by Dan Ames
I parked outside the Giordano house, rang the doorbell and waited. No one came to the door. I didn’t see any signs of life inside, just stacks of boxes from L.L. Bean, Nordstrom and Gucci.
Back behind the wheel of my car, I drove around the block, and then pulled up on the opposite side and parked along the curb. From what I heard, Katie enjoyed going shopping at malls when she needed a break from online shopping.
The best mall in Detroit was Somerset Mall in Troy, but even if she was there, I was willing to wait for her to return. She and I had a few things to talk about.
I sat there for two hours, playing a game on my phone called Trivia Crack and occasionally checking email. I seemed to attract email from people with large sums of inheritance money or people looking for a fuck buddy. Whatever that was.
At the end of the two-hour mark Katie pulled into the driveway in her giant Lexus SUV. They had an underground garage so I waited until she parked inside, the door closed and then I paused again so she would have plenty of time to bring up all the packages and pile them on top of all the other packages in the house.
Finally, I got out of my car, crossed the street and rang the front doorbell again.
Katie opened the door and rolled her eyes.
“I don’t really have time for this,” she said. She had a huge red wine glass nearly full. That thing had to hold at least half of a bottle of wine.
“It won’t take more than a minute or two,” I said. “Just a couple of quick questions.”
She stepped back just far enough to let me inside but not far enough to indicate that I was welcome any farther than just a foot or two inside the door.
“Did you hire this person to follow me?” I asked. I had grabbed the woman’s photo from her website. Her name was Sky Farrow, which sounded as genuine as Katie’s horrible hair extensions that I had suddenly noticed and couldn’t stop looking at. They were a completely different color than the hair on top of her head. I was just a guy, but it seemed to me that was a mistake.
Katie glanced at my phone and then shrugged her shoulders indifferently. “Nope,” she said.
I took that as a big yes.
“Why?” I asked.
“You said you had two questions,” she replied. “Is ‘why’ the second and final one?”
She clearly had no intention of answering either one. So I went for a third.
“What was the name of the group you were with in Napa? It was a wine-tasting tour, right?”
She stepped past me, opened the door.
“You were always a disgrace to the family,” she said. “Nick always talked about how embarrassed he was that his sister married such a loser like you,” she said. Her voice was getting louder and higher-pitched. It sounded like mental instability. “You killed someone, for Christ’s sake. An innocent boy you were supposed to protect. I’m done with you. Forever.”
She slammed the door shut and I had to jump back to avoid having my nose broken.
I looked on the bright side.
The next Giordano family reunion was going to be a hoot!
Chapter Twenty
Probably because of the guilt I’d felt about prying some information out of Frederick I decided against calling either him or Paul to try to get more information on their mother’s trip to Napa. Besides, Frederick hadn’t been very eager to discuss it, anyway.
So I went back to my office, decided against cracking open another Point and Googled the hell out of Katie Giordano.
The results were nearly nonexistent.
The only real hits on her name were a couple of mentions of the annual fundraiser at their kids’ elite, private school in Grosse Pointe. For several years running, the most expensive prize at the auction was bid on and won by, you guessed it, Katie Giordano. One year it was a trip to Europe. Another time it was a cruise to Hawaii.
Of course, knowing what I did about Katie, the real prize at those school auctions had been the joy of rubbing all of her husband’s money in everyone’s face. Hell, I wondered if Nick had even gone on any of those trips. It didn’t seem to me like he’d been all that eager to spend any time with her.
Gee, I couldn’t understand why.
With little hope, I closed the Google window and tried Facebook.
Nothing.
The next step was to try her maiden name. It took me awhile to remember it, but then it came to me. Wolter. Katie Wolter. If I remembered correctly, she had originally been from Toronto and had gone to school in the U.S. where she’d met Nick.
So I typed in Katie Wolter.
Once again, the Internet drew a blank.
And then I wondered if Katie was short for anything. Of course it was. I’m sure there were people who named their daughter Katie, and Katie only. But I was guessing that for most, it was short for something.
My first guess hit the jackpot: Katherine Wolter.
Many pages of Google hits.
And a personal Facebook page.
The Facebook page was intriguing, but her privacy settings only allowed me to see a few things. For instance, I could see one of the names of the folders holding photographs, but I couldn’t see the pictures themselves.
One of the folders was called Napa.
Damn, I needed to see those photos.
Something I had noticed with Katie, in addition to her giant wine glass, she frequently had her phone in hand and at one point when she was kicking me out of her house I was fairly certain I saw the Facebook layout on her phone. Facebook mobile.
It wouldn’t have surprised me if she was one of those middle-aged people who were always wasting time on Facebook, posting every single highlight of their lives and never mentioning the shitstorm that at some point everyone on Earth endured. Instead, they focused on how many “Likes” their posts received.
As if any of that mattered.
