It was a Caucasian woman maybe my age, with her hair sloppily ponytailed on top of her head. She looked me up and down, scowling, taking in my suit. “Yeah?”
Before I could demand to see Boswell in my homicide detective voice, Carl piped in, all easygoing smiles. I’ve always found the way he chameleons into any social situation pretty baffling. “Good morning—I hope we didn’t catch you at a bad time. We were looking to speak to Noah.”
Who? Oh yeah, Boswell.
“He ain’t here.”
Click.
As the door shut, Carl’s face shifted into a frown of annoyance…which made him look a heck of a lot more like himself.
CHAPTER THREE
JUST GOES TO show, that’s how far being pleasant will get you. Did I feel vindicated that Carl’s nice-guy routine hadn’t scored him any points? Maybe just a little. I knocked again, deliberate and loud, in a slow, even pace that conveyed I was perfectly willing to keep on doing it as long as it took. Meanwhile, in an act of due diligence, Carl keyed in the car’s license plate from the driveway and sent the numbers back to HQ.
“First the phone hangup,” I said. “Now this. I’m starting to think somebody’s not feeling all that chatty.”
I knocked for another two solid minutes, and eventually, the door opened again. Still just a crack. “I said he ain’t here,” the woman repeated.
Since Carl’s fake affability got him nowhere, I didn’t bother trying to butter her up. I flipped open my official-looking federal license and said, “And you are?”
At the sight of the plastic, the woman paled, but clamped her mouth shut.
“Miz Foster?” Carl said, proving we didn’t actually need her input—wow, the folks back at FPMP Records were super quick. “Like I said…we were just hoping to talk to Noah. Are yousurehe isn’t here?”
“He ain’t here. I don’t know when he will be. I ain’t seen him for at least a week.”
We could probably track that on his phone. I said, “And your relationship to him is…?”
“There is no…look, he’s just some guy I know.”
If she weren’t so damn vague, she wouldn’t be raising so many red flags. Now I was positive something shady was going on. I pulled out the dreaded notepad and Foster went ashen. “Ma’am,” I said, affecting the boredom of a beat cop who takes no shit. “I’ll need you to start from the beginning. How long have you known Boswell and where exactly did you meet?”
She looked me over and took in the plain black suit. With a sigh, she finally caved and opened the door all the way. She wore a schleppy long-sleeved T-shirt with a faded Bulls logo on the front and leggings that were stretched alarmingly thin. “I met Noah on Facebook last year—he’s a friend of someone I used to work with—and we just got to talking one day and realized we saw eye to eye.”
She attempted to stop there, but I stared blandly until she elaborated. “You can weed out a bunch of really dumb people if you pay attention to their comments. Idiots who think there’s any difference between Democrats and Republicans, who don’t realize the whole system is controlled by big pharma.”
I wanted to get into a political debate like I wanted to take the pen I was holding and stick it in my eye. “And the nature of your relationship?”
She seemed puzzled by that question. It took her a hot second to say, “Friends, I guess?”
“Roommates?” I suggested.
She recoiled. “Oh, no. He don’t live here.”
“Public record states otherwise.”
“I just get his mail—that’s no crime. I know that for sure. I looked it up.”
I couldn’t care less about mail fraud, but if I kept her on edge, she was more likely to overexplain herself and actually tell me something I could use. “When do you expect to see him next?”
“I dunno. He shows up when he shows up.”
“It would save me the time of verifying the local statutes and ordinances if I could track him down for a simple five-minute conversation.”
“Why?” Foster picked at the fraying cuff of her sleeve. “What’d he do now?”
I’m not at liberty to discuss an ongoing investigationwas at the tip of my tongue, but Carl interjected, “It’s a simple real estate matter—a follow-up on a review he left.”
