Dead Wood - By Dani Amore Page 0,35

Ellen said when she emerged from Hornsby’s office. “Satiated your insufferable curiosity?”

“I guess,” I said.

We left and Ellen locked the door behind us.

“What are you up to now?” she asked. “Going to try to sweet talk a few more waitresses?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Why do I get the feeling that you know more than you’re telling me?” she said.

“Why do I get the same feeling about you?” I said. “In fact, it seems terribly coincidental that you would just happen to drop by a the same time as me. Are you sure you weren’t following me?”

By now we were at her cruiser and I could see my Taurus across the street.

She climbed behind the wheel and rolled down the window.

“Maybe the next time you thoroughly charm a waitress, you should make sure she doesn’t see you cross the street and snoop around a place where a guy worked that you were asking questions about. She might call the cops.”

Ellen smiled at me, rolled up the window and drove off.

I couldn’t believe it. Michelle hadn’t believed my story. She hadn’t trusted me.

I was slipping.

Big time.

Twenty

To a resourceful private investigator, and after a few cups of strong coffee I had no problem putting myself into that category, there are many ways to take a phone number and match an address to it. If you have a computer handy, there’s the Department of Motor Vehicle database, there’s the Nexus database, there’s even the good old phone directory database. Now, if you’re not at a computer, there are still ways to do it. For instance, you call the operator and say you’re looking for Randy Can’t Remember-His-Last-Name, but you’ve only got his phone number and you know he used to live on Whatever Street. Most operators will call up the number and say Randy Jones? You say, yep, that’s him. And she’ll say, oh, he’s not on Whatever Street now, the address listed to that number is 334 Bourbon Street. You say, great, thanks and hang up.

The problem is, it doesn’t work every time. Some operators are more cynical than others. In fact, they seem to be getting more and more leery. So when I’m in a pinch and I’ve got a phone number but no real name or address, I go to the quickest, most dependable resource I have.

“Nate, I need an address.” I could hear the usual hubbub of the Grosse Pointe News office in the background. People talking. A copier banging out sheets of stories on the school board, and my overweight friend’s heavy breathing.

“How soon and what’s it worth?” he said.

“Let me put it this way, I’ll wait for it.”

He snickered, the sound of a fisherman who’s just sunk his treble hook into the lips of a trophy. “It’s worth that much?”

I paused. He knew he had me.

“Dinner at the Rattlesnake Club,” he said. “With drinks, appetizers and dessert.”

“Oh, come on, that’ll cost more than I’ll make on this whole case,” I protested.

“Okay,” he said, putting on his best bartering voice. “I’ll limit dessert strictly to sherbet.”

“Nuh-uh. Instead of dinner, how about lunch at the Rattlesnake Club? One drink. No appetizers. No dessert.”

“Dinner,” he said. “One bottle of medium-priced wine, one appetizer, one entrée and no dessert.”

“Lunch,” I said. “One glass of wine, one appetizer we split, one entrée each and no dessert.”

I heard him sigh, then say, “Fine. Shoot.”

I gave him the number. He accessed a mysterious software program he had on his computer then came back on the line.

“1114 Sheffield. In the village of Grosse Pointe.”

“What’s the name?” I said, scratching the address down on the back of a receipt from La Shish restaurant. I think that had been with Nate too. I believed he’d devoured an entire plate of hummus and pita bread before our waitress had returned with our drinks.

“It’s registered to a Melissa Stark,” he said.

The name meant nothing to me.

“Anything interesting going on, John?” he said. Despite all the shenanigans, Nate was still a reporter and he actually did work from time to time.

“I’ll let you know.”

• • •

1114 Sheffield turned out to be a small apartment building two blocks from the village of Grosse Pointe. It was one of the few low-income areas of Grosse Pointe. Most people here were renters. A ‘transitional neighborhood’ is how realtors and city councilmen would most likely describe it. There weren’t many apartment buildings in the village as it tended to conflict with the image Grosse Pointers try to project. Quaint houses are more the order of the