The Taking of Libbie, SD

by David Housewright

  “Michelle, you must know nothing happened. Sara Anne was not assaulted.”

  “So she says.”

  “You don’t believe her?”

  “I knew Rush.”

  “You should have believed her. She was telling the truth.”

  “You’re saying I killed the Imposter for nothing? It matters not. It is a mother’s prerogative, her duty, in fact, to defend her children. I am sure that any jury that consists of at least one mother will agree with me.”

  I had nothing to say to that, but something in my face must have spoken to her, because Mrs. Miller said, “I feel neither regret nor remorse over what I have done. Why should I? To be honest, Mr. McKenzie, it feels good to finally tell someone about it. Liberating, in fact. Yes, liberating.” She was smiling now. “What surprises me is that no one has yet discovered the body. I left it in plain sight.”

  “Where?”

  “Would you like me to show you?”

  Although I drove the Audi northwest out of town with the air conditioner on full, I kept sweating. Michelle Miller sat next to me, chatting as if we were old friends out for a ride in the country. She told me that she was twenty-five when she first met her husband; that he was thirty years her senior, yet it didn’t seem to make much difference at the time—he was so alive, so vibrant, so much fun, she said. That changed as he grew older.

  “Somewhere over the ensuing decades he misplaced his sense of humor,” she said. “Or maybe he sold it. Do you know why he got himself elected mayor?”

  “So he could be in charge.”

  “He’s already in charge. No, he ran for office so he’d be in a position to change the town’s name.”

  “To what?” I said. “Millerville?”

  “Millertown,” Mrs. Miller said.

  “Ahh.”

  “I laughed when he told me that. It sounded like something he might have joked about when we were first married. He was perfectly serious.”

  Mrs. Miller shook her head at the thought of it. We drove in silence until she told me to take a left at White Buffalo Road. I slowed the car and turned.

  “How well did you know the Imposter?” I said as we accelerated.

  “Well enough to know that he was a phony,” she said. “I recognized it the evening he came to dinner; knew before we finished the chicken. I’m from the Cities. I grew up in Edina.”

  “Cake eater,” I said, which was the standard insult for residents of the moneyed suburb.

  “Breakfast of champions,” she said, which was the standard reply.

  “Yeah, you’re an Edina girl.”

  “Only Rush wasn’t a St. Paul guy. He knew all the names, yet none of the locations and none of the slang. He didn’t know Dinkytown was practically on the campus of the University of Minnesota. He didn’t know where Uptown was, or Seven Corners.”

  “Why didn’t you speak up? Why didn’t you tell your husband?”

  “I don’t like my husband very much these days. It gives me pleasure to listen to him explain how his mistakes were not mistakes; the way his voice gets serious and he says, ‘I will not be provoked.’ Hysterical.”

  “Why don’t you leave him?”

  “Why bother when he’ll be leaving me soon?”

  “You mean dying.”

  “Yes, I mean dying. None of us live forever.”

  “When he’s gone, I take it you’ll inherit all he’s built.”

  “Saranne will inherit. Excuse me—Sara Anne. I hope she will be generous with her mother. If not, I will gain a two-million-dollar life insurance settlement and my freedom.”

  “Nothing if you leave him?”

  “According to our prenup, if I leave him I’ll get twenty-five thousand dollars for every year that we were married for the first ten, forty thousand for the second ten, and seventy-five after that. That’s a small percentage of our net worth and barely covers my mental anguish. Dewey inserted a clause stating that the contract will be nullified in case of immorality.” Michelle took her time sounding out the word. “Im-mo-ral-i-ty. I presume that means adultery, and lately I’ve been watching Dewey very closely. Unfortunately, he will not be provoked.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “You’re a stranger. It is much easier to confide secrets to a stranger. As judgmental as you might prove to be, you will soon be gone and your opinions will not trouble me.”

  “I might have a big mouth,” I said. “I might blab your secrets all over town before I go.”

  “I hardly think so. Except when it comes to my husband, I am a fairly astute judge of character. You will keep my secrets. Not out of any sense of loyalty to me, certainly. Yet you seem to care about my daughter. You will keep my secrets to protect her.”

  Not if we find Rushmore McKenzie’s dead body, my inner voice said. I’ll scream that from the rooftops.

  “We’ll see,” I said aloud.

  I have no idea who first decided that “10,000 Lakes” should be printed on Minnesota’s license plates. Yet whoever it was got it wrong. There are actually 11,842 lakes in Minnesota that measure ten acres or better and another couple of thousand that just miss the cut. Lake Mataya was smaller than all of them. It wasn’t even a lake. More like a giant puddle after a hard rain. I was sure I could wade across it without getting wet above the knees.

  I first glimpsed Lake Mataya when we pulled into the gravel parking lot off of the county road. I thought I was seeing just a small bay and the trees that surrounded it hid the rest of the lake. No, that was all there was. Grass and weeds receded at the water’s edge; there was no beach. The wooden planks of a T-style dock squeaked as we walked across them. I counted six signs posted on the dock. no diving, they each said. Seemed like sound advice to me.

  “Pathetic, isn’t it?” Mrs. Miller said. “In Minnesota, they’d bulldoze this place out of principle. Here it’s practically a tourist attraction.”

