Ultimate Thriller Box Set - Crouch Blake (лучшие книги без регистрации txt) 📗

“Credit card,” I said. “My name is Frank Furillo. I’m a fraud investigator for VISA.”

She leaned against her door. “The cop on ‘Hill Street Blues’ was named Furillo.”

If I was going to continue in this business, I had to stop assuming I was the only guy who watched TV and read books.

“I know,” I said wearily. “But it’s not so bad. I grew up with a kid named James Bond. He got his ass kicked every day of the week.”

“Probably by a guy like Arlo,” she said. “You want some coffee?”

“That would be nice.”

“All I got is instant,” she said and went back inside.

I took my hand off my toy gun and followed her in.

Chapter Fourteen

The place was laid out a lot like Jim Rockford’s mobile home, only where his desk would be there was a tan, pseudo-suede couch, the kind that had bulging cushions when you bought it but that flattened to the width of typing paper within a month after you got it home. The cushions were still plump.

That caught my eye, and so did the big-screen TV that dominated the boxy living room.

Jolene asked me to sit down on the couch while she made the coffee, but I couldn’t. I was afraid my clip-on holster would come off and that, with my broken ribs, I’d have a hard time getting up again after I sunk into the cushions.

So I stood at the low, chipped Formica counter that separated the kitchen area from the living room and watched her set the water to boil. There were bills, magazines, and a high school yearbook cluttering the countertop. I resisted the urge to rummage through them.

Jolene washed out two coffee mugs and dried them off.

“What’s this about?” she asked.

This was my first time questioning somebody, and my second attempt at subterfuge, and I didn’t want to blow it. I reminded myself that when she first saw me, she thought I was a cop. Everything I said and did now had to reinforce that first impression. I couldn’t show any doubt or hesitation. I couldn’t let my nose run and I couldn’t sniffle.

“We noticed an unusual flurry of activity on your account in a very short period of time,” I said. “Were you aware that your husband stayed at the Universal Sheraton in Los Angeles last week and ran up a bill of twelve hundred and fifteen dollars?”

“No,” she cinched the robe even tighter around herself. I looked past her to the open door of the bedroom. I could see one corner of an unmade bed and a pair of tennis shoes on the floor. I’d seen them before, coming at my face.

“Did you know he rented a Ford Focus from Swift Rent-A-Car, which he returned after a week with two thousand three hundred and eighty-seven dollars in uninsured body damage?”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“His name is on the account, which makes you responsible for his charges and the damage to the vehicle.”

I glanced at the yearbook on the counter. On the cover it read: Marcus Whitman High School, 1986.

“It’s a mistake,” Jolene said, cinching her robe again, even though it hadn’t loosened up any in the last twenty seconds. “I put his name on the account when we got married and I forgot it was there, or I would have taken it off when he went to prison. I certainly would have taken it off after the divorce.”

This was getting interesting. I decided to give her a little something to hang some hope on as a reward. “It’s true that we haven’t seen his signature on a credit slip in quite some time.”

“Four years.”

“That was one of the things that seemed suspicious to us,” I said. “Still, the fact remains he is an authorized user. Technically, the charges are valid.”

I didn’t want to give her too much hope. I wanted her to have a reason to answer my questions, to try to convince me to write off the mythical thirty five hundred dollars.

“You have to believe me, I didn’t remember he was on the card,” she whined. “We’re divorced; why the hell would I pay his bills anymore?”

“When did you divorce him?”

“Right after he went to prison,” she said.

“What did he go to prison for?”

“He was a drug dealer,” she said. “Not a very good one. He used too much of what he sold. So did I.”

It was a nice try, that little bit of self-recrimination, but she wasn’t getting any sympathy from me. “When was he released?”

“About six months ago.”

The teapot whistled. She poured the water into the mugs.

“You’re not gonna make me pay for all that stuff, are you?” she asked. “I mean, doesn’t the fact that we’re legally divorced make what he did fraud? I mean, doesn’t that make you and me the victims?”

“How did he get the card?” I asked.

Jolene dropped a couple spoonfuls of coffee crystals into the cups and stirred them while she thought about her answer.

“All his mail was forwarded to him in prison,” she said tentatively. “I guess that included credit cards.”

That didn’t make much sense to me. I couldn’t see prison officials letting inmates receive credit cards in the mail. Couldn’t the cards be sharpened into shivs or something? But I had to give her points for thinking fast on her feet. I decided to make my next move while she was still off-balance. I headed for the bedroom like I paid the mortgage.

“What are you doing?” she asked, dropping the spoon with a clank into the sink.

I strode directly into the bedroom before I replied. “Looking for the bathroom.”

The closet doors were open, so Arlo wasn’t hiding in there. Her panties and bra were on the floor. She’d taken them off in a hurry. The bed didn’t have a mattress frame; the box spring was right on the floor. There was no way he could be hiding under the bed.

“The bathroom is over here,” she said from behind me.

I turned around and she knocked on the door that was between the kitchen and the bedroom.

“Thanks,” I said.

She opened it. The bathroom was empty. I went inside and closed the door behind me. It reminded me of an airplane lavatory, only not as roomy. I looked at myself in the mirror and pondered my next move.

The first thing I did was take some toilet paper and blow my nose, which hurt my ribs, and I was reminded again of how they were broken.

Those were definitely Arlo’s tennis shoes in the bedroom. He’d been here, maybe only moments ago. They’d probably heard my car coming up the road long before I got there.

If Arlo was still around, he was outside hiding somewhere, shivering in the wet weeds. Maybe he was waiting to ambush me, but I doubted it.

I flushed the toilet, washed my hands, and came out again. My coffee was waiting for me on the counter, an issue of Cosmo serving as a coaster.

Jolene sipped her coffee and looked at me over the rim of the mug.

“When was the last time you saw your ex-husband?” I asked.

“March twenty-seventh,” she blurted out.

That was roughly three weeks ago, about the time Lauren started acting funny. “How can you be so sure of the date?”

“It was the day after my high school reunion,” she held up her yearbook. “I was a cheerleader.”

“Really?”

Jolene opened the book and proudly showed me the picture. It was taken of her in mid-leap, pom-poms in the air, a big smile on her face. She was pure beauty then, unblemished by the disappointments that burdened her now. She stared at the photo as if it were a diamond.

“You were very pretty,” I said.

“Yes, I was.” She abruptly closed the book.

“What was Arlo doing here?” I asked.

“He wanted to borrow some money. I told him to get fucked,” she replied, studying me now. “You ask an awful lot of personal questions for a guy checking on some credit card purchases.”

“It’s my job to determine whether we swallow the charges or you do, and I have to support my decision with the circumstances surrounding the transactions,” I said, realizing I’d let her put me momentarily on the defensive. That had to be corrected. I looked over at the big-screen TV and the puffy couch. “I don’t recall seeing those on your statement.”