A Killer Cup of Joe Page 9

  Finally, Phillips broke the silence. “All right. You don’t owe me an explanation, but you know what I said last night still stands, right? You need something, and I’m there.”

  “Thanks,” she replied, finally relaxing when they both turned to their respective apartments to get ready for the day. She had quite the task ahead of her to hide the evidence of last night, so wasting time in the hallway wasn’t going to get her to work on time.

  Chapter Seven

  Working for Phil had a number of advantages, not the least of which was that he focused primarily on the quality and quantity of your work, not on the clock and how long you pored over each file. She was sure he had to do a lot of documenting to prove the worth of their department, but that was something he protected his staff from. Despite her late start to the day and the extra time involved in making herself presentable, she managed to get into work only an hour past her usual time, unconcerned that anything might be said about her tardy appearance.

  She’d barely sat at her desk when Phil knocked on her doorframe and walked in, leaning on a dark blue cane with what appeared to be rainbow-colored fish painted on it. Ellie’s eyes were instantly drawn to the aquarium theme, distracting her from the fact the boss was giving her a once-over.

  “Don’t say a word,” he threatened. “The little missus says I need to learn to go with the flow, so she sent me off with this one today. Personally, I took it because something fishy is going on around here, so it seemed to fit.”

  “Your puns stink,” Ellie interrupted.

  “Yes,” he agreed, moving to the chair across from her desk. “And so does your attempt to act like everything is okay.”

  Ellie wasn’t sure she wanted to get into this right now. She’d taken her time this morning, covering up the puffiness around her eyes and the blotchy skin on her checks from her late-night crying. She wasn’t keen on reliving that again with her co-workers around as gawkers. “I’m going to need some time off next week.”

  “Great idea,” Phil easily agreed. “Why don’t you just pack up and start your vacation today? Take all of next week, and come back fresh the following Monday.”

  She held up her hand to stop him from being so helpful. “Next week is fine, but I have to finish a few things today, so my trip will have to wait until Saturday at the earliest.”

  Phil gave her a hard stare, as though questioning what was so important that it had to be attended to today.

  It was only by an extreme display of strength that she managed to keep from rolling her eyes at his confidence that she would eventually end up telling him what she was working on. In the end, Ellie realized it would speed up this conversation if she just gave in. They both knew he would win; she was only prolonging the inevitable.

  “I’ve been helping Agent Peters in Northern California,” she began, not sure how much she wanted to tell him about the photos that were supposed to be waiting for her to review.

  His eyebrows drew closer together as he seemed to be considering what she’d said. “Agent Peters? You mean Robert?”

  “Bobby, yes. That’s the one,” she confirmed, trying hard to keep the frustration from her voice at the mention of his name.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” Phil began, “but I don’t remember giving you a case from him to review.”

  “You didn’t, he came directly to me,” she confessed.

  “And everything you’ve done has been appropriately logged in the case file?” Phil asked, most likely already knowing the answer.

  Ellie cringed as she told the truth. “Not exactly.”

  He repeated her words before interpreting them. “You mean, no.”

  “A week ago, all he had was a couple of crime scene photos and some limited family background data. I gave him my impressions and some suggestions of where to go for more information. As a courtesy, he’s kept me in the loop of the new information he’s collected, and as things have progressed, I’ve continued to give him my thoughts.”

  “In other words, you’re doing the work, he’s getting the credit,” Phil summed up.

  “No.” She defended the west coast agent more out of habit than conviction. “At least, I don’t see it that way.”

  “Has he documented the assistance he’s gotten from our department?” Phil pushed.

  “I haven’t looked, but I’ve been told he isn’t including it in the record.”

  “So he’s leeching off our department, not giving you the proper acknowledgment for what you’ve offered, and he’s taking the credit for himself.” Phil was not pleased. When he started tapping his stick on the floor in a staccato pattern, Ellie knew this had the potential for getting ugly.

  “Call him, right now,” Phil commanded, using a voice he’d never directed at Ellie before.

  “It’s early there. He’s three hours behind us,” she argued, attempting to put off the call and hoping that Phil might calm down before she was forced to reach out to Agent Peters.

  “I don’t care if he’s in the hospital or on powerful sleeping medication. Pick up the phone, dial his number, and wake him up.”

  Not wanting this to ruin the normally easy working relationship they shared, she flipped through her contacts to get the cell phone number and punched in the ten digits while hoping for voicemail.

  On the second ring, Phil reached over and hit the speakerphone button, holding Ellie with a steely gaze that dared her to complain about him taking over the call.

  “Peters,” came a groggy voice, obviously thick with sleep.

  “Agent Peters,” Ellie started, hoping to wake him easily before her boss had a chance.

  “Ellie?” He sounded confused about why she would be calling, but not mad that she’d woken him up. “Is everything okay?”

  Before she could formulate an answer, Phil jumped in. “Robert, the hell it isn’t okay.”

  “Who is this?” Peters was awake and no longer as relaxed as he had been.

