Chapter 16

W hen she got back to the office, Kate had a lot on her mind. Not the least of which was why two homeless guys were targeted and killed in a matter of days. She was pretty sure Frankie's death had been because he had opened his mouth—and Shawn had probably opened his mouth as well—but what was the connection between Shawn and the Feldspar house? Why were those Feldspar papers found in the Paragon building on the third floor? It frustrated Kate to no end that Frankie and Shawn knew something that she didn't know. Yet .

She walked to her desk, then printed out the images she had taken of that paperwork, before she'd handed it over to forensics. With printouts in hand, she sat down and pondered them.

Lilliana walked in a little bit later, looking a little worse for wear. When Kate spotted her, Lilliana shrugged. "Just had a messy confrontation with somebody whose kid died," she explained.

Kate immediately understood and nodded. "I'm sorry. It's never easy when a child is involved."

"No, it sure isn't, particularly when I have a nasty suspicion that she's behind her child's death."

Kate raised an eyebrow. "That makes it even worse. You got any proof? "

"Oh, yeah, we'll have lots of proof when I get all the forensics in," she stated, sitting down with a thump . "It's a slam dunk, but I've got a lot to work on." She frowned at Kate. "How are you doing?"

"A dead homeless guy was found in the Paragon building, where the first dead homeless guy used to hang out. Not in the Feldspar house, where the first body was found," she added cautiously. "Yet he and his buddy were known to frequent the Paragon."

Lilliana frowned at that. "So, somebody is killing homeless guys?"

"Maybe, except both homeless guys seem able to ID the driver of a stolen vehicle that the first homeless guy got in and was the last time he was seen alive."

"Ah, crap, so he probably got killed for it."

"I suspect both homeless guys shared something that got them both killed for it."

Lilliana nodded. "Somebody is trying to cut the threads that tie them together, just to keep things quiet."

"And most of these homeless guys don't have too much fight to put up, so they're definitely vulnerable members of society," she murmured, "and that just pisses me off."

"Why? You want them to kill off other people?" Lilliana teased, giving her a smirk. "The thing is, this shit pisses off all of us," she declared, emphasizing all , "and it doesn't matter if they're homeless or not."

Kate groaned. "It just seems these assholes always pick the weakest to attack."

"Of course. That way they don't have to worry about having too much pushback. Imagine them trying to attack somebody who's fit and strong and capable of fighting back? The assholes might get hurt," Lilliana noted in a sarcastic tone.

"I know," Kate muttered. "In that same building, the Paragon, I found some old papers from a company that used to run the place."

"Run the place into the ground is more like it," Lilliana said. "So, you found something, but that doesn't mean the papers were left there. Maybe somebody else came to see the company, found out they were out of business, saw that the building was in complete disarray, and, in a fury, just dumped all those documents. Or else maybe a briefcase was stolen, and its contents were found there."

Kate frowned. "But, if stolen from that company, why would they take it back to where their office once was?"

"Maybe the documents were always there, and the homeless guys staying there wondered what the papers were about? Maybe your homeless guys knew the company from way back or something, and so they wondered what the related paperwork was all about," she suggested, yet with an odd note in her tone. "Were the papers important?"

Kate headed to the coffeepot and then, as she returned with her cup, answered Lilliana. "I'm just looking at it now," she shared. "I turned the originals into forensics, but took a bunch of photos for myself first."

"Smart," Lilliana agreed, raising the coffee cup in her hand. "You never know when you'll get it back from them, and that's only half the problem. We're always waiting on stuff, which will always be the problem because we have more crimes than we have crime fighters for," she noted, with a knowing smile.

"It's constantly an irritant, isn't it?"

"It sure is." With that, Lilliana started in on her own cases .

Kate wondered if she should offer to help Lilliana, but honestly Kate had more than enough to do on her own. She turned back to the case in front of her, studying the paperwork. And, with that, she brought up the company name on the internet. She'd already checked earlier but hadn't been very invested, just because it was a defunct company from years ago. However, now that they had the Feldspar paperwork, issued from the Paragon building years ago, then somehow returned to the Paragon, plus a murder at the same site, that changed things, maybe in a good way.

She always had to toss out a wide net of conjecture, hoping to catch something. Yet all too often nothing was there, and they had to make a case another way, if they could. That was always the challenge, and her greatest nightmare was that some asshole would wind up as only a person of interest listed in a cold case file because she couldn't find what she needed to put them behind bars for their crimes.

Other people had nightmares too, maybe about their kids dying or car crashes or even falling from a cliff while hiking. However, in her case, it involved not being able to put away criminals. Until she brought a case to a conclusion, something constantly nudged at the back of her mind, driving her to dig into every lead, to seek out new avenues when she wasn't making progress. It all made her quite mad, and maybe that was what drove her so hard to work so diligently.

She persevered not only to determine whoever was behind all this, but also to prove her case. She didn't want to spend her entire life going crazy over one unsolved case. Her missing brother's cold case notwithstanding, maybe Kate pushed so hard on these other cases because she couldn't make headway on her own sibling's case .

