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  Although it had no place in her plan, it now appeared the Cartel had possibly taken care getting rid of him. That would have been the good news. The bad news was maybe he was alive and they had taken him to make him talk. Still keeping her cool, because she was unwilling to let herself submit to panic, she went upstairs to grab all her false identifications from their hiding place. She sifted through them and decided to use her Briana Hanley identification which included a valid passport. It would come in handy along with some money and credit cards. Briana’s San Francisco assets were more than enough to cover whatever she needed with plenty left over. She hurriedly packed a small wheeled suitcase with necessities and put on an auburn wig she wore as Briana Hanley.

  Decked out in a Love Marina Del Rey baseball cap atop the auburn wig, jeans, a tee shirt and flat shoes, Barbara checked her reflection in the mirror to make sure she looked like a tourist. Satisfied, she hustled downstairs with the small case, then peered out through the window facing the canal. Everything was quiet. She waited until the only people she could see strolling along the sidewalk were on the other side of the canal, then walked out of her life as Barbara Shady. She left the front door ajar as though intruders had entered the house.

  As Briana Hanley, she’d moved in a leisurely stroll toward Washington pulling the small case behind her, turned left onto the boulevard and continued to the light where Ocean Avenue turned into Via Marina. Just one more short block and she could check into the Marriott as Briana Hanley, a tourist from San Francisco.

  She remembered reasoning if there were no rooms available, she would pretend her reservation must have been misplaced. Hotels usually had a few rooms in reserve, and that should do the trick. If not, there were other hotels along Admiralty. She needed a quiet place to work out a new plan. She had finally decided to rent a car in the morning and leave the LA area. By using her alias, no one would know she hadn’t disappeared with her husband and the odds were she would be presumed dead.

  After allowing herself to settle down, the next step was to take out her cell phone, log onto Google and research possible destinations.

  A hundred and twenty-three day around-the-world luxury cruise on the Crystal Serenity caught her eye. It sounded like a great possibility even though it carried a price tag of close to Fifty Thousand Dollars. She had plenty of money in San Francisco, so no worries. If she was cloaked in anonymity aboard a cruise, she would have time to make an educated decision about the next place to call home, preferably one without extradition.

  When she clicked for more details, she discovered the Los Angeles leg departed from San Pedro in just a few days and cabins were still available. Not only that, but passengers taking the full cruise finally disembarked in London about four months later. With money no problem, a long-lasting cruise would get her out of the United States in a way that would make it very hard to trace her for several months, if ever. A perfect solution.

  The following morning she contacted a travel agency near LAX and was able to book the cruise over the phone. Then using her cell phone, she went to an online travel site and booked a flight to Seattle in the name of Barbara Shady which she had no intention of taking. She figured the police could trace it from her phone provider and hoped it would look like she had taken that flight in case they were able to track her.

  The trail to Barbara Shady had ended the minute she booked the Seattle flight and she walked out of the Marina Del Rey Marriott.

  As a final measure, she used a phone in the lobby of the Marriott to book a rental car at LAX in the name of Susan Fletcher, another alias for which she had an Ohio driver’s license and two credit cards. With everything set, Barbara took the hotel shuttle to LAX, then took another to the car rental lot.

  While on the travel site, she’d noted a Doubletree Hotel very close to the Los Angeles Cruise Center in San Pedro with shuttle transportation to the ships. Again perfect. She could just abandon the rental car in the hotel parking lot. She used the new phone to make a reservation at the hotel before hitting the 405 freeway south to San Pedro and checked into the hotel as Susan Fletcher from Chicago, Illinois.

  On the way to San Pedro, she had stopped at a large shopping mall and used the Susan Fletcher ID and credit card to buy a large suitcase, some appropriate clothes for the cruise and a throwaway phone. It would be no problem to buy anything else she needed when they reached the first port in Hawaii.

