Jelly's Gold (18 page)

No, I wouldn’t,
my inner voice said.

“To protect myself, I occasionally do things that I shouldn’t. I lie. Not like you. You’re strong and brave, and something else—you have integrity, you have character. I knew that when you took on Wally and Ted, when you rejected me at the History Center. I know I can trust you. Help me, McKenzie. Help me, please.”

I took Heavenly by the elbow and gently guided her to a chair at my dining room table—I really needed to get some living room furniture.

“You said you lied to me,” I told her. “What did you lie about?”

Heavenly lowered her head; she knit her fingers together and dropped them into her lap. Looking down at her, I couldn’t help but notice that her dress was open to the fourth button from the top, exposing the swell of her breasts as well as a glimpse of black lace, and to the fifth button from the bottom, revealing more of her thighs than a modest girl should. I did a quick assessment of my personal integrity and character and decided that
Heavenly had been exaggerating earlier. I stepped around the large table, putting it between us.

“I said before that I didn’t know who killed Josh,” Heavenly told me. “Only I’m sure I do know.”

“Who?”

“Boston Whitlow.”

“Tell me about him.”

“Boston and I—we were in a relationship.”

“Before or after Berglund?”

“Before.”

“Did he know about the gold, too?”

“Yes. We were—for a time we were partners.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “You broke up.”

“Yes.”

“Was he greedy? Did he want a bigger cut, too?”

“He wanted everything.”

“That is greedy. Why do you think he killed Berglund?”

“For the gold, what else?”

“Why Berglund? Why not you?”

“I don’t understand,” Heavenly said.

“You know as much about it as Berglund. Probably more. Why not shoot you?”

“Maybe Josh discovered something important. He wasn’t completely useless. Maybe Boston found out about it somehow and killed Josh to get it.”

“The same motive could apply to you.”

“I would never kill anyone.”

“Not even with kindness?”

“McKenzie—”

“You’re saying Whitlow would. Kill someone, I mean.”

“Boston—he’s not a nice man. Not like you.”

“I don’t know. He’s certainly polite.”

“What do you mean?”

“I met him yesterday morning.”

Anxiety seeped through her frozen smile, and she held her breath even as the words spilled from her mouth. “You spoke to him?”

“We had coffee together.”

Heavenly got up from the chair and walked the length of the table. She dragged the fingertips of one hand over the top of the other chairs as if she were searching for dust. When she reached the final chair, she turned. She tried to make her face appear smooth and unconcerned; she was unable to hide the distress in her eyes.

“What did he say?”

“He wanted to partner up.”

“I thought we were partners.”

“Did you?”

Heavenly circled the table and sidled up to me. She rested her hands on the points of my shoulders. “I meant what I said yesterday morning. You and I. A fifty-fifty split.”

“Whitlow made the same offer.”

“You didn’t make a deal with him?”

“Nothing was decided either way.”

“You can’t trust him.”

“He said the same thing about you.”

“McKenzie, I’m throwing myself on your mercy. I need your help. I need your protection. I’ll give you anything.”

“Anything?”

Heavenly took my face in her hands and kissed me hard on the mouth. While she kissed me her arms wrapped around my back and pulled me close, her body grooved to mine. My own hands rested on the lovely curve where her waist met her hips, and for a moment I was
this
close to doing something very dumb. Only the gods were kind to me. The doorbell rang. It rang more than once. I eased Heavenly away.

“You’re a helluva negotiator,” I told her.

The doorbell rang again.

“Who is that?” she asked. There was a trill of anxiety in her voice.

“Wait here and I’ll see.”

Heavenly was sitting at the table and smiling when I returned with Boston Whitlow. With one look at him, the smile became faint, then confused, and finally vanished for good.

“Heavenly,” Whitlow said when he saw her. The word spilled from his mouth like a compliment. The expression on his own face was transformed from careful neutrality to joy to anger to bemusement.

She rose quickly from the table. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

Whitlow waved a hand at her. “I’ve always liked that dress,” he said. “I remember when you wore it for me.”

Heavenly quickly buttoned five buttons, three at the bottom and two at the top. I can’t say what message she was sending to Whitlow. As for me, I turned my back so I could take a deep breath without either of them noticing.

