Pay dirt, p.12
Pay Dirt, page 12
If Peter ever got back to me, if we ever got back together, how would he feel about becoming Peter Warshawski Sanson?
Lou pulled up in front of the house and turned off the engine. “The dead woman, Coffin, she came to talk to us a year or so back.”
“What did she want?”
“She was looking for old diaries or letters, any kind of family papers we had. She said she was talking to all the ‘people of color,’ she called us, in the county, hoping to do a proper history of Black folks in Kansas.”
“She say anything about what she was writing? I mean, a book, or some articles, or a podcast?”
Lou shook his head. “I didn’t pay that much attention. Something about her seemed a little off-kilter, if you know what I mean. Ed and I, we talked it over with some of the neighbors. One Black woman over at the university, she thought it was an opportunity to get more complete Black history out in the world, but the prof ain’t from here, so she didn’t have the kind of documents the Clarina woman was looking for.”
“Was Clarina Black?” I asked. “I haven’t seen a clear photo of her.”
“Ed and I thought she was a wannabe, thought maybe she wanted to produce a history to prove she was.”
He got out of the truck. I followed him behind the barn, where they’d parked the Toyota. It was exactly the car I needed—beige, a couple of dings on the fenders, but in good working order. Lou handed me the Toyota keys. I gave him seven twenties—a week’s rental plus the insurance.
“You get in over your head, and you don’t call me and Ed, that will be the crime we won’t forgive or forget, you hear? And fuck’s sake, Warshawski, start eating. That skinny white-girl look is never attractive, least of all on you.”
“Got it,” I said, a lump in my throat. I’d been needing a true ally down here.
17
New Life in Old Detectives
The route back into town led past the Boat Yard. I pulled into their lot. Ten a.m., business was light. Greg, the bartending owner, was talking with a couple of truckers standing at the counter drinking coffee.
Holly was setting up tables for lunch. She looked up when I came in and frowned, worried.
“Am I too late for breakfast?” I asked. “A short stack?”
She nodded and went to the kitchen window to put in the order, bringing a thermos of coffee on her way back to me. She poured without asking if I wanted it.
“I saw where you found your missing girl out in that house on Yancy.”
“I did,” I agreed. “I didn’t feed you to the police, if you’re worried about that. Or your sister, but I wondered if she showed up yesterday morning to clean the place.”
She shook her head. “I was scared about that when I saw the news, but she said someone told her to stay away.”
“Who?” I asked.
She hunched a shoulder.
“I’d like to talk to her,” I said, “see what she can tell me about who’s running those parties.”
“Please don’t,” Holly begged. “She needs the money.”
“No one’s going to be doing anything in that house for quite some time,” I said. “It’s a major crime scene, and anyway, now that the sheriff knows someone’s selling drugs there, they’ll shut it down.”
“But she could be arrested as an accessory or something, if the police learn she knew drugs were being used there and didn’t report it.”
A ding from the kitchen window called her to pick up my order. She set the plate in front of me, said, “Anything else?” and left the tab on the table. She stayed well away from me—when I got up to pay, she went into the kitchen, leaving me to settle the bill with Greg.
“You weren’t harassing Holly, were you”—he held my credit card close to his face—“V.I. Warshki?”
I shook my head. “I was looking for someone I thought she might know, that’s all.”
He eyed me narrowly. “Not that I don’t appreciate your business, but if it means upsetting my team, maybe you should eat somewhere else.”
I smiled, signed the slip, average tip so I didn’t look guilty. “Your team is lucky to have you in their corner.”
The truckers followed me out, watched me get into the Camry before climbing back into their rigs. Holly was lucky to have a protective boss. Greg was lucky to have loyal customers. I was lucky for some reason. I just couldn’t put my finger on it at the moment.
The strip mall where I’d bought my change of clothes yesterday was right behind the Boat Yard, but I thought it prudent to leave the parking lot. My overnight bag had been in the Mustang’s trunk. The police hadn’t let me take it with me, which meant I had to buy yet more jeans, socks, toothbrush, change of underwear.
