by Penny Drake
I don’t know how she did it, but in less than two days Ms. Hawk tracked down Noel. He had hanged himself in a public park down in Cincinnati, no ID, no note, nothing to tell the cops who he was. Ms. Hawk drove me down there to identify him. The morgue was cold and Noel’s naked body was pasty gray in the drawer. A ligature mark made a purple ring around his neck. I stared down at him, surprised that I felt more anger than sorrow. The lying bastard had copped out and dumped everything on me.
Ms. Hawk took me home, and we discovered the gorillas waiting for me in the kitchen. They had baseball bats. I cowered against the stove, but Ms. Hawk went into a whirlwind of action. She snap-kicked one guy in the groin and back-punched a second. The third, however, was moving in behind her, gun drawn. I didn’t even think. I grabbed the heavy butcher block knife holder from the cupboard and smashed him down with it.
I remember staring down at the three gorillas lying on the linoleum. Two women had taken out three men. An incredible sense of power thrilled through me. All my life, I had thought men—my dad, my husband, the collection gorillas—were stronger than me. But they weren’t. I could be just as strong as they were.
Ms. Hawk, meanwhile, got word to the local drug lord that Noel was dead and there was no point in trying to collect from his widow. I never heard from them again. A few weeks later, I was moving from Toledo to Ann Arbor as Hawk Enterprises’s newest employee.
Which didn’t change the fact that a lying bastard had gotten me there.
I grimaced. Like Noel, Zack was supposed to care about me. Like Noel, he had lied, for all that they were lies by omission. I didn’t want to become involved with another Noel.
Ahead of me, at the end of the gravel driveway, stood an old-fashioned carriage house. I’d seen it before but not paid it close attention. It had once been white, though now it was mostly gray with flecks of white paint. A set of double doors sagged against the ground. These days the place was most likely used as a garage.
I stared at the little building. The uncles had to have some sort of vehicle. A lot of the stuff in the house wasn’t easily portable—the pianos in the music room, for example. And come to think of it, Zack had mentioned riding in a truck with Uncle Lawrence.
The double doors were padlocked, and the normal-sized door to one side had a deadbolt. Where were Ms. Hawk or Zack when you needed them? Deadbolts and padlocks are beyond my meager B-and-E skills. I did note that the padlock was fairly new and the shackle was shiny from use. Someone went in and out on a regular basis.
The window in the little door was boarded over with a sheet of plywood. I trotted over to the toolbox I keep in my Jeep, extracted a hammer, and returned to the carriage house. The plywood came away with a great screeching of nails. A few more judicious yanks, and the window was exposed. It had no glass in it, so I reached inside and undid the deadbolt. I caught a whiff of stale, oily air. The door creaked when it opened. No light switch, so I was forced to rely on my flashlight.
Inside I found the same old, same old—boxes, crates, two engine blocks, stacks of tires, a pile of rims, a jumble of tools. No vehicle, but there was just enough space to park one. I found some damp spots on the earthen floor. Radiator fluid and oil.
I also found a small plastic container with a screwtop lid. The sides were sticky. I removed the top and smelled something similar to rubber cement. It was a bottle of waterproofing material, the kind you spread over the seams of a nylon tent so it won’t leak. Stuck to the side was a piece of nylon netting. I pulled it off and took it outside to examine it in better light. It was brownish green, and there seemed to be dried plant material caught in it. Uncle Lawrence was a camper? Seemed an odd hobby for a recluse who took care of a bed-ridden brother.
“So how goes investigation?”
I jumped and spun. Slava stood silhouetted in the doorway. I shut off my internal combat computer and got my heart started again.
“Don’t you have a job?” I asked.
“Of course. Today I teach grad students rudiments of Ukrainian history, then show little freshmen how to conjugate Romanian verbs. Afterward, I stop by your office, but place is empty, so I drive here to find you. I make good detective, yes?”
“If you’re fishing for a job as a field agent, you’re talking to the wrong person.”
Slava lit a cigarette and blew out a long feather of smoke. “One day you beg me to join Hawk Enterprises. It happen soon. My mother always say, ‘What will happen, will happen.’”
