by Clea Simon
“Ronnie?” I stepped to the head of the stairs. If he wasn’t alone, I’d bolt for the bedroom: it had a picture window that I could smash with the vanity chair if it didn’t open quickly.
“Pru! What are you doing here?” His round face stared up at me. Alone, as far as I could see.
“Me? What am I doing here?” Fear turned to anger. “You scared the hell out of me, Ronnie. Someone got killed here, you know.”
“I know.” He blinked up at me, his voice petulant. “When I saw the door was open, I thought…I don’t know, a ghost or something. Albert says I’m crazy, but Vince swears someone’s been following him. He says he’s laying low.”
“Vince drinks too much. You know that.” I was pissed, and having to agree with Albert wasn’t helping. I was also, I realized, missing something. “Ronnie, the door wasn’t open,” I said and began to walk down the stairs.
“It was.” He blinked up at me. “I was doing my rounds, and I saw it move.”
For a moment, I froze. It was possible someone had come in after me. Was now on the first floor as I descended. Possible, I decided, but unlikely.
“No you didn’t.” I grabbed his arm and marched him out. No harm in being careful. “What are you doing here, Ronnie?”
“That’s what I asked you.” He let me lead him down to the road, but there he stopped. “You’re not supposed to be in there.”
“I’m taking care of Cheryl Ginger’s dog.” It was true, if unrelated. Before he could question me further, I moved onto offense. “And since you’ve been keeping an eye on the place, you can tell me who else has been in.”
“I haven’t…” He stumbled over his own words, and that’s when it hit me.
“You come and go pretty freely, don’t you, Ronnie?”
He blushed. “I let the cops in. They needed to get in.”
“The cops?” I was missing something.
He nodded. “Not, you know, the local guys. But they were cops.”
That could mean anybody. The Feds, Benazi’s men. Somehow I doubted Ronnie’s ability to discern legitimate inquiries from any other kind. “You go in there, too.” I wasn’t sure what I was going for, but it seemed worth pursuing. “You know they’re looking for something, right? Something valuable.”
He was shaking his head. “I don’t know anything about that. I wouldn’t ever…” He stopped, and I stared at him.
“Ronnie, what did you take from Cheryl Ginger’s condo?”
Chapter Thirty-nine
“I’m not a thief.” A half hour later and Ronnie was getting sulky. “I don’t care how many times you ask me, Pru. I would never take anything, like you think.”
“As if you know what I’m thinking.” We were in his office again. I was in the desk chair; he was on the sofa this time. It was the closest I could come to grilling him.
“Ronnie, I know about the poker game at the VFW.” It was time to try a different tack. “Have you been losing? I know Vince can get pretty mean.”
“No way.” He shook his head. “And Vince didn’t even show.”
That was odd. Even that drunk, I’d have thought Vince would be able to make it the three blocks to the hall. “Who was playing then?”
“Some out-of-towners. But, Pru, it was all aboveboard. Your guy was even there.”
I nodded. That fit with what I’d heard.
“Look, Pru, I wasn’t stealing.” A whine crept into his voice. “I really did just think someone was in there.”
I didn’t try to hide my suspicion. For starters, I didn’t see Ronnie as the kind of man who would volunteer to interrupt a break-in. “Someone?” I asked.
“I thought, maybe, Cheryl…” he said, after a moment’s pause. “I thought maybe she’d come back.”
That had the ring of truth to it. While Ronnie was not the kind of man to investigate a possible break-in, he was exactly the kind to surprise a pretty tenant.
“You like her, huh?” I looked at the desk in front of me. The valentine I’d remembered was still there, leaning on the teddy bear.
He nodded, blushing, and I decided to try another tack.
“You know she’s in trouble, right?” He didn’t look up. “Not just with the cops, Ronnie, but with some very bad men. They think she has something.”
“I know he was pressuring her.” His voice was so soft, I had to lean forward to hear him. “He kept telling her she had to get it.”
