. Then we hack into their computer system and retrieve
the plans.”

“It'll be easier if we have a
photo. We can say we saw this house we like and want the architect who designed
it to do one like it for us.”

“Good plan,” I said.

Alex called one of his
agents. He gave him the
Durrani's
address in
Bel
Air and told him to hurry over there and take a photo
of the house—front view—and send it to him and to me. He gave the
agent my text number.

He ended the call and said, “We'll
have a photo in a while.”

Twenty minutes later we each
had a photo of the
Durrani
house in our phones. It
was ten minutes to three. It was too hot for Wilson to be left in the car while
I went into air conditioned office buildings to talk to architects, so I
explained this to him and told him he should stay with Mildred and I'd pick him
up later.
He woofed that he understood, and I gave him the
last of the day's donuts.