Disapproval flickered across Strickland’s face. “Miss Lottner, you need to be going,” he told her. His voice was still gentle but it held a definite “move along” tone that probably could have quelled a riot. Katie responded with a nod of surrender.
As soon as she was out the door my pleasure at seeing her evaporated and I realized I’d had all of the jail I could stomach for the day. Strickland was giving me an expectant look that I doubted few people ignored, but he’d said himself there was no reason to keep me here. “Sheriff, I have to leave. I have business in Kalkaska.”
He shook his head. “It will have to wait, Mr. McCann.”
“He can’t hold you unless he places you under arrest,” Alan stated. Legal advice from a dead Realtor.
“I have to go, Sheriff,” I repeated, giving him a look both honest and unyielding.
After a moment he grunted, acquiescing. “Told you!” Alan hooted triumphantly. The sheriff and I made an appointment for the next day. Strickland raised a farewell hand as I backed my truck out of the parking lot, and I had the strange feeling the guy sort of liked me.
Alan and I were both silent for the first few minutes as we drove, processing the day’s events. Charlevoix had long faded in my rearview mirror when I cleared my throat. “So, Alan. I’m sorry about that. About your daughter, I mean. Must have been sort of a shock.”
“Sort of a shock,” he repeated. “The last time I saw my little girl she was sixteen years old. Now she’s a grown woman. And you say it was ‘sort of a shock.’”
“What’s with the attitude all of a sudden?”
“The attitude? When were you going to tell me you knew my daughter?” he demanded.
“Oh, that.”
“Yes. That.”
“Yeah, well…” I sighed. “I met her a week or so ago.”
Alan was completely silent in a way that felt heavy with judgment. I rushed to fill the void. “But I just found out yesterday that her last name was Lottner. You were asleep, and I called her and got her answering machine. It’s sort of hard to figure out what to do in a situation like this, you know?”
He was still quiet.
“I mean, either I’m so completely demented that I’m sitting in a padded cell somewhere hallucinating this entire thing, or I just led the police to dig up the body of a murder victim based on his voice in my head. I think I’m to be forgiven if I’m making a few mistakes in etiquette, here.”
Finally Alan spoke, his voice subdued. “She was still a child when I saw her last. God, she was so beautiful.”
“She’s beautiful now,” I interrupted.
“She is, isn’t she? Ruddy, seeing her today was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. But I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”
A deer caught my attention and I braked. She stood by the side of the road, appearing alert and wary, but I knew from experience that her species was prone to sudden leaps across the pavement without wisdom. After I crept past she dashed back into the woods.
“I wonder if that was the right thing to do,” Alan reflected.
Somehow I doubted he was talking about slowing down for the deer.
“Before today everything was … contained. Now my body has been found, the sheriff’s suspicious, we know Burby is one of the killers, Katie’s involved … it feels like it’s getting out of control.”
“Out of control? You were shot, remember? When was it ever in control?” I flicked on the windshield wipers to clear away the light spray of sleet that had begun to fall. “I think we needed a little disorder, shake things up a little. See what we can make happen.”
Alan thought about that, and when he spoke again, his voice sounded troubled. “I just have a bad feeling that things are going to start happening very quickly now, and we have no idea what they are.”
It gave us both something to worry about on the way back to Kalkaska.
14
And There She Was
Alan was asleep as I parked my truck. I walked into the Black Bear and stopped dead, frowning—in what I would classify as an unauthorized activity, Kermit was setting down a couple of beers for a few people at a table near Bob the Bear. Becky was standing with her back to the room, hunched over something by the cash register.
Kermit’s eyes widened when he saw me. “Hi, Ruddy,” he called in Becky’s direction, like a prairie dog sounding a warning. “I was just improvident, here,” he explained to me.
“I’ll say,” I agreed.
Becky was working the little machine that we used to authorize credit card numbers. “So this is Kermit’s get-rich-quick scheme?” I asked in a disapproving tone.