While researching the history of the businesses that had long ago operated in the Paragon building, she felt an impatience nudging at her. She really needed a report on the forensic evidence found in the building in relation to Frankie's death. She kept looking at her phone, wondering if she should call to ask about it, but the more she pressured Smidge, the more he would get pissed off at her. That would put her in the doghouse, a place she didn't want to be.

She quickly found the former address of that now-defunct accounting company—which had prepared the taxes for the Feldspar family—plus some other details, including the identity of the business owner, Jet Mahoney. He had since died, but his wife, Daisy Mahoney, was still alive, yet retired. Kate quickly sent her cell phone photos of the paperwork and copies of the tax documents to the printer.

As she got up to collect them, Lilliana had picked up the copies and was sorting through them. She brought Kate's copies to her, and Lilliana kept the rest, retreating to her desk.

"Thanks." Kate picked up her phone and quickly dialed the number for Daisy Mahoney. When she heard a woman's voice on the other end, Kate identified herself and asked if she was speaking with Daisy Mahoney.

"Yes, that's me," the woman confirmed, with a little bit of a wobble in her voice. "Goodness me," Daisy said, almost in a panic. "What could the police possibly want with me?"

Kate explained, "It's quite possibly nothing, but your husband owned and maintained an office in the Paragon building. Is that correct?"

"Oh my, my, my," she replied softly. "Yes, but that was many, many years ago, dear."

"And that was your business, correct? "

"Technically speaking it was my husband's business, but I worked there, yes. But why? What has this got to do with anything?"

"We found some income tax forms left in the building."

"No, no," Daisy argued. "We removed everything when we closed down. Those were highly sensitive financial and IRS documents," she noted in a panic. "We removed everything."

"I was just in the Paragon building myself a few days ago, and I found these documents," she explained almost apologetically to the older woman.

"I don't understand how that is possible."

"I don't know at this time either," Kate replied, "but the documents were prepared by your husband for Albert and Mandy Feldspar."

"Oh my, Albert and Mandy Feldspar," she repeated, with sorrow evident in her tone. "Yes, yes, yes, they were murdered in their home, right?"

"Yes," Kate confirmed, "which is one of the reasons why I'm bringing this up."

"Why on earth would you?" she asked, her voice almost faint. "Bring it up?"

"Because we had a recent murder in the Paragon building. Unfortunately that death led me to these Feldspar documents, which I found on the third floor of the Paragon."

"Why on earth?" she asked.

Kate realized just how confusing this probably was. Using a soothing tone, Kate continued. "I'm trying to figure out if your business had any connection to this Feldspar family, other than preparing their taxes and whatnot."

"My husband had a close connection, beyond keeping their books," Daisy began. "Albert was a friend of my husband's."

"And your husband passed away a few years ago?"

"Yes, three years now.… It's been a very lonely three years."

"I'm sure it has, and the Feldspars were murdered at least ten years ago," she added, pulling on her memory.

"Yes, it was so devastating. But back to the papers you found, the only way those income tax documents would have come back to the Paragon would be if they were taken from the Feldspars, from their own house," she shared in a confused tone. "Back then, we provided paper copies of everything to our clients. It was just part of the service that we offered." She sighed. "But the Feldspars were pretty fanatic about security and privacy and didn't want us to mail them, so those we delivered."

"Were there ever any irregularities in their income taxes?" Kate asked curiously.

"Irregularities? What do you mean by that?"

"Just asking for due diligence, ma'am. Were there any reasons to be suspicious about their trying to hide anything in their income tax forms?"

"Oh my, no. However, I'm not an accountant. I was a file clerk and answered the phone and greeted clients for my husband."

Kate made note of that, then went on. "We're trying to find out anything that would reveal some motive for the Feldspar murders from a decade ago."

"But why now?" Daisy asked again.

Kate drew in a deep breath, before she responded. "We have had two deaths this week, both homeless men, one of whom was found in the Paragon building—which led me to the Feldspar tax documents in the third floor of that space. However, the first dead body this week was found at the Feldspar house. That victim found there was a homeless man who inhabited the empty Paragon building a lot too. Both these men knew each other. Since homeless, they don't generally have fixed addresses. Yet they have locations where they're known to frequent. Thus, we have another link between the Feldspar address and the Paragon building downtown, and I'm wondering if the Feldspar deaths are also connected to the more recent deaths of these two homeless men."

Daisy gasped and kept right on gasping.

Kate winced and realized that she probably should have visited Daisy instead of calling her. "May I come talk to you about this in person?" Kate asked hurriedly. Daisy seemed to be in shock, as she gave no answer on the other end. "Will that be all right?"

"Yes, yes, of course," Daisy replied. "When would you come though?"

"When would you want me to come?"

"Now please. I just can't even imagine how this is connected," she murmured.

