Ogilvy was also frightened and he squeezed into a corner. I scooped him up with one hand and hugged him to my chest. “That’s okay, bunny, you don’t have to be afraid,” I said, trying to soothe him. I moved to Heather’s side, sat on the floor next to her. I held up the gun, giving her a good look at it. “Blanks,” I said.
“Are you crazy?” Heather shrieked.
“No, but you must be, cheating at cards with professionals. In the old days they would have tossed your body out of a speeding car. In these more enlightened times, they’d probably be satisfied with breaking your fingers.”
“I … I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Let me explain. After a hand, when the cards are being thrown in for a new deal, a body might hold on to one or two to use later, concealing them in her armpits or under her knees. This is called ‘holding out.’ By the way, anyone ever tell you that you have delightful knees? Hmm? Oh, another thing: the next deal is yours, you study all the cards that were discarded during the previous hand. You see five that you like. So you pick up the cards one hand at a time, and as you do so, you put the card you want on the bottom of each group of five cards. Then you put all five hands together on the top of the deck, engage in some flummery while shuffling and then deal them out, with cards five, ten, fifteen, twenty and twenty-five coming to you. This is called ‘picking up.’ Picking up and holding out are considered cheating.”
Heather denied nothing. She merely asked, “What are you going to do?”
“Me?” I pressed the muzzle of the gun against her chest and slowly let it slip down between her breasts, using the neckline of her dress to hold it up, stretching the material into a tight V. She was trembling. “You did me a favor, so I’m going to do you one. I’ll get the people you cheated off your case, but it’s going to cost you.”
“You … you want me. Don’t you? Don’t you want me?” Heather stammered. She reached up and with both hands caressed the muzzle of the Beretta still pressed between her breasts. She arched her back, her head resting against the chair and closed her eyes, moaning slightly. I flashed on C. C. again. Only, unlike C. C., Heather wasn’t acting. She was having a wonderful time.
“Swell,” I muttered. She was an adrenaline junkie. She wanted to be frightened, it was how she got off; this was probably the most fun she had ever had. Swell, just swell, goddamn it. Didn’t she get it? Didn’t she understand? I wondered if I could get a few photos of Dennis Thoreau, a nice round hole in his forehead, show them to her. Ahh, man, what was I doing?
To Heather’s obvious disappointment I stood up, still holding Ogilvy in one hand, and returned the Beretta to my pocket.
“I want seven thousand, two hundred and fifty-five dollars; that’s the money you took off my client last week and the money you took off me Saturday.”
“Nothing else?” she asked, surprised.
“You have until Friday,” I said. “After that it’s out of my hands. Do you understand?”
She nodded that she did and I helped her to her feet. She immediately began smoothing her body-conscious dress into place.
“And if you can’t play a legit game, don’t play at all,” I added.
Heather smiled—an amazing thing. “Will you take a check?”
“Friday,” I said. “In cash. And if you don’t return it, it won’t be me who will come looking for you.” With that I pushed her toward the front door.
She stopped at the door, turning toward me, her hands behind her back, posing like one of the models in a Victoria’s Secret catalog. That smile, where had I seen it before? Oh yes, I remembered. A doctor, an oncologist who murdered his mistress and got away with it for fifty-seven days before Annie and I busted his ass. He thought he was invincible, thought he could do anything. He smiled like that. Right up until the judge dropped the gavel on him and the county cops led him away.
“Aren’t you going to offer me a drink?”
I opened the door and pushed Heather through it, clicking off the porch light before she reached her car.
“You know something, Ogilvy,” I said, scratching the rabbit behind his ears, “the way some people behave, you wonder if they’ve lost their will to live.”
I didn’t bother to watch any more of the videotape. I hit the rewind button and waited, catching the final two minutes of the game as Emmitt Smith trampled the Bears’ rush defense, pushing over for the winning TD from six yards out. After the machine had done its work, I took the videotape and slid it into an empty box. I labeled the box STAR TREK V—THE FINAL FRONTIER and put it on the shelf with my collection—I have about forty tapes. Where’s the best place to hide something? In plain sight.
I suddenly felt a desperate need to take a shower. I put it off, sitting down with a yellow legal pad instead, making detailed notes on everything I heard, saw or read, replaying the day slowly in my memory. Later, I would transcribe the notes onto my PC; I had a hunch this case was not going away.
Having the tape raised a lot of interesting questions, not the least of which was: What am I going to do with it? I did not want it; I hadn’t known it was the videotape C. C. and Marion sought when I removed it from Thoreau’s house. Yet I was not surprised to learn it was. After all, someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to make sure I found it.
Anne Scalasi’s name came to mind.
Another question beckoned when I stood naked in front of my mirror, wondering if I looked older today than yesterday: Did I have the only copy?
And still another arose when I was finally standing under the shower, letting the hot water run down my back.
Who operated the camera?
