Shadow Girl

by Gerry Schmitt

  Tell us how you really feel, Afton thought to herself.

  “Where’s the money now?” Sunny asked.

  “It’s safe,” Afton said. “It’s being held at First Federal.”

  Sunny’s jaw jutted out. “You know that’s my money.”

  “Well, it certainly may well be,” Max said. “But that’s an issue for your attorneys to sort out with the bank or your estate or whatever.”

  “Of course,” Sunny said. “But you’re telling me you stopped her?”

  “Yes, we did,” Max said.

  “How did you . . . Oh. You had her followed?”

  “That’s right,” Afton said.

  “Thank you,” Sunny said. She touched a hand to her chest. “I am so grateful for that.”

  Of course you are, Afton thought. She’d come to realize that rich people, seriously wealthy people, felt actual physical pain whenever they were forced to part with money.

  “There’s something else we need to discuss,” Max said.

  Sunny looked anxious again. “What is it? More problems with Fan Ling?”

  Max glanced at Afton. “Tell her.”

  “This concerns your daughter,” Afton said.

  “My daughter?”

  “Your daughter spent last evening at her boyfriend’s house,” Afton said, putting a little flint into her voice. “A man named Lester Snell. You might know him as a dirtbag who lives in a duplex over in the Frogtown neighborhood.”

  “What?” Sunny looked stunned all over again. She shook her head hard, her long gold earrings battering at her neck. “No, that’s impossible. Terrell doesn’t see that man anymore.”

  “We were there,” Afton said. “We talked to them.”

  “Bring her in here and ask her,” Max said.

  “She isn’t here,” Sunny said. “She went out last night and hasn’t returned home yet.”

  “I’m confused,” Afton said. “Terrell seemed quite content being with Mr. Snell. So why wouldn’t you think she was spending time at his house?”

  Sunny’s hands fluttered. “It’s complicated.”

  “Because . . . ?” Afton prompted.

  Sunny’s face went through a series of contortions. “My husband paid that horrible man to stay away from Terrell,” she blurted out.

  “He bribed him?” Max said.

  Sunny dropped her head into her hands and said in a muffled voice, “This is the exact thing Leland worried about. That something would happen to him and Terrell and . . . that person . . . would cash in on some of the inheritance.”

  “Excuse me,” Afton said. This all seemed slightly complicated to her. “So your husband didn’t like Terrell’s boyfriend?”

  “Didn’t like isn’t strong enough,” Sunny said. “When Terrell started seeing him, Leland had the man investigated. He has a record, you know.”

  “We know that,” Max said. “We are the Minneapolis Police, you realize.”

  “Yes, well . . .”

  “You say your daughter’s not home yet,” Afton said. “Have you tried calling her?”

  “I have, but Terrell’s not answering her phone.”

  Max lifted an eyebrow. He figured Terrell was either still getting stoned or sleeping it off.

  “Do you want us to have the Saint Paul police check on her? On them?” Afton asked.

  “No,” Sunny said. She rubbed her eyes and her shoulders sagged. She suddenly looked as if she’d aged ten years. “I’m sure she’ll turn up eventually.”

  40

  THE noonday sun was burning a hole through the clouds and finally warming the day to a tolerable fifty degrees. Inside the old casket factory, Mom Chao Cherry’s reinforcements had arrived and were setting up camp. The three men, who’d just endured a thirty-six-hour plane ride in cramped coach seats, didn’t seem to mind that the place was dark and dank and infested with scuttling rodents. They stowed their gear beneath the cots that Hack and Narong had brought in for them, chatted in Thai with Narong, and generally took it easy.

  These were Mom Chao Cherry’s own men, recruited from Klong Toei, Bangkok’s most notorious slum, and they’d done her bidding many times before. This trip, though tiring, was also exciting for them. A new country, new sights, a new opportunity to earn money.

  Hack was ready to run out to the nearest Burger King and bring in a mess of food and drinks, but Narong stopped him. Instead, Narong and the three men hooked up a hotplate to a car battery, boiled a pot of water, and cooked up a batch of noodles.

