4
After stopping at all the addresses
listed for Dillon and turning up zilch, I drove back to the office. The front
door was open until six, when the receptionist and Amerson went home, but I
wanted to slip in and out. I parked in the back and let myself in through the
rear entrance. I’m not an employee and don’t work full time, so I don’t have an
office or my own desk. But there are several cubical workstations in one of the
back rooms, set up with computers and phones for use by those of us who only
drop by occasionally. Tonight, the room was empty.
I chose a seat
and pulled out my notes. It was tedious work, but I went through each plate
number I’d written down. My first step is always to see what name came back and
if it’s known to be connected to the case. My next step is to make sure the
plate came back to the same make and model I’d found it on. Stolen plates had
blown open more than one case in the past, or so my mentor Blue had said. Lastly,
I input everything into an Excel spreadsheet so I can more easily search for
patterns later. When I’d done this, coming across no names that rang any bells
or any stole plates, I printed the list.
I’d learned the
Camaro and FJ were registered to an Eric Dunn. A quick property search told me
Dunn owned the house, having purchased it five years before. I ran his name
through the Sideline database and came up with several hits. A bit more
searching told me Dunn was a defense attorney. That went a long way in explaining
how he could afford his house.
I wasn’t sure I
was making progress on finding Danielle Dillon, but I still needed to find Dix,
too. I looked up the number to the Starbucks where he worked and used the
landline to call. A girl answered, and I heard the espresso machine hissing and
blenders whirling in the background.
“Hi. I was
wondering if Cory was working tonight.”
“He’s not here
at the moment, but I think he’s closing tonight. Hang on, let me check.”
It is
frightening to me what people will tell a perfect stranger over the phone,
truly frightening.
“Yep, he’ll be
here from five-thirty to close. Would you like me to have him call you?”
“Oh, no, that’s
okay. I may just swing by.”
I hung up and
dialed my voicemail. I had a message from Amerson, the Burbanks’ accountant,
and Ellmann. Amerson called to tell me no vehicle was registered with the DMV
under the name Danielle Dillon. I’d just looked it up myself and knew the same
thing. But that message had been there a while. The accountant left the names and
addresses of the housekeeper and gardener. Ellmann just asked me to call him
back.
I added the
housekeeper’s and gardener’s addresses to my growing notes, along with the
accountant’s name and phone number, just in case. Feeling I’d come to a bit of
a standstill, I dialed Ellmann.
“I was wondering
if you had plans tonight,” he said. “Would you be interested in grabbing
dinner?”
“Sure. Did you
have anything specific in mind?”
“Not really.
Why? Do you?”
“How about
Pueblo Viejo?”
“Strange choice.
I have the nagging suspicion you’re up to something. Whatever it is, can we get
ice cream first?”
Ice cream is
Ellmann’s favorite food. When in doubt with Ellmann, get him ice cream.
Yesterday’s Ice Cream Shoppe, located across the street from Pueblo Viejo,
serves Blue Bell ice cream. In Ellmann’s opinion, the only ice cream that’s
better is the homemade stuff at Pioneer Candies and Ice Cream.
“Sure.”
“You’re not
denying it?”
“Would there be
any point?”
“Probably not.”
“So I thought
I’d save us both the time.”
“Want me to pick
you up?”
“No, I better
meet you there.”
“Definitely up
to something. When do you want to meet?”
I looked at my
watch. “How about twenty minutes?”
He agreed, and
we disconnected.
I gathered my
printout and tucked the notes back into my pocket. The drive, in the heavy
evening rush-hour traffic, took nearly the whole twenty minutes. It took me
another five to find a parking space and hike over to the restaurant. Ellmann
was standing on the sidewalk waiting for me.
Ellmann is a
very big man. He’s six-six and solid muscle. I’m pretty sure he could pick up a
car if he wanted to. He has wavy dark hair, which he keeps a little longer, and
his cheeks and chin are covered in a dusting of dark growth. There were few
occasions when he wore a high and tight and went clean shaven. Fine with me;
he’s a very good looking guy.
