A Steep Price (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 6)

by Robert Dugoni

A bell rang as Tracy and Pryor entered Urban Trekking, though the bell was hard to hear over the technobeat electronic music blasting from ceiling speakers. From a quick survey of the clothing folded on metal shelving and hanging on racks, the store looked to be a college student’s paradise—priced-to-sell jeans with holes in the knees and shredded thighs, studded and dyed T-shirts, and tank tops. Tracy wouldn’t be shopping here anytime soon.

  Two women stood behind the counter folding the clothing and chatting. They glanced in the detectives’ direction, even smiled politely, but made no effort to approach, a clear indication they didn’t expect a sale. The African American clerk greeted Tracy and Pryor when they reached the counter. The white clerk disappeared behind a partition, and moments later the volume of music lowered.

  “Can we help you find anything?”

  At least she got an A for effort. “I think I might be a little too old for the clothes in here,” Tracy said.

  The woman smiled, but it looked forced. “We have women your age shop in here all the time.”

  Tracy looked at Pryor. “Ouch,” she said, making Pryor laugh. She fished out her police ID. “Actually, we’re here to follow up on one of your employees.”

  “Kavita?” the clerk asked, moving closer to the counter.

  “You know her,” Tracy said.

  “Sure,” she said. “But she didn’t come in today and our boss couldn’t reach her. I think he let her go. That’s why I’m working.” She looked to her colleague, who had returned, for confirmation, but the young woman just shrugged an I don’t know.

  Pryor asked for and wrote down both women’s names. The black woman was Charlotte, the white girl with the nose and eyebrow piercings, Lindsay. Both women were tall, five foot seven or five foot eight, and they dressed as if modeling the store catalogue.

  “When did you last see her?” Tracy asked.

  “We closed the store together Saturday,” Lindsay said. “That was the last time.”

  “How well do you know her?” Pryor asked.

  They both shrugged. “She was older,” Charlotte said, “so we didn’t, like . . . hang out after work or anything.”

  If they considered Mukherjee older, Tracy was ancient. “So she never mentioned to either of you that she wanted to take time off?”

  Dual shakes of the head and a stereo response. “No.”

  “Did she have a boyfriend?” Tracy asked.

  The two looked at each other but it was Lindsay who said, “I don’t think so. She never talked about a boyfriend.”

  “She’s a beautiful girl,” Tracy said.

  “Oh my God,” Lindsay said, becoming animated. “She is so beautiful. I think our boss hired her because she wore the clothes so well. They’re sort of designed for tall girls, you know? Kavita is really tall, like your height.”

  “Any boys ever come in to talk with her?” Tracy asked.

  “All the time,” Charlotte said. “They come over from the U and hit on all of us, ask us to their fraternity parties, that sort of thing.”

  “Did Kavita ever take them up on it?”

  “God no,” Lindsay said, looking bemused at the question. “But she wasn’t rude about it. She’d sort of just lead them on a little bit, though not in a bad way, you know? They’d buy shirts and stuff, thinking that maybe she’d go out with them. But she never did. She’d tell them she had a date or that she had to work.”

  “Any of them ever seem to take that the wrong way?”

  “Wrong way?” Lindsay asked.

  “Anybody ever get upset or angry? Say anything?” Tracy said.

  “You mean like a stalker?” Charlotte asked.

  “Or someone just kind of creepy?” Pryor said.

  The two gave each other another painful look before shaking their heads. “Not really. I mean, they knew Kavita was out of their league, you know? Guys know, but some figure what the hell; it can’t hurt to try. Why, did something happen to her?” Lindsay asked.

  “That’s what we’re trying to determine,” Pryor said.

  “You’re not here because she’s, like, dead or something, are you?” Lindsay asked.

  “No,” Tracy said. “But there are some people worried about her.”

  “Her roommate called looking for her,” Charlotte said.

  “When was that?” Tracy asked.

  “Today. Earlier. She wanted to know if Kavita had come in to work.”

  “How was Kavita the last time you saw her? Did she seem upset?” Pryor asked.

  They both shrugged. Charlotte said, “She seemed all right when she was working.”

  “Were there any clubs or bars she ever talked about, places where she hung out?”

