Greed and a Mistress Read online

  Greed and a Mistress

  (A Jackie Harlan Mystery)

  By

  Marti Talbott

  © 2011 All Rights Reserved

  Mark Barrett thought having an affair was no big deal as long as his wife didn't find out. That was before he got arrested for the hit-style murder of a wealthy old woman.

  What drew the Jackie Harlan Detective Agency to the fascinating trial in Portland, Oregon was the hope of finding a child that had been missing for years.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  THE DEAD LETTERS

  CHAPTER 1

  More Marti Talbott Books

  CHAPTER 1

  FRIDAY, JUNE 5TH, 2012

  Mark Augustus Barrett did not love Lexi Hamilton. He liked her well enough, but not once did he consider leaving his wife for her. As far as he knew, Lexi didn’t expect him to either. She made no demands at all and said she was happy just to spend time with him. He showed up once or twice a week, did what unfaithful husbands do, and then went home to his wife. There was nothing wrong with that – as long as his wife, Holly, didn’t find out.

  A technical engineer for a sophisticated website building company, his pay was above average. It just didn’t buy the kind of lifestyle he desired, so he was forever trying to come up with ways to earn a quick buck.

  In the end, it was greed and a mistress that got him in so much trouble.

  IT WAS WELL PAST TWO a.m. when Mark Barrett parked the car and walked down the deserted street. He wore all black, including an oversized jacket with deep pockets, black socks, and a black baseball cap. The only thing colorful, when he walked under the corner streetlight, was his favorite blue slip-on tennis shoes.

  Anxious and a lot more frightened than he expected to be, Mark paused at the end of the walkway that led to the house on the corner, and gazed up at the second-floor windows. All the lights in the house were out, just as he was assured they would be, but that didn’t calm his nerves much. Half a dozen times that week, he had walked or driven past the house until he knew where every bush, every tree, and every perspective hiding place was... just in case. He even walked down the alley, where the old woman’s cleaning lady set the trashcans out each week.

  According to the person who hired him, the housekeeper only came twice a week, and never stayed overnight. Indeed, he expected his intended target to be all alone in a house that was far too large for just one person. Yet, that was not what frightened the handsome father of two. This was the first time he had ever done anything even closely resembling a crime punishable by death. He was certainly not above committing a petty theft now and then, especially from cars left unlocked – but murder?

  Still, ten thousand dollars for one night of work sounded very nice, and he knew just how he would spend it. Besides, the odds of not getting caught were in his favor. People got away with it all the time.

  When the streetlight suddenly went out, Mark saw that as a good sign, and breathed a little easier. He gathered his courage, glanced around to make certain no one was watching him, and walked up to the front door. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, put it over the doorknob and turned it. The door was unlocked. As quietly as he could, he slipped inside and gently pushed the door until it was almost closed. He stuffed the handkerchief in his pocket, pulled his cellphone out and turned on the flashlight. In his other pocket, he withdrew a short-barrel revolver with a silencer already attached. It was then he noticed his hands were shaking, so he forced himself to calm down.

  Using the light on his cellphone, he located the staircase, walked across the large living room, and slowly began to climb. His detailed instructions, which he committed to memory, advised him to avoid the creaking third and eighth steps in the staircase, and to stay near the left wall when he turned down the hallway. So far, he had not made a sound. Yet, by the time he stopped not far from her bedroom door, he was so edgy and frazzled that he couldn’t seem to hold the gun steady. Once more, he took a moment to remind himself of all that glorious money.

  Mark Barrett was about to reach for the bedroom doorknob when he realized his cellphone light was still on and quickly turned it off. As far as he knew, only one person had the number, and although he wasn’t expecting a call, certainly not just now, he turned the volume off just in case someone dialed a wrong number. He put the phone in his jacket pocket and then waited for his eyes to adjust to the dark.

  That’s when he made his first mistake.

  The door was not completely closed, and when he used his index finger to open it a little wider, he forgot to use his handkerchief. His instructions were wrong too. The house was not completely dark. The old woman had a nightlight next to her bed, and it gave off enough of a dim glow to illuminate her face.

  Mark had not counted on being able to see more than just the head of a figure lying in a bed. For a long moment, he stared at her. The small woman looked nearly all swallowed up in her king-size bed. She had white hair, a round face, and nothing about her resembled the wealthy, unyielding tyrant he imagined her to be. Instead, she looked gentle and sweet.

  Still, all he had to do was pull the trigger and ten thousand dollars was his.

  Mark Augustus Barrett added his left hand to his right to hold the gun steady, and crept closer and closer to the end of the bed. If he was going to do it, he wanted to make certain he did it right the first time...if he was going to do it.

  IT WAS DARK IN HIS house too when Mark made his way up the stairs and quietly removed his clothing so his wife wouldn’t wake up. He was not successful.

  As soon as he climbed into bed beside her, Holly asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, I just needed a drink of water.”

  “What time is it?”

  He looked at the illuminated digital clock on the table next to the bed. “Almost four. Go back to sleep.”

