Concierge Confessions

by Valerie Wilcox

  “Quite a place,” I said as we settled into a plush leather booth in the lounge.

  “It’s fairly dead right now,” Bobby said. “It’s much better at night when there’s live music and dancing. The DJ they’ve got here spins a top mix of tunes with an elaborate light and laser show.”

  “Sounds great.” But not so great for conversation. This afternoon’s nearly empty lounge suited my purposes much better. I pulled out the only credit card I owned that still had a balance available and told Bobby the drinks were on me. He didn’t object. He was a concierge, after all. You want information or good service, it always helps to pay for it. After we’d ordered our beer, I got to the point of my visit. “So,” I said, “what can you tell me about the Novikov family?”

  “It was a tragedy all the way around,” he said, sighing.

  I waited for him to go on, preferring not to rush him as he sipped his beer.

  “Calina’s a habitual liar and if there’s a problem, she’ll push the blame onto anyone handy. But I guess you know all about that.”

  “Believe me, I do. Only she calls herself Carla now,” I said.

  “Right. I don’t consider myself prescient or anything, but…well, I just knew something bad would happen sooner or later. And now it has, or you wouldn’t be here.”

  “I understand she was a troubled child when the Novikovs adopted her,” I said.

  “Big time,” Bobby said. “It was Alena’s idea to adopt, you know. Ivan wanted no part of it.”

  “Because of Carla’s problems?”

  “Right. And the fact that they were too old and too set in their ways to take on a kid, with or without problems. Besides, it was common knowledge that Ivan had questionable business dealings. I think he was afraid the adoption would shine a spotlight on him.”

  “I heard he had ties to the Russian mafia.”

  “You heard right. Vasily Petrov and Ivan were building a big retail complex in southeast Portland. It all went south when Petrov started spending more on himself than the project. When the bank called in the note and they couldn’t pay, Ivan looked to the mob for the funds.”

  This agreed with Manning’s version. “The mob bailed them out?”

  “You got it. But Petrov kept on living the good life. Wine, women, and all that.”

  “But it was the Novikovs who paid the ultimate price, not Vasily,” I said. “Mob retaliation?”

  Bobby shrugged. “The responsible party is still a matter of conjecture.”

  “Same with Vasily’s murder. The police suspect it was a disgruntled investor.”

  “Novikov had a few of those, too.”

  “Did he run a Ponzi scheme like Vasily?”

  “Not that I ever heard about,” he said, shaking his head. “Petrov must have come up with that all on his own. No, it was the market that did them in here. Ivan and Petrov’s development deals took a hit in the real estate collapse. Quite a few of their investors showed up at the condo looking for them. They were not happy campers, to put it mildly. I’m surprised Petrov didn’t hightail it out of the country instead of just up I-5 to Seattle.”

  “Who do you think killed the Novikovs?”

  “That’s the million-dollar question.”

  “What does your gut tell you?”

  Bobby was quiet a moment. “My first reaction was that Calina had done it. I mean, she’d given them nothing but grief for years. It was no secret that she hated her father, who’d never really accepted her. Then there was the money angle. Calina would be a wealthy woman with her parents out of the way.”

  “I thought they were struggling to pay off the mob loan,” I said.

  “It’s true they were tapped out financially. Their condo is mortgaged to the hilt, but the life insurance amounts to quite a bundle. Of course, the payout is on hold until Calina is cleared of any responsibility in her parents’ deaths.”

  “So you believe Calina is guilty?”

  “I’m not so sure anymore.”

  “What gives you second thoughts?”

  Bobby flagged down our server. “Buy me another beer and I’ll tell you.”

  CONFESSION #18

  Asking questions does not a detective make.

  I ordered a pitcher of Bobby’s favorite brew and a big platter of nachos to go with it. I hoped the food and drink would satisfy him enough to keep him talking, but it quickly became clear he was willing to tell all with or without any incentives. He even said so himself. “I’ve been dying to tell this story to someone. Believe me, keeping quiet about something this juicy hasn’t been easy. It puts Calina—or Carla—in a totally different light.”

