Trouble in a Big Box (A Kelly O'Connell Mystery)

by Alter, Judy

  Only then did I call 911 and yell “smoke bomb.” The operator, doing as she’d been trained, tried hard to keep me on the phone, but I didn’t listen. I gave her the address and set the phone down. My focus was on Mike.

  Winded by his exertion, Mike finally said, “Sometimes a smoke bomb is meant to scare you out in the open where you’re a perfect target. Like tear gas.”

  Bella wouldn’t shoot us —or would she? She didn’t carry a gun. I heard sirens approaching then José’s voice calling our names.

  “In the back yard, José,” Mike called.

  He came bursting through the gate. “White smoke is pouring out of your house. Doesn’t look like a fire.”

  “No fire,” Mike said. “Smoke bomb. You didn’t pass a battered green Mustang did you?”

  “Man, I don’t know what I passed. Once the call came through HiHHis I just drove like hell.”

  “José, can you go through and open the front door, so the fire guys don’t break it? Grab a wet paper towel in the kitchen for your nose.”

  José took off and apparently just made it to the front door in time. In seconds, the house swarmed with firemen opening doors and windows. One of them had disarmed the bomb, and it was taken for evidence. The fire captain came out and reported to Mike that it was homemade, but in a canister that fragmented when it exploded. If anyone had been in the living room, they’d have been hit by flying fragments of metal. I made a mental note to examine the furniture and call poor David Summers, my usually patient insurance agent. José reported that the fire guys had set up giant fans inside.

  We waited outside, shivering, but José finally brought us coats that smelled not like smoke but strangely chemical.

  “I’ve got to call Keisha,” he said.

  “Don’t wake them all up. They don’t know anything’s wrong.”

  “Keisha will know,” he said archly, and he was right. She did. He handed me the phone.

  “I knew I shouldn’t have left tonight. Knew something would happen.”

  “Keisha, you couldn’t have done anything.”

  “Don’t be so sure. I’m gonna catch that girl red-handed one of these days. You just watch.”

  “Are the girls still asleep?” I prayed for a yes but got the opposite.

  “Can’t you hear them? They’re standing right here, demanding to know what happened. Heard the phone ring. They want to come home.”

  Sigh. “Tell them home is too smoky—not fire smoke but something that smells awful. I think we’ll sleep in the apartment, if you don’t mind.”

  “‘Course I don’t mind. Doubt you’ll sleep much anyway, but you try. We got work to do tomorrow, and I may have to do some detectin’.”

  She put the girls on, and I assured each one that Mike and I were freezing and frightened but okay.

  “Can’t we come home?”

  “No, Em, you’re better off with Nana and Keisha.”

  “Nana’s crying and talking about moving back to Chicago.”

  That’s all I need! Mom would harp on this for weeks. Finally I got the girls to go back to bed. “Keisha, tell Mom I’ll talk to her tomorrow. I don’t have the strength for it now.”

  She chuckled. “Miss Cynthia gonna be fine. I’ll take care of that. You sleep now. You’re safe.”

  I had to believe Keisha once again seemed to have that pipeline or sixth sense or whatever.

  Mike finally thought to ask José what he was doing on patrol so late. His shift should have ended hours ago.

  “You know that girl that’s been stalking you? I arrested her tonight for loitering—outside Nonna Tata. I’m guessing that’s where you had dinner.”

  I stared at him. “If she’s in jail, she didn’t throw the smoke bomb.”

  “Naw, she made bail about one. I was sort of footloose—Keisha being at your mom’s and all, and I just hung around playing poker with a couple of the other off-duty guys.” He looked anxious. “Don’t tell Keisha. She doesn’t like me to bet.” That was the farthest thing from my mind right then, but I promised.

  Mike was mumbling to himself, “She could still have done it, but she had to have help. You search her car when you hauled her in?”

  “Sure. No smoke bomb.”

  “So somebody brought it to her. She’s got help. She didn’t have time to make a bomb, even if she knows how.”

  “Her brother?”

  Mike shook his head. “I don’t think he’s a big enough player. He sure isn’t smart enough to make a smoke bomb. My gut tells me someone else is pulling these strings. Bella may not have done this at all.”

