Cold Case, Hot Bodies

“You say…” Judge Zhang stared down at his notes “…Mr. Case is going to be here next week, with the documents?”

“On Tuesday,” Luther confirmed.

“We’ll reconvene then,” said Judge Zhang. “Ten o’clock.”

“There’s just one problem,” said Chuckie Haswell, speaking for the first time. “Because my firm, Haswell Realty, had hoped to make Mr. Donato an offer on this property, we’ve been doing our own research.” Heading to the bench, he put a folder in front of Judge Zhang. “As these documents prove, the property was owned by my ancestor, Nathaniel Haswell. Even if Angelo Donato had wished to will the property to Gem O’Shea, it wasn’t his to give. He was a front man for Nathaniel Haswell. To protect his reputation, my ancestor only used Angelo Donato to conceal the true ownership of Angel’s Cloud—”

“Used Angelo?” Beppe shook his head. “The first guy wants to declare my building a landmark, so I can’t sell it, and now this one’s saying I don’t even own it.” Hearing his father’s disbelief, Dario winced. Beppe had hoped to use proceeds from a sale to pay for Eliana’s elaborate wedding.

“As you’ll see,” continued Chuckie, “Nathaniel Haswell willed the property to his son, Dirk, and his wife, Isme. The original records, of which you now have copies, are still on file at the courthouse.”

Judge Zhang said, “This is all the more reason to reconvene next week. Then we can take a look at whatever documentation Cassidy Case is bringing to town.”

“Next week!” exploded Brice. “On behalf of the tenants, I have to protest! We’ve already had a cold snap, and the boiler didn’t come on. And like I said, there’s something fishy happening. We hear music late at night. Sounds of dancing. I’m a reasonable man, Judge Zhang, and I don’t believe in ghosts, but—”

“Apparently, Officer Donato has promised to oversee the property during this upcoming week, as a favor to his father,” Judge Zhang said. “That means you’ll have on-site police protection until the matter is resolved.” The judge’s dark eyes landed on Dario. “Am I right?”

Dario bit back a sigh of annoyance. He hadn’t anticipated the dovetailing cases to entail him moving into an old brothel. “Absolutely, sir.”

“Then I’ll see you next week. Mr. Matthews, you may inform Mr. Case.”

A second later, Bianca said a quick goodbye and forced Beppe toward the door, clearly fearing he’d unleash his temper on Chuckie, Brice or Luther, and Dario took the opportunity to open the folder Luther had given him, feeling glad he wasn’t going to have to hunt for a cold case to work on. He’d never heard of Gem O’Shea, much less her possibly unsolved murder, but now it looked as if he could both help his dad and appease his boss by delving into the matter.

He surveyed a picture of the bawdy house, then a photocopied daguerreotype of his own ancestor, Angelo. His hair was wild, and his piercing dark eyes held a devilish glint. Often, Dario had been told he was the spitting image of the man. When he moved on to the next picture, his heart missed a beat. Gem O’Shea, he thought, feeling a tug at his groin. God, she was hot. Untamed waves fell over her shoulders, and the ends of the curls looked like flaming tongues. They licked an ample chest that spilled from a laced-up dress that was sexy as hell. Lots of cleavage.

The picture was black-and-white, of course, but Dario would bet her hair was flame-red. Her eyes would be blue or green. But which?

Eliana chuckled. “And they say normal men only think about sex sixty times a day.”

Dario blinked. “Huh?”

“What’s this for you? Six hundred?” When he didn’t immediately respond, she chuckled. “Since you’re going to be staying in Dad’s building, maybe you’ll get lucky. Maybe Brice will introduce you to that woman’s ghost. But be careful, little brother.”

“Because?”

“Sheila Carella might get jealous.”

“Who?” he teased, still staring at Gem O’Shea’s picture. “I don’t remember any woman named Sheila.”

“You’re incorrigible,” his sister muttered, rising on her toes to peck-kiss his cheek. “But be forewarned. When guys like you fall, they fall hard.”

Dario held up Gem’s picture. “Let’s just hope when I fall, that it’s right on top of a woman who looks like this.”

Eliana hooked her arm through his. “You really are impossible.”

“But you love me,” he guessed.

“In exactly the way all women love guys like you,” she assured.

“How’s that?”

“Completely against my will.”

2

“GEM, YOU’RE A HOTTIE,” Dario said late that night as he tossed back a shot of whiskey, drinking from the bottle. He’d showered in a cramped stall down an unlit hallway, deciding against using a tub in the empty apartments upstairs, then he’d put on briefs, gotten into bed and opened the file, mostly so he could look at Gem’s picture again.

Her finger was crooked and her mouth was pulled into a sexy pout. She would have looked frivolous, but her eyes held too much awareness. Pain, maybe. Something that hinted at emotional depth. According to his information, she’d survived a famine and fled her country. She’d crossed the Atlantic, only to find herself in one of the world’s worst slums, but she’d made a decent life, anyway.

