by C I Dennis
U awake? Yuliana had sent.
I talked with Barbara.
Uh oh.
Right.
She went crazy?
She and I are over, I sent.
Not a chance, she sent back.
What are u talking about?
Makeup sex is the best.
Not going 2 happen this time.
Why not?
She told me to never call her again.
Right. I’ll give her 24 hrs.
She’ll never forgive me.
That’s not the point, she texted.
What?
Forgiveness is a guy thing, she sent.
Meaning?
She’ll take u back. And no, she won’t evr forgive U.
Why not?
B cause she can use this for ammunition for the rest of your life.
Wish U were right, I sent.
I’m a woman, she sent back, I’m always right.
Wish U were here.
Ur in enuf trouble.
Damn straight.
Can you drive us 2 Morrisville airpt this afternoon?
Guess so, I sent. I thought I had quit as Brooks’ driver.
TX, she wrote. Dnt want 2 leave a car there. We may be gone a long time.
Hope not, I sent.
Ulterior motive…I want 2 see U.
Why?
Just want to look at U.
Ditto, I sent back.
Meet us at the house at 4 PM, OK?
OK.
*
I went down the hall to the nurses’ station for coffee and then chatted with the state cop who was outside Junie’s room, half-asleep but trying to look awake. He was another rookie, but he appeared to be a lot more rough-and-ready than the one I’d met two mornings ago. I made a mental note to call John Pallmeister and tell him to relieve these poor guys. I didn’t think Junie was in as much danger anymore. Tomas, if he saw the newspapers, would have read about the demise of his associate. If he had a brain in his head, he’d be on the run, and I would be right behind him.
I was washing my face in Junie’s bathroom when my mother and Mrs. Tomaselli arrived. My mom was carrying a big bag that I knew would contain more food, and Mrs. Tomaselli had a bouquet of flowers wrapped up in newspapers so that they wouldn’t freeze.
“We’re taking over here,” Mrs. Tomaselli said. “You can scoot. You have much more important things to attend to.”
“Hi, Mrs. Tomaselli,” I said, as I toweled off my face. “Hi, Mom.”
“Good morning, Vincent,” my mother said.
“Mom, just so you know, I told Barbara everything.”
“I hope she read you the riot act.”
“Worse than that,” I said. “I hardly got any sleep.”
“I wish I could feel sorry for you,” my mother said. “Let’s keep our voices down.” She turned to Junie. “The poor child. He needs his rest.”
“He’s not a child,” I said.
“When your baby is born, you’ll know what I mean,” she said. “They’re always your children. Even the unfaithful ones.”
“Francine, give him a break,” Mrs. Tomaselli said.
“It’s OK, Mrs. T.,” I said. A nurse entered the room with a breakfast tray for Junie.
“I’ll feed him,” my mother said to the nurse. “You run along now.” The young woman put down the tray and left.
Junie began to stir. “What’s going on here?” he said.
“Some kind of weird reality show,” I said. “Good luck.”
“Don’t leave me, Vince,” he said, with a faint smile. It was good to see him smiling. Maybe we’d survive this, somehow.
“You’re on your own, bro,” I said. I got my clothes and started to dress. Mrs. Tomaselli was ogling me like I was one of the Chippendales.
“Where are you going?” Junie said.
“To find Tomas,” I said.
“What are you going to do to him?”
“Later,” I said. “You rest up.”
*
My cheer about Junie turned to gloom over Barbara as soon as I walked across the hospital parking lot and a cold wind off the lake hit me in the face. Yuliana was wrong. There would be no make-up sex. My relationship with Barbara was beyond redemption because I had crossed the ultimate line. I had no excuses. It was over. Between the lack of sleep and the knowledge that I had truly screwed up, I felt like I might have been better off if Günter Schramm had just barbecued me in the house on North Hero.
I also had very mixed feelings about seeing Yuliana again, even if it was for a few minutes in the rearview mirror of the Escalade. I wished that they would just call a cab. I was a free man again, and technically, I could start seeing her, provided they didn’t lock her up. But as much as I cared about her, I just didn’t feel up to it. I wanted to crawl off to a dark place somewhere and lick my wounds.
That would have to wait. I had some work to do first.
*
My mother’s old Subaru was not intimidated by Tomas’ steep driveway. It climbed to the top as nimbly as Yuliana’s BMW had, and I felt like patting it on the nose and giving it a carrot. I parked in the middle of the driveway, which was empty. There were no cars in the garage, and this time the place really did look deserted. Just to be sure, I drew the Glock from my holster and rang the front bell.
No response. I guessed that Tomas was far away; perhaps in Canada, or further. I’d called Patton on the way to ask him to alert me if Tomas crossed a border, but even without the submarine I figured he could find an alternate, anonymous route.
I got in the hard way. The front lock was a polished-steel Baldwin, and it didn’t want to budge despite my best efforts. Instead, I climbed up a porch railing in the rear of the house where there was a sliding glass door. It had a cheap lock and I was in in less than a minute, no doubt tripping the motion-detecting alarm units that I noticed in the corners.
