Crime Seen

by Victoria Laurie

  ‘‘Because your head is in the lap of a guy driving a Mercedes-Benz, Edgar, and that’s rather strange behavior—even for you.’’

  ‘‘Huh?’’ I said, keeping my voice casual. ‘‘Don’t know what you’re talking about, Dutch. I’m at the office.’’

  ‘‘Really?’’ he said, and I could hear the tension in his voice. ‘‘That’s odd, because your cell phone is currentlyin the possession of someone bearing a striking resemblance to you and heading east on Long Lake Road.’’

  ‘‘Oh, crap,’’ I muttered. I had forgotten again that he had that stupid GPS locator on his cell that allowed him to track my every movement. ‘‘Hello?!’’ I suddenly yelled into the phone. ‘‘Dutch? Can you hear me?’’

  ‘‘I’m here,’’ he said.

  ‘‘Hello?!’’ I said again.

  ‘‘Abby, I’m here.’’

  ‘‘Darn,’’ I said, pulling the phone slightly away from my ear. ‘‘I always drop calls in this area.’’ I quickly turned the cell off, then twisted in my seat and eyed Darren. ‘‘Can you move this thing any faster?’’

  ‘‘You want to tell me what’s going on?’’ he asked.

  ‘‘Sure,’’ I said. ‘‘Just tell me when we’re clear of the black Range Rover tailing us.’’

  About three minutes later Darren said, ‘‘We’re clear. I dropped him at the red light behind us.’’

  I sat up in my seat and straightened my hair and clothing. ‘‘I am in trouble,’’ I said.

  ‘‘Will you tell me what’s going on?’’

  ‘‘That was my boyfriend back there,’’ I admitted.

  Darren’s eyebrow arched. ‘‘I thought you were single.’’

  I frowned. ‘‘I suppose that at this very moment that is a true statement.’’

  ‘‘Are you afraid of this guy?’’ Darren asked me, his features lined with concern.

  ‘‘No,’’ I said, looking behind us. ‘‘It’s just that he’s a little on the jealous side, and I don’t think he’d like it if he knew I was driving around with another guy.’’

  ‘‘I see,’’ said Darren. ‘‘Do you think he saw you?’’

  ‘‘Most definitely,’’ I said with a heavy sigh. ‘‘And I have no idea how I’m going to explain this to him.’’

  ‘‘Just tell him that your new job requires you to travel with an experienced loan officer. It’s just business.’’

  I nodded absently while my thoughts whirled. There was no way I could tell Dutch that I was working for Universal Mortgage. He’d be furious that I was within a hundred feet of Dick Wolfe. ‘‘I am so dead,’’ I muttered.

  A few minutes later, Darren and I arrived at the house of Tim and Tina Schalube. They were a nice couple who were struggling to assist with the housing and medical expenses of Tina’s ailing parents. They’d gotten behind in their property tax payments, along with a few of their credit cards. I listened as Darren smooth-talked them into overextending themselves with a three-year interest-only balloon mortgage that allowed them to take a good chunk of their equity out and increase their loan to property value. He told them that given the neighborhood and the size of their five-thousand-square-foot home, the value of their property was likely to increase ten to twenty percent over the next three years, which meant that they’d still have plenty of equity if and when they wanted to refinance.

  As I listened to him, I had a hard time holding in my anger. I knew both intuitively and from a practical sense that with Michigan’s struggling economy and the current downsizing of all the local automotive firms, there was no way this house was going to appreciate so much in such a short period. The Schalubes stood a really good chance to lose money, not make it. What’s more, by being locked into a balloon mortgage,they would be forced to refinance in three years—which meant they might have a much higher interest rate too. Still, in order to keep my cover, I had to play along, smiling and nodding at all the right times as the couple nervously scanned the application paperwork and signed the forms.

  We left their home only an hour after we’d arrived, and Darren was riding high. ‘‘Did you see that?’’ he said to me as we pulled out of the driveway. ‘‘They didn’t even flinch when I tacked on the origination fee!’’

  ‘‘I saw,’’ I said, keeping my voice even.

  ‘‘Easiest six grand I ever made,’’ Darren continued, exuberant about sticking it to the Schalubes. ‘‘There’s a sucker born every day!’’

