“I live my life to blow your mind.”
“Thanks for your help, Tyce. I’ll tell Helen you said ‘hello.’”
Julia got up and Tyce scooted his wheelchair from behind his desk and opened the door. “I’ll give you a personal escort out, reporter girl. I want to show you something before you leave.”
Tyce zipped down the wheelchair ramp ahead of Julia, but instead of heading to the Bagley Street entrance, Tyce led Julia toward the back of his building and to a room with a bank of windows overlooking a fairly decent-sized backyard for a property within the city limits. The yard was filled with man-made beehives, and what looked to be hundreds of honeybees lazily hovering around each one. A giant man wearing protective covering on his head and body held his arms out at his sides as the bees circled around him.
“Check this out,” Tyce said. He wheeled over to a table that was stacked with jars of honey. Tyce handed one to Julia and she read the label DETROIT HONEYBEEZ. On the back of the plastic jar was a large label that said, Made in Detroit, Baby.
“So you’re into the honey-making business now, too?” Julia asked.
“People are suckers by nature. They can’t help themselves. They just love themselves an underdog. Since the city’s bankruptcy shit and the auto industry tanking, Detroit is making its way back, and people want to be part of it. I’m living the American dream, mamma. I just got my first order from Costco. The mayor’s office just gave me another loan for fifty thousand to start work on a manufacturing plant in some old-ass building where they used to make windshield wipers for Ford.”
“Congratulations. I never saw you as a beekeeper, but if that’s your calling, I’m happy for you,” Julia said.
“I don’t give a shit about bees. That’s Animal’s thing. I just want to make money.”
“That’s your cousin out there?” Julia asked.
“He loves that stuff. I’ll tell him to follow you to the Muellers’.”
“Thanks, but I’m good,” Julia said.
“They say cats got nine lives. I’m not sure about people. But I know I’m down to my last one,” Tyce said. “But, you, Gooden, you keep poking around bad stuff, you may be down to your last one, too. Watch your ass. You change your mind about my cousin having your back, you call me.”
Tyce escorted Julia to the front door and reached for his gun in his rear waistband before he opened it.
“I didn’t realize the music and honey business were that dangerous,” Julia said.
“I still got a lot of enemies from the old days.”
“Are you still dealing?” Julia asked.
Tyce flashed Julia a smile and handed her a jar of Detroit HoneyBeez.
“Like I said, Gooden, I like money.”
The door closed behind her, and Julia hurried toward her car as her cell phone buzzed in her purse. She looked over her shoulder, considering her ambush up in Sparrow, and answered.
“You okay?” Navarro asked. “I’ve been working the Angel Perez case, but I got your message about Max Mueller. I’ve got the lowdown on him.”
“I just got it myself. I’m going over to his family’s consignment place right now. I found a listing for it in Birmingham.”
“Wait for me. Russell and I can meet you when we’re done with our shift.”
“No time. I need you to run another name for me if you would, please. Phoenix Pontiac.”
“The photographer?”
“I ran into him at the paper and found a string of pictures he took of me on his camera.”
“I knew that guy liked you.”
“No, these were personal shots. They looked like surveillance pictures. Whoever Phoenix Pontiac really is, he’s been following me and knows my patterns. He had pictures of me leaving my house and your place, and there was also a shot of me running at the RiverWalk. I called Fish, and he said he’d never heard of Phoenix Pontiac before.”
“You think he’s a stalker?” Navarro asked.
“I doubt it. I’d never met him until I ran into him at the crime scene. I realize you’re swamped with the Angel Perez case, but if you have time later, let me know what you can find out.”
“You know I will.”
“I was talking to a source, and he told me Max Mueller was running a human-trafficking ring at the time Ben disappeared. And my dad knew Max. I found out Duke was working for him. What if Mueller is the one who kidnapped Ben and then sold him?”
