The Taking of Libbie, SD Read online

  I saluted her with my bottle of Summit Ale. She returned it with a can of orange pop.

  “I guess that’s the end of that, then,” Nina said.

  “Well…”

  “Well, what?”

  “The Imposter used my name.”

  “I understand, but if he had called himself Bill Smith, I’d hardly think that would be reason enough for all the other Bill Smiths in the world to be outraged.”

  “He didn’t use Bill Smith.”

  “Why do you think the Imposter used your name?” Shelby said. “Do you think it’s someone who knows you?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” Bobby said. “He called himself a Raider. He could have gone to Cretin–Derham Hall.”

  “He could have gone to Roseville or Hastings or Norwood–Young America for that matter,” said Victoria. “Nicollet, Northfield, Greenway, Fulda…” She stopped reciting teams when she found Bobby and me both staring at her. “What? I read the sports page.”

  “Geez,” Katie said.

  “I doubt the Imposter and I have ever met,” I said. “Everyone I know is here or from here, and this guy doesn’t know diddly-squat about the Twin Cities.”

  “Does it matter?” Nina asked. “What is it you guys like to say—no harm, no foul?”

  “There was plenty of foul.”

  “Yes, but nothing lasting. ‘Living well is the best revenge.’ How many times have you quoted that at me? I thought it was your code.”

  I shrugged my reply and gnawed more corn. It seemed as if Shelby purposely waited until my mouth was full before she changed the topic.

  “So, when are you kids going to get married?” she said.

  I damn near choked to death. The expression on Bobby’s face was of pure horror—he couldn’t believe Shelby had said that.

  “That’s a good question,” Victoria said. “You guys have been sleeping together since when?”

  This time it was Shelby’s turn to be shocked. “Victoria,” she said.

  Only Nina remained calm. She flicked away Shelby’s question as if it were a bothersome fly. ’Course, she had practice. Her daughter, Erica, had asked the same question a few days earlier.

  “McKenzie asked me,” she said. “He asked a couple of times, only I keep turning him down.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Bobby said. “You could do so much better.”

  “After my last experience with marriage, I’m kinda sour on the institution.”

  “Besides, a woman doesn’t need a man to complete her life,” Victoria said.

  “Yeah,” Katie said. She usually agreed with her older sister.

  “Were we speaking to you?” Shelby asked.

  “You said ‘kids.’” Victoria pointed at herself and Katie.

  “It won’t be long,” I said, “before these two start dating.”

  Shelby and Bobby glared at me as if I’d told an off-color joke. I ate more corn.

  Between bites of the corn, grilled chicken, and shrimp and sips of wine, beer, and orange pop, we talked. We talked about the president, and the weather, which seemed cooler than it had been in past summers despite fears of global warming, and the price of gas, and the Twins, who were once again in the thick of the American League Central Division race. Finally Victoria said, “McKenzie, when are you going back?”

  “Tomorrow,” I said.

  Nina dropped her fork on her plate. Her startling silver-blue eyes became as dark as her shoulder-length black hair. She spoke very slowly.

  “Back to Libbie?” she said.

  I nodded.

  “When did you make that decision?”

  “Monday night.”

  “Give me one good reason.”

  Before I could, Victoria answered for me. “Because they broke into his house and kidnapped him and kept him in a trunk—a trunk! They kept me in a trunk, too.”

  Shelby tried to slip an arm around her shoulders, but Victoria slid off the picnic table and out of reach. I thought she might cry. There were no tears in her eyes, though. Only rage.

  “They kept him prisoner,” Victoria said. “They hurt him and they kept him prisoner and maybe it was mistaken identity like you said, but someone has to pay for that. The guy who started it all, the Imposter, he’s got to pay for that. Him and everyone who helped him. Otherwise—otherwise you’ll always wonder. You’ll always be afraid. I’m not afraid anymore because the people who hurt me, they’re dead or they’re in prison. The people who hurt McKenzie, they’re still out there and they’ll probably hurt other people, too, unless someone stops them. If McKenzie doesn’t stop them, who will?”

