David A. Schwinghammer
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Depty Sheriff Will Kneebone tries to hang Mrs. Robideau's murder on Ned.
Chapter 11
Give Mama Some Sugar
“In revenge and in love woman is
more barbarous than man.”
–Friedrich Nietzsche
By the time Ned reached the parking lot behind Snow’s, Nathan Oja was gone, but a note had been pinned to the upholstery. It was from Will. Ned crushed it up and dropped it on the floorboard. Starting the truck, he sat there listening to the motor race, brooding over what he’d seen at Blackbird Cove. Should he tell Will about Mrs. R. back there in her bedroom, slowly decomposing?
He put the truck in gear, backed out of the parking lot, his spent muffler kicking up more of a ruckus than usual, steered toward the Mobil station, arriving at the tracks in front of his apartment just in time to meet the three o’clock freight. Brakes screeching, sparks leaping like fireflies, taconite pellets spilling over onto the rails. How many times had he fantasized as a kid about hopping a freight? Loretta’s dad had been an engineer, absolutely the coolest job in the world. He leaned over and retrieved the note from Will. It said: I may have been a little hasty. If we’d gone to trial on that flimsy evidence, you’d’ve got off scot-free.
That was about as close to ‘I’m sorry’ as he was going to get. The last car rattled on by. Ned rumbled over the tracks, his worn shocks jarring his teeth. It seemed as though Mrs. R. was sitting in the seat next to him, though, and when he finally got to bed, he couldn’t sleep, thinking about what he’d seen. One thing was for certain, when he woke up in the morning, he wouldn’t forget what he’d done tonight. If he ever got to sleep.
As the sky paled to a hazy blue, he finally did nod off, but when the full rays of the sun played over his eyelids, he was awake again, feeling as logy as a newly revived coma patient. He rolled out of bed, scuffed his way to the can, then made coffee. As he sipped at his Folgers, he stared out across the street at the U-haul parked in front of the rental, expecting to see the little trucker putting his eighteen-wheelers through their paces. And he spilled coffee down the front of his shirt, scalding himself. Red and blue butterfly kimono, dyed black hair piled on her head, face powdered like a Geisha girl. Mrs. R. was sitting on the shotgun side of his truck.
Setting the cup on the window sill, he rubbed his eyes so hard he saw lightning bolts. When he opened them, there was no one in the truck. His scraped knee killing him, he limped to the wall phone in the kitchen, dialed the sheriff’s office.
“Kneebone here.”
“Will, this is Ned. ‘Preciate the note you left.”
“You gonna give the dozer back?”
“Told you I didn’t do that. This is about something else. I was over at Blackbird Cove this morning, checking on the place like she told me to, and the back window was broken and the door was open. There was glass on the kitchen floor. Looks like the place was burglarized. You better investigate.”
For a minute Ned thought they’d been cut off Will waited so long to answer. “You didn’t go in and look around? That’s not like you, Ned.”
“You’d probably try to pin it on me if I had.”
“What the hell are you doing over there at seven in the morning? It usually takes you a couple of hours to shake off the d.t.’s.”
Should have thought of that one. One little apparition in the front seat of my truck and I flip my fucking lid. “Couldn’t sleep. I was out wandering around in the woods again last night. Nathan Oja told me about this coin he--“
”Not a bad kid really. Thanks for taking care of him. Kind of wet out last night for you to be traipsing around in the woods.”
“Had me a rain parka Mrs. R. gave me used to belong to Andre. Snug as a bug in a rug.”
“No use arguing with a maniac,” Will said, his voice as raw as a chain-smoker’s. “I’ll look in on Mrs. R.”
“She ain’t there, remember? She went to see her daughter in Seattle.”
“Right. I’ll take a look.”
“Thanks. See you at Snow’s if nothing else.”
“Wait. You happen to see Sheriff Tibbetts lately?”
“Got no reason to.”
Will coughed into the phone, a ragged kind of hack suggesting pneumonia, blew his nose, and said. “Thought maybe you’d been playing cards with him.”
Ned extended the cord to the sink, where he ran water on a washrag, then rolled up his pants leg and bathed his scraped knee. “Nope. Hasn’t he been in the office?”
Will sniffed, coughed up some phlegm. “Not since our latest
run-in.”
“Oughta take care of that cold; hate for Lila to wind up a widow.”
