Pay dirt, p.8
Pay Dirt, page 8
“Can’t tell you anything,” I said. “You know it all already. However, if I were investigating, I’d wonder what use you were making of this house. Did you store stuff here, figuring the dealers and users wouldn’t bother about it? Posters and bullhorns, or something bigger, more worrying if a sheriff’s deputy found it?”
He gave a bark of something like a laugh. “You are so far off base you’re not even playing the right game.”
He stomped over to his van and took off. The doors rattled and the tires were balding, but the engine ran quietly, and he didn’t leave an exhaust trail.
I looked after him. “In court Monday, the judge said Santich didn’t own the land, that some corporation did.”
“I went over to the recorder’s office,” Zoë said. “The little bit of the property Brett hung on to includes this house. He still owns and farms that field”—she pointed toward where I’d parked my car—“but he lives over in that subdivision around Yancy School. He raised the money to build it, but then he got slammed in the downturn and had to sell the houses to some hedge fund. Back in the 1930s the Santiches were super rich. Gertrude Perec’s family couldn’t hang on to the farmland they owned here on Yancy, so they sold to Santiches, I think to Brett’s grandfather. Anyway, it must be unlucky land because whoever owns it can’t afford to keep it.”
She laughed. “Maybe I’ll do a little paragraph on how it’s unlucky to own land on Yancy—can the new resort going up break the curse?”
“If Brett is bankrupt, why is Trig so hot against him?”
Zoë shrugged. “Maybe it’s like Judge Bhagavatula said, Trig didn’t do his homework. Anyway, Brett’s family are like so many farmers around here, they can’t compete with the big corporate farms in the west of the state, and so they scramble to hang on to their land. Only Brett lost most of his with some unlucky investments. It’s a shame, really, that Trig doesn’t understand the odds farm families are fighting. They could use some support.”
“What about the Dundees? Are they another local family?”
Zoë shook her head. “I never heard of them. Not that that means anything—I didn’t grow up here and so all these family connections, they’re something I have to learn as I go along. I’ve been working for the Herald for two years now and I’m hoping it will lead to better things—which this drug story could make happen.”
Her face brightened, and she put a hand on my arm. “Why don’t you stay and find out what’s been going on in this house, and who the Dundees are. I could report the investigation as it unfolds, like a docudrama!”
“And your twelve thousand a year would cover paying for my time and expertise? I charge by the hour, plus expenses, which in this case would include moving my household to Kansas. Why don’t you investigate and do a daily podcast on your progress? That would get you a big audience and a new career direction.”
“It would be better with two people,” she wheedled.
My face must have looked ominous—she hastily moved away to take pictures of the outside of the house. While I was waiting on her, I got a call from someone named Jenna Ettenberg who said she was the Granev family’s attorney.
“Valerie Granev wants to talk to you. She’s staying with her daughter at the local hospital; if you could meet her there it would be a help. Text her when you get to the lobby.”
11
Take Me to the Limit
Valerie Granev’s face belonged in a funhouse mirror. She’d started the day yesterday with makeup, but her foundation had caked and cracked. She had mascara smears under her eyes, accentuating her look of unbearable grief.
“How is Sabrina doing?” I asked.
“Not too well.” She swallowed, looked away. “When we got to the hospital, she was screaming, having frightening hallucinations. She said monsters were waiting outside the window, she begged me to make them go away.
“I—I was useless, I thought if we went to the window she would see—but the nurses explained it was hallucinations from cold and dehydration and”—she flinched—“whatever drugs she’d taken. At least when they put in the IVs she calmed down. They let me sleep with her and at seven she woke up and screamed ‘they’re still there, they’re still there, make them go away.’ I told her that Daddy had gotten rid of them and she went back to sleep, but right before you got here she started seeing them again.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “I’ve been so—negligent. I saw at Christmas that she wasn’t well. Ram—my husband—we’re an athletic family. For New Year’s, we always go to a place in Utah to ski. Sabrina couldn’t ski—this year—her broken ankle wasn’t healing—she was in a lot of pain. She was already too thin, not eating, not working at her rehab.”
