“You would sell your company?”
“In a heartbeat. Take the money—and it’s going to be a helluva lot of money, McKenzie. Take the money and become a philanthropist. See if I can buy my way into heaven.”
“Do your employees know all this?”
“Just Alice.”
“Randy or the Bignell family?”
“God, I certainly hope not. Only Alice is supposed to know. I want to keep it that way, too, until the deal is consummated. Otherwise, I could lose … I’m all in, McKenzie. Actually, it’s kind of exciting. You probably understand what I’m feeling. From the stories I’ve heard, you’re a gambling man.”
“I am, but your boyfriend will tell you that I’m not very good at it.”
“You mean Ian?”
“Does he know what you’re up to?”
I barely noticed when Erin shook her head.
“He’s your accountant,” I said. “How can he not know?”
“He keeps such good books that I was able to give CVI what it needed without involving him.”
“Don’t you trust Ian?”
“Of course I do.”
“Well, then?”
“There are things I can’t tell him.”
“What things?” I asked.
“It’s complicated.”
Which I took to mean that Erin wasn’t going to tell me.
“At least we now have a better understanding of why Salsa Girl has been targeted,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“What would happen, Erin, if during negotiations with Central Valley, while the company was doing its due diligence, Salsa Girl Salsa started experiencing unexpected difficulties, such as, I don’t know, missing delivery dates because of problems with your trucks, or if you were forced to shut down your operation for a few days?”
Erin closed her eyes. This time, if she was counting to ten, she did it very slowly. She opened her eyes and took a long sip of her bourbon.
“Hmm,” she said.
“Perhaps your employees don’t want you to sell the company for fear they’ll lose their jobs.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“What’s the value of your company?”
“What do you mean?”
“What is Central Valley buying?”
“The brand. The recipes.”
“Not the physical plant, though.”
“They get that, too.”
“What I mean is, Central Valley could just as easily make Salsa Girl Salsa in California as here, am I right?”
“Yes.”
“So what’s keeping it from moving the operation?”
“I am.”
“For three years, at least. Anyway, do your employees know that?”
“They don’t know anything about Central Valley.”
“What happens to Randy Sax?”
“He’ll receive ten percent of the sales price, which is a great deal more than he deserves.”
“He’ll no longer be a business owner, though. He’ll lose Mommy and Daddy’s respect, not to mention Grandpa, who stands to be plenty pissed off when you drop the hammer on him, especially after adding all those Hispanic brands to complement yours.”
“You heard him yesterday. He’ll replace me easily enough.”
“Except retailers prefer the status quo. They don’t want change unless they’re the ones that make the change. It annoys them when they have to explain to customers why the products they want to buy are no longer available.”
“You know more about how this works than you let on, McKenzie.”
“What about your vendors, the guys across the river who supply your tomatoes, and those guys down south with the jalapeños? I’m guessing Central Valley has its own suppliers.”
“It has its own farms.”
“In any case, that’s four groups that might like to kill your deal with Central Valley without permanently damaging your company.”
“I told you, none of them are aware of what I’m trying to accomplish.”
“Someone knows.”
“I just don’t … I’m having a difficult time getting my head wrapped around that, McKenzie. It seems so—”
“Injudicious?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a smart woman, Erin. You must have thought it through.”
“In your head it’s merely ruminations. Spoken out loud gives it a different reality.”
“Which returns us to Darren Coyle of Columbia Heights.”
“Who does he work for, do you know?”
“Besides himself?”
“Himself?”
“He could be a sex maniac fixated on beautiful blond entrepreneurs.”
I thought I was being funny, but from the expression on her face, Erin didn’t agree.
“A couple of thoughts come to mind,” I said. One that included the cops, but I decided to keep that theory to myself. If the police really were interested in Salsa Girl, I didn’t want to interfere; she wasn’t that good a friend.
“For example?” Erin asked.
“Like I said, someone must know what you’re doing. The incidents of sabotage; the threat of greater sabotage pretty much proves it, don’t you think?”
Erin stared for a few beats before calling, “Alice.”
Alice Pfeifer knocked briskly on the door and opened it.
“Yes?” she said.
“Do we have any employees who live in Columbia Heights?”
“No.”
“No?” I said. “You can say that off the top of your head?”
“Columbia Heights is a North Minneapolis suburb. Everybody who works here is from St. Paul, mostly the East Side. A lot of them take the Green Line and get off at the Raymond Station, then walk the three blocks here. There’s no reason why that is. We don’t discriminate against Minneapolis or anything. It just worked out that way.”
“Okay.”
“Thanks, Alice,” Erin said.
Alice continued to stand there. She seemed confused. At least I know I would have been confused.
“I’ll explain later,” Erin said.
Alice retreated from the office, closing the door behind her.
“So,” Erin said. “Not an employee, not a husband or brother of one of my employees. There’s no personal relationship.”
“We don’t know that. Could be a friend of a friend.”
“I suppose.”
