King City

Chapter twenty two

The wedge?shaped glass office tower, at the corner of Grant Street and McEveety Way, stood on the original site of what had been McEveety’s General Store in the frontier days, the hub of commerce and gossip for the area’s settlers, farmers, and ranchers.

Vincent McEveety was one of the four founders of King City, and the third incarnation of his store on that property, a two?story brick?and?stone structure, had survived well over a century after his death from liver disease.

The general store grew over time in size, if not influence, and became McEveety’s Department Store in the early 1900s, which it remained until it was sold in the 1960s to the Cartwell’s chain, which ran it until they went under in the 1980s.

Over the following fifteen years, the building housed many different businesses, none of them lasting long, and decayed with the neighborhood around it.

When developers, supported by the city, proposed tearing down the building and replacing it with an office tower as part of an ambitious upscale revitalization and gentrification of McEveety Way, several citizen groups banded together and blocked the move in court, hoping to delay the project while they tried to have the building declared historically significant.

The opponents were making headway, getting support from all over the state, but before the matter could be legally resolved, the building and most of the city block were destroyed in a massive gas explosion. The cause of the leak, and what ignited it, was never determined, despite an initial determination by investigators that it was arson. The rubble was cleared, and McEveety Tower, named in honor of the historic building that it replaced, went up within a year.

Wade figured McEveety, a ruthless developer himself, would have appreciated the fate of his store and seen the tower, and the victory of commercial interests over historical preservation, as a far more fitting memorial to him, and the values of King City, than his old building.

The fourth floor of McEveety Tower was occupied by Burdett Shipping, which was what brought Wade and Charlotte there late that Saturday night, though Wade had intended to come the previous evening before getting sidetracked by the mini?mart robbery.

They strode into the marble lobby and up to the circular burled?walnut front desk, where an old security guard with a pear?shaped head sat in the center, watching the monitors embedded in the counter in front of him.

The guard looked up as Wade approached and immediately broke into a smile of recognition.

“I’ll be damned. Tom Wade.” The guard stood right up and eagerly shook Wade’s hand. “After what you did, I thought for sure that you’d be someplace where the sun don’t shine.”

“I am,” Wade said, then gestured to Charlotte. “Officer Greene, this is Sam Appleby, retired watch commander at McEveety station, where I started out.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Charlotte said.

Appleby shook her hand.

When Wade worked with Appleby, he was all muscle and sinew, without an ounce of body fat. But he’d put on weight over the years, and now it was all yielding to gravity. Everything on Appleby seemed to be sagging toward his feet. Maybe that was why Appleby sat right back down again.

“I had no idea you were back on your old beat,” Wade said. “What happened to the dream of spending your days fishing at Deer Lake?”

“It’s a vacation when you do it two weeks a year. It’s a new kind of hell when it’s your life.”

Apparently, Appleby had forgotten that Wade grew up on a lake.

“This is better?” Wade asked.

“At least now I enjoy fishing again,” Appleby said. “How’d they get away with busting you down to uniform?”

“Technically, it’s a lateral move.”

“You could have walked,” Appleby said, then waved his hand in front of him, as if dissipating smoke. “Never mind, I forgot who I’m talking to. So what brings you here, Tom?”

Wade handed Appleby a picture of Glory Littleton.

“Ah hell,” Appleby said. “She was such a sweet girl. I heard she’d been killed. What happened?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Did you know her?”

“Nothing beyond pleasantries,” Appleby said. “I saw her each night when she came in and four hours later when she left. But I’d keep my eye on her until she got on the bus.”

“She lived in Darwin Gardens,” Charlotte said. “How much danger could she be in on a street where Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and Armani have their stores?”

“She’s dead, isn’t she?” Appleby asked.

“Was she here on Monday?” Wade asked.

Appleby shook his head. “She didn’t come in.”

“Did she have a locker here?”

Appleby grabbed a key ring from the desk, hit a button that electronically locked the lobby doors, and got up. “Follow me.”

He led them across the lobby to an unmarked door, which he unlocked and that opened to a corridor with linoleum floors, white walls, and bars of fluorescent lights along the acoustic?tiled ceiling.

