“The next one won’t be as kind!” The voice seemed closer to the door. “I’m working, asshole. Leave me the fuck alone!”
“Annie?” asked Leonard.
We got silence for a reply. Then someone, inside, snapped off the latch.
Leonard turned the doorknob and gave it a shove. The door creaked slowly open and revealed a woman standing in an unlit hallway. She wore tan coveralls under a black welder’s apron. On her head was a welder’s helmet with the face shield turned up to reveal an angelic face. She wore a heavy gray gauntlet on her left hand and a large frame revolver on her right. Her eyes were dark watery pools.
“Why have you come here?” she asked.
“To see you, Annie-fannie,” said Leonard. He smiled and spread his arms.
It happened in a flash. She pitched the helmet aside, took maybe three steps, and leapt on Leonard—her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. Luckily for Leonard she was only about five feet tall and a shade over a hundred pounds—gear and pistol included. Leonard staggered back a step but kept his feet.
“I missed you,” she said, the only part I could make out. The rest was sobs. She settled her face into Leonard’s neck.
“You missed Dad’s funeral,” he said, patting her back.
“I was in Europe. I didn’t find out until I got back.” She wiped her face on the sleeve of her coveralls. “I called Mom. She said I had broken Dad’s heart and hung up.”
“After Dad died,” said Leonard, “I retired to be here for her. She’s moved out to the cottage. Sometimes she says mean things when she’s hurt or frightened.”
“I know,” said Anne. She snuggled her head back to Leonard’s neck and tightened her hug. She made a sob and retched out, “So do I.”
I left them, walked down the hall and turned right. I found myself in the well of a two-story studio. The west wall and roof were made of glass like a greenhouse. The room should have been an inferno, but a cool breeze off the lake was drawn in through a series of screens on the bottom row of windows and blown out through exhaust fans in the ceiling. The studio comprised fully half of the building and held a jumble of construction materials. In one corner a kiln and casting furnace glowed cherry red.
A gas welding rig with long, coiled hoses on a small cart sat parked at the base of a stone and metal spiral—a double helix—topped with a burst of bright metal balls that swayed on the ends of thin metal rods. Drawings cast about on the floor were titled, Reach for the Stars.
“I wrote you every couple of months,” said Leonard as he and Anne walked arm-in-arm into the studio, “but I always got them back unopened and marked ‘Return to Sender.’”
“I really don’t understand that,” said Anne.
“I called, but I got the houseman. He was always rude. He said you didn’t want to talk to anyone.”
“Brian?” she asked. “He is usually such a sweetheart.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “He is such a sweetie that he sicked a pack of dogs on us when we came to the gate today.”
“This is Mr. Hardin,” said Leonard. He gave her the card I had written Lambert’s telephone number on. “That’s his card.”
Anne set her pistol on a wooden crate that had been pressed into service as a table for a newspaper and a half-eaten Danish roll. She examined the front of my card and then the back.
“Scotty Lambert?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What does he want?”
“He’s not fifteen anymore. I think he wants to do lunch.”
“What if he’s a nutcase?”
“He owns a large manufacturing firm dealing in cutting-edge technology. His wife passed away a couple of years ago and he said that he just got to thinking about you. On the up side I can tell you that he, for one, hasn’t shot at me lately.”
Anne laughed. “No one bothers me while I’m working, and no one sees a work in progress. But since you brought Lenny, I’ll let you slide—this time.”
“That’s nice.”
“So you’re just going to tell him where I am?”
“No, ma’am. I give you his name and number, and if you want to talk to him it’s up to you to make the contact. I do need you to give me some little tidbit of information that only you and he would know so that he will feel assured that I contacted you.”
Anne made a mischievous face.
“It doesn’t have to be personal,” I said. “Something about school, maybe.”
“We were in the same physics lab. The professor didn’t like either one of us so he put us together. Scotty was like this computer geek and I was a fine arts major, so the professor thought we were wasting a bench.”