TEN
I WOKE EARLY without much enthusiasm for the sunshine that streamed through my bedroom windows. I’d had a difficult night of it, tossing and turning, dozing more than sleeping. But not because of Dennis Thoreau. Unlike the other dead men who invaded my sleep, Thoreau did not belong to me. None of it belonged to me. I had wandered into it, like a neighbor who inadvertently intrudes on a domestic dispute. It wasn’t my problem and if I was polite I’d say, “Excuse me,” and get the hell out of there; give the tape to Anne Scalasi—anonymously, of course, since removing evidence from a crime scene is a felony in this state—and walk away, letting Annie figure it out. Only now I was curious. The questions I had formed last night were still nagging me. Besides, good manners never were one of my virtues. And I did not like being trifled with.
But was I willing to take on the expense of continuing the investigation, of dragging Thoreau’s name through my databases without a client? No, not really, I decided, regretting my expensive gesture of the night before. Yet, as the nuns at St. Mark’s Elementary School were fond of telling me, the Good Lord always provides a way.
In this case He provided it in the form of a telephone call from Carol Catherine Monroe. She was desperate for my help. Or so she claimed. I replaced the receiver and rolled out of bed, pleased to have a reason to get up in the morning, and padded downstairs.
I did not recognize Conan at first. He was standing next to the information desk in his State Capitol Security Force uniform, the uniform tailored to fit his well-muscled body.
But he recognized me. He moved quickly, taking several long steps, positioning himself between me and the elevators.
“Something, yes?” I asked.
His eyes narrowed, his lips curled into an ugly snarl; I expected him to growl or at least bark. He did neither. Instead, he stepped away without a word, returning to the desk. If he was trying to get my attention, he did a helluva job. I backed into the elevator, watching him until the doors swished shut.
The State Capitol Office Building has eight floors, two below ground, six above. The floors are color coordinated; don’t ask me why. I took the ancient elevator to Blue. The doors opened onto a reception area. The legislative session had ended the first Monday following the third Saturday in May as prescribed by our state constitution and no one was on duty at the desk, which is probably wh
y C. C. had asked me to meet her there instead of at campaign headquarters. I walked down a long corridor dotted with a half dozen unoccupied desks and a dozen office doors. The doors were all closed and presumably locked, except one on the left, toward the end of the corridor.
C. C. Monroe was not in her office when I arrived at 9:30. She’d had a breakfast fund-raiser scheduled and Marion Senske had told her it was best she keep to her routine. That meant I was forced to sit with Marion and wait. I didn’t mind waiting and Marion’s attitude toward me had shifted. Yesterday she wanted me out of her life. Today she wanted me on her side.
“You must think I’m an awful bitch,” she volunteered.
“Not at all, I think you’re very good at it.”
“Practice, practice,” she said and smiled—sort of.
“I’m surprised you allowed C. C. to call me,” I told her. “Wasn’t your friend at the St. Paul Police Department available?”
Marion ignored my question. She slipped a wad of bills out of the desk drawer and handed them to me. “These belong to you,” she said. I stuffed them into my jacket pocket without counting them.
Marion was nervous. She tapped her foot relentlessly and the tapping started to work on my nerves. I looked for a distraction. I asked how the campaign was progressing.
“Good,” she replied. “We took in nearly a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars last night alone. That gives us two million. We’re putting it into TV and radio spots that will saturate the market during the final two weeks before the election.”
“That’s a lot of money, two million dollars,” I told her.
She disagreed. “The opposition has more.”
“Tell me something. Carol Catherine’s performance last night, her angry tears? Did you script that?”
“Goddamn it, where is she?” Marion asked, standing up, glancing at her watch, then the clock on the wall. “She’s never been on time a day in her life. I keep telling her …” Marion stopped and stared out the window. “You make do with what you have,” she sighed.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” When Marion did not respond, I asked, “Does C. C. ever do anything without your help?”
“Occasionally, I’ll let her sign her name to something.”
C. C. stepped through her office door on Marion’s words. “Are you talking about me?” she asked.
“Where the hell have you been?” Marion wanted to know.
C. C. ignored her, shutting and locking the door after first poking her head out into the corridor and looking both ways. She was obviously scared silly and kept pulling at her hair. Fifteen minutes before she’d called me, she said, a man had called her, a man who identified himself only with his demand: ten thousand dollars in tens and twenties.
“What exactly did he say?” I asked when C. C. was sure we were not being spied on.
She answered in a conspiratorial voice just above a whisper. “He said, ‘I know what you did and so will everyone else unless you pay me ten thousand dollars.’ He said, ‘Bring the money to Loni’s Coffee House on Cleveland Avenue across from the university’s St. Paul campus at noon today.’ He said, ‘Come alone.’”
“He said ‘I’ and ‘me’? Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“He didn’t say ‘us,’ he didn’t say ‘we’?”
“No.”
“Did you recognize the voice? Ever hear it before?”
“I don’t think so. It didn’t sound muffled or anything.”
“What else did he say?”
“He said not to call the police.”
“Yes, well, he would, wouldn’t he? Did you receive the call at campaign headquarters?”
“No,” C. C. said. “He called me at home; he had my unlisted number.”
I acknowledged that fact in my notebook. It may or may not be significant. Give me a half hour, I could get her unlisted telephone number, too.
“Do you think he has the videotape?” Marion asked.
