"You haven"t heard the most interesting part. The late Mrs. Canney had a job."
"Really? Where?" Mich.e.l.le asked.
"Battle Enterprises. Care to guess which executive she was servicing?"
"Bobby Battle!"
"You win the prize."
CHAPTER 60.
NO ONE ANSWEREDtheir knock at the Canney residence.
"That"s funny," said King. "I called ahead. He said he"d be home."
"At least the housekeeper should be here."
Mich.e.l.le went over and peeked inside the garage window. "Well, there are two cars in there, a big Beemer and a Range Rover. Unless he pays his housekeeper extremely well, I don"t think they belong to her."
King put a hand on the front door, and it swung open. Mich.e.l.le saw this and immediately took out her gun and rejoined King.
"I swear to G.o.d," she whispered, "if he"s in there dead with a dog collar around his neck and wearing a watch pointing to the number six, I"m going to scream for an entire week."
They made their way quietly inside. The front room was empty. They cleared each subsequent room before moving on to the next.
Mich.e.l.le heard the noise first, a grunting sound, appearing to come from the back of the house. They hustled there and looked around. They saw no one, but the sound repeated itself, followed this time by a clanking noise of metal on metal.
Mich.e.l.le motioned to a door at the end of the hall. King nodded, moved forward and slowly pushed it open with his foot while Mich.e.l.le covered him. King peered inside, tensed and then relaxed. He opened the door and motioned for Mich.e.l.le to join him.
Canney was seated with his back to them, earphones on and doing leg presses in his nicely equipped home gym. King pounded on the door, and Canney snapped around and ripped off his headphones.
"What the h.e.l.l are you doing here?" he demanded.
"I called this morning. You said one o"clock was fine. It"s one o"clock. n.o.body answered the door and it happened to be open."
Canney stood and put his CD player down and toweled off. "I"m sorry. My housekeeper has the day off, and I must have lost track of time."
"Happens to the best of us," said King. "We can wait if you want to clean up."
"No, I think we can just get down to it. I can"t imagine this will take long. Let"s sit outside. I made some lemonade."
They went into the large backyard, which had a lap pool, spa and a small cabana-style building as well as intricately planned landscaping.
"Beautiful," commented Mich.e.l.le.
"Yes, I love it back here."
"It all looks fairly recent," said King. "And you haven"t lived in this house that long, have you? What, three years or so?"
Canney stared pointedly at him as he drank his lemonade. "How did you know?"
"Public records are just that, public. You"re retired now. From accounting?"
"Twenty years seemed long enough to worry about other people"s money."
"Well, now you have plenty of your own to worry about. I guess accounting pays better than I thought."
"I"ve made some good investments over the years."
"And your late wife worked too, at Battle Enterprises. She was executive secretary to Bobby Battle, wasn"t she? In fact, she was working there when she died in that car accident?"
"Yes. It"s not exactly a secret."
"I didn"t see you at Battle"s funeral."
"That"s because I didn"t go."
"You hadn"t kept in touch with the family?"
"Just because my wife worked there doesn"t mean we were friends with them."
"I found a picture of your wife while I was doing my background research. She was a very beautiful woman; had even won some local beauty pageants."
"Megan was extraordinarily attractive, yes. Does this line of conversation have some point?"
"The point being that I had to hunt up pictures of your wife because there are none of her in your home. Nor are there any of your son."
"You mean, not out in the public areas."
"No. When no one answered the door and we found it open, we thought there was something amiss, so we went room to room, including your bedroom; there are no photos at all of your family."
Canney stood, enraged. "How dare you!"
King remained impa.s.sive. "Let me be blunt with you, Rog: you came into your money roughly three years ago, soon after your wife died, in fact. That"s when you bought this place. Before then you were an ordinary bean-counter making an ordinary income and doing okay because your wife was working too. Those sorts of people don"t suddenly retireafter they lose their spouse"s income, and buy a million-dollar property." they lose their spouse"s income, and buy a million-dollar property."
"She had life insurance."
"Fifty thousand dollars. I checked that too."
"What exactly are you implying?"
"I"m not interested in implications. I"d much prefer the truth."
"This interview is over. I believe you know the way out, since you"ve already searched my house."
King and Mich.e.l.le rose. "Okay, we can do it the hard way."
"And you can do it with Giles Kinney, my lawyer. He"ll tear you apart."