Murray called while I was clothes shopping to say he’d also come up blank on Clarina. “Maybe the Coffin woman was a Chinese or Iranian spy, with such a deeply buried backstory she didn’t know herself who she was.”
I gave him a full interview while sitting in the Camry, including all the details of finding Clarina, and finding the blanket in my trunk.
Before he hung up, Murray said casually, “Sabrina’s plight seems to have had some positive fallout. Some anonymous angel gave her father a hundred grand to build a youth camp in the mountains.”
“Any hints on the ID?” I asked.
“No one’s using their trumpet yet.”
I hadn’t bothered looking at the Granevs or the Perecs on my different news feeds. I squinted now at the screen, the gray day making it hard to read.
It was an Albuquerque story picked up on the national wires because my rescue of Sabrina had made the national news. “If this happened before one week ago, I am dancing up the mountain, so happy to have money for my youth camp,” Ramir Granev said. “Now? Now I am grateful, very grateful, but my own child, my own heart, lies between life and death. My heart is sliced in two: joy, sorrow.”
“You still there?” Murray demanded.
“Just catching up on the story. Ramir seems like a good guy,” I said. “His wife is more puzzling. I was looking to see if she’s mentioned anywhere. After unraveling on me and persuading me to go look for monsters at the drug house where I found her child, she told me we were done. They’d gotten a spot for Sabrina at some exclusive Florida facility. She was medevacked out yesterday afternoon.”
Murray whistled. “Private clinic? Could run over fifty K for a month. Maybe Ram will have to leverage his gift for youth camping or whatever it is.”
“Valerie is a higher-up in Tulloh Industries’ aeronautics division. The Granevs probably have gold-plated insurance and cash in the bank, too. The part that bothers me is that at the moment I found a likely source of her daughter’s terrified screams, Valerie axed me. I’m wondering if it was under pressure from the FBI.”
“Why? Jurisdictional jealousy?”
“Yesterday morning, when she was sharing her fears and so on, Valerie said it was Tulloh who got the Bureau involved. She seemed uncomfortable with the agent, guy named Stamoran. Stamoran acts as though he wants to print and book me but doesn’t have enough evidence. The LKPD is also gunning for me, so I’m supposed to stay here and wait for the DA to decide whether to charge me with being an outsider in Lawrence’s power structure. It didn’t move the local sergeant to know I’m here without a computer or clothes or toothpaste, so I’m driving up tomorrow to collect what I need for a week or two down here.”
“Oh, boy. Warshawski, the fugitive from justice. This is going to be my story when they pick you up, not that Kansas newbie’s.”
“The Kansas newbie gets twelve thousand a year to do real journalism. She’s making an amazing job of it, so don’t try to push her to the margins. Anyway, can you let Sal know I’m coming? I’ll call Lotty and Mr. Contreras. We can have a good old-fashioned get-together at the Glow before I head south again.”
When we finished, I saw I had a message from my lawyer, Freeman Carter. He’d found a criminal lawyer in Kansas City for me, a woman named Faye Mitchell who’d been in law school with one of Freeman’s associates. She’d be expecting a call from me. I didn’t tell Freeman I was planning a quick trip north, or that I wouldn’t call Mitchell until I was back in Lawrence. I wasn’t really fleeing the jurisdiction, but better to ask forgiveness, and so on.
I called my Chicago clients to assure them their affairs were uppermost in my mind. Yes, I knew I’d been in the news over a murder and a drug house; I’d be in Kansas for a week sorting things out but I would be taking care of everything they needed from me, not to worry.
I looked at myself in the rearview mirror. Dark circles under the eyes, cheekbones still too gaunt. I am a chronic overachiever, I chanted. I can free myself of suspicion, find Coffin’s murderer, solve the drug-use problem of Douglas County, and run my business. Come on, V.I., I adjured myself. Breathe new life into old detectives.
