I looked at the clock for what seemed like the fifth time, calculating the zone change with Mexico and the likelihood of catching Lane during that slim window before she got pulled into her moving meetings or skipped them altogether to indulge in mai tais at the pool. No sense speaking to her before she was coherent. There were too many late nights and too much booze between us.
I’d been at Lane’s investment property well past ten last night answering CPD’s questions, primarily with the phrase “I don’t know,” and I wasn’t sure Lane would have any more answers to their questions than I had. I’d canceled my dinner plans with Cai without going into detail, left Michael at the property with the rest of the crew prowling for answers, and made my way home to an apartment that suddenly felt desolate.
Normally the emptiness of my co-op felt like a refuge, a private space where I answered to no one. I could work all night, stay in my jammies all weekend, and eat nothing but raw veggies for dinner if I wanted, all without the disapproving eye of another human being. Last night, however, I longed for another voice, even if that had just been the presence of another human being at the end of the sofa as I ate the late-night tuna salad I’d forced myself to ingest. Walter, my Ragdoll cat, had done his best to make me feel loved, but I couldn’t help but credit the tuna for his show of affection.
The discovery of the body had led to a night of fidgety, on-again, off-again sleep as I obsessed about the victim and how she might have died. Although I had people who would look for me should I ever disappear, thoughts of dying alone were impossible to shake.
With sleep elusive, I’d gotten an early start on the day at my office and was poring over my notes on the Alderman Flores story, but the dead woman reinserted herself into my thoughts at every opportunity. Michael had yet to respond to my text for an update.
Was she a story? So far, it seemed straightforward: one more sad, heartbreaking life lost to overdose. A story that meant everything to her family but, sadly, little to the population at large. Overdoses came too fast and too frequently to warrant much attention by the media. For now, it was up to the cops to figure out. In the meantime, I had an existing story to work on, and that meant a call to Dominic Flores’s office.
“Good morning. This is Andrea Keller with Link-Media. May I speak with Elena Sanchez?”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Sanchez is in a meeting,” said a squeaky female voice on the other end.
Hmm, someone new.
“May I take a message?” she asked.
Meeting, my ass. I’d already put in six calls directly to Flores, and this was call number eight to his office manager. Not a single message had been returned, and I would bet money that this call would be no different.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name,” I said, hoping the newcomer would be chatty. At this point, the normal receptionist, Elena, had been well trained in the art of telling me to drop dead. “Perhaps you could answer a question? I have a deadline for this story I’m working on and only need a minute or two. Even a brief quote would be helpful.”
“Um, my name is Juanita. But I’m just the part-time receptionist. I really don’t think I can help you with this.”
“Well, I’ve left a number of messages for both Mr. Flores and Ms. Sanchez. They seem to be having a hard time getting to the phone. Is there a better time of the day for me to reach them?”
When it came to working a lead, stonewalling was my least favorite response tactic. It seemed weak or cowardly even when the reasons were legitimate. At least I could respect the creativity in a good boldfaced lie. Yet avoidance seemed to be the default methodology for people with shady business dealings. However, I could always find someone willing to talk if I was persistent enough or stubborn enough or creative enough. I never knew how one little thread would lead to another and another after that, until eventually a structure came into view. As a prosecutor, I had always enjoyed solving the puzzle, and a story was just that, another puzzle with pieces that hadn’t yet found their place.
“I’m not sure about today’s schedule, but Ms. Sanchez gets into the office quite early. I think it’s normally around six thirty a.m. If you call her before seven thirty, she might be easier to reach. I can give you her direct number.”
Bingo. “Thank you so much. I really appreciate your help.”
I jotted down the number as she read it off. If I couldn’t get Elena Sanchez to answer the phone, I could always resort to staking out the parking lot early one morning.
I thanked her again, ended the call, looked at my watch, then dialed Lane.
“Hey, sis,” she said, answering on the second ring. Her voice was bubbly, as if she were actually happy to hear from me. In reality, I recognized it as her sales voice. The classic Realtor intonation that implied she was so enthused, so confident about a prospective deal, that her voice was as smooth as maple syrup. “How did things go at the property? Please tell me they didn’t leave a whole bunch of shit.”
“Well, just one surprise, and it’s a big one.”
There was no easy way to break this to Lane, but I was struggling with how to couch the message.
“Okay, that doesn’t sound too bad,” she responded. “I’ll just get the junk haulers over there rather than leaving it to the contractor. I’ve got them on standby just in case. How big of a truck does he need?”
“No, you’re not understanding. You won’t be needing the junk hauler. This particular…treasure…has already been removed.” I was hedging, trying to delay the hysteria that I imagined was moments away and a little confused that CPD hadn’t already beaten me to the punchline. “Has anyone from the police department been in touch with you?”
“The police? Why would they call? I did get a couple calls from a number I didn’t recognize, but I didn’t pick up. Unless it’s a client ready to sign an offer letter, the world will have to wait until I have time to listen to my voicemail. And why would CPD need to talk to me, anyway?”