“No marble and chandeliers for the help,” Charlotte said.

They followed Appleby into a windowless room with a scuffed?up table in the center surrounded by mismatched plastic and folding chairs. There was a vinyl couch repaired with duct tape, some vending machines, a refrigerator, a sink, a microwave, a utility closet, and a wall lined with gym lockers that looked like they’d been recovered from a junkyard. A maid’s cleaning cart, stuffed with supplies, dusters, brooms, and a vacuum, was parked in a corner.

“Welcome to the employee break room, though nobody hangs out here. They grab their lunches and go outside. The maids keep their uniforms in here and change in the restroom across the hall.” Appleby stepped up to one of the lockers and knocked a knuckle against the tin. “This was Glory’s.”

“You got a key for it?” Wade asked.

“Nope. But the handyman’s closet is over there and I’m going on break.”

Wade and Appleby shook hands, and then the security guard walked out. Charlotte watched him go, a look of confusion on her face.

“What was that supposed to mean?”

“He was saying we don’t need a key,” he replied, walking over to the closet, opening the door, and peering inside.

“We still need a search warrant.”

“This is both.” Wade pulled a bolt cutter out of the closet and smiled. “It’s a very versatile tool.”

He went up to Glory’s locker, snapped the lock, and handed it to Charlotte.

“For someone who rooted out corruption in the MCU,” she said, tossing the lock on the table, “you play pretty loose with the law yourself.”

Wade set the bolt cutters down, pulled a pair of gloves from his pocket, and put them on.

“The cops I testified against weren’t bending a few legal niceties to get the job done.” He opened the locker and began sorting through the contents, starting with a box of tampons and some makeup, which he set on the couch. “They were taking bribes, skimming from the cash and drugs we took as evidence, and running a protection racket out of the police department.”

“This is how the corruption begins,” she said.

“I’m trying to get justice for a girl who was brutally murdered and dumped like trash in a parking lot.” He set a stack of gossip magazines and a cleaning uniform on the couch, then turned back to the locker for more. “I’m not trying to blackmail anybody or enrich myself.”

“But once you start bending the rules,” she said, “then pretty soon you starting thinking none of them matter anymore.”

“That’s why you’re here,” he said. “I wonder what she cleaned while she was wearing these.”

Wade pulled out several pieces of lacy lingerie and held them up for Charlotte to examine.

She gave them a close look. “La Perla. That’s not a minimum?wage brand.”

“Gifts from a wealthy admirer, perhaps.”

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, “but just because we are in Ethan Burdett’s building, that doesn’t mean that he was her lover. Maybe those were for someone she was seeing after work.”

“Like his son,” Wade said.

“Or Timo. Or Duke Fallon or Sam Appleby. It could be anyone.”

Wade gestured to the cleaning cart. “Get me a few plastic bags.”

Charlotte did as she was told and came back, holding the bags open so he could drop the lingerie into them.

“I don’t know why you are bothering,” she said. “These are worthless as evidence by virtue of the illegal manner in which they were collected.”

“I don’t think virtue is going to be an issue,” Wade said and slammed the locker shut.

“Charlotte is right,” Mandy said, sitting across from Wade in a booth that Sunday morning as he worked his way through a stack of pancakes between shifts. “Just because Glory had a nightie in her locker doesn’t mean that she was screwing Ethan Burdett.”

“The nightie was La Perla,” he said.

“Which I can get on eBay for twenty bucks. Want me to?”

“Used lingerie?” Wade asked. “Yuck.”

There were only three or four others in the restaurant that morning, and they made a point of sitting as far across the restaurant as they could from Wade. He didn’t take it personally.

“The locker might have been where she stashed her naughty stuff so Mom would keep on thinking that she was a good girl,” Mandy said. “You should have seen what I had in my locker at school.”

“You weren’t a good girl?”

“I’m still not,” she said. “But you already know that.”

“I’m thinking that Glory brought Seth together with Timo to start moving drugs into Havenhurst,” Wade said between mouthfuls of pancake. “Maybe she was even getting a cut.”

