CHAPTER EIGHT

 

The cab let me out in front of an ostentatious steel and glass structure located on the outskirts of Danger Cove in a sprawling group of similarly modern office buildings. From what I'd heard, they were all Jack Condor's doing. He'd tried to build similar monstrosities in the historic center of town, but at least those proposals had been blocked. Not that that ever stopped him from trying again with different sites.

I'd never met Condor formally, although he'd been pointed out to me at some museum event or another. As his receptionist let me into his office, I remembered that he usually wore a hat, presumably to cover the thinning of his hair. He dispensed with it in his office, which made him appear much less impressive, as if he'd magically shrunk six inches in height and lost half of the muscle mass of his still-beefy arms. I might have attributed his less impressive stature to his having sunk deep into the super plush carpeting of the office suite, but I thought it was more likely that I'd just never seen him at such close range before without dozens of other people circulating nearby to distract me from seeing him for who he really was. From just a few feet away, his sparkling white teeth gave him more of a creepy, Cheshire-cat smile than a Hollywood one.

"What can I do for you?" Condor said brusquely without bothering with any small talk on the way over to his minimalist wooden desk.

"It's about the quilt guild," I began as I settled into the solitary visitor's chair, but he cut me off with an impatient huff.

"Those old biddies? I can't wait until they're gone and I can finally get my money's worth out of that building."

Even a wide-eyed optimist—something I'd never been accused of being—would have been able to see that this conversation wasn't going anywhere good. It was pointless to ask for a long-term extension of the quilters' use of their meeting room, and such a request was likely to make him less reasonable, if that was even possible. A different tack was needed.

"Perhaps you have another property where they could meet," I suggested. "One that you're not ready to renovate just yet, that they could use until they find a more permanent location. The goodwill that comes from a gesture like that could be invaluable. Just about everyone in Danger Cove, including the town officials, is related to at least one of the guild members. That sort of personal connection can come in handy when getting approval for a development or finding tenants for the finished project."

"I don't need no senile old grannies endorsing my projects. I can get them approved and tenanted on my own." He threw himself into his chair with such energy I thought it would collapse. "Besides, they wouldn't even understand my plans. It takes someone who's young and hip to share my vision."

I tried to hide my skepticism. Condor wasn't exactly a hipster himself or any sort of visionary genius. Damping down my emotions like this wasn't good for me, and I could feel my blood pressure rising. Apparently I'd lost whatever patience I'd once had for dealing with fools in the two years since retiring from the practice of law. I was extremely tempted to tell Condor what I really thought: he was acting like a delusional idiot.

Instead, I settled for getting to my feet and saying, "There's nothing further for us to talk about then, so I won't waste any more of my time here. It would be better spent making sure the press knows about your part in the guild's precipitous relocation, as well as the benevolent action of whoever offers them a new space to use."

"Wait," Condor said, flashing his bright teeth at me in a misguided attempt at charm. "No need to have a hissy fit. If you had let me finish, I'd have told you about a way where we can all get something out of this situation."

"I'm listening." I remained standing and crossed my arms over my chest, aware that my body language would let him know how unimpressed I was, so he'd better come up with something good.

"I might be able to work something out with the quilters if you'd put in a good word for me with Miriam Stafford's probate attorney."

The museum's press release couldn't possibly have been published yet, but I didn't bother to ask how he knew I was involved with the estate. It was Danger Cove, after all, and the grapevine was faster than Twitter. Even if Condor, as the least-liked person in town, was the last to know something, that only meant it took an hour or two, rather than mere seconds, for him to hear the latest news. "Why would you do that?"

"I'm always looking for new projects," he said. "Miriam's property could be a real jackpot, and there's enough of a cloud on the title that I can snap it up for cheap. The house itself is worthless, of course, and the color is hideous, so anything that replaced it would be an improvement. The lot's big enough for a duplex. Barely, but I could make it work. No one spends much time in their yards these days anyway. Kids don't even play outside anymore. At least not at home. They can always go to Pacific Heights Park if they really want to be outdoors."

Pacific Heights Park was, indeed, a lovely place in the heart of Danger Cove. It offered marked spaces for soccer and lacrosse. For less structured activities, there were a few benches and picnic tables near the central fountain and the statue of Francis Drake. The local garden club even maintained a small rose garden there, filled with antique varieties that hadn't had the scent bred out of them.

