Buried Leads (A Headlines in High Heels Mystery) (19 page)

I rummaged in my bag for my Blackberry and called Kyle, really grateful for the first time to have my ex in Richmond. No way I’d have an ATF agent’s cell number under any other circumstance.

“What’s up?” Kyle said when he picked up.

“You have time for coffee?” I asked, thinking about the stamp thingies I’d hidden under the loose floorboard in my coat closet that morning. I was glad I’d never gotten around to reporting that to my landlord. It was damned handy for keeping things hidden. Better than a safe.

“Actually, yes. IT is working a bug out of our computer system this morning, so I’m staring at papers and twiddling my thumbs,” he said. “You hear any more from your walking buddy?”

“Give it a rest, Kyle,” I said. “It’s unattractive, this territorial thing. Who I walk or do anything else with is just big fat none of your business. But I need to talk to you. You’re sure Billings is your guy on the Amesworth murder?”

“You heard Corry ask for them to no-bond him, right? How often does that happen?”

“Almost never.” But even if Senator Grayson didn’t kill the lobbyist, he was into something he shouldn’t be. Possibly more so than the rest of his cohorts on Capitol Hill, though who could really tell about that? Maybe he was just dumb enough to get caught. My inner Lois was growing more convinced all this had something to do with Kyle’s big contraband cigarette investigation, though.

But how was I supposed to convince him of that without confessing to a federal agent that I’d broken into a senator’s house?

“Just come meet me at Thompson’s—it’s a little coffee shop on West Cary.Ten minutes?” I’d figure something out.

“Twenty.”

I hung up and shoved the phone back into my bag.

What did I know? Nothing I could prove.

What was I pretty sure of? That Allison, a volunteer on Senator Grayson’s campaign, was not dead in a dumpster because of a failed robbery or a random coed slaying. I’d bet my favorite Manolos on that. But why was she dead, and who killed her? I had a feeling that was the key to this whole mess. And I had no idea what Charlie was so excited about, so I needed to find the answer quickly.

I flipped through mental notecards on the case, beginning with Amesworth, the lobbyist. On the surface, suspecting that he was killed by someone involved in bribing Grayson didn’t make sense, because all the players should have been on the same team. So something went wrong. That was plausible. Maybe Grayson wanted out. Maybe Amesworth was shaking James Billings, the tobacco company executive, down for more money to support the lifestyle the
Telegraph
’s photo library told me Amesworth enjoyed. Except Joey didn’t think Billings was the killer, and neither did I, really. Plus, he was on house arrest. If he’d killed the girl, Kyle would be able to place him at the scene.

Then there was Eckersly, the tobacco farmer who shared a proclivity for expensive call girls with the senator.

I parked in the coffee shop lot fifteen minutes early, blowing out a frustrated sigh. I knew just enough to know there was something there, but I needed the middle piece of my puzzle that would pull it all together.

Hopefully Kyle had it, and I could convince him to share.

Kyle looked good. My stomach gave an involuntary flip when his ice blue eyes met mine across the coffee shop. I tried not to notice the biceps ringed by the sleeves of his fitted blue Polo, or the way his torso tapered at the waist like a cartoon superhero’s, and I squelched the little voice singsonging a reminder that he seemed more than a little interested in picking up where we’d left off. I didn’t date cops. And Joey was a way better kisser than I remembered Kyle being. Though one kiss wasn’t exactly picking out china; not to mention his occupation not being exactly desirable.

Kyle ordered his coffee and I watched, not liking the way his eyes lit when he spun from the counter and saw that I’d been staring at his tight ass in his khakis.

“Enjoying the view?”

“Knock it off. Old habits die hard.”

“Sure they do. Especially when old habits have a bitch of a fitness test for work every three months and spend hours in the gym every day.”

He sat down in the chair across from me and not-so-subtly flexed a bicep as he sipped his latte. “Is ogling all you wanted me for, or can I do something else for you?”

“Your head has definitely gotten bigger,” I said.

“It’s not the only thing.”

“Oh my God, Kyle.” I thumped my cup down on the table and laughed in spite of myself. “Are you twelve? Shut up. No, don’t shut up; tell me about Billings.”

