wants.”
“Is business good?” asks Vidocq.
K.W. shrugs.
“With development, it’s always feast or famine. No one wants anything new. All they want is new electrics or pipes in old structures. Then someone wants a new hundred-apartment complex up in two weeks. And there are ten other companies behind that one who want the same thing.”
“Was Hunter going to work for you when he finished school?”
“I don’t know. We talked about it.”
“Did he spend much time at the building sites?”
K.W. sips his coffee. Puts his hand on his wife’s hand. Squeezes. She squeezes back.
“Not particularly. He liked the big construction machines when he was little.”
Fucking fascinating. This family is in training for the Tedious Olympics.
“Are you developing anything new? Anything unusual?” asks Candy. Nice. She has good instincts for this Sherlock Holmes stuff. Me, I’m about ready to take her back to the hotel and break more furniture.
“What do you mean ‘unusual’?”
“You’re the builder,” I say. “We don’t know a dump truck from the Batmobile. You tell us.”
K.W.’s eyes unfocus. Make microscopic movements back and forth in their sockets. It’s an involuntary thing. The brain trying to access memories. If he was lying, his eyes would favor his left side, but they don’t.
K.W. shrugs.
“Nothing out of the ordinary. We’re finishing a housing development. Upgrading the fixtures in a strip mall. We’re about to break ground on an office park near the 405.”
“Okay, the jobs are boring. Are your clients? Any eccentrics? Odd requests? Anyone paying you in magic beans?”
He thinks again. His eyes stop and hold steady.
“There’s only one thing I can think of and it’s not really odd. It’s just not something that happens every day.”
“Tell us,” says Vidocq.
ight='0' width='12' align='left'>“A client called for a fix-up on a business property. What was unusual was that I never met her or a rep in person. We did everything on the phone. It was like she was one person handling everything herself. That’s unusual in this business.”
“What was her name?” I ask.
He frowns.
“I can’t remember. My secretary would know.”
“What did she hire you to do?”
“She wanted us to renovate and restore an old commercial site in the Hollywood Hills. It was a big job, too. There was extensive fire damage, but she wanted us to fix it rather than tear it down. It was something historic. An old gentlemen’s club. That I remember. It’s not a phrase you hear too often these days.”
I put down my coffee and Vidocq picks up his. Candy and I look at each other.
“Did she tell you the name of the club?”
“Maybe. I don’t remember.”
“Was it Avila?”
K.W. smiles.
“Yes, that’s it. How did you know?”
The human brain is a very funny thing, and because of that, it can do very funny things to the human body. Take mine right now. My heartbeat just doubled. All my senses are cranked up to eleven. Even the angel in my head feels it. I hear Jen’s breathing change. She knows my question and K.W.’s answer are important. I smell K.W. starting to sweat. He gets it that something he’s said is connected to Hunter’s disappearance. Vidocq and Candy are plain excited and trying not to show it. I’m as excited as any of them, but I feel cold, too. Like someone cracked open my chest and dumped a bucket of ice inside. But I don’t show any of it. This is basic stuff. I could have had this information yesterday if I hadn’t let the TJ thing get to me. But I guess getting to me has been the idea all along.
“How did you know the club’s name?”
I sip my coffee. The room is practically vibrating from the tension. Candy is a furnace. She wants to run out and start gnawing on bad guys or the coyotes in the hills. Something.
“A lucky guess.”
“I’ll call the office and get you the woman’s number.”
I shake my head.
“Don’t bother. It’ll be turned off and she won’t use it again.”
Jen says, “You know who it is, don’t you?”
