by Matt Hilton
Hayley wrenched to get free, but Tess’s grasp tightened again. The girl faced her. ‘I don’t want to speak with her. Why should I? She’s nothing but a goddamn liar.’
Tess nodded along with Hayley, a ploy to get her onside. ‘Like I said, it’s down to you whether or not you get in touch. I’ve been hired to find you and pass on Jessie’s request, that’s all. Your mom only wants to explain things to you regarding your adoption in the hope that you can reconcile your differences.’
‘OK, you’ve done what you had to. Now get your hands off me.’
This time when Hayley wrenched her arm, Tess released it. From the car, Pinky videoed the meeting on Tess’s cellphone as she’d requested: proof of locating Hayley to show Jessie Cameron. Jessie might expect more from her investigator for her money. ‘You really should give your mom a chance, Hayley. She only wants the best for you. She regrets not telling you the whole truth before but she was only trying to protect you.’
‘No, she lied because it was easier for her.’
‘Just give your mom a call. Straighten things out. It can’t hurt you, right?’
‘I don’t want to speak to her. I don’t want to see her. Tell her from me to back off and leave me the hell alone.’
‘I spoke with your father earlier and—’
‘What? How, he’s …’ Hayley faltered.
‘He’s back in Portland. Take that information how you see fit. But he’d also like to speak with you, to explain—’
‘Why the fuck he ran off and left me with a suicidal whacko? Yeah, like I want to hear his fucking excuses!’
With that Hayley broke away, rushing for the side entrance. Jacob scuttled past Tess, making plaintive gestures of apology with his open hands. Tess scowled at him. It wasn’t for her to advise him he was on the wrong path, or that he’d lost a good thing when he dumped Stacey in favor of this petulant child. Hopefully Po had put a word or two of wisdom in his ear while she’d been otherwise engaged.
Tess had completed her task. She’d located Hayley, personally spoken to her and passed on Jessie’s request, and as a result ensured that she was fit and well. She’d always cautioned Jessie that she could not force Hayley into complying with her request, or that she could physically compel the girl to return home. Her side of the bargain had been delivered, and yet a sense of failure stung her. She watched Jacob disappear around the building, calling out to Hayley to wait for him. Tess felt she should follow, perhaps try again to convince Hayley to call her mom.
‘Job’s done,’ Po announced from behind her shoulder.
She appraised him. He looked back, his turquoise eyes seemingly peering into her mind. ‘You’re unhappy with the way things went?’ he asked.
‘Is it so obvious, Po?’
‘You did what you were hired to do. What’s to be unhappy about?’
She didn’t reply. He knew that, for her, the perfect end to the day would’ve been coordinating a happy reunion between mother and daughter. Well it wasn’t going to happen.
‘C’mon, let’s get outta this darn rain,’ he suggested.
Tess looked up. Maddie’s window shutters remained resolutely closed. ‘Maybe I should go up and try again.’
‘That girl’s dug her heels in deeper than a tick. You’ll only be wastin’ your time and breath, Tess, with nothin’ more to show for it at the end. Guarantee ya; you’ll only feel the worse for it. C’mon, you’ve delivered Jessie’s request, best we can do now is get on down the road and let her know Hayley’s safe and sound.’
From the confines of the Mustang Pinky waggled her cellphone at her. ‘I’ve got all the proof you need on here, pretty Tess. I’m a veritable Spielberg, me.’
She gave Pinky a brief smile of acknowledgement, but her mind was on Po’s words. ‘Is she though?’ she asked. ‘After what happened to Maddie’s dad, are any of them safe and sound?’
‘That’s not for you to concern yourself with. C’mon, let’s go. We’ve aways to drive and I’d prefer if we were off the road before this storm really hits.’
Unlike Portland, Bangor was a good twenty miles inland, so was more protected from the storms that roared in off the North Atlantic to lash the coast. Judging by the charcoal grey of the eastern sky, which was lit occasionally by jagged lightning bolts, it wouldn’t be spared the fury of the incoming weather front though. The drive home could prove hair-raising if they didn’t depart soon. Tess hurried for the car, every second saved was a second they didn’t have to spend at the mercy of the coming storm. She clambered inside behind Po’s seat and then he slid in. He started the engine.