He sat back in the chair and laced his hands together behind his head.

“I’m afraid I can’t go on the record with the press about an open investigation, Miss Clarke.” He winked.

His ability to push my buttons had not changed.

“Dammit, Kyle,” I said. “I have a ton of work to do, two different bosses breathing down my neck, and a story that has more rabbit trails than Mr. MacGregor’s garden. I don’t need it on the record today. I just need to know why you’re so sure it’s him.”

He stared for a long minute, not saying a word.

“He’s part of the other thing you were telling me about, too, isn’t he?” I asked. “The contraband stuff and the stamps. That’s why you picked him up so fast.” He twisted his mouth to one side, and I knew I was onto something.

“Just tell me!” I didn’t really mean to shout that. People turned to look and I ducked my head. “I heard you had a weapon. Do you have positive ballistics? Any other evidence? I need to know whether or not to believe you before I have a stroke.”

“Same old Nicey.” He laughed. “Off the record?”

“Sure.” I made a show of tucking my pen and my Blackberry back into my bag.

“The bullet that killed Amesworth was fired from a very special gun. A Sharps eighteen-fifty-nine Confederate Carbine rifle. It’s a piece that was used by Civil War sharpshooters. Very expensive to manufacture back then, and consequently very rare. Like, there were only about two thousand made a hundred and fifty years ago.”

“And Billings has one of these rifles?”

“He does, but it’s missing from the rack in his office where he keeps it. He says he loaned it out, but won’t say to whom. He hasn’t filed an insurance claim on it, either.”

Hmmm. Rare gun. Suddenly missing.

“That’s pretty damning,” I said. “But why the hell would anyone use a gun like that to murder someone?”

“This guy is a real bastard.” Kyle leaned his elbows on the table. “I’ve been working this contraband case since before I left Dallas. It’s one of the reasons they transferred me here.”

“He’s the vice president of a company that makes money off of a product that kills people,” I said. “He’s not supposed to be a stand-up guy. That doesn’t mean he murdered someone.”

“You have a better explanation for his gun vanishing just after someone was shot with one just like it?”

I considered that for a second.

“No. But how did you know he had one, anyway?” I asked. “Guns don’t have to be registered in Virginia.”

“I got a lucky break. The new family smoking prevention law says the FDA has oversight of tobacco manufacturing. I sat down with the inspector who’d been over to Raymond Garfield a few days before Amesworth was killed, and we got to talking about guns. His father was a collector. He was telling me about this beauty in Billings’s office, and then this guy turns up, shot with the same antique gun. After years of work, I finally have Billings on something.”

“That’s a lucky break.” It sure sounded like he had Billings on the weapon. But Grayson had those stamps. I sipped my coffee, mulling that over.

What if Billings was telling the truth? If the gun really had been loaned to someone, why wouldn’t he just cough up their name to save his ass?

Because the someone was Senator Grayson and it might make the ATF wonder why they were so buddy-buddy?

“What do you know about Ted Grayson?” I asked.

He raised his eyebrows.

“United States Senator for the Commonwealth of Virginia, fairly middle of the road politically, historically not a fan of guns or cigarettes.”

“Thank you, Wikipedia,” I said. “But I’ve been poking around in his backroom dealings, and there’s something fishy.”

“What do you have on him?”

“Nothing concrete,” I said, unable to come up with a single possible way that I should know he had those stamps. “I think he’s taking bribe money. I’ve been wondering if it’s from Billings. But everything about this is so convoluted, I’m not sure of anything. My gut says there’s something more here, though. I don’t think Billings is your murderer.”

I sipped my coffee.

“Well, I’m very glad all your years of training in criminal investigation have led you to that conclusion.” He didn’t even have the decency to sound annoyed. He sounded amused.

“I’m sorry, have we forgotten my ability to channel Nancy Drew?” I asked.

“Beginner’s luck.” He waved a hand.

Asshole. I folded my arms over my chest and glared.

“You’re pretty sure of yourself for a guy with no murder weapon,” I said. “Don’t you think it’s worth looking into anything else?”

