“I liked the way he handled Tippen,” Moss went on. “No bully-boy, I'm-the-fed-and-you're-a-hick nonsense. I think he's a quick study of people. Probably frighteningly intelligent. What'd you think?”
Liska sent her a lascivious grin. “Nice pants.”
“God! Here I was being serious and professional, and you were looking at his ass!”
“Well, not when he was talking. But, come on, Mar, the guy's a total babe. Wouldn't you like a piece of that if you could get it?”
Moss looked flustered. “Don't ask me things like that. I'm an old married woman! I'm an old married Catholic woman!”
“As long as the word dead doesn't figure into that description, you're allowed to look.”
“Nice pants,” Moss muttered, fighting chuckles.
“Those big brown eyes, that granite jaw, that sexy mouth. I think I could have an orgasm watching him talk about proactive strategies.”
“Nikki!”
“Oh, that's right, you're a married woman,” Liska teased. “You're not allowed to have orgasms.”
“Do you talk this way when you're riding around with Kovac?”
“Only if I want to get him crazy. He twitches like a gigged frog. Tells me he doesn't want to know anything about my orgasms, that a woman's G spot should just remain a mystery. I tell him that's why he's been divorced twice. You should see how red he gets. I love Kovac—he's such a guy.”
Moss pointed through the windshield. “Here it is—Edgewater.”
The Edgewater town homes were a collection of impeccably styled buildings designed to call to mind a tidy New England fishing village—gray clapboard trimmed in white, cedar shake roofs, six-over-six paned windows. The units were arranged like a crop of wild mushrooms connected by meandering, landscaped paths. All of them faced the river.
“I've got the key to Bondurant's unit,” Liska said, piloting the car into the entrance of the town house complex, “but I called the caretaker anyway. He says he saw Jillian leaving Friday afternoon. I figure it won't hurt to talk to him again.”
She parked near the first unit and she and Moss showed their badges to the man waiting for them on the stoop. Liska pegged Gil Vanlees for mid-thirties. He was blond with a thin, weedy mustache, six feet tall, and soft-looking. His Timberwolves starter jacket hung open over a blue security guard's uniform. He had that look of a marginal high school jock who had let himself go. Too many hours spent watching professional sports with a can in his hand and a sack of chips beside him.
“So, you're a detective?” His small eyes gleamed at Liska with an almost sexual excitement. One was blue and one the odd, murky color of smoky topaz.
Liska smiled at him. “That's right.”
“I think it's great to see women on the job. I work security down at the Target Center, you know,” he said importantly. “Timeberwolves, concerts, truck pulls, and all. We've got a couple gals on, you know. I just think it's great. More power to you.”
She was willing to bet money that when he was sitting around drinking with the boys, he called those women names even she wouldn't use. She knew Vanlees's type firsthand. “So you work security there and look after this complex too?”
“Yeah, well, you know my wife—we're separated—she works for the management company, and that's how we got the town house, 'cause I'm telling you, for what they charge for these places . . . It's unreal.
“So I'm kind of like the super, you know, even though I'm not living here now. The owners here count on me, so I'm hanging in until the wife decides what to do. People have problems—plumbing, electrical, whatnot—I see it gets taken care of. I've got the locksmith coming to change the locks on Miss Bondurant's place this afternoon. And I keep an eye out, you know. Unofficial security. The residents appreciate it. They know I'm on the job, that I've got the training.”
“Is Miss Bondurant's unit this way?” Moss inquired, gesturing toward the river, leaning, hinting.
Vanlees frowned at her, the small eyes going smaller still. “I talked to some detectives yesterday.” As if he thought she might be an impostor with her mousy-mom looks, not the real deal like Liska.
“Yeah, well, we're following up,” Liska said casually. “You know how it is.” Though he clearly didn't have a clue other than what he'd picked up watching NYPD Blue and reading cheesy detective magazines. Some people would cooperate better when they felt included. Others wanted all kinds of assurances neither the crime nor the investigation would taint their lives in any way.
Vanlees dug a ring of keys out of his jacket pocket and led the way down the sidewalk. “I applied to the police department once,” he confided. “They had a hiring freeze on. You know, budgets and all.”
“Jeez, that's tough,” Liska said, doing her best Frances McDormand in Fargo impersonation. “You know, it seems like we always need good people, but that budget hang-up, that's a kicker. . . .”
Vanlees nodded, the man in the know. “Political BS—but I don't need to tell you, right?”
“You got that right. Who knows how many potential great cops like yourself are working other jobs. It's a shame.”
“I could have done the job.” Years-old bitterness colored his tone like an old stain that wouldn't quite wash out.
“So, did you know this Bondurant girl, Gil?”
“Oh, sure, I saw her around. She never had much to say. Unfriendly type. She's dead, huh? They wouldn't say it for sure on the news, but it's her, right?”
“We've got some questions unanswered.”
“I heard there was a witness. To what—that's what I'm wondering. I mean, did they see him kill her or what? That'd be something, huh? Awful.”
“I can't really get into it, you know?” Liska said, apologetic. “I'd like to—you being in a related field and all—but you know how it is.”
Vanlees nodded with false wisdom.
“You saw her Friday?” Moss asked. “Jillian Bondurant?”
“Yeah. About three. I was here working on my garbage disposal. The wife tried to run celery through it. What a mess. Little Miss College Graduate. You'd think she'd have more brains than to do that.”
“Jillian Bondurant . . .” Moss prompted.
He narrowed his mismatched eyes again. “I was looking out the kitchen window. Saw her drive out.”
“Alone?”
“Yep.”
“And that was the last time you saw her?”
“Yeah.” He turned back to Liska. “That nutcase burned her up, didn't he? The Cremator. Jeez, that's sick,” he said, though morbid fascination sparked bright in his expression. “What's this town coming to?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“I think it's the millennium. That's what I think,” he ventured. “World's just gonna get crazier and crazier. The thousand years is over and all that.”
“Millennium,” Moss muttered, squinting down at a terra-cotta pot of dead chrysanthemums on the deck of Jillian Bondurant's small front porch.
“Could be,” Liska said. “God help us all, eh?”
“God help us,” Moss echoed sarcastically.
“Too late for Miss Bondurant,” Vanlees said soberly, turning the key in the brass lock. “You need any help here, Detective?”
“No, thanks, Gil. Regulations and all . . .” Liska turned to face him, blocking his entrance to the house. “Did you ever see Miss Bondurant with anyone in particular? Friends? A boyfriend?”
“I saw her dad here every once in a while. He actually owns the unit. No boyfriend. A girlfriend every once in a while. A friend, I mean. Not girlfriend—at least I don't think so.”