Enemies Closer (10 page)

When they reached Gigi’s, Clara went in and handed the hostess, whom she didn’t recognize, a few of the flyers, asking her to post one in each of the restrooms. “Just ask Gemma,” she said when the woman looked skeptically at the picture of Maddy.

Ben was papering the side of a newspaper stand when she came back out. “Which way do you reckon Maddy would have walked home?”

“Quickest way is straight up to Second Avenue and then over to Pine.” They walked in silence up the steep hill, hanging flyers every ten feet or so until they were back on Maddy’s block. Cars whizzed by along the busy street and Clara looked despondent.

“If she hailed a taxi from here, what are the chances anyone noticed?” she asked.

Ben gave her a reassuring pat on the back and continued posting Maddy’s pictures.

Brightening a little when the idea struck her, she said, “Maybe we could bring her picture around to the city cab companies.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Ben. “We can also ask them about pick-ups around here on Monday night.”

They stood for a moment, each watching the steady stream of downtown traffic. Neither noticed the approach of the grubby young drifter until he started talking. Holding a flyer he had clearly just torn down and in a cracked voice that was a little too loud, the young man said, “I saw her. I saw this lady.”

Chapter Ten

J
udy Carlisle had just gotten home, just knocked on her teenaged daughter’s door to say hello and receive the standard grunt in reply, just checked in on her son, blissfully prepubescent and setting the kitchen table for dinner, just wrapped her arms around her husband, stirring a pot of spaghetti sauce on the stovetop, just begun to relax her weary shoulders, when her phone rang. It was Kincaid. It was work. Judy’s husband, now with his arms wrapped around her, read the caller ID over her shoulder, gave her a squeeze and said, “I’ll save you a plate.”

She answered, “Tell me you’re fishing for an invitation to dinner, Jerry.” They had decided to break for dinner and head back to Dovetail afterward to talk to the manager and the bartender, maybe some of the waitstaff.

“No such luck.” Carlisle rolled her eyes. “I just got a call from homicide. They’ve got a body we might be interested in.”

“Shit.”

“Mom swore!” said her son, never missing anything.

“So what, bratkin?” replied her blasé teenage daughter.

Carlisle left the kitchen. “Why are we interested?”

“It’s the floor manager from Dovetail. Susan Burns.”

“She’s dead?”

“Bludgeoned to death in her own apartment. The neighbor found her.”

“Any chance
he
did it?”

“
She
. Doesn’t look like it.”

They met outside of Susan’s apartment building – hard to miss with two cop cars outside, plus the medical examiner’s and crime scene tech’s vans. They badged the uniforms and made their way through the building’s entrance. It was a nice place, relatively new, with the Space Needle standing tall in the near distance, but it didn’t have much personality. Brick and mortar with oversized windows, white trim, and unremarkable landscaping.

“Second floor,” said Kincaid when they stepped into the elevator.

Carlisle pushed the button. “What the fuck is going on here, Jerry?”

He just shook his head. “Could be a coincidence.”

“It’s not a coincidence.”

“Nope,” he agreed. There was another uniform in the hallway outside of Susan’s apartment and Kincaid pulled his badge. “I spoke to Detective Iverson.”

“I’ll get him,” said the fresh-faced uniform, and Carlisle saw him take a deep breath before he turned and entered the apartment.

Less than a minute later, Homicide Detective Don Iverson stepped into the hallway. “We got a mess in there, Kincaid.” He introduced himself to Carlisle and went on, “So, after we identified the girl, someone at the station told me you two had a missing person from the same restaurant where the victim works. Any chance you already know who did this? Any persons of interest in your case that might also want to kill the hostess?”

“Floor manager,” Kincaid corrected, but the distinction didn’t seem to register to Iverson. “We got no one. Plenty of possibilities, and if we had motive we could at least narrow down the list, but we don’t.”

“I was afraid of that,” he replied. “Take a look?”

Carlisle and Kincaid followed the detective into the apartment, through a small foyer and into an open living room/dining room and kitchen. The place had been trashed. Books torn from the shelves, pieces of pottery and glass littering the kitchen floor, broken picture frames scattered around, sofa cushions thrown across the room. From the other side of the kitchen island Carlisle could see the body crumpled on the floor next to a glass and stainless steel coffee table. A crime scene tech snapped pictures, while another dusted for fingerprints and the ME stood by the body.

“Neighbor found her,” said Iverson without preamble. “She passed by on the way to her apartment and noticed the front door was ajar, knocked, called out, walked in and found this,” he said, pointing to the disaster in the living room.

“We were going to talk to her tonight,” said Carlisle as she pulled latex gloves from a dispenser box left on the kitchen island. Kincaid did the same and picked up a broken-framed photograph from the floor.