  When Barbara entered the hotel room that would be her residence for the next few days carrying her new purchases, her pounding heart finally slowed to a normal beat. She kicked off her shoes and plopped down on the bed, then congratulated herself for being a clever survivor. She remained in her room, ordered room service so she wouldn’t be seen by many hotel employees, and waited for the day she could board the Crystal Serenity as Briana Hanley.

  That night she had slept soundly.

  She snapped back into the present when there was a knock at the door followed by, “Room service.”

  After hearing the gruesome details surrounding the discovery of Al’s body, she was pretty certain who killed her husband. Now Barbara’s concern wasn’t just being found by the police. She was more concerned about what would happen if the Cartel caught up with her. Was she safe anywhere? She called out, “Please leave it by the door. I’ll put your tip on the bill.”

  Until she was out of the country, she wouldn’t be able to trust even something as innocent as room service being delivered.

  33

  Margaret was the last to arrive at Cameron’s house. Kim called promptly at six o’clock California time. Her husband Nathan was on an extension phone.

  With everyone there now, Cameron put the phone on the coffee table with it set to speaker as before, then introduced everyone to Nathan. It was time to get down to business.

  “Nate, we’ve continued to do some sleuthing of our own. I know Kim told us there’s a big joint investigation going on and not to jeopardize it, but what Maggie has to tell you is from a source the DEA or the cops would not have been talking to. Don’t be mad. We have lots of our HOA money at stake here.”

  They all traded glances when the voice of the United States Attorney General came over the speaker. Even Clarence raised his head from his sleeping position. Nathan’s voice was rich and commanding.

  “I’m all ears, Cami, as long as you stay out of our hair and don’t do anything to expose or impact the investigation that’s been underway for quite a long time. With Shady dead and his wife missing, obviously another of the elderly doctors will be taking his place, but we haven’t identified which one yet. This is very big business, folks. No wonder the Rojas Cartel is on the rampage. We estimate this network of amateur drug dealers has cut into their trade to the tune of close to a billion dollars. That’s billion with a B.”

  Garrett let out a low whistle. “Yep, I bet they are as mad as Hell and out for blood. No wonder Shady was beaten before he was shot. The way I see it, the odds are the Rojas boys sent some of their muscle to get as much information from Shady as they could, but I guess he wasn’t talking. What I don’t get is why they shot him up with Oxy. Maybe they just gave him too much and it wasn’t that he wouldn’t talk—it was that he couldn’t talk. That probably sent them into a real rage, and it would explain why they grabbed his wife Barbara so they could get whatever she knows. My guess is they don’t have the identities of everyone involved and were determined to get it out of Shady. But now he was dead, so they figured his wife was their best bet.”

  “Sounds like a reasonable theory, Agent Garrett. Um, Kim told me you are former FBI, and even if she hadn’t, I’ve read some of your books. Who have you guys been talking to and what have you discovered? I’ll let you go first, and I’ll fill in some blanks after I hear your side. I’m anxious to see if you learned anything that we’ve missed so far. Oh, by the way, about your HOA money, I understand before she went missing Shady’s wife helped herself to a few million dollars of it. I definitely understand your concern. I might have so
me resources to see if some or all of it can be tracked down.”

  Cameron was happy to see Nathan was still the down-to-earth guy she had known most of her life. While Garrett gave Kim and Nathan a short background on his friend and co-author Margaret that qualified how she was able to obtain the information she was about to reveal, Cameron spent a few minutes pondering how she and her friends seemed to have the knack for getting into hot situations.

  Margaret talked about her Beverly Hills friends and in particular what she had been told about Al Shady before he married Barbara. Apparently he had changed radically within a few months after they were married and said the team knew about all of Barbara’s late husbands, adding that all of them died under questionable circumstances. “Kate’s researcher discovered Barbara’s birth name was Barbara Overbeck, but to date she has used various other names.”

  Margaret wrapped up by telling him that by all estimates Barbara Shady was one clever, tough cookie. A tough cookie they suspected of being a black widow who had money stashed all over the place under various names.