Her lips pursed, a sign of stubbornness from childhood, but she didn’t look up at me. Curious despite myself, I stepped around the bar to watch. She was entering credit card numbers and dollar amounts from a computer printout. None of the amounts was more than three hundred dollars. “Shucks,” Becky muttered, writing unauthorized next to one of the entries. I could see that for the entire page, close to a quarter were winding up unauthorized.
“Why would a psychic send us credit card numbers for somebody over his limit? Wouldn’t the psychic know?” I asked innocently.
“Are you going to tell the same joke over and over again?”
“Becky, I have a real, real bad feeling about this.”
“You do?” Her eyes were bright with resentment. “That’s funny, Ruddy. I’ve already run ten thousand dollars today. That means we’ve made more than a thousand dollars for a couple of hours’ work. Can you see anything wrong with that?”
“Well, yeah. If you’re making more than five hundred an hour entering numbers on a little machine, why doesn’t everybody do it?”
“Kermit explained all that.”
“What does Kermit get out of this, anyway? Besides demonstrating to all of us that he is a financial wizard.”
Becky didn’t look at me.
“Becky, you’re not paying him, are you?”
“He gets a commission, yes,” she shot back.
“How much?” I pressed.
“Third.”
“A third?” I repeated incredulously. “That’s a hell of a commission. I don’t think even drug dealers get that kind of percentage!”
“You get your third, too, Ruddy, so I don’t know what you’re complaining about,” Becky responded bitterly.
I thought about this. Instead of being paid a salary as a bouncer, the arrangement that had always worked for us was that when the Black Bear made money, Becky divided the profits between the two of us. But this felt wrong, and after a moment I shook my head. “Keep it,” I told her. When her eyes grew blank with an emotion I was afraid might be hate, I gestured at the bar. “Put it into your improvements,” I mumbled. “Or, as Kermit would probably say, your improvisations.”
A genuine smile lit up her face then, full and open, without her hand reflexively covering it, and I gulped back a sweeping affection that literally choked me. If this made her happy, how bad could it be?
Her smile turned even more radiant as Kermit rounded the bar, and in a motion that caught me in complete surprise, the two of them embraced, their lips coming together for a kiss. I realized I was staring, and spun away so they wouldn’t see the shock on my face.
Jimmy wandered in an hour later and we played a little pool. We’re not any good at it and I don’t think either of us even like it, but we’ve probably shot ten thousand games over the years. I felt Alan wake up, but he remained moodily silent.
“Hey, what were you doing last night?” Jimmy asked as he gracefully stroked the cue ball, causing it to kiss off the four to no good effect whatsoever. He mournfully shook his head.
“What do you mean?” I lined up and shot, spreading the balls around but not sinking any.
“I saw you out jogging or something,” Jimmy explained. “About four miles down the road. I honked, but you just kept plugging. You trying to lose some weight?”
“What are you sayi
ng?” I asked indignantly. “You think I need to lose weight?”
“No, uh … I just wondered what you were doing, is all.”
“Well, it wasn’t me.”
Jimmy executed an artful banking shot that managed to miss hitting any balls at all, which isn’t easy to do.
“Have you guys never played pool before?” Alan asked wonderingly.
“I do push-ups and lift weights at the club,” I stated forcefully, recalling that sometime in January I’d had a pretty good workout.
“Bet you can bench a lot, huh,” Jimmy patronized with such wide-eyed sincerity I felt ashamed.
“No, I … ah, hell. Forget it.”
“You should tell him that we tracked the bounced checks to the bank president’s wife, see if he recognizes her name,” Alan suggested.
I felt myself bristling at what I felt was unneeded advice. “I’ve found out a few things about those checks of yours, but I’m not ready to talk about it,” I said forcefully to Jimmy.
“Okay.”
