Stalked (10 page)

Stride ordered a cup of dark coffee at the shop next door, picked up a newspaper, and found a corner table to wait. Tanjy’s disappearance was on the front page, but the article was short and below the fold. Stride was quoted, asking for help from people who might have seen or talked to her in the past week. He hadn’t told anyone yet, including Abel, about the possible connection between Tanjy and Eric. For the time being, he had a back door to keep his hand in the investigation of Eric’s murder.

Mitchell Brandt took twenty minutes to show up. He was dressed in a black silk shirt with a snug twenty-four-karat gold chain hung around his neck. He wore Dockers and black loafers and ordered a large skim latte with an extra shot of espresso. He sported enough expensive jewelry—an Omega watch, a sapphire ring on a non–wedding finger—to send the message that he had money. Before sitting down, he shook Stride’s hand firmly and gave him a stockbroker’s grin.

“How are you situated for investments, Lieutenant?” Brandt asked. “I’m tracking some interesting growth companies.”

“Most of my assets are in a police pension.”

“Well, if you want to make some real money, call me sometime. I work with a lot of the attorneys and executives in town. My clients do very, very well. I’ve turned people on to some hot med-tech companies down in the Cities.”

“What’s your secret?” Stride asked.

“I do my homework. I worked with the Byte Patrol guys here in town to build my own research software. It helps me find out everything there is to know about a business, good, bad, and ugly. I know more about these companies than most of their C levels.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Brandt sipped his latte. “So Tanjy’s missing, huh? What’s the deal? She drive into a lake or something?”

“What would make you think that?”

“She’s not exactly stable. Sort of a New Age choirgirl stuck in the middle of a Stephen King novel.”

“Meaning what?” Stride asked.

Brandt leaned in closer and lowered his voice. “Come on, Lieutenant. You read the papers back then. This is a girl who insisted I go to church with her every night and then would have me tie her to the bed and put a knife to her throat while I banged her. She’s not wired right.”

“So why date her?”

Brandt chuckled and fanned himself with the sports section of the paper. “Are you kidding? I’d take her back right now if she walked in the door. She’s Cleopatra meets Grace Kelly. The sex was bizarre, but it was ungodly amazing. I’ve never seen a girl climax like she does. You saw the Meg Ryan orgasm scene in that movie, right? Imagine that times ten. Tanjy could make the house shake.”

Stride finished off his coffee. The blend was dark and smoky, and there were grounds in the last swallow. He watched the horny glow in Brandt’s face and found himself getting angry. “If you thought she was making up the rape story, you could have come to the police instead of telling it to the papers,” Stride told him coldly.

Brandt held up his hands. “You’ve got it all wrong, Lieutenant. The reporters came to me. They knew about me and Tanjy before I ever opened my mouth. I swear.”

“How would they know that? Did you brag about it?”

“Sure, maybe a little, but I don’t think any of my friends would have ratted me out. I figured the papers got it from Tanjy herself. That would be like her, you know, to blow the whistle on herself. That’s part of the whole victim thing. Look, as soon as I heard about this rape story, I knew Tanjy was faking it. I mean, it read like a replay of our sex life. She had me do her in that very spot, down in Grassy Point Park, against the fence. For all I know, that’s where she takes all of her guys. But I wasn’t going to spoil her fun. The only reason I talked to the reporters is that they were going to run the story anyway, and I’d come out looking like a rapist myself. That’s bad for business. If it was going to be in the news, I wanted to make damn sure everyone knew this was Tanjy’s idea, not mine.”

Stride had a hard time imagining Tanjy reporting a rape, then giving the media a tip to expose her as a fake. “How did you meet her?”

“Sonia introduced us at the dress shop.”

“Sonia?”

“Sonia Bezac. She’s the manager.”

Stride felt a shiver. “Sonia Bezac runs Lauren’s dress shop?”

“Sure. Do you know her?”

He had an erotic flashback. “Yes, I do.”

“Don’t tell me you’re part of—?” Brandt stopped in midsentence.

“What?”

Brandt shook his head. “Nothing, never mind.”

“How do you know Sonia?” Stride asked.

“She and her husband are clients. I go in the shop sometimes to talk about investments. It’s just a few doors down from my office. I met Tanjy right after Sonia hired her, and we started going out.”