“Got the bastard Tibbetts for sure,” Will said. “Found his fingerprints on the money he paid the Zwald punk. He doesn’t dare show his face around here. Last I checked, though, his cruiser was still parked in front of his house, and this morning it’s not there.”
“Skipped town, huh?”
“Looks like it. I’ll let you go then. You still got your cell phone?”
He tapped his back pocket to make sure it was still there. “Sure do,” he said.
“Good. I’ll get back to you. Where you gonna be?”
“Probably at Mom’s, having breakfast.”
“Maybe I’ll drop by afterwards.”
“You do that.”
Ned hung up, went to the bathroom, washed his face and combed his hair. When he came back out, Peggy June was standing in the doorway, clutching a bag of groceries to her chest. “Miss me, Baby?” she said.
She wore a black cowboy hat, with a buckskin coat and blue jeans and what looked like hand-tooled cowboy boots with turquoise inlay. She looked like she’d just come back from a yard sale and was about to show the old man the neat goodies she’d found for only a couple of bucks.
“That depends,” he said. “You get the money?”
She set the groceries on the table. “We’ll talk about that later. Come here and give mama some sugar.”
He went over and hesitantly brushed her lips. Kind of like kissing Lizzie Borden.
“You call that a kiss,” she said. “I’m having trouble keeping from jumping your bones, and you peck me on the lips like I was the Baptist preacher’s daughter.”
“About the money?”
“I got the money, don’t you worry. Let’s have some breakfast and I’ll tell you how I left that Norb fellow wearing a barrel and suspenders.” She reached under the sink and came out with a corroded frying pan he hadn’t used since he’d moved in here. “Jeez, she said. “I’m going to have to housebreak you if we’re going to spend any quality time together.”
“There’re some pans in the cupboard. The stickproof kind.”
She found them, sliced some butter into one of them, cracked a half dozen eggs, peeled some bacon into the other, and set everything to fry.
“Got a toaster?” she said.
He looked around. “I did at one time. There it is, under the bed.” She poured them both a glass of orange juice and he got them coffee. She’d even brought raspberry jelly for the toast. He hadn’t had raspberry jelly since he and Loretta . . . “You may be a killer, but I love you anyway,” he said.
She stopped chewing and gave him that have-you-been-doing-funny-mushrooms? look. “What’d you call me?”
“I was over at Mrs. Robideaux’s. Found her body.”
She swallowed. “I’ve been in North Dakota for over a week; I couldn’t have--”
“Yeah, well, she’s been dead for well over a week.”
“What were you doing there, thinking of cracking that safe without me?”
“Long story. I was having a few beers with Nathan Oja and he told me he found a coin from the Plunder Lake treasure. I needed a shovel see, so I stopped at–-“
”You were really smashed, huh?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Yah fuckin’ nitwit, it was raining Persians and Poodles last night and you’re out there in the woods looking for something that ain’t even there. If Nathan Oja couldn’t find it, what made you think a goddamn dipso could?”
Ned didn’t really have any answer for that. Seemed like a good idea at the time. “So how much was in the safe?”
“I’m going to murder you if you keep that up.” She reached in her pocket and came out with a thick roll of greenbacks. “Here, send that to Loretta. I’d give you all of your share, but I know you’d only blow it on a football bet.”
He riffled through the crisp bills, still wasn’t focusing very well, but unless he’d missed his count, there was at least two thousand there. “So, are you going to tell me what took you so long?”
“You were right. He already had a buyer, offered me twenty thousand if I’d be willing to cut you out. If you’ll remember, you never said anything about my share, so I was kind of tempted, but then I thought, ‘Why should we settle for a lousy twenty Gs?’”
“You didn’t hurt him, did you?”
She fished a roach out of her shirt pocket, lit it with her flamethrower. “Nah, he was already thinking of running out on his wife cause of her constant nagging. Anyway, a gal knows when she’s got a guy by the nuts. We went to Vegas, gambled some, and I got us our fifty, cut him out of an extra twenty-five.”
“Whaddya mean, cut him out of?”
“Like in cards, Bozo.”
Suddenly the green-eyed monster took a bite out of his ass. “Bullshit. How’d you really get it?”
“What do you care? You aren’t even glad to see me.”
“Am too. Thought you killed poor Mrs. R. is all.”
“As God is my witness, I never touched the old lady.”
“Did you scare her to death, then?”
