Shay O'Hanlon Caper 04 - Chip Off the Ice Block Murder

by Jessie Chandler

  With a dramatic flourish he flung himself against the back of the couch. “Now tell me what’s going on.”

  “I think Lisa’s a cop who’s after my dad because he killed some-

  one.”

  Coop blinked at me a couple of times, then leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Okay. Let’s take this from the top. What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “This morning, Lisa and I were making the rounds talking to Dad’s friends, like we’d talked about at the Lep last night. We started with Brian Eckhart at Sexworld.”

  Coop gave me a facetiously long face. “Too bad I had to miss that trip.”

  I might have believed him if I didn’t know Coop was somewhat OCD about cleanliness. The thought of stepping foot in Sexworld was about as appealing as hopping into a dumpster.

  I said, “The only thing we got out of Brian was half a name. Then we headed to St. Paul to chat with Mick Simon.” I was proud of myself for following the timeline instead of babbling mindlessly that my father was a cold-blooded killer. Well, considering the circumstances, he’d probably be considered a hot-blooded killer.

  Coop said, “Ah yes, the Vulc. How was he?”

  “No idea. He wasn’t at the Krewe warehouse. Was going to try him later on.” I looked at my watch. It felt like it should be about six in the evening when it actually was only about half past one in the afternoon.

  “Anyway, from there we went to see Roy Larson.”

  Coop leaned back again and crossed his ankles. “Oh, Roy Boy. What’s the old Litter Liege up to these days?”

  “Coconut-scented stuff.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “They were doing the ad shoot when Lisa and I got there. It included a couple cats who were none-too-happy to be starring in a Larson’s Hawaiian Super Clump Flush-Away Cat Litter commercial.

  “Anyway, Roy didn’t have much to say except that Dad was well on his way to a day-early New Year’s Eve celebration of his own. Oh, and that he and Mick seemed to be butting heads for some reason. But you know with Dad … he can be weird for no reason. Then we left and Eddy called, and the fireworks really started.”

  I dropped the chair into a sitting position and put both feet on the ground.

  Coop waited quietly.

  I rubbed a hand over my eyes, which felt as gritty as Coop’s had to after a sleepless, computer screen–filled night. “Dad called Eddy.”

  “That’s great.” Coop brightened and sat up straighter himself. “Where is he?”

  “Don’t know.” I filled him in on the facts as Eddy conveyed them. I said, “It gets worse. Dad’s gun was found frozen in the ice with Ice Cube Man.”

  Coop’s widened eyes met mine. “Oh no.”

  “Oh yes.” It felt that with every sentence I pounded one more nail into my father’s coffin. I fished around in my pocket for the Intent to Purchase letter and handed it to Coop. He unfolded and read it once, then twice. Scanned the attached business card, and slowly raised his head and met my eyes. He said, “Chuck Schuler. You think he’s Ice Cube Man?”

  “I just talked to JT. She said St. Paul ID’ed Ice Cube Man. It’s a guy by the name of Eugene Charles Shoemaker. Also known as Chuck Schuler.”

  “Oh, fuck.”

  “Tell me about it. Coop, I’ve always said my father wouldn’t ever really hurt anyone, but when he’s in one of his alcoholic fugue states, I honestly don’t know what he might be capable of.”

  Coop sat still, absorbing all of this. Finally he slapped his knees and stood. “Come on. Let’s see what we can dig up on Schuler and Subsidy Renovations.”

  He put his hand out and hauled me to my feet. “Step into the Den of Illicit Knowledge and I’ll put Bogey Too to work.” Coop recently created this thing he called a bot that could travel through cyberspace, sneak into places it wasn’t supposed to go, capture whatever information he told it to, and return with the cyber goods. Since it was almost always good at sniffing out whatever Coop was searching for, he named it Bogey Too, after my canine Bogey, the flunky bloodhound. I think Bogey Too’s success rate was a fair amount better than its flesh-and-blood namesake. Coop’s ability to hack just about anything without being caught was legendary in certain circles. If he and his abilities got into the wrong hands, boy, would trouble abound.

