“Thanks for the advice. Maybe he is dangerous. But I am a therapist and I deal with quite a few strange people. I can handle Erik if I need to.”
“Hey Cleo, you could be a little more appreciative. This guy could be big trouble for you.”
“Well you could give me a little more credit for being a professional who knows what I’m doing. And anyway, I asked you to help me find out what happened to Adam, not to snoop around about Erik.” I knew I should be grateful he watched out for me, but I was feeling irritated and kind of smothered by his superior attitude.
“Since when is police work called snooping? And you’re the one who told me all the stuff about his slippery business deals.”
“And you were jealous that this good looking guy paid some attention to me, so you jumped on the chance to bring him down.” I knew I was exaggerating and also being contrary, which wasn’t quite fair, since I had questions about Erik, but I hated Pablo telling me who I should stay away from.
“Look, Cleo, if you want to take your chances with him, so be it. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
And before I could come back with a quick retort, he hung up.
Chapter 31
After I finished eating, I went out to my studio to paint. But I couldn’t keep my mind off Erik, or Horace or whoever he was. I thought about getting the phone number for Harry’s Grill in Minneapolis and calling his brother to try to get some information. But I was afraid the brother would just hang up on me, since he’d told Pablo he didn’t want to talk about Erik.
In spite of my assumed nonchalance with Pablo, I did have concerns about Erik and I did want to know more about him. I thought about Tyler telling me on Sunday that I needed to line up, that people were going under fast and needed serious help from me. Of course, those people could be the ones being scammed by Dr. Ahmed, and now that would be stopped. But I wasn’t involved in investigating Ahmed, so why would Tyler push me to do something about him? It was more likely he meant I should stop Erik from scamming people with his herbs and nutrition business.
I wished Minneapolis were closer so I could drop in on Harry. But wait—Minneapolis is less than a two-hour plane flight. Why not just do it? I had a bunch of frequent flyer miles with Frontier, so I gave them a call. No problem. I booked myself a flight leaving Denver at
7:00 am the next day. Even with the one-hour time change, I’d be there at 10:00 am, giving me plenty of time to track down Harry before my return flight left Minneapolis at 7:30 that evening. I spent about an hour on the phone canceling my Wednesday appointments, and went to bed to get some sleep before my early-morning flight.
The flight was uneventful and on time. On the plane, I sat next to a young woman from Minneapolis who was on her way home from visiting her parents in Boulder. I asked her about Harry’s Grill. She knew it—said it was a casual but expensive art-deco seafood restaurant in downtown Minneapolis on the Nicollet Mall.
While following the airport signs to ground transportation, I debated whether to take a bus or a taxi downtown. Since I didn’t know exactly how to get to Harry’s Grill, I decided to spring for the taxi. There were lots of them lined up, so I was soon on my way, enjoying my first view of Minneapolis—a tall city skyline where gleaming modern high-rises seemed to have pushed their way up between substantial brick buildings that looked like they had withstood many a frigid winter.
That July day was anything but frigid. A wave of hot, humid air hit me when I stepped out of the air-conditioned Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. It was sunny and, according to the pilot’s report before we landed, about 80 degrees. But it felt much warmer to me because of the stickiness, which we don’t get in Colorado. The muggy air enveloped me again as I got out of the cab at Nicollet Mall.
I found myself on a festive pedestrian mall with a narrow driving lane for busses and taxis. Stores and restaurants lined each side of the street, which was bordered by wide sidewalks with trees, flowers and outdoor restaurant seating. Harry’s Grill was in an elegant brick building with dark green awnings and a black wrought iron door. I took a deep breath and walked in.
Inside was quite a contrast to the outside. The air was cool and the décor accentuated that feeling—mostly shiny black with peach accents. An enormous mirrored wall behind a long rounded bar was lined with liquor bottles. Seating was in curved booths with chrome accents.
It was about 11:30 by then, so Harry’s was serving lunch. I asked the hostess if I could see Harry Honigman.