‘Who’re these bozos?’ he wondered.
Tess twisted around to check.
Parked on Broad Street, a panel van blocked their passage over the railway lines. From the driver’s position a mixed-race woman stared back at Tess. The woman’s hair was styled in tight cornrows, and elaborate silver earrings decorated with feathers hung almost to her shoulders. Beyond her a man strained to see the occupants of the Mustang. He had a shaved head, countered by a full beard and moustache. His styling was fashionable, but his didn’t appear the result of a trend, the dome of his head was puckered white, his temples darker, a sign he’d inherited male pattern baldness. As she’d found that day, Tess was again returning the stares of persons unknown to her.
The van idled parallel to the crossing. It stopped Po from reversing onto the road. The bearded guy leaned further across so he could see more of the Mustang. He was reading Po’s license plate. He snapped his gaze up and sneered at Tess, apparently unimpressed.
‘Want me to go ask what they want?’ Pinky offered.
Inside the car there was a tangible buzz of energy: it smelled of testosterone to Tess.
‘Let’s just give it a moment longer,’ she suggested.
Her words heralded a decision by those in the van. The woman pulled away from the railway crossing and headed along to where Broad Street merged with Front Street, where the van continued along the riverside drive. It was doubtful it would be the last they’d see of it.
‘What do you say?’ Tess asked. ‘Those were the guys that Mr Toner mistook us for?’
Po said, ‘I guess we won’t be leavin’ Bangor any time soon, huh?’
SIXTEEN
‘Nicolas Villere?’ Dominick grunted, unimpressed. ‘He sounds like some kinda Euro-trash faggot to me.’
Temperance had stopped the van at the furthest reaches of a public parking lot, on park ground alongside the Presumpscot River. There were riverside trails and views downstream towards a sprawling casino hotel that boasted its own harness racetrack, and a famous Paul Bunyan statue. On nicer days, the park would be the domain of young families, dog walkers and fitness enthusiasts, but in the teeming rain they had it to themselves. As soon as she’d stopped the van she’d gone for her cellphone.
Kelly Ambrose boasted to Mike Toner that her reach was long, and she’d eyes and ears everywhere. It was an exaggeration for effect, but that wasn’t to say she didn’t have certain resources her subordinates could pull on when necessary. Temperance rang Kelly’s contact in the DMV who ran the Mustang’s tags through the system. The car came back as owned by Villere, the owner’s address given as an autoshop in Portland, Maine. It was enough detail to get going with. She threw his name through a web search engine.
‘Maybe you shouldn’t take him lightly, Dom,’ Temperance cautioned. Villere’s name had come back attached to various news reports over the past few years. He’d been partly instrumental in stopping a cartel assassin and on another occasion a serial killer, and other stories hinted at his involvement in solving other high-stakes criminal cases alongside his employer, private investigator, Teresa Grey.
‘She’s the blonde that gave us the stink-eye back there?’ Dom asked.
‘We can assume it was her.’
‘What about the nigger?’
Temperance snapped a look of sheer hatred on him. ‘Are you for fucking real, Dom? You still use that horrible word
around me?’
He shrugged. ‘Why not? I have to be true to myself, right? Besides, it goes to prove I see you in a different way than I do others.’
‘If you tell me you don’t see my color no more, I swear to God I’ll—’
‘Chill out, girl. I still see your color, and it ain’t black. You’re mulatto, right, your daddy was white?’
‘No, you son of a bitch, my mother’s rapist was a fucking whip cracker like you!’
Dom stared at her coolly as he scratched his bearded chin. Her teeth were clenched, eyes bolting from their sockets. Her right hand crept to her side.
‘Draw that knife, Tempe, and you’d better be prepared to use it,’ he warned.
His words took the steam out of her. Her fingers withdrew from the blade she kept sheathed at her hip. ‘One of these days you’re going to go too far,’ she said.