“Don’t go from zero to sixty on this just yet. I found out Mueller was never arrested, but the cops were looking at him at the time. I’ve got a copy of Mueller’s file and Ben’s original one from when we ran Will’s missing person’s case when we were looking to see if there was a connection. I’ll bring both of them by and we can go through them at your house tonight. I’m staying over, on your couch, with my eyes on the front door, until things settle down. No debate. The sheriff’s substation’s guys who were at your house have been monitoring your neighborhood. Everything is quiet.”
“I appreciate the offer, but I don’t know how Logan is going to feel about you staying over. He was rattled when the sheriffs came by.”
“Maybe I can talk to him. Let him know that I’m just making sure everything is okay for a few days.”
“Are you kidding me? Logan will eat you alive. He’s one shrewd kid. He’ll drill you every way since Tuesday to find out why you’re really there. I’ll handle it.”
“Russell and I should be done in about an hour. Meet us at the station and then we’ll take a ride to Mueller’s store together.”
“Sure.”
“I wish I could believe you, beautiful.”
Julia hung up the phone, and as she started the car, she felt the familiar sickening ache in her gut about her brother. She was ready to pull out into the street when she noticed a small envelope tucked under the windshield wiper on the passenger side of her vehicle.
She figured it was a promotional flyer, but then realized it was a white, letter-sized envelope, not a typical marketing piece. She stopped the car, pulled the envelope open, and found a note.
Julia,
He’d want you to have this. I need a chance to explain.
Phoenix
Julia reached farther into the envelope until her hand felt a small metal chain. She tipped the envelope up and the object inside fell into the palm of her hand.
“Oh, my God,” Julia whispered as she stared down at the bracelet, now long-tarnished but with the boy-and-girl charm still intact. Julia felt outside of her body as she looked down at her hand and the bracelet Ben had given to her on her seventh birthday.
CHAPTER 11
Mueller’s Antiques and Fine Goods was located on a tony side street in downtown Birmingham, an upscale suburb of Detroit that was half an hour away from the city. Julia pressed the charm bracelet in her hand as tightly as she could as she made a fast path up the sidewalk toward the business. After an unsuccessful Google search on her phone for a Phoenix Pontiac in the Greater Detroit area, and the principal of the Grand Rapids high school’s confirmation that no such person had ever worked as an art teacher there, Julia was growing increasingly desperate to find whatever answers she could about Ben and her father’s connection to his disappearance, something that Julia was certain of now.
The consignment store was in a stately brick building. Its first front window showcased a stand of jewelry, mainly watches and rings. The second window featured two large jade elephant sculptures and a painting of what appeared to be Lake Michigan, circa the turn of the century, as a female sunbather in a midcalf, short-sleeved dress, bloomers, and a bonnet walked barefoot along the shore. Julia tried the door of the shop, but it was locked. She took a quick pan of her watch and saw that it was quarter after six, which meant the antique store was likely closed for the day.
A chest-high wooden fence hand-painted to replicate a Claude Monet water lily painting wrapped around either side of the store. Julia studied the fence as she hid her purse behind a bush. Realizing she
had no other options, Julia pulled off her heels and lifted herself up and over the fence, cursing under her breath as the hem of her dress snagged on a post.
Julia unhooked her dress from the fence and then dropped down on the other side. She did a quick assessment of the scene and saw a small Victorian-style yellow cottage in the rear of the property. Julia hurried barefoot down a brick path to the small building, which looked to be dark inside. Julia knocked on the front door, waited ten seconds, and then put her hand on the doorknob when no one answered, ready to break into the place if she had to.
“I’ll take it you don’t have an appointment. Usually our clients are wearing shoes when they visit. I wouldn’t suggest trying to open that door. If you do, an alarm will go off,” a voice from behind her called out.
Julia turned quickly to see a tall, wiry man with reddish-brown hair and small, round glasses perched on a long and slender nose. The man was standing on the back steps of the antique store and politely extended his hand. Julia estimated he was probably in his midforties.
