by Lisa Regan
“Why didn’t you wake me up?” he said.
“Then you wouldn’t have had any sleep at all. Besides, it’s a dead end right now. Unless she calls back.”
Gretchen and Mettner banged through the stairwell door, both shaking water from their hair. They attacked Misty’s box of goodies and settled in at their desks, ready to catch up. Gretchen booted up her computer, checked her email, and started printing documents out. Before Josie could brief them on the Beverly Urban case or the mysterious female night caller, Amber arrived, dressed in another form-fitting skirt and blouse, this time in darker tones. Instead of a briefcase, she carried a cup-holder filled with paper coffee cups. She set them down on Mettner’s desk. “Hi, everyone,” she said with a smile. “I thought you might need these.” Her face fell as she saw the cup in Josie’s hand, but she quickly covered it with a smile. “Now you’ll have two,” she told Josie, setting a cup in front of her. “Detective Quinn,” she said. “Detective Mettner told me you like your coffee with two sugars and lots of half and half.”
“Mett,” Josie said. “We just call him Mett. Thank you.”
Josie sipped the cup Noah had brought her as she watched Amber hand out the rest of them, each one made to the person’s liking as per Mett’s instructions.
Mettner said, “I told her we usually like Komorrah’s, but they’re flooded now.”
Gamely, Noah said, “This was very thoughtful. Thank you.”
When she had finished dispensing the drinks, Amber pulled a chair over from one of the unoccupied desks. She produced a tablet with keyboard which she opened on her lap. Then she looked at them expectantly.
Gretchen said, “Miss Watts, you’ll be joining us for all of our briefings from now on?”
Amber smiled. “Please, call me Amber. Well, not every briefing but I thought for now, to get myself acclimated, I’d sit in on as many as I can. This will give me an idea of what types of cases you’re working on and any press issues you might be up against.”
Josie wanted to tell her that they’d handled the press just fine as long as she’d been with the department, but it was obvious that in spite of the Chief’s protests, Amber was there to stay. When no one spoke, Amber said, “Look, detectives, I’m not the Mayor’s plant, okay?”
“No one said that,” Mettner told her.
Josie, Gretchen, and Noah all swiveled their heads to stare at him. Noticing their looks, he said, “What? You guys think she’s a plant from the Mayor? Really?”
“It’s okay,” Amber said. “Really. Listen, I can’t change the fact that the Mayor hired me, but I am here to do a job and that is to handle all press matters so that all of you can do your jobs. That’s what I’m here to do, and if it makes you feel any better, I report to your Chief, not the Mayor.”
No one spoke.
After a tense moment, Mettner said, “Come on, guys. We might as well make the most of this situation. We’ve got work to do.”
Gretchen said, “What happens if Mayor Charleston doesn’t get re-elected? Do you lose your job?”
Amber waved a hand dismissively. “Oh, the election is months away. I’m not worried about that now.”
“But the primary is in a couple of weeks,” Noah pointed out. “The other party doesn’t have a candidate, which means either Charleston or Dutton will run unopposed for Mayor in November. You’ll know in two weeks who your boss is going to be next year.”
Josie said, “Dutton’s running on a campaign to cut spending. He’s made Charleston out as though she’s gone buck wild with the city’s budget.”
Amber stared at them, a genial smile frozen stiffly on her face. An awkward moment passed. Then she let out a breath and said, “Well, I can’t worry about that right now. I have a job to do for as long as I’m here, so if you wouldn’t mind…”
Reluctantly, they began their morning briefing on the Beverly Urban case. Gretchen ran down everything they’d learned the day before. Josie talked about having tracked down Beverly’s two best school friends; the call from Alice; her search for the name in the Urban materials; and the warrants she had prepared for the cellular networks. Then Gretchen passed around a list of contractors that Plummer’s secretary had emailed over that morning.
Noah skimmed over it. “Here,” he said. “Newton Basement Waterproofing. I’d talk to them first.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Gretchen said. “But I’d still like to dig up the permits from the City Codes office.”
