by Dani Amore
“I’m assuming that my original investment won’t cover your services,” he finally said, before turning back to face him.
“Every major project requires investment and occasional re-investment,” the Spook answered. “You of all people know that. However, I’m happy to reduce my fee by ten percent. You can use that money to establish some sort of memorial for Mr. Ricks. Call it the No Refund Fund.”
The old man’s eyes narrowed. The Spook supposed it was the kind of look that made subordinates tremble. He wasn’t a subordinate. And he never trembled. Instead, he stood and let himself out.
It was time to go to work.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“What’s wrong with you, John?” Anna asked me. I’d been despondent all night, barely listening to what my family was saying. I’d asked my daughters about school, listened to Anna talk about her struggles to decide what book to pick for her book club, but mostly, I couldn’t stop thinking about what Tripp Collins had said.
Benjamin and Elizabeth.
There was no way.
Amanda Collins had told me that Benjamin said he’d met someone. That Grosse Pointe wasn’t suddenly so bad. Could that someone have been Elizabeth? Was it even a possibility?
It was bullshit.
Tripp Collins had been drunk and desperate to come up with something. The man was a loose cannon.
It was fiction, plain and simple.
The girls eventually went to bed. Anna went online to research her book choices and I sat on the couch, staring at the television.
What a ridiculous story. Elizabeth and I had been engaged. We were lovers. And we had spent a lot of time together. Sure, we had our separate schedules. Being a rookie on the police force, I’d had a lot of long shifts I couldn’t avoid. I suppose if she had wanted to sleep around on me, she could have. But I highly doubted it. I would have known, right?
I realized instantly how foolish that thought was. Every person who has ever been cheated on probably thought the same thing. That somehow they would have known.
There was no point in deceiving myself about how smoothly people could lie. In my profession, I saw it every day.
Another problem was that Benjamin would have been much younger than Elizabeth. He was barely out of high school for God’s sake. It just wasn’t possible that she would have started seeing someone that young. Right?
Still, the triumph in Tripp Collins’s eyes had been genuine. Even if it wasn’t true, he certainly seemed to believe it was.
On the television, an auction of classic cars was taking place. A beautifully restored Mustang rolled onto center stage and a bunch of old white guys, balancing glasses of beer on their bulging guts, were bidding.
An announcer was talking about the Golden Age of the automobile. It made me think of Auto Time.
And Benjamin Collins getting a job.
Onscreen, the Mustang sold for a little over forty thousand dollars, to some seventy-year-old guy with a cowboy hat and a twenty-five-year-old trophy bride.
Men. Sex. And cars.
Benjamin. Elizabeth. Murder.
Then again, there was a connection between the Collins family and the Pierce family. I had just seen Elizabeth with the UAM folio tucked underneath her arm. How long had she been working with Tripp Collins? Why I hadn’t I thrown that in his face when he confronted me?
On the television, a Cadillac that must have been about forty feet long was pushed onto center stage by two guys wearing gloves. It sat there while the camera flashed on bidders. I wondered who would have a garage big enough to house a car that size. You would practically need an airplane hangar.
Well, I wasn’t done with Tripp Collins. Or Elizabeth Pierce. I would just have to go back at him tomorrow. Confront him with the fact that I knew Elizabeth was a client. And just what did he have to say about that?
I turned off the television before the final hammer came down on the Cadillac.
It was time to go to bed.
But I doubted I would get any sleep.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Morning started with an entire pot of coffee for myself and the realization that I needed to stake out the home of Tripp Collins. Which meant, of course, that an entire pot of coffee was the last thing I needed. Both my bladder and I would come to regret it.
As I pulled out of the driveway in the Taurus and made my way down to Windmill Pointe Drive, I understood the challenge ahead. It’s not easy to do a stakeout in Grosse Pointe. People who live here are naturally suspicious. When you reside so close to a major city plagued with crime, it tends to put people slightly on edge.
Not that all crime came from Detroit. Far from it, in fact. But Grosse Pointe was a community that noticed things. They tended to take note if a car was sitting out on the street for extended periods of time with someone inside. Property taxes were high in Grosse Pointe. Part of the reason was an extremely well-funded police force. Grosse Pointers had no problem calling the cops the minute they saw something out of the ordinary. It was their way of getting some value back on their investment. You could ask my sister Ellen if you didn’t believe me. Her people dealt with those kinds of calls every day.
Eventually, I found a house with a for sale sign in the front yard. I knew for a fact that most houses listed with that company were foreclosures and usually vacant. Not all of the time, but certainly most. Like every other city in America, Grosse Pointe had been hit by the foreclosure crisis of a few years back. Only recently had the market picked back up. Before that, it wasn’t uncommon to see a half-dozen for sale signs on every block.
I parked in front of the house for sale. The best part was that the vantage point gave me an unobstructed view of Tripp Collins’s house. Because the house I was parked in front of was for sale, passersby could take me for a real estate agent. Or a prospective buyer. It would buy me at least a couple of hours.
I decided to play the part of a real estate agent and took out my phone. Not only would it help with my cover, I could actually get a few things done.
My first call was to Amanda Collins. It went straight to voicemail so I left a message asking her to call me.
