Every Breath You Take: A Novel (A Kristen Conner Mystery Book 2) (31 page)

We split an order of the asparagus with a hollandaise sauce and an order of creamed spinach. I’m not a huge spinach fan but it tasted so good there had to be a lot of unhealthy things in it. Reynolds sipped a couple glasses of red wine over the course of three hours. I had San Pelligrino sparkling water with lime squeezed in it and coffee made at the table in a French press. I like my latte or Americano at JavaStar every morning. But I think this was even better—and the office brew just got a little worse.

After his third glass of wine Reynolds might have hinted that I could come to his place or he could come to my place for the night, but he didn’t push hard. He knows I’ve got my boundaries drawn. If this relationship actually heats up at all I have to think through the fact that he has different boundaries than me. That’s going to bother me. It might be why I don’t even give myself a chance to get close to guys—I don’t want to hassle with hand-to-hand combat and explaining my position on not sleeping around. It doesn’t help that even my sister, Klarissa, says I am repressed and abnormal for not loosening up some.

From what I’ve seen, abnormal might be underrated when it comes to some things.

I pull back the covers ready to fall into an immediate coma. But even with my eyes closed tight and my head spinning from fatigue, the little red light on my answering machine keeps blinking away. Like the subtle sound of a faucet dripping it won’t leave me alone.

I sit up and let my legs dangle over the edge of the bed. I hit the play button.

“Kristen, you have to talk to me. I cannot absolutely prove that my daughter didn’t kill Jack Durham, but I absolutely know I can provide information that will help you arrest the real killer. Please call when you get in. Doesn’t matter how late. If not tonight, please call me in the morning. First thing. Please. Someone needs to hear what I have to say. There’s something else I should have told you sooner.” She pauses. “Kristen, things aren’t as they seem. I need your help.”

I look at the red digital letters on my clock. It’s after 1:00 a.m. I know she said it doesn’t matter how late—but it’s too late. I roll on my stomach and decide to call Bobbie back in the morning. First thing.

Then I roll back over on my back long enough to wonder who is sending me texts.

Surely not Dell. Couldn’t be, he’s engaged. The Marine—my one-time punching partner? Nah. He never called back. Derrick? He isn’t cryptic and uses my other phone. I’m sure he’s already moved on to several pretty young things. Not him. A joke from the guys in the office? The texts started after I got my undercover assignment. But they’re over-the-top for a prank.

I gotta talk to Blackshear and get this looked at.

47

“QUAD SHOT GRANDE Americano, room for cream, extra hot.”

“Coming right up,” a perky blonde that for some crazy reason seems very happy to be alive before 7:00 in the morning tells me excitedly. She obviously didn’t eat a pound of cow at Morton’s late last night. She almost makes me miss the guy with ear studs the size of quarters who used to mess up my order at this location most mornings. Haven’t seen him since I got back from D.C. Should I ask if he’s okay? When my order awaits me at an amoeba-shaped counter less than two minutes later—correctly I would note—I don’t miss my old order-taker nearly as much. I can thank him that I stopped using artificial sweeteners. I never knew what I was going to get in my coffee with him at the cash register so I quit trying.

I sit down in a bright orange vinyl chair that was obviously designed by someone that flunked or completely ignored the study of ergonomics. I sigh and stifle a yawn. I’m going to fall back asleep if I stay seated, even if the chair is designed to mess up my spine. I get up and head for my Miata. I’m tempted to put the convertible top down but my hair is already a mess this morning, even pulled tight in a braid, so I’m not going to risk further unruliness. I am an officer of the peace.

The engine fires right up. After rolling it backward down an incline to start it by popping the clutch for close to five months, I never get tired of the sound of my engine turning over. I’m tempted to turn it off just to hear the soft rumble again but resist.

I’ve been listening to light jazz on Water Colors all week, so I figure it’s time to crank some 80s. I hit the third preset button for WLLP—“the looooop”—as Sting finishes singing the phrase, “I’ll be watching you.” I like “Every Breath You Take” but after last night’s text I’m a little weirded out.

“That was the Police on the ‘loooooop,’” an excited DJ tells me. “Stay tuned for news at the top of the hour after these messages from our sponsooooors. You won’t want to miss first details of last night’s killing of the Lincoln Park Madame.”

I bounced out of the parking lot and shifted from second to third to fourth in fast succession as he says that. I gasp. I hit the seek button. A commercial. I hit it again. Another commercial. I got to find a station with news that’s not on a commercial break. The Lincoln Park Madame. That’s what the press has been calling Barbara Ferguson. Bobbie.

I didn’t call her back last night.

PART THREE

Blood is thicker than water.

G
ERMAN
P
ROVERB

48

“SHE LEFT THE message on your home answering machine at 11:30. My guess is she was dead within the next hour,” Jerome, the crime scene techie from the Medical Examiner’s office, says. “So even if you called her back after you got in, she was probably already dead.”

I look at him closely. Is he just trying to make me feel better? I’m still feeling guilty for not calling her back. I’ve been back in Chicago for twenty-two days now and I’m officially on my third murder case.

Jack Durham was dead before I landed. Keshan Brown was killed a week ago. Barbara Ferguson, my dating consultant and nemesis and almost-friend, was killed late last night or possibly the early hours of today.

She was known as the Lincoln Park Madame. Then the
Chicago Journal
broke the story that Penny was her daughter. Now the press is having even more fun with nicknames, including Mommie Dearest and the Mommy Madame.

I’ll admit it. I’m a boring person. I like it that way. I am not looking for drama in life. I get enough drama on the job and through my family. I don’t watch reality TV—though I have to admit I flipped channels one night and watched the Kardashians for the first time. I couldn’t turn it off and saw almost the entire hour-long episode. But that was a car wreck I stumbled upon. Bottom line, I don’t get a thrill from voyeurism.