“I’ll go,” Noah said.
Mettner said, “I’m supposed to be at the command post today. I can have someone take me over to Hempstead and see if it’s still underwater. If it’s not, I can poke around; see if I can find any clues.”
“Look for the house downstream too,” Josie told him. “See if you can find anything there.”
“On it,” Mettner said. He stood, picked up his coffee cup, and smiled at Amber. “I’ll see you later.”
Noah said, “I’ll head over to the City Codes office. That’s probably going to take a few hours. This way you two can start talking to people while I do that.”
Amber clicked away on her tablet as Josie picked up several documents Gretchen had printed out that morning, looking for known relatives of Vera Urban. “There’s a brother here,” Josie said.
“Yeah,” Gretchen answered. “I looked him up. He lives in Georgia. Not married. He’s a chemical engineer. Looks like he’s ten years older than her.”
“Let’s give him a call.”
Fifteen
Josie picked up the phone and set it to speaker so they could both hear. She dialed Vera’s brother’s number. After six rings, a man’s voice answered.
“Mr. Floyd Urban?” Josie asked.
“Who is this?”
Josie identified herself and Gretchen and told him why they were calling. For a long moment there was only dead air. Then he said, “You said my niece was murdered? I hate to tell you this, officers, but I don’t have a niece.”
Gretchen said, “You have a sister though, correct?”
“Well, yeah, but I haven’t talked to her in decades. We’re… how do you say? … Estranged.”
“Why is that?” Josie asked.
“I don’t really have time for this,” Floyd told them.
Josie said, “Okay, well what we can do is contact the police in your area and have them bring you in for an interview at your convenience. Would that work better?”
The sound of a heavy sigh filtered through the line. Then Floyd said, “Our mother died when Vera was very young, but our father passed when Vera was just out of high school. He didn’t have much, but she wanted it all. The house, the car, whatever was in his bank accounts. Said she needed it. Said I had been out of the house for ten years and was already established. When I insisted on getting my half of the estate, she tried to pass off a forged will, saying our dad had written it before he died, cutting me out and leaving her everything.”
“How did you know it was forged?” Gretchen asked.
“My sister was eighteen at the time, and believe me, she was never a genius. I just knew. As soon as I threatened to get lawyers involved, she backed down. We split the estate down the middle and never spoke again.”
“Not even once?” Josie asked. “Not even through social media? No calls for major life events?”
“Let me put it to you this way, officer, I didn’t even invite her to my wedding. My kids are grown now and have no idea she even exists. I really didn’t want someone like that in their lives anyway.”
“Someone like that,” Josie echoed. “Vera was just a kid.”
Floyd laughed bitterly. “You sound like my father. She was old enough to know right from wrong. Listen, she wasn’t a murderer or anything, sure, but she was conniving, and she had a problem with lying. The estate business was the final straw.”
Gretchen said, “You had no idea that Vera ever had a child?”
“No, I’m sorry, I didn’t.”
“You haven�
��t heard from or spoken with or been in any contact with Vera since she was eighteen years old?” Josie asked.
“That’s right.”
“Mr. Urban, do you know anyone named Alice?” Josie asked.
“No.”
“Do you know if Vera knew anyone by that name?”
“No, I don’t. I told you, we’ve never had a relationship. Listen, I really can’t help you.”
Gretchen said, “The medical examiner is going to be releasing Beverly Urban’s body soon. They usually ask the next of kin to make the arrangements.”
Bitter laughter erupted from the receiver. “I am not the next of kin.”
Josie said, “I’m afraid you are, Mr. Urban.”
“This kid of Vera’s didn’t have a father?” he asked.
“There’s none listed on the birth certificate,” Gretchen said.
He laughed again. “Yeah, that sounds exactly right. Well, you’ve got your work cut out for you, don’t you? Find her father because I’m not paying for her funeral.”
