Threads of Suspicion(78)

“The wall was going to come out soon anyway, so I figured I would take a look. I punched a hole in the drywall, and there was his face looking back at me, the jaw and teeth still kind of smiling. Freaked me out, let me tell you. I screamed so loud I probably sent every mouse and rat in the building fleeing.”

Nathan lightly laid a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sure they were already far away just from your hammering.”

She chuckled. “I don’t mind the things that run, Nathan. It’s the spiders the size of quarters that give me the shudders.”

Evie smiled at the humorous way the woman worded it. The sight of a skull would have freaked anyone out, and a woman mostly alone in a building under construction—she’d been fully within her rights to yell. “If you could share copies of that building research with us, it would help us out considerably,” Evie put in.

Lori looked toward Nathan and got a nod, looked back at Evie. “Sure. If you don’t mind copies of copies, there’s a folder of building research materials in the office downstairs—everything from when this building was built, its various owners, to blueprint changes and the permits issued for electrical and mechanical work. You can take it all with you. I’ve got a duplicate folder at The Lewis Group building.”

“Perfect,” Evie said.

Lori turned her attention to David, considered him for a long moment before observing, “You know who he is—the man in the wall. They called you in because you know. They wouldn’t tell me his name.”

“Saul Morris was a private investigator who’s been missing for six years.”

Knowing what was coming, Evie kept an eye on Nathan. David had timed things well. Nathan went pale, and then anger surged into his face. He stepped away from Lori, swung toward the windows. “Well, that burns it.”

“Who’s Saul Morris?” Lori asked, bewildered.

“A private investigator looking into my wife’s death,” Nathan replied abruptly. He squeezed the bridge of his nose, shook his head. “This can’t be related, Detective. Nothing he was working on for me would have had Saul this far south. Caroline was killed up in Freemont.” Evie watched his anger, fascinated by the quickness of it, along with the rapid way he’d reined it in, dealing with such an astonishing fact.

“We have a sense of what he was working on, what likely brought him here, and it wasn’t your wife’s murder,” David said.

Nathan seemed marginally relieved at that news. “Still, it’s not only beyond sad to realize he’s been dead, hidden here all these years, but you know better than I do that it incriminates me. I could have bought the building, hoping to permanently cover up the scene when I heard about the new missing-persons initiative. And now my newest employee rather steps in it, finds the body, and calls the cops before calling me.”

Lori laughed. It sputtered out of her so that she slapped a hand over her mouth as she shook her head. “Sorry,” she gasped, but still laughed around it. She caught her breath. “If you could hear and weigh what you just said. You sound rather foolish, Nathan. My boss or not, you’ve got an inflated way of viewing your importance. Some of the time at least, like now.”

Nathan started to smile. “It’s nice to know you have a healthy respect for the guy who signs your paycheck.”

The tension in him had broken. Evie studied Lori, more interested now than ever in this woman who’d discovered the missing PI. When Lori glanced over, Evie offered a brief smile. Oh, yeah. Ann’s chosen well, she thought.

David said into the pause, “Nathan, would it help to simply clear the question? Did you have anything at all to do with Saul’s death?”

“No.”

“Then we’ll figure this out. I’ve seen more odd coincidences than this in a case, though you now being the owner of this building is certainly unexpected. Give me some facts. When did you start looking at doing work in Englewood?”

“Jordan Lake with Helping Hands, Inc., started mulling around the idea of a community rehab here about a year ago. I’m basically his banker on projects like this. The concept didn’t gain traction for this calendar year until Governor Bliss won the election. He’s hoping Helping Hands can double the number of its employees over his four-year term, and a project of this scale is one way to rapidly ramp up hiring.

“I gave the project to Lori to pull together. If building owners see me on the other side of the table, they know I’ve got deep pockets and can make the decision to meet their price. They see Lori across the table, she tells them she might like to agree to that higher price for the building but can’t, they tend to stay more reasonable in the negotiations. I watched her acquire seventeen buildings with cash left under the cap she was working with, where I would have struggled to acquire fourteen for the same dollars. She did an incredible job.”