  Mom Chao Cherry, who’d been camped out in a room upstairs, came down to greet the men. They clustered around her, happy to see her and hear what she had to say. She was, besides being the boss lady, a benefactor of sorts. Working for her, dirty though the jobs might have been, had lifted them out of poverty.

  She spoke to them in rapid Thai, thanking them for coming, telling them that she needed them for some very important work. They would have to help her move some merchandise to a place called Michigan, she said. Maybe a ten- or eleven-hour journey. They would ride in a truck armed with weapons. All this, she told them, would happen tomorrow night, so they should rest up from their trip and be ready.

  All the men nodded agreeably, then hunkered around the hotplate, talking and finishing their noodles. After a while they broke out some ya-ba—pink meth tablets that smelled a little like cotton candy—and smoked for a while, laughing and telling jokes.

  They got a good high cranking before they settled back in their bunks and fell asleep.

  • • •

  NOW we must be concerned about our important meeting tonight,” Mom Chao Cherry told Hack and Narong. “In two hours I must meet with my buyers from Detroit.”

  Hack lifted a finger. “Problem, ma’am. We don’t exactly have the stuff in hand yet.”

  She gazed at him through half-lidded eyes. “But you will obtain my merchandise tomorrow, yes?” she said. “You told me everything was in order, every detail carefully worked out.”

  “Yeah, I did,” Hack said. “And I meant it.” He scratched his head as if deep in thought. “But don’t you want to leave a little wiggle room?”

  “No wiggle, no room,” Mom Chao Cherry said. “Now. I think we will not arrive in your automobile. We must have something more comfortable. More suitable.”

  “You want me to call a cab?” Hack asked. Their meeting was to take place at a fancy hotel in the town of Stillwater, right on the banks of the Saint Croix River, some thirty miles away. So a cab ride would cost a pretty penny. On the other hand, he wasn’t the one footing the bill.

  Mom Chao Cherry smiled. “A limousine would be best.”

  Hack bobbed his head. “Consider it done.” He walked outside onto the loading dock, checked his phone directory, and found the number for a limo company he’d used before for some other clients.

  “Mr. Hack,” Narong said behind him.

  Hack spun around. “Yeah? What’s up?”

  “The woman,” Narong said. “The woman who chased me . . .”

  Hack smiled. “I got that covered, kid. You know that news story they did on Channel Seven? When the cops found the two bodies?”

  “Yes?” Narong sounded unsure.

  “I called that news reporter up, Portia somebody, and told her I had some information for her. Details that police chick was withholding from her. Know what the news lady said?”

  Narong shook his head.

  “She said, ‘Oh, you mean Afton Tangler?’ And I said, ‘Was that the chick that was running away from you?’ And she said, ‘Yeah.’”

  Narong stared at him.

  “And then I said, ‘Thank you very much’ and hung up.”

  “You got her name,” Narong said.

  “Better than that, buddy. I know where she lives.” He put an arm around Narong’s shoulders. “Hey, you can trust old Hack to come through for you, right?”

  • • •

  THE meeting was held in the Lumber Baron Room at the Tamarack Hotel in downtown Stillwater. Mom
Chao Cherry sat at the head of the table dressed in a tasteful black Chanel jacket and slacks. Hack and Narong flanked her on either side. They’d ordered pots of jasmine and Darjeeling tea and Narong did the honors, pouring small cups of steaming hot tea for everyone and then sitting back down.

  The drug buyers were a strange pair. A Caucasian man in a white suit with bad, bumpy skin, and his partner, a dark-haired, dark-complexioned man who could have been Pakistani, Italian, or even Hispanic. Whatever, he seemed to be the big wheel in the operation, though no names were exchanged.

  “You remind me of that famous writer,” Hack told the man in the white suit.

  The guy curled a lip. “You mean Tom Wolfe?”

  Hack shook his head. “I was thinking more of Mark Twain.”

