Bird of Paradise: A Diana Siddal and Mustapha Alawi Mystery Short Read online

Bird of Paradise

  a Diana Siddal and Mustapha Alawi mystery short

  by Julian Cage

  Copyright 2013 Julian Cage

  Discover other titles by Julian Cage

  Robert made sure to file and submit the report, then archive it, then check it off on his to-do list, before he allowed himself to close the laptop and put the accursed thing away. Only three-thirty; not bad for a tax-season Saturday. Still at least an hour before Helen got home. He made himself an unsweet tea, added a dash of bourbon, grabbed the clarinet and headed out to the front porch, where he’d missed most of a gorgeous Atlanta spring day, all buds and daffodils but no pollen yet.

  But he’d barely developed a groove before a plain white SUV pulled up to the curb and a man and a woman got out, headed his way. He figured them for law enforcement right away, but he was thinking SEC or FBI, so when they introduced themselves as Atlanta Homicide, his jaw dropped. “Um,” he said. “Have a seat. Want some tea? How can I help you?”

  “I’ve had enough tea to float a cruise ship,” said the blonde whose card told him was Detective Diana Siddal. She was pretty up close, but didn't have the features for the stage. “Sorry to interrupt your personal time, Mr. Wayne, but we were hoping you could help us out.” She sat, took a tablet computer from her bag, activated it, showed him a picture of a laughing young brunette, who really did have the features for the stage.

  “Jasmine,” he said. “Haven't seen her since last fall.”

  “Janet Stark, was her real name.”

  “Was?” Robert felt the clarinet begin to slip; he put it down before he dropped it. “Oh, no. She's dead?” At the woman’s nod, he bowed his head and said, softly: “Dear Lord, please receive this woman’s soul, that she might find the rest and comfort she never knew in life.” He looked back up at them; he felt faint, and his ears were buzzing just a little. “What can I do to help?”

  The blonde tapped the tablet. “Ms. Stark was involved with this gentleman, Peter Baxter.”

  “Sure. My firm does some work for him.”

  The big cop asked, “What kind of work?”

  “Well, we do risk management. Peter’s a real estate developer; it's a cyclical business with a lot of big payouts and big expenses. So we help him with hedging strategies, risk mitigation, insurance, that sort of thing. Take a little off the top of the profits, take a lot off the bottom of the losses. Peter and Jasmine were involved, you say? As in, romantically?” Both detectives nodded. “I'm not sure how I feel about that. She's an innocent, and he's… well, he's a real estate developer, and old enough to be her father.”

  -----

  Inspector Mustapha Alawi had said, “Thanks for meeting with us, Mr. Baxter.”

  “Thanks for nothing,” said Peter Baxter from behind his desk. Behind him was the entire panorama of the Buckhead skyscrapers, built by people like Baxter to ensure Atlanta had a business district where poor people couldn't sit in the parks. “Not only are you costing me money I could be making right now, but I'm having to pay whatever outrageous hourly rate she charges to be here.” He jerked a thumb at his lawyer.

  “I'm pleased to serve,” said Hannah Wilson. She was the granddaughter of one of Atlanta’s most prominent attorneys, a man who Mustapha and Diana had taken great pleasure in putting in jail for murdering a philanthropist to cover up his own serial molestation of mentally challenged children.

  “I'll just bet you are,” said Baxter.

  “You know,” said Diana, “you could have just met us, saved yourself,”

  “Don't patronize me,” snapped Baxter. “I know who you are. I see homicide cops, I call Wilson & Knight, even if I'm going to have to waste even more time and money demanding a discount for sending me a Barbie instead of a partner. So what the hell do you want, anyway?”

  Diana took her time getting out a file folder, fumbling it, flipping through it, humming a happy tune, ignoring Baxter’s fuming. Peter Baxter might be one of the One Percent, but he had a colossal case of Short Man Syndrome, with his power tie, his hair transplants and his desk built up on a damn platform. He didn't look like Diana's ex-husband at all, but he had the same drive to overcompensate. It figured Diana would use paper instead of her iPad, just to yank the guy’s chain a little bit.

