Unidentified Woman #15

by David Housewright

A woman moved past Nina to the mouth of the garage. Despite the springlike weather, she was dressed in a black wool coat buttoned to her throat, black gloves that disappeared beneath her sleeves, black boots, and a black short-brimmed cloche hat with a red-ribbon hatband and side bow. She reminded me of a femme fatale from a 1930s gangster movie. It was difficult to make out her features even with the binoculars, yet her body language suggested there wasn’t a place anywhere on earth that she wouldn’t rather be than where she was.

  Kispert approached her. He locked his hands behind his back and rocked on the balls of his feet as if inspecting an ice sculpture at the St. Paul Winter Carnival. She put her hand in her pocket. He shook his head and spoke slowly. His words made her flinch. He walked off. The expression on his face gave me the impression that, like the woman, he wished he were somewhere else, too.

  The femme fatale looked around, saw the table piled with silk blouses, grabbed one in a gloved hand without bothering to check the size, and returned to Kispert. He took the blouse and folded it neatly, frowning all the while. She reached into her pocket and produced a white number-ten envelope. Kispert took the envelope and stuffed it into his own pocket. At the same time, he returned the blouse. She gripped it as if it were something she used to dust her knickknack shelves and walked away—walked as if she wanted to run but was afraid people would notice.

  The woman headed down the block to a gray car. She opened the door, tossed the blouse inside, and climbed in after it. From the angle where I was parked, it was impossible to make out the license plate—or the make and model of her vehicle, for that matter. Given the cookie-cutter appearance of automobiles these days, it could have been anything manufactured in the past decade, both foreign and domestic.

  I retrained the binoculars on the garage sale. Kispert had moved to the mouth of the driveway. Peter Troop joined him there. Kispert spoke; the security guard listened. Mitch and Craig had separated, and both were now assisting customers. I found Nina. She had drifted back into the garage.

  “All right, sweetie,” I said. “Time to go.”

  As if she had heard me, Nina started walking down the driveway. I could see the blue forget-me-not pinned to her lapel. She reached Mitch and said, “Send me an e-mail about your next sale. I’ll bring friends.”

  “You and your friends are always welcome,” Mitch said.

  It was because I was watching her that I didn’t see the car that drove up in a hurry until it filled the lenses of the binoculars.

  I heard gunshots—over the cell phone they sounded like the pop-pop-pop of someone playing with Bubble Wrap.

  The car drove off. The lenses cleared. I saw half the customers flinching and ducking at the unexpected noise. The other half turned their heads and looked around as if wondering what they had missed.

  Another car passed in a hurry, yet I didn’t follow that one either. Instead, I kept the binoculars focused on the driveway.

  Kispert was lying across a mound of snow at the entrance and looking in the direction the two cars had gone. He seemed to be fine.

  Troop was also down, sitting on the concrete apron, his hand gripping his thigh just above the knee.

  Nina was standing twenty yards behind him.

  Broccoli, my inner voice said.

  I left the Lexus in a hurry and started running toward the garage. At the same time, I reached for the SIG Sauer holstered beneath my zippered coat. My feet became tangled and I slipped on the ice. I fell, shoulder first, and skidded next to a parked car.

  I cursed and pushed myself to my knees.

  I didn’t realize I was still carrying the cell phone until I heard Nina’s voice.

  “What are you doing?” She might have been asking if I was putting extra peppers in my spaghetti sauce for all the emotion that she displayed.

  I looked up. Even from that distance I knew she was looking directly at me.

  “Are you all right?” she asked. “Seriously, what’s going on?”

  My answer was to brush the snow off and return to the Lexus, although I wasn’t happy about it. I retrieved the binoculars.

  Kispert was up now. He and Mitch were helping the security guard walk the length of parked cars until they reached a Honda Accord. They opened the door and helped him sit, his leg outstretched.

  Craig was speaking to his customers.

  “What was that?” someone asked.