“Wise woman,” I said dryly.
“So what does strange hoarding man keep in garage?” she asked. “Treasure?”
“No.” I sighed. “And I’m starting to get frustrated. Not only do I not know what I’m looking for, I don’t know where I should be looking for it.” I scuffed the dirt floor with one boot. “This whole house is organized, in its own weird way. So the treasure or papers or whatever the hell it is has to be hidden somewhere logical.”
Slava tilted her head. “This makes no sense. If you want to hide something, you don’t put it somewhere logical. My mother never kept real jewelry in her jewel box. She hid her jewels in outhouse. She always say, ‘No one looks for pearls in shit.’ And she was right. Look for something out of place, and you will find treasure.”
“Oh great,” I groaned. “That narrows it down.”
“You ask, I tell you what I think. Is why you love me.”
That got a laugh. Impulsively I stepped forward and kissed her cheek. “I do love you. Now get out of here—I have work.”
“I go, I go.” She exhaled smoke like a contented dragon. “Just remember me when the great Diana Hawk posts new position.” And she left.
I stood there for a moment, pondering what she had said. Look for something out of place. Trouble was, the whole house was full of stuff that was out of place. I mean, Lawrence dumped bags of cement in the dining room, for God’s sake. Still, Slava’s words scritched at the back of my mind. Something was there. Something I had seen fit what Slava was talking about. But the idea refused to coalesce.
I’d have to figure it out later. Right now, I needed to follow up on the truck, and the easiest way to do that lay right in front of me. Or rather, to my left and my right. Neighbors.
The uncles’ mansion lay at the end of a street in an otherwise pleasant, shady neighborhood. I crunched down the driveway toward the other houses and started ringing doorbells.
An hour later, I had made a complete circuit of all the homes whose residents might be able to see comings and goings, and I had an earful of complaints. The house was ugly. It was falling apart. The yard was an overgrown eyesore. The crazy old men who lived there were bringing down property values all over the neighborhood.
And they owned a truck. Dark red, rusty, with a camper top. I got this from two different sources—a teenager plugged into her iPod in one house and a stay-at-home dad with a baby over his shoulder in the other. The teenager even told me she’d seen someone unloading stuff from the back and hauling it into the house, though not since early last spring.
I thought some more, then hammered the plywood back over the garage window, climbed into my Jeep, hopped on I-94, and drove down to the Detroit River.
The dock-and-warehouse area was a completely different place during the day. Semi trucks, vans and cars grumbled over the concrete roads. Enormous ships lumbered down the river, and enormous cranes unloaded storage containers like giant children unstacking blocks. I drove cautiously past the Peale warehouse but saw no sign of activity. No ships, no boats, no trucks. Good. The warehouses on either side, however, boasted both trucks and workers. I parked, crossed the street, and headed for the warehouse on the left, since I’d gone right the last time.
I spent the next four hours telling dock workers and truck drivers I was a private investigator. Had any of them seen a rusty red truck with a camper top around? A series of no’s, three leers, and one proposition were all I got for my pains until I came across a crane operator climbing down from the cab. He wore a h
ardhat, denim work shirt and jeans, and he looked a little older than my father, though he was in great shape.
“I seen a truck, yeah,” he said. “Why?”
I got excited but tried to hide it. “When was that?”
“Two days ago, maybe three,” he said. “I seen that truck parked around here lots. I remember because I used to own one just like it. Chevy. Best trucks ever built.”
I made a mental note of the make. “Did you see who was driving it?”
“Nah. It was just parked a ways up the street.”
So Uncle Lawrence had been alive two days ago, and was probably alive yet. I gave the guy my card. “Call me if you see the truck again, would you?”
I braced myself for another leer or a smarmy comment, but the guy just nodded, put my card in his pocket, and walked away. A few gentlemen still left in the world, anyway.
