Free Hard Rock (A Hardboiled Private Investigator Mystery Series): John Rockne Mysteries 2 by Dani Amore

get Jenkins out of the house to talk with me.  The fact was, I loved improvising.  But for some reason I went with the truth.  “Can you please just ask him if he works with a financial consultant named Tripp Collins with UAM?”  Then I decided to throw in a little fiction.  “I’m with the Players Union and we’re investigating them for possibly embezzling former players.”
    The man looked me over like I was something clinging to the bottom of his three hundred dollar sneakers.  He shut the door.
    I waited.  Looked at the Ferrari some more.  Yep, not my style.  The Taurus, however, was all me.
    The door opened a crack.  Same guy.
    “Nope. Don’t know the dude.”
    The door shut again.
    Okay, then.
    I crossed the street on foot and walked to the second house.  This was Eddie Starks’s place.  It still seemed odd to me that all three players lived so close together. But if all three were friends it made a kind of sense.  A house pops up for sale next door, you’ve got a friend who just moved to town and is looking for a place, you tell him, right? 
    And real estate in Grosse Pointe changed hands more often than most people would think. 
    It turned out that Eddie Starks wasn’t home but I was able to leave my cell phone number with his assistant, along with the same story I’d given Greg Jenkins.
    When I got to the third house, the door was answered by an older black man.  He had on a Nike dri-fit shirt with the initials NFLPA.  Oops.  I’d called it the Players Union to the other guys.  It appeared to be the Players Association.  Oh, well.
    “Hi,” I said.  “I’m here because I wanted to ask if Desmond has any association with a company called United Asset Management, or UAM.  I work for the Players Association and we’re investigating the company for possible fraud.”
    The man squinted his eyes at me.
    I stuck out my hand.  “My name’s John Rockne, by the way.”
    He shook my hand.  His fingers enveloped my entire hand like it belonged to a baby.  His hands were the size of catcher’s mitts.
    “Melvin Jamison,” he said.  “I’ll ask him, but I’m pretty sure we’ve never dealt with them.”
    The old guy was pretty sharp.  I could tell he wasn’t totally buying my story. 
    But I gave him my card anyway and thanked him.  I went back to my car, got inside and fired it up.  Did a U-turn and drove down until I hit Lake Shore again.  I paused at the stop sign facing the lake.
    I checked my watch.
    It was time to go to the office and do some work on the computer. 
    Something wasn’t sitting quite right with me.  I was pretty good at spotting people who weren’t being truthful.  I had felt that Tripp Collins, while more than fitting the bill in terms of being an abrasive drunk, had at least seemed like he wasn’t hiding anything.  If any of these guys turned out to be his clients, it could mean that he simply wasn’t aware of exactly where they lived.  That it was literally on the same street where his nephew had been murdered.
    The possibility was very real that he wasn’t lying.  That maybe he was just missing something. 
    Or maybe I was missing something, too.

 
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Nineteen
     
    Note to self: invest in an air freshener.
    My office smelled like a rec room at an old folks home.  Maybe some senior citizens had broken in and staged a Greco-Roman wrestling tournament.
    I cracked a window, let in some fresh air and then fired up my computer.  I walked over to a built-in closet by the little fridge and looked for something to munch on.  There was a bag of sweet potato chips.  Those count as vegetables, by the way.  Five servings a day, right.
    I grabbed the bag and carried it back to my desk.  Plopped into my chair.
    Where to begin?
    I leaned back, put my feet up on the desk, and cracked open the bag of chips.  Started munching. And thinking.
    The chips made me think of how nice it would be to have a sandwich, too.  But the chips