Easy Innocence (28 page)

People from other tables shot curious glances their way. Georgia put on her game face. “Mrs. Walcher, I understand your animosity. And I know you want to protect your daughter. But I have a job to do.”

Andrea frowned, her behavior seeming to waver for an instant. She faced her daughter. “Did she force you to talk to her? Did she threaten you in
any
way, baby? Because if she did...” She looked angrily at Georgia.

The girl looked at Georgia, then her mother. After a pause, she said, “No. She didn’t force me.”

Georgia felt the knot in her gut loosen a notch.

“Are you sure?” Andrea’s voice was rich with doubt.

“I’m sure.”

Andrea Walcher threw up her hands. “I don’t know whether to believe you or not. I come in here to get coffee and I find you cozying up to a sleazy investigator who’s trying to get a murderer off the hook.” She spun to Georgia. “How much are they paying you?”

Georgia stood up and folded her arms. Protection was one thing. Abuse was another. “Not nearly enough to deal with the likes of you.”

Rage poured into the woman’s face. “If I ever find out you and my daughter have been in contact again, whether by phone or email or even smoke signals, I’ll have you put in jail. You can count on it.” She turned to her daughter. “Lauren, come with me. Now.”

A stubborn look came over Lauren. She shook her head.

Georgia made a quick decision. She wanted the girl to trust her, but she couldn’t insinuate herself into a mother-daughter relationship. Andrea Walcher could cause serious problems. She waved her hand dismissively. “Go ahead. She had nothing to say, anyway.”

Lauren shot Georgia an uncertain look and stood up. Georgia frowned and lowered her eyes. Meanwhile, Andrea Walcher grabbed her daughter’s arm and steered her toward the door. Lauren looked back as they pushed through. Georgia shook her head.

Once they exited, Georgia ran a shaky hand over her face. People like Andrea Walcher enjoyed making waves. And there was nothing she could do about it. Andrea’s reactions, and any repercussions from them, were beyond her control. She just hoped the woman had something more important to do with her time. She started to clean off the table, willing herself to stay focused on the case. But as she pitched napkins and cups into the trash, she still felt disturbed, and she realized it wasn’t all because of Andrea Walcher.

Georgia had dealt with prostitution as a cop. Underage prostitutes, too. But Lauren’s breed was different from the whores she was used to. The hookers she picked up as a cop, whatever their motive—usually money for drugs or their pimps—would avoid looking her in the eye. They might gape at the male cops, even come on to them, but woman to woman, they knew. Despite their tough exteriors, Georgia could see that kernel of guilt.

Lauren, though, showed no remorse. For her, and Sara too, apparently, prostitution was as legitimate a way to make money as any other. Better, since you raked in so much more. Nonchalant, almost arrogant, they refused to think that prostitution was self-destructive, demeaning, or even dangerous. And for what? To impress their peers—mostly other girls—with designer clothes, purses, toys. It wasn’t just Lauren and Sara, either. Lauren was running other girls. Georgia wiped down the table, with rapid, vigorous strokes. Lauren claimed it was a win-win: the men got laid, the girls got money. Maybe Lauren was right. Maybe
she
was the only one with a bad taste in her mouth.

She grabbed her bag off the back of the chair, almost enjoying her anger—it was a good, clean anger, directed outward for a change—when she noticed Lauren’s cell phone on the table. In the commotion, the girl had forgotten it. Georgia picked it up and dropped it into her bag.

GEORGIA DROVE
the few blocks to the Walcher home, planning to leave Lauren’s cell phone in the mailbox. She wasn’t eager for another encounter with either Walcher. She parked on the road at the edge of the stand of evergreens that shielded the house from view. Grabbing the phone, she climbed out of the car and looked around. The houses up here were huge, and many of them had private drives, which meant the mailbox could be hundreds of yards from the house. She checked both ends of the semi-circular driveway, but didn’t see it.

She started to trudge through the trees, enjoying the crisp, snappy scent of pine and juniper. It must have rained overnight, because the ground was soft, and chunks of dirt clung to her shoes. She was about to break through the cover of trees when she stopped. A black Jaguar was parked in the driveway, its engine running. A man was in the driver’s seat, and Andrea Walcher was leaning over the driver’s side window.

