I gave her the information she needed and, after instructing us to wait where we were, she disappeared through a door off to one side after swiping her badge in front of a security-card reader. As she disappeared through the door, we got a brief glimpse of a cubicle-filled back office area.
“This isn’t going to get us anywhere,” Duncan grumbled. “We need to get into that back area and have a look around.”
No sooner had he said this than the door opened. I expected to see Lisa, and was about to object at how quickly she had returned, thinking she had given up on the search. But instead it was a group of four women who came out, all of them carrying coats and purses that told me they had just finished their shift and were headed home.
Both Duncan and I watched the group as they left, chattering among themselves. One person in the group in particular caught my eye: a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman who looked to be around thirty years old. She looked a lot like the sketch Duncan had shown me, but then I felt certain there were dozens of other women in Milwaukee who would also fit the bill.
It wasn’t her looks, per se, that had snagged my attention. As she walked by us, I heard a distinctive squeaking sound, as if someone was rubbing a finger on a piece of glass. “Did you see that woman?” I said to Duncan as soon as the group had left.
“I did.”
“She smells like bleach. It’s faint, but it’s there. I heard the same squeaky sound when she walked by that I heard when we were in Belinda Cooper’s car.”
Duncan stared for several seconds at the door the women had just gone out. Then he said, “Come on. Let’s see where she goes.”
We left the office—I could only imagine how puzzled Lisa would be when she returned to her desk and found us gone—and trailed behind the group of women through the halls and out of the hospital, eventually entering a parking garage. I cursed under my breath and said, “Dang it, we won’t be able to follow her out of here because you parked several blocks away on the street.”
“Perhaps not, but we can at least get a make and model of car, and a license plate number.”
We continued trailing behind the women, up a flight of stairs in the garage. Then they began to say their good-byes and gradually split off. Finally, the dark-haired woman was walking alone. We stayed a good ways behind her and when she took her car keys out, Duncan grabbed me and pulled me in between two parked cars.
“Squat down,” he said, and I did so alongside him. We heard the sound of the woman getting into her car and shutting the door, then the sound of the engine roaring to life. In a low voice, Duncan said, “She’ll have to drive right by us in order to exit the garage. Stay down until I say so.”
A moment later, the car went past us. Duncan stood then and looked from behind as it drove away. “Got it!” he said. He took out his little notebook and wrote. Then he grabbed me again and we hurried back to his car.
Chapter 27
When we got back to Duncan’s car, he drove straight to the police station. I followed him inside and into an office where he sat behind one of four desks. He then woke up the computer on the desk and started typing. I pulled up a nearby vacant chair and scooted in beside him to watch.
After a few seconds he said, “Bingo!” and typed in some more information. Then he turned around and kissed me on the nose. “I love your nose,” he said.
It wasn’t a declaration of love, but for now I supposed it was as close as I was going to get. I took it and smiled.
Once again he took me by the hand and led me back outside. “Come on, let’s go visit Alberto Alvarez.”
“Is that who the car is registered to?”
“It is.”
We headed into the south side of Milwaukee, fighting the rush hour traffic as we went. Eventually, we pulled up in front of a red brick bungalow in the Layton Park neighborhood on Thirtieth Street. It was a quaint neighborhood with older model bungalows set close together, all of them with small but well-manicured front lawns leading out to a sidewalk.
Duncan parked behind an older model blue sedan; then he nodded toward it and said, “That’s the car.”
He turned off the engine and we got out. As I looked at the house, I saw a curtain move in a front window and knew our arrival had not gone unnoticed. I followed Duncan up a sidewalk that divided the postage stamp–size front yard in two. Duncan rang the doorbell and knocked on the door.
At first I thought no one was going to answer, but just as Duncan was about to knock again, the wooden front door swung open, revealing the same woman we had seen at the hospital.
“Can I help you?” she said, looking puzzled but wearing a smile.
She had a distinct Latina accent and a scent wafted toward me that made me hear that squeaking noise again. I felt my heart begin to race, though I couldn’t tell for sure if it was a reaction to some sensory input, or a physical response to the excitement I felt.
“Mrs. Alvarez? I’m Detective Albright with the Milwaukee Police Department. I’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”
“What about?” Her voice remained calm and curious, but I caught the tiniest flinch of a muscle above her left eye that made me think she was nervous. I also noticed that she didn’t correct Duncan when he referred to her as Mrs. Alvarez.
“What is your first name?”
She hesitated a second and I could tell she didn’t want to reveal it. “Juanita,” she said finally.
“I’m looking into the abduction of a little boy named Davey Cooper. Does the name ring a bell with you?”
“No,” she said much too quickly. She seemed to realize her denial had been abrupt because she added, “I mean, I’ve seen the TV reports and all, so I heard of him that way, but I don’t know the child.”
“Is your husband home?”
Her smile faded and she seemed to bristle at the question. She came back with one of her own. “No, he is not. Can I ask why you are here at my house?”
“I’m just following up on a lead,” Duncan said.
“And what lead is that, exactly?” Any hint of welcome and cooperation was now gone.
