"I thought you should know about your girlfriend's death before the police called," I said. "Just a courtesy, that's all."
He sighed and massaged his temples wearily. "All right. Thank you. It would have been . . . hard, hearing about Kristee from the police."
I got up to leave then, but my curiosity got the better of me.
"Mr. Collier, you don't have to tell me anything, obviously. Still, I was wondering. Would you mind telling me why you said Kristee wasn't missing? What made you think she was in Utah?"
A small tear trickled down his cheek. He brushed it away impatiently. "She told me she was going back West," he said. "That sodomite, Beemish . . ." He seemed to struggle with his emotions. "He'd forced himself on Kristee. Forced her to have—relations with him. She was ashamed. Humiliated. And terrified it might happen again. So she waited until they went out of town last weekend, to their beach place. She had a prepaid return-trip ticket, and she told me she was going to use it to go back home. She wanted to do temple work, work for the church. I encouraged her to go. A city like Atlanta is no place for an innocent young girl to live without protection."
Innocent wasn't a word I'd heard in connection with Kristee Ewbanks so far, but Whit Collier was obviously grieved about the news of the girl's death, so I didn't push the matter. Much.
"When did you see her last?" I asked.
"Sunday. Afternoon some time. I had some home visits to make—for the church, you know. So I didn't see her until late in the afternoon, and then only for a few minutes. I went by the house and we talked. She was packing. Her plane was going to leave around seven p.m. That was the last time I saw her."
Since Collier was in a talkative mood, I decided to keep asking questions. "Did you know anything at all about Kristee's background? Her real background?"
He seemed to bristle then. "I knew she'd made some mistakes. She was very young. But we talked about it. She'd had a hard life, losing her mother like she did. She was eager to make a fresh start."
"Did you know she wasn't really a Mormon?" I pressed.
The smile was a sad one. "You know about that, I see. Yes, I knew too. We met at a ward dance, you know? At first she tried to pass herself off as LDS. But it didn't take long for me to guess. It didn't matter though. We'd been reading Scripture together, and Kristee had become fascinated with church teachings. She was a very quick student. We talked about going up to Palmyra, New York, to the spot where Joseph Smith found the golden tablets. And of course she wanted to go back to Utah to be baptized a Saint there, in the Temple. I encouraged her, naturally."
"Naturally." I edged toward the door, unsure of what I'd hoped to accomplish by visiting Collier, or how I could talk myself out of the room. "Well," I said hesitantly. "I'm sorry to have brought you such sad news. But I'll leave you to your work. Thank you for seeing me."
I was out the hall and headed for the stairs when he caught up with me.
"Wait," he said softly, placing a hand on my shoulder. He pressed a pamphlet in my hand. "I'd like you to have this," he said earnestly. "I'm sure it will answer many questions you might have about our church."
"Right," I said, looking at it. "Thanks."
The pamphlet was pale blue, with a Bible school drawing of Jesus with outstretched hands. Come and See the title said. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
He turned and was gone, back to his office. I lit out of there fast. I guess it was the Bible tract that spooked me. I can remember, as a child, hiding behind the door while Edna or my dad tried to shoo away the Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons who came to our door to proselytize. Daddy would politely explain that we were Catholics and believed we'd already found Salvation, thank you very much. But I remember one time Edna told a sour-faced woman in an ankle-length dress that she'd knocked on the door of a whole houseful of tree-hugging, naked, dancing druids, and would she like some wolfsbane punch? Maybe I remembered that sour-faced woman. I think I halfway expected a whole band of Mormons to appear and drag this backslid Catholic straight to the baptismal font in the Temple. I was history in a hurry.
15
THE ONLY GOOD REASON I HAD for snooping around Bo Beemish's fancy new development was nosiness, pure and simple. Besides, if I ever hit the big time, Edna and I might want to live on the Chattahoochee River in a two-million-dollar Georgian Revival mansion.
