by Dan Ames
I decided to play the part of a real estate agent and took out my phone. Not only would it help with my cover, I could actually get a few things done.
My first call was to Amanda Collins. It went straight to voicemail so I left a message asking her to call me.
The second call went to Nate. He told me that he had more news and he would tell me all about it over burgers at Paul’s tonight. You know, I love the guy. But sometimes his obsession with food drove me nuts. Still, I had to laugh. Burgers for facts.
Tripp’s Bentley was nowhere to be seen so I figured he had already left for work. That was as I’d hoped. I had no interest in Tripp Collins. I was more interested in the girls I’d seen when I stopped by earlier.
Nothing happened. No signs of life.
By lunchtime, I decided it was in my best interest to move. So I drove down to the end of the street where there was a community park, open only to residents. But it had a bathroom. I was able to unload all of the coffee I’d consumed. My bladder thanked me and I was back on Windmill Pointe Drive in a matter of minutes.
I drove by the Collins house and again saw no movement. Maybe it was a bad idea. Maybe the girls didn’t even drive.
The next stop was all about luck. An estate sale had just started two blocks from Tripp’s house. I pulled past the sale, moved up a block and parked again. Now I was a husband at an estate sale, waiting in the car while my wife spent hours looking over old dishes and bad art. At some point, we might talk on the cell phone about some glorious oil painting she’d found that depicted sailboats on the open ocean. Was it too much? Where would we put it?
I should have gone to Hollywood and tried my hand at acting. I was a natural.
So I watched the Tripp Collins household for another three hours. A man walked past me with an elephant’s leg that had been cut in half and had two umbrella handles poking out of it. I tried to picture the reception he would get when he carried that thing into his house. If he was married, he might not be for long.
Ahead, a gold Toyota pulled out of Tripp Collins’s driveway. I saw three heads inside. It drove past me and I could see the three Asian girls. Once they passed me, I dropped the Taurus into gear and followed. They went through the village, then up to Mack Avenue where they turned right. I followed them until they pulled up in front of a dance studio called Prima Dance. Two blocks ahead was a liquor store. I stopped the Taurus in front of it and watched my rearview mirror. All three girls were out of the car. Two of them wore ballet outfits.
They went inside.
My options were few. If I went inside, the girls might see me and since I’d already visited their home, there was a good chance they would recognize me.
So I called.
“Prima Dance,” the voice said.
“Hi, I’m interested in signing my daughters up for ballet lessons. Do you have any open classes?”
“We sure do. How old are your daughters?”
Stupid. I should have known that would be her first question.
“They’re fifteen,” I said. “Twins.”
“Okay, we have classes at several times per day every day as well as the weekend, what–”
“You know I would like to see a class before I sign my daughters up,” I said, my voice chock full of enthusiasm. “Do you have any classes going on right now?”
“Why yes,” she said. “We are about to start an intermediate class.”
“Is there a certain age for this one?”
“Yes, it’s sixteen and under. It might be more advanced for your daughters, but you can get a feel for–”
“Okay, let me think about it,” I said and hung up.
27
Sixteen and under. That would do.
I was making a few assumptions, I knew that. Maybe there wasn’t anything odd going on, sexually speaking, inside the home of Tripp Collins. Maybe the Asian girls were three sisters from a dance troupe that he was sponsoring.
Either way, the fact that he possibly had some female minors living in his home was probably enough for me to bluff him.
Tomorrow, I would confront him and see what he knew.
In the meantime, I had to meet my source and ply him with several pounds of ground beef.
Paul’s is the best burger place in Grosse Pointe. It’s kitty corner from St. John’s Hospital, which is perfect for coronary arrest victims. In fact, I think there’s a shuttle that runs continuously between Paul’s and St. John’s. The Heart Attack Express.
In the parking lot, my phone rang and I figured it was Nate.
It was Amanda Collins.
She was doing fine, staying with a friend. The cops hadn’t told her much, just that the fire appeared to have started in the wiring behind the stove. No foul play suspected.
Maybe I was totally paranoid, but I wasn’t accepting that fact just yet.
“So I wanted to ask you if you knew anything about Elizabeth Pierce,” I said.
She paused on the other end of the line. “Elizabeth Pierce as in the Grosse Pointe Pierces?” It sounded funny. Like they were a magic act or something.
“Yes, that Elizabeth Pierce.”
“No. I know of her, naturally. But no, I don’t know her personally.”
“Did Benjamin?”
The effort I put in to making that question sound casual was extreme, but I didn’t pull it off.
“Benjamin? Why would he know Elizabeth Pierce?”
“I don’t know that he did,” I answered. “But I had a source claim to me that Elizabeth and Benjamin were romantically linked,” I said. The words sounded foreign in my mouth and tasted bitter. “And you had told me that Benjamin gave you the impression that he’d met someone–”
“Yeah, but not Elizabeth Pierce,” she said. Her voice incredulous. “No way. No. Uh-uh.”
“I know you feel that way, but do you know that for a fact?”
“If Benjamin was dating Elizabeth Pierce, then I’m screwing the Emperor of Japan.”
Now it was my turn to pause, and then I laughed.
