Blood Kills by Nanci Rathbun (book club reads .TXT) 📗

Spider to set up the detail and then join us at Ma Fischer’s so we could fill him in on what precipitated the need for heightened security.

In thirty, came his response.

We’d finished our meals by the time Spider arrived. He slid next to me in the booth and looked from me to Wukowski, his busy eyebrows moving in a salsa pattern. “What’s up?” he asked.

After learning of the will, the note, and the attack on Rebecca Franken, he let out a low whistle. “Bratva. Gotta be. Damnation! This is gonna be messy, Wukowski.”

“I’m well aware of that, Mulcahey, but I don’t want you getting involved with the murders. That’s my job. Yours is to protect Angie and Debby Hill.”

“No problem,” Spider said. “Between Bram, Tiny Tim, Mad Man Malone, and me, we can manage.”

How did Bram get into this team without a crazy nickname? I wondered.

Spider continued. “If it goes longer than four days, I’ll call in operatives I know from… from back in the day. But we’ll want any cops off the assignment. Would hate to incur friendly fire. And yeah, Wukowski, we’ll stay out of your hair, short of allowing our protectees to be harmed.”

“Great,” I said, jumping in to change the topic before Wukowski could assert police control. “There’s another matter we need to discuss. Wukowski, I’d like Spider to check out Franken’s computer and the building security tapes. He understands the workings of foreign agents better than the local police. Of course, he’ll share all his findings with you. No holding back, I promise.” I turned to Spider. “Right?”

“If you say so, it’s jake with me.”

Wukowski stared over his coffee cup at us, then gave us The Glare, a more intense version of The Mom Look. “If I find out you failed to communicate anything, even a typo in one of those files, I’ll slam your butts in jail for obstruction of justice. And they don’t have steam showers or a drawer full of pricey cosmetics inside, Angie.”

“No need to threaten, man,” Spider intoned in a low growl. “You’re the team leader. We’ll follow your orders.”

George approached with the coffee carafe. “You frighten my waitress,” he said as he poured. “Even I, across the room, can see the disagreement. Remain calm, my friends.” An unspoken “or else” floated in the air.

Wukowski sighed. “I apologize for the manner of my communication, but I meant every word.” His mental gears shifted, and he asked Spider, “How soon can you take a look at Franken’s office?”

“I’ve got stuff in the back of my Ram. We can go now, if you’re done reading us the riot act.”

Wukowski grinned. “Doubt I scared you.”

“Nah,” Spider said, “and you didn’t scare Angie either.”

Word, I thought, mentally echoing my grandsons’ newest favorite phrase.

Chapter 27

The dangers of life are infinite, and among them is safety.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Thanks to Wukowski’s badge and a call to Rebecca Franken, the building manager put up no barriers to unlocking the office door. The entire ride up in the elevator, the fussy little bow-tied man repeated various versions of “it wasn’t our fault.”

Exasperated, Spider finally turned to him and said, “We get it, Mr. Markham. Once I’m done looking at Ms. Franken’s computer, I’ll need to see the security tapes from the night of the assault.”

“I, uh, I’ll have to pass that by our attorney,” he said. “I didn’t think about that last night when I got the call from the police. Learning about an attack on Ms. Franken shook me up. But I should not have let them look at the tapes without our legal staff’s agreement.”

“Or,” Wukowski said, “I can get a court order and you can look like you’re unwilling to cooperate in a police investigation of a serious assault with ties to an open homicide case.” Wukowski gave it the just-the-facts tone that he’d perfected.

“I would never—”

“That’s exactly what you’d be doing,” he continued. “Delaying me in the conduct of my duties. So what’s it going to be?”

The elevator dinged, and we exited and walked down the carpeted hall.

“Very well, but I assure you that it’s a waste of time. I, uh, I took a look this morning. The cameras to the elevator and the stairway were both out of order for maybe thirty minutes. Our lobby guard noticed and was on the phone with the security company when they came back online, so nothing was done.”

“What about the hallway on her floor? And the other areas of the parking structure? Give me a look-see, Markham,” Spider said. “That time of night, there couldn’t be much traffic. I may spot someone approaching the disabled cameras. It’s amazing what biometrics can tell us these days.”

“Biometrics?” Markham asked.

“Things like gait, distance between eyes, ears. They’re all very indicative. I’ve got connections who can use even small amounts of data to narrow the field of suspects.”

And not all of those connections are strictly legal, I mentally added.

Markham clearly wanted to hang around the law office with us, but Wukowski dismissed him with a gruff, “I’ll call you when we’re done here.”

Once inside, Spider rolled Andrew’s chair from the reception area into Rebecca’s office. “Hers is way too small for me.” He stooped down to glance at the desktop computer, still unlocked from the previous night, and began to type, interspersing clicks with periodic hmms, yeps, and uh-huhs, all punctuated by the gyrations of his eyebrows.

After ten minutes, he looked up. “Files related to Michael L. Swanson have been deleted from the hard drive. The perp was damn clever. He installed malware to erase the entire drive if I try to restore them. Lucky Franken has offsite backups in place. I can revert to an earlier version from before the files were deleted. Hang on.”

Spider moved the mouse and clicked a few times. In under a minute, he said, “File folder called SWANSON, MICHAEL L., with a file called LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT and a SWANSON HOLDINGS subfolder. I won’t open anything here in case the guy