Chapter 1

Engineers tell us that a machine runs at peak efficiency right before it breaks down.

Walker, Vanessa and I were rollerblading around our enormous loft to soaring Italian arias cranked up to the max. Scarlatti, Parisotti, Rossini, and Verdi reached forward through the centuries to inspire us, touch us, move us.

It was 5:30 on a Tuesday morning and we were swooshing around furniture, area rugs, small sculptures, on a purely impulsive lark. Vanessa had woken up feeling the urge. Surprisingly, Walker was fairly easy to roust this time. He grinned, tucked morning wood into red boxer-briefs, laced up.

Unsurprisingly, Mindy was unresponsive. She sleeps more soundly than any human ever scrutinized by science. Going back to homo erectus times.

Vanessa was wearing a black ‘Winter Sucks Cock’ Tee-shirt. Long story. Mine was more demure, ‘I Love Vanessa.’ Vanessa, at 5’ 10” is naturally graceful. She reminds me of a panther, a tiger, some sleek cat. Put her on blades and it’s a force-multiplier, she becomes so fluid that she seems almost alien. Some undiscovered life-form from some undiscovered planet.

Walker ... well, Mr. Puberty is still butt-fucking him. He can pretty much maneuver around our hardwood floors without crashing, falling, tripping others.

I’m somewhere in between, grace-wise. But we all soared that particular Tuesday morning, effortlessly forming twosomes, threesomes, morphing back to singles. It was like a seemingly choreographed gambol while that glorious music thrummed through the air. The euphony seemed to fill the room, wall to wall to wall to wall, floor to ceiling.

Vanessa, gliding backwards, easily did a figure-8 around Walker, giving his bulge a friendly squeeze on the way by. I’m going to speak with her about that. Someday.

There is only one axiom I live by. I call it the Winter Jennings Code: If we didn’t do things we shouldn’t, we’d never feel good about the things we should do.

At work, Bulldog Bannerman’s Dragon Lady # 1, called me at my office in the Livestock Exchange Building, “Bulldog’s on the way.” Click.

Bulldog, city fixer, Kansas City style.

I left my .38 in the right hand drawer of my stylish Nelson Swag Leg desk, figuring that Bulldog wasn’t planning to off me. I unlocked the door separating my office from the modest, underused, reception area. Then I looked out my peephole and unlocked the steel-reinforced door to the hallway.

Winter Jennings, open for business. A mostly sunny morning, Tuesday, August 8, 2017. Because it’s Bulldog, this Tuesday will be interesting. Interesting good or interesting bad, I don’t know. But interesting.

“Winter.”

“Walk.”

“Do you think I’m too tall? Kind of goony?”

“I think your little pee-pee is too short.”

“F. U.”

“You wish.”

I’m Winter Jennings, a 33-year old private detective. I was a single mom of a single kid. Walker, 14. But I married up, married Vanessa Henderson. Along the way the three of us acquired a girl, Mindy Montgomery, 16, who has somehow become my son’s live-in girlfriend.

The four of us reside in a large, lovingly renovated loft in a century-old building -- the Wrigley Hotel. Although our fifth floor loft isn’t part of the hotel operation. The Wrigley is on Main Street, in the gallery-filled Crossroads District, just south of downtown Kansas City, on the Missouri side of State Line.

This would be the last month the four of us would live together. Stanford.

Bulldog Bannerman avoids the media, shuns even the most positive coverage. He’s been a behind-the-scenes guy since the 60s and his influence seems to grow with each passing year. White hair cropped short like he wore it in the Corps, wiry build, looks like he could still step back into a Golden Gloves ring.

He didn’t sit, merely handed me an online printout that would flood the city’s digital screens in a few minutes. Bulldog learns about things before regular people do.

“Sorry, Winter.”

It was an AP release about to hit the digital stream, “Sister Mary Catherine Packer, 62, was strangled to death early Tuesday morning at her shelter for homeless girls in Northeast Kansas City.”

The rest of the copy blurred from my silent tears. I sat down. Bulldog gave my shoulder a soft squeeze and left. Sister Mary Packer. Slight, determined, relentless, dressed for utility except for her neon-colored sneakers. A saint to the wretched little girls who knocked at her door.

Someone said, “Fuck.”

I’ve lived -- while attending college -- in New York City and London. But Kansas City, the Missouri version, is home. Born here, grew up here, family and friends here. Guess I’m just a provincial girl.

Actually, Doubly Provincial, now that I think about it.

There is Kansas City and then there is Winter’s Kansas City.

