Stealing the Golden Dream Read online

  Eddie stood and kicked back his chair. “Tell me what you know.”

  “Look. I can’t talk about it now. Not on the phone. But I’m afraid. I’m really afraid, man. I’m gonna have to pull in that favor we talked about. You gotta promise me if I help you, you’ll make sure your friends got my back, man.”

  Jordan was on the phone with Steve Keegan. Keegan had a private firm, Keegan and Associates Fire Consultants.

  “Hi, missy,” he said. “I heard about your man, Muggs Baxter. Only met him a time or two, but he seemed like a regular guy. Condolences.”

  “Thanks, Steve,” she said. “We miss him. I called to see if you have anything new on the nightclub case.”

  “The forensics team is still working on the evidence gathered from the scene. Looks like the accelerant was gasoline. I may be old and forgetful, but even a kid could figure that out in a minute and a half.”

  “We already know this Overton character, the club owner, was knee deep in some Ponzi scheme,” she said. “Losses in the millions. Torching his own club was his way of raising cash. Right? So we’re getting close to bagging the firebug?”

  Jokers Wild, a nightclub in South Phoenix, had burned to the ground six weeks earlier. Due to suspicious circumstances and the owner’s shaky financial situation, an insurance company they’d worked with in the past hired Shea Investigations to look into the matter. Jordan had called Steve, who was the go-to arson guy statewide. His reputation spanned thirty years, which put him in his late fifties or early sixties. He was the best in the business. Nothing ever seemed to get by him.

  “We are, indeed, closing in,” he said. “I should have a more complete report on the scene in a week or ten days. I’ll keep you posted.”

  “Thanks.”

  At least she had some good news on one of their cases. Too bad the other one—the one that mattered—seemed to be stalled. Even the Abromowitz sisters were getting antsy for some good news. They’d left three voicemails over the past couple of days inquiring as to their progress. It was now ten days since the museum robbery, and Jordan didn’t really have anything to tell them. She had lucked out. When she returned the call, they didn’t pick up, allowing her to simply leave a message. “Things are coming along. We have a few really good leads.”

  The door to Jordan’s office flew open, and Eddie blew in like a windstorm. “I just got off the phone with Diego’s contact in Tucson.”

  “Luis Martinez?” she asked.

  He was out of breath. “Lucky Louie. He has a lead that could blow this wide open. I gotta go down there.”

  “Right now?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  He told her Martinez had discovered a connection between the Mexican drug cartels and the Dahlonega coins.

  “What connection?” she prodded.

  “He never said. He’s scared to death, Jordan. That’s why I have to go.”

  The drug cartels. She swallowed hard. This was beyond serious. She was scared, but Eddie seemed energized by it all.

  He went on. “And it has to be tomorrow because Louie told the guy with the coins he had a couple of people who’d take ’em all—the whole kit and caboodle. You know, just to get our guy back in the store. It’s going down tomorrow, Saturday, at one. I’m going to get there a little early to set up surveillance.”

  “What time are we leaving?”

  “Not ‘we.’ Me. I’ll go first. You can drive with Tank and Diego later.”

  She bristled. Would she ever break him of the habit of trying to keep her stuck up on a pedestal, out of harm’s way? “It’s my reputation on the line here, too. Did you think I didn’t have a vested interest in recovering the coins? And besides, I may not have known Muggs as long as you did, but I loved him. Don’t shut me out.”

  “Who said anything about shutting you out? If you come down later, by the time you get there it’ll just be a matter of getting into position and waiting for the bust to go down.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m always sure, baby cakes.”

  She got up, went around behind him and circled him with her arms. He smelled clean and woodsy. Aramis, just the hint of it.

  “What time are you picking me up tonight?”

  “What time’s the engagement party again?” His voice was husky.

  “Seven.”

  “I’ll be there at five. That’ll give us a little time to … talk. Or something.” He kissed her, hard.

  His blood was up over this Martinez thing, and when Eddie’s blood was up, she could count on an energetic evening.

  She breathed against his mouth. “I just love it when we talk … or something.”

