“You’re quitting? I thought you couldn’t afford to lose this job! Friday you got down on your knees and begged me not to let my business fail! You said you and Tim were at the end of your rope-“
When I mentioned her husband’s name, Tina’s right eyelid pulsed. Then her upper lip twitched, and her breathing turned ragged.
“I never wanted him to do it!” she hissed. “I would have stopped him if I could! But you know how men are, Whiskey. They gotta fix things their own way. Even when things aren’t really broken!”
“Do what? Fix what?”
Was she talking about Tim? Or a Mattimoe Realty employee who had been sending fake spam?
“Oh, darn it, Tim wrecked everything!” she said.
Although Tim Breen had never worked for me, Tina would know how to set him up with an email address, or several email addresses, at my business domain. But why would she? What had he done? And did she really intend to quit? If so, I probably wouldn’t need to replace her immediately. Not 'til Odette started selling Big and Little Houses on the Prairie.…
This was not the occasion to mentally review my payroll.
“Tina, you’d better level with me. What kind of trouble are you and Tim in?”
“Oh god,” she moaned, sinking into a lobby chair. “All Tim wanted to do was be the breadwinner again. Being the laid-off stay-at-home dad made him feel like less than a man!”
“So he started sending email porn spam?” I asked, trying to find the connection.
“No! He talked to MacArthur about doing the same kind of work he does.”
“Being a Realtor? Tim should have come to me about that!”
“Not a Realtor, Whiskey! A cleaner! And now you know why I can’t stand that man. MacArthur turned my husband into a criminal, just like he is!”
“MacArthur’s not a criminal…“ I wished I could have been more specific, but I really wasn’t sure how to defend him.
“Oh yeah?”
Tina had a crazed look that made me want to put my hands on my cell phone. Subtly, I reached toward my sweatpants pockets.
“Somebody you know hired Tim as a cleaner. To make their problems disappear,” Tina said.
“Somebody I know?”
Nothing in my pockets. Damn. Then I remembered: I’d left my phone in my purse. In the bathroom.
“Oh yeah,” Tina said. “You know this person. It’s one of your super-rich friends.”
“I have no super-rich friends, Tina. Just a few super-rich former clients. Who do you mean?”
Tina shot straight up from her chair. “I know what you’re doing, Whiskey! You’re stalling for time, hoping somebody else will come by and stop me from doing what I gotta do!”
“What do you gotta do?” My heart thumped.
“I’m really, really sorry, but I gotta take whatever cash you got in the safe. Then the boys and I are going to meet Tim. We’re going underground. The four of us gotta disappear-“
Her voice dissolved into choked sobs.
“What does Tim’s ‘cleaner’ business have to do with spam?” I said.
“That’s not spam!” she sputtered. “Those are Tim’s notes to me about how he was doing. We had kind of a code. If I understood what he was telling me, I replied with a blank message. If I didn’t understand or needed more information, I didn’t reply at all. Then he’d try again. Tim said sending emails on his Blackberry would be safer than making calls! He didn’t think anybody would read them if they looked like spam.”
I glanced at the email message that I’d left open onscreen.
“’Enlarge your demands’? What did that mean?”
“Tim wanted me to ask you for a raise. You, of all people, were never supposed to get shot!”
Chapter Forty-Three
“Tim shot me?” I said when I could find my voice again.
Red-faced and sniffling, Tina nodded. “He kept trying to catch Abra-for ransom. But you kept getting in the way. He said you were as big a nuisance as your dog.”
I didn’t know which was more amazing, that Tim Breen had shot me, or that he had thought I would pay ransom for Abra.
“He only meant to scare you,” Tina said. “Shooting from a moving truck is a lot harder than you might think.”
I pictured the silver pickup with the splintering windshield. MacArthur had said he couldn’t identify the driver. Was that true or false? How much did he know about what Tim was up to?
“Since when does Tim have a truck?” I said.
“He doesn’t. He ‘borrowed’ it from our neighbor who’s on vacation.”
My head spun faster than a yoyo. If I hadn’t already been sitting, I would have immediately sought a chair. As it was, I wanted to slide all the way to the floor.
“Are you saying… Tim shot everybody?”
Tina arched her back. “Not everybody! Just four people involved in that dog show.”
“Two of them died,” I said.
“By accident,” my office manager declared. “Tim had instructions to hurt those two. But… they moved.” She shrugged. “Mitchell Slater wasn’t supposed to take that last step. As for Matt Koniger, well, you know what they say about a shot in the dark? Poor Tim. It’s really hard in a blackout to hit the target but not kill him.”
“How about Ramona Bowden?” I said. “Was Tim supposed to hit her or miss her?”
At that instant my front door clicked open again. Seeing our chief of police, Tina let out a cry of either surprise or relief; I couldn’t tell which.
To me Jenx said, “That’s where it gets interesting. Ramona Bowden was Tim’s boss.”
“No way!” I said.
“Way,” sighed Tina. Then she took a deep breath, stood up, and extended fisted hands, palms down, toward Jenx.
“What are ya doing?” the chief said.
“Go ahead and cuff me. I’m an accessory.”
“Shut up and sit down,” Jenx said. Tina obeyed.
I waited for Jenx to make the next move, but all she did was stare at Tina.
“Isn’t this the part where you read her her rights?” I said.
“If I was planning to bust her, yeah,” Jenx said. “But I think there’s a chance we can keep Tina out of this.”
“Her husband killed two people!” I exclaimed. “And shot two more, including me!”
Jenx nodded. “He also kidnapped a valuable show dog. And your dog, assuming Abra didn’t go willingly.”
“Abra always goes willingly.”
Tina raised her hand like she was in school. “I threatened Whiskey with a toy gun and told her I was going to rob her safe. Does that count?”
“Did you rob her safe?” Jenx asked.
Tina shook her head.
“Then let’s all play Whiskey’s game,” Jenx said.
“What’s that?” I said.
“Denial. We’ll all three pretend nothing weird happened here.”
Jenx pointed Tina toward the door and told her not to do anything stupid. I considered those instructions much too vague.
It turned out that Jenx hadn’t known about the Tim-and-Ramona connection 'til she followed up on the pickup truck reported by MacArthur. When she drove to the house where the truck was registered, she found Tim in the garage, cleaning broken glass from the dashboard.
“The son of a bitch ran when I pulled in the driveway,” she said. “I got so pissed off my magnetic compass went out of whack! Everything electrical on the block started arcing.”
Jenx wasn’t a superhero although her geomagnetic powers were the stuff of local lore. Magnet Springs happened to be built on a highly charged electrical field. Spikes and surges have always been commonplace here. Records dating back to 1820 note that the occasional grazing cow keeled over when it wandered into the wrong part of a wet pasture. A few farmers did, too. But fertile soil and sweeping views of Lake Michigan kept most settlers from moving on. Then along came the Jenkins clan with a genetic predisposition for channeling energy, especially when riled. Don’t piss off the chief. She’s got a weapon nobody can make her register or put down.