A Grand Plan

by Ann Roberts

  Across the street a homeless man lounged against the exterior of A-1 Liquors, a beer in his hand and his shopping cart beside him. He glanced toward two women sweeping a section of the lime-green bike path littered with leaves. Their industry did nothing to motivate him, and he looked as if he had no intention of leaving any time soon.

  You’d never see this kind of eyesore on RoRo.

  Still, murals and artwork adorned many of the masonry buildings, some of which possessed unique angles due to their location on a diagonal street. They were works of art themselves. Cylindrical planters stretched the length of LGA, decorated with mosaic tiles, clay art, black and white photos and recycled materials such as curled metal shavings.

  Palm trees along the west side of the street wore festive knitted cozies on their trunks. Lights hung from the trees to the roof of the Frontal Lobe Gallery, located next to ABLOOM, which offered an art gallery, holistic beauty and Sunday worship.

  She pulled up next to Brown’s Diner. Built on the diagonal corner between Grand and Tenth Avenue, the building was triangular with the front door situated at the point. A huge sheet of plywood covered the large picture-frame window next to it. The vandalism was part of a crime spree occurring on LGA, and a private detective, Ari’s former lover Molly Nelson, had been hired to find the culprit.

  She quickly pulled away and focused on her driving rather than her relationship woes.

  The next block symbolized LGA’s struggle between its industrial roots and the vision imagined by the artists. Gallery 7 and The Lodge sat sandwiched between two long-standing businesses: Quality Bumper and Arizona Patio Furniture. The faded Arizona Garage sign two doors south suggested the company had been in business for decades but spent its profits on something other than the exterior.

  Three different used car lots lined the east side of LGA next to Sterling Trucking. None of these venues would ever stay open until ten p.m. during a First or Third Friday. For every gallery there were three or four boarded-up buildings or businesses that detracted from the artistic atmosphere: the transmission shop, the brake shop and many she couldn’t name because they had no signage at all.

  So maybe it’s the galleries that don’t belong…

  She knew more businesses had perished rather than flourished and the fate of LGA remained undetermined. The slogan amongst commercial real estate agents was, “Good businesses come to LGA to die.” It was still too early to tell whether it would reinvent itself as an artists’ haven or be swallowed by the industry that claimed historical ownership of it. Perhaps there could be a balance and it would emerge as a destination spot, completely different from RoRo, unique in itself.

  She glanced at the address Lorraine had given her and made a quick right onto the last side street before she reached Seventh Avenue. Lorraine’s Lexus sat in a small parking lot behind a red brick building. Stretching the length of the block, apparently it had once been three businesses, each with a separate back entrance and loading dock. Lorraine was working the lockbox of the northern dock’s rolling aluminum door as Ari parked.

  Lorraine’s expensive gray suit and bright red pumps were a contrast to the faded brick building. She was a curvy woman with incredible fashion sense. Her shoes and handbag always complemented or matched her outfit, and she considered clothes shopping a recreational sport. She enjoyed dressing up, unlike Ari who hated wearing suits and dress shoes.

  Ari joined her on the dock and she flashed a smile. “You’re gonna love this, chica.”

  Ari followed her into the recesses of the building, their heels echoing in the cavernous space. Feathered cracks permeated the original concrete floor marred with stains from misuse but overall it still looked good. She admired the red brick walls, picturing the masons laying each one by hand. Time had blanched huge patches with discoloration and chipping. A few sections would need to be completely redone. Hardwood trusses framed the skylights above, and she imagined that the morning sunlight from the eastern exposure would greatly cut lighting costs. A small doorway led to the second room, which looked much like the first.

  “What was this place?” she asked. She winced as her question bounced off the walls with the echo.

  “This is the O.S. Stapley building built in nineteen twenty-seven. It was a hardware company that helped develop Phoenix. In September of two thousand and twelve the building was listed in the Historic Property Register.”

