Armed with this, he returned to the BMV and found her driver’s license. The image of her face was small on the phone’s screen, but Mark didn’t need a larger shot to recognize her: he’d seen her just hours before, smiling as she told him that his wife was inconsequential.
“Janell.” He said the name aloud, thinking that it didn’t match the person. He ran a few preliminary criminal-records searches but found nothing. Under the identity of Janell Cole, she was a model citizen. The only place he had to start was the address from the truck registration, and he didn’t think it would take long for the police to get there through their own means.
He drove fast on his way to Daytona Beach.
Janell Cole had lived above a garage in the sort of place people referred to as an in-law apartment. Between the garage and the main house was a courtyard with a bubbling fountain, a koi pond, and a brightly colored flower garden shaded by tall palms. The garage and apartment were painted in vivid colors and had flower planters under the windows, and the place didn’t fit with anything he understood about her. The polar opposite of the house in Cassadaga.
He climbed up the stairs and knocked. Nobody answered, but the blinds were angled to let some sunlight in. When he shaded his eyes and put his face to the glass, he could see that the place was empty, the carpets freshly cleaned and the walls gleaming with white paint, waiting on a new tenant.
“She moved.”
Mark stepped back from the window and looked down into the courtyard. A too-tan woman in shorts and a sports bra stood below him, dripping sweat and breathing hard, fresh off a run.
“Janell moved?” he asked, to test which name his girl had been using during her stay here.
“Yes. What kind of detective are you?”
Mark didn’t think he wore his profession like a fragrance, so either this woman belonged in Cassadaga herself, giving readings, or there had been other detectives looking for Janell Cole.
“The best kind,” he said, walking down the steps. She smiled at that, which was good, suggesting she wanted to cooperate rather than protect her former tenant. “You don’t seem surprised that a detective would be looking through the window of that apartment. Mind telling me why?”
“Because they’ve been here before.” She took a deep breath, her torso filling with air, then released it in a long, slow hiss like a leaking balloon, bent at the waist, and began to stretch her hamstrings.
“Which ones have you spoken with?” he said.
“The woman, mostly.” She straightened. “You don’t work with her?”
“No. But I’m sure as hell interested in talking to her. Do you know her name?”
“I don’t remember it, but I still have her card. Would you like that?”
He told her that he’d like that very much, then waited in the garden while the woman jogged around to the front of the main house and disappeared. When she returned she had a business card, and Mark took it and almost laughed.
“No shit,” he said. “The Pinkertons?”
She gave him a puzzled look. “You know them?”
“They never sleep.”
“What?”
“Never mind.” It was sad that she had no knowledge of the most famous private detective agency in history. Mark had grown up on stories of the Pinkertons. His uncle Ronny had traveled with a stack of paperback novels, romanticized old pulp stories, mostly Westerns by George Ranger Johnson but also many featuring the daring Pinkerton detectives. Mark had read them countless times, although as a PI, he’d never encountered anyone who actually worked with them. He knew that the company had been bought out long ago by a security conglomerate, but it still retained the brand and, according to the business card, that distinctive watching-eye logo. The investigator was named Lynn Deschaine, and she was based out of Boca Raton, just north of Miami. He snapped a photo of the card and handed it back to his new acquaintance, who was now standing in a midair stretch as if she were about to take flight. She accepted the card and tucked it in her sports bra, resumed her pose, and inhaled so deeply Mark thought she was going to uproot the palm tree. Then she closed her eyes.
“So,” he said, “what can you tell me about Janell?”
For a few seconds it seemed like she wasn’t going to respond, but finally, eyes still shut, she said, “I didn’t know her well. I will say I found her unusual. She didn’t like the sun. Her skin was so pale you could see the veins. That’s not healthy, you know.”
Her own skin was cured enough to be ready for belts and boots.
“You talk to her much?” Mark asked.
She shook her head without affecting her balance. “No. I really can’t say much else about her. Just like I told your partner. Or your predecessor. Whoever. She paid rent on time, she was quiet, and she left. When she left, she broke the lease, and I told her she couldn’t have the deposit back. She was fine with that. I had the impression that her new job was rather urgent.”
“What kind of job?”
“She’s an engineer.”
“An engineer?”
His shock was enough to finally disrupt her stretching routine. She blinked and looked at him. “Yes. That’s what she told me, at least. What do you think she is?”
A murderer, Mark thought, but he said, “That’s what I need to figure out.”
“Oh. Well, I can’t help beyond telling you that she paid rent in cash, which was her preference, not mine, that she paid promptly, and that she needed to spend some more time in the sun. That’s really all I know, Mr. Pinkerton.”
He liked that mistake so much he didn’t correct it.
Lynn Deschaine didn’t answer her office line, but he caught her on the cell. He identified himself as a fellow PI and told her he was working a case that had taken him to Daytona Beach and seemed to overlap with her work.
“Really sorry, Mr. Novak, but we don’t share information on our cases. It’s a confidential business. Good luck.”
“Hang on,” Mark said. “I’m not asking for you to fax over a dossier with Social Security numbers, Ms. Deschaine. If anything, I thought I could help you. I was told that you were-”
“I’m quite certain I don’t need outside assistance on my cases.”
These modern-day Pinkertons were real charmers.
“I’m sure you don’t,” Mark said. “So I won’t bother to tip you off about some problems with President Lincoln’s planned trip to the theater tonight.”
There was a slight pause, and then she said, “That’s both a silly remark and a historically inaccurate one. The Pinkertons were not providing security to President Lincoln on the night of his assassination.”
Her curt tone hadn’t changed, but Mark had the feeling that Lynn Deschaine, wherever she was, had smiled. He was almost certain.
“Fair enough,” he said. “I’m sorry to bother you. Really just meant to offer some information in case you still had any interest in locating Janell Cole, but it sounds like you’ve got everything in hand, so I apologize for interrupting your day.”
He hung up on her. It wasn’t something he would have done in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, but Lynn Deschaine felt like number one hundred. If she was half the PI that her bravado suggested, she’d be too curious not to call back. If she was even a fraction as combative as she seemed, she’d be too pissed off not to.
The phone rang in about thirty seconds. He answered.
“Markus Novak. I never sleep.”
“Hilarious,” she said, but there was neither humor nor anger in her voice. Just interest. “Tell me about Janell Cole.”
“I thought you didn’t need the-”
“I know what I said and I apologize. What do you know about Janell Cole?”
“I know where she’s been staying for the past few months, I know some people she’s associated with, including a man who just walked out of prison, and I know that the police aren’t going to be far behind me, as she recently cut someone’s throat and set a house on fire. Is that enough to interest you?”