SCHULTZ DROVE HIS REDDISH-ORANGE Pacer along in silence, listening to Dave Whitmore talk about the case and struggle along the same twisting thought paths Schultz had just been down.
“Some of this doesn’t make sense,” Dave said.
“Only some? I hate these wacko cutup jobs. Gimme a straightforward execution-style shooting, I say. That I can wrap my mind around.”
“Hasn’t working with Doc rubbed off on you at all? We do the sophisticated stuff,” Dave said.
“Lots of sophistication’s rubbed off on me. Looky here, I have an air freshener.” He spun the little green tree by snapping it with his finger. PJ had complained that his department-assigned vehicle didn’t smell good. Probably had something to do with that drunken informant upchucking in the back seat last month. Schultz wasn’t particular about the lifestyles of his sources if they told him what he needed to know.
Did I ever clean that up?
Dave folded his arms across his chest and clammed up for the rest of the trip. Someone else might have looked inscrutable, but Witless—a play on his last name—looked like a teddy bear that didn’t want to go to the tea party.
They headed for Fredericka Chase’s residence. She lived in one of the lofts that had been remodeled by Green Vista. The neighborhood had an on the go feeling to it, with people out walking in spite of the December chill. Cheeks reddened, cheerful voices calling out to neighbors, children gamboling at their parents’ sides—it looked like Santa’s Christmas Land to Schultz, minus the deep snow. Sunlight filtered down through high clouds that were rapidly dissipating, like the morning fog. Or maybe they were the morning’s fog, raised to heavenly heights. There were wreaths everywhere, and the scent of pine made it seem like the entire district had been doused in toilet bowl cleaner.
Most of the buildings had been converted already, but there were a sprinkling of boarded-up ones that served as a reminder of the neighborhood’s recent past.
Schultz groaned when he saw that her place was on the third floor. Arthritis made him reluctant to climb stairs unless necessary, plus his foot was hurting from the morning’s stroll along the cobblestones. It had been months since the bones in his left foot were shattered by a bullet, but it still ached. He imagined he could feel the coldness in every one of the screws holding his foot together.
He commandeered the freight elevator from a disapproving janitor who thought he had the place all to himself on a Sunday morning, and rode up. The elevator space was about ten by ten, with a wooden floor roughened by decades of dragging heavy items over it. Schultz closed the bars and flipped the impressive lever to the “Up” position, denoted by a nearly worn off “p” on the controls. The “U” looked as though it had been whacked off with an ax.
Dave followed him into the old elevator and kept his eyes down. He was either trying to decipher the graffiti carved into the wooden floor or carefully keeping his eyes from roaming the walls looking for an inspection certificate.
“It’s okay,” Schultz said. “All we have to do if the elevator breaks loose is jump up in the air right before it hits bottom.”
“I thought that was one of those urban legends. You don’t really believe that, do you?”
“Nah,” Schultz said, “but I thought it might make you feel better. Ah, here we are.” Schultz pushed the lever, and the elevator shuddered to a stop about two feet below floor level. “You first.”
Dave hauled himself up, tearing the cuff of his pants in the process, and turned around to offer Schultz a hand. Schultz worked the control lever forward and back, bringing the elevator up level with the floor, and strolled out. Dave kept his face straight but there was a little twitch near his left eye.
The freight elevator opened into a storage room filled with old fixtures that had been ripped out during the remodeling. Schultz passed an old cast iron bathtub with claw feet that sparked a memory of the first apartment he’d had after getting married, of making love with his wife in a tub just like that, tasting the soap on her skin, rivulets of water dripping from her hair onto his chest. Thirty years ago, and he could smell the Ivory.
Maybe June Merrett isn’t so far out of line with that chocolate business after all.
PJ had a tub like that in her house. All he had to do was turn off the cellphones and get her in it. Their slippery bodies moving against each other, her little yip of excitement when he gently bit her nipple, the rounded, solid feel of her everywhere he put his hands …
Good thing Schultz had his back to Dave. Little Elvis was ready to leave the building.
He opened the storage room door and found himself looking down a hallway with matted blue carpeting and several doors in various shades of green. A window at the end of the hall, streaked with settled tobacco smoke, dimmed the sunlight to a sallow haze. The pungent odor of stale urine rose from the carpet, which felt unclean all the way through his shoes.
