“Why aren’t we following Parker?” Salem fussed with the camera lens. He fidgeted when he was nervous. We’d seen Jimmy off and were headed to the Veno Pharmaceuticals campus.
I honked at the car in front, and the driver woke up enough to go through the intersection on the yellow light. It turned red just as it was my turn. Frustrated, I turned to Salem. “We aren’t following Parker because the police probably are.”
“Really? Do they suspect him?”
I wasn’t sure if they found out about his stay in rehab the night of the murder, yet. My guess was that his father, Grayson, had already had their lawyer tell the detectives. “I don’t know, but if the police suspect Parker of hiring a hit, they’ll have a loose net around him. I don’t want to get caught up in it if they do. Besides, following associates, or relatives, often works just as well when trying to keep track of a skip trace.”
“Skip-trace,” Salem repeated. “That’s the subject of our investigation, right?
I nodded. “I once tried to find this accountant named Artie for a fortune 500 business. He embezzled a few million dollars but I didn’t find any evidence that he bought a plane ticket. In fact, he’d fallen off the grid. I’d checked his credit cards, his phone records, his friends, and even his wife and had no clue where the guy was. I went back over his business expenses for the last few months and found a pattern. He ate mostly fast food except on Thursday nights. He’d go to a fancy restaurant and list it as business meetings, but Artie’s business associates said they hadn’t heard about any appointments on those days. In fact, he cleared his Thursdays from lunch on almost every week for three months.”
“Artie was being a bad boy,” Salem interjected with a smile.
“Artie had a girlfriend. After some digging I learned she was a secretary in his department. I followed her to a beachfront condo she rented for the summer. It was way out of her price range. Sure enough, Artie was there. I borrowed my neighbor’s dog, and went for a jog on the beach. I walked right up to on him while he was happily drinking coffee on the porch and served him with the subpoena.”
“Very nice.”
“Thank you,” I said. “We’re going to use the information I gained from Maurice’s DMV request to follow Shane. If he’s doing business or meeting with Parker for any reason, we’ll know about it.”
“So we stick with Shane.”
“Yes.”
“Do you think we missed their meeting, the one from the email?”
“No, I don’t think we missed it.”
“How do you figure?”
“If you remember, Parker wanted to meet at a place called, ‘On the Border’, right?”
“Did you figure out what that was?”
“Well, my guess is that it’s not an actual border, like on a map, but a place. The thing is, I think it’s a bar.”
“How did you get that?”
I showed him my phone. I’d done a search for the words, ‘The Border’ in the Seattle yellow pages and got the name of a bar in Columbia. The listing gave the hours of operation for the bar. They were closed yesterday.
“So, you think they’ll meet there tonight?”
I shrugged. I wasn’t sure, to be frank. “It’s my best guess. Bars are good places to meet because they’re dark, people mind their own business, and this one is in a seedy part of Seattle.”
“Because Parker wouldn’t be caught dead there.” Salem said. “So he knows no one will recognize him, or suspect he’s there.”
“Right.”
“How are we going to get pictures of them in the bar?” Salem looked out the window and sighed.
I smiled. Salem was a rookie with too many television detective stories in his head. “Pictures of Parker meeting with a business colleague are worthless. So what if two guys who work at the same company go out for a beer after work?”
“Then why are we going to follow them to the meeting?” Salem looked at me with his eyebrows knit.
“We’re not. We’re going to follow Shane from work. If he meets with Parker, then great, it means we’re on to something. If he goes home, we follow him there, too. I want to see who this Shane guy meets with. I want to know who he calls. Parker is too paranoid by now and he knows I’ve been looking into him. That’s why he sent the text and flowers. He won’t do anything stupid.”
“But Shane might.” Salem nodded, his face lighting up.
“Exactly.” I turned in and did a slow drive around the three floors looking for Shane’s car. He had an orange, nineteen sixty-five Mustang registered to his name. It wasn’t hard to find even without assigned parking. I’d stopped by N. Hale’s spy shop on the way and bought a live update GPS tracker. Salem was registering the serial number with the online mapping service while I checked to make sure that the motion detection mode was on.
Battery powered with live updates every ten-seconds, the matchbox size device was a little on the pricey side, but it required no service contract. I could track it using a mapping program available on the web. I’d opted for the one that had a motion sensor mode because the device put itself in sleep mode after sixty seconds of inactivity. That would make the battery last for at least a week if I was lucky.
There were no cameras on any of the floors that had a guard station. Shane had been kind enough to choose one with a guard station, probably because it was closest to his side of the building. I hopped out of the SUV, stuck the magnetic tracker underneath his front bumper, and flicked it on.
Salem watched with a nervous grimace stretched across his face.
But when I climbed back in behind the steering wheel he smiled broadly.
“That was way more boring than I anticipated.”
“I’ll wear my trench coat and fedora next time.” I checked my watch. I had to be at Maurice’s house in two hours. I turned to Salem and smiled reassuringly.
“Do you think you can handle this one on your own?”
“What? You’re leaving?” His head snapped in my direction and he stammered.
“You need the experience hours for your license, and I need to get to a meeting.”
“What meeting?”
“I’m having dinner with an old friend,” I hedged.
“So…you’re just…” Salem shrugged like a marionette. “What if Shane leaves while I’m taking you back to the hotel?”
“I’m taking a cab.” I grabbed my purse and pinched his cheek like a doting mother. I tossed him the keys.
“Keep the laptop on the map, it’ll update automatically as soon as Shane pulls out of the parking space. You don’t have to stay close because you’re tracking him via GPS. Use the laptop’s car adapter so you don’t run out of battery life. Other than that…just keep out of sight. If he meets with Parker or goes somewhere interesting write it down, but don’t tail him like in the movies. You don’t need to. That is what the GPS tracker is for.”
“What about pictures?”
“If you see him meet with Parker don’t bother to take any. If Shane meets with anyone else, use the telephoto lens. Take pictures of the person, their car if you see it, and the place they meet. Other than that, don’t risk your safety. Don’t get out of the car. You’re following him to photograph him, nothing else.” I stopped talking and watched Salem’s face.
A sheen of sweat glistened on his forehead and nose. It was sixty degrees outside. He looked like he was going to vomit, but took the keys. When he looked at me he seemed moved. “You really trust me with this?”
“You can do this, Salem. It’s a piece of cake.” I smiled and mussed up his hair.