“You hadn’t interviewed her yet?” asked Iverson.

“Nope.” Kincaid passed the photo to his partner.

Carlisle studied it, trying to reconcile the image of a tall, busty redhead, a flirtatious glint in her eyes, with the bloodied figure on the floor. “Plan was to talk to her tonight at the restaurant where she works.” She sighed. “Too late now.”

“What do you think of the apartment toss?” asked Iverson.

“Looks staged to me,” said Carlisle.

“Me too. We knocked on doors. So far no one heard anything unusual. I figure the guy who did this was done throwing plates around before the nine-to-five crowd came home. The building’s full of young, single professionals, Miss Burns included. There are shards of glass from the frames on top of the body. Cookbook on her ankle.” Iverson pointed at Susan’s bare leg where a hardcover cookbook of Provençal cuisine lay open, obscuring her right ankle. “She was already dead on the floor when he ransacked the place.”

“Looking for something, maybe?” asked Kincaid.

“Nah, whoever did this took everything that wasn’t already touching the floor and threw it around. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. Her computer is still here; her bed and closet contents are now covering the bedroom floor, but the guy didn’t even go through her drawers.”

“Ransack for show,” mused Carlisle, “trying to mask a murder as a robbery. How did she get caught up in this?”

It was a rhetorical question and nobody answered. Susan Burns was five feet ten inches according to the driver’s license Iverson had just handed to Carlisle, but you wouldn’t know it to look at her now. She was facing down, her arms curled around her head, her knees pulled up to her chest and her lower legs splayed to one side. It looked like she had been trying to protect herself from the blows, crouching on the floor while she was being beaten until she lost consciousness and her body collapsed underneath her.

“Ready?” It was the medical examiner. With the help of a crime scene tech they rolled Susan away from the coffee table until she was flat on her back. Susan’s once-flawless porcelain skin was turning an ugly shade of mottled blue, her eyes clouded over. “Lividity shows she’s probably been face down since shortly after her death.” He pushed her shirt aside and inserted a thermometer under her rib cage. “Liver temperature has dropped a few degrees. She’s not in full rigor.” He took her hand and gently shook the arm. “More than three, less than six. I’d say about four hours since the time of death, but don’t quote me till I get her to the morgue.”

All three detectives simultaneously checked their watches. “Two or three this afternoon,” said Kincaid.

As the ME and crime scene techs got the body onto a gurney and prepared to take it out to the medical examiner’s van, Iverson turned back to the two Missing Persons detectives. “What’s the story with your missing person?”

“Madeline Gardner. Co-owner and head chef of Dovetail. Last seen Monday night around eight-forty-five. Last confirmed communication was a text sent from her phone around nine-thirty.” Kincaid had gotten access to Madeline’s phone records after Ben left the station that evening and confirmed his story that she had received a text message during dinner. The problem was, she had received several and without the phone itself, they had no way of knowing which one had sent her running out of the restaurant while her ice cream melted at the table. “Reported missing by her business partner on Wednesday evening. No signs of struggle in her apartment. No known enemies, no current boyfriends.”

“Shit,” said Iverson, “any past boyfriends?”

“Maybe. We got a guy she dated in the fall, but there’s no indication that he’s a psychopath. Plus, he’s cooperating fully. Called us at the station when he heard she was missing.”

“Could be he’s trying to seem innocent.”

“Could be,” said Kincaid. “Lot of could-bes in this case. Could be money troubles at the restaurant, could be a stalker ex-boyfriend, could be a stalker customer, could be a total stranger. Madeline just disappeared one night and no one can think why or how or what for, because everyone is sure she has no enemies, incites no animosity in anyone, that everyone loves her and her restaurant is a thriving success.”

“She pretty?”

“Beautiful.”

“Beauty and success can piss off a lot of people.”

Kincaid grunted. “But who?”

Carlisle had been looking through the detritus on the floor. “Anything here?”

“We’ll see,” said Iverson. “We got a lot of fingerprints, some hair and fibers, and the ME will check her body for trace. We won’t know till we start processing.”

“We talked to her boyfriend today,” said Carlisle and Iverson snapped to attention.

“Why didn’t you say so?”

“I just did. Harry Reynolds. Floor manager at Gigi’s Bistro on the Waterfront. The very same restaurant at which Madeline Gardner was last seen. Plus, the owners of Gigi’s also own a wine and liquor supply company that provides Dovetail with its wine. Double-plus, the owners of Gigi’s also own several successful restaurants in Seattle and may or may not have had an interest in buying Dovetail, should its owners become interested in selling. You know, if the business isn’t doing as well as everyone seems to think.”

“Or if one of the owners turns up missing or dead and the other owner has to sell?” suggested Iverson.

