Courage Matters: A Ray Courage Mystery (Ray Courage Private Investigator Series Book 2), Page 5

  “What do you want me to check for?” she asked.

  “Just the usual. Financial and credit histories, criminal records, anything you can turn up. But to be honest, I doubt you’ll find much. These are the upper crust of Sacramento. They’re Lionel Stroud’s clients so they have to be worth a bundle. Maybe try to find out how they made their millions. That might be useful.”

  After I hung up, I started the car, pulled onto Land Park Drive, made a left on Sutterville Road then merged onto Interstate 5 north, caught the connector to Business 80 east and cruised at seventy miles an hour to Watt Avenue, where I exited and drove a mile or so to Del Paso Country Club.

  The most prestigious of the numerous private country clubs in the region, Del Paso had been built in the early 1900s ten miles from downtown Sacramento in what at the time had been prime agricultural land. By the 1960s, civilization—if you could call strip malls and tract homes that—had surrounded Del Paso as Sacramento spread like a stain in all directions. By the 21st century the once upscale neighborhood struggled to be called middle class, with every fifth storefront vacant, the neighborhood lawns rife with knee-high weeds, and chain-link replacing picket fences in front of homes protected by pit bulls not poodles. But when you drove through the wrought iron gates of Del Paso, past immaculate fairways, smooth white sand traps and lushly carpeted greens into a parking lot filled with Mercedes, BMWs, Jaguars and even a couple of Rolls Royces, images of the hardscrabble surroundings dissipated like a mist in the wind.

  I parked the car and entered the clubhouse, enduring stares from a couple of blue-haired women when I paused to locate the dining room. Apparently I lacked the look, smell or taste of someone who could earn a membership at DPCC. Undaunted, I found a sign indicating that the dining room was just ahead and even offered the blue-hairs a jaunty “good day” as I passed.

  Blake Rios told me he would be at one of three places between eleven in the morning and one in the afternoon: the dining room, putting green or driving range. At eleven sharp the dining room remained empty, save for a couple of waiters setting tables for the lunch crowd. I counted fifteen golfers hitting balls on the range, none matched the brief description Rios had given me over the phone. That left the putting green.

  Sure enough, a man in a white golf shirt and University of Texas baseball hat putted one ball after the other at a hole twenty feet away. By the time I reached him, I had watched him putt five of his golf balls in succession, sinking the last four. Pretty damn good.

  “Mr. Rios?” I said.

  “Yes. And you must be Mr. Courage? Isn’t that what you said your name was?” Rios was younger than I expected, late twenties, maybe early thirties. Though not tall, standing about five-nine, he had matinee idol looks, jet black hair, light brown skin, with clear dark eyes and strong, confident features. He shook my hand firmly.

  “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me,” I said. “I apologize for intruding on your personal time at the golf course.”

  “Not a problem. When you said what you needed to talk with me about I didn’t want to keep you waiting. This was the only free time I have all week. Besides, you said it would take only a minute or two.”

  “That’s right.”

  I walked beside him as he retrieved the four balls out of the cup and corralled the one errant ball. Using the back of his putter he flipped that ball up in the air and caught it at eye level with his left hand. He studied the ball for a few seconds, rotating it with his fingers, as if some imperfection in the ball had caused him to miss.

  “You said you wanted to talk with me about my investments with Lionel Stroud’s firm,” he said, dropping the ball back onto the putting green and then turning his attention to a hole about thirty feet away.

  “Yes, I work in quality control for Mr. Stroud and we just want to make sure our clients are getting great service from our staff,” I said. “Are you happy with how Mr. Norris is handling your account?”

  “If you don’t mind, Mr. Courage, do you have a business card?”

  “I do in fact.” I reached into my pocket and handed him a card.

  He studied it a moment, flipped it over, and examined the blank back side of the card, not unlike how he examined the golf ball.

  “The answer to your question is yes,” he said. “I am extremely happy with Mr. Norris and with Stroud Investments. They are an upstanding firm and have produced excellent returns on my investments. I could not be happier.” Unlike Burke, Rios kept my card, sliding it into his back pants pocket.

  “I’m glad to hear that,” I said. “Did you meet Mr. Stroud here at the Country Club?”

  “Not really.” He laughed softly. “Mr. Stroud’s reputation is well known. He was recommended by several people I know, some of whom belong to Del Paso, but that was more coincidental than anything.”

  “How long have you been a client of Stroud Investments now?”

  “A little over six months,” he said, stroking the first ball at a different hole a good thirty feet away. The ball lipped the cup, shot out ninety degrees to the left and stopped about two feet away. “That was much too hard. Better touch this time, Blake.”

  “You’re relatively new to the firm then?”

  “Yes.” He putted a second ball, this one stopping about a foot short of the hole. “Damn.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, what do you do for a living?”

  He averted his attention from the golf ball at his feet to me. He looked calm but something inside him shifted somehow. At least that is how it seemed to the communications professor part of me.

  “I am a businessman. I own several businesses of various types. Manufacturing, retail, some real estate.”

  “Rough economy right now,” I said.