Erin finished her bourbon and stared out the window at the Pelham Boulevard Bridge. I finished mine and did the same thing. She didn’t make a move to refill either of our glasses.
“Christine Olson,” I said. “Why did you use the name Christine Olson when you went to meet Ripley?”
“The meeting was supposed to be a secret, remember?”
“But why Christine?”
“It’s just a nice innocuous Scandinavian name that”—she waved her hand in front of herself—“that fits my appearance. What difference does it make? McKenzie, I told you before—don’t investigate me. Investigate…”
Her eyes met mine. I saw so many conflicting emotions in her face—anger and composure, fear and confidence, fragility and determination—that it was difficult to grab hold of any one. Yet her voice hadn’t altered a decibel during the entire conversation. It remained quiet and unruffled. I used to date a 911 operator who could do that, but only on the job. Off the clock she was a mess.
“Two weeks, McKenzie,” Erin said. “Help keep Salsa Girl alive for two weeks and I’ll buy you another Mustang. I’ll buy Nina a Mustang.”
Since it didn’t look like I was going to get any more bourbon, I stood up.
“It’s like what Shelby Dunston told me the other day,” I said. “If you want to know something about a person, just ask.”
“What does that mean?”
“Darren Coyle—I know where he lives.”
* * *
Only I didn’t need to go that far.
I left Salsa Girl Salsa through the rear
entrance. The plant must have been on break, because Hector Lozano and Tony Cremer were back there chatting while sucking on heaters.
“Gentlemen,” I said.
They replied with silence and hostile stares.
I took the stairs down from the loading dock and walked to the Jeep Cherokee. The vehicle was too old for electronics, and I had to unlock the door with a key. I half expected the lock to be jammed with super glue, only it wasn’t.
I worked the Cherokee out of the rear parking lot through the industrial park and onto Pelham Boulevard and hung a left on Wabash Avenue. That’s when I saw a blue Toyota Camry parked down the boulevard with an unobstructed view of Salsa Girl’s front entrance. Coyle wasn’t looking for a Jeep Cherokee, so he didn’t see me.
Not a cop, I told myself. If Coyle had been a cop, he would have known that I had made him; my call to Billy Turner would have confirmed it. The police would have pulled him off surveillance and replaced him with someone smarter. Probably an entire team of someone smarter.
Why didn’t Billy tell me who he was, then? my inner voice asked.
“One question at a time,” I answered out loud.
I circled the block and parked a good hundred yards behind the Camry. I moved across the seat so I could depart the Cherokee from the passenger side. Coyle was leaning against his car door; he would have detected movement in his driver’s side mirror. I approached the Camry from his blindside. There were no pedestrians on the sidewalk and little traffic on the boulevard, so I felt comfortable drawing the SIG Sauer from its holster and holding it against my thigh.
Coyle did nothing to indicate he was aware of my presence, and I wondered if he had zoned out. Remember what I told you about surveillance—it’s a lot harder than it looks.
I took a chance that the passenger door was unlocked; it was. I yanked it open, squatted down, and pointed the SIG at Coyle’s head. He was jolted, but his hands had been comfortably tucked under his arms, and now they were of no use to him.
“Remember me?” I said.
He didn’t say if he did or didn’t.
“Put your hands on the steering wheel,” I said.
Coyle slowly unwrapped his arms and did what I asked.
“Move and I’ll shoot you right in the head,” I said.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Pound of flesh.”
“What’s that mean?”
“If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”
“Huh?”
I crawled into the car and shut the passenger door, making sure the muzzle of the gun never wavered.
“Shakespeare,” I said. “The Merchant of Venice. Act three, scene—I forget the scene. Are you carrying?”
He didn’t answer, so I shoved the muzzle against his right ear.
“Yes,” he said.
“Where?”
He told me. I switched hands, shoving the SIG against his ribs with my left while I reached across his body with my right. I found his weapon, a .38 wheel gun in an old-fashioned shoulder holster. I plucked it out and waved it in front of his face.
“Is this what you used?” I said. “You suckered me and left me in the fucking gutter after hitting me with this? You’re lucky I don’t put a bullet in your spine.”
I dropped the .38 into the pocket of my sports jacket and leaned back. He turned his head to look at me. I told him to look straight ahead.
“What are you doing here, Coyle? Why are you following Erin Peterson? Who are you working for?”
He refused to answer any of my questions.
“Coyle, you should know I have a volatile personality.”
“You won’t shoot me. Not like this.”
“Who says?”
He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye and then looked forward again.
He knows you, my inner voice said.
I jammed the muzzle of the SIG hard into his ribs again. He winced at the pain it caused, and for a moment Coyle’s expression suggested that he didn’t know me at all.
I worked my free hand over his body until I found a wallet. I yanked the wallet free and leaned back again. I opened the wallet. My eyes flicked from Coyle to the contents and back to Coyle again. Minnesota has rules about the IDs that private investigators must carry. Along with name, address, head shot, and date issued and expired, they must also in really big letters disclose the name of the firm the PI is working for.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I said.