“Because there was a body in your basement,” I blurted out.
“Excuse me? A body? You mean like a dead body?”
Her voice had risen an octave or two, and she was speaking in a clipped staccato. I could imagine her carefully manicured nails digging into her palms until they left a mark. It had been her stress response ever since she was a teenager.
“Yes, there was a dead body in the basement of this property, and I found her.” I kept my voice low and controlled, anticipating a reaction that would be neither of those things. “Please tell me that you had no idea. Didn’t you inspect this property before you purchased? I mean, not even a peek in the windows or anything?”
I could feel my body tense with the memory and cold sweat re-form at the back of my neck. Like it or not, I was reliving the shock of finding this poor woman who had died alone and not been found for what was likely months. Who was spending sleepless nights wondering where she was and if she was all right? What family members jumped with every phone call, prepared for either the best or worst of news?
“Oh my God, you can’t be serious. You mean like a skeleton or something?”
I could hear the panic in her voice as reality hit.
“No, I mean a real woman who still had a face. The cops think she’s been there for months. They don’t know yet when or how she died.”
“How in the hell am I ever going to be able to sell the place now? Does it stink? I’m going to have to have the place fumigated. Wait, they took the body away, right?”
She rattled on, processing her shock, her questions nothing more than stream of consciousness, not expecting answers from me. Which was good, because I didn’t have any.
“Yes, Lane, they removed the dead woman’s body,” I said, as if speaking to an elderly aunt who was hard of hearing. Leave it to Lane, a human life was lost and her first instinct was to rush ahead to how it would affect her.
“What do you know about the property?” Yesterday’s conversation, if I could call it that, was floating back into my mind.
“I told you, it was an auction. Standard foreclosure as far I could tell, but there isn’t much background provided in these types of purchases. Ownership transferred to the bank after a mortgage default. It’s called an REO or real estate owned. Banks aren’t in the business of managing properties, so they hire an auction company and pay them a cut just to get it off their books. I bought it for little more than the price of the back taxes. There’s never an inspection option for these types of purchases. This was an as-is purchase.”
“Did you go to the property before you bid?”
“No, I just punched the address in to Google Earth and then ran the comps. Worst case scenario, it’s really about land value. If you get lucky, you can flip the house with minor capital investment, and if not, raze it and sell the lot.”
Discussing the details of the purchase seemed to bring her back to solid footing.
“Well, now a number of Chicago’s finest really want to talk to you,” I said. “Your contractor isn’t doing anything in that house until the cops release it. You should probably book a flight back this afternoon.”
“Don’t be melodramatic. The body’s gone, right? What do the cops need from me? I don’t know anything more than you do about what happened.”
“Just answer the phone, okay? It’s up to them to decide what they need or don’t need from you. I’m not interested in moderating the discussion.”
“Fine,” she huffed. “Well, I need to go. There’s a breakfast meeting by the pool that I’m late for, and I still haven’t put on my sunscreen. I’ll call you when I’m back next week.”
Typical Lane, downplaying anything that she wasn’t the center of. At least she might answer the phone now when CPD called, leaving me out of this mess. Feeling I’d turned over the responsibility, I could get back to my own work. I pulled my notepad closer, searching back through the pages. The anonymous contact who had been dribbling information to me about the shenanigans at the soundproofing company seemed to be clamming up. And management was being just as evasive as the crew in the alderman’s office. What I needed was someone in the front office. Someone who had an admin or bookkeeping role and might be worried about keeping their own ass out of trouble.
“You got a minute?”
I looked up from my notes to see Brynn eyeing me over the top of her extra-grande coffee mug. I motioned her in, and she settled her athletic frame into the chair opposite mine.
“I’ve got calls into the city on those building permits, but they are about as talkative as a cabbage. Feels like someone has told them to stay quiet. Doesn’t make sense. Permits are not some big dark secret. This might sound crazy, but I’m wondering if Flores has an inside guy? If all of the soundproofing permits were signed by the same person, that might mean there was a little cash flowing under the table.”
“Could be. And that would be an interesting twist,” I said, running through potential scenarios. “I wonder what the going rate is for low-level graft? Good hypothesis. Keep working it. Sometimes you have to get in their faces a little bit, so a trip down to city hall might get better results.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. Just wanted you to know there might be another route to take on this story.” She got to her feet.
“Can I add one more thing to your to-do list before you go?”
“That’s not a serious question, is it, boss?” Brynn laughed and rolled up the cuffs on her Oxford shirt one more time.
“No, I guess not. I need you to research ownership of a house. It’s a foreclosed property in Humboldt Park. A single-family that was just sold at auction. I want to know the backstory. Who owned it, dates, how long they’d been in arrears, etc.” I scribbled the address on a piece of paper and handed it to her.
“You thinking of investing? That’s a hot area for development right now.”
“It’s hot all right. My sister just bought this property. The previous owner included a gift with purchase. A dead body.”