“You’ll owe me.”
“I know. Can you see what you can find on Crystal Kick?”
“You want to hold while I do it?”
“Sure.”
While retrieving the information, Gary passed the time by telling her his favorite cop jokes.
“Did you hear about the crime spree going on at our local IKEA?”
“No.”
“The cops are having a hard time putting the pieces together.”
Oh dear.
“You’ll like this one. What do you call a snobbish, negative criminal walking down the stairs?”
“Do tell.”
“A condescending con descending.”
“Is that the last one?”
“I have more.”
“Maybe some other time?”
Having to listen to Gary’s corny jokes was a small price to pay for the information he was about to give her.
“Here it is. Crystal Kick. We already know she was born in 1967. In Chicago. I gave you her address. Married to Dillard Kick in 1985. Widowed in 1986. A daughter named Jessivel Salter born in 1988. No criminal background on Crystal. Previous employers include Merry Maids, McLean’s, and KMB Cleaners.”
“Previous employers. Nothing current?”
“The most recent was KMB—she left there in 1988. Almost thirty years ago. Since she’s worked for cleaning service companies, she may also clean people’s houses for cash. A lot of them do, and we wouldn’t have a record of that. Oh, and her maiden name is Scott.”
“But her daughter Jessivel’s last name is Salter?”
“That’s what it says. I suppose you want me to look her up too?”
“Could you?”
“This is really going to cost you.”
“Dinner?”
“No, my girlfriend wouldn’t go for that.”
“Bring her along!”
“You don’t know my girlfriend. You don’t want to know my girlfriend. Here she is. Jessivel Salter. It appears to be the name she was given at birth.”
“How could that be? Her mother’s name is Crystal Kick and before that, Scott?”
“I’m just reading what I’m seeing. Born in 1988. Never married. No work history. No criminal record, just a string of traffic violations. Daughter Kayla Salter, born 2006. Now, she was recently arrested for shoplifting.”
“Who?”
“The daughter, Kayla. Awaiting arraignment in juvenile court. Jessivel’s address is the same as her mother’s, Crystal Kick.”
After they hung up, Paige reviewed her notes. She Googled KMB Cleaners—they cleaned commercial office buildings but were no longer in business. Crystal had stopped working for them the year Jessivel was born. So her husband died, and shortly afterward she got pregnant by some guy whose last name might be Salter. She reflected on her conversation with Crystal’s former neighbor. Could the husband’s name have been Wayne Salter? Wait a minute! Wayne was the man’s name the woman in the funeral home parking lot had given her before she corrected herself. What the—
She called Gary.
“More background checks?”
“Please?”
“That property in Washington Park—get me a good deal on it.”
“You have one of my best agents working on it, Gary, but I think the owner is holding at $399.”
“You can do better than that. Pull out your big guns.”
“I’ll see what I can do. The name is Wayne Salter.”
“Hold on. Hmm, nothing is coming up. Are you sure about the first name?”
“Kind of. I’ve never seen it in print, just someone saying it.”
“I’ll try a few different ones—Duane, Lane, Shayne. Nothing is coming up.”
“Interesting.”
“Nothing in the local database is coming up on Salter at all, except for Jessivel and Kayla, of course. Anything else, Paige?”
“What about in the not-so-local database?”
“I’ll do the state of Illinois. Okay, three came up—Martha, June, and Emily.”
“Can you tell by whatever you’re looking at how old they are?”
“Martha is 76. June was born last year. And Emily is…looks like Emily died in 2001. She was 83. Will that do it for now?”
“Yes, and I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Negotiate that price down.”
Paige hung up the phone more bewildered than before and determined to get to the bottom of how Margo came into possession of her father’s ring. She called her mother and filled her in on what she had learned.
“Why are you even spending time on this, Paige? Don’t you have better things to do?” She paused. “I’ve been thinking about buying a second home, somewhere warm year-round. Marina Del Rey maybe. Or Palm Springs. Can you put me in touch with a good realtor there?”
“Why are you thinking of doing this now?”
“Because your father would never go along with it when I wanted to, and now I can.”
“You’re changing the subject. You’re good at that.”
“Then you could go there too, to visit, get away from it all every once in a while. Meet new friends. Or maybe you’ll go in on it with me?”
“What’s wrong with my friends?”
“Nothing. I was thinking of male friends. Find yourself a man and start a new life. You’re still young. You—”
“I don’t need a man, Mother. I don’t want a man. I’m very happy being single.”
“I’m just trying to help you expand the scope of your life a bit.”
“You’re trying to get me to stop trying to figure out who broke into your house.”
“Quit wasting your time…and mine. So, will you go in with me on the condo?”
“I don’t know. I’ll think about it.”
But Paige didn’t think about going in with her mother on buying a condo in sunny California. Instead, she focused on what she had learned from Gary. That, and the offhanded comment she’d made to her mother about not needing or wanting a man in her life.