  That was it. I’d had enough. ‘‘Doesn’t that bother you even a little?’’ I snapped.

  ‘‘Doesn’t what bother me?’’ he asked, looking puzzled.

  ‘‘These people are really struggling financially and you’re most likely putting them in a much worse situation, not to mention taking a good chunk of their equity in closing costs with it.’’

  ‘‘Did you see me holding a gun to their head?’’ Darren said defensively.

  I scowled at him and turned my head away to look out the window. ‘‘Whatever,’’ I said, wishing I’d kept my mouth shut.

  ‘‘They got themselves into their own mess, Abby. Not me. And if the universe wants to teach them a lesson by having them hand over their money to me and suffer for it down the road, then I’m actually helping them, aren’t I?’’

  I felt my face grow hot as my temper reached the boiling point. Turning back to Darren I said, ‘‘Did you ever consider, Darren, that the universe isn’t trying to teach the Schalubes the lesson? Maybe the powers that be are trying instead to teach you a lesson about doing the right thing.’’

  Darren gave me a huge roll of his eyes and turned back to watching the road. ‘‘You know, you’re never going to make it in this business with that kind of an attitude.’’

  Damn skippy, I thought, and thank God for that.

  A short time later Darren dropped me at my car and I wasted no time getting to my office so I could meet Candice. I wanted to be as far away from the cutthroat environment of Universal Mortgage as I could get.

  When I pulled into the parking garage, I could see Candice’s car already parked in the space next to mine. I rolled into my slot and pulled a little coin purse out of my shoulder bag that held my ID and credit cards, shoving it into the pocket of my blazer. Next, I pulled out my cell phone and clicked it on, then tucked that back into the bag and shoved it under the front seat. I then joined Candice in her SUV. ‘‘Tough day at work?’’ she asked, looking at me critically.

  ‘‘Darren Cox is an asshole,’’ I snapped.

  ‘‘Tell me something I don’t know,’’ Candice said. ‘‘Want to fill me in?’’

  I sighed heavily. ‘‘It’s not even worth getting into,’’ I said. After we drove for a minute or two, I had an idea and asked to borrow her cell phone.

  ‘‘Where’s yours?’’ she asked as she handed it to me.

  ‘‘Under the seat of my car. I figure if Dutch has any ideas about tracking my whereabouts via his cellular GPS system, he’ll see I’m at the office.’’

  ‘‘You left your purse behind too?’’

  ‘‘Yeah, but I brought my ID. One less thing the guards at the prison have to sort through,’’ I said as I punched a phone number into her phone. The call was to an old friend of mine, Tracy Gibson, who still worked at the bank where I used to work. She was the woman who had handled all of my own loan applications. I gave her all the details about the Schalubes, including the phone number I’d discreetly managed to jot down from their loan application. I told her to give them a call and offer them a competitive rate and program. ‘‘They’re being raked over the coals, Tracy,’’ I said. ‘‘I know you can do better on rate and terms, and I also know your fees will be a fraction of what they’re currently being charged.’’

  ‘‘How exactly do you know that they’ve got an application in at Universal Mortgage?’’

  ‘‘If I told you I’d have to kill you,’’ I joked. ‘‘Seriously, though, you can’t mention that you got this from me.’’

  ‘�
�And how exactly am I going to broach the topic?’’ she asked me.

  ‘‘Pretend you’re a telemarketer,’’ I said.

  ‘‘Which is against FCC regulations if they’re on the National Do Not Call list, Abby. I’d rather not get fined five thousand dollars.’’

  I scowled. This was harder than I’d thought. ‘‘Oh, crap, I’d forgotten about that. Well, can’t you be creative?’’

  Tracy giggled. ‘‘I miss working with you, girlfriend.’’

  ‘‘Does that mean you’ll do it?’’

  ‘‘I’ll see if I can’t come up with something. Keep me posted if you hear anything on your end, though.’’

  ‘‘Absolutely. And thanks, Tracy. You’re a life-saver.’’

  I hung up feeling much better and flashed Candice a winning smile. ‘‘I love beating an asshole at his own game,’’ I said.

  Candice smiled and pulled off the highway. ‘‘You hungry?’’

  ‘‘Famished,’’ I said, noting that she was heading toward a Denny’s restaurant.

