“Yeah. He and I ran this place. He worked…” She gestured at one of the desks. “That’s his desk. He wasn’t at it much. He was more of a field guy. A sales guy.” She sighed silently, eyes fixed on his desk. “And he was a good friend, too. One of the best guys.”
“You were in business together how long?” Thor asked, sparkling at her.
“Three years. I’d just gotten out of school with my drafting degree. I was thinking about getting a job, but then I was talking to Tim at a barbeque, and he was looking to start up a construction firm specializing in kitchen remodels, and I was big into kitchens—I’d written a few articles on kitchen functionality for credit at school—and we dreamed up this idea, of this niche. So many people just need their kitchen done, and larger construction firms sometimes subcontract to us.”
“And you’re buying out his share?”
“Yeah. For sure. I don’t want to run the firm with Nancy, and she’s not into it. We set it up like that, Tim and me, to have the option to buy in the eventuality…you know. To not force each other to work with our families in the event of one of our deaths.”
Zeus grunted in a way that meant he wasn’t on board with her story. Or he’d noticed something. What?
“So you’ll run it yourself?” Thor asked.
“No. I’m looking for another Tim. I could never do his job.”
Thor pressed her on the work details, and she gave us the down-low. Apparently, she ran the back end of the business—the office, the drafting, the budgeting, estimating, and contracts. Tim was in the field; he oversaw the work and handled the sales.
“Tim was amazing. Guys in the trades loved him. He would know all the right questions. He knew all the construction people. All the plumbers. I’d get us some sales from my own network, mostly friends and friends of friends, but I’m not a salesperson. We have a few jobs in the pipeline, but…” She shook her head. “I don’t love taking out a loan to pay Nancy off, but there’s no chance in hell she can do what Tim did, even if she wanted, though I think she’s pretty happy taking the money.”
I heard a strain of bitterness in her voice; I wondered whether my guys did.
“Did he have any enemies?” Zeus asked.
Rhonda furrowed her pretty brow. “Tim?”
“Yeah.”
“Why? What are you thinking?”
Zeus tapped his clipboard. “One of the questions on the list.”
“People loved him. His marriage wasn’t so good. That’s not a secret, but I wouldn’t call Nancy his enemy. She just…”
Thor cocked his head, focusing all of his sparkly attention on her. Oh, I knew all about being on the other side of that look, feeling mysteriously eager to tell him anything. “They weren’t getting along?”
“Nancy and him weren’t right for each other. I know she loved him in her own way—she’s a good person, but…they weren’t intellectually compatible, I’d say.”
Sweet Rhonda Broom. She didn’t want to say Nancy Zietlow was stupid.
“Was their marriage actually in trouble?” I asked.
“There was some thought she was having an affair—a rumor. Tim knew about the rumor—some friend of his told him, which was so insensitive. The man was fighting cancer, you know? So that was extremely demoralizing to Tim. It made it hard to focus on his battle. But he didn’t want to stop working. Honestly, I know pancreatic cancer is nasty, but he was turning the corner. He’d just gotten a really positive blood report. He was determined to fight the cancer and get their marriage back on track, and suddenly he gets sick from that cheese?” She sighed, this time not so silently. “He just didn’t have the immune system left to fight it.”
“We know he ate the cheese that made him ill at home, but did you witness him eating cheese here ever?”
“Are you kidding? I would kick it out of his hand if I did. A man in his condition isn’t supposed to be eating soft cheeses. He showed me the list. I mean, I love the Sunny Sisters, but that cheese—they sold bad cheese. It’s really sad. Those girls have had a bad time, but they shouldn’t have put people’s lives at risk to make their bottom line. I’m so off of their shit.” She set down the pen. “I know you’re investigating this from their side, but they really do need to answer for what they did.”
“What were the affair rumors?” I asked, trying hard to stifle my anger.
She shrugged. “I’m not the person people gossiped to about it. I wouldn’t think it was very entertaining or interesting, being that I was his friend. And his friend who told him didn’t even know who it was. Just a bunch of accounts of Nancy Zietlow and some guy out at a pub out near Moose Lake. He wasn’t sure whether to believe it.”
