The Devil May Care

by David Housewright

  “I’ll sign for the loan,” Riley said. “I have plenty of collateral.”

  Brodin studied his daughter the way a parent does when he feels his authority is being challenged.

  “If that doesn’t satisfy your … bank, then I’ll make the loan myself,” she added.

  “You don’t understand,” Brodin said.

  “If that doesn’t work out, I’ll loan Mary Pat the money she needs,” I said.

  Riley spun to face me, a surprised expression on her freckled face. Brodin stared as if he were estimating my income, subtracting my overhead, and coming up with a balance in the red.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “My name’s McKenzie, and I have five million dollars that I can convert to cash in seventy-two hours.”

  “That fucking McKenzie,” Brodin muttered in reply. He glared at Riley as if he couldn’t believe that she would allow herself to be seen in public with such a disreputable character.

  “I take it you’ve heard of me,” I said.

  “My father-in-law hates your guts.”

  “Now you know why.”

  “This is all moot.” Brodin’s voice became indignant. “First, we must wait to hear what the insurance company has to say. Of course, Ms. Mulally, one way or another Minnetonka Community Bank will find a way to accommodate you.”

  Mary Pat reached out and grabbed his hand as if Brodin had just done her a favor.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “We must get inspectors in here to provide a detailed analysis of the damage…”

  “Yes.”

  “And, of course, reliable contractors to estimate the cost of repairs.”

  “Yes,” Mary Pat repeated. She stood. The expression on her face went from despair to cheerful just like that. It was as if she could see the future. “I know people. I’ll start making calls.”

  “I’ll speak to my people as well.”

  “What people?” Riley asked. “You’re president of the bank. You own the damn thing.”

  “Riley.” Brodin was unable or unwilling to disguise his anger. “You have no idea how things work.”

  He left the patio and walked briskly to his car. Maria watched him go. She looked as if she were wrestling with the question of whether she should stay or leave as well. Mary Pat provided the solution when she took the young woman’s arm.

  “We must ask the firemen if it’s okay to go inside now,” Mary Pat said. “There is much work to be done.”

  Before she left the patio, though, Mary Pat turned to me.

  “Why did you say what you did?” she asked. “We don’t even know each other.”

  “Partly to help you and partly to annoy Brodin,” I said. Which is pretty much the reason you’re assisting Riley, my inner voice reminded me. “Partly because a man all but accused me the other day of doing nothing with my money except buying toys to play with. This was my chance to be a philanthropist.”

  She reached out and touched my arm. “Thank you,” she said.

  The touch and words somehow closed my throat. I couldn’t speak. Instead, I nodded my reply and watched as Mary Pat and Maria left the patio and made their way to the fire truck.

  Damn, McKenzie, my inner voice said.

  “That was awfully kind of you,” Riley said.

  “I’m a helluva guy,” I told her, and for half a second, I actually believed it. “Besides, it showed me something, the way you stood up for your friend. It made me want to stand up for her, too.”

  “I’m a helluva girl.”

  You’re certainly an interesting girl, my inner voice said.

  I took Riley’s arm and gently led her to the railing, where we stood and looked out over Gideon Bay. There was a boat in the center of the bay just bobbing along.

  “Have you seen Navarre?” I asked. “Have you heard from him?”

  “No.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “A couple of hours. I came as soon as I heard.”

  “Navarre didn’t show?”

  “Why would he?”

  “I didn’t want to say anything in front of Mary Pat or the cops, but I think that’s why the fire was set. A lot of people believe Navarre owns Casa del Lago. For some reason he wants them to believe that. I believe the fire was set to draw him out of hiding. Think about it. If someone torched your place, wouldn’t you show up?”

  “Why, though? Who? The kid in the parking lot that Mary Pat mentioned?”

  I figured it was a good time to come clean, so I showed Riley the photos I took with my smartphone and told her what I had learned.

  “Mexican Mafia?” she said.

