Leftovers (13 page)

There had been too many Montgomerys on the directory site I’d consulted before my interviews at NBG, but with his first name and phone number it was easy for me to find out where Donovan Montgomery lived. It shouldn’t have surprised me that it was the ritzy address on the screen. I was sure that Betty Montgomery had made a handsome salary at NBG.

I hadn’t found any way to broach the topic of the food trucks and their permits. I wasn’t sure what department or organization in NBG would be responsible for permits, but I would need to find out and then develop a story so that I could learn more about the monopoly on food truck permits that they’d created.

I debated about calling Donovan Montgomery first, but I opted to visit him instead. I wanted to catch a less guarded response from him. If I called, then he would have time to come up with a story for me. I wanted to try to scare the truth out of him.

I pulled up into the driveway of the Montgomery home. I had been right. It was an older home, but large—what my mother would have called stately. The drive curved past the door and back out to the street, so that it almost suggested that no one need stop to visit. I pulled up in front of the door and stopped. My Buick looked woefully out of place against this backdrop.

I knocked on the door, and a woman answered. For a moment, I was stunned. Apparently Donovan hadn’t wasted any time in getting a replacement spouse. She cleared her throat, and from the extremely deferential tone of voice, I realized that she was the hired help. “May I help you?”

I smiled at her. “I was hoping to talk to Donovan Montgomery. It’s a somewhat personal matter.”

If I had expected a reaction, I got none. She left the door slightly ajar so that I knew she would return, but I was not given any inclination that I should follow her inside. My place was to wait outside until beckoned.

She returned after what seemed like an eternity, but was only five minutes by my watch. Certainly any element of surprise would be weakened by all the time I had to wait for him to answer my knock.

“Mr. Montgomery will see you in the library,” she said, holding the door open so that I could pass her. I waited since I had no idea where the library was. She led me into a room filled with shelves of books, but I had a vague notion that many of these titles had never been read. They were more for show than pleasure.

I made myself comfortable in one of the upright chairs and waited. It was about another five minutes before Donovan Montgomery arrived.

I wasn’t sure what I had been expecting, but he was probably one of the best-looking men I’d ever met. Granted that his late wife was a beauty. She had that dark straight hair and finely crafted features that made her look equally at home in jeans or a dress. She’d been thin and stylish.

However, her husband was movie-star handsome. He had dark blonde hair that was slicked back and startling blue eyes. He was thin, but more lithe than beanpole. I was startled for a moment and probably stared at him as he entered. He sat in the seat opposite me and smiled. “I don’t think we know each other, do we?” he asked, brows furrowed.

I would have remembered that encounter,
I thought. I took a deep breath. “No, we don’t. I’m working on trying to establish a concrete identification of the woman who was shot in government square. She was claimed by a woman who said that she was her sister; however, it’s come to our notice that the woman bears an uncanny resemblance to your wife, who hasn’t been seen since the shooting.”

He nodded. “At the time, I didn’t pay much attention to the news. I was busy with my own work, and Betty was supposed to be away on business. So I only heard about the news from a colleague. It wasn’t until Betty didn’t come home as scheduled that I began to grow worried.”

I gave him my best smile, trying to look both sympathetic and efficient. However, he didn’t look like he needed sympathy. He wasn’t behaving like a man who had just lost his wife. I wasn’t sure if he was in denial about the event or if he’d known that it was coming. “I believe that someone from your wife’s office called you?”

“Oh shit, you mean Ann? That woman is a pain. She called to tell me that she thought my wife had been murdered. For someone to just call you out of the blue and tell you something like that, well frankly, I didn’t believe it for a second. I just assumed that it was Ann being Ann again.” He shrugged his broad shoulders to show me that he didn’t listen to office gossip. For me, office gossip was just Land and I talking.

“So then, you don’t think it’s your wife?” I asked, wondering what other solution he could come up with.

“Not at first. But she wasn’t answering my calls. She didn’t respond to my texts. So then I decided to check out the story about the woman being shot. I saw the photos of the victim. It could be her. It’s just difficult to tell.”

I nodded. This was not going to be an easy identification. It had been difficult to come up with photos to show the people at NBG. The sniper’s bullet had struck her in the head. As a result, the photos I could get were from artist sketches and renditions. The reality of the victim’s face would have been inconclusive and horrifying.

Now that the remains had been cremated, there would be even less to go on. “Do you have a dentist who could identify the teeth? Or perhaps she had some identifying mark that would have been noticed?”