  No one had anything to say to that except Victoria’s younger sister, who filled the uncomfortable silence that followed with a simple declaration.

  “Listen to her,” Katie said. “She’s an honor student.”

  Nina sat on the edge of a stool in my kitchen and held the stem of a wineglass against the counter as I filled it with pinot noir.

  “What Victoria said earlier, is that why you’re going to Libbie in the morning?” she said.

  “Partly,” I said.

  “What else?”

  “Curiosity. I want to know why the Imposter picked me. Unfortunately, I won’t get the answer unless I find him.”

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with the women you told me about, Tracie Blake and Sharren what’s-her-name?”

  “Certainly not. C’mon…”

  Nina thought about it, then said, “Maybe we should get married.”

  The remark caught me by surprise, and it took a couple of beats before I could reply. “Nope.”

  “No?”

  “You don’t want to get married; you’ve made that clear. If you’re talking about it now, it’s because you’re thinking about those women—you’re thinking you can’t trust me, and honestly, Nina, if that’s true, then you’ll trust me even less after we’re married.”

  “Oh, McKenzie, don’t be silly. Of course I trust you. That’s not it.”

  “What, then?”

  “If we were married, well, would you really leave me to go to Libbie?” She gave me an exaggerated wink just in case I missed her meaning.

  “I don’t know if it would be harder than it already is, but, yeah, I’d go, because then it wouldn’t be just my name I’d be trying to protect, it would be yours, too.”

  “That’s what it’s about? Protecting your fair name? Honestly, McKenzie, when did you become Arthur of Camelot?”

  “Nina—”

  “Actually, you could be Arthur, or at least one of his knights, righting wrongs with a singing sword you pulled from a stone.”

  “Excalibur is the sword Arthur pulled from the stone. The Singing Sword is different. It belonged to Prince Valiant.”

  Nina glared at me as if she’d suddenly discovered that I was the dumbest human being alive.

  “I just thought you ought to know,” I said.

  “What if I asked you not to sally forth?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What if I asked you to stay here?”

  “Are you asking?”

  “I said if.”

  “If you asked, I would stay.”

  “You would?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.”

  “Are you asking?”

  “No.”

  “You can if you want.”

  “No. I knew who you were and what you did when we met. I don’t have the right to ask you to change. If I don’t like it, I can always leave, can’t I?”

  “I would if you asked—change, I mean.”

  “Oh, McKenzie. Don’t start making promises that you can’t keep.”

  “I love you.”

  “I know. I love you, too, but I don’t always enjoy it.”

  Nina drained her wineglass in one long swallow and set it on the countertop.

  “There’s something you should know,” she said. “If we got married—that’s a big if, by the w
ay—but if we got married, I would insist on keeping my own name.”

  “Nina Elizabeth Truhler. A lovely name. A lovely name for a lovely woman.” I leaned in and kissed her gently on the lips. “Would you like to go upstairs?”

  Nina slid off the stool and moved to the kitchen entrance. She found the light switch and pushed it to off.

  “Here will do just fine,” she said.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I drove the Audi. My Cherokee was probably better suited for the terrain, but it didn’t have a false bottom in the trunk for my stuff. Besides, the Audi got better gas mileage—even though I cranked the air conditioner to seventy-four degrees—and these days any trip from home becomes a major expense. It amuses my friends that I concern myself with such things, what with the money I have. I wasn’t always wealthy, though. I was born and raised a middle-class kid in a middle-class neighborhood, and the lessons I learned stayed with me even after the insurance company handed me a check for three million, one hundred twenty-five thousand, five hundred eighty-four dollars and fifty cents.