  They crossed the threshold into a similar third space that included a loft. Ari stared at the skylight and said, “So what’s your plan?” When Lorraine didn’t answer, she pulled her gaze away from the amazing ceiling. Lorraine was facing her, wringing her hands. She’s nervous.

  “I want us to buy it together, fifty-fifty. I want you to become my partner in Southwest Realty and I want us to expand. Business is booming and we need to take advantage of the opportunity. This space will give us enough room to grow. It’s not like I’m retiring tomorrow, but eventually I’m going to want my life back and I’ll leave the company to you.”

  Ari struggled for words. “Lorraine, I’m flattered, but I’m not sure I’m ready for that, for this.”

  A smile crept onto Lorraine’s face. “Surprised you, huh? Well, I think you’re ready. All you need to do is take your broker’s exam.”

  Ari glanced through the front window. “This can’t be cheap,” she said.

  “It’s not. It’s historic.”

  “I’m just glad we’re not standing in the Bali Hi,” Ari joked, thinking about the abandoned hotel down the street.

  “That’s already spoken for. Tony Sanchez has a plan. He wants to turn it into an artists’ community where they’ll live and work. It’s completely doable, and the best part is there’s nothing like it on RoRo.”

  From Lorraine’s smug smile Ari could tell she was immensely pleased at the thought of LGA having the upper hand for once. Roosevelt Row got all of the attention and LGA was the stepchild. If LGA could do something unique, perhaps it would gain equal footing and more First and Third Friday patrons would travel two miles on the trolley to buy LGA artwork.

  “But first he has to win the bid,” Lorraine continued. “Apparently, there’s someone else interested but he doesn’t know who it is. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to help the area as much as Tony. It would mean so much to LGA. But I promise you, this area is gonna take off.”

  “Only if the crime wave stops,” Ari corrected.

  Lorraine shook her head. “I’m not so sure those four incidents were anything more than coincidence and silliness.” She held up her index finger and said, “Mark my words. LGA is here to stay.”

  She knew Lorraine might be right, but she also thought Lorraine was rationalizing the crime spree. Too much had happened for it to be coincidence. Up until the last few months, LGA was on the upswing. Recent articles in the Arizona Republic had proclaimed Grand Avenue as the next hotspot and the surrounding cities were committed to its revitalization. It was only a matter of time. The question was how much time? Other investors had tried to breathe life into Lower Grand but they had jumped too soon. She knew the average life span of a business on Grand was about eighteen months. Is it still too early? Or is someone afraid LGA will flourish and compete with RoRo? Is that why these incidents are happening, because LGA is about to make it?

  “I’ll think about it, Lorraine. Before I decide,” Ari said, “I want to come down here on First Friday tomorrow night.”

  Lorraine sighed. “Honestly, chica, you won’t be impressed. It doesn’t compare to Roosevelt Row—yet. It’s like RoRo eight years ago when there were only a handful of businesses involved in First Fridays and before there ever was a Third Friday.”

  “Are you saying this area needs eight more years?”

  Lorraine bit her lip, realizing her mistake. “No, it won’t take that long. It has the benefit of following on the coattails of RoRo. They had to start from nothing and the commitment from the neighboring cities will ensure LGA’s success. All of Grand Avenue is slated for a f
acelift.”

  They climbed a wooden staircase to a small loft. The air smelled stale and Ari inhaled a mouthful of dust. She quickly covered her mouth and nose as they reached the top. The fading glimmers of daylight eked through the glass, displaying the swirling particles in front of them. The loft was empty except for a mattress, a rolltop desk, its matching chair, and a body on the floor.

  Chapter Two

  “Oh my God!” Lorraine gasped.

  They ran to the woman who lay on her right side. Ari felt for a pulse. She glanced at Lorraine’s hopeful face and shook her head.

  “Oh, no,” Lorraine said. “This is awful.”

  The woman appeared to be in her mid-fifties, wearing cargo shorts, a Beatles T-shirt, a denim work shirt and sneakers. Blood had congealed against her left temple but there were no other signs of injury.

  Lorraine grabbed Ari’s arm. “Do you hear music?”