The second call went to Nate. He told me that he had more news and he would tell me all about it over burgers at Paul’s tonight. You know, I love the guy. But sometimes his obsession with food drove me nuts. Still, I had to laugh. Burgers for facts.
Tripp’s Bentley was nowhere to be seen so I figured he had already left for work. That was as I’d hoped. I had no interest in Tripp Collins. I was more interested in the girls I’d seen when I stopped by earlier.
Nothing happened. No signs of life.
By lunchtime, I decided it was in my best interest to move. So I drove down to the end of the street where there was a community park, open only to residents. But it had a bathroom. I was able to unload all of the coffee I’d consumed. My bladder thanked me and I was back on Windmill Pointe Drive in a matter of minutes.
I drove by the Collins house and again saw no movement. Maybe it was a bad idea. Maybe the girls didn’t even drive.
The next stop was all about luck. An estate sale had just started two blocks from Tripp’s house. I pulled past the sale, moved up a block and parked again. Now I was a husband at an estate sale, waiting in the car while my wife spent hours looking over old dishes and bad art. At some point, we might talk on the cell phone about some glorious oil painting she’d found that depicted sailboats on the open ocean. Was it too much? Where would we put it?
I should have gone to Hollywood and tried my hand at acting. I was a natural.
So I watched the Tripp Collins household for another three hours. A man walked past me with an elephant’s leg that had been cut in half and had two umbrella handles poking out of it. I tried to picture the reception he would get when he carried that thing into his house. If he was married, he might not be for long.
Ahead, a gold Toyota pulled out of Tripp Collins’s driveway. I saw three heads inside. It drove past me and I could see
the three Asian girls inside. Once they passed me, I dropped the Taurus into gear and followed. They went through the village, then up to Mack Avenue where they turned right. I followed them until they pulled up in front of a dance studio called Prima Dance. Two blocks ahead was a liquor store. I stopped the Taurus in front of it and watched my rearview mirror. All three girls were out of the car. Two of them wore ballet outfits.
They went inside.
My options were few. If I went inside, the girls might see me and since I’d already visited their home, there was a good chance they would recognize me.
So I called.
“Prima Dance,” the voice said.
“Hi, I’m interested in signing my daughters up for ballet lessons. Do you have any open classes?”
“We sure do. How old are your daughters?”
Stupid. I should have known that would be her first question.
“They’re fifteen,” I said. “Twins.”
“Okay, we have classes at several times per day every day as well as the weekend, what–”
“You know I would like to see a class before I sign my daughters up,” I said, my voice chock full of enthusiasm. “Do you have any classes going on right now?”
“Why yes,” she said. “We are about to start an intermediate class.”
“Is there a certain age for this one?”
“Yes, it’s sixteen and under. It might be more advanced for your daughters, but you can get a feel for–”
“Okay, let me think about it,” I said and hung up.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sixteen and under. That would do.
I was making a few assumptions, I knew that. Maybe there wasn’t anything odd going on, sexually speaking, inside the home of Tripp Collins. Maybe the Asian girls were three sisters from a dance troupe that he was sponsoring.
Either way, the fact that he possibly had some female minors living in his home was probably enough for me to bluff him.
Tomorrow, I would confront him and see what he knew.
In the meantime, I had to meet my source and ply him with several pounds of ground beef.
Paul’s is the best burger place in Grosse Pointe. It’s kitty corner from St. John’s Hospital, which is perfect for coronary arrest victims. In fact, I think there’s a shuttle that runs continuously between Paul’s and St. John’s. The Heart Attack Express.
In the parking lot, my phone rang and I figured it was Nate.
It was Amanda Collins.
She was doing fine, staying with a friend. The cops hadn’t told her much, just that the fire appeared to have started in the wiring behind the stove. No foul play suspected.
Maybe I was totally paranoid, but I wasn’t accepting that fact just yet.
“So I wanted to ask you if you knew anything about Elizabeth Pierce,” I said.
She paused on the other end of the line. “Elizabeth Pierce as in the Grosse Pointe Pierces?” It sounded funny. Like they were a magic act or something.
“Yes, that Elizabeth Pierce.”
“No. I know of her, naturally. But no, I don’t know her personally.”
“Did Benjamin?”
The effort I put in to making that question sound casual was extreme, but I didn’t pull it off.
“Benjamin? Why would he know Elizabeth Pierce?”
“I don’t know that he did,” I answered. “But I had a source claim to me that Elizabeth and Benjamin were romantically linked,” I said. The words sounded foreign in my mouth and tasted bitter. “And you had told me that Benjamin gave you the impression that he’d met someone–”
“Yeah, but not Elizabeth Pierce,” she said. Her voice incredulous. “No way. No. Uh-uh.”
“I know you feel that way, but do you know that for a fact?”
“If Benjamin was dating Elizabeth Pierce, then I’m screwing the Emperor of Japan.”
Now it was my turn to pause, and then I laughed.
“He doesn’t seem your type,” I said.
“Look, Benjamin and I both hated money,” she explained. “Hated wealth. We saw Tripp living his life drowning in money and booze. We both hated Grosse Pointe and all of the snobs. Believe me, Elizabeth Pierce would have been the last person Benjamin hooked up with.”