Schultz halted. His stomach had gone south and his heart was knocking at the back of his throat. His hard-on deflated.
A man’s body was fastened in a sitting position in the chair with leather straps at the wrists, ankles, and around the chest. He was naked. His mouth was taped, and there was crusty dried blood on his chin that had dribbled out from underneath the tape. Patches of skin had begun to slide.
His son died in a place like this, a hallway much like this leading to the room where Rick Schultz was executed in a homemade gas chamber. Everything was the same, even the grimy window at the far end of the hall that had caught Schultz’s eye before the image of his dead son was imprinted on his soul.
Dave nearly bumped into his back. “Hey,” he said. “What’s wrong? See anything?”
Yeah, you might say that.
“Nothing,” Schultz said. “The piss smell took me by surprise. I thought this was supposed to be a classy place, half a million bucks.”
“Bad janitor,” Dave said. Schultz nodded. The joke wasn’t half-bad, considering it came from Witless.
Striding down the hall, Schultz noticed none of the doors had numbers on them. Fredericka’s address was number ten, and there weren’t even ten doors. He was sure she lived on the top floor. Had he gotten the wrong building? He went all the way to the window and turned around. On his way back, he noticed that one of the doors had a peephole, just the thing a new tenant would install. He knocked on the door authoritatively.
“Police.”
“One minute, please,” came the answer. It seemed to come from right behind the door. He wondered if Fredericka had heard the freight elevator and was nervously checking the peephole. A woman living alone in this building had a right to be cautious.
The door slid open a crack, held in place by the stoutest door chain Schultz had ever seen.
“Police, here to see Fredericka Chase.”
“ID, please.”
Damn if she isn’t polite while being suspicious.
He held his badge up to the narrow opening, moving it slowly across since she could only see a slice of it at a time. She waited for the full Panavision effect.
“Is there someone else with you?”
Schultz shot a glance at Dave, whose raised eyebrows looked like twin frowns. He held out his hand and Dave passed him his badge. He did the Panavision thing again.
The door closed and reopened without the chain. “Come in.”
Stepping over the threshold, Schultz was bombarded with sensations. The space was as big as an airplane hangar, with a few columns scattered through it that Schultz hoped were adequate to support the high ceiling. Dozens of small, high-intensity lights hung from tracks that snaked over exposed ducts gleaming with a silver coating. Light from windows twelve feet high bounced from wall to wall, so that the very air seemed soaked with it. The wood floor must have required the sacrifice of a small forest.
A kitchen occupied one corner, all steel and glass, with a couple of stools next to a high counter serving as the dining table. There was a bed opposite the kitchen, with its supports nearly invisible so that the mattress appeared to float. Near it was an ultramodern oval tub built for two. Schultz’s fantasy with the claw-footed tub surged into his mind, and he mentally ground it out with his thumb. There didn’t seem to be any place for the business portion of a bathroom.
Might account for the piss smell out in the hall.
Petite Fredericka wore even more petite, low-rise shorts and a barely there halter-top, showing more thigh and breast than a Colonel Sanders meal. Golden curls were corralled, more or less, into a ponytail. Creamy skin, a lot of it, and cobalt blue eyes that seemed immense for her face. Curvy above and below a waist that looked like Schultz could snap it in two. She didn’t look a day over nineteen, although he knew from Arlan’s file that she was twenty-seven.
Freckles. She’s got freckles, for Christ’s sake.
There was a blotch of yellow paint on her neck, and she held a paintbrush vertically to keep it from dripping.
“You’re here about Arlan, aren’t you? Be right back,” she said.
The view from the back was just as good as the view from the front. A small butterfly tattoo on her left hip dipped and rose as she walked.
She dumped the brush into a paint can. On the wall was a floral design, the only splash of color on the too-white walls.
Making her way back over to the detectives, she looked around as if noticing for the first time that there was no place to sit except the bed.
“Sorry for the inquisition at the door,” she said. “I’m just being careful. When I came home a couple of nights ago, I thought somebody might have been in the place. It must have been my imagination working as much overtime as the rest of me. So I had the peephole put in and got a really big chain on the door.”
“Did you report it?” Schultz asked. He noticed there was a little redness around her eyes, like she might have been crying recently.
“Report what?” she said. “A creepy feeling? I’m busy today, can this wait?”
