From the Grave--A McKenzie Novel Page 17

  Only, he didn’t need to. Nina stepped around the corner where the restrooms and her office were located. She took a deep breath and exhaled as if she were relieved to see me.

  What did she expect? my inner voice asked. To find you lying facedown in her parking lot?

  The woman worries too much, I told myself, but not her. I knew it would only start an argument.

  Nina moved to where I was sitting. She rested a hand on my shoulder and smiled. She was not one for public displays of affection, but then neither was I.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “What happened?”

  “The kid wanted me to help him find Leland’s loot.”

  Leland’s loot—I kinda like that.

  “Why you?” Nina asked.

  “I don’t know. He wouldn’t say, and I resisted the urge to beat the truth out of him.”

  “That was nice of you.”

  “I thought so.”

  The bartender appeared in front of us.

  “Anything, boss?” he asked.

  “No,” Nina said. “I’ll be in the office.”

  She asked me to join her by yanking my arm. I grabbed the ale, slipped off the stool, pulled a ten from my pocket, dropped it on the bar, and followed after her. Once inside her office, Nina closed and locked the door. The locking surprised me. She had never done that before.

  “Nina,” I said.

  She took the glass from my hand, made to set it on her desk, thought better of it, and put it on a shelf instead.

  “Nina,” I repeated.

  She wrapped her arms around me and brought my head down close enough to kiss my mouth.

  “This is not like you,” I said.

  “I know.”

  NINETEEN

  The next morning, I was sitting at my computer, rereading Maryanne Altavilla’s case file, and taking more notes, especially addresses. Nina was dressed for work. She sat in the chair across from me.

  “I think I need to talk to someone,” she said.

  “About what?”

  “You know about what.”

  “Nina…”

  “I had sex in my office. Who does that?”

  “According to the adult film industry…”

  Nina took her face in both hands. “Oh, God,” she said.

  “You make it sound like a terrible crime was committed.”

  “Not a crime, but, but…”

  “Should I tell you what I think?”

  “I know what you think,” Nina said. “You think what we did was great fun.”

  “I think there are only two kinds of sex, regardless of what the evangelicals might tell you. There’s sex with love and there’s sex without love. I love you—”

  “I love you, too.”

  “That’s all that matters, not the where or the when or the how or anything else.”

  “I agree with you.”

  “Well, then?” I asked.

  “It’s just that lately, I’ve been thinking about sex all the time. It’s like suddenly I’m a guy.”

  “Um…?”

  “An article I read in Psychology Today said that men think about sex an average of thirty-four times a day.”

  “That sounds about right. Still, is that any reason for you to see a therapist?”

  “I didn’t say I wanted to see a therapist. McKenzie, do you think I could be possessed?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “When I was looking up psychic mediums the other day, I read this piece about a woman who was doing all kinds of things that were out of character, including having sex any time of the day or night, and it was decided that she was being possessed by a woman who had died in the house that she and her husband bought. They eventually took care of her. She was fine. But ever since, I’ve been wondering if I might not be possessed by my dead mother.”

  “I have no idea what to say to that.”

  “Shelby’s into all this paranormal stuff. I’ll ask her.”

  “No, no, geez, Nina, don’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “You can’t tell Shelby what we do in private.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake. You don’t think she knows we have sex? Now that her girls are older, she and Bobby practically—”

  “Noooo,” I said. “Too much information.”

  “Men. You guys think about sex all the time, yet you never want to talk about it. I have to go.”

  For one of the very few times in my life, I was actually glad to see her walk out the door.