Even so, a park couldn't replace a child's own yard for unstructured play. Plus, a duplex like what Condor was planning would be totally out of character for Miriam's neighborhood. Sticking a big house in the middle of all those tidy little ranches would be like using a modern polyester blend fabric to replace damaged cotton materials in a vintage quilt. The inappropriate insertion affected everything around it too, not just the one repaired block of a quilt or the one parcel of land in a neighborhood.

Besides, even if I shared Condor's vision for Miriam's house, I couldn't trade one client's best interest for another's. The temptation to tell Condor what he could do with his offer was overwhelming and giving in to it would definitely release some of the building stress. Unfortunately, I couldn't afford to alienate him completely. I might need to talk to him again to negotiate for a delay of a week or two on the eviction while arranging for a new location for the guild.

"I'm sorry," I said firmly and with as little hostility as I could manage, "but I'm not in a position to make any recommendations on the sale of the house."

He thought for a moment before saying, "You have a key to the place though, don't you? It would be worth something to me if I could spend an hour in there taking measurements and assessing the structural elements. I've already got the publicly available data, but there's nothing like a walk-through to really know a project and get a leg up on the competition."

"You know an awful lot about Miriam's house, considering it's not even on the market yet."

Condor's shrug was a bit too forced, as if he knew—or thought he knew—that he'd convinced me to work with him, and all he had to do was keep talking about his wondrous plans in order to seal the deal. "It's my job to know about available sites. Besides, in this case, I have a bit of a secret weapon. Miriam worked for another developer in town, Frank Dreiser. He wants to retire early, and we'd just concluded negotiations for me to buy his business when she died. He let it slip that he'd considered buying her house. Just goes to show you how bad a businessman he was. Shouldn't have told me anything before our deal was finalized."

"He couldn't have been too bad at his work if he can retire early."

This time Condor's shrug was real and irritated. "How would I know anything about his finances? All I know is how bad our deal is for him. He was in too much of a rush to unload the properties he was never able to develop, or he'd have gotten a better price from me. He'd be shocked if he ever found out how wrong he was about their value. He thought they were worthless, but that's because he doesn't have my vision. I just wish he wasn't leaving town right away, so he'd be able to see what he missed out on."

I wondered how long it had been since Dreiser had tried to buy Miriam's house. If it was recently, that gave him a motive for killing her, although it was a somewhat unlikely one. Still, it sounded like he was leaving town in something of a rush, possibly going far enough away that it would be difficult for the police to interview him if he ever became a suspect. "Where's he going?"

"Who cares?" Condor waved his hand airily. "I just know it's going to be soon. He insisted on spending all day here today, making sure he gets all the properties transferred, along with the files related to them, so I'll hand over the final installment on the purchase. He's been here since before I arrived this morning, going over the details with my assistant. I'll have to review everything myself later, of course, since Dreiser doesn't have my knack for seeing the potential in seemingly worthless property."

"He saw some potential in Miriam's property," I said. "It wouldn't have been easy to convince her to sell the house to him, the person who'd fired her. And yet, he apparently thought it was worth the effort to try."

Condor waved his hand dismissively. "Not my problem. All I know is that he'd been keeping an eye on the situation for years. Probably because he knew she was sick, so he could negotiate with her estate instead of with her. Even a bad businessperson can get something right every once in a while. The property does have potential, but I'm going to be the one to cash in now that she's dead, not Dreiser."

And the public thought lawyers were vultures, I thought. Maybe they were to some degree, but as a group they'd long since been eclipsed by real estate moguls, Wall Street traders, and CEOs of prescription drug companies.

 

*   *   *

 

I made it clear to Jack Condor that I wasn't prepared to provide him with any inside information on Miriam's home, and he suddenly remembered he had a meeting with Edward Kallakala, the town's mayor. Condor rushed off without bothering to walk me out of his office.

These days, I didn't rush anywhere, so I followed at my own, slower pace. From the reception area, I could hear voices in a nearby office. Condor's assistant and Frank Dreiser, most likely.

"You look like the boss just evicted your granny," the blonde receptionist said. A clear acrylic nameplate that identified her as Bonnie Lang hung from a three-tiered plastic inbox on her desk. "I see that expression a lot, but it's never as bad as you think. Everything works out for the best. At least, that's what the boss says."

"I'm not a big believer in things working out for the best," I said. "At least not without a whole lot of work on someone's part."

The blonde wrinkled her nose. "You're probably right. I bet you're the one who ends up doing all the work in your job too. Like me keeping this office running while the boss is off playing golf with his buddies."