I know Jimmy pretty well, and gradually I became aware that there was something on his mind. When Jimmy has something he wants to say, he is usually completely silent. “So what’s going on?” I prodded, accidentally sinking the eight ball and prematurely ending the game. We put away our cue sticks with relief.
“I guess that check bounced. You know, the one I cashed down at the hotel.”
“Yes, but we were expecting that, weren’t we, Jimmy?”
“The thing is, I got fired.”
“They fired you?” I felt a flash of protective anger. “For bouncing a check? Didn’t you tell them they could take it out of your pay?”
Jimmy was carefully aligning the cue sticks with each other.
“Jimmy?”
“Uh, I sort of had sex with one of the guests again. I mean, she wanted me to, but I guess they thought that I shouldn’t have done it since they made an official policy about me. So they told me that the bounced check money was me getting severed.”
“Severance,” Alan and I both said at the same time.
“Yeah, that.” He met my eyes. “I’m really sorry, Ruddy. I just kinda couldn’t help it.”
“How can you not help having sex with someone?” Alan demanded. I didn’t get it either, but then again, I didn’t look like Jimmy Growe.
“Well wait, Jimmy, you live at the hotel,” I said suddenly. “Are you kicked out?”
He nodded. “Tomorrow.”
“Well hell.” I blew out some air. “Okay, you can live upstairs at my place until you find something else. There’s nothing in the little kitchen up there but you can use mine.”
The look he gave me was full of wonder and gratitude, and just like with Becky I felt my throat tighten. Repo Madness was turning me into a softie. I punched him in the arm to keep things manly. “Tell you what, Jimmy,” I said. “I’ll even cover your tab tonight, if you answer me a question.”
His brow furrowed. “Aw, Ruddy, you know I’m no good at this kind of stuff.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Just … what do you think of Kermit Kramer? And if you say he’s got a great vocabulary, I am going to pick you up and heave you out into the street.”
Clearly, this was exactly what he’d been about to say, and my abrupt censorship rendered him mute for a moment. His mouth opened and shut a couple of times. “Well…” He cleared his throat, took a thirsty gulp of beer, and then scrunched his face in concentration. “Becky likes him,” he offered finally. “A lot.”
“How can you tell?” I pounced.
Jimmy gave me back a blank stare.
“You have to ask?” Alan inquired.
Alan was right—Jimmy could probably sense a woman’s interest the way Jake knows when I’ve opened a can of dog food.
“She laughs a lot when he’s around,” Jimmy mused, trying to put it into words that an amateur like me could understand. “I think … he seems to like her a lot, too.”
“Bull,” I growled, my face suddenly hot. “He’s just glad to have someone run his credit card numbers for him.”
“What?”
“Never mind. I’m going to go grab us each another beer.”
“What’s your problem?” Alan demanded. “Did you expect your sister to become a nun or something?”
“Go to sleep, Alan.”
“Why do you treat people like that?”
“You know, I’ve just about had it with your lectures. You can either be a separate person or my conscience, you can’t be both.”
When I came back, Claude was just settling in at the table with a war-weary expression. I gave him the beer I’d intended for me and sat.
“God, what a mess,” he moaned.
“What’s the problem?”
“It’s Wilma. When I call her and she recognizes my voice, she hangs up without saying anything.”
“Well, what did you expect, Claude? You gave her a disease.”
“I did not!” he shouted shrilly.
Grinning, I got up to replace my beer. Becky was still running numbers.
Not a bad night. Some fellows limped in around eight, their attitude and muddy attire leading me to believe they had been out playing a little baseball, getting some practice in for the season, which would be starting in a couple of weeks. I knew most of them and wandered over to say hello, but I could see I made them uncomfortable so I didn’t linger. I sometimes forgot how the local athletes felt about me.
Janelle didn’t arrive at all, which was no surprise to me, but I could see Claude had been expecting her. Every time the door opened he glanced over with a hopeful expression, but he was always disappointed. Eventually he threw some money on the table and walked out.
