“Maybe she’s got a nice round ass under there, boss.”
“Knock it off.” I don’t want to hear Gill talk about her ass.
He ignores me. “Shit,” he mutters.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“Dude. She lives in West Garfield.”
“What the hell?” West Garfield is not a great neighborhood. “What’s the address?”
“Thirty-three-oh-four West Walnut. Apartment number… uh-oh.”
“What?” Gill is starting to piss me off.
“Basement apartment.”
Hell, no. Basement apartments are notoriously unsafe. It’s the easiest for intruders to access. “Bring up the crime stats and let me see a picture of her place.”
“Okay, here you go.”
I watch as Gill displays the stats next to a picture of a run-down old brownstone. “Jesus.” The building she lives in was, at one time, a charming brownstone, a single-family home. But time has not been good to this building. The brick exterior has kept it upright, but the front porch steps are rotted, and several holes appear on the stair treads. The small portico above the porch looks as though it may fall down any second. The windows, several of which are cracked or broken, look original to the building.
As I lean in to the computer to see the image that Gill has enlarged on his screen, I look closely at the basement windows. Those don’t appear to be broken, and there are colorful curtains on them. Surprisingly, there’s a large yard that surrounds the house, but several abandoned cars are sitting on the lawn in back. There’s a small flower garden on the east side of the house and a strip of land that could be a vegetable garden, but it’s difficult to see for sure. These pictures must have been taken in spring or summer, but it’s impossible to know what year. We are in the middle of a Chicago winter right now, so they could be showing the place at its best. Not good.
“She’s made her part of the yard kinda cute, boss.” Gill notices those touches, too. “There’s a separate entrance for thebasement at the back of the house. At least that’s what it looks like from the tax assessor’s page.” Gill has already brought up that information on another computer. “Hey, it says here that she owns the basement apartment.”
“How’s that possible? And why would she do that?”
“Well, her last name is Parker, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“The previous owner of the entire place was a Frank Parker, but it looks like he sold the place about five years ago. That’s when she shows up as owning the basement apartment. A guy named James Nelson bought the rest of the place.”
“So, whoever this Frank is, he made it so she owned her apartment and then sold the rest? Why would he do that?”
“If he split them off as condos… yeah, he could do that. I’ve seen people do that with a lot of brownstones here in the city.”
“True.”But why?
“I wonder why he did that?” Gill echoes my thoughts.
I shrug before asking, “Okay, can you zoom in on those crime stats?” He opens up the tab and zooms in. “Damn. Not great.” In the last month, there’ve been sixty-nine reports of violent crimes like robbery, battery, and assault, and four sexual assaults in West Garfield Park. I continue reading aloud. “Sixty-nine property crimes in the last month and one hundred and forty-five crimes related to prostitution, drugs, and damage of personal property. Jesus,” I mutter. “I hate that she’s living there. There are safer affordable places in the city to live.”
“If she owns her place, that’d be reason enough for her to stay.” Gill turns to look at me. He blinks a few times, and then a smirk appears on his ugly, bearded mug. “So, whatcha gonna do about it, boss? You gonna sweep in there and save her?” He chuckles. “Should I start calling you Clark Kent?”
“Maybe.” Yeah, it’s a maybe. “I need to know more. Can you find out where she works?”
“On it. I should have it for you later today.”
I know what you’re thinking. That I’m a fucking creeper but that’s not my intention here. It’s my profession to learn background, find out everything I can about a client and while this woman isn’t my client, I feel protective of her. Besides, there are too many questions rolling around in my head. I mean, what was she doing at that obscenely over-the-top party? After a lot of thought, I’m sure that wasn’t her crowd and seeing where she lives, in that hellhole, I now know she was out of her element on New Year’s Eve. She must have some wealthy friends, or maybe that loser of a guy was her boyfriend. IfIwere her boyfriend, she wouldn’t be livingthere—that’s for damn sure. She deserves so much better than that.
I should have suspected something when I watched her get her coat that night. She handed her ticket to the coat-check attendant, and they returned with an old tan trench coat like one a detective would wear in an old crime drama. It was so tattered and worn, there has to be a story behind it, and I’d like to know what it is.
Later that day, I have everything I need to know about Miss MacKenzie Blue Parker.
