Unknown Means (9 page)

“How do you know it’s the desk clerk?”

“Because the second videotape covers the lobby. He leaves a little sign on the desk, walks out through the parking garage, don’t know why, maybe to save himself a couple of steps on the way to the deli. He comes back in fifteen minutes with a white bag, and then nothing happens for hours. Then Marissa walks right up to the camera. Look at this.” He tapped a button on the remote, advancing the tape frame by frame, twirling a dreadlock with his free hand.

Evelyn felt herself tense, as if the attack were happening again right in front of her and she couldn’t do anything about it. Her muscles gathered, ready to strike out.

“You see this patch of dark here—it looks like a hand, or an elbow. Something. Maybe a gloved hand.” He froze the picture. “And that’s it. That’s as much as we see of the guy.” He turned to the computer monitor. “I captured the image, deinterlaced, and brightened it. Now it looks like a slightly lighter blob.”

She squinted, as if that might help. “It still could be a glove, or an arm.”

“Or even Marissa’s hair.”

“What about the shoe? That dark thing that appears in the lower left corner—”

“I brightened that too.” He changed images. “See? But it’s still a blob. What was Marissa wearing?”

“High heels. The hospital gave me her clothes.”

“That’s too square to be a high heel. I bet that’s his shoe, just not much we can do with it.”

“Looks like a tennis shoe. A dark one.”

He considered the photo. “Maybe with a lighter stripe on the side. Maybe a Nike, or an Adidas.”

“You can see that? You really are the best.”

“Tell Marissa that. When she’s up and around again, remind her that she still has time to call off that wedding.” He hit the Print button. “How is she?”

“She should make it. That’s all I’ve gotten from the hospital so far.”

“You think this guy was some old boyfriend of hers, killed the Markham woman by mistake? I heard Marissa dated some gangbanger in her wild days and the guy still follows her around.”

“Who said that? Besides, how would the guy get into the Markham apartment? It’s like Fort Knox.”

“It’s a rumor. It’s not supposed to be logical.”

“It’s a lie.”

“Don’t shoot the messenger, lady. I just thought you ought to know what the busy little bees are buzzing about around here.”

Evelyn sighed. “I can’t say I’m surprised. Marissa’s gorgeous, and she speaks her mind. There’s plenty of staff here who would love to blame her for her own misfortunes.”

“Just thought you ought to know,” he repeated.

“I appreciate it. Look, the video of the lobby— Is that the entire day on there?”

“Yep. Those two from Homicide are going to come by later.”

“David and Riley?”

“No, the two chicks. The cute one, Sanchez, and her partner.

They left me a big, obnoxious note too. They want me to pick out the Markham dude leaving for work and then see who comes and goes after that. I already checked it out—you can see who comes and goes by way of the garage, but there’s no way to tell where someone goes once they get in the elevator. If your guy lives in the building, you’re screwed.”

“Can you keep an eye out for anyone carrying a bag or a case?

And about those cherry Pull-n-Peels . . .”

“No.”

“I haven’t had breakfast yet.”

“That ain’t good. It’s the most important meal of the day, you know. What kind of bag?”

“Don’t know. It’s just a guess, that he’d carry his straps in something, maybe even some gloves. My blood sugar is probably dropping.”

He pulled the vaguely shoelike image out of the printer and handed it to her. “There’s your shoe.”

“Not much chance of getting a size from that,” she said. She had compared the shoeprints lifted from the kitchen floor with her un-official database of ME staff shoeprints and figured it for a size 10.

William Markham, she knew from inspecting his closet, wore size 10, so the prints might belong to him. “Don’t forget to print a picture of everyone who left the building as well as entered.”

“If I give you a Twizzler, will you go away and stop thinking of work for me?”

She received her cherry prize without making any promises.

“I bet your guy’s still there,” Rafe added.

Evelyn shuddered. “Deciding on his next victim.”

