Repo Madness (34 page)

“She doesn't look happy,”
Alan worried. He seemed pretty concerned with Cutty's mood.

I walked into the restaurant. A rack of computer monitors was stacked off to one side, my friend Donut Cop sitting in front of them. As I looked at him, what was in my vision popped up on all the screens, because my hat was still transmitting. I looked left and right, momentarily fascinated by the bizarre perspective.

“What the hell was that?” D.A. Darrell bellowed at me.

There was just something about Darrell Hughes that begged to be aggressively ignored. I glanced around the room. “I haven't been in here since they rebuilt it. Looks really nice,” I observed.

“Ruddy,” Strickland warned.

“Can you not follow even one goddamn instruction?” D.A. Darrell stormed.

“I thought I did pretty well,” I replied mildly.

“You did well? You fucked it up, McCann!” the D.A. raged.

“You were supposed to get the money,” Cutty reminded me curtly.

“Yeah, but I was also told to get something of value for the contract to commit murder. You heard him say to shoot her, right?” I nodded to the video equipment. “The camera picked him up. And the ‘something of value' is the hotel room. You heard that, too—he says it will cost him more than five thousand dollars. We even said
contract
.”

“Plus you managed to sort of keep the down payment money,”
Alan concluded.
“It's actually pretty clever.”

“You've broken the law,” the D.A. seethed.

“Maybe Ruddy has a point,” Strickland mused. “He got something of value. And Blanchard was pretty explicit about what he wanted done. You hear him? Shoot her so you'll leave less evidence at the scene.”

“Give me that,” D.A. Darrell snarled, reaching for the camera hat. I caught his hand by the wrist in mid-grab and held it. My grip wasn't gentle.

“Don't do that,” I said softly.

Everyone in the room went very tense on me. I kept my eyes on the D.A., who glanced away.

“I think everyone needs to calm down,” Strickland observed dryly.

“Ruddy, would you mind returning our equipment?” Cutty asked.

I let go of the D.A. and handed Cutty the hat and the gum. Hughes rubbed his wrist.

“What do you think?” Strickland asked the D.A.

“What do I think? I can't take a fucking hotel room to the jury. It's stupid.”

“It does seem to me that before you came up with the idea, Blanchard was going to call the whole thing off,”
Alan said.

“It may be stupid, but you weren't in the Escalade. I was,” I objected.

“We heard every word,” D.A. Darrell countered.

I shook my head. “No, it was nuanced. Blanchard was going to pretend he didn't know what I was talking about. He suspected something. It was the idea of the hotel that convinced him I wasn't wearing a hat camera and spy chewing gum,” I asserted, glad Alan had mentioned that.

Everyone looked at each other. Strickland cleared his throat. “We had one like this when I was a cop in Muskegon,” he offered. “Guy hired a C.I. to kill a liquor store owner who wouldn't sell his building.”

“C.I.?”
Alan asked.

“Confidential informant,” I replied without thinking.

Strickland nodded. “Right, one of our informants. So we fabricated some pictures of the intended victim. Back then we had to use fake blood, but the stuff you can do with digital nowadays, wouldn't take much to make a couple of convincing photographs.” He turned to Cutty. “You take Alice into protective custody?”

Cutty nodded. “The second we got the threat on tape, my men moved in. She's packing some clothes right now.”

“Think you could get some digital pictures of her lying on the floor?” Strickland asked.

Cutty gave him an admiring look. “I got a guy so good with Photoshop, he can make it look like Ruddy beheaded her if we want.”

“Wait. Wait,” the D.A. said. He seemed mostly upset that this wasn't his idea, because when everyone did what he asked—took a moment to wait, wait—he didn't say anything for a long time. “Okay,” he finally nodded. “I see it. But I still need money to exchange hands.”

“I like the bank as the location for that,” Cutty suggested. “Obviously, he's got money there.”

“Lot of people, though,” Strickland noted.