  I had set the cruise control to exactly nine miles per hour above the speed limit and seemed to be making better time than on my first trip to Libbie. Certainly the view was better. South Dakota, like all of the other Plains States, was supposed to be flat, with rangeland stretching as far as the eye could see, except it wasn’t. It was rugged land, with canyons, gullies, ravines, and flat-topped hills. Cottonwood, elm, and willow trees were common near rivers and shelter belts. There were fields of alfalfa and grain and corn and soybeans. Along the way I also saw plenty of bison, deer, and pronghorn antelope. Yet one thing was as advertised—the sky was big and blue and seemed never to end.

  By early afternoon, I had crossed the Missouri River, where the east ended and the west began. There were fewer farm fields, and now I saw pastures dotted with herds of shorthorn and Angus cattle. There was a saddle straddling a mailbox at the end of a long farm road. Someone had driven a Chevy van nose down into the drainage ditch along Highway 212 just outside of Faith. I stopped to take a look. No one was inside or around the vehicle.

  A few miles up the road, I pulled into a Quick 66 to gas up. The smell of skunk as thick as a fog punched me in the nose when I stepped outside of the Audi, yet it didn’t seem to bother a hen pheasant crouched alongside the road, taking grit. There was a cornfield on the other side of the gas station that looked like it was badly in need of water.

  I filled my gas tank and checked the oil before I went inside. The Quick 66 was empty except for an old woman who sat behind the counter.

  “As you can see, I’m just busier than heck,” she said.

  I told her about the van.

  “Oh, that’s just Eugene,” she said. “I swear that boy got his license out of a Cracker Jack box. I ’spect he’ll be along soon with his brother Al’s wrecker to pull ’er out. Al is a mechanic, don’t you know.”

  I thought that was convenient, and the woman agreed with me.

  “Looks like you folks could use some rain,” I said.

  “Whaddaya mean?”

  “The corn seems a little dry.”

  “You’re not from around these parts, are ya?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Cuz we only get about fifteen inches of rain each year, don’t you know. Folks up here, if they ain’t raising cattle, they’re dryland farmers. Raise corn, beans, even watermelons with nothin’ but a thimbleful of rain. It’s an art.”

  I agreed that it probably was.

  I was glad when I returned to the Audi, glad to get out of the heat—the AC did such a fine job, I had to turn it down after only a couple of miles. There was a purple ridge in the distance running north and south, how many miles away I couldn’t say, and I wondered if that was where the Black Hills began. I didn’t get close enough for an answer. Instead, I turned north on Highway 73, the ridge now on my left, with the sun looking to set behind it. I passed more fields of alfalfa, beans, and corn, although they were now spaced miles apart. There were steel bins visible from the highway, and barns and cattle in feedlots and cattle at pasture and a white silo with go cardinals painted on it. A cock pheasant crossed the road in front of me, and I slowed down to avoid hitting it. A few miles later, I did the same for two hens. There were little songbirds balanced on fence rails, and killdeer, and in the distance I saw two red-tailed hawks perched on a big bale of alfalfa. The only things that blocked the view were the occasional windbreak of trees.

  What I didn’t see was another car—not one—on the whole way north.

  It was a pleasant drive, but I was starting to get tired and cranky just the same. I had been over eight hours in the Audi, and I couldn’t find a single radio station worth listening to. Finally I approached a sign set along the highway. libbie, sd, 1884. rules, regulations, and respect!

  “That’s the town motto?” I said aloud. “Really?”

  It was the exclamation point that annoyed me the most. I was a big fan of respect, but rules and regulations—not so much. If I had been a teenager growing up in Libbie, somehow I could see myself burning that sign to the ground. With Bobby Dunston acting as lookout.

  I leaned against the frame of Chief Gustafson’s office door and watched him, my arms folded across my chest. He was sitting behind his desk, his feet up, and reading a two-week-old copy of Time. Except for the chief, the Libbie police station was empty and silent. It could have been a library, or a Christian Science Reading Room. There wasn’t even a bell on the door to announce when visitors arrived. Eventually his eyes lifted upward off the magazine and saw me standing there.

  “Hi,” I said.

