Cheryl Bradshaw - Black Diamond Death

“Did you ask her what it was?”

She nodded.

“Charlotte wouldn’t tell me. She said she didn’t want to involve me more than I needed to be. But there was one thing she made me promise her.”

“What was it?” I said.

“She asked me to stay away from the office until I heard from her. She wasn’t sure what would happen and she didn’t want me around just in case.”

I thought about the files I found at Charlotte’s house the night of my attack. Why hadn’t I realized their importance before?

“If only I could get my hands on the copies of those files,” I said.

Bridget reached into the front pocket of her jeans and pulled out a key ring. Two keys dangled from it.

“I can.”

CHAPTER 52

I followed Bridget to Tommy’s apartment. He wasn’t home. She parked her car there and left it along with a note for Tommy that said not to worry and that she would be back soon. Then she got in the car with me.

The real estate office of Ellis & Marshall had vacated for the day. We drove to the adjacent grocery store and parked and waited. When we were the only people in the area, we made our move. Bridget explained to me on the way over that the manager of the office changed the locks every time someone left or was fired, which seemed like a waste of time in my book since all of the interior offices exhibited their own individual door locks, but that was the way of the world these days. With any luck, they hadn’t changed them yet.

We reached the door and Bridget inserted her key into the hole and turned it to the right. It clicked.

“It still works,” she whispered.

Inside, the TV played the same looped video montage. The light that emitted from the screen offered enough of a glow for us to descend the stairs far enough to round the corner. Once we were safely on the level below, I clicked on my flashlight.

We reached the filing office and Bridget put her second key in and turned it.

“Uh oh,” she said.

“What uh oh?”

“My key doesn’t work. Now what?”

“Let me take a look,” I said.

The troll was smart to change the locks, but she used a very cheap and very standard doorknob and jimmying it open wasn’t rocket science. One flick from a standard paperclip in the right direction and we were in.

“Voila.”

“Not bad,” she said. “I’m impressed.”

I handed her the flashlight.

“Now it’s your turn,” I said.

The files were kept according to year and agent name. Bridget found Charlotte’s in less than a minute.

“Let me make some copies and then we can go.”

“That will take too long,” I said. “We can’t risk it.”

“There’s no other option though.”

I held my hand out and she handed over the files.

“I don’t feel good about this. What if they find out?”

She stood there for a moment like we were still deliberating the subject. I grabbed her jacket and tugged on it.

“Let’s go.”

We climbed the first few stairs and I heard a noise on the main level. It sounded like someone had dropped their keys. This was followed by a jingle and then the front door opened. I turned to Bridget whose jaw propped open like she was about to get a root canal. I placed my finger over my lips and motioned for her to ease back down the stairs. She nodded. The main-level door slammed with a loud thud and a male voice sounded off in the distance.

“Like I said, I know these people personally. They lost everything when their business closed last year. One more month on the market without a good offer and they’ll accept anything thrown their way. I’m sure I can convince them to short sale.”

“It’s Jack,” Bridget whispered. “What are we going to do?”

“Keep quiet,” I said.

“Sure, sure,” he said. “I understand. Let me just grab the file and I will tell you what your counter should be.”

The light to the basement flickered and then came on and the sound of hefty footprints made their way down to the lower level. We crouched behind some empty boxes in the hallway, but they weren’t big enough to conceal both of us.

Jack reached the bottom of the stairs and halted.

“Oh, wait a minute,” he said. “You know what? I left the file in my office earlier today. Let me find it and I’ll call you back.”

He turned around and a minute later the light went off and we relaxed in the darkness.

I looked at Bridget.

“Not a sound,” I whispered.

“But what if he comes down here again? What if he sees us? What are we going to do? We need to get out of here.”

I put a firm grip on her arm.

“Get it together,” I said. “It’s going to be fine.”

She moved and I worried she was about to take flight.

I applied more pressure.

“Ouch, that hurts.”

“Good,” I said. “Concentrate on that for a minute.”

Several minutes elapsed before I heard his voice again.

“I think $840,000 is a fair offer. I’ll write everything up and get this over to you tomorrow.”

The front door opened and closed and a key bolted the lock. We stayed put for the next five minutes until his car pulled out of the parking lot and onto the road and then we got the hell out of there.

“It’s late and I could use another pair of eyes on these reports. Why don’t you stay the night at my place?” I said.

“Why did you do that back there?”

“Grab your arm?”

She nodded.

“I wanted to shift your focus.”

“It hurt, you know.”

“But it worked,” I said. “I’m sorry I had to do that, but you didn’t leave me much choice. I could tell it was more than you could handle.”

“Tommy must be worried. I’ve never went this long without calling.”

“I take it you haven’t told him what’s going on.”

“I didn’t want to get anyone else involved.”

“You wanted to protect him, I understand. Why not talk to the police?”

“I don’t even want to be here––in this town, I mean. I tried to leave, and I told Tommy I wanted to move, but he didn’t understand and then we got into a fight and now everything’s a mess.”

“Can I ask you a personal question?” I said.

“I guess so.”

“What attracted you to him in the first place? You two seem a lot different from each other.”

“I get that a lot,” she said. “I’ve known Tommy since we were kids. It’s kind of like that saying about how opposites attract. His life hasn’t been the easiest, and I think he’s still trying to figure it all out, but he knows me better than anyone. When all of this happened I thought I should run, but then I realized my life is here, with him.”

“Why don’t you call him tonight and let him know where you are and talk to him for a little while,” I said. “You can stay the night at my house and tomorrow I will drive you home.”

She nodded.

“Besides,” I said. “It’s time you told him the truth.”

CHAPTER 53

I got Bridget squared away in my guest room and scooped up Lord Berkeley in one hand and the files in the other and went down the hall to my room. From the stack I had to sort through I could tell the past year had been a fruitful one for Charlotte and Vicki. I pondered waiting until morning when Bridget could help me, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep while the files rested on my nightstand.

Lord Berkeley scanned the bed a couple times before he assumed a position where his body rested against my thigh and his head propped up on top of it. Sometimes when I worked on my laptop at night he rested his head on the corner of it which made it almost impossible for me to type. I never moved him though.

Step one in my sort process was to separate out the transactions according to agent. I arranged them into three piles that consisted of Charlotte’s deals, Vicki’s deals, and the deals they shared together. In the past year, Charlotte closed over 45 transactions. No wonder other agencies fought over her. Of those, five were shared with Vicki. Vicki herself had a modest year, with 24 transactions. I looked over Charlotte’s files, but nothing stood out to me that was unusual. The same could be said for the shared deals she worked on with Vicki.