Evidence of Murder (26 page)

“Yeah, yeah, abandoned property.”

“If I could tie him to Edgewater Park specifically, he’d have no explanation for that.”

“Unless he went there for a walk, before her death or since.”

“He doesn’t strike me as the outdoorsy type.”

“He snowboards.”

“That’s true.” Their sentences had overlapped as the words spilled out; now she slowed. “That’s true. And he’s got a huge bag in his closet for the snowboard. Slender Jillian would easily fit in it.”

“He could have used the board to transport her.”

She tried to picture this. “Only if she were still in the bag; otherwise her arms and legs would overlap it, and they showed no signs of dragging. But it would leave a distinctive track in the snow.”

“We got four inches on Sunday night. It would have covered the tracks.”

“Hefting it over his shoulder would still look less suspicious, I think, but either way I need a search warrant for his house and car.”

“A series of guesses does not constitute sufficient probable cause. Look, I’m glad you’re trying to get back in the game—”

“I’m just doing my job. It’s not a game, and even if it is, I never left it.” This sounded pale and unconvincing even to her, and she avoided his gaze by opening and closing Paul’s desk drawers. Not even a paper clip remained.

“You don’t think you’re overcompensating a little bit for your, um, lack of job enthusiasm during the past few months?”

“Enthusiasm?
I work with dead bodies. Exactly how enthusiastic am I expected to be?”

“Okay, forget that. But are you maintaining some sort of objectivity here? At least the possibility that Evan might not have done it?”

“Like you and Georgie?”

“I can admit that nothing is turning up to implicate my Georgie. Can you admit that you are, perhaps, overly sympathetic to this Drew character?”

This stumped her. “Drew?”

“He lives at the edge of the crime scene, he’s squirrelly, and he has a better motive for murder than Evan does. Yet you immediately eliminated him. That’s not like you.”

“I know there’s a remote possibility—”

Frank rubbed his face before going on, uncomfortable but determined. He leaned over the stacks of folders, notes, and encrusted coffee cups to keep his voice low. “He lost his beloved. So did you. You haven’t noticed that you and he have a lot in common?”

“Like insanity?”

“Like intensity. Hell, your cat died three years ago and you never got another one.”

“I got tired of fur coating every surface of my house.”

“You don’t love easily, Tess. That’s my point. This situation is affecting your judgment. You’re gunning for Evan Kovacic to take your mind off—” He stopped.

“I’m trying to put a man in jail because I need a hobby, is that what you’re saying? I believe Evan Kovacic killed his wife and that he’s going to kill her daughter. That isn’t grief talking, it’s logic. And I’m not going to let him get away with it!”

She slammed a drawer shut and stood up, nearly knocking down a dark-haired woman holding an overstuffed carton, a bulging briefcase dangling from one shoulder. “Oh! Sorry.”

“That’s okay.” Detective Sanchez, normally the picture of confidence, shuffled her feet. Theresa assumed she had overheard their conversation until she noticed that Sanchez kept glancing at the desk. Nor did she leave, but stood there staring into her box as if it could help.

Theresa glanced at Frank, who had the same concerned, waiting expression he’d worn around her for months.

“Are you moving in here?” she asked Angela Sanchez.

The woman’s eyes were full of sympathy. “Yep. I’ve been assigned to work with Frank.”

Theresa instantly smiled. The smart, attractive Sanchez would keep her cousin on his toes, and they would work well together…. “Good. I’m so glad.”

The woman’s olive skin seemed to melt in relief.

Theresa got out of her way. “Put that down, it looks heavy. Did you think I’d get hyper over Paul’s desk? Please! It’s just a desk, and frankly, I can’t believe they left it empty this long, space being at such a premium around here.” She watched Sanchez unpack her belongings, noting with approval the neatly labeled files and the framed family photos, knowing that she was talking too much but made verbose by the opportunity to put someone at ease instead of making them uncomfortable. Was Sanchez divorced or never married? Not that workplace romances were ideal, but the female detective would be a huge improvement over Frank’s usual choice of date…Theresa moved behind Frank and patted her cousin’s shoulder. “If he gives you any trouble, just call him Francis. That slows him down. If that doesn’t work, you can add the middle name, L—”

“Hey!”