  Mary and Ben Welsh lived in Troon, in North Scottsdale. The area was famous for sports icons, renowned authors, movie personalities, and rock stars. Nestled among boulders and the grassy golf course, the houses were all custom-built and some of the richest real estate in Arizona.

  The Welsh home was four thousand square feet of opulence and excess. Mary had it furnished and decorated in a similar way to their place in Lake Forest, with antiques and imports mixed with rich tones—French renaissance with a Southwestern twist.

  Over the top, according to Jordan and her sister Kate, but when you walked in, there was no doubt Mary Welsh lived there. Her fingerprints were everywhere, from the Louis XIV sink pedestal to the brass-studded leather Mexican bar stools at the kitchen counter. God forbid anyone pointed out the incongruities to her.

  Jordan and Eddie showed up at seven fifteen. The engagement party was already in full swing. They were just a tad late due to their intense and satisfying conversation and the subsequent need to shower afterward.

  The valley’s glitterati were there in full force—about a hundred, all told. Jordan had to hand it to her mother. Only Mary Welsh, reigning queen of Chicago society and heiress apparent in the Valley of the Sun, could assemble such a star-studded event in a week’s time.

  Food and wine from the family’s restaurant, arranged by Jordan’s brother Alec, would be served at eight in a big party tent set up in the back patio area. Two bartenders also borrowed from her parents’ restaurant mixed, served, and entertained the guests while servers circulated with trays of hors d’oeuvres.

  From the back of the house, Mary shuffled to meet them, hampered by flopping three-inch mule sandals that clicked against the tile with each step. There was a bloom on her cheeks and a sloshing champagne flute in each hand.

  Rose followed along behind her, a vision in a cream-colored, silk pantsuit with a silk cami the color of storm clouds. Silvery pumps studded with sparkling stones peeked from under the hem of her pants. Four strands of pearls circled her neck. Her salt and pepper hair was immaculately styled. Gone was the frizzy disarray she usually sported. Her makeup was understated.

  Jordan took her hand. “Rose, you’re stunning.”

  Mary, who was normally the definition of polite society, giggled. “Can you believe it, Jordan? Rose is wearing a Gucci suit!”

  Jordan waited for Eddie to compliment both women, but instead he stood, hands in his pockets, studying the tops of his shoes.

  She nudged him. “Eddie?”

  He looked up. “Huh?”

  “Doesn’t your mom look pretty tonight?”

  He seemed to wake up. “Oh, yeah. Gorgeous. You, too, Mary. Both of you ladies. Just gorgeous.”

  She leaned over and whispered in his ear, “You okay?”

  He nodded, still smiling at his mother and Mary. “Yeah, just thinking about tomorrow.”

  Jordan couldn’t say she blamed him. The trip down to Tucson would be interesting, to say the least.

  Jordan put her arm around Rose’s shoulders. “Come on, Mama Rose. I’ll buy you a drink.”

  Alec, his wife, Caroline, and their twin daughters scoped out the appetizer table in the great room. Both girls, bound for kindergarten in the fall, were dressed in frilly pink princess dresses. They looked like miniatures of their mother, an attractive French woman with big brown
eyes and lush dark hair.

  Caroline and the girls hovered by the serving table where the twins had launched an attack against a cheese platter.

  Alec put his arm around Jordan and bussed her cheek. “Hey, baby sister. How’s the PI biz treating you?”

  From behind them came, “Au contraire, Alec, not the question of the night.”

  They turned to see the middle Welsh offspring—Jordan’s sister, Kate—with Dave Clark, the lovable bank manager she’d been seriously dating for several months. Dave headed for the serving table where he assisted the twins in the assault on the Brie.

  With pale blue eyes and golden brown hair like Alec’s, Kate was all Welsh. Jordan and her mother sported the copper hair and hazel eyes of the Irish O’Connells.

  “Then what is the important question of the night?” Alec asked.

  Kate laughed. “Has Mother had her first meltdown yet?”

  “Not yet,” Jordan said, “but then she’s yet to have one like the time back at …”

  They raised their voices an octave to spout, “… Sacré Coeur School for Young Ladies.”