  “I don’t know,” Craig said. “Kids with their car stereo up too loud, or maybe a backfire.”

  C’mon, my inner voice said. When was the last time you actually heard a car backfire? It’s become so rare it’s almost an urban legend now.

  “The guy was startled and slipped on the ice,” Craig added. “He’ll be all right.”

  Nina was looking directly at the Lexus when she said, “Huh.”

  Once I assured myself she was safe, I trained the binoculars on Craig. He moved along the parked vehicles until he reached the Honda. Mitch said something, and Craig hurried to a second car, popped the trunk, and retrieved a red and gray satchel. The soft-sided bag contained a wide array of emergency supplies including jumper cables, folding shovel, tools, tape, fuses, flares, flashlight, and survival blanket, plus a forty-five-piece first aid kit—I had carried one just like it in my dearly departed Audi. Craig gave the bag to his friend. Mitch wrapped the blanket around Troop’s shoulders and began ministering to his leg while Kispert looked on.

  Craig returned to the driveway to pacify his customers some more, although none of them seemed terribly concerned. The crowd was thinning out, however. He spoke to his assistants, and they quickly began packing up merchandise and collapsing tables.

  Mitch finished attending to the security guard. He patted his shoulder; Troop nodded in reply. Kispert slipped behind the steering wheel of the Honda and drove off, leaving Mitch standing in the middle of the street.

  Nina reached the Lexus, opened the passenger door, and slipped onto the seat.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “I’m fine. Are you? I saw you fall. What was that all about?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I heard a noise, I saw a man slip and fall, I saw people trying to help him up, and then I saw you running toward the driveway. Well, actually, I saw you tripping—what happened?”

  I started the car. Several white panel trucks had appeared. They stopped in front of the driveway. I drove around them.

  “McKenzie, what happened?”

  I explained.

  Nina closed her eyes and rested her head against the back of the seat.

  “Well, that was unexpected,” she said.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”

  “The man who was shot…”

  “He was working security for someone called the Boss. From what I saw, it looks like he’ll be okay.”

  “I was five feet from him when the shooting started.”

  “Actually, you were farther away than that.”

  Nina cocked her head as if I had ruined a perfectly good story. Neither of us spoke until we put a full mile behind us. Nina opened her eyes and grinned slightly.

  “At least I got some pearl earrings out of the deal,” she said. A block later, she asked, “Who was the other man, the one who dove into the snowdrift?”

  I explained.

  “For what it’s worth, you were wonderful,” I told her. “You were great. Stashing the bug in the sweaters so I could hear those guys, masterful.”

  “Do you think it was Fifteen in the car? Do you think she’s the one who shot Karl Olson? I hope she did. I mean—it would prove she’s alive. I’ve been worried ever since your gun showed up in Highland Park. I don’t want her to be a murderer. On the other hand…”

  Nina’s words pretty much captured the mixed emotions I was feeling, too, so I kept quiet.

  “Was the drive-byer trying to hit Kispert and the security guy, or just shooting randomly?” she asked.

  “Drive-byer?”

  “You know what
I mean.”

  “He might have been trying to scare everyone and Troop just got in the way.”

  “Yeah, well, mission accomplished because now I’m plenty scared. The gun wasn’t very loud.”

  “Probably something small.”

  “Like a .25 caliber Colt?”

  “Like a .25 caliber Colt.”

  “One of the handguns Fifteen stole.”

  “It might be unconnected to her. Rival criminals fighting over turf. Craig seemed concerned that someone might be moving in on the operation.”

  “I like that theory better than Fifteen shooting up the place.”

  “So do I. Unfortunately, she’s our primary suspect until we can find someone we like better.”

  “Speaking of suspects—McKenzie, buying the pearls just now, how big a crime is that?”

  “Gross misdemeanor punishable by ninety days in jail and/or a seven-hundred-dollar fine. ’Course, in your case, it’s two counts.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “Assuming the county prosecutor can prove you knew the merchandise was stolen when you bought it.”