  Mom Chao Cherry took a cigarette from a gold case, lit it, and smoked it using a tiny, jeweled holder that looked like a modified roach clip. When everyone had settled down and all eyes were on her, she said, “I have procured the merchandise.”

  “Took you long enough,” the dark-haired guy said.

  “There were unforeseen circumstances,” she said. “That has all been taken care of.”

  “You will deliver the shipment directly to us?” white suit asked.

  Mom Chao Cherry nodded serenely, then waved a hand at Hack and then Narong. “These men will arrive with my merchandise Monday morning.”

  “Don’t you mean my merchandise?” the dark-haired guy said.

  “It only becomes yours when you make the payment,” Mom Chao Cherry said, her eyes filling with a predatory glow. “Once that takes place, our business will be concluded.”

  “Right,” white suit said. “Got it.” He pulled out a wallet and withdrew a blank white card, scribbled a hasty note on it. “Here’s the address. It’s a warehouse on the edge of Detroit. The number below is an emergency phone number.” He slid the card down the table. “If your people do not arrive at this address Monday morning—noon at the very latest—none of this information will be valid. We’ll be gone. The deal goes up in smoke.” He made a sound like phfft with his lips.

  Mom Chao Cherry smiled even though she found the two buyers loathsome and disgusting. “My men will be there. No problem.”

  41

  AFTON and Max were just coming out of the medical examiner’s office, squinting in the fading sunlight, trying to shake off the chill of the basement labs and the stink of formalin and formaldehyde, when Max’s mobile phone rang.

  “Yello,” he said. Then he bent over abruptly, as if someone had just jammed a live wire up against his spine. “What? Where?” Max cocked his head and gazed openmouthed at Afton.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “What was the name again?” Max asked. “Cosmonaut? Oh, Cosmopolitan?” He listened for another forty seconds and then punched his phone off. “A limousine company just called in to the Homicide desk. Seems one of their drivers just came back from a run to Stillwater.”

  “Yeah?”

  “When the driver walked into the dispatcher’s office, he recognized his fare from the flyers we sent out the other day to all the hotels, cab services, airlines . . . well, you know.”

  “And it was them?” Afton asked. “The old woman and the Asian man?”

  “The driver’s pretty sure it was them.”

  “What are we waiting for? We gotta talk to that driver.”

  • • •

  AFTON and Max crowded into the Cosmopolitan Limousine Service’s small office. It was located on the first floor of a former warehouse that had been converted to luxury condos two years earlier. It was surrounded by other conversions, mostly warehouses to condos, as well as some brand-new condo buildings that had been dropped like Legoland buildings in surface parking lots. It was the new North Loop, what developers were calling NoLo, hoping desperately for the name to catch on.

  They met with the dispatcher, a guy name Ricky Chase, and the driver, an older African-American guy named David Huntley. Chase had watery blue eyes and a phlegmy voice, and he handled bookings and dispatches in the office. He looked and dressed like a disreputable grad student. Huntley wore a gray suit with a white shirt and red tie, and he held a jaunty cap in his hands.

  “Just to be clear,” Afton said, “you picked up a young Asian man and an older woman.”

  Huntley shook his head. “There were three passengers.”

  “Wait. What?” Afton said. “Someone besides the two people whose faces are on the flyer?”

  “Yes, ma’am. There was a sort of blue collar–looking guy with them.”

  “Blue collar,” Max said.

  “You know,” Huntley said. “Work shirt, trucker cap, blue jeans. Looked like he just got off his shift.”

  “Would you be able to give a description of this guy if we put you with a sketch artist?” Max asked.

  “I think so,” Huntley said. “But the other two looked just like the drawings that the police sent out.” He glanced at the eight-by-ten-inch flyer that was stuck on the office wall along with a calendar and a bunch of take-out menus. “The drawings that you guys sent out. Anyway, I picked all three of them up at the Radisson hotel in downtown Minneapolis and drove them to Stillwater. Went right up I-35, then east on 36. Made pretty good time, too, considering.”

  “Where did you take them in Stillwater?” Max asked.

  “The Tamarack Hotel. Right downtown by the river.”