Not that she could see me, but I nodded my head.
“Well, okay, I didn’t believe it either,” I said. “I’ll let you know if I have any other ridiculous ideas.”
We disconnected and I got out of the car, locked it, found Nate inside already, eating from a basket of onion rings.
I slid into the both across from him, ordered a Diet Coke from our server.
“How are the rings?” I said. I had a very real fear of onion rings. Something about the way the onion part slid out of the breading. It always creeped me out.
“Excellent.”
Somewhere I had read that caffeine increases your appetite and I didn’t know if it was from the huge pot coffee I’d had in the morning, but I was suddenly ravenous. When the first platter of sliders arrived in front of us, I dove in with the same vigor and enthusiasm as Nate.
“Whoa, what’s this?” he said, amusement and a little anxiety in his voice.
“I’m starving.” I could tell he was worried there wouldn’t be enough for him, so I signaled for our server and ordered another platter. That seemed to calm him.
“Bluestone Limited,” he said and pulled a notebook out from his back pocket.
“Mmm hmm,” I said, through a mouth full of beef, bun and onion.
“It’s a shell company, obviously,” he said. “One of many that I traced back via corporate tax returns to a company called E & L Enterprises. E & L owns all kinds of things in the Midwest. Pioneer Building Products, Coastal Marine, AutoDyne, Cross Financial Systems, Vintage Software–”
I nearly choked on my burger and reached for my Diet Coke.
“Jesus, are you okay?” he said.
“What did you say? AutoDyne?”
Oh my God, I thought. It wasn’t Auto Time. It was AutoDyne.
“Yeah. But the interesting thing is who owns E & L Enterprises,” Nate said. He took a moment to shove an entire slider into his mouth and then he proceeded to talk around it. “That company, in turn, is part of a larger collection owned by probably the most powerful family in Grosse Pointe.”
He didn’t have to say it. But when he did, the world rocked once more beneath my feet.
“The Pierce Family,” Nate said. And he dug back into the burger platter.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
One of the reasons I had never seen Elizabeth Pierce much after the Benjamin Collins murder was that she left town, so to speak. Indeed, the Pierces had real estate all over the world and from what I’d heard, she had spent extended amounts of time in Paris and London before eventually returning to the Detroit area.
But she had come back to an estate in Grosse Pointe Farms. I knew this because she had settled on Kenwood Road, home of the famous Nun’s Walk of Grosse Pointe. Two evenly spaced rows of towering, hundred-year-old Silver Maple trees lined the street. The story went that the nuns from the Sacred Heart Academy used to stroll between the trees on their way to and from church. I’d always wanted to walk down the lane myself, but never had. It didn’t help that it was all private property now.
I knew which house was Elizabeth’s because Ellen had pointed it out to me. “Looks like your old squeeze is doing fine,” she had said, pointing at the sprawling home as we drove past it. I had probably been taking Ellen to confession. Lord knew she needed it.
Now, I pulled into the driveway and looked at the house. It was your classic Grosse Pointe Tudor, a combination of brick, plaster, leaded glass windows and a towering chimney set on a sprawling lot with the famous Silver Maples out front. A bluestone walk led from the sidewalk to the house, and a second structure, a garage with a living area above it, sat near the rear of the property. Both the main house and the garage featured slate roofs.
I parked the Taurus and w
ent to the front door. Rang the bell. Waited.
A woman came to the door. She was middle-aged with dark hair, dark pants and a nicely pressed white shirt.
“May I help you?” she asked.
“Is Elizabeth home?” I asked.
“May I ask who is inquiring?” She had a thick accent, probably Albanian. There was a significant population of Albanians living in certain parts of Grosse Pointe. The woman no doubt worked for Elizabeth.
“John Rockne.”
She nodded her head toward me. “Please wait one minute,” she said and shut the door.
It was more like three or four minutes but eventually the door opened again and Elizabeth had replaced the Albanian woman.
“John,” she said. Not quite as friendly as when I’d bumped into her at UAM. I would even go so far as to say she was a bit cool. “Come in.”
There was a grand foyer with a seating area next to a set of doors. Elizabeth walked to a padded bench and sat at one end, gestured for me to take the other. It was a clear statement. I wouldn’t be going into the actual house. The foyer was as far as I was going to make it.
“Twice in one week,” she said with a smile that didn’t even attempt to conceal its artificiality.
“Were you romantically inclined with Benjamin Collins?”
Sometimes the best way to ask a difficult question is to just unload it. Like when you’re carrying a heavy box somewhere and when you get it to where it needs to be you just drop it. Don’t even care if you break something in the process.
The fake smile dropped from Elizabeth’s face.
“What?” she said.
“Benjamin Collins. The boy who was murdered,” I said. “Were you seeing him?”
“Are you out of your goddamned mind?” she said. Elizabeth got to her feet and I saw a shadow behind the main doors leading into the house. I didn’t think it was the Albanian woman.
“Answer the question, Elizabeth. Were you?”
She strode across the foyer, jerked open the front door and held it wide.