Death of a Modern King

by Angela Pepper

  “Waste not, want not.” Kyle held up a cardboard tray that contained Tim Barber’s paper supplies—a stack of old memos and junk mail flyers on every color of paper. The top sheet had a neatly torn rectangle missing. “What do we see here?” he asked.

  “It’s more about what we don’t see,” I said.

  “Exactly. I don’t see any of that crisp white paper that he allegedly used to write his good-bye note. If people are anything in life, it’s consistent. I don’t mean to make light of a man’s death, but I’d believe that whole suicide scene more if he’d scrawled his final words on the back of a pizza flyer.”

  “Get pictures,” I said. He was already taking photos for the file.

  We finished searching the shed and crouched over the trapdoor leading to the tunnel.

  Kyle used the key to unlock the trapdoor and pulled it open.

  “Ladies first,” he said graciously. “Unless you’re afraid of the dark and want me to go first?”

  I peered down. “No rats or snakes,” I said. “I should be fine.” I took my first steps on the metal rungs.

  He called down, “Unless there’s something bigger down there and it’s what ate the rats and snakes.”

  “You’re a real fun date, Kyle,” I said flatly.

  I climbed down the rungs until I reached the bottom. The tunnel had been constructed with aluminum culverts, so it was completely round inside, except for the flooring, which was a patchwork of wooden building materials. From where we stood, the tunnel was so long, I couldn’t see the end of it, just darkness. It was lit—barely—by a string of small bulbs that were controlled by a switch on the wall.

  Kyle flicked the switch off to test if it controlled all the lights. It did. In the darkness, all the crawly things made scratchy sounds.

  “This is so cool,” Kyle said.

  “I wish I shared your enthusiasm for tunnels. Hey, since you don’t have your duty belt, I’m guessing you don’t have a flashlight, do you?”

  He flicked the switch back on. “Don’t need it,” he said with a laugh that echoed eerily.

  We set off, walking slowly. The tunnel ran in a straight line, with one branch at the halfway point. We turned right at the branch and walked in the murky near-blackness until we reached a metal door. Kyle used the key, and the door opened with a rusty squeak straight out of a horror movie.

  He called out, “Hello? Anyone in here?”

  No answer.

  We entered the bunker, which wasn’t nearly as rustic as the tunnel. The walls were square and painted a cozy tan, and the space contained simple, comfortable-looking furniture. It was practically a penthouse apartment, compared to the entry tunnel.

  “Nice pad,” Kyle said. “This is better than the apartment I rented when I did my training.”

  “I think the furniture is from IKEA,” I said. “I recognize that chair from the new IKEA catalog.”

  “They really do make attractive, reasonably priced furniture for small spaces.”

  I snickered. “They should feature more bunkers in their advertising.”

  “What did Erica call this place? The brink?”

  “The hidey-hole,” I said.

  “Sounds dirty.”

  I snickered as I looked around the space. Something odd caught my eye.

  “Kyle, if we’re underground, why are there curtains over there? It can’t be a window.” A funny thought came to me. “Do you think it’s an ant farm?”

  He opened the curtains. We both laughed self-consciously. It was an enormous flat-screen television on the wall.

  Kyle whistled at the TV and said, “That’s it. I’m moving into this hidey-hole to catch up on all the shows I missed when I was growing up.”

  “You’d be comfortable enough.” I went over to the compact kitchen to check out the appliances. The fallout shelter had a bar-style mini fridge, a microwave, and a hotplate. The refrigerator was empty but running with a low hum that was the only sound in the place other than us.

  “Someone’s been living in here recently,” Kyle said.

  “Are you saying that because you can smell something?” I sniffed the air. “I smell food. The cupboards and fridge are empty, and the garbage can’s been cleared out, but my guess is that happened recently. This place doesn’t have a lot of ventilation, so the smell lingers.”

