The Taking of Libbie, SD Read online

  I met Shelby three and a half minutes before her husband did, and often I have wondered what would’ve happened if I had been the one who spilled a drink on her.

  “I really am, Shel,” I said. “A bit of a headache, some aches and pains, nothing more. I’m sorry if you were frightened, but it wasn’t my fault.”

  “As opposed to all the other times you frightened me when it was your fault.”

  “Exactly.”

  She sighed deeply. It was the same sigh that Victoria had given me. Like mother, like daughter.

  “I’ve given you and your family a few anxious moments over the years,” I said. “I apologize.”

  “The good has always outweighed the bad.”

  “Thank you for saying that.”

  “What did Nina have to say about all this?”

  “I haven’t spoken to her yet.”

  That caused Shelby to pause for a few beats.

  “You called me before you called her?” she said.

  “No. I mean yes. I mean, I called—I knew Bobby would beworking the case…” This time I sighed. “Yes, I called you first.”

  “Dammit, McKenzie.”

  “What?”

  “You’re supposed to call the woman you’re in love with first.”

  “Sure.”

  She paused again.

  “Be safe, Rushmore,” she said. “Hurry home.”

  Shelby hung up before I could say anything more.

  Nina was not at the jazz club she owned near the cathedral in St. Paul, named Rickie’s after her daughter, Erica. Jenness, her assistant manager, said she had been too anxious to work. When I reached her at home, she shrieked my name so loudly I had to pull the receiver from my ear. After I assured her that I was “fit as a fiddle and ready for love,” she told me that everyone was looking for me, including Harry and the FBI. I told her that I would call them as soon as I was finished talking to her.

  “You called me first?”

  “You’re the only one that matters,” I said.

  I believed it with all my heart when I said it. I admit that on occasion I allow myself to become confused. Yet all I have to do is see Nina or hear her voice and everything becomes perfectly clear to me. I see the world in its entirety, and it is exactly the way it should be.

  I told Nina what had happened in detail, even confessed to how frightened I had become, which I had not admitted to anyone else. I told her that I was tempted to help the City of Libbie because I was angry that the Imposter had used my name. I also told her that the idea made me uneasy because I would be cut off from my resources, from Bobby and Harry and from her. Nina told me she would support any decision I made, although she wouldn’t have an untroubled moment until I returned safely to her. She was like that, supporting my crusades, as she called them, without entirely embracing them.

  God, I love this woman, I told myself.

  Then why did you call Shelby first? my inner voice said.

  “I’ll be home as soon as I can,” I said.

  “I’ll be waiting,” Nina told me.

  After I shaved and showered, I stood naked in front of the bathroom mirror and fingered the puncture wounds in my shoulder and waist. The Taser marks seemed smaller now, yet they throbbed like first-degree burns. I would have liked some salve to soothe them, but all I had was aspirin tablets that I was starting to pop like M&M’s. They hadn’t done my headache any good at all.

  I stared at my reflection.

  “Screw Libbie, South Dakota,” I said aloud. “Screw the Imposter. Screw everyone.”

  I finished dressing and peeked at my reflection yet again. For some reason I didn’t look like myself. Certainly I didn’t feel like myself.

  “Go home, McKenzie,” I said.

  The reflection nodded in agreement.

  Sharren gave me a wolf whistle from behind the registration desk when I reached the lobby. She spoke in a low, husky voice that sounded as if a lifetime of talking had taken its toll.

  “My, oh my, but don’t you clean up nice,” she said.

  “Clothes make the man,” I said.

  “I don’t know about that, Rush. I kinda liked what you were wearing before.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t call me that—Rush. McKenzie is just fine.”

  “Buy you a drink, big boy?”

  I glanced up at the clock behind Sharren’s left shoulder. Even if I took my time, I would probably be about five minutes early to the café, and I couldn’t have that.

  “Yes, you can buy me a drink,” I said. I didn’t mind at all that she called me “big boy.”

