Pay Dirt, page 26
Another phone. I found a burner in my backpack and called.
“This is crazy and even creepy, Vic, but—but Sabrina’s mother is here. She wants to talk to you but she’s afraid her calls are being monitored. Bernie’s in a match in Ann Arbor, that’s why it’s me calling.”
She handed the phone off to Valerie Granev.
“Ms. Warshawski? I have the engineering skill to tell that someone has planted spyware on my phones. I have three, and they are all contaminated. I need to be quick, before someone figures I’m using this phone and starts monitoring it.
“I’m in Chicago to collect my daughter’s belongings. Sabrina is—she is recovering, I think, I hope, but slowly. She won’t be back in school, or anyway, not this school, not for a long while, if ever.”
Her voice quavered, holding back tears. She stopped for a beat; I heard Angela urge her to drink something.
“Sabrina is in the best institution in the country for dealing with addiction and brain impairment. We—Ram and I—we couldn’t have gotten her in on our own, at least not so quickly, and we couldn’t afford to keep her there without help. I—I was asked—told—not to communicate with you, to fire you—after you agreed to help me—us. I told the FBI you had not kidnapped my daughter, that you saved her life, so I hope they’re not charging you with a crime.
“Angela told me you have to stay in Kansas because they suspect you of a murder in that same house where you found Sabrina. I’m sorry, sorry my daughter’s troubles brought all this grief to you, sorry I can’t talk to you directly, but for me, Sabrina comes first.”
“Of course your daughter comes first for you, but I also know the Tullohs made a handsome gift to your husband when you fired me. I’m cleaning up a giant mess involving drugs and at least one, maybe two, murders as the thank-you gift I got for saving your daughter’s life. I want you to show some gratitude.”
“I can’t—Sabrina—”
I cut her off. “Tell me what the Tullohs are building on Yancy.”
“I don’t know. Honestly I don’t know. It’s nothing to do with avionics, so I’m not on the distribution list. All I can tell you is that the brothers are arguing over it. No one knows what Matthew thinks. Sometimes he talks to Pauline instead of the sons.”
She hung up abruptly.
I called back, and spent some time talking to Angela, who was understandably worried by Valerie’s behavior. The whole time we were speaking, I could hear Valerie in the background, urging her to hang up before someone traced her to the house.
I turned off the lights, but it was a long time before I went back to sleep.
39
Fermented Cabbage
Sometimes Matthew Tulloh talked to his daughter instead of his sons, Valerie had said.
The sons both lived in a gated community with their father near the company’s Salina headquarters. Of course, being billionaires, they had plenty of other homes. New York and London to be close to financial centers. Palm Springs for golf, Mont Blanc for winter sports, Sardinia for peaceful getaways.
Pauline’s main residence was in Mission Hills, a wealthy enclave in Kansas City. Pauline had been married and divorced some years ago. There wasn’t any mention of children, while the brothers both had three each. She’d separated herself geographically, at least a little; maybe she’d separated herself enough emotionally that she’d confide in a female PI.
“What should I do?” I asked Peppy. “Cold-call on the phone, at the front door, or a text?”
Peppy pawed at my knee.
“Try her in person, right you are.”
It was possible that she was in the family enclave in Palm Springs or the one in Sardinia, but Peppy and I set off for Kansas City in a hopeful spirit. The sky was an eggshell blue, a color that made me feel young and optimistic: spring would be here soon; I would solve Clarina’s murder; I’d hear from Peter; I’d figure out if I wanted to end my life as an investigator and take up something new and amazing.
Pauline’s mansion was set well back from the road, surrounded by a high iron fence with movable spikes along the top. The road itself was a discreet ribbon in the middle of a large parkway, barely noticeable for the creek that ran alongside it. I let Peppy splash in the creek and chase rabbits across the parkway before shutting her back in the car.
I left the Camry on a nearby cross street and walked back to the Tulloh place. When I buzzed an intercom set into one of the gateposts, a man answered. I explained I was a detective working on the crimes around the Tulloh family’s Yancy project and hoped to speak to Pauline.
The man who spoke to me was waiting at the top of the walk. He escorted me around the side of the house to a glassed-in porch overlooking a garden with a pond and ornamental fountain. Pauline Tulloh was inside, sitting cross-legged in a white wicker chaise longue. She was in leggings and an oversize shirt, and her toes in her braided leather flip-flops had been groomed and painted turquoise. The sun picked out a range of colors in her hair, from a dull gold to a glossy brown. It was so expertly painted that it ended up looking fake.
When the man, whose name I learned was Mellon, ushered me inside, Pauline didn’t get up, but waved me to a wicker basket chair. Mellon left me at the doorway, but returned almost immediately with a tall glass holding a greenish liquid, which he put on a round table next to Pauline’s left hand.
“It’s my ten a.m. pick-me-up. Do you want one? Grass, lemon, a little fermented cabbage as an immune booster.”
It sounded revolting. “My body would collapse under so much health,” I said.
“You’re a private detective. Does that mean you want bourbon or rye?”
Mellon’s expression remained bland, but he murmured that they also had Sardinian fizzy water or coffee. I was eager to try a billionaire’s coffee.