  “Okay.” She started to curl up in his arms, but he was all sweaty. She raised up on her elbows and looked at him. “Mark, where have you been?”

  “Right here. I just got too hot and needed a drink.”

  She felt his forehead, but he didn’t have a fever. “Are you sick?”

  “No, sweetheart, go back to sleep.”

  Reluctantly, she turned over and settled back down. With two little ones to care for, Holly needed all the rest she could get. Even so, she couldn’t go back to sleep. Either Mark had a mistress, or something bad had happened, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know which. The last time he got that sweaty, he tried to steal a car and almost got caught. He promised not to do that again, but Mark was not very good at keeping his promises.

  Lying on his back beside her, Mark was still sweating profusely, and his eyes were wide open. They remained open until his alarm went off at five thirty. He turned it off, got out of bed, and went to take a much needed shower.

  On her side of the bed, Holly only pretended to be asleep and opened her eyes too. There were signs that he was being unfaithful, but life was hard enough living on a strict budget. Sometimes, she didn’t think they would make it to the next payday. Somehow they managed, but what would she do if she left her husband? She had no skills to speak of, no job to fall back on, and the cost of a babysitter for two small children was outrageous.

  Holly knew the girls would be awake soon, so she threw the covers back and sat on the edge of the bed. That’s when she spotted the pile of dark clothing on the floor and it made her mad. She didn’t recognize them and they were certainly not the clothes he wa
s wearing the previous morning when he left the house. It was just like him to charge them on a credit card that they couldn’t make the payments on. At length, she sighed, ignored the clothes, and when downstairs.

  HE WAS STILL IN THE shower when Holly finished making his breakfast, and still there when she got her two toddler daughters dressed and in highchairs. She sat between her children, handed the oldest a piece of toast, and started feeding the six-month-old a small spoon full of baby cereal in milk. His bacon and eggs were getting cold, but she didn’t care. Nor did she care to accuse him of anything, especially the first thing in the morning. He would deny it and she was too tired to fight.

  The Barrett home was a two-story tract house with an unfinished basement. It had the exact same floor plan as dozens of other houses in the neighborhood. Built on a small lot, every third house had a slightly different exterior, but the prefabricated stairs, walls, roofs, and even the plumbing was exactly the same. Someday, if they could ever afford it, Holly hoped to get rid of the mauve colored walls and trim that was in her kitchen. She thought it was a stupid, unwelcoming color for a kitchen. Still, it was better than the dull red in some of the other houses. It was of that she decided to think about, instead of her husband’s unfaithfulness.

  When Mark finally came downstairs, he was dressed for work. As if he didn’t have a care in the world, he nonchalantly sat down at the table, started eating his cold bacon and eggs, and pretended to be in a happy mood. She could see right through his façade and wondered, as she often did, just how stupid he truly thought she was. His meaningless chatter was supposed to keep her from asking him about the night before. He needn’t have bothered.

  In his shirt pocket, a cellphone rang.

  Completely surprised, she asked, “You have a cellphone?”

  The color seemed to drain out of his face, as he abruptly stood up and walked into the living room. Holly glanced at her oldest daughter, handed the youngest a crust of toast, and then crept closer to the doorway. When she peeked around the corner, her husband had his back to her. She moved to the center of the doorway and folded her arms.

  “I couldn’t do it,” Mark whispered. “What?” After a long pause, he said, “Yes, I hear you.” He disconnected the call, put the phone back in his pocket, grabbed his briefcase, and walked to the front door. As though he just remembered he had a wife, he glanced back and smiled at her. “I’m off to work. Love you,” he said as he opened the front door and then closed it behind him.

  “You forgot your breakfast,” she muttered. Holly hung her head for a moment and then went back to the table. “How are we supposed to pay for a cellphone?” Her two-year-old looked puzzled, and it made Holly smile in spite of the sick feeling she had in the pit of her stomach. She pulled Mark’s breakfast plate closer, picked up a piece of bacon and took a bite.

  Mrs. Holly Barrett did not know it, yet, but paying for a cellphone service would soon be the least of her problems.

  PORTLAND, OREGON HAD everything a big city should have. It was situated approximately halfway between Mt. Hood, a dormant volcano, and the Pacific Ocean. In 2012, it was the twenty-ninth most populated city in the United States. Built on both sides of the Willamette River, a tributary of the Columbia River, it was a sprawling metropolis that offered employment, and plenty of entertainment for the over two million residents. Portland featured annual celebrations such as the Rose Festival, Dragon Boat Races, the Blues Festival, a Beer festival and for those that preferred it, a Chamber Music Festival. The climate was normally moderate, the wealthy lived in the Pine Lakes area, and the state normally suffered only minor earthquakes.

  They had their share of crime, but nothing captured their attention like the Pine Lakes murder of Mrs. Amelia Ann Lockhart in the early morning hours of June 9th.

  EIGHTEEN MONTHS LATER.

  Two dozen white marble steps between tall white pillars, led up to the four doors that allowed entry into Portland’s largest courthouse. It was an unusually busy day, with reporters vying to get seats inside, while others gathered outside hoping to seize an interview or a very telling photograph.