THE RHODES Business and Living Center in the Flats consisted, at the moment, of a haphazard array of ironwork that still managed to imply a sweeping design. David took a moment to follow the beams from the arching tower down to where they met the choppy Cuyahoga. Whatever else William Markham might be—adulterer, murderer—he was one hell of an architect.

Riley finished his smoke, and they entered the construction site through a rusting chain-link fence. A steady drizzle turned the earth to one big mud puddle, through which men carrying impossibly

heavy loads splashed in random patterns. For once, David felt it was just as well he couldn’t afford expensive shoes. Past the mud, a pile driver took steel rods larger around than a man and pounded them into the earth. The steady pounding dug into his cerebellum, carrying the promise of a deadly headache. He should have passed on that fifth cup of coffee at the Riviere, but he’d needed it to keep going.

“At least we don’t have to tote buckets of grease and rivets for a living,” Riley pointed out, but he seemed almost cheerful. Perhaps, despite his habits, his lungs perked up at the prospect of breathing air that wasn’t either recirculated or filled with nicotine. “This has got to be hell in the winter, one street off the river like this.”

After five steps, David’s trousers were speckled with mud up to the knee, and he was damn tired of getting wet. “I can’t wait to have my own washing machine, with the amount of laundry I create—”

“You want to move in with Evie so she can do your laundry?”

“That’s not what I said.” His partner was the closest thing David had to a friend in his entire adopted city, and he couldn’t even talk to him, knowing that Riley would take Evelyn’s side in all matters.

David suspected the older detective had been half in love with her for years. He changed the subject. “This is an interesting location for Markham’s job, right here in the Flats.”

“Because these lucky guys can spend their lunch hour staring at girls in Christie’s?”

“Because the Riviere is on the other side of the river. You can see it from here.”

“So William could easily have snuck out of the site, gone home, killed his wife, and been back before anyone realized he was gone?”

“Exactly.”

“Good thinking, son. I really like to see you taking initiative, theorizing about our potential murderer using the facts at hand.”

“All right.” David took advantage of a dropped wooden plank to step out of the sucking mud for five feet. “What’s wrong with it?”

“William Markham wasn’t here the day Grace died. He spent

the day at his office on East Thirtieth, presenting plans to a client for a mall out in Beachwood—like they need another mall. So he’s seventeen blocks away and not missing from the powwow for more than a bathroom break, all day long.”

“You neglected to mention that yesterday, when you said his alibi checked out.”

“We haven’t had time for details.”

“Isn’t God in the details? Okay, so he hired someone.”

Riley eyed a welder. “I see from that guy’s tattoos that he’s been inside more than once. If William wanted a tough guy, he might not have had to look too far.”

They approached the construction trailer. “But this guy isn’t a tough guy,” David argued. “He’s a sick guy. It seems personal, trussing her up like that. And a hired hood would have lifted the cash from her purse at the very least.”

“I know.” Riley sighed. “But so far, hubby’s all we’ve got.”

They entered the trailer without knocking, to find William Markham and two quite hefty men leaning over a set of blueprints held down by coffee cups. After introductions, the construction manager told them to use the trailer for as long as they needed and threw Markham a sympathetic glance as he left with his partner.

The murdered woman’s husband sank into a battered leather desk chair. “Good morning, Officers. What can I help you with?”

Riley straddled a stool, shrugging off his blazer. Once they were out of the spring breeze, the temperature seemed warm. “Nice-looking building, so far.”

Markham rubbed a palm over his receding hairline. Well-cut pants hid the baby fat he’d never lost, and he had managed to get into the trailer in them without accumulating one-tenth the mud that David had. “They’ve already sold the ground floor to two restaurants and a gym.”

“With a generous tax break from the Lakefront Development Plan, no doubt.”

“The Flats started out as factories and sleazy bars, and grew into a cultural mecca. We can’t let one bad decade push it back into the sludge.”

“Very civic-minded of you. You’re a strong guy, coming to work the day after your wife and baby get offed.”

“You’ve locked me out of my own home. Where am I supposed to go?”

“We’re going to release the scene later today. Besides, you’ve already worked that out, haven’t you?”

