Henri eased his SUV away from the curb and headed for Lake Street.
“That wasn’t good,” I said.
“If you mean Lenny’s book, no, it wasn’t good,” Henri said.
“We could hardly scare up a clue, two, three days ago.” I scrolled through my email. “Found an email from Sandy. On the book. Here’s another one.”
“I got them,” Henri said. “Haven’t read them yet.”
“We had Lenny’s book in the office, for chrissake,” I said.
“Too late to worry about it now,” Henri said. “But it gave us new pieces, more details.”
“We don’t know if, or even how, they fit together,” I said. “The pieces don’t make any sense.”
Henri let me out in front of the office and drove off.
“Damn, boss,” Sandy said after I’d filled her in. “It sure makes sense now, but…we dropped the ball. Wish I’d been sharper.”
“Join the club,” I said.
“Want me to call the Cavendish Company?” Sandy said.
I nodded. “See if president … forgot his name.”
“I have it,” she said, sifting through a stack of papers. “Daniel, Daniel Cavendish.”
“Well, see if president Daniel Cavendish has a few minutes this afternoon for a private eye from Petoskey.”
I went to my desk and texted Marty Fleener about the Cavendish connection.
“Text me tomorrow,” he sent back, “might have something.”
I hadn’t given much thought to Lenny’s tour stop at the Iroquois Hotel, but keeping him safe on a trip to Mackinac Island was a less complicated problem. The area was contained, unlike the northern tip of the mitt. The bad guys had to hit us on the way to Mackinaw City or back. Once at the Shepler’s ferry dock, it was too difficult to hide. On a ferry, impossible.
“You’re on Daniel Cavendish’s schedule at two-thirty,” Sandy said from the doorway. “Talk to the receptionist … her name’s Sally Peck. You’ll find her just inside the front door.”
“She ask why I wanted to see her boss?”
Sandy nodded. “As all good assistants should. I gave her the usual ‘a name came up in an investigation’ excuse, and that was that.”
Over the years, I’ve learned most people are intrigued when a private eye knocks on the door. It was “just like on TV,” they’d say. People were usually eager to talk, at least the first time. But I wasn’t sure what to expect from the Cavendish folks.
I tapped Henri’s number. “Where are you?” I asked when he came on.
“Just ordered a sandwich, why?”
“Road trip to Gaylord. You want to come along?”
“Of course.”
I explained what and when.
“Things to do. I’ll meet you there.”
I finished up some paperwork and made one call. I checked the time. It wouldn’t take that long to drive over to Gaylord.
“I probably won’t be here when you get back. Dad’s got a doctor appointment.”
Sandy had lived with her widower father since her mother died. They shared a classy 1920s clapboard-sided two-story on the water at Crooked Lake, a few miles north of Petoskey.
“Is he okay?”
“Sure. It’s his annual Medicare Wellness checkup. Happens every July.”
“Good to hear,” I said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Are you leaving for the Mackinac luncheon from here?”
“Yeah. We’re riding with Henri.”
Sandy returned to her desk, and I stared at my iPhone … again.
I wanted to call AJ, text her at least, before heading to Gaylord. I did that all the time, keeping her aware of when I left town, especially if I was working a case. We learned the hard way during the troubles with Conrad North that danger can strike anywhere, even in the most banal places. AJ worried about me differently after that. It wasn’t simply fear, she told me, it had become a nagging sense of dread. I tried to reassure her, but it was just so many words, and she knew that.
AJ gave me a heads-up if she left town, too. That’s what partners did.
But when we talked yesterday, she seemed uninterested, even annoyed that I was bothering her. I couldn’t tell if she didn’t want to hear from me, or if hearing from me made it harder to push away that feeling of dread.
I looked at the keypad and shook my head. I slid my phone into a pocket, said good-bye to Sandy, and walked out to the car.
I opened the driver’s door and waited for some of the heated air to rush out. I fired up the twin-turbo six and switched the A/C on high. I tapped in directions to the Dickerson Road address for Cavendish Company. There was only one reasonable route to Gaylord; happily, the nav system thought so, too.
I joined the endless line of cars and trucks on Mitchell, then motored past the hospital and Johan’s to US 131 South out of town.
Traffic was thick and steady, especially near Walloon Lake and through Boyne Falls. Not that I expected anything different at the busiest time of the summer. At some invisible place just south of Boyne Falls, US 131 added “Old Mackinaw Trail” to its name, staying that way when I turned east on M-32 for Gaylord.
Once Lenny connected a family business in Gaylord to his story of corruption and murder in Chicago, we were onto something solid for the first time since the threats started. But we still had a long way to go … rusty old trucks, vanity plates, teenage tough guys with tattoos, and a manufacturing company. It all added up to what?
By the time I passed the lush, green fairways of the Gaylord Country Club, traffic had slowed to a crawl all the way through town as visitors peeled off at Home Depot, Panera Bread, or Starbucks. When the nav system squawked at me, I turned on Dickerson Road at the Shell station. About a quarter mile past the end of the airport runway, I spotted a gaudy green-and-red sign that read simply, “Cavendish.”