“Did you believe it?”
She cast her eyes downward. “Not for me to say. They just shouldn’t have been married, though. That’s the bottom line.”
Zeus set a card on her desk. “Thanks. We just needed the lay of the land. Appreciate it.”
She smiling, looking from Thor to Zeus to Odin and finally to me. “Insurance investigators.”
My face blazed. “Thank you.” I led my guys out the door and away from pretty Rhonda.
“What’s your impression?” Odin asked as we drove away. “You know her.”
“Insurance investigators,” I mimicked. “So that’s where you’re keeping the hot guys. Three tens and a dorky two—interesting!”
“You think that’s what she meant?”
“Um, yes.”
“But you don’t think she was hitting on us.”
“No.”
“I shouldn’t think so,” Odin said.
“Why, because she’s married?”
“No, because she was in love with Tim Zietlow,” Odin said.
I nearly spit out my soda. “What?”
“Now that you mention it, I could see that,” Thor said.
“Um…he’s ten years older than her, and they’re both married.”
“That’s why you didn’t see it, goddess,” Odin said.
“We have a new suspect—her husband,” Zeus said.
“Back up—I’m still on Rhonda being in love with Tim Zietlow.”
“Couldn’t you see how she’d been crying? And she hated Nancy,” Odin said.
“She was nice about Nancy,” I said.
“She doesn’t want people knowing how she felt,” Odin said. “She probably didn’t even want Tim to notice.”
“But maybe her husband noticed,” Zeus added. “Who’s her husband?”
“Wouldn’t I like to know,” I said. “And how would her husband force Tim Zietlow to eat the cheese that Nancy bought?”
“Why would a woman buy a food that could kill her husband in the first place?” Zeus asked. “That’s what confuses me.”
“Wow,” I said. “Nancy Zietlow.”
“Yup.”
Suddenly we had two suspects.
We stopped next at Nancy’s home. She came to the door dressed in black velour sweats and a turtleneck so slim-fitting you could see the entire outline of her bra strap. Her short blonde hair was sticking up all over, as if she’d been rubbing it a lot. She apologized for how she looked. She wasn’t expecting visitors today. Hibernation mode, she called it.
Zeus explained our mission to her while Thor was all sparkly and friendly and apologetic, and that got us invited into her kitchen. “Sorry about the mess. I’m trying to sort things out.” Her voice went down a notch, and I thought she might cry. “It’s just a mess.” She shook her head as if to shake out all the mess. “I don’t know what new I can tell you.”
“We’re following the trail of the cheese, so to speak,” Thor said. “Just following it. Protocol.”
She sunk into a chair, looking almost trance-like. “He was sick, but we didn’t expect…” She paused there, because of course that wasn’t our question.
“In your own words, how did it happen?” Zeus asked.
“Well, he got violently ill. He was suddenly going downhill fast after seeming better.
I thought it was the chemo drugs. The hospital had me do a food diary for him because he wasn’t that with it—he was really in and out. I filled it out best I could. He was on a limited diet. He barely ate anything. He definitely wasn’t supposed to eat soft cheeses. They asked me about it specifically, and at first I thought he hadn’t eaten any such thing, but then I checked the refrigerator and saw the brie had been unwrapped, and I guess he must’ve nibbled on it. He loved that brie. He knew better, though. I don’t know…”
“So you kept brie in the house?” Thor asked innocently. “Kind of a guilty pleasure?”
“God, no. I didn’t buy it once the doctor sent him home with that list of forbidden foods.” She pulled a sheet of paper off the refrigerator door. I thought it was actually the list until she handed it to Odin and I peered over his shoulder: Fundraiser for St. Guadalupe’s.
“Every year I make the baked brie balls for this fundraiser. It’s an exotic appetizer party for our sister church in Central America. It’s what I always bring, and I was on the list to bring them this year. I deep-fry them, actually, but…” She waved her hand mysteriously at the list.