  The star attraction of the Pioneer Hotel was its cathedral-like dining room with a huge stone fireplace. It was half filled, a good crowd for a Monday night, Sharren said. Heads turned to watch as she led me through the room, and there were whispers.

  “News travels fast in a small town,” I said.

  “Hmm?”

  “Nothing.”

  At the far end of the dining room was an ancient bar, the kind with a long, graceful mirror. A young man with sparkling eyes and a winning smile stood behind the stick. The way he ran his fingers through his blond hair made me think he knew how to get girls. On the other hand, the way his white dress shirt strained at the buttons made me think that if he didn’t start investing in some exercise, the girls wouldn’t stay gotten for long. He greeted us with two coasters that he quickly set in front of us and a prediction that we’d like it there.

  “Evan, this is Rushmore McKenzie,” Sharren said. “McKenzie, this is Evan.”

  “The one and only,” Evan said as he extended his hand. I didn’t know if he meant me or himself. “What’ll ya have?”

  We ordered a double Jack Daniel’s for me and bourbon and water for Sharren. I took a long pull of the liquor. It burned all the way down to my empty stomach. I heard my inner voice say, You should eat something before you set to drinking. In a minute, I told it, and took another sip.

  “So, what do you think of Libbie?” Evan said.

  “It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live here.”

  Neither of them thought my answer was particularly funny.

  Sharren asked if I would mind taking our drinks back to the hotel lobby in case an errant traveler might seek lodging for the evening. I said that was fine. On the way out, I caught Evan giving Sharren a wink and the thumbs-up sign. Sharren responded by sticking out her tongue.

  As we worked our way back through the dining room, Sharren told me about the swimming pool and sauna that were added in the early seventies and how people would often book rooms just to lounge around them, especially in winter.

  “We added a water slide two years ago,” she said. “It’s become a big profit center for us.”

  Once again, I noted the turned heads, whispered words, and more than a few twisted smiles as we walked past. This time, though, it occurred to me that I was only peripherally the object of curiosity. It was Sharren that the diners followed. I began to suspect that I wasn’t the first “big boy” Sharren had treated to drinks. I also wondered at what point her dalliances had become a spectator sport.

  “Small towns,” I said.

  “Tell me about it,” Sharren said.

  Apparently this time she knew exactly what I meant.

  I followed her to the lobby. We found a pair of overstuffed chairs with an uncluttered view of both the front door and the registration desk and settled in.

  “Are you really going to try to find Rush—I mean—you know who I mean,” Sharren said.

  “Do you care?”

  “I wouldn’t mind seeing him get punished for what he did to the town.”

  “What did he do to you?”

  Sharren surprised me by smiling. She waved her glass at the arched doorway leading to the restaurant.

  “You saw those people giving me the eye,” she said. “That’s what he did to me.”

  “What do you know about him?”

  “I know he used to be a cop i
n the Twin Cities and that he quit the force to collect a reward on an embezzler he tracked down—a couple of million dollars. I know he graduated with honors from the University of Minnesota, he speaks three languages, he’s single, and his parents are dead, that he has a big house in Falcon Heights…”

  I took a long pull of the whiskey.

  “That’s all you, isn’t it?” Sharren said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Nothing to be sorry about. I like being me.”

  “Yes, but him using your name like that—I’m sorry.”

  “What else do you know about me?”

  “I know you like sports. Do you like sports?”

  “Yes.”

  “You played hockey?”

  I nodded.

  “And baseball?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And football?”

  “Football? No. He said I played football?”

  “He said you lettered as a wide receiver and backup quarterback.”

  “Did he say who I played for?”

  “Central High School in St. Paul. He said you were a Raider.”

  That caused me to lean back in my chair.

  “You didn’t go to Central High School?” Sharren said.

  “I did, yes. We were called the Minutemen.”

