“Do I get yours?”
“To a point.”
“I’ll take the same point. Deal?” Kelly raised her chin and grimaced, giving him her no-deal look. “I don’t know who killed him or who tried to kill me, but nobody wants to find out more than I do. I can’t give up a client unless I’m not worried about being wrong. And you’re not going to tell me anything about St. John’s investigation that could blow his case. So we both know what that point is. We’re college graduates. If it gets tricky, we’ll work it out. Deal?”
She slipped out of her cop look and put on her punch-line smile. “Deal. Sullivan sustained a blow to the back of the head. Probably not enough to kill him or even knock him out. Water in his lungs proves he drowned.”
“That’s not news. What else do you have?”
“Cause of death was drowning, but he had a heart attack first. The coroner says it was probably drug induced. He doesn’t have all the lab tests back yet. But he does have one test back. Your partner was HIV positive.”
“AIDS?”
“Not yet. Just HIV positive. We’re not disclosing that information yet. I’ve got an appointment with the family doctor, Charlie Morgenstern, after the funeral, to examine his medical records.”
“Any more surprises-maybe a birthmark that turned up missing?”
“Close. He had needle marks on the inside of his left arm and the inside of his thighs.”
“Don’t tell me he was an intravenous drug user too!”
“Intravenous user of something. That’s what the lab tests are about.”
“HIV explains one thing. Sullivan was stalling on the physical for the life insurance policy to cover his death benefit at the firm. Now I understand why. I wonder who gave him the virus and who he passed it on to.”
“Spreading that news would not improve his sex life and might make someone angry enough to get even. The insurance policy is another motive. Who was the beneficiary?”
“Technically, the firm, since the money was to be used to buy out his stock. So I guess his wife ends up the real beneficiary. But what difference does that make? He never got the policy.”
“Maybe his wife didn’t know that. Maybe she only knew he had the death benefit.”
“Where do you go with the information on his HIV status?”
“Missouri Department of Public Health. Morgenstern had to report the HIV diagnosis. The state may have tried to track down his sex partners to notify them.”
The mental picture of Sullivan listing the names of his sex partners was too much. Mason would have bet money he asked for extra paper.
“Did you know Sullivan and my firm were targets of St. John’s investigation?”
“No. St. John wanted O’Malley. We knew about Sullivan, but nothing I saw pointed at him or your firm.”
“Well, something changed. St. John sent Sullivan a target letter naming him and the firm about six weeks ago. Then he served Sullivan with a subpoena for the firm’s records on O’Malley. Sullivan was supposed to turn the files over this Friday.”
“How did you find out?”
“Scott Daniels found the target letter and the subpoena in Sullivan’s office on Sunday.”
“That’s convenient.”
“Yesterday, Sandra and I met with St. John to buy some time on the subpoena. Your name came up when I asked about wiretaps. St. John said they weren’t tapping our phones. Then we found this in the phone on Sullivan’s desk.”
He handed her the bug.
“Too cheap for the bureau. This is strictly amateur stuff.”
“That’s what St. John said. I don’t think I’m on his Christmas list anymore.”
“Did you find any others?”
“I’ll know soon. Is that all I get from you, Sheriff?” he asked as they pulled into the cemetery.
“Maybe. Depends,” Kelly said as they stepped out of the car.
“On what? I’ll even buy you dinner.”
“On what my pal St. John wants.” St. John stood alongside his sedan a hundred feet away, motioning her toward his car. “I don’t think I’ll need a ride back. Dinner sounds great. I’ll call you next week.”
Mason congratulated himself on getting a date at a funeral and walked toward the grave site.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
One thing Mason learned from Blues was to pay more attention to his hometown. After all, he was a fourth- generation resident in a city that at one time had been home to more hogs and whores than just about anyplace in the history of either commodity.
Kansas City was born as the last trading post before the pioneers’ leap into the Great American Desert, later known as Kansas. It survived its adolescence as one of the most wide-open, swinging, corrupt towns of the twenties and thirties and matured into a five-county metroplex straddling the Missouri-Kansas state line, bragging that it had more fountains than Paris and more boulevards than Rome.
Following the funeral service, friends and family gathered at the Sullivan home in Mission Hills, the richest of the Kansas-side municipalities that grew into a seamless patchwork of neighborhoods, oblivious to the state line.
An out-of-towner couldn’t tell where Jackson County, Missouri, ended and Johnson County, Kansas, began. But it was easy to tell where the money was, and a lot of it was in Mission Hills. This enclave of the locally rich and famous was five minutes and a million dollars west of Mason’s house.
Huge homes sat on large, heavily treed lots, along winding streets that oozed an old-money ambiance. The Sullivan home was a handsome Tudor set back on a broad, carefully manicured lawn. The circle drive was filled with cars bearing Mercedes, BMW, and Lexus hood ornaments. American-made cars lined the street.
Two hours spent pumping the hands of colleagues who were planning their pitches to Sullivan’s clients was enough for Mason. He found Pamela in the family room, sitting on a small sofa next to a stern-faced, dark-haired woman who was holding Pamela to her breast and stroking Pamela’s hair. The woman looked up at Mason with a defiant glare. Two half-empty cocktail glasses sat on the butler’s table in front of them. Mason cleared his throat. Pamela raised her head and sat up. The woman brushed Pamela’s lips with her own while Pamela brushed imaginary lint from the woman’s breast. This was a post-funeral visitation, not a slumber party, he thought.
“I know this isn’t a good time, Pamela, but I’d like to come back tomorrow morning. Richard may have left some firm files at home.”
Her eyes were glassy. He couldn’t tell whether it was grief or booze or both. She didn’t introduce her friend, who kept her high-beam glare trained on Mason.
“Certainly, Lou. I should be up and around by ten.”
Mason spent the rest of the day and early evening returning calls from clients and answering mail until it was time to meet Blues at The Landing.
The Landing was a piano bar in the northwest corner of the downtown in what used to be the garment district. The buildings that used to turn out dresses and coats had been rehabilitated as offices and lofts. One, however, still ground coffee beans, and when the wind was right, the aroma swept the streets like a runaway Starbucks.
The Landing occupied a three-story redbrick building on the northeast corner of Eighth and Central that felt as if it had always been a saloon. Maybe it was all the beer and whiskey that had been absorbed by the wood-plank floors and the bartenders who looked as though they’d heard it all. The food was good and the music was great. The bar was jammed when Mason arrived at nine, slicing his way through the crowd until he found Blues finishing his dinner in the kitchen.
“It’s about time you got here, man. I go on in five minutes. I’m gonna play ‘Green Dolphin Street’ no matter how many times those accountants taking inventory of each other ask me to play some hip-hop bullshit.”
Blues was not a fan of professional people. In fact, Mason couldn’t name many people Blues was a fan of,
