Hour Game skamm-2

by David Baldacci

  “I sincerely hope this is the last one you’ll have to do for a long time.”

  As he started to turn away, she said, “Last night was the most fun I’ve had in years.”

  “I can say the same.”

  As King and Michelle drove off, Michelle looked over at him. “Am I wrong, or have you and Sylvia rekindled your romance?” He shot her a glance but said nothing. “Come on, Sean, don’t feed me that line about my being your partner and not your shrink.”

  “Why not? It’s still a valid point.”

  She slumped back in her seat with a defeated expression. “Okay. Fine.”

  “What do you care anyway?”

  “I care because we’re right in the middle of a very complicated murder investigation, and we don’t need the best detective on the case and the brilliant medical examiner being distracted by a romance.”

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were jealous.”

  “Oh, please!”

  “I said if I didn’t know better. And don’t worry, right now everything else takes a backseat to this case.” He paused and added, “I saw you and Eddie hugging.”

  She looked at him angrily. “You were spying on us!”

  “No, I peeked in the window as I was going to the door to see if you were in there. I didn’t know you two were trying to crawl inside each other’s bodies.”

  “That’s so unfair, Sean. I was just thanking him for a painting he did of me.”

  “Oh, he painted a portrait of you? That should make his intentions quite clear.”

  “He’s unhappy.”

  “And it’s not your job to fix that unhappiness,” he retorted. “So just let it go, Michelle. The last thing you need right now is for your judgment to be clouded.”

  Michelle looked ready to argue but remained silent.

  King continued, “He’s an attractive, fun and nice guy who’s had more than his share of tragedy, and to top it off he’s caught in a miserable marriage. You wouldn’t be the first woman in history to want to help a man like that.”

  “You sound like you’ve experienced stuff like that.”

  “The world is full of stuff like that. And none of us are immune to it.”

  “Okay, okay, I get the message. So where to now?”

  “We’re going to see Roger Canney. It seems he came into a substantial sum of money right around the time of his wife’s death. Its origins are unclear.”

  “That’s interesting.”

  “You haven’t heard the most interesting part. The late Mrs. Canney had a job.”

  “Really? Where?” Michelle asked.

  “Battle Enterprises. Care to guess which executive she was servicing?”

  “Bobby Battle!”

  “You win the prize.”

  Chapter 60

  No one answered their knock at the Canney residence.

  “That’s funny,” said King. “I called ahead. He said he’d be home.”

  “At least the housekeeper should be here.”

  Michelle went over and peeked inside the garage window. “Well, there are two cars in there, a big Beemer and a Range Rover. Unless he pays his housekeeper extremely well, I don’t think they belong to her.”

  King put a hand on the front door, and it swung open. Michelle saw this and immediately took out her gun and rejoined King.

  “I swear to God,” she whispered, “if he’s in there dead with a dog collar around his neck and wearing a watch pointing to the number six, I’m going to scream for an entire week.”

  They made their way quietly inside. The front room was empty. They cleared each subsequent room before moving on to the next.

  Michelle heard the noise first, a grunting sound, appearing to come from the back of the house. They hustled there and looked around. They saw no one, but the sound repeated itself, followed this time by a clanking noise of metal on metal.

  Michelle motioned to a door at the end of the hall. King nodded, moved forward and slowly pushed it open with his foot while Michelle covered him. King peered inside, tensed and then relaxed. He opened the door and motioned for Michelle to join him.

  Canney was seated with his back to them, earphones on and doing leg presses in his nicely equipped home gym. King pounded on the door, and Canney snapped around and ripped off his headphones.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded.

  “I called this morning. You said one o’clock was fine. It’s one o’clock. Nobody answered the door and it happened to be open.”

  Canney stood and put his CD player down and toweled off. “I’m sorry. My housekeeper has the day off, and I must have lost track of time.”

  “Happens to the best of us,” said King. “We can wait if you want to clean up.”

  “No, I think we can just get down to it. I can’t imagine this will take long. Let’s sit outside. I made some lemonade.”

  They went into the large backyard, which had a lap pool, spa and a small cabana-style building as well as intricately planned landscaping.

  “Beautiful,” commented Michelle.

  “Yes, I love it back here.”

  “It all looks fairly recent,” said King. “And you haven’t lived in this house that long, have you? What, three years or so?”

  Canney stared pointedly at him as he drank his lemonade. “How did you know?”

  “Public records are just that, public. You’re retired now. From accounting?”

  “Twenty years seemed long enough to worry about other people’s money.”

  “Well, now you have plenty of your own to worry about. I guess accounting pays better than I thought.”

  “I’ve made some good investments over the years.”

  “And your late wife worked too, at Battle Enterprises. She was executive secretary to Bobby Battle, wasn’t she? In fact, she was working there when she died in that car accident?”

  “Yes. It’s not exactly a secret.”

  “I didn’t see you at Battle’s funeral.”

  “That’s because I didn’t go.”

  “You hadn’t kept in touch with the family?”