His eyes are
green, a more jade color than mine, and have a mesmerizing quality to them. Of
Italian descent, Ellmann doesn’t really have the olive complexion, but he
always looks healthily tanned. His typical work uniform consists of jeans,
which fit him exactly right, and t-shirts, with a few button-down tops thrown
in. Today was no different. He wore a light blue t-shirt that made me want to
blow off the rest of the day and take him home.
“You look
beautiful,” he said, smiling.
“I was just
thinking the same of you.”
He pulled me
into him and kissed me. The take-Ellmann-home idea was gaining intensity and
appeal the longer the kiss went on.
“Are those
handcuffs in your pocket?” he whispered in my ear.
“Yeah.” Suddenly
my mind was dreaming of different things to do with those cuffs. I pushed away
from Ellmann. “Uh, should we eat?”
He chuckled as
he followed me inside, no doubt fully aware of the direction my brain had spun.
Ellmann tends to have an uncanny and sometimes annoying talent for knowing
precisely what I haven’t said. Only one other person in the world can do such a
thing, and that’s Amy. It had taken her years of practice. Ellmann seems to do
it naturally. Most days I like that. Some days it scares me.
Ellmann had put
our name in and requested a seat on the patio, which was all the more
convenient for my purposes. After a short five-minute wait, we were shown to a
table. The restaurant was crowded, and the sidewalks were packed.
“How was your
day?” I asked after we placed our order.
“Pretty good,”
he said, nodding. He took a sip of his drink and leaned back in his chair.
“Finally got a break in that series of muggings downtown. Caught the guy this
morning. We even recovered a lot of what was stolen.”
“That’s great.”
“It is. Shortly
after that, though, I got called in on a new case.” He dragged a hand back
through his hair. It’s what he does when he’s stressed or upset. “Caroline
Marks was murdered last night.”
I may not have
known the name Burbanks, but I knew the name Caroline Marks. She was a big deal
in Fort Collins, her family being sort of like our own version of the
Rockefellers. She was a native, her great-great-great grandfather having been a
key player in founding the town. He’d struck it rich with the railroads, and
while he had left plenty of money to his children, they’d each gone on to do
something remarkable and earn their own fortunes. The Marks family had more
money than the lot of them could ever spend in ten lifetimes.
Caroline Marks
had married young and become a widow young, the result of something tragic like
cancer, if I remembered right. Never remarrying, she devoted her time to her
children and town. Pretty much every local charity and public event had her hand
in it. Every year, she gave away two scholarships to CSU to local high school
graduates she chose herself. It wasn’t uncommon for her to pay the hospital
bills of a local family in dire financial straits. She’d built a shelter for
the homeless and fully funded the soup kitchen there. She donated money to the
Lincoln Center so they could buy equipment and props for the community theater.
She donated computers and musical instruments to the local schools. She went to
the library and read books to the kids on weekends. She was like Fort Collins’
own Mother Theresa. It was hard to think of her as being dead, and that much
harder to think of her death as murder.
Who could have
done something like that? Who would want to kill Mother Theresa?
“I can’t believe
it,” I said after a long moment. “Do you have any leads or anything?”
He shook his
head. “No. I’m still not really sure what we’re dealing with. We think her
murder is connected to a string of murders stretching across the state. The FBI
is getting involved, and a task force is being formed.”
“I just can’t
believe it.”
He sighed and
leaned forward again. “I get the feeling you have plans for the evening. I was
going to head back to work anyway. I want to go through things while it’s all
fresh and before the FBI takes over.”
“Yeah, I’ve got
a couple things to do. Hey, would you do me a favor, maybe when you need a
break later?”
“Depends,” he
said cautiously, watching me. Even after such a short time, Ellmann knows me
well.
“I just need a
little information. In August, a couple named Melissa and Mitchell Conrad was
murdered in their home. I don’t know yet if it’s connected in any way to the
woman I’m looking for. There wasn’t much in the papers.”
“The name rings
a bell, I think. I’ll see what I can find. It’ll probably be nothing,” he
warned.
