“And all of your family thinks he was buried right away.” I nodded.
“Sure, but that’s not it. I mean, it’s not like they are going to find out my prevarication. No, I got a call. The guy from the prosecutorial office says that considering Milt’s cancer, and no signs it was foul play, they’re willing to just call it an accident instead of deliberation.”
“So if you agree to no autopsy, they’ll put accidental death on the certificate, instead of suicide,” I translated.
“They’re trying to save the family’s feelings,” Alan observed.
“They’re trying to save money by talking you into cutting corners,” I told Kermit. I thought of Sheriff Porterfield, warning me he was going to put me out of business. What was happening to this place, anyway? “You know what? I say screw them. Maybe Milt had a heart attack. You want an autopsy to find out what happened, they should do one.”
“Well, there’s more complexity to it than that.”
I nodded for him to go on.
“See, if the coroner rules it was suicide, then one of Uncle Milt’s policies won’t pay anything, and the other two won’t pay the double indemnity for an accident. It’s a lot of money.”
“Then why do it?” Alan wanted to know.
“But how could they know that for sure? Your uncle probably just wanted to listen to the radio and think and have a couple of nips, and he fell asleep. Carbon monoxide hits pretty quickly, I think. No one can prove it wasn’t an accident just by doing an autopsy.”
Kermit’s vision cleared. “Yeah, you’re right.”
“So what good will this do?” Alan demanded. “He should leave it alone.”
“Did the prosecutor mention anything about the insurance?” I asked shrewdly.
“Yeah, he was the one who said I should see what the policies promulgated about suicide,” Kermit admitted. “And there’s something else. They found a bottle of vodka with him, but Uncle Milt hated vodka. So what was it doing there? Could an autopsy find out what he’d been drinking?”
“I highly doubt it,” Alan observed.
“Maybe,” I replied, just to disagree with the voice in my head. “You should tell the prosecutor that the coroner should look into it.”
“Yeah. Thanks. Becky said you’d know what to do,” Kermit told me.
“Becky said that?” I asked, pleased.
“Yeah.”
“Well, let me know that they find out. Hey, where’s my dog? I want him to see the new truck.”
“He’s at your house. I drove him over,” Kermit replied.
“It’s, like, three blocks. You couldn’t walk him?”
Kermit jammed his hands into his pockets, looking apologetic. “He didn’t want to.”
That sounded like Jake. “Okay, mind if I take him for a little spin in the new toy?”
Kermit slapped the side of the truck. “Have fun.”
“You’re really taking the dog for a ride? You think Jake will honestly care?” Alan challenged as I drove down the narrow alley.
“He’s going to be amazed out of his mind. Besides, I know he would like to see Katie.”
“You’re going to drive over to see Katie? Without calling first?”
“Sure.”
* * *
Jake actually did seem excited by the new truck, sitting up and sniffing at the dashboard and the CD player. I cranked up the seat warmers to keep my ass thawed so I could roll down his window and let him ride nose to the wind, his eyes full of the joy of being a dog. I punched on the radio and listened to a political commentary channel, a nonstop flood of one man talking, like having Alan Lottner on a speaker. Eventually I shut it off.
I used my repo skills to track down my fiancée. She’d said her new place was close to work, so I started at her office and cruised up and down until I found a small house with her car in the driveway.
There was another car parked right behind it.
I pulled over and sat in the street, contemplating. Who would be visiting Katie after eight o’clock at night?
“This isn’t necessarily what it looks like,” Alan told me in a soothing voice. Which meant he was drawing the same conclusion.
“You’re right,” I said, my voice strained. I cleared my throat. “Probably a girlfriend.”
“Right. We should just go.”
The front door opened, and a man emerged, silhouetted by the interior lights.
He was a big fleshy man: Dwight Timms, Katie’s former boyfriend before she upgraded to me. He was not in uniform, but he wasn’t dressed for a date, either. He wore jeans and a heavy, bulky coat, looking like a balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I wondered if he had his gun with him, and if he did, if he could get to it through all that insulation before I punched his nose to the back of his head.