The door shut behind him and then opened right back up, and there she was: Katie Lottner.
15
No, I Did Not Mean to Do That
Katie spotted me and came right across the floor without hesitation. She held out her hand like we were going to have a business meeting, and I took it with a little disappointment, though I don’t know what else I’d been expecting. I reflexively checked to see if Alan was awake, which he was, and so what? I’d done nothing wrong, I reminded myself.
“The sheriff told me where you worked. I wanted to … I was going to get you a card. You know, for…” She gestured toward my face.
“Oh, you don’t have to do that. It was all a misunderstanding.”
She poked her finger into her hair and twirled it like a fork full of spaghetti. A reddish highlight flashed in her brown hair as she did so, and I found myself staring at it, enthralled. “She used to do that same thing with her hair when she was little,” Alan murmured, jerking me out of my reverie. “It means she’s worried about something.”
“Well … I’m sorry,” she said.
We looked at each other. I couldn’t stop grinning at her, even though I felt foolish. “So,” I said finally. “What sort of card do you get for something like that?”
Her mouth curved into a soft smile. “I figured they’d have something suitable.”
“Sorry I spit, I’ll try to quit?”
“Oh please,” Alan protested, but Katie laughed.
I steered her over to a table and sat down. Becky appeared, her eyebrows raised in unwelcome curiosity. My sister could read me so well. I introduced the two women. So what if I was interested in Katie? No big deal—but I could feel my face flushing, for some reason.
Jimmy came over and I found myself tensing, feeling like I suffered mightily in comparison to my supermodel buddy, but Katie was friendly and nothing more. After Becky brought us both our drinks, Jimmy went back to the bar and I had Katie all to myself, like a date.
With her father there.
“So, you’re the bouncer here?”
“More like the business manager,” I promoted myself. “My sister owns it, and I run it.” I glanced over at the bar to make sure Becky couldn’t hear me.
“I’m not going to sit here and listen to you mi
slead my daughter,” Alan warned, as if he could sit anywhere else.
I told her how the Black Bear came to get its name, then cleared my throat. “Actually, I don’t spend much time here. My profession is collateral recovery.”
Katie thought about that.
“Come on, Ruddy,” Alan prodded.
“I’m a repo man,” I elaborated. There, happy now?
“You’re kidding me! Have you ever been shot?”
“Not anywhere vital.” Her eyes widened. “No, just joking. I’ve had a gun pointed at me a few times, but not with intent to use it.” I thought about Einstein Croft. “Well, maybe once.”
“I could never do that.” She shook her head, undoubtedly picturing something far more glamorous than the gritty reality of climbing under a car to attach a tow hook to some deadbeat’s bumper.
I told her about how I got into the business—Milt hired me because he figured a large ex-football player could intimidate people into giving up their vehicles. I left out the part about being beaten up by a twenty-pound goose.
“So the theme of this conversation is, all about me, by Ruddy McCann,” Alan noted sardonically.
“But what about you?” I asked smoothly.
“Well, what about me?” she replied lightly.
I took a deep breath and broached the subject I’d been dreading. “Well, Deputy Timms, are the two of you…”
Against my fervent wishes, she nodded her head. Her finger started twirling her hair. “We’re supposed to get married.”
“What?” Alan shouted.
“Ah. Well, congratulations, then, that’s just great.”
Her eyes regarded me with an unreadable expression. “Thanks. It isn’t official, though. I mean, he hasn’t proposed formally; we’ve just talked about it.”
“Oh.”
“Ask her about Marget,” Alan directed.
I decided that next time I had Alan alone we were going to have a serious talk about when it was appropriate for him to speak. I asked Katie about her family, and she told me her mother had remarried and still lived in the East Jordan area. “I’m living with her, actually,” Katie informed me with an embarrassed blush. “But in a trailer, out back. Like, a travel trailer with a kitchen and all? Just until, you know, Dwight and I figure things out.”