Curse of the Jade Lily: A McKenzie Novel Page 13

  * * *

  Pozderac drank whiskey, Hemsted drank wine, and I had a beer. I was sure that there was something significant about our individual tastes in alcohol, I just didn’t know what. Pozderac also ordered a plate of buffalo-style chicken wings because he was hungry and lunch was a good hour away. He ate them without benefit of a napkin, a transgression that seemed to offend Hemsted greatly.

  “First, allow me to offer you my sincere condolences at the passing of your friend yesterday,” Hemsted said.

  “You are referring to Lieutenant Noehring,” I said.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “He was not my friend.”

  “Oh?”

  “However, if you wish to contact Lieutenant Rask, I’m sure he’ll be happy to commiserate with you. In fact, I know the first thing he’ll ask. Where were you last night around 8:00 P.M.? You and your”—I passed up the many adverb-adjective-noun combinations that flashed through my head and settled on “friend.”

  “We have spoken to your Lieutenant Rask this morning, and I must say he is an exceedingly rude man.”

  I flashed on what Perrin Stewart said about him two days earlier.

  “A lot of people think that,” I said. “What did you tell him?”

  “I reminded Lieutenant Rask that Mr. Pozderac enjoys diplomatic immunity.”

  Pozderac smiled around a chicken wing. “Im-mun-i-ty” he pronounced slowly.

  “What exactly do you want, Hemsted?” I asked. “Why am I here?”

  “Mr. McKenzie…”

  “Drop the mister. Let’s not pretend we’re friends.”

  “McKenzie, we can at least be civil, can we not?”

  “I killed a man last night, pal. This is as civil as I’m going to get for a while.”

  “You shoot police?” Pozderac asked.

  “No, I didn’t. Did you?”

  Instead of answering, Pozderac licked his fingers and picked up another wing.

  “McKenzie, I thought we had an understanding,” Hemsted said. “You went after the Jade Lily without first contacting us.”

  “Tell you what. Next time I set out to commit a felony, I’ll invite you both. We’ll have an outing.”

  “What is felony?” Pozderac asked.

  “A criminal act,” Hemsted said.

  Pozderac smiled again. There was buffalo sauce at the corners of his mouth and on his chin. “Im-mun-i-ty,” he said.

  “McKenzie,” Hemsted said, “I made our position clear earlier. I see no reason to repeat it now. You must believe, I will do what I said I would do.”

  “Destroy my life unless I steal for you. Is that why you asked me here, to remind me?”

  “Frankly, yes. Going after the Lily the way you did without first contacting us smacked of recklessness. I need ample warning next time so that I might have time to make the necessary preparations to receive it from you and then remove it from the country.”

  “You can’t just shove it into a diplomatic pouch and send it back to Bosnia COD?”

  “Hardly.”

  “Why are you here, Hemsted? In Minnesota? How did you know the Lily was going to be stolen?”

  “We didn’t know. We came to secure the Lily from the museum. Its theft was a terrible inconvenience to us.”

  “Is that all it was?”

  “I wish you could see this our way. It really is in the national interest.”

  “It’s probably moot, anyway,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Rask is hungry for an arrest. He has two dead bodies connected to the theft of the Lily, and one of them is a police officer. There’s no way you’re going to keep him off the case now. That means sooner or later the cops are going to get their hands on the Lily. The only way you’ll be able to take it out of the country after that is with lots and lots of publicity, and I have a feeling you don’t want any publicity.”

  Hemsted slipped a cell phone out of his pocket.

  “Don’t worry about that,” he said.

  I expected him to make a call right then and there, yet he didn’t. Instead, he held on to the phone as if it were Aladdin’s magic lamp.

  Pozderac tossed down a chicken wing and wiped his fingers on the tablecloth. Hemsted winced and forced himself to look away.

  “Enough talk,” Pozderac said. “You will return Lily. See to it.”

  He rose, turned his back to the table, and started walking toward the hotel’s elevators. Hemsted gave him a head start before he pushed back his chair and made ready to follow. I called his name. When he turned I told him, “Pozderac might have diplomatic immunity, but you don’t. Think about it.”

  I don’t know if he did or didn’t.

  * * *

  I stopped at the front desk on my way out, once again catching the eye of the pretty desk clerk. I asked her if it was possible to learn when Hemsted and Pozderac had checked into the hotel. She hesitated for a moment, and I had no doubt that we were both thinking the same thing—it was against hotel policy to reveal information about its guests. She must have felt she owed me a favor after the mix-up earlier, though, because she quickly checked her computer and then leaned across the desk toward me.

  “Eleven forty-five A.M. Sunday,” she said.

  Fourteen and a quarter hours before the Jade Lily was stolen, my inner voice figured.

  I thanked her and left the hotel.

  * * *

  I didn’t realize I was being followed until I turned into a Holiday gas station a block from the hotel.