  The Den of Illicit Knowledge was actually an ex-dining room that ran almost half the length of the house. Years ago there must have been some memorable parties in the old joint.

  Room-darkening blinds filtered outside light. Two eight-foot tables pushed side-by-side lengthwise were littered with a vast array of electronic equipment, including hard drives, miles of wire, and three monitors. From this setup Coop worked his magic for his not-so-

  legitimate fun and for more orthodox and legal profit.

  An old metal and laminate dining room table with an extra leaf in the center sat in one corner of the room. This was where Coop and his fellow role-playing geeks amused themselves with Dungeons and Dragons when they weren’t all knee-deep in tournament play in Minnetonka’s Hands On Toy Company and Game Room. Coop’s newest addition to his role-playing repertoire was an online game called Runes of Magic. I’ve tried but failed to grasp the allure. But Coop enjoyed the complexity of those games, and I respected that.

  Coop plopped down in a rolling chair in front of the middle monitor and fired it up. “This guy’s name was Chuck Shultz, right?”

  “No. That’s the Peanuts guy, dope-on-a-rope. It’s Schuler.”

  “You passed the test. Thought we needed a little levity.”

  I dragged a chair over. I usually had no idea what Coop was doing, but it was fun to watch his fingers fly over the keyboard.

  He pulled up one of his custom search engines and typed the name into the query box and hit enter. Almost faster than Google returns came back, a substantial list of Chuck Schulers popped up. Coop added Minneapolis to the search string. Still way too many responses.

  “What did you say he was doing for a job?”

  “Real estate.”

  “Okay, let me try that.”

  This time we got a much smaller sample. An entry for “Chuck Schuler Services LLC” listed a business office in New Brighton, a metro suburb. I looked again at the Intent to Purchase and Schuler’s attached business card. The card listed Minneapolis but gave no street address. Coop jotted down the New Brighton address and went back to surfing.

  He moved the mouse pointer here and there. Between that and the left clicking, my brain started to gnaw on thoughts about my dad. Where was he? Was he truly hurt? What was he doing? What had he done?

  My instinct when a loved one was in trouble was to react. Often without rational, conscious thought and without the benefit of common sense. It wasn’t a good combination. When people who get really pissed say they see red, believe them; they do. This feeling, this thing that seemed to come over me when I saw my own personal shade of red had a name, thanks to some friends from a very long time ago. The Tenacious Protector.

  Initially, when this fiasco started with my dad on New Year’s Eve, I’d been furious. I’d gone through far too many of these episodes with him to cut him any slack. Add in the time of year and his monetary needs, and I was livid. Now, in light of these recent turns of events, the fury was slowly ebbing and the Protector in me was stirring, pushing against my carefully constructed façade.

  “Shay!”

  I jumped, jerked back to Coop’s Den of Illicit Knowledge. My pal was staring at me as if I’d grown two additional heads and was drooling.

  “Sorry,” I said. “What?”

  Coop’s expression reflected both fondness and exasperation. “I told you it looks like Chuckie baby started freelancing his talents, and has seriously flawed workplace ethics.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He worked for one company that fired him for selling pr
oprietary information to the highest bidder. He was busted because he made the mistake of trying to resell the stuff to the his own company’s ex-CEO. Another place kicked him to the proverbial curb because he had employed some outside help to achieve sales goals through intimidation that involved violence against animals and kids.”

  “Big winner there.” I rubbed my eyes. “Let’s go see what kind of office a dead man keeps.”

  I merged onto 35W as Coop said, “So who else do you think might want to see the last of Chilly Chuck?”

  “Good question,” I said. “You know those questionable workplace ethics?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe someone he screwed over might be pissed off, maybe enough to do him. Or maybe a jilted ex-lover?”

  Coop cleared his throat. “I hate to bring this up, but I’m not sure why a jilted ex-lover would have your dad’s handgun and freeze it with a dead guy.”