  Nathan Hartman was surprised that they had uncovered all of those details without interfering in the DEA investigation. Also, the question of her being, as they called it, a “Black Widow” had not been part of what they were checking into. They had concentrated on Al Shady and his network.

  Garrett added, “In the back of our minds, we suspect she might have been planning to kill him in a way that looked like he died of natural causes. That was the scenario with her other husbands. Old, wealthy, suddenly dead. She was married to Shady much longer than any of the others, and maybe this drug ring has something to do with that.”

  “Good work. We knew a lot of this, of course, but have been concentrating on Shady and his gang of old doctors. Nice way to guarantee a great retirement income. Anyway, with the Rojas boys playing hardball now, that’s why it is imperative that we learn who will succeed him in heading up this Oxy ring. Of course, it’s possible that it could fall apart without his leadership, but whatever happens, all those doctors are in danger and are also very well aware of how much they can make with bogus prescriptions. They certainly know which pharmacies will fill them without question. However, we don’t know if they are aware of which distributors will turn a blind eye to questionable pharmacists who fill large quantities of the drugs.”

  Kate digested what Nathan Hartman just said. “So, Nate, you remember that frauds are my specialty and I’d say what we have here is not only drug dealing, but also the kind of case I investigate. The thing that jumped out at me is what appear to be legal prescriptions. I’ll bet a huge portion of the supposed patients have prescription insurance. That means that the insurance companies are also being defrauded big time. We exposed a large accident fraud ring last year composed of doctors, therapists, accident ‘victims’ who were actually not hurt, attorneys and some other players. Am I correct about the insurance fraud aspect and is that under investigation also?”

  “Spot on, Kate. You see, this group isn’t the only one pulling this off. We have things like this happening all over the country. It’s huge, triggering payback from a few of the major cartels like the Rojas, billions in insurance fraud and a whole population who are addicted to opioids with the help of doctors and the pharmaceutical industry. We use every case like this that we crack as examples in the media to make the remaining ones see the danger of exposure. I hate to say it, but Shady’s murder will be a prime example. And we still don’t know the fate of the wife.”

  Their conversation continued for another half hour with both sides promising to keep the other apprised. It ended with Nathan Hartman thanking them for the extra information and their integrity. Before the call disconnected, he said, “I meant it when I said I have resources that can help you find and recover some of your HOA money.”

  CAMERON POURED CELEBRATORY glasses of wine with a club soda for the recovering alcoholic actor Matt Darwin. Clarence lifted his head from his snooze and padded over to see what the happy voices were about. He was rewarded with some slices of cucumber. After wolfing them down, he returned to his place by the fireplace, stretched out and went back to sleep.

  “That was really an experience,” the Colonel said after taking a sip of his wine. “Imagine, we are working with the Attorney General. You people are really something. This is the most excitement I’ve had since retiring. Kate, Danny, do you have any idea of what he meant by resources to help find our money, assuming it’s still around?”

  Kate said, “Well, I assume he could help with some of the tools they use to track money from money laundering. Whatever she has done with everything she either inherited or stole, in a sense it is all illegal. You can’t inherit from someone you murdered. I guess he could stretch the facts a little to make our situation qualify.”

  Garrett added, “Yeah, and in recent years there is also something called money mules. They think they are hired as couriers and they transfer the money innocently to accounts set up for that purpose, often offshore or in foreign countries. That way the name of the true person who has either stolen or laundered money is hidden, and the money mule gets a fee for the job. They generally have no idea they have done something illegal.”

  It was getting late and they decided to put things to rest until the next day. The Colonel limped over to Clarence and gave him a gentle nudge to wake him up. The big dog looked up with adoring eyes as if to say, “My goodness, time to go already?”

  Garrett and Margaret left first along with Matt. It took a little time for the Colonel to get Clarence hooked back on his leash. As the two oldsters reached the front door, the Colonel turned and said, “Ya know ladies, it really is amazing what this world is coming to. Good night.”