“McKenzie, what is he doing here?” Heavenly said.

“I thought it was time we all had a heart-to-heart.”

“My previous entreaties have nothing to do with Ms. Petryk,” Whitlow said.

“I have nothing to say to him,” Heavenly said.

“Not even to accuse each other of murder?” I asked.

“Boston, how could you?” Heavenly said. Her expression had become hard and unforgiving. She looked away from Whitlow, refusing to meet his eyes.

“Have you spoken to the police yet?” I asked.

“I have indeed,” Whitlow said. “It was a most disagreeable experience.”

“It usually is. Did they take your gun?”

“I volunteered to give it up for testing.”

“I bet you did,” I said. “What alibi did you give them?”

They both continued to look everywhere except at each other, yet they seemed to drift closer until they were within hugging—or at least punching—distance. It was as if they had a compulsion to touch. I didn’t know anything about their previous relationship, but I would have wagered that they both missed it.

“I had none to offer,” Whitlow said. “I had been at home reading when the crime occurred.”

“Hmmph,” Heavenly snorted.

“Where were you when Berglund was killed?” I asked her.

“I was in bed.”

“Alone?” Whitlow asked.

She stepped forward with her left foot, pushed off with her right, and swung her hand in a low arc toward Whitlow’s face—she looked a little like Josh Beckett pitching from the stretch. Whitlow blocked the blow with his wrist before it could land. Their faces were inches apart; their breath was coming much harder than their exertions justified.

I probably should have moved to intervene, but the drama was just too good. I wondered if I had time to make popcorn.

“Did you expect civility, Hep?” Whitlow said. His voice was low, hoarse. “You broke my heart.”

Heavenly lowered her hand to her side and stepped backward. Her blue eyes were bright and glistening. “You broke mine first,” she said. “Oh, McKenzie, why did you bring him here?”

“Sit down,” I said. “Both of you.”

Heavenly found a chair and sat at the table. Whitlow sat, too, across the table and two places down from her. They tried not to look at each other yet couldn’t help themselves.

I stood at the head of the table. “Let’s talk about the letters,” I said.

“What letters?” Heavenly asked.

“The letters that Whitlow here thinks Berglund found, the ones that he offered to buy from me for fifty percent of the gold.”

“Do you have them?” Heavenly asked. “If you have the letters, we can get the gold without Boston.”

“Don’t get so excited, Hep,” Whitlow said. “McKenzie doesn’t have the letters.”

“I can get them,” I said.

Whitlow didn’t buy the lie any more than he had before. “I don’t believe him,” he said. “Do you?”

From her expression, Heavenly wasn’t sure.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s talk about Brent Messer.” I smiled at Heavenly. “That’s your cue.”

“I don’t know anything about him,” she said.

“So you said. I assumed you were lying.”

“Don’t talk to her like that,” Whitlow said. He impressed me by pushing his chair back so he could leap out of it at a moment’s notice.

What do we have here?
my inner voice asked.

“Relax, kid,” I said.

“You offended the lady,” Whitlow told me.

“Did I? How ’bout it, Heavenly? Are you offended?”

“Why did you bring us here, McKenzie?” she asked.

“I had hoped to frighten you both into cooperating with me. I have information, but I don’t know what it means. You have both offered to partner with me in order to get the information, even agreeing to a fifty-fifty split. Except in both cases you insist I tell you what I know, yet you refuse to tell me what you know. Now, I can keep blindly moving forward on my own until I get it all figured out—and I’m willing to do that, make no mistake, lady and gentleman—but it seems like a lot of work to me. So now I’m willing to formally accept the offer of whichever one of you tells me the truth first. Or, if you prefer, we can all go in on this together, equal shares all around. Thirty-three and a third percent of eight million plus is more than enough for me. What do you say?”

“You say you brought us here to frighten us,” Whitlow said. “I’m not frightened.”

“McKenzie.” Heavenly’s voice was low, cautious. “Are you saying—did you kill Josh?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Then why should we be frightened?”

