Lies Still Told, page 15
“How do you feel about your dad providing financial support for Tawny Lane?”
“I didn’t care. I don’t care.”
He didn’t believe that. Platt wouldn’t give her the money she’d wanted to start a salon, but he’d been habitually helping someone else.
“I’m going to continue to investigate your dad’s murder. If we need to talk again, it will be in Baywood. At the police station.”
“I’ll look so forward to that,” she said sarcastically. She stood up, walked to the door, opened it and stood back. She stared at the floor.
Bitchy Veronica was back.
As long as he was in Wausau, A.L. thought he should drop in on Virginia and ask her about Platt’s relationship with Tawny Lane. He was also interested in digging deeper into Hank’s comments about there being extra cash around a lot of the time. A wife would have seen that.
He drove to her house and knocked on the door. No answer. He knocked again. Still on her front porch, he called her cell phone. It rang four times before kicking over to voice mail. He did not leave a message.
He was going to have to let this go for now. He needed to head back to Baywood. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve. And he still did not have a present for Tess. No cords. That had been Rena’s instructions.
Left it pretty wide open.
First Christmas together. No way to calibrate his decision-making. No way of knowing what her expectations might be.
He felt pretty confident that T-shirts and socks weren’t on her list.
Fifteen minutes from Madison, he made a decision. When the exit came up that would take him into Madison proper, he took it. Ten minutes later, he was parked in front of a store that had been on his first beat, about a hundred years ago. He’d passed the windows of the store literally thousands of times without giving it much thought. As a twenty-five-year-old kid, he’d had neither the money for nor the interest in the sparkle and glitter of what it was selling.
The store looked much the same as he remembered. Maybe a new awning. He gripped the store’s door handle and realized that his hands were sweating. Good thing Rena couldn’t see him now.
“May I help you, sir?” the middle-aged woman behind the counter asked.
“I hope so. I really hope so.”
Chapter Thirteen
When A.L. got back to the office, he didn’t head for his own desk. Instead, he looked for Blithe. The detective was hunched over his computer and didn’t look up when A.L. approached. A.L. gently bumped the desk.
“Oh, hey,” the man said, stretching back into his chair.
Detective Blithe had been with the Baywood Police Department for over twenty years. He was solid, dependable and better able to tune out noise in a room than most people ever hoped to be. He also drank good whiskey, and A.L. joined him in the endeavor once in a while.
A.L. appreciated that the man was working on Sunday. They were the only two in the office at the moment. “What do we know about Colby Kane?” A.L. asked. He’d asked for Blithe’s help in tracking down the man’s finances, cell phone activity and personal acquaintances. It was time to try to get a better feel for what tied Colby and Platt together.
“I think he spent too much money getting food delivered. He should have learned how to use a stove.”
“Okay.”
“Almost eighty percent of his cell phone activity was food-related. I’m still looking at the other twenty percent, but I can tell you that there were no calls to Platt Waymann or Tawny Lane. Also none to Bernie Potts or Wade Stoner.”
A.L. nodded. It would have been too much to hope for. “Veronica Host or Virginia Trotter?” His morning visit to Wausau was still fresh in his mind.
Blithe shook his head. “There were four calls to Mickey Roe.”
Like Colby Kane, Mickey Roe was known to the Baywood Police Department. Had a reputation for dealing weed and hawking stolen items. Had spent time in jail for both. He was currently out, and last time A.L. had had a reason to talk to him, he’d been living in his mother’s house in Baywood. His nose had been clean.
“Birds of a feather,” Blithe said.
“What’s the number?” A.L. asked.
Blithe read it off, and A.L. put it in his phone. “Anything else?”
“Colby had $843 in the bank. Life insurance benefit of one times his salary from the garbage company. Beneficiary is his sister, Sarah. She lives in Utah. I called her. Said she hadn’t traveled recently, and I was able to verify that with her employer, a home health agency. Said she hadn’t known she was the beneficiary, but she intended to use the money to cremate her brother and ship the ashes to her. The rest she’d give to her son for college. She believed it would have made Colby happy to help his nephew.”
“That reminds me,” A.L. said. “I need you to check on something for me. When Rena was going through Platt Waymann’s financial records, she saw payments to Lincoln Life Insurance. Can you follow up on that and see who the death benefit was payable to?”
“Sure,” Blithe said, making a note.
“Thanks,” A.L. said. If Rena had been there, she’d have already followed up on the life insurance payment. She didn’t let stuff slip through the cracks.
It was now almost four o’clock. He hoped Mickey Roe was at his mother’s house, maybe watching football on television. That would make this nice and easy. He walked out to his SUV, plugged in the address and pulled up in front of the big two-story house ten minutes later. The place needed some work, he thought. Mickey could pay back his mother’s hospitality by putting in some elbow grease.
He walked up the sidewalk, stepping in drifts that were deep enough the cold snow was up inside his pant legs by the time he knocked on the door. It was answered by a woman, maybe in her early seventies, holding a paperback in one hand.
“Detective McKittridge to see Mickey Roe,” he said, holding up his badge.
