A Killer Cup of Joe Read online

  Convinced there was nothing more to learn from the cover letter, Ellie picked up a small envelope with the name of a bank printed on the front. Inside, a single metal key was attached to a key ring that held the number 210. She immediately remembered that 210 was the same number as the storage unit he’d reserved, and knowing her father as she did, there had to be a reason behind it.

  When she picked up the other envelope, she immediately lifted it to her nose, as though hoping for a chance to smell his aftershave once again. Old Spice could be purchased at any drugstore, but it never smelled the same in a bottle as it did when he wore it on his face. Unfortunately, the letter in her hand only gave the slight fragrance of paper that had been stored for a long period of time.

  She slowly slid her finger under the edge of the envelope, but her cell phone rang just as she was about to rip open the last communication her father had prepared for her. She didn’t know whether to swear at the caller or ignore the interruption, but on the second ring, she knew she wouldn’t be able to relax and enjoy the letter from the past with the thought of someone needing her in the present.

  Taking the time to carefully lay the letter down, she was surprised to hear the voice of Agent Peters speaking rather apologetically in her ear.

  “Hi, Ellie. I’m sorry to call so late, but I’ve been swamped and hated the last couple of e-mails between us, so I wanted to call to be sure we were okay.”

  Her eyes fell to the spot where the envelope sat waiting for her, and she felt the sudden urge to tell Agent Peters to buzz off and hang up the phone. Her father still held some sway over her actions, though, and her dad would never have approved of her treating a fellow agent like that, no matter the circumstances.

  “Things are fine,” she forced herself to say. “I’ve given you everything I can. It’s up to you to make a case out of it.”

  “Look,” he said, a crackle coming through the receiver, as though he were letting out a long breath. “I know I was terse in my last response, but your note blindsided me. This case is important to me, and I don’t see how it’s possible the same person committed the crime in the east. You’ve reviewed my files, and I’m pretty sure you’ve pulled things up in the Bureau database to know there have to be differences. I don’t see the point in pulling in D.C. yet.”

  “The only difference I could identify was in geography, but the timing between the murders was perfectly spaced two weeks apart, so I feel strongly that this is a single person you’re after,” Ellie told him, repeating what she’d pointed out in her e-mail. “For the record, I haven’t pulled up anything in the database. I have access, but I rarely use it, and I certainly haven’t reviewed your cases to see how you’re handling them.”

  “You haven’t?” he asked, sounding shocked and slightly worried. “Then who has?”

  The last question seemed to be more rhetorical, so she didn’t bother replying, even as she was struck with a memory of Phillips confessing he had reviewed Agent Peters’ cases to see if he’d mentioned any of Ellie’s work.

  “I’m going to be honest with you, Ellie,” he began. “I’m up for a promotion—one I really want. This case is important because the second victim is distantly related to a Bureau chief in this part of the country, and solving this before it gets elevated would not only ensure that I get the promotion I want, but it would also get the case solved before anyone else has to suffer.”

  “Then why don’t you contact D.C. and see if they’ve gotten anywhere with their investigation?” she asked, unsure why he was so set against it.

  “Because they’ll attempt to claim lead since the first crime occurred there. Plus, I feel like the momentum on the case is in my office. Since I started this, I want to see it through,” he explained.

  “Why does it matter?” Ellie asked, unable to hold her tongue. “As long as the right person is caught and put away, is the gold star that important?”

  “Usually, I’d agree with you,” he admitted. “But the timing on this…well, if I can finish it quickly, then the killer will get put away, and even though I’m not after a gold star, I still think it’ll help to get me what I ultimately want. Besides, the last murders happened here, which means the perp is most likely on the west coast giving me an advantage. Once we have him in hand, then we can verify it was the same person that acted in D.C. if that’s what happened, but in the meantime, I don’t want to get bogged down waiting on the higher-ups to assign someone to coordinate activity and get the credit for busting this case, when they haven’t done any of the legwork.”

  “Then I guess I should wish you good luck in finishing the investigation,” she said, irritated with his egotistical disregard for the victims. She saw so many ways his need for the spotlight could end up ruining the case and possibly letting a serial killer go free.

  “I was hoping you might be willing to help me more than that,” he said, disregarding her cue for him to end the conversation.

  “What else can I do?” she wondered, going back over all the leads she’d pointed out.

  “Can I send you a couple of photos to look at tomorrow?” he asked. “Both of the victims went to a yoga retreat center outside of San Francisco. It was different weekends, but it was the same total wellness package. So far, it’s the only thing they have in common. I’m hoping this is the connection we’ve needed to understand what happened. I sent someone to the retreat to check it out and, depending upon the level of services a person utilizes, clients are sometimes awarded a necklace for completing their program. Both the women were wearing necklaces that were in the style the retreat said they award. The catch is, they said all the necklaces they give are identical, and the two the women were wearing were not exactly the same. I was hoping that if I sent you blow-ups of the three medallions, you’d be able to find some meaning in why the killer changed them.”

  “You don’t know for sure that the killer changed them. Maybe the women had them altered themselves,” she pointed out, feeling as though that should’ve been something Agent Peters picked up on.