My first impression of Bonnie hadn't led me to believe she was the brains behind the Condor empire. Her artificially large lips and heavy-handed makeup were as overdone as the bleaching of her hair. Now that I looked past the sparkly shadow and thick mascara, directly into Bonnie's eyes, I suspected that if things did, in fact, all work out for the best around here, it was most likely due to her efforts, not Condor's.

Perhaps I should have made my appointment with Bonnie instead of the boss. I doubted she could blatantly overrule Condor's decision about the quilt guild, but perhaps she'd be willing to help me in another way. I'd have really liked to meet Miriam's ex-boss and find out why he was in such a rush to leave town.

"I understand that Frank Dreiser is here. Any chance I could have a chat with him?"

"You want to do business with him instead of the boss?" Bonnie asked. "It's too late for that. Dreiser's retiring."

"I heard about the sale of the business," I said. "This is about something else. Someone else, actually. Miriam Stafford."

Bonnie frowned. "Sounds familiar, but I don't know her."

"She was murdered."

Bonnie leaned back in her chair. "If you think the boss did it, you're wrong. I know he's a greedy jerk and all, but he isn't violent."

"I never thought for a moment that he killed her," I said, with complete honesty. At least not intentionally. On the other hand, it was possible that he'd killed a few people with his greed and lack of empathy, making their lives so miserable that their immune systems weakened to the point where the first serious germ they encountered was enough to kill them. "Dreiser is a more likely suspect. He and Miriam had a history together, and not a good one."

"In that case, it must be time for my coffee break." Bonnie ducked down behind her desk to dig around in a bottom drawer. She popped up again with a faux designer handbag—I knew enough to know it was a knock-off, but not the name of the original—and got to her feet, teetering on stiletto heels as exaggerated as her lips and hair. She nodded toward the hallway that led in the opposite direction from Condor's private office. "While I'm gone, you absolutely, positively should not go near the first door on the right down there."

 

*   *   *

 

I knocked on the first door on the right and a moment later it flew open. Standing in the opening was a tall, glowering man in jeans that were faded to a blue that was almost white, and a denim shirt that was darker, but frayed along the edges of the cuffs. His face was as craggy as the cliffs overlooking the waters of Danger Cove, and his skin had that deeply wrinkled, leathery texture that comes from spending too much time working outdoors. I wasn't sure if he was a worn-out fifty-something or a comparatively young-looking sixty-something. More likely the latter, the right age for early retirement, assuming this was Frank Dreiser.

"I told Condor I'd get this done as soon as I could," the man snapped at me. "It's not my fault that he gave me someone incompetent to work with."

I looked past the presumptive Dreiser to a young man at the conference table. He appeared to be a contemporary of Craig Pitts, the teen who'd brought me the envelope from Aaron Pohoke's office. In every way but age, though, he was Craig's polar opposite. He was short and thin with the extremely pale skin—now blotchy from blushing at the criticism of his work—that redheads like him were famous for. He also seemed to be shy, rather than gregarious like Craig, and kept his eyes focused on the laptop in front of him. He continued to type without interruption.

"Condor didn't send me," I said. "I'm Keely Fairchild, and I'm doing some work for the estate of Miriam Stafford. Assuming you're Frank Dreiser, then it's my understanding that you knew her, that she used to be your employee. I was hoping you could spare me a minute to talk about her estate."

"I don't know anything about her life after she quit her job and left me hanging," he said, implicitly confirming his identity. "All I can tell you is that she was a lazy, lying thief. I once thought she might be different, but in the end she was just like every other woman I've ever known. Can't trust any of them." He tossed a glance over his shoulder at the teen who was pretending not to listen. "At least she was reasonably good at her job, unlike what you can hire these days."

I had to remind myself that I wasn't in a position any longer where I needed to jump to the defense of downtrodden women and underpaid workers, and it wasn't in my best interest to remind Dreiser that he was speaking to a woman who might find his sweeping insults offensive. Not while I needed to get more information out of him.

"You weren't completely over your irritation with Miriam." I didn't have any duty to keep Condor's statements confidential. He was a big boy, after all, and if he hadn't wanted his plans made public, he should have kept them to himself. "I understand you kept an eye on her house over the years since she left her job. Now Condor wants to buy it from the estate based on the information in your files."

A sly look came into Dreiser's eyes. "It's tempting to fight him for the property. There's a non-compete in the contract we signed, but by the time he could enforce it, I'd have flipped the house, made my score, and taken off for my retirement home in Mexico."

"That would take a while to do. I heard you were anxious to leave Danger Cove."