"That's fine. I'll be there in…" Kate checked the address and realized it was probably a fifteen-minute drive. "Give me twenty minutes, maybe half an hour, and I'll be right over." With that she disconnected, snatched her bag, and headed out.

As she got closer to the address, she observed the well-to-do area, suggesting that the Mahoneys' business had most likely done well but wasn't in the uber-rich classification. Maybe they retired, shutting it down instead of selling it. That certainly meant a big difference in their bottom line .

As Kate walked up to the front door, it opened, and there stood a tiny birdlike woman, not even five feet tall. Kate smiled gently and held up her ID. "Hello, Daisy. I'm Kate. I'm the one you were just speaking with."

"Yes, yes, come in." Daisy led Kate into the house.

Kate looked around curiously, aware that it had that familiar old-person smell, as if no fresh air flowed through the premises. She followed the older woman into the kitchen, and Daisy motioned to a kitchen chair, where they both got settled.

Once Daisy was seated, Kate began, "I'm sorry. Obviously my call was a shock for you this morning."

"Oh, yes, it absolutely was," she replied, now more animated. She tapped a box in front of her. "It's even more of an upset because we knew the family. As I mentioned before, my husband, Jet, and Albert Feldspar were quite good friends. Jet was really shocked and so upset when the Feldspar murders happened, and he didn't really ever get over it."

Kate winced at that. "I'm sorry. That makes this even harder, doesn't it?"

"Yes, but, if we could finally get answers, that's all Jet ever really wanted… right up to my husband's last day on this earth," she murmured. "Yet it just wasn't meant to be. It seemed as if you guys weren't getting anywhere."

"I'm not sure that we're getting anywhere now either," Kate admitted, "and that's not what you want to hear. However, now we have two recent deaths which seem to be connected back to the Feldspars deaths.… So it's something I need to take a look at. I would absolutely love to find the killer of the two homeless men who died this week, plus also to close that old murder case and bring closure to the Fe ldspar family and to all their friends out there who have been waiting for answers, just like you."

Daisy nodded. "It was so hard at the time. Jet just kept screaming and yelling, walking around at night, saying something like, Why did they do it? Why? "

"Meaning, why did whoever it was kill them?"

"I always thought that, at first," Daisy clarified, with a glint in her gaze. "But then one time Jet asked out loud, How could they? "

Kate stared at her for a long moment. "Did Jet explain that?"

"No, he wouldn't explain it at all."

"Okay. Do you have any idea what that was all about?"

"I didn't at the time, but it's something I've thought about a lot since then. Of course now that you've brought up their income taxes, it's definitely something on my mind."

"Even if Albert had cheated on his taxes," Kate suggested, easing into the topic gently, "it wouldn't necessarily have been something that would get him killed, I don't imagine."

"No, and I don't think it was so much about his taxes as much as other documents. He was trying to set up a shell company for something, and he and my husband had an ongoing argument over it. I didn't really understand what the shell company concept was all about back then, but Jet told me that it was bad news. When Jet got angry…" She flushed. "I didn't really pressure him because he got very difficult."

"Of course," Kate replied. "So, the Feldspars were setting up a shell company?"

"That's what they wanted, yes, and they wanted my husband to help them, but he didn't want to."

"Because of what they were trying to do? "

"I believe so, yes. I don't know that for a fact, but I think it was because the Feldspars wanted to move money into that shell company, just so they didn't have to pay taxes on it."

"And, of course, if Jet were an ethical accountant…"

"I agree. Jet, as an ethical accountant, wouldn't have anything to do with it, and I think that is where the problem was."

Kate pondered that, her mind racing. "The documents I found didn't really mention anything about a shell company. And I've not checked with any remaining Feldspar family members."

"A son and a daughter both survived the attack on the parents—well, if you can call it surviving when the daughter suffered a serious brain injury. Albert's sister was supposedly there at the time of the other murders too, but I don't think she has ever been seen again. I believe Albert's mother was killed as well. Quite a few family members were involved in the attack, and they all may have been living in the one house. Well, not Albert's sister. If I remember correctly, she may have lived nearby but was otherwise always at Albert's house."

"And what happened with the injured daughter?"

"Poor thing. She was so badly injured.… She will need lifetime care, as in some special facility maybe. I don't know. I might be getting that a little confused."

Kate nodded. "I can check on that. I don't suppose the siblings had any wealthy family or other connections to rely on at the time?"

"I don't think so," Daisy replied, "but definitely a lot of care and love and attention was extended to the surviving family members by their neighbors and friends because what the Feldspar siblings were going through was so horrific." Daisy shuddered visibly, then went on. "The kids were so young to lose their parents, their grandmother, their aunt. The son was just fourteen, I believe, with his sister maybe eighteen. I seem to recall that the kids got help of some kind, but again I'm not privy to the details of that."

"Surely your husband would have known something, being so close with Albert?"

"My husband might have helped them out, as a chunk of money disappeared from our savings account at one point in time, and we had quite the brawl about it."

"You think he might have done something to help them?"