He rattled off the name of a dentist, and I wrote it down. I wasn’t sure what Danvers was up to with the information I’d sent him about Betty Montgomery, but sending him the contact information for her dentist ought to show him that I was serious about the situation. I could understand him not wanting to admit the police had messed up by releasing the body to a stranger who had cremated the remains, not allowing for any additional tests, but he couldn’t keep this hidden forever. That is, unless he was somehow bought off by NBG or whoever had paid off the Zoz family. I was beginning to worry about my own cynicism, if everyone around me was a suspect or part of the conspiracy.

Donovan Montgomery was looking at me, and I figured I was supposed to say something. “Do you have any photos of your wife that could borrow? I’ve been using her profile photo from the NBG website.”

He rolled his eyes. “She hates that photo. Says it makes her look frumpy. She is really a carefree soul. I guess you wouldn’t expect that of a CFO, but she wasn’t the normal type of executive.” I couldn’t imagine that photo ever being called frumpy, but I guess it all depends on perspective.

I noticed that he was still using present tense, and he sounded on the verge of a full-blown ramble. I recognized it from the times I did the same thing—usually in times of great stress. I didn’t know how to stop one from happening, but I opted to ask a few questions to see if I could change the topic. “Do you two like to travel? You said that she was out of town on business?”

He nodded. Montgomery stood up and pulled a framed picture from a shelf. He handed it to me. He and, presumably, the woman I saw shot were standing together in front of the Eiffel Tower. He handed me a second photo where they were riding together in a gondola in Venice. I sighed, wondering if I’d ever make it farther than the distance that my food truck could carry me. Right now, it seemed as though I would live and die in Capital City.

The ruse seemed to have worked. He’d stopped talking so quickly and so fervently. He was more relaxed when he spoke. “Please, will you let me know the minute you find something out? I have trouble sleeping at night, wondering if she’s alive and if she’s okay.” He took the two photos out of their frames and handed them to me. “I have copies of these. You can keep them, if you think it will help. I just want to know what happened.”

I nodded. “As soon as I know, you’ll know.”

He let me out the door. I sat down in my car and sent a text to Danvers, giving him the name of Betty Montgomery’s dentist. If he hadn’t known before that I was serious, he certainly would now.

The next day was the funeral for Mariel Mills, and I decided to go. I’d always heard these old wives tales that the murderer always showed up at the victim’s funeral. I wasn’t sure that I believed the story, but at this point, I didn’t have much else to go on. I’d talked to the Montgomery family and the people at NBG. I still needed a way to get in to learn about the food trucks, but I hadn’t come across a good plan of attack yet. I was going to have to use some form of subterfuge to get the information I wanted, if I couldn’t get it from the Zoz family.

Land decided that he wanted to go to the funeral as well, so we closed the truck for the day. We rarely did that, and I highly suspected that Land was more interested in ensuring that I did not get killed at the funeral than paying his respects.

He picked me up in his car, which was a sporty model that put my Buick to shame. I wondered where he got the money for a purchase like this. I knew how much I paid him, and how much my aunt had paid him before that. A car like this would mean that he’d never eat again. I wondered again if Land was somehow involved with NBG. They were certainly able to pay him enough to get him to spy on me.

We drove to the funeral in silence. We’d attended funerals together before, like when we were on the reality show, but this was much more low-key, and there were no TV crews trying to ask us questions.

The family had opted to just hold a graveside service. Since we hadn’t been invited, I wasn’t sure who would be attending. If her family had consisted of just her sister and nieces and nephews, it would be a small ceremony indeed.

I noticed a few people standing near the grave as we approached. The ground was soft and a bit soggy from an earlier rain, and I had to tread lightly not to sink into the ground. I’d worn heels, which was proving to be a bad decision all around.

As we approached, Land nudged me with his elbow. I tried to see what he was indicating, but I just saw a group of people waiting for the service.

I looked to him to see what he was trying to tell me. He leaned close and whispered, “Andy Zoz.”

I nearly fell over at the mention of the name. I had not expected the man who had gone into hiding to attend the public funeral of his sister-in-law. If he was really in danger from someone or some group, it seemed likely that they would be attending the funeral as well. Now, rather than a scouting situation for us, it appeared that we might be in the middle of a battle. I tensed, thinking about all that could happen here.

I looked at the landscape differently. We were on a hill with little cover. There were a few trees surrounding the area, but any cover they could provide was minimal. I worried that I was actually starting to think like a sniper, but after all I’d been through, there was a matter of self-protection here as well. I wanted to live through this experience.

