shower.
“Anything else?” asks Ceepak.
“That’s it until right after midnight. Twelve-oh-five A.M. she sent a short text message.”
“Short?”
“Not much data in the transfer. That was the last time she used her phone.”
“To whom did she text?”
Diego runs her finger down two different sheets of paper, looking for a match.
“Area code 609. Another local number. Mr. Patrick O’Malley.”
19
Okay.
Maybe Skippy is a better detective than we gave him credit for.
“Does that last number appear elsewhere in the phone records?” Ceepak asks.
“Yeah,” says Officer Diego. “Several times. Earlier in the month. Almost once a day through last Saturday morning, then nothing until last night.”
“You know this Patrick O’Malley?” asks Botzong.
“Roger that,” says Ceepak. “One of Sea Haven’s most prominent businessmen. His wife died last Saturday from a heart attack during the inaugural ride of Mr. O’Malley’s new roller coaster.”
“Yeah, I read about that. You think maybe the heart attack might’ve been caused by something besides an adrenaline rush?”
“We had no reason to think so previously.”
Yeah. But maybe now we do. Maybe the wife was giving Mr. O’Malley too much grief about his girlfriend Gail.
“Twice in one week …” I mumble.
“What’s that?” says Botzong on the speakerphone.
“Danny?” This from Ceepak.
“It’s what Mr. O’Malley’s son said. ‘Twice in one week.’”
“Implying,” says Ceepak, “that his father was implicated in Ms. Baker’s death as well as that of his wife.”
“Guess you guys better go have a chat with this Mr. O’Malley. See if he has any receipts from Home Depot for hacksaw blades.”
As soon as we’re off the conference call, Ceepak gives Diego a new assignment: Search the public real estate records and find out who owns number One Tangerine Street.
Good. Means we’re not going back to All-A-Shore Realty to talk to Mrs. Starky. I won’t be verbally castrated again until the next time Sam invites me over for Sunday dinner.
While Officer Diego clacks her keyboard and scours historical real estate transactions, Ceepak and I hit the road and head north on Beach Lane.
Time to talk to Skippy’s poppa-if we can find him at the Rolling Thunder. Meanwhile, Dylan Murray, who stayed on the clock after Santucci punched out, is on the street with his partner, Ron Edison, tracking down Mike Charzuk, Gail’s personal trainer and the second-to-last person she called. Mrs. Rence is also helping out, calling Santucci’s cell phone. Repeatedly.
“He must have it off,” she reported in her last radio transmission. “No answer and no busy signal.”
“Keep trying.”
We’re moving past the Sea Spray Hotel when Dylan Murray radios in.
“Unit A-twelve, this is Baker-six.”
Ceepak’s at the wheel, so I take the call.
“This is A-twelve, go ahead.”
“We’re with Mr. Charzuk at Beach Bods gym. He has one more client scheduled. How shall we proceed?”
I glance over to Ceepak.
“Have them ask Mr. Charzuk to join us at the house at twenty hundred hours.”
“Dylan,” I say into the mic, “we’d like to talk to him in an hour-at eight.”
“At the house?”
“Right.”
“We’ll offer him a ride.”
“Thanks. Let us know if he turns down your invitation.”
“You got it. Out.”
It’s nearly seven now. I sense Ceepak’s plan. We spend the next hour with the last guy to communicate with Gail, then head back to the house to chat with the second-to-last guy. There’s a pecking order to these things.
We pull into a municipal parking lot butting up to the boardwalk and have our pick of spaces, because, like I said, our seaside resort stays pretty sleepy until the end of June. We hike up a ramp that will have us hitting the boards pretty close to Pier Four, home to the brand-new Rolling Thunder. The tarry scent of creosote is almost strong enough to overpower the food odors sputtering out of the open-air concession stands. Almost. Italian sausage sandwiches with onions and peppers put up a pretty good stink fight.
“Looks like they are testing the electricals,” says Ceepak.
On the horizon, we’re treated to a disco inferno of flashing colored lights. They must have all the bulbs on the Rolling Thunder synched up to a high-tech computer. They flicker, blink, strobe, and streak like chaser lights up and down the humps of the wooden scaffolding. Then they blast through a rainbow of color bursts. It’s pretty awesome. Probably even more amazing when you’re slightly buzzed. Trust me. My high school buddies and I could sit and stare at a blinking Ferris wheel for hours after chugging a few brewskis and smoking something I’d have to arrest myself for smoking these days.
“Hello, Samantha.” Ceepak sees her first.
“Hi, guys! You still on the clock?”
“Roger that.”
“Hey, Sam,” I say, kind of sheepishly, because a) her mother royally reamed me out a couple of hours ago, and b) she’s with a group of six or seven other kids her own age. I say that because Samantha Starky is four years younger than me. The crowd looks like her college buddies.
“How’s it going, Danny?”
I shrug. “We’re, you know, following up on a couple things.”
“Cool.”
“Is this
“Yep. Oh, shoot-I forgot. You’ve never met any of my friends from school, have you, Danny?”
Okay. I think that was a dig.
Three girls and two guys are clustered around Sam now, nibbling on fried candy bars, sizing me up. A third guy who just paid for his fried Twinkie joins them. He’s wearing a Rutgers Law School sweatshirt and shorts. Go Scarlet Knights.
“You’re Danny?” The way he says it, I think he was expecting someone bigger, more intimidating. “We’ve heard so much about you.”
“What is that thing, Richard?” Sam asks Sweatshirt Man with a flirty little giggle.
“Twinkie,” Richard says with a mouth full of sponge cake and cream. “I thinkie.”
The college kids laugh. They’re into witty word play. Me and Ceepak? Fuhgeddaboutit.
“Meet Richard Heimsack and the rest of my study group,” explains Sam. “We’ve all been working so hard, we wanted to blow off a little steam.”
“Thanks for letting us borrow Sam tonight,” says Heimsack, his mouth full of creamy mush. “She sure knows how to show a guy a good time. On the boardwalk, I mean.”