“Harry’s in the kitchen right now. Was he supposed to meet you?”
“No. But I’m here from Colorado just this one day, and I really need to talk to him.”
“If you wait until I seat these people, I can call him,” she said, motioning a party of six to follow her to a booth. She got them set and returned to her hostess desk. “What did you say your name was again?” she asked, picking up the phone.
“It’s Cleo, but he doesn’t know me. Tell him it’s about his brother, and it’s very important.”
The hostess spoke to someone on the phone, who relayed the information to Harry. “Can you come back at 2:30?” she asked me.
“Sure. That will work. Thanks for taking time to call him.”
I headed back out to Nicollet Mall to find something to do for a few hours. The food smells in Harry’s had brought on some hunger pangs, so I decided to look for a place to eat. At a nearby bakery café, I filled up quickly on a huge spinach salad, a generous slice of cheese and mushroom focaccia bread, and an enormous iced tea. I suspected that large portions might be a Minnesota tradition to help locals stoke up for the long winters.
After lunch, I wandered through Marshall Field’s, Neiman Marcus, and Saks Fifth Avenue. Big city shopping is a novelty for me, as Boulder doesn’t have these department stores in town, and I don’t often go to Denver or its suburbs to shop. The hours passed quickly, and it was soon time to walk back to Harry’s Grill.
The hostess recognized me when I walked in. “Harry’s over at the bar,” she said pointing to a dark-haired man wearing chinos and a white shirt, seated on a barstool and talking intently with the bartender. I walked over and stood next to him until he finished his conversation, turned his head in my direction and looked at me. He looked amazingly like Erik, except nowhere near as fit. He was medium height like Erik, but stockier, without the muscles. He had Erik’s dark eyes and curly brown hair, but his face was marred by a two-inch scar on his left cheek.
“Are you Harry Honigman?”
“That’s right. Are you Cleo from Colorado?” He was still seated facing the bar, looking sideways at me.
“Yes. Could you spare a few minutes to talk about your brother?
I guess his name is Horace, but I know him as Erik.”
Harry looked bored, his eyes half-lidded. “I’ve spent way too much time in my life talking about my brother. What do you want to know?”
I decided I needed to get his attention quickly, or at least get an answer to one of my questions, so I said, “Who are Amber and Melissa?”
Harry spun his bar stool around to face me. His eyes were wide open now, boring into me. “He told you about Amber and Melissa?”
“No, Jenny said we should ask him about them.”
“Jenny’s been dead for over a year. Why are you here now?” He sounded like I was trying to sell him a used car, but I ignored his suspicious tone and answered in my calm-therapist voice.
“It’s a long story. Could we talk somewhere a little more private?”
He motioned me over to a booth. “Would you like something to drink while we talk?”
“Water would be great,” I said, scooting into the middle of the booth.
As Harry joined me in the booth, the bartender brought over a couple of bottles of Evian, two ice-filled glasses and a tiny dish of lime wedges. As I poured some water into a glass, I speculated as to what it would be like to have your own bartender.
“Jenny was a sweet lady,” Harry’s face had softened. “How di
d you know her?”
“My grandmother lives at the nursing home where she worked. Jenny was Gramma’s favorite nurse.”
“So what did Jenny tell you about Amber and Melissa? And have you talked to Horace about them?”
“It’s complicated. I’ve only known Erik—or Horace—for about a month and he insists he’s never heard of Amber or Melissa. In fact, half the time he denies having a brother, says he has no family at all. Are Amber and Melissa your sisters?”
Harry sighed. “No, they were Horace’s first two wives.”
“So he’s divorced from both of them?”
He stared off into the distance as if trying to recollect long-forgotten details, then looked back at me. “Not exactly. It’s a long story, but I need to hear more about your involvement with Horace before I tell it.”