  That was a disquieting thought. I wanted to tell him to ask Keisha but instead I asked, “How do you make a smoke bomb?”

  Mike looked at me briefly. “Combination of chemicals—and simple things like sugar and sodium bicarbonate. Usually use potassium nitrate—probably what you smell.”

  It was five before everyone left. The fire department had boarded up the broken window and left someone to keep watch because they left the doors and windows open. As we fell into bed, I said, “Mike, Conroy didn’t show up tonight. That’s a first.”

  “Maybe no one called him,” he said and was instantly asleep. I almost hated him as I fought to clear my mind and let sleep come.

  We slept until almost ten and might have slept longer if someone hadn’t pounded on the apartment door. Mike and I looked at each other. At least we knew it wasn’t Bella—this person was not at all stealthy. Still as I said, “I’ll go,” Mike’s hand reached for his revolver. Having no robe with me and sure that Keisha’s caftans would swallow me, I put on the coat I’d worn last night and called, “Just a minute.”

  It was Buck Conroy, as we both should have known. “Getting your beauty sleep?” he asked as he barged in.

  Mike sat up in bed. “We were up a good bit of the night.”

  “So was I. Tracking down where Bella Garza is and where she went after she posted bail.”

  “And?”

  “She didn’t do this. I had them put a tail on her, and he followed her to that old warehouse where we’ve found her before. She and Ben were both there. Officer held them until I got there. She was surly as usual but claimed she didn’t know anything about this. You know what? I can spot a liar, and this time she wasn’t lying. So now we got to figure out who did throw that bomb.”

  I shivered and drew the coat closer.

  “For starters,” Mike said, “could you let us get dressed and maybe meet us at Ol’ South, say in half an hour? We’re supposed to meet the girls, Keisha and Nana.”

  Conroy looked startled but said, “Oh, yeah, sure. A family party. Just what I need right now. I’ll just go drink some more coffee.”

  I used my cell to call Nana and ask them to meet us at Ol’ South. The girls of course had to talk, but I assured them we’d see them in thirty minutes and our talk was brief.

  Everything in the house smelled funny, but not nearly as bad as last night. Mike commented, “Good thing about a smoke bomb—the smell goes away pretty quickly.”

  Unshowered and exhausted, we arrived at Ol’ South. I ordered corned beef hash and two poached eggs, while Mike went for the full steak and eggs treatment. Conroy kept drinking his black coffee, and I wondered that his hands didn’t shake from caffeine nerves. The girls greeted us with joyful hugs and protests about how much they missed us. Nana stood looking sort of wistful, while Keisha was busily efficient.

  “You girls sit right here and tell me what you want.” They wanted pigs in a blanket of course. Keisha ordered Dutch babies, and Nana said primly she’d already eaten breakfast. Oh oh, the old Nana was back.

  “Okay, let’s pool our knowledge. Kelly, I suspect you know things I don’t.” Conroy ignored the rest of my gathered family. He hadn’t even greeted the girls, which gave me real doubts about his fathering abilities.

  I bristled but told him about Tom Lattimore and the way he’d rushed from his office, looking scared or worried. And about Bella hinting at someo
ne much “bigger” than Lattimore, to which Mike said, “Not hard to be bigger than that little twerp.”

  I gave him what I hoped was a withering look. “What I can’t figure out is why someone’s so desperate about a grocery store at that location. Why not just move it rather than fight the preservationists and the landmark commission and all that red tape?”

  “Maybe that’s where the answer lies,” Conroy mused. “Lattimore’s the key. We’ve got to crack him.” But he took the idea no further, and I was left stymied.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Tom Lattimore called me Monday after the bomb incident. He was, I thought, trying to sound upbeat and not quite pulling it off. “Kelly, I hate what happened at your house the other night. How bad is the damage?”

  The Fairmount grapevine—no six degrees of separation in our neighborhood! “Some scratches to furniture from flying metal fragments and one torn chair. It can all be fixed.”

  “Well, thank God no one was hurt, and the girls weren’t home.”