“He said that sometimes you met at the library or you had a burger together.”
“And that was it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Anne laughed. “Tell him, ‘Tacos—no onions.’ He’ll know you talked to me.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I have one more question—not about Mr. Lambert—if you don’t mind.”
“Sure.”
“The Dutchman.”
“You were in the main house?”
“Yeah,” I said, “we met Shelly, not very—”
“—Really? Shelly’s been gone for a while.”
“Out of town?”
Anne shrugged. “Wherever Shelly goes, she’s the real work of art.”
“What do you mean?”
Anne laughed and waved her hand at her face. “Takes a lot of paint,” she said. “A piece of work, the bard would say.”
“What happened to her voice?”
“Car accident.”
“Sorry to hear that. Tell me about The Dutchman.”
“That’s about Scotty.”
“How so?”
“You want to know how the ship captain appears?”
“Absolutely.”
“It was our physics project. There’s a photoelectric cell under the mainsail. When the light enters from the side it puts a positive charge on the paint pigment and causes the ghost to appear. It looks like a shadow but it’s not.”
“On brick?”
“It’s not brick. The wall behind the artwork is cast out of a ceramic mud that’s electrically conductive, even after it dries. Scotty invented it.”
A knock exploded onto the door. “Don’t shoot,” I said. “I think that’s the police.”
It was—a county sheriff’s deputy with a brown uniform and a Smokey Bear hat. He escorted us back to the gate where an ambulance, the county animal control truck, and two patrol cars showing red and blue rollers crowded around Leonard’s Humvee.
Hemmings sat in the back of the ambulance with his hand wrapped with an ice pack. His knife and gun had been laid out on the front deck of a patrol car.
Shelly stood in front of one of the deputies and made monotone threats and demands. The deputy stared benignly down at her. Lorna stood next to the cruiser and showed me a mean face over folded arms.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“You didn’t close the gate,” she said. “When the dogs finished the hors d’oeuvres, I had to climb on top of the truck to get away from them.”
“Why didn’t you just get inside the truck?”
“Canvas doors.”
“Oh,” I said. “Sorry we didn’t think to lock the gate.”
“It worked out. They’re going to charge Mr. Hemmings with ‘felonious assault by doggie.’ But they want to talk to Mr. Jones about Hemmings’s broken finger.”
Anne steamed up to Shelly. “Listen,” she said over a pointed finger, “unlike you, I have a family. Where do you get off returning my brother’s letters?” Shelly turned from the deputy. Anne added a sarcastic smile and the word, “Bitch.”
Shelly caught Anne with a roundhouse open-handed slap. Leonard wedged himself between Shelly and Anne.
The deputy smiled, and I saw him mouth the words, “Hot damn.” He grappled Shelly to the patrol car and bent her over the front de
ck. “You’re under arrest,” he said, reaching for his handcuffs.
5
LORNA KEMP DROPPED ME in the parking lot behind my office a little after nine. The sun hung low, leaving just a sliver of red-orange to filter through the trees. I shut her car door and she motored off with a wave and a toot.
My car, a nondescript dark sedan—all dash and no flash—had the parking lot to itself. I dug out the keys, opened the door, and found the steering wheel dangling by the ignition wires. A cement block nestled in the driver’s seat. The windshield lay sprinkled about on the dash, seats, and floor.
Lorna loitered at the stop sign, waiting for traffic to clear on Forty-fourth Street. I thought about running over to catch her before she pulled out, but on the way up from Whitmore Lake we had discussed her open cases and decided that one of them needed a morning surveillance. Better to let her get some rest. I could have the car towed and write up the Lambert/Jones case while I waited for a ride from home.
My office is in Kentwood, the first suburb south of Grand Rapids, in a row of brick three-story office buildings on Forty-fourth Street. I rent a corner office off the common area on the first floor, which is down a flight of steps from the main door—the office being sort of half-assed in the basement. “Peter A. Ladin Associates” was painted on the window, facing the common area—black letters shadowed in red.
