Nearest and Dearest by Bob Toomey

Nearest and Dearest by Bob Toomey

Nick collected his package at the front desk and brought it back to his room on the fifth floor. He was about to swipe his keycard when he sensed someone behind him and glanced back.

A Catholic schoolgirl stood there, beaming up at him. “Mr. Garcia?”

“Maybe,” he said.

She continued to beam. “Didn’t they tell you to expect me?”

“They told me to expect a Joe Somebody.”

“That’s me, I’m Joe Somebody.”

Nick stared at her.

“Josephine,” she said. “Jo for short. No ‘E.'”

He looked her up and down, from her ponytail and freckles to her brown and white saddle shoes, and shook his head. “What are you — twelve?”

“Thirteen.” She said with an impish grin. “This outfit makes me look younger.”

Down the hall the elevator arrived again. An elderly woman stepped out and glared at Nick and the girl before heading off in the other direction.

Nick sighed and swiped his keycard to unlock the door. Jo slipped past him into the room.

“Oh my God,” she said. “You have a balcony. I don’t believe it. Did you pay extra for this?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It all goes on the expense account.”

“You have an expense account?”

Jo hopped on the closer of the twin beds, drew her legs up under her, and tugged her plaid skirt down modestly over her knees. Nick stood at the dresser unwrapping his package, which turned out to be one of those overpriced, oversized bestselling novels.

“I read that one,” Jo said. “The ending sucks.”

“This edition has a different ending,” Nick said.

He opened the book and showed her it was hollow, its insides stuffed with excelsior packing material.

“I saw something like that in a spy movie,” Jo said.

“Me too,” Nick said. “Don’t ever let anyone tell you movies aren’t educational.”

 He dug around in the excelsior and extracted a snubnose stainless steel Colt Cobra .38 Special.

“I always mail this to myself before a job,” Nick said, brushing off the excelsior. “Avoids hassles with airport security.”

“It’s a cute gun,” she said, “but I thought you were all about accidents.”

“Is that what they told you?”

She shrugged. “I’m into accidents myself. Probably why they teamed us up.”

“We’re not a team.”

“We’re not?”

“Nope.”

She frowned. “What are we then?”

“We’ll see,” he said.

He opened a dresser drawer and tucked the book and revolver under his clean shirts and turned to Jo. “Why do you think you’re here?”

“Because this is where they sent me.”

“For what reason?”

She plucked at the hem of her skirt. “I’m not sure exactly. Are you supposed to train me or something?”

“More like evaluate.”

She hopped off the bed. “So when do we start? No wait. We started when I came up to you in the hall.”

“That’s right.” Nick checked his watch. “It’s time for lunch. Where are you staying?”

“Around the corner.”

“Trot back over there and get changed,” Nick said. “Put on something grown up and respectable and meet me down in the lobby in half an hour.”

& & &

The waiter at the Student Prince didn’t card Jo when she asked for a stein of Dinkelacker Pilsner. Nick ordered a Spaten Octoberfest and watched her study the menu. In half an hour she’d transformed herself from a junior high school student into a senior account executive in a business suit. Nick was duly impressed, which he assumed was the intended effect.

“I’m torn between the Geschnetzeltes and the Kassler Rippchen,” she said. “Which would you recommend?”

This was the first Nick had heard of either item.

“The Kassler Rippchen,” he said because it was easier to pronounce.

“What are you having?”

“Fillet of Smoked Trout.”

She located it on the menu. “With Creamy Horseradish?”

“I might skip that part,” Nick said. “Creaminess doesn’t always agree with me.”

The waiter returned with their drinks, took their orders and departed.

Jo sipped her beer and said, “So — any words of wisdom for a beginner in this business?”

“Sure,” Nick said. “Never kill anyone you know personally, even if they really deserve it. That’s rule number one.”

“Nice,” Jo said. “I should write that down.”

“Rule number two,” Nick said, “never write anything down.”

Jo laughed.

Nick indicated a table across the room. “See that couple over there under the Hofbräu sign?”