“If that’s true, I’ve got to hand it to her-she was working every angle to get out.”

“Look where it got her,” Wade said.

“You don’t know if that’s got anything to do with why she was killed. I haven’t heard you mention anything that sounds remotely like a motive.”

“That’s mainly because I haven’t come up with one yet,” he said. “When did you start becoming interested in detecting?”

“When I started fucking you,” she said.

“You like saying ‘fucking.’”

“I like saying it because it reminds me that I’m doing it,” she said.

“You can sleep with me without helping me investigate these killings.”

“First off, we’ve shared a bed, and we’ve done plenty of fucking, but I haven’t slept with you yet,” she said. “Secondly, I have an interest in you, and you’re investigating, so I want to help.”

“I have an interest in you,” he said, “but you don’t see me making pancakes.”

“I see you coming in here and eating a lot of them,” she said. “Same thing.”

He supposed it was.

Billy came into the restaurant and approached their booth. He was holding a folder, which he set on the table beside Wade’s plate.

“This was faxed to you,” he said, then nodded at Mandy. “Good morning, Ms. Guthrie.”

“Billy,” she said. “Please call me Mandy.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

Wade opened the folder and started reading it.

“And never call me ‘ma’am,’” she said. “It makes me feel old.”

“You got it, baby,” he said.

“Much better,” she said.

Wade looked up at them. Billy smiled. So did Mandy, who gestured to the folder.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“The autopsy report on Glory Littleton. It lays out in detail her physical condition at the time of her death and the injuries she suffered. The conclusion is that she died Monday morning of injuries consistent with a fall or blunt force trauma, specifically as a result of massive internal bleeding.”

“You knew that already,” Billy said.

“But there’s plenty here that I didn’t.”

Mandy slid out of the booth. “Makes for wonderful breakfast reading.”

“More like dinner,” Billy said. “It’s his bedtime, in case you’re interested.”

Both Wade and Mandy looked at him.

“What? We’re all adults here,” Billy said, taking Mandy’s place in the booth.

“I shot you once,” Wade said. “I can shoot you again.”

“I keep hearing about what a dangerous place Darwin Gardens is,” Billy said. “So how come you’re the only who has taken a shot at me?”

“Somebody shot up your station,” Mandy said.

“While it was empty, and I’m pretty sure that was Timo, acting on his own,” Wade said. “Duke is giving us safe passage while we look into those dead women.”

“Because it serves his interest,” Mandy said.

“And because, so far, I’ve only been arresting junkies, sheriff’s deputies, and liquor store robbers. I haven’t taken a run at him yet.”

“You shot up his sign,” Billy said.

Wade nodded. “And since he hasn’t retaliated, that tells me he’s showing restraint to see how our murder investigation goes.”

“What happens after that’s over?” Billy asked.

Wade shrugged. “It’ll be interesting to see.”

Mandy put her hands on her hips and looked down at Billy. “Can I get you anything from the kitchen?”

“One of those big Injun doughnuts would be great.”

Mandy turned to Wade. “You really shot him?”

“I did,” Wade said.

“I don’t blame you,” she said, then looked back at Billy. “One fry bread coming right up.”

“We’ll take it to go,” Wade said, closing the file.

“Where are we going?” Billy asked.

“Havenhurst.”

Billy looked confused. “Why? When Glory was killed, Seth was on a county work detail out on the highway, under constant supervision of deputies, and his dad was in a room full of lawyers, so they’re both off the hook.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“Even without their kick?ass alibis,” Billy said, “you haven’t established a credible motive for either one of them.”

“So I’ve been told,” Wade said. “Why do you sound so lawyerlike all of a sudden?”

“I watched Lesbian Legal 7 last night. It’s the DVD I found at the station. It’s like Boston Legal, only with lesbo action.”

Wade took the file and slid out of the booth. “I’ve got to grab some stuff at the station. Meet me there in five minutes.”

“You want to borrow the DVD?” Billy asked.

“No, thanks.” Wade walked away.

“Your loss,” Billy said, calling after him. “It really makes you appreciate our legal system.”