Catch As Cat Can

7

“In jail?” Helena Martinson echoed, looking shocked. “What do you mean?”

The same questions were floating around in Sunny’s head, but she had some practical matters to take care of—like getting Abby seated before she fell down. She unlocked the office door and maneuvered Abby and Helena inside, bringing the younger Martinson down for a landing on one of the office chairs. “Coffee?” she asked.

Abby silently nodded. She looked as if she’d just received a serious jolt. Her perfect princess face was pale, her jaw hung loose. She swallowed hard a few times before she was able to thank Sunny when she returned with a cup.

Sunny managed to get Helena into a chair rather than fluttering over her daughter like a mother hen. After Abby had taken a couple of sips of coffee and a little color had reappeared in her cheeks, Sunny said, “Now do you want to tell us about it?”

“That man in the store,” Abby began.

“The one behind the counter?” Sunny asked. After this buildup, it would be a heck of a thing if one of the customers had gotten such a reaction from Abby.

She nodded. “The one you called Neil Garret. That’s not his real name. He’s Nick Gatto—and he’s a crook.”

Now that Abby had begun to calm down, Helena started getting agitated. “How do you know that?”

Abby took a long breath. “Mom, I guess there are some things you have to know. The streets in California aren’t paved with gold, you don’t get discovered by Hollywood while sitting at a soda fountain . . . and I wasn’t living in a convent the past few years.”

Just the words to gladden any mother’s heart, Sunny thought. “So how did you meet this Nick Gatto?”

“‘Nicky Suits,’ they used to call him. He was always beautifully dressed.” Abby actually smiled at the memory. “And I worked for him. I know it’s a cliché, but I was supporting myself between acting jobs by waiting tables. There’s a reason—you can set your own hours to accommodate auditions or rehearsals, even open up your schedule for filming something. I was good enough that I got offers to work in the front of the house, as a hostess, and let’s face it, my career wasn’t exactly setting Hollywood on fire. A lot of the stuff I did, I was just an extra—walking scenery.”

“I’ve seen movies and TV shows where you acted,” Helena loyally disagreed.

But Abby shook her head. “Usually about five lines, maximum. Anyway, when I heard about this upscale Italian place opening, I applied for a hostess job, and I got it. That’s where I met Nicky. It was his restaurant.”

“And this restaurant landed him in jail?” Sunny asked.

“No, the way he got the money for the restaurant put him in jail,” Abby said. “He was manipulating stocks.”

“A guy named Nicky Suits was messing with Wall Street?” Sunny didn’t have much to do with high finance, just an anemic 401(k) from her days at the Standard. But the idea of an apparent mobster muscling into the stock exchange made her stare.

“It’s not the big corporations that you hear about all the time,” Abby explained. “It’s what they call the small cap market, small companies trying to raise capital or going public. Nicky figured out how to use investment firms and force dealers to push up the prices of some stocks that he and his boss bought into for pennies and sold for big bucks. It’s not all that well-regulated, and he was doing pretty well.”

“Well enough to buy a little respectability with a restaurant.” Mrs. M. didn’t sound happy. “And you worked for this man?”

Abby nodded. “He was a good guy to work for, and the restaurant took off—until his, um, associates started hanging around. Nicky’s boss Jimmy just about turned the place into his private clubhouse. Then Jimmy started taking an interest in me.”

“Oh, yes?” Helena’s approval reading was way down in the negative numbers by now.

Abby looked as if she’d just taken a dose of very unpleasant medicine. “That’s not the point. What’s important is that Nicky helped me. When he saw that Jimmy was after me, he got me a job in a completely different business and helped me to move out into the Valley. I’d seen the handwriting on the wall for my acting career for a while. Nick got me working for a law firm, and I’ve moved on and up from there.”

“And he did all this just because you worked for him?” Helena’s tone reminded Sunny of her own mom’s approach when digging into some messy situation in her teenage life.

Except this is a lot more serious, she thought. It’s not promising when the good guy in the story is a gangster, saving Abby from a worse gangster.

“We were—involved,” Abby admitted. “He was going through a messy divorce, and he really is—was—a nice guy, Mom.”

