High Profile

50

Suitcase Simpson came in with his notebook and sat down in front of Jesse’s desk.

“Master detective,” he said.

“You enjoy Baltimore?” Jesse said.

“Yeah. It’s pretty cool. They got like this huge Quincy Market on the harbor. Lotta places to get crab cakes.”

“You detect anything?” Jesse said.

“Besides the crab cakes?” Suit said. “Yeah. I did.”

Jesse tipped his chair back and waited.

“I went to the Baltimore County police, and talked with a nice woman in the personnel department.”

“You get to her right away?”

“Pretty quick. I turned on the charm.”

“Wow,” Jesse said.

“It helps in detective work, you know, if you’re charming.”

“I didn’t know that,” Jesse said.

“Anyway, when Lutz worked there the beneficiary of his life insurance was Lorraine Pilarcik. She was on his medical insurance, too.”

“And what was her relation to him?” Jesse said.

“He listed her as his wife.”

“Lorraine,” Jesse said.

“It gets better,” Suit said.

“Good.”

“I got his address during the time he worked there and went and talked with people in his old neighborhood,” Suit said. “There were three, four people that remembered both of them. They all called her Lorrie.”

“Tell me you showed them the picture of Lorrie Weeks?” Jesse said.

“I did.”

“And?”

“It was her.”

“Suit,” Jesse said, “you’ll probably be chief of detectives.”

“When we have a detective unit.”

“Immediately after that,” Jesse said.

“They hedged a little. You know what license photos are like. And they knew her like fifteen years ago. But they all thought it was her.”

“Happy marriage?” Jesse said.

“As far as anyone can remember,” Suit said.

“When did they get divorced?”

“Nobody knew they were divorced.”

“When did they leave the old neighborhood?” Jesse said.

“Hard to pin it down, you know. But the consensus was late eighties, early nineties.”

“You find any records of divorce?”

“Nope,” Suit said. “Not in Baltimore. Got a marriage license issued to Walton Weeks and Lorrie Pilarcik, and a marriage announcement from The Baltimore Sun. August twenty-sixth, 1990.”

“They could have divorced elsewhere,” Jesse said.

“I thought of that,” Suit said.

“Okay,” Jesse said, “take your time. Enjoy it.”

“I said to myself, Why would you not get divorced locally?”

“Because maybe they had moved to another state?” Jesse said.

“Maybe, or, I thought to myself, maybe they’re looking for a quickie. And where can you get a quickie divorce?”

“Dover-Foxcroft, Maine?” Jesse said.

“Las Vegas,” Suit said. “It did no harm to check.”

“And?”

“Lorraine Pilarcik and Conrad Lutz got a divorce on August fifteenth, after six weeks of residency in Vegas,” Suit said.

“Eleven days before she married Walton Weeks,” Jesse said.

“Makes your head hurt a little,” Suit said.

“It does. Did Weeks steal Lutz’s wife and continue to employ him as a bodyguard?”

“Maybe Lutz is a really forgiving guy,” Suit said.

“Maybe,” Jesse said.