“No,” I said, and then almost explained how I knew. Dumb, real dumb. Fortunately I checked myself. “Maybe,” I added. “I don’t know. He didn’t mention it, did he? He merely assumed Carol Catherine knew what she was buying. It could be a completely different matter.”
It could be Joseph Sherman.
I turned toward C. C. She had spoken to Sherman and then denied it. A couple of days later, he was wanted for murder.
C. C., her eyes unblinking, said, “What?”
“I was just wondering if there was something you haven’t told us.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Perhaps Dennis Thoreau had a partner,” Marion suggested.
“Perhaps,” I agreed. I hadn’t forgotten about the camera operator.
“Perhaps Thoreau and his partner had a falling out,” Marion continued. “Perhaps the partner thought Thoreau wasn’t going to share the blackmail money. So, the partner kills Thoreau and takes matters into his own hands—the amount the caller is asking for is the same amount Thoreau wanted.”
I liked it. I turned on C. C.
“Tell me about the movie,” I asked her. “Who else was there?”
“What do you mean?”
“When you filmed it, who else was involved?”
“No one!” C. C. exclaimed, utterly astonished that I would ask such a thing.
“No one was operating the camera?”
“Certainly not! What kind of person do you think I am?”
I let her question slide and continued asking my own. “Did a friend of Thoreau’s …”
“I never met any of Dennis’s friends,” C. C. insisted.
“Did Thoreau have your unlisted telephone number?”
“Yes,” she said in a small voice.
“A partner!” Marion cried out in triumph and slapped the desktop; it must be wonderful to be right all the time.
“Who was Thoreau’s partner?” I asked C. C.
“I don’t know.”
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
“What should we do?” Marion asked.
“You could always call your friends in the police department,” I suggested again.
Marion didn’t reply. She pursed her lips and tapped her toe and rubbed her hands together. Pontius Pilate came to mind.
“You already called your friend, didn’t you?”
“She asked me if I wanted to press charges. When I declined she said there was nothing she could do. That’s what she said the first time.” Marion shook her head. “I asked you a question. What should we do?”
“I think we should meet this alleged blackmailer, don’t you? Find out what he has for sale.”
“And if he’s selling the tape?”
“If he knows about the tape, then he’s probably also a killer and we should turn him in.”
Marion Senske tapped her toe some more and thought it over. “Do you know what the newspapers …”
“This has nothing to do with the newspapers,” I interrupted her. “This has nothing to do with politics. This is about doing what’s right.”
“I agree,” C. C. chimed in almost cheerfully. “We have to do what’s right.”
“Shut up, Carol Catherine,” Marion told her.
C. C. bowed her head and kept quiet, a dutiful child.
“You’re not a police officer anymore,” Marion reminded me. “You’re not obligated to enforce the law, you’re obligated to protect your client. Carol Catherine Monroe is your client.”
“I think we had this conversation once before,” I said. I was fast losing interest in C. C.’s problems and part of me wanted to forget the whole sorry business and move on. The other part? It’s like watching a bad movie; you hang in there only because you want to see how it ends.
“So, what are we going to do?” C. C. asked.
“Meet your friend for lunch,” I answered.
“I’ll get the money,” Marion volunteered.
“Wait a minute,” C. C. said. “I don’t want to go … I mean, ca
n’t … People will recognize me.”
C. C. was wearing a burgundy turtleneck sweater and a long, full skirt of the same color; both matched her fingernail polish. They also made her hair seem brighter, richer and hard to miss.
I glanced at my watch. “We have plenty of time,” I said. “I’ll take you home and you can change. Jeans, sweatshirt; we’ll put your hair under a hat. You’ll look like a college kid.”
“I … Can’t you go for me?” she asked Marion.
“I think the blackmailer would see that she isn’t you,” I told C. C.
“Besides, I have a meeting with the media people,” Marion reminded her. “And I have to rearrange your schedule. The Minnesota Farm Bureau is expecting you in Duluth; I have no idea what I’m going to tell them.” Marion consulted her watch, made a few silent calculations and sighed. “We really haven’t got time for this.”
“Nobody cares about me,” C. C. said weakly, staring down at her folded hands.
Marion smoothed C. C.’s hair with a gentle hand. “It will be all right, Carol Catherine. We’ll deal with this and in three weeks we’ll be governor.”
C. C. looked up at the older woman and they both smiled brightly. For a moment they forgot about Thoreau, forgot about the blackmailer.
Governor. The word hung in the air like a gas, like helium—something they’d been breathing for so long that it made them light-headed, made them dizzy. They weren’t thinking straight.
ELEVEN
MARION OPENED the desk drawer and slipped out an envelope containing ten thousand dollars, the same envelope she had given me yesterday. This time she gave it to C. C. She took it like it weighed half a ton.
“I just had a terrible thought,” Marion said, turning toward me. “What if there is more than one copy of the videotape?”
“What if…” I repeated. “Let’s worry about the original first.”
C. C. put the envelope into her purse, hung the purse over her shoulder, slipped a charcoal coat over her arm and stepped into the corridor, which was now occupied by a handful of secretaries stationed at the desks outside the offices. C. C. acted like she was walking her last mile, ignoring the greetings that followed her to the elevator.
Penance Page 9