“The bald dude with the blonde?”

“Right,” Nick said. “That’s our target, Arnie Zeigler. He’s partners in a company that has a contract with the city to tow illegally parked cars.”

“Who’s the blonde?” Jo said.

“That’s Mrs. Zeigler, probably our client.”

“No way.”

“Why not?” Nick said. “Nearest and dearest. Always the most likely suspect.”

Jo scrutinized the couple. “See the way she’s looking at him? I’d say she loves him. That’s the way my mom looks at my dad.” She thought for a moment. “How many partners are there in that towing company?”

“Besides Zeigler, there’s two, so three altogether.”

“One of them could be our client, looking for a bigger cut of the business.”

“It’s possible,” Nick said, “but odds are it’s the wife.”

“What else do we know about him?”

“Well,” Nick said, “he has a major heart condition. He could drop dead at any moment.”

“And yet someone is paying us perfectly good money to hurry him along.”

Nick shrugged. “We live in impatient times.”

The waiter arrived with their orders. Jo tried a forkful of her Kassler Rippchen and smiled.

“This is excellent,” she said. “How’s your trout?”

“Not bad,” Nick said.

She glanced across the room at the target. “So have you made a plan to take care of Mr. Zeigler?”

“I have.”

“Is there some way I can assist you?”

“That depends. Do you have a driver’s license?”

She nodded. “Several.”

“In that case,” Nick said, “I’ll let you drive the getaway car.”

& & &

“Don’t turn around.”

Zeigler couldn’t help himself. He swiveled his head to see who was in the back seat and Nick flicked his ear lightly with the barrel of the Colt.

“Eyes on the road,” Nick said.

Zeigler rubbed his ear and faced front.

“What do you want?” he said.

“Just drive.”

Silence for the next mile or so, and then Nick said, “Slow down. Our turn is coming up on the right. That dirt road into the woods.”

“Why are we –?”

“Put on your blinker,” Nick said. “We don’t want to attract any attention.”

Zeigler put on his blinker and turned onto the dirt road. It was bumpy and rutted and tall weeds scraped the underside of the car.

Zeigler said, “How far –?”

“We’re almost there,” Nick said.

They rounded a curve and Nick looked out the back window. The woods screened them from the highway now.

“Pull over into that little clearing.”

It was a parking area or turn around. Humans had marked it with beer cans, pizza boxes and fast food wrappers. Zeigler stopped the car and waited, stealing quick looks at Nick in the rear-view mirror. Nick sat there and let him stew for a while.

Finally Nick checked his watch and said, “All right. It’s time. Get out.”

It wasn’t really time. Nick wasn’t on a schedule. He was just messing with the man’s head. Putting him on edge. Getting him anticipating the worst.

They both got out of the car, Nick pointing his gun at Zeigler in a casual sort of way.

Just then, Jo emerged from the woods, all junior high school again, in faded jeans and a team sweatshirt.

“Run away,” Zeigler called out to her. “He has a gun. Run away and call the police.”

“Sorry.” Jo indicated Nick. “I’m with him.”

Zeigler sagged.

Jo tapped her wrist watch and, being in on the gag, said to Nick, “We’re running late.”

“This won’t take long,” Nick said.

He cocked the Colt, the click sharp in the silence of the woods. Zeigler took a step back. Nick swung the gun around and pulled the trigger. The shot echoed off the trees. Then came the hiss of air escaping from the hole the bullet put in the left rear tire of the car. The three of them stood there and watched the tire deflate.

“Looks like you got a flat,” Nick said. “Better see if you have a spare.”

Zeigler retrieved his keys from the ignition and opened the trunk. The spare was one of those smaller temporary tires designed to take a car just far enough to get a full sized replacement. Zeigler hauled it out of the trunk, along with the tools he needed to install it. By then he was breathing hard and sweating.

“Let me rest a minute,” he said.

Nick shook his head. “We don’t have time for that. Jack it up and get going.”