Granev kneaded her fingers. “I pushed her to take her rehab seriously. She—she was ranked among the top twenty young U.S. soccer players before the ankle break. Twenty Under Twenty. She’s competitive and ambitious.”
A sob caught up with her.
“She was. That’s my nature, and she has it, too. But at Christmas she was apathetic, didn’t seem to care, and all I did was scold her.
“I flew to Chicago at Thanksgiving and saw she wasn’t making an effort with her rehab. I lectured her but didn’t really pay attention—I was under a deadline, as if killing more Russians was more worth my time than my own daughter.”
Her mouth twisted in a spasm of self-loathing. “Instead, I tried getting her housemates to push her to do her rehab, but of course they couldn’t. It wasn’t fair to them. I—I didn’t want to see the problem.”
I nodded, not speaking.
“The young Black woman Sabrina lives with—the basketball star—she tried to tell me when I came back with Sabrina after the winter break, and all I did was tell Sabrina to follow—what’s her name? Angela? Angela’s training schedule and she’d be back on her feet. How cold was that? The truth is, I was annoyed with Sabrina for not taking her career as seriously as Angela takes hers. I didn’t want to know she was struggling with these damned drugs.
“And now—we don’t know how much damage she has. Brain, body—will she walk properly, let alone play, or have a family—” The enormity of her daughter’s losses crashed in on her, and she began to weep in earnest.
A hospital staffer stopped near us, looking down in concern. Water? I mouthed. She nodded and came back in a moment with a bottle and a cup.
“Were you able to reach your husband?” I asked. “I gather he’s up in the mountains away from normal phone service.”
“Yes, wilderness camping is his great love and he longs to run year-round programs, and get the resources for less-able children. We used to go camping in the Uinta Mountains when Sabrina was little, but then my career got more demanding, and when Sabrina was a teen she wanted to spend spring break at soccer camps or with her friends. I—I used to argue with Ram that he didn’t care about her future, and he said I cared enough for two, so he turned his attention to the youth programs he works with.”
She rubbed her eyes, further smearing the mascara.
“Ram is hiking down from the camp, but with the kids and equipment it will take hours and then—anyway, as soon as it’s safe to move Sabrina, we’re getting her to a rehab clinic that works with—with addicts, so there’s no point him coming here. Although maybe if Ram shows up he can persuade her that Daddy got rid of her monsters.”
She went over her failures like an accountant with a spreadsheet, her coldness, her imperceptiveness, her absorption in her avionics career. “I loved being one of the ‘Forty Under Forty STEM Women to Look Out For.’” Her voice cracked. “And when Sabrina was one of Twenty Under Twenty, I was so proud, like these numbers mean something more than paying attention to your own child.”
She was crying in earnest. I let her cry, found more water and a box of tissues.
She finally wound down and looked at me. “I know I owe her life to you, the police told me that, but how—how did you know where to find her?”
“I didn’t,” I said. “I’m a stranger in this town. When I asked questions of likely people, the house where I found her was the only thing close to a lead I turned up. I wasn’t expecting to find your daughter, but I thought if there was a party going on, I’d get leads on other places to look for someone trying to score—trying to find meds. The FBI agent ordered me to stop looking, in case she’d been kidnapped, but I thought finding leads to dealers wouldn’t interfere with a kidnapping investigation.”
“Agent Stamoran thinks you got her to go out there. He said you need to look like a hero after making a big mistake with a different college student last fall.”
“Yes, he made that slanderous and outrageous statement in the police station last night. I don’t know why he felt he needed to discredit me, but he is, in fact, wrong.”
“He says you can’t prove you didn’t take Sabrina out there.” She didn’t sound accusatory, more anguished and uncertain.