“I know. I just
need to be sure.”
“Who are you
looking for?”
“A woman named
Danielle Dillon. I’ve got until six a.m. Sunday to find her or Sideline is out
a lot of money and an old lady loses her house.”
“Is she the
reason we’re here?”
“No. That would
be Cory Dix. Oh, I don’t have a cell phone right now, by the way.”
If he was
surprised, he didn’t show it. I suspect he wasn’t.
“What happened?”
I explained.
“I’m glad you
didn’t follow him out the window.”
“I’m not a total
idiot.”
“So, what’d Dix
do, anyway?”
I told him.
“Streaking, huh?
He’s quite the daredevil.”
“He’s a pain in
my ass,” I said, looking across the street at Starbucks. “He works there. And
the police are probably more upset about the grand theft auto part.”
“With CSUPD,
it’s hard to tell.”
Not
surprisingly, there is a bit of rivalry between the different agencies in law
enforcement. Those in Fort Collins and the state of Colorado are no different.
They are capable, for the most part, of working together, but they’re pretty
hard on one another. And all of that animosity is magnified for the FBI. I
imagined Ellmann would be pretty stressed in the coming days after working with
them and a bunch of other local agencies.
Ellmann polished
off his entire plate and then the last part of mine. We paid our bill and left,
crossing College then heading south. He held my hand while we walked.
“So, my dad
called me today,” he said.
I could tell by
his tone I should be worried.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. He’s
getting married.”
From what
Ellmann had told me, his parents had been married young. After three children
and fifteen years together, they’d called it quits. His mother, Anja, had
gotten remarried a couple years later to a guy Ellmann and his siblings like
well enough, and she’s still married. His father, Vincent, had been sleeping
with his secretary at the time of his divorce. After a couple years, he found
out she’d been having an affair. He dumped her then moved on to someone else,
then someone else, then another. He was never without a girlfriend for very
long, and the women kept getting younger and younger. His children had gotten
used to his revolving door of women, but none of them liked it.
“Married?” I
said, unsure of exactly what else to say.
“Her name is
Susan. I guess they’ve been together for about a year. Anyway, he called to
tell me he’s coming to town. He wants all of us to meet her before the wedding.
He’s already been to see my brother in Seattle. This is his next stop. Somehow
he convinced my sister to fly out here, too.”
Ellmann is the
middle child. His brother, Charlie, is two years older and lives in Seattle
with his wife and their two children. He’s some kind of engineer doing some
sort of complex aerospace design stuff I don’t understand. Their sister, Natalie,
still lives in California, in the town where their mother had moved them after
the divorce. Ellmann had told me she’s an artist. She works at a local community
college teaching painting, sculpture, and drawing. She does her own art on the
side and has done several art shows.
“Well, okay,” I
said. “We should be happy for him, right?”
“She’s probably
younger than my sister,” he said. “He’s not a young man anymore. I can’t help
but wonder what she’s after.”
No one in
Ellmann’s family is hurting for money, least of all his father.
“Okay, so when
she gets here, we’ll get her full name and her prints and do a background
check. If she seems shady, I’m not above a little intimidation.”
He glanced down
at me then laughed.
“I want you to
meet them,” he said after a minute.
We walked to the
door of the ice cream shop, and he pulled it open.
Ellmann’s
intimately familiar with my family after a couple encounters shortly after we
met. It hadn’t gone well, but at least my dirty little secret was out on the
table. I’d never met any of his family. I suppose I hadn’t thought it would
never happen, but I had thought it would be a while longer.
“When are they
coming?” I asked as we got in line.
“Tomorrow.”
I knew my eyes
were bigger than usual when I looked up at him.
“Tomorrow? What
kind of notice is that?”
“He only called
me today. That’s just how he is. My sister will fly in about an hour later. I
was thinking we could all have dinner.”
“Have you told
them about me?”
“Yes, a little.
Please, don’t worry. They’ll love you.”
Naturally.
What’s not to love?
“And on the off
chance they don’t?”
“Doesn’t matter.
There’s a reason I moved to a state where none of my family lives.”