“I’m looking into plenty else,” he said. “My guys are checking the tire tracks from the body dump against Billings’s cars as we speak. I’m almost certain Billings had a couple of folks from the House of Delegates on his payroll, and I think that’s why Amesworth is dead. But come on, Nicey. How am I going to go back to the office and open a file on a sitting U.S. senator—one who’s in a smackdown of a reelection campaign at the moment, let’s not forget—because my ex-girlfriend told me she has a hunch? You’re going to get me laughed right out to the podunk sheriff’s department.”

“I’m not asking you to open a file. I just think you should consider the possibility that you’ve got the wrong guy. He might be an asshole, and he might be a criminal. I don’t know what you’ve got on him with the cigarette case, but think about it, Kyle: what does contraband tobacco carry? Five years? If he’s not a murderer, he doesn’t deserve to be called one.”

“I’ve been doing this for a while now, Nicey,” he said, softening his voice. “If he wasn’t a murderer, he’d give us the gun.”

“I think you’re wrong.” I sounded petulant, and I wasn’t proud of it, but I couldn’t really tell him why, either. I wasn’t sure I knew myself. “But I’m not going to convince you of that, am I?”

“Not based on your gut, you’re not,” he said.

“Thanks for coming to meet me.” I stood.

“Have dinner with me tomorrow night,” he said, getting to his feet and gesturing for me to walk ahead of him to the door.

“I have work to do,” I said.

“Come on, Nicey, don’t be that way. I’ll buy. Anywhere you want to go. I still need you to show me where they have good food around here.”

He pushed the door open and I walked through it, sighing as I looked back at him. He was a good friend to have. And he did fill out those khakis nicely.

“Bring me what you have on Billings,” I said.

“Do what?”

“I’ll have dinner with you, but I want copies of your file,” I said. “I won’t run it, and no one will know I have it. I’ll even give them back. I can’t shake this feeling, though. So prove me wrong. Let me see what you’ve got.”

He stood on the sidewalk in front of the coffee shop, shading his eyes and staring at me for a long minute.

“It’s been a long time,” he said. “How can I be sure you won’t throw away my career for a scoop?”

“You can’t,” I said. “But you want me to believe you. Believe me.”

He shook his head. “I’ll pick you up at six-thirty.”

“I’ll be ready for some after-dinner reading.”

I unlocked the car, annoyed that I’d spent a half hour and had nothing on my new murder victim to show for it.

I climbed behind the wheel and dug my Blackberry out. I had four texts and three missed calls from Bob.

I clicked the messages open.

“Your dead girl was a prostitute. Channel Four just blew the top off a college call girl ring. Where the hell are you?”

Double shit. Charlie had dropped the noon time slot into conversation twice. I should have known she was lying. And Bob hated nothing worse than losing to the TV folks on a big story.

16.

Taking a beating

“Tell me one more time why you were busy with the ATF and a murder case the CA himself is calling a slam dunk while Charlie Lewis was digging up a call girl ring that makes sorority row look like the goddamned Chicken Ranch?” Bob’s face was nearly purple, and despite cringing because his anger was almost never directed at me, I worried about his blood pressure and his heart.

“I’m sorry,” I said, wondering how Charlie had known that and whether she was closer on my heels than I wanted to think. I dismissed the thought quicker than I usually would, largely because Charlie was the least of my problems. “I didn’t know.”

“Except that we pay you to know,” Bob practically roared. “Dammit, Nichelle! Do you have any idea how stupid it makes me look when I spend months—months—going to bat for you with the suits upstairs and you turn right around and drop a ball the size of Mercury? Les was practically glowing when Andrews gave him the go-ahead to send Shelby over to the campus to knock on doors. They even made Parker go with her because he knows so many people on the faculty over there.”

I closed my eyes for a long minute, inhaling for a ten count.

“Bob, I’m working on something,” I said, holding my voice in check and hoping it would calm him down. “When have I ever let you down?”

“Today.” He sat back in the chair and sighed. “This morning, you let me down. If Charlie knows it, you could know it, too. Nobody in this town is better at covering cops than you are, kiddo. But you’re only as good as what you’re getting for me next, and you know it. You’re not the only one Les is gunning for.”