“Did you buy the cheese yourself?”
She fixed Thor with a haunted look. “I’ve been all over this with the FDA.”
“We have to go over the same ground,” Thor said sympathetically. He looked innocent, very nearly cherubic. Thor and my guys were like Venus flytraps. So pretty and deadly. “I know it’s a pain.”
“I bought it myself along with the other ingredients for the brie balls.”
“Do you have the receipt?” Odin asked.
“No. But I paid cash. And the FDA took the package. I gave them the package and what cheese was left.”
“What else was he not supposed to eat?” Thor asked.
She looked interested. “Do you think it might not have been the cheese?”
“Just getting a lay of the land.”
“He had this whole list.” She took another list down and handed it over. “He stuck to mostly stews and breads. Oatmeal. That sort of thing. I can send you what I sent the FDA. They made us do the food diary. I can send you that.”
“That would be helpful.”
“Is there some question it wasn’t the cheese? Or…some other question?”
“Just doing verification.”
Thor regarded her with a pleasant expression, but I knew he was looking at her hard. “What did you think about Rhonda? His business partner?”
Nancy shrugged. “We never quite got along. She’s a bit…better than everyone. Not exactly very nice. Why? Is there some…question about Rhonda?”
Thor gave a small French shrug. “Oh, just getting a sense of things.”
We had her email us her food diary, and we headed out.
“Interesting,” Zeus said as we swung into the car.
“Very fucking-g interesting.”
I shut my door and buckled up. “What?”
Zeus pulled out and smiled at me in the rearview mirror. Taunting. “You want to know what we found interesting?”
“Fuck you,” I said. “Don’t tell me, fine. How about if I tell you what I found interesting? What I noticed that you didn’t notice?”
“You think you noticed something we didn’t notice?”
“I do.”
Thor grinned at me. It was rare that I noticed things they didn’t. “Tell us.”
“I don’t want to bruise your elite spy egos.”
He tickled me, and I screamed. “Fuck! Stop it!”
“Tell us!”
“She lied,” I said proudly, pushing Thor off me.
Zeus turned back, impressed. “How so?”
“I think she knew we were coming. I believe she was expecting us.”
“How do you know, goddess?”
“Did you know?” I asked. “That she was expecting somebody?”
“I wondered,” Zeus said.
“I knew for sure.” Thor snaked a hand around my belly at my most ticklish part, and I screamed. “Okay! She was wearing a bra under that turtleneck. If you’re at home in hibernation mode not expecting visitors, you’re not wearing a bra, and you’re not wearing that turtleneck, either. Especially if you have small boobs like her. No fucking way. And she came to the door too fast to have changed clothes when we knocked.”
Thor smiled at me, impressed. “That’s good, Ice.”
“Very good,” Zeus said. “I agree, I had the distinct sense she was expecting us. But I didn’t have that physical clue. A bra?”
“Most women don’t wear bras when they’re alone.”
“You don’t wear a bra when you’re hanging around with us.”
I swung my legs onto his lap. “Half the time I don’t wear a shirt.”
“I told you somebody was following us,” Odin said. “Somebody’s watching us, and it’s not dead deers and fucking-g cupids. Somebody warned her.”
Zeus nodded, way more open to the idea now.
Were we being followed?
“Look, not that I’m not agreeing with you, Odin, that maybe somebody is following us and tipped her off,” I said, “but you guys have to know something about a small town—there are eyes everywhere. We’re strangers, so we are being watched. And people call each other. We’re making the rounds that the FDA made. Warren told everyone at the grocery store all about our conversation after we left—I guarantee it. Anybody there could’ve called Nancy and let her know. People probably know where we’re staying now.” Along with tales of our sexual proclivities, no doubt.
“Here’s what else I know,” Zeus said. “She felt really open to the idea of foul play. It’s guilty party 101 that you’re overly interested in tracking the thinking of people like us. Did you notice how she asked about it twice? If she was one hundred percent convinced it was the cheese, she wouldn’t have gone there so eagerly with her questions. She wouldn’t have made that leap so quickly and so often. She asked too many of the wrong kinds of questions.” He turned onto the highway.