__________
We ate our ice cream at a table on
the sidewalk outside the shop. We chatted about important things and about
nothing. One of my favorite things about Ellmann is how easy it is to be with
him. We don’t always have to be doing something or talking; we could do nothing
and not say a word. We could also do anything or talk about anything. And I rarely
get bored with him. He makes me think; he challenges me, pushes me. Ellmann’s
very intelligent, and I found we are more equally matched than most people I
know.
But brains run
in Ellmann’s family. Ellmann has degrees in science and psychology. His brother
is an engineer. His sister was a chemistry major before she switched to art.
Their father was a scientist for the Army Corps of Engineers until he retired.
And their mother is some sort of biological research scientist for the Center
for Disease Control.
My family didn’t
necessarily get shorted in the brain department, but mental illness runs
rampant on my mother’s side, and there is a long history of abuse on my
father’s. All of this significantly affected the ability of my relatives to
pursue college degrees and honest, meaningful careers. My mother somehow
managed to get an MBA and become a partner in her investment firm, but she was
the exception to the rule, and I can’t even begin to guess how she managed to
do it. It probably had something to do with the fact that the schizophrenia
that runs in the family had skipped over her. She got bipolar disorder instead.
By some miracle, both my brother and I seemed to be unaffected, but this is a
constant fear in the back of my mind.
I sat opposite
Ellmann facing north. I watched the heavy foot traffic in and out of Starbucks
over his shoulder. This Starbucks store is located in the old, historic
Northern Hotel. Yesterday’s Ice Cream Shoppe and a couple other places share
the space. The hotel is located on the north side of Old Town and just west of
Old Town Square. There are always lots of people in this area, and today the
place was hopping, with an almost constant string of people in and out. I could
see customers milling around through the windows, but the number of people and
my angle made it hard to differentiate anyone in particular.
“Got your
capture papers?” Ellmann asked as he took his last bite.
I nodded. “Yep.”
“All right,
then. Let’s go get him.”
We stood.
“You can’t help
me.”
“I’m just going
for a cup of coffee.”
We dumped our
trash and walked to the corner. The place was crazy. Every table I could see
was occupied. The line to place orders reached to the door. The line to pick up
orders was just as long. I attempted to politely make my way through the crowd,
but people pretended not to see me and didn’t move, afraid I was really trying
to cut in line. People tended to move out of Ellmann’s way just because of his
size—some instinctive fear of being flattened by a mountain. But I’d never
given Ellmann much room to play rescuer to me, and I didn’t think now was the
time to start. If I could save myself from kidnappers, I could get through a
little crowd, right? Instead, I used my elbows to shove people out of the way,
like I was making my way to the bar for a drink.
There were a
couple gasps, a few curses, a couple return shoves, but I paid no attention.
When I was near the front, I could better see the baristas behind the counter.
There was one kid taking orders and two others making drinks. None of them were
Cory Dix. I worked my way around the store as best I could, searching for Dix,
who was now here if what I’d been told about his schedule was true. I pushed
through the crowd waiting for their coffee to search the small seating area
toward the bathrooms. And then I heard it.
“Zoe Grey.”
The voice like
nails on a chalkboard.
I stopped. I
didn’t want to turn around, but I could see no other choice. It was too late to
pretend I hadn’t heard her, and I’d have to pass her in order to get out.
Taking a breath,
standing up a little bit taller, and pushing my shoulders back slightly, I
turned.
“Priscilla.”
Priscilla
Casimir had started at the private K-12 school I went to in third grade. She’d
declared us mortal enemies on her first day because she believed our ancient
Native American ancestors to have been enemies. I’d declared her my archnemesis
because, in the third grade, I’d believed I was a superhero, and every
superhero has an archnemesis. Priscilla is mean, self-centered, ugly, and a
little bit crazy. Growing up, she’d looked a lot like Christina Ricci in the
movie Casper, with pale white skin
and long, black hair. Except Priscilla had weird (crazy) eyes, a huge forehead,
which was always obvious because she wore no bangs, and a pointy nose and chin.