  “My nose doesn’t work as well as yours, so I’m going by the dust pattern on the TV. It’s mostly clean, but it looks like someone did a bachelor-style dusting on the screen.” He lifted his elbow to demonstrate dusting the screen with his shirt. “See? There are chunks of dust in all the corners.”

  “Do you think Tim Barber was hanging out down here?”

  Kyle nodded. “Pretending to be working but actually putting his feet up with a movie and a beer.”

  “Well, maybe he was down here and saw something or heard something he wasn’t supposed to.”

  I looked over at the bed. It had been topped with round bolsters so it doubled as a lounging sofa. “Someone might have been using this place as a secret nookie den.”

  Kyle propped his chin with his hand in a contemplative gesture. “Tell me more about these ideas you have about secret nookie dens.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Don’t make fun of me. It’s a valid theory.”

  “But what does it have to do with Dieter Koenig’s death? Or Tim Barber’s?”

  “I don’t know yet, but my gut tells me this is a piece of the puzzle.”

  “Then we’d better be thorough. Let’s do a search grid. I’ll start in that corner.”

  I agreed and started my search at the opposite corner.

  We spent close to an hour going over every square foot of the underground shelter, but we found nothing worth putting in an evidence bag. Kyle didn’t have a fingerprinting kit with him, but even if he had brought it, the few surfaces that might have been handled were likely to have been touched, over the years, by many staff and family members.

  As we locked up behind ourselves, I asked, “Did you ever fingerprint those glass tumblers from the sink in the hangar?”

  He gave me a guilty look and scratched the back of his head. “What tumblers?”

  I sighed.

  “There weren’t any,” he said. “I did remember what you told me, but when I went back inside the hangar, the sink was empty. One of the maids must have tidied things up.”

  “I could kick you,” I said.

  “Prints on the glasses wouldn’t have proved anything,” he said. “So what if the boys poured themselves a post-flight drink? It didn’t mean they were celebrating their murder plans.”

  I sighed again. “Let’s have a look at the hangar again. I barely saw it last Sunday.”

  “Of course,” he said with an enthusiastic swing of his arm. “The hangar is up next on our subterranean tour.”

  We proceeded along the tunnel to the end, where another ladder led up.

  “Next stop, Wonderland,” Kyle said, going ahead so he could shoulder the heavy trapdoor.

  “I always wanted to visit a magical world,” I said.

  “Having your own personal jet plane and hangar is pretty magical. Even the bunker is cool, when you think about it.”

  “Ah, to be fabulously wealthy,” I said.

  “You’d get used to it fast, and then what? You’d need more money.” His sandals clanged on the metal rung.

  “You’re right about that. I saw it happen time and time again when I was working in venture capital. Entrepreneurs are happier when they’re struggling, when they’re looking forward to reaching something. When they actually do hit their goals, they don’t know what to do with themselves.”

  “That’s why I’m a cop.” He climbed out and reached down to help me. His hands were rougher than I expected.

  I asked, “What do you mean? Because as a cop you always have clear goals?”

  “Sure. And also, you might get spoiled on wealth, but you never get spoiled helping people. Money is the ruin of people, but not hel
ping others or your community.”

  “True,” I said, completely in agreement.

  “Even so, I wouldn’t do it for free,” he said with a chuckle. “I have to give credit to monks and people who do.”

  I finished climbing out of the tunnel and wiped my hands on my jeans.

  We stood still for a moment to get our bearings in the dark hangar. It had just a few tiny windows, and with the doors closed and only safety lights on, it was darker than the tunnel we’d come from. Kyle closed the trapdoor so we didn’t have any comical leg-breaking accidents.

  The jet was parked inside, and we couldn’t resist checking it out. Together, Kyle and I rolled a ramp over to the aircraft’s door and ran up the steps like a couple of kids on a field trip. The door was unlocked. Pulling it open triggered the interior lights. We walked inside, making ooh and aah sounds as we tried the comfortable leather seats and looked around. I settled in, picked up a magazine, and promptly forgot why we were there. Kyle practically had to pry me out of the comfy seat.