  How did he know that? Boldly, I asked him, “How did you know about it? Was it in the paper?”

  “No. Nothing in the paper. Maybe Keisha told me. I called her yesterday to check on you. You weren’t in the office. Anyway, the reason I’m calling is that we’ve got to put an end to this. I can’t feel responsible for putting you in danger.”

  “Are you?” I was not playing games with him anymore.

  “Inadvertently, maybe. Can we meet? I don’t want to come to the office—I think the walls have ears.”

  “Keisha can be trusted,” I said. “I tell her everything.”

  He laughed nervously, “Well, I hope not everything. No, that’s not what I meant. I just think it’s better if we meet some place unlikely.”

  Something dinged in my head. There was someone he didn’t want to know he was meeting me. Couldn’t be Bella, because she followed me everywhere. In fact, I was beginning to think I’d miss her when this all ended. And wouldn’t Bella report back to whoever Tom was hiding from? Maybe if I met him he’d open up about North Side Properties. I had friends with a café in the Stockyard District on the North Side—maybe that was enough off the beaten path that he’d agree. I suggested the Star Café.

  “No, not the North Side,” he said too hastily.

  I began to picture him on the other end of the phone, nervously twisting a pencil in his hands, sweating a little and wiping his forehead with his handkerchief. I was making this as difficult as I could.

  “Okay,” I said slowly. “How about The Lunch Box in Ridglea?”

  “Perfect. Today? Eleven-thirty?”

  “I’ll be there,” I said, and then, “I may bring Keisha.”

  “Uh, well, if you’re sure….”

  “I’m sure. Get a table for three.”

  We’d stand out like a sore thumb in The Lunch Box, a place with wonderful tuna and chicken and egg salad sandwiches plus other delights. The gray-haired crowd pretty much dominated there, and there were almost no men younger than sixty-five. Plus it wasn’t usually very racially diverse. What fun, I thought as I turned to tell Keisha of our lunch plans.

  “Did Tom Lattimore call yesterday and talk to you about the smoke bomb?”

  She shook her head.

  “Well, he says you’re the one who told him the girls weren’t home. Just keep that little secret under your bonnet. We’re having lunch with him today.”

  “I don’t want lunch with that scum,” she protested.

  “Be sweet.”

  “Someplace good?” She was hoping perhaps for Patrizio’s or one of the other upscale places that had opened in the So7 district.

  “Yep. The Lunch Box.”

  “Sandwiches,” she sighed. “I eat enough tuna salad to deplete the tuna in the ocean.”

  “So order chicken.”

  I called Mike and asked him to have Conroy drive him home, reminding him we had a four o’clock appointment with his surgeon. It was time anyway, but I wanted to be sure he hadn’t done any damage the night the bomb went off. He was still only at about six months post-op, not ready to be dancing yet.

  “Where are you going?” he asked suspiciously.

  “To lunch with Tom Lattimore.” Before he could object I added, “I’m taking Keisha. After all, Conroy wants to follow up.”

  The Lunch Box was sort of buried down an outdoor corridor in a huge shopping center in the Ridglea area along Camp Bowie. If you didn’t know it was there, you’d never find it, but lots of people find it daily. I doubted the menu had changed in thirty years and maybe not the personnel. It was a sunny, cheerful, tea-room type of place, surely not the place to be discussing smoke bombs and stalkers and other threats. Yet there we were—Tom had, probably deliberately, gotten there early enough to get us a table in a corner. I decided he had a thing about corner tables.

  He rose to greet us, kissed me on the cheek (yuck!) and took Keisha’s hand in both of his. I thought she’d wince, but she played it like a trooper. Tom did look a little more disheveled, a little less arrogant than usual. His tie was loosened and crooked. He’d thrown off his jacket, and even in this cold he had sweat stains in the armpits of his shirt.

  Stress! He’s really stressed. My job is to find out why.

  While we waited for our sandwiches, I said, “Okay, Tom, let’s put our cards on the table. What can we do to stop this, other than removing all opposition to the big-box store?”

  A nervous laugh. “Well, of course, that would make everything better, but I think it’s gone too far for that.”