  “Just because my wife worked there doesn’t mean we were friends with them.”

  “I found a picture of your wife while I was doing my background research. She was a very beautiful woman; had even won some local beauty pageants.”

  “Megan was extraordinarily attractive, yes. Does this line of conversation have some point?”

  “The point being that I had to hunt up pictures of your wife because there are none of her in your home. Nor are there any of your son.”

  “You mean, not out in the public areas.”

  “No. When no one answered the door and we found it open, we thought there was something amiss, so we went room to room, including your bedroom; there are no photos at all of your family.”

  Canney stood, enraged. “How dare you!”

  King remained impassive. “Let me be blunt with you, Rog: you came into your money roughly three years ago, soon after your wife died, in fact. That’s when you bought this place. Before then you were an ordinary bean-counter making an ordinary income and doing okay because your wife was working too. Those sorts of people don’t suddenly retire after they lose their spouse’s income, and buy a million-dollar property.”

  “She had life insurance.”

  “Fifty thousand dollars. I checked that too.”

  “What exactly are you implying?”

  “I’m not interested in implications. I’d much prefer the truth.”

  “This interview is over. I believe you know the way out, since you’ve already searched my house.”

  King and Michelle rose. “Okay, we can do it the hard way.”

  “And you can do it with Giles Kinney, my lawyer. He’ll tear you apart.”

  King smiled. “Giles doesn’t scare me. I kick his butt on the golf course at least once a week.”

  Chapter 61

  King and Michelle met Todd Williams and two of his deput
ies at the Aphrodisiac and were soon in Lulu’s office questioning her about the occupant of the room and Kyle’s visits there. At first she denied knowing anything about it but finally admitted that she’d recently seen Kyle at the club.

  “But I don’t know who the lady is,” she said. “She doesn’t work here. I know that for a fact.”

  “What, you’re in the charity business now, letting rooms out for free to rich drug users?” said Williams sarcastically.

  “I didn’t know anything like that was going on. She paid for the room, in cash. I just thought she needed a place to stay.”

  “Was she here every night?”

  “I didn’t keep track really. Unless you’re going into one of the performance areas to see the girls or the bars, you don’t have to show ID. We have restaurants and lounges here too, and a business center. Anyone can come in and go to one of those places. We are open to the public,” she added hotly.

  King shook his head. “Come on, Lulu, are you saying that when the woman first came here, you never spoke to her? How the hell did you know what she even wanted?”

  “She left cash and a note that said she wanted that room and that room only.”

  “And you did what? You just gave it to her without question?”

  “It’s just a room, Sean! And cash is cash. It’s not like she was running some criminal business in there. She only came at night. During the day we had the room cleaned, like all the others. There was never anything there. I know it sounds a little weird, and I admit I was curious. In fact, when she first started coming, I kept an eye peeled. There was never any loud noise or stuff like that. Except for this Kyle person, no one ever visited her.”

  “Did you see her come and go?”

  “Sometimes. But she always wore a scarf, long coat and glasses.”

  “And that didn’t make you suspicious? Didn’t you ever try to find out who she was? Wait and watch her leave, trace her somehow?”

  “Of course I was suspicious, but I’m not one to pry into other people’s business either. Live and let live is my motto. If she wanted a private room and didn’t want anyone to know who she was, at least she was willing to pay well for the privilege. And so there you are. I’m not into scaring off customers,” she added defiantly.

  “Well, Kyle Montgomery is dead, possibly murdered, so that puts a different spin on things,” said Williams.

  Lulu looked at him nervously. “I don’t know anything about that. He sure wasn’t killed here, so I don’t see what this place has to do with it.”

  “Well, let me enlighten you, then,” said the police chief. “We have a witness who says a very heated altercation took place here between Kyle and this woman. We know he was bringing her prescription drugs that he’d stolen from the doctor’s office where he worked.”

  “I don’t know anything about that.”

  Williams continued. “So they had an argument recently, and last night, Kyle dies.”

  “Well, I didn’t kill him, and I don’t know who the lady is.”

  “Did she come here last night?”

  “Not that I know of. At least I didn’t see her.”

  “When was the last time you did see her?”

  Lulu thought. “I can’t be sure. I’ve had other things on my mind, including a husband to bury,” she said, bristling.

  “We’re going to need to question anyone here who might have seen her.”

  “Some of those people aren’t due into work until later.”

  “Then right now I want to see the room, and I want to question whoever is here who might have seen her.”

  Lulu looked at him nervously. “Right now?”

  “Is there a problem with that?”

  “No, it’s just that some of the night-shift dancers are still sleeping.”

  “Sleeping. It’s two-thirty in the afternoon!”

  “They dance until dawn!”

  “All right, let’s start with the nondancers, but in the meantime you get those gals up and ready to talk to us. You understand, Lulu?”

  “I understand,” she said quickly.

  As they were leaving, Michelle glanced back and saw Lulu’s hand disappear inside a drawer of her desk, just as it had the other time she and King were here.