  “Did they have any luggage with them?” Afton asked.

  “No.”

  “Did you go into the hotel with them?” Max asked.

  “No, I just stayed in the car. In the hotel’s parking lot out back. They said they wouldn’t be long and to just wait.”

  “And how long were they in the hotel? How long did you have to wait for them?”

  Huntley thought for a few moments. “Half hour? Forty-five minutes?”

  “That’s it?” Afton asked. “Short meeting.”

  “And then they came out of the hotel, climbed in the car, and we drove back here,” Huntley said.

  “Back to the Radisson on Seventh Street?” Max asked.

  Huntley nodded. “That’s right.”

  “Holy crap,” Afton said. “It was them, all right.”

  “What’d they do?” Chase, the dispatcher, asked. He was antsy, scratching his arms and raising red welts, endlessly clearing his throat.

  Max quickly related to Chase and Huntley what they knew so far about the helicopter crash along with the murders of Odin and Barber.

  “Holy Hannah,” Chase said. “These people sound like a regular sleeper cell.”

  Huntley was more thoughtful. “You know I think I heard that crash a couple of nights ago, but I didn’t know what it was at the time. It didn’t register. I was dropping some folks off at the Fox and Hound Tea Room and it sounded more like, I don’t know, when box cars kind of hump together and make that dull, crashing sound. Or a big semi truck having a near miss over on I-94. There are always crashes over there, where 35W and Hiawatha peel off. I didn’t know about any helicopter crash until I saw it on the news the next morning.”

  “This is so awful,” Chase said. “Please don’t let our company’s name get mentioned on TV or in the newspapers on account of this.”

  “People have been killed and you’re worried about your reputation?” Afton asked.

  “Damn,” Max said, and he really sounded sore. “We missed them by like . . .” He pinched his thumb and forefinger together. “This much. So, Mr. Huntley, did you have any conversation at all with these people? On the ride over or the ride back?”

  “Not really,” Huntley said. “They were very polite and businesslike. When I picked them up, they just gave me the Stillwater address. And when I dropped them back at the Radisson, they thanked me and paid in cash. Gave me a good tip, too.”

  “But nothing else,” Afton said. “No conversation at all?”

  “Well, no,” Huntley said. “But I had the partition up. Most clients prefer it that way; the
y like their privacy. And I was listening to the hockey game.”

  “I thought hockey was over,” Afton said.

  “Hockey’s never over,” Max said.

  Huntley nodded. “The Wild. Playoff game against the Blackhawks.”

  “How’d they do?” Afton asked.

  Huntley looked forlorn. “Lost.”

  • • •

  BACK out on the street, Afton said, “We missed them. They’re still in town and we missed them!” She felt so frustrated, she wanted to scream out loud and bang her foot against the curb.

  “And they’ve got some sort of business deal cooking, too,” Max said. “Sure as shit they were confabbing with somebody over there.”

  “But who was it? And what’s going on?”

  “Could be anything,” Max said. “Dope, diamonds, hookers, fraudulent credit cards . . . who knows? I’m going to jump on the horn with the people at the Tamarack Hotel and then I’ll get an investigator with the Stillwater Police to drop by there. If anything blips on the radar, I’ll take a run over there myself.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Nothing you can do. Go home.”

  42

  AFTON did go home. And since it was Saturday night, she sent out for pizza. One large cheese pizza for the girls, one small pepperoni pizza for her. Lish had tripped out of the house some thirty minutes ago, all gussied up in a slinky dress and boots, on her way to meet a friend (in other words, a date) at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. The museum was holding a combination gallery tour and wine tasting event. Not necessarily in that order.

  To counter-balance the heinous crime of serving fast food to her still-growing children, Afton tossed together a fresh garden salad of Bibb lettuce, tomatoes, slivered carrots, cucumbers, and sliced radishes.

  When the pizzas arrived, she paid the delivery kid, who looked like he was about twelve years old, gave him a decent tip and an admonition to take care, and then carried the pizzas into the kitchen.