Cultured, page 18
“Fuck,” April said. “What am I going to do?”
“Nothing,” Roberta said. “There’s nothing you can do. The good news is I think Chloe was with him last night so maybe he’ll sleep in. For a few hours anyway.”
That proved untrue. The door opened and a man entered. Tall, lean, dark hair, dark eyes, thick mustache, and a face that hadn’t seen a razor in a few days.
“Welcome, April,” he said. “I see you’ve met Emanuella and Roberta.” Then to the two girls, “Leave. April and I need to get acquainted.”
CHAPTER 33
THE SUNDAY MORNING traffic was nonexistent, so Nicole set some kind of time-trial record from Magnolia Springs to Gulf Shores. At least she didn’t pass anyone on the right, so we arrived at Captain Rocky’s with my heartbeat only hovering about 120. Carla greeted us as soon as we entered.
“He’s going for the record today,” Carla said. “Go talk with him so he’ll slow his pace and the kitchen can catch up.”
Carla knew that wouldn’t help. Nothing slowed Pancake’s food consumption. I think he even eats in his sleep.
“We got here as quickly as we could,” I said.
“Next time drive faster.”
“Nicole was driving.”
“Oh.”
Yeah, oh. No one flies faster than Nicole except maybe an F-14 Tomcat, or a cruise missile.
“Ray’s here,” Carla continued. “What’d you do wrong?”
“Why would you think I did something wrong?”
“Playing the odds. Want me to make you guys breakfast burritos? Pancake just ordered his third.”
“Sounds good,” Nicole said.
We joined Ray and Pancake at my table on the deck. The Gulf lay calm and the sun was beginning its daily warming of the beach, already filling with sun worshipers. My staff had deployed the yellow Captain Rocky’s umbrellas and three of them shaded several early beachgoers.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“No pastries?” Pancake asked.
“Sorry,” Nicole said. “We were well down the road by the time you asked.”
“Guess you’ll have to have another burrito instead,” I said.
“Already on the way.”
“I know. Carla told us.”
“You keeping a tab now?” Pancake asked.
He knew better than that. “The math required to do that is too complex for me.”
Pancake leaned back, crossed his arms over his chest. “Simple math is too complex for you.”
“But he’s pretty,” Nicole said.
And so it begins.
Libby, my latest addition to the waitressing corp and Pancake’s current fascination, poured Nicole and me coffee. Pancake gave her a wink and she returned a smile as she walked away. Carla appeared with three burritos.
“Anything else?” Carla asked.
“Banana pancakes,” Pancake said.
“You had some earlier.”
“That was then, this is now. Add some pineapple and toss on a handful of pecans.”
“Will that do it?” Carla asked.
Pancake took a huge bite out of his burrito. “I’ll think on it and let you know.”
“It’s what I live for,” Carla said. She gave Pancake’s shoulder a friendly punch and walked away.
“Tell them what you found,” Ray said to Pancake.
“There’re a lot of those sugar baby sites. Most are shaky at best, but several seem legitimate. As legitimate as any could be.” Another bite of burrito. “I found Lorie Cooper on one out of Birmingham where she used to live. It’s called Find-A-Daddy. Isn’t that cute? Her profile was taken down a year ago.”
“That fits what she told us,” Nicole said.
“If it was taken down, how did you find it?” I asked.
“Everything on the internet is archived somewhere if you know where to look. Nothing ever truly disappears. But on this site, they keep the old profiles and just don’t display them. It seems that many people walk away from the site but then return. Makes it easy to re-up.” Another bite of burrito. “Is it just me or are these things getting better?” The question was rhetorical, so no one answered. Pancake continued. “It looks like she only hooked up with a couple of guys. Both from the Birmingham area. One of those guys has since left the site, but the other one’s still active. I found Robin Meade on another site out of Biloxi. It’s called Sugar Hookup and is larger and covers much of the Gulf Coast. She too dropped off around a year ago. She’d had four relationships over the three years she was active. Same kind of deal as Lorie. Each older, two married, but a couple single. Pretty vanilla stuff.”
