Dying Embers (9 page)

“Let me talk to them—her family, I mean,” he said. “I could explain it to them. I could give them my telephone number for her to reach me here. They could go and talk to her.”

“Bad idea,” I said. “I can't explain why because of our original deal.”

“Why?”

“Scott, you're a little shrill right now. If you talk to Anne or her family like you're talking to me, you'll poison the well for sure.”

“You don't get it!”

“What is it that you didn't tell me?” I listened to a pause.

“Nothing,” he said.

“Okay,” I said. “So we're exactly where we started.”

“Except … Wendy has done a lot of business with me and there's going to be a lot of business you could do. I need you to go and find Wendy's operative. He was more than a janitor. He had keys for all the offices and production facilities in Wisconsin.”

“Change the locks,” I said, and looked in the fridge.

“He picked up our mail at the post office and then disappeared. Some computer discs are missing from the plant manager's office.”

“Call the police,” I said. No soda.

“We did. They said that since there was no sign of a break-in, the discs might have been misplaced.”

“What was on the discs?”

Silence from Lambert.

I asked, “Proprietary information?”

“Is that important?”

“Very!” I got a coffee cup out of the cupboard.

“Mr. Hardin, I just want you to find the man and ask him about the discs.”

“How many discs are we looking for, and how are they labeled?”

“We're not sure. There have to be at least a half-dozen CDs. I don't know what brand they had in the office. The plant manager can help you with that.”

“You need to tell me what's on the discs. I mean just generally. Is it text or figures?”

I got more silence from Lambert. This time I didn't interrupt. Finally he said, “I don't know.” He paused, then asked, “Mr. Hardin, are you there?”

“Yes,” I said and waited.

“The plant manager's workstation was wiped. We don't know if all of the data was taken or just part. The most sensitive material would have fit on six discs.”

“Can't you tell what was downloaded? I understand that even deleted information is retrievable, and you certainly must have had some security protocols.”

“We have a backup database, but the manager's hard drive was destroyed. They probably had a high-intensity electromagnet. We can't recover anything.”

“I'll need you to front the expenses for this job.”

“When can you start?”

“Tomorrow, if you like,” I said.

“There's a direct flight to Madison that leaves at three-thirty in the afternoon. There'll be a ticket at the airline counter tomorrow. Bill Johnson, my Wisconsin plant manager, will meet you. I'll instruct him to give you whatever you need.”

“I'll need to start in Brandonport. The Dixon Agency is based there and I need to review the operative's personnel file.”

“Hank Dunphy is the Michigan plant manager. I'll have him set up a flight and meet you at the airport with a company credit card.”

“I think that'll cover it.”

“In the meantime I need to know how to contact Anne or her family.”

“Mr. Lambert,” I said. The line went silent on his end. “I appreciate the opportunity to work, but I don't see how you could go on doing business with someone who betrayed the trust of a woman you care so much about.”

W
ENDY WASN'T FEELING WELL
—hadn't for a while. She didn't sleep well, mostly she said that she was too warm. I actually got to put the fan in the window before July. I like the cool air off the lake at night, but when I tried to snuggle up, Wendy was all knees and elbows. She said it was like lying next to a furnace, and she did feel warm to the touch. Sometimes she just didn't come to bed. When she did she was up at two or three in the morning for a shower and change of nighties. Wendy thought it was a virus. For my money, it had gone on so long it had to be an allergy.

She had a doctor's appointment in town so things kind of worked out. She could drop me at my office on the way. On the other hand, she had an hour to work me over and started with, “I guess the boys and I are lucky you ignore us.”

Just lately I had found it best to let her complete her thought before joining the conversation. I said nothing and got twenty minutes of silence so thick it would have spilled out and splashed down the side of the car if I'd let window down.

Finally, her knuckles white on the steering wheel, she said, “Well?”

“Well,” I said, as gently as I could muster, “I'm not real sure what you mean.”