Georgia stared at the man behind the wheel. She could only see his profile, but he had curly gray hair, and he was wearing a warm-up jacket. He looked familiar. She ducked behind a tree.

“I need to talk to you,” Andrea said to the man in the car. “Is everything kosher with the land deal?”

Georgia saw the man’s head bob up and down.

“Then why did Fred say it wasn’t?” Andrea’s voice was tense.

The man cocked his head. Georgia could just make out his reply. “I haven’t the slightest idea.”

Andrea straightened up and folded her arms. “Look. I know he was upset about something. But he didn’t have time to get into it before he died. Tom won’t talk to me about it, so I’m asking you what’s going on.”

His response was so low Georgia had to strain to hear him. “Everything’s fine, Andrea.”

“Don’t patronize me. He was my brother, Harry.”

Harry Perl. The real estate developer she’d seen at North Shore Fitness with Tom Walcher and Ricki Feldman.

“I would never do that.” Suddenly his tone oozed empathy. “It’s just that—well, Tom took care of the details. We’re almost ready to start construction. Things are proceeding nicely.”

Andrea cut him off. “Then why did Fred say he wanted to go to the authorities?” Her body language spoke anger, but something else was there too. Worry. Maybe a touch of fear.

The man’s shoulders hunched. “I wasn’t aware of that. Ask your husband.”

Andrea stared into the car for a moment, then turned on her heel and went inside.

Perl rolled up his window and pulled away from the house. Georgia waited until the Jag was out of sight. The mailbox was in front of the house just to the right of the goldfish pond. She quietly placed Lauren’s phone inside.

***

Fred was Andrea’s brother. “Uncle Fred,” Georgia recalled on the way home. He had suspicions about a land deal he and Harry Perl were involved in, but he died before he could do anything about it. Now his sister, Lauren’s mother, was following up.

Georgia thought back to the conversation she’d overheard between Perl and Walcher and Ricki Feldman at the health club. She’d been distracted by seeing Ricki, but she thought she remembered something about a deal that required Tom Walcher’s help. Walcher was expected to soften up the village board. Perl—or was it Ricki?—had told him to use his “leverage.” Whatever that “leverage” was. Was this the same deal?

She parked on Asbury and headed back to her apartment. Andrea Walcher had been livid in Starbucks, throwing around wild accusations and threats. Was this part of what was troubling her? Maybe Georgia should look into it. It wasn’t directly related to Cam Jordan or Sara Long, but she couldn’t move forward with the prostitution angle without Lauren’s help, and the last thing she needed was to be cut off from the girl. If she uncovered anything significant about the land deal, maybe she could use it to convince Andrea to let her keep talking to Lauren. Apply a little “leverage” of her own.

Back in her apartment, she sat at the computer and Googled Harry Perl. Perl Development came up right away. The website was a class act—he must have paid some agency a fortune to design it. Too bad. Her friend Sam would have killed for the job and probably charged a lot less. A string of pearls were used to tout the “pearls” of the company’s properties. Clicking on any one of them took you to a different project, including a skyscraper off Michigan Avenue, several shopping centers, and housing developments in Will and Lake Counties.

Then there was the Glen, a commercial and residential community built on what used to be acres of Midwestern prairie. It had been a controversial development. Environmentalists fought to keep the land pristine, holding meetings, staging protests, even pulling off a tricky legal maneuver or two. Ultimately, though, the project was green-lighted, and Perl had built dozens of town houses, a nursing home, and a motel.

Now Perl was announcing a new project just east of the Glen. 2500 Chestnut would be twin condos with a small, enclosed, upscale mall. During his conversation with Andrea Walcher, Perl said they were almost ready to start construction. Georgia searched his website for other projects under development. 2500 Chestnut was the only one. The Glen was only a few minutes away. She grabbed her jacket.

***

A dirty overcast grayed the sky, and a damp, earthy scent hung in the air. Georgia turned off Waukegan Road onto Chestnut. The street resembled a war zone between residential and commercial tracts, and the commercial side was winning. An apartment house lined one side of the street, but it was overwhelmed by a strip mall, cemetery, and small office complex on the other.

