I answered as I typed. “Because he made me worried, for your sake. I told you that I thought he was doing something criminal and I looked into it. He owns things under a few different names.” I pointed to the screen. “Here’s what I found, but I don’t think that it’s comprehensive. I’m not a private detective.”
“I know someone who is. Can you drive so I can talk to her?”
Sure. It had been a while but I could do it for him, so we got into his car. I moved up the seat and tilted down the mirrors as he made a call. “Sophie? It’s Levi,” he said into the phone, and spoke to this woman for a while about August. “Thank you,” he ended by saying, and hung up. “She’s going to find out what she can and get back to me. Sophie Curran is one of the sisters who taught me to dance and she also used to work as an investigator. She’s pretty sure she can get something fast.”
That was good, because August wasn’t at the addresses I had found, not his warehouse in Oak Park, his rental home in Southfield, or his commercial retail space in Birmingham. We were in the parking lot there when Levi’s former neighbor called and told him about another property. We headed to what he explained was the Green Acres neighborhood of Detroit, to another house that the woman suggested was not a rental—she wasn’t sure what August was doing with it, and the ownership had been very tricky to uncover due to a few different trusts that obscured things. As we drove up, I thought it was funny that he’d have bought this house, a pretty, older building on a tree-lined street. What was so special about it?
“I don’t see any of his cars, but there’s a garage and he could have parked inside. I’ll go,” Levi said, but I got out and went with him just like I had at the other places. He stopped on the step. “I don’t know if I want to find him or…”
I took his hand, and he knocked. If the street hadn’t been so quiet, we wouldn’t have heard the faint noises inside the house. We glanced at each other, because someone was here.
And suddenly, the door jerked open and there was August. The two of them stared at each other for a moment and then Levi grabbed his friend and hugged him.
“You scared the shit out of me!” he said, and his voice sounded choked. “Why did you stop answering? Why did you say that stuff? What the hell is wrong with you, hiding here?”
August sounded dazed. “How did you find me?” he kept repeating, the words muffled. Levi was hugging him pretty tightly, but finally he let go.
“What’s going on with you?” he asked.
“Come on,” August said, eying me, and we both followed him into the house. The interior was just as normal as the outside, just a regular place. Nothing about it seemed to indicate intrigue or danger, so then what was going on?
His answers about that were just as frustrating as Vivienne’s had been.
“Sorry I scared you,” August said, looking at his hands. “I called because I started thinking about how we haven’t been talking, and I felt really shitty. I missed you a lot. You know I’m sorry.”
His gaze slid in my direction again as he spoke, and I wondered once more if the trouble between them might have had something to do with me. The breach had seemed to occur just after we’d hung out at his pool, and maybe he’d said something to Levi, like a rude remark. The same thing had happened once when one of Grant’s friends had announced that he thought I had a genetic issue. I had told him that no, I did not, and surprisingly, Vivi’s husband Lance had spoken up for me too.He’d told the other guy to shut the fuck up, and I’d gotten an apology.
But if August had been criticizing me, he didn’t apologize now. Levi told him it was ok but he still wanted to know what was going on. “Why are you here? What is this house?”
“I bought it for my mom a few years ago, in case she ever came back,” August answered. He was back to studying his hands as he spoke. “I wanted her to have a safe place that was away from her old friends.”
“Yeah, that makes sense,” Levi said. “But why are you here right now? Are you hiding?”
“I’m having some business issues,” his friend answered, and as much as Levi questioned him, that was about all he would say. Then I tried too, asking a few pointed things about his underground club, and that got more of a response.
“I’m getting out of that,” August answered. “I’m going to focus on other ventures.”
“Why?” I asked immediately. “Did it get raided by the police? IRS? DEA?”
He shook his head and wouldn’t say any more.
Levi looked over at me. “Emerson, would you wait in the car for a minute? I’ll be out soon.”
I took the keys. “Bye,” I told August, who nodded. It took more than a minute for Levi to reappear, and I started the car when he slid into the passenger seat.
“Did he tell you what’s happening?” I asked.
“No. No, I still have no idea but he’s acting exactly like he did when he almost got kicked out of high school.”
“What had he done back then?” I asked.
“He got into a fight. More than that,” Levi sighed. “He ambushed a guy who had been harassing him and there was a knife.”
Now my question changed: “They didn’t kick him out for having a weapon?”
“There were a lot of extenuating circumstances and he was able to show that there was no way to prove that the knife had come from him. Someone had broken the camera that covered that area of the building and the cellphone videos were inconclusive.”
“You sound like a lawyer trying to hide the truth,” I pointed out. “Was it his knife that he’d brought to hurt someone?”
