Collateral Damage A Matt Royal Mystery - By H. Terrell Griffin Page 0,39
suburbs are in South Carolina, so I checked those records. Nothing.
I called Jeanette Deen. “Hi Jeanette, this is Matt Royal. Sorry to bother you again so soon.”
“No bother, Matt.”
“Do you have an address for EZGo? The place where you sent the gift certificate?”
“I’m sure I do. Hold on a minute.”
I heard the keyboard clicking and she came back on the line. “It was to a post office box in Charlotte,” she said, and gave me the box number.
“Thanks, Jeanette. I’ll try not to bother you again.”
“Anytime, Matt. It’s not a problem.”
I drove down to Moore’s. I usually walked, but it was August and my Explorer had a healthy air-conditioning system. I’m no fool.
Jock was sitting at the deserted bar talking to Debbie, who had been serving drinks there for the past twenty years. She was a good friend and I think secretly had a thing for Jock. I joined them.
“I heard somebody was trying to kill you yesterday,” she said.
“News travels fast.”
“There’s never new news on this island. It’s old before it has time to germinate a little. The gossip telegraph works very well, even in August.”
“Well, I’m okay. In case you were worried.”
“We probably need a better class of killer on this island. You know, somebody who knows what he’s doing.”
“Ah, Deb. You’d miss me.”
“Well, I’d sure miss those big quarter tips you give.”
“You’re worth it, babe.”
She laughed, threw a dish towel at me and went to the beer cooler for my Miller Lite.
“Did you find out anything?” Jock asked.
I related my conversation with Jeanette Deen. “She sent the gift certificate to EZGo Travel Agency in Charlotte, but there is no such business.
Just a post office box. I’ve got the credit card number that the certificate was charged to. Maybe that’ll give us some more information.”
“You going to ask Deb to check it out?” he asked.
“Yep. We’ll save your agency for the hard stuff.”
“Check what out?” Deb asked.
“I just need a little hacking job,” I said.
“Geez, Royal. There’s no such thing as a little hacking job. They’re all big. What do you need?”
“Some information on who pays the bills on a certain credit card?”
“You got the number?”
“Of course.”
“Give it to me. I’ll check it out when I get home tonight.”
Debbie was a very competent hacker. She’d taken some computer courses at the local community college just for her own edification. The further she got into it, the more she realized she had a gift. Before long, she was hacking her way into all kinds of databases. It was a hobby for her, and she never took anything of value or shared the information with any-one else. I was probably the only person other than Jock and Logan who realized what she could do. She’d helped us out before.
Back at my house, I typed a note of my conversation with Jeanette Deen into my computer and e-mailed it to J.D. and Doc Desmond. Jock was on his cell phone, which had some sort of encryption that ensured the privacy of his conversations. He was talking to somebody at his agency headquarters in Washington.
“They’ll get back to me on Soupy,” Jock said as he closed his phone.
“Thanks. We may be chasing wild geese with the Dulcimer murders. If Soupy sent a team to take out Jim Desmond why would they kill two people who apparently have no relationship with each other or with Desmond? It just doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe Soupy is the wild goose.”
“You’re thinking that he might not have anything to do with any of this?”
“That’s one option. Another is that Dulcimer and Jim are just coincidences.” He held up his hands. “I know, I know. You don’t like coincidences, but sometimes they happen.”
“What would you guess the percentages of that are?”
“Near zero, but that doesn’t make it impossible.”
I shook my head. “You may be right, but I don’t like it.”
“I agree,” said Jock. “Let’s keep digging. We’ll either hit a complete dead end or we’ll turn over a rock somewhere and find our answers.”
I thought he was right. I called Mrs. Garrison in Jacksonville. “My name is Matt Royal, Mrs. Garrison. I’m a lawyer in Longboat Key and I’ve been retained to look into the deaths on the Dulcimer.”
“I remember you, Mr. Royal. You pulled me out of the water. But who would be looking into that now? I gather that the police haven’t been able to find much of anything.”
“My client’s son was killed on Longboat Key the same day as your husband. There may not be any