“You’ll eventually build your case. Maybe this one with Saul is it—if these photos let you pry up some people to testify about what happened that night.”
“We’ll push hard,” Ben said.
Evie found the story of the Grayson brothers fascinating. “That’s rare, that someone leaves a crime family and is still alive.”
“The eldest son has talent and a good business sense. He’s the sort of man who, were he born into a different family, you’d think would make a good federal judge or an honest governor. There’s got to be some deep-rooted ethics in him to have walked away from the money and power of his family in order to build something legal and free of that influence.” Ben looked across the images spread out on the table. “David, the photos from the concert and the guy Saul was focused on, why don’t you take those and see what you can find out? It might help you with that other disappearance—Tammy Preston, was it? I’ll start working IDs for the people gambling that Saturday night. We’ll meet up at the office where you’re working in, say, three hours? I’ll bring my team with me, and you can bring us up to date on the Saul Morris case.”
“Sounds like a plan,” David agreed, gathering up the concert photos of Lucas.
“So do we tell local cops our suspicions about Lori?” Evie asked David as they rode down in the elevator. “Someone tied to the organized crime family in Chicago is involved in Saul’s murder? If Lori knew a body was in that wall, it’s no longer a casual matter . . . or how she came to know it. And if one of her Houston clients told her about the remains, it’s likely she might be able to identify that person as someone in those photos.”
“We ask her ourselves first,” David replied after considering the question. “If she was acting on information someone told her who’s now dead, that’s different from if he were still alive. We don’t want to lose sight of what she’s potentially doing for Ann—solving who killed Nathan’s wife. The cops start looking at why she’s in Chicago, how she had info about the body, then suspicions overshadow what she’s doing at The Lewis Group, and whatever she has found to date there grinds to a halt.”
Evie went quiet as they walked out of the building, waited until they were in the car. “We’ve got time to swing by The Lewis Group offices. Why don’t I give Ann a call now, ask her to have Lori come down and meet us? That way we have it settled before you talk to the Englewood detectives. If we want Lori to speak with them directly, we can make arrangements for her to come talk with them tonight, maybe keep Nathan in the dark about Lori’s real reason for working for him.”
“All of this presupposes that Lori Nesbitt is in fact working for Ann and did know a body was there. We may be totally off, Evie.”
“I don’t mind looking like I stepped in scrambled eggs.”
David laughed at the image. “Call Ann. We’ve got time to make a stop.” He put the address for The Lewis Group in the GPS and pulled out into traffic.
Evie made the call, closed her phone with satisfaction three minutes later. “Ann didn’t seem surprised at the request. I’m going to take that as confirmation Lori and Ann have talked since the body was found this morning. Go around to the staff entrance on the south side of the building. Ann will have Lori meet us there.”
“We don’t tell Lori about the photos,” David clarified.
“No. Just ask about how she knew about the body. And take it from there, depending on the answer we get.”
Twenty minutes later, David pulled up to the building, and Lori appeared, opened the back door and slipped into the seat. “I’d say someone here knows Ann well. You’ve got questions?”
David and Evie had both turned toward Lori, and Evie began, “Thanks for coming down. You’re helping out Ann in Nathan’s office?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Making any progress?”
“I think so, and Ann’s right. Someone has been making trouble for Nathan from inside the firm going back at least eight years. That it escalated to killing his wife? I have some theories but not enough facts yet to put a name out there.”
“I’m glad you’re digging into it,” Evie said.
“Who told you where to find the body?” David asked.
Lori blinked, considered him, then smiled faintly. “A guy named Philip Granger, who was a client of Estate Services, Ltd. I learned after he died that he was in WITSEC. His landlord called me since I was listed as his emergency contact. I was at his apartment before the US Marshals got there. Granger had left a letter alongside his will with a few details. He didn’t say who the dead man was, just that he’d walled up a body in Englewood, Illinois. There wasn’t an address for where, only a description of the scene.
“I gave the US Marshals the letter, waited for something to happen, even subscribed to a Chicago newspaper and watched for anything about a body discovered in Englewood. For whatever reason, either the US Marshals didn’t pass on that letter or it was deemed too unspecific to act on by local authorities.
“Anyway, when Ann asked me to do a favor for her regarding Nathan, and I realized I could possibly solve my curiosity about this mystery at the same time, I said yes. I figured I could narrow it down to five or six buildings in Englewood, then get cops to do a radar scan of the walls or something. When I saw this property and the permits, the building changes, I realized Philip had to be referring to a building in its prior condition. He was describing RB Electric, because the fence, the last building modification, hadn’t been made yet. It fit, so I took a hammer to a wall and wow, a body, just like the letter said. I’d thought I was on a wild goose chase up until then.”
“Why didn’t you tell us this when we first met?”
“With Nathan hovering? He doesn’t know why I’m here. The man I knew as Philip Granger is dead—I doubt that was his real name—and all I had to give you was a body. You’ve literally got everything I know. I figured silence worked in my favor.”
“It had to be a surprise, finding out Philip was in WITSEC,” David said.