“I’m not at liberty to say,” Duncan responded, continuing the game of cat and mouse.
“Then neither am I,” she said, with a decidedly unfriendly smile. She started to close the door but Duncan stopped her.
“What about the name Valeria Barnes? Does that sound familiar to you at all?”
The woman paled noticeably, answering the question without intending to. “I do not have to speak to you,” she said. “I know how you cops can be. I’ve had too many friends who were arrested for no reason. You think just because our skin is darker than that lily white color you have, that we all must be crooks. So if you want to speak to me, you can do it through my lawyer.”
At that point, a little girl with dark brown hair, who looked to be around four years old, appeared behind Mrs. Alvarez. “Who is it, Mommy?” she asked.
“Go back inside, Sofia,” Mrs. Alvarez commanded. The little girl pouted but retreated.
Once again, Mrs. Alvarez tried to close the door and Duncan again stopped her. “Mrs. Alvarez, if you are involved in any way with the murder of Belinda Cooper and the disappearance of her son, I can promise you that I will see you put away for the rest of your life.”
This time she succeeded in closing the door; actually, she slammed it.
“Well, that was certainly interesting,” he said.
“She knows something,” I told him.
“Yeah, even I know that and I don’t have your superpowers. Did you hear the squeaking sound again?”
“I did. It’s faint, but it’s there. ”
We turned away and walked back to the car. Once we were seated inside, Duncan started the engine and we drove down the street and around the corner. He cruised around the block and then parked on a cross street, out of immediate sight but in a spot where we could see the blue sedan.
“Now we wait,” Duncan said.
“For what?”
“If we get lucky, maybe the husband will come home. But I’m betting not. I think Mrs. Alvarez will call him and head him off. And I wouldn’t be surprised if she tries to leave here and hook up with him somewhere else.”
We sat in silence for several minutes, staring at the car. I tried to will Mrs. Alvarez out of her house, but there was no action other than a neighbor who pulled up and parked in the spot we had just vacated, and then entered the house next door. At one point, Duncan got on his phone and asked someone to look into the name Juanita Alvarez and call him back. He also asked to have a DMV photo of her pulled and have it shown to Jamie Cooper, to see if he recognized her as Valeria Barnes.
“I didn’t know that your mother’s accident was never solved,” Duncan said after he disconnected his call.
“I didn’t know myself until I was a teenager. That’s when my dad told me.”
“It must have been hard for you growing up without a mother.”
I shrugged. “There were times in school when the other kids teased me about it, and I suppose if I’d ever known my mother, the loss might have had more of an effect. But my dad did a great job of raising me and whenever he needed a female point of view on things, he would hit up one of our regular customers. There was a lady named Genevieve who used to come in all the time and she taught me what to do once I started my periods. And whenever I had boy troubles, I would sometimes confide in the women who came into the bar. I had a lot of temporary aunts and uncles, people who were regulars for a number of years and then moved on for whatever reason. Some of them moved away, some of them got a life that cut down on their bar and drinking time, some of them died. So, while I realized that I was different from all the kids who had a mother, and I grieved over the fact that I never knew her, it was a different kind of grief, I think. Sometimes I felt guilty that I didn’t feel more, especially when I would find my dad all red eyed and sad, looking at the old pictures of the two of them.”
“Do you still have those pictures?”
“I do. They’re in an album stuffed in a closet.”
“Do you ever look at them?”
“Occasionally, but I haven’t for a long time. My dad used to sit with me and go through the pictures often when I was little. He said he wanted me to know my mother as much as I could even though I never got to spend any time with her. I think the sessions were as much for him as they were for me. Sometimes he would talk to her as if she were in the room with us. It was sweet but also kind of creepy.”
“Don’t you have any real aunts and uncles, or cousins, or grandparents?”
“My mother had a brother and a sister, but her brother died when he was little and the sister lives over in France. I never hear from her. Apparently, she thought my dad wasn’t a good match for my mother and she was angry that she married him. Then she blamed him for her death. My mother’s parents died in a plane crash about two years before I was born. My grandfather was the pilot and they think he had a stroke or something. My dad was an only child and his mom was a single parent who died of cancer years ago. So I suppose I might have a grandfather out there somewhere, but my grandmother never told anyone his name and no one has ever come forward. I’m not sure the guy even knew he was a father.”
“I’m sorry,” Duncan said.
I shrugged again. “I’ll manage. I miss my dad something fierce but, in a way, I have a family with some of my employees and the customers who come in to the bar all the time. The Signoriello brothers are like uncles to me, and Debra has been like a sister. Cora has been a good friend, too.”
Duncan straightened up suddenly and stared out the window. “It looks like Mrs. Alvarez is on the move.” He started up the car and we waited as the woman got the little girl situated and then slid behind the wheel. When she pulled out, so did Duncan, trying to keep a discreet distance behind her. He let a couple of cars get between us but kept the blue sedan in sight.
“Well, either Davey Cooper isn’t in the Alvarez house or she left him there alone,” I said.
“I don’t think he’s there. But, with any luck, Mrs. Alvarez will take us to him.”