"I'm flexible," he said. "Given enough of an incentive, I could stick around for a little longer. I don't suppose you'd be able to let me inside Miriam's house to see exactly what condition it's in, would you? I'd make it worth your time."

If I told him the truth, that there was no way I'd let either him or Condor into the house, I'd never get any more answers out of him. Fortunately, I had a lot of experience at ducking questions. "Is the house that valuable? It seemed pretty ordinary to me. And I'm not convinced Condor will get the necessary permits to build the duplex he's got in mind. Not in that neighborhood."

Dreiser rolled his eyes. "Condor's an idiot. Always going for the impossible score, wasting time and money on projects that will never get approved. Better return on investment if you just take the small, fast wins and move on. That's what I did, and look where it got me: retiring to paradise by my sixtieth birthday. But not Condor. The stars in his eyes blind him to the real value of property. Like in this deal with me. All he got out of it was my mistakes, the property that isn't worth what it'll take to fix it up. I'd already written them off as a total loss, so the money Condor's paying me is a windfall. A particularly hefty windfall, given his unrealistic expectations."

The teen's typing had drifted to a stop. Condor couldn't be much easier to work for than Dreiser was, so my guess was that the young man was as entertained as I was by the two developers' diametrically opposed views of who had been the winner in the business deal. Dreiser should have had enough sense not to crow about his victory in front of his rival's employee. Of course, he could have been counting on the fact that if the teen did tell his boss about this conversation, it would bounce off Condor's massive ego.

"Is that what you'd do with Miriam's house if you bought it?" I asked. "Something small and fast?"

"Yeah." Dreiser turned to glare at the teen, who immediately resumed tapping away on his laptop. "Her house is going to go for cheap, because most buyers can't see past the cosmetic stuff, like that terrible exterior color. Miriam was always tidy, I'll give her that much, so I bet the inside is in pristine condition. Mostly all the place needs is a coat of paint on the exterior. Maybe inside too, if it's anything like the outside."

"So you've never been inside Miriam's house? Perhaps while discussing her decision to quit?"

Dreiser snorted. "You think I'd waste my time with a losing proposition like that? I told you, the key to success is to move on as fast as you can."

"Then why did you go to the trouble of investigating her house? I got the impression you had some pretty substantial notes in the files you handed over to Condor."

"Just doing what anyone in my business would do," Dreiser said. "At first, I considered suing her for leaving me in the lurch the way she did, quitting with no notice. Before I went to the trouble, though, I wanted to be sure she had sufficient assets to make it worth the effort. She didn't though. Nothing other than her house, so my attorney convinced me it would be best to just let her go. Especially since she wasn't in the best health, so all I had to do was watch the obits while I waited for her to die. Not a huge investment of time, compared to a lawsuit."

"She wasn't that old," I said. "Was her health really bad enough that she was likely to die young?"

"I'm no doctor," Dreiser said, "but she called in sick all the time, really made it hard for me to get any office work done. I only put up with it because if I fired her instead of waiting for her to quit, I'd have been sued for discrimination or something. And that would have been a real waste of my time."

"I won't waste any more of your time now." I'd been under the impression from Herb that Miriam had been fired, rather than quitting her job. I wondered if he'd gotten it wrong or if Dreiser had conveniently rewritten history so he could be the victim rather than the cause of his own problems. He wasn't likely to admit that he'd been the cause of his problems, especially not to a woman.

As I turned to leave, Dreiser said, "Wait."

When I stopped heading for the exit, Dreiser turned to the teen. "I need coffee. Something stronger than what your boss has on hand here. I take it black."

The teen jumped to his feet and slipped past us. I couldn't help noticing that Dreiser didn't offer to pay for the coffee.

He gestured for me to come all the way inside the conference room and closed the door behind me. "So, how about letting me see the interior of the house? It wouldn't take long. Fifteen minutes, tops. I'd just need to take some measurements and see how ugly the walls are. That would give me an idea of whether it's worth fighting Condor for."

"I can't do that."

"Oh, well, I had to try. Let me know if you change your mind." He handed me a crumpled business card. His craggy face didn't reveal any lingering regrets. Apparently he didn't just talk about moving on from setbacks, he actually did it. "It would be fun to snatch it out from under Condor's nose, but I'll be just as happy to wash my hands of Miriam, her house, and all of Danger Cove. I've got plenty to do before I can leave, and I'm anxious to get settled in Mexico."

I was more than happy to leave Dreiser to his preparations for paradise. He and Condor deserved each other. If there was any justice in the world, they'd both lose out on the chance to buy Miriam's house.