I was breathing shallowly as I watched him walk down the carefully shoveled walkway to his car. My hands were clenching the steering wheel. I noted Katie didn’t kiss him good-bye. They didn’t hug. Yet my heart was hammering inside my chest.
Timms caught sight of my truck and froze. I could not see his face—it was enshrouded by the harsh shadow from the streetlight—and I doubted he could see mine, either. But he could certainly read KRAMER RECOVERY on the side of the truck. We stared at each other, like two faceless phantoms in the complete silence of the snowy night.
“Don’t do it,” Alan urged me. “It’s what he wants, Ruddy. He’s hoping you’ll come after him. Then you’ll be in jail and you won’t see Katie for years and you’ll say good-bye to everything. Please. Just sit. Okay? If Katie looks out and sees you fighting, you’ll lose her forever.”
The last time I checked, I thought Alan was more or less in favor of me losing Katie forever, but I didn’t mention this. I unflexed my hands on the steering wheel, letting my air out in a long slow sigh.
“Okay,” I murmured, though my pulse was still racing.
After standing there for what seemed five minutes, whatever passed for a brain inside Timms’s head began to spark up and advise him he was out in four-degree air. He gave a derisive toss of his head and got into his car and backed out, flipping on his brights as he drove past me. I stared stonily ahead, my pupils whittled down to slits, and waited long enough for my vision to clear before I opened my truck door.
“Come on, Jake.”
The peephole darkened as Katie eclipsed it from the other side, and then she opened the door and, thank God, she had a welcoming smile on her face, though most of her joy seemed reserved for the dog. “Jake!” she greeted.
She held the door for us. I stamped my feet and looked around the tiny little living room. A wood stove was cooking in the corner. Jake quickly decided the couch would be the softest place and jumped up to lie down before we got any crazy ideas about going back outside.
“It’s even smaller than it looks from outside,” Alan murmured, ever the real estate agent.
I was heartened to see that Katie wasn’t dressed for a date. She had on sweat pants and an old shapeless sweater, and no makeup. “I didn’t … How did you find my place?” she asked.
“It came furnished?” I responded. The couch was ratty, there was a card table by the small kitchen, and a single wooden chair offered the only place to sit that wouldn’t mean sharing space with a dog. I resisted the temptation to poke my head down the hall to see what the bedroom looked like.
“Yes, well, and I got some stuff from the Rainbow Shoppe. Ruddy, what’s going on? You seem…” She shrugged.
“I saw Deputy Dumbbell.”
“Sorry?”
“Dwight Timms. The worm farmer turned sheriff’s deputy.”
Katie’s eyes turned cool. “So?” she challenged softly.
“I don’t know, Katie, you tell me. Is that what on a break means?”
“Oh God.” She looked thoroughly disgusted.
“You need to back off,” Alan commanded sternly.
“I don’t know what you think, but Dwight is my … This is his place
. He’s my landlord. I’m renting from him. He came over because the oven wasn’t working; it wouldn’t light.”
“So what are the terms of this rental?” I asked.
“What are you implying?” Alan hissed furiously.
The anger flared in her eyes and then turned to something like sadness. She shook her head mournfully.
“That question is completely inappropriate,” she told me. “Dwight lists the rental with our company, and we manage it. My boss is waiving the fee so I can afford it. Why are you doing this? I don’t want to fight. I was actually glad to see you when I opened the door. I was thinking of driving to the Bear, but it got too late, so I texted you.”
“I just wasn’t prepared to see your old boyfriend walk out of your house.”
Sometimes in a conversation there’s a point where it can go either way, and that’s where I sensed we were. Worse, I knew we were at the precipice because I had forced us there. Instead of listening to Alan, I was heeding the needs of something base and unpleasant inside me.