Dario felt a magnetic pull, a sense of impending fate. Plain old lust, too. Or else maybe he’d just had too much to drink. Whatever the case, he was fantasizing about playing out the age-old cliché about hookers and cops. It had been a long night, and he was desperate for release. Pat had called about another arson case, and although Dario was supposed to be laying low, he’d visited the scene. Then, because Beppe’s tenants had waylaid him to air their grievances as he was leaving court, Dario had wound up hauling in surveillance equipment to appease them.

Now cameras were arranged strategically around the premises. At least, by the end of the week, Dario would be able to prove his pop’s building wasn’t haunted. When he glanced at the tripod-mounted camera placed discretely in a corner, his lips stretched into a slow grin.

With this camera, he was going to catch a woman, not a ghost. As soon as he’d called and told Sheila about the history of Angel’s Cloud, apologizing since he’d be busy and unable to meet her this week, she’d said she’d never had sex in a haunted house and wanted in on the action.

“It’s different,” Dario had assured playfully. “And not something I can just tell you about. You’ll have to come over and experience it yourself.”

“See you at eight,” she’d said.

But eight had come and gone. Typical Sheila. Punctuality wasn’t her strong point. It was nearly midnight, and anticipation had left Dario as horny as the men who used to patronize the room where he was about to sleep.

To keep his mind occupied, he’d interviewed tenants. There was a middle-aged woman who ran an Italian ice stand, Carmella Liotella, and Chinese sisters, Zu and Ling, who shared an apartment on the otherwise vacant third floor. Brice, whose law office was around the corner, lived in the attic. Rosie, a liberal-looking single mom, was on the first floor, just beneath Carmella and opposite the apartment where Dario had set up camp. She had a crush on Brice, and an alarmingly flirtatious thirteen-year-old, Theresa, who’d been wearing skintight jeans, a midriff exposing a fake tattoo, and enough makeup that she could have been applying for a job as a madam herself.

Dario had moved in opposite them because everybody said that’s where the noise was coming from. The previous tenant had left in a hurry—supposedly due to the haunting—which meant the apartment had ramshackle furnishings. Shirts were still in the closet. The tenant had been a big guy, almost Dario’s size, so it was hard to believe he’d been scared off.

There were nine empty units, three per floor, discounting the attic where Brice lived—and that seemed weird, too, since Beppe was a soft touch and the rent was low. Ghost sightings increased whenever he made moves to sell, but Dario had always figured people would lodge complaints, no matter how absurd, to discourage the building’s ownership from changing hands.

Still, people had left despite having rent-stabilized leases, when they’d have difficulty finding similar bargains, and the place was creepier than Dario remembered. While in the basement, putting out environmentally friendly mouse traps Eliana insisted he buy, he could have sworn the air temperature dropped abruptly. Shrugging off the event, he’d spent an hour trying to fix the boiler before realizing he’d have to buy a new one. The whole time, he’d felt as if somebody were watching him. Most disturbing, the tenants seemed genuinely scared.

“The sounds started about two weeks ago,” Zu had reported. “We hadn’t heard anything in a long time, about six months, but then all of a sudden…”

“Gem O’Shea is walking the halls at night again,” Ling had added in a hushed tone. “Luther Matthews came by. He has a key to the place, you know. And he told us about Gem O’Shea. That she was murdered. I’m sure she’s haunting us.”

“Maybe trying to tell us who killed her,” said Rosie.

“The music’s, like, really loud,” added Theresa.

“Here,” Brice had added angrily, coming from the attic, and dumping a box of papers at Dario’s feet. “This is everything I was able to find out about the place. Something fishy’s going on. You should take a look.”

And Dario had. Apparently, these old walls had absorbed plenty of lovers’ whispered secrets, and many illicit backroom deals. The old news clippings collected by Brice jibed with records Dario had found in cold-case files at the precinct, as well as family materials related to the property that Beppe had kept, and that Dario had brought with him. A sheet in the police file indicated Gem had stashed jewelry in the house; an inventory list had been submitted in case of theft.

Definitely, the tenants hadn’t lied about the shoddy workmanship. It was Dario’s grandfather’s fault, since he’d hired bad contractors. The original bar, which had been about fifteen feet long, was still in Zu and Ling’s apartment. Someone had renovated it as a kitchen island. Brice’s shower stall was in his kitchen, and because his wiring was inadequate, he’d run an extension cord to an outlet in the hallway.

Outside, Dario had stood on the sidewalk, surveying the exterior, and something had niggled, but he didn’t know why. The building was tall and skinny, with a sharply graded roof and louvered windows. The bricks crawled with ivy, and a downstairs back door led into unkept gardens. The rear building, where Gem had lived, had been torn down long ago.

His cell rang. He clicked on. “Yeah?”

“Sorry I’m late.”