"I think so, yes."

"Would he have done that because he cared or… because he felt guilty?"

Daisy stared at Kate for a long moment, trying to understand the insinuation. "I wondered if you would imply my husband might have had something to do with it."

"I'm not implying anything," Kate clarified gently, "but, until I really understand exactly what's been going on, I don't know who could be involved in anything. So I certainly don't know that Jet would have killed this Feldspar family."

"That's good because he didn't," Daisy declared flatly, "and he's not here to defend himself now anyway."

"Exactly," Kate noted, "so just talk to me. Tell me what you do know, and maybe I can solve these Feldspar murders, as well as my two murdered homeless guys."

In the back of Kate's mind, she wasn't exactly letting Amie and her not-suicidal husband off the hook at the moment either. However, she would march forward on this somehow connected side trip. She brought out her small notepad and looked at Daisy in the hopes that something was here. "Let's go over the details again. The Feldspars were interested in a shell company, and your husband refused. Would he have referred them to another accountant?"

"He did," Daisy stated in a clear tone. "Jet had split with an old business partner because my husband was extremely moral and ethical, and his partner was much less so. Let's call him fluid , if you will. After parting ways, Jet's former partner set up his own accounting business, and, every once in a while, when clients came to my husband with requests that he wasn't comfortable with, he would send them over to this friend."

"Who is this friend?"

"Jackson, Darrian Jackson."

Kate sat back, frowning at Daisy. "Why do I know that name?"

Daisy shrugged. "No idea, but I'm sure you probably have case files on him." She hesitated and then whispered, "He's slippery ."

"Okay, good enough." Kate wrote down the name, then continued to ask Daisy questions. "Did you have anything to do with the Feldspars or other clients yourself?"

"No, I didn't. My husband clearly told me that it was his business, and I just worked for him," she stated, with half a smile. "Honestly, I wasn't in it for the work. I was in it so that we would have retirement money. We had already raised the kids, and I was back to helping him at work, rather than being at home, where I'd gotten so bored. So, I was helping my husband," she stated, with a nod, "but it was very much his business."

Kate wasn't so sure she believed that, but, as she contemplated the mind-set of the time and the age of the woman before her, it was quite possible. At that point in time, men were much more dominant than they are now, especially when it came to men and women working in businesses. "Did you ever resent that?" Kate asked out of the blue.

"No, not at all," Daisy shared, with a smile. "I didn't even particularly want to work. I was looking forward to when we both retired. So, if he had told me to stay at home, I would have in a heartbeat. I was bored at home, but I could have found other things to do. I didn't particularly enjoy what his accounting work involved, but it wasn't necessarily anything that I wanted to continue with either."

"Did Jet know that's how you felt?"

"Sure, and I think that's also part of why he kept me out of a lot of it."

"Did he keep secrets from you?"

She nodded and tapped the box in front of her. "He kept a lot of secrets from me," she declared. "Secrets that, even now, I find hard to fathom."

"Such as?"

Daisy swallowed, looked down at the box again, and stated, "When I first opened this… I opened Pandora's box."

Kate frowned. "But, if these secrets are bothering you, maybe it's time for them to be exposed. If you shed a little light on them, it makes them not quite so scary."

Daisy looked up, and a host of tears filled her eyes, but she shook her head. "But then I'd have to deal with them," she pointed out. "As long as I keep this box closed, I can forget about what he did."

"Maybe," Kate said, "but maybe we're all better off knowing exactly what Jet did. And, even though he's not here to defend himself, maybe we can make peace with it, one way or another."

Hesitating for only a moment, Daisy then opened the box and pushed it over to Kate.

She lifted up a picture of a man, standing with his arms wrapped around a young woman, holding twin babies. "Oh, look at that," she murmured. "How lovely. Is this a picture of Jet?"

"Yeah, it is," Daisy said bluntly, "except that's not me."

Kate frowned at her.

"Jet had a second family," Daisy shared, her voice getting strong, filling with anger. "A second family I didn't know about until after he died. The only reason I ever found out was because that woman contacted me, saying she had heard about his death and had heard how I was his wife. When I explained to her that what she'd heard was correct, she added, "But I'm his wife too."

"Ah, hell," Kate muttered, as she sat back and stared at Daisy.

Daisy nodded. "It explains all the late nights he worked and all the supposed business trips he took."

"It also might explain why he may have done something he shouldn't have—if he needed money to support two families—plus why he may have had secrets, just to keep you from finding out," Kate suggested, with a nod.

"Yes, and, in his mind, it was his job to support us, so he was busy supporting both his families. Yet, because I was working at the business myself and because I was Jet's legal wife," she explained, "I inherited his estate. Whereas this other woman, who wasn't his legal wife—but didn't know that—didn't inherit anything. "

"Good Lord," Kate whispered, "I bet that was a shock to her."

"It was a pretty rough shock for her, as you can imagine. She had children too, those twins in the picture," she added. "Imagining my Jet, the old fool, running around with a young wife and his children from her? It wasn't a fun time."