I unlocked the door and turned on the lights. Marg, my late partner’s widow, had left a note taped to my office door. “I NEED YOUR EXPENSE REPORT!”
After Pete died, Marg sold me her half of the business for a dollar and accounts receivable. She stayed on to work as the secretary, typing my reports and invoices, and operates her own accounting business from the reception desk. The name painted on the window makes Marg feel at home.
I left her note on the door. If I took it down, it was going to be hard to deny that I’d seen it. I flopped into the chair at my desk and dialed up Wendy on the telephone.
“Silk City Surveys,” she said. She sounded chipper, but then, she didn’t know it was me yet.
“Hi, Sweets,” I said, “this is your one and only.” I rocked the chair back and stacked my heels on the corner of the desktop.
“If you’re not in jail, how come you’re not home?”
“How do you know I’m not in jail?”
“You didn’t call collect,” she said.
“I’m at the office. I found your client’s old flame.”
“Really. What do you think?”
“I think he’s not her type but she’s not married and—after today— maybe not attached. I gave her his number.”
“So you’re on your way home? Bring milk and bread.”
“I need a ride.”
Less than commiserate, she said, “Now what?”
“Fan club disabled my car again.”
“I’m watching something.”
“Enjoy. I gotta call the police and write the report on Scotty’s gal pal.”
“He doesn’t like ‘Scotty,’ and I’m watching the last part of a miniseries that’s on until eleven.”
“Give it an hour and send one of the boys. Scott gave me a message for you. He says that your operative in Wisconsin hasn’t been to work in a week.”
“Must be why I haven’t had any daily reports. I e-mailed the Dixon Agency this morning but so far, no answer. Don’t forget the milk and bread,” she said, and hung up.
I put my feet back on the floor and dialed up the Kentwood Police administrative number. Due to the lateness of the hour I got Kent County Dispatch.
The dispatcher said her name was Deputy Paxton—a voice like honeyed almond. I complained about my windshield while I wondered if she looked as sultry as she sounded. She said that if the damage was less than a hundred dollars I’d have to come in to make the report. I told her the car was “deadlined.” She said they’d take a report as soon as someone was available.
I put the phone back in the cradle and stirred the clutter on the top of my desk until a yellow pad surfaced. I scrawled “New file series—new client, Light and Energy Applications.”
By the time I’d scratched out the details of the Lambert/Jones file, I heard the front door open. I looked up at the video monitor that hung from the ceiling diagonally across from my desk and watched Gerald Van Huis, the Chief of Detectives from Kentwood, scan the office like Bo-Peep looking for her sheep.
“Back here, Jerry,” I called out, clipping a memo on the front of my report to cover Lorna’s time.
Detective Van Huis, six feet and some change and well over two hundred pounds, had a fair complexion and a full shock of sandy hair despite his five-plus decades.
“What are you, psychic now?” he said. He strolled into my office with his hands in the pants pockets of a black suit. He wore a white shirt with the collar unbuttoned, and his tie loose.
I pointed at the monitor. “Chip-cam in the smoke detector on the back wall of the front office.”
His face bloomed into a toothy smile. “Hey, Tex, what happened to your hoss?”
“Somebody fed it a cement hay bale,” I said, “but I sure am flattered by this kind of attention.”
“We have a jackknifed semi up on Broadmoor, and the patrol sergeant is taking a dump. I was on my way home, so I told them I’d take the call to spare everybody your usual bullshit.”
The left side of my credenza is a small refrigerator. I opened the door. “I got cola and orange. Sorry, no sarsaparilla in here, Kemo Sabe.”
“Orange. You doing a cowboy divorce case or did you take up community theater?”
“I have a Jewish Korean tailor,” I said, casually, as if that explained everything, and handed him the soda. I took out a cola for myself.
Van Huis tapped the top of the can twice and sat in the wing-back chair across from my desk. “And?”