With that, he hung up.
Josie looked at Gretchen. “I have a feeling Vera was lucky that he stopped speaking to her all those years ago.”
Shaking her head, Gretchen said, “I think you’re right.” She jotted down some notes in her notebook. “Well, that doesn’t get us anywhere at all.”
“We’ve got to find someone who knew Vera,” Josie said. “Maybe old co-workers or friends?”
Gretchen suggested, “Maybe Beverly’s friends would know where her mother worked or who her friends were.”
“Worth a try,” Josie said.
Chief Chitwood’s voice boomed across the room. “Detectives,” he said, striding out of his office. Ignoring Amber, he asked, “What have you got for me?”
They briefed him and he listened, the creases in his craggy face deepening with each detail. When they finished, he said, “Let’s have a press conference.”
Amber’s head shot up from her tablet. “Chief,” she said. “Are you sure that’s a good idea this early on in the investigation?”
“Watts,” he barked. “It’s ultimately my decision when to have press conferences. If I tell my detectives to notify the press of what’s going on, that’s what they’ll do.”
Amber said, “This is a cold case, sir. There’s no urgency—”
Chitwood cut her off, pointing a finger in her direction. “You don’t think putting a murderer behind bars is urgent, Watts?”
Amber put a hand up. “That’s not what I said. I only meant to say that it might be prudent to get more information before we take this public.”
Josie cleared her throat. “Chief,” she said. “I think what Miss Watts is getting at is that once we make the details of the case public, anyone who might know something about Beverly Urban’s murder and the whereabouts of her mother may disappear or withhold information they might otherwise have told us. This Alice person—what if she runs once we release Beverly’s name to the public?”
One of his bushy eyebrows kinked, a rogue gray hair like steel wool jutting out. “Quinn, in my office. Now.”
With a sigh, Josie followed him inside his office, closing the door behind her. He paced in front of his desk, keeping his voice low. She expected him to reprimand her for disagreeing with him in front of the new press liaison but instead he said, “Listen, Quinn, I need these protestors over at Quail Hollow off my back. I have to give the public something else to gnaw on. What better than this? A murder case. For the love of all that’s holy, I can’t even speak freely in my own stationhouse anymore.”
“Sir, I wasn’t suggesting that we don’t do a press conference, just that we limit what we tell the press. If this Alice woman is a real lead, I don’t want to lose her. You can work out what to release and what to hold back. Just don’t release Beverly’s name yet. Make Amber do the conference. That’s why she’s here, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “I need something to keep her busy until this Quail Hollow thing is resolved. If the Mayor thinks sending a spy is going to stop me from bringing the full force of the law down on her and her cronies, she’s got another think coming.”
Josie said, “Release some vague details today. We found the body of a seventeen-year-old girl under the house on Hempstead. We’re working to identify her and determine how long she may have been buried there. The medical examiner has confirmed that the manner of death was homicide. Tomorrow, we send Amber out there with a little more.”
His head bobbed along with her words. “Yeah,” he said. “I can give her a tip line to handle. Ask people to call in. Good work, Quinn. You take Palmer—get those warrants signed and run down some leads. Now, get out of my office and send Miss Watts in here. I’ll settle this with her. Then I’ve got to go handle some more of this Quail Hollow horseshit before a riot breaks out.”
Josie went back to her desk and told Amber that the Chief wanted to see her. She stood up, smoothed her skirt, plastered a smile across her face, and strode into the Chief’s office.
“What was that about?” Gretchen asked.
Josie waited for the Chief’s door to close before she relayed the conversation to Gretchen.
“Wow,” said Gretchen. “There may be an unforeseen advantage to having a press liaison.”
“Really?” Josie asked. “What’s that?”
“He might be on our side more often now.”
Josie’s cell phone buzzed several times. She punched in her passcode and studied the text messages from Noah. “We’ve got a lead,” she said. “Looks like there were some major plumbing issues at the house on Hempstead while Vera and Beverly were living there. One of the load-bearing walls got rotted. That work was handled by Zurzola Contracting.”
