The Taking of Libbie, SD Read online

  “Nice car, McKenzie,” Dawn said. She placed both of her hands on the driver’s side door, which was fine with me—it made it easier to keep track of them.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “How much does a car like this go for?”

  “About fifty grand.”

  “Must be tough.”

  “It can be.”

  She grinned at that.

  “That was something else, huh?” Dawn said. “Two dead bodies. Wow. You don’t see that every day.”

  “You don’t seem too upset about Tracie Blake.”

  “It’s not like we were friends or anything.”

  “How well did you know Mike Randisi?”

  “I didn’t. He was just a customer.”

  “You knew he had agoraphobia.”

  “That’s why he used the service, because he didn’t like to leave his place.”

  “He never invited you in for a cup of coffee? You never spent time with him?”

  “The company doesn’t like employees fraternizing with customers. Get in and out, that’s what the company says.”

  “Of course you always do what the company says.”

  “Of course. Geezus, McKenzie. You sound like the cops.”

  “Do I?”

  “Yeah, but forget that. The reason I chased after you—you were really driving fast. The van started to shake and shimmy, scared the hell outta me.”

  “Why did you chase me?”

  “I was wondering about Nick Hendel. You know, the Imposter. Have you found him yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  Dawn seemed genuinely disappointed.

  “Do you have any leads at all?” she said.

  “I think he might be from Chicago.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Dawn, don’t worry. I’m working on it.”

  I waited until Dawn’s van was just a white speck on the highway before I activated my cell phone. I was surprised I still had coverage. The bars had been pretty low in Libbie, and out here they were nearly nonexistent. As it was, it took about five minutes before I finally negotiated my way past Greg Schroeder’s secretaries.

  “What the hell, Greg,” I said. “Do you get paid by the hour?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” he said.

  “I mean, how many Nicholas Hendels can there be?”

  “From coast to coast, about a thousand.”

  “Really? How many in Chicago?”

  “Seventeen. If you include all of Chicagoland, it’s sixty-eight.”

  “Swell.”

  “The Imposter is your age, right?”

  “Thereabouts.”

  “We’re trimming the list according to age and race. I should have something for you soon.”

  “When you do, send a fax to the Pioneer Hotel.”

  “Okay.”

  “Sooner would be better than later.”

  “McKenzie, don’t worry. I’m working on it.”

  This time when Sharren Nuffer came around the desk to hug me, I hugged her back. Her eyes were red and swollen from tears, and as I embraced her she began crying again. I led her to a chair in the lobby, the same one she used when we had shared a drink just last Monday. I asked her if she wanted a drink now, and she said she did, which gave me a chance to escape her grief. Truth be told, I felt a little like weeping myself, but it wasn’t something I did or wanted to do.

  I cut through the dining room to the bar in back. Evan was on duty. His only patrons were four older men sitting together at a table and playing hearts, wearing work shirts and baseball-style caps that promoted everything from farm implements to the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

  “McKenzie,” he said. A good bartender always remembers the names of his customers.

  I stood between two stools, setting both hands on the bar top. For a moment, I forgot why I was there.

  “I take it you heard,” Evan said. He ran his fingers through his blond hair just like he did the last time I saw him. I could see how that might get annoying after a while.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Helluva thing,”

  “Helluva thing,” I repeated.

  “There hasn’t been a murder in Libbie, or the whole county for that matter, since, I don’t know, forever.”

  For reasons I didn’t fully understand, I flashed on a verse of poetry from a long-forgotten college English class, William Dunbar’s “Lament for the Makers”:

  The state of man does change and vary,

  Now sound, now sick, now blithe, now sary,

  Now dansand mirry,

  Now like to die—

  “Helluva thing,” I said again.

  “What’ll ya have?” Evan said.

  I ordered the same drinks as before—double Jack Daniel’s for me, bourbon and water for Sharren—and told Evan to charge them to my room.

  “If you don’t mind my saying so, McKenzie, you look like crap.”

  I did mind. Still, a quick glance at my reflection in the mirror told me that he was right. I hadn’t shaved or changed clothes since the day before, and my eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep.

  “I’m starting a new fashion trend,” I said.

  “Let me know how that works out for you.”

  Sharren had stopped weeping by the time I returned and was now staring out of the large window at nothing. She said, “Thank you,” when I set the bourbon on the small table next to the chair and didn’t speak again for a long time. I was nearly finished with the Black Jack when she turned in her chair to face me.

  “You think I’m being silly,” she said.

  “Not at all.”

  “I didn’t know Mike Randisi, and I didn’t like Tracie Blake. So why am I crying for them?”

  I had an answer that involved other English poets, only Sharren wasn’t looking for answers, so I kept my mouth shut.

  “I thought Tracie was an opportunistic, money-grubbing slut, and she—she thought the very same of me. So why—”

  Sharren turned to gaze out the window again, and for a moment I thought she would begin weeping some more. She didn’t.