I nodded. The
Telegraph
was Bob’s entire reason for getting up the morning, but he lived under constant threat of being forced out by Les, who was as smarmy and backstabbing as they come. I couldn’t imagine the newsroom without Bob, and it wouldn’t be a place I wanted to work.

“I’ll apologize to Andrews myself,” I said. “But you have to believe me. Grayson is crooked. And I am this close,” I said, holding up my thumb and index finger, barely touching them together, “to finding something that pulls all this together. The girl, too, possibly.”

“No.” Bob shook his head and leveled a don’t-fuck-with-me-on-this glare at me. “Ted Grayson is a politician. Rick Andrews, who happens to be the publisher of this newspaper, is one of his biggest campaign contributors, which you would know if you’d asked our actual politics reporter for information about him. You will back off of Grayson this minute. You will throw yourself into the call girl scandal and find me something that will redeem us both for today. You will work with Shelby for the duration of the story, since she’s already been assigned to it. And you will not put another toe out of line, or Shelby Taylor will be my new courts reporter. Are we clear?”

I returned the stare, biting my lip to stave off the pricking in the backs of my eyes that meant tears were threatening.

“Yes, sir.”

“Get to work.” He turned to his computer screen and flipped it on, dismissing me.

I walked out of his office and saw the back of Les’ balding head bobbing through the cubicles toward the break room, but managed to keep myself from chasing him down and delivering a swift
ap-chagi
to his ass. I couldn’t even tell if I was madder that he was still trying to help Shelby get my job or that he was after Bob’s. I could probably go somewhere else, but Bob... If Les managed to convince Andrews that Bob wasn’t still at the top of his game, he’d be pushed into retirement. I didn’t think Bob would last long without the newspaper.

I limped to my desk, determined to dig up something on the call girl ring. Shelby could run around RAU banging on doors with Parker all day long, and she could sleep her way into my byline, but she didn’t have my connections. I snatched up the phone, feeling stupid for not figuring it out sooner. Lakshmi had told me she was a grad student there, for Christ’s sake. Apparently, so was Allison. She also worked for Grayson’s campaign, which tied him to it at least marginally. But was her earnest admiration of the senator professional, or had she fallen for her client?

I called Aaron first, and left him a message begging for any five minutes he had that day.

Next, I dialed the head of security at the campus, who, not surprisingly, was in a meeting. But he’d always seemed to like me well enough, and he was an old-school guy who preferred print to TV.

I called Evans at the FBI next. He answered.

“Are you the only law enforcement agency in town who isn’t working on the call girl thing?” I asked.

“Not federal jurisdiction, as far as I can see, but it is quite a story,” he said. “What can I do for you today, Miss Clarke?”

“Why did you call to tip me off about Billings’s arrest?” I asked.

“I thought you’d be interested in it,” he said. “You called me asking for information about the dead lobbyist and bribery investigations.”

“You know about the bribes, right?” I asked, tired of skirting the issue and in desperate need of an answer. Though I wasn’t sure what I’d do with it if I got it. Bob and I had a special bond, but he didn’t love anything more than he loved the paper. He would absolutely hand Shelby my job if something I did put his in jeopardy.

“What do you know?” Evans asked.

“I don’t have time for this,” I said. “You’re on Grayson, Kyle Miller at the ATF is on Billings. Got it. But there’s something here that ties the two of them together, and it has to do with these two corpses.”

“Which two corpses? The lobbyist and the call girl? What’s the girl got to do with anything?”

“I was hoping you could tell me that.” I sighed. “Look, I don’t have a positive I.D., but I’m nearly a hundred percent sure that she’s an intern on the Grayson campaign, and she tipped me off about the bribes, though she didn’t realize she was doing it. I also hear there’s a good chance Grayson’s name might be in the call girls’ little black book. And he’s in the middle of a fight for his career. That’s entirely too coincidental, don’t you think?”

“Where’d you get that?” Evans asked, his voice suddenly tight. “About Grayson and the call girl?”

“I pieced it together from a couple of interviews.”