“We won’t take much of your time,” Schultz said. Dave was looking at the bed, realizing that it was the only place in the room to sit. Red slowly rose up his neck and headed for his cheeks. It looked as though he’d have steam coming out of his ears soon. “Just a few questions about Arlan Merrett.”
Although she must have known what was coming, Fredericka melted in front of his eyes, her shoulders sagging, her eyes lowering until her chin nearly touched her chest. She appeared unsteady on her legs. He was reaching out a hand to help her when she folded and ended up on the floor with her legs crossed.
“If you don’t mind, I think I’ll sit down,” she said.
Dave followed suit, though not nearly as gracefully, leaving Schultz in the uncomfortable position of the teacher standing in front of the class at lesson time.
He shifted to face them both. Dave looked up at him expectantly, the corners of his mouth almost imperceptibly turned up.
Getting me back for that trick with the elevator, no doubt.
“It’s so awful about what happened to him,” she said. “Nobody I’ve known has ever been murdered. I heard it on the news when I got up. Is it true he was …?”
“Stabbed? This time you can believe what you heard on the news, Ms. Chase.”
“Call me Freddy.”
Not in this lifetime.
“Ms. Chase,” Schultz said, “could you clarify for me your relationship with Arlan Merrett?”
Her mask slipped again, and under it Schultz saw an emotion he couldn’t pin down. “We were business partners. I moved here from Albuquerque a couple of years ago. We connected at a developers’ conference. Arlan liked my ideas for the loft district, and I liked his business sense and ability to promote. Since we got together, Green Vista has become successful on a whole new level.”
Rehearsed.
“Did you see each other regularly, maybe have something going outside the office?”
“We were together a lot but we weren’t sleeping together. Arlan was happily married.”
“Happily married doesn’t stop a lot of men. Do you know if he was having an affair?”
“Not that I’m aware of. He was old fashioned. We worked closely, even traveled together sometimes, and he never even made a pass at me.” She shook her head as if she just uttered the unthinkable.
“If he wasn’t interested in you, was he interested in men?”
“No.”
Schultz wasn’t giving up on his gay murder theory, but he couldn’t dig up any evidence to support it. Yet.
“Do you know anyone who might want to harm him?”
“Oh, Arlan had the usual assortment of business rivalries. Nothing serious. Nothing worth killing a man for. I can make you a list of the main people, but I’m sure they had nothing to do with it. In this business, Detective, people who are rivals end up collaborating on some project another time. It’s the way this game is played.”
“I have to ask, Ms. Chase,” Schultz said. “Where were you yesterday evening, say between six and nine?”
“Let’s see. I got my hair cut around three, then came home and worked all evening on plans and estimates for completing the remodeling of this building. You may have noticed the hallway isn’t in prime shape to take clients through. It’s going to be a lobby area with a marble floor, and just two lofts up here. We’re blocking off some space and making it into a couple of offices. Residents can have a home office but not have it intrude on the living space. It’s one of the signatures of Green Vista, and it’s going to be very popular. Portable, too.”
“What do you mean portable?” Schultz said.
“Adaptable. I’m already looking into suburban applications. You know those multi-building apartment complexes, with pools and playgrounds and workout rooms? Why not convert a few of the apartments to subdivided office space? Reclaim your living space by getting that cluttered desk out of your dining room and put it into a sleek space with all the business conveniences.”
“Sounds like you’ve got the sales brochure already written,” Schultz said.
“Oh, we’re pretty far along,” she said. “Local zoning boards can be so picky, though. I’ve been dividing my time between this project,” she waved her arm, vaguely taking in the entire building, “and a couple of complexes in North County. I’ve got an apartment out there as a convenient base.”
“Big plans.”
“Like I said, Green Vista is moving to a whole new level of success.”
“Getting back to your activities yesterday evening. Make any phone calls? Order food delivered, that kind of thing?” Schultz said.
She shook her head. “No, sorry, I didn’t realize I’d have to account for my time. I went to bed around one in the morning, I think. Alone. I slept in this morning, didn’t get up until a little after eight.”
“Did you know that Arlan left you his share of Green Vista?”
“Of course. It was written into the partnership agreement. He said his wife was well taken care of otherwise, life insurance I guess. He thought I’d contributed enough to our success that I deserved it.”
