After hitting a series of brick walls trying to locate any contact information for Angie Polaski, Faith had burned through the remainder of the morning and part of the afternoon trying to track down Dale Harding’s place of residence. Two dead ends had sent her to east Atlanta’s shadier neighborhoods, where she was told by various neighbors and slumlords that Dale Harding was an asshole who owed them money. No one seemed surprised or sad to learn of his untimely death. Several expressed regret that they hadn’t been there to witness it.
As Amanda had predicted, there were liquor stores, strip clubs, payday loan stores and all sorts of seedy dives where you’d expect to run into a slimeball like Dale Harding, and in fact many of the workers at these businesses recognized the dead man’s photograph, though none could recall seeing Dale in the last six months. That was the story everywhere Faith went: Dale was bellied up to the bar every day until six months ago. He was shoving ones into G-strings every day until six months ago. He was buying loose cigarettes and three-dollar liters of whiskey every day until six months ago.
No one could tell her what had happened six months ago.
She was about to give up when she ran into a stripper who said Harding had promised her kid a hundred bucks if he helped move some boxes. Faith would’ve never found the quiet little duplex in north Atlanta if Harding hadn’t stiffed the kid.
All of that made sense, from the slumlords to the strippers to cheating a fifteen-year-old boy out of a promised payday. What didn’t make sense was the place that Harding had finally called home.
He hadn’t lived in elegance so much as limbo. According to its website, the Mesa Arms was an active retirement community for the fifty-five-and-older set. Faith had drooled over the modern floorplans posted on the site. Everything was in italics with an exclamation point, like it wasn’t exciting enough to live in a community that did not allow children under the age of eighteen to visit more than three days in a row.
Spa-style bathrooms!
Main floor masters!
Hardwoods throughout!
Central vacuum!
The place was a baby boomer’s dream, if you could dream in half-a-million-dollar increments. Green lawns. Gently sloping sidewalks. Cute craftsman-style bungalows spread out like fans on tree-lined cul-de-sacs. There was a club lounge, gym, pool, and a tennis court that was currently occupied by two sporty seniors, even though the temperature had passed the one hundred mark.
Faith used the sleeve of Will’s suit jacket to wipe the back of her neck. At this point, the thermometer might as well read HELL.
She finished the water and tossed the empty into the back seat. She wondered if Harding had found a sugar mama, then figured that was unlikely unless she had very, very low standards. It was possible. Cotton-candy-pink drapes were hanging in the front windows. There were three gnomes and a ceramic bunny in the front yard, all dressed in ill-sized pink jackets, which seemed incongruous with Harding’s betting sheet and nudie pics from Backdoorman.com.
Considering Harding had cashed in his chips both literally and figuratively, Faith found it odd that he’d chosen the Mesa to live out his dying days. Further, it was odd that the Mesa was allowing him to do so. The posted $1,200-a-month homeowners’ association fee seemed well out of reach for a man who had bought out his pension for pennies on the dollar.
Then again, Harding had known he wasn’t going to live long enough to take the full benefit, so maybe he was smarter than she was giving him credit for. Better to die in the Mesa Arms than some government-owned toilet of a nursing home.
Was it irony or just shitty luck that he’d ended up croaking in an abandoned nightclub with a doorknob stuck in his neck?
Not just any nightclub. Marcus Rippy’s club.
She wasn’t ignoring the timing of Harding’s good luck so much as mulling it around inside her head. Marcus Rippy had been accused of rape seven months ago. Harding had hit paydirt approximately one month later. Then there was Angie Polaski caught in the middle. Had she been sent to the club to take out Harding, or had Harding been sent there to take her out?
Faith couldn’t yet add it up, but she knew the math was there.
She fished around in the back seat for the bottle of water her mother had insisted she take with her this morning. It had been baking in the car since 6:30. The warm liquid slid down her throat like cooking oil, but the city was under a code black smog alert and she couldn’t afford to get dehydrated.
Her time hadn’t just been wasted in strip clubs and liquor stores. She had spent a good hour walking up and down the Mesa Arms knocking on doors that were never answered, peering through windows that showed well-appointed, otherwise empty homes. The sign outside the property manager’s office said that they would be back at two, which had already come and gone. The heat-resistant tennis players had shown up ten minutes ago. Faith was headed toward the courts when a wave of dizziness had sent her back to the car. She had tested her blood sugar under the roar of the Mini’s air conditioning because Sara’s lecture about badly managed diabetes had hit home.
Poor Sara.
‘Okay,’ Faith mumbled, psyching herself up for a return to the heat. She cut the engine. Before she could open the door, her phone chirped. She turned the engine back on so she could sit in the air conditioning. ‘Mitchell.’
Amanda said, ‘Will found a Jane Doe in the office building across the street. Junkie. Homeless. OD’d on a giant bag full of blow. Looks like it was on purpose. Her nose and throat collapsed. She’s at Grady. Surgery should be two hours. Do what you can at Harding’s, then go sit on her. I’d bet my eyeteeth she saw something.’
Faith silently repeated everything back in her head so that she could make sense of all the information. ‘Do we know why she wanted to kill herself?’
‘She’s a junkie,’ Amanda said, as if that was as good an explanation as any. ‘I got your text with Harding’s address. The search warrant is being faxed to the property manager.’
‘No one’s there. I called the emergency number, I knocked on doors. Not a lot of people seem to be home, which is weird, because it’s some kind of retirement community. It’s actually really nice. Nicer than Harding could afford, I would guess.’
‘It’s owned by a shell company. We’re trying to trace it back, but we know Kilpatrick owns a lot of expensive real estate that he lets out well below market value.’
‘Smart.’ Faith had to hand it to Marcus Rippy’s fixer. The guy knew how to squirm his way out of a legally binding financial entanglement. She told Amanda, ‘Not a bad way to hide some money. Harding lives in old people Shangri-La for a nominal sum, Kilpatrick keeps him off the official payroll.’
‘Incidentally, Harding bought the car brand new six months ago. Paid cash.’
‘Harding did a lot of new things with money six months ago.’
‘Tell me you have a lead.’
‘Not yet.’ Faith hedged her words so they didn’t give false hope. ‘I mean, I don’t know what I have other than a feeling that something isn’t adding up.’
Amanda sighed, but to her credit she never faulted them for listening to their instincts. ‘Collier heard back from the hospitals. All the stabbing victims are accounted for. Two domestics. One bar fight. Another was self-inflicted, said the knife slipped into her side while she was cooking.’
Faith couldn’t muster any surprise over the number of unrelated stabbings. She had worked this job too long. ‘I should have Harding’s bank accounts and phone records within the hour. I’ll start going through everything as soon as it hits my email. Meanwhile, I guess I can interrupt the tennis players. So far, they’re the only people I’ve seen.’
‘Angie’s blood is all over the crime scene.’
Faith bit her lip. This just kept getting worse. ‘How did Will take the news?’
‘He didn’t hear it. And he won’t. Hold on.’ The phone clicked as Amanda took another call.