“Okay,” I said. “We more or less knew that would be the case. What else did you find?”
“The two girls you asked about? Sisters Shane and Sara Hutton? They, like Robin, are listed on the Sugar Hookup site. They live just off campus in Wheelerville. Each of them has a single guy they see. Single as in just one. Both are married.”
“That’s what we thought,” Nicole said. “We never got a chance to talk to them one-on-one and neither ever said anything, but our take was that they had also been in that world.” Nicole shrugged. “Nothing specific. Just a feeling.”
“Your instincts were right,” Ray said. “But it gets better.” He nodded to Pancake.
“Stephanie DeLuca.”
“Really?” Nicole said. “That I didn’t see.”
I hadn’t either. But then again, why not? She was beautiful and worked for TLM. Even met her husband there. Did he know about her past? Maybe. She was at TLM and it would seem logical that her husband, the hotshot attorney, would know that the girls on staff were—what’s the word?—available. It was increasingly looking that way for sure.
“Same group as Robin, Shane, and Sara. She wasn’t very active.”
“Of all the girls we’ve met,” I said. “Stephanie seemed the most normal. That’s not the right word, maybe the most straight and narrow.”
“No doubt,” Nicole said. “To me this sort of seals the deal. TLM culls girls from the sugar baby world. Three girls either work or have worked there and two others are prospective employees. Way too many for coincidence.”
“It gets better,” Ray said.
Before he could continue, Pancake’s banana, pineapple, and pecan pancakes arrived. They looked amazing. Pancake began dismantling them as if he hadn’t eaten in days. It had actually only been a few minutes, but that’s what the big guy does. Sherman’s March to the Sea came to mind.
“You should put these on the menu,” Pancake said.
“Maybe we will,” I said. The “we” meaning Carla of course.
“It’s what I’d do.” He forked pancake into his mouth. “Ready for the punch line?” More pancake. “April Wilkerson did the same thing.”
Nicole stopped, her burrito only inches from her mouth. She lowered it to her plate. “Really?”
Pancake nodded. “Her profile was up on yet another site. You ready for this? It’s called Rich Daddy Hot Baby.”
“They can’t be accused of false advertising,” I said.
“Her profile’s still active,” Pancake said. “It hasn’t been used since she joined TLM, but it is still up. The last guy she saw was from right next door in Orange Beach. Dude named Tony Amato. Interesting guy with a wife, four kids, and some loose mob connections.”
“Mob as in Mafia?” I asked.
“Not the big ones in New York or New Jersey but a local outfit involved in some shady stuff. Car thefts, money laundering, some small-time drug dealing. No murders I could find.”
“This is amazing,” I said.
“But what does it tell us?” Nicole asked. “So TLM recruits girls with a history of hooking up with rich guys. From what we’ve seen, TLM, in the interest of promotion, wants them to do the same, and these girls did so of their own free will.”
That was true. So what if they simply moved their activity to a new program presumably with a better clientele? It seemed a win-win situation. “Which means that April might simply have found the guy she hoped she would and took off.”
“Without telling her mother?” Ray asked.
“She’s mad at her,” Nicole said. “This could simply be that she’s having a little spat with mommy, nothing more sinister. Or maybe she intended to call or text and let her know but never got the chance before she took off to Europe or South America or out to sea on a yacht. Maybe she’ll contact her next week.”
Ray eyed her. “Do you believe that?”
Nicole shook her head. “Not really. I’m simply saying it’s possible.”
“If so, we have no case,” Ray said. “Which is fine so long as she’s safe.”
“I still have a few more things to look into,” Pancake said. “I was working on Jonathon Lindemann’s and TLM’s money trail when I got sidetracked on this sugar baby stuff. I’ll get back to it and see what I can find.”
“We need to go chat with this Amato guy,” Ray said.
“We can handle that,” Nicole said.