Some time ago, I had bought a group of one hundred emails from the service provider that hosted my website. Using those emails, I had, on one weekend at the office, set up nearly a dozen fake Facebook accounts with them.
With a goal in mind, I had tried to figure out every age, gender, and interest group I might need for future cases. Sometimes they could come in handy for someone who didn’t want to talk to me, but had no problem sharing stuff on social media.
Which was a very common affliction these days.
Now, I looked at my aliases and wondered what the best one would be to use. Maybe it was the cynic in me, but it sounded like Nick and Katie hadn’t had the best marriage and even though she had been recently widowed in the worst possible way, I thought there might be a chance that she was open to meeting new men. Especially new, ruggedly handsome men.
‘Ted Stanchion’ was one of my favorite Facebook accounts. I’d used a royalty free stock image for his profile picture. It was a candid photo of a man in his late forties, possibly early fifties with salt and pepper hair, a finely chiseled jaw and a five o’clock shadow.
He was wearing a white shirt, rolled up jeans and he was on the deck of a sailboat. He looked like he was about to sail up to the Kennedy compound and be welcomed inside as a dear friend of the family.
I’d had some fun with ‘Ted Stanchion.’ The guy had a sense of humor but he was kind of dumb, clumsy and a bit arrogant.
Needless to say, lonely middle-aged women (and some men) loved Ted Stanchion.
Ted sent Katie a friend request and I grabbed another Point beer, set my feet up on the desk and waited.
Twenty minutes later, unbeknownst to her, Katie and I were friends again.
Chapter Twenty-One
The first thing that became apparent to me as Katherine Wolter’s new Facebook friend? She didn’t have a lot of friends.
It looked like most of them were from Toronto and I guessed that meant family or friends of family. She had very few Grosse Pointe friends.
Shocker.
But when I clicked on her “Likes” that’s where I saw all of her passions. Every store conceivable was listed as
a favorite of Katie’s. From fashion to cooking to travel and jewelry. It was like she automatically liked the top five hundred retailers in the world.
Which probably wasn’t much of a stretch.
But what I wanted to see were the pictures in the Napa folder. There were only three, which I found incredibly disappointing. One of them was of Katie by herself, standing in front of a building but only the edge of the structure was visible.
The second picture was of Katie a large, manly-looking woman who had her arm around her. This was taken on a hill overlooking a valley.
The third picture was of Katie with a man who looked vaguely similar to the manly woman. They were standing on a hill and in the background I could just barely make out a gate with a sign at the top. I had to do a screen grab of the image and then use a photo tool to magnify the image and sharpen the focus.
I could just barely make out the words.
Napa Restorative Services.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Not much online could be found about Napa Restorative Services. I couldn’t find the name of any employees or even a website. All I had was the photo and the belief that it was somewhere in northern California.
In a database of California businesses, I was eventually able to find an address and when I Google mapped it, the surrounding terrain matched what I’d seen in Katie’s photograph.
There was no phone number and no email address, which I found very odd for a business.
How did they get new customers? How had Katie found them? And why didn’t they have normal ways to get in touch? Was it just a matter of being exclusive? Or was there some other kind of answer?
In my opinion, there was only one way to find out.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“This is some kind of joke, right?” Anna said.
News of my decision to take a trip to Napa wasn’t going over all that well at home.
I explained what I’d learned so far, and even though I had carefully explained the situation, it seemed my wife didn’t entirely believe that I needed to go to one of the most beautiful places in the country on business.
“No, no joke,” I said. “I’ll only be gone a day or two and I promise to bring back as much wine as they’ll let me bring on the plane. And I’ll try not to drink it on the way home.”
The flights were cheap mainly because I used a bargain travel service that had unsold tickets and I found a cheap hotel by the airport.
All it took was one suitcase that would fit in the overhead compartment and some extra cash. With a quick goodbye to the girls and a peck on Anna’s cheek, I headed out to the car. The airport was only a half hour away and I had more than enough time to get there, but I was a nervous traveler. Always had been, always would be. I pulled up to Mack Avenue on Cadieux, the border between Grosse Pointe and Detroit, just as a squad car’s lights went on behind me. I pulled over to let him by, but he followed me over to the curb.
What the hell?
Then I smiled. It had to be Ellen. She’d done this before, plus, I’d barely been going the friggin’ speed limit. I never sped in Grosse Pointe, they loved to give speeding tickets left and right. Kept the police department well funded.
I checked my rearview mirror, expecting to see Ellen sauntering up to my car and I wasn’t disappointed. She approached with a hand on the butt of her pistol. Suddenly, I was a tiny bit worried. I rolled down the window and gave her my license and registration which she didn’t take.
“Put that away, dumb ass,” she said.
“Was I speeding?” I asked.
“One more question and I’ll shoot you,” she answered.
Again, what the hell?
I decided keeping quiet might be the best option here.