I told him about Adam’s death, Erik’s friendship with Adam and with Sharon and Nathan, Erik’s nutrition and herb-growing business, what Erik had told me about his belief that Adam’s death was suicide, and how he told conflicting stories about his background. When I got to the Contact Project part, and described Sharon’s contact with Jenny, he looked skeptical, but kept listening. I finished by saying, “So after I found out that you really do exist, I decided I needed to meet you to find out if you have any idea what Jenny was trying to tell us.”
Harry sighed again, but this time he gave me a tiny half-smile. “Okay, I’ll tell you what I know. But you may need something stronger than water to hear this story. We’re famous for our martinis. Or maybe you’d like some single malt scotch?” He jumped up and started toward the bar, looking back to check on my order.
I was tempted but I decided I needed to keep all my faculties sharp. “Thanks, but I’ll stay with the water for now.”
He got himself a drink of something on the rocks, came back to the booth, settled in, and began his story. “Well, first of all, we lived with our parents, who did not abuse us, when we were growing up in L.A. Dad was a construction worker, Mom was a waitress. We weren’t poor, but certainly not rich—just comfortable. I’m six years older than Horace, and we got along fine when he was really little. He looked up to me, and I enjoyed teaching him stuff. But, by the time he was six and I was twelve, that changed. His true character was coming out. He made a game of getting me to let him use my stuff, even when he didn’t really even want the stuff. And sometimes he’d break or damage my things on purpose, just for the heck of it. Like the time he dropped some of my best baseball cards in a mud puddle in front of the house.”
Harry stopped and looked down pensively, as though he could still see those precious cards floating in the muddy water. He took a long sip of his drink and went on. “Sometimes I’d go after him and fight with him. He was vicious—that’s how I got the scar on my face. But usually when I got mad, Horace would cry and pretend to be really sorry, and I would let him get away with it. I kept thinking I could get him to change.”
I began to see why Harry didn’t like to talk about his brother. “Didn’t your parents do anything to stop him?”
“My parents tried, but Horace was immune to punishment. He lied and stole like a pro and nothing worked to change his behavior. It was like he knew the difference between right and wrong, but he didn’t care because he was special. He saw no reason to feel sorry about the pain and destruction he caused. Sometimes he’d pretend to feel remorse but they knew he was faking. So they pretty much gave up.”
I began to feel kind of stupid for ever finding Erik attractive or feeling sympathy for him. Maybe Pablo’s take on him was more accurate than mine. But Erik had managed to convince three women to marry him, and Sharon liked him. “He has a way of attracting women,” I said.
“Oh man, does he ever!” Harry rolled his eyes. “I was always amazed that as a teenager, Horace could have his pick of girls, even though he was really bossy with them. Like one girl in high school who liked pleasing him, and the harder he made it the more she liked it. Sometimes Horace would make demands just to see how far he could push her. Then, after he had her totally under his thumb, he dropped her with no warning. She kept calling him begging him to tell her what she had done, but he refused to talk to her at all.”
“Did that happen a lot?” I wondered how Jenny had done with that.
Harry swirled the ice around in his drink and shook his head. “Actually, I wasn’t around much while he was in high school. I know most of that from what my mom told me. I moved up to San Francisco to study at the California Culinary Academy and then I apprenticed at some restaurants up there to get experience. So during that time I was mostly only seeing Horace at vacations. But in 1988, I got a great job offer at a restaurant in L.A., so I moved back there. Horace was involved in some multilevel marketing scam where they got people to buy supplies to assemble holiday decorations at home that they could supposedly sell back to the company. But the supplies were crummy and the directions were worse and when the people tried to get paid, the company told them the products were no good and refused to pay. So Horace and his partner were making money selling supplies but no one else got anything.”
“Hmm…that sounds a lot like the herb growing kits he’s selling right now,” I said.
“I’m not surprised. Horace just keeps on using people. He told me once that most people lead such silly little lives, it’s stupid not to take advantage of them. He said it’s like they are some sort of wind-up toys set on a path to chug along. They just go until they run out of steam and then stop, dead in their tracks. And all the time they are going along, they don’t even see what is going on around them.”