She turned without saying a word. He waited. It was at least two minutes before Mickey came to the door. A.L.’s first thought was that the man didn’t look good. He’d lost weight, and his skin had an ashen tone.
A.L. handed him a card. “May I come in?” he asked.
“Yeah. Sure.” Mickey stepped back and led A.L. into a small living room with old furniture, worn carpeting and a big flat-screen television. Mickey motioned for him to take a chair. A.L. sat on the edge.
“I appreciate your time,” A.L. said. “I’m investigating the death of Colby Kane.”
“The murder, you mean,” Mickey said. “I heard he took a slug before he took a swim.”
“Murder, yes,” A.L. said. “The two of you were friends?”
Mickey nodded. “I didn’t think he’d go before me.”
Maybe Mickey was sick. A.L. didn’t ask. “When’s the last time you talked to Colby?”
“Just last week. He called me to check in. He was good about things like that.”
“Do you know of anybody who would want to harm Colby?” A.L. asked.
“Colby was…Colby. Nicest guy you’d ever want to meet, but he was never content. Always thought that something bigger and better was just around the corner. I kept telling him that he was wrong, that this was it. That for guys like him and me, this was as good as it gets. But he…he was one of those kinds of people that really only hear what they want to hear.”
Nicest guy you’d ever want to meet. That tracked with what Colby’s boss had said, that his customers all liked him. “You didn’t answer the question,” A.L. said, keeping his tone congenial. “Do you know of anyone who would want to harm Colby?”
“I don’t. Not really. But I do think it’s pretty darn odd that he took a hit around the same time as Platt Waymann.”
A.L. had planned to get around to asking if Mickey knew whether Colby and Platt were connected. He’d not expected the info to be offered up. “Why do you say that?”
“Because I saw Colby talking to Platt a few weeks ago.”
A.L. had about a thousand questions. “You knew Platt Waymann?”
“I didn’t know him. But I knew who he was. And I’ve heard the stories.”
“What stories?”
“Just things. You know the things you hear about people when you live in a place the size of Baywood.”
“Be more specific,” A.L. said.
“Platt was…middle management. You know the guy. He doesn’t do the grunt work but he doesn’t really make any of the decisions.”
He wanted to press for more information but he didn’t want to alienate Mickey too early in the conversation. He would let it go for now. “Where were Colby and Platt when you saw them talking?”
“I do a day shift sometimes at the parking lot on the corner of Cedar and Wilmont. For five bucks, you can leave your car there the whole day. Ten bucks for overnight. They were on the opposite corner. But I know it was them. Nothing wrong with my eyesight.”
A.L. was familiar with the lot. It belonged to the Methodist church, and it was packed on Sunday when church was in session. Because it was situated on the way out of town near the interstate, the church decided to let commuters park there for a reasonable fee in order to bring in some extra revenue. It was handy for people going to Madison or Milwaukee who wanted to carpool.
“What day was this?”
Mickey thought for a minute. “Last Monday.”
Two days before Platt was killed. Three days before Colby’s body washed up. “You remember the time?”
“Not really. Sometime between seven in the morning and two in the afternoon. That was my shift.”
A.L. made a note. “Do you have any idea what they were meeting about?”
“My hearing isn’t that good,” Mickey said. “It wasn’t a long conversation. Maybe five minutes. I was going to ask Colby about it when I saw him again, but… Well, I didn’t get the chance.”
He sounded sad, as if he was really going to miss the man.
“Do you know where Colby was living?”
“On Maple Street.”
A.L. shook his head. That was the address that the garbage company had on Colby. But that had been a dead end.
“Then I don’t know,” Mickey said. “He had a nice little place there. Nothing fancy, but it was clean and quiet.” He looked over his shoulder, as if to ensure himself that his mother was not within hearing distance. “Sometimes a man enjoys the quiet.”
That was true. After his divorce from Jacqui, A.L. had gotten used to living alone. Had been in no hurry to change that situation. But now, after meeting Tess and enjoying the two or three nights a week that one of them slept over at the other’s place, he once again realized how damn nice it was to come home to somebody at the end of a long day.
“Can you point me in the direction of any of Colby’s other friends?” A.L. asked.
“He drank at the Wild End Tavern. I used to join him for a few pops, but I can’t drink anymore. Messes with the medicine the damn doctor put me on. Runs right through me.”
That was more information than A.L. needed or wanted. He focused on what was important. The Wild End Tavern was where Tawny Lane bartended a couple nights a week. It was the bar that Platt had stopped in at on the last night of his life.
Did Tawny Lane know Colby Kane? They’d asked her exactly that when he and Rena had gone to her apartment. She’d said that she did not. Had she lied? Why?
His visit with Mickey Roe had yielded more than he’d expected. He had placed Platt and Colby Kane together at a location where they might get lucky with video footage from street cameras. And he’d linked Colby Kane to the Wild End Tavern. And maybe to Tawny Lane.
He stood up. “Thank you for your time.”
“I have not always had the friendliest relationship with police,” Mickey said. “Some responsibility for that likely rests with me. But I’m happy to help you in any way I can.” He swallowed hard. “I’m doing it for Colby. I think he’d appreciate that.”
