Deadly Sexy by Beverly Jenkins
“Five thousand, cash.”
“Cash. Who sends cash in the mail?”
“Apparently, Mr. Garrett does. Cash that tested positive for cocaine, I might add.”
“Really? Who was the envelope addressed to?”
“A P.O. box number in Cleveland that turned out to be one of those mail services you can use if you want to mask your real address.”
“So where was it supposed to go to next?”
“Funny thing. We tracked it from Cleveland to a similar service in Orlando where it was forwarded to another service in Boston.”
“Somebody’s really trying to cover their tracks.”
“Correct, and they did it well because from Boston it went to a private service in France, and that’s where the trail ends. The French are refusing to let us follow it without official red tape. By the time the Bureau does the paperwork, the envelope will be on to its next stop, which could be anywhere.”
The news was disappointing. “Do you think the money was for the bomber?”
“We’ve been listening to Garrett’s phone and we think it may well be.”
“So what do you do next?”
“We keep watching and listening. I’ll let you know if anything turns up.”
JT had just set the phone down when it rang again. It was Pops. “Morning, Mr. Anthony.”
“Morning, Ms. Blake. I’m supposed to check on you and make sure you’re not trying to get into the tub by yourself.”
She smiled. Reese knew her well.
“I’ll take that silence as a yes you were.”
“I plead the Fifth.”
He laughed. “Mrs. Boggs, my neighbor the nurse, is here. I’m going to send her over.”
“Thanks, Mr. Anthony.”
“The last thing either of us needs is Reese taking bites out of our butts.”
JT chuckled. “True that.”
“She’ll be bringing your breakfast too.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll be over later.”
“I’d like the company.”
“So would I.”
At about the same time on the West Coast, law enforcement agents and canine officers affiliated with the L.A. offices of the FBI, Transportation Safety Administration, and Homeland Security were conducting routine security checks on some of the state’s small airports. Because most of their focus had been on larger facilities like LAX and the ones in the Bay area, little airports had been given low priority. The airport targeted for inspection that morning was a tiny postage-stamp-size operation with a landing strip that was little more than two tracks in a field. The corrugated metal hangar sheltered four small planes. The uniformed dog handlers walked their canine companions around the first three aircraft without encountering any problems, but when they neared the fourth plane, Lucky, a drug dog, let the humans know to call for a warrant. After tracking down the airport’s manager, an aging gray-haired hippie named Doyle, they were given the name of the owner of the plane in question.
“Name’s Bo Wenzel,” the nervous looking Doyle said.
The FBI agent took out his phone and called it in. The remaining agents went with Doyle back to his office to take a look at the records of Wenzel’s flight plans and to await the arrival of the tech teams.
Three hours later the techies had come and gone. They’d found traces of coke on the plane’s controls, floor, and seats. The flight plans showed Wenzel making a series of trips to Tijuana. The agents placed a call there, but the airport there couldn’t provide verification that Wenzel ever landed or had taken off from there.
Reese was in New York only one hour before he had to grab a flight back to L.A. The commissioner had received a call that morning from the FBI about Bo Wenzel being brought in for questioning on cocaine smuggling, and someone from the commissioner’s office needed to be on site. Reese was that someone. Neither he nor Commissioner Tay McNair had any idea what the investigation might turn up, but the commissioner wanted to have all the facts firsthand, in case it became necessary for the league to step in and take over the running of the team. Matt Wenzel had proven to be a competent GM, but if he was involved too, no one would be in charge.
Reese was hoping this might shed some light on the Pennington case. He also hoped the answers would come quickly because he was missing Jessi. Last night’s lovemaking had been incredible, and even though they hadn’t been able to swing from the light fixtures because of her injuries, he added the sensual evening to a growing list of memorable JT moments. Before leaving for the airport that morning, he’d wanted to wake her and kiss her good-bye, but she’d been sleeping soundly. One day hadn’t been nearly enough time for them to be together, and now he was on a plane touching down at LAX.
After deplaning, he called Mendes. The captain had been notified about Wenzel, and said that the Feds were on their way to pick him up even as they spoke. Mendes gave Reese the address of the office and told him one of his detectives would meet him there. Reese grabbed a cab.
Bo was on the phone talking to Ham. No one had seen Garrett. Ham wanted to shut down the operation until he was found. There was no indication that Garrett was being held by the police, which led Ham to believe that he’d either left town or gone underground. Bo was about to respond when a man and a woman in dark suits appeared in his doorway. “Got visitors,” he said cautiously into the phone. “I’ll call you back.” Closing the phone, he looked at the man and woman, who he thought had to be FBI, and asked, “Can I help you?”
He was right. The woman identified herself as Special Agent Brenda Tate and asked him, “Are you Mr. Bo Wenzel?”
“I am.”
“I ask that you come with us, sir. We have some questions about your plane.”
Inside, Bo shook, but he held it together. “Has something happened to it?”
“We’ll talk about it at our office.”
“I’m calling my lawyer.”
“That’s up to you, sir, but for now you have to come with us.”