I sat up, feeling excited and happy. What if she was having an affair? What if it was a murder? Probably not the best attitude about the possibility that an accidental death was really murder. But if that was the case, it got my sisters off the hook.
“If it’s a murder, it’s a sophisticated one,” Thor said.
“Too sophisticated for Nancy Zietlow?” Zeus asked.
“She did wear the telltale bra,” I said.
“Good job on that,” Zeus said.
I swelled with pride. I used to love Nancy Drew, and I was feeling a little like Nancy Drew, to tell the truth, though my guys were definitely a far cry from Ned. They were more like Ned 2.0. Or maybe more like Ned 900.5.
“I’d like to hear more about this affair rumor,” Thor said. “I’d like to find out who the guy was that Nancy was supposedly seeing, and I’d like to talk to Rhonda’s husband, too. He benefitted from Tim’s death. He got rid of his competition.”
“Fuck,” I said. “So you’re looking at Nancy in cahoots with whoever she was having an affair with. Or Rhonda’s husband. Or the Millers.”
“Tell me, Ice, would all these people know about this church potluck thing?” Thor asked. “Would they all know who brings what to it?”
“Very likely,” I said. “People get known for their hors d’oeuvres, and they’re expected to bring them around. My mom had this stuffed mushroom hors d’oeuvre she always made, and it would be weird if she didn’t bring it to a specific event. And the potluck thing was a big event.”
“So. Four theories,” Odin said.
“Wait. Four?” I said.
“Where are you getting four?” Zeus said. “I only see three.”
“Somebody else benefitted from this poisoning incident,” Odin growled. “You’re not looking at the bigger picture.”
“Besides Nancy Zietlow and her lover, the Millers, and whoever Rhonda married?” I asked. “You’re not back to the rival cheesemaker, are you?”
Odin sta
red out the window. He seemed so hard all the time, but he was so sensitive. He picked up on things others didn’t.
Finally he spoke. One word. “Denko.”
A chill shot through me.
I caught Zeus’s expression in the rearview mirror. He looked thoughtful. Was he actually considering this?
Denko had made it his life’s mission to pursue us, to kill us. He was part of ZOX, the covert organization Zeus and Odin used to work for as agents. Way back when, Odin and Zeus had been sent to kill Thor for nothing more than being a witness to atrocities overseas and trying to blow the whistle. When Zeus and Odin met Thor and came to see what had happened, they decided Thor was right to blow the whistle, and that ZOX was wrong for wanting him dead.
So ZOX put a price on all three of their heads.
They’d been fugitives ever since. Denko was the one carrying out that mission to kill my guys. Unlike Zeus and Odin, Denko didn’t have scruples about the people he was ordered to kill.
Robbing banks was a kind of fuck-you to ZOX. Reckless but effective, and definitely one of the more lucrative career paths for fugitives with undercover operative skills.
It was professional with Denko, but it was also personal these days. Tying up a guy and having sex in front of him will definitely make things personal.
Nobody was saying anything for way too long.
“That would be kind of elaborate,” I said. “To set this whole thing up. Right?”
“Not too elaborate,” Zeus said. “We’re really exposed here. We’ve exposed ourselves, made ourselves vulnerable. That benefits Denko.”
“Let’s assume Denko knows who I am…” It was a scary thought, but that’s where this was going. “How would he find out about anything in Baylortown? Not to mention the thrown-out cheese?”
“Maybe he triggered it,” Zeus said. “We still don’t know how that cooler got unplugged. The assumption is that somebody kicked it out. What if the plug was pulled to trigger the disposal of the cheese?”
“Fuck,” I whisper. “But here’s the thing I keep going back to—it’s not a sure thing that cheese makes people ill, just from it warming up. It’s a lot to go through for no guarantee of success, unless the person doesn’t know about food safety.”
The Hard Way: Taken Hostage by Kinky Bank Robbers 5 Page 9