From the Grave--A McKenzie Novel Page 18

  “Yet you told the Feds and the insurance investigators that you barely knew Hayes and his friends.”

  “What part of young, poor, black, and living alone in the projects did you not get?” Toy asked.

  Good point, my inner voice said.

  “Hayes had a son,” I said aloud.

  “Ryan.” Toy made the name sound filled with sadness. “Poor kid. Leland beat him down, not just physically; he was always carrying bruises, but mentally, too, emotionally. He walked around like a zombie. He didn’t even have the strength to run away. When Leland was gone, and he was gone a lot, I’d make Ryan come over to my house. I’d feed him, talk to him. I found out his mother had died a couple of years before I moved there. It just shattered him. And then his father … I was only five years older than him, but I became—I was going to say his substitute mother, but no, that’s not right. Friend is better.

  “McKenzie, I didn’t have the best childhood myself; one of the reasons I was living alone. Nothing like what he had to go through, though. He went through it alone, too. He contacted me after he was convicted of the truck robbery and asked if I would find a photograph of his mother that he had hidden from Leland. He said I could give it to his public defender, but I brought it to him personally. ’Course, they wouldn’t let him keep the frame, only the picture. I met him in the jail where they were holding him before they sent him to Kentucky. Seeing him like that—it made me cry. I still get sad when I think about him.”

  “He’s out, you know.”

  Toy’s head came up and she looked hard into my eyes. “I didn’t know,” she said. “When?”

  “About six months ago.”

  “Have you seen him?”

  “Yes, just the other day.”

  “How’d he look?”

  “Good. Strong.” I told her that he was working, that his employers named him Employee of the Month. “He seems to be doing all right.”

  Toy nodded her head as if it was what she had expected to hear. “Do you have a phone number, an address?” she asked. “I’d like to see him again.”

  Normally I’d keep private information like that to myself, but the expression on her face told me that I would be a real jerk if I kept Ryan and Toy apart. My notebook was in the inside pocket of my leather coat. I pulled it out and recited Ryan’s current address and where he worked. I didn’t have a phone number. Toy scribbled it down on a notepad.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “My pleasure.”

  “So are you going to tell me why we’re talking about Leland Hayes, or what?” Toy asked.

  “I’m trying to find the money he stole before he can pay it to someone else.”

  “Is that why you went to see Ryan?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said he wanted nothing to do with it.”

  “Good for Ryan.”

  “Anything you can tell me…”

  “I probably already told you everything I know,” Toy said. “Leland and I were not friends.”

  “The day of the attempted robbery…”

  “What did the report say?”

  “It said you caught the bus on Franklin Avenue at seven thirty in the morning and got home at six that night just in time to meet the Feds when they knocked on your door.”

  Toy spread her hands wide.

  “Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of,” I said.

  “Tell me about Hannah,” Toy said. “Tell me about the reading.”

  I did.

  “Do you believe her?” Toy asked.

  “Don’t you?”

  She wagged her hand as if to say it was fifty-fifty.

  “Toy,” I said, “I am in desperate need of enlightenment.”

  “I believe in the paranormal,” she said. “I believe that ghosts walk the earth. My experiences living next door to Leland’s house after he was killed, that’s what got me interested. Well, not my experiences. My neighbors. There were a lot of them, too, moving in and out of that place over the years. One by one they told me about being haunted by him.

  “So, yes, I believe in the paranormal, McKenzie. I believe there are psychic mediums that can communicate with the dead. I do not believe, however, that it’s anywhere near as common as it appears to be on TV and in the movies. Hannah and her colleagues—there is no doubt, at least I have no doubt, that a blessed few of them can and do communicate with the spirits of the dead every single day of their lives. But the rest? I don’t believe their gifts are as substantial. Some can do it most of the time; others can do it some of the time; still others can’t do it all.