“Well, I sure was,” she finally said.
I stared at her in noncomprehension. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I was ready to see him walk out of my house. There is nothing going on between me and Dwight, Ruddy. God, give me some credit. That was a long time ago. He wanted to talk and asked if I had any wine, and I told him I needed him to leave. A little Dwight goes a long way, if you want to know the truth.”
“Thank God for that,” Alan breathed.
I thought about Deputy Dumbbell’s girth wrapped up in that big parka. “Is there even such thing as ‘a little Dwight’?” I asked her. What I should do, I realized, was cross the room, take her in my arms, kiss her, and accompany her into the bedroom.
“Don’t try it,” Alan advised me. “Give her time, Ruddy. She just wants to laugh with you; that’s all she’s ready for right now.”
I didn’t know how he knew what I was thinking, but I could see his point. I glanced over at Jake, who was sprawled on the couch. “I think my dog plans to sleep right there tonight.”
Jake rolled his eyes at me, insulted I would drag him into the conversation.
“Jake, you silly dog, you can’t sleep here tonight. I have to work tomorrow,” Katie said.
Okay, I might be a big dumb repo man, but even I got that her statement was for me, not my dog.
“Okay, Jake. Let’s go home.”
Jake squeezed his eyes shut, feigning deafness.
Inspired, I told Katie that Kermit was my new boss and that I’d just negotiated a new pay package with him, and asked her if I could take her out to dinner, someplace nice, to celebrate my good fortune. She brightened and said sure, and we set a date for the next night, ignoring Alan’s indignation. “You didn’t negotiate; you just accepted his offer,” he advised me.
Unlike what happened with Timms, she did kiss me good night, a light peck on the lips, though she reserved most of her love for Jake. In a way I was grateful—before I did anything more passionate, I needed to have Alan take a nap.
My fiancée and I were living separately, but we had a date, she’d kissed me, and she loved my dog. I had no idea what was going on, but it seemed like I had a shot.
* * *
I woke up with Schaumburg on my mind, but I really didn’t feel like talking to him, so I went to the library instead, jumping on the computer and looking for stories about Lisa Marie Walker. Alan woke up around the time I had finished with my notes, which I put on old-fashioned paper.
“What are we doing?”
I looked around carefully. The only other people were all the way across the room behind their desk. As long as I spoke quietly, I could converse.
“I’m going to let the we pass, though I’ve been doing all the work while you snoozed. I’m reading about the accident. I never did that, really, and since I pleaded guilty, there wasn’t much to learn at the trial.”
“So?”
“The search for Lisa Marie started that night. The stoners who pulled me out of the water said I was screaming some girl’s name. The police moved pretty quickly, and they had divers out before dawn. Meanwhile, her parents had called to report her missing, and it was easy to connect her to the party I’d gone to. They woke up my friends, and they said the last they’d seen, Lisa Marie and I were getting into a car together. By the time I came to in the hospital the next afternoon, they figured she was in the car with me but that she had gotten out and must have drowned.”
“So that’s the message. She drowned, just not in the car. That lines up with what that girl Amy Jo said.”
“I don’t think that’s it at all. The clear implication was that I was not at fault. She said, ‘I know you think you killed her.’ See? So something else happened to Lisa Marie.”
“Like what?”
“Well, I don’t know, Alan,” I replied irritably. “But I got the medical examiner’s name. He’s no longer the M.E., but he is still listed as a practicing physician. I’m going to go talk to him.”
“What good would that do?”
“You know, if you read a few murder mysteries instead of Good Housekeeping, you’d realize that in today’s world, forensics solves everything. Maybe the M.E. remembers something that nobody cared about because I had already pleaded to the crime.”
“Well, obviously I’m reading the same book as you. I don’t have much of a choice, do I? I’d prefer biographies, but you’ve decided we need to reread the Lee Child one.”
“Pretty good, don’t you think? I see myself as a lot like the Jack Reacher character.”
