The Midnight Plan of the Repo Man: A Novel

  “That’s not what I want. Don’t you see? Things have to change. We need to attract somebody besides bikers and unemployed factory workers.”

  “What about the petty criminals and con artists?”

  “Why do you always joke? Ruddy, the other night when everyone was dancing, we grossed more than four hundred dollars. If we could attract that sort of crowd every time … I want to sell something besides popcorn—you know how often people come in and ask for a menu? Because we don’t serve anything but thawed-out chicken wings and nachos with that disgusting cheese sauce, after they come here for a drink they go somewhere else to eat. I want to put in a grill that actually works, paint the walls, get some new tables.”

  “People don’t like our cheese sauce?” I responded, truly offended.

  “It’s made out of plastic,” Alan sniffed contemptuously.

  “Please,” Becky said impatiently.

  “Okay, okay. I’ll give you the money. I can sleep in the back for a while, until your business plan kicks in and we become as big as Burger King.”

  She shook her head. “No, Ruddy. Dad and Mom left the Bear to me. I don’t want your money; I want to do this myself.”

  “By running credit card numbers through our machine.”

  “Right.”

  “Have you consulted a psychic about this?”

  “I would think you of all people wouldn’t make fun!” she snapped.

  I looked at her. “What do you mean, me of all people?”

  She shook her head. “Never mind.”

  “No, what is that supposed to mean? That I got a voice in my head, so I should start hanging out with psychics and people who have been kidnapped by UFOs?”

  “I’m doing it,” Becky said fiercely. Her eyes were blurred. “It isn’t something I need your permission for.”

  “Dad would never allow it.”

  “Oh right, Ruddy. I’m the one who disappointed Dad.”

  That one hurt. I felt the heat rise in my face. “Becky, you do this and you risk everything we own.”

  “Everything I own.” She turned on her heel.

  I watched her walk away from me. This was not Becky behavior at all. “I am going to rip Kermit’s arms out of their sockets,” I remarked pleasantly.

  “You aren’t listening to her,” Alan told me. “It’s not Kermit.”

  “You too? Great, even my own psychosis is against me.”

  Alan made a sound I interpreted to mean he was cutting me off from the pleasure of his company for a while.

  Claude joined me and began babbling about the kind of return you could get from off-shore investments. I gathered that he felt the slander clause was so close to being a done deal he was already starting to resent the tax implications. I tuned him out until Janelle came in and walked over to us, and then my head filled with alarm bells. She scooted a chair up to the table and patted Claude’s hand affectionately. He beamed at me like a boy with a new toy and I just shook my head.

  “Honey, let’s go see a movie in Traverse City tonight,” she purred possessively. Claude nodded expansively.

  I looked at Janelle and she stared right back, her gaze almost a challenge of some sort. She had been homecoming queen, I suddenly remembered. When I was a boy I stood on the sidewalk in front of the Black Bear and watched her ride by in a convertible. The man she wound up marrying had been wearing a football uniform and was driving the car behind her. He wasn’t much of a halfback, I recalled, but he got the girl, and then he dumped her. I shook my head again. A couple of decades hadn’t really erased her appeal, but it sure had taken away a lot of her options.

  Why did Janelle feel complete only when she had a man in her life? The misery she’d been oozing since her husband walked out on her was gone, and the settled contentment on her face just because she’d hooked an easy fish like Claude made me squirm in my chair.

  When Wilma walked in half an hour later I was still sitting there at the table with Claude and his new girlfriend as if we were all having a big adultery party. I dropped my eyes away from Wilma’s accusatory stare, cursing Claude for making it appear I had chosen sides against her.

  “She knows,” Alan whispered in despair.

  Becky and I exchanged worried glances.

  This was not going to be good.

  12

  What Everyone Does in a Situation Like This

  Watching Wilma walk across the floor, dark as an approaching thundercloud, I had the epiphany that Claude had never done anything like this before. Janelle was a new sort of disaster in their lives.