  * * *

  A few minutes later, I left the condominium myself. I checked the Mustang for GPS transmitters again just because, left the parking garage, and drove toward South Minneapolis. Along the way, I listened to Minnesota Public Radio and heard this:

  The body of a fifty-four-year-old woman, who had been missing from her St. Paul home for nearly two weeks, was discovered by investigators late Monday in a farm field near New Richmond, Wisconsin. Mrs. Ruth Nowak was found wrapped in a blanket by officers of the New Richmond Police Department who were acting on a search warrant requested by the St. Paul police. A spokesperson said the circumstances surrounding the woman’s death were not yet known and the Ramsey County Medical Examiner will determine her cause of death. He refused to speculate on who put the body in the field or if a relationship existed between Nowak and the farm’s owner. The search for Nowak began twelve days earlier when Robert Nowak reported his wife missing from their Crocus Hill home. Nowak is the owner of RN Management Group, a business-consulting firm based in Shoreview. The couple had been married for thirty-two years.

  “I wonder how Bobby managed to get a search warrant,” I said aloud.

  * * *

  Two of the addresses I had written down were in Ventura Village, a neighborhood more or less in the center of Minneapolis that took its name from the Spanish word for happiness or luck and had never experienced much of either. Case in point—I found statistics suggesting that nearly one out of every twelve residents experienced a violent or property crime in the past year. The neighborhood association actually paid off-duty cops to patrol the high-crime areas neglected by on-duty cops.

  The first address belonged to Leland Hayes, and the second was next door, where LaToya Cane had lived. I didn’t actually expect to find her there, or anyone else who knew Leland, for that matter. Eighty percent of Ventura Village’s residents were renters squeezed into five ten-story towers, about fifty additional apartment buildings, and a hundred or more duplexes, triplexes, and quadruplexes, which gave the place a transient vibe—30 percent of the residents were replaced every year. I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered that both Leland’s and LaToya’s places were single-family dwellings.

  Leland had lived in an ugly rust-colored clapboard house with rotting trim boards surrounded by a spotty lawn and a cyclone fence. At least, it was rust colored now. It might have been a bright yellow twenty years ago. It had a garage that seemed too small for a standard SUV and a short driveway leading to it that was located outside the fence, go figure. There was a small wooden shed leaning against the garage; Ryan’s hiding place, I told myself.

  A sign hanging on the fence said the house was for sale. I parked my Mustang and went up to it. There was a sleeve attached to the sign filled with red and black trifolded sheets of paper that provided specific details—two bed, one bath, 672 square feet, partially furnished, one-car garage, built in 1913, foreclosure, est. $89,000, $5,000 assistance grant available to homeowners who purchase a house in Ventura Village and live in it for five years, tour by appointment only. I didn’t know it was possible to buy a house for less than $100,000, but what do they say? Location, location, location.

  There was a gate in the fence. I opened it and walked to the front door. I knocked. There was no answer. I didn’t expect there would be. I pressed my face against the glass. Despite the sofa, stuffed chair, and coffee table that I saw, the place appeared empty.

  I walked back. There was a black man standing at the
fence watching me. He was big enough to play the defensive line for the Vikings. On the other hand, the dog he was walking was about the size of his right foot.

  “You ain’t thinkin’ of buyin’ this place, are ya?” he asked.

  I stepped outside the fence, closed the gate, and bent to pet the dog. He wagged his tail and growled at the same time.

  Mixed messages, my inner voice told me.

  I decided to let the dog be.

  “I haven’t decided,” I said aloud. “The price is right.”

  “You gotta know—the place is haunted.”

  “Haunted?”

  “I know what you’re thinkin’, but I ain’t makin’ this shit up, man. Place has had at least a dozen owners in the past twenty years. That’s gotta tell ya somethin’.”

  “People come and go, don’t they?” I said. “Especially in Ventura Village.”

  “Not like that, man. I’ve been here ten years now. Live right over there.” He pointed at a small well-kept house across the street and down a couple of lots. “This one time, musta been what? Three years ago. It’s night. Summer. I’m havin’ a cold one on the porch. All of a sudden these people come runnin’ out the front door screamin’ their heads off. They see me and come runnin’ my way like I was supposed to protect ’em or somethin’, and I’m like, I told you not to buy the place.”

  “What frightened them?”

