A Deadly Development (14 page)

The addition had been highly controversial.
Kansas City had these type of controversies about every ten years
or so. The Nelson’s earlier controversy had involved placing forty
foot tall shuttlecocks on either side of the lawn of the building,
making the building look like a net of a badminton game. Burke had
liked the shuttlecocks, but there had been a lot of howling at the
time.

Next his car cut through the University of
Missouri, Kansas City campus, where Burke reluctantly had gone to
school, unable to afford any of the out of state schools he had
wanted to attend. Then through Crestwood, the neighborhood John
Vithous called home. Tom had thought about driving by the home, but
figured there was no point, so he kept heading south.

Finally, he was in the neighborhood he had
called home, both as a child and as a first time homeowner.

When he had bought, it had been an
investment. He and a high school buddy were in the business of
flipping houses. They were young, with a limitless amount of
energy, enthusiasm and optimism. They flipped a total of five
houses, each time spending months gutting, painting and updating
the home. Tom’s college buddy, Steve Taylor, was the talent of the
operation. His father was a contractor, so Steve knew how to
upgrade electrical, plumbing and HVAC systems. Tom had been mostly
the muscle; he was good at throwing a sledge hammer around and
breaking down moldy ceilings, broken plaster, and leaky roofs.

They hadn’t much money, so they would live in
the houses they were flipping. This led to many nights of dealing
with no lights, or running water. But, they had done it. Both he
and Steve took tremendous pride in the finished product, and they
made a little cash to boot.

By the time they arrived at the 1925 Tudor
home, with beautiful oak crown molding, and gorgeous hardwood
floors, Tom had saved up enough for a down payment.

This house had been a wedding present from a
young groom to his bride. The couple had been there when Lindbergh
flew across the Atlantic, the stock market crashed and for FDR’s
four elections. Within those walls, the couple watched their
children grow up there, saw the world come to war, and eventually
receded into old age during the latter part of the 20
^th
century.

The husband died in 1983, but his widow had
refused to move. One snowy night, she broke her hip slipping on the
back porch, and her children wouldn’t let her come back to the home
when she got out of the hospital. Tom knew all this because the man
he bought the house from was her youngest son. While looking at the
house together, the son would point to a corner and talk about a
specific childhood memory often becoming emotional. Tom wondered
why the son hadn’t bought the house, but he hadn’t asked.
Selfishly, he had wanted the home for himself.

It had great bones but was a mess. Leaky
plumbing had led to large amounts of plaster crashing to the floors
below. The kitchen hadn’t been updated since the 1950s; the
basement still housed the original boiler, which at some point had
been converted from being heated by coal to being warmed by natural
gas. The old coal shoot still stood in the corner of the basement.
The son indicated he was too young to remember when it was used,
but did say his dad talked often about how much of a pain it was to
keep the boiler stoked on cold Kansas City nights.

Steve and Tom had moved in on a March
Saturday, and got to work. Over the next six weeks they filled up
three industrial bins full of trash. They tore the building down to
its studs, leaving only the beautiful molding, wood floors, black
and white bathroom tiles and the clawed foot bathtub upstairs.

Burke would come home from a long patrol
shift, Taylor from his Dad’s contracting business and they would
start in. They usually wouldn’t stop until at least 10:30 at night,
sometimes later. It had been exhausting and frustrating, but in the
end, all worth it.

Burke had moved in as bachelor that fall, and
would be there for the next decade.

He had dated a lot in the early days, never
finding the ‘one’ that he wanted to spend the rest of his life
with, until when he was 35 years old and he met a young nurse named
Julie in a spinning class at his gym.

She wasn’t from Kansas City, and had just
moved into town. Tom had found himself enchanted immediately; she
had a smile that she gave away so easily. She laughed at his jokes,
and enjoyed many of the same things he did; history, travel, going
to the gym to workout.

He had his misgivings; she was 13 years
younger. But she assured him it didn’t matter.

“Love knows no age, Tom,” she purred into his
ear one night on his couch in the house that he loved.

