“Thanks,” Lori said softly. Then, “So I’m not fired?”
Nathan gave her an amused look. “You do too good of work to fire you, though the price of a crime scene is going to need some reconsideration. I’m still not sure how you got Tyson Fenny to sell. The property at the end of the block,” he explained for their benefit. “Adult entertainment and liquor. It was critical to acquire if we were going to change the atmosphere of the neighborhood.”
“What are you going to do with it?” Evie asked, curious.
Nathan shared a look with Lori. “Probably a roller rink, give kids a place to work out some aggression in a well-padded way. But a church wants a footprint in the neighborhood, and that place has got the sizable parking lot required. What goes in where—that’s the next issue on Lori’s plate. It’s time I moved her off demolitions.”
They all chuckled at the comment.
“It sounds like quite an opening project with your new job, Lori,” David remarked. “You said you started working for The Lewis Group in November. Were you working for a real-estate firm prior?”
“No. The accent tends to give me away. I worked for Estate Services, Ltd., out of their Houston office for the last decade. If beneficiaries live in several different states, or you’ve got a complex family situation—exes and steps—you’d hire the firm as executor of your will. I’d arrange appraisals, liquidate assets, handle transfers of ownership, according to what the client had outlined. I spent a significant amount of time traveling and I was ready to settle in one place. That happened to be Chicago.”
“Something I’ve come to appreciate more with every passing week,” Nathan added.
David tucked his notebook away. “I appreciate you both staying around for this.”
“We’ve been shifting people to work at other sites, moving deliveries of materials to later dates,” Lori replied, nodding to paperwork in front of her. “I need to talk with Scott downstairs, the security guard who was with me. We’ve been told this will be a crime scene for at least forty-eight hours, that someone is likely to remain on-site even after we resume work.”
David glanced around. “I imagine the odds are good if a body is on the second floor, there’s going to be one on the first floor.”
Nathan grimaced.
“Sorry about that,” David said.
“Well,” said Lori, “at least it will solve one question we’re debating between the architect and foreman. We’re definitely gutting this entire place.”
Evie caught David’s attention and held up her phone. “Sharon is here. Lori, if you can get the building history info from the office downstairs, I’ll start on the next piece of this puzzle. You have Detective Jenkins’s number?” Evie handed over business cards for herself and David.
“Yes.” Lori gathered together an elegant-looking portfolio and slim leather briefcase. “I’d rather avoid that end of the building if you don’t mind, so let’s use the north stairs.” Nathan headed that way with her.
“Let’s regroup downstairs after you speak with Sharon,” Evie suggested to David. “If you want to head to the lab or stay on-site while they do a preliminary search of the building, Sharon can give me a lift back to the office.”
David nodded. “Give me twenty minutes. I’ll get a sense of the politics unfolding and then we’ll see what makes the most sense.”
The press corps was settled in for the long term, most of them walking around with insulated coffee mugs, talking on cells. An enterprising assistant had rounded up some portable heaters and arranged for the brewing of gallons of fresh coffee, enough to fill several large thermoses. The anticipation of someone on the second floor discreetly capturing a photo of the skeleton in the wall would have any self-respecting reporter hanging around with a roll of hundred-dollar bills in hopes of scoring such a scoop.
Evie unwrapped a sweet-tarts roll as she scoped out the neighborhood. Plywood covering broken windows and faded For Rent signs told an all-too-familiar story. Manufacturing businesses disappearing, gone either to bankruptcy or relocation, had collapsed local incomes, with that impact then rippling through the restaurants, clothing shops, hair salons, drugstores, and on and on.
Six years ago, Evie mused as she looked around, this would have been an odd place to hold a card game, with Englewood already on a downward slide. But it likely had an organized-crime connection already entrenched, preying upon the community’s desperation—payday loans, get-rich-quick schemes, liquor sales, petty crimes. In such an environment, “RB Electric” would have been a good front for what really went on here.