"And yet you still protect his image and his name?"

"A part of that, I think, is just habit," she conceded, as she stared down at the box and shook her head. "It still doesn't mean he had anything to do with anything illegal. I don't even know why I'm telling you about this, since it's not pertinent."

"Maybe you're telling me because it's important to get it off your chest and to know that you loved him—before finding out this, I suppose. I'm not sure what you feel about him right now, but he had to know that, once something happened to him, it would all come out."

"In a funny way I think he was happy to know that it would all come out. It had been wearing on him, and his heart was starting to give him trouble, and he just couldn't easily keep up the pretenses."

"I'm not surprised," Kate said. "How old was he when he died?"

"Sixty-seven."

"He still lived a long time, especially considering he was living a double life. I'm sure the stress must have been pretty rough and had taken a toll on him to some degree."

"I'm sure it did," Daisy agreed, "but then I never got the retirement that I waited and worked for either. We never had the money, or so he told me, and now I know why."

"Is that the chunk of missing money from your savings account that you mentioned earlier? "

"That was one particular lump that went missing right after the Feldspars died," she clarified. "I always figured it went to the surviving siblings, but maybe it didn't. Maybe I have no idea what really happened, and maybe it went to this woman and her children. Who knows."

"Do you begrudge her that?"

"No, I don't begrudge her anything. I should be totally angry at him," she stated, "though somehow I still feel angry at her."

Kate could understand being angry, since it was obviously a shock and a very confusing scenario for Daisy after decades of marriage. Kate was confused as well, since she didn't know how or if any of this could possibly apply to her current murder cases or how Shawn's and Frankie's deaths could possibly be connected to the Feldspar murders from a decade ago. Shaking her head, Kate asked, "Do you think Jet would have done something illegal or something on that edge of legality to support his two families?"

"I would have always said no. Then I look down at this box, knowing he absolutely loved those kids with her, which I can see in his face. So, in his mind, maybe he felt compelled to do something which he normally wouldn't have. I don't know," she muttered, with a headshake. "He's been gone three years now, and I'm still completely confused over the whole thing." After that, Daisy took a deep breath and shook her head. "I feel such a sense of betrayal and… abandonment in a way. He lived with me and presented us as a happy couple, but then he didn't really live with me honestly, did he?"

Kate sighed. "No, he didn't, and I'm sorry for that. Words are so inadequate right now."

"Exactly, for you, for me, and, of course, for him, who managed to pass away without facing any of us," she stated.

"Did you have any other contact with the other… family?" Thankfully Kate caught herself before she said wife , which would have been sure to rile up Daisy.

"Only after the funeral notice had been posted in the paper, when she realized no inheritance was coming for her because she wasn't Jet's legal wife."

Kate nodded. "Has she remarried? Do you know how she's been doing since then?"

"No, I haven't had any contact with her," Daisy muttered, staring down at the box. "A part of me says I probably should have helped, that I probably should have shared. And I did consider it at the time, but then I decided to hell with that idea," she declared. "I mean, she was the second wife, the one who broke up my family. Yet I realize that she was just as much of a dupe as I was," she muttered, "or more. So, I'm still pretty messed up over it all."

"And your children?"

She hesitated before responding. "They're both dead. A car accident last year on their way to the interior for a fishing trip."

"Oh, no. That must be any parents' worst nightmare, losing their children. I am so sorry," Kate said.

"Me too," Daisy murmured, as she stared out the window. "They did find out, of course, and it was one of the hardest things to watch them realize that their father had done such a thing to them too. I don't even know whether my husband understood just how much pain he was inflicting on us, or he just got so sucked up into the second-family scenario that he didn't see any other way out."

"Chances are it's the latter," Kate noted, trying to ease Daisy's mind. "I've seen more than a few cases where people make a selfish decision and then lie to conceal the decision. Yet, once you lie… the lying just never stops."

Daisy nodded. "And the reality is that I won't be around too much longer myself."

Kate studied Daisy, noting her skin was thin, translucent almost. Kate could see the veins underneath, wondering whether Daisy was dealing with a specific health issue or nothing more than just age.

Daisy shrugged and sat back. "I don't really care at this point," she murmured, "with my kids gone and how things with my husband went. I don't even want to see him in the afterlife because I'm afraid I'll get so angry that I'll want to kill him all over again."

It was all Kate could do to hold back a smile because, of course, in the afterlife, she wasn't at all sure that death was something Daisy could inflict on Jet. "I'm sure that anger has been eating away at you."

"It sure has," she muttered, as she dropped her head to her hands, yet still staring at the box. "It's just one of those things, where you are left to go through life, asking yourself how you could possibly have missed all the signs, wondering what you could have done differently, so you didn't wind up feeling like such an idiot at the end of the day."

"I'm sure this other woman doesn't feel very good about herself either."