  We probably all looked like idiots, sitting there open-mouthed as Wilma stood in front of our table, her crazy bejeweled earrings flashing like lightning. I realized I was afraid.

  She took three deep breaths. “Well, Claude,” she said unevenly, her lips twitching. “Congratulations.”

  The three of us were silent. Janelle had averted her eyes, while Claude was staring at Wilma in dread.

  “You’ve given me syphilis, Claude,” she announced, more loudly.

  “What!” he gasped, turning pale. Janelle jerked her head around and stared.

  “And gonorrhea, too,” she added in a shout. “The doctor said you must be oozing pus. That’s how you gave it to me.”

  Claude could think of nothing to say, though he swallowed a couple of times. Janelle pushed herself away from the table and muttered “Excuse me” under her breath. Wilma watched her leave with hot, black eyes. The room was now so silent I could hear people breathing.

  “For God’s sake, Wilma!” Claude protested.

  She whirled on him. “The slander clause, remember, Claude?”

  “Yeah, but…”

  “But what?” Wilma regarded Claude’s humiliated expression with complete apathy, as if he were just another person complaining about county government services at her office. “Have a nice evening, honey.” Her smile was cold as she pushed her way past him. Her sharp eyes flicked at me and I knew it would take a lot to repair the damage done by my presence at the table with Claude and Janelle.

  Alan winked out at the same time Becky shut off the lights. My sister and I exchanged weary glances, as if we’d just survived a family crisis. She gave me a look that meant, I know we fought, and I know you’re still mad, but we’re still brother and sister and I love you.

  My look said back, “I am always right about everything.”

  Alan was still asleep when I got home, so after dragging Jake out to do his business, I decided to flip through the stack of mail on the table and then grab an Andrew Gross novel and head to bed. “Unless you maybe want to go hunt some ducks or something, Jake?”

  Jake didn’t seem to think I was funny.

  About a year ago Jimmy Growe purchased something sexy for one of his girlfriends from a mail-order lingerie place and had it delivered to my house. He didn’t want anyone at the hotel where he lived to see it arrive. As a rather pleasing result, I sometimes received unsolicited lingerie catalogues, like the one I came across as I sorted through my bills.

  I opened it and gazed in something akin to bewilderment. “Do women really let you do that, buy them outfits like this to wear?” I asked. Alan, still slumbering, didn’t reply, and I realized with considerable consternation that I’d developed a habit of talking out loud to myself. Jake’s grunt indicated he wasn’t any more fond of the new behavior than I was.

  Once I was in bed with the Gross novel I realized I was far more interested in reading the lingerie catalogue, despite the lack of a plot. One of the models bore a passing resemblance to Katie Lottner.

  Hi Katie, here’s a present I bought for you.

  Thanks, Ruddy! I’ll put it on right now!

  Be careful with the garter belt!

  The same model was on another page wearing little more than an inviting expression and a pair of lace shorts, her arms crossed in front of her bare chest. I pictured Katie spreading her arms to me, her smile, those lips, her eyes, the lace coming off in a whisper of
sound …

  “What are we doing?” Alan asked curiously.

  “Nothing!” I shouted. I threw the catalogue across the room.

  He was silent for a minute. I surreptitiously yanked at the waistband of my boxers.

  “I guess we should talk about this,” he said.

  “I guess we should never talk about this,” I responded hotly.

  “No, look. I mean, it’s perfectly normal,” he soothed.

  “Do you have any idea how crazy it makes me to have a voice inside my head talking to me as if it is my psychiatrist?” I raged back.

  “It’s healthy. There’s no reason to feel ashamed. Everybody does it,” he argued.

  “Not with another guy in the room!”

  “I think you’re really overreacting.”

  “How am I overreacting? By its very definition, it’s a solo act. There’s not supposed to be another person there. If there’s another person there, it’s something else!”

  “Ruddy, if it makes you feel better, next time I won’t say anything.”

  “There’s not ever going to be a next time!” I stormed.

  “Sure,” Alan agreed skeptically. “Never again. Ever.”

