“You’re not living with Valeria anymore?”
Jamie shook his head and then blew his nose again. “I didn’t live with her, exactly, just spent some nights. She always kicked me out early in the morning, around seven. She’d drop me off someplace, arrange to meet me somewhere at a bar that evening, and then take off. She said she had to get to work.”
“Where does she work?”
“I don’t know,” he said, wincing and rubbing his forehead. “I don’t think I ever asked her. I don’t process too well in the mornings.”
“Where is she now?”
Jamie sighed. “I have no idea. Friday night when we were at the bar, she said she was going to the bathroom and she never came back. I thought maybe she’d gotten sick or something and had gone to lie down. But when I went outside to try to find her, the camper was gone.” He paused and sighed. “I really thought she was into me,” he said. “She even acted jealous whenever I talked about Belinda.”
Duncan perked up at that. “Did you talk about Belinda a lot when you were around her?”
“I guess. It seemed like Val was always asking about her and Davey. She wanted to know where Belinda worked, what her hours were, what they did for fun, that kind of stuff. And she was always asking me if I was going to go over there to see them, like she was worried that Belinda and I might hook up again or something.”
I had a strong suspicion that Valeria’s interest in Belinda and Davey stemmed from something else altogether, and judging from the look Duncan gave me through the window, so did he.
“Did Valeria have a favorite place where she liked to park the camper most of the time?” Duncan asked.
“There’s a Target over on Miller Park Way and she parked in their lot quite often since no one bothered us there. And they’re open from eight in the morning till like eleven, I think, so it was convenient if we needed something, or had to use a bathroom.”
“When was the last time you were parked there?”
Jamie screwed his face up in thought. “What day is it now?”
“It’s Monday.”
“I think it was Friday night.” He thought a moment and then nodded. “Yeah, I remember her saying something about how we needed to kick off the weekend. That was the night she disappeared.”
“And you haven’t seen or heard from her since then?”
Jamie shook his head, but not with much conviction. “I remember going outside and back to where we parked the camper. When I saw it was gone, I went back to the bar. I thought maybe she’d come back, but she never did. I remember the bartender telling me I had to leave at some point, but I don’t remember much after that.”
“Obviously you kept drinking,” Duncan said. “How did you pay for the stuff?”
“I had money Val gave to me. She always let me carry the cash so I could pay for the drinks.”
“Did she ever use a credit card?”
“Not that I can remember,” Jamie said, and Duncan’s shoulders sagged. “Val always had a ton of cash around, wads of it.”
“What does Valeria look like?”
Jamie gave us a description, more detailed than the others we’d heard, but matching in the basic characteristics : about five-two, slender but a little full in the hips, pouty lips, long brown hair, dark brown eyes, Hispanic. “She had that sultry, sexy Latina accent, you know?” Jamie said at one point, momentarily lost in some bit of reverie.
“What does her camper look like?” Duncan asked next.
Jamie gave him a description of that, too, stating that it was a white camper with gold trim mounted on an old Ford pickup, a dark blue F-150.
“Do you have somewhere to stay?” Duncan asked.
Jamie shook his head. “I don’t have enough money to pay my back rent on the apartment I was staying at. I spent too much on the booze. And, to be honest, I don’t think my roommate, Jason, would take me back anyway. I’ve burned a lot of bridges. Booze has a way of making your friends disappear.”
“Where have you been staying during the day for the past week or so?”
Jamie frowned and scratched his head. “I’ve been wandering around. For a couple of days, I stayed at the house of some guy I met in a bar, but then his girlfriend booted me. Probably a good thing. They were into drugs a lot. The other days I spent wherever I could. There are enough indoor walkways downtown to stay in out of the cold, and sometimes in the mornings I’d sleep for a while in a public restroom or something and then try to clean myself up a little. I had a backpack with some clothes and stuff in it, but I don’t know what happened to it.”
What he said about the downtown area is true. There are a number of buildings along the riverfront region that are connected by a maze of indoor corridors.
“What about family?”
Jamie huffed at that suggestion, and then his expression turned terribly sad. “My sister was killed in a car accident seven years ago. I was driving.”
“Were you drunk?” Duncan asked.
Jamie let out a humorless laugh. “No, I wasn’t. In fact, prior to that I hardly ever touched the stuff. I’d have the occasional beer with the guys, but that was it. I didn’t start drinking hard until about a year after her death.”
“What about your parents?”
Jamie shuddered. “They’re both dead.”
I didn’t want to feel sorry for Jamie. His drunken, abusive behavior had made him easy to dislike initially. But upon hearing about his history, I found myself feeling some pity for the man. The fates had certainly not been kind to him and while it didn’t mitigate his behavior and wrongdoings, it did make them a little easier to understand.
Duncan told Jamie they were going to hold him for now under charges of public drunkenness, loitering, destruction of property, and a battery charge being filed by the bar’s bouncer. In addition, Duncan told him that he was considered a potential suspect in Belinda’s murder. Jamie didn’t protest, which surprised me at first, but then I figured that with nowhere else to go, spending a day or two in a jail cell with three squares might seem like a good deal.