“Was she a client, too?”

“Tanjy doesn’t have any money. Her dad was a minister, and her mom stayed at home. She got a little cash after they died, but that was all going to tuition. Tanjy never has much in her wallet, but when you look like she does, it doesn’t matter. Guys will buy you anything you want.”

“How long did you date?”

“About five or six months. We split up over the summer. That was a couple of months before her rape story made the news.”

“Why’d you break it off? Did she get too expensive?”

Brandt looked surprised. “Me break it off? No way. She dumped me. I was having the best sex of my life, Lieutenant. Like I said, if she called me today, I’d be back over there this afternoon.”

“Okay, so why did she dump you?” Stride asked.

“At the time, she said it was because I didn’t want to get married.”

“Why not? I thought you were hooked on the girl.”

“I was, but not in a forever, roses, kids, minivan kind of way. I was happy to stay with her as long as she was greasing my pole. But marriage? No thanks. I didn’t want to wake up and find her taking a cleaver to my privates someday.”

“Tanjy was violent?”

“Haven’t you been listening, Lieutenant? This girl was all about violence. Sex to her
was
violence. That was the only way she could enjoy it. This girl had bats in her belfry. I wasn’t planning to be around if Satan suddenly told her to start slicing up her husband.”

“You said you thought at the time that she dumped you because you didn’t want to get married,” Stride told Brandt. “Was there some other reason?”

Brandt nodded. “Oh, yeah. I’d never been dumped before, and it was sort of a blow to my ego, know what I mean? Girls don’t usually blow me off for another guy.”

“Tanjy was seeing someone else?”

“Yeah. She started having conflicts on date nights. Sonia told me Tanjy would go out for long lunches. Long like two hours. So I figured she’d found a sugar daddy. Somebody richer than me.”

“Did you ask her who it was?”

“No. I didn’t want to find out she tossed me over for someone fat, balding, and sixty, know what I mean? I bought the whole you-won’t-marry-me line, even though it was bogus.”

“You’re sure it was bogus?” Stride asked.

“Well, no one put a ring on her finger, did they? Besides, the way she was sneaking around had to mean one thing. Whoever she was seeing, he was already married.”

Like Eric
, Stride thought.

After Stride left, Mitchell Brandt watched the detective from behind his coffee cup as he climbed into an old Ford Bronco in the parking lot. Brandt had been around cops before, and he knew the games they played. They talked with you about one thing when they really wanted something else. They baited you into saying something stupid. Sometimes, if you caught them stealing a glance when they thought you weren’t looking, you could see the truth in their eyes.

Stride didn’t look back as he drove away.

So maybe this really was all about Tanjy and nothing else. Brandt just didn’t like the coincidence of the police tracking him down at this particular moment. Not when he was waiting for the next phone call. Not when his whole life was on the line.

Brandt slid out his black RAZR and dialed a number.

A woman answered. “This is Kathy.”

“Hey there, alpha girl,” Brandt said.

He pictured Kathy Lassiter, cool and hard in spiked heels, cutting off balls in the boardroom, hiding her bad girl ways behind a Brooks Brothers suit. She was a bitch, but he liked that. He enjoyed their battle for control.

“Well, hey yourself,” she replied, her voice turning smoky. He imagined her red lips folding into a half-smile and her nipples puckering into pink nubs.

“Are you looking forward to next week?” he asked.

“You know I am. Are you going to be first?”

“Maybe I’ll make you wait, so I can watch.”

“I like that.”

He grinned.

“Listen, about Infloron—” he began.

“
Not on the phone
.”

“Yeah, I know. Understood. Sorry. I was just wondering if anyone has been nosing around. Asking you questions.”

The silence drew out, but Brandt could hear the measured sound of her breathing.

“Of course not. Why?”

“I’m just making sure we’re safe.”

“Has someone talked to you?” The erotic undercurrent in her voice was gone. She was a corporate lawyer again, as sharp as a knife edge.

He hesitated. “No.”

“Then stay cool.”

“Look, if someone were to start following the paper trail, they’d wind up with me, not you.”

Her voice was frozen. “So?”

“So I don’t like that.”

“I guess you’ll have to trust me,” she said.

“Yeah, right.”