She flicked the roach at him. Sparks flew and flared, singeing the hair on his arm, and before he knew what hit him, she’d kicked the chair out from under him and they were rolling around on the floor, her trying to yank his tongue out of his head, him trying to fight her off. “You’re gonna have to do something about that temper if you’re going to manage my money,” he gasped.
That seemed to sooth her some and she quit struggling. “You stink, you know it?” she said.
“Yeah, well, you could stand to lose some weight.”
“Keep that up and I’m cuttin’ you off.”
“Nymphos don’t cut people off. You aren’t thinking of moving in, are you?”
That cracked her up. Carol Burnette laughter. Lunatic laughter. She knocked on the side of his head with her knuckles.
“We’ve got seventy-five thousand, minus what I spent in Vegas, the Navajo Rez, and the side trip I made to see O.J.’s house, and what I gave you for Loretta, and you think I’m moving in here? We’re getting us a decent crib.”
They sat up, their backs against the bed. “Meant to tell you about Loretta. She went back to Darwin.”
“I could have told you that, Clem. She was just checking you out is all. A woman isn’t going to trade in a new Corvette for a ‘55 Ford Fairlane.”
“She would if the Ford is cherry.”
“Yeah, well, you’re not cherry.”
“If I’m such a basket case, why do you want to move in with me?”
“Cause I’m an artist; I’ve got a twisted perspective.”
“Oh, good, whatever the hell that is. Something else I need to tell you. I talked to Will, told him there was a burglary over there at Robideaux’s, so . . .”
This time the look was that of a puppy begging for a tidbit. “Really, I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“If you didn’t kill her, who do you think did?”
“My best guess is Lorna. That is, if the old lady didn’t die of natural causes.”
“What would Lorna want with a piddling fifty thousand or so?”
“That type never has enough money.”
“There were some bills on the floor, broken glass. Besides, the body looked--”
“She could’ve faked that or hired somebody to make it look like a burglary.”
He heard a banging and a clanging sound, momentarily thinking of the hail storm that had hit last summer, breaking windows and punching a softball-sized hole in his roof. Then he remembered the flying red horse. “By the way, thanks for bringing back the sign.”
“What makes you think it’s the same one?” she said.
“You mean it’s a fake?”
“Like I said, I’m an artist. Any graphic designer could paint a little red horse with wings on sheet metal, ding it up a bit, stain it with a soldering iron.”
“You’re amazing. If I take a shower, will you have sex with me?”
#
After his fracas with Tibbetts, Voigt had run his car into a tree, then dialed 911 on his cell phone. He spent an hour in the emergency room at the hospital, having his nose set and taped. The doctor tried to admit him, but Voigt insisted he was all right.
Afterwards he had returned to his office. Moving a two hundred and fifty pound corpse had proved to be more of a problem than he’d bargained for. He managed to drag Tibbetts into the closet, leaving a urine stain on the rug, which he sprinkled with potpourri and covered with a throw rug, but he hadn’t been able to think of a way to get the sheriff out into the parking lot. He hadn’t actually done any physical labor since his late twenties and there was absolutely no one he could trust with this kind of secret.
Rather than take a chance on the janitor finding the body, he slept in his chair that night, called Lorna the next morning to tell her he’d fallen asleep at his desk working on accounts. “Didn’t know you were missing,” she said. Lorna had her own bedroom and she’d still been in bed when he’d called.
Having given the matter some thought, he picked up the phone, punched in a three digit number. His office manager answered. “Randy,” he said. “I need to move some junk out of my garage, an old refrigerator and such. Can you call over to the hardware store and rent me a forklift?”
“I can have somebody do that for you, Boss.”
“Nah, they’re all a bunch of snoops. I’d just as soon take care of it myself.”
“But your back.”
“Don’t worry about my fuckin’ back. Just do as I goddamn say.” He hit the disconnect button.
Should have asked for one of those push carts. Doubted he’d be able to get a forklift through the door. Voigt sat there doodling on a notepad. How long would it take before Tibbetts started to stink? He’d need some clothesline to tie him onto the pushcart. He might need something bigger than the derringer if Tillie still had that fucking Malemute patrolling the perimeter of her yard at night. He went out into the hall, found Pete Bierbrodt mopping the entrance hall. “Hey, Pete,” he said. “You got a pushcart? Gotta move some books.”
“I can do that for you,” the man said.
“This is some stuff I want to rearrange at home,” he said.
“I wouldn’t mind coming over to help out.”