“He doesn’t seem your type,” I said.
“Look, Benjamin and I both hated money,” she explained. “Hated wealth. We saw Tripp living his life drowning in money and booze. We both hated Grosse Pointe and all of the snobs. Believe me, Elizabeth Pierce would have been the last person Benjamin hooked up with.”
Not that she could see me, but I nodded my head.
“Well, okay, I didn’t believe it either,” I said. “I’ll let you know if I have any other ridiculous ideas.”
We disconnected and I got out of the car, locked it, found Nate inside already, eating from a basket of onion rings.
I slid into the booth across from him, ordered a Diet Coke from our server.
“How are the rings?” I said. I had a very real fear of onion rings. Something about the way the onion part slid out of the breading. It always creeped me out.
“Excellent.”
Somewhere I had read that caffeine increases your appetite and I didn’t know if it was from the huge pot coffee I’d had in the morning, but I was suddenly ravenous. When the first platter of sliders arrived in front of us, I dove in with the same vigor and enthusiasm as Nate.
“Whoa, what’s this?” he said, amusement and a little anxiety in his voice.
“I’m starving.” I could tell he was worried there wouldn’t be enough for him, so I signaled for our server and ordered another platter. That seemed to calm him.
“Bluestone Limited,” he said and pulled a notebook out from his back pocket.
“Mmm hmm,” I said, through a mouth full of beef, bun and onion.
“It’s a shell company, obviously,” he said. “One of many that I traced back via corporate tax returns to a company called E & L Enterprises. E & L owns all kinds of things in the Midwest. Pioneer Building Products, Coastal Marine, AutoDyne, Cross Financial Systems, Vintage Software–”
I nearly choked on my burger and reached for my Diet Coke.
“Jesus, ar
e you okay?” he said.
“What did you say? AutoDyne?”
Oh my God, I thought. It wasn’t Auto Time. It was AutoDyne.
“Yeah. But the interesting thing is who owns E & L Enterprises,” Nate said. He took a moment to shove an entire slider into his mouth and then he proceeded to talk around it. “That company, in turn, is part of a larger collection owned by probably the most powerful family in Grosse Pointe.”
He didn’t have to say it. But when he did, the world rocked once more beneath my feet.
“The Pierce Family,” Nate said. And he dug back into the burger platter.
28
One of the reasons I had never seen Elizabeth Pierce much after the Benjamin Collins murder was that she left town, so to speak. Indeed, the Pierces had real estate all over the world and from what I’d heard, she had spent extended amounts of time in Paris and London before eventually returning to the Detroit area.
But she had come back to an estate in Grosse Pointe Farms. I knew this because she had settled on Kenwood Road, home of the famous Nun’s Walk of Grosse Pointe. Two evenly spaced rows of towering, hundred-year-old silver maple trees lined the street. The story went that the nuns from the Sacred Heart Academy used to stroll between the trees on their way to and from church. I’d always wanted to walk down the lane myself, but never had. It didn’t help that it was all private property now.
I knew which house was Elizabeth’s because Ellen had pointed it out to me. “Looks like your old squeeze is doing fine,” she had said, pointing at the sprawling home as we drove past it. I had probably been taking Ellen to confession. Lord knew she needed it.
Now, I pulled into the driveway and looked at the house. It was your classic Grosse Pointe Tudor, a combination of brick, plaster, leaded glass windows and a towering chimney set on a sprawling lot with the famous silver maples out front. A bluestone walk led from the sidewalk to the house, and a second structure, a garage with a living area above it, sat near the rear of the property. Both the main house and the garage featured slate roofs.
I parked the Taurus and went to the front door. Rang the bell. Waited.
A woman came to the door. She was middle-aged with dark hair, dark pants and a nicely pressed white shirt.
“May I help you?” she asked.
“Is Elizabeth home?” I asked.
“May I ask who is inquiring?” She had a thick accent, probably Albanian. There was a significant population of Albanians living in certain parts of Grosse Pointe. The woman no doubt worked for Elizabeth.
“John Rockne.”
She nodded her head toward me. “Please wait one minute,” she said and shut the door.
It was more like three or four minutes but eventually the door opened again and Elizabeth had replaced the Albanian woman.
“John,” she said. Not quite as friendly as when I’d bumped into her at UAM. I would even go so far as to say she was a bit cool. “Come in.”
There was a grand foyer with a seating area next to a set of doors. Elizabeth walked to a padded bench and sat at one end, gestured for me to take the other. It was a clear statement. I wouldn’t be going into the actual house. The foyer was as far as I was going to make it.
“Twice in one week,” she said with a smile that didn’t even attempt to conceal its artificiality.
“Were you romantically inclined with Benjamin Collins?”
Sometimes the best way to ask a difficult question is to just unload it. Like when you’re carrying a heavy box somewhere and when you get it to where it needs to be you just drop it. Don’t even care if you break something in the process.
The fake smile dropped from Elizabeth’s face.
“What?” she said.
“Benjamin Collins. The boy who was murdered,” I said. “Were you seeing him?”
“Are you out of your goddamned mind?” she said. Elizabeth got to her feet and I saw a shadow behind the main doors leading into the house. I didn’t think it was the Albanian woman.