  Finally, she was ready. “What can you tell us about this woman standing next to you in this here picture?”

  Baxter held out his hand, took the photo, looked, grimaced. “Just what I needed.”

  “Well, she sure looks nice on your arm there, Mr. Baxter,” said Diana. Mustapha watched her lose the willpower battle and add, “Little tall for you, maybe.”

  “That's not what I meant. Tell me something bad happened to her.”

  “Tough breakup, sir? Left you for a younger man?”

  “Try dropping the attitude, Officer.”

  Mustapha said, “It's Detective Sergeant. Tell us what you know.”

  “What I know? She cost me a shitload of money. She's a grifter.” He sat down heavily in his chair. Took a deep breath. “Sorry. Nobody likes to be reminded of their bad decisions. And I'm still paying for this one. Thinking with my dick. What I know is that she and her boyfriend defrauded me of two million dollars and change.”

  “Really?” said Hannah Wilson. “That's the first,”

  “You'll hear all about it once I track’em down. My security guy is on it. Okay, Detectives: you know what a flash mob is?”

  “Sure,” said Diana. “Bunch of people show up out of nowhere, do a musical number or something, disappear. It's supposed to look spontaneous.”

  “Yes. Friend of a friend, runs a company, tells me about how there’s this guerrilla theater group will do flash mobs at corporate events? I'm trying to rent out space in a new building, in this economy. I have a grand opening, I figure why not? Turned out people loved it. Did way better on that one than I should have. So I do it for another function, they do this thing with ribbons and a really hot chick on a goddamn horse. I landed investors way out of proportion to the cost. So I get together with this guy Tom who runs the group, offered to invest in his business. He says what they do, they don't need much capital, but he offers me a finder’s fee if I line up other clients. Chicken feed for me, but people are beating down my door to line him up for their events, anyway. You have any idea what people will pay to liven up a corporate Christmas party?”

  Diana showed him another photo. “This guy?”

  “Yeah. Is his name really Tom?”

  “Yes, sir. Thomas Morneau.”

  “Hunh. Because my security guy says there's just nothing happening under that name. Figured it was an alias. Maybe he's using one now. Anyway, he introduces me to the hot girl, Jasmine, and we hit it off right away. She was sweet, she was interesting, and she was into me. What it seemed, at least. She did a hell of a job, I'll give you that: I've been with a lot of whores, and the good ones will pretend to like you for something other than your wallet, but their eyes never really lose focus. They're playing you. But she played the hell out of me: within about two weeks I had her moved into a nicer place. She did it right: she acted like she wanted a father figure, not a sugar daddy. You know, like she had a crappy childhood and had to grow up too quick, so she related to an older guy. And she didn't give up the puss—the sex, right away. Now that should have clued me in. A good whore who wants a long-term might make you wait a day or two, but Jasmine played it up, acting like it was about the connection, not the sex or even the money. Like I have any business dating a twenty-six-year-old wants a goddamn connection with me. And it never even occurred to me until later
that she's an actress. Shit. Like I said, thinking with the little head.”

  He picked up the photograph, gazed at it. “God damn, she was hot. She finds out I've never even been to a play, starts taking me. And she knows what she's talking about, makes me enjoy the hell out of it. So when my new pal Tom comes along, starts talking about setting up a theater company, I’m like sign me up. They play me like a damn violin, get me to go through my contacts, start hitting people up for donations. He's got a plan—a very professionally done plan—to repurpose some spec-built retail space that's been sitting empty since the market crashed, turn it into a theater space. Do the classics, appeal to the rich crowd. Hook, line, sinker. I bundle up two million goddamn dollars while Jasmine’s got her tongue on my balls, then a few days after New Year's, I transfer the money to where he can pay the landlord and the contractor. Same day, Jasmine tells me she's going to go do some acting workshop where she gets to be the teacher. A week later, I get a call from