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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

September 18, 1996

Wednesday morning

I slept badly. Actually, it’s an overstatement to say I slept at all. I flipped and flopped, struggling to get comfortable on the over-used mattress. I took Tylenol, more than directed, and then watched the clock to see when I could take it again. The pain in my shoulder wasn’t the problem though. Joanne’s murder was.

It had to be Luca or Cray who killed her. I just knew it. But I couldn’t figure out how either of them could have done it. Did Luca get away from the Feds? Did Cray have enough time to do it?

The biggest stumbling block was Cray’s motive. I was fairly certain he’d overheard me say Joanne was embezzling from him. Was that enough of a reason to kill her? How would he get his money back now that she was dead? And was there enough time to plan the murder if he only decided to kill her that afternoon?

It was still dark when I took a shower. I didn’t bother turning on the light, the bathroom felt safer in the dark—or at least cleaner. I threw on a T-shirt and jeans, grabbed my new jacket, filled a bag with a few things, and left. I pretty much had everything with me. My valuables would be safer in the car.

I drove to the 7-Eleven I kept visiting and got a large, bitter coffee, a Detroit Free Press , and the mass-produced cinnamon roll I’d almost gotten on Monday—a time that now seemed very far away. Sitting in the rental, I sipped the coffee, read the paper, and ate as much of the cinnamon roll as I could stomach—about half. The front page had a lot of articles about the auto industry. I did not read those. The president was in town campaigning. Violent crime was down by almost ten percent—I imagine Joanne Di Stefano would disagree. Certainly Bob Dole disagreed as he’d been hammering Clinton on crime for weeks. My guess was Republicans took whatever the actual crime figures were and added the deaths they saw on TV the night before and quoted that figure. As long as it seemed like there was a lot of crime they’d win.

I flipped through the whole paper looking for some mention of Joanne’s murder. I didn’t find anything. It had been two days. Well, one and a half. It should have been in there. It should have been the first story in the local section. But it wasn’t. Was one woman’s death not considered very important?

Before I left the parking lot, I dumped my trash in a container outside the store and went back in to ask the clerk where Bellagio Drive was. He gave me directions. Well, he kind of gave me directions. He said it was somewhere out near Beck Drive and gave me directions to Beck.

The sun was up, though there was still some pink on the eastern horizon. I’d barely had time to think about it, but the light was different here. And not just that there was more of it in California.

Actually, sometimes there’s less of it in LA. When I first ended up there, I noticed summer days seemed shorter than they’d been in Chicago. Eventually, I looked it up. The longest day of light in Los Angeles is a full hour shorter than the longest day of light in Chicago. It must be similar in Michigan. Weird. When you think of California you think of sunshine, but there’s actually more of it in the Midwest.

That’s what I was thinking about as I took 10 Mile Road out to Beck and turned south. When I found Bellagio Drive, after driving back and forth a few times, I discovered it was behind a gate. Pulling in, I sat staring at the neighborhood. A lot of it was under construction. I couldn’t see much, but I could see that. A couple of the homes had been finished but not many. They were enormous. Mansions, really. Brick, two stories, sprawling. The one I could see best had a three-car garage with what were probably maid quarters above. Full grown trees sat in giant wooden boxes waiting to be planted along the street. These people were too rich to wait patiently for trees to grow.

This was where Mr. Cray lived. I suspected he made a decent living squeezing the last dime out of poor people. But nothing like this. No, the people who lived in this neighborhood weren’t rich because they had gotten good jobs and worked hard. No, these people started rich and just got richer.

My guess was Cray’s money came from his wife. If he’d always been rich he might still be a lawyer, but he’d be working at some ritzy firm where money flowed like ocean currents. Rather than the steady, reliable trickle he’d settled for.

I drove away sure of one thing: Cray didn’t care that Joanne was stealing from him. No, if he killed Joanne, something she did Monday afternoon threatened his life on Bellagio Drive.

And then I had to be honest with myself. It might not have been Joanne doing the threatening. It might be me with my questions. If Cray was involved in Dom Reilly’s death and he thought I might figure that out, then the life he lived behind the gates would disappear in a flash. If he didn’t trust Joanne to keep her mouth shut… he might have killed her.