  More head shakes. “I don’t think she’s really into clubbing too much. At least she never talked about it to me,” Lindsay said. “Like I said, she’s kind of older. She works a lot.”

  “She’s trying to get into medical school,” Charlotte said. “She wants to be a doctor.”

  “How much was she getting paid to work here?”

  “Minimum wage. Same as us,” Lindsay said.

  Tracy quickly did the math in her head. If Kavita was working thirty hours a week at $15 an hour, she was earning $450 before taxes, or roughly $1,800 a month gross. Her rent would have been about $900 when sharing the apartment with Aditi. Tracy had to hand it to the woman for not giving in to her parents’ pressure, but tearing up Aditi’s check to cover the apartment rent for the next two months did not seem like the best idea. Again, it made Tracy wonder if Kavita had done it out of anger.

  Tracy and Pryor handed the women business cards. “We’d appreciate a call if you hear from her or think of anything that she might have said, someplace she might have gone.”

  “I really hope she’s okay,” Lindsay said, considering the card. She looked at Tracy. “Will you tell us if anything happened to her? It’s kind of creepy, the way she just left.”

  “Sure,” Tracy said. She and Pryor started from the store. Then, realizing how long it might take to drive out to Bellevue, Tracy turned back. “Is there a bathroom I can use?”

  CHAPTER 15

  Del pulled the car to the side of the road and turned off the Mariners broadcast. He’d seen Faz cry, but on those occasions the tears had been tears of joy, like when Vera had hosted a dinner to celebrate Dan and Tracy’s engagement and Tracy had told them all what they meant to her, how they had become her family. That was just Faz being Faz. He said crying was part of his Italian genes, but Del was Italian and he wasn’t much of a crier. He sensed that Faz’s tears this night were neither tears of joy nor sentimental tears, and seeing his partner this vulnerable made him uncomfortable.

  Faz removed a handkerchief from his back pocket, blotted his eyes, and blew his nose. His face had become blotchy, as if from rising embarrassment. The color in Faz’s cheeks made Del notice that the bags beneath his partner’s eyes were darker and more pronounced. Something was wrong.

  Faz sighed as if to let out a batch of bad air, then cleared his throat. “Vera’s got cancer.”

  Faz said the words so quickly, without any buildup or warning, that for a brief instant Del thought he must have misheard his partner, but you didn’t mishear certain words, no matter how softly spoken. Certain words refuse to be drowned out, refuse to be ignored or pushed into the recesses of the mind to be dealt with at a more convenient time. “Cancer” is one of those words—it is never convenient; never misheard; never ignored.

  “No,” Del said. He didn’t want to believe it. He and Celia had just been to Faz’s home for a barbecue the prior weekend. They’d drunk Chianti and ate a pork loin in the backyard.

  Faz nodded, as if also coming to grips with the truth. “She has a lump in her breast.” He paused long enough to suck in another deep breath. It shuddered in his chest, like poison. He quickly exhaled. “We went back for additional mammograms and an ultrasound this morning. We were sitting in the doctor’s office, waiting, trying not to think about it too much—trying
not to jump to any conclusions, you know? Then the radiologist walks in, he pulls up the X-rays on a computer and points with the tip of his pen to this small black area in the breast tissue. This thing, it was like a pebble, Del. It was nothing. But this doc, he don’t sugarcoat things. He gives it to you straight so there’s no misunderstanding. And this guy, he looks right at Vera and he says, You have cancer.”

  “Faz, I’m sorry,” Del said, at a loss for words and trying to curb his own emotions.

  “Just like that,” Faz said. “Just like that, he says, You have cancer.” Faz turned his head and looked at Del. The area beneath his nose was red and his eyes watery. “You want to get angry, you know? You want to get mad at something, at someone, but you can’t, because it’s just one of those things, you know? One of those fucking things.” He slammed a fist against the dash, then the door. The car rattled. Del gave him a moment to vent. Faz spoke quietly. “The luck of the draw.” He exhaled, looking out the front windshield, his eyes unfocused. “It just feels surreal to me, like I wasn’t really even in that room this morning, and it wasn’t my Vera he was talking about. I felt numb. I still do.”