  We closed the plane, returned the rolling ramp, and finished our search of the hangar.

  “Getting any ideas?” Kyle asked. “Don’t say you aren’t, because I know you are. Suddenly, you’re awfully quiet.”

  “Is it that obvious?” I started grinning and couldn’t stop.

  “Your father is the same way when he’s got something solved in his head and he’s waiting for me to catch up.”

  “Yup,” I said.

  “You’ve got it all figured out, haven’t you?”

  I scrunched my lips and shrugged.

  “Stormy, don’t hold out on me. This whole investigation is a really big deal. If we don’t have a good idea and soon, Milano’s closing the case.”

  “I know, I know. Just give me a few minutes to put my thoughts in order.”

  Sighing, he walked toward the exterior door.

  “Not that way,” I said. “Instead of making the return trip above-ground, I want to go through the tunnel again.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “This had better be good,” he said.

  “Kyle Dempsey, pull up your socks and get ready to have them blown off.”

  Chapter 37

  After leaving the Koenig Estate, Kyle and I went for a long drive in his Jeep to talk things through. We circled the town of Misty Falls at least three times. I told him my half-baked theory, which wasn’t exactly bulletproof. Then he told me his half-baked theory, and together we put together a whole new one. Both of us were convinced, but would the evidence back us up? And how would we get proof?

  He put in a phone call to the crime lab, begging for the results of the DNA test on the baby soother.

  “Claudette’s going to call back within an hour,” he reported after ending the call.

  “I’m dying to know. It’s not fair that she gets to find out first.”

  He smiled. In a radio announcer voice, he said, “Build your own multi-million-dollar lab and get specialized forensic science training, and you, too, can perform your own genetic testing.”

  “You’ve got a real corny side, Dimples.”

  “Um, thanks?”

  “Let’s head back into town. If we’ve got an hour to kill before we get the news, I’m going to need a root beer float.”

  He clicked on the turn signal to make a safe turnaround using a side road. “And nachos,” he said. “I know a place that puts bacon bits on the nachos, and you’re a fine lady who deserves the best.”

  Laughing, I said, “How are you still single?”

  “It’s a mystery,” he replied.

  The nachos were as delicious as promised, and we washed them down with root beer floats. Unfortunately, that only killed about thirty minutes, because we gobbled everything down so fast.

  The phone call still hadn’t come in from Claudette at the crime lab, so we went for a stroll along Broad Avenue.

  We popped into the drugstore to buy some gum, where Kyle spotted royalty inside, and I don’t mean on the cover of the gossip magazines.

  He joined me at the magazine display and whispered, “Don’t look now, but Countess Octavia is here.”

  “Does she have the twins here? I need to know if one of them is a girl, because jogging a quarter marathon is bad enough without a fur suit.”

  He gave me a funny look. “You have all kinds of things going on in that pretty head of yours, don’t you?”

  “Dad let me watch as much TV as I wanted growing up. My mind is a jungle gym of weirdness.”

  I turned my head so I could watch the countess in the round security mirror on the wall above the magazine stand. She didn’t have any babies with her, nor did she have a shopping basket in her hands. She was here for one thing only, maybe two.

  Kyle and I both watched silently as she took a box the size of a toaster off a shelf and brought it to the register. She was dressed in the same Chanel suit I’d first met her in, and she had the top unbuttoned to reveal a mile of milk-inflated cleavage.

  As soon as she left, we went to the aisle where she’d been shopping and located the empty spot on the shelf. The drugstore didn’t turn over high volume, and so some of the items they carried were stocked in single quantities only.

  We didn’t need to ask the cashier to tell us what Countess Octavia of Krengerborg had just purchased, because it was written on the price label affixed to the front of the shelf.

  Kyle said, “This case just got a lot more complicated.”