  They realized it was coming from the body. Ari noticed an earbud in the left ear, the white cord disappearing into a front shirt pocket under her right arm. Ari resisted the urge to move her and free the music player or phone, which she imagined might contain many clues.

  “It’s Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Seven Wonders,’” Lorraine said. She whipped out her cell. “I’m calling the police.”

  “Wait,” Ari said, holding up a hand. “Let me snoop for a sec.” She pulled a pair of latex gloves from her purse. “I need to look around for Molly. This could be related to all the crime that’s occurring. If that’s the case, then she’s going to need some answers since she’s in charge of security, but Phoenix PD won’t give her anything.”

  Lorraine eyed her incredulously. “You really carry gloves in your purse?”

  She squatted next to the corpse and snapped photos with her phone. “Unfortunately, this isn’t the first dead body I’ve found. I’ve learned a lot since then.”

  “True. But you’re not going to disturb the crime scene, are you?”

  “Of course not,” she said. At least not very much.

  Ari scanned the room, looking for any other traces of blood, an indication that perhaps the woman had tripped and accidentally killed herself. The body was a few feet from the desk, but the chair appeared to have been deliberately pushed away.

  The only other furniture in the room was a mattress. A pillow lay on one end and five neatly folded T-shirts were stacked on an opposite corner. The rest of the woman’s wardrobe included a fleece jacket and flannel shirt that hung over the desk chair.

  “Definitely homeless,” Ari concluded, “but living here. So how does she get in?”

  “When I pulled up out back, I noticed there was a side gate across the parking lot. It might be unlocked.”

  “Did you see a shopping cart?”

  “No,” Lorraine said softly. “This is horrible.”

  She took a step as if to walk across the room, and Ari said, “Don’t move. Do you see the footprints?” She pointed toward the staircase they’d climbed. Several sets of footprints trailed from the staircase to the desk and the mattress on the floor under the window.

  “See the letter P in the dust? It matches the emblem on the side of the sneakers she’s wearing.”

  She nodded. “They’re Princes, made by the tennis company.”

  “And you can see our tracks too. Ladies’ heels leave a smudge-like mark since so little of the shoe actually imprints on the floor.”

  “Uh-huh, okay.”

  “But look at the one right there.” She pointed to a distinctive shoe print with ridges running across the toes and heel.

  Lorraine leaned over as far as she could without taking a step. “That one’s a lot bigger.”

  “Yes, it’s a man’s footprint. If you look closely you can see a few of them here by the desk and near the body. I’m thinking he came up the stairs and confronted her, but there was a struggle because the footprints overlap in this area. He hit her in the head and she collapsed. From the positioning of the blow we know he’s right-handed.”

  “Why would someone do this?”

  “Maybe he was after something.” She pointed at a dirty daypack perched against the back of the hutch. Both the main compartment and outer pocket were unzipped and her things lay on the desk.

  She handed her phone to Lorraine. “Snap some pictures.”

  “We shouldn’t be doing this,” Lorraine said, but she started taking photos of the objects sitting on the desk: a pair of scratched RayBans, a pocket watch, a bus pass, a paperback copy of Black Hawk Down that belonged to the Phoenix Public Library, a worn library card, a black pen with a Velcro strip attached to the top, a worn and dirty file folder and a prescription bottle full of small white pills. The label identified the drug as Risperdal.

  “This was prescribed today at the VA. Isn’t Risperdal used for anxiety or depression?”

  “Yes, it’s one of the meds my mom takes,” Lorraine said. “It’s also used to treat PTSD.”

  Inside the folder was the dead woman’s biography. A photocopy of her Social Security card established she was Carol Susan Kendricks, and her birth certificate confirmed she’d just celebrated her fifty-sixth birthday. They also found her honorable discharge from the US Army dated September, 2003.

  Ari shuffled through several pages of her medical history and diagnoses, which included PTSD, anxiety and depression. Underneath Carol’s paperwork was a birth certificate and discharge for Jonelle Humphreys.

