“A son,” Edmond said with undisguised pride. “I lost him in the war.”
Alex had heard that story before. A lot of people lost sons in the war, but it never got easy to hear about it.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“And I said don’t be,” Edmond admonished. “I miss my family, but I’m grateful for the time I had with them. Besides, I’ll be with them soon enough.”
Alex looked down at the folio. He missed his father, of course, and now Father Harry, but he still had Iggy and Leslie. If he played his cards right, he might even have Jessica in his life. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose them all. To be alone.
“You got lucky,” Edmond said.
“What?”
The old man pointed at the paper tag on the outside of the folio.
“According to that, North Shore Development went out of business about ten years ago,” he explained. “These records are scheduled to be moved to storage in a couple of months.”
“Yeah,” Alex said, talking just to ensure the awkward silence didn’t come back. “Lucky.”
He opened the folio and pulled out an inch-thick stack of papers. Some were stapled together into packets, but others were loose and none of them seemed to be in any kind of order.
“Here it is,” Edmond said, reaching into the stack as Alex fanned them out on the counter. He pulled out a yellowed packet of papers that had been stapled together. The cover had the name North Shore Development on it and several official-looking stamps.
Alex turned to the front page and found a mass of legal phrases and clauses. Skipping that, he turned to the back and found what he was looking for.
A slow smile spread across his face as he read down the list of names of the partners in the company. There were eleven all total. All were names that Alex recognized.
He laughed out loud and Edmond looked confused.
“Something funny?” he asked.
“No,” Alex said, still grinning. “Definitely not funny.”
He copied down the names, then wrote down the index number on the folio.
“That’s all you needed?” Edmond asked, somewhat incredulous. “Who are those people?”
“If I’m right,” Alex said, stacking the papers neatly and returning them to the folio, “they cheated someone out of a fortune a long time ago.”
Edmond looked shocked, then sad.
“Some people,” he said. “Did they get away with it?”
“For a while,” Alex said with a sigh. “But as near as I can tell, the man they cheated is killing them one by one.”
“So, you’re going to stop him?” Edmond wondered. “The killer I mean.”
“That’s the plan.”
“What about the people who cheated him? Are they going to keep getting away with what they did?”
Alex gave Edmond a determined smile.
“Not if I can help it,” he said.
Alex walked Edmond back to the reception desk, then went to the pay phones near the door.
“It’s me,” he said as Leslie picked up. “Did you get an address for Duane King?”
“Yes,” Leslie said in a worried voice, “but we’ve got bigger problems. Did you see today’s issue of The Midnight Sun?”
Alex groaned.
“Don’t tell me,” he begged.
“They printed that entire list of names you gave the cops,” she said, ignoring Alex’s entreaty. “That Lieutenant over the case called here and raised hell. He wants you to call him right away.”
“Do me a favor,” Alex said. “If he calls back, stall him. Tell him you haven’t heard from me.”
“You on to something?” There was hope in her voice.
Alex grinned.
“Get this,” he said. “The company that bought King’s land at the tax sale, well it turns out the assessor wasn’t just working with them. North Shore Development was entirely made up of Seth Kowalski and ten people who worked for him.”
Leslie whistled.
“And you think Duane King is the one killing them?”
“Makes sense,” he said. “But I’ll need more evidence if I want to get Detweiler off my back. I’m going to go by King’s address and see if he still lives there.”
Leslie gave him an Inner-Ring address and he wrote it in his notebook.
“What do I do if Detweiler sends cops here?” Leslie asked.
“Just don’t let them answer the phone.”
Duane King’s address turned out to be for an elegant brick home a block from the park. If he could afford to live here, he had the money to pay off the taxes on the land he inherited. As Alex stood looking at the tidy home, he wondered if he might be wrong about who was killing former members of North Shore Development.
Steeling himself for disappointment, Alex opened the gate and walked up to the heavy door. It was stained dark and had polished brass hardware and an enormous knocker to match. Alex rapped smartly with the knocker, then took a step back from the door.
“Yes?” An older woman said as she pulled the heavy door open. She had brown hair and thick glasses, and peered at him through the lenses.
“I’m sorry to bother you, ma’am,” Alex said, quickly taking off his hat. “But does Duane King live here?”
She smiled and shook her head.
“No,” she said. “I’ve lived here for thirty years.”
That would have meant she moved in around the time King let the land go to the tax sale. Maybe he was having money problems after all.
“Mr. King lived here about thirty years ago,” Alex said.
The woman’s face brightened and she smiled.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “King was the name of the man we bought the house from, my husband and I.”
“You don’t happen to know where he went after he sold you the house, do you?”
“He moved to Florida,” she said. “A town called Boca Raton, there was a doctor there.”
“He was sick?”
“His wife,” the woman said. “Poor thing, she had tuberculosis.”
Alex had never heard of Boca Raton but if there was a doctor there who specialized in treating TB, it shouldn’t be too hard to track them down. The doctor would undoubtedly have more information on the Kings.
“Anything else you can remember about Mr. King or his wife?”
“I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s been a long time since I thought about them. I hope she got better.”
Alex thanked her and headed back to the street. TB wasn’t always fatal; there was a good chance that if the mysterious doctor helped her, then Mrs. King might still be in Boca Raton.
The problem was that in order to find out, he would have to go home. Since he didn’t have a fist-full of nickels, Iggy had the only phone he could use to call long distance. It was a risk, with Detweiler looking for him. Alex wouldn’t put it past the man to have a few cops staking out the brownstone.
He sighed and put his hat back on. If he wanted to get Detweiler off his back, it was a risk he was going to have to take.
When Alex reached the brownstone that afternoon he didn’t see anyone staking out the place, but he went around to the alley behind the house just in case. The door to the tiny, walled back yard was protected just like the front door, but Alex’s pocketwatch let him pass without any trouble.
Once inside, he found that Iggy was still out. One of the lessons the old man had taught him about being a detective was that it was often better to ask for forgiveness rather than permission. With that in mind, Alex crossed the kitchen and picked up the telephone receiver.
“Get me Boca Raton, Florida,” he said once the operator came on. Five minutes later he was connected with the operator in Boca Raton.
“I’m looking for a doctor who lives in town,” he told her.