Anyway, it was a nice day for a drive. I called WDB Enterprises—that's the name of Beemish's development company—to find out exactly where L'Arrondissement was. His secretary was hesitant to tell me until I identified myself as a real estate broker with a client who was CEO of a Japanese electronics company. Then she was more forthcoming with directions.
It was in the far north corner of Fulton County. "But there's really nothing much to see yet," she said. "And we don't have our construction fences up yet. We'd prefer that brokers wait until we have our sales office on the premises, with our marketing director there to explain the plan to you."
I persisted, in a nice way, until she reluctantly gave me directions.
I decided to stop by the Fulton County courthouse on my way, to check the deed information. They have a Northside annex, where you can look up that stuff without making a trip clear downtown to Atlanta, where there's never anyplace to park anyway.
I found the deed book without too much trouble. Beemish, it seemed, had bought up several pieces of property on the river about three years ago. From the stamps on the deeds, it looked like he'd paid a couple million dollars for the whole parcel, with the mortgage secured by SouthStates Fidelity of Charlotte, North Carolina.
A trip to the planning office revealed that Beemish had tried, unsuccessfully, to have the land rezoned from agricultural to planned unit development right after he'd bought it. The records showed the rezoning request had been denied, on the recommendation of the county's zoning review board. But a handwritten note attached to the file folder said the property in question had been annexed into the city of Kensington Park the previous September.
I looked up at a clerk who was standing behind the counter in the development office. "Excuse me," I said, showing him the file folder. "I'm sort of confused about this file here. Does it mean this tract of land isn't in the county anymore?"
The clerk, a thin young man with a straggly mustache, glanced down at the file and smiled condescendingly. "It's still in the county physically, of course. But this shows the property was annexed into the city of Kensington Park seven months ago. I'm surprised you didn't read about it in the newspaper. The county made a big stink about losing that land, but Kensington Park made them an offer they couldn't refuse: sewer lines, garbage pickup, regular police patrols. So the owners petitioned the city to annex them in, and the city did."
"Isn't that unusual, for a small town to take away a big chunk of riverfront land from the county?"
He smirked. "You really are out of it. Happens all the time. Look at Roswell and Marietta," he said, naming two of the wealthier bedroom suburbs on the outskirts of Atlanta. "They ate up valuable chunks of land in Fulton and Cobb counties, but there was nothing the counties could do to stop them."
I still didn't get the annexation deal. "Why would the property owners want to be annexed? Doesn't that mean they're taxed double?"
Just then a cute little blonde walked into the office and up to the counter with a stack of file folders. The clerk's expression brightened. "Hey, Vicki." He shot me a look. "Anything else you need here?"
"Just one more thing. How does a piece of property get annexed?"
He gave a huge sigh of exasperation. "Easy. The property owners petition the city to take them in. If enough owners ask, the city just does it. OK?"
"OK," I mumbled, taking a last look at the file folder. "How do I find out who requested the annexation?"
"Talk to somebody in the Kensington Park City Clerk's office," he said, moving down the counter to help the fair Vicki.
I had to dig in the glove box of the van to find my metro area map
book. I had a vague idea of where Kensington Park was, but I preferred not to circle the city on Interstate 285 looking like the Lost Dutchman.
Once I got my bearings I had no trouble finding the town. You just take Interstate 75 north to Georgia 400 and get off at the first exit where you see cows grazing instead of a Taco Bell.
Kensington Park was one of those small towns that predate the city of Atlanta by a couple of decades. It had started out as the home to Kensington Mills, a yarnspinning plant that had supplied material for Confederate soldiers' uniforms. The original plant had been burned by Yankee soldiers, but years after the war another mill had been rebuilt on the same site. The mill had provided steady jobs for townspeople until the late 1970s, when American textile mill-owners discovered it was cheaper to hire Sri Lankans than it was Kensington Parkers.
These days Kensington Park was a ritzy bedroom community, home to executives who worked in downtown Atlanta or in one of the new glass office towers that were springing up at the edges of the city.
The old yellow brick mill still dominated Kensington Park. Someone had the bright idea to buy up the old hulk for back taxes and turn it into a new city hall. Only, in typical government-ese, it was now called a Municipal Services Facility.