“Caught me off guard,” Lori said immediately. “It was a rather vanilla will, stated he had no living relatives, left his estate to the preservation of wildlife. The US Marshals went through the remainder of his things, then handed the apartment and its contents to me to process according to the will. They seemed a bit irked a letter had been included with his will with such information in it, but otherwise it wasn’t such a big deal.”
“How did he die?”
“The ME said natural causes—he was a steady drinker, and his body finally said enough.”
“We’d like you to identify a photo of him for us, so we know the Philip Granger you were talking with, hopefully to get a real name,” David requested.
“You can call the Houston medical examiner and ask for the file. His photo has to be part of it. Or check DMV records in Texas since he had a valid driver’s license in that name when his will was notarized four years ago. If those draw a blank, I can look at photos or try to work with a sketch artist, but just to warn you—I’m not too good at descriptions.”
“You’re a lawyer, Lori?” Evie asked casually.
“No.”
Evie studied her. “Why the lie to that question? The rest has been reasonably truthful, the facts, although the sequence . . . maybe not so much.”
Lori faintly smiled. “I used to be a better liar. I’m not a lawyer anymore.” She didn’t offer anything else.
Evie blinked as it clicked who she must be talking with. “Oh . . . I thought you were mostly a legend.”
Lori’s smile broadened. “I’m very much real, but thanks for the compliment. I’ve really got nothing else useful to offer on this case. The body was it. I wish you luck with solving it from here.”
“Thanks, Lori,” Evie replied. “Let me know if you need any help with digging out what happened to Nathan’s wife.”
“I’ll do that.” Lori slipped out of the car and headed back inside.
David had watched in silence as the last part played out.
“Clue me in, Evie.”
“She’ll never say it, but I think she’s the WITSEC death attorney. Or was. She must have retired.”
David turned to look at Lori reentering the building. “You think . . . ?” He tapped his fingers on the wheel, then nodded and carefully pulled back into the heavy traffic. “Explain what you mean so I don’t say something in reply that tells you more than I want to say.”
Evie smiled. “She truly is an estate attorney, but she’s also a US Marshal. Her clients were all in witness protection. She’s the one who figures out how to settle their estates without compromising the program. The people in their lives from before WITSEC don’t know where they went, their new name, and those who meet them after WITSEC have no idea of their former life. The wills get complicated when you’re distributing money and belongings from someone who has to remain a ghost to those receiving an inheritance. I’ve heard rumors the position existed. But to meet someone who’s held that role, that’s a pretty big deal.”
“Lori Nesbitt.”
“It fits. Just shift what she said from being, ‘Oh my, my client was in WITSEC and left me a letter, what shall I do?’ to that being a normal part of her job description. It makes better sense.”
David thought about it, smiled. “Theoretically, yeah, it would flow better. I’ve seen one of those WITSEC on-death letters,” he mentioned. “About four years ago. A man died, and the letter arrived through channels to the NYPD. It was ten pages long, detailing crimes he knew about firsthand or had heard about. He’d been in WITSEC for twelve years, and it was clear he wanted to have the last say in life, was writing mostly to get even with old adversaries rather than to clear his conscience. We were able to make fifteen arrests based on the details in that one letter, even with the rather dated information.”
“I’ve seen one in my career too. A shorter letter, about six years ago. It had information about a series of vandalisms to farms, a guy causing damage to grain silos, destroying airflow so that the feed inside them would rot. The damages ran into the millions of dollars, and there wasn’t a single lead. The one who wrote the letter entered witness protection after testifying in a murder case. He wanted to get even with his cousin, who was doing the vandalisms, but had promised his mother not to rat on a relative, so he waited until he died to get even.
“I asked Ann about the letter when it arrived, and she said she’d dealt with a handful of them during her career. Apparently, to encourage those in WITSEC to be detailed in their on-death letters, there’s a deal made. If the material is ever used while they’re alive, they get immunity for everything in the letter. If I’m right about Lori, she would have been the one getting her clients to write those letters.”
Evie looked over at David while he steered through the lanes of traffic. “Say in this case Philip Granger was one of her clients. She wrote his will. She also talked him into writing an on-death letter. She would have read that letter in order to decide if it was worth giving him immunity to use the information while he was still alive. So his letter describes a past crime with a buried body. Maybe the body gets found by other means, and cops make a case against Philip as the murderer. Oops, we gave him immunity. So the decision in his case is to let the letter sit there alongside the will and hope the body gets found by other means.
“A few years pass. This Philip now dies in Houston. Lori hears the news. She happens to be in Chicago working for Nathan. So Lori knocks a hole in the wall and gives cops the body. She must know scores of secrets like that one. If I’m right, the on-death letter Philip Granger wrote—or whatever his real name is—will arrive in due course through whatever official path those things take. Lori simply saved us some time and used what she knew to give us the body sooner rather than let some random construction worker get the scare of his life and possibly damage the evidence.”
David thought about that sequence of events. “I’ll accept that Lori somehow came to know where the body was and ‘found him’ in order to give the skeleton to the cops in a neater fashion than some construction person might have done. The rest of it is . . . well, conjecture and speculation.”
