J.M.J.

Author's note: Thanks for continuing to read this story! Thank you especially to everyone who took the time to review the last chapter (or any chapter since I posted the last one): t4swp, ErinJordon, Candylou, Bkworm4life4, Guest, max2013, and Cherylann Rivers! I do want to let you know that I think this story will be a little shorter than what will be typical for the rest of this series, probably around ten chapters. Later stories in this series will probably be twenty or more chapters. I hope you enjoy!

Chapter IV

An Unexpected Visit

The unmarked police car drew up in front of the intimidating residence of Alessandro Moretti. It was a large house, more of a mansion, really, surrounded by a tall iron fence that defied anyone to try to enter without welcome. The two officers in the car were feeling very much that they would have rather visited Moretti in his office, but he was at home today, so they didn't have that option.

A security guard approached the car, and Fenton, who was driving, rolled the window down. "Afternoon, officers," the guard greeted them, using the business-like politeness that all Moretti's mere hirelings used when dealing with the police. It was the more powerful members of the organization who dared to be defiant. "Are you looking to see Mr. Moretti?"

"Yes," Fenton said, giving the man a curious appraisal. Despite the car being unmarked and neither man inside it being in uniform, he had still picked them out as cops. Perhaps someone from Moretti's office had given warning that two detectives were on their way to pay a call. "It's an urgent matter and we need to see him immediately."

"Do you have an appointment, officer?" the guard asked, looking at a clipboard which no doubt showed all the appointments that Moretti had for that day.

"No," Fenton admitted, "but as I said, it's a very important matter. We won't take up much of Mr. Moretti's time."

"I'll have to call in and make sure it's all right," the guard said, adding with surprisingly little insolence, "Unless you have a search warrant, of course."

"We just want to talk to him," Fenton assured the man.

The guard went into the booth beside the gate and, through the glass, Fenton saw him pick up a telephone receiver.

The officer sitting in the passenger's seat was more interested in gawking around at as much of the estate as he could see than in watching the security guard. "I've never been to this place before," he commented. "I'd always heard that Moretti was loaded, but I never expected a set-up like this. Makes you wonder about that old saying about crime not paying."

"According to Moretti, he didn't make his fortune through crime, Brink, so I wouldn't go bringing that point up to him," Fenton told him. "In fact, how about you leave the talking to me? I think that might be the best way to try to draw Moretti out."

"Anything you say, Lieutenant," Brink replied.

A moment later, the guard returned to say that Moretti was willing to talk to the officers. He opened the gate, and Fenton drove through. The detective parked in front of the house, and the two men went to the door. A butler showed them to an extravagantly-furnished sitting room.

Brink looked about him in admiration at the paintings on the wall and the plush chairs and the thick carpet. "If I didn't know where the money for this place came from, I'd be impressed," he whispered to Fenton. "As it is, I wouldn't feel right even just sitting in one of those chairs."

Fenton shushed him, and just in time, because the butler returned a moment later, escorting Alessandro Moretti himself. It wasn't the first time either officer had seen Moretti, but neither could help feeling the same sensation of disappointment that each felt every time they saw him. Moretti was hardly the suave, stylish mobster that television promised, or that might be expected from his home. Instead, he was a little, stooped, old man whose only hair left was a wavy, little cloud of gray and who wheezed when he talked. His health seemed to have taken a turn for the worse since the last time Fenton had seen him, for he hobbled in with a cane and practically collapsed into the first chair that he came to, waving for his callers to sit as well as he tried to catch his breath. Fenton and Brink obeyed the request, Brink sitting just a little too uneasily to look natural.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Moretti," Fenton greeted him to fill the silence. "I'm Lieutenant Fenton Hardy and this is Officer…"

"Yes, yes," Moretti wheezed, waving his hand to punctuate his interruption. "You've both annoyed me before. Forgive my abruptness, but I'm not feeling well today."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Fenton replied out of pure politeness, but he wasn't nearly so sorry as his words let on. There was a part of him that pitied the old man in his ill health, but there was also a part that was delighted by the fact that Moretti seemed so distraught. In his present state, he might very well let much more slip out than he intended. "We'll try to make this as brief as possible. It's about the shooting yesterday. As you no doubt know, eight men were killed, five of whom were known to be in your employ."