Of course we could. I was hoping for a day off to simply goof around. Basically, get back to my normal routine.
“Not this guy,” Pancake said. “Ray and I’ll handle him. He probably doesn’t play nice, which could make for a fun day.”
“For you.” Nicole pouted. “We never get to have fun.”
“Sure we do,” I said.
“Not that kind of fun. I mean work fun.”
I started to say that work and fun never belonged in the same sentence but was interrupted by the chirp of Nicole’s phone. She answered and listened for a good half minute.
“Okay, when and where?” Another pause. “That works but let’s meet at Captain Rocky’s in Gulf Shores. That’s Jake’s place and we can talk privately.” Pause. “Great. See you then.” She disconnected the call and looked at me. “That was Lorie. She wants to talk.”
CHAPTER 34
TONY AMATO LIVED in a nice house in a nice neighborhood. An expansive Tudor style in a cul-de-sac that butted against swampy open land. The front yard was manicured with perfect grass and thick shrubs and well-maintained flower beds. It seemed to try too hard to be a normal house for a normal guy. Tony wasn’t that.
The double garage door stood open, and Tony was bent into the back cargo area of a silver Lincoln Escalade. As Pancake pulled his black Chevy dual-cab pickup into the drive, Tony straightened and turned their way. Thick and stocky, he wore khakis and a two-tone brown bowling shirt, no logo, no embroidered name. Pancake and Ray climbed out.
“Mr. Amato?” Ray said.
“Who’s asking?” Tony squared his shoulders, his chest expanding. His body language said that Tony didn’t back down, or avoid confrontation, rather he charged straight ahead. Exactly as Pancake’s research on him had suggested. His record was fairly clean, probably more so than it should be. Only two charges, both later dropped, for bar fights. In one, the other dude ended up in the hospital with a broken arm and a blow-out fracture of his left orbit. Tony must have a good right hand. The guy dropping assault charges from his hospital bed meant Tony had the clout and the connections to make big-time indictments evaporate.
“I’m Ray Longly. This is Tommy Jeffers, but you can call him Pancake.”
Tony seemed to take inventory of them both before settling his gaze on Pancake. “Football?”
Score one for Tony.
“That’s right,” Pancake said. “We need to ask you a couple of questions.”
“About what?”
A woman stepped through the door that connected the garage to the house and peered out over a white Mercedes. “Tony? Is everything all right?”
“It’s fine. Go on back inside. I’ll handle it.”
“Should I call the guys?” she asked.
The guys? Pancake pictured a group of hard-nosed dudes with firearm lumps beneath leather jackets.
“No. They’ll be here in a minute anyway.”
The door clicked shut as she retreated back inside.
“We need to ask you about a girl I think you know.”
“Who might that be?” A slight crease of concern wrinkled Tony’s forehead.
“April Wilkerson,” Pancake said.
The creases deepened, but Tony didn’t flinch. “Never heard of her.”
“We aren’t here to cause you any trouble,” Ray said. “But we know that’s not true.”
“Who are you guys?”
“Private investigators,” Pancake said. “April’s gone missing. Her mother hired us to find her.”
“What do you mean missing?”
“Just that. She dropped off the radar about three weeks ago, and according to her mother that’s not like her.”
Tony digested that for a beat. “Wish I could help, but I don’t see how.”
Pancake stepped closer to Tony, looked down on him. “This is private and not something we wish to expose. We know you met her just over a year ago on the Rich Daddy Hot Baby website.”
Tony recoiled. “How did you …”
“Relax,” Ray said. “We aren’t going to blow your cover. We don’t care how you run your life. Our agenda is to find April. When did you last see her?”
Tony glanced back toward the door where his wife had stood earlier. “This doesn’t go any further?”
“Not on our end,” Pancake said.
Tony nodded. “I haven’t really seen her in nearly a year. Since she hooked up with that TLM group. Well, maybe a couple of times after that, but for sure not in the past six months.”