Gretchen wheeled her chair over to her desktop computer and started typing. “Looks like they closed in 2007.” She picked up a printout of the email she’d received from Tammy and studied it. “They’re not even on this list. Does it say anything about who did the plumbing work?”
“Yes,” Josie said. “You don’t have to look it up, the plumber is dead.”
“Great,” Gretchen sighed. “We’re really on a roll here.”
“Hold on,” Josie said, scrolling through the texts and PDF documents Noah had sent over. “Look up Newton Basement Waterproofing, the one Noah mentioned earlier. Around that same time, they applied for a permit to underpin the basement. If the plumbing issue was that large that they needed to dig up some or all of the basement, maybe Plummer decided to go ahead and have the whole basement lowered at the same time.”
Gretchen’s hands flew across her keyboard. A smile lit her face. “We’re in luck. They’re still in business—and their office is not in one of the flood zones!”
Sixteen
After taking care of the warrants, they headed to Newton Basement Waterproofing. The rain had stopped, but the clouds overhead were thick and gray. They showed no signs of clearing. Josie longed for the sight of blue skies and sunshine. The gloomy weather did nothing to help her mood. She turned briefly to Gretchen. “You find out anything about this company?”
“Looks like it’s family owned,” she told Josie. “Been around forty years. Father passed it to his son. Current owner is George Newton. He is in his forties. They have a staff of ten.”
Josie skirted around the flooded portion of the city, taking a circuitous route until she reached North Denton, which was a more sparsely populated and mountainous part of the city. Newton Basement Waterproofing was housed in a flat-roofed cinderblock building with a large parking lot. Two pickup trucks sat in front of the building, their beds filled with equipment. Josie and Gretchen parked next to them and made their way inside. A ding sounded overhead as they opened the front door and stepped in. A few chairs sat unoccupied to their left. Directly in front of them was a tall, unmanned desk. Brochures were spaced in neat piles across its surface. From a doorway behind the desk, a male voice called, “Be right there!”
They waited five minutes and finally,
a ruddy-faced man with short brown hair emerged from the doorway. He wore dirty jeans and a black T-shirt with white lettering that said, Newton Basement Waterproofing. Since 1980. “What can I do for you?” he asked.
Josie and Gretchen were getting their credentials out when he pointed at Josie and said, “Hey, I know you. You’re that detective.”
Josie handed him her credentials. “Yes, Detective Josie Quinn.”
He gave Gretchen’s ID a passing glance, his attention focused on Josie. “What can I help you with?”
Josie said, “I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to watch the news in the last twenty-four hours, but we recovered human remains from beneath the foundation of a home on Hempstead Road.”
He grimaced. “Oh yeah, I saw it on the news. It was a body, huh?”
“Yes, unfortunately. It was the body of a girl who lived in the house between 1997 and 2004. She had been buried beneath the foundation. We pulled city permits to see if anyone had worked on the basement of that house, and we found that your company applied for a permit for underpinning in 2004.”
His face clouded with confusion. “You think I had something to do with this?”
Gretchen said, “Mr. Newton, is it?”
“Yeah,” he said. “George.”
“Right now, we’re just trying to establish when and how the body came to be under the house. Do you remember working on Hempstead?”
His eyes were wide. “No. I mean if we applied for a permit, then I’m sure we did the work, but I don’t personally remember it.”
“Were you working here back then?” Josie asked.
“Oh yeah,” he answered. “I wasn’t in charge or anything, but I worked for my pops for a long time before he handed over the company. I was on the crews. He sent us to places and we did the jobs.”
On her phone, Josie pulled up the PDF document Noah had sent her and showed it to him. He patted his collar and then searched the underside of the desk until he came up with a pair of reading glasses. “You mind?” he asked, reaching for her phone.
“Not at all,” Josie told him, handing her phone over.