I found a Sony laptop in an upstairs bedroom on top of a dresser. It was plugged in and fully charged. I sat down on the side of a king bed and opened it up. Someone had conveniently left it in “sleep” mode, so there was no login or password necessary. I sent Roberto a text message from my phone.
U in school?
Still sick, he sent right back. Week 2.
Ur voice working?
Can talk a little, he sent.
I called him. “I’m on someone’s computer. I need you to have a look around.”
He gave me a URL to type in, and guided me through the process of letting him in.
“What are you looking for?” he asked.
“I’m trying to locate somebody. I think this computer belongs to him. I can’t track his car or his phone. He’s probably gone underground, and may be out of the country.”
I watched as Roberto navigated for several minutes. “There’s a lot of crazy stuff in here,” he said.
“Like what?”
“More videos, like the one you had. A lot of them.”
“Encrypted?”
“Yeah,” he said. “About half of what’s on here is in a different language. Looks like German.”
“He’s German.”
“OK,” he said. “Here’s something. Check it out.”
“I can’t. That print’s too small. I don’t have my reading glasses.”
“Somebody rented a van. From a place called LaBounty Car Rental.”
“When?”
“Last night,” he said. “The credit card says ‘Rudolf Meijer’. The address is in Stowe, Vermont.”
“You mean the guy’s address or the rental agency’s?”
“Both. The guy has a Stowe P.O. box, and the car rental place says Mountain Road, Stowe.”
“The person I’m looking for is called Tomas, not Rudolf,” I said.
“Let me look around,” he said. I waited while the cursor flew back and forth across the screen by itself, opening windows and searching files. “Here’s a picture,” he finally said. A small photograph opened on the screen. It wa
s Tomas, wearing tinted glasses.
“That’s Tomas,” I said.
“The file name is MEIJER3.jpg,” he said.
“Interesting,” I said, and Roberto started coughing. “You get back to bed.”
“Don’t forget the syrup,” he said, and we hung up.
I decided to borrow Tomas Schultheiss’ computer for a while. I’m not into porn, especially when it involves old, fat politicians, but this thing was a treasure trove. I wondered how many land deals and God knows what else had gone exceedingly smoothly thanks to Tomas’ smut collection. I would hand it over to Patton as soon as I saw him. Whatever was on there would surely get his closed-down investigation opened again, and some cow pies would be hittin’ the windmill, yes sir Mister Dooley.
*
The LaBounty Car Rental office was inside a tiny building at the far end of a gas station on the Mountain Road. It looked closed, and I was about to give up when a young man pulled into the lot in a rusty Dodge pickup that was peppered with bumper stickers. The stickers appeared to be the only things that were keeping the pockmarked tailgate from disintegrating.
“Help ya?” he said.
“I was supposed to meet Rudy here,” I said. “Not sure if I got the time wrong.”
“Rudolf Meijer? You sure did, Mister. He left last night.”
“Nuts,” I said. “I was supposed to go with him. I’m going to lose my job.”
“You were going to Canada too?” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “But I have no idea where. He was going to drive me. I’m screwed.”
“Wait right there,” he said, and he opened the hut and went inside. I saw him working on a computer, and a few minutes later he came out with a slip of paper in his hand.
“Here’s the address,” he said. “You didn’t get it from me, OK? I don’t want anybody to lose their job, includin’ me.”
“He gave you the address?”
“Nope,” he said. “Don’t tell anyone, but we have trackers on all our vehicles. We got ripped off one too many times.”
“Smart,” I said.
“That address is where the car is, right now,” he said. “Can you, like, make up a story, so you didn’t get this from me?”
“Oh yeah,” I said. “I’m pretty good at that.”
*
I was passing through Burlington on the way north, wishing that I had time to stop and check on Carla and Junie. It would be something of a squeeze already; it was almost noon, my destination was an hour north, and then I had a two-hour ride back to Brooks’ house and I needed to get there by four. The phone’s GPS program led me across a bridge over the lake to Alburg, and then over another bridge to Rouses Point, in New York State, just below the Canadian border. I took Route 11 north a few miles and stopped at the Canadian customs building, where the agent waved me through after I’d shown him my passport. I’d called Robert Patton again as I’d passed through Burlington, and he had cleared the way. I was carrying the Glock, and that was a no-no, but I wasn’t about to visit Tomas Schultheiss unarmed.
A few miles past the border I turned onto a gravel road that bisected a snow-covered farm field. It led me to Rang de la Barbotte, a paved road that ran along the western shore of Lake Champlain and served a string of cottages and small estates. I was now heading due south, parallel to the way I had come, and I wondered if the GPS was playing tricks as it sometimes does. I decided to trust it, and the blinking dot led me to a lakeside estate that was within sight of the U.S. border. The wrought iron gate was secured with a chain and a padlock.
I got out of the car and fumbled with my tools in the icy wind. I had the lock open in a short time, but as the gate had been chained and locked from the outside I didn’t expect to find “Rudolf Meijer” or anyone else within.
My expectation proved to be correct. There was no rented van and the place was deserted. It looked similar to the house in North Hero—isolated from its neighbors, with several outbuildings and a large, new-looking boathouse. I walked down a frozen slope to check the boathouse out.