  “How’s the fishing?” I said.

  Mrs. Miller thought that was an awfully funny question. When she stopped laughing I said, “Where did you kill the Imposter?”

  “This way.”

  Mrs. Miller did not hesitate at all as she led me off the dock. We followed a worn path halfway around the lake. “Here’s the place,” she said when we reached a narrow trail that left the path and disappeared into a stand of ponderosa pine, American elm, box elder, green ash, and willow trees. There was a clearing among the trees where someone had built a bench using the trunk of a cottonwood tree. People had come to the clearing often, leaving behind empty beer cans, food wrappers, and cigarette butts. What grasses and shrubs there were had been trampled into submission, and in most places the ground was hard-packed dirt. The clearing was invisible from both the lake and the parking lot.

  As good a place for an ambush as any, my inner voice told me.

  “This is where you killed him?” I said aloud.

  “Yes, right there.”

  Mrs. Miller pointed at a spot along the far edge of the clearing. There was no body. Then again, I never thought for a moment that there would be. We do not live in an Agatha Christie world. People do not admit that they committed murder and announce, “Yes, and I’m glad that I killed him, glad, do you hear? Ah ha ha ha ha ha.” I was convinced that Mrs. Miller was playing me. The question was, why? Still, just in case there was some truth to what she said, I squatted near the spot and examined the ground carefully. There were footprints, mostly the tread of tennis shoes and the impressions of boot heels.

  “When was the last time you had rain?” I said.

  “Last month sometime.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you see anything?”

  “Nope.”

  “No?” She seemed surprised.

  “What did you kill him with?” I said.

  “Rush? What did I use to kill Rush?”

  “Yes, Rush. Unless you’ve killed so many people lately that it’s hard to keep them straight.”

  “That’s not funny, McKenzie.
”

  “I apologize.”

  “I used a tree branch.”

  “A tree branch?”

  “Yes.”

  “You lured Rush here so you could kill him with a tree branch?”

  “I thought it would be better that way. Harder to trace the murder weapon.”

  “What did you do with it?”

  “The tree branch?”

  “Yes.”

  “I threw it into the lake.”

  “You walked out to the lake where people could see you and threw the branch in?”

  “It was dark. No one could see me. Besides, there was no one here. Just me and Rush.”

  “No other cars in the parking lot?”

  “No.”

  I examined the ground some more. There were no bloodstains and no drag marks.

  “How did you manage it?” I said.

  “Manage what?”

  “Mrs. Miller…”

  “I told Rush to meet me here. Here in this spot. I waited for him. When he stepped into the clearing I hit him with the branch.”

  “How many times did you hit him?”

  “Times? Just once.”

  “How did you know he was dead?”

  “He fell. He didn’t move.”

  “That doesn’t mean he was dead.”

  “I checked his pulse.”

  “Where?”

  “Where?”

  I touched my wrist and the carotid artery in my throat as I spoke. “Wrist, carotid artery—”

  “Wrist.”

  I held out my arm. “Show me.”

  Mrs. Miller set all four of her fingers over the tendons that ran down the center of my wrist instead of the radial artery that’s found on the thumb side between the tendons and the edge of the bone. She jumped back when she discovered that I didn’t have a pulse, either.

  “Feeling for a pulse in the wrist isn’t always reliable,” I said. “Especially if the pulse is faint, especially if you don’t have much experience at it, especially if you were rattled. You were rattled, right?”

  “Are you saying he isn’t dead?”

  “There are two possibilities. First, that you actually did kill the Imposter and someone came along and removed the body—but I don’t see any blood or drag marks. Two, that you hurt him, perhaps even knocked him unconscious, and sometime after you left he got up and walked away. Or at least he recovered enough to call for help, called for someone to pick him up, his accomplice probably. That would explain why his car was still here.”

  There was a third possibility—that she was lying through her teeth, but I didn’t mention that.

  “Are you saying I didn’t kill him?” Mrs. Miller said.

  “You sound disappointed.”

  “I am, a little.”

  “Well, cheer up. You committed assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill. That’s a Class C felony in most states.”

  “I hit him extremely hard.”

  “As hard as you hit me last night?”

  “I didn’t—McKenzie. Certainly not. I had nothing to do with what happened to you. How can you suggest such a thing?”

  “Okay.”

  “What reason would I have for attacking you?”

  “The same reason you had for attacking the Imposter.”

  “Rush assaulted my daughter; you protected her.”

  “You might not have known that.”

  “Mr. McKenzie.”

  “All right.”

  “Surely you don’t believe—”

  “Just a thought.”

  “I have never been so insulted.”

  It was hard to keep from laughing at her, but I managed it just the same.

  Mrs. Miller stared down at the spot where the Imposter’s body should have been.

  “Should we call the police?” she said.

  “We could do that. They’ll strap you to a polygraph and ask some hard questions, though. Are you prepared to answer them?”

  She didn’t say if she was or wasn’t.

  “Why don’t we just hold off on calling the cops for now,” I said.

  “Until when?”

  “Until we know what really happened.”

  “I told you what really happened.”

