“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Did you know her?”
“Nothing beyond pleasantries,” Appleby said. “I saw her each night when she came in and four hours later when she left. But I’d keep my eye on her until she got on the bus.”
“She lived in Darwin Gardens,” Charlotte said. “How much danger could she be in on a street where Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and Armani have their stores?”
“She’s dead, isn’t she?” Appleby asked.
“Was she here on Monday?” Wade asked.
Appleby shook his head. “She didn’t come in.”
“Did she have a locker here?”
Appleby grabbed a key ring from the desk, hit a button that electronically locked the lobby doors, and got up. “Follow me.”
He led them across the lobby to an unmarked door, which he unlocked and that opened to a corridor with linoleum floors, white walls, and bars of fluorescent lights along the acoustic?tiled ceiling.
“No marble and chandeliers for the help,” Charlotte said.
They followed Appleby into a windowless room with a scuffed?up table in the center surrounded by mismatched plastic and folding chairs. There was a vinyl couch repaired with duct tape, some vending machines, a refrigerator, a sink, a microwave, a utility closet, and a wall lined with gym lockers that looked like they’d been recovered from a junkyard. A maid’s cleaning cart, stuffed with supplies, dusters, brooms, and a vacuum, was parked in a corner.
“Welcome to the employee break room, though nobody hangs out here. They grab their lunches and go outside. The maids keep their uniforms in here and change in the restroom across the hall.” Appleby stepped up to one of the lockers and knocked a knuckle against the tin. “This was Glory’s.”
“You got a key for it?” Wade asked.
“Nope. But the handyman’s closet is over there and I’m going on break.”
Wade and Appleby shook hands, and then the security guard walked out. Charlotte watched him go, a look of confusion on her face.
“What was that supposed to mean?”
“He was saying we don’t need a key,” he replied, walking over to the closet, opening the door, and peering inside.
“We still need a search warrant.”
“This is both.” Wade pulled a bolt cutter out of the closet and smiled. “It’s a very versatile tool.”
He went up to Glory’s locker, snapped the lock, and handed it to Charlotte.
“For someone who rooted out corruption in the MCU,” she said, tossing the lock on the table, “you play pretty loose with the law yourself.”
Wade set the bolt cutters down, pulled a pair of gloves from his pocket, and put them on.
“The cops I testified against weren’t bending a few legal niceties to get the job done.” He opened the locker and began sorting through the contents, starting with a box of tampons and some makeup, which he set on the couch. “They were taking bribes, skimming from the cash and drugs we took as evidence, and running a protection racket out of the police department.”
“This is how the corruption begins,” she said.
“I’m trying to get justice for a girl who was brutally murdered and dumped like trash in a parking lot.” He set a stack of gossip magazines and a cleaning uniform on the couch, then turned back to the locker for more. “I’m not trying to blackmail anybody or enrich myself.”
“But once you start bending the rules,” she said, “then pretty soon you starting thinking none of them matter anymore.”
“That’s why you’re here,” he said. “I wonder what she cleaned while she was wearing these.”
Wade pulled out several pieces of lacy lingerie and held them up for Charlotte to examine.
She gave them a close look. “La Perla. That’s not a minimum?wage brand.”
“Gifts from a wealthy admirer, perhaps.”
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, “but just because we are in Ethan Burdett’s building, that doesn’t mean that he was her lover. Maybe those were for someone she was seeing after work.”
“Like his son,” Wade said.
“Or Timo. Or Duke Fallon or Sam Appleby. It could be anyone.”
Wade gestured to the cleaning cart. “Get me a few plastic bags.”
Charlotte did as she was told and came back, holding the bags open so he could drop the lingerie into them.
“I don’t know why you are bothering,” she said. “These are worthless as evidence by virtue of the illegal manner in which they were collected.”
“I don’t think virtue is going to be an issue,” Wade said and slammed the locker shut.
“Charlotte is right,” Mandy said, sitting across from Wade in a booth that Sunday morning as he worked his way through a stack of pancakes between shifts. “Just because Glory had a nightie in her locker doesn’t mean that she was screwing Ethan Burdett.”
“The nightie was La Perla,” he said.
“Which I can get on eBay for twenty bucks. Want me to?”
“Used lingerie?” Wade asked. “Yuck.”
There were only three or four others in the restaurant that morning, and they made a point of sitting as far across the restaurant as they could from Wade. He didn’t take it personally.
“The locker might have been where she stashed her naughty stuff so Mom would keep on thinking that she was a good girl,” Mandy said. “You should have seen what I had in my locker at school.”
“You weren’t a good girl?”
“I’m still not,” she said. “But you already know that.”
“I’m thinking that Glory brought Seth together with Timo to start moving drugs into Havenhurst,” Wade said between mouthfuls of pancake. “Maybe she was even getting a cut.”
“If that’s true, I’ve got to hand it to her-she was working every angle to get out.”
“Look where it got her,” Wade said.
“You don’t know if that’s got anything to do with why she was killed. I haven’t heard you mention anything that sounds remotely like a motive.”
“That’s mainly because I haven’t come up with one yet,” he said. “When did you start becoming interested in detecting?”
“When I started fucking you,” she said.
“You like saying ‘fucking.’”
“I like saying it because it reminds me that I’m doing it,” she said.
“You can sleep with me without helping me investigate these killings.”
“First off, we’ve shared a bed, and we’ve done plenty of fucking, but I haven’t slept with you yet,” she said. “Secondly, I have an interest in you, and you’re investigating, so I want to help.”
“I have an interest in you,” he said, “but you don’t see me making pancakes.”
“I see you coming in here and eating a lot of them,” she said. “Same thing.”
He supposed it was.
Billy came into the restaurant and approached their booth. He was holding a folder, which he set on the table beside Wade’s plate.
“This was faxed to you,” he said, then nodded at Mandy. “Good morning, Ms. Guthrie.”
“Billy,” she said. “Please call me Mandy.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
Wade opened the folder and started reading it.
“And never call me ‘ma’am,’” she said. “It makes me feel old.”
“You got it, baby,” he said.
“Much better,” she said.
Wade looked up at them. Billy smiled. So did Mandy, who gestured to the folder.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“The autopsy report on Glory Littleton. It lays out in detail her physical condition at the time of her death and the injuries she suffered. The conclusion is that she died Monday morning of injuries consistent with a fall or blunt force trauma, specifically as a result of massive internal bleeding.”
“You knew that already,” Billy said.
“But there’s plenty here that I didn’t.”
Mandy slid out of the booth. “Makes for wonderful breakfast reading.”
“More like dinner,” Billy said. “It’s his bedtime, in case you’re interested.”
Both Wade and Mandy looked at him.
“What? We’re all adults here,” Billy said, taking Mandy’s place in the booth.
“I shot you once,” Wade said. “I can shoot you again.”