Voigt bristled. All of a sudden everybody was a good Samaritan. Instead he clapped Pete on the back and said, “Appreciate that, but these are private papers and such.”
“Porno, huh?”
Voigt’s face burned. He’d like nothing better than to fire this dumb son of bitch, sending his wife and fourteen kids to a poor house, if there still was such a thing. Instead, he smiled. “Too old for that. Viagra doesn’t even help. Put that cart in the back of that white loaner out in the lot.” He flipped the janitor his keys.
Back in his office, Voigt mopped his forehead with his handkerchief. Would he be able to make it through the day with a body in his closet? Again he dialed the office manager. “Had a car accident last night, Randy,” he said. “Cancel all my appointments. I don’t feel up to going on the air today. Would you call in the new kid?”
“Sure thing, Boss. Should I ring Doc Benson?”
“I was over there before I came to work. He gave me some pain pills. I don’t want to go on the air sounding like I’ve been smoking pot.”
“I understand. Buzz if you need me.”
Voigt set the phone down. What a self-important little snip. Who the hell cared if he understood or not? If he ever got out of this mess, there’d be some changes made around here.
Taking a yellow legal pad out of a drawer, Voigt began to doodle. With Tibbetts dead, was there any way the Indian could trace the recent violence to him? He wrote “Cornelius dead” in the upper right-hand corner. The Bradshaw kid had been killed in the head-on collision with the Indian. Schmidtgap was the headless corpse. Jamie Zwald had already spilled the beans about the bribe Tibbetts had given him. Could Voigt believe that Zwald knew nothing about him? Why would Tibbetts tell him? No, Zwald was not a problem. The Indian? He’d been after Tibbetts. The sheriff had laundered some of his drug money in the radio station, the pizza supply, and the new housing addition, but that didn’t really implicate Voigt. Sonny Tuttle, now there was a dangerous little snoop. The debate with the school board chairman should settle his bacon for him.
#
Ned banked the two ball into the corner pocket, then nudged the three into the nine, which was hanging on the lip of the side pocket. “That’s my dough,” he said, reaching for the ten dollars they’d bet on the game.
She slapped his hand away. “Lucky shit. Double or nothing.”
As Ned was lining up for the break, Will touched him on the arm. The Indian, his nose as red and swollen as a problem drinker’s, said, “Got a minute?”
“You look like death warmed over,” Ned said. “You and Peggy June know each other?”
“Oh yeah,” Will said, in a how-could-I-not-know-the-biggest-troublemaker-in-Plunder Lake? tone. “Let’s step over to the bar.”
“She knows about the break-in,” Ned said. “Anything you want to say to me–-“
Will dabbed at his nose with a Kleenex. ”Suit yourself. Some bad news. Mrs. Robideaux is dead. Looks like it may have been a homicide.”
Ned slumped down on a chair, trying to look crestfallen. “Who could have done such a thing? If it wasn’t for her, I’d be homeless.”
“What makes you think it was a homicide?” Peggy June said.
“I said it may have been one. She looked frightened. Touch anything while you were there?” he said, giving Ned that tractor beam stare.
“When I found the broken glass and such, I beat it out of there. I thought she was in Seattle.”
“Think it was one of those kids who broke into Yeager’s?” Peggy June said.
“Nope, looks like it was somebody who knew she had a safe in her newly remodeled living room.”
“If you think I–-“
”Exactly,” Will said. “You better hope the crime team doesn’t find any fibers from one of your flannel shirts on her body. You and I are going back to your place.”
“You son of a bitch. Bad enough you locked me up on suspicion of stealing that Caterpillar, and now you accuse me of murdering a woman I thought of as my second mother.”
“Don’t make me cuff you.”
#
Voigt had spent a long and trying day, never straying from his office for a moment. At five o’clock he turned on his TV to watch the debate between Mrs. Vanderwaal and Sonny Tuttle on local cable. He’d meant to attend himself, but due to unforeseen circumstances . . .
The camera moved in for a close-up of Sonny Tuttle, wearing a corduroy jacket with elbow patches and an open-throated blue shirt, then shifted to the superintendent of schools. “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “I’m Dan Wilson. I’ll be moderating the mayoral debate between Principal Tuttle and School Board Chairman Vanderwaal. Without further ado, I’d like to introduce Mr. Tuttle, who will have five minutes for his opening statement.