“Mmmmm-hmmmm.” Helena was definitely reserving judgment on that score.

“Anyway, he made a clean break when he got me the new job. The next thing I heard about him was when he got arrested. He pushed his luck on a deal and it blew up on him. The feds got involved, charging him with securities fraud, wanting to make an example out of him. The last I knew, he was supposed to be going off to federal prison.”

“And instead he ends up in Kittery Harbor, selling fish.”

Sunny could have smacked herself in the forehead. She should have seen the signs—Will’s interest in the incident with Shadow. He didn’t check into it because Shadow was her cat, but because it took place in front of Neil Garret’s or rather, she corrected herself, Nick Gatto’s store. That also explained Val Overton’s sudden appearance, chatting with her about Shadow’s misadventure. Sure, federal marshals delivered writs and chased fugitives. But one of their big jobs was running the witness protection system.

Well, Val’s job had just gotten a lot harder, with a murder happening in her witness’ place of business. And Ken Howell was begging me for something juicy . . .

Sunny quickly shook that thought away. Abby had stumbled across a dangerous secret, something with possibly fatal consequences, and now the three of them knew it.

The situation hadn’t quite penetrated for Helena Martinson. She was still preoccupied with her daughter’s unwise life choices. But it had started to sink in for Abby. She was going from shocked to sick.

Sunny spoke up in a firm voice. “Now, listen,” she said. “This story does not go beyond these four walls. It involves gangsters, and now murder.”

She knew how Mrs. M. loved a good secret to spread around the gossip grapevine. The fact that it didn’t do her daughter much credit should dampen her usual enthusiasm—or so Sunny hoped. “So we’ve got to keep this under wraps,” she went on. “It may have already gotten someone killed.”

That finally got through. “Subject closed,” Helena Martinson said. But judging from the look she gave Abby, they would be discussing many other matters soon.

Abby simply looked apprehensive, whether from her discovery or from her mother’s reaction, Sunny couldn’t say.

After a moment, Helena turned to Sunny. “I’m sorry, dear. With all of this. . . .” She made a vague gesture with her hand to include the whole mess. “Maybe we should take a rain check. Would that be all right with you?”

“Don’t worry about it, I understand perfectly,” Sunny assured her neighbor. “There’s always something I can do around here to fill the time.”

Silently, she added, Maybe I can get Will over for lunch instead. I definitely have a bone to pick with him.

She got the Martinsons out of the MAX office, watching them set off in the opposite direction from Kittery Harbor Fish. Then Sunny went to the phone on her desk. She got through to Will’s cell phone and suggested lunch. “Unless you’re busy with Val Overton,” she teased.

“No, no,” he said. “Where would you like to go? I’m up in headquarters—”

“I was thinking of something simple,” she said. And private, she silently added. “Why don’t you pick up some sandwiches and lemonade? We can have a picnic in my office.”

“Well, I guess that beats getting frostbite outside.” From Will’s tone of voice, the office sounded only marginally better. “What kind of sandwich would you like?”

“Surprise me,” Sunny said. It’s only fair. I’m going to surprise you.

Will arrived about fifteen minutes later with a paper sack. “Hope you don’t mind lemonade out of a bottle. I stopped off in Saxon and picked up meatball sandwiches at Avezzani’s.”

“One of the fanciest restaurants in the area, and you pick up a meatball sub?” Sunny shook her head.

Will grinned. “Before it went all fancy, Gene Avezzani’s folks ran a deli—and they made meatball parm sandwiches on garlic bread—best I ever ate. You should just count yourself lucky that I’m pals with Gene, and he still makes these things for me.” The smells seeping through the slightly greasy paper reminded Sunny that it had been a while since breakfast. She almost regretted what was going to happen next.

Sitting down across from Sunny, Will spread the wrapped sandwiches on the desk she’d cleared. Soon they were hard at work on their lunch.

“You know, I got my job at the Standard because of a meatball sub.” Sunny took another appreciative bite and chewed. “I was interviewing with the editor—”

“Randall McDermott,” Will put in.

