14 - J. T. Ellison [80]
There were many toasts to the couple’s happiness. Taylor lifted her glass again and again, wondering what the phrase meant. Happiness was a state of mind, sometimes elusive, oftentimes immeasurable. She was happy tonight, in her way. Content, even. But was she the right gauge for the implications of the emotion? She imagined there were people, women getting married, who were simply happy to have a house, a nice ring and a long train to their dress.
Taylor wasn’t about that. She wanted to see a week without a dead body, for starters. That would make her happy. She’d like to have Frank Richardson’s killer in her sights. Yeah, that would make her happy. She’d like to have the Snow White Killer and his accomplice on their knees in front of her, hands cuffed, a fresh clip loaded into her Glock…panic swarmed her chest. These weren’t the right thoughts for a soon-to-be-married bride to be having. She should be dreaming of sugar and spice and everything nice.
Maybe she was a little drunk.
Baldwin saw the way the night was headed, took charge of getting his bride home. She drank a Diet Coke in the truck and felt better. The snow had stopped; the white layers looked like wedding cake. She giggled at the image, and Baldwin laughed with her.
They got home, changed, and tried to find something to do outside of their bedroom. Taylor was too keyed-up to sleep, so she challenged Baldwin to several games of eight ball, then collapsed, wired but exhausted, on their living-room couch.
“What’s wrong?”
“I want to figure out why Frank Richardson was killed. And I had to bite my tongue so I didn’t interrogate Father Francis.”
“Was that why you were acting so weird? I was starting to think you were getting cold feet again.”
“You’re assuming I ever warmed them up.”
“Taylor—”
“I’m kidding. Stop already. No, I’m thinking about Frank, and Burt Mars, and I can’t help myself, honey, I need to go over these files.”
Baldwin sighed good-naturedly. “What can I do to help?”
Two hours later, Taylor felt confident she knew what was going on.
“Burt Mars was a very bad boy.”
Baldwin was stretched out on the couch in the living room. Taylor sat on the floor, the printed papers from the Tennessean spread across the coffee table. It was nearing midnight. She needed to get this wrapped up and get out of the house. They’d agreed that she would spend her last night as an unmarried woman at the Hermitage Hotel, a suite they had for the weekend. She’d stay there alone tonight; he’d join her there tomorrow, for their wedding night, then they’d check out and go to Italy Sunday morning. A great plan that hadn’t anticipated a late night combing files.
Baldwin played with her hair, then rubbed her shoulders. “Will it wait?”
She sat back, out of his reach. “I think you might want to hear this. Mars is a bad dude. He left Nashville in the late eighties, right about the time Daddy got sent to Brushy Mountain for that stint for trying to bribe Judge Galloway. He was an accountant here, moved to Manhattan, put out a shingle and started to take clients. A few years later he’d gone down on a racketeering charge. A year after that, they got him on a separate RICO charge, convicted him of racketeering since it was the second charge within a ten-year period. This time they sent him to the federal penitentiary. He served six years of a fifteen-year sentence, got out early for testifying against a man named Horace Macon. Macon was a low-level crime boss working for a guy named Tony Tartulo. The trial was the first step in the fall of the Tartulo syndicate. So now Mr. Mars has himself wrapped up in the Mafia. He gets out of prison, and within six months he’s running a highly lucrative real-estate firm, and holds a controlling position in a hedge fund that focuses on REITs.”
“Real estate investment trusts. Seems like a conflict of interest.”
“You think? Here’s what so damn interesting. Horace Macon was just a soldier in Tartulo’s organization. But Tartulo was sworn enemies with another