I took a deep breath to try to calm myself, and we walked to the graveside. The preacher started as soon as we arrived, so there was no chance to talk to the family. From what I could tell, the only others at the ceremony were Andy Zoz, his children, and a woman I didn’t recognize. I wondered if she was from the police department—here for the same reasons that I was.

The service was very short, and Andy took the time to throw a rose on the casket. The children did the same. They looked nourished and well cared for, so I doubted that there was any deprivation wherever they were staying. I was glad of that.

The family turned to go, and I rushed over to them. “Excuse me, aren’t you Linda’s husband?”

He turned. I could tell there was a moment of recognition, but I wasn’t sure where he could know me from. Then he spoke, and I knew. “You’re the woman who found Linda, aren’t you? The one who was in the office when—” He choked on the last words, and the other adult herded the children off so that we could talk.

I nodded. “Yes, I did. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

A tear ran down his cheek. “I miss her every day.” He rubbed at his eyes with his suit sleeve and sniffed.

“Do you have a moment to talk?” I asked. I knew that this was entirely inappropriate, but he’d been hiding so well that no one had found him in weeks. I didn’t want to go that long again before I could ask him questions.

“Just for a moment,” he said. “What do you need?”

“I wanted to ask you about the money.” I didn’t elaborate or tell him how I knew. I wanted to make this as fast as possible. A gentle breeze blew across the hilltop, which only served to remind me how exposed we were.

“I wish I’d never heard about that damned money,” he said. “It’s destroyed our family. First Linda, now Mariel.”

“Do you know that both were killed by the same people?” I asked, wondering what he knew.

“They were both beheaded. What kind of person does that anyway?” His eyes had welled up, and he looked like he was going to lose it. Of course, this was the perfect place to cry, but despite his sorrow, I wanted to stop the killing spree in town.

“That’s true. So did Linda tell you where she got the money?” I asked. This was the question I’d been hoping to ask for ages.

“NBG,” he said simply, confirming my suspicions. “They wanted to stop other people from getting food truck permits. So they gave Linda over $100,000 to hold up all other inspections. She said that it didn’t take much to do that.”

I thought back to my aunt’s process. She’d been denied, and that would have been the end of it, if she hadn’t started counting trucks and weighing the number against the available permits. Most people would not go to that much trouble. They would just shake their heads and walk away.

“Did she say why NBG wanted to stop others from passing the inspections?” I tried to think of a reason why they would pay twice my annual take, just to keep others off the road. It didn’t make much sense. Even with a few other trucks, NBG would have a virtual monopoly on Capital City’s food truck industry. I had no clue why that was so important. It didn’t make sense. What was to be gained by that type of suppression of competition?

“Who knows? Why does any company engage in that kind of behavior? Money, probably. Anyway, Linda definitely took the bribe for the money and started doing what they asked.”

I nodded. I remember how difficult it had been for my aunt to finally obtain a valid health inspection. All three times she’d gotten Linda as her inspector, and all three times she’d failed—until another owner had intervened and thrown a fit about the process.

The thought made me wonder. How likely was it that Linda would get all the health inspections for all the food trucks? The mere thought of it indicated that the conspiracy went far higher than originally thought. The scheduler would have to assign all of the inspectors to all of the trucks. To ensure that Linda got the food trucks, the person in charge would have to be in on the scheme.

Land was right. This conspiracy was much larger and had much more significant stores of cash than I had originally thought. I had been thinking entirely too small. This was not a domestic homicide; this was the act of a well-funded organization that seemed to be funded, at least in part, by NBG.

“One more question?” I said, thinking faster now. “Your wife wrote a letter to her sister before she died. The letter was written in some form of code that we haven’t been able to puzzle out yet. Do you know anything about that?”

“Code? Linda didn’t know anything about codes and puzzles. She liked to read, so I’d look in a book to see if she copied a code from that.”

I barely had a chance to hear the words before another sound came to me. The whiz of a bullet filled my ears. Having heard it so recently, I knew exactly what it was. I didn’t need Land to tell me what to do.

I started to hit the ground, but realized that it would just make me a sitting target. In these circumstances, I would be better off moving. I got up and ran. Land was already on the move. He ran in my direction, grabbed my hand, and then began to pull us back to the car. We were running at top speed across the open space. I knew that we would be hard to hit at this speed, but I also knew that we couldn’t keep up this pace for long. I was running on adrenaline and self-preservation at the moment, but I knew it couldn’t last.