My final call was to Mr. Contreras. He was ecstatic that I was coming home, even for a day. He didn’t want me taking Peppy, but he understood, doll, he understood she’d look after me. After forty-five minutes, I gently disengaged myself so that I could move into the Perec garage.
I apologized to Cady for being late—I’d said I would be there an hour earlier.
She shrugged. “I wasn’t doing much. Gram is on me to stop moping around feeling sorry for myself, so I’m tutoring in the library’s after-school program, but I still need to pull my socks up and get marching, Gram says. Apply for jobs, rethink my career goals, all the stuff that self-help books tell you marks the difference between success and failure.”
“I always wonder about those books,” I said. “They seem to me to be a form of fantasy fiction. ‘In my dream world I was an Olympic diver who became the person who brokered peace in Sudan. In my real life I’m a checkout clerk in a grocery store.’ Maybe with artificial intelligence coming to dominate us, we won’t be able to tell the difference, but for now, keep doing what you’re doing.”
She laughed and showed me where to park. She escorted me up the stairs, which ran outside the garage, mercifully on the far side from the house so that Gertrude couldn’t monitor my comings and goings.
It was a small space, but one with plenty of light. The furniture seemed to be leftovers from generations of Gertrude’s family: a bureau with a marble top and an old streaked mirror, a rocking chair, a narrow couch with crocodiles carved into the arms and legs. A bookcase next to the narrow bed held a selection of mysteries and Kansas history books.
Cady had clearly scrubbed it down in my honor, and had even put a bunch of flowers in the middle of the table.
“Gram built this place when my mom was pregnant with me, hoping she would stay here, only of course she died when I was a few months old.” Cady offered this in a matter-of-fact voice, repeating a story she’d been told many times.
She watched while I put away my few belongings. “Have you learned anything about Clarina?”
“So far, only that no one knows anything about her, except for her obsession with Kansas history. I have to stay here until I clear my name, but I’m going to drive up to Chicago tomorrow to get my computer and clothes and so on. I’ll be bringing my dog back with me, so let me know if I need to look for a different place.”
She assured me the dog would be fine as long as she was housebroken. She seemed eager for a longer tête-a-tête, but I told her I had to start investigating or I’d be in Gertrude’s garage until Memorial Day.
As I drove off, I saw her in the rearview mirror, shoulders slumped when she thought I was no longer watching her.
I made my way around the town on side streets that turned into county roads, checking for company. Lawrence was well supplied with traffic cams; I expect Deke could track me online if he knew about the Camry, but at least for now no one was following me.
The Prairie View Mobile Home Park where Clarina had lived was between Yancy Hill and the town. If Clarina had been an energetic walker, she could have gotten to the Dundee house and the Yancy school on foot.
Some prairie remained for park residents to view, but the north side of the development faced a fertilizer plant, while the east backed onto a busy county road. The entrance, on the west side, listed the amenities: Wi-Fi, running water and electricity, a community room with a gym, and a park. The manager’s home/office immediately inside the entrance was clearly marked.
I pulled into a parking space next to the office trailer. A pair of cement blocks served as a step up to a muddy stoop, but the doorframe was freshly painted. The manager’s name was also freshly painted on a white plaque with a border of bright flowers: mignon travers.
She buzzed me in and called out, “To your right.”
To my right was her home office, filled with green plants along with a television, a recliner, and a desk. Travers was in the recliner, playing a computer game on a tablet with fierce attention. She was a heavy woman, her dark hair scraped back into a bun that accentuated her round cheeks.
She didn’t glance up from her screen. “You looking to rent or buy?”
“Neither. I’m a detective, I want to look at Clarina Coffin’s place.”
“Sheriff and city cops both have been through here already. Which one you with?” She looked up for a moment, eyes shrewd behind her dark heavy frames.
“I’m private. Coffin was a historian. I’ve been hired to look for her papers, to see if she has anything in shape to be published.” I took my PI license from my wallet, but Mignon wasn’t interested.