After that, it had been a whirlwind. She
moved in, they got engaged and on a trip to California, they
eloped. Their mothers had been furious, and that was one of the
reasons they did it.

All these memories were swimming in his head
as he pulled up to the very house where Julie had won his heart,
and then – only a few years later – broke it into a thousand
pieces.

Tom walked up the three steps that he had
countless times before, but instead of entering, he tapped firmly
at the door. He still had his key, but felt he shouldn’t barge in,
and to be honest, was afraid of what he might find.

Julie came to the door looking very much like
that girl at the spinning class all those years ago. Her turquoise
eyes stared up at him, flashing a combination of guilt and
contempt.

“I thought you were going to call first,” she
said, while motioning him inside. It was still all the same
furniture, the blue sofa, the brown overstuffed chair with the huge
ottoman that Tom bought specifically to watch football on weekend
afternoons. Everything was in the exact same place. Everything,
except him.

“I have been really busy,” Burke said, not
caring if she believed him or not. That trust was broken, and he’d
be damned if he ever tried to put it back together.

“Tom, I know you are intent on selling this
house, but I’m not ready. Where would I go?”

“Not my problem, Julie,” Tom said with a
shrug while sitting down on the edge of the ottoman, “you agreed to
this as part of the divorce settlement. It’s time.”

Julie sat across from him, as far as the
couch would allow her to be from him. She curled her legs up
alongside her, like she always did. Her bare feet jutting out from
her Levi’s, a red V-neck sweater that hugged her body close. She
still looked amazing, but the feeling of love he had for her was
long gone.

She ran her fingers through her long, black,
curly hair and sighed. It was so quiet that Tom could easily hear
the ‘click click’ of the second hand in the clock above the
fireplace. The clock that had been a wedding gift.

“Ok,” she said finally, defeated, “I’ll call
the realtor in the morning.”

“Promise?” Burke asked, while already moving
to the door.

She nodded and wiped a small tear from her
eye.

“I really screwed things up, didn’t I?” she
asked. Burke didn’t answer. They had had that fight too many times
already. Everything he had wanted to say about the subject had been
said. The relationship was long over; they both knew it.

He clutched his cellphone in his hand, pulled
open the solid oak front door – the one he had refinished right
before moving in – and walked outside.
At least this home had
one happy marriage
, he thought before getting his car and
driving away into the night.

Thursday, March 16, morning

“Coffee?” Tom Burke Sr. offered, pointing to
a coffee maker on the small counter in his new home.

“No thanks, Dad,” Burke had answered, “I
already had some before coming over. It’ll make me jittery.”

Sgt. Tom Burke was sitting in his father’s
latest home. Which wasn’t his home, it was his girlfriend’s. If
Burke recalled correctly, this would be the third live-in
girlfriend for his father since he left his mother. The story
repeated itself about every five years or so. Burke Sr. would meet
a woman, usually an old classmate, or someone who hang out in the
same bars that he did, and the romance would begin in earnest.

Tom’s dad was popular with the women because
he was an anomaly for men his age; he liked to do things. He loved
to go to garage sales, live music, art fairs, lectures, you name
it. This gave him an immense advantage over his competition. Most
of his contemporaries were happy to just sit on the couch like a
slug and watch TV. Not Tom Sr. He still had energy to burn.

His hair was now completely snow white, and
the body, which for so long had been lean – even muscular was
finally caving in to all the beers he drank. But, he could be
charming when he wanted to, and at the moment, his charm had led to
his latest living arrangement, a modest three bedroom ranch in
south Kansas City with a widow named Linda.

“Sounds like you’ve got yourself one hell of
case,” the old man said, sitting next to him, sipping from his
coffee cup that proclaimed “world’s greatest dad”. Burke knew he
hadn’t given him the cup, had his sister Megan? Or was it one of
the fabulous “deals” his father had brokered in a garage sale
purchase?

“If you want to know the truth, it’s driving
me nuts,” Tom said. “I’m going nowhere fast. That’s why I came. I
need some background information.”

“Shoot,” Tom Sr. said, while blowing on the
top of his coffee, “I’m all ears.”