Zeigler went to work. By the time he got the old tire off he was flushed and panting and drenched with sweat, but the son of a bitch refused to have a proper coronary and keel over.

He tightened the final lug nut and said to Nick, “Can I ask you a question?”

“Go ahead.”

“Who hired you to do this?”

“I don’t know,” Nick said.

“Come on, you can tell me.” Zeigler seated himself on the flat tire and worked on his breathing. “It’s not like I’m gonna survive to pass it on.”

“I really don’t know who hired me,” Nick said. “We have layers between us and the client. They talk to someone who talks to someone else who talks to us. We’re twice removed. That way we can’t testify against each other. Stand up.”

Zeigler struggled to his feet and wiped his wet face on a sleeve. He looked like a red balloon about to burst.

Nick cocked the Colt and aimed it at Zeigler. “We’re out of time and so are you.”

Zeigler put his hands out as if they would shield him from a bullet. Nick pulled the trigger and the gunshot bounced around the woods and Zeigler clutched his chest and made a funny little strangled squeak and pitched forward onto his face in the dirt and lay still.

Jo watched the body fall, and after a moment she said, “Is he dead?”

Nick shrugged. “Check him out.”

Jo went down on her knees and examined the body. She wasn’t squeamish about it and seemed to know what she was doing.

“He’s dead all right.” She stood and brushed dirt off the knees of her jeans. “Are we done here?”

“This place turns into a lover’s lane at night,” Nick said. “Some young sweethearts will stumble over his body, take all his valuables and then call the cops. The cops will see this poor bastard who got rolled after having a heart attack while changing a tire. Case closed.”

Jo studied the body. “You don’t think they’ll find that bullet hole a little suspicious?”

“What bullet hole?”

She thought about that and then she went down on her knees again. She rolled the body over onto its back and carefully inspected it.

“No blood,” she said. “No hole. But you couldn’t have missed at that range. A blank?”

“Very good,” Nick said, and waited for her to score some points with him by working it all out.

“That first shot into the tire,” she said, “was obviously a live round.”

“Obviously.”

“It convinced our guy over here — and me — that your bullets were real.”

“Uh huh.”

“So when you pulled the trigger the second time, he believed he was really shot and did the sensible thing and dropped dead.”

“There you go.”

“But what if he didn’t believe it?” she said.

Nick gestured with the gun. “That’s where the rest of these bullets come in.”

“I thought our client wanted an accident.”

“If possible,” Nick said. “And fortunately this time it worked out. Where’d you stash our car?”

Jo pointed back the way she’d come. “It’s parked two dirt roads over.”

He surveyed the area one last time, making sure everything looked the way it was supposed to look, and then he followed Jo back to their getaway car.

& & &

The next morning, Jo came by his room to thank him for giving her a positive evaluation.

“In fact,” she said, “they offered me an assignment.”

“Congratulations.”

Today she was back to the account executive look, but she seemed a little skittish, leaning against the dresser, shifting her weight from leg to leg.

“The thing is,” she said, “it’s Mrs. Zeigler.”

“The wife?”

“Yeah.”

“Sounds like you were right,” he said. “She probably wasn’t our client. Now I’m thinking one of the partners or a relative who stands to inherit.”

She took a breath and said, “How do you figure they’d react if I turned down this assignment?”

“You want to refuse your very first gig?”

“Not a good idea?”

Nick grunted. “What’s the problem?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Something about the way she looked at him in the restaurant.”

“Like your mom looking at your dad.”

“Right.”

“You need to think about this,” Nick said.

He went out on the balcony to give her some privacy. In the park across the street, a couple of boys and a dog were chasing a Frisbee. The dog was better at catching it than the boys.

After a while, Jo joined him on the balcony. “They told me it doesn’t have to look like an accident.”

“That’ll make it easier.”

She nodded. “Guess I’ll drive by her place and see if I can make a plan.”

“Good idea.”

“Can I run it past you later, the plan, I mean, if I can come up with one?”

“Sure,” Nick said.