The property she was looking for occupied the southeast corner of Lehigh and Chestnut. Surrounded by a chain link fence, it was about the size of a football field. Georgia walked through an open gate. Hugging the perimeter were a couple of cranes and earth moving machines. A white RV was parked at the edge of the field. Perl wasn’t wasting any time.

In the center was a hole in the ground. Georgia started towards it. For the second time that day, mud caked the soles of her shoes. She picked up a stick and scraped it off. She peered into the hole, wondering what had been here before. She wasn’t a tree hugger, but she found herself regretting that another piece of the past was gone, unable to serve as a guidepost to the future.

She made a 360. On one side of the field were a couple of newly built townhouses. On the other, a bank and park district facility. But across the street on the north side were five flat-roofed houses that seemed almost defiant in their shabbiness. Most of them had peeling paint, rickety porches and seedy lawns. Between houses two and three was a space that looked like a giant gap between teeth in a kid’s mouth. An “Under Contract” sign staked the lawn of the house on the end.

Georgia picked her way across the street to the most ramshackle house and rang the doorbell.

A young Asian girl opened the door. “Yes?”

The girl looked to be the same age as Lauren. “Hello. Are your parents home?”

The girl looked blank for a moment, then turned and called out rapidly in another language. Chinese? A pot clanged from somewhere in back, and a woman emerged in the hall. When she saw Georgia, her eyebrows arched.

Georgia smiled. “Hello. My name is Georgia Davis.”

The woman frowned and looked at the girl.

The girl translated, then said to Georgia, “She doesn’t speak English.”

“I wanted to ask her about the property across the street.” Georgia waited while the girl translated.

The woman stiffened. Her response was curt.

“She says she doesn’t want to sell and to please go away.”

Georgia held up a hand. “Please tell her I’m not here for that.”

The girl translated, but the woman launched into another diatribe. Embarrassment shot across the girl’s face. “I’m sorry. You have to go.” She closed the door in her face.

Georgia headed back to the sidewalk, wondering whether to try another house. What she was doing probably wouldn’t help her find Sara Long’s murderer, and she wasn’t fond of having doors slammed in her face. Then again, she was here. May as well do a thorough job. She gazed at the other three houses. A rusty commode leaned against the side wall of the house two doors down. Next to the commode was a group of plastic buckets.

She walked over and rang the bell. Nothing happened. After a moment, she rang again. Still nothing. She was about to leave when the front door squeaked open. The woman on the other side was gnarled and old. Patches of pink scalp shone through wisps of straw-white hair, and her wrinkled face wore a dour expression. She was dressed in a bathrobe so threadbare it was impossible to tell what color it had been. On her feet were a pair of incongruously new-looking fuzzy blue slippers.

“Yeah?” She coughed into her hand, a rasping, phlegmy cough that made Georgia want to cover her face.

Georgia nodded. “Hello. I wonder if you could tell me about the property across the street.”

The woman shifted, her manner suspicious. “What about it?”

“I have a few questions.” Georgia made sure to smile.

“Who wants to know?”

“My name is Georgia Davis.”

“You from that realty company?”

“No, ma’am. I’m a private investigator.”

The woman shook her head. A draft of sour-smelling air wafted out of the house. Georgia backed up. “I told them I wasn’t gonna sell. But they keep nosing around. You gonna do something about that?”

“Who’s nosing around?”

“Them realty people.” She looked down at her slippers, as if she was afraid they might dance away from her feet.

“Do you know their name?”

“Something like a jewel.”

“Perl Development?”

“That’s it. Some guy in a fancy suit waltzes in and tells me they wanna buy my house. Building condos and stores, they say. I told ’im I didn’t think so. That they’d be taking me out of here feet first. He’s been back a couple of times, but I won’t talk to ’im. I been here over forty years.”

“That’s a long time.”

“You said it. I mean, where am I supposed to go? My nephew says he’ll find me a place, but Lord knows, he’s got his own life to live. Three kids and a bitch for a wife. But now my taxes are going up so high, I may have to.” She sighed. “I just don’t know any more. They got no heart. No soul, either, you know?”

“What was there before?”

The woman slid her fingers along the sash of her robe. “There was a gas station. And body shop. Been there ever since I moved in.”