“I’m sorry, have we met before? I’m Liam Mueller, the owner. Are you a garden-variety thief, a collector, or are you actually here to buy something? We don’t sell shoes, though, I’m afraid.”
“None of the above. Your father knew my dad, Duke Gooden. They were in business together. The problem is, I can’t figure out which part of your father’s business my dad was involved in.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I believe you know exactly what I’m talking about. Was it antique sales or people sales? Human trafficking is a cruel, cruel business.”
“Ms. Gooden, I’m sure you’re unaware that my father just passed. I can’t imagine anyone, even someone as brash and as rude as you appear to be, could speak ill of the dead.”
“I know your father ran a human-trafficking business. How did you know my last name?”
“You told me your father’s last name was Gooden, and you aren’t wearing a wedding ring, so I assumed. What’s your first name?”
“Julia. I’m Julia Gooden. I want to know about your father.”
Liam Mueller took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes as though he were tired. “You want to know about Max? My father loved art more than anything else, including his wives and children. Truth be told, he wasn’t a very good man. I’m guessing you already know most fathers aren’t. But your accusations about Max are wrong. Come on, let’s go inside.”
Julia looked over her shoulder at the fence and thought about what she had left on the other side, not her shoes, but her handbag with the three-inch knife.
“Are you coming or not? I’m willing to talk to you, instead of calling the police, but I’m not going to stand here all night.”
Julia made her choice and followed Liam into the cottage, which felt as cool as an icebox and smelled like oranges and flowers. The place was sparse on furniture, except for a bar stool next to a small desk, with a purple orchid plant on top. What it lacked in furniture, it made up for in artwork. Paintings filled almost every space of the walls and a single, strange-looking sculpture, which looked like a bent cane, was encased in glass by the front door.
Liam looked out the window dreamily and his eyes hooded down halfway. “I see you noticed the cane in the glass display box when you walked in. It’s a black coral walking stick. If you look closely, and I’m guessing you didn’t because you’re clearly not a collector, you can see that the cane is shaped in a sharp curve, like a bent snake. I believe that in art, without pain, there can be no beauty. Take the master Vincent van Gogh, who cut off his ear. The artist sees the beauty so closely, there must be suffering and torment to balance the ecstasy. Art is rapture and pain intertwined. Only those who truly see can understand.”
“I didn’t come to talk about the finer points of philosophy and art.”
Liam walked over to the sculpture and rapped his fingers gently on the top of the glass. “My father beat me with that cane, whenever he felt like it when I was a child. After my father died, I discovered two pieces of the cane broken in half that he kept on his dresser. He’d saved them like a trophy. I had the cane repurposed so it could be whole again. Do you know how hard you would have to hit someone for a carved piece of black coral to snap in two?”
“I’m not your therapist, Mr. Mueller.”
“But you’re a journalist. I recognize your name from the news. Journalists are paid to hear the stories and the sufferings of others. I invite you in, but you won’t indulge me?”
“I know plenty of people like you. They think they’re smarter than the whole world, and they spin their smoke and mirrors to distract from the truth. That’s what you’re trying to do here, or to gain my sympathy. Say whatever you want, Mr. Mueller. But understand that no matter what happened to you, or what kind of monster your father was behind closed doors when he got home, it won’t influence me.”
Mueller closed his eyes while his fingers played a slow beat against the glass container.
“I was ten, sleeping in my bed when Max got home from the opera. It was Madama Butterfly at the Detroit Opera House. The Free Press panned the performance, and my father agreed. I woke up to Max standing over my bed with this look of rage on his face. Then he started beating me with the cane. He was a slight man, but when he was angry, he seemed to possess the wrath of an Old Testament God. Max shattered both my wrists and knocked out two of my teeth. The next morning, after the nanny called my father’s private doctor to stitch me up, I came down to the breakfast table. My father asked me how my eggs tasted. So as you can see, Ms. Gooden, Max was cruel. Coming here and throwing insults about him is quite tame in comparison to what I’ve thought about the man myself. Considering the circumstances, I couldn’t be happier that he’s dead. Lung cancer. It was slow, painful, and well-deserved.”