  The guy on the radio was waxing philosophic about a massive snowstorm that was heading our way—that was his word, massive, not mine. When he said the Cities might get hit with as much as twelve inches of the white stuff, I glanced down at my gas gauge. It’s one of the things you learn at a young age when you’re from Minnesota—whenever a blizzard or an interval of subzero temperatures is predicted, make sure you have a full tank of gas. I discovered that the tank on my Jeep Cherokee was down by three-quarters just as I was approaching the driveway, so I swung the wheel and drove into the Holiday station without signaling. The action caught the cherry-colored Acura MDX behind me by surprise. The driver hit his brakes, slid well past the driveway, recognized his mistake, and sped up. The SUV continued on to the next intersection, hung a U-turn, and came back. It passed the Holiday station, returned to the hotel lot, turned around again, and headed toward the station, this time parking along the street about a hundred yards away.

  I pretended not to notice.

  I filled my tank, checked my levels, and used the squeegee to clean my windows, all the while keeping my leather coat open so I could reach the 9 mm Beretta in a hurry. The thieves wouldn’t like it if they knew I was carrying, but two men were dead and they had probably killed them. As far as I was concerned, the Beretta was nonnegotiable.

  While I was at it, I checked around the front and rear bumpers of the Cherokee. As Rask had predicted, I found a tiny GPS transmitter inside a small magnetic box attached to the car frame. I dropped it into the trash bin. I didn’t think the driver in the Acura was using it, otherwise he would have hung farther back, and if he was, tough.

  After gassing up, I sat in the Cherokee for a few moments, angling my sideview mirror until I had a clear look at the front bumper of the Acura. It took a minute or so to correctly read the license plate in the mirror and write it down—I didn’t want to turn around for fear the driver would know that I made him.

  Let him think you’re oblivious to his presence, at least until you decide what to do with him, my inner voice said.

  * * *

  The Acura stayed close as I maneuvered onto I-394 and headed east into Minneapolis—way too close. By the time we were crossing the river into St. Paul, I decided the driver was a rank amateur. He did very little to disguise his presence, and I don’t think it was because he wanted me to know that he was there. Also, the vehicle itself—cherry red? Really? Could you be more obvious? The question was, who did he work for? I was gue
ssing Jonathan Hemsted. That was the reason he summoned me to the hotel, so the tail could pick me up. After all, Hemsted could have just as easily threatened me over the phone.

  I let the Acura follow me to the parking lot next to Rickie’s. This time he was a little more clever, passing the lot and pulling into an empty space on the street a half block down. He put the luxury SUV in PARK yet kept the engine running. I did the same thing while I fished my cell phone from my pocket, found a familiar name in my list of contacts, and hit CALL.

  “Major Crimes,” a voice said. “Commander Dunston.”

  “I remember when you used to answer the phone with just your last name.”

  “That was before I was promoted to upper management,” Bobby said. “What’s going on, McKenzie?”

  “Same-old, same-old. Did Victoria tell you about her adventures in cable TV?”

  “She did. Ghosts at Rickie’s? When did that happen?”

  “I don’t know. I think Erica is messing with her mother.”

  “Speaking of which, what’s this nonsense about you buying Victoria a car?”

  “What? No, no. I’m not buying her a car.”

  “She said you would when she got her driver’s license. I don’t mind an MP3 player, McKenzie. But a car?”

  “I am not buying Vic a car. She’s just trying to manipulate me. I mean, buying a car, that’s way over the line, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “That girl is so spoiled.”

  “Whose fault is that?”

  “I blame her parents.”

  “I’m sorry. Aren’t you the one who bought eighty-seven boxes of Girl Scout Cookies so Victoria could win a contest?”

  “I like Girl Scout Cookies. Especially the Samoas. I have about seventy boxes left if you want any.”

  “No cars, McKenzie.”

  “No cars, I promise.”

  “Are you playing hockey tomorrow tonight?”

  “I am unless the snow gets too deep.”

  “Snow shmow. Don’t be a wimp.”

  “I’ll be there if you’re going to be there.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “I’m going to hold you to that.”

  “Is that why you called?”

  “Bobby, I need a favor.”

  “I knew it.”

  “It’s a small one.”

  “I thought we had an understanding. I don’t do favors for you. I especially don’t use St. Paul Police Department resources to do favors for you.”

  “Why not? I’m doing you a favor.”

  “Such as?”

  “I’m not buying Victoria a car.”

  Bobby paused for a moment.

  “Does this have anything to do with what happened in Minneapolis last night?” he asked.

  “You know about that?”

  “Of course I do. McKenzie, what have you got yourself into this time?”

  I explained while I watched the cherry red Acura. When I finished, the only question Bobby asked was “Heavenly Petryk is back in town?” When I confirmed that she had indeed returned, he said, “Better Rask’s problem than mine. Although…”

  “Although what?”

  “She is a fetching lass.”

  “Are you going to help me or what?”

  “What do you want, McKenzie?”

  I recited the license plate number of the SUV that was tailing me and asked for the owner’s name.

  “Do you need this in a hurry?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so; otherwise you wouldn’t be gabbing this long on the phone. I swear, McKenzie, you don’t get out enough.”

  * * *

  The first thing I saw when I walked through Rickie’s front door was Nina Truhler standing behind the stick, one end of a bar towel draped over her shoulder while she polished the inside of a glass with the other end. She could have been a stereotypical bartender from an old Western movie—“Hiya, Kid, what’ll ya have?”—except, had any bartender ever looked that good, ever?