“Yes. Randall took me out to lunch. He said he hired me because I had the nerve to eat such a sloppy sandwich at such a crucial meeting.”

“You still have plenty of nerve,” Will said.

“I sure do,” Sunny told him. “That’s why I’m asking how come you never told me about Nick Gatto.”

Will made some interesting noises. Whether it was meatball getting caught in his throat or lemonade coming out his nose, Sunny wasn’t sure. He went through a couple of napkins wiping his face while Sunny glared at him.

“I can see you’re trying to come up with something, but at least pay me the courtesy of not saying, ‘Nick who?’ I’m talking about my next-door neighbor here, Neil Garret, aka Nicky Suits, California man-about-town and supposed securities fraud convict.”

Will was pretty quick on the uptake. “California,” he said. “Damn. Abby Martinson recognized him?”

“She worked for him, and nearly fainted when she saw him.”

Will shook his head. “Of all the lousy luck.”

“Your luck’s about to get lousier,” Sunny warned him. “I’m furious at you. How could you lie to me?”

“I didn’t lie,” Will said carefully. “I didn’t tell you anything, because it wasn’t my secret to tell.”

“So you just strung me along ever since that shop opened last summer,” Sunny accused.

“I didn’t know anything myself until after the November election when the sheriff made me her chief investigator,” Will said. “Then I got brought in on this whole WITSEC thing.”

“WITSEC?” Sunny repeated.

“Witness Security,” Will explained. “It’s what the marshals call the witness protection program these days.”

“Well, you’d better get used to being called mud, because that’s what your name is gonna be.”

“Right, because the first thing I should do with a witness hiding from the mob is to talk all about him to my girlfriend, the newspaper reporter.”

“I’m not a newspaper reporter.” The denial burst from Sunny’s lips with enough anger to surprise her. Keep this up, she thought, and I may not be a girlfriend much longer, either.

“You write stories for the Harbor Courier,” Will said. “And I can imagine how Ken Howell would react to a story like this.”

Sunny was ready to give him an argument about that until she remembered Ken’s voice trying to wheedle something out of her for the paper. “Maybe you have a point,” she admitted.

“And this is the kind of thing that, if it got out, could get someone killed.” Will paused for a second. “Maybe it did.”

“You mean that guy you tried to claim you couldn’t identify?” Sunny said.

“We couldn’t, until the prints finally came back this morning.” Will sighed in defeat. “His name was Phil Treibholz. He was a Los Angeles private detective, a would-be peeper to the stars.”

“Sounds pretty high-end.”

“Maybe ‘extortionate’ would be a better word.” Will looked grim. “From what I was able to find out about him, he collected big bucks from lawyers to help with their cases. One witness complained that Treibholz tried to intimidate him by hanging a rat from the rear-view mirror of his car.”

“So the guy who tried to put the noose around Shadow’s neck—”

“Was almost certainly Treibholz,” Will finished the thought. “When you consider that ‘gatto’ means ‘cat’ in Italian, it’s kind of obvious that Treibholz was trying to send a message.”

“A message that wouldn’t have done Shadow much good.” Sunny sat for a moment. “You know, I’m having a really hard time scraping up any outrage over this guy getting shot.”

“I can understand that.” Will shrugged. “Other folks, though, take a dim view of murders happening in these parts.”

“Sounds as though the new Sheriff Nesbit is a lot like the old one in that respect,” Sunny admitted. “Well, your job can’t be that difficult. Treibholz turns up from California and threatens Neil—we’ll call him Neil to keep the secret. That’s motive. Treibholz gets two bullets in the back of the head in Neil’s freezer. That’s opportunity. You’re two-thirds of the way to making a case.”

Will hesitated for a moment before he answered. “It’s not that simple. There’s a big racketeering trial due to open soon against Neil’s boss.”

“And the federal prosecutor wants Neil’s testimony.”

“It could put a dangerous criminal away for life,” Will said.

“You mean, somebody better known than Nicky Suits,” Sunny corrected. “I used to help cover some of the federal trials in New York. The prosecutors knew that nailing big names meant career advancement.”