  Inside the courthouse, two armed guards checked photo identifications, and then permitted visitors to pass through the metal detectors into the wide corridor. Next to three sets of tall, mahogany, double doors stood signs on stands designating which trial was to take place in each courtroom. The line of people hoping to get into the middle courtroom left little doubt as to which trial would take place in the largest.

  Mark Barrett’s murder trial was about to begin.

  The Harlan Detective Agency, of which Jackie Harlan was the owner, specialized in finding missing people. She and her team were the best of the best, and charged an enormous fee that only the wealthy could afford. Along with the fee came complete discretion and secrecy, which made what they did well worth the money. Their current case was what brought them to Portland, Oregon, and unless they were mistaken, the missing person they had been looking for was in that very courtroom.

  A pretty woman with brown eyes and long auburn hair, Private Detective, Jackie Harlan, almost didn’t get in and had to settle for an aisle seat in the back row. The room had traditional wood panel walls that faintly smelled of furniture polish. A pole held an American flag on one side of the Great Seal behind the Judge’s bench, and another held the Oregon State flag. Aside from that, Jackie Harlan could see very little. Immaculately dressed in a white blouse, black business skirt and jacket, Jackie wore nylons, even though they had gone out of style, and black heels. She crossed her legs, took a pad and pen out of her purse, and got ready to take notes.

  The people behind her that could not get in, moaned, when the doors were closed in their faces. Normally, seating for three hundred was more than enough, but for the biggest trial Portland had seen in a long time, five hundred seats would not have been enough. The murder of a wealthy woman known for her generosity to the arts was a very big deal indeed. According to the Portland, Oregon newspapers, all of which had covered the case extensively, the trial was expected to take less than two weeks.

  Not counting Jackie, The Harlan Detective Agency’s employees numbered only two. The three member team called hotel suites their home, and restaurants their personal chefs, although they ordered in a lot more than they went out. Business came first, last and in-between, and netted them more money than any of them could conceivably spend in a lifetime. Therefore, what motivated them was accomplishing the impossible. Finding missing people who could not, or did not, want to be found was the ultimate challenge. The Harlan Detective Agency was not always successful, but when they were, there was no greater reward than a happy family reunion.

  When Jackie needed someone to do the out-of- office legwork, Carl Kingsley was more than happy to accommodate her. A man of average height and build, he was just as good as she on a computer, but he was more of an outdoor kind of guy who had a fascination with hiding tracking devices, cameras, and microphones in obscure places. Carl was also their Learjet pilot, and in charge of keeping the plane ready to take off at a moment’s notice. Inside the jet was the corporation’s fully functional office, a change of clothing for each of them, maps, charts, and most importantly, boxes of flash drives containing copies of all their secret records. A second set, including personal records Jackie did not share with her team, was kept in a bank vault in Iowa.

  Carl could fix anything – except his marriage. In the divorce settlement, he talked his wife into giving him the air crane they jointly owned in exchange for their small drug company. Even now, the thought of it made Carl smile. The drug company went broke, but the air crane lasted for years. In fact, when he and his high school friend, Jackie, first teamed up, they used the air crane as their basic mode of transportation.

  Michael Sorenson had thick, brown hair, and wore gold-rim glasses. He was shorter than most men were, and claimed short men were not taken seriously. Therefore, he jumped at the chance to give up the corporate world and go to work for Jackie. A com
puter geek, hacker, and electronics nerd, Jackie constantly spoiled him with all the newest and most expensive equipment on the market. Michael was, or at least said he was, madly in love with Jackie. It was to no avail, for Jackie firmly refused to mix business with pleasure. That didn’t keep Michael from hoping that, someday she would accept his repeated marriage proposals.

  She wondered what he would do if she ever accepted.

  While Jackie sat in the courtroom waiting for the trial to begin, Michael and Carl sat on a sofa in the hotel room. Both had their legs propped up on the coffee table, were working on laptops, and had a good view of a closed circuit big screen TV that displayed three separate images. For their current case, it was important to have a good view of all that was happening in the courtroom. It was illegal, but Michael managed to hack into the courtroom’s closed circuit cameras. The camera, located in the front of the courtroom, provided the image on the right side of the TV, and the middle image was from the camera in the back.

  The third image came from a tiny camera, complete with a microphone that Carl put in the dangling white rhinestone medallion Jackie wore around her neck. He also put a wireless headphone in an earpiece that looked like a hearing aid. Her hair aptly hid it from an inquisitive public, and right now, all they could see through her medallion was the back of the man seated in front of her.

  Michael and Carl shared a two-bedroom suite, but the work was normally done in Jackie’s hotel room. Maids were rarely let in to clean and make beds, for fear their computers, printers, papers, books, graphs and charts spread out all over the place might be disturbed. When the dishes began to pile up, they set them outside the door with a generous tip, for someone to take back to the dining room. When a case was finished, they copied everything onto a flash drive, shredded the papers, and then moved on to the next location.