“Answer the question, Elizabeth. Were you?”
She strode across the foyer, jerked open the front door and held it wide.
“Get the hell out of my house. You’re pathetic.”
I hesitated and then figured I had my answer. I walked past her, smelled her perfume, saw the blind rage on her face.
She slammed the door behind me.
I stood for a moment, wondered if the ghosts of the nuns had heard Elizabeth curse me out. I hoped so.
As I walked to my car, I played back her reaction.
Elizabeth was angry, no doubt about that.
She was also lying.
29
A funny thing happens when you suddenly look at your past in a whole new light. What was that phrase? Revisionist history. You know, when someone changes what happened in the past to fit an argument they’re currently making. Essentially creating a brand-new version of past events.
Well, my history was being revised, and I didn’t like it.
But I had known Elizabeth well. We had spent a lot of time together. A lot of intimate time. Even though we’d spent years apart, every fiber of my being told me that her display of anger was a sham. It was a lie. Something had been going on. There was a connection between her and Benjamin Collins. I just didn’t know what it was. Not for certain.
The problem was, I still didn’t want to believe it.
I needed to verify it somehow and there was only one person who could do it. Well, two. But Benjamin was dead.
No, I needed to see Tripp Collins. He was the one that had delivered the news, so I needed to know his source. Initially I thought his source might be his own demented imagination. But now I wasn’t so sure.
Since I’d already been thrown out of one house I decided I might as well go for two. So I swung down to Jefferson Avenue, and then turned onto Bedford until that spilled me back onto Windmill Pointe Drive. The estate sale had ended and the wide street was totally devoid of parked cars.
I didn’t care. There wasn’t going to be any subterfuge this time. I was going to exhibit all of the delicate grace of a battering ram.
The Bentley was parked in the driveway and I pulled the Taurus in behind it, went to the front door and rang the bell. I could hear music and laughter inside. Actually, it wasn’t music. It sounded more like someone was trying to play the piano while wearing boxing gloves.
The piano music stopped and the door opened a crack. I heard the high-pitched lilt of female voices whispering and then the face of Tripp Collins filled the opening.
“Fuck off!” he shouted at me and tried to slam the door but I threw my shoulder into it and plowed ahead. The heavy door swung inward, knocking Tripp Collins on his ass and spilling his drink all over the floor. The Asian girls scattered and Tripp tried to get to his feet. I grabbed him by the front of the shirt and pinned him against the wall.
“Listen, you miserable drunk,” I growled at him. “I know that at least one of your harem here is underage. So unless you want to be investigated for statutory rape, I suggest you tell me what you know about Benjamin and Elizabeth Pierce.”
He pushed me away and I let him get all the way to his feet.
“You think because your sister is the head cop around here you can get away with this?” he said, but his voice lacked the conviction it needed.
“What do you know about Benjamin and Elizabeth?” I repeated, advancing on him.
He backed into the great room. Ordinarily, I might have been worried about a gun, but I think the only thing Tripp Collins was interested in grabbing was a glass of Scotch.
“It was a guess,” he finally said.
“Bullshit,” I replied. “You’re not that creative. Try again.”
He had broken out in a sweat and he coughed. I walked over to the Scotch decanter, pulled out the stopper and splashed some into a glass. I handed it to him and he chugged it, held the glass out for a refill. I tipped more into it and held the decanter away from him.
“Talk,” I s
aid.
He sank into the brown leather couch and stared at the empty fireplace. Took a long pull from the glass.
“He had a laptop that he carried everywhere with him. It made me nervous when he sat in his room and used it. One night, someone came and picked him up and he left his laptop in his room. It was something he had never done. I was home. I’d had quite a bit of this stuff,” he held up the glass in case I didn’t know to what he was referring. “So I went into his room and looked. His screen was blank, but I launched his browser and checked his history. I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t doing anything illegal.”
I bit my tongue on that one. And Tripp must have recognized the hypocrisy of what he’d said, because his eyes flicked toward the rooms upstairs where his harem was taking cover.
“It was mostly empty, his history,” he said. “But while I had the browser open a window appeared with a private message. It was very sexual in nature.”
“And it was from Elizabeth?”
Tripp Collins sighed. “You know, I’m a fairly wealthy man. I’m used to the finer things in life. Now, I had the impression that Benjamin had met someone. I didn’t have any proof. But he seemed to be going out more often, spending weekends away, and he seemed….different.”
His glass was empty so I filled it all the way up with Scotch.
“Then, when I saw a Patek Philippe on Benjamin’s wrist, I understood that the person he was seeing most likely had a fair amount of money to be able to give Benjamin a gift like that.”
None of this made sense. There was no expensive watch found in Benjamin’s belongings. No laptop. Nothing.
“That night, when Benjamin was picked up? His friend was driving a Porsche,” Tripp added.
Another little something gave way inside me.
Back then, Elizabeth had driven a Porsche 911. A gift from her father.
“So then that private message popped up, clearly from a lover,” he said.
“But how did you know it was Elizabeth Pierce?” I asked.
He chugged the entire glass of Scotch.