If Uncle Lawrence was still alive, I needed to find him. Where the hell was he hiding? It was possible he had squirreled himself away in the house, but I had my doubts. Lots of people were going in and out of the place these days, and Uncle Lawrence didn’t seem the type to stomach all the invasions. His truck was also gone, meaning he had driven it somewhere. But where?
I thought about the house, the paper blizzard in the dining room, the leaf collection, the cardboard forest, the pan avalanche, the magazine deadfalls. There had to be something in all that to tell me where he was. I had the feeling I was missing the forest for the—
—trees.
An idea took root and grew. I went back to my Jeep and climbed inside to turn it over in my head. The more I thought about it, the better it looked. But I would need some help.
At just that moment my cell chirped at me. It was Zack. I almost hung up on him, but it occurred to me that I could get his help and keep an eye on him at the same time.
“Where the heck are you?” he asked.
“On my cell phone,” I replied. “Where are you?”
“Your place,” he said. “It’s almost supper time, and I stopped by the Biemers’. They said you weren’t there.”
I glanced at my watch. Holy shit—I’d worked my way through lunch and out the other side. Dammit! No way I’d make it home for dinner now.
“So I figured…you know…you might want to get some supper,” Zack said. “Um…with me?”
He sounded so uncertain and boyish. It was so…normal. Hard to believe he was a convicted felon with a penchant for other people’s property and a card-carrying member of the Peale family to boot.
“Sure,” I said.
“Okay, I under—what? Really?”
“Make it a picnic supper,” I said. “Bring everything—fried chicken, potato salad, the works. I have a couple errands to run first, so you’ll have time to get it together.”
“Cool! Where do we meet?”
I told him.
***
It’s a well-known fact that parking in Ann Arbor is a horrible mess. Students suck up most of it. The rest is wiped out by businesspeople, yuppies, visitors and patients at the University hospital. It’s a lesser-known fact that most of us natives know the secret spots where you can park for free. The parking meter readers always miss this street. That business doesn’t tow. The side street over there allows parking at the curb. It was in the latter place where I parked my Jeep. Feeling smug, I trotted downhill past the children’s hospital toward a wrought-iron fence, beyond which lay enormous trees. I carried a dusty looseleaf notebook under my arm and my Batgirl belt dragged at my hips. Zack stood at a gate in the fence, and damned if he wasn’t holding an actual picnic basket. He was wearing a red polo shirt and a red baseball cap.
“Hey, Red Riding Hood,” I said. “You got something for Grandma?”
He tipped his cap with a grin. “I was wondering if you’d notice.”
“That basket looks brand new,” I said. “Did you buy it just now?”
“Right after you called.” He drew my hand into his arm. His skin was warm and smooth, and I could feel its corded muscle. “Let’s find a place to sit and you can tell me what this is all about.”
We strolled through the gate into Nichols Arboretum. Ahead of us stretched several acres of hilly green lawn surrounded by thick stands of enormous trees, all drenched in August sunlight. Birds sang in the trees, and a creek burbled past us. Stone benches were scattered here and there in both sun and shade. Trails snaked into the woods and, I knew, eventually led down into a deep valley with the Huron River at the bottom. It was a perfect day for a stroll, and for a few minutes I let myself forget that I couldn’t trust Zack.
“What’s in the notebook?” Zack asked as I nudged him toward a section of shade.
“Supper first,” I told him. “I’m starving.”
We were just sitting down when my cell chirped. It was Ms. Hawk.
“I’ve just heard from the office of the medical examiner,” she said. “Dr. Wilewski has identified the man crushed under the magazine deadfall, though she had to consult immigration to do it.”
“Really?” I said as Zack spread out a red-checked picnic blanket. He had really gone all the way. “How so?”
“Dr. Wilewski realized the man’s dental work contained steel, which is only used in Eastern Europe and Russia. Its use has been discontinued, many people of this…gentleman’s generation still have steel teeth.”
“Interesting.” I was keeping my remarks non-committal, not sure how much Zack should overhear. He was setting out china plates, cloth napkins, and wine glasses, all the while pretending not to listen in.
“I shall assume you cannot talk freely,” Ms. Hawk said.
“Good idea.”