  “Not the actual Mexican Mafia. A street gang in West St. Paul.”

  “What has that to do with Juan Carlos? He’s not from Mexico. He’s from Spain. He’s only been in the U.S. for six months. How could he have anything to do with a gang that doesn’t even exist anymore?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know or you don’t want to tell me?”

  “I’ve told you everything.” The expression on her face suggested she didn’t believe me. “Have you told me everything you know?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Riley asked.

  “Mary Pat said it was a banker who told Juan Carlos that she was looking for a silent partner to invest in her restaurant. It wasn’t a banker. It was you.”

  “My father—”

  “It was you.”

  “Through my father. Juan Carlos said he was looking for business opportunities, and I knew that Mary Pat was looking for investors, so I had my father hook them up. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing. I’m just trying to put all the pieces together.”

  “Mary Pat is my friend.”

  “How did you two meet?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “She’s a decade older than you are.”

  “No, only six and a half years. Besides, what has that to do with anything? You’re worse than my family, prying into my life.”

  “Is that what I’m doing?”

  “What would you call it?”

  “Trying really hard to do what you asked me to do—find your boyfriend. You are a moody young lady, you know that?”

  She chuckled and said, “I’ve been called worse.”

  “By who?”

  “My family. Who else would have the nerve?”

  “Tell me about your family.”

  “You’re prying again.”

  “Tell me about your father.”

  “Look—we don’t get along, simple as that, okay?”

  “That was my impression. Why don’t you get along?”

  “Why, why, why—I don’t know. Because I’m a Muehlenhaus and he’s not. I mean—my father owns a bank. Lake Minnetonka Community. Well, you know that. It’s a small bank, caters mostly to the lake crowd. At least that’s where his biggest depositors come from. He wouldn’t have any depositors at all, though, if he hadn’t married into my family, and he knows it. I think he resents it.”

  “Your grandfather supports him?”

  “His name does. Without it, there would have been no organizing group, no state charter, no shareholders. As for money, I don’t think Grandpa has a dime in the bank himself.”

  “What about your mother?”

  “She doesn’t have any money in the bank, either, which shouldn’t come as a shock since she and my father separated when I was a child.”

  “Separated—not divorced?”

  “It’s complicated. When it comes to money, everything is complicated.”

  “What about Navarre? Does he have cash in your father’s bank?”

  “Quite a bit, I think.”

  “Yet your father claims Navarre is a con man who’s only after your money.”

  Riley twisted her head to look at me; it was almost as if she were surprised to see I was still standing there. Her full lips formed a tiny smile.

  “I’m beginnin
g to understand why my grandfather both likes and dislikes you so much,” she said. “You have a way of sneaking up on people.”

  “It’s a gift.”

  “You think my father is involved in Juan Carlos’s disappearance, don’t you?”

  “I think nothing of the sort. I’m just—”

  “Trying to put the pieces together. I get it now.”

  “Do you? I’m not so sure. See, I know why you came to me instead of involving the police when Navarre disappeared, and it wasn’t because you were afraid of scandal. It was because you were afraid that your family was responsible, that they got rid of him somehow. Your mother believes it, too. I don’t. Your grandmother and your grandfather hired a pretty good private investigator. They both want to find Navarre just as much as you do, although probably not for the same reasons.”

  “Is that what they told you? And you believed them? You’re not investigating, McKenzie. You’re taking sides.”

  “Oh, for—again, Riley? Again with the accusations?”

  “What are you doing talking to my mother? My grandparents?”

  “I didn’t go to them, they came to me. We had conversations I could have done without, too. Look, I did pick a side. You’re right about that. I picked yours. I’m trying to be your friend, but you make it so damn hard, honest to God.”

  Riley didn’t have anything to say to that. She turned toward the lake, and I did the same. The boat was still drifting in the middle of the bay. After a while, it got under way. A few moments later, it disappeared from view, and I flashed on the empty dock in front of Irene Rogers’s home, the one with electricity and fresh-water hookups.