  “How about finding an alternative site?”

  “I’m afraid they don’t want that—they’re set on that site.”

  “Okay, let’s get real here. Who are ‘they’?”

  He squirmed in his chair, looked around nervously, and said, “Kelly, I don’t know. I get instructions.”

  Keisha looked at him scornfully. “You just a gofer? I thought that’s what my kind did.”

  He ignored her until I changed the subject.

  “Tell me about North Side Properties.”

  He looked startled. “It’s my company that handles rentals on the North Side. One reason I didn’t want to go up there today.”

  Keisha again. “Why? You got so many disgruntled renters they might attack you in a simple café?”

  “It’s not that….”

  “Wait a minute, Tom. You don’t own North Side Properties, do you?”

  He drew himself up. “A portion of it, yes, I do.”

  “What portion?”

  He was fiddling with his iced teaspoon and now he almost threw it on the table. “For Pete’s sake, Kelly, that doesn’t matter now. I just don’t own a controlling interest.”

  “Do you think whoever does had Sonny Adams killed?” I was really getting good at grilling.

  The waitress arrived with our sandwiches, and we all three shut up and began to eat. Then I repeated my question.

  “Yeah, I do think that’s possible, Kelly, Keisha, but I don’t want that to go any further. Adams was skimming off the top of the rents he collected.”

  “Yeah, you told me that. But you just said he was let go, not that he was killed because of it.”

  “Kelly, what you need to know is that there are people behind this who won’t listen to me, won’t let anything get in their way. They want that property.”

  Keisha asked the question I’d been about to, but as she asked, her open dislike of Tom was evident. “Why that property? There’s lots of places to put a grocery store.”

  “They don’t want any other property. They want that corner.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I wasn’t sure if he was lying or not. But we weren’t getting anywhere, and I was through with my sandwich. “We seem to be stalled. The only way to stop this harassment—and danger to my family—is to allow the development, which really isn’t in my hands anyway. Things have gone too far with the zoning commission and landmark commissio
n and even the neighborhood to do that. What exactly is it that you think I can do to pull your chestnuts out of the fire? I sense I’m not the only one in trouble here.”

  He nodded. “You’re not. I admit it. I guess what I want to know is if there is any way to use the concept of adaptive re-use to pull this project through?”

  “Adaptive re-use to build a big-box store?” I exploded so loudly that he looked around, and I did see a few heads turn. Well, be darned!

  “We talked once about putting the store in the existing historic buildings. All it would take is remodeling, and I kind of like the idea—sort of kitschy. Different departments in different buildings—produce in one, meat in another, you know.”

  “And you think kitschy is a good thing?” Keisha chimed in. “It means a cheap imitation.”

  “I didn’t know that.” He did look surprised. Then, defensively, “Well, I still think it’s a good idea.”

  The waitress came with our check, and for once Tom didn’t grab it in the grand gesture. I waited and finally took it.

  “I’ll leave a tip,” he said.

  I refrained from a sarcastic, “Gee, thanks,” but I did say, “We aren’t through here.” There was a wait for tables—I could see the crowd by the door—but I wasn’t leaving. “You want me to persuade all those tenants—including Otto Martin who intends to kill you—to give up their leases so the other owners and I can sell?”

  “Otto Martin is the least of my worries,” he said hastily. “I mean, yes, that’s what I want. Most of them have agreed, and I don’t want any more goons visiting any of the others.”

  “Why?” Keisha asked. “Because it might be traced back to you?”

  “No, because I don’t want people hurt. I’m done here.” He threw some money on the table and left abruptly by a side door. We rose more leisurely, and I paid at the cashier’s stand.

  On the way home, I said, “Christmas is less than a week away.” It would fall on Sunday this year, and I thought Keisha and I deserved to close down the office for a few days. I had most of my shopping and about half the wrapping done—hard to find the privacy to wrap without someone peeking. And I needed to start on some baking. Toward the end of the week, I’d make a massive grocery trip—I’d already ordered the fresh turkey—and start cooking. “Let’s take this afternoon and tomorrow to wrap up things, and then we’ll close until a week from tomorrow.”