  “Oh, they was yellin’ that there was this guy inside the house with half a head tellin’ ’em to get out, get out.”

  “Half a head?”

  “What they said.”

  “Did you go and take a look?”

  “Fuck no.”

  Do you blame him?

  “So what happened?” I asked aloud.

  “They moved out, whaddaya think? Place is fuckin’ haunted, I’m tellin’ ya. Next people that moved in, nice couple. Hispanic. They lasted two months. Just packed up and drove away; didn’t even take all their furniture. Let the bank worry about it, man. You know, in some states, they gotta tell ya if a house you want t’ buy is haunted. It’s the law. They call it—are you ready? Ghoul disclosure.”

  I don’t know exactly why I laughed, but I did.

  “Ain’t funny,” the man said. “Maybe it is a little, but I’m tellin’ ya—you don’t want t’ move here.”

  “The guy with half a head, did you ever find out what that was about?”

  “Oh, yeah. Woman who lived next door told me. Guy what used to live there, I can’t remember his name, he got hisself shot robbin’ a bank in St. Paul. Guard took his head off wit’ a shotgun. Boom. Now he’s like, you know, a permanent resident. Hanging around a shitty place like that, you gotta wonder what he’s thinkin’.”

  “Maybe he has nowhere else to go.”

  “Yeah, but if you’re gonna haunt someplace, go to the Mall of America, someplace like that, you know? If it was me, I’d be hangin’ over t’ Target Center watchin’ them Timberwolves play.”

  “The woman next door, does she still live here?” I asked.

  “Naw, naw, naw, Ms. Cane”—he spoke the name with respect—“she moved over t’ Standish-Ericsson, only three miles away but might as well be on the far side of the moon. Why? You wanna ask ’er ’bout the ghost? I’m tellin’ ya, man.”

  “The askin’ price is pretty reasonable.”

  “That’s just the starter. You could git this place for seventy-five. Less even, if you negotiate.”

  “What I’m saying.”

  “I don’t know Ms. Cane’s home address, but she’s got a business over on Thirty-fifth Street near Twenty-third. I was over there once just to say hi. Sells all kinds of ghost shit.”

  “Ghost shit?”

  He held his hands up like he couldn’t believe it either.

  “I know, I know,” he said. “Right? Somethin’ else. You know the area where her store is, what they’re startin’ to call it now? The Witch District.”

  TWENTY

  The Witch District was populated by a wide variety of shops that catered to customers with more than a casual interest in witchcraft, not to mention communication between the living and the dead. One displayed a number of T-shirts in its window that read GHOSTS ARE AWESOME, I WILL HAUNT YOU, WITCHY WOMAN, and THE WITCH DISTRICT KEEPS IT WEIRD. Another featured a library filled with books on magic and tarot cards and magazines like Sabat, which claimed to fuse witchcraft with feminism. I’m not sure why, but the fact that the area was also well decorated for Christmas made me go “Hmmm.”

  LaToya Cane’s store was called Good Spirits, and my first thought was that it was schizophrenic. On one side, it sold most of the stuff that I had seen at the Twin Cities Psychic and Healing Festival; I wondered if it had a display there and I hadn’t noticed. There were lavender and frankincense incense cones, astro dice sets, crystals, healing stones and jewelry, chrome altar bells, lunar calendars, tarot cards and books that teach you how to read them, Wiccan guidebooks, charcoal, small cast-iron cauldrons, single-spell kits with instructions, and all kinds of potions, including love spells—anything and everything needed to contact spirits and enlist their aid.

  On the other side, though, a wide assortment of electronic gear including spirit boxes and EMF meters was displayed next to all the things one might buy to combat ghosts, including palo santo wood splinters, sage smudge sticks, smoky quartz and black tourmaline chips, white candles, salt, brick dust, white roses, prayer cards, religious talismans like rosaries and crucifixes, holy water, and banishing-spell kits.