  “Except they have a product to sell, don’t they?” Toy added. “People pay them for readings, pay them to contact their loved ones. Often a great deal of money. What are they going to say if the spirit doesn’t come through? Sorry, better luck next time? Some of these psychic mediums do group readings in huge halls, casinos even. What if they can’t actually contact a spirit or if they can only contact a few? What do they tell a thousand people who paid, what, a hundred dollars or more to see a show?”

  “Toy,” I said, “are you telling me that the less gifted psychic mediums will investigate the lives of some of their customers so they have something to fall back on if they can’t give them the real deal?”

  “If a customer comes in and asks for a Come to Me Love Spell Kit and I’m all out, I might steer her to a bottle of Self-Love Potion #9 or even my Vibrant Pulse Pussy Tonic if I thought that’s the way she was leaning.”

  I flashed on Karl Anderson.

  He said the Braatens hired him the day before they did the reading that brought Leland into your life, my inner voice reminded. But he could have been feeding information to Hannah about the people she was reading long before then, couldn’t he?

  “Tell me about Hannah Braaten,” I said.

  “I don’t know her. We’ve never met.”

  “You said she was a lightweight.”

  “Yes, but I didn’t say she was a fake, did I?”

  No, she didn’t.

  “Toy, I’m not a cop anymore. I’m not a lawyer or a journalist. Nothing you say to me will be held against you. I won’t even repeat it.”

  She stared at me over the brim of her coffee cup for a few beats, took a sip, and set it down on her desk.

  “McKenzie, no psychic medium has ever told me that they cheat,” Toy said. “No friend or acquaintance of a psychic medium has ever told me that they cheat. I have no tangible evidence to prove that they cheat. We’re just talking.”

  “Okay.”

  “People come in all the time and they tell me things. They tell me when a psychic was spot-on and when the psychic got a few things right and some things wrong and when a psychic was just plain faking it. A woman came in Sunday and told me about a reading where her grandfather was supposed to have come through. The psychic gave the woman specific details about the grandfather that rang true, but then she said that he was sitting next to his wife. The woman asked, ‘Which one?’ The psychic answered, ‘The second one.’ The woman said, ‘Funny, I had tea with her last week.’ See what I mean?”

  It was my turn to stare over the brim of my coffee cup. I also took a sip and set the cup down.

  “Hannah Braaten,” I said again.

  “Hannah is exciting and beautiful; people are talking about her. She’s the next big thing, and I’m sure she’s enjoying the moment. For what it’s worth, no one has ever told me that she was a phony. What they have said was that she usually delivers the readings people expect, but sometimes she doesn’t, and when that happens she’ll apologize.”

  “She’s convinced certain people that Leland Hayes will pay a lot of money to see me dead without apology.”

  “What people?”

  “Your son, for one.”

  That jolted her.

  “What are you talking about?” Toy wanted to know.

  “Jackson came looking for me last night. He wanted me to help him find Leland�
�s stash. He believes the money rightfully belongs to him.”

  “Jacks said that?” Toy said.

  “Yes.”

  Toy moved her head quickly to her left, looked down, and became very still. “I can’t imagine why,” she said.

  She’s lying, my inner voice told me.

  “He tracked me down,” I said aloud. “I found it very disconcerting. It makes me think others might try to do the same thing.”

  “McKenzie, I don’t know why Jackson wants to find Leland’s money after all of these years, why he thinks it belongs to him—except maybe he heard about it so many times while growing up, while living next to Leland’s house, that it seems like his. What I do know is he would never hurt you. Or anyone else. Not because of this.”

  “Okay.”

  “Jacks spent his first twelve years in Ventura Village; this was before we moved over near Roosevelt High School. I gave him everything I could, a good education and the discipline to benefit from it. I made sure he stayed out of the gangs, that he didn’t get involved with drugs. I taught him not to feel sorry for himself or think that he was entitled, like the world owed him something. You know how hard that was to do, a single mother? Now he’s studying economics at Macalester College while interning at an investment bank in downtown St. Paul. Every time I see him I feel like I might cry, he makes me so proud.”