  ‘‘We can talk strategy over lunch,’’ Candice said as we pulled into the lot.

  After we’d placed our order, Candice pulled out a legal pad and began to make notes. ‘‘I made a call up to Jackson this morning to see if Lutz was accepting visitors, and apparently he’s recovered enough from his stab wound to meet with the public. When we get in we’ll need to go through security and then I’ll give my name and see if Lutz is curious enough to let us see him. Most of these guys are so bored that they’re willing to see complete strangers if it means breaking up the monotony.’’

  ‘‘I gather you’d be the one doing all the talking?’’ I asked.

  Candice nodded. ‘‘You just sit there and let that radar hum. Along with asking him about Walter, I want to know who stabbed him, and why. Not that he’ll tell me, but maybe your radar can give us an insight or two. It’ll also let us know if he’s full of shit or not,’’ she added with a smile.

  ‘‘Inboard lie detectors do come in handy.’’ I grinned back.

  ‘‘I think we should also try and get a word with the warden. He’s not obligated to talk to us, but he might open up about who’s been visiting Lutz and if there’s any inside scoop about the stabbing.’’

  I nodded. ‘‘Sounds like a plan.’’

  We finished our meal quickly and hurried out the door, anxious to be on our way since the drive was long. We made it to Jackson about two hours later, and I was struck by the starkness of the place. The prison was out in the middle of nowhere, far removed from anything even remotely civilized. A huge facility complete with watchtowers and razor wire strung along the top of mammoth brick walls, it stood imposingly surreal against the emptiness of the open terrain.

  There was nothing warm or inviting about it, and I felt the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stand on end as we entered the first set of gates leading into the main prison. We were stopped by a guard and asked to show our IDs and state our business. Candice did most of the talking and I simply nodded as she explained that we were here to visit with one of the prisoners.

  We were let through the first set of gates and came to a second and a third before we were finally allowed onto the main grounds. We had to pay to park, but we found a good slot near the main entrance and hurried inside, both of us eager to complete our errand and get the hell out of there.

  Once we were inside, though, the process was anything but swift. We were taken through security, which involved lots of unloading of pockets and Candice’s purse, pulling off shoes, being swept by a handheld metal detector and peppered with questions about who we were there to see and why. Once we’d passed the gauntlet of security and were allowed into a small waiting area, I turned to Candice and said, ‘‘We’d better make this visit count, because I sure as hell don’t want to come back through all of this again.’’

  ‘‘You find this at the maximum-security level,’’ Candice said. ‘‘I mean, this is where the worst of the worst get sent, so they have to be thorough.’’

  I shivered as I looked around at the bleak waiting room and the even bleaker faces of relatives and friends of inmates, all waiting to spend a few minutes with them. ‘‘Makes you really want to keep your nose clean,’’ I said with another shiver.

  A few minutes later, our names were called and we were led through a set of iron prison gates into a corridor lined with barred windows. Our footsteps echoed along the corridor as we followed the guard, and I found myself trying to quiet them. We turned a corner and were led through two more sets of gates and corridors until we were finally admitted to a narrow room set up with little cubicles. Plexiglas divided those of us in the free world from the prisoners on the other side.

  We were shown to the last cubicle near the wall and told to wait while Lutz was brought down from the infirmary. I took a seat beside Candice and we waited in silence for a minute until Candice looked down at her cell phone and said, ‘‘Crap, I gotta take this. Abby, if Lutz shows up, tell him I’ll be right back.’’ Off she went to a corner of the room to take her call.

  I was sitting, anxiously wondering how long it would be before Lutz came down, when snippets of the conversation in the next cubicle caught my attention. ‘‘The man came to the house yesterday,’’ said a portly Hispanic woman next to me. ‘‘He gave me the papers to sign and drop off to him tomorrow. This way we won’t have to sell the house to get the money.’’

  Out of the corner of my eye I glanced at her. She was talking earnestly into the phone that connected her with the convict on the other side of the Plexiglas, and I noticed that her swollen belly showed signs of late pregnancy. ‘‘He said it would take about two weeks before I could get the check.’’ There was a pause as the woman listened to what the prisoner said before she snapped, ‘‘There’s nothing I can do! I already asked him to hurry, Nero! I can’t make this go any faster!’’