‘Thought you’d be used to me by now. You’re getting too sensitive for your own good, Temperance.’
‘Just think about what you’re going to say before you open your mouth in future. We might not like it, but we have to work together, and it needn’t be unpleasant the whole time.’
‘I quite enjoy our times together. Mind you’ – he aimed a lascivious wink and a nod at her long legs – ‘I prefer to watch you leave.’
He’d turned from racism in favor of sexism. Temperance shook her head in frustration. Trying to change Dom was an exercise in futility. She concentrated on searching for details of Teresa Grey on her phone. Cross-breezes buffeted the van, and the rain was a constant drumroll on its shell.
‘What’ve you got?’ Dom prompted after a moment’s pause.
‘She used to be a cop. Sergeant with the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Department before being injured in the line of duty. Since then she’s been making a living poking around in other people’s business.’ Temperance’s eyes widened a fraction more. ‘Villere’s not the only one we should worry about. Remember a few years ago when Albert Sower’s outfit was broken, and his brother Hector was killed? That was down to Grey.’
Until a few years earlier the Sower siblings’ name had been synonymous with organized crime in Maine. Dom being a latecomer to the state hadn’t a clue about them, but the gravitas Temperance gave them hinted they’d been hot shits before meeting Teresa Grey and her sidekick. He said, ‘Do I look worried?’
‘What interest has a private investigator got with Mike Toner’s daughter?’ Temperance prompted. ‘He was warned what’d happen if he called the cops. You don’t think Toner disobeyed his instructions and called in help?’
‘You had to clean up his piss. Do you really think he’s gonna disobey?’
‘His daughter must’ve called them then?’
‘You have to think about the timescale, Temperance. Do you really believe that during his drive over from Rockland, Toner telephoned Madison, he told her everything that happened and she called in the cavalry from Portland? They wouldn’t have made it here already. It doesn’t add up.’
It irked admitting that Dom was right. ‘So they must be here over some unrelated matter. Do you think they got wind of Madison’s scheme the way that Blake and Kelly did?’
‘Beats me,’ he said. Drunk one night in a Rockland bar, Mike Toner had mentioned to another drinker that his days hauling lobster pots was coming to an end, that he’d soon be rolling in cash through a scheme his daughter had thought up. The drinker was in debt to Blake and Kelly Ambrose. Thinking he’d earn himself some leniency from Blake and Kelly’s ‘debt collectors’ he’d pointed them at Toner as a sure-fire source of income. ‘You saw that other car, right? Some old model Chrysler. Looked to me as if they’d blocked it in the way we did with them. Maybe their business is with whoever the car belongs to.’
‘There’s only Madison living in the apartment block just now. Has to be her car.’
‘On the money she’s making? If she’s splashed out on some new wheels it won’t be on a shit heap like that.’
‘Maybe she’s being careful and not advertising the fact she’s suddenly earning a packet.’
‘Speculation’s getting us nowhere. Let’s do another drive-by; if it’s all clear we’ll go visit Toner like we were told.’
‘You want to do this while there’s a PI sniffing around?’
‘I sure as hell don’t want to be out in this storm all night. Let’s get this done, Temperance. If Grey or Villere get in our way, I’ve got it covered.’ He touched his holstered gun for emphasis.
After another brief check of her phone screen, Temperance shut it down and started the van. She cut a rapid turn, and headed back towards Madison’s apartment building. By then the wind was roaring out of the east. Leaves stripped from the riverside trees made a green and gold blizzard, while airborne trash added flashes of different colors. Otherwise everything was grey or silvered by the rain. Lightning cut jagged streaks on the far side of the Presumpscot. Though she was unhappy about Dom’s plan, she was in agreement with the part about getting out of the storm.
It was a minute’s drive back to Madison’s place. Temperance slowed the van as they drew adjacent with the railway crossing, but didn’t stop. The Mustang was gone, but the Chrysler was where they’d last seen it. ‘Make a note of those tags,’ she told Dom. ‘I want to know who might be inside there before we go in.’