Was that what the fight between Mr. Cray and Luca was really about? Did Luca think Cray killed Joanne? Was he going to go after Cray? Was I doing this all wrong? Should I just step back and wait for one of them to kill the other? No. I wanted to go home. Waiting around wasn’t part of the plan.

I figured I’d learned about as much as I could sitting in front of the gate of a gated community—which was frankly more than I’d expected to. Cray was rich, big rich. Or at least his wife was.

Cruising by Cass’s house at around eight-thirty, I saw there were several black-and-white squads out front, and the Crown Vic I’d seen Monday night in the Top Dog parking lot. The garage door was raised. The doors on the Belvedere were open, as was the trunk and the hood. They were doing a thorough job and not finding anything. I imaged they were pissed.

Aunt Suzie’s Voyager was in the driveway. She’d done as I’d asked and stayed with Cass. I wondered if she’d slept in the junk room or Cass had allowed her to use Joanne’s room.

I drove around the block just to be sure the Feds hadn’t come back. It was Luca they were after, or at least that’s what I thought. They weren’t there so I was probably right.

Then I drove to Top Dog and sat in the parking lot of the storage place next door. It was already after nine so I watched as people arrived for the workday. Mr. Cray arrived around 9:15. I didn’t know it was him, though. Not right off. He arrived in a shiny black Porsche 911. His three-car garage made a bit more sense.

What didn’t make sense was driving it to work. If the police were putting out that Joanne was killed in a failed carjacking, then why drive a car that was twice as expensive as your everyday car? That only made sense if he knew it wasn’t a carjacking.

Claudia arrived around 9:40 in a recent model Honda Prelude. Cherry red. It was so low to the ground she nearly had to crawl to get out of it. I watched as she sauntered into the building, then I drove back to the pay phone at the 7-Eleven, which was quickly becoming my ‘office’, and called Top Dog. Claudia picked up.

“Hey Claudia, how’s it going? This is Nick.” Had I told her my name? I couldn’t remember.

“Nick who?”

“We’ve had a couple of chats. I’m the guy who met with Joanne on Monday. I stopped by yesterday.”

“Oh. You. What do you want?”

“I’d like to buy you lunch. Twelve o’clock. Anywhere you say.”

She didn’t think about it, didn’t ask what it was about, just jumped at the chance. “There’s a restaurant in the Hotel Baronette next to the Twelve Oaks Mall. I’ve been wanting to go there.”

“Then that’s where we’ll go.”

She hung up on me.

I had about an hour and a half. I took a quick trip by Luca’s Lifters. The blue Corvette sat out in front. The Feds were down the block. That was as much as I wanted to know, then I drove back to the restaurant.

The Hotel Baronette was a three-story brick building with a concrete awning over the front entrance, and an entrance to Trattoria Bruschetta about thirty feet down. I skipped the valet parking and parked myself in the lot across from the front entrance. The landscaping was pretty nice, with lots of orange and red mums for the fall.

Even from outside I could see that I’d be underdressed for lunch. The collared shirt I’d worn the day before was sitting in a pile on the bathroom floor back at the corporate flophouse. I had almost an hour before lunch so I drove over to the mall, wandered around for a while, then finally went into Hudson’s and bought an over-priced, navy blue Izod shirt on Charles Henderson’s tab. I found a men’s room and put it on.

Then, I drove back to the hotel, parked, and went into the restaurant. It was 11:50. The tablecloths were red and white checks, which made it seem like they were downplaying the upscale nature of the place. The host, a bald guy with a thin mustache and a gold vest, walked me across the plush carpet, put me at a booth against the wall, and laid down two menus.

I glanced at the menu. It looked good but pricey. A waiter, very young and a bit nervous, came by and asked if I’d like a cocktail.

“Do you have lemon soda?”

“Limonata? Yes, we have that.”

“Good. I’ll have one.”

The soda arrived quickly and I sipped it while thinking about the questions I needed to ask Claudia. I had to find out more about Mr. Cray’s personal life. If he killed Joanne I needed to know why. I also needed to figure out if he could have killed her. Had there been enough time on Monday afternoon for him to be in all the places he needed to be?

My soda was nearly gone when Claudia walked in. The host stopped her and looked as though he might ask her to leave, but she pointed at me and walked by him. As she sat down, I asked if that happened a lot.

“Him? He was just being helpful. I’ve been helped out of nicer places than this.”