She’d always been tall and thin, aside from having hips twelve sizes too big
for her body, which I’d always secretly hoped she’d never grow into.
Now, I could see
some things had changed. Braces had straightened out her ugly teeth and, I
suspected, her jaw, because her chin wasn’t nearly so pointy. Her nose was
still pointy and slightly upturned at the end, but it had been softened by age
and the effect of her thick bangs sweeping across her forehead. The bangs also
hid her enormous forehead, which unfortunately helped her appearance
dramatically. She was obviously paying someone a lot of money to style her hair
because it was almost attractive (though I’d die before I admitted that out
loud to anyone). It was still long, but she’d added highlights and layers.
She may have
been one of the tallest in school, but she’d done her growing early; she was
only about five-five barefoot. She was still thin, but the healthy kind, not
the bean-pole kind. I was devastated to see she had grown into her hips and
that her body was well proportioned. Sometimes life just isn’t fair. She was
wearing an expensive brown pinstripe pantsuit with a pink blouse and heels. Her
jewelry, makeup, and perfume were also expensive. She was carrying a brown
leather briefcase with a designer label. It was all the sort of stuff I used to
buy when I was making six figures a year. I had never thought it was possible,
but I actually hated her more just
then.
“What are you
doing here?” she asked. Her voice had gotten a little more nasally with age, I
noticed happily. “And what happened to your face?”
“I’m actually in
the middle of something. Excuse me. Come on, Ellmann.”
I grabbed his
arm and turned, starting back through the crowd.
“Now, is that
any way to treat an old friend?”
“We were never
friends,” I said, turning back to her. “Don’t tell people that.”
She grinned; it
was that disgusting I-know-something-you-don’t grin. It always made me want to
hit her. That’s something that hadn’t
changed.
“Aren’t you
going to introduce me to your friend?” she asked, eyeballing Ellmann like she
was starving and he was a steak on a dinner plate.
“No,” I said.
“Excuse us.”
I took Ellmann’s
hand as she offered him hers.
“I’m Priscilla.
Zoe and I went to school together.”
“I’m Alex
Ellmann. I’m her boyfriend.”
I was annoyed
he’d responded. It was like letting her win. The whole point of an archnemesis
was to not let her win. Duh.
“Geez, Zoe, why
do you call your boyfriend by his last name?” she whined.
I couldn’t keep
my eyes from rolling. I’d lost track of how many times people asked me that,
and how many times I’d heard it today alone. In my opinion, which I held above
most others, it was no one’s freaking business what I called my boyfriend.
I was about to
respond when I saw an employee pushing a mop and yellow bucket around the
corner from the bathrooms. It was Dix. I knew he’d bolt if he spotted me. I
wanted to get to him before he could get too far. I shifted slightly so Ellmann
blocked me from his view, which bought me some time.
“Listen,” Priscilla
went on. “I just moved to town. You may remember, I graduated high school a
year early and got a full scholarship to Stanford. After that, I went to law
school at Harvard. I just started with a large, prestigious Denver-based firm
that has an office here in Fort Collins. I’ve been working for about a month
now, and I caught my first really big case today. It’s the kind of case that
will get me noticed. I plan to work here for a couple years then transfer to
the larger Denver office, where I’ll take on big, public cases and become a
partner by the time I’m thirty.”
The barista
called a drink that was apparently hers. She went to get it, giving me the
perfect opportunity to get away from her. But I found I was rooted to the spot.
I suppose I was in shock. I’d always known Priscilla was intelligent, which
made me hate her even more, because being intelligent just made being mean
easier for her, but I was still surprised to hear how accomplished she was.
What kind of world is it that mean people can succeed like she had?
Coffee in hand,
she returned.
“So, what are
you doing now?” she asked.