A few minutes after she left, his phone rang and a familiar voice said, “Since you’re already there in town, how would you like to take care of Zeigler’s partners in the towing firm?”

“Both of them?” Nick said.

“That’s right. You’ll collect a double fee on top of the one you’ll be getting for Zeigler.”

“Am I supposed to make them look like accidents? That’s a lot of people checking out from the same company.”

“Doesn’t say anything here about accidents.”

“When does this need to be completed?”

“In your own time.”

“Okay.” Nick liked the sound of that double fee. “I’ll get back to you when it’s finished.”

“Excellent.”

Nick sat and thought about what had to be done, then he picked up the phone again and called his wife. Sarah thought he ran a small private hedge fund and was traveling to meet up with a group of potential clients. The hedge fund was real, but the clients were for something else, and he never met up with them.

“How’s it going?” Sarah said.

“Better than I expected,” Nick said.

“That’s nice.”

“How’s it going with you?”

“Fine.”

“The girls staying out of trouble?”

“Edie’s having a pajama party with her new best friend Delores, and Veronica isn’t talking to me again, so it’s pretty quiet around here.”

“Good,” Nick said. “You deserve some me time.”

“I guess.” She sounded dubious.

“Is there a problem?”

“Not really,” she said. “It’s just, I don’t know, maybe it’s a little too quiet around here.”

Nick took a breath. “So listen, the way things are going, it looks like I’ll be here a little longer than I thought.”

“How much longer?”

“Hard to say.”

“Veronica’s playing basketball on Saturday,” Sarah said. “She’ll be very disappointed if you miss another game.”

“And then she won’t be speaking to either of us.”

Sarah sighed. “Just try to be home by the weekend.”

“I will,” Nick said. “Only two more meetings. My pitch is already starting to pay off. In fact we’ll probably be able to afford that trip to Tuscany this year.”

“That’s wonderful.”

“I know.”

There was a pause and then she said, “Miss you.”

“Miss you too,” he said.

& & &

Nick watched a tow truck drag a red Honda Civic into the impound lot. The place looked like a POW camp for cars, with a high chain link fence topped by coils of razor wire, cameras all around, spotlights to make the yard bright as day at night. The only thing missing was the machine gun tower.

The main office was a square white building that anchored one corner of the lot. People went in and cars came out. Nick wondered whether there were armed guards in the office. He was thinking about road rage and how towed rage must be even worse. Taking an American’s car away was a dangerous business.

His phone rang and it was Jo saying she wanted to meet him for lunch and how about the Wok Right In, down the block from his hotel.

The restaurant was packed. Jo was already there, munching on a fried spring roll, when he arrived. He took the seat opposite her, and she pushed the plate of rolls to the center of the table, along with some packets of sauce.

“Help yourself,” she said. “These have cabbage, carrots and what I think may be green onions. That’s duck sauce on the side of the plate.”

Nick told her about his commission to clip the two partners. “It’s like someone’s decided to wipe out the whole company. Of course, Mrs. Zeigler could have hired us to take out the partners, and either one of them could have hired us to clip her.”

 “Mm,” Jo said doubtfully. “You were right, by the way.”

 “About what?”

 “Mrs. Zeigler.” Jo grinned and finished off her spring roll.

 “She’s the one who hired us to do her husband.”

“You know this how?”

“She told me.”

“Just up and confessed?”

“Well,” Jo said, “I confessed first.”

Nick dipped a spring roll in the duck sauce and took a bite. “Go on.”

“Have you seen their house?”

“Yes.”

“It’s really nice, set back from the road, no close neighbors. Her car was in the driveway, so I figured I’d just go right up and knock on the door. When she answered, I told her I was there to make sure she was satisfied with our work.”

“Interesting approach.”

“Turned out she didn’t know Mr. Zeigler was dead. She figured something must have happened because he didn’t come home last night, but no one had informed her of his demise.”

“Maybe the young lovers didn’t find the body.”

“Or maybe they just robbed him and didn’t bother to report on the corpse.”

“Not very civic minded of them.”

