She turned to look into my eyes. ‘Everybody’s saying also that Lamm escaped with a million dollars that’s missing from Grant Carson’s insurance.’ She lit a Camel and blew smoke at the Willahock.
Up in the ash, Leo was smiling down. Amanda had come around the side of the turret followed by a thickset man in a black suit. Wendell’s corporation had lost no time imposing a security detail on its new largest shareholder.
Amanda and I had not spoken one word since leaving Bent Lake, and when she dropped me at the turret, I was not sure she’d ever speak to me again.
‘I told myself that I’d have to live with Lamm’s permanent disappearance,’ Debbie went on, ‘but then, this morning, a messenger from a bonded delivery service brought me a box.’
Amanda glanced only briefly at me and went on talking up to Leo.
‘Want to guess what was in the box I got?’ Debbie asked behind a puff of smoke.
‘Flowers?’
‘Something that smells even better. Here, take a whiff.’ She picked up the envelope, opened the flap, and fanned the contents inside with her thumb.
I made a sniffing noise, but kept my eyes on Amanda. She’d opened a small rectangular box and was holding up its contents to show Leo, whose face had turned serious.
I turned back to Debbie. I couldn’t smell anything other than cigarette smoke.
‘Smells like a tire, doesn’t it?’ Debbie said.
‘Why would it smell like a tire?’
‘Look closely, Mr Elstrom. They even have little bits of rubber dust on them, like from the inside of a tire.’
‘Interesting,’ I said.
‘Got any idea why these might have been inside a tire?’
‘Not a clue.’ I pushed myself up to stand. I’d been off the crutches for three days, but that was more from temperament than prudence. I needed to walk, to take steps to get on with my life.
‘Me, neither.’ Debbie Goring flicked her cigarette butt in the river and stood up, too. ‘Two million in insurance was what I had coming, but a million cash, even smelling like the inside of a tire, made me a damn sight happier than when I first woke up.’ She reached for my wrist, slapped the thick white envelope into my hand and started to walk away.
‘Wait,’ I said. I looked closely into the envelope. There were eleven packets of currency inside. Fifty-five thousand dollars.
She came back. I extracted one packet – five thousand – and jammed it into my khakis. I held out the envelope to her.
She backed away. ‘No, no, Elstrom. Our deal was five per cent. You earned that, off the cashier’s check and the contents of this morning’s delivery.’
‘The papers mentioned an IRS agent named Krantz?’
She nodded.
‘He’d planned on making a big, career-boosting arrest of Arthur Lamm for income tax evasion. He’ll seize many of Lamm’s assets, but Krantz will be criticized for letting four million dollars get sent to Grand Cayman, where it can never be seized by the IRS. Krantz did recover a million dollars from Wendell Phelps’s Buick, but there’s no proof that it was the Carson payout, so he’ll never be able to seize that either.’
A huge grin lit up her face. ‘The newspapers are saying Lamm used the other half of that insurance money to get away. You saying you can’t always believe what you read in the papers?’
‘Krantz will hunt for that missing million for the rest of his days because he doubts that Lamm got away. He thinks I know something about that, and he’ll be watching me and my tax returns for years. If he finds me with money I can’t explain, he’ll redouble his efforts to nail me, along with anyone else he thinks might know something.’
‘Meaning me?’
‘Meaning anyone connected with the case that shows sudden signs of wealth.’ I pressed the envelope into her hands. ‘Be prudent, Debbie. Hide it all in a dozen places, trickle it out in small amounts over a lot of years, for clothes and tuition and a vacation every once in a while.’
‘As my father would have wanted.’
‘Yes.’
Her eyes got wet, and she stepped forward like she was going to kiss me. But reason took hold, and she turned. ‘You’re not half bad, Elstrom,’ she called back, as she disappeared around the front of the turret.
I started towards the ash, un-crutched but wobbling. Amanda met me halfway.
‘I noticed your spare tire is back on your Jeep,’ she said.
‘It just needed new air.’
‘I’ll bet. That happy woman was Debbie Goring?’ she asked.
‘She gave me five grand.’
‘How much did she want to give you?’
I looked up the hill, past the turret. A black limousine was idling at the curb. No doubt the driver was armed, just like the bodyguard who’d followed her down the hill and now stood a few vigilant steps away. Her new life had begun.
When I didn’t answer, she said, ‘I checked my father’s incoming calls. He got a call from a burner phone thirty minutes before he left for Bent Lake.’
‘Delray Delmar, the fake cop,’ I said. ‘Your father was a good man.’
‘You always find the good, don’t you, Dek?’
‘You’re going to do fine as a tycoon,’ I said.
‘There will be bumps. The Pig Lady’s lawyer called this morning, saying she’s going to sue for all of it. Otherwise, he said, she’s going to go hungry.’
‘Send her lettuce and tomatoes. Properly frugal, she can have BLTs for years.’
Amanda laughed at that, a good, long, healing laugh. She handed me the small white box.
A great creak came from the tree. Leo had stopped sawing.
‘How many leaves remain?’ she asked.
‘Six,’ I said, ‘per this morning’s count.’
‘You’re cutting off only one limb?’
‘It’s a minor setback, nothing terminal.’
Leo kicked the limb. We watched it fall. The tree, now with only one limb, looked like the hands on a clock, set at ten to six.
She kissed me, maybe longer than she’d ever kissed me before.
I looked at the gold flecks in her eyes.
‘I need to accept that I never knew my father,’ she said.
‘You know enough.’
I walked with her, and the bodyguard behind us, up the hill.
‘That ash will survive, Dek?’ she asked, at the limo.
‘Perhaps stronger than before.’
The bodyguard opened the front passenger door.
‘Aren’t you going to open your gift?’ she asked.
I did.
She got in front, next to the driver. The guard closed her door, and got in back. In time, she’d learn to ride in back.
Her car pulled away, and in a minute it had disappeared. I looked down at the sunny-colored, yellow bow tie, wondering if it was more of a declaration than a gift, and thinking of my other bow tie, the purple one hanging on a nail in my almost-finished closet.
I started back down to the river, to look some more at the water and at Leo up in a tree, moving as best I could, one step at a time.
Jack Fredrickson
Jack Fredrickson's first Dek Elstrom mystery, A Safe Place for Dying, was nominated for the Shamus Award for Best First Novel. His short fiction has appeared in the acclaimed Chicago Blues and in Michael Connelly's Burden of the Badge anthologies. He lives with his wife, Susan, west of Chicago, where he is crafting the next Dek Elstrom novel.