While the Chamber claims the Greater KC Metro Area has around 2,000,000 mostly un-incarcerated souls and sprawls over almost 8,000 square miles, My Kansas City is much more consolidated.

Turn your back on the Missouri River, face south, and look around. You’ll see the West Bottoms, or, using its upscale name, River Market. And this is the little pocket of the city where my office building resides in the once-bustling, starting-to-bustle-again, stockyards.

Squeeze your eyes shut while Uber takes you south over those fucking freeways that ugly-slice through the city and you’re in downtown. Or, as the successful marketing campaign dubbed it, the Power & Light District.

Keep heading south, say on Main Street, and you’re in the artsy Crossroads District. Where I live with Walker, Vanessa, and Mindy. Our loft takes up the entire fifth floor of the Wrigley, pretty cool digs, in fact.

Motoring further south through a vague stretch known vaguely as midtown, you come to historic Westport. There were military battles of some sort fought back ... um, back in time. It’s mostly bars now with a few good restaurants sprinkled in.

Next is KC’s jewel, the Country Club Plaza. It’s a ritzy shopping and dining area modeled after Seville. The one in Spain, not the Detroit version. I love the Plaza -- 15 square blocks of colorful tiles, graceful arches, parking hidden from view, cast-iron scrollwork, low-rise decorative towers. Plus around 30 or so bars and cafes with outdoor seating.

Brookside is next. Neighborhood shopping and dining. Largish houses on largish lots.

Furtherest south in My KC is Waldo -- bars, bars, bars with a few eating establishments. Lively nighttime scene. Smaller bungalows than Brookside.

Now, with Mary Packer gone, My Kansas City is dimmer, more hushed.

Vanessa and Bear entered my office together. She took me in her arms and I lost it. Weeped, cried, sobbed. Bear opened my little office bar and poured us 9 AM snifters of Germain-Robin brandy from California.

Vanessa said, “Phillip is on the way to tell Mindy.” Phillip Montgomery, banker, father of Walker’s girlfriend.

I said, “We need to go get Walk.”

“We’ll take your truck, Bear is going to the shelter.”

The Sister Mary Packer Shelter. For girls in need. Bear runs a major restaurant, he’ll be able to handle the shelter for a while. Work around the crime scene area, those girls still need to be fed.

Vanessa and I head for Pembroke Hill School to pick up my son. Our son.

I hadn’t known Mary Packer’s middle name. Catherine. Nor her exact age. 62. Doesn’t matter now.

Fuck.

When Bulldog dropped the bombshell I had been preoccupied by three significant -- significant for us anyway -- items on our little events-horizon: Mindy Montgomery was leaving us, leaving Walker, to enroll at Stanford University. We all understood this would almost certainly be the end of the kids’ romance. Walker knew it at a deeper level than the rest of us.

Vanessa Henderson was working frenetically to open her new Brookside restaurant. Euforia. Regional Italian food. Euforia is an investment in time, money, and effort. The cash commitment goes against the counsel of our financial advisor, Gertie Oppenheimer.

With all of this going on, I was scheduled to fly to Palermo on Thursday to meet, and board, The Globe. With 200 luxury condos, it’s one of the largest residential yachts afloat. Phillip Montgomery’s New York hedge fund, Envoy Assets, owns 30% of the ship. And something troubling was going on. I’d been contracted to investigate.

Well, later.

Back when I was in New York, going to John Jay College of Criminal Justice, a girlfriend talked me into attending a weekend workshop called “The Experience.” It was an eye-opener. A new wave of feminism. Without any of the militancy.

The guru, Mama Gena (Gena Thomashauer), is inspirational, positive, strong. A true motivator.

To oversimplify, she teaches women how to move beyond a male mindset. Personally and professionally. She preaches pleasure, a type of happiness not confined to the rules created and reinforced by men.

One small example, stop thinking of chocolate as a guilty pleasure. Like it? It’s just a pleasure. Enjoy it.

The same thing for work. Stop looking at your career as duty. Either enjoy it or find something else to do.

Strident? Not at all. More celebratory than anything. Several women wore Tee-shirts that said ‘8,000 Nerve Endings.’ The number that happen to be in my vagina. Mama Gena uses the word ‘pussy’ a lot. Pussy as in pleasure.

Ever since my babysitter, Peggy Rawlings, and her brother Ryan, first seduced me, I’ve celebrated my hedonistic side without really thinking about it. Mama Gena reinforced my sybaritic nature and expanded my positive understanding of myself, my opportunities, my outlook on life.

We tend to admire people who preach what we already believe, don’t we?

Mayor Tom Lynch held a noon press conference to announce that Homicide Captain Dave Jennings, my father, would head up a dedicated task force to find and apprehend Sister Mary Packer’s killer.