  “It’s my fault,” she said. “I can’t get past the idea that it’s all my fault.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Do you think what happened—do you think that it might have something to do with Rush?”

  “I don’t know. It could have.”

  “It is my fault.”

  “What are you trying to tell me, Sharren?”

  Sharren retrieved the glass from the table and drank down half of the bourbon. She took a deep breath as if it had burned her throat and then pressed the glass against her forehead with both hands while she studied the carpet at her feet. A moment later she drained the glass, studied the carpet some more, then looked at me. She was working herself up to telling me something, and I was going to let her, no matter how long it took. It took a long time. I had finished my own drink before she began to speak again.

  “The Miller family keeps a room—they have a room reserved just off the swimming pool year-round with a sliding door that opens right onto the deck. Saranne uses it a lot.”

  That would be Sara Anne, my inner voice said. Yet I kept it to myself. There was no way I was going to interrupt Sharren now.

  “I won’t lie to you, McKenzie. I slept with him, with Rush—the Imposter. I told you that. Afterward, the day after, I saw him in his swimming trunks walking to the pool. First chance I got, I went to say hello. Only I couldn’t find him anywhere. I walked around the pool. There were people there, not many. I thought I might have missed him until I heard his voice. He had a voice that carried, an actor’s voice, you know? The voice was coming from the Millers’ room. The sliding door was open, but the drapes were drawn. He was saying things—they were the same kinds of things he had said to me the night before. I pulled open the drapes, and he was sitting on the bed in his swimming trunks. Saranne was across the room. She was holding a beach towel in front of herself. It didn’t do muc
h to hide her own swimsuit, this skimpy two-piece, and Rush was trying to talk her onto the bed next to him, patting the bedspread like he was calling a pet, and I—I made a scene. I don’t know why. He didn’t mean anything to me. He was just, he was just—I called him things, bad things. I called her things, too, just as bad, things that she didn’t deserve to be called, and everyone at the pool heard me. Rush thought it was funny. Saranne, of course, was crying. That’s what I heard when I left. His laughter and her tears. It’s not something I’m proud of. I’m afraid I hurt Saranne badly.”

  I don’t often come across this degree of honesty, and it made me squirm in my chair. I felt as though I should reciprocate in some way, tell her something uncomfortably honest about myself to even the score—it would have been the Minnesota Nice thing to do. I resisted the impulse. I had no idea what Sharren’s confession had to do with the murders of Tracie and Mike, but I wanted to hear it. Still, I didn’t push. I figured she would get to it in her own time. After a while, she did.

  “I was on duty the Tuesday evening Rush disappeared. I didn’t tell the chief this, I didn’t tell anybody, but the evening he disappeared, right before he left the hotel, Rush received a phone call, a call to his room. It was made through our switchboard. Our switchboard is automatic. If you know the recipient’s room number, you can just punch it in and not use the operator, so I didn’t hear a voice. Our switchboard, we have caller ID. The call came from Mr. Miller’s house.”

  It made perfect sense to me. The Imposter gets a call from Miller, probably about Sara, and he panics. That’s why he left town so quickly, not even bothering to pack. Perfect sense.

  “Why didn’t you tell the chief?” I said.

  “I should have. I know I should have because now, if keeping quiet is the reason Tracie and Mike … I didn’t tell him because, McKenzie, you should know, Mr. Miller—he owns the hotel. Also, I felt guilty about Saranne, about ruining her reputation. As for Rush, he got what he deserved, didn’t he?”

  “Sharren, unless you know something I don’t, what Rush got was a whole lot of money and a trip to the Cayman Islands.”

  “Do you still believe that?”

  “What do you believe?”

  “I believe he’s lying in a shallow grave somewhere.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I liked it, I really did—the idea that Dewey Miller put the Imposter down for trifling with his daughter. It smacked of frontier justice. Except I didn’t believe it. The problem was the missing money. If the Imposter was dead, whoever took the money must have known he was dead—probably killed him—and had to have the wherewithal to abscond with the funds. I didn’t think Miller was that guy. If he were, he never would have sent two bounty hunters to track down Rushmore McKenzie. ’Course, he might have, knowing I was innocent, to prove his deep concern to the community, an alibi after the fact …

  Stop it, my inner voice warned me. You’re thinking too hard.

  After cleaning up, I asked Sharren for directions to Miller’s home. I waited patiently while she cycled through a menu of conflicting emotions. Finally, after I promised to keep her name out of it, she relented, pointing me in the direction of Boucher Gardens. I found the house just west of the cemetery. I was expecting a mansion, but the Miller home didn’t even aspire to a McMansion. It was no bigger or grander than any home you might find in a first-ring suburb of St. Paul.

  The woman who answered my knock was another one of Libbie’s seemingly endless supply of beauties—red-brown hair, blue-green eyes, and a body that most twenty-year-olds would do anything for, except diet and exercise, of course, and she so closely resembled her daughter that I nearly asked if her father was home. Instead, I said, “I would like to see Mr. Miller. My name is McKenzie.”

