J. Jance - Fire and Ice

“But it’s been cold these past few months,” Joanna objected. “Why wouldn’t she have a coat?”

Tom paused a moment before he answered. “You need to see this place for yourself, boss,” he said. “It reminds me of what they used to say in that old commercial about the roach motel: They check in but they don’t check out.”

“Have you spoken to any of Ms. Brinson’s family members?”

“We have a phone number for a grandniece who lives in the Phoenix area. We’re trying to reach her. So far that’s a no-go.”

“I’m on my way then, Tom. Thanks for the call.”

As she closed the phone, Butch came out of the bathroom carrying Dennis. His hair was still damp. When Joanna leaned over to kiss him good-bye, he smelled of baby shampoo.

“Bye-bye,” she said. “Mommy has to go to work.”

Dennis smiled and waved.

“Be careful, Joey,” Butch said, leaning across Dennis to kiss Joanna as well.

“I will,” she told him. “But don’t worry. It’s just a missing persons case.”

“I always worry,” Butch said, and Joanna knew that was true.

“I know,” she said. “So do I.”

“You are arriving at your destination on the right,” the computer-generated female voice of the GPS told us.

“On our right where?” I asked the question of Mel as much as the disembodied voice emanating from the dashboard.

As far as I was concerned, we were in the middle of nowhere on the Maple Valley/Black Diamond Highway. It was well after dark by then and raining again.

On either side of the road, Douglas fir and lodgepole pines loomed like towering black shadows against a slightly lighter sky where the undersides of lowering clouds were lit by reflected light from the megalopolis behind us.

“Right here, I guess,” Mel said. She turned onto an almost invisible dirt track that led off into the woods. From my point of view, it didn’t look promising. There was no gate, and no visible sign of security. If Mama Rose was running an all-cash business, I wondered about that.

“Why would a slumlord live out here in the sticks like this?” I asked.

“Slumlady,” Mel reminded me. “And maybe because she can.”

Several hundred yards into the forest, the trees disappeared. Before us, set on a slight rise in the middle of a clearing, stood an eye-popping, brightly lit two-story house with an illuminated fountain spouting water in the middle of a circular driveway. The lower level of the house was lined with a series of French doors that opened out onto a long veranda.

“I’m guessing Mama Rose doesn’t spend a lot of money fussing around with eco-green fluorescent lights,” Mel muttered.

Just as she said that, all around the house several blindingly bright motion-activated lights flashed on. Although we hadn’t passed through a gate, we had obviously just encountered Mama Roses’s first line of homeland security. The second one appeared a moment later, when an immense dog, a German shepherd, came careening out of the darkness, barking fiercely and charging at the car as if wanting to take a bite out of it.

Mel stopped at once. The dog didn’t. Instead of backing off, the dog threw himself at her window, where he rose up on his hind legs, still barking and snapping. If the window hadn’t been shut, he might have bounded straight through it. Then suddenly, in response to something Mel and I couldn’t hear or see, the dog stopped barking. Dropping to all fours, he turned and trotted off toward a spot at the side of the house where yet another light had just switched on.

Hoping the dog was gone for good, I risked cracking open my window. “Hello,” I called. “Anybody here?”

“Beaumont?” a man’s voice said as a figure materialized next to what seemed to be a garage. “Is that you? It’s Tom.”

His reply told me two things. Just as Mel had thought, Donita had called Mama Rose the minute we left the trailer park to let her know we were on our way. The fact that the speaker used my name that way-with no Mr. and no J.P., either-told me this was someone who knew me, and probably someone I knew as well.

“Tom?” I said tentatively, meaning “Tom who?” But as he walked toward us I added, “I’m Beaumont. My partner, Mel Soames, is here as well.”

“Tom Wojeck,” the man said. “Don’t worry about the dog. Regis is back in his run.”

I breathed a sigh of relief when I recognized a voice and name out of the past: Thomas Wojeck-Detective Thomas Wojeck. He had to be at least ten years older than I was. He had been a homicide detective for Seattle PD while I was still working Patrol. We had never actually worked together, although I seemed to remember that at one time, before my appearance on the scene, he had been partnered with Big Al Lindstrom, one of my former partners. Wojeck had left the department to go work somewhere else shortly after I was promoted to Homicide. After that, as far as I knew, he had pretty much disappeared from view.

I wondered if Donita was right and if he was more than just Mama Rose’s driver. If he was the boyfriend or even the man of the house, I had to admit it was one hell of a house, verging on palatial. Tom had either moved up or married up. In landing in such very posh digs, Tom Wojeck, like me with Anne Corley, had done all right for himself.

“Hey, Tommy,” I said. Taking his word as far as the dog was concerned, I opened the door, stepped out of the car, and walked to meet him with my hand extended in greeting. “Long time no see. How the hell are you? Some place you have here,” I added.

“Not bad,” he said. “We like it.”

His comment did nothing to clarify his exact position in this universe, and I was well mannered enough not to ask.

Mel climbed out of the Cayman and came around to where we were standing. “This is my partner, Mel Soames,” I told him. And by way of keeping things even, I didn’t explain the true nature of our partnership, either.

“Mel, this is an old colleague of mine from Seattle PD, Tom Wojeck.”

“Glad to meet you, Mr. Wojeck,” she said.

Wojeck smiled and pumped her hand. “Forget the mister stuff,” he said. “Most people call me Tommy. It’s what my mother called me, and I’ve never gotten over it. Let’s go inside before you’re soaked. I hope you don’t mind coming in through the garage. The front entry is a lot nicer, but getting to that door is a bit of a wrangle in the dark.”

The well-lit four-car garage was impressive on its own. So were its occupants. Parked side by side were a looming black Hummer, a shiny black Lincoln Town Car, a deep maroon Mercedes S550, and a bright red Dodge Grand Caravan.

“Quite a collection of rolling stock,” I said.

“We mostly use the minivan for taking Regis for rides,” he said. “Rosie insists that everything else is a dog-hair free zone, including the house.”

“Good call,” Mel said.

“Don’t worry about him being stuck outside in the cold, though,” Tommy added. “For a guard dog, Regis has it pretty good. His doghouse is fully climate controlled. It has radiant heating and cooling in the floor. Cool, don’t you think?”

I nodded my agreement, but what I was thinking was that no expense had been spared here. Money-or at least the lack of same-was not a problem for Mama Rose Brotsky.

“Right this way,” Tommy said.

He took us into the house itself through a massive kitchen, a catering kitchen, really, that had double everything, from sinks and ovens to dishwashers, warming drawers, and microwaves. The appliances were top-of-the-line stainless steel. The countertops were a gorgeous tawny granite and I suspected the cabinets were solid cherry. The materials that had been used here were way upscale compared to the grim and gray Formica on the counter at the manager’s office back at the Silver Pines, but that’s how come they’re called slumlords and ladies.