by Clea Simon
“Those meetings, Jim.” I leaned against the door, my earlier suspicions rushing back. I didn’t want to talk about them here. “Are you working with the Feds, still?”
“Pru.” His voice said it all.
I pushed anyway. “Jim, there are things you don’t know.”
“And there are things I can’t talk about, Pru.” His voice had an edge to it. “Look, I respect your need for privacy often enough. Can you not do me the courtesy of respecting mine?”
That shut me up. How could I tell him that this wasn’t about personal boundaries? This was about life and death.
“So anyway…” He cleared his throat, as if that had been the cause of the silence hovering between us. “I did get your message, and I wanted to touch base. And because you sounded so concerned, I thought I’d swing by and see how our roly-poly friend is doing.”
“Roly-poly?” A thought was poking around the back of my mind. Something to do with what I’d discovered about Henry. With what Wallis had said—and Frank and Growler…
“Yeah, don’t you think he’s kind of like a woodland creature?” Creighton sounded like his jovial self again. “A big bear, one of those that come out of hibernation and gets picked up lumbering around downtown and sent back into the forest?”
It couldn’t be. It was too simple. Too simple and—too dangerous.
“Jim, you can’t…” I paused. I didn’t know how to explain. How to ask. “You don’t have to go check on Ronnie right now. In fact, I’m going to head over there myself.” I grabbed my jacket off its hook and ducked back in to wave goodbye to my hostess.
“It’s no problem,” said my beau, oblivious to the tension in my voice. “I just need to swing by the office and pick something up, and then I’ll be on my way.”
He was making a stop. I had time. I had to have time.
“There’s no hurry, Jim.” Marnie Lundquist pushed the covered plate toward me. It was still warm. “I’m on it.”
“Great,” said my heedless sweetheart. “I guess I’ll meet you there.”
The humor of the situation did not evade me as I made my way to the highway. Here I was, in a controlled panic, while my car smelled like a bakery at Easter. Driving as quickly as I safely could in the heavily populated side of Beauville, on my way to avert catastrophe—or, at least, to keep the men I cared about from a potentially disastrous collision. No, the absurdity of the situation was quite apparent. That, and my blindness through it all.
“Pick up, pick up, pick up.” Ronnie wasn’t answering, which could mean nothing. If he was that drunk, he’d probably lost his phone or let the battery run out. Maybe he was being a good boy, not using his phone as he made his penitent drive back home. Maybe…
I dialed again.
“Uh, hi.” Ronnie’s voice. I grabbed the phone. “Is this thing on?”
“Ronnie! It’s Pru—” The sound of fingers over a phone. A rustling.
“Leave a message.” The beep cut off as he started to laugh. Voice mail.
“Ronnie, if you’re at home,” I emphasized the last word. I didn’t know who would get this message or who was listening as I spoke. “You need to leave there. Now. Come meet me at Happy’s.” I paused, unsure how much I wanted to make myself a mark. “It’s Pru,” I said finally. My voice was probably distinctive enough to identify me, even if my phone number wasn’t marked. Besides, all the concerned parties knew how deep I was in this. Even I knew that.
I’d hit the highway by then, and I floored it. I passed a family in an SUV like it was standing still, and did my best to ignore the look of horror on the driver’s face as I passed.
“Sorry, Dad,” I said to the air. Let him use me as an object lesson for his kids.
The shadows reaching across the road made the next bit trickier. I didn’t think we had any more ice, but even damp spots could be deadly if I hit them wrong. I had both hands on the wheel, and I made myself lower my shoulders as I took at turn at ninety. Relax into the road. Just…drive.
I didn’t jump, not much, when my phone rang. But I did overcorrect slightly as I answered.
“Ronnie?”
“No.” A female voice, slightly confused. “It’s Cheryl. Cheryl Ginger.”
“Cheryl.” I sighed. “I thought you were gone.”
“I meant to be.” Her voice was low with regret—or could it be shame? “I was going to…well, you know. But then I thought of my brother and…well, everything.”