  “Of course I knew—”

  I put an index finger to my lips. “Shhhhh.”

  “What about when I told Mitch I wanted a Japanese Akoya pearl necklace? How bad would it be if he actually stole one?”

  “Aiding and abetting felony theft, five years, ten thousand dollars.”

  Nina stared at me for a moment before resting her head back against the seat and closing her eyes again.

  “Will you visit me in prison?” she asked.

  “Every Wednesday between six and eight P.M.”

  * * *

  We were on Radio Drive heading north toward I-94 when I saw the flashing lights in my rearview mirror. The lights came from the grille of an unmarked police car. I might have said “Uh-oh” as I pulled to the side of the road.

  Nina turned her head to look.

  “Should I throw the earrings out the window?” she asked.

  “Why? Are they stolen?”

  Nina gave me a hard look as I stopped the car. She settled back in the seat and stared straight ahead.

  “This isn’t nearly as much fun as I thought it was going to be,” she said.

  A moment later, Detective Shipman walked up to the driver’s-side window. I powered it down.

  “Is something wrong, Officer?” I asked.

  “I don’t even know where to begin,” she said. “Hello, Nina.”

  Nina leaned forward and turned her head to see past me.

  “I’m Jean Shipman. We met at a barbecue last August.”

  “I remember,” Nina said. “You’re Bobby’s girl.”

  “There’s a Caribou coffeehouse a couple of blocks up. Meet me there. We have much to talk about.”

  “No,” Nina said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Ward 6 on Payne Avenue. Do you know it?”

  “Yes…”

  “Meet us there instead.”

  Shipman hesitated for a few beats before agreeing. I powered up the window as she returned to her vehicle. Nina held out her hand, and I turned my head to look at it. The hand was trembling.

  “The last thing I need right now is caffeine,” she said.

  * * *

  Ward 6 was a small yet highly regarded bar and restaurant located in a 130-year-old building in the Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood of St. Paul, about three minutes’ drive from police headquarters on Oak Street. Before Prohibition, it had been a “tied house,” one of those neighborhood taverns that was owned by Hamm’s Brewery and served only Hamm’s products, and it still boasted the original bar. None of that seemed to interest Nina, though. She was concerned only with the shot of amaretto that she threw down in one gulp and chased with one of the joint’s notorious adult milk shakes. I might have said something about the danger of drinking alcohol that tasted like candy, except the look in her eye told me it’d be best to keep my opinions to myself.

  I ordered a beer, and Shipman had black coffee. She seemed fascinated by Nina and kept watching her even while she spoke to me.

  “If you show me yours, I’ll show you mine,” she said.

  “You first.”

  “I was at the garage sale. I didn’t see you, but I saw Nina.”

  I had no doubt that Nina was listening intently, yet she did not react to the sound of her own name.

  “What else did you see?” I asked.

  “I saw the drive-by shooting. Rather, I should say, I heard it. I was looking down at the time. It took me a moment to figure out what happened. I pursued the car, only by then it had too much of a lead. I lost it.”

  “Butterfingers,” I said. “Did you at least get a license plate number?”

  Shipman shook her head.

  “By the time I returned to the scene, the circus was packed up and gone,” she said. “I sent a bulletin to the hospitals. What do you think the chances are that the shooting victim will seek treatment in an emergency room?”

  “From what I saw, his wound didn’t seem too serious.”

  “I’m working with a detective out of the Minneapolis PD named John Luby. Know him?”

  “I met him at the duplex the other day.”

  “We put together a kind of an informal task force. We think that my killing and his killing are connected, yet we have no evidence to prove it. It’ll become a formal joint operation once we find a way to tie them together. In the meantime, Luby’s working his side of the river and I’m working mine. So far he’s found nothing about Karl Olson that we don’t already know.”

  “What about Oliver Braun?”