  “Go on.”

  “Remember how I said we had people banging on our lobby door?” Bobby said.

  I nodded. “Unhappy investors looking for Vasily or his partner.”

  “Right. But here’s the thing—they weren’t all investors.”

  Knowing how Vasily charmed the female population in Seattle, I suspected it was the same in Portland. “Women?” I suggested.

  Bobby laughed as he grabbed a handful of nachos. “We had our share of those, too,” he said. He paused to wash down the chips with his beer. “No, I’m referring to a guy who said he knew Petrov when they were kids. He’d heard Petrov lived in Portland and wanted to meet up with him again. It’d been years since he’d last seen his old playmate.”

  “Vasily lived at Pacific Tower?”

  “He moved in shortly after becoming partners with Novikov.”

  I didn’t get where Bobby was going with this. “So did they meet?”

  “You know the drill. I couldn’t just send him up to a resident’s doorstep without permission. I had him wait in the lobby while I called Petrov on the phone. I tried his home and cell numbers, but there was no answer. You know how that can turn out.”

  “I’ve been there,” I said. Bobby was referring to a common problem with visitors. People walk in off the street and don’t understand that it’s your job to determine who they are and why they want access. Some visitors see the verification process as insulting, no matter how politely you treat them.

  “Have you ever had to turn a visitor away?” he asked.

  “Oh, yeah. Hell hath no fury!”

  Bobby grimaced. “Then you’ve shared my pain.”

  “Is that what happened?”

  “Not this time. The guy—he said his name was Drew or something like that—was quite pleasant. Not offended or put off by my questions. He was well-dressed and polite so I said he could wait in the lobby for a while longer. I thought I might reach Petrov after a few minutes.”

  Hopefully, Bobby’s roundabout explanation was leading to something important. Anxious for him to get to the point, I said, “And then?”

  “And then we started talking while he waited. It was a slow day and I had the time.” He chuckled. “I guess you know I’m not averse to a little chitchat.”

  “I assume he had something worthwhile to chat about.”

  “That he did. Turns out, Drew and Petrov lived together in the same foster home when they were kids. It wasn’t all that nice, if you know what I mean.”

  This story had a familiar ring to it. “Abuse?” I said.

  “Sadly, yes. But that’s not the crux of the story.”

  “What is?”

  “Drew said that Petrov always talked about wanting to find his little sister. They were split up when their parents died. Petrov had been placed in foster care, but she’d been adopted.” Bobby eyed me carefully. I figured he wanted to gauge my reaction as he continued. “Drew asked me if I knew whether Petrov had ever found his sister.”

  “Carla?”

  “You guessed it. Petrov and Carla are brother and sister.”

  “Wow! That possibility had never occurred to me, especially since they looked nothing alike. I just thought Carla attached herself to Vasily because of his wealth and what he could do for her career.”

  An hour and another pitcher of beer later, Bobby and I had co
me to no conclusions about whether Carla and Vasily’s relationship had anything to do with the murders in Portland and BellaVilla. Bobby didn’t learn that they were brother and sister until after the Novikov murders had happened. I was the first person he’d told and I advised him to report their relationship to the police as well. He said he would, because the more he considered it, the more he believed his first reaction had been wrong. From what he’d observed, Vasily was a positive influence on Carla. Yes, she still made up stories to suit her purposes and wasn’t problem-free, but Vasily had convinced her to stay in school and graduate. With his encouragement, she’d even mended her relationship with her father and had begun working at his mall project. Bobby said that showed her commitment to the success of the venture. “If you look at it that way,” he said, “killing her parents made no sense.”

