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“It is, isn’t it? But do you have a good coffeemaker at work?”
He shakes his head, still looking puzzled.
“Not this good, but the one in the office is okay. Most of the guys I work with wouldn’t know good coffee from kerosene. They’re the types who put on a pot on Monday and are still drinking it on Friday.”
“What kind of guys are we talking about?”
“Construction mostly. I’m a property developer. Someone has a piece of land and wants something on it, they call me.”
Makes sense. I remember seeing mud and cement around the wheel wells on the pickup in the drive.
“I have my own company. Some days I wear suits and some I’m out on the sites making sure the floor tiles are going in the right way up.” He smiles like we’re supposed to laugh. It’s a joke he’s used on a lot of clients. Now it’s just a nervous tic.
“Depending on business, I’m either out in the field most of the time or back in the office having meetings.”
“Whaene>Èt kind of real estate do you develop?”
“Whatever a client asks for. Shopping malls. Business parks. Apartment buildings. Whatever a client 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.”
