She supposed she should be somewhat happy that he hadn't lied to her, because she was fairly sure he was famous in some way. But it didn't really make sense since she hadn't been able to find out anything about him on the Internet. Which meant he probably wasn't using his real name. Josie had been an actress once. Maybe Jax was an actor. But if he was, it seemed like someone else besides Ellen would have thought he looked familiar, and no one at Ocean Shores seemed to have any sense that they'd seen him before.
"So," Jax prodded. "What are we going to tell Walter?"
"What we've found out so far," she said, knowing that Jax was trying to distract her from his mystery. But that was fine. She probably should concentrate on Walter since they were almost at his apartment.
As Jax parked in front of Walter's building, she unbuckled her seat belt and stepped onto the sidewalk. It felt strange to be here without responding to a call. And there was a voice inside her head that suggested this probably wouldn't go over well with her boss, but she ignored that warning, leaning into the idea that if they could help Walter with a problem that wasn't at all medical in nature, everything would be fine.
She led the way into the building and knocked on the door. Almost immediately, the door across the hall cracked open.
"Hello, Mrs. Park," she said. "I'm just checking on Walter."
The woman gave her a suspicious look. "I didn't call you, and you're not in uniform."
"It's not an official visit," she replied, tapping again on the door.
A moment later, it opened, and she was relieved to see Walter on his feet, although he had a confused expression on his face.
"Hello, Mr. Cobb," she said. "It's Kaia Mercer, and this is Jax Ridley. You spoke the other day at the music store."
"I know who you both are," he said with a frown. "What I don't know is what you're doing here. I didn't fall, and my blood sugar is fine."
"We're not here about that. Can we come in?"
"Why not?" He stepped back and waved them into his apartment. "I guess you can sit."
Jax closed the door and then followed her to the couch while Walter sat down on a recliner.
"We came to talk to you about the red door, Walter," Jax said. "The old nightclub, the Starlight Lounge, the one you told me about."
"I can't find it," Walter said. "I keep looking, but no one knows where it is."
"That's because it's not a club anymore," Jax said. "The club closed a long time ago, and it's now the basement of the bookstore."
"The bookstore," Walter echoed. "That's where it used to be?"
"In the basement," she interjected. "We checked it out, and the owner of the building confirmed that the Starlight Lounge was in the basement, and it had a red door. But that door was painted over years ago, and it's just a storage room now. That's why you haven't been able to find it."
"When did it close?"
"Thirty or more years ago," she said.
He slowly nodded his head. "I didn't know. But I kind of figured."
She was relieved to hear him admit he hadn't expected it to still be there. "Well, you don't have to keep looking for it anymore," she told him.
"I want to see it," Walter said. "Can I see it?"
"It's not the same as it was. It looks like someone's basement."
"Reina said she was going to leave me something at the club, in her dressing room, in a place no one could find. It might still be there."
"That's doubtful," Jax cut in. "The lounge became a printing facility after the club closed. The basement is filled with stuff from different decades, including printing equipment. I doubt anything Reina would have left would still be there."
"If the building is still standing, then it's possible," Walter said stubbornly. "Can you take me there?"
She hesitated. Walter now seemed quite animated and hopeful about finding an old note among the clutter, and she couldn't imagine that happening.
"It might not be a good idea," Jax said. "It will just make you sad."