“Any issues?” Ray asked.
“Between us? No.” He shook his head to emphasize his denial.
“What about with TLM?” Pancake asked.
“Not that I know. She seemed enthralled with the program.”
“And you?”
Tony opened his hands. “What can I say? She tried to sell that deal to me, but I don’t do that kind of stuff.”
“What stuff do you do?” Ray asked.
“I own a construction company. I don’t have the time or the inclination to hook up with some cult.”
“Is that how you saw TLM?”
“Look, I don’t know much about it. April was all wound up with it and thought that Jonathon what’s-his-name was some kind of self-help guru and financial genius. Isn’t that what most cults do? Dazzle the unsuspecting?” He raised one shoulder. “I’ve heard that story before.”
“Did you and April talk about TLM?”
“Not really. Once she realized I was a no-go, she dropped it and we just took care of business.” He offered a half smile. “If you know what I mean.”
“How was your relationship with her?” Pancake asked.
“It wasn’t a relationship. It was a business arrangement.”
“Okay. How was your business arrangement going?”
“I like her. She’s a nice girl and a lot of fun. We had some good times. Even spent some fun times together.”
“She was at FSU in Tallahassee,” Ray said. “That’s a bit of a hike from here.”
“Not that much. I was often down that way for business or she’d come up this way. Sometimes we’d meet in between. Either way, I’d get her a room for the weekend, a few days, whatever. Then she moved up to Orange Beach and worked in some bar. That definitely made things easier. Until she took off to Magnolia Springs.”
“Any problems between you two?” Pancake said.
Tony’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t like your insinuation here.”
“None intended. What we’re trying to accomplish here isn’t blame. We want to know where she might’ve run off to.”
“You don’t think something happened to her?” Tony asked.
“Do you?”
“God, I hope not.”
To Pancake, Tony’s prayer seemed sincere. Like, despite his writing this off as a business arrangement, he was more invested. “You liked her, didn’t you?”
Another glance toward his house. “I love my wife. You can take that to the bank. But this was … different. Sure, it started out as merely a sexual thing, but April is a smart, funny young lady. Easy to talk to and be with. I enjoy her company. Do I like her? Very much. I was sorry it ended.”
“As we stand here right now,” Ray said, “you haven’t talked with her in several months and have no idea where she might be. Is that correct?”
“It is. Whether you believe me or not, it pains me that she’s missing, and my hope of hope is that nothing has happened to her.”
“She never shared any concerns she might have had with TLM or anyone in that world?”
“No.”
“Did she have any issues with other guys she saw?” Ray asked. “Or old boyfriends? That sort of thing?”
“Not that I know.” He glanced toward his shoes and hesitated, as if recalling something. “And I think I would’ve known. She asked for my advice on lots of things. You know, life stuff. When she was down or stressed out, she’d call and we’d talk. Sort of like I was a father or uncle figure. I think if anyone had spooked her, she would’ve told me and asked for my help.”
“And you would have helped her?” Pancake asked.
Tony almost smirked. “I would’ve fixed it.”
CHAPTER 35
NICOLE IMMEDIATELY SENSED Lorie’s nervousness. She knew Jake had, too. As soon as Lorie entered Captain Rocky’s, she scanned the room before seeing them and approaching Jake’s corner table. When Lorie reached them, she fidgeted with her purse strap and examined the other deck tables. Most were unoccupied and those that were revealed people talking and laughing, absorbed in their own worlds.
“It’s OK,” Nicole said. “Please sit down, relax.”
Lorie sat, but Nicole saw no signs that the tension in Lorie’s shoulders had dissipated. She hugged her purse to her chest.
Before meeting Lorie, they had decided that Nicole would handle most of the conversation and ask most of the questions. If there were any. That depended on what Lorie wanted to talk about. No doubt it was important or why go to all this trouble? Her calling and arranging this meeting and then driving down to Gulf Shores meant that whatever she had in mind was secretive and required a face-to-face conversation.
