Blood Orchid

24

Holly got back onto the interstate and headed north. At seventy miles per hour she put the car on cruise control and called Harry Crisp.

“Hey there, Holly, how are you?”

“I’m real good, Harry, and I could use your help.”

“Shoot.”

“You’ll remember that my house was broken into and my phone tapped?”

“Yes.”

“Well, we found the guy who did it.”

“Good for you.”

“Not so good: We found him in the Indian River with a bullet through the head.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. We IDed him as Carlos Alvarez, a locksmith from Fort Lauderdale.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“No reason why it should; he has a clean sheet.”

“That’s interesting.”

“Why?”

“Well, you’d normally expect somebody with the proficiency to do your burglary and wiretapping to have some sort of record, at least an arrest or two.”

“I thought proficient people were the least likely to get caught.”

“Yeah, but they don’t start out proficient, and they usually screw up early in their careers.”

“If you say so. Anyway, I went down to his shop today and talked with his partner and cousin, Pedro Alvarez, broke the news to him. He was shocked, said he didn’t know what Carlos was into, but I don’t believe him.”

“So what do you want from me?”

“Wiretapping’s a federal crime, so I thought maybe you might be able to investigate this for me. I don’t have the resources to send people all over the state to conduct interviews, and I don’t want to go through the red tape with the state.”

“I don’t know, Holly. What with our push on terrorism, I don’t have a lot of agents to put on stuff with a low priority. I mean, some tech gets himself wasted, that’s not really our problem.”

“You’ve got enough people to send a guy to my jurisdiction, haven’t you?”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“You know I can’t tell you that.”

“Suppose this is connected to what your man is working on?”

“How would you know that? You don’t know what he’s working on.”

“No, I don’t, but you do, and if there’s a connection to be made, you can make it.”

Harry was silent.

“I hope you’re thinking.”

“I’m thinking.” He went silent again.

“Just tell me when you’re finished, Harry.”

“All right, I’ll send somebody over to talk to Pedro.”

“Carlos also had a girlfriend, but Pedro wouldn’t give me her name.”

“We’ll talk to her, too. We can probably find a way to worm the name out of Pedro. Is he a U.S. citizen?”

“I don’t know. Both cousins were born in Havana and came over on the same fishing boat twelve years ago.”

“I’ll check him out; he’ll be easier to handle if all he has is a green card. Easier still if he’s an illegal.”

“Thanks, Harry, I appreciate it.”

“Glad to help. How are you and what’s-his-name getting on?”

“Who?”

“You know who I’m talking about.”

“Oh, him. Well, I saw him like you suggested.”

“And…”

“You trying to be a matchmaker, Harry?”

“Me?”

“Talk to you later, Harry.” She punched off.

Daisy took a couple of turns around her seat and resettled with her head in Holly’s lap.

Back at the station Hurd had news for her.

“We ran down the Chrysler key,” he said. “It’s not to Carlos Alvarez’s car; it’s to a year-old van. We ran the VIN number and it turns up rented from a Miami company two weeks ago and not returned on schedule.”

“Who was it rented to?”

“For cash to a fictitious name and a false driver’s license. It’s a small rental agency in a Cuban neighborhood that apparently doesn’t do all the checking that Hertz and Avis do.”

“Okay, cancel the bulletin on Carlos’s car and put out one on the van.”

“It was kind of smart to steal the van that way, instead of just grabbing one off the street,” Hurd said. “This way, the guy gets a couple of weeks of use without the thing being reported stolen.”

“Yeah, that is smart,” Holly said, “except that there was a face attached to the fake driver’s license, and an employee of the agency would have seen it. Call them and get a description of the renter.”

“Okay.”

“Also, do a criminal background check on Pedro Alvarez-he’s Carlos’s cousin and business partner. Check out his immigration or citizenship status, too.” No need to rely entirely on Harry Crisp, she thought.

“Okay.”

“Let the coroner know that it’s all right to release Carlos Alvarez’s body, too, and tell him to call me with the name and address of the funeral home.”

“Will do.” Hurd returned to his office.

Holly sat and thought about Carlos Alvarez. He didn’t do this on his own, she knew. Why would a Fort Lauderdale locksmith be interested in her telephone conversations? No, he was hired, and by somebody smart enough to find a man with no criminal background, and to steal a van from a rental agency, instead of off the street.

She tried to figure out how this might all connect to the murder of the two Miami property developers and the attempt on Ed Shine’s life, but that didn’t work. Whoever was behind those crimes obviously wanted to win the auction of the Palmetto Gardens property, and once Ed Shine had won, there was no further motive for killing him, nor would there be any further motive for coming to Orchid Beach and rummaging around in her life. So her burglar couldn’t be connected to the Fed’s auction of the property.

Dead end. Unless Harry Crisp could come up with something. She decided to relax and let the FBI do the work.

Then her thoughts returned to the night before. She hadn’t heard from Grant today. She called a florist and sent a dozen yellow roses to his house, with a card reading, “Hope you get well soon.”