  “Ever!” I affirmed. I reached for my book. “I’m going to read now.”

  “I’ll try to go back to sleep,” Alan promised, “let you get back to … what you were doing.”

  I closed my eyes and groaned.

  * * *

  Alan was still asleep when I awoke the next morning, but I felt him stir as I was reading the paper.

  “God, this is awful,” Alan moaned.

  “Good morning to you, too.”

  “The way you are reading is giving me a headache.”

  I snorted. “That’s ridiculous. How can you get a headache? You don’t even have a head.”

  “Ruddy, about last night…”

  “No talking, Alan,” I warned. He sighed in frustration. I continued to read the paper, deliberately moving my eyes more slowly. It took a lot of concentration.

  “Are we going back to East Jordan today?” he asked finally.

  “Yes, soon as I finish my breakfast and take Jake out to water the lawn,” I promised.

  “A cold Big Mac and a cup of coffee. Breakfast,” Alan pronounced.

  “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.”

  “I am trying it,” he retorted.

  “Okay, but look at it this way: You can eat all of the saturated fats you want, and it can’t hurt you, because you’re already dead.”

  “If I have to share this body with you I think I should have some say as to what goes into it,” he responded haughtily.

  “Let me disabuse you of the notion that you have to share my body,” I answered.

  After breakfast I stood in my living room and looked at something I hadn’t seen in a long time: my carpet, vacuumed and free of any dirty laundry. “Why is she doing this?” I wondered out loud.

  “Who?”

  “Becky. Why is she cleaning up after me?”

  Everywhere I looked, surfaces gleamed with something besides spilled liquid. Crushed bags from the drive-thru had disappeared. I sort of missed them—they’d become a little like pets.

  In East Jordan I drove out to Einstein Croft’s house to see if he’d decided to wash and wax his truck and leave it sitting for me with the keys in the ignition. At the very end of his driveway I encountered a thick cyclone fence: He didn’t have the money for a truck payment, but somehow he’d found the financial resources to sink some metal posts deep into cement and hang a gate that was far too thick for any wire cutters. I kicked at the fence in frustration and Doris the watch goose wandered over and gave me a warning look.

  “First thing we do is locate my wife, Marget, talk to her. Next we need to look into Burby’s background, see what we can turn up,” Alan said, sounding like he was reading from a checklist. He grew pensive as I headed north up Highway 66, away from East Jordan. “Ruddy, where are you going? What about the investigation?”

  “There is no investigation, Alan,” I responded pleasantly. “Who do you think I am, Jack Reacher? You were killed. This is now a police matter. I’m going to the police.”

  “Jack who?”

  “He’s a sort of private eye in Lee Childs’s books.”

  “You know, I don’t get it,” Alan responded peevishly. “You read nothing but mysteries and thrillers. I’d think you’d be interested in solving my case.”

  “Alan, I’m a repo man. My forensic lab is less advanced than the sheriff’s.”

  “I just don’t think we know enough to go to the cops yet,” he argued.

  I set my jaw. “Well, I’m driving and I made my decision—that’s where we’re going. You don’t like it, I’ll pull over and let you out.”

  “Why are you acting like this?”

  I wondered briefly if Alan could feel the heat in my face. “Because this is my life, my body, and my prerogative. Not yours.”

  “Oh. This is about last night, then.”

  “Alan, just shut up. Now. Period.” I was gripping the steering wheel so tightly it was making a creaking sound.

  Alan seemed to decide it was best that he not speak.

  The sheriff’s facility in Charlevoix was larger than many in the area, built to handle the summer crowds that seasonally flooded the town. This time of year, though, it was virtually deserted—the crime rate, like everything else, was waiting to thaw out. The sense of inertia was palpable, the deputy looking up listlessly as I stepped in and wiped my feet. I could feel him sizing me up a little as I approached, gauging my potential for making trouble. Must be an automatic reflex similar to what I experience when a couple of guys wearing motorcycle leathers wander into the Black Bear for drinks.