Jo shrugged and started on another spring roll. “So anyway, I told Mrs. Zeigler how we induced a fatal heart attack in her husband, and that improved her mood so much she invited me in for tea.”

“All this, I imagine, was part of your plan.”

“Actually,” Jo said, “I was sort of winging it. Anyway, towing cars must pay pretty well. The house was beautiful. Persian carpets everywhere. At least I think they were Persian. Shelves full of art books, books on gardening, flower arranging, classy books, not like the one where you keep your gun.”

Nick grunted. “I was going for storage space, not literary values.”

“I understand.”

A waitress came by and they ordered today’s lunch special, beef with string beans and pork fried rice, with egg drop soup on the side.

“So I’m standing there admiring the books,” Jo said, “and while Mrs. Zeigler is distracted making the tea, I come up behind her with this heavy bronze bookend in the shape of a rearing stallion.”

“Classy,” Nick said, “like the books.”

“Right.” Jo held out her phone. “Here she is.”

On the phone’s screen was a blonde woman lying in a heap on pale ceramic kitchen tiles, a dark red tide spreading out around her head.

Nick blinked. “Do you remember rule number two?”

“Sure,” Jo said. “Never write anything down.”

“Well,” Nick said, “a corollary of that rule, call it Rule 2a, is never take pictures of your target lying in a pool of their own blood.”

“This is strictly for your eyes only.” Jo tapped the phone a couple times and the picture disappeared. “All gone now, never to be seen again.”

Nick sighed.

“Bad, huh?” Jo said. “Are you gonna tell on me?”

“Tell who?”

“Whoever it is we work for.”

“Nothing to tell,” Nick said. “You did your job, quickly and efficiently. I assume you didn’t leave any fingerprints or DNA behind.”

“I was very careful,” Jo said. “I didn’t touch anything but the bronze horse and the doorknob, and I wiped them cleaner than clean. Nobody saw me come and go, but just in case I wore sunglasses and tucked my hair under a Red Sox cap, and I covered the license plates on the rental car with mud.”

“Almost sounds like a plan,” Nick said.

Jo grinned. “Incidentally, I think I know who hired us to take out Mrs. Zeigler and the partners.”

“Who?” Nick said.

“I think it was Mr. Zeigler.”

“Clawing up from the grave to take his revenge.”

“Exactly,” Jo said. “I mean, who even knew Mr. Zeigler was dead? Just you and me and the people we work for. But the very next day, word comes down to remove the three main suspects in his death. That can’t be a coincidence.”

Nick gestured with his spring roll. “You’d be surprised at some of the coincidences we run into.”

“Maybe,” Jo said. “But Mr. Zeigler must have sensed this was coming. He didn’t know who was going to get him, but he knew it would be one of these three. So he left orders to take care of all of them in the event of his passing. That way he’d be sure to get his killer.”

“Yeah,” Nick said. “Too bad about the innocent ones, but a guy who’d sneak up and tow away your car wouldn’t much care about something like that.”

“So you like my theory?”

“It’s nearest and dearest all over again, and it’s about the only thing that makes any sense. Not that we’ll ever know for sure, and not that it matters. But you’re probably right.”

The day’s special arrived and they dug in. Watching Jo eat, Nick was surprised at how much she reminded him of Veronica, his oldest daughter, the one with the basketball game on Saturday. Jo even held her fork like Veronica, clenched in her little fist as though she was afraid it would go flying if she didn’t hang on tight.

She glanced up from her beef and pork fried rice and said, “I have a proposition for you.”

“I’m listening.”

“Let me take out the two partners.”

Nick shook his head, thinking of Tuscany. “I’m not giving up my fees.”

“I don’t want your fees,” Jo said. “I want your experience. I could be like your unpaid intern. Take me through the two jobs. Show me where I’m going wrong. I was lucky this morning. But I want to be smart.”

Nick thought about it and said, “We have to finish them both in three days.”

“There’s a time limit?”

“That’s right,” Nick said. “We need to be done before the weekend.”

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Bob Toomey 2025