“Get what, Ronnie?”
He shook his head. “Some kind of picture, I think.”
I sat back. A picture could be a lot of things. A photo used in blackmail, which would explain the widow’s involvement. Or…
“Did he say anything else about the picture, Ronnie?” I leaned forward, emphasizing each word. “Anything at all? If she’s in danger, and you can help her…” I let him imagine the possibilities.
“All I heard was that they want it back,” he said. “And if she helped them, he said he’d help her.”
It was crazy. I knew that. Still, I needed to find out. Ronnie’s desktop computer was barely serviceable, bogged down by a truly impressive amount of high-definition porn. But once I got out of the “hot teen action,” I was able to search for Teddy Rhinecrest, looking for the article I’d read only a few days before.
It took a while. Ronnie’s browser was slow and my memory woefully sketchy. My first search—Theodore Rhinecrest—produced a phone book, and when I added “picture” to the mix, I ended up following a wedding photographer of the same name. In between, I had to keep batting down pop-ups. Ronnie, I gathered, preferred large-busted women of Eastern European origin.
“Hey, Ronnie,” I said. I could sense him shifting uncomfortably on the couch. “You want me to respond to one of these girls for you? I bet I could get you married in a month.”
“Oh come on, Pru.” From the hurt in his voice, I wondered if he’d considered it. “They’re not, you know, real women.”
I snorted. “Could’ve fooled me.” Outside the bird noises had settled down for the night. I switched on a dented desk lamp, almost upsetting the white plush teddy bear that leaned against it. “You must have had a sweetheart at some point,” I said as I righted the little bear, tucking the red felt heart emblazoned with “One and Only,” back into its little arms. “What happened?”
“It—ah—she didn’t…” Ronnie squirmed so much the sofa squeaked. I looked up in alarm.
“You okay, Ronnie?” He had turned an unhealthy red. “I’m only teasing.”
“I know, it’s just…” He kicked at something on the carpet. A pizza crust, I thought, and was grateful that nothing scampered out.
“Look, why don’t you take off? Go find a card game or head down to Happy’s?” My motives weren’t purely altruistic. It was hard to work with his fidgeting. “I’ll lock up when I’m done.”
The name of the bar had the desired effect. His color was still high, but he was breathing more easily as he stood before me.
“Go.” I said, with a smile. He looked so uncertain that I was beginning to wonder what else was on this computer. “I’ll lock up. I promise.”
“Okay,” he said as he fished the big ring of keys off of his belt loop. “And Pru?” He shifted from foot to foot. “If you can…”
“Don’t worry,” I said, turning back to the keyboard. “I’m not interested in your personal life, Ronnie.”
It was easier with him gone. Even the porn wave seemed to subside, and as the dusk outside deepened I found what I was looking for. The key had been adding the word “indicted,” and there it was: Teodros —not Theodore—Rhinecrest, aka “Teddy,” cleared of charges. I clicked through and figured out why it had sounded familiar. The art heist had been big news, even out here. Three Old Masters had been stolen from a famous museum overnight while the museum was closed. Originally, suspicion had fallen on the guards,
but the ongoing investigation had revealed that the security for the old institution had been so out-of-date as to be practically worthless.
“It was no wonder that the museum had been burgled,” the chief of detectives had been quoted as saying. “What was a surprise was that nobody had done it sooner.”
Once the guards were cleared, the investigation had turned instead to recovery. Two of the paintings were quickly retrieved, jettisoned apparently during the escape. But after that, the search had ground to a halt. “We’re stymied,” that same chief of D’s said only three months later, in an article that some clever wag had titled “Billion-Dollar Bunny Goes to Ground.”
“Berkshire Forest,” said the chief, giving the missing masterpiece its official title, “has disappeared.”
It wasn’t that the investigators didn’t have leads. The basic assumption was that organized crime had been involved—the poor driver they’d caught had confirmed as much with his refusal to speak about who had hired him or where he was supposed to go—but beyond that, nothing.
