Sitting at the Spot I decided it might be time for a little Come to Jesus chat with my client, Kerri Mathias. I didn’t necessarily mind looking into things that were on the far side of the law, but it would be nice to know what I was getting into before I got into it. I didn’t like surprises in my business.
“Let me talk to Kerri, please,” I added the please as an afterthought.
“She’s busy right now. Perhaps I could show a few items of interest that might allow you to broaden your horizon…” a couple of telltale hisses in her pronunciation.
“Da’nita?” I guessed.
“Who this? Wilson, is that you?”
“No, actually it’s me, Dev?”
“Dev? Oh Devil, how have you been, baby?”
“Thanks for your concern. I’m doing just fine.”
“Look, I’ll have Kerri call you back, unless like I said, you might want to broaden your horizon, you know.”
“Sweet of you Da’nita, but I need to get hold of Kerri. If you can just have her call me that would be fine.”
“You sure? I could show you things that…”
“No doubt you could. I appreciate your effort but I just need to talk with Kerri. Okay?”
“All right, if you say so. I’ll give her the message, she’s got your number?”
“Yeah, she does, at least I think she does. You got a pen? Let me give you my number just in case.”
I gave Da’nita my number, then hung up, and tapped my fingers on the bar wondering what next. I didn’t have to wait long, my phone rang before I had another sip of beer. As always I attempted to read the incoming number and as always, failed, I was going to have to get a pair of cheaters.
“Haskell Investigations.”
It was Kerri, I thought I could smell her perfume through the phone.
“How are you, Dev? Have you found Nikki?”
“Amazingly no, I haven’t, at least not yet. But I’ve come up with a lot of questions. Can we get together and go over some things?”
“What kind of things?”
I wasn’t going to get into anything with Kerri while I was in the Spot Bar. And I certainly wasn’t going to get into anything with her over the phone. I like to watch people when they lie to me.
“Just some general background info that might speed things up. Can we get together tonight?”
“I wish we could but I have, ahhh, an appointment that will probably be late.”
I didn’t need any detail on the appointment.
“How about breakfast, tomorrow?” I asked, then thought I detected the slightest pause.
“Yes, I guess that would work.”
“You just tell me where and when,” I said trying to hide my surprise.
“You know Bon Vie?” she asked.
It took me a moment but I did, it was almost within sight of my front porch and didn’t have a bar, which may have explained my pause. Other than McDonalds, I don’t frequent many food establishments without a bar.
“Yeah, sure, perfect. What time?”
“Noon would be best,” she said.
“Noon?”
“Yes, twelve o’clock, noon. Does that work for you, Dev?”
“It does, I’ll see you there.”
I hung up and phoned Aaron to check on what he had found out on Kerri’s car. I ended up leaving a message.
A few beers later I thought about dinner and after dinner. Fortified by the beer I placed a couple of calls and ended up leaving messages at both numbers. I wasn’t exactly feeling like Mr. Popular.
I woke up sometime after three the following morning. Bourbon and a book will do that to me. I’d been sleeping in my favorite reading chair, which was great for reading and not the best for sleeping. My body felt like a bent piece of plumbing pipe and I stretched and groaned on the way to bed. My joints sounded like a bowl of Rice Krispies, snap, crackle, and pop.
I stumbled out of the bathroom sometime after nine in the morning and noticed the message light blinking on my phone. The first voicemail was from Pam, one of my attempted post-dinner dates from the night before.
“Hi, look, Dev, thanks for the invite but I really wish you wouldn’t call me, umm, ever again. I’m very happy with my life now that you’re not in it, and I would prefer that I never, ever hear from you. Hope everything is going okay, bye.”
I pushed the delete button and made a mental note not to offer Pam the opportunity to enjoy an evening of my witty comments followed by mad, passionate debauchery. Which was screwier, Pam’s message or my calling her in the first place?
Next message.
“Hey dipshit, you there? Call me, I think I got something that might interest you. Grab that photo you showed me, too, will you?”
It was Aaron. I called him back, left a message in response to his message then padded into the kitchen and made some coffee. He phoned back a minute or two later just as I was pouring my first cup.
“Haskell Investigations.”
“Christ, you sound barely awake. You keeping banker’s hours over there? How soon can you meet me?”
“I’m just finishing up a meeting,” I said.
“Yeah right. Look, get dressed and meet me at the morgue in thirty minutes. I got something for you.”
“The morgue that doesn’t sound good.”
“Don’t forget to bring that photo with you. See you there,” Aaron said and hung up.
I poured my coffee into a travel mug, sipped as I got dressed, topped the travel mug off, and headed out the door.
Chapter 10
The old St. Paul morgue used to sit just below the river bluff from downtown. Perhaps, not ironically it was built directly over the ruins of the old Washington Avenue red-light district. In the days when brothels provided clean shirts for regular customers to wear home, served decent liquor, and featured a piano player banging out ragtime. At least that was the perception.
The new, more efficient, Ramsey County Medical Examiner was a state-of-theart facility located on the edge of an industrial area off University Avenue. If you were looking for romance this probably wasn’t the place, but time marches on. I entered the comfortable waiting room done in various tones of beige with overstuffed chairs, a flat-screen TV, and somewhat current magazines.
I sipped from my travel mug as I walked up to the nice-looking receptionist.
“Good morning, I’m supposed to meet Lieutenant LaZelle here.”
“Mr. Haskell?” she said after glancing at a yellow Post-it note stuck to her computer screen.
I nodded in mid-sip. She was a fairly attractive brunette, darker skin tone. Maybe Italian, Greek, Hispanic, Israeli. It didn’t matter I’m an equal opportunity admirer of women.
“Aaron said to send you back to the cooler. Do you know the way?”
As a matter of fact I did.
“Down the hall, right?”
“Yep, all the way back,” she said giving her hair a shake and a quick raise of her eyebrows.
I headed down the long hallway toward the examining area and the walkin cooler. I think they could house up to forty or fifty bodies at a time. The few offices I could see were done in off-whites bordering on the beige side of things. The occasional tasteful framed print hung on the wall, and one got the sense this was not the sort of place for levity or office clowns. I guessed I wouldn’t have fit in very well on staff.
Once through the heavy metal door things became very industrial. The autopsy suite, in all its clinical chill, was straight ahead. Off to one side stood a large, low-dose radiation scanner. To my immediate left, Lieutenant Aaron LaZelle, was chatting with an attractive blond of about forty with her hands stuck in the pockets of her white lab coat.
“What’d I tell you, Doc? Doesn’t he look like he should be in your cooler?” Aaron said.
She chuckled but didn’t say no.
“Oh, I’m sorry, pretending to look like you’re working. You must be undercover.” I replied.
“Let’s get started.” Aaron gestured toward the massive walkin cooler, all stainless steel, not that the occupants cared.
“Oh, Doc, the world’s top crime investigator, Devlin Haskell of Haskell Investigations. Dev, Dr. Mallory Bendix, medical examiner extraordinaire and big fan of mine.”