I had no idea. Maybe we’d already hit the wall. “My house, I guess. Do you mind if we stop at my office on the way so I can go through my mail?”
He turned east on Ventura then parked in an empty space outside the small complex where I leased an office. Leaving Nick in the car, I entered the courtyard of suites bordered by a row of coral gladiolus and opened the door to my one-room office. A small stack of letters scattered on the floor beneath the mail slot. Junk. Junk. Junk. Phone bill. Bottled water service bill. I tossed the junk, left the bills on my desk to pay on Monday, checked the service for messages, and then locked the door behind me.
“Dr. Cooper.” Building manager Yuri Ivanov lumbered out of his office in a geometric print shirt and held up a finger for me to stop.
“Hi, Yuri.” I smiled, curious. The beefy Russian did an excellent job of maintaining the property but rarely chatted with the tenants. “Crazy hot out, isn’t it? I came by to get my mail.”
He grunted. “A woman detective come here about you today,” he said in his thick accent. “You in trouble? I don’t like trouble.”
My ears burned. I didn’t have to ask who or why, but I wanted to know what Carla thought she’d accomplish by annoying my landlord. If she sought my attention, she had it.
“I’m sorry she bothered you.” I cringed with embarrassment. “I’m not in trouble. What did she want?”
“She show me picture of dark-hair woman and light-hair man. Ask me if they visit you. She want me to tell her if you pay rent on time. When you come to work. Sound like problem to me.”
“Everything is fine, Yuri. I’ll be back in my office on Monday. I assure you, nothing illegal is going on.”
Yuri grunted, appearing wary but appeased. We crossed the patio together and he stopped outside his office door. “Rent is due on first.”
“No problem. Have a nice weekend.”
I had my phone out before I hit the sidewalk. I dialed Oliver’s secret number and got an automated message. Great. He was probably still in court. “It’s Liz Cooper,” I said at the tone. “Please call me. Carla Pratt phoned, and then went snooping around my office building this afternoon, asking questions. I hope she isn’t bothering my neighbors, too. We need to talk.”
“She knows you’re stalling her,” Nick said, easing into traffic after I got in and blurted out Yuri’s account of Carla’s visit. “Did you think she’d be polite and wait for you to call?”
My logical love. “I can’t see her until I have concrete information to get her off my back. Is she trying to manipulate me into a meeting?”
“I think you already know the answer,” Nick said.
We passed the Big Sugar Bakeshop near Vantage Street and I made a mental note to buy Yuri a box of doughnut muffins on Monday morning as a peace offering.
“Let’s call Dave,” I said.
We reached him at his office in the Police Administration Building downtown.
“I talk to you two more than I talk to Robin,” Dave said over the speaker.
“Robin isn’t avoiding the police,” I said. “Give us some good news and we’ll leave you alone.”
“I don’t know if you’d call it good, but I have news,” he said. “Herrick Schelz is still incarcerated and he’s not Indiana State Prison’s model citizen. He’s had eight disciplinary actions. There are two names on Schelz’s approved visitor list. Kenneth Rosenfeld—”
“His trial attorney,” Nick said. “Rosenfeld must be on the long side of seventy by now.”
“And Margaret Smith, listed as his daughter. She’s been visiting Schelz twice a year since the early nineties. Her last visit happened in January. No visits from a wife or other children.”
“Schelz’s wife testified against him, no love there,” I said. “If I remember correctly from the article we found, both children were minors at the time of the trial.”
“Right,” Nick said. “The social worker Schelz murdered came to investigate complaints of child abuse.”
“The abuse allegation would block the children from visiting Schelz in prison until they became adults,” Dave said.
I did some quick math. “Which means if Margaret began visiting her father when she turned eighteen, she’s close to our age or older. Did you get any contact info on her?”
“Curran Road in Bull Valley, Illinois—and I already checked,” Dave said. “The house at that address was destroyed in a fire last December. No forwarding address on the owners or tenants.”
Chapter Twenty
As soon as we entered my house, Nick put on his glasses and stood by the living room window, thumbing through e-mails on his phone. I plunked on the couch with Erzulie and opened the GPS app on my smartphone. I typed “Bull Valley, Illinois” at the prompt and hit the “Start” button.
A map flashed on the screen with a red pin marking the center of Bull Valley. I clicked the pin on the map to request directions. A gasp caught my throat.
Nick pocketed his phone. “What’s wrong?”