“We know Madeline was making inquiries about the myriad ways in which a restaurant can lose money in spite of high turnover and low overhead,” added Kincaid.

“Embezzlement?”

“We don’t know,” said Carlisle, “and we don’t have cause to look into Dovetail’s financials, so it’s all speculation.”

“What do you think of the boyfriend?”

“Harry?” Carlisle thought for a second. “He’s ambitious, fastidious in appearance, he likes Maddy Gardner. Hard to say how much though. He was working the night Madeline went missing, and we alibied him at Gigi’s until ten-thirty, but since we have a twelve-hour-plus gap between the last time she was seen and the time she was noticed missing, we can’t rule Harry out.”

“Who was she having dinner with?”

“A guy named Ben Radcliffe. Money guy, venture capital or something. He’s just a friend, or so he says, but he has a pretty good alibi, and if the same guy who took Madeline did this,” Kincaid gestured around the room, “he’s got a great alibi. Us. We interviewed him this afternoon. He came in around three, but he couldn’t have beaten a woman to death at two o’clock or even one o’clock and then walked into the station without blood and guts all over him. Plus, he said he came from a meeting at his office and a sit-down with Maddy’s sister before that. Should be easy to rule him out.”

“For Susan,” Carlisle clarified.

“Right, for Susan, but between you and me, I don’t like him for the chef either.”

Iverson looked at Carlisle, who shrugged and said, “Me neither, but until we know exactly when she disappeared, we can’t rule anyone out with certainty.”

“Hard to check an alibi when you don’t have a time,” said Iverson. “Let’s collaborate on this one for now. If it turns out to be a coincidence, we can separate the investigations.” He paused, then added, “But that doesn’t seem likely.”

They all agreed on that and Kincaid asked, “Where’s Tanaka?”

“He went back to the station to start the paperwork. We gotta get her phone records tout de suite and my partner lost the coin toss.”

Kincaid chuckled. “I bet the ladies love it when you speak French.”

“Fuck off, Kincaid,” said Iverson without venom. “I’m picking him up when I’m done here and we’ll get to the boyfriend and the workplace tonight.”

“Boyfriend is working tonight. You’ll find him at Gigi’s. What about us?” Carlisle looked at her partner.

“Well, the interview with Susan is off but we still need to talk to the bartender at Dovetail. You wanna get there first?” he asked Iverson.

“Nah, we’ll hit the boyfriend first. Let’s do a one-two punch. You talk to the staff at Dovetail about your missing person and then Tanaka and I will come in later and tell them their floor manager is dead.” He pulled his phone from a clip on his belt buckle “Lemme confer.” Iverson stepped into the bedroom to call his partner at the station. He emerged a minute later and said, “It’s a plan.”

When Carlisle and Kincaid were back outside they decided to leave Jerry’s car and ride together. “Dovetail?” asked Carlisle.

Kincaid looked at the clock on the dash. “Perfect timing. It’s rush hour at the restaurant and they’re down a manager.”

“Something tells me you’re going to enjoy this, Jerry.” She pulled out and headed south toward Maddy’s restaurant.

“Life is about smelling the roses, Judy. If you can’t enjoy interrupting a restaurant in full swing to ask a bartender about a missing woman, you’re not taking advantage of the little things God gives us every day.”

Carlisle grinned; she was looking forward to this. She was especially looking forward to catching Michelle Perkins off guard. By the time they parked and walked through the entrance to Dovetail it was seven-thirty and the dining room was packed.

The man who jogged to the host stand looked harried. He was in his early to mid-forties with a head shaved to mask his bald pate and a five o’clock shadow that made him look a little rough around the edges. Taller than Carlisle and shorter than Kincaid put him around six feet. The grey broadcloth shirt tucked into black wool trousers showed his muscular physique and matched his whiskers. With a tense smile, he eyed the two cops standing by the host stand, a flicker of recognition passing through his gaze before he blinked it away.

“Good evening folks, are you here for dinner?”

“No such luck,” Kincaid said and showed his badge. “Detective Kincaid, and this is my partner, Detective Carlisle.”

The man’s plastered-on smile disappeared. “You’ve got to be kidding me. We’re packed. Can’t you come back after the dinner rush?”

“I’m afraid not. You see, sir, the clock is ticking on Madeline Gardner.”

The man’s face changed instantly from irritation to resignation. “Sorry, you’re right. It’s just that we’re completely full and one of our employees didn’t show up tonight.” He shook his head sadly. “I’m Eddie Perkins, just here helping out while Maddy’s gone. I mean, until she comes back. You’ve met Michelle, my wife. The three of us own this place together, but generally I’m only here to eat. Here, let me get you a seat at the bar. Who do you want to talk to?”