I was stunned. Was this actually Erik’s philosophy of life? He sounded like a sociopath. I needed to hear more. “That’s amazing,” I said. “He gives the impression that he genuinely cares about people. Or about Sharon and Nathan at least. So what was the story with Amber and Melissa?”
Harry drained his drink, set his glass to one side, and said, “Okay, here’s the story. Amber was Horace’s first wife. He married her in 1990, when he was 24. She was one of those clumsy fat girls who thought she’d never get a man, much less a good-looking guy like Horace. But her father, Jim, was a widower who had tons of money. Amber was an only child, and he doted on her. A perfect setup for Horace. The father was suspicious at first, but Horace turned on the charm, and in no time he convinced Jim that he was earnest, sincere, hard-working–whatever Jim wanted to believe. When Horace and Amber got married, Jim gave them a house and a bunch of stock. And he took Horace into his construction business as a full partner. A few years later, Jim died from a bad fall from the top of a building they were working on. Horace took over the business. Amber was never the same after her dad died. She got more and more depressed until she overdosed on pills and booze. Most people thought Horace was heartbroken, but from my view all was going according to Horace’s plan. He was only 28—took his inheritance and moved on.”
The story shocked me, but I didn’t react because I didn’t want to distract him from the telling. “So, how long ago was that?” I asked.
“About ten years ago, and it was the last time he lived anywhere near me,” Harry said. “I had met Loretta by then, and we were getting married. She didn’t want to stay in L.A.—thought it was too plastic. And her family lived here in Minneapolis. I was lucky enough to find a good chef position here, so we moved. We decided to stay, I opened Harry’s Grill, and we’ve been here ever since. I haven’t had much to do with Horace except when he’s showed up here—always to ask for money—or as he puts it, to let me in on an incredible investment opportunity. I never bite, so I don’t know why he keeps trying.”
I felt more and more alarmed about what Erik might have in mind for Sharon, but I kept a poker face and made no comment. I was after information—which I was getting—and I didn’t want to interrupt the flow.
Harry looked increasingly disgusted as he continued his summary. “Horace has lived all over, had all kinds of businesses. I couldn’t tell you much about them. I
do know he married again in 1994. Her name was Melissa. I don’t know much about that marriage, except that Melissa left him a couple of years later and disappeared. I don’t know whether or not they ever got divorced. I hope they were divorced before he married Jenny. I guess you know they were only married two years before she died.” He stopped and looked at me inquiringly.
“Yes,” I said, “that was so tragic—her forgetting her inhaler and having that asthma attack when they were backpacking. She was only
34. When did you meet her? I’m guessing Erik—or Horace—didn’t bring her here to meet you, since he didn’t want her to know anything about him or even his real name.”
Harry nodded. “You’re right. Horace never brought her here. I only met Jenny once. It wasn’t long before she died. She came up here alone to see me, without telling Horace. It was …” A crash of glasses from the bar behind us interrupted Harry in mid-sentence. As Harry jumped up, I heard a woman yelling obscenities from the other end of the restaurant.
I sat where I was, trying to revise my impression of Erik in a way that incorporated this new information—and hoping Harry would come back and finish the story.
Chapter 32
After twenty minutes went by, I started to worry about the time. My flight back to Denver was at 7:30, so I figured I needed to leave for the airport by 5:30 to allow for traffic delays, airport security and all. It was already 4:30, and there was more I needed to find out from Harry.
Just then he showed up carrying a tray with a bottle of chardonnay, two wine glasses, and a plate of crab-stuffed mushrooms. “I can’t let you leave without tasting anything,” he said with a grin. “And a little alcohol usually helps anyone who is talking about Horace.”
I couldn’t refuse, and I was so glad I didn’t. The fruity wine was the perfect complement to the spicy cheese-topped crab filling nestled in the hot mushrooms. I savored the flavors and relaxed into the moment.
Too Near the Edge Page 18