Paige’s mother had to know something she didn’t want Paige to know—otherwise, she wouldn’t keep discouraging her from finding out about the break-in…or was it the ring? The ring seemed to be a trigger for her. Perhaps she was protecting Natalie from something again. She texted her friend Sandy and asked her if she was in the mood to meet for a drink. Minutes later, their other two friends, Valerie and Gayle, agreed to meet them later at Rigo’s, a Mexican restaurant they often frequented.
“The girls” had been friends for a long time and were not shy about disclosing with each other everything that was going on in their lives. Sandy and her husband owned a downtown hair salon that catered to certain well-known Chicago figures…some upstanding and others not so much. Sandy had shared details for more than a few shady deals that had gone down there over the years. Valerie—married four times and now a fifty-five-year-old widow and the oldest in the group (but, thanks to a few plastic surgeries, looking every bit the youngest) was raising three grandchildren after her son and daughter-in-law were killed in a car accident when the youngest was just two years old. Gayle, Paige’s former college roommate and a reasonably successful author of romance novels, was single and seriously looking. At forty-two, Paige was the youngest in the group.
This evening, they clinked their margarita glasses to good health before Paige breathlessly began her story.
“Sounds like a real mystery to me,” Sandy said after hearing about the ring and the strange woman who claimed it. “What other clues do you have?”
“I wouldn’t go there, Paige,” Valerie said. “Let sleeping dogs lie, my mother always said. Just like what I’m doing with what I just learned about my dead daughter-in-law. Some things are best left alone.”
“Tell me more about your father’s ring,” said Gayle. “Maybe he and this woman had a secret romance going on?”
“First of all, Gayle, I don’t want to think that about my own father. You’ve written too many romance no
vels! And Val, I can’t let it go. I must know. So what did you find out about your daughter-in-law?”
“For another time. Let’s get back to you.”
“Any other clues you can give us, Paige?” Sandy asked again. “You have to find out why she had the ring, but you’ve got so little to work with.”
“I know. That’s the problem.”
“So why do you think your mother is being so secretive? Is this the first time she’s acted this way?”
“Pretty much. Mom doesn’t confide in me on everything, I’m sure, but I never knew her to keep significant secrets from me either.”
“Sounds like she is now,” said Sandy. “I’m excited about it. How can we meet this woman? Things at the shop have been so boring lately.”
“Come to my house with two teenagers and an eleven-year-old who’s madly in love with Ethan Wacker,” said Valerie. “I promise you won’t be bored.”
“Ethan who?”
“Are you kidding me? The raddest boy on the face of the earth? Bernie on Bizaardvark?” Valerie said with dramatic flair.
“I don’t think kids use rad anymore, Val.”
“I was going to say gnarly, but I knew that was wrong.”
“How about bitchin’? Can we still use that one?” asked Sandy.
“Only when you’re feeling dope. And Paige?”
“What?”
“We missed you at our last two get-togethers.”
“I had work conflicts.”
“In the evening?”
“It’s real estate. All hours of the day and night.”
“You know what they say about all work and no play.”
“Will only make you sad and gray?”
“You got it, girlfriend.”
They parted ways, with Paige promising to keep them up to date on the Margo conundrum. She felt bad about missing out on seeing them the last two times, but when it came to sealing a deal versus having a few drinks with friends, she chose the deal every time. Who wouldn’t?
Later, lying in bed that night, with a mid-summer night’s deep rumble of thunder and driving rain beating down on the skylight in her bedroom, Paige replayed in her head what she knew about Margo.
Margo drove a car owned by Crystal Kick but wasn’t connected with Crystal in any of Gary’s searches. She claimed the ring to be hers—obviously, a lie—and that she had lost it. But why did she claim that instead of just saying she’d found it somewhere or that someone had given it to her? And then she had said that it couldn’t have been Paige’s father’s initials engraved inside the ring. She had seemed so adamant, like she really believed it, not like something she had come up with in the spur of the moment during their conversation. It just didn’t add up.
Paige recalled what she had learned about Crystal Kick. She gave birth to Jessivel Salter in 1988. A man going by the name Wayne Salter was presumably Jessivel’s father, lived with them, and may have died—according to their neighbor—but Wayne Salter was nonexistent, according to Gary, at least in Illinois. So maybe he was linked to somewhere outside of Illinois. Did any of this pertain to Margo? She wished she had access to the same database Gary did so she could conduct her own research and stop pestering Gary.
Erratic thoughts and images wandered through Paige’s head for a while until she glanced at the clock—three A.M. A distant train whistle penetrated the sound of the rain, instilling in her a brief sensation of melancholy. When the sound of the wind and rain weaving through the trees reminded her of a baby’s frantic cries and prevented her from falling asleep, she finally gave up, turned on the bedside light, and started jotting down what she knew about Margo.
She wrote a few things down before tossing the paper and pen aside. The rain had stopped. She opened a window, and fresh air enveloped her in momentary calm—her favorite Rachmaninoff CD would do the rest. Lying back down, she concentrated on her breathing as the music filled the room, thinking about the busy day at the office that lay ahead with three new major listings to market.