  What a nitwit you are, my inner voice told me. How come you didn’t think of that before?

  “Riley?” I said aloud.

  “What?”

  “Does Navarre own a boat?”

  “Yes. A cabin cruiser. The Soñadora.”

  “Means ‘dreamer.’”

  “You speak Spanish.”

  “Enough for that. When was the last time you saw the boat?”

  “Friday night. We used it when we went to dinner at the club.”

  “Where is it now, I wonder?”

  EIGHT

  Riley assured me that Navarre’s boat had a comfortable sleeping compartment. She blushed when she said it, and for a moment I could imagine the two of them anchoring at night in one of the big bays until the morning sun. And all day long, too, for that matter.

  The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that the reason Navarre’s security system was down and his BMW was still parked in the garage was because when the time came to run for it, he went by water, not by land. He simply dashed out the back door without bothering to set the alarm, hopped in his boat, and disappeared onto the vast and sprawling lake. He was probably out there now.

  But where? Why was he hiding? From whom?

  One question at a time, my inner voice told me.

  Riley wasn’t particularly helpful. The more I pressed her for information, the more curt and condescending her replies became. She insisted that Navarre didn’t have any friends on the lake whose docks he could tie up to—because he’s been in Minnesota for such a short time, you see. I told her that both Mrs. Rogers and Mary Pat Mulally said he was very good at making friends. She all but accused me of leading a Spanish Inquisition. I couldn’t remember meeting anyone as defensive as she was.

  She did tell me where Navarre bought his boat, though. That was something at least.

  * * *

  McDonald’s Marina was located on a strip of land that separated Lake Tanager from Brown’s Bay in the upper northeast corner of Lake Minnetonka. I sat in the Audi and took it all in. Five piers and a chain of docks provided slips for at least 250 vessels, yet only half of them were filled. In fact, there seemed to be just as many boats resting side by side on wooden supports in a yard next to a massive warehouse as in the water, each of them shrink-wrapped in blue polyethylene film. They reminded me of toy boats still in their original packaging, assuming they were toys for giants. At the edge of the marina, a captain was trying to maneuver his cruiser into the waiting jaws of a huge boatlift and not making much progress. Apparently he wasn’t very good at driving backward.

  There were several buildings, all of them white. I walked to the building that looked most like an office while I adjusted the holster behind my right hip. I hadn’t seen anything at the marina that frightened me, yet the gun wasn’t doing me any good locked in the trunk. It was a 9 mm SIG Sauer P228. I had been a Beretta man most of my adult life. I had taken a SIG off of a disgruntled bartender in the tiny town of Krueger, Minnesota, a while back, though, and decided I liked it. When I got the holster the way I wanted, I hid it beneath my sports jacket. The sports jacket made me the best-dressed man in the marina.

  The owner was occupied, so I wandered around, looking at the boats moored at their slips until he was free. I used to have a 28-footer with an eight-and-a-half-foot beam—the largest boat you can pull on a trailer in Minnesota. As I stopped to examine a pristine cabin cruiser I wondered why I sold it.

  “The Amante,” a voice said. I turned to see a middle-aged man dressed in cargo shorts and a polo shirt. He was reading the name painted on the boat’s bow. “It means ‘lover.’ The previous owner, his wife named it. She said if a husband must have a mistress, it’s best that she be made of fiberglass.” He extended his hand. “I’m Jimmy. You were looking for me?”

  I shook his hand and introduced myself.

  “Are you in the market?” he asked. “We have some nice boats, new, used…”

  “Actually,” I said, “I wanted to ask about a boat called the Soñadora.”

  “I’m afraid you must have been reading one of our old flyers. I sold that boat seven, eight weeks ago. She was very similar to the Amante here. Thirty-eight feet LOA, thirty-six-inch draft, four-hundred-horsepower Volvo engine, three-hundred-gallon gas tank, sixty-four gallons of fresh water, sleeps five.”