Sonny smiled at the camera, said good afternoon, went on to list his professional experience, his extracurricular resume. “I’ve met a lot of parents during my term as a teacher and acting principal,” he said. “Most of them worked at the fish processing plant or at the pizza supply.” Tuttle paused for emphasis. “Minimum wage jobs. If elected mayor, I will bring better paying jobs to Plunder Lake.”
Superintendent Wilson had to call time twice before he could get Tuttle to shut up.
Mrs. Vanderwaal spent her five minutes outlining her experience making tough decisions on the school board, emphasizing that she’d been elected chairman after only a year in office. She mentioned how she’d saved teaching positions by eliminating top-heavy administrative positions. She cited the new DARE program at the high school.
When she was finished, Wilson asked Tuttle what he thought were the main issues in the coming election. Tuttle leaned forward, pointed a scrawny finger at the camera. “We all know that crime has run amuck in White Tail County since Sheriff Tibbetts took office. Plunder Lake needs to beef up its police force. The number of deputies in the sheriff’s department is woefully insufficient to patrol the entire county, and now it seems Sheriff Tibbetts has disappeared. I would suggest the county commissioners appoint Deputy Kneebone sheriff in the interim until an election can be held. We need to help the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension solve the murder of the young man found in the woods. I think this homicide was drug related. I’m one of those people who believes we must stop the problem at the source.” Again a pregnant pause. “Eliminate demand. Perhaps a teen center. More extracurricular activities.”
Mrs. Vanderwaal raised an eyebrow scorning this man’s pie-in-the-sky ideas. “Mr. Tuttle, where will this money come from? We both know the last school referendum was voted down.”
Tuttle responded with demographics stating the number of young families in Plunder Lake was on the rise. “They’ll support an increased activities budget,” he said. “I would also like to improve relations between the Ojibwas and the white populace.” He went on to mention some of the same areas John Mad Bull had discussed during that first radio interview. The new jobs. The charitable contributions. Ojibwa concern for the fish count. He also read a statement from Mad Bull endorsing him for mayor.
Voigt slapped his forehead. Should’ve let Mad Bull know how he felt about Tuttle’s candidacy, should’ve made it a deal breaker where his reservation property was concerned.
Mrs. Vanderwaal said she’d like to encourage small business and to attract more tourists.
Tuttle raised the shortage of low income housing.
“And we need to do something about the moral tone in this town,” Mrs. Vanderwaal said. “There’s a woman selling porno videos to our underage high school boys. Sheriff Tibbetts and Deputy Kneebone have always looked the other way.”
Voigt jumped to his feet, moved closer to the screen, frantically waving his hands in a negative semaphore she couldn’t possibly see. What the hell did she think she was doing? Afterwards he’d insist the woman apologize in print and on KPLM, or he’d withdraw his financial support.
Vanderwaal went on and on like the fucking Energizer Bunny. “The Stairway to Limbo rents porno videos. I was in there the other day, ah . . . antiquing, and the manager was smoking a marijuana cigarette, right out in the open, as cool as a cucumber.” The moderator interrupted, chiding Mrs. Vanderwaal about the possibility of a libel suit. She shushed him. “And while we’re at it, Mr. Tuttle, how do you expect the people of Plunder Lake to have any respect for a mayor who blatantly carries on an affair while married with two lovely children?”
Tuttle looked like she’d just complimented him on his tie. “My wife and I are separated, Mrs. Vanderwaal. She’s right out there in the audience, if you’d like to hear whom she supports for mayor.”
“Are you going to tell me you were separated when you and Miss Peters began your illicit affair? Have you no respect for the marital vows?”
That salvo struck home. “I regret that you feel the necessity to bring Miss Peters’s name into this. She’s not running for mayor. Our relationship is not a tawdry affair. We plan to be married.”
#
Ned sat on his bed, smoking a Pall Mall while Will removed a furnace vent and dug inside. So far Ned had voluntarily shown Will the hundred dollars he had in his wallet.
Will stood up to blow his nose, which immediately began to run again. It was as red and raw as deer steak. He knelt to put the vent cover back in place and looked over his shoulder at Ned. “You’ll tell me if I’m getting warm, won”t you?”
“Kind of tough to do, since I don’t know what the fuck you’re looking for. Mind if I turn on the radio? My brother is debating that Vanderwaal woman.”
“Knock yourself out.”
Ned switched on the radio just as Mrs. Vanderwaal accused Sonny of the affair.
“Get up off the bed, will you? I want to look under the mattress.”