"They weren't working for me when they got killed," Moretti said. "Once my employees are off the clock, they can do whatever they want with their time. It's none of my doing if some of them decide to get a little extra cash in illegal ways."

"Of course. Still, all five of these men did work for you, which is a strange coincidence, especially considering that this isn't the first time some of your employees have been killed."

Moretti glared at him from underneath his drooping eyelids, but then he quickly wiped the look away. "That's all it is: a coincidence. I check my employees' criminal pasts out, but I don't refuse to hire a guy just because he has a record. Most of them just want to get on with their lives, and a few of them would rather keep on breaking laws. There's nothing I can do about that."

"Could you possibly give us access to look at things like these men's schedules and their job descriptions?" Fenton requested. "They must have known each other from work, and maybe we can learn something from how often they worked the same shifts and how close together they worked and so forth."

Moretti shook his head. "That stuff's private. Can't give it to you without a court order."

"Could you at least tell me the names of any supervisors these men had?" Fenton asked without missing a beat. "They might be able to tell us what we need to know, plus they might already have some idea what these men were doing."

Whether Moretti would have agreed or not, Fenton never learned. Before he had the chance to do either, the butler returned to the room, excusing himself in the most polite terms he could manage, although it was clear he was excited about something. He bent down and whispered something to his employer. Moretti's neck stiffened and his face reddened with anger.

Then he turned to the two officers. "If you don't mind, officers, there's something I must take care of immediately."

Without giving them a chance to protest or question him, he pulled himself to his feet and hobbled out of the room on his cane. The butler followed him.

"I wonder what happened to rock his boat like that," Brink said. "Maybe that rose tattoo gang hit some more of his guys."

Rather than answering, Fenton rose from his chair and went across the room to the door. He tried the knob, but it wouldn't turn. "Whatever it is, he doesn't want us to know what it is. He's locked us in."

Brink jumped to his feet and ran to the door. He jiggled it back and forth several times but with no more result than Fenton had received. "What is he trying to prove? Locking up two police officers? I'll personally arrest him the second he opens this door!"

"It's a much bolder move than I expected from someone who's usually as careful as he is," Fenton agreed, stepping back to size up the situation more effectively. "On the other hand, he'll probably just tell us that this was a mistake and he didn't mean to lock us in. He might even blame his butler. It doesn't instill any confidence in any of us, but it really won't get us any closer to arresting him."

Brink began banging on the door with his fist and shouting at the top of his lungs, "Let us out of here, Moretti!"

A moment later, the door opened, but their rescuer was not Moretti or even the butler. Instead, it was a harried-looking young woman with her sleeves rolled up and a dust cloth in her hand. "Goodness! What happened?" she asked.

"Your boss Moretti tried to lock us in his drawing room," Brink stormed. "Where is he? I'm going to go arrest him right now!"

"Cool it, Brink," Fenton warned him. "We'll never learn anything rushing in on him and blowing up. It could have been an accident."

"I'm sure it was," the cleaning woman agreed. "This door locks by itself all the time when it's closed."

"You see?" Fenton said. "Now, you just calm down and follow my lead." He turned to the woman. "Ma'am, do you know right off where Mr. Moretti is? We haven't finished our business with him yet."

"I don't think he wants to be disturbed right now," the woman told him. "He's in a terrible temper, ever since that terrible business yesterday. When that other man came in, I thought Mr. Moretti was going to have a heart attack."

"What other man?" Fenton asked.

"I don't know. I've never seen him before, but then I haven't worked here very long. Everyone else seemed to know him and it put them all in a flurry."

"Could you just point me in the right direction?" Fenton requested. "I might want to talk to this other man, too."

The cleaning woman finally told them where to go, and the officers made their way to the door of a very private study. Brink was still all for breaking in and arresting everyone in the house, but Fenton held him back. Signaling Brink to be quiet, Fenton put his ear against the door. He could hear Moretti talking.

"Is that all you want?" he was asking in an almost broken sort of tone. "You only want to see me destroyed? What about everything I've built?"

"Who cares?" a second man replied. "The drugs are the only thing that amount to anything. The bookmaking is a thing of the past. It's too easy for people to gamble legally."