“Somebody already went through that place. God knows what they were looking for. Cops was plenty mad about it when they saw the damage, like I’m supposed to be a security guard or something. All I do is make sure trash on the outside of the homes is picked up, rent collected on time, nobody shooting guns inside the homes, even if they’re the owners, ’cause we all live close together and between you, me, and that geranium over there, the walls are not that sturdy.”
“Is it true someone was shooting at roaches?” I asked.
“They said, not me.” Her thumbs were moving furiously.
“Even if someone went through Coffin’s place already, I’d still like to see for myself.”
“Got to earn your fee, I suppose.” She flicked her eyes at the wall by the door. “Keys are hanging there. 1732 Squash Blossom Lane.”
Duplicate keys for all the homes were hanging on a pegboard, addresses written on white disks in a neat hand. I found 1732 easily enough. Anyone could have found it if Travers ever left her recliner long enough for someone to pop in.
“I understand she sublet. Who was the owner?”
“You ever going to finish talking? I’m concentrating here. I have to answer back to the cops, but not to a private.”
“I’ll be gone so fast you won’t know I was ever here,” I said. “Just tell me who she rented from.”
“A fund, like a bush. Not local, but who knows where they’re located. They own about twenty of the units, and we only have but forty-eight.”
“A hedge fund,” I said, but she didn’t answer. Hedge funds, Squash Blossoms, Mignon herself, a kind of plant. It was an effort to turn a spartan space into a garden. The hedge fund was probably not much help.
The homes themselves were trailers, some single wide, some double, set on a grid of streets around a rectangle of grass with playground equipment—I guess that was the park part of the community. I drove there and inspected the layout on my map app. Squash Blossom Lane was four streets down. I parked and walked over.
The homes were close together, close enough that if neighbors weren’t mindful about their TV volume everyone on both sides could hear it. Even though it was the middle of the day, plenty of people were inside, devices loudly competing among country, rap, and soaps.
The February freeze and thaw had left the ground raw, but some dormant grasses were still there, along with a few spindly bushes. The streets were cleaner than in my neighborhood at home; Mignon did a good job of making sure people picked up their trash, or maybe Kansans were naturally tidier than Chicagoans.
1732 Squash Blossom was a single wide, which meant a single bedroom at one end, with a bathroom tucked in between that, and a kitchen-dining-living room at the end where the door was.
I studied the lock before I stuck the key in. It hadn’t been jimmied, and the hinges were all straight. Whoever came in before me either was skilled with a picklock or, more likely, picked up a key while Mignon wasn’t looking.
My predecessors in the search hadn’t been interested in hiding their presence. Every possession Clarina Coffin had owned had been pulled from cupboards and drawers and dumped where the intruders had stood when they examined it. I could hear them cursing, getting angrier as they moved through the narrow space, because the destruction in the bedroom was worse than in the main room. The couch had been upended and the cushions unzipped, but in the bedroom, they’d slit open the mattress and the pillows.
Mignon, or the hedge fund, had turned the power off to the trailer. It was dark and cold and my phone flash didn’t give enough light for a thorough inspection, but I wore down the battery poking through the debris. I didn’t find any personal papers, or even scholarly papers. Of course, I was third in line. I was assuming her killers had been the first—they’d killed her looking for something, and had been furious when they couldn’t find it. They or the cops would have impounded any digital devices.
The only personal items I found, if you could call them personal, were three pictures. One was a black-and-white photo of a white woman in the kind of dress I associated with Mary Todd Lincoln—a tight bodice and full skirt. She was sitting with her hands folded in her lap. The print was old and faded; the black of her dress had turned a kind of sienna.
I would have thought the woman was wearing mourning, except she seemed to have a wreath of flowers looped around the wings of hair that covered her ears. She had a large brooch pinned to where the collar met at her throat, and she was staring at the camera with seeming defiance.
The vandals had broken the frame around the photo. A piece of glass was embedded in the woman’s skirt. I removed it, carefully, trying not to tear the paper itself.