  I pointed out that both Carla and Vasily liked the good life. With the collapse of the economy and its effect on the partnership’s development deals, the lifestyle they’d come to enjoy was in jeopardy. Perhaps they decided they’d be much better off if her parents were out of the picture. The answer was to kill them and use the life insurance money due Carla to start over in Seattle. They worked the Ponzi scheme together to pay back the mob and keep afloat until the insurance money came through.

  Bobby countered my theory by saying that Carla and Vasily could just as easily have left Portland for their own safety if they believed the mob or a disgruntled investor had killed her parents.

  “If that’s true,” I said, “then whoever killed her parents and Vasily is probably after Carla, too.” I thought about the car that hit and killed Marcus. “Carla may have already had a near-miss.”

  “It’s not a given that the same person killed the Navikovs and Petrov,” Bobby offered. “Maybe it was the mob or an unhappy investor in Portland and a Ponzi scheme loser in Seattle.”

  “And there’s always the possibility that Vasily and Carla had a falling out.” I told Bobby about finding her standing over Vasily. “She had his blood all over her, but told the police it came from me. She’s been feeding them lies about me ever since.”

  “So where do you go from here?” asked Bobby.

  Aside from Carla’s adoption by the Navikovs, the background info Erin had retrieved didn’t add anything more to what I already knew about Carlton Leavy’s prison stint or the others on Jack’s suspects list. I shrugged. “Any suggestions?”

  He ran a finger around the rim of his beer stein. “It’s probably a long shot, but I have a cousin who might be able to help you.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Molly is a pipefitter. She used to work at the Columbia Plaza site before it shut down.”

  “Vasily and Ivan’s project?”

  “Yeah. If anyone knows what went on there, it would be Molly. She was a union steward.”

  I figured it was worth a try. Bobby gave Molly a call and she agreed to meet me at her home within the hour.

  “You’ll have to take what she says with a grain of salt, though,” Bobby warned. “She’s kind of bitter. Living on unemployment ain’t easy.”

  Tell me about it.

  Bobby gave me directions to his cousin’s house, but I keyed in the address on the Miata’s dashboard Garmin anyway. The GPS system didn’t always display the best route, but I could count on it guiding me to where I needed to go. I took a few minutes before leaving to check my cell phone for messages. I’d turned it on vibrate so that I’d be free from interruptions during my meeting with Bobby. It was a good thing that I checked. The message mailbox was full.

  There were a half-dozen messages from Billy Matthews that sounded more desperate with each additional call. Playing concierge in my absence was apparently more demanding than he’d anticipated. I took pity on him and called back. It took a few minutes, but I was able to answer all his questions—except the last one, which I assumed was rhetorical: “How in the world do you put up with Peter every day?” he asked.

  Jack’s contributions were two profanity-laden phone calls and a similar text demanding to know what I was doing in Portland. Erin must have given him a heads-up after I left her place. No return call needed—or deserved. The last message was a text from Shannon. My granddaughter had taught me how to send and retrieve texts when I first got my phone and we’d been text buddies ever since. It still amazed me that a six-year-old could master the skill so quickly. Whatever Shannon’s problems were, it certainly wasn’t a lack of smarts. She wanted to know if I planned to come to her birthday party, so I texted back that I wouldn’t miss it.

  Communications completed, I left the downtown core via the Morrison Street Bridge. The bridge is one of ten that span the Willamette River, which divides downtown Portland and its westside neighborhoods from the eastside communities. The sun that had been so glorious earlier had given way to angry clouds rolling in from the north. The wind was brisk and a flurry of red and gold leaves twirled like ballerinas as they fell onto the tree-lined streets.

  Bobby’s cousin lived in a working class neighborhood in northeast Portland. It was just a ten-minute jaunt from downtown, but seemed blissfully detached from the hustle of the city. The small homes on her street were typical of those built during the World War II era—a mixture of Craftsman, Cape Cod, and cottage styles. Molly’s cottage had what realtors would call curb appeal. An ivy-covered front porch was adorned with a couple of hanging baskets overflowing with colorful fall flowers, a wicker rocking chair with matching end table, and a welcoming bright green front door.