“Yeah, but every employee is behind bulletproof glass. And this guy thinks he's going to stay bank president, be Traverse City's most eligible bachelor,” Cutty pointed out. “He's not going to queer that deal by opening fire on my people. We put a couple of our guys in the lobby, messing with deposit slips. Ruddy shows Blanchard the pictures. Once the money is handed over, we'll walk right in.”

“We could get shot,”
Alan fretted.

“I'll do it,” I said.

“This time of year, no one would notice Ruddy wearing a vest underneath his coat,” Strickland chimed in. I had wondered when he was going to sneak the weather into the conversation.

“All right. We fake the pictures right now. Get the victim and her daughter into protective custody. Tonight we'll post some plainclothes at the house, make sure Blanchard isn't so stupid as to do a creepy-crawly to check on McCann's handiwork. Next morning, we go in, Ruddy makes the deal, gets the cash,” D.A. Darrell concluded, as if it was all his inspiration.

“All for no reward,” I agreed sunnily.

Both Strickland and Cutty turned a glare on the D.A., who managed to bite off any retort he had been planning to make. Group therapy.

“What about the guy? Jimmy Growe?” Cutty asked.

Strickland knew of my relationship with Jimmy, and glanced in my direction.

“In my opinion, you should just leave Jimmy out of it,” I said. “Have Alice call him at the Black Bear and make up some reason she won't see him for a couple of days. A mother-daughter thing. Jimmy's not … He's not the best actor, and honestly, he's not particularly good with secrets, either.”

“So you do know him,” Cutty observed.

“He's my best friend.”

“Is it true? Do you know, then? I mean, the affair. Is your friend sleeping with Alice Blanchard?” Strickland asked.

I sighed. “Yes, it's true.”

Strickland nodded, his mouth set in a line. I wonder if he was thinking of his own extramarital fling, and the damage it had wrought in his own life.

“That his cell phone, as far as you can tell?” D.A. Darrell asked.

I didn't see why that mattered, but I pulled it out and looked at it. “Yeah.”

Cutty held out her hand, and I gave it to her. “We'll get screenshots of the threatening messages.”

“It's a good thing she's on this. You can tell: There won't be any screw-ups with her in charge,”
Alan praised.

I yawned, tired though it wasn't yet noon. By my calculations, Claude and Wilma were probably just over Illinois. If there was a car waiting to meet them when they landed, the deal was on.

“We're all set,” Cutty stated decisively.

“No,” I responded. “We're not all set.”

Everyone glared at me. I was accustomed to being unpopular, so I just gave them a mild look back.

“How are we not all set?” Cutty asked me in a controlled and gentle tone.

“You heard Blanchard say he can fix my tickets? Porterfield's been trying to harass me out of business. Now you've got the perpetrator of a murder-for-hire scheme on tape, saying he's in bed with the sheriff on shady dealings. The thing with the boat? It wasn't just prostitutes—Porterfield and Blanchard brought in a card shark to fleece their friends. I want Porterfield investigated, and I damn sure want these tickets taken care of. Every single one of them is bogus.”

It was quiet in the room, and then, one by one, everyone turned to look at D.A. Darrell. His eyes widened. “You're fucking kidding me,” he said.

“Everything on the tape is going to come out as evidence anyway,” Strickland soothed. “Don't you want to get ahead of that? What would it look like if, after hearing the tape, you left Ruddy twisting in the wind on all those tickets?”

“Jesus, Darrell,” Cutty interjected, her patience wearing out, “can we get past this petty crap and nail us a killer?”

Darrell Hughes looked at me, his expression flat. “All right,” he finally agreed. “You got those tickets with you?”

*   *   *

I could tell Strickland wanted to talk to me, so I dawdled, pretending to be doing paperwork in my truck, as a big white van came in and the cops loaded all their equipment into it. Strickland walked down to the frozen lake and peered at it, drinking coffee out of a paper cup. Finally it was just the two of us there at the ferry landing. It was, I reflected, a lonely, forlorn place. The ferry captain, a woman named Toni, was off in Florida, I'd heard.

Alan was respectfully silent. He knew exactly where we were, and even if Lisa Marie Walker didn't go into the lake with me, this was still the place where my entire life got derailed.