  “I don’t know about that,” I said. “Sometimes what appears to be a problem is actually the solution.”

  He glanced around the store. There were three staff members working and two other customers shopping.

  “Let’s get that gum and talk elsewhere,” he said.

  We made our purchases and left the drugstore. We spoke in hushed tones as we made our way to Central Park, where we selected a park bench off the busy path.

  Kyle said, “I can’t see how this case could possibly get any stranger.”

  “You’re tempting fate,” I said.

  “I suppose I am.” His phone rang. “It’s the crime lab,” he said.

  I shook my fists in excitement. “It’s time to play Who’s Your Daddy!”

  He was too nervous to laugh. He answered the phone while I stopped breathing for a moment.

  “Claudette, I promise not to be disappointed,” he said into his phone. “Just give it to me straight.”

  He looked right at me, the way people do when they’re talking on the phone about a matter of great importance—as though he could beam the basic details straight into my head via intense eye contact.

  “No way,” he said. “You’re kidding. No, I’m not disappointed.” His pale-blue eyes grew wider and his stare even more intense. “You did that on your own? That was some smart thinking. And?” His face locked motionless, as though he’d also stopped breathing in anticipation. “NO WAY!” He jumped up from the bench. “NO WAY!”

  “What?” I asked, gasping for breath. “What?”

  He talked to Claudette for another minute and then ended the call.

  “This might change everything,” he said. “You have to promise you won’t tell Logan. This is top secret. You can’t tell anyone. Promise?”

  Without hesitation, I said, “I promise.”

  And then he told me the results of the DNA testing. My mouth dropped open.

  I immediately regretted making the promise.

  Chapter 38

  Logan said, “Before you say one single word, I’ve got something I need to tell you.”

  We were standing in the driveway. He’d been parking his truck when Kyle pulled up and let me out of his blue Jeep. Now Kyle was gone, and I was dying to tell Logan everything I’d learned that day, but I’d promised Kyle I wouldn’t, so it was just as well he didn’t want me to say one single word. I mimed zipping my lips shut and simply smiled.

  “You could still say hello,” he said with an apologetic grin. />
  I unzipped my lips. “Hello.” I zipped them again.

  “Can I interest you in a root beer float?” he asked.

  The sugar buzz had worn off from my last one, so I nodded enthusiastically and followed him into his side of the duplex. I perched on one of the leather barstools he had set up next to the kitchen island. I didn’t have barstools over on my mirror-image side, because I liked having more room for a bigger table with regular chairs, but every time I sat on his stools I questioned my decision. Just like how I questioned my hasty promise to keep Kyle’s police investigation information secret.

  Logan pulled two bottles of cold root beer from the fridge and made us a spectacular pair of floats with his own homemade vanilla ice cream. I wasn’t saying a word, so I clapped my hands to show my appreciation.

  “You’re a good sport,” he said.

  I nodded in agreement.

  “And so modest,” he added.

  I blew him a kiss, which he caught and tucked into his pocket.

  “Listen,” he said, looking into my eyes as he sat on the stool next to mine. “I came to Misty Falls in search of a different life. Not vastly different, but calmer and quieter. Being with you these last few months, however, has been anything but calm and quiet.”

  I blinked. He was wearing his bad-news expression and speaking with his bad-news tone.

  My excited mood banked hard to the right, drifting over the edge of the road, sliding and grinding, about to crash into the billboard of bad news.

  The way he was talking... was he breaking up with me? My ears began to ring so loudly I could barely hear him.

  He continued, “Maybe the change I tried to make by moving here wasn’t drastic enough. I don’t know that I want this life. Do you know what I mean?”

  I gave him a sidelong look. What was it, exactly, about his new life in Misty Falls that he didn’t want? I kept blinking, my lips still zipped.

  “You’ve been great, Stormy. As a friend, and as a landlady.”

  My eyebrows rose higher and higher, stretching my face.

  “But I need to make more changes,” he said.