“Do you think Valeria had something to do with this?” Jamie asked Duncan.
“I don’t know. Do you?”
“If she was still with me, I might think so,” Jamie said. “I could see her going off on some jealous rampage and killing Belinda. But . . .” He left the obvious conclusion unstated, and instead asked, “Do you think my boy is okay?” He looked more haggard and forlorn now than when I first saw him.
“I certainly hope so,” Duncan said, and I could tell he felt a little sorry for the man.
“I need to get my life together,” Jamie said. “I need to beat this damned booze habit.”
Duncan went over to the interrogation room door and had an officer come in and take Jamie away. Then he joined me in the listening room. “I think he’s telling the truth,” he said.
“So do I. I was hoping he might help us solve this and find the kid.”
“I don’t think he knows where Davey is or who killed Belinda, but he did give me some information that might be useful. I’m pretty sure that Target store has cameras on their lot, so we might be able to get a visual and maybe even a plate from that camper. This Valeria Barnes woman is a ghost so far—no DMV records, no arrest history, nothing. I’m pretty sure the name is a phony, but if that camper was licensed at some point, it at least gives us a starting point.”
“Do you think he’s okay?”
“Who, Jamie?”
“No, Davey.”
“I don’t know. The evidence suggests that whoever took him meant him no harm, but people do crazy things when they think they might go to prison. To be honest, the fact that we haven’t found him yet doesn’t bode well.”
“But we think they took clothes and toys for him,” I said, unwilling to accept his doom-and-gloom prediction. “Doesn’t that imply that the person who took him intends to keep him?”
“It would suggest that, yes. But the question is, for how long? If this
Valeria Barnes is a finder for a child molester, or a child pornography ring, or some foreign kidnappers who intend to sell the kid abroad, then they won’t keep him for long.”
Those outcomes hadn’t crossed my radar yet and hearing them depressed me.
Duncan reached over and cupped his hand around the back of my neck. Then he pulled me to him and gave me a kiss that made me forget everything else . . . at least temporarily. When he pulled his lips away from mine, it nearly made me moan. He leaned down, touched his forehead to mine, and spoke in a low, intimate tone.
“I was really hoping to solve this case so we could spend a little time together, but I have to get back to work. I expect it’s going to be a late night again, and another early start in the morning. So is it okay if I have the guys take you back to the bar and give you a call sometime tomorrow?”
Hell no! After that kiss we just shared, I wanted more than anything to take him somewhere quiet and alone, somewhere the ugly rest of the world could be temporarily shut away, somewhere we could focus only on us. But I knew that couldn’t happen. What’s more, I realized that the future would probably be like this fairly often, with Duncan’s job—and mine, though less so—interfering with our time together.
“Of course it’s okay,” I said, wondering if he could tell I was lying.
After one more kiss that made me rethink my answer, we both parted with heavy sighs.
Thirty minutes later I was back at my bar, feeling like I was walking into another world.
The Capone Club group was gathered in their usual spot, and also as usual, Cora was there at the center. I went over and greeted everyone, and then I fielded questions about Davey Cooper. Everyone was wondering what, if any, progress had been made in finding the boy. I told them there wasn’t much in the way of new information, but that the boy’s father had been found and it didn’t appear as if he was involved. There was a palpable sense of depression amongst the group with this news and I felt bad about bringing them down. After I was done with the questions, I asked Cora if she would meet me in my office. Once we were inside, she asked me how everything had gone and I gave her more in-depth information than I had shared with the others. I knew from my prior discussions with both her and Duncan that Duncan trusted Cora to keep certain information to herself. In exchange, Cora shared any dirt she dug up using her phenomenal computer skills.
“I have someone new for you to look up,” I told her. “Jamie Cooper had a very short-term girlfriend who was asking a lot of questions about Belinda and little Davey. She was living out of a camper, and Jamie was sharing it with her for a while. I don’t have any kind of license plates and, besides, the police can look that up if they get them, and I already know from Duncan that they haven’t been able to find any information about her in their usual searches.”
“It doesn’t sound promising,” Cora said, tapping away on her laptop. “I’ll see what I can do. Give me a name.”
I gave her Valeria Barnes’s name, and then we spent a few minutes adding my reactions to Jamie Cooper into the database she was keeping for me. It wasn’t a lot, and none of it seemed particularly helpful.
When we were done, Cora stared at me for a moment and then said, “Are you doing okay with all of this?”
“I guess so.” Even I could tell I didn’t sound very convincing. “I think it’s just going to take me a little while to get used to all this sadness and death.”
“How are things going with you and Duncan?”
“Pretty good, I think,” I said with a smile. “I was hoping we would get to spend some time together tonight, but he needs to work on the case. It was a bit of an eyeopener for me. I realize that if I hope to have a relationship with him, I’m going to have to share him with his job.”
“He pretty much has to share you with your job, too,” Cora pointed out.
“I suppose so. But I just spent all this money to expand the bar, and I set things up so I could have more free time and some semblance of a life outside the bar. And then I go and hook myself up with someone who has even less spare time than I did before I made the changes. I have this sinking feeling that I’m going to end up spending a lot of my newfound free time alone.”