I parked around back and followed a brick walkway around to the heavy glass front door. CITY OF KENSINGTON PARK: MAYOR CORINNE H. OVERMEIER was lettered on the door in an arc of gold leaf.
Inside, I followed a linoleum-floored hallway until I found a door marked CITY CLERK.
A plump woman in her fifties was seated at a large wooden desk, engaged in deep conversation with a much younger woman. The younger woman had brown hair cut in one of those outdated Farrah Fawcett dos, while the older woman's gray head was bent over the pages of a catalog.
"Now this cake-taker, that's a special this month, Darlene. And if you buy it, you're gonna get a deviled egg dish and the stacking salt and peppers for three dollars more. Do you want that in the paprika or the harvest gold?"
Darlene looked up at me guiltily and pushed the catalog away. "Let me think about it, Wilona, and I'll tell you at lunch." She smiled quickly at me and headed for the door.
Wilona tucked the Tupperware catalog under a glass candy jar on her desk. "And what can I do for you today?" she twittered. "Register to vote?"
I smiled back pleasantly. Always smile at secretaries and clerks. "Actually, I'm not eligible to vote, because I'm not a resident. But I am looking for some information about the annexation of some property called L'Arrondissement. Could you help me with that?"
"Oh, the old Harper property," she said. "I can't seem to get my tongue around the fancy name that developer put on it. What is it, anyway? French?"
"Yeah, it's French. I think it means something like police station. I can't pronounce it too well myself, to tell you the truth."
I was now oozing affability. I could feel it. Wilona seemed like a woman who knew the answers to questions I hadn't thought of yet. If I could be pals with her, who knows what I might find out?
"Well, what is it you need to know?" she asked. "I'm the city clerk, have been for twenty-five years. If there's anything gone on in Kensington Park I don't know about, it most likely ain't happened."
I edged down into the chair by her desk that had been vacated by Darlene.
"Wilona," I said. "I'll be honest with you. I'm a private detective. I'm working on a case that shouldn't have anything to do with Kensington Park, but here I am anyway. I need to find out some stuff about the Harper property."
She'd clasped her hands together on her desk, her head tilted while she listened. "A private detective? No. A little old gal like you?"
I nodded. "Used to be a cop with the City of Atlanta. But I quit that a couple years ago and started my own business."
Wilona shook her headful of gray pincurls vigorously. "Lord, I know what you mean about Atlanta." Her voice lowered to a whisper. "It's all niggers running the show now, they say. Said there's not a white person working down at City Hall, or the police station neither. I heard they got niggers sittin' up in the mayor's office and white folks working as janitors. Beats all."
I tried not to wince at her use of the n-word. You still run into that, even in Atlanta, the city that was supposed to be too busy to hate. I never have gotten used to it, though.
"Why, our own chief of police, Miles Norman, used to be in the police department down there. Took early retirement and come out here to get away from the darkies. And of course Mr. Shaloub, our mayor pro tem, I believe he used to be an Atlanta policeman too, before he moved out here and started selling them phone beepers."
"Mr. Shaloub?" I said, startled. "Is that Eddie Shaloub?"
She laughed a tinkly, knowing laugh. "Lord, yes, none other. I bet you knew him pretty good back at the Atlanta police department, didn't you? No good denying it to me. I never knew a man had such a way with women. Cut up? Lord, he comes in here and cuts the fool. Those snappin' black eyes of his don't miss nothing."
"He's vice mayor, did you say? How long has he been on the City Council?"
Wilona did some quick figuring in her head. "Let's see. This is his second term he's starting. I'd guess he's been on the council for three years now."
Now that she mentioned it, I suddenly recalled my conversation with Bucky Deaver. He'd said something about Shaloub being in politics, but either I hadn't heard or he hadn't said where.
"Yes, I know Mr. Shaloub," I said, throwing her a knowing wink. "But about the Harper property," I continued. "How did it happen to be annexed by the city?"