“Of course, you think everything's just great. You ignore us. But what do you do to other people? Why do they get so angry they have to smash your windshield or slash your tires? Our car insurance is going through the roof, and it's because you can't learn to be nice to people.”

I had a flash in my mind of a Yellow Pages ad. “Pollyanna Detective Agency—We Always Try to Be Nice.” I didn't share the thought.

“See, that's the problem,” said Wendy. “That smirk on your face.”

“It's the business, Hon. People don't hire me to dish up ice cream at birthday parties.”

“I'm in the same business you are. I've got a windshield. My tires wear out before I have to replace them.”

“You do industrial undercover jobs,” I said. “People don't find out about you until Officer Friendly snaps on the bracelets.”

“And that's another thing. You keep getting arrested. Your luck's going to run out. You'll end up in jail. And then what about me? You want to put the boys through that?”

I didn't have time to formulate an answer—if there was one—Wendy had only stopped for air.

“Or dead,” she said. “Like yesterday! What on earth did you do to make that man so angry he put a knife to your throat?”

“He tried to take the evidence tape and I whacked his hand with the telephone.”

“Had to be more than that.”

“That's how it started,” I said. “Just what was it you told him, anyway?”

“I told him that your .45 had a hair trigger and you had a nervous tic,” said Wendy, as she turned onto Forty-fourth from Breton Road. “And if he got his brains all over that ugly suit. I'd have to bury you in something else.”

“Damn right,” I said. “I expect to be laid out in my dress blues. And I want the hat in the casket. And my low quarters. I'm not marching into eternity barefoot and hatless. One of the boys will want my sabre—no point to burying that.”

“Your blues probably don't fit any better than that plaid suit.”

“I liked that suit. The belt loops fit my gun belt.”

“It made you look like Howdy Doody.”

“Now I just look like Buffalo Bob.”

“Scott liked your jacket,” said Wendy.

“Tell him Kim Goldberg down on Twenty-eighth Street.”

We pulled into the parking lot behind the office. June or not, the morning air sliced sharply off the whetstone of a west wind. I didn't loiter at hauling a couple of suitcases and a two-suiter out of the trunk of Wendy's old Cadillac. The smallest bag was a lime-green cardboard number that smelled like granny's attic, into which I had packed rags, a brick, and the Sunday paper. The other was Wendy's hard-sided tan traveling case—with wheels and a handle—that matched the two-suiter.

Wendy let her window down to say that she'd stop by when she was done at the doctor's office. “If you're still here, I'll come up to the airport with you.”

“Could save cab fare,” I said. I bent over and gave her a kiss through the open window. She had put on a little makeup because she was coming into town. Her lipstick tasted dreadful. I smiled anyway and added, “I'll wrap this up as quick as I can.”

“You're going to look silly, you know,” she said. Her eyes squinted against the breeze and she reached out to tug at the elbow of my suit jacket. “A wrinkled-up old fart with half a dozen gray hairs and a full head of liver spots, laid out in a dress blue uniform.”

“From your lips to God's ear, Wendy, me darlin'” I said and put my arm around her shoulder through the window. I kissed her again and stood up. She waggled her fingers bye-bye as the glass wound up with an electric whine.

I found Marg already at her desk. She wore a gray cashmere suit with a pleated skirt over an ivory silk blouse with a mandarin collar. Her hair, a uniform dark brown despite her fifty-something years, hung to her shoulders with a little flip at the end.

As I shouldered the door open she rolled her eyes up to survey me over the top of the horn-rimmed half glasses perched on the end of her nose. “I want your May expense report before you leave.”

I dropped my luggage on the settee in the front office and picked up the three pink message slips that Marg pushed across her desk in my direction. The tow company wanted the keys for my car. The insurance company wanted a police report. The adjuster at Pacific Casualty wanted an update on the Fenton case. “Nothing from Light and Energy Applications?”

“A man called and asked for you about ten minutes ago. He wouldn't leave a name or number. He said he'd call back.” Marg turned her gaze down to her work. “I need your expense report,” she added without looking up.