“Okay, okay. I’ll save that tidbit to blackmail you with later.” Glad to see a genuine smile on her cousin’s face and vaguely aware that it might have something to do with her own, she donned her coat and prepared to leave. “I’ll be calling later.”

“Should that worry me?”

“Not at all. I just meant I’ll give you a ring when I figure out how Evan Kovacic murdered his wife.”

Soft notes tinkled from the baby grand in the corner, over the crystal and china set at the tables; the place settings and their linen napkins were ignored, however, in favor of the bar at the other end of the room. At least ten couples mingled there, some by the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out on downtown Cleveland and the lake from twenty-five stories up. The women—girls, really—were slender, well built, and uniformly coiffed in long hair of varying colors. The men all wore suits and had gone gray years previously, whether they let their hair show it or not. The restaurant’s name, Macy’s, decorated each pane of interior glass that closed off this private room from the rest of the facility. Theresa had never been there before. From the prices on the menu she had perused while waiting, she never would be again.

She watched as a waiter whispered a message to George Panapoulos, who promptly glanced behind him to where she stood behind the lettering on the glass. He frowned, said something to the redhead next to him, and left the room.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“I wanted to ask you a few questions. I also wanted to see how this works. Those are your girls?”

“Yes. They look like cheap little sluts, don’t they?”

The women wore dresses of clingy, swishy fabrics, but none were exceptionally short; low cut, but not obnoxiously so. Stiletto heels, but nary a fishnet in sight. “They really are beautiful.”

Her tone must have sounded wistful to him because he softened enough to ask, “So what can I do for you?”

“I’m still working on Jillian Perry.”

“I told you—”

“Mr. Panapoulos, I don’t believe you killed her. I don’t believe you had anything to do with her death. But she had a very limited circle of friends and acquaintances and I have run through all of them except for you.”

“And what do you think I can tell you?”

“Who she was. What she was. What went on in her mind—”

“Sheesh, like I’m gonna know. Kid, stop a minute.” He held his hand out to slow down a smooth-faced young man with a black jacket and a tray of champagne, and snatched one of the delicate glasses. “You want one—sure, yeah, you do, have one. Okay, that’s it, you can go now.” He handed the glass to Theresa and let the boy get the door for himself.

She sipped it immediately. She was thirsty, and she liked champagne.

He watched her. “None of that line about not drinking on duty?”

“I’m not a cop. Besides, I never turn down free food or free booze.”

“Good philosophy. Now, Jillian. I wouldn’t have the slightest idea what went on in her head, Ms. MacLean, and I wouldn’t waste a lot of time on it if I were you. Jillian wasn’t some deep, troubled soul, she was a pretty, nice, few-lights-short-of-a-marquee-sign girl. That’s it. What you saw was what you got.” He leaned against the glass and polished wood and focused on his sparkling wine for a moment before looking directly into her eyes. “I know what you’re thinking, that I’m one step out of the cave and should be wearing a fur pelt. But I’ve spent most of my day, every day, for more years than I care to count now with women, looking at women, talking to women, telling women what to do. I dress them. I undress them.

So maybe you should consider that I know my subject.”

Theresa considered herself lucky that he didn’t sell used cars, or she’d have been signing on the line for a used Audi sportster right then and there.

“Jillian Perry didn’t have a dark side, or a flip side, or any side but the outside. She had no secrets.”

“Then who is Cara’s father?”

“Except that one.” He sipped the champagne, frowning. “Okay, that’s the exception in her life that proves the rule. I just know it ain’t me. Beyond that, I don’t care.”

“What if it were a client?”

“That’s his lookout, not mine. Though I’d be a little peeved—I go through all the trouble of hiring these girls, coaching them a bit, and then some idiot knocks her up and she’s out of work for months? Yeah, I’d be peeved. But that’s the great circle of life and all that crap.”

“Did Jillian have a relationship with any of your clients?”

He drained his glass. “Nope.”

“You seem sure of that.”