  It was then that I noticed my intuition buzzing like crazy in my head and I swiveled in my chair to get a full look at the woman and focus on her energy. She wasn’t just pregnant; she was scared out of her mind. Her energy was frantic. She held one arm protectively over her stomach while she gripped the phone with the other hand. Something was terribly wrong, and the fact that she was incredibly nervous and talking about taking two weeks to get some money had me on high alert.

  Just then the woman turned her head slightly in my direction, and the look she gave me was harsh. ‘‘You want something?’’ she snapped.

  ‘‘Sorry,’’ I said, holding up my hand in apology. ‘‘You remind me of someone I know.’’

  ‘‘Yeah, right,’’ she scoffed as she looked me up and down. ‘‘I know plenty of white folks like you. I clean their houses and pick up their shit and get paid dirt for it.’’

  I nodded soberly. ‘‘I’m truly sorry,’’ I said. ‘‘It was rude of me.’’ I scooted my chair a little farther from her, hoping that she’d drop it.

  She gave me a loud ‘‘Hmph’’ and turned back to the inmate, saying, ‘‘Nothing, just some white bitch thinkin’ she’s all better than me. Listen, I gotta go. I’ll be back next week, okay?’’

  Thankfully, at that moment Candice came back and took her seat. ‘‘Did Lutz come down yet?’’

  ‘‘No, not yet,’’ I said.

  ‘‘You okay?’’ she asked me as she noticed the way I was trying to blend into the wall.

  ‘‘Fine,’’ I said quickly. ‘‘I’m just anxious to talk to Lutz and get the hell outta here.’’

  We didn’t have long to wait. Bruce Lutz appeared in a wheelchair on the other side of the Plexiglas a few moments later, and although his face didn’t register anything other than a deep scowl, his eyes held a hint of curiosity. ‘‘What?’’ he asked as Candice picked up the phone and held it between the two of us.

  ‘‘Good afternoon, Mr. Lutz. My name is Candice Fusco and I’m a private investigator. I’d like to ask you a few questions, if I may.’’

  ‘‘What’s in it
for me?’’ he asked as his eyes roved over her chest.

  ‘‘Parole,’’ Candice said simply.

  The corner of Lutz’s lip turned up slightly. ‘‘That so?’’ he asked.

  Candice nodded. ‘‘I’m looking into the murder of Walter McDaniel, and I have reason to believe you were not the triggerman.’’

  Lutz actually laughed. ‘‘That’s funny,’’ he said. ‘‘ ’Cuz I seem to recall confessing to the crime, Miss PI.’’

  ‘‘Lots of people confess to crimes they didn’t commit,’’ Candice said easily. ‘‘The question is why.’’

  Lutz waved his hand impatiently. ‘‘Well, I hate to disappoint you, sweetheart, but I shot that cop, and you can let the parole board know that I’m really sorry about it.’’

  My lie detector went haywire. I tapped Candice’s foot with my own, a sign that she and I had agreed upon at the restaurant would indicate when Lutz was lying. ‘‘I’ll be sure and let them know, Mr. Lutz,’’ she said. ‘‘But are you sure your memory is serving you correctly? Are you sure that someone else didn’t shoot Detective McDaniel and get away with it?’’

  Lutz scoffed as he looked at her. ‘‘You’re a pretty dumb broad even if you are a looker,’’ he said. ‘‘I told yous, I shot that cop. Okay?’’

  Again my lie detector sounded and I gave Candice’s foot another tap. ‘‘Fine,’’ said Candice. ‘‘Have it your way, Mr. Lutz. I was hoping I could help you, but that’s obviously not something of interest to you. So sorry for wasting your time.’’

  ‘‘That’s all I been doin’ for nine years, honey, was-tin’ time. Say, who hired you anyway?’’

  ‘‘One of the family members,’’ Candice said easily, then quickly changed topics before Lutz had a chance to ask which one of Walter’s relatives had hired us. ‘‘Just one more thing before we go, Mr. Lutz. Mind sharing with us who stabbed you?’’

  Lutz’s face seemed to flush slightly. ‘‘Yeah, I mind,’’ he snapped and promptly hung up his end of the phone. Flipping Candice the bird with one hand, he pulled on his wheelchair with the other and spun away from the counter. A moment later he was out the iron gate and heading away from the visitors’ room.