  “Help ya?” he wanted to know. His neck was as thick as his head and his big frame supported a lot of beef. His nameplate read TIMMS. He looked like the kind of guy who would drive his elbow into my sides after tackling me, but only when he was sure the ref wasn’t watching. His hair was so short it stood up like brush bristles.

  “I think I know this guy. His name is Dwight Timms. His dad runs a bait shop. I can’t believe he’s a cop, he used to be in trouble all the time,” Alan murmured.

  “Hey there, Dwight. Sheriff in?” I asked casually.

  He’d been leaning on the counter for support. Now he straightened, a doubtful look in his eye. I gave him a cheerful grin, like we were buddies, and he was plainly disconcerted. “Um, got an appointment?”

  “No, but he wants to see me.”

  Reluctantly, Deputy Dwight Timms slouched away from his post, taking my driver’s license and disappearing for a moment. When he returned he nodded for me to follow him down the hallway to a door marked BARRY STRICKLAND, SHERIFF, CHARLEVOIX COUNTY.

  The sheriff was standing, waiting for me, and gave me a look of complete authority as he shook my hand. I told him my name and accepted a seat at his invitation. He settled down behind his desk and fixed me with a pair of clear blue eyes. He was my size, though at least two decades older, with white hair and a face roughened from repeated exposure to sun and Michigan winters. He was chiseled, fit, and handsome. In his snug uniform he looked like a Hollywood version of what he was—a small-town sheriff.

  “How can I help you, Mr. McCann?”

  How indeed. This was, I reflected, not the most thought-out action I’d ever taken. I took a breath, then laughed lightly at my embarrassment. Strickland’s expression didn’t change. I was wondering how I might extricate myself from this whole situation when Alan made a barely audible sound and my irritation punched through my caution. “It’s about a missing person case you’ve got from back about eight years ago. An East Jordan man named Alan Lottner. I was wondering if … if you ever found his body.”

  Strickland’s eyes registered something at the word “body” and I tried not to wince. “And what is your interest in this matter, Mr. McCann?”

  “I’m a friend of Alan’s. At least,
I was. Until he disappeared.”

  Strickland regarded me carefully for an uncomfortable minute, then stood. “Wait here,” he ordered. I’ll bet not too many people disobeyed Sheriff Strickland when he used that tone.

  “I don’t think you should have used the word ‘body’ just then,” Alan advised helpfully.

  “Alan, I really don’t want to be caught talking to myself in a sheriff’s station,” I warned.

  When Strickland returned he carried a manila folder in his hands. Grunting, he lowered himself back in his chair, wet his thumb, and leafed through the papers, taking his time. Finally, he raised his eyes and looked at me. “I’m afraid your name appears nowhere in this file, Mr. McCann.”

  “I didn’t make any statement or anything at the time,” I responded lamely.

  Strickland closed the file and set it on his desk, then eased back in his chair and put his hands behind his head, staring at me. I tried to remain still under his tight examination. “Case is still open,” he told me.

  I found myself very unhappy that I had aroused the sheriff’s curiosity.

  “Do you know something about this man’s disappearance you would like to report?” he probed, his instinct taking him right to the heart of the matter.

  “Not that I’d like to report, no,” I answered evasively. I decided the bravest thing to do was flee. I moved to stand. “I’m sorry to have taken your time,” I apologized.

  “Just a minute.” Strickland tried to give me a friendly smile, then, but the effect under those hard blue eyes was even more intimidating than his glare. “Can I get you something, a cup of coffee, maybe?”

  “No, no thanks.”

  “Mr. McCann. Ruddick McCann, right? That’s what your license says.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Have you ever been in any trouble with the law, Ruddick?” Strickland asked with forced casualness.

  I gulped. Why was he asking that? “It’s Ruddy,” I stalled. “My friends call me Ruddy, I mean.”

  “Ruddy.” Nothing in his expression indicated that he wanted to be considered one of my friends. “Answer my question, please.”