Paige stared blankly at the ceiling, a soft flicker of moonlight streaming through the window bringing transitory comfort to her dazed frame of mind, until none of what she’d been agonizing over made any sense. She then closed her eyes and focused on relaxing her body like she’d been taught in yoga class years before, tensing each major muscle and then relaxing it until it became loose and limp. Entering a dreamlike state, she pulled in one more deep cleansing breath before drifting asleep, her last thought that there had to be connections between Margo, Crystal Kick, and her father—unfathomable as they may be.
Chapter 12
Jessivel dreaded meeting with CDFSS, the agency that dealt with wretched homeless people who couldn’t fend for themselves. She wasn’t like them.
She dropped Kayla off at the local library and drove to their offices where a frumpy middle-aged woman named Cassandra, whom Jessivel immediately disliked, greeted her. Cassandra led the way to a small, dreary conference room, void of any furniture or décor except for a table and four chairs.
“How are you today, Miss Salter?”
Jessivel didn’t answer—too dumb of a question.
“Okay, let’s talk about your living situation. I understand you need housing.”
“Exactly where would this housing be?”
“We’ll get to that, but first I need to ask you—”
“Because I’m not going to live in some dilapidated government housing. I’m used to—”
“Look, I’m trying to help you here. If you would just let me do my job, we’ll get through this a lot faster.”
“Fine.”
Cassandra asked many questions, which Jessivel answered honestly, albeit reluctantly.
“Where is your daughter right now, Miss Salter? Is she in school?”
“Well, no. She’s with… I mean she’s at the library.”
“By herself?”
“Of course not! There’s always other people at a library.”
“So she’s not in school. She’s at the library with whoever happens to be there this morning.”
“She’s in good hands. It’s a library, for God’s sake.”
“Miss Salter, the library is a public place where anyone can go, those with good intentions and those with bad. It is not an acceptable place for an unsupervised twelve-year-old. Someone could take her, or she could leave on her own at any time. Right now, you have no idea if she’s there or not.”
“She wouldn’t leave.”
“You probably didn’t think she’d steal anything either, but she did.”
The woman stared at Jessivel for a prolonged moment without blinking, the impact of her gaze unsettling. “What are you afraid of, Jessivel?”
Feeling the conversation going down a path she didn’t care to travel, Jessivel shifted in her chair as her pounding heartbeat grew loud in her ears. “I’m not afraid of anything, and I don’t need anything from you or this stupid department.” She got up to leave.
“You leave here, and CPS will get involved. That I can promise you.”
“You can’t take my daughter from me!” she shouted.
“It doesn’t appear to me that her basic needs are being met—adequate food, shelter, supervision, schooling. Look, I’m mandated by the court to report this. And that’s what I am prepared to do, unless you take advantage of the social services I can offer you. And this, by the way, includes job training so you can get out of this situation and support yourself and your family.”
The woman’s calm demeanor and precise word choices annoyed Jessivel further. “I can find a job on my own.”
Cassandra gave her a guarded smile before saying, “Sit down.”
Jessivel remained standing.
“Sit down!”
“Fine.”
Cassandra leaned back in her chair and glared at her for an instant. “I broke my arm last year. My right arm. Couldn’t do even the most basic things. If I hadn’t been able to rely on my husband and children for help, I don’
t know what would have happened to me. I couldn’t write, get dressed, cut my own meat, or even go to the bathroom without a struggle. Do you know how humiliating it was to have my husband help me go to the bathroom?” She paused. “We all need help at some point in our lives. And right now, you need it. The more receptive you are, the quicker you’ll be able to be on your own. I don’t want to see your daughter taken away from you—she needs you—but that’s what will happen if you don’t let me help you.”
“Fine,” Jessivel said in a tone she knew indicated otherwise.
Why it was so difficult for her to ask for and accept help, Jessivel hadn’t a clue.
Jessivel wanted to break out of her situation, but not by taking a handout from social services and joining the ranks of pathetic welfare recipients. She decided to make a last-ditch effort to get her mother to move out of the Perlman palace and go back to living together as a family. She asked her mother if she could pick her up on her supposed day off and go out for breakfast.
“You look terrible,” were the first words out of her mother’s mouth when she entered Jessivel’s car two days later. “And this car smells like…I don’t know what.”
“It’s nice to see you too, Mom.”
Her mother turned around toward the back seat.
“Where’s Kayla?”
“I dropped her off at the library.”
“By herself?”
Jessivel held back from lashing out at her mother, despite the pain grinding into her temples—pain she thought might make her head explode without some form of release.
“She’s fine. There’s a workshop she’s attending—”
“A twelve-year-old needs better supervision than that.”
“She’s being supervised. She’s fine. Really, Mom?”
“I never left you alone at that age. I would have—”
“She’s not alone!”
“What’s all this stuff back here?”
“Just some of our things that didn’t—”
“You have to keep this stuff in your car? I thought you said Marcy had plenty of room for you two.”
“I did. She does. It’s just that—”
The Ring Page 7