  I bet you could catch him if you really wanted to, my inner voice told me. There are probably a thousand high schools in the U.S. with the nick name Raiders, yet if you could narrow it down … Stop it! You’re going home, remember?

  The clock above the registration desk told me if I hurried, I would be only fifteen minutes late for my meeting with Tracie. I drained my drink and stood up. The pain in my head made me wince.

  “Are you okay?” Sharren said.

  “I need to get something to eat.”

  “I’m off at ten, but I could stay later if…”

  Sharren leaned forward. The front of her shirt fell away, as I’m sure she intended, and I could see the swell of her breasts encased in flimsy black nylon and lace. I forced myself to look away but could do nothing about the all too familiar stirring somewhere south of my belt. Will you never grow up? my inner voice asked. What are you talking about? I looked away, didn’t I?

  “I don’t know when I’ll be back,” I said.

  “If you’re having dinner with Tracie Blake, you won’t be out too late,” Sharren said. “So if you want to chat some more, we could have another drink. Or two.”

  I knew an invitation when I heard one. Just in case I was brain dead, though, Sharren rose slowly from her chair, stepped in close, and rested her slender fingers on my shoulder at the base of my neck.

  This is probably a good time to mention Nina, my inner voice told me. You remember her, don’t you? The love of your life? Only I didn’t want to get into it.

  “Be careful,” I said. “People will talk.”

  “People will talk anyway.”

  I eased Sharren’s hand off my shoulder, gave it a friendly squeeze, and released it.

  “I gotta go,” I said.

  I stepped around Sharren and headed for the door.

  “Have a good time,” she said.

  “Don’t wait up,” I told her.

  Café Rossini was located on the corner of First and Main, and it had two entrances. Enter from the west like I did and it looked like a neighborhood bar with plenty of worn wood and lights that discouraged reading. The entrance to the dining room was at the north end of the building, and I had to walk through the bar to get to it—you could not see the bar from the dining room.

  Unlike the bar, the dining area looked like it had been built in the fifties—it was all stainless steel, Formica, and cold fluorescent lights. A long counter with a dozen round stools bolted to the floor faced the kitchen; slices of various fruit pies were set on small plates and displayed in clear plastic cases near the cash register. Each of the half-dozen booths against the wall had a metal napkin dispenser, bottles of ketchup and mustard, and shakers of salt and pepper. So did the small Formica tables arranged between them. Tinny, unrecognizable music poured from cheap speakers.

  I found Tracie sitting in a booth nursing a glass of white zinfandel. The booth had a nice view—we could see the new concrete of Libbie’s main drag. When I mentioned it, Tracie told me that it took the contractor one full day to pour the concrete for a single block of First Street from curb to curb. Two cement trucks at a time would dump their loads into a machine that kept edging forward, leaving a smooth and leveled surface behind it. Tracie was not only proud of the street, she was proud that she and the Libbie City Council had the presence of mind to set up a table with coffee, lemonade, and donuts for the nearly three hundred people who stopped by throughout the day to watch the work.

  “You’re wise to public relations,” I said.

  “Not wise enough to hide the fact that I’m upset that you kept me waiting,” Tracie said. “Why are you so late? Was it Sharren?”

  “The various law enforcement agencies that had been searching for me all day had many questions.”

  That slowed her down. “What did you tell them?”

  “The truth.”

  “The truth?”

  “It’s always a good idea to tell the truth, especially to the FBI. They get cranky when you don’t.”

  “The FBI?”

  “When the home security people answered my alarm this morning and found the door smashed open and me gone, who did you think they were going to call? The Boy Scouts of America?”

  “I didn’t realize it was that big of a deal.”

  “Ever hear of the Lindbergh Act?”

  “McKenzie, are you going to press charges? Are you going to sue us?”