She wrinkled her forehead, considering the matter. "I suppose somebody in the city decided it would be nice to have the taxes from that land. But I don't know, really. I can tell you that the developer, Mr. Beemish, was very enthusiastic about being annexed. He come out here to all the council meetings, took everybody out to lunch at that fancy country club he built over in Gwinnett County, and talked up how he was going to build such a nice community with big fancy houses and a shopping center with a restaurant that serves wine. I think he bought some other small lots around the Harper property. In fact, he had to, in order to be contiguous with the city."
"Contiguous? Could you explain that to me? I'm not a lawyer."
She patted my arm in a conspiratorial way. "Neither am I, honey. All contiguous means is that his property touches the city limits. State law requires that his property touch our city limits before we can bring him in."
"And the Harper property didn't?"
"No, ma'am. There was a little bitty old strip of land between it and our city limits. Belonged to old Inez Rainwater. She lives out there in an old mobile home with a couple of nanny goats out in the yard. She's a nasty old bat and crazy as a loon. Has been since her youngest boy got kilt in a loggin' truck accident on the Roswell Highway. After that, she got nutty as a fruitcake. Come to town wearin' nothin' but a cotton slip on hot summer days, till Chief Norman put a stop to it by threatenin' to arrest her for indecent exposure."
All this town history was a bit overwhelming. "Wait a minute," I said. "You're losing me here, Wilona. How did Beemish get annexed into the city if his land wasn't contiguous? And how did he get the land rezoned after the county turned him down?"
She eyed me like a schoolteacher eyes the class idiot.
"Bought the Rainwater property. Didn't I tell you that?"
"Maybe I missed it," I said lamely.
"Paid an awful price for that land, too," she said smugly. "I checked the doc stamps on the closing papers. Give the old lady close to eighty thousand dollars for not even two acres of land."
"Is that too much?"
In answer, she got up and walked stiff-legged to one of the gray metal file cabinets that banked the wall in the rear of the office. She yanked open a drawer, thumbed through some cards until she found the one she wanted, and pulled up the card in back to mark her place.
She sank into the chair with a grimace of pain, but thrust the card at me. It had plat
-book pages and lot numbers and what appeared to be a legal description of a piece of property. In a corner was typed an appraisal amount: $38,000.
"Does this mean the Rainwater property was only worth thirty-eight thousand?"
Wilona rewarded me with a smile. "That's right. And Mr. Beemish gave Miss Inez more than twice that. Even promised her she could leave the mobile home right there where it's at until they start clearing for lots."
I was surprised to hear of Bo Beemish's generosity. He hadn't struck me as the Eagle Scout type. "Mr. Beemish's secretary told me on the phone today that they had started clearing the lots. Would Miss Inez still be living out there?"
She shot me a reproving look. "I wouldn't know where Miss Inez is," she said primly. "I've got city bid-ness here. I don't go out tromping the woods spying on nutty old ladies."
Wilona struggled to her feet again, more slowly this time, and walked over to the open file cabinet to replace the card she'd shown me.
"Wait," I said. "What about the rezoning? Why did the city decide to give him the rezoning if the county had already refused? Their zoning board recommended denying the rezoning."
She kept her back to me. "Fulton County don't know all there is to know about everything," she said. "Niggers run everything down there, don't want white folks gettin' anything they can't have. Mr. Beemish is goin' to build some right nice houses out there, and those folks want a Kensington Park address. We're gonna run our sewer line out there, and then we're gonna sit back and collect all those nice taxes."
She turned around and stared at me. Hard. It looked like maybe we wouldn't be pals after all.
"Why'd you say you cared about all this anyway?"
She had me there. Why did I care?
"Uh, thanks for the help, Wilona," I said. "And if you see Mr. Shaloub, tell him Callahan Garrity was by and said hey."
"If I see him," she muttered, and turned away again.
16
BEING AS I WAS IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD and all, I decided to drop by L'Arrondissement. I followed the directions Beemish's secretary gave me, making only three wrong turns, which is about average for me.
Every Crooked Nanny Page 10