  “That is why I am thankful for Mr. Stroud’s company. Even in a down business and real estate market he makes money for me by diversifying my investments.”

  “So the bottom line is that you are happy.”

  “Perfectly.” He putted another ball at the hole, this one stopping an inch short of dropping in.

  “One last thing I’m asking everyone just to be consistent. Did Mr. Norris say anything about there being any…” I reached into my coat pocket, pulled out my notebook, flipped it open to the first page for effect and read the only word written there, “improprieties.”

  “Improprieties? Improprieties with what?”

  “I don’t know, anything, your account?”

  “No, he didn’t say anything at all about any improprieties, but now you have me worried,” he said.

  “Oh, no please don’t be. These are just pro forma questions.” I slid the notebook back into my jacket pocket. “I believe the Securities and Exchange Commission now requires this kind of follow up by firms with all their investors. You know since the last economic meltdown they’ve installed all sorts of checks and balances. That’s all this is.”

  Rios did not respond, focusing on the fourth putt, which he dropped into the hole. He lined up his fifth and final ball, stroked it and watched as it too fell in the hole.

  “You’re very good,” I said. “You should go out and play 18.”

  “No time, Mr. Courage.” He smiled. “I’m too busy. Work, work, work.”

  ten

  “You didn’t!”

  “I did,” I said.

  Jill and I sat at the Say Hey bar drinking, Chardonnay for her, Lagunitas Pale Ale for me. She had come over right after practice when I told her I had developments to report. She still wore her ‘Sacramento State Softball’ polo shirt and green coaching shorts. On a lesser female the combination might have looked mannish, on her it looked killer sexy. Rubia had left for the day to work at It’s My Life, so I pulled double duty as bartender and patron. It was tough handling the five o’clock happy hour crowd of Jill, me and three college-aged men watching a spring training game between the Cubs and White Sox on one of the two flat-screened monitors.

  “My father will kill you when he finds out,” she said. �
��What were you thinking?”

  “I had to do something. The case was stuck in neutral. At least now I know something.”

  “I hope it was worth it because unless you’ve got something juicy on Andrew Norris, my father will fire your ass the second he hears that you approached three of his clients.”

  “If he finds out,” I said.

  “Oh, he’ll find out. He’s known most of his clients for decades. They tell him when they’ve sprouted a new wart.”

  “Nice image. I’m going to have to drink that one away.” I took a big sip of the Lagunitas. “You’re probably right. He will find out.”

  “You don’t seem very concerned about it.”

  “So if he fires me, he fires me.” I took another drink of beer.

  “Ray, don’t you get it? Firing you isn’t the biggest concern here.”

  “He won’t sue me. It’s not worth it to him.”

  “I’m not talking about suing you,” she said. “I’m talking about blackballing you all over town. Hell, all over the state.”

  “Jill, I know he’s your father, but he’s not that powerful.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “His clients are the richest, most influential business people in this entire region. They control most of the job market, the economy, and every politician up to and including the governor. My dad provides every elected official, including judges and police chiefs with pro bono services. He doesn’t do that out of civic duty. He does it to own them. If he says ‘shut Ray Courage down,’ guess what?”

  When she finished talking Jill looked scared, as if she had actually witnessed her dad exerting his considerable powers and calling in his prominent chits. Once her words had fully registered I had a full fright on.

  “Damn,” I said.

  “Damn is right.”

  “Nothing I can do now.” I acted nonchalant, but in my head I was running the possibility of Stroud being able to shut down my investigation business, maybe even dredging up the sexual harassment thing at Sac State to all but eliminate any chance I had for gainful employment this side of washing cars at Gemco Super Car Wash.

  “I just hope it was worth it.”

  “It might be. Two of the three clients said that Norris told them there was something un-kosher going on with their accounts. He told them there were improprieties. That was the word of the day.”

  “That doesn’t sound like something my father would approve having an associate tell his clients.”

  “I don’t think so either. And get this, Norris also suggested that the clients either pull their money out of Stroud Investments or talk to your dad about what was going on.”

  “Really?” Jill sounded stunned. “If he really told those clients to pull their investments, then Norris just committed career suicide. And he must not have said it to get them to leave my dad and join up with him and his supposedly new firm. If he was doing that he wouldn’t have told them to talk to my dad first.”

  “Good point. Oh, and get this—it is rumored that Norris has his house on the market and is planning to leave town.”

  “How did you hear that?” Jill seemed a little impressed with what I’d learned.

  “Sources.”

  “You haven’t been working at this PI thing long enough to have sources.”

  “I move fast.”

  She shook her head in mock annoyance. “Do you think he really is moving?”

  “Maybe. Things sure point to that. And, there is one more thing, which I find most interesting of all.”

  “There’s more?”

  “Your father has not been returning Charles Burke’s phone calls requesting a meeting. For all I know he’s not returning Eric Tyler’s calls either. Those are big time clients and your dad is ignoring them at a time when one of his own employees is telling them to jump ship. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “No, it doesn’t make sense does it.” Jill sighed. She drank some of her wine. We watched the Chicago Cubs turn a double play on the television just before the broadcast went to a commercial.