  Del had sat in a car with Faz for more than twenty years, and during that time they’d never been without something to talk about, but now he was struggling with what to say. What do you say? I’m sorry seemed too simplistic, too obvious, what a dullard would say. He remained silent.

  “They took a biopsy after that.”

  “Did they give you the results?”

  “We won’t get those for a couple of days, but the radiologist didn’t pull any punches. He said we should find an oncologist now and decide on a course of treatment.”

  “Listen, Faz, why are you here, man? Take some time off to be with Vera.”

  Faz shook his head. “I tried, Del. I suggested to Vera that I take some time off, but she said, the two of us sitting around worrying about it wasn’t going to change the outcome or make either of us feel any better. It would just make us more miserable. She told me to go to work, to try to get my mind off it.”

  “Sounds like Vera,” Del said.

  “Like I could, you know?”

  “Well, maybe she’s right,” Del said. “We’re both better when we’re working. Like when I got divorced, you remember? Or when Allie died.” Allie had been Del’s seventeen-year-old niece who had died of a heroin overdose. “It was better when I was working. I know it’s not the same thing, Vera being your wife, but . . . Hell, you spend too much time with Vera and she’s liable to not like you anymore, right?”

  Faz grinned, but it looked small and painful. “I don’t know what I would do without her, Del.” His body shuddered and he sat up, as if struggling to hold something horrible inside.

  “Don’t go there,” Del said, but it looked to Del like Faz was already there.

  “I hate myself for thinking of me at a time like this, but I’d be lost without her, alone in that house, growing old by myself. I don’t have any hobbies, nothing to keep me busy. I work too Goddamned much. What would I do, Del? What the hell would I do without her?”

  “Hey, first off, Vera’s not going anywhere. Second, you got me, Faz. I’ll always be around.”

  “You’ll have Celia,” Faz said, glancing at him again, giving him another rueful smile. “And I’m happy that you do. Everybody should have somebody.”

  Del couldn’t help but think that Faz was right, that he’d be lost without Vera. Faz and Vera were like red wine and lasagna. They just went together. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Del said. “It’s like you said about this investigation. We take it one step at a time. One day at a time. Okay?”

  “Yeah,” Faz said. “Yeah, okay.”

  “And Vera . . . I’ll tell you this. If I was cancer, I’d be scared shitless of Vera.”

  Faz wiped at his nose with his handkerchief. “She’s tough,” he agreed.

  “Damn right, she’s tough. Toughest woman I’ve ever known. She won’t just beat this thing; she’ll kick the crap out of it.”

  Faz nodded, exhaled. He smiled again and sat up, as if awakening from a nap.

  “Come on,” Del said. “Let’s deliver this car so we can get you home.”

  CHAPTER 16

  As Tracy and Katie Pryor drove east across the 520 bridge, the windows of the opulent homes along the shores of Lake Washington sparkled from the light of a fading sun. In the distance, the Cascade mountain range loomed.

  The young women inside the store had confirmed Aditi Banerjee’s statement that Kavita had not gone to work, and she had not called her boss to let him know—neither action being in character for the woman Aditi, and the two store clerks, had described—mature, smart, a little stubborn, driven.

  As Tracy reached the east end of the bridge, she fought to keep negative thoughts from spinning out of control and instead tried to decide how best to approach speaking with the Mukherjee family. It was rare that Tracy was ever in someone’s home to deliver good news. Faz once said that a police detective calling about a family member was like a 60 Minutes producer calling to invite you on to the show. It was rarely for a good reason, no matter how they phrased it.

  The Mukherjees lived in a neighborhood called Cherry Crest. Heavily wooded, the area appeared to be designed for equestrians, and was close to a state park. The homes were situated on large lots enclosed with horse fencing. Tracy turned the car down a road without sidewalks. Slatted shafts of light cut between the branches of evergreen, dogwood, and maple trees, casting shadows on the asphalt. Green and blue garbage cans, neatly aligned for pickup, roughly identified the location of each driveway. Tracy turned at the designated address and parked outside a one-story home of dark wood siding nestled in a grove of trees. The yard was impeccably landscaped with stones and native plants. Water trickled beneath a footbridge that spanned a pond covered with netting to protect spotted black-and-orange koi fish. Tracy and Pryor crossed the bridge to the front door.