“And you realized you didn’t want to be on the run forever?” I was willing to bet that fear of Benazi had more to do with her change of plans than her concern for her brother. But what did I know? I was an only child.
“I realized I had to finish this,” she corrected me. “And also, well, I had a thought about the…you know.”
“Yeah, I think I do.” I wasn’t going to say it, either. “Want to share?”
“I just want to end this, once and for all.” There was a new steel in her voice, and for the first time I thought maybe she honestly had been an Olympic contender. “And you’ve been part of this, so…”
“Where are you now?” I had an idea. I wanted to be sure.
“I’m on my way back to The Pines. To Teddy’s condo,” she said.
“Good.” I had plans for the pretty redhead. “I’ll meet you there.”
I turned off my phone after that. There was only one player left who hadn’t checked in with me. One player who had a role in this whole scheme, and I didn’t want to talk to Gregor Benazi just then. I half hoped I wouldn’t ever have to again, and that I wouldn’t find him somehow involved in what was about to happen. Still, as my car ate up the road, I kept one eye on my rearview mirror, looking for a red Maserati with a silver fox behind the wheel.
Chapter Forty-eight
I cut my engine on the path up to the condo. A four-hundred-fifty-cubic-inch has a healthy growl, and I saw no reason to announce my arrival to anyone who wasn’t already expecting me. As it was, I had enough momentum to cruise past Teddy Rhinecrest’s former love nest and around to a secluded spot in back. Once I’d parked, I sat there, listening to the engine tick, as I played over my options in my mind.
I needed to talk to Ronnie, both for his protection and to end this cycle of violence. What I didn’t need was for anyone else to be present—not at first. Cheryl was going to be useful, but she had her own agenda. Maybe she’d gotten hooked into this out of concern for her brother. Maybe that was what was still driving her, I didn’t know. I did know that she wanted out, and I suspected that she’d take any deal to make that happen. I had to make my moves before she did.
Creighton’s motives were likely to be a lot more pure. And that was going to be a different kind of problem. I was going to have to strike a bargain with Benazi, I suspected, in order to make this all go away. If my boy scout of a boyfriend was hanging around, that could get complicated. For the moment, I seemed to be the only person here. If I was lucky…
I was. In my rearview, I saw Ronnie’s truck and, a moment later, the big man himself, a brown paper bag in his arms.
“Ronnie.” I got out as he was still fiddling with his keys. “You and I have to have a conversation.”
“Not now, Pru.” He looked up at me with bloodshot eyes. “I’ve got the world’s worst headache.”
“Hangovers will do that to you.” I followed him into his office. As he placed the bag on the desk, I looked around. The magazines were still there. The food wrappers. That was it. “So will a guilty conscience,” I said.
“A guilty what?” Still standing, he extracted a bottle of aspirin and six-pack from the bag, pulling a can free as he spoke. Before I could answer, he threw the aspirin back, closing his eyes as he washed it down with half the can.
“Conscience, Ronnie.” I sat behind the desk and pulled open the top drawer to find some paperclips and about thirty cents. “Th
at little voice inside you that says you’ve done wrong.” The next drawer held a bottle of lotion and more magazines. I closed it quickly.
“Pru…” He looked around, as if he didn’t know the place, finally settling on the couch/bed. “I’m really tired.”
“I bet.” I wheeled the chair up to the side of the desk. The place was a mess, and I was getting a little worried. “But before you take your nap, I need you to tell me where it is.”
“Where what is?” He looked around as if seeing the place for the first time. “Honest, Pru…”
“The bear.” I was losing patience. “I know you were spying on Cheryl, but you must have seen more than you bargained for. You figured out what Teddy Rhinecrest was hiding—and you took it.”
“Pru.” He shook his head. “I don’t know…”
“Do you mean this?”
I turned. Cheryl Ginger stood in the doorway. She was holding a small plush teddy bear. The red heart in its arms was still bright, but the toy’s white fur was now brown and dotted with what looked like coffee grounds.