She drove until sheltered beneath the underpass, where she again rang Kelly Ambrose’s DMV contact. Dom called out the license plate number when prompted, and then she waited a moment until the details returned.
‘You sure about that?’ she asked the woman on the other end of the line. She listened again. ‘All right, then. If that’s what it says, I’ll take your word for it. Your discretion about this is appreciated.’ Temperance ended the call and looked across at Dom. ‘Interesting. The Chrysler threw up a red flag just now. Keeper details come back to a Jacob Doyle, a kid from Standish, but hear this, Herbert Wetherby, a sixty-eight-year-old retiree from Wiscasset, holds the insurance details. You know what that means, right?’
Dom grunted in comprehension.
‘One of Madison’s disgruntled customers has come calling,’ he said, ‘or the stupid bitch has used her system to save her boyfriend Jacob a few bucks. Either way, it’s a problem we’ll have to sort or we’ll be collecting fifty percent of fucking zero.’
SEVENTEEN
Tess stood buffeted by the wind, soaked through, hair whipping across her face, regretting her plan. There was no shelter from the storm on the exposed roof of Maddie’s apartment building. She waited, leaning with her ear against the roof access door – the same one she’d noted earlier when Po checked it was bolted from within. She’d considered calling the local police to warn them of possible impending trouble, but hadn’t. What could she tell them? With no firm facts concerning the nature of the ‘possible’ trouble the police response would be marginal at best, and could quite possibly cause further problems for the Toners down the line. It was apparent that those in the van were connected to the people that Toner was fearful of. Tess had no timescale to go on. The van might return within minutes or hours, but she was confident it’d be back and she wanted to know why. Po was of a similar opinion, while Pinky was only happy to be out in the field with them once again … or he was earlier. Now he looked miserable.
Pinky hunched behind her, rain battering on his shoulders and washing over his screwed features. Ordinarily he’d be large enough for Tess to shelter behind, but the whipping gusts had a way of finding egress to every nook and cranny, delivering payloads of raindrops equally on her as on Pinky. She glanced at him, saw him blow frothy water from between his lips. He shivered constantly, moving his feet so that his limbs didn’t lock up. ‘Welcome to the glorious side of being a gumshoe,’ she whispered.
He flashed her a grin of supreme irony. Then leaned close so she could hear. ‘Nicolas warned me there’d be good times, but also when I’d be verging on hypothermia and bursting for a leak. I guess this is one of those latter times, me.�
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Tess nodded in shared desperation. Her bladder was also threatening to explode; she should have made do with drinking her coffee and not downed Po’s too. ‘At least you can turn your back and relieve yourself,’ she pointed out. ‘I don’t have that luxury.’
‘Uh, no, pretty Tess. Don’t you know the definition of getting your own back, you? That’s right: it’s pissing into the wind.’
She grunted in mirth. Pinky’s immature humor could occasionally be trying but there were times, like now, when he lifted her spirits. Above them the wind roared and without warning lightning streaked a ragged fork through the boiling clouds. Tess huddled in anticipation of what was coming. The roar of wind was drowned beneath the tremendous rumble of thunder. As a child she used to count the seconds between the crack of lightning and the boom of thunder that followed, to determine if the storm was nearing or moving away. In the last few minutes she’d swear that the storm had remained static almost overhead to add to her misery. She cringed as the tumult faded, knowing that it would be followed in no time at all. Thunder and lightning didn’t usually frighten her but exposed on top of the building they were in real peril of being fried. If that damn van didn’t arrive soon she’d call off her plan.
‘I hope Nicolas is dry and warm,’ Pinky said without conviction.
Po was below them in the building, though where he’d hidden was unknown to them. There were few options that Tess had noticed on the way up the stairwell. Thankfully, Maddie hadn’t learned from their earlier incursion of the building, neglecting again to lock the entrance door: maybe it remained open in order for Jacob to take his smoking breaks. She wondered if Po had gotten sequestered somewhere he too could feed his nicotine habit. Her thoughts did him an injustice. Wherever he was, he’d be by her side the instant she needed him.