“Come on now, what do you take me for?”
They both stopped to listen as Sonny artfully dodged Mrs. Vanderwaal’s underhanded ploy. “Wow, Will said. She couldn’t really take him up on that, could she? Does his wife really support his candidacy?”
“Hell if I know. She thinks I’m a drunk.” Will turned the mattress over, then took out his buck knife and slit a hole in the side and dragged some of the stuffing out onto the floor. “Hey! you’re payin’ for that.”
Will tossed him a quarter. “I doubt you spent that much.”
He looked up at the light fixture. It had been Ned’s hidey-hole once upon at time. One of many. Hiding money from himself. Will stood on a chair, wobbled a bit, then removed the globe.
He jumped down off of the chair, just as Mrs. Vanderwaal began to complain about Peggy June. “That woman must’ve used Newt Gingrich as a role model,” he said. “I doubt she could be elected dog catcher.” Another coughing fit struck as he dusted off the front of his pants.
“Let me take you to the emergency room; you’ve got walking pneumonia.”
“You don’t look too worried,” Will said. “I’ll bet it’s in the can.”
The two thousand dollars was under a loose tile in the bathroom, so Ned figured his goose was pretty much cooked, but he let Will remove the cover of the commode, check the medicine cabinet, dump the potpourri out of its canister, and finally pry up the loose tile. Ned stood in the doorway feeling as sick as Will looked.
Will counted the money. “Two thousand two hundred. Where’d you get that kind of dough, Ned?”
“Poker game.”
Will stood, put his arm around Ned’s shoulders, and led him out into the living room, where they both sat on the bed. “I really want to believe you, I really do. Who were the other players?”
“Nobody you’d know. I didn’t know most of them myself.”
“Give me one name.”
“You’re gonna have to lock me up. As you know, gambling is illegal, and I’m not gonna rat on my friends.”
Will removed the Mountie hat, wiped his dripping forehead with his sleeve. “You know those tire treads I found out at the Gohl farm?”
“Yeah, what about ‘em?”
“They match up with your friend Bud Allyn’s semi. If you’re such a stand-up guy, you’ll admit you stole the Caterpillar and save Bud the embarrassment of having to testify against you.”
Ned lit another cigarette, trying to keep his hands from shaking. “That’s bullshit.”
“We’ll see about that. Another thing. I’m thinking you really got the short end of the stick on this deal if all you got was two thousand dollars and some change. Unless of course, this money is from Mrs. Robideaux’s safe.”
Ned took a deep drag on his smoke, slowly exhaled, careful not to blow any at the Indian. He had a feeling Will was so angry he might try to smack him if he did that, and that would be the nail in the coffin of their friendship.
“You ever see this?” Will said, showing him a leather hair clasp Ned had seen Peggy wearing. “It’s not the kind of thing an old woman would have. Seems like I saw Peggy June wearing something like this when I was over there talking to her about those porno videos. A little safe cracking. A bulldozer theft. I wouldn’t put it past her.”
“Not hers. She and I practically live together and I’ve never seen that before. Maybe it belongs to one of Mrs. R.’s daughters.”
“Too cheap for Lorna to wear, don’t you think? And the other one lives in Seattle.”
“Why don’t you just lock me up again? We’ll see how long I’m in jail this time.”
Will got up off the bed and began to pace. He reached up and touched the stitches on his forehead, closed his eyes, and rocked on his heals as if he was having trouble keeping his balance.
“I think I’ll let you stew in your juices for a while,” Will said. “I won’t hestitate to stick Buddy Allyn with this Caterpillar theft if you don’t fess up. You know he’s got four kids, and with the price of gas these days, he’s having a rough enough time making it the way it is.”
“I think you better locate the Caterpillar before you try to pin the deed on anybody. Corpus delicti, you know. I don’t understand why you’re pressing so hard to find Voigt’s Caterpillar when he probably got more from his insurance company than he paid for it. I’ll bet he stole it himself.”
Will waved him away. “Don’t think I won’t find that Cat, and when I do, I have a feeling whoever you sold it to is going to be a lot less close-mouthed about it than your friend Bud.”
“Anything else? I want to take a shower.”
“Yeah, I’m keeping the two thousand. You admitted it was gambling money, and as you know, that’s illegal.”
“How’d you get to be such a son of a bitch?”
“Hanging around FBI agents at Free Leonard Peltier protests.”
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Mystery Writer
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