I had nothing to
say. I wasn’t married; I didn’t have kids; I didn’t even live in any of the
houses I owned. I didn’t have a college degree, never having gone back to finish
after quitting for a doomed relationship. I didn’t have a career, having quit
the only career I’d ever had twice—once five years ago in order to move back to
Fort Collins and put my brother back on the straight and narrow, and again four
weeks ago when I’d started the bond enforcement thing. Technically, I still
worked for White Real Estate and Property Management one day a week (too many
clients threatened to walk away if I quit entirely), but I might have accepted
one of Mark White’s promotions had I known a few weeks later I’d run into my
archnemesis.
“Zoe is in law
enforcement,” Ellmann said, putting his arm around my shoulders.
Ellmann had
clearly picked up on what I wasn’t saying. The “law enforcement” thing was a
bit of a stretch.
“Really?” Priscilla
said, obviously skeptical.
“Yes, and she’s
good at it. She puts bad guys behind bars. And she helps people.”
Now he was
really playing me up. Not that he wasn’t always supportive, but this seemed
over the top.
“So, you’re,
what, a cop?” she asked me.
I opened my
mouth to answer, but no sound came out.
“Not exactly,”
Ellmann said. “But she’s on the same side.”
I had watched
Dix stop to mop the floor near the bathrooms. Now he was wheeling the bucket
toward us.
“What’s on the
same side but isn’t a cop?” Priscilla asked.
I stepped away
from Ellmann as the crowd parted to allow Dix and the mop bucket to pass. The
next part happened really fast.
I moved in front
of the bucket and said, “Hi, Cory.”
Dix looked up,
and an instant later, recognition hit. He gripped the mop with both hands and
jerked it up out of the dirty water, shoving it forward. It hit my chest,
knocking me back and slopping down my front. Then Dix dropped the mop, spun
around, and ran back toward the bathrooms.
I righted myself
and started after him, knowing how much he liked bathrooms. I lost my footing
on the mop as I hurried forward, stumbling, trying to go around the bucket. I
ended up catching it with my knee as I was falling, pulling it over with me. I
hit the floor, and the dirty water dumped out, soaking my shoes and my lower
pant legs. I pushed myself up, aware of a screaming pain in my left shoulder as
I did so, and charged forward as Dix disappeared through the door and around
the corner out of sight. My shoes squished and squeaked as I ran after him.
I took the
corner too fast in wet shoes and slid into the wall. Back here, the restrooms
are to the right along the interior of the hotel. To the left is an exterior
door, which was still easing closed—I assumed Dix had torn through it. I ran
after him, huffing and puffing, sweating and soaking wet with dirty mop water.
I knew it was a lost cause (because I’m not a runner), but I refused to give up
quite yet. I caught a glimpse of a pair of shoes disappearing around the corner
to the left. I hurried after them.
By the time I
made the corner, Dix was gone.
I slowed to a
walk and, holding a stitch in my side, made my way back around to the front of
the building. People were staring at me, and I noticed they were moving out of
my way now—giving me a wide berth, in fact. I looked down at myself and could
guess why. I sort of looked deranged. The mop had struck me in the chest, and
my entire shirt front was soaking wet with dirty brown water. Under the dirt,
though, the color had faded. My jeans, wet from the cuffs to mid-thigh, were
also faded. There had been bleach in that water, the little bastard. My clothes
were ruined.
Ellmann came out
of the coffee shop as I neared the door, Priscilla close on his heels, much to
my disappointment. She was staring at me openly with wide eyes, eyes that
seemed happy. Man, I hated her. Ellmann looked concerned.
“Are you okay?
How’s your shoulder?
I nodded. “It’s
okay. He got away.”
“How many times
have you found him so far?”
“Twice.”
He shrugged. “You
found Tyler Jay three times. Dix doesn’t stand a chance.”
“These were my
favorite jeans,” I said.
He chuckled.
“They were great jeans.”
“So this is what
you do?” Priscilla asked, her nose decidedly upturned. “You chase people, allow
them to elude you and ruin your clothes, not to mention embarrass you in front
of dozens of people?”
“Priscilla,” I
said on a sigh, “it’s really too bad you moved back here.”
“Oh, really? And
why is that?”
“Because I was here first, and you’re gonna find it’s
too small for the both of us.”
Read Chapter 5
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