  Toy waved at her store. “At the same time, Jackson thinks all of this is silly. Well, not the profits, only the idea behind them. I worked retail all my life, McKenzie, behind God knows how many counters and eventually behind the desk. When Jackson and I finally got a little bit ahead, I took that experience and what I learned studying all that paranormal stuff and opened this place. I was in the right place at the right time because of the explosion in TV shows about paranormal activities, the movies, the books, the websites—did you know there’s a Facebook page devoted strictly to haunted houses?”

  “Of course there is,” I said.

  “It all generated an enormous amount of customer interest. Even people who don’t believe a word of it, who think the paranormal is a joke, will come in to buy love potions for Valentine’s Day and spirit boxes for Halloween. They think it’s fun. And it is.”

  “I used to think so, too,” I said.

  “But Jacks believing that Leland Hayes is talking from the other side—I doubt that, I really do. Maybe he heard the story and that got him thinking about the missing money.”

  Maybe he heard it at Macalester, my inner voice suggested.

  “Did you know he carried a gun?” I asked aloud.

  “I tell him not to. A young black man carrying a concealed weapon the way the police are today…” Toy shook her head as if she could see the future and it terrified her. “I know he doesn’t carry it all the time. He doesn’t carry it at school or work. Even so … It comes from growing up where he did. I can’t make him understand that the whole world isn’t Ventura Village or even South Minneapolis.”

  “Toy, I’m not here because of your son. If he finds the money, God bless him. I hope he buys his mother something nice. I just want all of this to go away.”

  “You shouldn’t be talking to me, then,” Toy said. “Or Jackson. You should be talking to Hannah.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  I went back to my car, sat behind the steering wheel, and thought about Hannah Braaten. Could she have made all this up just to entertain the audience at her reading?

  If she did, how do you explain Kayla Janas and all those other psychics at the Twin Cities Psychic and Healing Festival? my inner voice asked. And Leland’s haunted house?

  A lightweight, Toy had called her.

  Still …

  “I don’t believe in ghosts,” I said aloud just to hear the words.

  What do you believe?

  I believe that Leland Hayes stole $654,321.

  And hid it where?

  I pulled my notebook from my pocket again and reviewed what I had written there.

  What are you looking for?

  Stuart Moore. LaToya said that he was a friend of Leland’s, yet I don’t recall seeing his name listed in the insurance company’s case file.

  Maybe he’s a ghost, too.

  I started the Mustang and drove back to my condominium to find out.

  * * *

  Smith and Jones were working the security desk. I thanked them for finding the footage of the red Toyota Avalon and sending it off to Bobby Dunston. They asked if anything had come of it.

  “Not that I heard,” I said. “But then the cops don’t necessarily confide in me.”

  “You’re saying you and Detective Shipman aren’t bosom buddies?” Jones asked. “What’s that about, anyway?”

  “She’s jealous of my storied exploits,” I said.

  “Aren’t we all?” asked Jones. “What about the psychic medium thing? How’s that working out?”

  “I’m no further along than when I started.”

  “So we didn’t miss anything,” Smith said.

  “I’ll keep you posted,” I told them.

  I bid good-bye to the boys and took the elevator to the seventh floor. I went directly to my computer after entering the condo and fired it up. I skimmed all the Midwest Farmers field reports while carefully searching for names. I found two that I had already entered into my notebook—Fred Herrman and Ted Poyer, plus their addresses from twenty years ago. I couldn’t find Stuart Moore no matter how hard I tried, so I Googled his name. There were sixteen matches in Minnesota. I narrowed that down to six within the greater Twin Cities area. Using Facebook, LinkedIn, and a couple of other social media sites, I was able to reduce that number to two, one in Minneapolis, one in St. Paul.