  The chief tried to do everything at once—drop the magazine, lower his feet, stand, and reach for his gun—none of them smoothly. Still, it took only a moment before the fear slipped away.

  “You startled me,” he said.

  “This is the least secure police station I have ever been in,” I said.

  “We’re kinda informal around here.”

  “I noticed.”

  “So what are you doing here, McKenzie? I thought you went back to the Cities.”

  “I did. Like the man said, I have returned.”

  “Yeah?”

  The chief motioned toward a chair in front of the desk, and I settled in. He sat behind the desk and folded his hands on top of his blotter.

  “So, any complaints?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was wondering if anyone swore out a warrant for my arrest. Felonious assault, something like that.”

  “You mean what happened the other day at the Rossini? The way I heard it—a couple of witnesses swore Church threw the first punch and you were acting in self-defense. Least, that’s what it says in my report.”

  “What does Church say?”

  “Not a word.”

  “That surprises me. Usually bullies are the first to go whining to the law when things don’t go their way.”

  “Church is one of those guys who likes to plot his own revenge, so be careful. Hear me?”

  “Sure.”

  “What about you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I had a couple of interesting conversations yesterday, first with the FBI and then later with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. They seem to think there was something improper about how you were treated the other day.”

  “They’re right about that.”

  “And?”

  “The last I spoke to them, we pretty much agreed that they have far more important things to do than rousting small-town police departments.”

  “I appreciate that, I surely do.”

  “How big is your department, anyway?”

  “Three, plus a couple of part-timers.”

  “I’m surprised a town this small can afford a police department.”

  “We have contracts with a few local towns; that helps keep the price down. ’Course, with this other McKenzie defrauding the city, I don’t know what
’ll happen. Tell me, is that why you came back? To help get the Imposter?”

  There were several framed color photographs on the chief’s desk. In one, a woman with black hair and pale skin, her head tilted just so, stared straight into the camera; her smile was bright and warm. I reached for it.

  “May I?” I said. The chief nodded his approval. I took up the frame and gave it a long look. “Very pretty.”

  “My wife, Nancy.”

  “One look and I can tell she’s far too good for the likes of you.”

  You say something like that and most husbands will tell you that they agree, even if they don’t actually believe it. The chief’s reply: “The photo was taken a couple of years ago.”

  “I can’t get over it,” I said. “The number of attractive women in this town. You must have more babes per capita than just about anywhere I’ve been.”

  “We hold our own.”

  “Gotta be something in the water,” I said. I set the photograph back on the desk. “You know it’s an inside job, don’t you?”

  The chief didn’t say.

  “The Imposter didn’t simply show up one day and decide to fleece Libbie, South Dakota,” I said. “He had an accomplice. Someone had to set it up, tell him who to talk to, who to avoid.”

  The chief rubbed his face with both hands.

  “I don’t believe that,” he said.

  “Yes, you do.”

  The chief stopped rubbing.

  “No, I don’t. I know there’s an accomplice. It’s the only way to explain how the Imposter got out of town. That doesn’t mean he’s from Libbie.”

  “What do you mean ‘got out of town’?”

  “We found the Imposter’s rental in the lot at Lake Mataya. That’s a park about seven miles outside of Libbie on White Buffalo Road, lots of trees, picnic tables—people sometimes use it as a kind of rendezvous. Which was what I first thought when I found the car, that he went off with someone and spent the night, if you know what I mean. Except he never came back for the car. Later, I checked with the Pioneer Hotel. Turned out the Imposter left Tuesday night, left about 9:00 p.m.—that was ten days ago. He was carrying one of those personal computer bags. Sharren Nuffer called after him as he headed for the door. Just to say hi, she said. The Imposter, he waved at her and said, ‘It’s been a slice,’ and walked out. When we checked his room, we found that his bags and clothes were still there, but nothing that could identify him. That’s when I put a call in to Jon Kampa, who owns the bank. Turned out that the Imposter had electronically transferred all of the cash in his account to a bank in the Caymans at about midnight.”