City Hall and the police brass often hold media events in a threadbare room, poor lighting, dusty plastic ferns, worn furniture. The shabby setting is to downplay the true power of the city. The weight and majesty of the executive branch combined with the raw power of law enforcement.

This particular media showcase was in the plushest mayoral conference room that City Hall has. Flags, framed portraits, polished oak. No subterfuge. Bulldog Bannerman had placed his experienced index finger on the pulse of the city. Blood pressure up. Interpreted the increased electrical activity from his private EKG.

A beloved nun had been killed. He told the mayor, “Full Monty.”

By two o’clock that Tuesday afternoon a war-party of sorts was gathered in our loft. The mourners -- Walker, Mindy, and I. Phillip and Rebecca Montgomery. Phillip had started the Sister Mary Packer Foundation once Mindy became a daily volunteer at the shelter.

Rebecca had spent a lot of mothering time with those lost little girls herself.

Bear would have been here, all 6’ 8” of him, but he had taken charge of the shelter. The girls need food, showers and beds even without Mary. Probably need them more than ever without Mary. Phillip dispatched a grief counselor to hang out at the site, talk with anyone who wanted to.

Daddy, Homicide Captain Dave Jennings, was here. The mayor, also the head of the Police Commission, had immediately put him in charge of the Sister Mary investigation. Daddy stopped by mainly to hug me. And to murmur, “We’ll catch the cocksucker,” before he left to open the Murder Book.

Also present, notably so, Bulldog Bannerman, the first time he’d been in our loft. That I knew about anyway. Locks and permission are of little consequence to him. He sat quietly, watching, listening, that’s how he operates. So far as I know, no one told him about our little gathering, let alone invited him. But he was more than welcome. Things tended to get done when Bulldog was involved.

At the end of the impromptu meeting, which was mostly free of emotional outbursts and staccato obscenities from me, Bulldog said, “The city is posting a reward, $100,000.”

Phillip said, “OneBank will match it. I’ll make some calls.” The wealth network. This reward fund would grow rapidly.

Between the two men -- Bulldog, the pragmatic city fixer and Phillip, the connected banker -- they worked out the next steps.

First thing, above everything else, was to keep the shelter going. It would be the one thing that Mary Packer would have asked. This would entail finding a replacement for Mary, probably more than one person, to run the place. Which was now a large enough operation to have a weekly budget of over $3,000.

Phillip asked me, I’d known Mary longer than anyone except for Bulldog, where I’d hold her memorial service.

“Right here. Mary spent the night here, drank a lot of wine. A few times. She liked it here.”

Bulldog left the funeral arrangements up to Phillip. Bulldog said, “Tom will want to speak, but you should do the eulogy.”

Mayor Tom Lynch wouldn’t miss a turnout like this one. But, all in all, I think he’s a pretty good guy. Daddy agrees and he doesn’t like politicians.

There is only one axiom I live by. I call it the Winter Jennings Code: The higher the mountain, the more treacherous the path.

Well, Mary’s death changed everything in our little world. There’s never a convenient time for murder, is there?

Phillip not only understood I had to postpone my investigation of The Globe, he had one of his assistants reschedule my trip.

Mindy had been accepted to Stanford. We were all proud of her, even Walker. Especially Walker. Although it meant the probable end of his love life. His sex life. Mindy is two years, almost three years, older and in Teenage World, the boy is supposed to hold seniority.

Mindy had worked her wealthy little butt off at Mary’s shelter and announced today that she would not be leaving for college. She’d stay to work at Mary’s until things are running smoothly again. Until a new administrator is found.

Walker was the first to respond, “No, Mindy. Sister Mary would want the same thing for you that she wanted for her shelter girls. To move on, to keep trying. Keep going.”

Little fucker. I may have teared up, just a little, I was so proud of him. Vanessa too.

Walker, Vanessa and I joined forces with Phillip and Rebecca to squash Mindy’s brief, kind, unselfish, rebellion. She has gained a lot of spine since she had fallen prey to a cult, but she didn’t have enough to stand up against our united front.

That left Euforia.

We had rented a failed Brookside liquor store on the south side of 63rd Street. From the minute we signed the lease, the financial clock was ticking.

Vanessa was working killer hours trying to get her restaurant in good enough shape to do a series of soft weekend openings. There wasn’t much she could do to help in the Mary Packer investigation. It simply made sense for her to continue to apply her prodigious work ethic to the launch effort.

That Tuesday night, it was a quiet dinner, just Walker and Mindy, Vanessa and me. I can’t even remember what we had, probably just salads.