  “I thought of that,” he blurted out, so quickly it didn’t ring sincere. “The reason I moved away from the idea was that when I showed the pictures of the necklaces found on the victims to their families, they said they hadn’t seen either of them wear that exact medallion, but they did almost always wear one similar to it.”

  “If you send the photos, then I’ll be glad to look them over,” she grudgingly agreed. “But don’t expect miracles.”

  “You’re the best, Ellie,” he responded, as though her agreeing to help him with the pictures had resolved the tension between them. “So I hear the songwriter showcase is coming up soon. Who are you going with?” he asked in an obvious attempt to change the subject.

  Normally, this would be where she’d sit back and enjoy the easy conversation with a man who until recently had been one of her favorite co-workers. Tonight, she found his attempt to get her on to more personal topics pandering. “I’ve got a few friends who’ll be going,” she lied. “And I thought about asking my neighbor to go with me. I don’t think he’s ever gone to a showcase like that, so it could be interesting to see him experience it for the first time.”

  “If he has any brains at all, he’ll love it,” Agent Peters announced.

  “Oh, I think it’s safe to say he’s intelligent,” Ellie toyed with him. “I even think you know him, since he’s an agent, too—Garret Phillips?”

  She was able to count to four in her head before Agent Peters made another sound. He cleared his throat two times in succession before saying, “I didn’t realize you and Garret were friendly. He was in your office the other day, but you indicated you were annoyed by his presence.”

  “And that would still be true,” she agreed. “He lives across the hall from me and we’re friendly. I haven’t made up my mind about sharing a ticket with him.”

  “Something tells me it wouldn’t exactly be his cup of tea,” Agent Peters speculated. “If he thinks there are women he c
an pick up, he might be more interested in going, but sacrificing an entire Saturday for unheard-of artists probably won’t appeal to him.”

  “You two seem to know each other, yet I haven’t exactly heard either of you singing the other’s praises.” She knew she was fishing for information and that could turn around to bite her later, but she simply couldn’t resist.

  “Let’s just say we have a history and leave it at that,” he replied.

  There was no way to stop the laugh that bubbled out at his comment. “That’s the exact same thing he said about you. One day, you’ll have to tell me about this history of yours.”

  “If you help me bust open this case, then I’ll give you every sordid detail,” he offered, dangling the carrot of FBI gossip in an attempt to inspire her.

  “Send the pictures,” she told him curtly, “but I’m not looking at them until tomorrow.”

  “Hey, I have to go,” he replied, as though ending the conversation was because of his tight schedule instead of her building irritation.

  After hanging up, her face felt hot. She rode out the emotions and stuck her tongue out at the envelope from her father. “I never should have answered the phone, and if you hadn’t made me feel guilty about it, I wouldn’t have. This is all your fault.”

  Saying that last sentence made his death feel real all over again. She’d lost her biggest cheerleader, the one person who encouraged her to do whatever she wanted in life while making her believe she was fully capable of doing it. While she was content in her life, she wondered if she would have been living it the same way if he were still alive.

  She flopped back down on the loveseat and picked up the envelope once more. “I don’t mean that. I know you wouldn’t have gone if you’d had a choice.” Saying that aloud made her feel better. He wouldn’t have abandoned her if there had been anything he could have done to have returned back home.

  She decided to rinse off the day, the job, and the unsettling conversation with Agent Peters before jumping into her past with her father. She picked up the envelope and brought it to the bathroom with her, setting it on the vanity before changing her mind and covering it up with a hand towel. She told herself it was to keep the envelope safe, but in the back of her mind, she couldn’t help but think of it as if her dad was watching her take a shower. Ellie shook her head at the foolish idea, but didn’t remove the towel.

  Later, she sat on her bed and held the envelope in her hands, running her fingers over her name, written in his distinctive script on the front. Now that she had taken care of all the potential distractions for the night, she wasn’t so eager to open it. Once she’d read it, that would be the final surprise from her father—ever. Completing this task would feel like losing him all over again. She’d mourned her father and tried to put his loss behind her, but being forced to think of him like this, as a living, breathing agent, was bringing up all the feelings she wasn’t sure she wanted to endure a second time.

  She put her finger under the edge of the seal and ripped it open. Once the seal was broken, there was no going back and she couldn’t procrastinate any longer.

  She carefully pulled out the paper. There was a piece of her that wondered if she should be using gloves in order to protect the evidence. While it was certainly possible someone had gone through a great deal of trouble to send this as a prank, it was highly doubtful they would’ve waited such a long time. Plus, the handwriting on the page was her father’s. She knew this was real and didn’t need a lab tech to confirm it.

  Ellie Girl, If you’re reading this letter, then I have to assume I wasn’t successful in gathering the evidence I was after. The fact that I failed makes me mad. Not only because it means a couple of old cronies will get away with abusing their power and allowing horrible things to happen on their watch, but it also means I’ll never get the chance to see you again. You might think my job was always the most important thing in my life, but you’d be wrong. My little girl, from the moment you were born, nothing was more important to me. Watching you grow up and share my world filled me with a sense of pride and purpose that I didn’t realize was possible. The day you were sworn in as an agent for the Bureau was the day I decided this case had to be finished. There was no way I could let my daughter come to work in a place where she might go through every step perfectly and the perp she brought in would walk because of politics.

