Chapter Three

Taylor took the file, the camera, the hidden video camera, the binoculars, and the long range listening device from Bailey.  As he left, he held the door for a breathless, frantic looking man who appeared to be in a great hurry.  ‘T,’ as he preferred to be called, made his way to his metered parking spot and climbed into his Honda Civic, drove to the Beckers, and parked along the opposite side of the street.  Working with Lucky, effecting surveillance, was the only thing he could think of that would be as exciting as working for the FBI or CIA.  He prepared to wait for Mrs. Becker to emerge from the house, noting the time at three-fifteen.  Taylor did not have to wait very long.  Mrs. Becker came out the front door and walked toward her Mercedes.  Taylor zoomed and snapped a photo of her mainly to make sure he knew how to operate the camera.

            When T was a boy, he imagined growing up to be an astronaut, a baseball player, a doctor,  a lawyer, he had gone through all kinds of phases.  But through it all he dreamed of doing police work.  He found a certain satisfaction by rendering justice.  Working as a deputy in Oakville was  fun, but it was not what he envisaged for himself.  When Lucky announced that he was quitting as sheriff and moving to St. Louis after his wife died, Taylor approached him to ask what he was going to do for his future.  When Lucky told him he was going to open his own professional investigating firm, T asked if he would be needing any help.  That was when they made the arrangement for T to come work for Lucky once he was busy enough to need help.   T had taken a temporary, tedious desk job with the St. Louis police department, but now here he was, doing clandestine surveillance, having the time of his life.

            No one could deny Mrs. Becker was a striking-looking woman.  Even in the short walk from the front door to the car door, Taylor could see that she had poise and grace.  That alone set her apart from most women.  She could easily be imagined as a beauty pageant contestant.  Who could know though?  Maybe she was an intensely private woman.  Maybe even her husband didn’t know her deepest and darkest of secrets.  Taylor looked at the image in the display window on the back of the camera.  She wore her light brown hair parted in the middle and straightened.   She was wearing an elegant pair of sunglasses so he could not get a view of her eyes.  Her nose was slightly crooked, surely she could have had plastic surgery for that, he thought.  Especially since it appeared that she received silicone injected into her lips, making her look like some soap opera stars who have received one injection too many.  She was wearing denim short shorts with a gray tee-shirt with some writing on it that T could not make out.  Because the car partially obstructed his view, he did not see until she came around the car that she was wearing heels.  Heels with denim short shorts.  Kind of tacky, Taylor thought.

            So many women of means begged for plastic surgery these days.  Botox for wrinkles, facelifts for droopy skin, nose jobs, collagen for the lips, liposuction everywhere, but age always won out in the end.  Either one finally accepted the way one looked or one was to have so many procedures that one became a caricature of oneself. 

            Mrs. Becker pulled out of the drive and headed east.  T pulled out about three cars behind her and the pursuit was on.  She headed down Kingshighway and exited onto the 40-64 highway, going west.  She went as far as Brentwood Boulevard, where she went north and pulled into the parking lot of the Galleria shopping mall.  She pulled up alongside a black Jeep Wrangler.  The driver of the jeep was evidently waiting for her, because he got out as soon as she pulled up.  T pulled in a couple of rows over.  He took out the binoculars and focused on the scene before him. 

            Taylor remembered fondly pretending to spy on people when he was young.  He received his first pair of binoculars when he turned eight, for his birthday.  He would hide in the shrubbery at home and peer at the neighbors that lived on either side of him.  He even kept a journal of what he observed; in fact, T thought he probably still kept that journal tucked away someplace in the attic among all the unpacked boxes.

            The boy that climbed out of the jeep was very young, twenty years at the most.  He let his curly light blonde hair grow down to his shoulders, framing a cherubic face, like a young Adonis.  Mrs. Becker appeared to be angry with him by the expression on her face and the gesticulations of her hands.  She reached inside the passenger window of her car and pulled out a briefcase that must have already been in the car when she got into it at home.  She walked over to the back of the jeep and started transferring handfuls of cash to a duffel bag the boy was holding.

  Taylor could not have been more surprised at what he was witnessing.  The transferring of money seemed to go on and on.  He took a couple of photographs to put in the file.  He was also able to jot down the license number of the jeep.  Taylor was surprised by the audacity of passing so much cash in such a public place.  He supposed what his grandmother used to say was true:  “If you want to hide something, leave it out in public.”

            A time would come when Taylor would look back upon this day and wonder how things might have gone differently, if a life could have been saved.  But now no one would ever know,  for hindsight is always 20/20, as the saying goes.  How guilt pulses in one’s heart, not knowing if one could have made a difference.  Looking back, the murder was probably inevitable and no one or nothing could have prevented it, but this could never be proved of course.

            The transaction appeared to have been completed.  Mrs. Becker closed the brief case and was moved back toward her car.  It looked as though there were some rather angry parting words. T forgot he brought the listening device.  He hurriedly put it on to see if he could capture any of the last bit of this conversation. All he caught was the young man saying “This is far from over, b***h.”  She squealed tires a bit as she took off while the young man smiled smugly and got back in his jeep.

            Taylor now faced a dilemma, should he follow Mrs. Becker or the young man?  His instinct said to follow the young man as he knew already where Mrs. Becker would be later.   So he pulled out behind the jeep which got onto the I-170 going north toward the airport.  T now thought that perhaps this young man was going to leave the city, if not the country.  The young man, however, stayed on the interstate going north, past the airport, into the subdivision called Florissant.