It had the same keyless lock system as its Vermont counterpart. I didn’t want to leave a record of my visit with any splitting-maul antics. I figured I already knew what was inside—wooden docks, unfrozen water, and no submarine—I’d already taken care of that.
I called Robert Patton. “I found the Canadian side,” I said. “It’s just over the border from Rouses Point. He rented a van under a different name and it was here a while ago, but now the place is locked up and he’s gone.”
“You’d better get back here, Vince,” he said.
“What’s up?”
“Your sister is gone. Pallmeister sent someone to check on her. She’s gone, and so is Rod Quesnel, and his secretary doesn’t know where he is.”
“Where are you?”
“My office,” he said. “We’re at the Burlington airport.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can. Do me a favor and get someone to guard Junie’s room. I had Pallmeister take the trooper off this morning.”
“Will do,” he said. “Get here as soon as you can.”
*
I was on my way to the Burleigh farm, but I wasn’t in any mood to be a solicitous chauffeur, that was for damn sure. I’d stopped in at Robert Patton’s office and had dropped off Tomas’ laptop, and Patton had literally rubbed his hands together with glee. I lied, and told him that Tomas had left it in my car so that he’d have a clean evidence trail. We discussed what to do about my sister and Rodney Quesnel, but he had already put out the alert, and there wasn’t much I could do now except wait. The more I thought about the whole thing the more I wanted to throttle Brooks Burleigh until he led me to Tomas and I shot them both. That’s not exactly the attitude you want in a driver.
Yuliana was wearing her pilot’s outfit under a fluffy white parka that set off her long, dark hair. I suddenly wanted to split into two, like a paramecium in biology class. One paramecium would go back to Florida and be a loving husband and Super-dad. The other would just stay here with her and swim around in the petri dish.
“Everything OK, Vince?” Brooks asked as I helped him load his luggage in the back of the Escalade.
“No,” I said. “Not even close.”
“What is it?”
“My sister is missing now,” I said. “I thought I had her safely stashed.”
“This will all be resolved in a few days,” he said.
“Sorry, but that doesn’t help.”
“What will help?” he said. “I’m trying to undo a lot of damage here.”
“Where would Tomas go, if he was running?”
“There’s a place just over the border,” he said.
“I just came from there,” I said.
Brooks frowned. “He can melt away. That’s his talent.”
“I’m going to find him and kill him,” I said.
“That would save a lot of time and money,” Brooks said. “But be careful. I’m sorry I ever got involved with him. He brought out my worst instincts.”
“Jesus, Brooks,” I said. “I can’t stay mad at you, you’re such a fucking nice guy sometimes.”
“I’m going to pay my debt, Vince,” he said. “And then I hope that we are going to be friends.”
I caught Yuliana’s smile in the rearview mirror as I drove. “Get a room, you guys,” she said, and reluctantly, I laughed.
We were halfway to the village when the Escalade’s motor died, and I was just barely able to coast into the parking lot of a restaurant. I put on the brake, got out and lifted the hood. Nothing looked askew, although a car motor these days is a mass of plastic and computers, and there aren’t any plug wires to jiggle or distributor caps to clean. I got back in and tried to start it again, but nothing happened.
“It’s done this before,” Brooks said. “I should have had it looked at, but it started the next morning.”
“Ed’s at the airport,” Yuliana said. “I’ll call him and he can get us. Vince, I’m sorry, w
e’re leaving you with a mess.”
“Just not my day,” I said.
“Come outside,” she said to me.
We stood behind the car, while Brooks made calls from inside. The sun had dropped behind the womanly curves of the Green Mountains, and it was getting dark.
“Please don’t hate me,” she said.
“Impossible.”
“I got you into so much trouble.”
“I take responsibility for my actions,” I said.
“That’s one of the reasons I’m in love with you,” she said.
“Yuliana—”
“I’ll stop saying that,” she said. “I just needed to tell you one more time.”
“I wish I was two people,” I said.
“You’d just have twice the problems,” she said.
“Stop making me laugh,” I said. “It makes it harder to let you leave.”
“Kiss me and I will shut up.”
I took her in my arms and gave her a long kiss. I didn’t want to let go, but I did.
“Goodbye, Vince,” she said. “And thank you for saving me.”
“This isn’t goodbye.”
“Yes it is,” she said. “It has to be.”
*
Half an hour later they were gone, and I was waiting for a tow. I had far more important things to do, like find my sister, but I had no choice. I fumed in the cold interior of the big car.
I heard the sound of a text message, but it was not my phone; it came from the back seat. I saw it—Yuliana’s purse. She had forgotten it when Ed had come to collect them. She’d be beside herself—for some people, leaving your phone somewhere is like forgetting to wear pants.
On a whim, I tried the key one more time, and the Escalade roared back into life. Fickle bastard. Maybe I could make it to the airport before they left.
*
When I arrived, the Bombardier was on the taxiway with the engines running, moving slowly toward the runway. I flashed the lights of the Escalade, but the cockpit was pointed away from me. I parked, and dashed inside the little building. The attendant was reading a newspaper.