Zack produced a Zingerman’s Deli container with a cold chicken in it. I was impressed. Zingerman’s ain’t cheap.
“According to Dr. Wilewski,” Ms. Hawk continued, “the man’s name was Ilya Konanykhine, late of Georgia—the one-time Soviet republic, not the state—and he was here on a temporary visa. The police are currently checking into who he is and what he might have been doing in the Peale mansion.”
It occurred to me that Ms. Hawk must have a pretty good contact in the medical examiner’s office, since Dr. Wilewski had been less than forthcoming about these matters before. In any case, the information created more questions than it answered. What the hell was someone from Georgia doing in Uncle Lawrence’s house? Did it have something to do with the treasure? If it didn’t, what did it have to do with? And how did a dog-smuggling ring fit into all this?
I couldn’t voice any of the questions, however. Zack had finished with the place settings and the chicken and he was now laying out an endive salad, rolls and butter. It all smelled fantastic.
“Are you with Mr. Archer?” Ms. Hawk asked.
“Yeah. I’ve done some checking and learned a few things.”
“About Mr. Archer?”
“Yes.”
“Then call me when you can.” And she clicked off.
“That the boss?” Zack asked.
“Yep.” I sat cross-legged on the red-checked cloth. We were back a ways from the main path, and other people strolled down it, chatting and laughing. Zack produced a bottle of wine and a corkscrew. I’m a complete Philistine when it comes to the grape, but I was willing to go along with it.
“Gewurztraminer,” Zack said, half filling my glass. “Lightly chilled.”
“Thank you,” I said, and took a sip. It was sweet, perfect for an uneducated palate like mine. We were sitting side-by-side on the blanket, the food spread before us, warm summer air flowing over us. The breeze stirred Zack’s gold hair, and I found myself wanting to brush it back into place. I also wanted to know if he was playing me. Caught between conflicting emotions, I did nothing. Zack didn’t say anything either, but I could see him giving me sidelong glances with those green eyes. Silence landed between us like a heavy rock, refusing to budge. My knee was touching his, just barely.
Zack broke first. “I have a confession to make,” he said. “I lied to y
ou.”
That surprised me, and my eyebrows went up. Maybe this would be easier than I thought. “Really?”
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “Remember when we first came out of the uncles’ house and you poured water over your head?”
“You said I looked awful,” I said.
“I was lying. You were beautiful. And you’re strong and you’re tough and you don’t give a shit what anyone thinks—except maybe Ms. Hawk.”
Definitely not what I’d expected. I felt a flush come in for a landing. “Don’t forget that I saved your life once or twice,” I said, to cover.
“That, too.”
“So why do you lie to me?” I snapped.
“I just told you I—”
“Not about that,” I interrupted, waving a hand. “About who you really are, Zackary Peale.”
The shocked look that slammed across his face was almost worth everything else.
“Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” I went on relentlessly. I set the wine glass down, picked up a plate, and plopped a piece of chicken on it, followed by some salad and a roll. If I was going to have it out with Zack and maybe never see him again, I was at least going to get a free meal out of it. “Did you think that you could go on lying to me? Play me for an idiot?”
“I…oh shit.”
“Yeah,” I said with my mouth full. The chicken was melt-in-your-mouth delicious, but I barely noticed. “Oh shit.”
“You think I’m some kind of crook or a con artist,” he said, his own plate untouched and empty before him.
“Haven’t seen a lot of evidence to the contrary.”
He looked away. His knee was still touching mine, and I pulled away. I tried the salad. Crisp, cool, and perfectly seasoned. It could have been seaweed, for all I cared.
“I’ll tell you the truth,” Zack said at last. “But I don’t know if you’ll believe me.”
“Hey, I’m open minded,” I said, forking up more salad. “Some of my best friends are lying, thieving crooks. That was sarcasm, in case you were wondering.”
“Sure. Okay.” He took a deep breath. “Everything I told you about my parents—the commune, the Grateful Dead, the breakup—all of that was true. But it’s also true that Arthur Peale was my father, and he’s one of the Chicago Peales.”