  Molly herself was just as pleasing. She invited me, a virtual stranger, into her home, fed me homemade chili and cornbread, and told me to ask any questions I wanted. She was in her late forties, barely five feet tall, and had a pixie-like face. She had Bobby’s blond hair, but that was about all the genetic features the cousins shared. I don’t know what a typical pipefitter looks like, but this petite woman dressed in a frilly apron, living with two cats in a vine-covered cottage, certainly wasn’t what I had imagined.

  There’s something about breaking bread that fosters kinship. Molly and I quickly bonded as we ate dinner and got to know one another. We discovered we had a lot in common. We were both divorced, had one grown daughter, and had previously worked in related industries. We both knew what losing jobs did to the psyche and how difficult it was to start over in a radically different career field. Molly had just found part-time employment as a retail clerk.

  “Did Bobby tell you that I was bitter?” she asked.

  We’d just settled in the living room after our meal, sipping tea and warming ourselves by the wood-burning fireplace when she brought up Bobby’s warning. I admitted that he had and added, “But stretching scarce unemployment dollars can make anyone bitter.”

  “I made more on unemployment than I make working at Macy’s, but I’d exhausted my benefits. Since nothing was opening up in construction, I took whatever work I could get.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Hey, it’s okay. I’d rather be working than collecting unemployment anyway. It’s just hard to give up something I loved doing.”

  “Speaking of which, Bobby said you could tell me about your work at Columbia Plaza.” I’d waited until now to broach the subject, hoping that a little get-to-know-you time would pay off.

  She sighed and leaned back in her chair. “Yeah, that was my last pipefitting job. I worked in the federally run shipyards after I got out of the navy. I made good money, but private industry paid better, so I switched.”

  “I understand you were a union steward?”

  “Molly the Meanie, they called me. That was one of the better labels. I may be little, but I have a big bark. I needed it, too.”

  “Things got rough?”

  “Par for the course,” she said. “Things are changing, but I’m still a woman in a man’s job. I’m sure you’ve experienced that, too.”

  “Some, but probably not as much as you have. The engineering field is drawing a lot of women now. I worked
for a good company.”

  “I wish I could say the same. Petrov and Navikov’s project was doomed from the start.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Not enough capital. It didn’t help that Petrov and his little sister were such high rollers. They sucked that company dry. We all saw the end coming, but it didn’t make it go down any easier.” She shrugged. “But at least we didn’t wind up dead like the Navikovs.”

  “Who do you think killed them?”

  One of Molly’s cats jumped onto her lap. She gently stroked its calico-colored fur for a moment. “The rumor mill has the killings pegged as a mob hit,” Molly said, looking down at her pet. “But some of the guys I worked with weren’t exactly choir boys.” She looked up and regarded me carefully. “When the project ended, it caused a lot of anger and resentment. Testosterone-fueled rage is not pretty.”

  “You think one of your fellow workers might’ve killed the Navikovs?”

  Molly smiled without warmth. “Let’s put it this way—whether it’s testosterone-or estrogen-fueled, rage is rage. So, yes, I think it’s entirely possible that one of the workers at the Columbia project killed the Novikovs. And probably Petrov, too.”

  We tossed around the possibilities for a while longer, but Molly wasn’t able or willing to give me the name of anyone she suspected. It was dark and rainy by the time I left Portland, which matched my mood perfectly. I’d started the day confident that I could solve this case, but all I had to show for my efforts was a long road trip that added a few hundred more miles on the Miata’s odometer and raised about the same number of questions. I should’ve known that tracking down a killer took more than confidence and a strong desire to succeed. Running around asking questions didn’t a detective make.

  I could just hear Jack’s ridicule when I returned. “Face it,” he’d say. “Detective work isn’t for amateurs.” He’d put it a little more crudely, but the truth was, he’d be right. As a detective, I was a bust, just like my job, my reputation, and possibly my freedom.