Beach Wedding(46)

“Not without me there, you won’t!” I laughed. “Don’t move a muscle. I’m on my way.”



61

When Viv’s foot poked my left knee pit for the second time, I reluctantly opened one eye and saw it was still dark.

Then the soft soothing cool pillow I was sleeping under was lifted, and I heard my phone vibrating.

“Just leave it,” I groaned as her foot worked on my right knee pit.

I waited until Viv rolled over before I reached out slowly and saw it was a text from Special Agent Courtney Frazier for us to meet up.

“I’m about to just smash it with a hammer, Terry,” Viv said as I sat up.

It was dark when I left and just daybreak when I pulled in beside an old barn on the edge of Courtney’s family farm restaurant in Amagansett. I saw that there were two other vehicles already parked at the side of the beat-up barn. One of them I actually recognized. It was Detective Marvin Heller’s red Nissan Frontier pickup truck.

Seeing it, I wondered if I was going to hear some good news that the case was going to be reopened. I had already told Courtney all about my new findings from Father Holm. How the money and power-grabbing machinations of Noah’s family had cast the case in an entirely new light.

I spotted Marvin just inside the door of the abandoned structure along with Courtney. There were two other new people there, as well. A tall fortysomething white guy with curly brown hair who was wearing a suit, and an attractive fair-skinned woman in her midfifties who was wearing a workout hoodie and patterned leggings.

“Are you sure no one was following you?” Courtney said to me.

“I’m positive. What’s up?”

“You’re being surveilled,” said the pale fiftyish woman.

“Terry, this is the assistant DA of Suffolk County, Katrina Volland, who’s working with us on our Suffolk DA corruption case.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said. “I’m being followed? Are you serious?”

“You went into the city yesterday, right?” Volland said.

“Yes.”

“So did one of the county undercover cars of Suffolk County police chief Dennis Tapley, who we have a tracking device on,” said the tall man in business clothes.

“Terry, this is Assistant Special Agent in Charge Walter Marino,” Courtney said. “He’s my boss who’s in charge of the RICO case against the Suffolk County DA.”

“Pleasure,” I said, nodding at him as I tried to absorb what I was hearing.

“I told you this place has gone crazy,” Marvin said. “And Chief Tapley is the craziest one of the lot.”

I remembered the sociopathic look on Tapley’s face as he screwed with me and Tom back at the house. The coldness in his eyes.

Then I thought about Viv and Angelina and the rest of my family.

This wasn’t good, I thought. I didn’t like this at all.



62

“Terry, we’ve been having some trouble moving forward with our corruption case,” said ASAC Marino. “So, we’ve decided to shift our focus and resources.”

“We’d like to get behind you and your cold case, Terry,” Courtney said. “We think that if we can get Hailey Sutton back on trial, we can negotiate with her to give up Chief Tapley.”

I remembered how Hailey had shown up right as Tapley was towing all the cars.

“So, it’s really true? You think Hailey Sutton is siccing this Tapley guy on me?” I said in shock.

“Remember I told you about all these crazy parties?” Marvin said. “Well, I’ve been asking around and Tapley moonlights security at her parties.”

“It’s obvious Hailey and Chief Tapley are thick as thieves,” Courtney said. “We get Hailey, we feel we can get Tapley.”

“And then with Tapley, he’ll give us Wheaton,” ADA Katrina Volland explained.

“But it’s cards-on-the-table time, Terry,” FBI ASAC Marino said. “If we’re going to help each other, we need to know more about what you’re doing.”

“Off the record, right?” I said.

Courtney pointed up at the blue sky coming through the missing rafters.

“This look like a courthouse deposition to you, Terry?”

“Okay, good point,” I said. “Here’s how it happened.”

It took me about ten minutes to spill all the beans about how I had found the Kelsey novel manuscript at the beach house and how I’d exchanged it with Lucas Brody for the extensive private investigation files concerning Noah’s case.

“Why didn’t you tell me all this before?” Courtney said.

“Because there’s illegally obtained records in the case files. Credit card statements. Phone logs with local usage details. I don’t know who did Kelsey’s investigating, but the son of a bitch broke about every privacy law there is. Do you want to look at the files?”

“No, no. You keep them for now at least,” ASAC Marino said. “We touch those files, the case is over. Fruit of the poisoned tree. We couldn’t admit anything in court.”

The FBI agent looked at me and nodded to himself.

“The way you’re playing this is actually perfect. You keep feeding Katrina anonymous information. That’s the best way.”