  “This is Phillip Hamilton. You remember me, don’t you?” Without waiting for an answer, Phil plowed on. “I’m the person that gave you your first big break out the academy, and I need to know why you think it’s the right thing to do to fleece your fellow agent for time and information and not reflect it in the case notes.”

  “Look...” Peters was on the defensive and wasn’t bothering to hide it from his tone. “I don’t know what Ellie has told you—”

  “She told me that you two have had a few simple conversations about a case you are working on and that she hasn’t bothered to file notes or case documentation with me because it was low level and no big deal.”

  There was the sound of a female voice in the background, pleading with Peters to come back to bed, before he spoke again. “That sounds right.”

  “I wanted to extend you the professional courtesy of knowing that as her supervisor, I have forbidden this practice effective immediately. Any work she does on your cases must be logged into the system. If you want her to look at a speck of dirt, her impressions will be entered into the system as a matter of the record. This isn’t negotiable, so don’t try pressuring her to keep her name out of your cases. If you don’t like the rule, use someone else to help you do the investigative work.”

  Agent Peters could be a smooth operator when it was called for, and apparently, he deemed this one such situation. “Sir, I can assure you I will abide by your wishes for Ellie’s time, and I will not impose upon her further.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Phil’s voice thawed only briefly. “She’s leaving this afternoon for a week of vacation time, so any file review needs you may have can come to me directly. I also understand she was going to look at some photos for you this morning. She can still do that, but my decision that any details that stand out to her must be shared through the official notes still stands. You’re done mooching off my agents and taking credit for it. Either stand on your own two feet, or stand down, Agent Peters.”

  Before she could object or attempt to say something to soft
en the abrupt switch in tones, Phil reached over and hit the red line button, ending the phone call.

  “Don’t you think you were a little hard on him?” Ellie challenged.

  Phil grinned, and she could see that any of the anger he had previously been harnessing was gone. After seeing him puff up with fury, she was glad she’d never crossed the man with the overly enthusiastic accessorizing wife.

  “Are you sure that thing shouldn’t have sharks on it instead of fish?” she asked, pointing to his cane.

  Phil spun it around with a carefree smile on his face. “Every so often, I need to rattle a few cages so that people remember I haven’t always been a basement rat. There’s a fair bit of life in me yet.”

  “I never doubted it,” she assured him.

  He limped to the doorway before placing his hand on the frame. When he spoke, he didn’t turn back to face her. “Take the week. Hell, take all the time you want, but while you’re gone, don’t think for a minute that you’re alone. I’m not so washed up that I don’t remember how to read people. You’re hiding something, Ellie Michaels. Something big and damned painful. I’ll take someone lying to me, but I won’t take you hurting without sticking my nose into it. You call me if you need me, understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” she replied softly.

  As Phil walked away, the sound of his cane hitting the floor with each step fading down the hall, she wondered why she used to think she lived a rather solitary existence. Over the last twenty-four hours, she’d had one man calling her for help and two others declaring they would do anything to help her.

  The morning passed quickly as Ellie worked a few files, making suggestions where she could and answering questions that had been forwarded to her. An hour from lunch, she opened the e-mail from Agent Peters that had three photos attached. The first was labeled as being the medallion given to the people who completed the program at the yoga retreat the two girls had attended. The second was the necklace found on the first victim, and the final picture was from the second girl. At first glance, they all looked the same. But when she printed them out and took them to her table, she began to see the differences.

  In the first picture, there was a woman posing in the lotus position, with her legs crossed and her hands resting gently on her knees. The medallion that had been on the first victim was still of a woman, but she had no face. The long hair on the model was still visible, but there were no eyes, nose, or mouth. The second victim’s necklace had a face. Her legs were crossed, and hands rested on them, but there were no arms leading to the floating hands.

  She looked at the three pictures side by side and wondered why the killer had replaced their original medallions with these tarnished versions. Why was it important that they were marked differently? She spent the next three hours looking at the first woman’s life, trying to see if there was a correlation between any of her activities and the lack of a face. Was her identity overly important? She was an attorney, but she didn’t appear to have much of a profile. She primarily worked in business law, but hadn’t managed to make a career that was memorable.

  Getting frustrated, Ellie typed up her thoughts to Agent Peters, basically telling him she was confused about the alterations to the necklaces and tried to explain what the killer might have been thinking by removing the face on the model. Finally, she admitted that she wasn’t a profiler, but it was probably time to enlist the help of one.

  She pulled up the file from the D.C. office and saw they had reached out to Agent Peters twice with no response. She added notes to that file about the medallions on the two California victims being changed and uploaded the photos. If Peters didn’t want to work with them, he certainly couldn’t stop her from helping the team on the east coast.

  By the time she felt she had done all she could—while admitting to herself it wasn’t much—she was exhausted and decided there wasn’t much point in working any new files. She might as well take advantage of her understanding boss and pack it up for a week of vacation.

  On the way back to her apartment, she felt the beginning of a headache coming on. It wasn’t surprising, based on her lack of sleep. When she remembered that in her haste that morning, she hadn’t taken the time to stop for coffee, she sped up to get to Mocha Joe’s, hoping she was timing it well between the lunch and after-work rushes so that she could grab a drink without having to wait.