  That did make most of my percolating theories shut down fast. “I hate it when you’re right.”

  “How would your dad have managed to turn him into a human ice cube, anyway?”

  Good question. Realistically? “Whether my dad’s drunk or not, we both know he’s very strong. All the years working on the river … Moving a dead body?” I thought about that. “Yeah, he could do it. But turning dead body into an ice cube, that’s the real question.”

  “Yeah. Let’s assume he had to have help. More to the point, who would help your dad freeze-dry Chuck?”

  I didn’t answer as we exited off the freeway onto County Road D and made a left at the top of the ramp. A strip mall sat off on the left. On the other side of the road were a number of single-story office buildings. I found the right place without too much fuss.

  The walls of the building were mirrored glass so shiny that they reflected the image of the Escape. I killed the engine. “Mick Simon coordinates ice blocks for the winter carnival. He’d be a natural choice. And Limpy Dick is eccentric enough to be a willing participant.”

  Coop asked, “Do Mick and Limpy Dick know each other?”

  “Probably. They were both playing poker Friday night. But wait.” I thought about it some more. “Neither of them would incriminate my dad by leaving his gun with the body. I’m sure of that. And why would they take Dad to some cabin and dump him like that?”

  “Maybe no one helped your dad get there. Maybe he drove himself.”

  I groaned. “Why the hell can’t he remember?”

  “I don’t know,” Coop said softly. “Let’s go inside and see if we can find out anything that’ll help.”

  I followed Coop through a glass door labeled C.S. Services LLC in white vinyl letters. The lobby was tiny. A lone desk stood beside an open door, presumably Schuler’s office. There wasn’t a chair to be had, nor a coat rack, or even a potted plant. The place was about as clean as a freshly bathed baby’s bottom.

  Behind the desk, a mostly unremarkable middle-aged woman sat filing her nails. The glaring exception to her unremarkability hovered at chest level. Extending straight out from her body was a humongous pair of knockers that appeared to float without restraint beneath her paisley sweater. Dolly Parton would be proud.

  She glanced up with a suspicious expression at our entrance, but her hand continued to slide the file rhythmically back and forth, not missing a beat. “Help you?”

  The woman was either ready to be done with her job or she didn’t care that her boss was toes up in the morgue downtown.

  I said, “We’re wondering if you could tell us a little about Chuck Schuler.”

  The sawing continued unabated. Before I could come up with something to startle her out of her strangely compelling task, she said in a sing-song voice, “Poor, poor Mr. Schuler.” Her tone was much more venomous than the words themselves would indicate, and she ground her file against her nails a little harder. Apparently she did have some emotion over the demise of her boss after all.

  I sucked in a breath and opened my mouth to speak, but not before Nails said, “I swear, that man has more visitors after he’s dead than he ever did before he turned into a goddamn ice cube.”

  She dropped the nail file. It clattered loudly against the desktop. She lumbered to her feet and said, “All right. Who sent you and how much does he owe this time?”

  In a heartbeat, she shed bored secretary like a snakeskin and replaced it with vindictive bitch. Nails attempted to frown and instead gave us a half-squint. Her brows were frozen in a state of perpetual astonishment. I wondered what kind of a bargain basement deal she got on the Botox job.

  Both Coop and I took a casual, cautious half-step away from the desk. I was ready to keep on going right out the door, but the desire to see what else Nails had to say overrode my instinct to get the hell out of there. I was curious to find out if old Chuckie had his hand in a few cookie jars that now wanted their cookies back in a bad way.

  So how could I play on that and maximize my informational return? “Mr. Schuler was involved in some business dealings with one of the parties I represent.”

  That sounded good.

  Nails returned her attention to her fingers and studied them from one side and then the other. The only thing that could’ve made the moment even more surreal and sadly cliché would have been if she were chomping on a piece of gum and sporadically cracking it between her molars.

  She sighed dramatically and muttered under her breath, “Yup. Another one.”