“Where did you find it?” I asked, even as Ronnie stuttered. “I didn’t—honest—”
“You did, you creep.” Cheryl stepped in, and for a moment I thought she was going to take a swing at Ronnie. “I knew this place was bad news. I didn’t think you’d break into our condo.”
“It wasn’t…” He was sputtering. “I had to fix the wall, you know. By the door?”
“That doesn’t make it right, Ronnie.” I reached over and took the bear from Cheryl. “This was yours?”
She nodded. “It was one of Teddy’s stupid gifts. I think he picked it up at a gas station or something. I recognized it on the top of the trash. ”
I turned it over in my hands. Brushed the grounds off the fur, off the red satin heart. “When did he give it to you?”
“About a week before…” She stopped. Swallowed. “We had a fight, the morning he was killed. He couldn’t believe I’d lost it.”
“I bet.” I was looking for something. I didn’t know what.
“Hey!” She turned to Ronnie, her voice rising. “You didn’t take this when you came to fix the wainscoting. Teddy only gave me that bear that night!”
“It was the next day.” He cowered. “I forgot my tools, and I had to go back. I had to. But after what you said…” He looked from Cheryl to me and back again.
She was staring daggers, but that only confirmed it. I turned the bear over again. Plucked the heart from his arms, and pulled out my knife.
“What are you doing?” Cheryl whipped around, hands on her own chest.
“Teddy wasn’t angry at you for losing a present,” I said, as I examined the back of the red satin heart. The stitching there was loose. Amateurish, and my blade made quick work of it.
“He was angry at you for losing this.” I held up the key. It had a number on it, like you’d find on a locker. “And after he’d been so smart about hiding it—hiding it again, I should say. Your repairs, Ronnie. They made him jumpy, only he was looking out for the wrong people.”
“So that’s what all the fuss has been about.” As Creighton stepped in, we all turned. “My colleagues have been pretty close-mouthed about the details.”
He held out his hand, palm up. “Pru?” He was watching me. Waiting.
I had no choice. I gave him the key.
“Looks like it came from the Hills,” he said, turning it over. “Maybe one of those lockers big enough for skis. Tell me, Ms. Ginger. Was it your idea that you two take a ski vacation here?”
She shook her head. “No, Teddy’s. He knew I skied, and he said he didn’t want to fly.”
“Don’t blame him,” said Creighton, with a smile. “Not with close to a billion dollars’ worth of stolen art hidden in his car.”
“A billion?” A voice chimed up behind us. We’d all but forgotten Ronnie.
“You didn’t know, did you?” I actually found myself smiling at him.
“I just…” He looked down at the floor, but even that didn’t hide his blush. “I thought it was sweet.”
I looked over at the redhead, expecting more fireworks. After all, Ronnie was a voyeuristic creep who’d used his job to steal love tokens. To my surprise, she was blinking away tears.
“It was sweet,” she said. She turned toward me and Creighton. “He could be…Teddy was always insisting I keep his presents. Keep them to remember him, even if something happened to him. He said he wanted me to have something—something of my own.”
“Pity it wasn’t his to give.” The dark-haired man—the one from the woods—stepped in, his broad shoulders silhouetted against the morning light. I heard Cheryl gasp as my own heart began to race. “But you’re right, that is what we’ve been looking for. Federal agent Brian Dalehy.” He handed a billfold to Creighton, who glanced down and handed it back. “I’ve been undercover on this operation since Day One.”
As the newcomer pocketed his credentials, my beau just stared. I had the feeling he was sizing up the dark-haired man, his blue eyes narrowed slightly against the glare. What he saw, I couldn’t tell.
“Detective?” In a move that echoed one Creighton had made only moments before, the dark-haired man held out his hand. When my guy had done it, I’d hesitated because of the backstory. Because I knew Benazi was involved, and that the agent who was supposed to be Cheryl Ginger’s contact on the case was really working for the old gangster.