Daisy rummaged through the box, then handed Kate a piece of paper. "This was her address back then, though I don't know if you need or even want to contact her. I don't know if Jet spoke about work more with her than he did with me, but you could give it a try. I was there in the same office with Jet, but I didn't really have that much to do with his business." She took a moment and added cautiously, " But a connection is there."

"A connection? In what way?" Kate asked.

Daisy pointed at the dreaded box, at the piece of paper with the second wife's address on it. "The Feldspars were her family."

"Ah, hell." Kate moaned, not sure why she always heard the most important tidbits at the end of her interviews.

"Yeah, so maybe that's how it started. Maybe Jet went over to see whether she was doing okay, or… I don't know. She's the niece. I believe she's the niece." She frowned at that. "She's quite a few years younger than he was."

Kate didn't say anything. The woman in the picture looked to be quite a bit younger, but photos were deceptive. "I don't suppose you have a phone number for her."

"No, not now anyway," she shared. "But, if you look in the box, I think you'll find the number I used in the past."

"Good enough," Kate murmured. "Between that and the address, it should give me a start."

Daisy closed the box and pushed it toward her again. "Take it with you." Seeing the surprised expression on Kate's face, Daisy added, "I'm not long for this world, and, with my kids gone, I don't really care to see that box ever again."

"When you're gone from this world, what will you do with your estate?" Kate asked.

Daisy flushed. "Is it wrong of me to have it all for myself?"

"Not at all," Kate replied. "It's from your husband."

"I don't know if she needs it now, though she probably needed it back then. I'm sure she should be fine by now. Yet I don't know," Daisy muttered. "Maybe I'll just leave it all to charity."

Kate didn't want to get into that discussion, so she just nodded. "Hopefully you'll have time to figure it out, just please do something on paper to make it legal and not just leave it as a mess for someone else to deal with."

Daisy gave a bark of laughter. "I wasn't an accountant's assistant for nothing," she stated. "Paperwork is part of my world, and it's one of the reasons I don't want to keep any of that." She pointed to the box that Kate had her hand on. "Such bad memories."

"I'm sorry. I'm sure you're very confused over it all."

"Confused and devastated," she declared. "That's the story of my life. You think you know somebody, somebody you married, somebody you lived decades with, someone you had children with, someone you worked with even. You loved him, and you told everybody how much you loved him, and then you find out his secrets, and you just really hate him.… In a way, my death would be a saving grace."

"Maybe, but it will also be the end of your chance to forgive and to forget," Kate pointed out. "So maybe find a moment or two for some time in a quiet space and see if you can find some peace in your own soul before your time comes. For all you know, you'll go upstairs , and he'll have gone downstairs ."

At that, Daisy started to laugh and laugh. "Lord, I hope so because, if I'm going downstairs too, you can bet I'll definitely be looking for him." With that, Daisy stood and said in a pleasant tone, "Take the box with you, dear. I don't have any other information for you, but that other woman might."

"Can you give me her name?"

Daisy sighed. "Rosemary, Rosemary Mahoney."

Kate nodded, and, with the box under her arm, she thanked Daisy and quickly escaped. As soon as Kate got into her vehicle, she phoned Reese. "Find out everything you can on a Rosemary Feldspar, will you?"

"From the Feldspar house?"

"Yeah, apparently she's the niece and unknowingly ended up being a clandestine second wife to Mr. Jet Mahoney. I've just spoken with Daisy Mahoney, his widow, his legal wife." Kate looked down at the box in her lap. "She gave me a box with some information and photos and other materials. I'm bringing it back to the office right now, but her husband died three years ago, with his secret still in him. He left behind two families and was secretly married to both women."

"Oh, what an ass," Reese declared. "That's messed up."

"Yeah, and, not only that, he was best friends with the Feldspars from the infamous Feldspar house, and Daisy believes her hubby took a chunk of money out of their savings to give to the Feldspar siblings, who survived that attack. So probably through that interaction, Jet met and started the relationship with the niece Rosemary. He was apparently good friends with the whole family. Though, if that were the case, I don't know how Rosemary wouldn't have known that Jet was already married."

"Yeah, exactly. If he were good friends with the family, you would think that Rosemary would have definitely known."

"So, maybe he convinced Rosemary that his first marriage was over or something. I don't know. And, with both women and their children living in town, how the hell did they not end up meeting each other? I mean, Rosemary's twins are a lot younger than Daisy and Jet's kids would have been, plus Daisy lost her kids last year. All I can tell you is that, according to Daisy, she didn't know anything about his second family, not until Jet passed away. Rosemary supposedly reached out, after finding out Jet had died and had left behind a wife who wasn't her, only to find out that she wouldn't inherit anything because he was already legally married to somebody else."

"Oh boy," Reese muttered. "I'm on it, and hopefully I'll have something for you by the time you get back to the office."

As she disconnected, Kate whispered, "I hope so too." A weird sense overcame her that sometimes came to pass when they were just starting to catch a break in a case. It was such a great feeling, the excitement of knowing that something was about to burst wide open, or at least she hoped so. And this time, maybe, just maybe, she could solve both of these damn cases.