Evie shrugged. “No one would ever confirm I’m right, even if I was. The WITSEC death attorney knows an enormous number of interesting secrets. The identity of that person, even after they retired, would have to be carefully protected. It does make me wonder, though, if Lori Nesbitt is even her real name.”
“Evie . . .”
She grinned. “I know. Letting it rest. I just like spinning stories of WITSEC and spies and skullduggery. It lightens an otherwise miserable day.”
David laughed. “I’ll concede that.”
“Do we need to tell Englewood detectives anything more than what they already have in Lori’s statement?”
“We’ll pull a photo of Philip Granger and see if he’s in one of the photos Saul took that night,” David proposed. “See if we can learn his real name. Why was he in WITSEC? He must have told cops something useful in another case to get moved to Houston. The fact he’s dead is going to complicate things, but maybe he had a relative who would also know something about the night Saul died. We make sure those names show up on the Englewood gamblers list. If necessary, we say a source gave us the names, but we don’t have to bring Lori into it.”
“That works for me,” Evie said.
It was midnight when Evie walked the Englewood detectives to the door after their briefing in the Ellis offices. They would be back with a van in the morning to pick up all the boxes from the Saul Morris case.
She pushed open the suite doors and realized David had once more turned on the Triple M playlist. She found him sorting folders into a box. “That went well. They liked your whiteboard wall.”
He glanced over his shoulder, smiled. “Saul’s life, recorded in the names of those who knew him. I only wish something here pointed more specifically to who killed him. We know why, where, and when, mostly how. We still don’t have who.”
“Blake Grayson. Go to the top of the list for who pulled the trigger and actually killed him, and maybe evidence one day confirms it.”
David fit a lid to the box. “Given who Blake is today, they’ll have their hands full trying to find someone willing to talk. But it’s their problem now. In one day my case goes from being a stuck mystery to mostly resolved. It rarely happens this elegantly.”
“You want me to come with you tomorrow when you talk with Cynthia?”
“I would, but grief is a complicated reality. It’s probably best she not have to deal with a new face when she hears the news. I’ll make sure she has a friend or neighbor to be with her before I leave. So”—he set another box on the table—“tomorrow it’s back to Jenna Greenhill.”
Evie could barely remember the last detail she’d been working. Multiple concert ticket purchases by loyal fans? “You could pursue Tammy Preston’s high school boyfriend, Lucas. Maybe she ran off with him and got in trouble. If we can take Tammy off the list of similar crimes, this gets simpler, even if it means we lose the theory that the guy lives around Milwaukee.”
“I’ll take another look for Lucas,” David agreed. “You look staggeringly tired, Evie.”
“How come you’re not? We got called out to the scene at like seven a.m.—and I’d had a short night.”
“Adrenaline hasn’t faded yet, I guess. It’s nice having an answer to prayer be so obvious, even though it’s a grim scene. And you still owe me an answer on that short night of yours.”
“We’ll pass on my story. But given it’s Chicago in January, I should have realized any answer from heaven would have to be indoors. If I’d been sharper on the mark, I could have guessed he’d be found in a floor or a wall, and looked smart when I turned out to be right.”
David laughed. “A missed opportunity. Why don’t you plan to sleep in tomorrow? I’ll join you at the hotel after I’ve talked to Cynthia. Maggie gets in tomorrow, and I’ve promised her an introduction to you before the charity event. Maybe we’ll do that
as well.”
Evie had lost track of the calendar. “The mayor’s event is this Friday night, forty-eight hours from now? I need to go shopping.”
“You’ll find something wonderful, I’m certain.”
“It’s not the dress; it’s the inevitable high heels to accompany it. You’re comfortable with Maggie’s security for this?”
“Given the number of VIPs attending, Maggie will be in one of the safest locations in the city Friday night. I’ll confirm again tomorrow that there will be security video for the rope line for us to review. I think odds are good the guy we’re interested in comes to see her arrive. It’s one reason I’m so relieved to be able to pass along Saul’s case, which needs devoted attention to reach a conclusion. I need to be focused on who is using Triple M concerts.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and spot a familiar face. We should be able to ID the diehard Maggie fans by looking for those who leave the minute she disappears inside.”
“We’ll start there.” David finished the last box and added it to the flat cart. “Come on, Evie. Let’s call it a night and head back to the hotel.”
She gladly went to get her coat.
Seventeen
The hotel restaurant at 10:40 a.m. on a Thursday had just two other guests in a room that could seat forty.
“It went that bad with Cynthia?” Evie asked, pushing a Diet Coke across the table as David approached.
He pulled out a chair, sighed as he sat down. “Just sad. She’d seen the news, wondered if it could be Saul. I told her the medical examiner is going to need another week to confirm ID, but based on what I’d seen at the scene, it was her brother. It helped a lot having copies of those sunset photos for her.”
Evie simply nodded, imagining the difficult meeting for both of them.
He picked up a mushroom from a basket of appetizers she had ordered, then pointed to her pad of paper. “Master list? Where are you at right now?”
“Just reviewing old theories on what happened to Jenna. This vast gulf between how Candy saw Jenna and how her friends describe her has my attention. Jenna was a lot more complex than she appears.”
Threads of Suspicion Page 23