Repo Madness

by W. Bruce Cameron

  We had both finished two cups of coffee when I brought out the out-of-focus photograph. “Anyway,” I said, smoothing out the piece of paper.

  “Yes, of course,” Audrey murmured. Her hazel eyes went milky for a moment as she remembered. “I’m actually the one who identified her in this shot.”

  “Really? It seems pretty blurred.”

  “Oh. I know. But that’s her. I recognize the outfit.”

  “It’s just an outfit,” Alan protested. “Jean shorts and a red shirt?”

  I cleared my throat. “Is there something unusual about the clothing, then?”

  “Oh no,” Audrey said, shaking her head. “No, that’s just the sort of thing she always wore.”

  “You think you would have recognized her without the clothing?”

  “Maybe by the hair—that’s how she wore it, long with a flip. Otherwise, no, it’s a pretty bad picture.”

  “Ah. So … how did you know about the surprise visit? Not much of a surprise if she told you about it.”

  Audrey got up and poured a little more coffee for herself. I shook my head when she gestured with the pot in my direction. “I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore,” she said with a sigh, sitting back down.

  “Sorry?”

  “She was coming to see me, but it wasn’t a surprise. She was coming to spend the afternoon in one of my cabins. With her … boyfriend.”

  “With her boyfriend.”

  “She was married to someone else at the time. So, you know.”

  “I see.”

  “Nina’s husband was killed in a car wreck last summer, and the boyfriend’s divorced now. I can’t imagine anyone would mind me talking about it.”

  “Find out the boyfriend’s name!” Alan practically squealed.

  “Does the boyfriend live here?” I asked instead.

  “Here, on Beaver Island? No. I forget what he did for a living, but he had some business here, or at least that’s what he told people.”

  “So was he on the boat that day, the Emerald Isle?”

  “Yes. He came straight here when it docked. He was pretty frantic, but of course he couldn’t call the cops. I had to phone them and say she was coming for a visit. I don’t know why I said it was a surprise. I guess because it was hush-hush. Their plan was to go back on the last boat. Her husband didn’t know anything about it. Didn’t suspect a thing.” Audrey sighed, remembering.

  “So he was the one who paged her. The boyfriend.”

  She brought herself back to the present, focusing on my face. “What do you mean?”

  “She was paged. The loudspeaker called her name. He must have been looking for her,” I elaborated.

  “That sounds right.”

  “And what is his name?”

  “David Leinberger. God, I haven’t thought about him in several years.”

  “Tall guy, sandy hair? Maybe forty years old?” I guessed.

  “Yes, you know him?”

  “We’ve met, yes.” I drummed my fingers on the blurry photograph. “Audrey … do you think there’s a chance David might have had a reason to hurt Nina? Was she demanding he get a divorce, anything like that?”

  “Oh!” Her eyes brightened in surprise. She considered it but then shook her head. “No, and there’s something you need to hear, Ruddy. Nina had a problem with alcohol. At the time of the accident, her drinking was pretty much out of control. David, too, for that matter—I sometimes thought that was the main reason they were together. So I never doubted for a minute that Nina could have gotten drunk and fallen off the ferry. Her car had dents all up and down.”

  Alan drew in an audible breath. I bit my lip in irritation—how could he do that when he had no lungs?

  “They don’t serve booze on the Emerald Isle, though,” I objected eventually.

  Audrey shrugged and gave me a sad smile. “I imagine she had a few before boarding. She even drank at breakfast.”

  I refused an offer of pie until I found out it was raspberry. We had more coffee, ate pie, and talked about nothing of consequence. Alan moaned with pleasure at the pie. When we were finished, I texted McCann and advised I was ready to go back to the airport. I told Audrey how sincerely I appreciated her help, and she invited me to come out anytime. For just a minute, there was something flirty in her gaze, but we shook hands formally when McCann’s Jeep showed up.

  Alan fell asleep, waiting for the pilot to come fly us back to the mainland, but it was a quick nap and he was back as I steered the repo truck out of the Charlevoix Airport parking lot. “Where are we headed?”

  “I have an appointment with Schaumburg, remember?”

  “Oh. Right,” he said dismissively, as if having the psychiatrist threatening to send me back to jail was no big deal.

  “Are you satisfied now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We know what happened to Nina. Her sister said she was an alcoholic. She got drunk, waiting for the ferry. She got on the Emerald Isle, and she and David Leinberger didn’t find each other. She tries to dive out of a photo being taken by some tourists because she doesn’t want anyone knowing she’s making a little trip out to Beaver Island for hanky-panky. Probably she’s trying to avoid being seen. Maybe she gets sick and leans over the railing to throw up, and that’s it—she goes in. Meanwhile, Leinberger can’t find her and eventually goes and has her paged.”

  “I can’t believe that’s how you interpret it,” Alan scoffed.

  “Well, what the hell do you think, Alan?”

  “I think there’s a man out there who preys on women who have had too much to drink. I think he grabbed Nina on the boat and pulled her into his panel van. Maybe he held her captive on Beaver Island somewhere. Did you think of that?”