“Did Max ever mention Duke Gooden or a boy named Ben?”
Liam outstretched his hand and tapped it gingerly against Julia’s. “I remember your father. Benjamin Senior, I think his name was. That’s what my father called him. The name Duke seemed so low-class. I met him once or twice. He worked for my father only for a short time, maybe less than six months. My father had to fire him. Benjamin Senior worked for Max as a driver, I believe.”
“A driver, like a personal chauffeur?”
“Max saw great promise in your father. That was a tremendous compliment. My father didn’t see promise in anyone, including myself. But your father—Max took him in, almost as an apprentice, and let him live in the carriage house in our Grosse Pointe property. But something soured between our fathers. I’m not sure what, but I believe it had to do with Duke’s drinking.”
“My father didn’t drink.”
“We all block away memories that are the hardest. I clearly remember Max telling the family over dinner one night that Duke had shown up to work that day barely able to stand. He was supposed to pick up a shipment for my father, and Max had to send him home.”
“A shipment of what? People?”
Liam’s top lip curved into a nasty smile. “I had heard those rumors through the years, but they simply weren’t true and were created by a rival company in Chicago. My father was independently wealthy from his own father, who brought millions of dollars’ worth of paintings here from Germany after World War II. Max didn’t need more money, and he never would have done anything as dirty as what you’re implying, not because he was a good man, but because he would have felt that kind of thing, selling people, was beneath him.”
“You’re saying my father was a drunk?”
“Max told me the last time he saw Duke, he was slurring his words and could barely stand up. That was right before Duke got in a car accident. He hit a utility pole, as I recall, and his car burst into flames on impact. A terrible way to die. But, hopefully, the end was quick. There were rumors, though, that Duke escaped and fled the country, since he wanted to run out on a debt. Is that true?”
“My father is dead.”
“Is that so?” Liam sai
d, and hit a buzzer behind his desk to unlock the front door.
Julia felt something squirm inside her as a giant man came inside and seemed to swallow the room as he approached.
“Ms. Gooden, this is Ahote. He is an old friend of my father’s. He was just visiting me. Coming to pay his condolences.”
Ahote positioned himself inches away from Julia and stared at her, as though he could read her thoughts. Julia kept his gaze and tried to hide the screaming memories of the picture of the strange bird she saw by her mother’s bed the night Ben was taken, and Sarah’s description of the giant man with the long braid down his back, who had interrogated their mother.
“You’re in my personal space. Back up,” Julia warned. “I think the two of you know something about my brother, Ben, and you’re going to tell me.”
Ahote’s voice was smooth and sounded deeper and more ominous than the Devil beckoning her inside the gates of hell. “‘Ben.’ I don’t know anyone by that name. But it is true. All souls on this earth know each other.”
Julia reached her fingers into the pocket of her dress. She clutched the bracelet Ben had given her, as the pain she had carried for the past thirty years pulsed up like a deadly wave, ready to drown her and anyone else in its path.
“We have another guest,” Liam said in an emotionless tone. “Coming up the path.”
Julia could feel Ahote’s warm breath on her shoulder as she spun around toward the door to see another towering figure on the other side.
The buzzer to the cottage rang and Liam nodded at Ahote to answer it.
“We’re closed. You’re not supposed to be back here,” Ahote said.
“The gate was unlocked,” the man said, and pressed his badge up against the glass.
“Open the door,” Liam directed, but Ahote stood motionless with his hands at his sides. “I said buzz the officer through. Now.”
The big Indian pounded out the security code on a keypad on the wall and let in Chief John Linderman. The chief of police brushed by Ahote, making sure the big Indian felt the weight of his chest as he went by him. Linderman did a quick pan of the room and then stood protectively next to Julia.
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