“Yes, ma'am,” I said. I took the telephone messages into my office and
flopped into the chair at my desk. I got the number for Lambert's Ada Plant from information and let them dial it.

“They charge extra to people who are too lazy to dial,” said my conscience in Marg's voice. Hank Dunphy was out and not expected to return until the late afternoon, if at all.

I bulldozed the clutter on the top of my desk until I had a clear spot and sorted the contents of my wallet into piles. The first stack for receipts, the next for crap I wanted to keep, and the last for crap that only God knows why I saved in the first place.

I had my wallet put away and held the wad of “God only knows” crap over the trash can with hesitant fingers when Lorna marched into the office with her arms folded, her cheeks luminescent red, and her long blond hair tied in a ponytail. She wore a ratty yellow cardigan sweater buttoned up to her neck. Her tight lips underlined a hot stare.

I cast one last doubtful glance at the wad of crap that I released from between my thumb and forefinger.

“What on earth happened to you?” I asked while I watched the scraps of paper flutter into the trash.

“Do you know how far it is to that Fenton character's house?”

“Seventy, eighty miles?”

“Ninety-three miles, and you told me to be there by six.”

I looked at Lorna and said, “It was a morning surveillance.”

“I had to leave at three-thirty.”

“Sounds about right.”

“It was cold. I froze my ass off!”

“Yeah, I heard the furnace come on around two. I had to get up and close the windows at the house. Your heater broke?”

“Heater's fine,” she said. “Some asshole broke into my car—broke the driver's window and trashed the inside. They took something sharp and carved ‘
DIE BITCH
' into my windshield.”

“Steal your radio?”

“I wish,” she said and rolled her eyes. “They emptied my glove box all over the floor and pulled all the trash out from under my seats.”

“They take anything?”

“No, but I found those tractor-paper printouts you left in my back seat blowing all over the street.”

“Someone blasted the windshield out of my car with a cement block yesterday before you dropped me off.”

Lorna leaned forward, her arms still folded, and gave me an ugly “Why didn't you warn me?” stare.

“Have a seat.” I said. “I'll get you a cup of coffee.” Lorna climbed into the wing-back chair across from my desk and sat on her feet. I stood up, but Marg was already at the door with a steaming cup of something in her hand.

“Mister, you're confined to this room until I get that expense report.” She looked at Lorna and said, “Chicken soup. I keep a couple of packets in my desk.”

Marg kept enough provisions in her desk to outlast a nuclear holocaust. “I'm working on it,” I said.

Marg walked over to the chair, and Lorna unfolded her arms to take the soup. “You could deduct the expenses next quarter but the FICA is gone forever.”

I raised my hands in surrender. “I'm doing it,” I said and sat back down.

Lorna held the mug in both hands, blew the steam away from the top of the mug, and took a noisy sip. When she looked up she asked, “So what happened to your car?”

“The windshield was smashed out and the steering wheel left hanging by a couple of wires, but they didn't ransack it like they did yours. I had it towed to the shop this morning. Ben came and picked me up last night. We had to shake a tail before we could go home—somebody in a small white car with a dark vinyl roof or maybe a convertible.”

“What's going on?”

“Until you walked in, I thought it was an unhappy camper from the car dealership—still could be, I suppose. You carry comp coverage on your car?”

“Yeah, but there's a hundred-dollar deductible.”

“Put it on your expense ledger.”

“What case do I bill it to?”

“I'll make it an office expense until we figure that out. What did Mr. Fenton do?”

“Came out of the house around seven-thirty, stood on the porch and drank a cup of coffee. Around eight he drove into town in that ratty pickup truck and bought a newspaper. Then he sat in front of the Dodge dealership and read his newspaper. He was back home around a quarter to ten, and I broke it off.”

“Well, he's not working a morning shift,” I said, “and if he were working midnights you would have seen him come home.”