Markham looked up at Riley from the shade of his fingers.

“What do you mean?”

“Frank told us you’re moving out—”

“Can you blame me?”

“No, not at all. He also gave us your forwarding address.”

Markham remained still as stone. The pile driver, David noticed, managed to reverberate right through the thin trailer walls as if they were still outside.

“I wonder how you’re going to move into that address at the Quay 55—gorgeous place, by the way, love the view—when there’s already someone living there. A young lady. A really nice-looking young lady, as a matter of fact, named Barbara Quinn. A young lady who used to work at Markham and Johnson, until four months ago.

What happened? You had to find her other employment because you were afraid that one of your staff would tell Grace?”

Markham straightened up but didn’t respond. Nor did he look particularly shocked.

“Was that when Grace started to have you followed?”

“Followed?”

“According to a friend, she planned to hire a private detective.”

Markham rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Let me guess. Jolene Eames.”

“You’re acquainted with Miss Joey?”

“Joey’s a hanger-on. She hasn’t got squat and doesn’t want to

work to get it, so her best plan is to hang around with someone who has. Grace picked up the lunch tab, the bar tab, the concert tickets, you name it. She gave her money to make her rent now and then.

Joey used Grace to meet eligible men, guys she didn’t have a chance in hell with anyway. Joey never met a person she didn’t use. Grace was too sweet to call her on it.”

“Or call you on it.”

He sighed. “Or me. Yes, everything you suspect about Barbara is true. I am moving in with her, and we’ll be married as soon as we get the license.”

“And Grace knew?”

“Grace suspected. And she didn’t hire some PI, at least not that I know of—that’s Joey Eames’s flight of fancy. Grace would ask if I was seeing someone, and I’d convince her I wasn’t. Look, I know I’m a snake, but I couldn’t make myself tell her the truth. I couldn’t hurt her. If she’d been one of those cold trust-fund babies, I could have just said sayonara, and she’d have waved me on with the prenup as I walked out the door. But Grace was too soft. I didn’t know how to tell her.”

“Now you don’t have to,” David pointed out. “And the prenup doesn’t apply. You have to admit, you have two of the oldest motives in the world. Money and sex.”

“I didn’t kill her,” he said without anger.

“And now Barb doesn’t have to worry about being a stepmommy.”

“I didn’t kill her! I had even decided to tell her the truth. I thought if Grace had someone of her own, a baby, she wouldn’t mind me leaving.”

“Oh yeah.” Riley put a cigarette to his lips, striking the match so hard it didn’t light. “Women just love being left to raise a kid all by themselves.”

“Grace didn’t need my help, she could afford to hire a live-in.

Maybe Joey killed her—Grace had been getting tired of her lately.”

“Is that why she didn’t tell Joey she was pregnant?”

“I guess so. She didn’t want to tell anyone, for fear something would go wrong. Her mother had had a lot of miscarriages. There’s something else you guys should look at—maybe Grace found out something shady about one of those charities she spent so much time with. They’re always throwing millions of dollars around. I’m not the best husband in the world, but I wouldn’t hurt Grace. I have no idea who killed her. But”—the muscles of his jaw tightened, smoothing out the baby fat to look older, harder—“I hope you catch him. And I hope you kill him.”

David found himself believing the man but still refused to be sidetracked. “How long has Barbara had the elevator code to your apartment?”

“Penthouse. And she doesn’t. She’s never needed it.”

“And why did Barbara quit your firm?”

“Like you said. A few people on my staff had gotten a little too interested in our relationship.”

“It had nothing to do with her father kicking off and leaving her about a million and a half in real estate?”

Marblelike eyes widened. Money is wasted on the rich, David thought, like youth on the young.

“Yeah, we know more than you think. For future reference, Markham, when we talk, we’ll always know more than you think.

So you’ve picked up another wealthy babe. How do you do it? You’re not Hollywood material, you’re not baby-sweet, you don’t seem like a sparkling conversationalist. What do they see in you?”

The man seemed incapable of taking offense. He considered the question, somberly. “I listen to them.”