Ting-A-Ling (7 page)

I looked up at her and shook my head. “Jesus, nice investigator.” My voice sort of trembled. “I don’t have the slightest idea. To tell you the truth, until the other day, I hadn’t thought of any of this for, well, for a very long time.”

She slid off her kitchen stool and squeezed my arm. “Don’t punish yourself, Dev. That’s my job. Come on, you left your car at your office last night. I’ll give you a lift back down there.” She gave me a lingering kiss on the cheek, then grabbed the rest of my caramel roll, stuffed it into her mouth and went to find her jacket.

Chapter Fifteen

Jimmy White’s wife, his
widowed wife, was named Susan. As far as I knew she had always gone by Sue. I didn’t know if she’d kept White as her last name. I didn’t know her address. I didn’t even know if she was still in the area. I didn’t know anyone I could call to find out. I went online and did a reverse directory search. I came up with thirty-seven different Sue Whites in St. Paul within the proper age range.

I picked up the phone and started calling. I found her on the thirty-third call.

“Sue White, please.”

“Speaking,” I could hear what sounded like a young voice in the distant background.

“Sue, my name is Dev Haskell. I’m looking for a woman who was once married to a childhood friend of mine, James White.”

“Oh, sure, I recognize your name. Yeah, Jimmy mentioned you from time to time. You’re what, a fireman, is that right?”

“Actually, I’m a private investigator.”

“Really? Is this business or pleasure?”

“Sort of business, nothing you have to worry about. Actually, I was thinking about Jimmy and well, I wondered if I could maybe get together with you.”

“You know he passed away a few years ago.”

“Yeah, I knew that. Actually, I just wanted to talk to you about some things. I’m involved in an investigation and I just had some questions that…”

“An investigation? About me, about us? God, now what?”

“No, no nothing like that. To be honest, it involves someone who was in the same line of business as Jimmy. I just wanted to see if you could give me some direction. You know, which way to go in this thing. To be honest real estate investment and development is not my strong suit.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment. “I really don’t think I can help you. All that was his world, not mine. I’m an RN, pediatrics. If you have someone who needs a diaper change I might be able to help with that, but real estate and property development is something I don’t know anything about and I don’t want to know anything about.”

“I’d still like to talk.”

“I really don’t see how I can help,” then she seemed to address someone else and said, “Just a minute honey, mommy’s on the phone.”

“Sounds like you’re busy. I promise I’ll only take a few minutes of your time.”

“I suppose. I’ve got to pick up at day care so we won’t be home until after four-thirty tomorrow.”

“If I stopped by around five, could I just have maybe fifteen minutes? I’d gladly pick up dinner.”

She sort of laughed and said, “Thanks, but that’s not necessary.” Then she gave me her address and hung up.

Chapter Sixteen

I was in the
office by nine the following morning, attempting to learn anything I could about Renee Paris. I started out by Googling his name. Based on the volume of results that popped up I’d be in front of the computer for the better part of the day. I read the first half dozen articles that were posted, three from the
St. Paul Pioneer Press
. A couple more appeared to be a four part series from a local financial publication. There was another long column from the
Minneapolis Star Tribune
that had run in their business section. Those were just the articles in the past few months. Checking dates on the postings, the things went back more than thirty years and there seemed to be a common thread to the headlines. “
Loans Called, Investors Sue, Project put on hold, Code Violation Lawsuit, Court Decision Appealed.
”

I didn’t know who was handling his legal maneuvering. Whoever it was, they had to be nicely compensated. While everyone else seemed to end up in the poor house, Paris was still out there walking around free and doing another deal. Meanwhile, the body count of folks who were financially ruined or just couldn’t take it anymore continued to rise.

Sixty minutes later, just an hour into my research and pretty much everything Louie had suggested looked to be true. It was sort of like reading about some politician trying to get ahead of an ongoing story. There’d be a statement from Paris attesting to one thing or another and then a story posted a week or a month later, listing all sorts of factual information that read completely contrary to what Paris had said. The common denominator was Paris always seemed to walk away and someone else always seemed to be left holding the bag.

I phoned Danielle in the early afternoon.

“Hi, Danielle.”

“Dev?”

“Right, just checking to see if you heard anything from Paris.”

“No.” The way she said it seemed to suggest something like
‘Why would I?’

“Well, I guess I was just hoping he would respond in some way, a call, an email, something that might suggest he took our little conversation to heart.”

“I don’t think that’s going to happen, Dev. That’s not his style.”

“There’s a word that’s not applied to Renee Paris too often, style.”

That didn’t seem to raise a reaction.

“If you hear anything from him you’ll let me know. Right?”

“You’ll be the first person I call. Hey, I’ve got to run, I’ve got another call coming through,” she said.

“Call me back if it’s him,” I said, but she’d already hung up.

Chapter Seventeen

At exactly five o’clock
I rang Sue White’s door bell. She lived in a single level, nondescript tract house that looked to have been built in the mid-sixties. Just like all the other nondescript tract homes for blocks around. There seemed to be four or five different versions of the same style. A front door on the right or left corner of the home, a large living room picture window in the middle and what I guessed were two side-by-side bedroom windows on the opposite corner.

The siding on Sue’s home was a cedar shake sort of affair with a large flat panel between the picture and bedroom windows painted the same color as the trim. Sue’s home was light gray with the flat panel and her trim a peeling white. Her front door was a glossy fire engine red.

