Page 65 of Gem Warfare

“I wonder how a person even insures something like that?” I pondered, not expecting a reply.

“Beats me. I’m just a bar manager. Rubies and diamonds are a whole different world to mine, despite my name.”

“Ready!” called Lily, coming around my side of the bar. She’d tied her curls into a poofy ponytail and removed her apron and “Manager” pin. “Where to first?”

“I tried all the phone numbers and they’re long dead but I have two addresses to check out,” I said as we left the bar.

“Maybe they can give us the skinny on this guy.”

“I’d like to think so but I assume our expectations should be in the gutter. I expect to find they’re fake. One is a past address and the other two are for references and our forger admitted he could make those.”

“Wouldn’t he have been found out at the time if he’d handed over a forged document?”

I beeped my car unlocked and we climbed in. “Security was a lot more lax twenty years ago. I think it would be easy to fake references and not have anyone check up on them, especially if you were the kind of handsome, charming, guy Charlie Black parading as Joe Smithson apparently was. I think he would have an answer for everything. ‘Oh, you can’t get through on the phone? Let me pick up a letter of reference for you! It’s notrouble!’” I mimicked. “’What’s that? They don’t remember me? Whom did you speak to? Mabel? She’s a hoot! Always messing with people. I’ll get them to give you a call,’ then pay a woman twenty bucks to call and give a reference over the phone.”

“That’s how we used to give each other glowing references,” said Lily, cracking a smile.

“And that’s why I know how easy it is to get a fake reference.”

“We could have taught this guy a thing or two.”

“Yeah, and he could have taught us a hundred.”

Our first stop was the three thousand block of Glenhaven Road but I couldn’t find 3406. We double-backed, then on the third pass, I pulled over at a disused scrub of land with six-foot-high fencing and bold “STAY OUT!” signs at regular intervals. “This is why we can’t find it,” I said, pointing. “It’s been knocked down.”

“Strike one,” said Lily. “A lot of the neighboring businesses look like they’re going or are already gone out of business.”

I followed her gaze to the boarded-up windows and the “Everything Must Go” signs on neighboring properties. “I don’t think we’re going to find anyone who remembers a business here twenty years ago, much less, a man who once needed a reference. Next!”

The second address on my list had been turned into a grocery superstore with a sprawling parking lot more than ten years ago.

“I remember this now,” said Lily. “There was a campaign to save the neighborhood but the grocery store had bought up the land rights on either side and were steadily buying all the houses in the middle. I think a couple of households refused to move until the grocery store made them a big offer and that was it. By the end of the year, the street was flattened and the store was being built.”

“I remember the store being built because Mom was irrationally excited about it but I don’t remember the fight aboutthe land. Black couldn’t have foreseen the development so many years before.”

“The original homeowners might still be local.”

“Yeah, but he listed this address as a former rental residence. They might never have met him. You know what would be interesting? Finding out what happened to his stuff when he disappeared.”

“The things he left in his house?”

“Yeah. While we drive to the next place, can you look through the pictures I took and see if it says what happened to them? I think there was a receipt for a house clearance company. Did the Greenbergs keep any of his stuff? Or toss it all?” I passed Lily my phone and unlocked it to the image folder. As she scrolled up, I pulled a U-turn, heading back the way we came. The final residential address listed was in Chilton, only a couple of streets from my home. A number of the residences on that street had been divided up into apartments but Black had only listed a number.

“Found it,” said Lily. “Oh, no.”

“They tossed his stuff?”

“As good as. They made a note here saying all his belongings were kept for six months by the clearance agency, then donated to Goodwill.”

“That’s all long gone,” I said.

“You’re not disappointed?”

“No. It was too much to ask that they kept the stuff. I’m surprised they stored it for that long but I’m not surprised it was later donated. They kept it long enough to consider it a good deed to a former tenant that skipped out.”

“I hope the next place isn’t knocked down too. I feel this trip would be more enjoyable if we got some answers.”

“Such is the life of a PI,” I said although I agreed with her. “But I do know that street is fully intact so the house will bethere. We’ll find out about the owners when we get there.”

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