  Once they were outside, Michelle said, “Todd, why don’t you collect the people and start the questioning? Sean and I’ll poke around a bit.”

  “Good idea. We’ll compare notes later.”

  “What’s up?” said King after the police chief and his men had left them.

  “Come on, quick.”

  Michelle led him outside and to the back of the building where she spotted a staircase leading from the second floor. They stayed concealed behind a Dumpster and waited. Within a minute or so their patience was rewarded. A number of men, some carrying coats over their arms, others with their shirts unbuttoned and untucked and hair sticking up, emerged from a second-floor door and made their way down the outside stairs, climbed into cars parked there and sped off.

  King and Michelle looked at each other.

  “Appears the Aphrodisiac is living up to its name. Nice catch, Michelle,” said King.

  “And prostitution is one way to enhance the old revenue stream,” added Michelle. “So what do we do about it?”

  “I think another talk with Lulu is in order.”

  “Husband dead and three kids. I know it’s a crime, Sean, but I’m not real excited about helping to send her to prison.”

  “Perhaps we can show her the error of her ways.”

  When Lulu returned to her office later, King was sitting behind her desk and Michelle was standing beside him.

  “What are you doing in here?” Lulu barked.

  In answer King reached inside the drawer and pressed the buzzer they’d found there earlier.

  “I hope this second warning doesn’t confuse the girls, but at least all the johns have already left the joint.”

  Lulu’s mouth dropped open but she quickly recovered. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Sit down, Lulu,” King said very firmly. “We’re here to help you. But if you try to bullshit us even a little bit, we’ll just tell Todd to come in here and take over. And then it’ll be out of our hands.”

  Lulu stared fiercely at them but finally sat down, her hands fidgeting in her lap.

  “If you want to light up, feel free; we might be here awhile.”

  Lulu did so, sucking in the smoke and then purging it out her nostrils.

  King sat back in his chair. “Okay, explain the setup.”

  “It’s not what you think,” Lulu said.

  “You’re far too smart to do it the old-fashioned way, so I’m sure you have something very creative. I’m anxious to hear what it is.”

  Lulu looked nervously at them. “I’ve worked hard for years to build up this place. Long hours, ignoring my kids at times, and Junior too. I’ve got ulcers and a two-pack-a-day habit. Sure, I’m the minority owner but I really run the place. My partners spend most of their time in Florida. But they’re always on me to keep pushing up the profits so they can buy bigger boats and better-looking wives. More, more, more—that’s all I hear.”

  “So you came up with ways to do that with the dancers?”

  “My partners suggested it actually. I didn’t want to do it but they insisted. Said they’d find another manager who would, and get rid of me. But any girl who didn’t want to do it didn’t—no questions asked. I wouldn’t back down on that.” She hesitated and then said, “If I tell you…”

  “Lulu, like Sean said, we’re here to help you,” said Michelle.

  She suddenly yelled out, “Why? Why do you care?”

  King answered, “Because we think you’re basically a good person and a mother with three children who need you. You’ve been under tremendous pressure and you just lost your husband. What you tell us goes no further, you have our word.”

  Lulu took a deep breath and began. “No money exchanges hands between any of
the girls and any of the men. We… well, we formed a club of sorts. The members pay an initiation fee to the club to join and then a monthly amount based on… well, based on usage. We book it as business networking.”

  “Well, that’s certainly an original way to network. Go on,” said King.

  “It’s a fairly large sum, so the clientele is limited and of a certain level.”

  “Translation: wealthy guys looking for some action in bed,” commented King.

  “Anyway, with their membership they have access to the girls by appointment only. The members are given special words to tell the girls so they know it’s okay. They all use protection and there’s no dangerous stuff allowed. Anybody gets rough with one of the girls gets kicked out for good. But we’ve never had any problems. The dancers who participate get extra pay.”

  “Pretty creative, but it’s still illegal, Lulu. This could shut the club down and put you right in prison.”

  Lulu lit another cigarette and looked like she might be sick. “I know,” she said in a trembling voice. “God, I knew this whole thing was stupid.”

  “And the buzzer in your office is connected to the rooms, to alert the girls and their clients if there’s a problem, and they clear out through the rear exit.”

  “Yes,” Lulu said miserably. “And I have people keeping an eye on the entrance to the hallway from time to time.”

  “So how did Kyle get through, then?”

  “The lady left a note and a picture of Kyle telling me he was okay.” She put her cigarette out. “I can tell you this much. There was someone who followed Kyle in the night I saw him. One of my lookouts told me about it later.”

  “That was Sylvia Diaz, the doctor Kyle works for.”

  “Name sounds familiar.”

  “She’s the local medical examiner. And before you changed doctors, you two shared the same gynecologists.”

  “I haven’t changed my ob-gyn.”

  “Okay, the point is, she was the witness who saw Kyle here and heard the argument between him and the woman.” He paused and said, “You’re going to have to put an end to it, Lulu. No more, starting today, or else it all comes tumbling down.”

  “I’ll have to refund the men their money. That’s a lot of cash.”