“I didn’t mean that you should be scared of me. I wouldn’t harm a hair on your head.” I gestured toward Whitlow. “Yours, either. On the other hand, there’s the young man sitting in the Toyota Corolla across the street.”

Both Heavenly and Whitlow turned in their seats and stared at the large bay window in the living room as if they were sure the car would burst through it at any moment. Whitlow was the first to move to the window, Heavenly following close behind. They peeked through an opening in the drapes as I had done earlier.

“Do you think it’s him?” Heavenly asked.

“Not him, but—he must be someone who’s employed by him.”

“Do you think he killed Josh?”

“Don’t you?” Whitlow pivoted away from the window to face me. “How could you put Hep in danger like this?”

Heavenly’s friends call her Hep,
my inner voice reminded me.
Unless he called her that out of habit, Whitlow is still her friend.

“Is she in danger?” I asked.

Whitlow didn’t reply.

“Are you in danger?” I asked Heavenly.

She didn’t answer, either.

“Who is this guy? Who does he work for?”

Silence and blank stares.

“We were getting along so well, too. All right, you’re on your own.”

I left them both standing there and went into my kitchen. I pulled two Summit Ales from the refrigerator and headed for the front door.

“What are you going to do?” Whitlow asked.

I recited a song Bobby and Shelby Dunston’s daughters once sang to me while pitching Girl Scout cookies.
“Make new friends but keep the old. One is silver and the other’s gold.”
I waved the beer bottles at them. “You two can let yourselves out.”

I walked out of my house, across the porch, and over the lawn as if I owned the place. I was carrying a bottle in each hand so the driver of the Toyota wouldn’t worry that I was armed as I approached. Truthfully, Allen didn’t seem nervous. The driver’s side window was rolled down and he had propped his elbow on the door frame, his cheek resting against the knuckles of his hand. He could have been waiting for a light to change for all the emotion he displayed.

I stopped in front of the door. “Hey, Allen,” I said. I extended my hand, offering him one of the Summits. He took the bottle as if we were barbecuing in my backyard and read the label.

“Good stuff,” he said.

“I like it.” I twisted the cap off my bottle and took a sip.

He did the same. “You know who I am,” he said.

I told him I’d known who he was since he started following me at Rickie’s two days ago. He didn’t seem impressed.

“You know, Allen, you’re on the St. Paul side of the street,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“This side of Hoyt Avenue is St. Paul. If I call the cops, the SPPD will be here in about two and a half minutes, three tops. The other side of the street, that’s Falcon Heights. They have a contract with the St. Anthony Police Department. I call them, they might take a minute or two longer.”

“What would they arrest me for?”

I pointed at the beer in his hand. “Open bottle.”

Allen thought that was pretty funny. When he stopped laughing, I said, “Who’s your boss?”

“Boss?”

“Yeah, okay. You’re not going to tell me. You’re a good kid.”

“Don’t call me kid. I don’t like it.”

“Yeah, you kids keep telling me that. Tell your boss I want to talk. Tell him I’m a reasonable man. Tell him no deal is too big or too small. Think you’ll remember, or do you want me to write it down?” “I’ll remember you all right,” he said.

While we chatted, Whitlow stole out of my house and headed for his Honda Accord.

“That wouldn’t be Boston Whitlow, would it?” Allen said.

“In the flesh.”

I waved at Whitlow. He stopped, glared, and flipped me the bird.

“English majors,” I said.

“Heavenly Petryk must still be inside,” Allen said.

“Last I looked.”

“Neither of them told you who my employer is.”

“Not yet.”

“That’s smart of them.”

“Yeah, we’re all fucking Einsteins. Tell your boss what I said. You can also tell him that I don’t like being watched. I don’t like being followed. Do it again and I’ll go vigilante on your ass.”

“Only if you see me coming,” Allen said. He handed me his half-finished beer through the car window, ignited the engine, and put the Corolla in gear. “I’ll be in touch.” A moment later he drove off. I watched his taillights until they disappeared around the corner.

That’s the second guy you didn’t scare this week,
my inner voice said.

Heavenly was standing just inside the door when I returned to my house.

“You still here?” I asked.

“What happened?”