“Can’t you ask her?”
“I would, sir, but somebody killed her.” “Someone killed your aunt?” Walmsey said skeptically. “Is that why you want your duffel? Is your aunt in the Army?”
“No, sir.”
“Then I’m apparently not getting through to you, Puller. What you’re planning to do is an unauthorized-”
It was at this moment that Puller ran out of patience. It was contrary to his nature in speaking with a superior officer, but perhaps his brief time away from the Army had dulled those professional instincts. He would just assume that was the case.
“Sir, if I may elaborate. My aunt sent my father a letter at the VA hospital where he’s currently staying. The letter stated she was afraid, that things were happening down here that she thought were suspicious. My father asked me to investigate. I came here to do so. I found my aunt dead. Naturally my suspicions were aroused.” When Walmsey next spoke his tone was far less confrontational. “Your father? At the VA hospital?”
“Yes, sir. He’s not that well, but he’s hanging in there. Even though sometimes he thinks he’s still commanding the ioist.”
There was a long stretch of silence and then Walmsey said, “Fighting John Puller is your father?”
“Yes, sir. I’m John Puller Jr.”
“That was not included in my briefing on this. I can’t imagine why the hell not.”
Puller could see a certain aide to Colonel Walmsey getting his or her ass reamed over that one.
“But my father being who he is should not impact this matter at all.”
“No, it shouldn’t,” said Walmsey in a halting voice.
“It’s just that my aunt was my father’s only sibling. He took it hard. He was her younger brother. You have siblings, sir?”
“Two older sisters. Special relationship, big sisters and little brothers.”
“Yes, sir, so I’ve heard.”
There was another long pause.
“Why don’t you carry on down there and we’ll revisit this issue later, Agent Puller.”
“Yes, sir, thank you, sir. And Ms. Craig?” “Don’t worry about her. I’ll take you at your word that she wasn’t involved in anything that was unauthorized. She’ll be back on duty today.” “Appreciate it, sir.”
“You tell your father I said hello and convey my best wishes for a speedy recovery.”
“I will do that, Colonel. Thank you. Uh, any chance on running that license plate down, sir?”
But the line went dead.
It didn’t look like the Army was going to be much help with this.
Puller headed to the Tahoe.
He needed to get his investigation duffel.
CHAPTER 37
The sweat trickled down his neck.
At eight in the morning he’d already been hard at work for an hour. It was eighty-two degrees with a projected high of nearly a hundred today.
He was at the same house. He had been told that the grounds here were so extensive that they required a landscaping crew every day. He had taken steps to make sure that he would get the assignment. It had involved payments and promises to people who didn’t give a damn why he wanted to be here. For them it was just an exchange of something for something else. And when you were dealing with folks who had little money, bartering became a way of life. For all they knew he was trying to case the mansion in hopes of robbing it. They did not care about folks stealing from the rich. The rich had everything. They would just print more money.
He was simply one man working for others. He was paid a wage that could barely keep him alive. And he was one injury away from being homeless.
As he looked around at the workers next to him, he was actually describing their state of affairs, not his. Money meant nothing to him. He was here for his own purposes and no other. When he was done he would leave.
Unless he was dead. Then he would stay in Paradise for eternity.
He rubbed the sweat from his eyes and commenced clipping a hedge for owners who demanded a precisely trimmed bush. But he also focused on what he had seen the previous night on the beach.
Those people were lost forever. As soon as they had been taken, it was over. On the boat. On the truck. It didn’t matter. Nothing could break the long chain of ownership, for that’s what it was.
Chattel.
The sixteenth century or the twenty-first century, it didn’t really matter. People with power and means would always take advantage of those without them.
He clipped and thought about his next move.
He ran his eye along the top of the hedge and at the same time skirted his gaze along the perimeter of the mansion. The same Maserati was parked in the front cobblestone circular drive. He assumed that the young couple had stayed over. Why leave this place if one didn’t have to? He had learned, by asking subtle questions of a house servant who had come out to retrieve the mail, that the interior staff consisted of ten people. These included maids, a chef, someone playing the role of a butler, and various others who worked cheap and were able to live in the servants’ quarters of the grandest home on the Emerald Coast.
The family who lived here consisted of four people:
The cash machine husband.
The pampered second wife.
The even more pampered son.
The mother-in-law.
The cash machine was in his mid-forties, relatively young for having amassed such great wealth. He had not asked the maid how the money had been made.
He already knew.
The second wife used to be a runway model, was in her early thirties, and spent most of her time shopping.
The cash machine’s son-the second wife’s stepson-was seventeen and attended a private boarding school in Connecticut. He had already been accepted at an Ivy League school based more on his father’s largesse to the university than his academic performance. He was now home for the summer playing polo, driving his Porsche, and sowing his wild oats among the available local young women, who were unabashedly competing to one day live in grand houses filled with servants. This he had also found out before coming here.
The second wife’s mother lived in the lavish guesthouse and was, at least by most accounts, a bitch of massive proportions.
As he watched, the same woman he had seen by the pool the day before strolled out of the mansion’s rear French doors. She had on a white skirt that showed off her bare, tanned legs, a light blue shirt, and spike backless heels. Her hair fell around her shoulders. Her appearance was quite dressy for this early in the morning. Perhaps she had an appointment.
He watched as she crossed over to the guesthouse and went inside, perhaps to pay her respects to the resident mother-in-law.
The rear door to the mansion opened once more and a man stepped out.
He studied him. About five-eleven, trim, fit, dressed in white shorts that showed off his tanned, muscular calves. He had on leather loafers that looked expensive and no doubt were, and a pale blue patterned long-sleeved Bugatchi shirt. He had left the shirt untucked, no doubt to show that despite his immense wealth he was a casual yet hip man. His hair was brown and wavy with just a touch of gray around the temples.
The man crossed the grounds and entered the guesthouse.
He knew who the man was. He was the cash machine. The man owned this estate and everything in it.
His name was Peter J. Lampert.
He’d made and lost most of a multibillion- dollar fortune as a hedge fund manager, along with most of the money entrusted to him by his clients. Then he had made another enormous fortune to pay for this place and other assorted toys of the rich. But he had not bothered to recoup his clients’ money.
That was what bankruptcy was for, he’d responded, when someone asked him if he felt remorse at all for destroying the lives of so many people.
Lampert, he knew, also had his own private jet, a Dassault Falcon 900LX that was parked at a private airport about thirty minutes from here. Its maximum cabin height was six feet two inches, which meant Lampert could stand up straight inside it, but he couldn’t. Yet he never expected to be on it. Private jets were not meant for the hired help.