  What are the odds that a friend of Leland Hayes is intimate with the legal system? my inner voice asked.

  Pretty good, I decided, which was why I accessed the website of the Minnesota Judicial Branch. A couple of clicks brought me to a page designated as Minnesota Public Access, which allowed me—or anyone, for that matter—to search through most of the court records in the State of Minnesota Court Information System. I clicked on the tab labeled MINNESOTA DISTRICT (TRIAL) COURT CASE SEARCH, accepted the terms and conditions, and was sent immediately to a page that allowed me to choose the types of case records I wanted to search. I selected criminal/traffic/petty and was sent to still another page with blank information fields that the website wanted me to fill in. All I had was a name, so I entered the one belonging to Moore in Minneapolis and hit SEARCH.

  A second or two later, I was told that Moore had been charged and convicted of four, count ’em, four traffic violations in the past nine years—failure to obey a traffic control signal, parking within five feet of an alley or driveway, passing a parked emergency vehicle on a two-lane street without moving to the far lane, and violating a winter parking ban.

  Clearly a menace to society.

  I also discovered that he was thirty-two years old, which meant he wasn’t the hardened criminal I was looking for. So I repeated my search, this time using the name of Moore from St. Paul.

  My, my, my …

  Stuart Moore had been a jerk in three different counties. The search engine told me that he had been convicted of multiple counts of domestic assault, disorderly conduct, driving under the influence, pawning another’s property, and obstructing the legal process with force, earning him a bunch of fines and a few jolts in various county jails. Then came a big fall: criminal sexual contact in the second degree. He had copped a plea, which suggested that the evidence must have been pretty compelling—ninety months in Stillwater and registered as a sex offender when he got out, which occurred about a year ago.

  The fact that he was registered meant that I could look him up online, and I did, first by accessing the website of the Minnesota Department of Corrections. Next, I clicked on the SEARCH FOR OFFENDERS AND FUGITIVES tab, followed by the PUBLIC REGISTRANT SEARCH bar. I typed in Moore’s name and was immediately told where he lived in Ramsey County as well as h
is age, color of his eyes and hair, height, weight, build, and ethnicity, none of which was necessary because, in addition, the site featured colored mug shots. The page also gave me Moore’s MNDOC offender ID and offense information:

  Offender engaged in sexual contact with victim (female, age 16). Contact included penetration. Offender gained access to victim by following her home after she exited a city bus and asking to use her phone. Offender gained compliance through threat of physical force. Offender was not known to victim.

  I headed for the door. And stopped.

  What did they teach you in the Boy Scouts before kicking you out for having a problem with authority? Oh yeah—be prepared.

  I crossed the condo to my bookcase, pressed hard, listened for the click, and swung open the massive door. I stepped inside the secret chamber, moving to the gun cabinet. I retrieved the nine-millimeter SIG Sauer and holstered it on my hip. I didn’t know if that fit the other parts of the Scout motto, the ones about keeping myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

  * * *

  Sixty years ago, the East Side of St. Paul was a virtual boom town unto itself. Ten thousand multiethnic employees earned a comfortable middle-class living from their jobs at three thriving neighborhood businesses—Theo. Hamm Brewing Company, Seeger Refrigeration Company, which later merged with Whirlpool, and 3M, formally known as Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company and called “the Mining” by the East Siders. Dozens of shops, banks, drugstores, barbers, restaurants, and bars thrived along Arcade Street, Payne Avenue, and East Seventh Street. You could get anything you needed within a six-block radius. Only, the national recession that closed out the sixties pounded the local economy into dust. Plant closings and layoffs became regular news. 3M moved. Whirlpool shuttered its Arcade Street plant. Hamm sold out. One by one the little shops and restaurants closed their doors. Crime soared, property values plummeted, infrastructure crumbled. Still, it was better than Ventura Village. Here, at least, you only had a one-in-thirty-two chance of being a victim of a crime per year.