It was now well into the dinner hour. For that reason, he considered waiting until tomorrow to talk to Tawny Lane. But he had two murders to solve, and tomorrow was Christmas Eve. Time was not on his side. He needed to keep going.
In the car, he called Rena. She answered on the second ring. “Hey, if you’re eating, you can call me back,” he said.
“Already done,” she said. “What’s going on?”
He brought her up to date on his visits with Jeff Host, Veronica and Mickey Roe. She did not interrupt.
“I’m on my way to see Tawny Lane,” he said.
“Do you really think that Tawny Lane also lied?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to be kind of pissed if she did. I was feeling badly for her.”
“I felt badly enough that I dropped off supplies and Christmas presents,” Rena admitted.
Rena was a good person. “It’s a nice time of year to be generous,” he said.
“Wow. No teasing me about being a softhearted sap?” she said. “Maybe you’re too tired to visit Tawny tonight. Want me to bring you some coffee?”
“I’ll pass. Any chance to look at more of the prison visitor tapes?”
“Yes. I spent a couple hours today. I’m isolating the sections of video related to Badger Crawford’s visitors. Gabe has software on his computer that lets me… Well, let’s just say it lets me copy and paste to make a new video that’s exclusively of his visitors.”
He appreciated that she was watering down the technical version. He wasn’t exactly a Luddite, but he had little interest in the details. “Sounds good,” he said.
“I’m almost done. I should have something for you tomorrow.”
“It’s Christmas Eve,” he said.
“Yeah. Faster’s administrative assistant called me to make sure I understood that even though I’m on administrative leave, I’m still invited to the department lunch.”
They’d been doing one of those for years on Christmas Eve. Used to be a potluck, but Faster had offered to pony up for the food this year. A.L wondered if he knew there was no going back from that. “Are you coming?” he asked.
“I don’t know yet. We don’t have anything planned until evening. Then it’s dinner and gifts with the Morgans, and then we all traipse over to Midnight Mass, which actually starts at eleven.”
When he’d been a kid, Midnight Mass had actually been at midnight. He’d thought it was crazy to be going to church in the middle of the night. “You should come,” he said. It would do her good to be surrounded by friends.
“We’ll see,” she said. “Did you get your Christmas shopping done?”
“I did.”
“You got a gift for Tess?”
“She was on the list,” he said dryly.
“What did you get her?” Rena asked.
He didn’t want to say. If it was the wrong thing, there was no need to broadcast it. “Not telling,” he said. “But I do need to make sure that I’ve got some double-A batteries.”
“No,” she said. “‘Nothing with a cord’ translates into ‘nothing with batteries.’”
“You should have been more specific. Listen, I’ve got to go.”
“Good luck with Tawny,” she said.
“If she lied, I’m taking all your presents back.”
“Don’t do that, A.L.”
A.L. stood outside Tawny’s apartment door and listened. He could hear nothing from inside. No television. No talking. No little-kid noises. He knocked anyway and watched the peephole to see if he could detect movement. He thought he saw a shadow. And sure enough, in another fifteen seconds, the door opened.
“Detective McKittridge,” Tawny said.
He’d not expected her to already be dressed for bed. She had on a robe, and he could see pajama bottoms poking out from the hem. “I’m sorry to bother you,” he said.
She waved a hand. “This is my life. When I get a rare night alone, I’m so exhausted that I go to bed early like a three-year-old.”
She did not sound angry. Just accepting. “I won’t keep you,” he said.
“That’s fine. Come in. It’s easier for me to talk with nobody else here.”
“I have a follow-up question from our earlier visit. I had asked you if you knew Colby Kane.”
She nodded. Her expression did not change.
“You said that you did not. I want to revisit that question.” He pulled out his cell phone, found Colby’s photo and showed it to her.
She looked and then immediately glanced at him. “He comes into the bar. I didn’t realize that was his name. The people he drinks with call him Cheez Whiz.”
Cheez Whiz. It was a ridiculous name, but then again, weren’t most nicknames? The biggest guy in the room was always called Tiny. “Colby Kane was killed around the same time as Platt and with the same caliber of bullet. Did you ever see the two of them interact?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I mean, first of all, Platt didn’t come in that often. When he did, he generally sat at the bar and talked to me. Cheez Whiz—I mean Colby, sat at one of the tables, usually with a few friends. They were loud and laughed a lot. When I would deliver drinks to the table, he always seemed like a friendly guy.” She paused. “Now that I’m putting this all together in my head, I do think that Platt and Colby may have left the bar at around the same time on a couple of occasions. But I couldn’t tell you for sure.”
What it sounded like to A.L. was that the two men were careful to keep their distance from each other in a public spot but maybe used the opportunity to meet outside, perhaps in an alley under the cover of darkness, to discuss some business. “Did that happen Wednesday night? You said Platt came in. Was Colby there as well? Did they possibly leave around the same time?”
“The nights roll one into another. But I think they were both there on Wednesday. There’s no way I’d know if they left at the same time,” she said. “I’m sorry, I’d like to be more help, but I get busy.”
“Cameras?”
She nodded. “Front door and back door. Also inside on the cash register.”
