Two things were for sure. One, I was excited about my homemade jam. I hadn’t had good strawberry jam since I was a little girl. Thinking about my grandmother’s jam had my mouth watering. Two, I was going back to Highland Heights. I wanted to find out what was going on in that school building across the street from The Light. If it was only a jam factory, then I’d be able to tell Bernard that the lead hadn’t panned out.
That wasn’t a conversation I’d relish. This investigation was taking longer than either of us had expected, and coming up with dead ends seemed to be my new specialty. Thank God, Foster was keeping Bernard busy with some new stories. Nevertheless my boss was definitely getting anxious. It wasn’t until I’d gotten him, maybe not on board, but at least entertaining the compilation theory that he’d agreed to let me keep working this angle. In order to do that, I’d had to share some of the information I’d learned from Dr. Howell. I didn’t tell him my source, but I gave him a taste of the incidence of women dying from suspicious causes over the last ten years in the Detroit area. When I did I watched his wheels turn. Even the slightest possibility of a connection between the dead and missing women and the drug smuggling made his brow and upper lip glisten with perspiration. Bernard foamed at the mouth like a rabid dog with the need to uncover this story.
When my phone rang, I glanced at the date on the screen and my heart clenched. It’d been six weeks to the day since I’d last spoken to Mindy. I tried to suppress the lump in my throat as I answered the phone.
“Hello, Stella Montgomery.”
“It’s Foster.”
“Hi, I obviously didn’t look at the number. What can I do for you? You’re saving my ass keeping Bernard busy. Otherwise he’d be chewing it every chance he had.”
Eddie Foster’s laugh filled my ear. “Not a problem. We all have some stories that fall into place better than others. Have you found anything lately?”
“Jelly.”
“What?”
“Never mind,” I said, waving my free hand. “What do you need?”
“It’s not so much what I need. I have a couple questions for you.”
“OK, shoot.”
Foster cleared his throat. “You know we keep an eye on our own, right?”
“You’re making me nervous. What are your questions?” I bit my lip.
“What do you know about real estate in Bloomfield Hills?”
“I know that some of the partners at Preston and Butler live there, and it costs more than I’ll ever have.”
“OK, have you ever heard of Motorists of America?”
I shook my head toward the phone, as if he could see me. “No, Foster. Is this for a story?”
“No, not really. Like I said, we keep an eye on our own.”
“Hey, I love you, but jump ahead. My mind’s so rattled with this case, I’m missing the point.”
“Motorists of America, MOA, was a retirement endeavor set up in the late sixties for employees of the big auto companies. It was a private option for members of UAW and Teamsters. It didn’t replace their union dues or retirement; it was billed to supplement it.” I had no idea where he was going. “That was fifty years ago. I’ll spare you the history. Let’s just say it was one of the many ventures that didn’t deliver. The funny thing is that I remembered it was something Mindy had mentioned, and recently I was doing a search and it came up.”
“Foster?” We’d already canvassed all of Mindy’s research. MOA hadn’t been there, so it must have been a while ago that she’d mentioned it.
“Give me a minute.”
Securing my lip once more to stop from telling him I didn’t care, I nodded.
“I can give you more detail, but obviously you want the CliffsNotes. MOA declared bankruptcy in the eighties. Operations stopped, but it wasn’t dissolved.”
My patience was wearing thin.
“After bankruptcy a company is unable to . . .”
“Foster, I really want to care. Are you saying this isn’t a story and somehow has something to do with me?”
“Jesus, Stella, listen a minute. MOA has a list of assets a mile long, valued in the millions, hell, billions. I don’t know. I just got started into all of this. The part that jumped out at me, the reason I even stumbled upon this, was because of a six-bedroom home in Bloomfield Hills.”
“Are you and Kim house shopping?”
“Like we could afford to live there. No, I may have been running some searches on Dylan Richards and his name popped up on a utility bill, gas, for that six-bedroom. His name was only there one month, and then it was changed, but you know how slow utility companies are? Their records last forever.”
What the hell?
I shook my head. “Let me save you any further trouble. It’s not my Dylan Richards; you’ve got the wrong one. Next, explain to me why in the hell you’re running a search on my boyfriend.”
“I suppose that’s possible, that it’s not him. What’s his father’s name?”
I bit my lower lip. “Um, Mr. Richards? We haven’t really made it to the parent part of this relationship. He doesn’t talk about them. Now answer my other question.”