Gretchen flashed her credentials at him as she and Josie approached. “We are the police.”
“Oh,” Calvin said, glancing at Gretchen’s ID. He raised a brow. “Detective? I assume this is about my property on Hempstead.”
“Yes,” Josie said, offering him her credentials as well.
He took a cursory look at her ID and shifted the box in his hands. “I’m happy to talk to you, but right now I’ve got to get these files up to the second floor before we get out of here.”
Josie looked around. The sound of a metal drawer slamming sounded from the room Calvin had just emerged from. “My secretary,” he explained. “Tammy. Now, if you don’t mind.”
He muscled past them and started up the steps.
Josie said, “We’ll help.”
Gretchen gave her a brief glare but then nodded at Plummer.
“Fine,” he said. His head bobbed in the direction of the file room. “In there. Tammy will give you some boxes.”
From outside came a hammering sound on the porch roof, as the rain picked up. The long, low howl of the South Denton fire company’s emergency alarm began. “Hurry,” Plummer told them.
Tammy was in her early twenties with long, dark hair that swished across her back as she unloaded file folders from the metal cabinets lining the room and tucked them into letter boxes. She was shorter than Josie and much curvier, her tight black dress and six-inch heels oozing more sexual energy than professionalism. She was going to have a hell of a time carrying letter boxes up and down the steps quickly in those shoes.
They introduced themselves, and Tammy handed them each a box. Plummer joined them, taking a third box. Josie and Gretchen followed him up the steps as he talked. “I’ve had that house on Hempstead for years,” he said. “A damn shame. Is Mrs. Bassett okay?”
“Yes,” Josie said. “A small bump on the head but otherwise fine. Happy to be alive.”
“She lost everything though,” Calvin muttered. At the top of the steps, they followed him left and down a long hall. On the second floor, the insistent drum of the rain was nearly a roar. “Do you know where I can reach her? I can at least return her security deposit. I definitely don’t need it now. She was always a great tenant. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find good tenants?”
Gretchen started with his first question. “We’re not sure where she’ll be placed but as soon as we know, we can pass that along.”
“Speaking of tenants,” Josie said as they came to a doorway. “We were wondering if you could tell us about the tenants who lived in the house before Mrs. Bassett.”
Calvin walked into a large room which was empty, save for a stack of file boxes along one wall. He motioned for them to place their boxes on top of the pile. “This is to do with that thing you jumped into the water for, isn’t it? On the news, reporters are speculating that it was a body. Is that the case?”
“Yes,” Josie answered, setting her box down. “It is a body. It’s with the medical examiner now.”
Calvin hung his head. “You’re telling me there was a body buried under one of my houses?”
Gretchen put her box on top of Josie’s. “Yes. Do you have any idea how it might have gotten there?”
Calvin laughed as he headed back down to the file room. “If I knew anything about a dead body underneath one of my properties, you’d be having this conversation with my attorney. Of course I don’t know anything about it. Listen, that property has always been a rental. Like I said, I’ve had it for decades. Before Mrs. Bassett, there were a bunch of tenants; not the most savory types, if you take my meaning. Any one of them could have been doing illegal things there. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they had been. I was lucky to find Mrs. Bassett. I’m sad to see her go. Sad to see the house go. Insurance will cover it, I imagine.”
“About those former tenants,” Josie said, trying to keep him on track as they took more boxes from Tammy and followed Calvin upstairs again. “Do you have records? A list? Something we can use to track them down?”
Over his shoulder, he said, “I’m only required to keep records for seven years, but I suppose I can check and see what I’ve got. Actually, Tammy probably knows where those records are better than me.”
Back in the file room, he addressed his young secretary.
“Tammy,” he said. “I need you to find all the records we have on the Hempstead property, if you can find them quickly.” He looked out of the file room toward the front door. Beyond, the murky brown water began to cover the grass.
With a sigh, Tammy turned away from them, walking sideways through a narrow passage between two piles of letter boxes and then navigating her way to a file cabinet in the corner of the room, blocked by a rolling cart with computer equipment on it. “I think those are in this one,” she said, pushing the cart aside. They watched as she bent at the waist to open the bottom drawer. As she riffled through it, Josie looked over to see Plummer’s gaze glued to his secretary’s rear, eyes hungry. Gretchen’s elbow jabbed at Josie’s side, an indication for Josie not to stare. Josie tore her eyes from the attorney and stepped forward, searching for an empty file box. A moment later, she and Tammy were loading file folders marked “Hempstead” into it.
Plummer said, “I trust you’ll return them to me when you’re finished? We don’t really have time to make copies right now.”
Outside, the mournful wail of the emergency fire siren went on. Gretchen said, “We don’t need copies. We can bring them back as soon as we’ve finished with them.”
“Perfect,” Plummer said. He gestured to the rest of the files in the room. “You mind helping us with these?”
Eight
“I feel dirty,” Gretchen joked once they were back in the car. She shifted the letter box that Plummer had given them on her lap. “And not just because I’m sweating. From now on, check with me before you volunteer us for hard labor.”
Josie laughed. “What do you think the age difference is between Plummer and Tammy?”
“It’s gross,” Gretchen answered. “However many years gross comes out to.”
Josie laughed harder and started the car, turning her windshield wipers up as fast as they’d go. Two more patrol cars pulled up, maneuvering around her vehicle to block off the road. The water had been up to their calves by the time they left Plummer’s office. Josie turned her vehicle around, driving away from the flooded area. “Some people say age is just a number,” she teased.
Gretchen shook her head. “To be fair, I was twelve years younger than my husband, but I’m thinking there’s a lot more years than that between Plummer and Tammy.”
They returned to the police station, pushing through the soaking wet throng of reporters still staked out at the back door, and took the file up to their desks. Once they got out of their raincoats and waders and felt sufficiently dry, they spread the paperwork out across Josie’s desk and pored over it. Josie said, “This guy saved a copy of every check Evelyn Bassett ever sent him.”
“That’s a lot of checks,” Gretchen said. “Here we go. This is the tenant before her.”