“That doesn’t mean that Jimmy DiCioppa doesn’t deserve prison time,” Will argued.

Sunny gave him a disgusted laugh. “Yeah, having a colorful nickname like ‘Jimmy de Chopper’ because of what happened to the fingers and toes of people who owed him money—that didn’t enter into the equation at all.” She paused for a second. “So what’s the deal? Is Val Overton trying to save her witness? I thought that if you broke the witness protection rules, you got kicked out of the program.”

“There’s the question of innocent until proven guilty,” Will said. “And Neil keeps swearing that he’s innocent.”

Sunny took a moment to digest that, contrasting the Nick Gatto she’d heard about with the Neil Garret she knew. On one side was the guy who’d broken the law and gone to prison. On the other was the boss that Abby Martinson had more than liked, the pleasant store owner that Sunny had come to know . . . the rattled guy who’d opened the freezer and let a body out of the bag.

“So what do you make out of what he’s saying?” she finally asked.

“He sounds good,” Will replied. “But then, he made a lot of money scamming people on the stock market.”

“So, has he got some sort of alibi that required the body to be found at nine thirty-seven in the morning in the presence of a witness? If we’re thinking he killed this Treibholz guy, why did he drag me into it?”

“The medical examiner has had a lot of fun trying to determine a time of death. Apparently the body hadn’t frozen through, so we have a rough window between twelve and fourteen hours before you found the body.”

“Sometime after the store closed and well before morning,” Sunny said. “So was Neil Garret out of town, or surrounded by witnesses at the time in question?”

Will laughed, with precious little humor. “That’s the thing. He hasn’t got an alibi at all. Not even a favorite TV show he was watching. If we believe him, he was in his lovely rental home out in Sturgeon Springs, reading a book.”

Sunny sat back in her chair. “A literate criminal. That’s something we don’t see every day. But it kind of clashes with his alibi. That sounds like something he came up with between the fish market and the interrogation room in Levett. You’d expect better workmanship, considering this is a guy who swindles people.”

“So far he’s stuck with it, and we haven’t been able to challenge his story. You know the area. It’s pretty countrified, the houses are spread out, nobody really notices anything.”

“He had to know that he couldn’t just talk his way out of having a body turn up in his freezer.” Sunny squinted her eyes, as if that would help her focus on her memories of Thursday morning. Neil trying to tell her the store wasn’t open yet. The chill in the air. Finding the door open. Did he look surprised or scared? What was his expression when he checked the cash register? When he opened the freezer door? It hadn’t seemed rehearsed, and Neil hadn’t been checking her reactions. Unless . . .

“What if he had an accomplice, someone he expected to clean up the crime scene, and they didn’t—or couldn’t do it?” Sunny bit her lip as the idea came out of her mouth. Who would be the most likely accomplice, someone who knew all about Neil Garret’s former life? Someone who had just turned up from California?

Abby Martinson.

Sunny shook her head. “No, that’s a ridiculous idea. What was I thinking?”

It doesn’t make sense, she realized with a feeling of relief. Abby as an accomplice would only work if nobody knew of her connection with Nicky Suits. So why would she blab that to Sunny? But that question still paled beside the biggie. Why would Neil Garret reveal Treibholz’s dead body? And of all the people he could have had in front of that door when he threw it open, why choose Sunny?

“So Neil is the obvious choice, but you’re not sure he’s the right one,” she said slowly.

“Maybe someone here knew about Garret’s California connection and didn’t want it coming out. A business associate, or competitor.” Will leaned across the desk with their half-eaten sandwiches. “It strikes me that your father has a lot of friends in the local fishing community. Now that you know what’s going on, maybe you could work some of those contacts.”

“I should still be furious with you,” Sunny told him.

“I’ll say I’m sorry, if that helps,” Will said. “The sheriff really wanted to keep this under wraps. When Lenore revealed the truth about Garret, she said that Frank hadn’t even told her.”

“So now that I know, the old team is back together again?” Sunny gave him a rueful grin.

And that snarky voice in the back of her head chimed in, Just when you thought you were out . . . they pull you back in.