King smiled. "Giles doesn"t scare me. I kick his b.u.t.t on the golf course at least once a week."
CHAPTER 61.
KING AND MICh.e.l.lE MET TODDWilliams and two of his deputies at the Aphrodisiac and were soon in Lulu"s office questioning her about the occupant of the room and Kyle"s visits there. At first she denied knowing anything about it but finally admitted that she"d recently seen Kyle at the club.
"But I don"t know who the lady is," she said. "She doesn"t work here. I know that for a fact."
"What, you"re in the charity business now, letting rooms out for free to rich drug users?" said Williams sarcastically.
"I didn"t know anything like that was going on. She paid for the room, in cash. I just thought she needed a place to stay."
"Was she here every night?"
"I didn"t keep track really. Unless you"re going into one of the performance areas to see the girls or the bars, you don"t have to show ID. We have restaurants and lounges here too, and a business center. Anyone can come in and go to one of those places. We are open to the public," she added hotly.
King shook his head. "Come on, Lulu, are you saying that when the woman first came here, you never spoke to her? How the h.e.l.l did you know what she even wanted?"
"She left cash and a note that said she wanted that room and that room only."
"And you did what? You just gave it to her without question?"
"It"s just a room, Sean! And cash is cash. It"s not like she was running some criminal business in there. She only came at night. During the day we had the room cleaned, like all the others. There was never anything there. I know it sounds a little weird, and I admit I was curious. In fact, when she first started coming, I kept an eye peeled. There was never any loud noise or stuff like that. Except for this Kyle person, no one ever visited her."
"Did you see her come and go?"
"Sometimes. But she always wore a scarf, long coat and gla.s.ses."
"And that didn"t make you suspicious? Didn"t you ever try to find out who she was? Wait and watch her leave, trace her somehow?"
"Of course I was suspicious, but I"m not one to pry into other people"s business either. Live and let live is my motto. If she wanted a private room and didn"t want anyone to know who she was, at least she was willing to pay well for the privilege. And so there you are. I"m not into scaring off customers," she added defiantly.
"Well, Kyle Montgomery is dead, possibly murdered, so that puts a different spin on things," said Williams.
Lulu looked at him nervously. "I don"t know anything about that. He sure wasn"t killed here, so I don"t see what this place has to do with it."
"Well, let me enlighten you, then," said the police chief. "We have a witness who says a very heated altercation took place here between Kyle and this woman. We know he was bringing her prescription drugs that he"d stolen from the doctor"s office where he worked."
"I don"t know anything about that."
Williams continued. "So they had an argument recently, and last night, Kyle dies."
"Well, I didn"t kill him, and I don"t know who the lady is."
"Did she come here last night?"
"Not that I know of. At least I didn"t see her."
"When was the last time you did see her?"
Lulu thought. "I can"t be sure. I"ve had other things on my mind, including a husband to bury," she said, bristling.
"We"re going to need to question anyone here who might have seen her."
"Some of those people aren"t due into work until later."
"Then right now I want to see the room, and I want to question whoeveris here who might have seen her." here who might have seen her."
Lulu looked at him nervously. "Right now?"
"Is there a problem with that?"
"No, it"s just that some of the night-shift dancers are still sleeping."
"Sleeping. It"s two-thirty in the afternoon!"
"They dance until dawn!"
"All right, let"s start with the nondancers, but in the meantime you get those gals up and ready to talk to us. You understand, Lulu?"
"I understand," she said quickly.
As they were leaving, Mich.e.l.le glanced back and saw Lulu"s hand disappear inside a drawer of her desk, just as it had the other time she and King were here.
Once they were outside, Mich.e.l.le said, "Todd, why don"t you collect the people and start the questioning? Sean and I"ll poke around a bit."
"Good idea. We"ll compare notes later."
"What"s up?" said King after the police chief and his men had left them.
"Come on, quick."
Mich.e.l.le led him outside and to the back of the building where she spotted a staircase leading from the second floor. They stayed concealed behind a Dumpster and waited. Within a minute or so their patience was rewarded. A number of men, some carrying coats over their arms, others with their shirts unb.u.t.toned and untucked and hair sticking up, emerged from a second-floor door and made their way down the outside stairs, climbed into cars parked there and sped off.
King and Mich.e.l.le looked at each other.
"Appears the Aphrodisiac is living up to its name. Nice catch, Mich.e.l.le," said King.