55.
The laurel heights police station was across the town square from an upscale shopping mall. It was like it was a detached part of the mall, with the kind of pseudo small-town America decor that you find in theme parks. I parked in a visitor’s slot out front and went inside.
The cop on the front desk directed me to the detective squad room on the second floor. I sat down in a straight chair beside the desk of a detective named Coley Zackis.
“Name’s Spenser,” I said. “I called you yesterday.”
We shook hands.
“After you called,” Zackis said, “I got out the Turners’ fi le.”
He patted a thin manila folder on his desk.
“Not much,” he said.
“You want to show it to me,” I said, “or you want to tell me.”
“You been a cop?” Zackis said.
“I have.”
“Then you know what a file looks like,” he said. “Be easier if I tell you.”
“Illegibility is one of the first things you learn on the job,” I said.
Zackis grinned. He was a heavy guy with a noticeable belly and thick hands.
“And you got to spill coffee on them,” he said.
“What’s in this one?” I said.
“Hardly enough to spill coffee on,” Zackis said. “Turners stopped paying the mortgage. Eventually the bank sent somebody over there. Place looked deserted, so they called us. Patrol guys went up and took a look. Mail was piled up, grass wasn’t cut, unopened newspapers all over the front walk. Phone was disconnected. They went in. No sign of life or anything else. It was like one day they just up and left.”
“Bank inventories the stuff they left behind,” I said. “I went over it last night. It looks like they didn’t take much. No car.”
“Couple of our detectives went up and looked around.”
“You one of them?”
Zackis nodded.
“Yep,” he said. “Just made detective at the time. We found nothing. There were still suitcases in a closet. His and hers. Makeup in the master bath. Couple purses hanging on a knob in the front hall closet. No way to know how many suitcases they had, how many purses. Makeup looked like it was used, but . . . you married?”
“Sort of,” I said.
“How do you be sort of?”
“Takes practice,” I said.
“Well,” he said, “you probably know that your sort-of wife has more makeup than anyone would believe and that when she packs to go away she takes it all, but when you look at her bathroom, or wherever, there’s, like, still a ton of makeup.”
“I know that,” I said.
“And you know she got a half-dozen purses.”
“I do,” I said.
“So we got no way to know what there was to start,” Zackis said. “Did they take suitcases? Did she take a purse? Did she pack makeup?”
“Beds made?” I said.
Zackis glanced at the report for a moment.
“Nope,” he said. “King-sized bed in the master bedroom was not made.”
“People usually make the bed before they take a trip.”
“So they don’t have to fi nd it unmade when they come back.”
“Or have someone else fi nd it so,” I said.
“Like wearing clean underwear,” Zackis said. “In case you’re in an accident.”
“Like that,” I said.
“For most people the house is their biggest investment,”
Zackis said. “They don’t just walk away and leave it.”
“They left about a hundred grand on the table,” I said. Zackis shook his head.
“It smells bad, doesn’t it,” he said.
“It does,” I said.