  “Everyone we’ve talked to said he was a good kid, and I have no reason to doubt it. He worked as an intern for Merle Mattson—she’s a Ramsey County commissioner. The job satisfied a requirement for his political science degree, but it ended last November right after the election. The last time Mattson saw Oliver was when she gave him a glowing letter of recommendation. That was over three months ago. She wept when we told her about the kid.”

  “I don’t trust tears, especially from politicians.”

  “Neither do I, but hers were genuine.”

  “Girlfriends?”

  “His parents think Oliver might have been dating someone, but he had a habit of keeping his relationships to himself. Something about an unfortunate incident that occurred when he brought a date to a family wedding a couple of years ago.”

  “They can’t confirm that he was seeing El?”

  “No. We asked his friends about her. They don’t seem to know much either, except that they haven’t seen Elbers around since Christmas. Apparently they broke up—like your Deer River source suggested. Truth is, we’ve found nothing definitive to connect Elbers and Braun since Christmas except your gun and the telephone call. Which brings me to the flyers we dug out of the trash at the duplex. I’m guessing you found them, too, since you were at the garage sale in Woodbury as well as the one yesterday in Arden Hills. So, McKenzie, what do you know that I don’t?”

  “I think the garage sales are being conducted by a shoplifting and burglary ring,” I said.

  “I could have told you that. How are the kids living in the duplex connected? How is Elbers connected?”

  “Except for the flyers, I honestly don’t know.”

  “C’mon, McKenzie.”

  “I was told that El posted the names Craig and Mitch on her Facebook page. Mitch and Craig are the names of two of the people involved with the garage sales. I don’t know if that makes El their acquaintance, friend, customer, or colleague.”

  “What about Oliver Braun? Has his name ever popped up on Elbers’s page?”

  “Not since Christmas.”

  “What do you make of the drive-by?”

  “What do you make of it?”

  “Could be your girl looking for some payback. Someone threw her off the back of that damn truck. Maybe it was Mitch and Craig.”

  “Or it could be a rival gang.”
>
  “What makes you think so?”

  I couldn’t answer honestly without revealing that we had been conducting electronic surveillance. Probably Shipman wouldn’t have cared. On the other hand … Nina must have understood my predicament, because she jumped in without a moment’s hesitation.

  “I overheard them talking,” Nina said. She spoke without touching the mic still pinned to her lapel or even glancing at it—a mistake others might have made. “They also said something about getting out of the business while the getting’s good, so if you’re going to arrest them…”

  “I might do just that, or at least get Woodbury to do it for me since the sale was held outside of my jurisdiction. Craig and Mitch wouldn’t be the first to try to deal themselves out of the jackpot. I don’t suppose you know who they are or where I can find them?”

  I considered handing over the intel Smith had given me in the lobby of the condo two days earlier, yet kept it to myself.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Uh-huh. What about the time and location of the next garage sale?”

  “If I hear anything, I’ll let you know.”

  Shipman thought that was fair enough and said she’d be in touch. She left, leaving me to pick up the cost of her coffee. Nina watched her through the window. She didn’t speak until Shipman was driving away.

  “You didn’t tell her everything.”

  “She didn’t tell me everything either,” I said.

  “But why didn’t you tell Shipman about Kispert and the Boss and all the rest?”

  “I have a plan. She wouldn’t approve.”

  “It’s not because you don’t like her, is it? It’s not because you want to prove that you’re smarter than she is?”

  “Of course not. You have to understand, Shipman just wants to close her case. That’s fine. That’s her job. I’m willing to help, too. First, though, comes Fifteen. We’re trying to protect her, remember? At least until we know if she’s guiltless or not. That’s why we got involved in the first place.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Oh, and for the record—I am smarter than Shipman. If I was still in harness, I’d be Bobby’s partner, not her.”

  “As long as we have our priorities straight.”

  Nina ordered a second adult milk shake.