  Probably not, I decided. I didn’t care what happened to Libbie, South Dakota, and I certainly had no love for Miller and his bounty hunters. Harry was right, though—I wasn’t a guy to take legal action against cops, and that’s what it would eventually amount to, me suing the Libbie Police Department. ’Course, I didn’t want Tracie to know that. At least not while I could use the threat to leverage a meal. I grabbed a menu from behind the napkin dispenser.

  “What’s good?” I said.

  “Rush was like that. Whenever someone asked a question he didn’t want to answer, he’d change the subject.”

  “Did you spend much time with him?”

  “Some.”

  Tracie glanced casually across the restaurant toward the front door. Of course, she had slept with him. She didn’t need to say it; I could see the words written on her face.

  My, my, my, my inner voice chanted. He did get along, didn’t he? If what Miller had said earlier was true, the Imposter had bedded at least three attractive women using my name. I discovered that I was more than a little jealous.

  “Tracie, what are you doing here?” I said. “How the hell did you end up in Libbie, South Dakota?”

  “You make it sound like a Russian gulag.”

  “There are those who’d agree with me.”

  “Honestly, McKenzie, this is the only place I’ve been where I’ve felt completely at home, completely relaxed.”

  “Mayberry.”

  “Hardly that. Still … I don’t know, McKenzie. Either you like small-town life or you don’t. I like it.”

  “Were you born here?”

  “No, no. My ex-husband was. Christopher Kramme. He was from Libbie. I met him in Chicago. He was taking graduate courses in aeronautical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He wanted to build airplanes. I didn’t discover until much later that he was more passionate about that than he was about me. Oh, well.”

  “Were you a student?”

  “I was a model. And an actress.”

  I knew it, my inner voice said.

  “Really?” I said.

  “Not a supermodel by any means,” Tracie said. “I can’t complain, though. I worked steady. A lot of advertising work—catalogs, brochures, a lot of weekly supplements for d
epartment stores like Nordstrom’s, Macy’s, Value City. Some TV spots, too, some video work, plays. I acted in a couple of small theater productions doing Harvey, Agatha Christie’s Murder Is Announced—I once played Typhoid Mary in A Plague of Angels. They made me look thirty years older than I was. That was sobering. I read somewhere that the average career expectancy for a professional football player is something like four-point-four years. I bet it’s the same for models. Still, it was fun. Not as much money as you’d think, but a good time. People stopping me on Michigan Av and pointing at an outdoor board, my face twenty feet high, and saying, ‘Is that you?’ What a rush.”

  Tracie took a long sip from her drink before continuing.

  “Anyway, we lived in the same apartment building. At least once a week Christopher would come to my door carrying a pitcher of strawberry margaritas, and we’d sit on my balcony and get pleasantly stoned. Not once did he make a pass. Whenever the evening would start to take a romantic turn, he’d glance at his watch, jump up, and say, ‘Gotta go.’ For the longest time I thought he was gay. Then I discovered he was a member of an entirely different minority group.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He was a gentleman.”

  “Ahh.”

  “We finally went out on a real date—I had to ask him—and we just hit it off. He proposed, I accepted, and suddenly I was packing to go to Libbie to meet his parents. Unfortunately, his father died at the same time. Heart attack. He was only sixty-one. They say he was a great guy. They also say that it was the shock of his son settling down that killed him. They were wealthy people, the Krammes, and Christopher took advantage of that. Never held a job. Never wanted one. All he wanted to do was build and fly his airplanes, which he never actually did—build them, I mean.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Christopher? He went to prison.”

  “What?”

  “The Feds got him. What happened, one day he jumped into his plane and flew off. The next day he called me. They had arrested him at the airport in a rinky-dink town called Mineral Point in Wisconsin. The Feds got an anonymous tip and asked the sheriff’s department to detain him. Turned out Christopher had a hundred and fifty pounds of high-grade marijuana squirreled away in compartments in his plane worth something like seven hundred thousand dollars. Christopher never explained where he got the dope, or where he was taking it, or why he landed in Mineral Point, or who ratted him out. At least not to me.”