“You can’t prove a negative, Ms. Granev.” Big lies, small lies, all circulating on the net, destroying life after life. The sheer tawdriness of life today made the whole world appear gray.
I summoned what I hoped was a reassuring tone. “Even though we disagree on my role in what happened to Sabrina, your FBI agent should be able to track down the dealers who sold drugs to her. The Bureau has the resources for that kind of work.”
She gave a little headshake. “He’s not my agent. I don’t know who called the Bureau about Sabrina’s disappearance. It wasn’t me, but anyone who heard me on the phone with you or with Ram—I was so distraught I wasn’t careful where I spoke.”
She pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead. “I can’t finish a coherent thought today. Agent Stamoran—maybe old Mr. Tulloh called the Bureau. If he heard about Sabrina—everyone jostles for space close to the head man—anyone could have told him. When you’re a billionaire, you know everyone wants to do you favors, even the FBI, so maybe that’s why they sent Stamoran over from the Topeka office.”
She produced a smile to keep from crying again. “I saw Stamoran this morning. He says since Sabrina wasn’t kidnapped, the Bureau doesn’t have jurisdiction to track down dealers, that it’s the business of the local police. I know I should care more, get on some soapbox and demand they protect other people’s children, but that doesn’t matter to me.”
“Don’t add that to the list of other things you’re beating yourself up over,” I said. “You have one job right now, looking after your daughter. The local cops are good; they’ll follow up.”
“There’s one thing I wanted to ask you.” She looked up at me again. Her mascara had turned into black stalactites, reaching from her eyes to her jaw.
“I know Sabrina is hallucinating when she’s screaming about the monsters coming to the window, but what if she really saw something last night? If it’s someone who could come after her—I—she doesn’t seem to remember anything else. I’m asking you—you did what no one else could, finding Sabrina. I want you to find out what she really saw when she was in that house.”
“No!” My response was involuntary. She winced, and I tried to soften my answer—my home was in Chicago, my clients as well as my elderly neighbor needed me, I was here without clothes or even my computer.
“Today and tomorrow,” she said. “I can pay whatever your fee is, send it by Zelle to your bank. The FBI and the police, they won’t pay attention. You could go out to that place and see—I don’t know what a detective can see.”
I started to say “no” more forcefully, and then I thought of the blanket by the front door, with blood on it still fresh last night at midnight. A party had been interrupted, everyone but Sabrina had fled. She’d been screaming when she saw me, nonsense syllables I’d thought at the time, but maybe she’d thought I was one of her monsters.
It hadn’t occurred to me last night, but I’d gone into a house where a party had been at full swing not too much earlier, and yet I hadn’t seen any cars leaving as I walked to the house from the farm track where I’d parked. The blood on the blanket was just starting to congeal. That meant someone had been dripping blood less than fifteen minutes before my arrival.
I pulled up one of my contracts on the app I’d created for my business. Valerie filled it out and signed it, including her private cell phone number, and sent me four thousand dollars without blinking.
12
Monsters
I parked in the same place I’d used before and walked down the road to the Dundee house. The day was dull, with snow threatening. The wind had risen, stirring dust devils in the plowed field on the south side of the road.
Despite the cold air, I moved slowly up the drive, trying to see if anyone had driven here after Zoë and I left this morning. I was hoping to find signs of the Omicron boys’ Porsche. The county hadn’t sent a crime scene unit in yet; the fraternity crew might have come to collect leftover product, but I didn’t see any signs of them.
The kitchen door was unlocked. Trig apparently hadn’t tried the handle but had gone straight for a rock. He wanted to go inside, but when I suggested he was hiding something in the house he’d been scornful: I was so far off base I wasn’t even playing the right game.
What was the right game? Drugs? The protests he was running with the woman named Clarina? Or had Cady Perec’s firing felt personal to him?
I waited for a moment inside the kitchen door, ready to run if anyone tried to jump me, but the house felt empty.
