“No, sir. His daughter asked me to—”
“He’d better move fast,” Leopold said. “If you’re in touch with him, tell him I can’t keep the wolves at bay much longer.”
“Wolves?”
“My partners.” He looked wounded and anxious, hope fading in his eyes. “When Randy called and said he’d make good, I told my partners, look, he does this and we drop the charges, make it all go away.” He sighed. “It’s been, what? Four days now? And now you say he’s missing?” He stared at me. “I just can’t stand up for him for much longer. My partners—”
“I understand,” I said, which was not strictly true — it hardly ever is — but saying so usually quiets people down. “So he called you and offered to—”
“Every nickel,” Leopold assented, bushy head bobbing. “That’s what he said. ‘Every nickel’ he’d pay back.”
“When did he call you?”
Squinting, Leopold counted back. “Thursday.” Hm. Seemed to me that day had been mentioned before. Could this be a Clue? Or simply what my Mend Raeanne calls a “co-inky-dink”?
Leopold charged on. “He pays the money back, it’s all forgiven, see? He keeps his job, it’ll all be like it was before. That’s what I promised him.”
“Seems right generous of you.”
Leopold made an it’s-nothing gesture with shoulders, hands, a brief bow of his head. “He’s like part of the family. We all make mistakes, we all do dumb things. Nothing is stranger than what actually happens. Life goes on—”
“Neal?” came a voice from the door. A mere slip of a young man, shaved nearly bald and wearing white over tan, seemed to slither in. He extended an envelope to his boss and whispered, “Excuse me. Thought you should see this right away.”
Leopold took the opened envelope in his big hairy hands and shook out a what looked like a business card. There was also an elongated piece of yellow paper. The owner’s eyes squinted at the latter, then widened behind the thick lenses. He positively beamed, holding the larger item up like a diploma. “He did it!” Leopold crowed.
It was a check. From where I stood, I could not make out the details. The young man said, softly and sibilantly acerbic, “What makes you think it’s any good?”
Leopold flipped the check around and read. “Pay to the order of Brighton-Leopold Corp. four hundred ten thousand dollars. Signed, Randy Ryan.” The man was positively glowing; I thought he might do a jig right there. “Of course it’s good,” he said to the younger man. “He said he’d come through, and he did. End of discussion.” Turning to me, Leopold seized my hand. With a slight bow, he pumped it hard, as if I’d had anything to do with anything. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”
“Well, sir, I—”
“And when you find Randy,” Leopold commanded, letting go and pointing at me like the I WANT YOU poster, “you tell him it’s time to come home now.”
But he was still missing. Which, in light of what had just happened, made no sense.
But then little in this work ever does. This part I remembered all too well.
I sat in the icebox Mustang, running the engine to warm it up. Flurries fell on the flat snow-covered plain, adding insult to icy injury. Just past the parking lot, beyond a mountain of freshly plowed snow, trucks crept along 10 Mile Road. Why? I asked myself. Why do I still live in Michigan? More to the point, why am I out here in the bitter snowy cold, twisted around a mental axle trying to figure out this Randy Ryan mess? Where I should be is back in my warm, pleasant, Norwegian Wood maintenance office. In full control of my own little world. Listening to ’ABX and drinking coffee and smoking cigars.
But... I had promised.
So get on with it, stupid.
Now. The central theory had been that Randy Ryan had absconded with a pile of embezzled money, perhaps into the arms of his girlfriend in Georgia. That theory was now inoperative. So where was he?
At times like this, when your Big Theory goes poof, the only thing to do is start over with what you know for sure. In sequence. Think orderly for once, I told myself. When did Shyla last hear from her dad? Thursday, she had said this morning, I was sure of it.
On Randy’s apartment door, the oldest UPS delivery sticky note was dated... December thirtieth, which was... Thursday. So he had not been back there since.
Then there was Doreen Mason. I was pretty sure she had told me it was Thursday when Randy called her to break off their affair. What about Shanahan, the detective? He’d said that Randy had promised to turn himself in on Thursday. And when Randy called Neal Leopold to tell him he was making things right, that had been last Thursday, right? Correct.
Thursday, Thursday, Thursday. All these things in one day this was not just a “co-inky-dink.” Back there in Leopold’s office I had heard a tinny little ringing in my ear — that long-dormant detective instinct saying, this is something important, pay attention, idiot.
And every one of the contacts he had made had been by phone. The logical question was, from where had he called? How could I find out?
Ah yes.
Clenching the smoldering cigar in my teeth, I picked up the cell phone and mashed SND. Ringing, then click, and the taped answering spiel started. I overrode with “Doreen, pick up, please? It’s Ben again.”
Click. “Well hello there,” she purred. “I was hoping you’d call back.”
Nice as it is to be come on to, I had no time for flirting, or interest in it, either. “Well, I need a bit more information if you don’t mind. About Randy.”
“Uh-huh,” she replied, resigned.
“When was it he called you? To, uh—”
“To dump me?” she supplied, tone patient. “Um. Let’s see. Thursday, that’s right. I know because I went to a New Year’s Eve-Eve party, and—”
“This is important. Where did he call you from?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”
“Doreen, please,” I said patiently. “You have Caller I.D., right?”
“That’s right!” She seemed surprised to hear this. “It’s in the kitchen, that’s why I didn’t see it when he called.”
“Can you check it for me now and tell me where he called from?” I asked.
“Okay.” Fumbling noises and then she said, “Hope it’s still in here. I get a lot of calls, it might have... let’s seeeeee...” Long pause, silence. “Well, this must be it,” she said. “It’s the only one I don’t recognize from Thursday.”
“Read it to me,” I said, groping paper and pen out of my glovebox.
“Redemp Eee See,” she said slowly and then recited a phone number in the 248 area code. “What the heck is that? And where the heck is 248?”
Redemption Episcopal Church is on Quarton Road in Bloomfield Township, several blocks east of Telegraph. I got there during lunch hour but luckily found the lone office worker eating a sandwich at her desk. I hadn’t gotten half my question out of my mouth when she started shaking her head. “You’ll need to see Father Dave about that,” she said, not unkindly.
“Is he here?”
“He should be free.” She put down her sandwich. “Come along.”
I followed her down a narrow hallway to the end office. It was all glass on one wall, bookshelves on the others. Its occupant rose to greet me as we entered. He was evidently a person of the cloth. But you would not have known it from his dark Dockers pants and open-necked pale blue polo shirt. He also looked way too young to be a priest. “Dave Collins,” he said, shaking hands with a very firm grip and a very direct look in the eye. “How can I help you?”
“Ben Perkins,” I said as the office worker stepped out, clicking the door shut behind her. “I’m here about one of your, uh... congregation people.”