“We can’t drive away with people shooting at us,” I protested. Another bullet hit the gravel two feet away from me. In the melee, I hadn’t seen Andy Zoz run off. I hoped he was okay.

I turned for a second, just in time to see him crumple into a heap on the ground. I whimpered as he fell. This would be another death attributed to this same group. I was trying to figure out who was to blame for this death. The group who had beheaded his wife and sister-in-law seemed much more likely to be after Andy as well, but the snipers were here today. Could they be working in tandem, or perhaps they had some common enemies?

Maybe they didn’t have time to behead him if he was already talking to us.

Land dragged me behind his sports car. He cursed as we hunched down in its shadow. “Damn it. The insurance probably won’t pay for this,” he muttered.

“Geez, the company policy can. Defending the owner from certain death seems like something that should be covered.” I hunkered down so that none of me showed above the contours of the car.

We didn’t get to finish the discussion, because a bullet shot through the driver’s window above us. Crystal rain fell on us. Land kept a tight grip on my arm, so that I couldn’t jump up in surprise or try to run any farther away. The experience reminded me of the bank and the drive-by shooting. For some reason, today I didn’t feel like I was in danger of going into shock. Today I wanted to get even. I wanted to solve this case and put these idiots behind bars.

“Now would be a great time to call Danvers,” Land said, gazing up at the broken window. I wondered what he was thinking, if he had a plan to get us out of here.

I dialed Danvers’ number, but of course, it went to voicemail. I cursed our fight, but I cursed him for being so petty—and perhaps being on the same side as this sniper. I called 911, and then I called the homicide department and told them that a material witness in the Zoz murders was lying on the ground beside Mariel Mills’ grave. Those calls were much more productive, and in a matter of minutes, I could hear the sounds of sirens. I hoped that the snipers could also hear them.

Despite not taking my calls, Danvers was in the first car to arrive at the scene. A van with men in paramilitary gear pulled in just after them and parked in front of his car. A dozen men got out of the van and began to sweep the area, guns drawn and visors down. I’d never seen a SWAT team in action but it was a blessed sight for me.

Danvers ran back to Land’s car and stooped down with us behind it. “What the hell is going on here? You just thought it would be easier for everyone if you started getting people killed in a cemetery? Less mileage?” His anger showed in his face. We were probably cutting into his prep time for his other case.

I told him the whole story of the day’s events. I told him how we’d run into Andy Zoz while paying our respects to Mariel, how he’d confirmed that Linda had taken a bribe from NBG, and how she’d been killed for it. I took a deep breath when I was finished, glad to have shared that with someone so that I was not a threat to the killers. I wanted to mind dump everything I knew so that these men could go after whomever I shared with—instead of me. It was a selfish thought, but I figured that Danvers could handle an attack better than I could.

His radio crackled, and he put it against his ear, so that we couldn’t hear the discussion. I thought that after what we’d been through that I deserved to hear, but apparently he felt differently.

When he turned back to us, his face showed disgust. “You do know that there are laws against calling in a false 911 call, right?”

I sputtered and tried to reiterate what had happened. Land merely said, “She told the truth.”

Land’s words seemed to carry more weight with Danvers. “Well, there’s no sign of a sniper here at all. We did find a place with some spent ammo, but that’s it. No indication that it was used today or used against you.” Danvers held out a handful of shells, but when I reached for them, he dropped them on the ground.

“What about Andy Zoz?” I stammered, still shocked by this accusation.

“There’s no body up at the gravesite. Well, I take that back. Mariel Mills is up there, but I just got a report that there are no other bodies at the site. So apparently either he’s not dead or he’s a zombie.” Danvers looked annoyed.

Land looked at me. “Kevlar. Had to be.”

Andy had known the risks of attending the funeral, and he’d take measures to protect himself as much as he could. A bulletproof vest would definitely cut the risk of him being killed, though a bullet could have knocked him down for a moment. Not what I would have thought to wear to a funeral, but after today’s events, I might have to reconsider.

Danvers looked at both of us. “I can tell you that he was supposed to meet us here at the gravesite today. We had called him using that phone number we got from Montgomery’s phone. Yeah, we did check with the dentist, in case you’re wondering. The dead body belonged to Montgomery.”

I nodded. It was an explanation, and I’d take it. I had suspected Danvers of not following up, but apparently he had taken my deductions to heart. He just hadn’t bothered to share the results with me. “So he did show, but someone else did too. How did a sniper know to show up here?”