  Coop said, “What?”

  “You’re the fourth set of people coming in who want payment or to talk about Mr. Schuler’s business. What is it this time?”

  The woman made the sign of the cross and opened a desk drawer. For a spilt second I wondered if she was going to pull a gun. She fumbled around and withdrew a saltshaker. She shook it a few times over her left shoulder, returned it the to the drawer, sat, and resumed her nail filing.

  One more try. I said, “Mr. Schuler was working for Subsidy Renovations—”

  “NO,” the woman said forcefully, startling me. “He didn’t work for them, they contracted with him. There’s a difference, you know.”

  Wow. I exchanged a glance with Coop, who gave me the universal, wide-eyed, she’s-off-her-rocker look.

  “Okay,” I said slowly. “He was contracted by Subsidy Renovations.”

  “Yes.” The woman rolled her eyes dramatically. “That’s what I said.” She blew on a nail and moved on to another. I wondered if she was going to have any fingernails at all after this.

  Coop said, “If he was contracted by Subsidy, did he have a contact there he worked with?”

  The woman wrinkled her nose. “You’re all the same. You want to know where your money is. Well, I can tell you in no uncertain terms that I don’t have it.”

  I opened my mouth once again, but she continued before I could utter a sound. “I know all of you think Chuck took your money and ran. That it’s not him who was frozen in that”—she sniffed, and her lower lip trembled, whether in rage or grief, I didn’t know—“that ice. I’m sure he took real good care of your precious money.” The sarcasm was rampant. “Just like I’m sure that from beyond the grave he’s going to pay me for working all of last month. And this month, too, for that matter.” Nails whipped out that saltshaker and did her thing again. There was going to be no worry about ice buildup on this floor.

  So Chuckie-boy was taking investment money and not applying it where the investors expected it to go. And he wasn’t paying his help. The facts weren’t stirring much sympathy from me, but I felt bad the secretary was going to get screwed along with everyone else Chuck swindled. Maybe she wanted him dead as badly as the other people he’d screwed over. Add another name to the list.

  I said, “The person I represent didn’t invest any money and we’re not here trying to squeeze you for any.”

  She sniffed none-too-delicately, and attacked another fing
er.

  “So,” Coop said, “who was Mr. Schuler’s point person for Subsidy?”

  “Norman Howard. He’s—”

  Before she could go on, the door opened and three people sporting black leathers, scruffy faces, and scary-looking facial tattoos stomped inside. Coop and I faded back as the leader marched up to the receptionist’s desk. He planted two hairy fists on the desktop and rumbled, “Heard Schuler was terminated. We need to talk about the money of ours the bastard’s got.”

  He cleared his throat, sucked up some snot, and hocked a sizeable loogie across the desk. It splattered wetly against the wall and started oozing down.

  I tried not to gag and backed toward the door. On the other side of the two hench-wingmen, Coop was making his retreat too. Part of me felt guilty about leaving Nails to the motorcycle sharks, but she could probably use her fingernail file to stab them if they tried anything.

  I was starving. We headed for Boston Market off County Road C and Snelling since the restaurant could satisfy both my carnivorous cravings and Coop’s vegetarian requirements.

  “So what you want to do after we chow?” Coop asked.

  “We know that someone named Norman Howard contracted—” I shot a questioning glance at Coop, who shrugged. “Let’s call it contracted … He made some sort of arrangements with Chuck Schuler to go after the Leprechaun?”

  “That’s what it sounds like. Chuckie was apparently a go-between without any real stake. Of course, his buy-in was probably a fee of some kind that I’ll bet he used to replace money that he’d”—Coop paused and did the quote thing in the air with his fingers—“borrowed for some project that wasn’t anywhere near on the up and up.”

  “Our circle of who’d like Schuler dead is growing.” I hit the blinker and turned into the parking lot.

  We exited the Escape and I headed in to use the restroom while Coop sucked down a cancer stick. I could not wait for him to get his ass in gear and try the quitting thing again.