  I thought long and hard about what to do if I went down. I’m hoping they allowed you to know the truth, that I was taken out in the line of duty, and they didn’t try to disgrace me. If that was the case, then I hope you knew me well enough to know there’s no way I’d compromise what was right. I made it clear to the people I worked with that you were completely in the blind about what I was working on. I’m pretty sure by now the case I was closing has been long forgotten, and I seemed to be the only person convinced it could be done in a timely enough way to make a difference.

  In the end, that’s why I decided to forward you my case notes and this letter. I wanted you to see for yourself what had happened and what I’d stumbled across. There’s one thing I have to make perfectly clear. I’m not giving you this stuff to do anything with it. My hope is that the people I suspected of wrongdoing have retired and moved on. In the event they haven’t, then I wanted you forewarned of what they were capable of so you could protect yourself. My guess was that in five years, you’d be heading up your own team, taking the world by charge, and truly making a name for yourself. Don’t fool yourself into believing that just because you’re well known and well respected that you have enough clout to do anything with the files I’m sending you. If you let anyone know you’re reopening the work I was doing, you’ll walk around with a bull’s-eye on your back. The world needs you in it to make it a better place for other people. You can’t stick your neck out for this one. If you’ve gotten this, obviously all my years of work and reputation weren’t enough to see it through.

  Use this information wisely to protect yourself and steer clear of the people involved. You can’t let a soul from my old department know about this. I guess it goes without saying that you shouldn’t tell anyone, but it might be a good idea to try to craft a donkey blanket in case something slips out. There’s no one else I would trust this to. Of all the agents I know, you’re the one with the highest integrity and the greatest potential. Go take the world and make it your own, little girl. I may not be there, but have no doubt that I’ll be watching and cheering you on no matter what you do.

  If it were mine to give, I’d give you the world. Since it’s not, I’ll give you all my love instead. Love, Dad

  When Ellie awoke the next morning, the letter was still clasped tightly in her hands. Her eyes felt like they were filled with sand, and she could feel the puffiness around them that always appeared after she cried. As much as she’d tried to avoid it, reading the letter from her father had reminded her of what she’d lost, and holding back the dam of emotions had been impossible.

  It was tempting to forego her morning run and call in sick to work. She had more than enough vacation time accumulated, and a day off from exercising wouldn’t hurt anything. Goodness knows, most of the other guys in her office weren’t capable of running at all based on the size of their spare tires.

  In the end, she forced herself to get up and throw on some running shorts. It was Friday, and she figured if she was going to take some time off, the least she could do was go in and warn Phil. Maybe she could take off all next week and go down to see what was in the safety deposit box. He hadn’t mentioned it in his letter, so she was even more curious about what was inside.

  At the top step of her complex, she pulled the ear buds away from her head and let out a long breath, glad she’d decided to run, despite not feeling like it when she started. Something about the repetition of putting one foot in front of the other for the miles she’d put in had helped focus her mind and get her brain back in gear for the day. Unfortunately, she’d slept in a bit, despite her good intentions, and she hea
rd the unmistakable sound of Phillips coming up behind her. Quickly, she pulled the apartment key from behind the iPod strapped on her arm and had to fiddle with it to get it in the lock, giving Phillips a chance to catch up.

  She turned around, wiping the back of her wrist across her forehead, which was dripping with sweat. One of the reasons she liked to run alone was so she didn’t have to feel self-conscious. Other women might lightly perspire, but when Ellie ran, there were rivulets of water on her face, back, and abs. And while she didn’t mind it while she was moving, once she was done, she looked forward to washing it off.

  “Hey, Ellie,” he said, still catching his breath.

  It was hard to keep her thoughts to herself as she appreciated the sight of Phillips in front of her. He’d probably run a similar route, and he was arguably as drenched as she was and breathing just as hard. But where she might feel she was at her most unattractive, sporting a wet cat look, Phillips couldn’t look better. His skin was glistening, and the deep breaths he took only drew one’s eyes to his chest expanding with each inhale.

  His next sentence wasn’t exactly the endearment she was hoping for, but it reinforced her earlier thoughts. She needed to keep her workouts in the early hours of the morning so they could be completed in private.

  “You look horrible.”

  “You really know how to sweet-talk a girl,” she shot him a narrow look. “I got a late start this morning and just finished, so I’m not at my best.”

  He gestured with his hand, as though what she was saying was nonsense. “No, I mean your face.”

  She wasn’t sure that was any better.

  “You look like you didn’t sleep at all. Is everything all right?” he continued to make his point.

  “Everything is fine—or at least, it will be.”

  “Does this have to do with the package you got yesterday?” he asked, not easily brushed off.

  “Yes.” No harm in telling him what he already knew.

  They stood there, catching their breaths without speaking.