This is my fifth or sixth time in Bobbie’s condo. She told me her designer was big into Feng Shui, the belief that the geometric arrangement of furniture could create energy and peace for the person living there. I don’t think I’m buying all that. But it’s obvious that furniture, decorations, and basic arrangements say something. In Bobbie’s case the eclectic but somehow harmonious blending of styles is elegant and somehow comfortable.

I didn’t grow up poor but I grew up in a working-class home. Mom still lives in the same place in West Lawn. The houses and yards are small but well-maintained. If you can ignore the jets flying overhead into Midway, it’s not a bad place to have been raised.

Even if we had to share one car—even after I got my license—we never felt like we were missing anything. The travel soccer team I played for as a teen had some girls from what appeared to me to be pretty wealthy families. Heck, anyone with a pool in the backyard was rich in my eyes, but I visited some of the homes and there was a lot more than a pool. I remember one of the girls—Abby, a decent sweeper—could not get over the fact that I was sixteen and didn’t have a car. She wasn’t trying to make me feel bad, but she yammered on about it one entire night we were staying in a motel outside of St. Louis for a soccer tournament. That may have been the first time I was aware that how much money you have is a big deal to some people.

But how much is
much
is relative. From my perspective Bobbie looked pretty rich. I heard her say a few things that indicated she thought she was pretty poor.

A lot or a little is irrelevant at a crime scene. Dead is dead.

Bobbie’s death does not match her surroundings. She was shot in the head at point-blank range. Her white sofa and the wall behind it is a mess from the blood, bones, and brains blown there.

Jerome walks next to the gurney being wheeled out the front door and into the hall with a black bag containing the bodily remains of Barbara Ferguson’s earthly life.

He looks back at me and says, “Nothing you could have done, Kristen.”

We are scouring every inch of her place—all 3500 costly square feet with an almost front row view of Lake Michigan on Chicago’s Gold Coast.

“Guys, I found something,” Randall calls from the bedroom.

I am not a guy, but I join the throng gathered comfortably in her walk-in closet, which is bigger than my bedroom.

“There’s a drawer unit here in the back that doesn’t look quite flush to the wall,” he says.

“You a carpenter or something?” Don asks.

“Matter of fact I am,” Randall answers. “I gave it a few pushes and could tell it wasn’t anchored. So I found the lever that releases the spring load latch. It popped out about six inches. It’s got a hidden hinge. When it’s out, the frame and hinge are far enough out that you can open it.”

We are looking at the front door of a safe that is probably three by six feet. Impossible to tell how far back it goes.

“What was her birthday?” Martinez asks.

“What’s yours?” a uniform asks him. “And can I borrow your debit card. I think I just figured out your password.”

Everyone laughs and Martinez reddens and mutters under his breath.

“No one is punching numbers on that beast,” Blackshear says. “We’re going to get some backup in here. She wasn’t stupid so the code isn’t her birthday or social security number, but even if she was idiot enough to use one of those numbers, there might be a trick or two built into the mechanism that destroys some important evidence.”

“Besides, no woman would use her birthday as a code,” the uniform says. “Too sensitive of a subject.”

He thinks that is hilarious but takes his laughter down a couple notches when he realizes no one is laughing with him. I look at his lanyard and see the name Russ.

We all head back for our assigned areas of the condo but Russ goes for a laugh one more time as he calls to Martinez, “So what is your bank, Detective? I got the key.”

“¿Qué te parece que un puñetazo en la cara,”
Martinez calls back.

I look at Don for a translation. He just shrugs.

I have to pick a new password for all my accounts.

• • •

That didn’t have to happen. But it should probably have happened years ago.

Barbara, it was bad enough when you got so full of yourself that you actually thought you were part of high society.

But when you suddenly got a conscience, you were even worse.

• • •

My phone vibrates but nothing is happening on my screen. I like my new iPhone. The guy at Verizon told me it was part of a 4G network. I guess that’s good. I am using more features than I thought I would, namely Words With Friends with Kaylen and Klarissa. I sweep the screen again. I push the only button on the unit. Nothing. The vibrating noise has stopped and I put it back down.

I downshift to fourth and then third in quick succession to assist my braking and dart off at my exit and then gun into a gap in the traffic, barely slowing down. Reynolds is picking me up in twenty-five minutes for a date. I’m still fifteen minutes from home and have to take a shower.

It’s Friday night. We went out last night too. He flies back to D.C. in the morning. He wanted to pick me up earlier but it’s another overtime day that has Martinez crying about the toll the extra hours are taking on his love life. I told Reynolds 8:00 was best I could do and left the office at 7:00. The Friday night crowd is already out in force.

I consider running a yellow light at Division but since I have no suicidal tendencies, think better of putting my tiny Miata in the path of a giant SUV or dump truck. My phone vibrates again. I look down. Still nothing on my screen. Is it broken? Then it finally dawns on me. The temp phone they gave me to use with Derrick Jensen is what’s vibrating. I need to pick up and tell Derrick to stop calling and texting me. My eyes don’t leave the road as my right handle fumbles and feels everywhere in my carryall purse, searching for the phone. I growl in frustration. I remove my hand to shift gears numerous times and finally find it as I bounce into my parking lot. Someone near my unit is having a party and I end up parking in another area of my apartment complex.

I start walking briskly and look down at the little Nokia screen. He’s relentless. Twenty-five texts, eleven missed calls, nine voice messages.

• • •

“So are you asking me to assess this or are you just trying to make me jealous?”

Reynolds is in my living room. I’m in my bathroom finishing my makeup. My place is small enough that we can hear each other just fine through two open doorways.