  “I know who you are,” she said. “I’m Mrs. Miller.” She paused while she carefully considered my appearance. “I’m told you are a millionaire.”

  “I have a couple of bucks.”

  “Do you always go about attired in this fashion, or are you dressing down for the natives?”

  I did a quick inventory of my dress—white Nikes, blue jeans, rust-colored short-sleeve polo shirt, and black lightweight sports jacket.

  “If I had known it mattered, I would have put a ribbon in my hair,” I said.

  “I guess not everyone should have money,” Mrs. Miller said.

  I asked again to see her husband.

  “He is unavailable at this time,” she said.

  “When will he be available?”

  “I do not approve of your tone.”

  “Oh, for crissake.”

  “Mr. McKenzie!”

  “Tell your husband I was here. Tell him that I have questions, specifically where was he the night the Imposter disappeared. Tell him he can talk to me or Big Joe Balk—I really don’t care which.”

  I turned and started for my car. It was a fully loaded Audi 225 TT Coupe with a Napa leather interior and light silver exterior. I doubted Mrs. Miller approved of that, either. She called to me before I could reach it.

  “Stop. Mr. McKenzie. Please.”

  I spun to face her. She was still standing at the front door, still holding it open. She gestured inside.

  “Please,” she said.

  I hesitated.

  “Please,” she said again.

  Unlike her husband, Mrs. Miller apparently knew the magic word.

  I went inside.

  She shut the door behind me.

  “Make yourself comfortable,” Mrs. Miller said. She pointed at a chair, and I sat. “May I get you anything? A drink, perhaps?”

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  Mrs. Miller sat across from me.

  “How is your head?” she asked.

  I automatically touched the back of my head and winced, although the pain was more memory now.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “I’m delighted to hear it.”

  “Mrs. Miller—”

  “My name is Michelle. Better yet, call me Mickie. All my friends do.”

  “Michelle,” I said, although Mrs. Miller didn’t seem to notice the snub.

  “I am grateful to you, of course,” she said. “Grateful that you went to my daughter’s defense last night. That was heroic of you. I cannot say the same, however, about the lecture you delivered afterward. It seems you have rekindled her rebellious nature. Sara Anne, indeed. Suddenly she insists on being called Sara Anne. I swear, I don’t know what’s wrong with that girl.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “This morning she announced that she intends to move to Hollywood and become a sound effects woman.” Mrs. Miller quoted the air around the word “woman.” “What rubbish. I thought we had drummed that fantasy out of her head years ago.”

  “What’s wrong with creating sound effects? Someone has to do it. Why not her?”

  “Mr. McKenzie, please. It is a pipe dream, at best. A childhood fancy.”

  “I remember one time when I was a kid, I wanted to become a professional water-skier. I told the old man I was going to run away and join the Tommy Bartlett Show in the Wisconsin Dells. He said if that’s what I really wanted to do, I should practice first. He got me lessons with a guy who actually worked with Tommy Bartlett at one time. Turned out I lacked the necessary aptitude for the profession. Oh well.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “No point. Just telling you a story about me and my father.”

  Mrs. Miller smirked. “You’re suggesting that we are unsupportive of our daughter,” she said. “Far from it. She is being groomed to take over our numerous business concerns. One day she will thank us.”

  “Assuming the businesses are still here to inherit.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I’ve been told on several occasions that the Great Plains are dying. Why shouldn’t your numerous business concerns die with them?”

  She stared at me as if I had been the first person to suggest the possibility to her. Perhaps
I was. She turned it over in her head for a few moments before smirking again.

  “What utter nonsense,” she said.

  “When do you expect Mr. Miller?”

  “Not for a few hours at least. He is meeting with our banker. Mr. McKenzie, you mentioned the evening when Rush—hmm. Should I call him that?”

  “Why not?”

  “You asked about the evening Rush disappeared. May I ask why?”

  “The Imposter left his hotel that evening immediately after receiving a call from your husband.”

  Mrs. Miller thought long and hard about that bit of news before answering.

  “You are mistaken,” she said.

  “I’m only telling you what I heard,” I said.

  “From that trollop who works for us, no doubt. Still, Mr. McKenzie, you are mistaken.”

  “We can check the phone records to make sure. When I say we, of course, I mean the cops.”

  “Yes, yes, but that is not what I meant when I said you are mistaken. It was not my husband who made the call. I did.”

  “You?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I ask why you called the Imposter?”

  “So I could kill him.”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t tell him that, naturally, when I lured him to Lake Mataya.”

  “I wouldn’t think so.”

  “Instead, I gave him the impression that we would exchange sexual favors. To be honest, I was a little surprised he fell for that gambit, especially after he was just caught in a hotel room with my teenage daughter. Imagine the arrogance.”

  “Are you saying you killed the Imposter because you believe he assaulted your daughter?”

  “Yes.”