  I slipped off my coat—I had locked the Beretta in my Jeep Cherokee because Nina didn’t like guns in her place—and went directly to the bar. I pounded the top of it with the flat of my hand and said, “Barkeep, I want whiskey and fresh horses for me and my men.”

  Nina smiled a sad sort of smile and covered my hand with hers.

  “What?” I said.

  “McKenzie, are you okay?”

  I was surprised by her concern.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “What happened last night?”

  “Just the usual confusion and chaos, why do you ask?”

  Nina looked toward the far corner of the club. I followed her gaze over the heads of the large crowd eating lunch at the club’s small tables to where Heavenly Petryk was sitting. She was alone in the booth nearest the staircase. The expression on her face suggested that she didn’t have a friend in the world.

  “How long has she been here?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. She was here when I arrived.”

  “Has she been drinking?”

  “She was until we cut her off. I’ve been making her drink coffee for the past hour. I tried to get her to eat something, but she won’t have it. She’s hurting, McKenzie.”

  “Did she tell you that?”

  “I’ve owned a bar for a long time.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “She said a friend of hers was killed last night. She said it was her fault.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s plenty of blame to go around.”

  “What happened?”

  I explained, leaving nothing out.

  “You killed Tommy?” Nina said.

  “I threw him into the street and he was hit by a car. The car killed him. Technically, you could blame the driver. In Minnesota, the law demands that you have complete control of your vehicle at all times.”

  “McKenzie.”

  “Yeah, I killed him.”

  Not once during our conversation did Nina remove her hand from mine. Now she squeezed it tight.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “It shouldn’t have happened. I didn’t mean for it to happen. That stupid kid, trying to act tough…”

  “It’s okay.”

  “No, Nina, it isn’t. The things I’ve done—this is the life I chose, and mostly I’m happy with it, mostly I sleep pretty well at night. Yet this was so senseless, so unnecessary.”

  “Tommy made a choice, too, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah, he made a choice.”

  I brought my free hand up and set it on top of Nina’s hand on top of my hand.

  “Do you want something to eat before you talk to her or after?” Nina asked.

  “Why should I talk to her?”

  “Go now. We’ll have lunch later.”

  “What’s this sudden concern with Heavenly Petryk’s welfare?”

  Nina shrugged.

  “You like her, don’t you?” I said.

  “I hate to see anyone suffer.”

  I gave her hand a hard squeeze. “You have the kindest heart,” I said. “No wonder ghosts like to hang out here.”

  * * *

  Heavenly’s eyes told me everything I needed to know. Normally, they sparkled like liquid azurite, yet now they were dull and bloodshot and took a moment to focus when I sat in the booth across from her.

  “McKenzie,” she said. “I knew you’d come by sooner or later.”

  “Where are your boys?”

  “They have lost their enthusiasm for the task at hand.”

  “They left you?”

  “Sooner or later men always leave me.”

  “Give me your keys.”

  “Huh?”

  I reached across the table with an open hand.

  “The keys to your car,” I said. “Give them to me.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Give me the keys to your car or I’m leaving. You came here to talk to me, right?”

 
“McKenzie…”

  “Heavenly.”

  She rummaged through her bag; I thought I saw the butt of a small handgun when her hand emerged with the keys dangling from her fingers. While she was doing that I pried a wad of bills from the front left pocket of my jeans and peeled off a fifty. I took the keys and set the fifty in front of her.

  “I’ll leave your keys with Nina,” I said. “You can take a cab home.”

  Heavenly didn’t touch the bill. Instead, she took a long sip from her coffee mug and made a face like it didn’t agree with her. The flesh around her bloodshot eyes was swollen and puffy. What was left of her makeup looked like it had been applied yesterday.

  “Have you slept at all?” I asked.

  “Did you need to kill him, McKenzie?”

  “It was an accident.”

  “An accident,” she repeated slowly.

  “He fell into the street…”

  “No one was supposed to get hurt. Take the Lily and off we go to Ontonagon, Michigan. No one was supposed to get killed.”

  “How did Tommy know I was at Loring Park?”

  “We followed you.”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “You’re not that good. I would have noticed.”

  “We used a three-car team, rotating in and out. We also sprayed your rear bumper with liquid glass so we could identify your Audi at night and in heavy traffic from a distance.”

  “I stand corrected,” I said.

  “Once we got to Loring Park, we had Tommy sit on your Audi while the rest of us created a perimeter so we could watch you going in or coming out. We never actually entered the park, just observed from a distance.”

  When did she become so damn smart? my inner voice asked.

  “Did you see Noehring get hit?” I asked aloud.

  “I didn’t know who he was.”

  “Did you see it?”

  “I saw. He was just a dark figure slipping on the ice. I didn’t pay any attention.”

  “Then you can’t identify his killer.”

  “No. I didn’t even know he was shot until Lieutenant Rask, until he…”

  “Did you tell Rask that Tommy worked for you?”

  “Tommy moved without instructions, McKenzie. I told him not to go anywhere near you unless you had the Lily. I don’t know why—”