When Pauline lifted her immune boost to drink, I saw a ring, gold, covered with small red stones, on the traditional wedding ring finger.
She saw me staring and laughed. “Such a beautiful ring. When my husband and I parted, I saw no reason to resize it for another finger.”
She drank some more fermented cabbage. “What’s the Yancy project?”
“I was hoping you could tell me,” I said. “Yancy is a hill outside the northwest border of Lawrence. The Kaw makes a loop there and creates a kind of embrace around the hill. A hedge fund owns a big chunk of the hill. Two years ago they got planning permission to build a resort and some shops, but they are putting in an eye-popping power grid. I’d like to know what they’re actually building.”
Pauline looked into her glass. “I see, yes, I see a power grid, I see trucks. I don’t see the Tulloh name.”
“Tilt the glass,” I said. “Look a bit farther north, to the Kaw and the old Wakarusa Power Plant. It now belongs to your brother Robert.”
She held the glass out. Mellon materialized to take it away, returning a moment later with coffee in a small porcelain pot, a porcelain mug, and a little pitcher of cream. I drank some coffee, black. Mellon or whoever staffed the kitchen did a nice job. It wasn’t any better than the Hippo’s, but the porcelain elevated it to something special.
“And is Robert also in charge of the construction on this hilltop?” Pauline asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “He keeps popping up in the area. The FBI was having me deposed for my involvement in saving the life of a young woman whose mother works for your family’s company. Your brother showed up in the conference room and ended the interrogation. It was an interesting display of power, a private citizen derailing a federal interrogation.
“Two days ago, your brother Robert showed up outside an old house at the bottom of Yancy, a house that still belongs to one of the original owners of the hill. Robert was chewing out the owner, a man named Brett Santich.”
“You think that proves that my brother is the secret owner of the hedge fund?” Pauline asked. Her husky voice was languid, almost mocking.
Being rich means you can ridicule the people around you to derail a conversation you don’t like. Being a detective means staying serious and straightforward.
“Your other brother is also interested in some aspect of the Yancy project. Two days after I found Sabrina Granev close to death in that house at the base of Yancy, Jacob seemed to be coaching the Lawrence police chief during a press conference on Granev’s health.”
“Jake and Robert do like to boss people around,” Pauline said. “Mellon, what’s Jake’s connection to the Lawrence police chief?”
Mellon had been hovering just inside the door. “Jake and Chief McDowell were fraternity brothers at Wichita State thirty-three years ago.”
Pauline nodded. “So it’s not surprising the chief would welcome Jake’s support at a press conference.”
“When your brother Robert was arguing with Brett Santich, I overheard part of the conversation. I confess that I only caught a few words, so I may be filling in the blanks wrong, but he thought somebody’s sister might ‘bitch the whole deal.”
“Real-life detectives actually do go listening at keyholes.” The mockery was more pronounced.
“We’re like everyone else—electronic keyholes, and mine wasn’t very sophisticated. My recording suggested you resented your brothers and that might lead you to kill the deal.”
“Resent? I try not to think about them that much. Daddy didn’t want me working in the company. Mother was never involved; she let Daddy make all the decisions, turning her grain elevators into Tulloh gold. He thought that was a good model for me to follow.
“I married one of his rising executives so I could play the good daughter/wife role, but when my husband saw that no outsider would ever have a top job at Tulloh, he left for a start-up. And he left me. And then Daddy bought the start-up and shut it down.
“Since then, I try to pay no attention to anything any of them are doing, but sometimes Daddy still comes around whining because Robert is impetuous and stupid, and Jake is too cautious and also stupid.” Her voice hadn’t changed pitch or cadence; she might have been talking about what a nuisance it was to clean the birdfeeders that dotted the garden outside the sunroom.
“And has he come around whining about Robert and the Yancy project?”
Pauline studied her fingernails, which, like her toes, were perfectly manicured. “In a general way, he wants the boys to know how important it is to clear the ground of obstacles before you start building. He might have meant there were unexpected problems with the building site, but it could have been metaphoric, of course.”
“You know a woman was murdered and left to die in that house on Yancy land.”
She gave a sardonic smile. “You think that she might have been an obstacle to the building site? Robert killed her to show Daddy he could remove obstacles?”
“If she was in the way of the project, I expect he would have had someone do it for him.”
At that she laughed. “That would be Jake. Robert loves getting his hands dirty.”
“Murdering a woman would leave a lot of dirt on your hands. Not all the perfumes of Tulloh Industries could sweeten them. If you could bitch the Yancy project, would you?”
“I don’t know what I could do to derail it, assuming it is a Tulloh Industries thing.”
“If your father confides in you, I expect you could tell him your brothers are making serious mistakes over in Lawrence.”
“Such as?” Her voice hadn’t changed, but her face looked alert, cautious.
“The planning commission approved plans for a resort and some shops. But it looks as though they’re installing a big power grid, which is perhaps why they bought a coal plant. It would be a resort on the scale of the country of Monaco to require that much power.”