Ellen opened the rear door and reached into the back seat. She pulled out a baggie.
At first, I figured it was from one of the girls’ lunches. You know, a little piece of crust from one of their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Their lunch bags sometimes ended up all over the place.
But when Ellen held up the baggie, I could see there wasn’t a sandwich inside.
The little plastic bag was tied at the top and I could see a small lump of brownish white powder.
As I watched, she pulled out a little kit, put a touch of the powder in and shook it up. It turned blue, which matched the exact color of my face, probably.
Ellen turned to me.
“Follow me, Meth Boy.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“I guess the good thing about you being on meth is you might actually get something done,” Ellen pointed out. “You know, more energy. Maybe you’ll actually get some work done around the house, I’ll let Anna know.”
Ellen smiled at me, her face beaming with positivity. We were sitting in her office. “You might even lose some weight, too, which I think would be great for you. I’ve noticed just a little bit of a love handle going on there–“
“Ellen, can we be serious for a minute?” I asked, not really believing those words had just come out of my mouth.
“You meth heads have no sense of humor,” she answered.
“It was obviously planted,” I said. “I think I even know by who.”
“Do tell.”
“Sky Farrow. A scumbag private investigator famous for dirty tricks. I think she was hired by Katie Giordano to get me off the case.”
Ellen leaned back in her chair.
“The call was anonymous,” Ellen said. “But when the dispatcher told me about it, I thought I would come and find out. Rather than spending good taxpayer money on something that was obviously a hoax.”
“What’d the caller say?”
“That a guy named John Rockne was heading to the airport with a stash of drugs in his backseat.” Ellen shook her head. “It was the best joke I’d ever heard. My brother John an international drug dealer. Hell, Anna doesn’t trust you to pick up the kids’ prescriptions at CVS.”
I was glad my sister was enjoying this, but I had a few very grave concerns.
For starters: How did they know I was going to the airport?
“She bugged my office,” I said.
“Who?”
“Sky Farrow.”
The bitch.
Now I was mad.
“Well, if they call back I‘ll just say that their tip didn’t pan out, then try to get more information.”
“Was it actually meth?” I asked.
“I’m afraid so, John,” she sighed. “Enough that you would‘ve gotten at least ten years. If your sister wasn’t such a frickin’ angel.“
These pricks were playing for keeps.
“Am I free to go?”
“Sure,” Ellen said. “As long as you promise me one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Get your head out of your ass.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Needless to say, the flight was missed.
I headed home, went to bed late and got up early. Anna joined me for coffee after a bit. I told her what happened.
“Jesus John, someone isn’t messing around,” she said. Her face became angry. “First they kill my brother, now they try to frame my husband so he might go to prison for a dozen years or so?”
Her hand gripped the coffee mug so hard I thought it might shatter in her hands. I reached over, pulled her hand away and held it in my own.
“This is a good sign,” I said. “When they’re getting scared, that means we’re getting close.”
In fact, I was now more determined than ever to fly out to California and find out exactly what the hell this Napa Restorative Services was all about.
Since it seemed like a priority of theirs, whoever they might be, to keep me from getting to the airport. I went up to my computer, launched my web browser and started looking for another flight.
But before I got that far, the local news page popped onto my screen and I had to blink several times to understand what I was looking at.
Oscar Shaw, head
of Napa Restorative Services, was doing a program at the Grosse Pointe War Memorial on the health benefits of California. It seemed Napa Restorative Services was billing itself as a cross between a spa and a winery, adding a quasi-mental health aspect to the enterprise.
I immediately closed my browser.
It occurred to me that this group must have come to Grosse Pointe before and that’s how Katie most likely found them.
It never ceased to amaze me how much stuff could be going on in such a small town like Grosse Pointe that I never knew about.
Well, at least they had saved me the trouble of an expensive flight.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The Grosse Pointe War Memorial is located right off of Jefferson Avenue. It used to be a home owned by one of the early wealthy Grosse Pointe families that had eventually been donated to the city.
It was located on the banks of Lake St. Clair and afforded gorgeous views from multiple rooms sporting giant windows designed just for that purpose.
I parked in the expansive parking lot and once again marveled at the beauty of the building. To imagine it had once been a private home was impressive.
Once inside, I followed the signs to the Napa Restorative Services wine hour. It was being held in a room just off the main hallway that featured a parquet floor and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Several large oil paintings adorned the walls and at the opposite end of the room a massive fireplace.
There was a wooden podium at the front of the room and about two dozen chairs set out facing the front.
I saw a lot of heads with white hair, and the audience was overwhelmingly female. I saw Katie Giordano sitting at the front of the room.
I took a seat in back.
A server wearing a white shirt and black slacks brought a tray with glasses of wine around and I selected one.
There was no one I knew in the audience, and Katie never looked back at me. I figured when she saw me she might have a problem with my presence.