She laughed as she headed back to the station. She felt sad and sorry for Daisy but wasn't at all sure how to feel about Rosemary at this point. Jet, the accountant, was definitely in the middle of things. He'd been a busy guy. No wonder he died of a heart attack.

Keeping one wife happy was hard enough, but keeping two? That had to be an easy ticket on a one-way street. And, with that thought, she headed back to her office.

*

Simon waited until the forensics team was done in the Paragon building before he walked back inside. He was due to head home soon, picking up a few groceries on his way, getting to the boat in time to meet Kate. Yet he wanted to visit the Paragon building, and that was nagging him badly. How stupid to even think that he could talk to Shawn's ghost? Yet the more he dealt with this woo-woo craziness, the more he wondered how much more could be possible.

Was it his imagination that Shawn had called out to him, or was it something completely different?

Could it have been another homeless guy, having fun at Simon's expense?

That and other thoughts ran in his mind, but he had no answers. Not yet anyway. It was so hard to get any clarity, even when he knew these strange voices were constantly talking to him. As he headed back into the huge building, the nagging realtor, Ariel, called him.

"Did I hear what I just heard correctly?" she cried out.

"You mean that a murder victim was found in your listing?" She groaned, which amused him. "Yes," he confirmed, with a surprising note of humor in his tone.

"I suppose you think that's funny," she snapped.

"I don't think anything is funny about murder," he declared, glaring at his phone. "And, if you just called me to insult me, I will end this call right now."

"No, no, no," she interrupted. "I didn't mean it that way."

"Yes, you did," he snapped, all traces of his good humor gone. "I'm not enjoying this conversation at all, and I really don't have time for it. If you have a legit reason for calling, tell me what it is. Otherwise I'm gone."

"No, I just…" She took a deep breath and let it out in a noisy exhale.

"You just heard the news that the building itself was crawling with forensic technicians?"

"Is it still?" she asked.

"No, now that they've gone, I'm stepping inside to see what condition it's in."

"Oh God," she muttered. "I should be down there. "

When she hesitated, he understood her intent because he would want the same. He offered, "I can send you photos, if you want."

"Would you mind?"

"Of course I don't mind," he replied irritably, "but let's be clear. It's your listing, not mine."

"Trust me," she said. "The owners are quite perturbed about it all."

"Of course they are. Their building up for sale is now a murder scene. The victim was also a friend of the other homeless guy, who was murdered and dumped somewhere else, yet also used to hang around this building."

"Why the Paragon?" she cried out.

He sighed. "It's huge and unlocked, which makes for easy access. The police have somehow connected the Paragon building to the Feldspar house."

"Feldspar, Feldspar, Feldspar. Oh my God, the Feldspar murders?" she screamed.

He winced at her volume and held the phone away from his ears as much as he could, waiting for her shrieking to subside. "Yes, you could say that, but I don't know in what context."

"Oh my God, I'll never sell that property."

He snorted. "Spoken as a true realtor."

"Hey, it's not that easy to sell these old buildings as it is," she muttered.

"I understand that. I buy them all the time, remember?"

She snorted into the phone. "It would be a hell of a lot easier if you would just buy them outright at the asking price."

"For you and the sellers, yeah." The note of amusement had returned in his tone, as he wandered through the building. "It looks as if the crime scene folks are done in here at least."

"I don't understand why they took so long," she muttered, with a hint of frustration.

So she knew all along. Figures . "All I can tell you is that they don't appear to be here now."

"That's something to be grateful for," she murmured, completely unaware that she had been caught lying to Simon… again. "Did they do any damage? Man, I wonder if the seller could charge the city for that?"

"I wouldn't try it," he stated, with a chuckle. "The city is well within protocols to do whatever they need to do to investigate a crime."

"Sure, but that doesn't mean they get to damage buildings."

"I'm pretty sure they would have a solid case against those charges, particularly about how much damage anybody could inflict on this already damaged place. Not to mention how dangerous the building itself seems to be," he noted, his tone deepening, as he surveyed the growing darkness around him. "And it's getting dark in here because I don't have any lights on."

"The building has power," she told him.

He walked over to a light switch and flicked it on, nodding. "That's interesting. There is power."

"Oh, good. We need lights to take clients around, so they turned the power back on."

"That makes sense. It'll also bring in more homeless because now they have lights too."

" Great ," she muttered, "but, if the cops or the squatters didn't damage anything, I don't have to go down there right now. I'll absolutely make a trip in the morning, but it would be great if I don't have to come right at the moment. I really don't have the time. I'm swamped."

"No, it looks fine so far, other than the fingerprint dust all over the third-floor office where the body was found," he told her. "I'm walking up to the other floors."

"There shouldn't be any disturbances on the other floors, should there? That wouldn't make any sense."

"I don't know what makes sense at this point in time," he said. "There's definitely been activity on all these floors, but how much of it is criminal and how much of it is related to this particular crime, I can't say."

