He found it, and the lock popped open.
He stepped away from the door before opening it. Just in case there was a booby trap waiting for him. There wasn’t, and he stuck his head into the darkened space, seeing nothing but blackness below. He flipped the light switch, and a light came on halfway down the stairwell. The stairs were made of wood, and looked sturdy.
He went down. Reaching bottom, he found himself standing in a finished basement, with a painted concrete floor and paneled walls. It was decorated like a studio apartment, with a kitchen in one corner, a small dining table, and a couch and a pair of matching chairs facing a flat screen TV on the wall. Except for the TV, there wasn’t anything of value. So why the padlock?
He was missing something.
The space didn’t feel right. After a few moments, he realized what it was. The basement was smaller than the first floor of the house. In most houses, the basement was the same footprint as the ground floor. Not here. The basement was smaller. Or was it? He ran his palms across the paneled wall, and applied a gentle but firm pressure.
Halfway down the wall, he felt it give. He pressed harder, and a hidden door popped open, revealing a secret room. He stepped in, and was immediately hit by the smell. It was moldy, the air foul.
Martin Daniels had built a panic room in his house. Those were common these days. This wasn’t a panic room, not if the decorations were any indication. It looked like a room in a bordello, the walls painted hot pink, the lighting subdued, the pink carpet thick and furry. A heart-shaped bed sat in the room’s center.
He’d once been engaged to a woman who’d wanted to honeymoon in the Catskill Mountains because it was where her parents had gone. She’d shown him a glossy full-page ad for the hotel in a bridal magazine that featured photos of a room with pink walls, a bathtub shaped like a champagne glass, and a heart-shaped honeymoon bed. It was so cheesy that he’d broken off the engagement on the spot.
This room reminded him of that ad. Since the rest of the house was wired with surveillance cameras, he assumed this room was as well. A minute later, his suspicions were confirmed when he found a surveillance camera hidden behind a painting of a naked woman hanging on the wall.
There was also dust. It covered the picture frame and the bedspread. The room hadn’t been used in a while. On the night table was a small picture frame that was also covered in dust. He cleaned it off, and stared at the two smiling people in the photo. One was Katya. It took a moment for him to place her partner. An older man with a thick head of hair and a gap-toothed smile. It was Martin Daniels.
He studied the photo. He’d told Beth that her father wasn’t having a relationship with Katya because it just didn’t seem possible. Martin was smarter than that. But here was the evidence, staring him right in the face.
He put the photograph back on the night table. The room hadn’t been used in a while. Had the relationship soured, and Katya turned on him? It was a possibility, only it didn’t explain why the Sokolovs had ransacked Martin’s study, or the missing money from Martin’s bank accounts, or why there were mummified hands being put on people’s doorsteps. The truth be known, it didn’t explain a damn thing.
Taking out his cell phone, he snapped a photo of the picture of Martin and Katya, then took multiple shots of the room, including the hidden camera behind the painting. Then he left.
Leaving the house, he walked down the driveway to the road. Beth was in the passenger seat with her laptop, typing away, her eyes filled with murderous intensity. The laptop’s screen was visible, and he spied Katya’s rap sheet and mug shot.
He climbed behind the wheel. Beth stopped what she was doing.
“I found her rap sheet,” she said.
“Great. Want me to drive?”
“Please. I need to make a few calls. Katya got busted in Fort Lauderdale on a pot charge last year. She’s here on a work permit, and normally a drug arrest would have sent her home. For some reason, she got to stay. I want to find out why.”
He backed out. He didn’t know how to tell Beth what he’d found in the basement. She was grieving, and the news would only make things worse. He needed to figure out a way to tell her that wouldn’t crush her.
“What did you find in the basement?” she asked.
“Dust,” he said.
Chapter 17
It didn’t take Daniels long to find out why Katya had been allowed to stay in the country after her arrest. She called the Broward County District Attorney’s office and spoke to the prosecutor on the case, who was happy to fill her in. As she ended the call, Jon pulled into the driveway of her father’s house, and killed the engine.
“Learn anything?” he asked.
“Katya’s lawyer got the charge pleaded down to a simple misdemeanor,” Daniels said. “She was supposed to perform a hundred hours of community service as punishment, but never showed up.”
“She must have had a good attorney. Which one did she use?”
“Some hotshot named Timothy Morrell.”
“You’re kidding. Morrell charges five hundred bucks an hour. His clients have to put up a ten-thousand-dollar retainer before he’ll talk with them.”
“Where would she have come up with that kind of money?”
“Someone else must have paid him.”
They fell silent. The only truism in police work was that it was impossible to learn the truth; all an investigator could do was piece together the facts, and compose a reasonable scenario. Katya’s story continued to confound them, the pieces not adding up.
“What else did you learn?” Jon asked.
“Katya came here on a work permit, and was working at a bed-and-breakfast in Fort Lauderdale when she was arrested. Maybe the B&B owners paid Morrell.”
“That’s a stretch. Ten grand is a lot of money.”
“Maybe they’re nice people, and wanted to help her out.”
“I have friends in the hotel business, and they don’t tolerate employees that smoke pot. If the owners of the B&B paid Morrell, they probably had another motive. Did you get the B&B’s name?”
“Casa Del Mar. Katya was the night manager.”
“A job like that pays minimum wage. They would have let her go.”
She unlocked the front door, and they went inside the empty house. Her father was fond of playing music on the loud side, and the silence that greeted them was haunting. While Jon ground coffee beans and fixed a pot, she sat at the kitchen table on her laptop, and did a search of the Casa Del Mar on the Broward Property Appraiser’s website.
Jon served her a steaming mug and parked himself in a chair.
“Any luck?” he asked.
“According to the Broward Property Appraiser’s website, the Casa Del Mar is owned by a couple named Boris and Svetlana Vasilek,” Daniels said. “They purchased the business over a year ago, and paid a million two for it.”
“Speak of the devil.”
“You know these two?”
“Our paths crossed when I was a detective. Boris Vasilek has run a variety of businesses, including a car wash, a dry cleaner, and a body shop, all of which went belly-up. We assumed he was laundering money for Russian gangsters, but could never prove it. His wife, Svetlana, acts as his bodyguard. She was an Olympic weightlifter.”
“If you couldn’t prove it, then why assume it?”
Daniels had been trained to follow the facts, and not make assumptions. It irritated the hell out of her when Jon jumped to conclusions without having proof to back up his claims. He stirred sugar into his coffee before replying.