The building was a large, flat-roofed cinderblock structure that stretched back off Dickerson Road for a hundred yards. The side of the building was lined with a long row of huge overhead doors. Several trailer trucks were being loaded at the doors.
The office section of Cavendish Company was an A-frame assemblage tacked onto cinderblocks in an effort to reflect the alpine theme of Gaylord’s buildings, adopted to make the town stand out from other northern Michigan resort communities. The shops and restaurants along Main Street did a better job of masquerading as chalets than the Cavendish building did.
I parked in the small lot at the front of the building, several spots down from Henri’s SUV. He slid the driver’s window down when I came up.
“Want me to come in?” he said.
“Sandy made an appointment for me. Let’s not scare them just yet.”
Henri nodded, and the window went back up.
I went through the double front doors into a large square room with a tile floor. On one side were four uncomfortable looking tubular chairs with orange seats; on the other side, an office-functional gray metal desk. The hum of the air conditioning tried unsuccessfully to blend with the raspy noise of the fluorescent lights.
“Hello,” said the woman at the desk. She was in her early twenties, with shoulder-length brown hair and soft eyes. “How can I help you?”
“Are you Sally Peck?” I said.
Her face lit up. “Yes, I am,” she said, emphatically and confidently.
“I’m Michael Russo. I have …”
“An appointment to see Mr. Cavendish,” she said.
“Right.”
Sally leaned forward a bit. “Are you really a private eye?”
I nodded. “I really am.”
“Could I see some ID?” She tried to sound serious, but her request came across as curiosity.
I pulled out my leather holder and showed her my license.
“Wow. Just like on TV.”
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33
Sally Peck picked up the receiver of her museum-piece desk telephone and punched one of the plastic buttons at the bottom. The button lit up. I didn’t think they still made phones like that.
“Your appointment is here, Mr. Cavendish,” she said, and put down the receiver. The button’s light went out. Clever.
“Would you have a seat, Mr. Russo?”
I moved toward the other side of the room. I had just figured out how to make the uncomfortable chair work when a door opened and out came a pear-shaped man in his mid-thirties, with an oval face, round eyes, and a narrow widow’s peak at the front of his receding hairline.
“Mr. Russo. Daniel Cavendish,” he said, extending his hand. His ill-fitting black suit needed a tailor, or he needed more time at the health club.
We shook hands.
“Come on in,” he said cheerfully, and went into his office. “Have a seat,” he said, closing the door behind me.
Cavendish’s office was a slightly upscale version of Sally Peck’s. It was bigger, but without windows or fluorescent lights. His desk was some type of heavy, dark wood. A matching conference table sat to one side. It was large enough for six upholstered chairs. A banker’s lamp, complete with green shade, sat at each end of the table.
I sat in an upholstered client chair in front of his desk. Cavendish leaned on the desk, laced his fingers together, and smiled.
“Well, Mr. Russo, I have to admit I’m curious what brings a private investigator all the way over from Petoskey.”
Cavendish seemed almost as eager to chat as Sally Peck.
“Your name came up during an investigation.”
“My name?”
“Well, not you, personally, but Cavendish Company.”
“Really? In Petoskey?”
I nodded. “Emmet County.”
“How so?”
“The driver of one of your company trucks may have witnessed a crime in Harbor Springs.”
His eyebrows came together, his head tilting slightly.
“One of our trucks? You sure?”
“An old Ford Ranger, red. Sound familiar?”
Cavendish nodded slowly. “Could be someone else’s truck. Why would you think it’s ours?”
“It’s registered with a vanity plate, RC 44.”
Cavendish sat back in his chair. His right hand moved up and lightly scratched the side of his face. He wasn’t smiling.
“It’s your truck, right?” I said.
He leaned over, picked up a phone receiver just like Sally Peck’s, and punched a button. It lit up, too.
“My office,” he said. He paused. “Yes, now.” Not angry, insistent.
“The Ranger is one of your trucks?” I said again.
Cavendish put his right elbow on the desk, hand up, the index finger pointed in the air.
“A moment.” Not angry, not insistent. Like he’d hit the pause button.
The moment lasted no more than fifteen seconds. The office door opened. I stood and turned toward the door. In came a man, not quite six feet, lean, with an angular face anchored by dark-rimmed glasses.
“Mr. Russo,” Daniel said, “this is Walter Cavendish, our Director of Marketing and Production.”
Walter moved across the room effortlessly and economically. His handshake was firm.
“Mr. Russo,” Walter said, in a voice both sharper and less amiable than his brother’s.
“Shall we move to the conference table?” Daniel said, gesturing to the side of the room.
“I’m fine right here,” Walter said. His single-breasted black blazer over a gray silk T-shirt seemed more suited for downtown big city than main street northern Michigan.
“Daniel?” Walter said. That’s all he said, all he needed to say. Daniel was president of Cavendish Company, but it was clear who was in charge.
“Mr. Russo is a private investigator from Petoskey,” Daniel said.
Walter pulled back the sides of his blazer and put his hands on his hips. He listened silently as his brother filled him in. He remained silent once Daniel was finished, waiting to see what I had to say. He was used to being offered information, not offering it.
