A few minutes later, the scraggly dude left the office. Another quandary—Follow him or stick with the doc? She took a photo of him and then she looked at her watch. It was only ten o’clock. Avery was in Aspen, where it was seven hours earlier. It would be 3:00 A.M. there. He could still be awake, considering he had changed time zones twice, which meant his body clock was still on 1:00 A.M. She took the chance and pressed the button on her fake Apple-watch phone.

“You okay?” Avery was wide awake and surprised to hear from Eileen at that hour.

“Yes. I’m fine. Two things. There is a guy who went into the office who looks extremely out of place. Should I tail him or stay in front of Marcus’s? I took a photo from a distance. The telephoto lens captured a good shot of him. Sending it over to you now.”

“Good. Stay on Marcus for now. Isabelle should have the blueprints for both his apartment and his office shortly. Probably late afternoon your time.”

“Will do. What about the wife?”

“See if there’s a pattern in Marcus’s day-to-day life for the next two days. Then you can tail the wife.”

“The other thing is I literally bumped into two women coming out of the office with very posh-looking shopping bags.”

“You bumped into them?” Avery sounded surprised.

“Well, not exactly bumped into them. I pretended to trip and fell on my ass in front of them. I was trying to get a look inside the bags.”

“And?”

“And not much. The bags contained beautifully packaged boxes. I said I hoped I didn’t break anything, and they told me they were vitamins. Sorry I couldn’t get more info out of them, except one of the women didn’t seem very happy with the results so far. They took me to get a cup of tea. That’s when I spotted the scraggly guy.”

“You are good.” Avery smiled.

“Thanks, boss. I’ll be in touch.”

“Be safe,” Avery said before he ended the call. He forwarded the photo of the mysterious guy to Charles.

* * *

Marcus was trying not to have a hissy fit. That creep Jerry had shown up unannounced with a message from Franny. “Cash upon receipt. Or a few baubles. No more credit.”

“But why?” Marcus whined.

“Dunno. Big guy wants it that way. Says he ain’t no bank.”

“But he gets a twenty-five percent commission!” Marcus knew he might as well be talking to the wall.

“What of it? If you want somethin’, yer gonna have to pay as you go.” Jerry turned on his filthy sneakers and walked out.

Marcus realized that he needed to come up with a plan. One thing he knew for sure: stopping the cocaine wouldn’t be a part of it.

Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Pinewood