A grim Bo grabbed his keys, phone, briefcase, and hat, then walked to the door. Matt was standing off to the side. He looked ashen.
“Call my lawyer,” Bo snarled as the agents escorted him out.
At the Federal Building, Tate led the questioning as Reese, behind the one-way glass, studied Bo Wenzel’s expression and movements. Wenzel didn’t look particularly nervous except for unconsciously tapping his fingers on the table where he was seated. Tate was walking him through the trips to Tijuana.
“Now, you say you flew down to drop donations off at an orphanage?”
Bo nodded. Since his lawyer had yet to arrive, he was being cautious with his replies. He knew that by law he could’ve refused to answer any questions, but he didn’t want to appear uncooperative and maybe piss the lady agent off. He also wanted to know how much, if anything, the Feds had on him.
“And your contact down there?”
“A padre named Gabe Lawrence.”
“Are you aware that Mr. Lawrence is a federal fugitive?”
Bo paused and weighed his answer. The lady agent was looking into his eyes. “I knew him years ago in Texas. No idea he was wanted.”
She gave him a small smile. “He’s a Mexican citizen now. We’ve been trying to bring him back to the U.S. to face charges for years.”
“Didn’t know that either.”
The questioning continued, and in response, Bo spun a tale about how he’d run into Lawrence on the streets of Tijuana and been asked to help the orphanage. In his mind, he thought his story sounded innocent enough; he was simply a man trying to do a good deed. But it was understood that Tate hadn’t dragged him in just to chat, so he braced himself for whatever might be coming next.
“What can you tell us about the night of April third?”
Bo responded with a perplexed look, but inside the panic bells were screaming. “That’s the night Gus Pennington was killed. Have you turned up something?”
She offered him another small smile. “Wh
“Looking at some property.”
She glanced down at her notes. “Ah, that’s right. Says so here. You were going to provide Mr. Anthony from the commissioner’s office with the name of the realtor you were with.” She met Bo’s blue eyes. “I’m not seeing any indication that you did.”
“Got busy and forgot.”
“Can you provide it now?”
He froze. Her manner was pleasant as she waited for his answer. He gave her the name of a realtor who owed him a favor. “Carson Adolph.”
She picked up a sheaf of documents and began to read through them. “This is a list of all the realtors in the state of California, and I see Mr. Adolph’s name here at the top.” She pulled out her phone and made a call. When it went through, she said, “This is Special Agent Tate from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” She paused for a moment, then stated, “Yes, ma’am, the FBI. I’m trying to reach Mr. Adolph.”
Tate looked Bo’s way. “Good. Adolph’s secretary says he’s in.”
Bo wanted to shit.
She began questioning Adolph, then turned toward Bo as she stated, “So, Mr. Wenzel wasn’t with you that night? I see.” She listened for a few moments more, then responded, “I appreciate your help in this matter, Mr. Adolph. I agree. Mr. Wenzel must have been gotten his dates mixed up. Thank you.” She closed her phone.
Bo didn’t move for a moment and neither did Tate, until finally she said, “Let’s leave that part of your story for now, shall we?”
He nodded curtly.
“You’re aware that the forensics done on the conference room in your offices where Mr. Pennington was murdered turned up traces of cocaine.” It was a statement, not a question.
“I—I’d heard rumors.”
“Did you know that cocaine has a signature chemical compound, depending on how it’s manufactured?”
Bo shrugged and shook his head. “No.”
“The chemical makeup of the cocaine found in your conference room is an exact match of the cocaine found in the interior of your plane this morning, Mr. Wenzel. How do you explain that?” Her eyes were steady, serious.
Bo swallowed inwardly. He was a cooked goose. “I don’t know, so I’m not saying another word without my lawyer.”
She nodded. “That is your right. We’ll continue at that time.”
On the other side of the glass a pleased Reese nodded. Stick a fork in Big Bo Wenzel. He was done.
Pops’s neighbor, Mrs. Boggs, turned out to be a godsend. Not only did the woman help JT in and out of the tub, but she’d brought along a shower chair and a plastic sleeve with elasticized openings that she could pull over her cast to keep it dry. To her further delight, she learned that the retired nurse did hair out of her home to supplement her pension and social security checks, so later that morning, JT got the works: wash, relaxer, and a trim. When Mrs. Boggs was done, JT was a bit tired out from all the activity, but she looked good.
So much so that when Pops brought over lunch, he checked her out and said, “Wow.”
JT was seated on the rocker on the porch, enjoying the warm May day. She shook her gleaming cut and said, “Looks good, doesn’t it? I think I’m going to kidnap Mrs. Boggs and take her back to California with me.”
“And the ladies around here will walk there to drag her back.”
“I wouldn’t blame them. She’s special. Thanks for asking her to come by.”
“No problem. Brought you a turkey sandwich, some chips, and some raw carrots.”
He set the tray on a wire café table in the center of the porch and began to unload it. “Brought my lunch too.”
“Good.” She walked over and sat down in one of the chairs. “I’d like the company.”
