“What?” She glanced down at them. “Oh. Thank you.”
“I’m sorry to be bothering you again, Laura. As you may have seen in the news, this crazy White River case just keeps getting crazier.”
She nodded.
“Have you heard that we’re trying to locate Dell Beckert, the former police chief?”
“It’s all over the news shows.”
“Right. So here’s the thing. We suspect he might still be in the White River area. We’re checking to see if he owns any local property. That’s easy for us to do. But he might be renting a place, and there are no public records of renters for us to check. Then I recalled someone telling me that you folks manage most of the rentals around here. So I figured if anyone could help us out, it would be you.”
She looked puzzled. “What kind of help do you want?”
“A simple tenant database search. Beckert may have leased a place himself, or he could be staying in a house or apartment leased by someone close to him. I’ll give you a few names, you run them against your master file of tenants, and we’ll see if you get any hits. Pretty straightforward. I already know about the apartment on Bridge Street and the house on Poulter, so I just need to know about any others beyond those.” He added, “By the way, that necklace you’re wearing is gorgeous. It’s jade, right?”
She touched it gently with the tips of her fingers. “The highest quality jade.”
“That’s obvious. And it goes beautifully with those rings.”
She looked pleased. “I believe appearances matter. Not everyone today agrees with that.”
“Their loss,” he said.
She smiled. “Do you have those names with you?”
He gave her a piece of paper listing Beckert, Beauville, Turlock, Jackson, and Jordan, plus the three ranking WRPD officers whose names Payne had provided. She placed the paper in front of her keyboard, frowned thoughtfully, and got to work. A quarter of an hour later, the printer came to life. A single page slid out, and she handed it to Gurney. “Beyond the two you mentioned, these are the only three rentals that come up in connection with those names.”
The first property was a one-bedroom apartment on Bacon Street in the Grinton section of White River. It was on the top floor of a building owned by Carbo Holdings LLC. A one-year lease in the name of Marcel Jordan had begun four months earlier. The agent’s name was Lily Flack. Her notes indicated that the full $4,800 annual rental had been paid in advance in cash by the tenant’s representative, Blaze L. Jackson.
The second property was a single-family house in a place called Rapture Hill. It had also been leased four months earlier for one year—from the foreclosed properties division of a White River bank. The name of the lease-signing tenant was Blaze L. Jackson. The agent, Lily Flack, noted that Ms. Jackson had paid the full amount of the lease—$18,000—in cash.
The third property was an apartment in Grinton, leased to Marcel and Tania Jordan six years earlier and renewed annually every year since. That one didn’t strike Gurney as having any relevance to Beckert’s possible whereabouts. The other two locations, however, seemed worth looking into. He folded the sheet and put it in his jacket pocket.
Laura Conway was watching him carefully. “Is that what you wanted?”
“Yes,” he said. He made no move to get up from his chair.
“Is there something else?”
“Keys. To the first apartment and to the house.”
Her expression clouded. “I don’t think we can give out keys.”
“You want to ask your boss about that?”
She picked up her phone. Then she put it down and left the cubicle.
A couple of minutes later, the man who had greeted Gurney on the street appeared in the doorway, lips pursed. “I’m Chuck Brambledale, the manager here. You asked Laura for keys to two of our rentals?”
“We may need to enter them and we’d rather do it without causing excessive damage.”
His eyes widened. “You have . . . warrants?”
“Not exactly. But I understand we have a cooperative agreement.”
Brambledale stared into the middle distance for a few seconds. “Wait here.”
While he was alone in the cubicle, Gurney got up and examined a framed award on the wall. It was a Tri-County Association of Real Estate Professionals certificate recognizing Laura Conway as Salesperson of the Year—ten years earlier.
Brambledale reappeared with two keys. “The silver one is for the apartment—top floor, 4B. The brass one is for the house up in Rapture Hill. You know where that is?”
“No.”
“It’s an unincorporated locality north of White River. You know where the gun club is? Well, it’s just two or three miles farther up.”
“Past Clapp Hollow?”
“Between Clapp Hollow and Bass River. Middle of nowhere.” He handed the keys with obvious reluctance to Gurney. “Weird place.”
“How so?”