“Guys like these, they’re not looking for something pretty to hang on the walls,” the lead investigator had said. “This is about money. That bunny will surface for sale at some point.”
That had been three months ago
I stared at the screen for so long it went dark, and as I tapped the keyboard to wake it, I heard a door opening. “Hey, Ronnie,” I called out. I wasn’t in the mood to be interrupted. Not while I thought about the possibility of one Hudson River masterpiece and two dead men. “You didn’t have to come back. I said I’d lock up.”
“You should have thought of that before,” said a man. Not Ronnie. I whirled around in my seat.
“You!” Even in the darkened room, I recognized the dark-haired man from the forest. He stepped toward me and I pushed the chair back, away from the desk lamp. I didn’t want him to see as I reached into my pocket.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” He came closer. My hand closed around leather—and I remembered the collar. I’d slipped my knife into my boot when I’d pocketed the discarded froufrou. Now, instead of the familiar handle of my blade, I felt only the soft band and the empty, ridged settings sharp against my fingers. “I was in Rhinecrest’s condo with you earlier.” The man kept talking. “And I left you alone.”
The door. The one Ronnie had said was open. “What do you want, then?” I slid my chair back, calculating how quickly I could get my blade out of my boot.
“Same thing you do.” He reached for me—and I braced for an attack. But he only rolled my chair back and, leaning in, reached for the computer keyboard. He began pulling up the history of my recent searches. “I want to see what the fat man here has been looking at.”
“Leave him out of this.” I never thought I’d defend Ronnie, but he was a simple creature. A woodland animal of the burrowing kind, and here I had ousted him. Exposed him to this alpha predator. “He’s done nothing.”
A bark like a wolf. The man was laughing. It was a joyless sound. “Maybe, but he keeps showing up where he shouldn’t, and that’s not safe.”
I gripped the collar tighter, feeling those empty settings sharp against my palm. The jewels. I was at least partly responsible for Ronnie’s safety. “Here.” I dug around, fishing the colored stones from my pocket. “I don’t know what these mean and neither does Ronnie. Just take them, and don’t hurt him.”
“Hurt him.” He was smiling. “I’m trying to save his fat ass. But thank you.” He reached to take the collar, leaving the gaudy stones in my hand. “This will make everyone a lot safer.”
“Why?” I looked at him and down at the stones in my hand, the desk lamp making the colors glow. “What does this mean?”
“You don’t want to know,” he said. A few more clicks and he was back to the original story. “Your boyfriend says you’re smart, Pru Marlowe. Prove it.”
He had both hands on the keyboard by then, and I realized I was in a perfect position. He wasn’t looking at me. I could grab my knife easily. I could attack, or I could run. He wouldn’t be able to stop me, not without getting hurt. But the words he’d just uttered were bouncing around my head. My boyfriend? What was Creighton involved in?
I looked again at the “gems” in my hand. At the red one that had concealed a space just big enough for a message or a signal. And it hit me.
This man wasn’t a gangster. He was a Fed. Cheryl Ginger was working with the Feds.
Chapter Forty
“You can’t think that Ronnie has anything to do with any of this.” I’d watched the dark-haired man erase my search history and move onto Ronnie’s e-mail. “He’s clueless.”
“We know.” He had stepped back from the computer and was wiping down the keyboard by then. “We’ve been watching.”
“Then why?” I didn’t even have the words for what had just happened. The surveillance, the search of the condo.
“He’s too nosy for his own good, and we’re trying to keep civilians out of this.” He stopped to stare at me. “We’re not the only ones watching.”
With that he had left, and I found my heart rate returning to normal. The dark-haired man might be a Fed—I’d asked, he’d only glared in response—but he wasn’t a good guy. I didn’t think he cared about civilians, for starters, innocent or not. After all, he’d left me there, alone, in the dark. No, whatever kind of lawman he was, he was very different from Creighton. This man’s main concern was keeping anyone from interfering with whatever trap he had set. Hunting, we both knew, is incrementally more difficult if your prey has been alerted.