"God," she muttered, "sometimes I think I need to change jobs."

"Now, if you don't need anything else from me," he quipped, "I want to get back to what I was doing."

"And what is that?" she asked. "Why exactly are you even there?"

"I'm doing a cost analysis."

"Oh," she said, perking up, her tone turning sly. "Tell me more."

"No, I won't tell you more," he stated. "Now that this place is directly related to a couple murders, I'll also have to consider that."

"No, you do not," she declared, "not at all. You don't need to reconsider based on that. You and I both know that it doesn't change a single thing."

"Yeah, says you," he snapped, with a wry look around. "But now it'll have that reputation, won't it? Just like the Feldspar house, which is still empty, by the way."

"God, I hope it's not still empty," she complained. "That would be a tough sell too."

"I'm sure, and it most definitely is empty. I just don't know whether it's empty because the heirs didn't want to sell it or because nobody could sell it."

"Nobody could sell it," she stated, her voice distracted. "I'm just bringing it up on my screen now. It hasn't been for sale for years. They did try way back when, but didn't get any bites."

"Even with the murders, I wonder why though," he muttered. "I mean, a massive property comes with perks. Someone who could afford it could surely move past the fact that there were murders onsite. Murders happen somewhere every day."

"But, better than the Feldspar house, the Paragon building is a different story. It's an empty building downtown with lots of different spaces, and the dead guy was homeless," she added, gearing up for the pitch again, "and that's not news."

"It should be news," Simon replied, trying for a mild tone, but her callous wording and attitude was starting to piss him off. "The homeless are still people. Those two murders this week were still someone's father, brother, son, uncle."

"I know that," she declared, "but it's not as if some woman was enticed there, raped, and then murdered. It was some guy who was sleeping probably, and maybe someone just shot him because he saw something."

"Maybe," Simon conceded, "but have you ever seen anybody hanging around here?"

"No, I haven't—well, except for that one time," she clarified. "It's not exactly a place I want to spend any time at."

"No, downtown can get pretty rough."

"Yeah, rough and then rougher," she stated, "and that corner can get especially rough."

He wondered how she knew so much about it but decided not to ask. As he returned to the third floor, he looked around, having that weird sensation again. "Did you ever see any of the homeless guys in here?" he asked her.

"I shooed one away once when I was in there. He wasn't too friendly."

"No, most of the time they aren't. Most of the time they just want to be left alone."

"They shouldn't be on other people's property then," she stated in exasperation. "What am I supposed to do? I've got clients, and I need to be looking after the properties too."

" Uh-huh , that's your theory at least."

"And it's a good one," she said. "It's not as if I don't visit my listings."

" Sure . Yet these abandoned buildings attract the homeless, who should not be considered as unimportant. These people have lives that are just as important as everybody else's." He then quickly disconnected before he went into a full-on rant with Ariel. Plus, he felt that weird foreboding, as the hairs on the back of his neck raised. He slowly turned in a circle, staring in all corners. "Hello, anybody here?"

Getting no answer, he continued to turn in a slow circle, not sure whether he was looking for something human or something a whole lot less than human. Even the thought of encountering a spirit was something he had to shut his mind to. He didn't want to even consider it, yet it was hard not to.

Hearing a voice behind him, he spun around, but nothing was there. Frowning, he called out, "If you want something, you can talk to me."

He thought he heard another voice, and yet he couldn't see anything. Frustrated, he walked several steps forward, still looking for whatever source was causing him such unease. As he got to the hallway, a door slammed hard nearby. He froze and then called out, "Yeah, I heard this place was haunted. I'm not sure what you ghosts want around here, but, if I can do something to help, let me know."

A weird almost inaudible laughter came in response.

He winced, realizing that the ghosts had their own issues, and not a whole lot Simon could do about it. A good part of their issues would be the reason why they were still here in the first place.

He called out again and added, "I don't know why you're here, but you might want to leave before things turn ugly." Again more weird laughter came. Frowning, he realized that, for them, things had already gotten ugly. Yet, for whatever reason, they were still tied to this place. Wincing, he turned, gave the area a long, slow look and called out, "Shawn, are you here?"

Silence came now.

Still frowning, he called out a second time and then a third, but no response came. Finally he pushed his hands deep into his pockets, took one last look around, and decided to leave it be for now.

"That's fine. You don't have to show yourself, but, if you want to talk to me, it could make things easier." And, with that, he slowly turned to walk back down the stairwell. As he reached the landing where he had seen Shawn before, he called out again, "Shawn, are you here?"

At that moment, several pieces of paper lifted up from the floor, as if by an unseen wind, and ghosted toward him. He froze, staring at the papers as they slid toward him. He grabbed them and asked, "Are these important?"

When no answer came, he held the papers tightly. In spite of himself, he took one last look around and left the building as quickly as he could. He could be just as affected by ghosts as anybody else—and, maybe considering his proclivity for his grandmother's world, even more so.