  “Why is she carrying around someone else’s personal papers?”

  “I don’t know, but Jonelle didn’t receive an honorable discharge,” she murmured. “Maybe the answer is in the desk.” She closed the file and said, “There’s no way to copy all of this. I’ll just have to write down what I can remember after we leave.”

  “Do you think the killer took anything?”

  She gazed at the items on the desktop. There was something bothering her but it wouldn’t surface. “I don’t know.”

  With a gloved hand she opened the little drawers and peeked in the cubbies with the flashlight attached to her keychain. Three were empty but one was filled with old pictures. She debated only for a second before pulling out the stack and holding them up. Lorraine took a picture of the front and back of each photo while Ari made a mental inventory of the subjects. Most were of two women, one of whom looked like the victim roughly twenty years before. They often posed wearing their army dress blues. On the back was written Jonny and Care followed by the location and a date range that spanned the eighties and nineties.

  “Jonelle and Carol. Jonny and Care,” she said.

  Care was alone in some of the photos, standing in front of famous locales like the Grand Canyon. Two of the photos at the bottom of the stack depicted Jonny and Care in a social setting, and although their smiles were relaxed, it was still posed.

  “These photos are so formal,” Lorraine observed. “Do you think they were best friends or more?”

  She studied the last photo. The women were sitting on a sofa, Care’s hands folded in her lap. Jonny’s right hand rested on her own thigh, but her left arm was draped over the sofa, her fingers lightly touching Care’s shoulder. It was only slightly suggestive and most observers wouldn’t notice the gesture, but it implied possession and rights only reserved for a lover.

  “More,” she said and tapped the incriminating part of the photo. “They were lovers and they were both in the military.”

  “A recipe for disaster thirty years ago,” Lorraine observed.

  “And maybe the reason Jonny didn’t get an honorable discharge.”

  She replaced the pictures and quickly opened all of the larger drawers, making sure her gloved hands only touched the sides of the handles in case the murderer had left fingerprints. Each drawer contained canned goods, and she found a spoon and can opener lodged between several cans of black beans.

  Lorraine audibly gasped. “By the grace of God…”

  “I hear you,” she agreed. “Let’s get out of here and call the police.” />
  They went outside to the back gate. The padlock wasn’t snapped shut, which explained Care’s entry to the property, but Ari couldn’t explain how she got in the building. They went out front to call the police, but as luck would have it, a patrol car was parked at the end of the block. Two policemen were exiting Brown’s Diner, each with a coffee. Lorraine rushed to them while Ari stayed out front, guarding the entrance and watching Lorraine tell her story.

  The cops jumped in their car and pulled up next to Ari. They wasted no time rushing past her and into the building. She looked across the street at a two-story stucco structure. The word Scrabble was spelled out in large wooden squares that looked exactly like the old-fashioned tiles found in the original game. A patio area and some colorful cabins that could have belonged to Willy Wonka sat behind Scrabble. A wrought-iron fence enclosed the property, a For Sale banner draped along the top. She craned her neck to get a better look, but the fence and several trees obstructed her view.

  A woman with blue bangs and burnt-orange hair leaned against the hood of an old maroon Chevy Malibu in the parking lot, and Ari resisted the urge to walk across the street and ask her about the fascinating place. She seemed to be watching the action as if attending a show. She waved at Lorraine, who waved back as she returned from the diner.

  “Who’s that?”

  “That’s Chynna Grove. She owned Scrabble but it went out of business. A really sad story.”

  She was about to ask her to elaborate when the police officers returned. They directed Ari and Lorraine to the side of the building.

  “How long will this take?” Lorraine asked, checking her watch.

  “A while,” Ari sighed. “We need to get our stories straight. They have to match.”

  As a former police officer, Ari knew the detectives who took charge of the case would expect statements from each of them. They might also know Ari since her father, Lieutenant Jack Adams, was the Chief of Detectives. Many in the department knew her family and knew she’d been a cop for a brief time. Some also knew she had a propensity to snoop and become involved.