Fiction
Vengeance From The Grave Part 8
A Henry James And Roberto De La Cruz Series
My name is Henry Allen James, and I’m Roberto De La Cruz, and we’re writers for Dark Sides of the Truth magazine.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
What Roberto found wasn’t much, but at least we had a starting place. Of the hundreds of records we checked, only two people left the Dukes organization around the time of Dante’s death; one before and one afterward.
The one who’d left before, we were sure we could discount pretty quickly, but still, we needed to be sure. The other, well, the other had questions written all over him.
The problem is, at two in the morning, we were pretty sure we weren’t going to get many questions answered.
“Okay you guys, I’m exhausted. Besides, Robert’s already called me four times.”
“Yeah, we heard.”
“I’m surprised mother hasn’t called you Henry.”
“That’s because I did a preemptive strike and called her before we started all this mess. You should try it sometime, princess.”
“Whatever old man.”
“So, what do we do with all these records?”
“Good question Roberto. I suppose I can take ’em with me and keep ’em at the house for the time being. I don’t think Cynthia will mind.”
“Good enough. Okay, so what now?”
“We try and get some sleep and hook up this morning say, about nine, then call Robert and get Donnie and Becca on getting us the skinny on these two.”
It was Wednesday morning around nine-thirty when all of us met at the bullpen of Dark Sides. Between several yawns and even more cups of coffee, we snagged a conference room with a spider phone and made the call to Robert’s office.
“NSA Cyber Security office, this is Manny Hermanos. How may I direct your call?”
“Whoa Hermanos. Did Robert finally figure out the right job for you?”
“Bite my ass, James. What the hell do you want?”
“Dude, you’re on speakerphone. Sunny and Roberto are here with me. We…”
“Morning, you two. What’s up?”
“Good morning Manny. Roberto and I were wondering if we could use Donnie and Becca’s talents this morning. We’ve got two people they need to do a deep dive on.”
“Sure hang on I’ll transfer you.”
We all stared at each other as we listened to some classical pieces of hold music.
“You know what old man? If you’d just be a little nicer, Manny wouldn’t always give you such a hard time.”
“Where the fun in that princess? Manny and I get along…”
“This is Donnie.”
“Hey Donnie, is Becca there with you?”
“I am. Good morning Sunny.”
“Hey, Becca. So here’s the deal. We need a little help this morning. Can you guys see what you can dig up on a Katheryn Delany Marshal and a Samual Louis Kingston?”
“Kingston as in Kingston motor group?”
“I knew I’d heard that name before Donnie. The dude owns several car dealerships in the area.”
“May not be the same one, Henry. We’ll check them out and get back to you as soon as we can. Anything else?”
“No, Becca, that’s it for now.”
The call from Donnie and Becca came later in the day following lunch at Johnson’s, the one restaurant we all seemed willing to agree on. The news certainly woke us all up from a general post-lunch malaise we were experiencing, primarily brought on by lack of sleep.
When Donnie contacted Sunny, we called him back from another conference room.
“Donnie Martin speaking.”
“Donnie, it’s me, Henry, and Roberto returning your call. Whatcha got?”
“Hang on. Let me put you on speaker. Can you hear us?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, Kathryn Delany Marshall. Not much to tell. She worked for the Dukes about a year and a half in the front office. When her husband landed a job with IBM in Colorado, she gave her two weeks’ notice and left the week before…”
“You can say it, Donnie.”
“Yeah, this is kind of hard, Sunny.”
“We know. So she left the week before Dante was killed?”
“Yes.”
“Before you ask, we checked out her financials. Aside from a couple of overdrafts, there was nothing special. Pretty normal paycheck to paycheck living.”
“Okay Becca, what about Kingston?”
“That’s where it gets really interesting. First of all, Kingston had been with the Dukes organization for almost ten years as an assistant coach. Did you know Kingston was only making about a hundred thousand a year?”
“Why is that important?”
“It’s important Henry because up until the week after Dante was killed, he was bringing in about eight thousand a month, but during those ten years, his deposits and withdrawals were all over the map. Sometimes he pulled twenty to twenty-five thousand out of his savings, and then sometimes he would deposit forty or fifty thousand. But the way he deposited the money was extraordinary.”
“How so?”
“It was never more than ten thousand dollars and never deposited within the same year.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Because he didn’t want his bank to do a currency transaction report to the IRS, Roberto.”
“So what the hell was he doing with the money? Stashing it under his mattress?”
“Probably.”
“He was laying bets against the team, wasn’t he Becca? That would explain the peaks and valleys in his money movement.”
“Again, Sunny, probably. But the one thing he had little control over was this last score of his that came exactly two weeks after Dante’s disappearance and death. It was a wire transfer from an offshore account in the amount of a quarter of a million dollars.”
“Holy shit Becca.”
“Holy crap is right, Henry. Guess what he did with all of that money?”
“If you tell me he started Kingston Auto Group, I’m going to pass right out.”
“Well then somebody needs to get out the smelling salts Henry because that’s exactly what he did.”
“We’ll keep digging, but that should be enough to go on for now.”
“Okay, Becca. Thank you, guys. Let us know what else you drag up.”
“Will do Sunny. Talk to you later.”
We disconnected the call and sat, staring at one another. Getting in front of Samual Louis Kingston wasn’t as much a problem as proving he had something to do with Dante’s death. From where we sat, the evidence looked overwhelming. Now, all we had to do was connect Dwayne Macy to Kingston.
“So, what now?”
“Roberto, I think my baby needs a new car. Sunny, don’t you think Cynthia needs a new car?”
“Why yes, old man, I believe she does.”
Read On — Vengeance From The Grave Part 9
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