  Before they headed upstairs Kate said, “You know, when I came down here to meet with my agent and the studio, I had no idea I’d be adding a new chapter to the next book I plan to write. The insurance angle is something I hadn’t thought about. The people who literally buy the prescriptions fill them at one of the pharmacies in Shady’s network, the pharmacy gets the drugs from a distributor who looks the other way although they are supplying product for an inordinate number of opioid prescriptions for these select pharmacies. Everyone involved benefits with very good kickbacks or fees. Then, depending upon the kind of insurance the user has, their insurance company picks up most of the tab. No wonder the price of prescription drugs is skyrocketing.”

  “You bet. It makes sense if they’re being ripped off for billions. They pass that on to us.” Cameron plopped back down in one of the chairs, seemingly deep in thought. “But here’s something I don’t understand. Something I think you might want to delve into deeper since fraud is in play. How do the doctors make enough to make it worth their while if all they get is a fee for faking a prescription? I have a hunch there’s a lot more to it.”

  Kate yawned. “And, I would bet money your hunch is correct. But right now I need to get some shuteye. Tomorrow’s a busy day and I don’t want to look like something that the proverbial cat dragged in.”

  Cameron arose from the chair and said, “Okay, time to turn off the brains and turn in.” She started up the stairs, then turned to her friend. “One thing wrong with that last statement, though. There is no way you would ever look anything but gorgeous. See ya in the morning.”

  34

  Danny Garrett phoned Kate early the next morning. “Hey, Beautiful, did you have breakfast yet? If not, how about joining me. It’s a wonderful morning and I was about to walk over to Café Buna in the little shopping center on Washington. Perfect weather to sit outside and enjoy a cup of their great coffee and a nice omelet or one of their other breakfasts.”

  Cameron hadn’t come down yet, and Garrett’s offer sounded too tempting to pass up. If anything, the attraction to the handsome former FBI agent had grown stronger each time she saw him. She would be going back to San Francisco soon, and wasn’t about to pass up a chance to be alone with him, even if she had to call her agent and tell hi
m she would be a little late. So what if she already had a cup of coffee and an Everything bagel?

  She said, “Café Buna? I haven’t been there before. Sounds good. We’ve usually eaten breakfast here or sometimes gone over to the bagel shop.”

  “It’s in the same strip mall. It used to be called The Coffee Roaster before the new owners took it over. Back then they had this huge coffee roaster and used to roast their own beans.”

  “Well, I could spend about an hour, give or take a little. Then I have a full day.”

  “Great. Buna is just a few doors down from Noah’s Bagels, and it’s a real hangout for many of the locals. Some of them wind up chewing the fat, so to speak, for such a long time that they not only meet for breakfast, they wind up ordering lunch as well. You’ll like it. Has character. I’ll be by in about fifteen minutes.”

  Like clockwork, fifteen minutes later Garrett was at the door, and Kate was ready to go. Cameron called out “Good morning,” from the kitchen, but stayed at the kitchen table nursing a cup of coffee and enjoying a chocolate chip sweet roll.

  While they were walking toward Washington, Garrett’s cell phone rang. He said, “Gotta take this. It’s Maggie. Wonder what’s up that she’s calling so early.”

  After listening for a moment, he said to Kate, “I’d put this on speaker, but it would be hard for both of us to listen to while we’re walking.” After a few exclamations of “wow” and “incredible,” he finished the call, then turned to Kate and said, “This case gets stranger and stranger. I’ll share what Maggie found out when we get to the Grinder.”

  A few minutes later they claimed a table with an umbrella on the paved area to the side of the eatery. It was one of those places where you order at the counter, then they deliver it to your table. He motioned her to stay put. “Hold down the fort here. I’ll get us some coffees. I love their Crab Omelette. If you like crab, I think you’d like it, too.”