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Rick was going to spend Sunday with Tamsen and Justin, so we agreed to table our review of the material Tiffany had found at the Center for Infusion Therapy until that evening. That morning I drove over to Crossing Commons with Rochester. It was one of the first apartment complexes in Stewart’s Crossing, and had been around since I was a teenager. Back then, it attracted what people called “the lower classes,” which meant somebody who couldn’t afford to buy a house.
It had been completely renovated a few years before and now advertised “apartment homes.” If I hadn’t inherited my father’s townhouse, I might have ended up there – it was a haven for the recently divorced and those who’d lost houses during the great recession.
Long rectangular buildings were punctuated with doors to first-floor units, and to staircases to the second floor. Faux-colonial touches decorated the otherwise bland exteriors – spread-winged eagles over each door, classical pediments and square light fixtures. Dark blue wood shutters surrounded each window against white siding.
I parked in front of building fourteen, by the door that led to Doug’s second floor unit. As soon as I got out of the car, Rochester jumped across my seat and hurried over to a bush and peed, as if he’d been holding it all through the ten-minute drive.
A woman watched us from the first floor window. She waved her finger in a “no” gesture, and I waved back and smiled.
Rochester didn’t like the claustrophobic staircase up to the second floor, but I flicked on the light switch and pushed against his rump, and he scampered up to the small landing, then sat on his butt and barked once. “I’m coming,” I grumbled. “I only have two legs, remember?”
The smell of trash and spoiled food assaulted us as I opened the door. Rochester rushed immediately to the garbage can in the kitchen and I had to hurry behind him to keep him from eating anything.
The kitchen trash can was nearly overflowing with fast-food wrappers and soda cups. I sealed up the bag and put it on top of a plastic table on Doug’s small balcony, which looked out at a narrow hedgerow of oaks and maples that shielded the complex from the gas station next door. I left the sliding glass door open to air the place out and began cleaning up.
The apartment was clearly a bachelor pad, and the only personal touches were a couple of photos of his kids and a wardrobe of dark suits and white shirts. I packed up his clothes into a pair of suitcases from the bottom of the closet, threw away the half-opened bottles of hotel shampoo and body wash. He had a good quality Eastern sweater, maybe a relic of his student years, and I thought it might fit Ethan.
Rochester sprawled out on the balcony while I worked. At least he wasn’t getting underfoot, I thought, as I ferried trash out to the dumpster and stacked the luggage and a box of Doug’s personal stuff in my trunk.
I left his laptop for last. Doug had kept a handwritten page with all his passwords beside it, so I didn’t have to hack in order to snoop around. The passwords were all combinations of his kids’ names and what I assumed were their birthdates.
The laptop was one of the few things I thought Catherine would want; perhaps one of her kids could use it. But I couldn’t hand over a computer without knowing what was on it, right? Suppose Doug had a collection of porn, for example? Imagine the horror a kid could experience. So I had an excuse to snoop around.
And of course, there might be some clue to Doug’s death. Nothing as explicit as a suicide note, but maybe a motive someone had to kill him.
I logged into his Gmail account and began to sort through the mail there, deleting the junk and putting aside anything I wanted to look more closely at.
There were several messages with red flags, and I clicked through to the first, from ucwashwax@yahoo.com.
Dude. You promised I could get my $$ back anytime. Why are you stalling?
There was no signature, and no indication that Doug had answered the email. I right-clicked on the address to see if it had a person’s name attached, but there was none.
The second message was grimmer.
Dude. I know people who will hurt you if you don’t get me my $$ ASAP.
Someone was threatening Doug about getting money back. Was it money this person had lent him? Or invested with him at Beauceron?
I sat back to think about how I could trace that address and heard the sound of paper crumpling from the second bedroom, which I presumed Doug had kept so that his kids would have a place to stay over.
Rochester was on the floor with a Jersey map beneath him, and he’d dripped a big glob of saliva right over Hudson County, just west of Manhattan. As I pulled the map out from beneath him I spotted Union City.
“Hold on,” I said to Rochester. “Union City. UC.”
He scratched his head with his back leg. “Once again, you’re a genius, boy.” I scratched the place he’d been trying to get at then went back to Doug’s laptop. There was no website for Union City Wash and Wax, but there was a Facebook page, with a bunch of likes and positive reviews. One of them was from Tiffany Lopez, who praised the staff for their attention to detail. “Ask for Alex and he’ll give you a good deal,” she wrote.
I remembered that Shawn Brumberger had let slip that Alex had invested money in Beauceron’s REIT. The messages demonstrated that he was angry he couldn’t get his investment back, and he’d threatened Doug. There was a clear motive for murder.
I forwarded the two messages to Rick. Maybe this evidence would be enough to allow him to reopen the investigation into Doug’s death.
I used Doug’s password to access his bank and investment accounts, though I knew I was overstepping my bounds. But once again, I justified my actions because I was in pursuit of a greater good.
The news there was grim. He had gotten a big cash payout when he left Tor’s firm, but he had used that money to pay off the mortgage on the house in Westchester. He had gone several months without any income, and after a while had cashed in one of his retirement accounts in order to be able to pay alimony and child support. Then a month earlier, he had cashed out the remaining account. There wasn’t much left, and without that commission check from Beauceron there was no way he could have continued to support Catherine and the kids.
That was going to be even tougher financially on Catherine. And even though we knew now that she wasn’t going to be able to collect on the insurance policy, she might not have known about the suicide clause, or that his death would be classified as anything other than an accident.
Did she know Doug was running out of money? Was she so determined to continue her lifestyle that she’d kill her ex to get his insurance payout? Had she read Jimmy’s first book and thought about how easy it would be for Doug to slip into the canal?
Then there was Ethan. Making a Splash was a kids’ book. Had he read it? Could that have given him the idea to get rid of his father? He had been very upset since Doug’s death. Could that be guilt instead of remorse?
There wasn’t much else on Doug’s laptop, but I zipped up the files on the hard drive and emailed that file to myself. When I was satisfied I’d looked at everything I could, I closed the laptop down and carried it out to the car. As I opened the door and Rochester jumped in, the woman who’d been watching me stepped out of the first floor unit. “Is he moving?” she asked.
She was in her forties, with a hard edge to her that came out in her messy hair, sweatpants and T-shirt that read New Jersey: Where the weak are killed and eaten.
“He’s dead,” I said. “I’m cleaning out his apartment.”
“I’m not surprised,” she said. “There was something not right about him.” She peered at me. “You a friend of his?”
“Sort of. I’m doing this as a favor for his ex-wife.” Rochester stayed in the car as I walked up to her, extending my hand. “I’m Steve.”
She shook my hand reluctantly. “Marissa. The ex have a new man?”
I nodded.
“Wonder if that was him, then,” she said. “Came around banging on the door yelling for him. This is a nice complex. We don’t need that kind of thing.”
It was hard to imagine Jimmy Burns banging and yelling, but you never know. “When was this?” I asked.
“Maybe two weeks ago?” she asked. “Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen him around since then. I was going to complain to him.”
“You remember what day?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Just that it was a weeknight, kind of late. I was already in bed and I didn’t appreciate the noise.”
She pointed behind me. “Your dog is going again. He needs to be on a leash, you know. It’s the law.”
I looked behind me. Rochester had jumped back out of the car and was peeing on an azalea bush. “Thank you,” I said. “Come on, Rochester, in the car.”
He jumped in, and I backed out of the space and drove away. I wondered who had been banging on Doug’s door. Had it been Alex Vargas? Had he then managed to track Doug down to the parking lot behind the Drunken Hessian?