I rang the doorbell a second time, hoping she hadn’t forgotten. In an effort to try and extract some warmth I moved my hands tighter around the take out pizza box I was holding. The evening temperature was already below zero and dropping. The double cheese and sausage pizza box I held felt barely warm and was quickly losing any semblance of heat.

The door was suddenly opened by an attractive, redheaded woman in hospital scrubs. Her hair was pulled back and wrapped in a loose bun.

“Mr. Haskell?” She smiled.

“Please, call me Dev,” I said and sort of raised the barely warm pizza box.

“Come on in. Oh, gee, you didn’t have to do that,” she said, taking the box. “But, thanks. I was just wondering what I was going to serve Jimmy.”

The look on my face must have given me away.

“My five-year-old son. He’s at the kitchen counter watching the Grinch.”

“Yeah, sure, you had me for a brief moment there,” I said, then pushed the door closed behind. I followed her through a living room and into the kitchen. There was a small Christmas tree standing in the corner of the living room sparsely decorated with little twinkling white lights. As I passed I noticed one small gift covered with candy cane Christmas wrap placed beneath the tree.

“Jimmy, this is Mr. Haskell. Would you please look up from the Grinch long enough to say hello?”

He was seated at the kitchen counter and the little face that looked up was the spitting image of his father as I remembered him in about Kindergarten. Close cropped light brown hair, a cowlick hairline and happy blue eyes.

“Hi, Jimmy. Nice to meet you, give me five,” I said and held out my hand.

The kid slapped my hand, shot me a quick smile and then made a speedy return to the Grinch.

“Can I get you anything to drink?” Sue asked.

“Are you going to have something?”

“I’ve got the kettle on for some tea, will that do?”

I guessed it would have to. “That would be fine,” I said and then tried not to visibly shudder.

“Come on, we can sit out in the living room and talk,” she said a minute later. She pushed a steaming mug toward me and walked out to the couch.

I sat down in the threadbare chair across from the couch and put my tea mug on the coffee table. The flimsy little table next to the couch held a twelve dollar lamp burning a ten watt bulb. A framed photo of Sue and Jimmy on their wedding day rested in front of the lamp. She looked gorgeous in a full length wedding gown. Jimmy in a dark suit looked as I remembered him, happy and serious at the same time.

She settled onto the couch, half faced me and folded her legs beneath her. She took a long sip from her mug and seemed to study me. Her hospital scrubs looked to be a faded blue and she wore small white slippers on her feet. “So,” she said, setting her mug down. Then she just sat there and waited with a look on her face that said
‘your turn’
.

“Yeah, well. Like I mentioned on the phone, I grew up with your husband. I’m sorry, by the way, my condolences. We grew up, grade school pals, sort of started to go in different directions during high school. Jimmy was serious. I think he had something like a three-point-five grade-point average. He was on the track team, student council, wrote for the school paper. I was, well, let me see, I guess I was just me.”

She gave me a look like she wasn’t quite following.

“I was your typical, confused, goofball at age fifteen.”

This seemed to make sense to her and she nodded, then said, “Except neither of us is fifteen anymore.”

“I probably still am, at least to some extent. Did he ever tell you about the broken neighbor’s window?” I asked, figuring she was probably sick to death after hearing about it numerous times.

She shook her head ‘no’ and reached for her mug.

I told her the story, then finished with, “So anyway, the reason I wanted to talk to you was to learn what I could about Jimmy’s dealings. I know he was a developer, that he was involved in real estate investment. I was hoping you could give me an idea of what it was like for him, for the two of you.”

“What it was like?” She flashed a smile, a lovely smile. She had smooth soft skin and white teeth that shone almost porcelain, full, sensuous lips, soft brown eyes. “It was somewhere between pure, living hell and the absolute shittiest thing you can imagine.”

I must have had a shocked look on my face.

“What? Surprised?” she said. She took another sip of tea, set the mug down and then those soft brown eyes suddenly took on a vicious quality.

“Imagine watching everything you’ve worked so hard for just going up in flames and then instead of helping put the fire out, your so called partner just seems to pour more and more gasoline on the flames until it’s roaring out of control and all you can do is watch. You can’t stop it. You can’t slow it down. You can’t do a thing.”

“What happened?”

“What happened?” She let out a long breath and seemed to look into the distance for a moment, weighing her response. Then she refocused and bored back into me with those eyes.

“What happened? I honestly don’t know, at least not the specifics. One day we were in a partnership with a man named Renee Paris. Everything is fine, we’re sort of half planning the various things we’re going to do with our investment returns, a new home, another project, trips, clothes, cars, start a family. The next thing I know we are beyond broke, without a leg to stand on. We lost the condo, lost our lake place. They repossessed our cars. Christ, we even had to sell our damn furniture,” she said, then cleared her throat to get her voice back under control.

”Jimmy went to our lawyer. That jerk wanted ten grand, up front before he’d be able to even lift a finger. He came up with it, somehow, the ten grand. Not that it did any good.”

“What was his name?”

“The lawyer? God, Richard Hedstrom. He has a small practice specializing in development deals.”

“Did he get anywhere? File some sort of court action, an injunction, something, anything?”

She shrugged and gave me a look that suggested ‘isn’t it obvious?’ “It turned out Richard was a pal of Renee Paris. I’ve always thought they were probably in on the scam together right from the start. No doubt they had a good laugh at our ten grand expense. I think the guy wrote a letter or something, kept telling Jimmy he was waiting for a response, needed another thirty days, that sort of thing. Meanwhile our ship was sinking, fast.”

“What happened?”