“I’ll see you next week. You can get out your frustrations then. In the meantime, don’t be stupid. Okay?”

“Sure.”

Brandt hung up.

He tried to decide if Kathy Lassiter was lying to him. They used each other in and out of bed, but Brandt didn’t trust Kathy. Not one little bit. He couldn’t afford to trust anyone now. That was how it was when you were on the hook to a blackmailer.

An elderly Mexican housekeeper led Abel Teitscher to the solarium at the rear of Dan Erickson’s London Road estate. A silver urn with coffee waited for him, along with a warm plate of cheese Danish and croissants. Abel awkwardly filled a china cup and blew on the coffee to cool it. He ate a piece of Danish quickly without using a plate and wiped his sticky fingers on a small paper napkin, then crumpled the napkin and shoved it in his pocket. He felt foolish, trying to balance the cup between his thumb and index finger, and feeling it quiver in his hand as if he was about to drop it and cause an embarrassing mess on the white ceramic tile.

Abel could feel the chill of the floor through the bottoms of his faded leather shoes. A wall of glass, divided into geometric patterns, looked out on a broad stretch of snow-covered lawn leading down to the lake. The mansions along the coastal road were expensive and old-school, set well back from the street behind iron gates, on large open lots that did nothing except ring up dollars on a property tax bill. Abel figured that the ground itself, just the dirt, was worth many times more than his entire house. Lauren’s money, not Dan’s.

He noticed a reflection in the diamond-shaped windows and turned to see Dan step down into the solarium from the main house. The county attorney had summoned Abel for an update on the investigation of Eric Sorenson’s murder.

“Shit, it’s like an icebox out here,” Dan said. “You okay on coffee, Abel? Need a warmer-upper?”

“I’m okay.”

Dan poured a cup. He was dressed in a navy blue silk robe over white pajamas, with black plush slippers on his feet. Abel could see an inch or two of bare ankles. Dan’s blond hair, which was normally plastered in place with half a can of hair spray, was mussed and spiky. He hadn’t shaved, and there was a yellow growth of stubble across the lower half of his face.

“Sorry I’m late,” Dan said. “I was on the phone until two this morning about the new job. I can’t wait to move to Washington. Nothing wrong with Duluth, but I was born in Chicago, and it’ll be nice to be back in a real city again. Where Chinese food doesn’t mean the lunch buffet at Potsticker Palace.”

Abel grunted. He ordered takeout every Monday from the Potsticker Palace and thought it was damn good.

Dan put a croissant and two cheese Danish on a plate. “Not much for small talk, are you? That’s why some people think you’re a prick, Abel. Think about that. You’re looking even skinnier than when I last saw you. You don’t have cancer or something, do you?”

Abel felt his face growing hot. “I run, okay? Everyone else in this town piles on lard to hibernate for the winter, and meanwhile, my cholesterol is one hundred and seventy-one without taking any goddamn Lipitor.”

Dan laughed. “K-2 was right. You do go ballistic about that.”

The man was deliberately pushing his buttons. Abel wasn’t going to miss him. He hoped that Dan went to a Chinese restaurant in Washington and choked on his broccoli stir-fry.

“No offense, but why am I here?” Abel asked impatiently. “You don’t usually call me in until we’re ready to make an arrest.”

“Well, are we?”

“No way. We won’t have anything back on the forensics for a few weeks.”

“All right, tell me what you’ve found since we last talked.” Dan sat down and chewed the end of a croissant.

“I’ve looked at Sorenson’s finances. He had a net worth in the high seven figures and a strong cash flow at his business. He did well in the market. No litigation at the company. He hasn’t dismissed an employee in two years. There’s nothing suspicious in his work life.”

“All of his money goes to Maggie now?” Dan asked.

“Most of it. I saw his will. There are charitable provisions and some outright gifts to two sisters and a few nieces and nephews. Nothing more than a hundred thousand dollars. The bulk of the estate winds up in his wife’s hands.”

“Nice nest egg for a cop. What about the happy couple?”

“Not so happy.”

“What does Maggie say about their marriage?”

“She says they were fine, but she’s lying. I’ve got reports of arguments and affairs. He wasn’t sleeping in their bed. You ask me, they were headed for a divorce.”