“Luring an ex-con with your sweet butt? Isn’t that entrapment?”

“Very funny,” I said.

“You know, sodomy is illegal in Michigan. I should take you in.”

“Nothing happened.”

“Not what I hear,” she said. “I heard you were caught in flagrante delicto. At least, that’s what the boys down at the station are probably saying.”

“Would you please shut up?”

“Mom would roll over in her grave if she knew you were sleeping with an ex-con,” she continued.

“Okay, that’s enough.”

“Why don’t you just tell me what happened,” she said.

I filled her in on my questioning the dancer at the Lucky Strike. How one thing had led to another and I’d found myself on Barrington.

I also told her about the woman in the kitchen.

“Never got a look at her?” Ellen asked me.

“Nope.”

“Would you recognize her voice?”

“Maybe.”

Ellen thought about that for a moment. “The house is clean. Nothing to tie Grasso to anything, from what we could find so far.”

“So what were they doing here?”

She shrugged.

“Well at least we know now that Grasso wasn’t working alone and that Jesse Barre’s murder wasn’t just an ordinary robbery gone wrong.”

“Don’t jump to any conclusions.”

“Oh, come on, Ellen. You’re not going to pin this all on Grasso, are you?”

“Why don’t you let us do our jobs before you start telling me what I’m doing wrong?”

“Okay,” I said. “Fair enough.”

Ellen looked me over. “Does your wife know what happened?”

“Not yet.”

“Why don’t you go home and tell her all about it. Stay out of the investigation for a little while.”

It was at times like this that I could really tell she was pissed. Apparently I’d overstepped my bounds again. Well, goddamnit, I couldn’t help it if every cave I stuck my nose in had a bear inside.

I left the scene of the crime, as it was. And went home to tell my wife that I’d been shot at again.

I hoped it wouldn’t ruin dinner.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Ellen called me at my office the next morning.

“I want you to come and look at something,” she said.

“What, is your toilet running again?”

“Like you’d have a fucking clue how to fix it,” she said. “I want to get your take on some stuff we found out about Grasso. I have no idea why, but I do.”

“I thought you said you wanted me to stay out of the investigation,” I said. “I got the definite feeling you’d tired of your favorite sibling.”

“You’re my only sibling.”

“The two have nothing to do with each other.”

I listened to Ellen sigh on the other end of the line. It was always fun to know I’d irritated her slightly. Besides, I couldn’t just let her get away with telling me one day to fuck off and then the next day welcoming me back. I was getting whiplash from the sudden changes of direction.

“As much as I would like to keep our work separate, the fact is, Grosse Pointe’s a small town,” she said.

“Especially for an ego like yours,” I said.

“Shut up, John.”

I complied.

“What I mean is, a small town means that we’re bound to cross paths once in a while,” she said. “Considering that we work in similar fields.”

“Lucky you.”

“Besides, you’ve done some good work on this case, chasing down Grasso and making some connections.”

“Was that a compliment? You gotta be kiddin’ me,” I said. “Who is this? Am I on Candid Camera? Where’s Allen Funt?”

“God, do you ever shut your piehole, John?”

“Occasionally,” I said. “Usually during the holidays.”

“Call it professional courtesy, but I thought you might like the opportunity to see what we’ve found,” she said. “Say no and I’ll never be nice to you again.”

“When did you start?”

“This is the sound of the phone being placed near the cradle,” she said. I actually heard her voice getting softer.

“Wait!” I called.

Now her voice was really distant. “It’s also the sound of your private investigator’s license failing to be renewed for lack of cooperat—”

“Hold it!” I shouted into the receiver.

Her voice came back on, this time at normal volume.

“Yes?” she said, her voice thick with innocence.

“You fight dirty,” I said.

“I fight to win, my friend.”

I grabbed a pencil.

“Spill it,” I said.

•

Expecting a rat trap, I wasn’t disappointed. The deceased Mr. Grasso had on his person at the time of his death several forms of false identification portraying him to be Phillip Carmichael. Through the efficient work of the Grosse Pointe Police Department, an address belonging to the pseudo Mr. Carmichael was discovered. It was over the border from Grosse Pointe into Detroit proper. A fabulous piece of real estate comprised of two abandoned buildings, three abandoned lots, and a whole lot of garbage.

When I arrived, I could see why Grasso had chosen to spend his free time at the stripper’s house with a fridge on the porch. At least there was a fridge. This place, a single-story, sagging house, was certainly on the condemned list along with a few ten thousand other properties the absentee Detroit government hadn’t gotten around to clearing.

Ellen was already inside, another cop waited just outside the front door. I found her in the main room of the house, which held one duct-taped sofa, a couple dead rats, and two worn-out boxes. My sister stood over the boxes.

She pointed at the rats. “Couple of your PI colleagues?”

“Very cute,” I said.

Ellen nudged a box with her toe. “Check it out.”

I bent down and leafed through the papers inside. There were newspaper articles, letters, pictures, and a few pieces of cheap jewelry.

“Notice what they all have in common?”

I had. They were all about Shannon Sparrow. Pictures of her concerts. Articles about her. Notes from fans. I assumed the necklace and bracelet had once been hers. Even though it was all in a couple of flimsy boxes, they were very organized, and you could tell they’d been labored over. Someone had spent a lot of time studying these things. Obsessing over them, in fact.

“Her number one fan, apparently,” she said. “The flame never died out.”

I knew where Ellen was going with this.

“So you’ve got everything you need,” I said.

“He was still in love with her. Obsessed with her. Had to have her.”

I thought I’d help her along. “He dreamed about her in prison,” I said. “Read about the wonderful Jesse Barre guitars and how much Shannon loved them, decided to kill Jesse, frame his old prison mate, and present the guitar along with himself to Shannon.”

Ellen nodded. “In the context of a sociopath, it works.”

“Except for the mystery woman,” I said.

“Could have been anyone,” she said. “A girlfriend. A junkie friend. A neighbor. An innocent in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

I shook my head. “You didn’t hear the authority in her voice when she told Grasso to just kill me. She’s no innocent. There’s more to it than Grasso, Ellen.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “You may be right. But he’s dead. And for now, the case is eventually going to be closed.”

“So why bring me here?”

She gave me a look of exasperation, like I was a kid who didn’t appreciate a birthday gift. “I thought your client might like to know about this. And on the off chance that Grasso wasn’t working alone, and that there might be future violent episodes, you should know about this.”

I looked at her. What a load of bullshit. She had stopped doing me favors a long time ago. Unless I was in real physical danger, but even then she would still think about it.

“You want me to keep digging, don’t you?” I said. “Not in an official capacity, but you think there’s more to it, don’t you?”