“You had to be there.”
“I don’t want to hear it. If you shook this up I’m going to go put that cement block in your back seat.” He flinched as he opened the can and said, “So who’d you piss off today?”
I popped open my can. “I’d have to work up a list,” I said. “It’s been a long day.”
“So how are you going to get home?”
“I called my wife. She’s sending one of the boys.”
He reached into the breast pocket of his suit coat and dropped a pad of white raffle tickets on my desk. “My church is having a raffle. You live on the lake. We’re giving away a bass boat, and the dealer will make you a good deal on the trailer.”
I picked up the pad. He hadn’t sold any yet.
“Hole in the water impossible to fill with money,” I said. “Besides, I hate fish.”
“Tickets are a buck apiece. How many you want?”
“Five,” I said. Van Huis looked happy. I peeled off five tickets and started filling out the stubs. “You still driving that ratty minivan with the fake wood siding?”
“It’s got a windshield,” he said and took a slug of soda.
I finished the stubs and handed back the pad. I took a similar pad from my jacket. “My son’s football team is having a summer raffle for new equipment. The Chevy dealer donated a Silverado Suburban. It’s a couple years old, but the tires come with it.”
He laughed. “Hardin, you’re a pain in the ass,” he said. He took the pad, peeled out five tickets, and tore them off.
I asked, “At what point did you delude yourself into thinking that you weren’t going to buy the church raffle tickets yourself?”
He set the soda on my desk and leaned forward to fill out the stubs. “Some guys really sell these things.”
“Sure they do,” I said.
“One of the ushers already sold two hundred.”
“Does he fish or has he just got a gambling problem?”
“I think he fishes.”
I watched him fill out the stubs while I finished my soda. I crumpled my can and dropped it in the wastebasket at the end of my desk.
“Hey, there’s a de
posit,” he said.
“Not on those. I bought ’em down in Indiana when I went to get Wendy’s cigarettes.”
“Kay-ryst, Hardin! I come over here and you feed me bootleg soda?”
“You could always run me in.”
He rolled his eyes up to look at me directly. “No,” he said. “I’m waiting for something good.”
“You busted me for murder once.”
“That was a hummer,” he said and flipped the pad back in front of me as he clicked his pen and put it away. “But it had its moments.” He smiled.
Headlights flashed across the short window high on the back wall of my office.
“That’s probably my ride,” I said. Van Huis finished his soda and dropped the can into the wastebasket.
I locked up, and we went out to the lot. We found my son Ben leaning against the front of his brother’s Camaro with his arms folded and one heel racked on the bumper.
A month short of his seventeenth birthday, Ben stood six feet tall, was lean at the waist and wide at the shoulders. He wore a black denim jacket over white jeans and a black T-shirt. He had my brown eyes and—I told him—his mother’s hair. Far too long to suit me. Wendy liked it. When he was out with me he tied it in a ponytail and hid it under a baseball cap.
“I would have donated my left testicle to science to have a car like that when I was a teenager,” said Van Huis.
The Camaro was a black T-top with a four speed, Corvette rims and tires, and a sport suspension. Eye candy. Ben had turned off the ignition and Van Huis could not hear the part that I would have sacrificed significant appendages for—two-and-a-half-inch dual-exhaust pipes relieving a big block V-8 that loped like a three-legged dog until you cranked it on.
“So would I,” I said as I turned to look at Ben and told him, “and your brother would blow a gasket if he saw you sitting on it.”
Ben made an embarrassed smile that included a roll of his eyes. He stood up, hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans and walked over to look in my car. He had driven on a dawn-to-dusk “farm license” since he was fourteen. Working for local farmers, he’d piloted everything from harvesters to five-ton straight trucks. He proudly displayed his newly acquired “real driver’s license” to anyone who cared to look. But how Ben got out of the driveway in his brother’s car was a story I could hardly wait to hear.
Dying Embers Page 5