  “I meant until we have confirmation.”

  “What should I do in the meantime?”

  “Leave your husband, challenge the prenup, divorce him for half of everything he owns, take your daughter back to Edina, and start living the life you deserve to live—or at least the life Sara deserves to live.”

  “I meant for right now.”

  “Go home and forget all this ever happened.”

  A puzzled expression spread over Mrs. Miller’s face.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

  “See, it’s working already.”

  We slowly made our way through the trees back to the parking lot. Mrs. Miller’s cell phone rang—it sounded like an old-fashioned telephone.

  “Uh-oh,” she said when she read the display, and then, “Hello, dear,” when she activated the phone.

  I could hear only her end of the conversation.

  “I’m at Lake Mataya … I’m with Mr. McKenzie. He asked if I would show him where Rush’ … If you must know, he came to the house looking for you … Apparently Rush received a phone call that originated from our home just before he disappeared. Did you call Rush, dear? … Of course.”

  Mrs. Miller held the phone out for me. I took the phone and pressed the receiver to my ear.

  “Yes?”

  “What are you doing?” Miller said. “I said I wanted my family left out of this.”

  “I said I don’t work for you.”

  There was a long pause, and for a moment I thought we had lost Miller’s signal.

  “I will not be provoked,” he said at last.

  I placed my thumb over the microphone.

  “He will not be provoked,” I said.

  Mrs. Miller covered her mouth with her hand and turned away, afraid that her husband would hear her laughter.

  I removed my thumb from the microphone.

  “Mr. Miller, I’m not trying to be a pain in the ass.” Oh yeah, like he believes that, my inner voice said. “I’m just trying to find answers, like I was asked to do, remember?”

  Mr. Miller sighed heavily. “Tell my wife to bring you out to the sheds,” he said. Then he hung up.

  Miller Self-Storage was a work in progress. It was located north of Libbie, and from the illustration on the huge sign along the county road, it would eventually have sheds large enough to house RVs, not to mention cars, boats, and furniture. Only that was some time in the future. When I arrived there, it was little more than a huge slab of concrete surrounded by gravel, stacks of cinder blocks, bags of cement, wood, and corrugated tin. Mr. Miller and the banker, Jon Kampa, were standing near the center of the slab, where additional building supplies were also stacked. Miller wore an untucked sports shirt loudly decorated with rodeo images; Kampa wore a powder blue dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar, the shirtsleeves carefully rolled up. There were no workmen in sight, which raised the question, what were Miller and Kampa doing there alone on a late Saturday afternoon? After parking the car, Mrs. Miller and I walked toward them. The bright sunshine made Miller look much older than the previous times I’d met him.

  “Explain yourself,” he said.

  “I was born in St. Paul to an ex-marine and his wife—”

  “I don’t want your fucking life’s story. I want to know why you’re messing with my wife.”

  “Actually, your wife was messing with me, but what the hell.”

  “McKenzie,” Mrs. Miller said. She appeared shocked at my remark, but appearances can be deceiving. “I did no such thing.” She turned to her husband. “Mr. McKenzie asked about a phone call that was made from our house to Rush just before he disappeared. I told him—”

  “She told me that she lured Rush to Lake Mataya and killed him with
a tree branch, but of course there was no sign of foul play and we couldn’t find a body.” I stamped the concrete slab with my foot. “Is it under here, do you think?” I stamped some more.

  “What I told you was true,” Mrs. Miller said.

  “I believe you,” I said. “Only I’m notoriously gullible. Just ask my investment counselor.”

  Mr. Miller shook his head, his expression an odd mixture of disappointment, amusement, and anger.

  “Mickie, what were you thinking?” he said.

  “She was thinking about her investment,” I said.

  “Her investment?”

  “She was protecting you.”

  “I didn’t make a phone call.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Are you calling me a liar?”

  “Yep.”

  “Watch your mouth.”

  “Someone called the Imposter using your phone.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “I told you, I did it,” Mrs. Miller said.

  “Nonsense,” her husband said.

  Jon Kampa stood at a discreet distance throughout the conversation, pretending not to be there, giving the Millers the illusion of privacy while listening intently to every word. Finally he spoke up.

  “I did it,” he said. “I made the phone call.”

  “Ahh, another county heard from,” I said.

  Kampa moved closer, stepping between me and Miller.

  “I had dinner that Tuesday night at the Millers’.” He gave Miller a meaningful stare over his shoulder. “Remember?” Mr. and Mrs. Miller both nodded their heads, so I knew he must have been telling the truth. “Just before I left, I asked to use the phone. I called Rush. I called the Imposter.”

  “Why?” I said.

  “To warn him. Dewey kept saying that he was going to kill him or have him killed because of Saranne. I couldn’t let that happen. I didn’t care about Rush, but Dewey and I have been friends for a long time, and I didn’t want to see him do anything foolish. So I warned Rush to get out of town.”

  “You’re a good friend,” Miller said.

  “Either that, or he’s protecting his investment, too,” I said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  I ignored the question. Instead, I asked Kampa, “Did you arrange to meet Rush?”

  “No,” he said. “I just told him that he was no longer welcome in Libbie and that he should leave.”