Least Wanted (Sam McRae Mystery 2)

His eyebrows knitted. “The neighbor give any description?”

“Whoever it was looked a lot like Tina. Around her height, thin. Light-brown complexion. Do you know if any of Tina’s friends look like her?”

“I don’t know many of Tina’s friends,” he said, then fell silent.

Nobody knew Tina’s friends. Nobody saw Tina’s friends. Did they wear invisible cloaks when they visited Tina? Or sneak in the back door while Shanae was working? Maybe they never went to Tina’s house. Which would make it harder to argue that the kid at the house that night had been Tina’s friend.

Dropping that issue for the moment, I said, “You were going to tell me about your business with Shanae.”

His eyes widened and he appeared to refocus. “Right. Shanae had asked me to look into some of Rodney Fisher’s business dealings.”

“To get evidence for the child support case against him?”

He nodded. “I started looking into it, asking around. I hear that Fisher’s been selling drugs, doing loan-sharking and money-laundering on the side.” He drummed his fingers on one knee. “If Shanae was going to win her case, she’d need more than the word on the str

eet to prove it. That’s why I broke into the shop.”

“Ah. And what did you find?”

He picked up a thick file from the floor and handed it to me. “Found some tax returns that say what he’s supposed to be making. And a ledger that says what’s really coming in. Some checks signed over to the pawn shop, too. I copied everything I could.”

I flipped through the photocopies. One set of papers, held with a clip, were the tax returns. Another set, handwritten ledger entries. A list of names with cryptic notes was on the left; columns of numbers on the right.

“That’s yours to keep,” he said.

“Too bad Shanae doesn’t care about child support anymore.”

“Yeah, but when Shanae found out what he was doing, she was none too happy. And she was no shrinking violet. She told me she demanded he pay up, or she’d take him to court. And you know, if any of this shit came out . . . .” He whistled.

“So Fisher had a definite motive for killing her?”

“Look that way to me.”

“When did Shanae tell you this?”

“At her house, the day she died.” His mood was somber. That he made no secret of having been there relieved me.

Fisher was sounding more like a promising suspect than ever. If he’d gone to the house and had an argument with Shanae, maybe that was what woke up the neighbor, Mrs. Mallory. He might have grabbed the bat in anger and beaten the life out of Shanae and, in a panic, failed to dispose of the weapon. But then what about fingerprints? And who was the kid Mrs. Mallory saw leaving the house? Could she have mistaken Fisher for Tina? Didn’t seem likely.

Scanning the checks, I halted abruptly when I noticed one for $5,000 made out to ITN Consultants. I blinked and stared at it. The check had been drawn from the Kozmik Games account. Hello! The back of the check bore an illegible signature.

Stunned, I tried to process this bizarre coincidence. Little D had just mentioned loan-sharking and money-laundering. Could the embezzlers have been laundering the stolen money through Fisher’s pawn shop and signed the check over to him? It was sloppy, but even the most sophisticated criminals could get sloppy. Hell, the Watergate investigation started with a cashier’s check intended for Nixon’s re-election fund, which ended up in a burglar’s bank account. I scanned the handwritten records, ordered by date, searching for a notation for ITN around the time the check was written. I found the entry, with “$5,000” entered next to it; “$500” and “$4,500” were written in the right-hand columns. I flipped back a month and found ITN again—this time with “$7,000” next to it. In the right-hand column: “$700” and “$6,300.” It looked like Fisher was getting a ten percent cut. But where was the rest going?

Little D was still talking. “I’m kind of hooked into that scene. That’s how I know him.”

“I’m sorry. I drifted off. Know who?”

“Dude named Narsh. Worked as a drug runner for a while. Fisher got him acting as—what do you call it?—liaison between his clients and the shop. An enforcer, too.”

“So he should be able to tell us who Fisher is dealing with.”

“He should. Why?”

“Because it looks like Fisher is handling a transaction that involves a phony company. Something related to another case I’m on. I’d like to know who’s behind that company.”

“I can ask Narsh about it when I see him.”

“You’re going to talk to Narsh?”