The kitchen looked worse in daylight. When I turned on a light, roaches skittered away from the cartons of food. I could see more drug detritus—not needles, but the foil wraps and test-tube bottles that tabs and powders come in. Ivy hadn’t shown for her cleanup gig. Or she’d come, not seen her pay, and left again.
I stood still, listening for a creaking floorboard, stifled cough, but didn’t hear anything except the wind rattling the windows. I moved past the downstairs rooms into the front hall.
The blanket was gone. Someone had returned for it. Someone could be in here now, silent as a grave, waiting for me.
“Don’t go there, V.I.” I said out loud. “Keep your head.”
I climbed the stairs to the upper floor, stomping loudly on the narrow risers. At the top, I hugged the wall, making myself as small a target as possible, but no one appeared, no one shot at me.
I checked the three small bedrooms, found a bathroom tucked into what had been a closet, saw nothing.
The window in the room where I’d found Sabrina overlooked the woods behind the house. If she’d seen monsters, they would have come across the fields or through the woods. Maybe deer or some other animal that her drug-riddled brain had turned into something from a horror film.
Back in the kitchen, I saw another door that I’d overlooked before. The cellar. I found a string attached to a naked bulb that swung above my head like a noose.
Another steep narrow staircase. No handrail. In movies, you yell at the heroine not to go down those stairs. I wasn’t a heroine, though, but something less dazzling, an exhausted detective far from home.
I almost missed the woman. She was propped against the wall under the stairs. Her head had flopped to one side, but her eyes were open, irises cloudy. She was wearing a down coat that someone had stuffed her into, unskillfully, one arm in, one showing where her clothes had been ripped away from her body.
I didn’t touch her, but bent over her. Bra unhooked, pants pulled away from her hips. Her feet were bare.
The blood on last night’s blanket had come from the back of her head. Someone had smashed it, hard, probably more than once. Blood and bone chips had fallen onto the coat’s collar.
“Poverina,” I whispered, blinking back tears. “Who hated you this much?”
13
Whose Woods These Are
“You have serious explaining to do.” Deke Everard’s voice was raw with fatigue. He probably hadn’t been to bed at all since dropping me at Norma’s place in the predawn.
“What would you like me to explain?”
“What you really know about the Dundee house. You conveniently uncovered two crimes there in”—he looked at his wrist—“just about twelve hours. Don’t bat your eyes and tell me you never heard of the place before.”
“I’m not an eye batter, Sergeant, but I never heard of the place before last night.”
He smacked the tabletop. “Don’t give me that crap. The DA is looking into what we can charge you with. Obstruction, concealing a crime for starters. Just so you know, that fed has shown up again, making more noises about kidnapping.”
We were in an interrogation room at the LKPD headquarters. The building was new, so new that the interrogation rooms didn’t yet smell of blood, sweat, and tears.
“Who was the woman whose body I found?” I asked.
“Clarina Coffin. Tell me what you know about her.”
“Nothing,” I said. Zoë had told me about Clarina Coffin’s role in getting Cady Perec fired, but you don’t do yourself any favors by rambling on to the cops.
Deke demanded that I tell him what I was doing at the Dundee place this morning.
“You know I didn’t put Ms. Coffin’s body in that basement,” I said. “Nor did I hit her over the head hard enough to kill her.”
“You had blood on you last night,” he said. “Where did it come from?”
“A blanket by the front door. I was terrified Sabrina Granev’s body might be inside, but when I unrolled it, nothing was there.”
“And you didn’t think to report it?”
“I mentioned the blood to you, but in the stress of finding Sabrina, I forgot about the blanket.” I kept my voice steady. Don’t push on a cop who’s already close to the edge. “There’d been a party going on, which apparently broke up abruptly. You surely noticed all the booze and foil wraps and so on, right? No cars when I got to the house last night. But if I’d thought about the bloody blanket at all, I’d have guessed a fight among the partygoers. You find out who set up the party? Was it the Omicron boys?”