            He soon pulled into a vacant driveway of an ordinary ranch style home.  Taylor drove a little further down the block and parked and wrote down the address of the home.  He would do a title search when he got back to the office.  The young man stepped out of the jeep and retrieved the duffel bag from the rear.  He unlocked the door and entered the house.  Before long, the young man returned with only a backpack and got back into the jeep.  He pulled out and Taylor followed not far behind.  Taylor subsequently followed him to five different banks, where it appeared the young man was depositing large sums of cash at each location.

            After the young man returned home and didn’t seem to be coming back out, Taylor drove back to Forest Park and parked opposite the Becker’s house.  The Mercedes was once again sitting in the circular drive.  After it seemed Mrs. Becker would not be reappearing anytime soon, Taylor pulled out Bailey’s general file, if it could be called that�"it was really just a stack of notes--on the Beckers.

         Mr. Becker, who was thirty-five, was an architect at the firm Becker & Sutterland.  Mrs. Taylor, who was thirty, was a high school English teacher currently on spring break.  They were married for ten years.  Neither of them desired children, so when Mrs. Becker became pregnant, they were both dismayed.  Firmly against abortion, she carried the baby to term and then gave him up for adoption.  This happened Thanksgiving before last.  Mr. Becker became suspicious that Mrs. Becker was having an affair several years ago when she suddenly started having frequent parent-teacher conferences, and staying late at the school most afternoons.

                   He had no idea with whom she would be having an affair.  He maintained that they had a healthy sexual relationship and that she took birth control pills as their method of contraception.  After she gave birth to the baby, she got her tubes tied.  They were quite well off between his income and her inheritance.  Money matters were of no concern.  If he could prove she was having an affair their total assets would be divided equally, giving him a fair share of her inheritance.

            Taylor wondered what she did on her summers off.  He re-read the report and there was no mention of it.  He would ask Lucky when he got back to the office.  He looked at his watch and noted it was five-fifteen.  Shortly thereafter, Mrs. Becker came back out and once again entered her car.      This time she was wearing body-hugging blue jeans and a white tank top.  And, once again, Taylor followed her.  This time she was headed in the opposite direction, toward downtown.  She steered into the valet parking lane of one of the city’s finest hotels, and surrendered the car to a handsome young valet.  It appeared that she tipped him and went inside.  T was torn, should he follow her in or not?

 He decided that, since he had not yet been in the position of her having  observed him, that he would follow her inside.  He drove up into the valet lane as well and hurried after her.  The elevator doors were closing and T didn’t attempt to squeeze in between them.  But before the door closed, his eyes met hers, and he knew he would not be able to follow her this closely again for she would remember his face.  She might not be able to place it if she saw him only one more time, but if they kept running into each other, she would know she was being followed, and the case would be compromised.

 There was no one else in the elevator though, so wherever the floor indicator light stopped on, that would be the floor of her destination.  The elevator stopped on the ninth floor.  T went up to the ninth floor on the next elevator.  He looked both ways down the corridors and saw no sign of her.  He retreated to the main floor and went to the check in desk.  He asked the young woman behind the desk politely if Mrs. Becker had checked in yet.  The woman poked around on the keyboard, and looked up and down the computer monitor screen.  She said, “I’m sorry sir we don’t have anyone by that name registered here.”

            He hailed the valet who brought him the car.  He parked across the street where he could see Mrs. Becker when she appeared.  His cell phone rang and he could tell by the ringtone that it was his mother calling.   He flipped open the phone and said, “Hi mom.  What’s up?  You never call me during the week.”  He kept his eyes on the hotel entrance.

             “It’s your father, honey, he may have had a heart attack.”

            “What?  What happened?” Taylor asked, in disbelief.  His father was the healthiest person he knew.  He did not just exercise regularly, he ran marathons regularly.  He was on a quest to run a marathon in each of the fifty states.  He only had six to go. 

            “Well this morning he started having chest pains which he thought was heartburn.  You know is stomach is upset easily.  So neither of us thought much about it.  But it kept on, and then his left jaw and arm started tingling so we went to the emergency room.  That’s where we are now.  They’ve done some blood work, given him aspirin, and took an EKG.  We’re waiting for the results.”

            “How is he doing now, mom?”

            “He seems fine.  The pain and the tingling have all stopped and he didn’t even want me to call you until we had the results, but I thought I should call.”

            “No, I’m glad you did.  Will you call me the minute the results come back?”

            “Of course dear.  Talk to you later.”

            “Bye, mom,” he said, and clicked the phone shut.

            Shortly after the phone call was disconnected, Mrs. Becker came into view.  The valet brought her car around and she left, with Taylor once more on her trail.  He looked at his watch again, it was six o’clock.  Traffic on the highway was congested, so it took about a half an hour to get back to the Becker residence.  By that time, Mr. Becker was there because his SUV was in the driveway, so Taylor headed back to the office.  He dialed Lucky.

            Taylor said, “I’m headed back to the office, will you be there?”

            Lucky said, “Yes I’ll be there shortly and remind me to give you a key to the place.”

            “Good idea about the key.  You won’t believe what I’ve been through today.  I can hardly wait to tell you about the Beckers.”