“We’ll see.”
Merci smiled ever so slightly. In the end she was just like the rest of us. She needed to be loved. Eventually, it’s what life comes down to, a few people loving us and us loving them. Sometimes it takes a tragedy to impress that upon us.
“Don’t be too hard on him,” I told her. “I admire a man who pays his own way.”
Merci held on to my hand for a while longer.
“Will you come visit me?”
“Sure. I have property near Grand Rapids.”
“Better hurry. If things don’t work out, I might take off again.”
“If you do, don’t let me find you.”
Bobby Dunston entered my hospital room carrying a bouquet of flowers. “These are from Shelby,” he announced so I wouldn’t think he’d give another man flowers. “I tried to smuggle you a six-pack, but the nurses stopped me.”
“Sure.”
“Shelby sends her love. You might not know it, but she’s been here almost without a rest since they brought you in. But now that they say you’re all right, she’s packing.”
“Packing?”
“We’re sneaking up to your place for a few days.”
“Just you and Shelby?”
“Just me and Shelby. Mom is taking the kids.”
“Good for you.”
“Shut up, McKenzie.”
He sat on a chair and crossed his legs.
“I had him, you know. Devanter. I had him. I knew he killed Katherine and Jamie eight hours before you killed him. I had a warrant for his arrest, only I couldn’t find him. I couldn’t find him because apparently he was hiding at your house. Why I didn’t think to look there first I’ll never know.”
“Don’t be bitter,” I told him.
“Who? Me?”
“I didn’t know it was Devanter,” I confessed. “I didn’t have a clue. Not until I saw him hovering over Merci with the knife. Hell, the people I accused were innocent. Innocent of that, anyway.”
“Maybe so, but the way the papers are playing it you’d think you were the greatest thing since Dick Tracy.”
“A very underrated investigator, I might add.”
“You realize, of course, that you look ridiculous with those bandages on your head.”
“I’m starting a new fashion—next week I’ll be on the cover of GQ.”
“It was the twine,” Bobby said. “The twine used to tie down both Katherine and Jamie. Microscopic examination indicated that the lay, circumference, and strand number were identical. So was the reason they each had it—to secure the rose bushes to the trellis on the south side of their houses. They had the same gardener. Devanter. That’s why he knew precisely where the twine was kept. I would have figured it out sooner only I let you distract me with all that Family Boyz nonsense.”
“It really was a coincidence, Jamie’s murder and the Boyz,” I admitted. “You guessed right the first time.”
“I made a lot of mistakes.”
“Why did Devanter do it? Do you know?”
“No, I don’t.”
“He was at the VA—I saw his wounds. Maybe the answer is there. An honest-to-God deranged Viet Nam vet like you see in all the movies.”
“Except Devanter was never in Viet Nam, or the Persian Gulf, or anywhere else for that matter. He never served. He suffered his wounds working on an off-shore oil rig fifteen years ago.”
“But he was a patient at the VA.”
“He was a groundskeeper at the VA. We interviewed his former coworkers, the hospital staff. Apparently, he didn’t have any friends. Everyone who remembered him, and there were only a few, said he was scary, but quiet—a loner, but a good worker.”
“Aren’t they all?”
“We traced his movements. Born in Des Moines. After high school he drifted south, more or less in a straight line, working for a farm co-op in Iowa, a nursery in Missouri, another nursery in Oklahoma, a golf course in Texas, then an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. He was engaged to be married to a woman in Fort Worth, but he called it off just before the wedding and moved here. I spoke to the woman. She said Devanter broke off the engagement when he found out she couldn’t have children, something about a botched abortion when she was sixteen.”
“Was there anything about her that resembled Jamie and Katherine?”
“Not that we could determine. Little over a year ago, Devanter went to work for Warren and Lila Casselman. The Casselmans introduced him to their entrepreneur friends—by the way, did you hear that the feds busted them and the Family Boyz and a couple of Russians …”
“I was there. Front-row seat.”
“Then you know why everything happened the way it did.”
“Pretty much, but we can talk about that later. What about Devanter?”
“The ladies of the Northern Lights Entrepreneur’s Club apparently admired his handiwork. He agreed to help them with their gardens. They paid him for his trouble. That’s all we know and are likely to know.”
“No motive then?”
“Jealousy. Frustration. Obsession. Pick your own.”
“I thought you were the psycho expert.”
“Obsession, then. You were a little obsessed yourself. Why else would you put yourself through all this?”
“I was just doing my job.”
“Job? What job?”
I recalled the mission statement that Kirsten had attributed to me. Live well. Be helpful.
“Uh-huh. Speaking of which, I have a message from Chief Casey of the City of St. Anthony Village Police Department. ‘All sins are forgiven.’ Whatever that means.”
“Whatever.”
“Are you thinking of getting back into harness, Mac?”
“I honestly don’t know what I’m thinking.”
Bobby didn’t push. Instead he told me I had had another caller while I was unconscious.
“Nina Truhler.”
That made me smile.
“Nice,” Bobby suggested.
“Very.”
“I like her.”
“She is likable.”
“How do you do it?”
“It’s a gift.”
“Speaking of gifts, Shelby is waiting for me.”
“Thanks, Bobby.”
Before he left, Bobby found the remote control and aimed it at the TV set suspended on the wall at the foot of the bed. He surfed past several channels until he found WGN—the Cubs were playing Houston. Sammy Sosa was up with two on base.
“Are you going to be all right, alone like this?”
“What do you mean alone? I’m in a hospital.”
“I have a few minutes. Let’s watch the game.”
“Get out of here. Shelby’s waiting.”
“McKenzie?”
“Dunston?”
“Screw it. I’ll see you in a couple of days.”
“Love to the family.”
“Back at ya.”
After he left I turned up the volume.
“Whaddaya say, Sammy,” I said to the TV screen. “Just me and you, man. Just me and you.”
ALSO BY DAVID HOUSEWRIGHT
In the Holland Taylor Series
Penance
Practice to Deceive
Dearly Departed
A HARD TICKET HOME. Copyright © 2004 by David Housewright.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.minotaurbooks.com
eISBN 9781429996778
First eBook Edition : April 2011
First Edition: May 2004
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A Hard Ticket Home (Twin Cities P.I. Mac McKenzie Novels) Page 25