I didn’t care, I wasn’t interested in playing that game.
“That was your company truck in Harbor Springs,” I said. It wasn’t a question.
“What crime are you talking about?” Walter said, ignoring my comment. “That you think one of our people witnessed.”
“Street crime,” I said. “Two people were attacked in the middle of the day. Downtown. It was a company truck.”
“One of ours?”
Daniel, the amiable front man of Cavendish Company, had become irrelevant. Walter had simply taken over, ignoring his brother, making no effort to include him.
“We got the plate,” I said. “RC 44. It is yours.”
Walter nodded. “And you think that means what?”
That was the first empty thing Walter had said. He was stalling. Sooner rather than later was always a good time to push.
“The vanity plate,” I said. “What’s it mean?”
“Our late father,” Walter said. “Ramsey Cavendish, ‘RC.’ He ordered the plate a long time ago.”
Walter shot his brother a quick glance, but I caught it. Walter’s first indication that Daniel was not being completely ignored.
“After dad passed, we kept it,” Walter said. “Seemed like a good idea.”
“What about the 44?” I said.
“I have no idea,” Walter said.
Another glance his brother’s way. The first one could have been nothing more than the brothers remembering their father. The second one? A mistake.
I turned toward Daniel.
“Did you ever hear your father mention the plate?”
“Beg pardon?”
He had to be listening. It was a reach, but I hoped to catch him off-guard.
“Did your father … ?”
Daniel hesitated, shoved his hands into his pants pockets. “No … don’t think so. No. I’m sure … no.”
He didn’t sound all that sure to me, but before I could invent another question, brother Walter stepped in.
“A license plate, Mr. Russo? We’re really quite busy this afternoon — that is, if you have nothing better to be curious about.”
He had me there: curiosity was all I had left. For now.
“Well, I appreciate your time, gentlemen,” I said. “I’ll find my way out.”
Walter got to the door first, opened it and said, “Have a good day.”
I waved good-bye to Sally Peck and went outside into the afternoon heat.
I cranked up the A/C for a faster cool-down as I pulled onto Dickerson Road.
I didn’t bother replaying my time with the brothers Cavendish, hoping to remember some nugget of conversation. This time, only one thought ran around and around in my head.
Why did Walter Cavendish lie?
34
“So,” Henri said. “You’re still alive. How’d it go?”
I told him.
“See you in the morning,” Henri said, and drove away.
I took the back way, south of the airport to Alba Road, avoiding the late-afternoon congestion in downtown Gaylord. Once on US 131 to Mancelona and Kalkaska, I had little choice but to join the train of vehicles for the ride home. But it gave me time to think.
Walter Cavendish lied, that much was clear. Even “why” seemed clear. He wanted to throw me off the track. Who picked the vanity plate? Just dad having a bit of fun. Why did the company keep his license plate? Well, it was dear-old dad’s, after all.
I didn’t buy it. Maybe Walter assumed his folksy explanations would satisfy me. It was a simple task to check the death records. If a company driver did witness a c
rime, Walter had to worry the police would eventually come calling. Likely he knew the local cops and thought he could take care of it.
The ride to Petoskey seemed longer than usual, probably because I was in a hurry. I took the stairs two-at-a-time. Sandy was gone for the day. I knew that I rummaged around her desk at my own peril, but Lenny’s book was there someplace. He’d sent her a pre-publication copy, one with “not for sale” slapped on the front cover, “uncorrected proofs” on the back.
Luckily, Corruption on Trial was hiding in plain sight under yesterday’s copy of the Post Dispatch. I sat in Sandy’s chair and scanned the email summaries she sent about the book. Helpful stuff, but I needed more detail. I opened the book and dug in.
It was right there in Chapter 18. Ramsey Cavendish died in prison, beaten to death in his jail cell. No suspects.
I leaned back, carefully put my feet on Sandy’s desk and kept reading.
Ramsey’s widow, Sylvia, and her boys, Daniel (age 10) and Walter (age 9), sold the family home on Chicago’s Gold Coast and moved to northern Michigan. Sylvia bought a less-than-successful manufacturing firm in Gaylord. They lived quiet lives, as she, and later her sons, built the Cavendish Company into a successful business well-positioned to take advantage of online sales during a time of a rapidly expanding global economy and its demand for industrial supplies.
All of which made for an interesting story of success in the wake of tragedy, but it didn’t answer my question. Why did Walter Cavendish lie? Ramsey Cavendish was long dead when somebody chose a vanity plate for the battered Ford truck.
I read on for a while, but learned nothing helpful. About the time I thought I should give up and head home, the office door opened.
“Hi,” AJ said, and closed the door.
It could have been an hour or a week since we’d been together. It didn’t matter, I always reacted the same way. My heart skipped a beat.
She hesitated, then crossed the room to sit opposite from me in one of the client chairs next to Sandy’s desk.
“Hi,” I said.
“I stopped at McLean & Eakin on my way home. Thought I’d see if you were still here.”
Deadline for Lenny Stern: A Michael Russo Mystery Page 16