  “How long could you keep a boat like that out on the lake?”

  “How long can you go without a hot shower?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You need shore power to run a hot water heater. Otherwise, it depends on your battery setup. With a good bank of storage batteries, and let’s say you’re frugal with your amp hours, running the refrigerator, microwave, blender, coffeemaker, TV, computer at the bare minimum, I’d say you might be able to keep this boat off the grid for three, four days. Five if you push it hard.”

  “How long would it take me to recharge the batteries?”

  “You could do it overnight.”

  “Where?”

  “Lots of places—Minnetonka Boat Club, Wayzata Marine, Howard’s Point, Rockvam Boat Yards, Blue Lagoon, Excel. There are private docks, too, depending on who you know. Listen, if you want to live on the hook for a few days, I can show you several boats besides this one that would be damn comfortable. You need to understand, though, the Lake Minnetonka Conservation District rules won’t allow you to use a watercraft as living quarters. You can’t actually live on the lake.”

  “But I can take a boat out for a few days at a time with no problem, right? The lake police won’t bother me.”

  McDonald’s smile was a bit askew, as if he weren’t sure whether I was naive or up to something.

  “It’s the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Department Water Patrol,” he said. “No, they won’t bother you. Plenty of people go camping on their boats. Just remember to make sure you mount a white light that’s visible from any direction between sunset and sunrise.”

  * * *

  I pulled up a map of Lake Minnetonka on my smartphone. It was so damn big with so many miles of unbroken shoreline and so many places for a man to conceal a boat, not to mention just anchoring in the middle of a bay or inlet somewhere, hiding in plain sight. I didn’t even know where to begin looking for Navarre, although I figured it might actually be easier to sneak up on him after dark when
I could concentrate my search on any white lights I saw flickering across the water. That would require a boat, though, and a pilot who knew the lake, because if I could get lost just trying to drive around it …

  ’Course, Navarre might also be moored in a slip at one of the many marinas, paying dockage fees for the day while he recharged his batteries and took on fresh water. It had been nearly a week since he took the Soñadora out, and Jimmy McDonald said five days was the maximum. I could check on each and every marina in turn. Grunt work, I knew, but that’s what private investigators do.

  You should apply for a license one of these days, my inner voice told me.

  Yeah, I’ll get right on that.

  What else?

  Would Navarre have the balls to return to Irene Rogers’s dock? How ’bout Club Versailles? They would accommodate him if Mrs. R said so. Would she say so? Would they even bother to ask her? I called Mrs. Rogers. There was no answer, so I left a message. I called Sarah Neamy. She assured me that the Soñadora was not currently tied up at one of the club’s slips.

  What else?

  Anne Rehmann. Rehmann Lake Place Real Estate. Did she have a dock with fresh water and electrical hookups? It seemed unlikely a real estate agent could afford it, given the lake’s exorbitant property values, although—taking prospects out on the water, I could see how that might be a powerful sales tool. Except she had been looking for Navarre, too. When I met her at Mrs. R’s house …

  Wait a minute. The first time I saw Anne, after she startled me, she asked what was I doing and I said I was looking for Juan Carlos and she said he wasn’t there. How could she have known that? She couldn’t have known that unless … Maybe Anne already knew where he was. Maybe Navarre was at her place. Maybe he sent her to get some of the clothes and toilet gear that he left behind.

  C’mon, McKenzie, my inner voice said.

  Maybe, I told myself. Think about it. It was Anne’s idea that Navarre occupy Mrs. R’s house in the first place—isn’t that what Mrs. R said? It’s possible they have a relationship.

  And wouldn’t that make Riley happy.

  I called. Anne’s voice mail said she would be out of the office until early in the afternoon. However, my call was important to her, and if I left a message, she would return it as soon as possible. I hung up and found Anne’s address on my GPS. Her office was in Deephaven. I could be there in twenty-one minutes if I skipped lunch.