  “I wanted to apologize for what I said the other day,” Jill said, her eyes on the bar in front of her.

  “For what?”

  “I laid it on pretty heavy about my father and what a disappointment I was to him.”

  “I didn’t think you laid it on too heavily, especially if it’s the truth.” She surprised me. I thought she might be referring to our meeting at Espresso Metro, when I had implied that I didn’t understand her, prompting her to leave without finishing her cup of tea.

  “True or not, he’s my father, it’s his and my relationship. I shouldn’t have dumped it on you, especially since…”

  I waited for her to complete the thought. Instead she drank some more wine. I could tell she was turning something over in her mind.

  “Especially since what?” I said.

  “Especially since we’re not a couple,” she said.

  “Oh, that?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have even brought it up.”

  “Do you want to talk more about it?” I said. “About us, you know, before?”

  “No, not now.”

  I took that as somewhat encouraging if not satisfying. I glanced over at the table with the three college guys and one of them held up a finger and pointed at the empty pitcher in front of them. I got up to pour them another. When I was on the other side of the bar, filling a pitcher with Guinness Stout, Jill spoke again.

  “Are you going to talk to my father?”

  “Yes, but not before I do one more thing,” I said, turning from the tap to look at her over my shoulder.

  “What’s that?”

  “Talk to Andrew Norris.”

  eleven

  At eight o’clock that evening I sat in my car in front of Andrew Norris’s Granite Bay home. Rubia had returned from her class to relieve me at the bar, taking on a surging crowd that had swelled to four by the time I departed. As it stood I could go to Stroud with a report that Norris was spreading rumors about the firm’s credibility while planning to quit and leave town. If I could persuade Norris to tell me his motives then Stroud would have a clear picture about his former star employee’s motives and what, if any, damage he may have caused the firm. That, I figured, should be worth something to the old man. Enough for him not to kill me when he found out about my approaching Norris and three prominent clients.

  Light showed through the shuttered windows of the single story stucco home. Though it looked pretty much like every other home on the street in this upscale neighborhood, I figured Norris’s place would sell for close to a million dollars, even in a down market. If he did have the house up for sale as Rebecca reported, he made no effort to advertise the fact, no real estate sign, no lock box, nothing that would suggest he planned to clear out.

  I knocked on the door. I wondered what Norris’s reaction would be when the guy he met the other day at Jamie’s showed up at his front door. Norris didn’t immediately come to the door so I rang the bell. Still no response. I could faintly hear music or a television on the other side of the door. I rang the doorbell again and waited. And waited some more.

  Norris’s car was not in the driveway. I walked to the wooden gate next to the garage, opened it and went to the window on the side of the garage. I could see Norris’s BMW parked inside.

  The back patio lights were on, as was the light in the pool, which comprised nearly all the small back yard. Staying close to the wall, I turned the corner at the garage and inched along the backside of the house until I reached a window. I peered inside. The window was just above the kitchen sink. Atop the stove, steam pumped out of two covered pots as an expired timer beeped and beeped. Next to what looked like a full bottle of beer, a plate, fork and napkin had been casually placed on a kitchen table. The muffled sounds I had heard from the front door were now clear: Norris had turned on the television to the evening news.

  I considered my next move. My opti
ons were to retreat or to charge.

  I drew a breath and walked toward the sliding glass door. When I reached it, I was surprised to find it wide open. I stuck my head inside. Then I saw him, not more than ten feet away, face down on the carpet, partially obscured by a dining room chair.

  “Andrew?” I said, taking two tentative steps inside.

  Norris didn’t reply so I took a couple of more steps.

  “Norris!” This time I yelled, more of a scream really because now I could see that he’d been shot, a ragged hole in his back, his white shirt saturated red.

  I flashed that the killer might still be in the house. I ran out of the room, backtracking all the way to my car. There were no other cars on the street, no indication that whoever had done that to Norris remained in the area. I called 9-1-1.

  Minutes later an army of police officers and paramedics rolled down the street. I stood in front of Norris’s house and greeted the first cop who approached.

  “Did you call this in?” he said, flashing a badge.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Detective Trujillo, police. You are?”

  I told him my name and what I saw inside the house.

  “You’re sure he’s dead?”

  I nodded.

  “Was anyone else in the home?”

  “Not that I saw,” I said.

  Two paramedics started to rush to the front door when Trujillo stopped them. He told them that the sheriff’s officers needed to clear the building before they could enter. In quick order he dispatched six cops into the house. While they cleared the house, Trujillo grilled me.

  “What is the victim’s name?” Trujillo stood an inch or two shorter than me and probably had twenty or thirty pounds on me. He had a blocky bulldog face that could probably intimidate a confession out the most hardened criminal.

  “Andrew Norris.”

  “Is he a friend?”

  “No. I’ve only met him once.”

  “How is it that you were in his house and found him dead?”

  I told him the sequence of events that started with me knocking on the door and ended with me running out the sliding glass door and back to my car. Detective Trujillo jotted notes as I spoke.