Now it was Jim’s turn to pause, appraising that outstretched hand. Maybe it was professional jealousy. The Feds had taken over his case. Maybe it was some cop instinct. I’m not the only one with heightened senses.
The room was silent. The dark-haired man’s face unreadable against the brightness of the open door. I looked up at Creighton, saw the creases around his mouth. The tension in his eyes.
And then he handed it over. The man had identified himself as a federal agent, and at heart Jim Creighton is a boy scout.
“Good.” Brian nodded once at Creighton and turned to take us all in, and then he left. Was I relieved? Sure. I didn’t want any bloodshed, particularly mine. But I knew what would happen if Creighton discovered the truth. I knew what it would cost him, and a little part of me died.
“Jim?” I didn’t know what to say.
“I’ve been working with him,” Cheryl interrupted. “He’s why I’ve been here. With Teddy.” In her rush to explain—to exonerate herself—she spilled out the story I’d so painstakingly put together. Her brother. The undercover operation. Even her adopting the spaniel as an excuse to go for walks. To meet with Dalehy, the collar a way to pass messages—the signal that she never got to give. As she told it, I could see how it started as an honest operation. Maybe even a good one.
“That’s quite some story.” Creighton didn’t look comfortable. He still had some qualms about Brian, I could tell. But my chance to tell him had passed. I hadn’t heard Brian drive away, but I had no doubt he was gone. I didn’t think he’d be reporting to the Feds. “But I…” He rubbed his face, as if he could shed some feeling that was nagging at him. “There’s going to be paperwork.”
“Go,” I said. I looked around at Cheryl, who had collapsed against the desk, and Ronnie, who sat up, more awake than ever. “I’ll…clean up.”
He raised his eyebrows at that, but with a nod he left. I turned toward Ronnie.
“Ronnie, you are not to tell anybody about this.” I pitched my voice low. He needed to understand. “Nobody. Not even Albert.”
He nodded. The night in jail had scared him. Maybe not as much as the truth would, but then again, if he knew about Benazi—about how Parvis had gotten killed—he might not have been able to function.
“Cheryl?” She was pulling herself upright. Pulling her bag up onto her shoulder. “You okay?”
She nodded. “They cleared me this morning. That’s why I came b
y.”
“And your brother?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m supposed to hear from Brian…” She looked out the door.
“I’m sure you will,” I said. I was lying. Then again, hope isn’t a bad thing.
“Yeah, well…” She looked down at the floor and then up at me. Maybe she knew. Maybe she had done all she could. She held out her hand. “Thanks, Pru.”
“My pleasure.” I thought of those twenties. I wasn’t offering her another refund. “You’re taking Stewie?”
“Stewie?” She blinked, a hint of a smile making her cheek dimple. “That is a better name than Pudgy, isn’t it? Yeah, I am.” Her smile broadened. “I think we both deserve a fresh start.”
I followed her out and closed the door behind us. I doubted that Ronnie was going to get much sleep after that, even with five beers to go. Better he mull the morning over here, though. With any luck, by the time he got to Happy’s tonight, he’d have decided most of it was just a bad dream.
Cheryl’s silver Honda was parked right outside, the window slightly ajar, and I leaned in to give Stewie one last pet.
“How you doing, boy?” His ears were warm and silky, and his flag of a tail thudded against the seat as I rubbed them at their base.
“The master was here.” His voice deep in my head.
“I know.” If Cheryl were listening, she’d think I was talking endearments. Nonsense to an animal I’d grown fond of. “I know, Stewie.”
“He said he’s leaving.” This startled me. “That I’m to protect her from now on.”
“Because you’re such a good boy,” I said. It was the truth. “You’re such a good boy.”
I stepped back from the car and waved as Cheryl drove off. Then I turned and walked a little way into the woods. I knew he would be waiting.
***
“Pru.” Benazi stepped out of the shadows as silent as a panther. “And how are you this fine morning?”
“Well, thank you.” I looked at him. “I gather your associates—the ones whose methods you don’t approve of—have moved on?”