  Pryor rang the doorbell and Tracy watched through a sidelight as a man approached and answered. He wore shorts, a loose-fitting white shirt over a protruding stomach, and no shoes. A woman came and stood beside him. Also barefoot, she wore baggy brown pants and a long-sleeve matching top. Her hair was pulled back from her face and tied in a long braid. From the picture Aditi had provided, Kavita more closely resembled her mother, who also had light skin, fine features, and expressive eyes, though they were brown, not blue.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Mukherjee?” Pryor said, introducing herself and Tracy. “We spoke on the phone.”

  Both parents, Pranav and Himani, looked understandably tentative.

  Pranav Mukherjee adjusted black-framed glasses on the bridge of a broad nose and invited them inside. Tracy detected an aroma of cooked spices. “I hope we’re not interrupting your dinner,” she said.

  “No. Please.” Pranav gestured for Tracy and Pryor to proceed to his left. They paused in the entry where shoes lined the wall.

  “Would you like us to remove our shoes?” Pryor asked.

  “It is not necessary,” Pranav said, his accent thick.

  Tracy and Pryor stepped into a living room where other presumed relatives waited—an elderly couple seated on the couch; a young man, perhaps in his early twenties, leaning against a wall behind the couple; and a younger boy, early teens, seated on a red beanbag. The elderly woman on the couch had light-blue eyes.

  Grandparents.

  Behind the grandparents, a mural of brightly colored birds perched on tree limbs climbed the wall. A picture window provided a view of a wooded backyard.

  Mr. Mukherjee made the introductions, starting with a hand gesture toward the couch. “This is my mother and my father, Kavita’s grandparents.” The elderly couple nodded but did not rise. Nor did they speak. “And these are Kavita’s two brothers, Nikhil and Sam.” Nikhil, the older brother, had his hands thrust in the pockets of blue jeans and made no effort to remove them or to approach. Trim, he resembled his father, with dark skin, broad feature
s, and wiry hair. Sam, the younger brother, had long hair he swept across his forehead. It partially covered his eyes. Light skinned, he resembled his mother and sister. He wore basketball shorts and a tank top.

  Pranav gestured to two open chairs designated for Tracy and Pryor. When Tracy sat, it felt a bit like she was back in court on the witness stand. Pranav and Himani moved to an empty sofa positioned perpendicular to the grandparents and across from Tracy and Pryor. “I’m not sure what Aditi has told you,” Pryor said, looking for a place to start.

  “She hasn’t told us anything,” Nikhil said. “Except that she can’t find Kavita.” His tone emanated more annoyance than concern, and it made Tracy wonder, again, if Kavita had gone missing before.

  Pranav raised a hand intended to silence his son. Addressing Pryor, he said, “What can you tell us?”

  Pryor shared what she and Tracy had learned. After Pryor had finished, the room remained silent.

  Pranav broke that silence. “Kavita and Aditi were very close,” he said, looking to his wife for confirmation. “I’m sure the news of Aditi’s wedding was very difficult for Kavita to accept.”

  “I take it that you haven’t heard from your daughter,” Tracy said.

  “No,” Pranav said. “We have not.”

  “When was the last time you spoke to Kavita?” Tracy asked.

  Again, the room fell silent, and Tracy sensed this was perhaps a source of embarrassment. She pushed ahead to try to get past it. “Aditi mentioned there was some tension in the family?”

  Pranav looked to his wife before he reengaged Tracy. “Yes.”

  When he didn’t elaborate, Tracy said, “About her living on her own?”

  “We expected Kavita to move home after graduation,” Pranav said. “We told Kavita that we would no longer pay for her apartment or her studies. We considered it an unnecessary expense.”

  “Aditi mentioned that Kavita intended to attend medical school?” Pryor said.

  Pranav nodded but it was Himani who spoke. Her voice was surprisingly strong and, like the son’s, it, too, had an edge. Pranav may have been the head of the family, but Tracy suspected Himani had her say. “Kavita is very headstrong.” Tracy also suspected this was a trait Kavita had inherited from her mother. “It has always been our intention to pay for each of our three children to attend college. Kavita knew this before she started. She knew that we did not intend to pay for graduate school.”