“Dick Houlihan?” Burke said and waited for
his reaction.

“He’s not a murderer,” Tom Sr. said, while
taking a gulp, “if that’s what you are thinking.”

Burke shook his head.

“I know that,” he replied, “he’s got an
airtight alibi, I was just curious what you thought about him.”
Burke could hear his father’s latest girlfriend, chatting on the
phone in the other room. She was gossiping with a friend about the
upcoming wedding of a friend’s daughter. It was obvious she didn’t
approve of the bride’s choice of a spouse.

“If bullshitting was an Olympic event, Dick
would get the gold. Hands down,” the elder Burke said. “We went all
through school together. St. Elizabeth’s all the way. Then
Rockhurst. Dick liked to talk too much even then. Always was
involved in those sorts of things – drama club, debate, you name
it.”

Tom Sr. got up and poured more coffee in his
cup. He sat back down and laughed.

“Somehow, he never got his ass kicked, which
was something considering how much he talked and how full of crap
he was. He remembered me, didn’t he?”

Burke nodded.

“He told me you were a good guy. I told him
he must have known a different Tom Burke.”

“Wiseass,” the old man said, but he wasn’t
angry. He had a smile on his face.

“You run into any else of my contemporaries
lately?”

“Just Jane Hughes,” Tom replied.

“Seen her around a bunch,” his father stated,
“but never really talked to her.”

“How about her attorney, Peter Knaak?” Tom
said. His old man’s eyes lit up.

“Him I know. Spoiled rich kid. Grew up right
off Ward Parkway, around 58
^th
street. Huge house. His
old man had more money than his kids could spend.”

“You go to school with him?”

The old man shook his head violently.

“Nope. He isn’t Catholic. He was one of the
Pem Day school brats.”

Burke didn’t know it as Pem Day; to him it
was Pembroke - a private school right off the Plaza where Kansas
City’s elite sent their children. Both Burke and his father had
run-ins with the Pembroke boys when they were in high school. The
word was a Pembroke education cost more than most universities. To
this day, Pembroke kids drove nicer cars to school than Burke ever
owned.

“So, how did you know him?” Tom asked.

“Same way you ran into a lot of them brats -
parties, fist fights, stupid high school shit.”

“He’s a big powerful lawyer now, guess he
changed.”

Tom Sr. put his lips together and blew.

“Doubt it,” he said with contempt, “he’s
probably the same asshole. But money will always let you abide by a
different set of rules than the rest of us. Don’t you forget
it.”

Linda had walked in, still talking on the
cordless phone. She smiled at both Toms, poured a cup for herself,
finishing off the pot, and disappeared back into the bedroom.

“That one talks even more than your mother,”
Tom Sr. stated.

“Is that even possible?”

That got a snort out of the old man.

“Sadly so,” he said.

“You ever see Pete Knaak after high
school?”

The old man nodded and smiled.

“When I was a young beat cop, we got a call
about a disturbance at a bar over by Rockhurst College – Mike’s,
you know it?”

“Yeah, Dad,” Burke replied, “my college
buddies and I hung out there a lot, trying to get into Rockhurst
college girls pants.”

“And failing miserably?”

“Yep.”

“Sounds familiar, anyway, we get to the bar.
Pete Knaak is being held back by the bartender. Turns out someone
had insulted his date –squeezed her ass, made a nasty remark –
something, I don’t remember exactly. Pete was drunk as hell. When
the guy turned away, Pete smashed him over the head with a beer
bottle.”

Burke’s heart skipped a beat.

“He hit him?” Burke said. “Over the
head?”

“Yes, Tom. Are you not listening to me?”

“I’m listening, believe me. Every word.”

“Yes, over the head. Guy was bleeding all
over the place. His buddies wanted to kick Knaak’s ass, but the
bartender had a baseball bat hidden under the bar for just that
type of situation.”

Burke’s Dad stood up, grabbed a donut from a
paper bag, and took a bite.

“We haul his sorry ass down to the station.
He’s blubbering like an idiot. Talking about how his date was
disrespected and he had to do it.”