“Except that he folds his clothes and keeps his kitchen clean.”
“I don’t know where you get that.”
“He’s ex-military. Organized, neat, disciplined. Simply could not be less like you.”
“You know what, Alan? I would appreciate it if not every conversation we have ends up with you complaining about some aspect of Ruddy McCann. Think you could manage that? You’re a guest in my house and my body. Show some respect.”
I must have raised my voice, because when I looked over at the counter, all three women were standing behind it, staring at me soberly. I waved in an everybody-talks-to-themselves fashion and left the library.
I really didn’t want to speak to Schaumburg, but I was just reaching for my phone to call him when it rang. Caller ID told me it was Barry Strickland. We chatted about the weather for a few moments before he got down to it.
“I ran that plate,” he told me. “Belongs to an Amy Jo Stefonick, twenty-three years old. You got a pencil?”
11
Ask Her How She Knows
I headed straight to Ms. Stefonick’s address in Petoskey, a lakefront city of about six thousand souls, most of whom would be inside on a day like this—frigid but partly sunny, the golden beams of sunshine slanting down through breaks in the heavy dark clouds every once in a while like stairways to heaven. I was pretty pleased with this analogy when I mentioned it to Alan, but he just said, “Oh please.”
“So sorry that I am trying to find something pleasant to talk about,” I replied.
“It’s not even original. And I can’t stand that you’re using your cupholders to store trash.”
“It’s not trash; those are my receipts. The cupholder is my filing system.”
“Stuffing wadded-up scraps of paper into a hole in your dashboard is not a system,” he sniffed.
“You going to tell me why you’re even more irritating than usual today?”
“You’re supposed to be giving Katie time to think things through, and then you’re taking her out to dinner tonight. How is that giving her time?”
“Okay. Let’s say you’re real, that I’m not just imagining you to keep myself company.”
“You can’t seriously be back to that.”
“If you are real,” I continued stubbornly, “then you are her father, so you’re hardly the person I would go to for advice on dating her. And not her father now; in your mind sh
e’s still a little girl. I mean, you missed the teenage years, when she discovered boys and went to prom. You missed when she moved to Detroit for nearly a year. She’s a full-grown woman now, Alan. You want her to wind up with Deputy Dumbbell?”
He was quiet. I fidgeted. I had a great follow-up speech on the topic of what it meant if he were just a delusion, but his silence was robbing me of any pleasure in the argument. “Alan?”
His voice was raw with pain. “How do you think it feels to know that, Ruddy? To know that I couldn’t be there for her, to protect her from her worst mistakes, to give her advice. How can you be so callous to me?”
Ugh. I was pondering how to apologize when my phone rang. It was, unfortunately, Dr. Robert Schaumburg.
“Ruddy, this is Dr. Schaumburg,” he said curtly. “Your druggist keeps asking for some authorization form but hasn’t bothered to fax it to me to fill out and sign.”
Yes! Good old Tom.
“I want you to know I am sending a letter to the court today,” he continued, “informing them you are in violation of the terms of your probation and, in my opinion, are a danger to yourself and others and should be picked up immediately.”
Oops.
“I told you this would happen, Ruddy, that if you ignored me, it would be at your peril.”
“I was in the hospital.”
He paused. “Say again?”
“You can call over there and verify, or call the sheriff’s office. I was in an accident during the ice storm and had to go to the hospital for a while.”
I could hear him turning it over in his mind. “Why didn’t you have the attending physician call me?”
“Doc, I got hit in the head. I was all bruised up. I was on pain medication. Which,” I continued with more enthusiasm as something occurred to me, “I figured you would not want me taking in combination with the meds Sheryl prescribed, so I haven’t been taking them since the crash. In fact, the medications don’t seem to be in my house, and I promise you that if they were in the glove box when I rolled the truck, I’ll need a new prescription.”
I had rarely felt so clever—I hadn’t even really lied.
Repo Madness Page 10