Coyle didn’t answer.
I slipped the wallet into my other pocket and opened the car door. I slipped out cautiously, once again refusing to let the business end of the SIG leave my target.
“Call your boss,” I said. “Tell the sonuvabitch I’m coming to see him.”
* * *
Schroeder Private Investigations was a cop shop. Every field operative who worked there had been an investigator for one law enforcement agency or another—local police, sheriff’s department, state cops, even the FBI. I say “field operative” because the company also employed a platoon of computer geeks that ran skip traces, conducted background checks, hunted identity thieves, vetted jurors, uncovered hidden assets, and conducted cyber investigations without ever leaving the comfort of their workstations.
I walked into the office without knocking and made my way around the reception desk. The receptionist was named Gloria, and she knew who I was. Instead of trying to stop me, though, she smiled and said, “He’s in his office.”
I made my way to a corner office with a splendid view of the new U.S. Bank Stadium in downtown Minneapolis. There was a desk in the center of the office. A man was sitting behind it. I dumped Coyle’s wheel gun and wallet on the desk blotter in front of him.
He slowly swept them both into his drawer before looking up at me.
“Let me guess,” he said. “You’ve come to file a complaint.”
“What the fuck, Greg?”
Greg Schroeder was a trench-coat detective, or at least he tried real hard to maintain the image. He actually wore a gray trench coat over his rumpled suit when the weather allowed, along with a pinstripe fedora. He drank his coffee black and his whiskey neat and liked to sneer while he ran his thumb across his chin, which was exactly what he was doing while I sat in a chair across from him. For all I knew, he carried photographs of Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum in his wallet. Mostly I liked him. ’Course, he did save my life, after all. Twice.
“Did Coyle call?” I asked.
“Yeah. He’s pretty embarrassed.”
“Did he tell you that he laid me out last night?”
“No.”
“Sonuvabitch is pretty loose with his hands, Greg. I thought you didn’t condone that kind of behavior from your people.”
“I’ll talk to him.”
“Talk to him? You know what? Fuck you. I’ll go talk to him.”
“Don’t you think you’re being a little sensitive about all this, McKenzie?”
“How ’bout I smack you on the back of your head with a .38 and we’ll see how sensitive you feel?”
“I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry it happened. How can I make it up to you?”
“Where did you even find this guy, anyway?”
“He was on the job in St. Paul, same as you.”
“Oh, crap.”
“What?”
“Missing Persons?”
“That was one of his assignments. Why?”
That’s why Billy Turner didn’t give him up, I told myself. He was protecting one of his own.
Do you think he’d ever do the same for you? my inner voice asked.
Probably.
“Coyle is following Erin Peterson,” I said. “Why?”
Schroeder spread his hands wide as if he didn’t know what I was talking about.
“You asked how you could make it up to me,” I said. “Tell me who your client is.”
&n
bsp; “You know I’m not going to do that.”
“Are you going to make me guess?”
“You know how it works, McKenzie. You don’t carry a license, but you know how it works.”
“Fuck you, Greg.”
“Jesus, you’re cranky today.”
“A concussion will do that.”
Greg stared at me. I stared at Greg. I had an ace in my hand, and I decided to bet it. I stood up.
“Where are you going?” Schroeder asked.
“Cambridge—but only after I stop to pick up my lawyer so we can both threaten Bruce Bignell with a lawsuit over the reprehensible behavior of his employees.”
Schroeder shook his head slowly. “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” he said.
“Okay, I won’t.”
I sat down again.
“It’s not Bruce Bignell, by the way,” Schroeder said. “Our client.”
“Who is it?”
Schroeder sighed as if he had made a difficult decision and now had to live with it.
“In the fifties and sixties, divorce investigations were a major revenue stream for most PIs,” he said. “That changed in the seventies when more and more states started adopting a no-fault approach to divorce. Minnesota is a no-fault state, for example. That means if you or your spouse believe your marriage is broken so badly that it can’t be saved, and a judge agrees, the court will issue a divorce. You don’t necessarily have to prove infidelity, except to yourself, of course. As a result, divorce work dropped off. But things have changed lately, because more and more couples are signing prenuptial agreements. The majority have fidelity clauses. To beat them, well, sometimes now you do need evidence of adultery. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
I stood again.
“Thanks, Greg.”
“You’re welcome.”
“See you around. Oh, and tell Coyle to stay the hell away from me.”
“Love to Nina.”
SEVEN
I looked for Coyle, but couldn’t find him or his Camry when I drove back to Salsa Girl Salsa. I was hoping to catch Erin before she left. Some of her employees were already heading to their cars in the parking lot when I arrived, while others were making their trek to the light rail train station—the end of a long ten-hour day. Hector Lozano was walking toward me when I got out of the Cherokee, as if he wanted to talk, so I walked toward him. We met in the middle of the lot. He spoke very slowly as if he thought that would help me to understand his language. I wasn’t offended. Americans do it all the time.
Like to Die Page 11