Strickland came back up to the parking lot and slid into the repo truck next to me.

“Spring still feels a long way off,” he commented.

“Yeah, but in six months it'll be winter again.”

“Pretty ballsy move, asking for the hotel instead of the money.”

“All's well that ends well,” I said.

“Yeah, maybe. Still a lot of things that could go wrong between now and when you walk into his office at the bank.”

“I guess so.”

“I'd appreciate it if, in the future, you clued me in when you're thinking of going off book.”

“All right.”

He gazed at me, approval in those steely eyes. I understood he wasn't really complaining—he knew I'd made the right call. He just had to say something for the record so I didn't take him too far off the reservation with me. “Phil Struder. That's the Shantytown guy's name.” He apparently couldn't bring himself to say
mayor
.

“Struder,” I repeated.

“His family called in a missing persons report on him around the first of the month. Said he didn't come home from the bar. He lives with his daughter and her family; his wife's been dead a long time.”

“Missing, or run away?”
Alan wanted to know.

“Any theories on where he went?” I asked.

“No. Except that his car was ticketed and towed for sitting right there in the lot down near where the Beaver Island ferry parks in the summer.”

“Huh,” I said, processing it. “Right by the Ferry Bar.”

“So, why the interest?”

I briefly explained what I had found out about Nina Otis. Strickland's expression was entirely impassive—I couldn't decide if he thought I was crazy, or thought I was really on to something. “I sort of have had Phil … Struder … in mind as a suspect. Seems awfully convenient that he hears I want to talk to him and vanishes that day. But I'm not so sure, now that I hear he abandoned his car. I don't know how you get out of here without a car, this time of year.”

Strickland rubbed his chin. “I haven't told anyone about what you've been looking into, but maybe Cutty and I will sit down for a cup of coffee after we've taken down Blanchard. Like you said, I'm building a few favors.”

“Ask him if he knows if she is seeing anyone,”
Alan suggested preposterously. My psychosis was acting completely crazy.

We went our separate ways. I decided to hit Darlene's for breakfast, but sternly told Alan I was not going to get a cinnamon roll, that it was time for me to quit. When I got there, I ordered eggs and bacon and a cinnamon roll.

“I thought you were going to skip it this time.”

“I saw they were down to just one left, and I panicked,” I explained.

“You said you wanted to lose five pounds,”
he reminded me.

“That's why I wasn't going to have a cinnamon roll,” I agreed logically. I had my phone out and pressed against my face so I wouldn't draw undue attention, talking to myself in Darlene's. “So what in the world were you thinking about Cutty Wells, Alan? I'm not going to ask her out on a date, for God's sake.”

He was quiet, and I had a sudden insight. “Wait, do you think
you're
going to call her? Like, when I'm asleep?”

“Do you know how lonely it can get being me? There was something about the way she looked at us. What would be the harm?”

“The harm? Have you not only lost your body but your mind, too? She was looking at me, not us, and even if I'm asleep, it would still be Ruddy McCann chatting her up. What do you think, you're going to date her, fall in love, get married? What am I supposed to tell your daughter?
Don't worry, honey; I'm asleep
?”

“I don't understand what's wrong with a little fantasy,”
he whined.

“I'll tell you what's wrong. You have a fantasy about a voice in your head, and the next thing you know, it's ruining your relationships. Now, I know for a fact you've been doing a little cleaning at night—”

“A little?”
he interrupted incredulously.
“Do you ever wipe your counters? Sweep your floor? Bother to mate your socks?”

“Again with the socks. Jesus,” I snapped. “Look, you can get up and play housewife if it makes you feel better, but that's it. No computer dating. No taking Cutty Wells Zumba dancing. Got it?”

“You've got someone. I've got no one,”
Alan mourned softly.
“Sometimes a man needs a woman, if only to cuddle with.”

“That's what Jake is for.”

Alan was moodily silent for most of the rest of breakfast.
“Can we talk about the mayor's disappearance?”
he finally suggested.