"You don't know anything about it. I make good money from it. I'm a businessman. I wouldn't be in a business that doesn't pay. Why don't you forget your grandiose ideas?"

The other man snorted in contempt. "Because I can accomplish them. These people I met, they supply the manpower, I supply the brains. It's a perfect set-up, but you need to stay out of our way, or you're going to get worse than you did yesterday."

Moretti made a sound almost like a sob. "How can you talk to your own father that way, Gregorio?"

HBHBHBHBHB

"I don't understand, Lieutenant Hardy," Brink puffed as he followed Fenton into the precinct. "We were just about to get the goods on those guys. Why did we leave before we heard anything?"

"We heard enough," Fenton told him. "We know that that was Gregorio who came to see Alessandro, we heard enough to convince me that Gregorio was behind the shooting, as well as a witnessed admission from Alessandro that he is involved in bookmaking and drugs. That's quite a bit. We might have learned more if we had stuck around, but we also could have been caught at any moment. Don't forget that cleaning woman knew where we had gone. She might have realized what she had done and decided to rectify the situation."

At the door, the two officers parted ways. Fenton went straight down the hall to where Mitch Johnson was probably still going through descriptions of various criminals to see what he could find about the rose tattoo. He stopped short when he saw Laura, Frank, and Joe sitting and waiting with Mitch.

"Laura! What are you doing here?" Fenton asked.

"We were just about to radio you," Mitch interjected. "I'm afraid things have taken a bad twist now."

"What happened?"

Laura's hands were trembling, but she was making a valiant effort to hold them steady. She was holding Joe on her lap, while Frank was sitting in the chair next to her, apparently trying very hard to understand what was going on. Laura glanced down at her two sons.

"You two stay here with Mitch," she instructed them gently. "I need to talk to your dad."

She deposited Joe on the floor, and then led Fenton back out into the hallway. Once there, she grasped his hand, needing to feel his touch to be comforted.

"Laura, what's wrong?" Fenton asked, becoming more concerned than ever.

"Someone called the house a little while ago," Laura said. "It was a man. He asked for you, and when I said you weren't there, he told me to tell you to back off the case because he knows where we live now. I didn't think it was safe to stay there, so I got the boys and brought them down here. I'm scared, Fenton. What are we going to do?"

Fenton let out a long, slow breath, processing this terrible piece of news. "You did the right thing, bringing the boys down here, Laura. Clearly, it's not safe to go back to the apartment, at least not to stay. We'll have to find someplace else for you and the boys to live until this case is solved."

"What about you?" Laura asked. "You're not going to stay there alone, are you?"

"Of course, not," Fenton assured her, "but in case someone starts following me or something, it might be better if I don't stay with you and the boys."

Laura shook her head. "I don't like that. I don't want to be apart from you."

"It's only for a little while." Fenton brushed back a strand of blonde hair that had fallen over her cheek. "I got a good break in the case today. It won't be long before we have it all tied up."

Laura took a deep, albeit shaky, breath. "Good. That helps. If it was just me, I'd still refuse to leave you, even for just a little while, but we have to think about Frank and Joe. We have to keep them safe."

"That's right." Fenton smiled at her, trying to be reassuring. "When exactly did this happen?"

Laura glanced at her wristwatch. "About an hour and a half ago. I did take time to grab some clothes for myself and the boys. I knew I wouldn't want to go back to the apartment."

"An hour and a half ago," Fenton murmured under his breath. He and Brink hadn't even arrived at the Moretti estate an hour and half ago. There was only one way Moretti could have known at that point that Fenton was on the case.

"What do we do right now?" Laura asked.

"Just wait in the office for a few minutes," Fenton told her. "I have to have a word with Mitch."

Once the two men were in the hall, they began speaking in low tones.

"So, what did you find out?" Mitch asked.

"From Moretti?" Fenton replied. "Plenty, but that can wait for the moment. Whoever threatened Laura called her before I got to Moretti's."

"So?"

"At that point in time, the only ones who would have known I was on the case were other police officers," Fenton said. "Plus, I got the feeling that Moretti was expecting us. What if he's paid off one of our officers to keep him up to date on our investigation?"