“You’ll never be alone, Mack,” Cora said, closing her laptop and preparing to leave the office. “You’ve got us. Besides, I’m a pretty good judge of men, if I do say so myself, and I’m betting Duncan Albright will find a way to spend as much time with you as he can.”
“I hope you’re right, although I’m afraid that most of that time will be spent helping him investigate cases. And I don’t know if I want a relationship that revolves around so much death and despair.”
Cora was at the door to my office and had her hand on the knob, ready to leave. She turned to me and said, “If I recall correctly, the death and despair found you before Duncan did, when your father and Ginny were both murdered. In fact, it was that very death and despair that brought him to you. It was fate.”
With that she left the office, leaving me alone with my somber thoughts. I couldn’t deny that I was enjoying my relationship with Duncan, but on some level it bothered me. For one, I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that it was a relationship of convenience for him, that my ability to help him solve these cases had a lot to do with his interest in me. I realized that my life prior to my father’s murder had been a very insular and protected one. Maybe Cora was right. Maybe everything had happened for a reason. Maybe it was fate. Maybe it was fate’s way of telling me it was time to step out of my shell, to be a little less safe, to take some risks with the hope of a happy outcome.
If Davey Cooper was never found—or worse yet, was found dead—I wasn’t sure I could continue helping Duncan. But I also knew that until this case was resolved, whatever its outcome, I would feel obligated to help. Little Davey Cooper’s picture was too firmly planted in my mind.
Chapter 25
It snowed again during the night, an inch or so of light, powdery stuff that dusted the city. Tuesday morning dawned bright and sunny, but the weather forecast was calling for clouds to move in later in the day, bringing with it three to five inches of lake effect snow. It was the week before Thanksgiving, and I knew this first major snowfall of the season would be welcomed by most. Unlike the snows in January and February, the snows of November and December often put people in a holiday mood.
I woke just before my alarm was set to go off at nine-thirty, and had only been up for a few minutes when my phone rang. When I saw from the caller ID that it was Duncan, hope surged that he was calling with some good news about Davey Cooper.
“Good morning, sunshine,” Duncan greeted when I answered. “I have a deal for you.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ve got some bagels and cream cheese that I’m willing to share in exchange for some of your wonderful coffee.”
“Sounds yummy. I think we can work something out. Any news on Davey Cooper?”
“Some,” Duncan said. “I’ll tell you when I see you.”
“And when will that be?”
“That depends on how long it takes you to come downstairs and let me in the door.”
“You mean you’re here already?”
“I am. And it’s cold out here. How long are you going to keep me waiting?”
“I’m on my way.” I disconnected the call and headed downstairs to let him in through the bar’s front door. He came in along with a blast of frigid, cold air that made me shiver. As soon as I closed and locked the door, he grabbed me by one of my arms, spun me around, and gave me a very nice good-morning kiss.
When he finally released me, I laughed and said, “If you keep that up we won’t have time to eat.”
“That’s okay with me,” he said, his voice laced with the taste of dark chocolate. And then he led me up the stairs to my apartment.
Twenty minutes later, I said, “That was a very nice appetizer, but I still want my bagel and cream cheese.”
He laughed and said, “And I
still want my coffee.”
When we were both dressed and sitting at my table, I finally broached the subject uppermost in my mind. “What’s the latest on the Cooper case?”
“Well, we got lucky with the camera footage from the Target parking lot. Not only were we able to get a good look at the camper, we were also able to get a license plate number. We got a shot of the mysterious Valeria Barnes, too, but it’s from too far away and it’s too fuzzy to be of much use.”
“And?” I urged, spreading a thick layer of cream cheese on a garlic-encrusted bagel that smelled wonderful and made my neck feel hot and prickly. I made a mental note to have Cora add this sensation to our database, though I had my doubts as to how useful my synesthetic reaction to garlic would be. Biting into the slathered bagel turned that hot, prickly sensation into something much more satisfying, like a just-scratched itch.
“I’m afraid the license plate number was a bit of a dead end. The plates were stolen. We canvassed the bars that Jamie Cooper mentioned, and they verified his story, including the one that he was in on Friday night when Valeria ditched him. But we can’t find the friend Jamie supposedly stayed with for a couple of days, because Jamie can’t seem to recall a name or an address. We were able to get a sketch done up of our Ms. Barnes, however.”
He showed me the sketch, which looked like a generic late-twenties or thirty-something Hispanic woman. “It’s not very specific,” I said, feeling depressed. “I know at least two women who resemble this sketch.”
“Still, it’s progress,” Duncan countered, dabbing at some cream cheese at the corner of his mouth and then licking it off his finger. “It seems pretty clear to me that this Valeria woman is involved somehow. Her timely appearance in Jamie’s life, all of her questions to him about Belinda and Davey and their day-to-day lives, and her unfortunately successful attempts to remain under the radar all point to someone who’s complicit in this whole thing. So at least now we have a better idea of what direction to take, whereas before we were sort of floundering.”
Murder with a Twist Page 20