  I met an African American woman in the aisle between the two sides. She was about as old as me and wasn’t dressed witchlike at all. She looked like a floor rep for Macy’s.

  She smiled and asked, “How may I help you?”

  “I’m McKenzie.”

  She kept smiling.

  “Are you LaToya Cane?” I asked.

  “Have we met before?”

  “No, but I met your son last night.”

  I noticed that her skin was darker than his.

  “Jackson?” LaToya said. “Did he send you to me?”

  “Not exactly.”

  LaToya kept smiling.

  “This is going to sound ridiculous,” I said.

  Her eyes flitted right and left at the merchandise surrounding us and settled back on my face.

  “People come to me with all kinds of troubles,” she said. “I don’t think they’re ridiculous.”

  “I’m the former police officer who shot Leland Hayes in the head. Now he’s using psychic mediums to tell people that he will show them where he hid the money he stole if they kill me.”

  LaToya’s smile didn’t diminish one bit. If anything, it grew even brighter.

  She shook a finger at me. “I have to admit, of all the stories I’ve heard since I opened this place…” She shook her finger some more. “I knew Hayes.”

  “I know. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Step this way.”

  LaToya led me toward the back of her store, where there was a counter with a cash register. Behind the counter was a single stuffed swivel chair in front of a long desk stacked with several CCTV monitors so she could watch her customers without being intrusive about it. There was also a laptop, plus wire baskets filled with invoices that made me wonder if LaToya trusted it. Next to the desk was an old-fashioned percolator set on a small table.

  “Coffee?” she asked.

  “Bless you.”

  She filled two cups and gave me one.

  “Mr. McKenzie?”

  “Please, just McKenzie is fine.”

  “Call me Toy.”

  “Thank you, Toy.”

  “Do you actually believe that Leland Hayes is threatening you from the grave?”

  “I’m just telling you what I heard.”

  “From whom?”

  “A psychic medium named Hannah Braaten.”

  “She’s a lightweight,” Toy said. “I’m not sure how seriously I would take anything she says.”

&
nbsp; “Kayla Janas?”

  “I don’t know her.”

  “Okay.”

  “Why did you come to me?”

  “You said you knew Leland Hayes.”

  “Yes. I lived next door to him for I don’t know how long, a few years anyway.”

  “You told the FBI that you never heard of him,” I reminded her.

  “Did I?”

  “According to the report.”

  “The FBI report?”

  “No,” I said. “Actually, I’m working off a file generated by Midwest Farmers Insurance Group. A field agent wrote that you were uncooperative when they went to see you after Leland was killed.”

  “I don’t remember the FBI, but I remember them. They all but accused me of stealing Leland’s money, the bank’s money, actually. Stealing it and hiding it in the house I was renting. They demanded that I let them search it. When I refused, they said they would come back with a warrant.”

  “They didn’t, though, did they?”

  “No,” Toy said. “They were just trying to intimidate me. It nearly worked. I was twenty-two years old and living alone and they were threatening prison and whatever. But you grow up poor and black in neighborhoods like Ventura Village, you learn when people are bullshitting you and when they’re not.”

  “What can you tell me about Hayes?”

  “He was a vile, despicable sonuvabitch. Loudmouth—some of the things he said to me, screaming at me over his fence just to hear the sound of his own voice. He was the only person who ever called me nigger to my face.”

  “Did he have any friends?” I asked.

  “Sure. Men just as loathsome as him hangin’ around, doin’ their shit. The cops knocked on his door at least a half-dozen times that I know of. He always blamed me for calling them, although I never did. Another thing you learn when you’re young and black.”

  “Do you remember any of their names, Leland’s friends?”

  “Just one. Bastard named Stuart Moore. He caught me once out by the curb and told me that he wasn’t a bigot like the rest of them, and to prove it, he offered to pay twenty dollars if I would take him around the world. I slapped his face. He slapped me back. He hit me harder than I hit him, but it was satisfying just the same.”