  A young girl with more metal in her face than would safely get through a security checkpoint at the airport asked for her order. Usually able to censor her thoughts, she blamed her nagging headache for the fact that she asked, “Don’t some of those piercings hurt?”

  The girl blinked a few times before shrugging and saying, “Not usually.”

  “Ellie, if you're considering a piercing, you should speak to someone else,” Joe’s amused voice came from behind her.

  She spun around, not realizing how close he’d gotten. “Hi, Joe,” she said softly, wondering why she felt shy around the man she’d spent such an enjoyable evening with just a couple of days prior.

  “Hey, Ellie, you want to come in for a cup in my office?”

  Nodding her response, she followed him as he asked, “Do you want the same thing, or something different?”

  “Surprise me,” she replied, not sure she could get herself invested enough to come up with a decision about a beverage right then.

  His eyes narrowed, and Ellie attempted to hold herself still under his scrutiny. She hated being examined and tried to remind herself he was a friend and didn’t mean to make her so uncomfortable.

  “You look horrible,” he finally blurted out. “Are you sure coffee is what you want, or should I pull out something stronger?”

  “I don’t drink much,” she replied, not sure if she should be offended, or relieved to finally find someone who didn’t seem to sugarcoat how they felt.

  “I meant espresso, but if you need a little whiskey, I have a bottle in my desk.”

  “You drink whiskey?” she asked, trying to picture that.

  “Not usually, but sometimes when Garret has an unusually bad day, he’ll stop by and we’ll share a bit.”

  She tried to picture Phillips needing a drink to deal with a rough day. She knew even the most seasoned agents occasionally saw things that made them pause, but she’d never seen him show any signs of struggling. “I think coffee is better.”

  “Sit down.” He pointed at a love seat and set about making the machine at the side hiss and whir until he produced a foamy, steaming cup of something she couldn’t wait to taste. “This will cure what ails you.”

  “I hope so,” she whispered before taking a sip. She knew the things on her mind wouldn’t go away with just a few swallows of a fine-tasting cup of coffee, but she certainly appreciated the effort.

  “You want to talk about it?” he asked gently.

  “Can’t,” she lied, hoping he would assume it related to a case that was classified.

  The corners of his eyes tightened as he squinted slightly before he said, “Whenever you’re ready to talk, I’m willing to listen, but I’m not going to press you for anything, so you don’t need to manufacture excuses of why you aren’t sharing.”

  Ellie was a lot of things, but she abhorred being lied to, and even though she could have argued her answer simply meant she couldn’t talk about it because it was too emotional, too hard to find words, she knew deep inside that wasn’t the real reason she’d used that word. Her eyes closed as an attempt to escape the guilt she felt come over her.

  “When I was little and my parents separated, I used to feel guilty for having a better time with my dad than my mom. He would teach me all the things I wanted to know, he never treated me with kid gloves, and he always seemed to enjoy our weekends together as much as I did. My mom, on the other hand…” She paused, trying to find the right words. “My mom taught me things I had no interest in, never listened when I complained about it, and always made me feel more like an obligation. I asked my dad once why I couldn’t
come and live with him instead because I thought it would work better for everybody, and he told me, ‘you just can’t.’ In my mind, that wasn’t an answer, it was a cop-out, but he said it in a way that was so final, I couldn’t question him on it.”

  “So when I asked if you wanted to talk about what has you in knots...” Joe prompted, giving her a chance to loop the story into what they’d just said to each other.

  “I just can’t,” Ellie replied. “It’s not top secret. In the big scheme of things, it probably isn’t even a big deal, but right now, it’s raw and fresh, and I just…can’t.”

  “That was a perfect answer,” Joe assured her, gently smiling to reinforce his words.

  Pausing to drink more of her coffee, she placed the cup back in the saucer before asking, “I guess people come to you all the time to talk. You have a bartender thing going on.”

  He laughed a little at her comparison. “I guess people do like the idea of talking to someone who won’t judge them, but I don’t usually get the same kind of confessions that a bartender would.”

  “What do you mean?” she was thrilled to unhook her mind from where it had been mired down all day.

  “I think people go to bars to forget, and occasionally, they drink so much they lose their inhibitions and end up talking to any stranger that will listen. They feel better the next day because their pain from the hangover gives them something to think about besides the emotional roller coaster they’d been on, and they unloaded a lot of the baggage they’d been carrying.”

  “How is that different from when they come to a coffee shop?” Ellie wasn’t sure she saw anything other than the hangover that would set them apart.

  “When people come here late at night with something on their mind, it’s usually not to forget. They’re searching for something, and they’re more interested in trying to find a solution. They usually end up talking through whatever’s happening and drinking loads of caffeine, so by the time they come up with something—anything—they can do to fix whatever situation they’re in, they’re buzzed enough to go right out and try it. The next day, they feel the crash from the lack of caffeine, so they’re exhausted, as though they’ve run a marathon, but they usually feel better at the same time because they’ve finally done something about whatever brought them in at night in the first place.”