Was that what had happened to Marty Parvis? I found myself thinking of the dead PI as I pushed myself out of that chair. I’d only been sitting there for an hour—the entire interlude with the dark-haired man had taken maybe fifteen minutes—but I was shaking as I rose to my feet. Had the chubby blond man drawn the attention of Teddy Rhinecrest’s associates? Or had he interfered too much in the Feds’ investigation? I didn’t know what the dark-haired man was capable of, only that I didn’t like him.
I also didn’t know what hold he had over Cheryl Ginger. And warning or no, she’d gotten me involved in this—she was going to give me some answers.
I wanted to approach her. To drive straight to the Chateau and confront her and the spaniel, too. But something else the dark-haired man had said stayed with me: “We’re not the only ones.” I thought of Benazi, appearing out of nowhere, and I knew he was right. Besides, on the off chance that I was wrong about the stranger, about him being a Fed, I needed to be extra careful. At times, I might be paranoid. Then again, I’m still alive.
For the same reason, I didn’t want to go home. No, I wanted a place where there’d be people around me. People who wouldn’t bother me too much while I thought things through. It wasn’t much of a decision. I headed to Happy’s.
It was early, even for me. But daylight was long gone by the time I reached the center of town, and it took an effort of will to drive around to my usual spot in back. Happy’s is sort of centrally located, holding down a decrepit row of shops that once marked the edge of downtown—and traffic is never that bad here. But my life savings have gone into my GTO, at least once over, and I wasn’t going to leave her out front. Besides, I needed to reclaim my dignity.
I knew what Wallis would say about that, and could imagine the way she’d sway as she’d saunter out of the room, using her tail for emphasis. Wallis considers herself the alpha predator of our household and finds any pretensions I may have risible. But for all her attitude, she’d been a house cat now for years. I wasn’t, and if I was going to function in this town, I needed to feel like myself again. In her terms, I needed to mark my territory.
I wasn’t going to spray. The crepuscular creatures who scurried as I stepped from my car might have picked up my intent, but what I was battling was in my head. Careful to move my knife back up to my pocket, within eas
y reach, I walked around the small lot—from the dumpster to the back curb and back again. Two rats watched as I paced off the space, curious but not alarmed. The raccoon who’d been hoping to get into the dumpster was a little more concerned. He’d seen firsthand what odd behavior could mean when one of his own littermates had gotten sick. Their mother had driven the rabid cub from the den before he could infect any others, but the image had stayed with the young male, even now that he was out on his own.
My pulse was still elevated when I finally opened the bar’s back door, but I felt better than I’d thought I would. Maybe it was that I’d already faced down one threatening stranger today. Maybe it was knowing I was going to get a drink.
“Pru.” Happy came over with a lowball glass and a bottle, filling it without me having to say a word. I drank it off before he could return to his post and he refilled it just as silently, without so much as a raised eyebrow. Happy is a pro. He knows why people come to his bar. He also knows that I’m one of the few regulars who can pay the tab at the end of the night, even without a mysterious benefactor.
That first drink took the edge off, and I lingered with the second, enjoying the warmth that spread its own golden glow. My usual stool is on the short end of the bar, by that back entrance. I can see everyone who comes in the front, this way, and I’m out of the spotlight, such as it is, where any randy male—the ones who don’t know better—might mistake me for available. Tonight, I felt a bit vulnerable there. The door at my back looming even as the bourbon made itself felt.
“Happy?” I didn’t have to say more. He topped me off with a nod, and I took my drink to the back of the room.
“Hey, Pru.” I had no desire to sit with Albert. He and Ronnie were sharing one of the back booths, a greasy bag of fries spilling out between them.
“Al.” I nodded and turned toward one of the two other booths, eager to drink alone, with the wall at my back. Then I stopped. Ronnie had probably told me all he knew, but I had something to share with him now. A warning, at the very least. “May I?”