  Kate huffed. “You nearly got me expelled.”

  “Me?” Jordan feigned outrage. “It was all your idea.”

  They both knew it wasn’t. Saint Katherine, as Jordan often called her older sister, not only wouldn’t think up the mischief they got into, she couldn’t. It wasn’t in her genes.

  When Jordan was in her sophomore year, Abraham Lipchitz, from the Hasidic Yeshiva Academy for Exceptional Boys down the street from Sacré Coeur, gave her two joints of a strain he called Purple Haze. Not only had she not smoked them, she’d left them in her gym locker. It was Friday night and Jordan was paranoid the joints would be found. Silver-tongued devil that she was, Jordan convinced Kate to help her break into the school to retrieve them.

  Kate was terrified, but she loaded her little sister into her 1998 red Mustang convertible and drove down to the high school. They circled the building until they spotted an open window, crawled in and made their way to the gym. Kate cursed a blue streak the entire time, words Jordan had never heard before or since.

  The girls’ locker room was suspiciously steamy when the two young women snuck in at eight thirty p.m. Who the hell would be taking a shower in the girls’ gym at the high school? Well, come to find out, it was Mr. Pachnowski, the biology teacher, and Miss Mackenzie, the women’s tennis coach, getting it on in the shower.

  They didn’t want to look, but couldn’t look away. Katie slipped on the wet concrete and went down. Coach Mackenzie shrieked and came charging out. Professor Pachnowski cowered in the corner, clutching the shower curtain to his privates—too little, too late, literally.

  The end result was that Miss Mackenzie found the joints and kicked Jordan off the tennis team. But when she tried to get Jordan and Kate expelled, Kate couldn’t stand it and narced out the two teachers. Both were eventually let go. Katie got off with a stern reprimand. Jordan sat out eight weeks of her sophomore year, which she wouldn’t have considered punishment except it meant spending eight weeks of quarantine at home with Mary. Her mother was humiliated beyond words and spent nearly the entire eight weeks, screeching at Jordan about how she was turning into a juvenile delinquent and might have to join the … wait for it … Merchant Marine. It took Mary nearly all of Jordan’s remaining two and half years at Sacré Coeur to get over it.

  “Yep.” Katie rolled her eyes. “Nearly went thermonuclear all right. She spent the next two months lying on the chaise in her bedroom with a cold cloth across her brow.”

  As if Jordan could ever forget. “Yeah, ordering me to fetch her stuff twenty-four hours a day.”

  And right on cue, the target of their query stopped a young man in a crisp white shirt and black trousers who was circulating a tray of canapés, to straighten his bow tie.

  The three Welsh siblings stood shoulder to shoulder and sighed as Mary turned her sharp eyes in their direction. Uh-oh. Storm front imminent.

  “Oh, swell,” Alec said. “Here she comes. Is my hair sticking up or anything?”

  Eddie found himself outside on the back patio with a Dewar’s on the rocks in one hand, a cigar in the other, and Marky Mark at his elbow.

  He was having trouble tracking what Mark was saying. His mind was on the events that would be unfolding in the morning. Deep down he had a strong feeling this could be the turning point in the case.

  “Thanks for stepping out with me.” Mark sounded unsure of himself.

  “No problem. What can I do for you?”

  “Look, Eddie,” he began slowly. “I know you aren’t too crazy about the idea of me marrying your mom”

  Eddie opened his mouth to say something, but Mark held up his hand.

  “No. It’s okay, man, I understand. She’s doing okay financially, lot of publicity. I can see where you’d figure I’m just a scumbag out to swindle her money.”

  “I ….” Eddie searched for a way to make a denial that wasn’t an outright lie.

  “Something I want to show you.” Mark pulled a folded document from his jacket pocket.

  Eddie set his drink on the table, his cigar in the ashtray and moved over under a pillar light where he could see.

  It only took a minute for him to figure out what he was looking at. “This is a—”

  “Yep,” Mark said. “A prenup. It basically says what’s hers is hers and what’s mine is hers.”