  “No, and you didn’t either,” I retorted. “You just came up with it now.”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “You know what? I could ask the same of this whole day. What’s the difference? We’re right back to zero on Nina Otis and have even less to show for figuring out what might have happened to Lisa Marie.”

  “We need to talk to David Leinberger.”

  I groaned.

  “You said he was a friend of yours, right? Let’s go ask him about Nina. Audrey said he’s divorced, so what difference does it make?”

  I was silent.

  “Ruddy? He’s a friend?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s a client.”

  “A client? You don’t have clients. You … oh,” Alan said as he got it.

  “Right. I repossessed his car.”

  * * *

  Dr. Schaumburg feigned surprise when he opened the door to his waiting room, where Alan had fallen asleep and I had nearly joined him, relaxing in an overstuffed chair. “Why, Mr. McCann, you actually came to your scheduled appointment,” he marveled dryly.

  He invited me in and asked me a bunch of questions that were really none of his business, so I sort of hunched my shoulders and answered curtly. I was fine. Yes, recovered from my injuries. Yes, positive that Yancy’s dive down the stairs was not my fault. Glad to be here, sorry to have been so negligent. No, I had not heard from Alan Lottner. (This was true; I didn’t ever hear him, not technically, not with my ears.)

  “I have samples to get you started on your meds,” he told me. He handed over some blister packs of little pills, along with a typed-up instruction sheet. He wanted me to call him if I had any one of what seemed like a pretty gruesome list of potential side effects. I put the pills in my pocket, nodding, thinking I would flush them down the toilet on my way out of the building.

  “I want you back in ten days for a urine test,” he said, fixing his eyes on me like a general giving me a direct order.

  “Sure,” I grunted.

  “We both know what will happen if you fail the test.”

  “I won’t fail. My urine is great at tests.” Not so much as a smile flickered on his face. I stood. “We done?
”

  “No, we have some time. I want to hear more about Alan. Why do you suppose you’ve not heard from him?”

  I was going to say, Because of the medication I’ve been taking, but I bit it off. “I have no idea what Alan’s been up to,” I finally responded evasively.

  He mulled this over. I felt myself getting angry.

  “What does his voice sound like?” Schaumburg probed.

  “I don’t know. Like a voice. Are you telling me you never have a voice in your head? Never say to yourself, you need to start going to the gym? That you should have asked out that one girl in high school, that you can’t forget to mail your check to the tax people?”

  “That’s different than having a voice with a separate identity,” Schaumburg informed me pedantically. “Having your own voice in your own head is pretty common. Having a voice that thinks independently, that urges you to do things you might not otherwise do—that’s another matter entirely.”

  What really irritated me was how spot-on his observations were. If it weren’t for Alan’s pleadings, I would be focused on Lisa Marie Walker and wouldn’t have flown out to Beaver Island.

  “You seem angry,” he noted after a moment.

  “Well, yeah, I guess it pisses me off that you’re so smug about all this.”

  “Am I smug about this?” he answered, looking mildly surprised. “Tell me more about that.”

  “You act like I’m a danger to society, like I’m criminally insane.”

  “I never used any of those words,” Schaumburg objected softly. “I just want you to see that what you’ve come to regard as normal is not actually all that common. Your own voice, as I said, sure, telling you not to eat that bagel.” He patted his stomach. “But a voice belonging to someone else, that’s actually very unusual.”

  “Is it?” I grated. “Let me tell you, I hear another voice all the time, and it’s not Alan Lottner. Yeah, that’s right; raise your eyebrows. It’s my father’s voice. I’ve heard it my whole life, always telling me to work harder, to throw another hundred passes, to study more. And you know what he says now? He says that I brought shame to the family. That I took a fantastic opportunity and flushed it down the toilet. That he never missed a game, never missed a practice, was there for me every mile and minute of every day, and then I drove into the lake and ruined everything!” My voice had risen to a hoarse shout, and I could feel my pulse in my temple. “Is that crazy? Do I need a pill for that, Doctor? Because I know a lot of guys who feel the same way about their dads, and nobody tells them they better get on medication or they’ll be sent to jail.”

  After a minute I calmed down, wondering how much damage I had just done to myself.

  “No, you may be right,” Schaumburg shocked me by acknowledging. “You and your father were very close, weren’t you?”

  I nodded, rendered mute by my own emotions.

  “Children often strive to please their mothers and fathers. And often our biggest achievers, our top performers, felt that in the end they never measured up to their parents’ expectations. My own father was also a psychiatrist, at the University of Michigan. He never understood why I moved my practice up here, instead of making a fortune in the city. To him, just because my wife loves it here was not any sort of reason for such a sacrifice—he and my mother got divorced, because his career always came ahead of family. I don’t hear his voice, but I do feel his disapproval every day that I deposit my meager little paycheck.” A sad smile drifted onto his lips. I had heard quotes around “meager little paycheck” and knew those were his father’s words.

  “Is this so much different, then? I’ve got this voice—I had this voice,” I interrupted myself in correction. “Always questioning what I was doing, wanting me to be more than just a repo man if I was going to date his daughter. So? A whole chorus of fathers, telling me I’ve got to do better.”