They ate and talked. She told him about her family and its Old West roots, and he told her about his family’s links to Louisiana.
“We are descendants of the House of LeVeq. They were gens de couleur libres.”
She did the translation. “Free men of color?”
“Very good. We have African, Spanish, and French blood in our veins. The free Black citizens of Louisiana were pretty wealthy in the years leading up to the Civil War.”
“How interesting. The House of LeVeq? Do you have a crest?”
“I’m sure there was one back then, but it’s been lost through time.”
“We still have our Granny Loreli’s derringer. She was a gambling woman.”
He grinned. “A derringer? So you come from a long line of tough women? If she was a gambler, she had to be able to take care of herself.”
“The stories said she was something else. Gave up gambling to marry a pig farmer.”
He laughed. “A pig farmer?”
“Yep. Grandpa Jake Reed.”
“She must have been seriously in love to marry a man with pigs.”
“Yes, she was. They were married over fifty years, and according to the family Bible, died two days apart. Mama said her mama told her that Loreli died first and he died of a broken heart.”
Pops looked off into the distance for a silent moment and said solemnly, “When I lost my wife, thought I’d die of a broken heart too. Never remarried because I didn’t want to let go of her memory.”
“And now?”
He shook his head. “Nothing’s changed. I’ll be her husband until they put me in the ground beside her.”
“Didn’t mean to make you sad.”
He waved her off. “It’s not about that. She was just the love of my life. Always will be. Not many people get to have that.”
JT thought about her mother. “My mama never remarried after Daddy died either. I think she feels the same way. In fact, the two of you would probably get along real well. She loves to cook, loves ball.”
“She tall?”
“And fine.”
He grinned, “I already knew that.”
Jamal drove up in a golf cart and stepped up on the porch.
“Thought you and Brain were working today,” Pops said.
“We were, but he’s doing some trolling on the computer for Reese, so I thought I’d come see if JT would like to take a tour of our Ponderosa.”
The reference made her smile. Her mother was a big Bonanza fan. “Sure.” She’d finished her lunch and felt pretty good physically, so why not?
Pops thought that a good idea. “You two go on. I’ll clean up here. Good talking to you, JT.”
“Good talking to you too, Mr. Anthony.”
She got into the cart, grabbed the seat belt with her good hand and strapped herself in. Once she was ready, Jamal gently put the petal to the metal and they were off.
The Anthony’s Ponderosa was impressive. Jamal drove them past his father’s house and then Bryce’s place. Up close, the Brain’s cubist-inspired crib was pretty spectacular. They then drove to see the home Jamal was building for himself, and like Pops’s and Reese’s, his house was more traditionally designed. Next, he took her to see the orchards that were filled with trees that would bear apples and pears, an outdoor half court paved with asphalt, gardens where Pops grew everything from collards to roses, and a good-sized pond stocked with koi.
The open air, the lush green, and the quiet made it seem as if she’d stepped into another world. A world where bombers didn’t exist, Carole didn’t need surgery, and she wasn’t afraid to let Reese know she loved him. While they drove around, Jamal asked her about her job and some of the athletes, and she answered as truthfully as she could. She liked Jamal. He was quieter and seemingly more introspective than his brothers, but she supposed his temperament was needed to balance off the vivid personalities of the other two.
The highlight of the afternoon was the tour he gave her of the labs. First of all, the facility was underground, which rocked her.
“Keeps out those pesky spies,” he explained as he took out what appeared to be an electronics remote and pointed it at the door of a building resembling a small Quonset hut. The doors opened and he drove them
He smiled. “We’re fine. It’s like a mine shaft. It’ll take us down a couple hundred feet.”
The walls of the shaft were made of black metal, with recessed lighting embedded into them that gave off enough illumination so she could see. When the platform stopped, the wall in front of them parted and he drove them into a brightly lit area that made JT stare like a country girl in the big city. Large glassed-in rooms held what looked to be prototypes of engines, brake systems, and truck cabs. “We have our own world down here.”
He drove on while she stared around in amazement. “Looks like a top secret government lab.”
“We do some government work here. Sometimes grad students at the universities need a clean lab to test a prototype and we’ll let them come in and run their data.”
“What’s a clean lab?”
“Sterile.”
“Ahh.”
They passed more sealed rooms containing works in progress. There was even a kitchen. “We each have bedrooms down here for when we’re too busy or too tired to crawl home.”
“And just you and Bryce work down here?”
“Yep. This is our underground tree house.”
“Can I ask how long it took to dig this all out?” The area seemed cavernous.
“Not long. This part of the state has underground salt mines. Some are still working, others like this one were abandoned when they stopped turning a profit.”
“We’re in a salt mine?”
He gave her the Anthony grin. “Yep.”
“Wow!”
That evening, she was relaxing up in Reese’s bedroom when he called. “How are you?” she asked, beaming in response to his familiar voice. Who knew she could miss a man so much.
“Doing okay. How are you?”
“Just fine. I toured the Ponderosa and the lab today.” And she was still wowed by all she’d seen.