We tailed her car through city streets for five minutes or so, Duncan deftly dodging in and out of traffic. She got onto Interstate 94, and exited from there onto Interstate 43 heading north a few miles later.
“Do you think she’s making a run for it?” I asked Duncan.
“I don’t know what the hell she’s doing. But she’s playing it smart, staying just under the speed limit and driving carefully. I don’t even have a reason to pull her over. So I guess we’ll have to see where she takes us.”
We followed her past the communities of Shorewood and Whitefish Bay, bastions of the rich and well-to-do. After about seven miles, she exited and followed several more roads, making a couple of turns. When she finally reached her destination, it was a place neither of us had anticipated and it brought our pursuit to a grinding halt.
Chapter 28
“I never would have guessed she was coming here,” I said as we sat outside the gates of an elite country club. “How can she afford a membership?”
“Maybe her husband works in the place.” Duncan pulled up to the gate and flashed his badge at the guard, who looked duly unimpressed. “I’m looking for a Mr. Alvarez,” Duncan said.
“Are you a member here, sir?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll be happy to let Mr. Alvarez know you were asking for him. Your name?”
I could tell Duncan was fuming. “Mr. Alvarez is a person of interest in a case I’m investigating involving both a murder and a kidnapping. I need to speak with him.”
“As I said, I’ll let Mr. Alvarez know. Would you like to leave a contact phone number?”
“Listen, you jack donkey,” Duncan said irritably, jumping out of the car and getting in the guard’s face. “A little boy is missing and his mother has been murdered. If anything happens to that little boy because you are jerking me around and pretending you have some kind of authority, I’ll personally see to it that you are brought up on obstruction charges.” He glanced down at the guard’s name badge and then added, “So think very carefully about this, Roger.”
Roger did. I could see the indecision stamped on his face. “If I let you in here, I could lose my job,” he said.
“If you don’t let me in, I’ll see to it that you lose your job.”
Roger was stuck between the proverbial rock and hard place and he began to sweat despite the chill in the air. I understood his dilemma. No one wants to lose their job, but this was the maddest I’d ever seen Duncan and it was a scary sight. Finally, Roger made his decision.
“Fine,” he said. “Go on in.”
“Where can I find Mr. Alvarez?”
“He works in the fitness building. You’ll probably find him there.”
After getting some brief directions from Roger, Duncan got back in the car. Once Roger opened the gates, we drove onto the compound and followed the signs to the fitness building. We knew we were in the right area when we saw Mrs. Alvarez’s car in the parking lot. I expected the guard to call and warn the Alvarezes that we were coming, but either he hadn’t or he wasn’t able to get through in time.
We found Mr. Alvarez and his wife, along with the little girl we had seen at the house, standing off to one side in a large open fitness area that was furnished with all the latest in workout machinery. Two men and four women were on the treadmills nearby, the women all dressed in trendy, expensive workout wear. There were also a few men working a circuit of the other equipment in the room.
Fortunately, Mrs. Alvarez had her back to us. Had she seen us coming, I suspect she might have tried to make a run for it. As it was, we were able to catch her completely unaware and when she turned around and saw us, her eyes shot daggers at us. “What are you doing here?” she shrieked. “You can’t come in here.”
A tall, blond Adonis-type wearing tight-fitting white shorts and a green T-shirt that was a size or two too
small for him—presumably to show off his assets—quickly approached.
“Is there a problem here, Alberto?”
Juanita Alvarez didn’t give her husband a chance to answer, something I suspect happened a lot at home. “These people don’t belong here,” she said to the Adonis. “They are harassing us.”
Adonis gave us a calm but questioning look and Duncan flashed his badge at the man.
“I’m here on official police business,” Duncan said, and Adonis shifted his inquiring gaze back to the Alvarezes.
“We have nothing to say to you,” Juanita said, her voice laced with venom. She pointed her finger at us in a jabbing motion as she spoke.
“Juanita, please,” Alberto said. “Do not make a scene.”
While I was focused on the action going on before me, I also noticed something else that piqued my attention: a very loud squeaking sound identical to the one I had heard in the backseat of Belinda Cooper’s car.
“How can I help you, Officer?” Alberto asked.
“I am looking into the death of Belinda Cooper and the kidnapping of her two-year-old son, Davey.”
Alberto squinted in thought and then said, “Are you talking about that missing child on the television this weekend?”
“Alberto, don’t talk to them,” Juanita harangued. Then she whirled on Duncan. “We have nothing to say to you.”
I looked around and saw that we had attracted the attention of the other people in the room. Adonis—who seemed far more interested in having this little tête-á-tête take place somewhere out of eye and earshot of the members in the room than he did in the fate of the little boy—said, “Might I suggest that you discuss this matter elsewhere, somewhere private?”
“I don’t see how we can help you, Officer,” Alberto said. “Why would we know anything about this death or the little boy?”
Duncan shifted his attention to Juanita. “Does your husband know about all the late nights you spent with Jamie Cooper?”
Juanita paled. Alberto looked over at his wife with a confused expression. “What is he talking about?” The little girl, who had been hiding behind her mother’s legs, started to cry.
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