“I expect Daddy knows about that,” she said. “He likes old coal plants. Coal makes him feel connected to the ground, and the ground is where his fortune comes from—coal, gas, but wheat and sorghum are where he started. He’s suspicious of financial instruments that are separate from the land.”
“But he must have a huge investment portfolio,” I objected.
“Of course. He has a whole building full of portfolio managers. But he likes them grounded in reality. No crypto for him.”
“Does your mother have a role in his business decisions? I gather he started with her grain elevators.”
“Daddy turned her into a billionaire, while her brothers lost all their land and the elevators their father left them. Why would she regret it?”
“That’s definitely what your grandmother Tulloh believed, isn’t it?” I said. “Someone recorded her at your parents’ fiftieth anniversary party. She was quite gleeful about how badly your mother’s family had fared.”
“Mother doesn’t like conflict. She let Grandmother Tulloh say a lot of things that were hard to listen to. She won’t fight with Daddy either, so she sometimes asks me to support—charities—he might not like.”
Her hesitation before “charities” made me ask, “Is Brett Santich one of your mother’s charities?”
“Santich? Oh, the man you saw Robert arguing with. If Mother knows him, she hasn’t shared that knowledge with me. No, there are other people in Lawrence she cares about, but not him. Mellon.”
She didn’t raise her voice; he appeared at once.
“The detective and I are done here. Can you make sure she leaves the premises, maybe get Johnno to escort her out of the village?”
I got to my feet. “You don’t have any role in the company?”
Her smile reappeared, but it was brittle. “I do have a role. I cash dividend checks and admire the boys.”
40
“A” Student
I collected Peppy and walked with her along the creek bed, trying to decipher Pauline’s comments. She had been strangely revealing of her family’s dynamics, all delivered in a cool tone that made it sound as though she didn’t care. Was I supposed to think we’d been intimate, and so I wouldn’t question anything she or her family did?
Then there were comments about her brothers and their different ways of dealing with obstacles. Did she know that Robert had killed Clarina, or was she saying he was capable of doing so? And what about her statement that she gave money to her mother’s—charities?
The dog and I had walked as far as a small commercial strip. While I waited in line at a coffee bar, I looked up Mellon on my phone. Geoffrey Mellon, forty-seven years old, had studied social psychology and homeland security at Wichita State University, had worked for a private security firm, then joined Tulloh Industries nine years ago. Doing what was impossible to discover, but he’d clearly proved himself worthy of bringing Pauline her fermented cabbage.
I shared a bagel with the dog as we walked back to the car, but I poured out the coffee. Three dollars and undrinkable. At least I could expense it.
We were just getting into the car when a text came through from Abby Langford, the archivist at the Kansas Origins Museum and Library. The museum’s conservator had finished studying the photo I’d found in Clarina’s trailer. He wanted to deliver his report in person; could I come in this afternoon?
The museum was seventy-five miles away, but those were Kansas miles, not Chicago. I was in the museum parking lot a little over an hour later.
Abby Langford greeted me at the reference desk with a worried frown. Before we met the conservator, she needed to talk to me about something truly serious that she’d learned only after her earlier message.
“I asked one of my coworkers if there were other materials Clarina looked at which might show what she was working on. I know I told you we protect our readers’ anonymity, but in this case I decided to bend that rule.
“We have diaries belonging to dozens of early settlers; Clarina went through many of them during the fifteen months she used our collection. All of us in reference agreed she seemed most interested in one of the last collections she came on. These were the diaries of a Lawrence woman, a Mrs. Florence Wheelock. We were fortunate that the family gifted us with the diaries because Florence wrote in them for close to sixty years.”
I made enthusiastic noises. “Fabulous. The Wheelocks were the first people, at least the first European settlers, to claim land on a place just outside Lawrence called Yancy Hill. Yancy is where Clarina’s body was found. A current-day Wheelock descendant was at a drug house on Yancy the night Clarina’s body was found there. Maybe the diaries can give some background on the Wheelocks’ relationship to Yancy. I’d love to see them.”
“We’d love to see the diaries, too.” Langford’s smile was thin-lipped, tight. “There are seventeen volumes altogether, starting in 1858, when Florence was thirteen, and ending in 1919, when she was seventy-four. The three volumes covering 1864, when she married, to 1877, are missing. We believe Clarina Coffin smuggled them out of the library. You didn’t see anything in her home that could have been these diaries, did you?”
My heart sank. “If she had them, whoever tore her place apart found them and took them. What do they look like?”
Langford called to a young man sorting books in an area behind the reference counter. He disappeared into the stacks and returned with a trolley holding a collection of old books.
Langford took a box from the trolley and removed a cardboard binder tied shut with string. She opened it to show me a stack of paper, pieces of all different sizes, some with type set on them, some flimsy pages torn from mail-order catalogs. She let me look closely at one of the pages, as long as I didn’t touch it. The immature handwriting was full of spelling mistakes.
“When Florence started her diaries, the family had no money, so she wrote on whatever she could find—bills of sale that she picked up on the town streets, things like that. She explains where she’s getting the paper, and the paper itself is historically interesting. This carton represents 1859 and 1860, and it’s fascinating for what she shows us of daily life while the border wars over slavery and statehood were in full sway.