  Eddie stared at Mark as the man went on, “I love your mother. She’s a class act. Worm like me, I don’t deserve her. I’ve been married before. I’m not ashamed to say it because the man I was then isn’t the man I am today. I may be a slow learner, but I did learn. Rose is it for me. I want to spend the rest of my life with her. All I have, I’m sharing with her. And I won’t be asking for anything from her in return except the pleasure of her company.”

  Eddie just stood there, caught off guard by the sincerity in Mark’s voice. There wasn’t anything left for him to say. He stuck out his hand and Mark took it. They shook.

  The only reply that came to mind was, “Welcome to the family.”

  Mark sighed, big and long. It was obvious he’d been expecting a different result. “I gotta say that went down easier than I expected. I figured I’d be lucky to get off without a bullet in my chest.”

  Eddie stared at him and swallowed hard. What had Mama been saying to him? He was a little ashamed that whatever she’d said, it was probably true.

  He must have looked stunned because Mark was quick to say. “No, no. I was just messing with you.”

  “Oh.” Eddie felt like an idiot.

  “One more thing,” Mark said.

  “Yeah? What?”

  “Now that we’re friends and all, do you think you could stop calling me Marky Mark?”

  Chapter 17

  Saturday morning brought wind to Phoenix and Scottsdale. The air was so full with yellow Palo Verde blossoms, they seemed to be raining down. Eddie pulled the Ford Ranger out of the garage and hit Interstate 10 heading south. It was a little over an hour and a half to the South Fourth Avenue location of Lucky Louie’s Pawn Shop in South Tucson.

  In Tucson it actually was raining, a cold spring downpour. The deep chuckholes in the empty parking lot were filled with dirty runoff. Eddie turned up the collar of his denim jacket and walked around to the back.

  He mentally ticked off, item by item, what he had planned. First, lie in wait for Louie’s contact to come. Second, make him talk. Third, if it turned out to be the scum who killed Muggs and took the coins, take him down. Fourth, get Martinez out of harm’s way. All this he planned to do before Jordan arrived with Tank and Diego. She hadn’t been far off the mark when she chewed his butt for trying to shut her out. He didn’t want her anywhere near the cartel.

  Both the security gate and rear door stood open. Rain poured off the overhang, drenching him as he stared at the grisly scene.

  He took a step inside, resisting the urge to shake off the water like a soaked do
g as the drizzle coming in behind him ran in muddy rivulets to the two bodies face down on the concrete floor.

  A few quick steps carried Eddie across the room. He knelt beside the first body and put two fingers to the carotid artery. No pulse. It was Louie’s muscular bulldog he and Jordan ran into on their first trip down. The second body was a younger man, Latino. The enormous rock on his right hand identified him as the courier from Louie’s security footage.

  Both men had been shot in the back.

  Luis Martinez was slumped over the table, bullet hole in the back of his head.

  In the far corner of the room, the door to the old safe stood open. Eddie didn’t need to have a look. He knew the metal box and its contents wouldn’t be there.

  A moment of regret passed over him. Maybe he should have come down yesterday. Maybe Martinez would still be alive. What a waste of life, and Eddie still didn’t have what he needed.

  A scrape. The unmistakable click of a gun being cocked. Before he could even react—

  “Stand up straight. Hands on top of your head.” The command came from behind him. He obeyed. “Turn around. Take your time, friend. Like an instant replay in slow-mo.”

  The cop’s shirtsleeve said he was South Tucson PD. His gun aimed at Eddie’s chest said he was in charge.

  “It’s not what it looks like, officer.” Get it on the record, Eddie.

  “Of course not.” The cop smiled. “It never is.”

  She must have thanked Ann a dozen times for driving to Tucson with her. Not that it had been easy being in the car together. The topic of the conversation during most of the ninety-minute ride had centered on the obvious fact that their relationship was tricky, that there was a fine line between their strong friendship and their professional interaction.

  But in the end, the detective’s word had gone a long way toward getting Eddie out of the cell in South Tucson.