  “Yes, I am afraid it is different, Ruddy,” Schaumburg replied. “You have a treatable disorder. But the medications will help you deal with it. We’ll talk about that at our next visit.”

  After a second I realized what he was saying: My time was up. When I got to the door, he softly called my name. I turned.

  “Don’t forget,” he said blandly. “Urine test. Ten days.”

  17

  Who Is Rachel Rodriguez?

  I had a message on my phone: Kermit.

  “Hey, Ruddy. It’s Kermit. Kramer. I conducted a few inquisitions into Claude and Wilma’s one-in-five drop, the Hawaii scenario. So the room itself, the phones, is being run by a guy my brother familiarizes with, and it’s our customer who is behind it all. William Blanchard, I mean. He provided the capitalization. Uh, Jake says hi.”

  Alan woke up on the way to Gaylord, a town of close to four thousand people due east of East Jordan. I told him what Kermit had to say, that Blanchard had bankrolled the whole Hawaii vacation thing.

  “I still don’t get how it makes money,” Alan confessed.

  “I don’t either. Next time I see Blanchard, I’ll ask him. Hey, Alan, I’ve got some good news.”

  “You’ve decided to go to the gym and lose fifty pounds,” he guessed.

  “What? I don’t need to lose fifty pounds.”

  “Even five would help. You’ve got to start exercising.”

  “It’s winter. Every animal gains weight in winter.”

  “No, animals starve in winter. Only humans gain weight in winter, but if they go to the gym, they gain less.”

  “Why are we even talking about this?”

  “Our pants are tight. They’re not only ugly, they’re uncomfortable.”

  “They are my pants and you know what? Forget it. I’m not telling you anything.”

  “No, tell me.”

  “I’m just some fat guy in bad pants. And Jimmy Growe is an idiot, and you laugh at the Wolfingers—you’re the most intolerant person I’ve ever met, Alan,” I stormed.

  He was silent. I stared moodily at the empty road ahead of me.

  “Okay,” he finally said quietly.

  “Okay what?”

  “You may have a point. I never intended it, but I see how some of my remarks might cause offense.”

  A few more miles rolled by. “What did you really want to tell me?” he asked hesitantly.

  “All right. It’s a secret, but I guess I don’t have to worry about you telling anyone, do I? Guess who’s having a baby.”

  “Oh my God, no,” Alan moaned.

  “What? Wait, you think it’s Katie? And all you can think of to say is ‘God no’?”

  “It’s not her?”

  “Of course not.”

  Alan sighed in relief.

  “It’s my sister, thanks very much,” I told him. “I’m going to be an uncle.”

  He congratulated me sincerely and told me I needed to buy a gift. “Like, now? I thought that’s for the baby shower,” I objected.

  “No, that’s what you do if it is someone close to you; you get a gift right away.”

  “Like, a baseball mitt, maybe? Hockey mask?”

  Alan laughed, knowing I was joking. Or hoping, anyway.

  David Leinberger was easy to find—he ran a tax preparation and accounting service out of a converted Victorian house, just two doors down from the bank that financed the Chevy Malibu I’d repossessed from him. I guess the people in the bank were too embarrassed to walk a few yards down the street and ask for their collateral, so I drove the forty miles from Kalkaska and hooked him up. David came out to ask what was going on when I had the front wheels lifted off the ground, and communicated a certain amount of displeasure with events. He was my height and spent a lot of time poking his finger in my face. Experience has taught me that fingers aren’t too dangerous unless they’re curled around a trigger, so I let him point and swear and threaten while I finished putting the safety chains on, and he was still yelling as I drove away.

  This would be our first reunion.

  “What are you going to say? What if he recognizes you?�
�� Alan fretted.

  “I don’t know; let’s just see what happens.”

  “We should have a plan.”

  “My plan is to see what happens. Stop talking now, Alan.”

  The other half of the house was a defunct hair salon, the windows cloudy with dust, but Leinberger’s side was tidy, the snow shoveled. The sign above the door to the small accounting business invited me to come right in, so that’s what I did. There was a tiny outer office with a desk and a phone, empty of people, but I could hear someone in the back, moving around, so I waited, wiping the wet off my feet and onto the welcome mat.

  “Hi!” David greeted me, coming out smiling. He looked in better shape than last time I’d seen him—he’d lost weight, it appeared. As Alan seemed eager to point out, I’d sort of gone in the opposite direction. His clothes were pressed, and he wore a sports coat—Alan’s kind of guy, basically. “What can I help you with today?”

  “Mr. Leinberger?”

  I held out my hand, but before he could reach for it, his gaze darkened. “I know who you are,” he said after a moment. “McCann.”

  “Yeah. Hi.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Just to talk. Do you have a minute?”

  “Talk about what?”

  “That’s what I want to talk about.”

  Okay, even I had to admit that didn’t make a lot of sense. His facial features were hardening. “You need an accounting service?”

  “No. Well, actually, I probably do, but I can’t afford one.”

  “Then I can’t help you.” He folded his arms.

  I sighed. “I was just out on Beaver Island, talking to Audrey Strang. You remember her?”

  He regarded me warily. “So?”

  “So, something has come up concerning her sister, Nina. I was hoping you could help me shed some light on a few things.”