She wore a dark purple dress that hugged her curves and a lot of gold jewelry that at least looked real. I hadn’t thought much about what she was wearing when I watched her walk in to Top Dog earlier.

“Purple?”

“In honor of Joanne.”

“I got the impression you didn’t like her much.”

“I didn’t. If I liked her I’d be wearing black.”

The waiter came over and asked Claudia, “Hello, um, would you like a cocktail?”

“I’ll have a Cosmo made with your best Japanese vodka. And is there a wine menu?”

“Oh, um, sure… I’ll bring one right over.” He started to step away, then came back. “Did you want another soda? Sir?”

“Sure.”

Before I could decide on my first question, she asked, “Now, who are you again? The last time we talked I neglected to ask who the fuck do you think you are.”

I smiled at her belligerence. She wasn’t going anywhere until she got her fancy lunch so I relaxed. “I told you. My name is Nick and I’m a friend of the family.”

“Joanne’s family? You in the Mafia?”

“No.” I decided I needed to resort to my cover story. “I’m helping Cass find his father. We met in an AOL chat room for people with missing relatives. Although now I’m trying to help him with what happened to his mother.”

“Mmm-hmmm, I’ve heard about men like you, chatting up teenaged boys on the computer.”

“It’s not like that. My daughter ran away a few years ago. We found her. She’s all right now. People helped me find her so I feel like I should return the favor.”

“That’s bullshit,” she said as the waiter laid the wine menu down in front of her with one hand, and with the other set down a large plate of appetizers: pate, white bean spread, tapenade surrounded by a circle of bruschetta.

“Complimentary hors d’oeuvres. I’ll, uh, get your drink. Then, you know, take your order.” He scurried off.

Claudia covered one of the tiny slices of toast with a big gob of pate. Before popping it into her mouth, she said, “Go ahead. You want to ask me questions. Ask.”

“Mr. Cray seems to have a lot more money than he could earn with a company like Top Dog. Do you know where it comes from?”

She chewed for a moment then swallowed. “His wife. She’s from some hoity-toity family around here. Made all their money in glass for windshields, I think. Or maybe carburetors? Doesn’t matter I guess.”

“With a business like that, they must need lawyers. Why isn’t he working for her family?”

After considering that for a moment, she said, “I think they sold it and then her parents died. Or her parents died and then they sold it. I don’t remember. Either way, I don’t think her family liked Mr. Cray much.”

The Cosmo arrived, straight up and bright pink. She looked at the waiter, and said, “Yum.” He looked frightened and ran off.

“Do you know why they didn’t like Mr. Cray?”

“He’s a creep?”

“His wife doesn’t think he’s a creep, though?”

“You don’t know anything about women, do you? Women don’t marry a man for who he is, they marry him for who they think he can be. Mr. Cray was a creep with potential.”

She took a sip of her drink and closed her eyes in appreciation. I wondered if the waiter had completely forgotten my soda.

“Do you think Mrs. Cray knew about her husband’s relationship with Joanne?”

“Depends on what you mean by the word ‘know’.”

“You said she’d call when Mr. Cray and Joanne went away and try to get their contact information.”

“Every time. Didn’t really matter, though. Mr. Cray and Joanne always had different rooms. For appearances.”

“But you think Mrs. Cray knew about the relationship?”

“And didn’t know at the same time.”

“What about Mr. Cray? Did he think his wife knew?”

She shook her head. “Men don’t know what women think. He thought he had her fooled.”

The waiter came back with my second soda. “Would you like to order?”

I’d barely looked at the menu and was about to ask for more time, but Claudia said, “I’d like the rock shrimp, a salad and the veal shank.”

The easiest thing to do was say I’d have the same. I really wasn’t there for lunch. Once the waiter was gone, I said, “Tell me what happened Monday afternoon, after I left. Did Joanne go in and talk to Mr. Cray?”

“You want to know if you stirred up trouble between them.”

“Did I?”

“You did. Right after you left she went into Mr. Cray’s office and they had it out, big time. He said he was going to fire her. And she said he’d better not. That he’d be sorry if he tried it.”

“As in she’d tell his wife about their affair?”

“Maybe. I couldn’t hear that part.”

“Did they fight a lot?”

“Enough. They always made up.”

“Did they make up on Monday?”

Claudia rolled her eyes. “They sure did. I went to the ladies room. I don’t need to hear that kind of thing.”