He leaned back a bit, away from her, as if he no longer cared if she bought the Audi or not. “I am. The girls don’t freelance, it’s a rule. Sure, some break it and I fire them, but not Jillian. She didn’t seem all that enamored of my clientele. It was just a job to her.”

“No one she liked…in particular?”

“Not that I know of. Tell you what, you can talk to Vangie if you want. I’ll tell her it’s okay. I know women, yes, but I also know that they talk more to each other than to me sometimes.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. You ought to do that more often.”

“What?”

“Smile.”

“Any clients that Jillian particularly
disliked
?”

“Whoops, there it went. Okay, Jillian, disliked…she got along better with Hispanics than Asians, and hated it when old guys would pinch her, but aside from that, nothing sticks out.”

“Her mother says her father called the agency once.”

“Oh, yeah. Daddy dearest thought he’d be clever and check up on his little girl. He requested Jillian, then kept asking for details, would she do
this,
would she do
that
—which is kind of weird in my book, talking that way about your own daughter, even if you’re supposedly looking out for her—”

“And you told him she would?”

“No. Not exactly.” He cast about for a place to set the empty glass, then gave up and hung on to it. “I may have given him the impression that, well, they could work that out between themselves. You know, like when the furniture store advertises leather couches on sale for three hundred bucks and you get there and there’s only one at that price, and it’s teal.”

“I see. Simple salesmanship.”

“Sure.”

“So your girls
don’t
have sex with clients?”

“I wouldn’t know. That’s up to them.”

She made sure her skepticism showed on her face. “I’m sorry, but I need to know. If they do, then you’re a pimp, which isn’t my problem. If they aren’t supposed to but do anyway, and take in money that you’re not getting a cut of—”

He came closer. “I thought you said I wasn’t your suspect.”

“I didn’t think you were.” She would not step back.

“I don’t do violence in this line of work. I don’t need to.”

Toddlers lied with more conviction. “Since you’re already annoyed with me, let me point out that Sarah Taylor used to work for you.”

“Yeah, your cousin was by, asking me about that too.”

“How did you know Frank is my cousin?” she asked out of curiosity.

Georgie smiled in a way she really didn’t like. “I know lots of things. Look, I had Sarah in my stable a long time ago, but she couldn’t stay off the juice long enough to turn a profit, so I cut her loose. Haven’t seen her since. In those days, I’ll admit, my girls definitely slept with clients. That was the whole point.”

“But not now.”

“Okay, look. I’m going to give you a lesson in escorting. Business 101, right?”

“Sure.”

“I charge enough that, whatever arrangement the girls might make with a client, I don’t care. I’ve been paid, understand?”

“Ye—ess.”

“So say the girls make more if they do have sex with the guy. The client is happy and might request them again. The girls are happy to have repeat customers and so am I. Everybody wins.”

“What if a girl made her own arrangement and bypassed you completely?”

“Of course that can happen. No system is without problems. But I would fire that girl, and eventually the client would get tired of her. Now she’s got no client and no job. Everybody loses.”

“I see.”

“It’s a business, Ms. MacLean. Nothing worth killing nobody over.”

“Okay. I get that. So Jillian’s father got angry at the, um, implication that Jillian would have sex for money?”

“I’ll say. Jillian came in later that night for a job, so I told her about it. By then I was laughing, but the poor kid started to cry. We had a cocktail party, like this one, and she kept having to run to the ladies’ room and fix her makeup. Pain in the ass, really.”

“What did her father say, as closely as you can remember? Did he threaten Jillian?”

“Hell no, he threatened
me
. Said if I touched her, if I even spoke to his baby girl again, he’d come over and bash my head in. Like I’m the one calling on the phone for her, you know? Oh, and then he’d have me thrown in jail. That was about it. I guess he thought better of it, because I never heard from him again. No visits, no cops throwing me in jail.” He shook his head with sympathy rendered false by the smile on his face. “Poor Daddy.”

“But he didn’t say anything about Jillian?”

“Not to me. I don’t know what he said to her later, because she seemed kinda depressed for a couple of weeks. But she kept working. She’d come in with this sort of grim, go-to-hell look on her face. I’d have to jolly her before the job started.”