“I take it that means your half would have gone to him if you’d died first,” Schultz said.
A little color showed in her cheeks. “No, I have a brother who needs long-term care, round-the-clock care. My share would have gone to my estate to pay for that. Arlan was okay with it.”
“In other words, you benefit whether Arlan dies first or you do.”
“You could think of it that way. We weren’t quite so mercenary about it.”
Dave spoke up. “When’s the last time you saw your partner?”
Fredericka’s head swiveled toward him, as though discovering his presence for the first time. The movement reminded Schultz of a praying mantis swiveling its triangular head, eyes locking onto lunch.
“On Wednesday,” she said. “We had lunch at Jake’s Steaks, in the Landing. I remember it because Arlan had a margarita, and he usually doesn’t drink until evening. In fact, I don’t think he drinks often at all. Too many empty calories.” She patted her perfectly flat abdomen as though to protect it from the very phrase.
“So did he seem worried about something and that’s why he was drinking at lunch?” Dave asked.
“He was worried, I think. Probably because of the clients he was driving to Chicago to meet. He gave me the impression the clients were going to be disappointed about something. I’m sure it wasn’t our designs.”
“He was planning to drive after drinking?”
“He only had one drink, silly.” She had a musical laugh that floated up to the high ceiling like a brightly colored balloon. “We split up about two o’clock, and I came back here to work. I assume he took off for Chicago.”
Schultz noticed that Fredericka’s attitude had changed when Dave started doing the questioning. A lilt in her voice. A tilt of her head. A jaunty toss of her ponytail. The weakness she’d suffered a few minutes ago had dissipated. She rocked herself sideways on her bottom so that she ended up close enough to Dave’s knee that a spark could cross the distance.
Fredericka rested her hand lightly and familiarly on Dave’s thigh. Beads of sweat began erupting on Dave’s forehead like pimples on a teenager. No doubt he was wondering where the wandering hand would go next. Cutting off speculation, Fredericka got to her feet in a smooth motion that looked like a flower unfolding. She was clearly trying to draw the interview to a close.
“Arlan was a wonderful man,” she said. “A good businessman and a good husband. An old-fashioned gentleman. I hope you find whoever did this awful thing.”
Dave got up, limbs flailing around for balance. “We’re doing our best,” he said. “Any problem if we look around a bit?”
A fleeting frown passed over her face, a cloud blocking the sun. She hesitated.
“Arlan didn’t spend much time here, and I have work to do, Detective. I have a contractor coming in first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Just for a little while, Freddy,” Dave said. “For our reports, you know.”
Schultz didn’t know that Dave could come up with such a disarming smile. Dave had certainly never used it on him.
“Well, okay. I’m getting back to work, though,” Fredericka said. “Say, don’t you need a warrant?”
The wattage of Dave’s smile doubled. “Not if we have your consent. We won’t take anything, though.”
She pursed her lips into a kissable circle before saying yes.
Any more of this and I’ll puke.
She retreated to one of the kitchen stools and set up a laptop on the counter. Like a pair of hungry lions scouring the savannah, Schultz and Dave roamed the space, taking note of everything. They discovered a pocket door that practically disappeared into the wall, and it led to an expansive room with a toilet, sink, shower, and dressing area.
“I knew she had to shit somewhere,” Schultz said, once inside with the door closed. “This place is just a little too perfect, isn’t it?”
Dave wasn’t paying attention. He was looking at the U-shaped dressing area with one of those three-way mirrors surrounded by open shelving, hanger rods, and built-in drawers with glass fronts. All of them neatly filled. There was one small section of men’s clothing, some casual outfits and a few suits. The nearby open shelving held folded men’s dress shirts, socks, and boxers. Tucked below were four pairs of men’s shoes, two dress and two casual. Schultz’s eyebrows rose.
“Unless the lady’s a cross-dresser, there’s a man around the house.” Dave said.
Schultz drifted over to that section and casually checked the items, which were in plain sight. “Size eighteen shirts, thirty-five inch sleeve. Arlan was a big guy, wasn’t he?”
As they were leaving, Schultz asked about the presence of men’s clothing. Fredericka was prepared with an answer, having seen them go into the room.
“Arlan stopped in to shower and change sometimes. Work sites can be awfully dirty.”
No doubt he needed someone to scrub his back, too. In an old-fashioned way, of course.