Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 44, No. 6, June 1999

Something Simple by Rob Kantner

The first Monday of the New Year found us still digging out from the first big storm of the winter. Four days before, an Alberta Clipper had blown through the Great Lakes region, gifting us with twenty-one inches of snow. Behind that, an Arctic air mass depressed highs to twelve at best. All this fouled up the roads, loused up New Year’s Eve, and kept me on the clock all weekend long.

Well, that’s what they pay me the big bucks for. And besides, this being metro Detroit, we expect such events. We welcome them, even. They give us a chance to be as tough as we talk.

Relieved to be back indoors, I trudged into the cosy warmth of the Norwegian Wood maintenance office. My people were deployed on the day’s chores around the complex, dealing with busted pipes, tenants’ gripes, and snow and ice or a combination thereof. Time for a smoke. Time for some coffee. Time for—

“Good morning, Ben,” Shyla said.

She sat in my chair behind the plain, gray steel desk, slumped down so low I hadn’t noticed her. “Morning,” I said, not bothering hiding my surprise as I unbuttoned my peacoat. “You working this week? I thought you were back at school.”

“Classes start tomorrow,” Shyla said, straightening. I noticed that she had poured herself some coffee, smoked two cigarettes already. She had also switched my desk radio from ’ABX over to one of those Ani DiFranco stations. That’s our Shyla, I thought with a smile. “Got a minute?” she asked.

“Sure, kid.” Grabbing a chair, I sat down facing her and dug a short cork-tipped cigar out of my shirt pocket. Shyla Ryan was slight but not short, five seven or so. Her blonde hair was a close-cropped cap around a pretty face graced with high cheekbones and striking bright blue eyes. She wore a light brown jacket over a snug, longsleeved dark brown top. Her lipstick was the color of her top, making her look even paler than usual. Unlike many her age, she had pierced no parts, at least none I could see. She seemed restless and intense, which was typical of her, and worried, which was not. “What’s up?” I asked.

“I need your help,” she said.

“Sure,” I answered. Flaring a wood match, I lighted my cigar. “What’s the story?” I asked, thinking college problems, car problems, maybe boy problems. Here’s the windup and now the pitch, a nice high slow one for old Ben to hit out of the park for her.

“My dad’s disappeared,” she said, fidgeting. “Can you find him for me?”

A few years before, I got asked that a lot. A few years before, the answer was easy. Now the question came rarely, and when it did, it threw up all kinds of red flags. Looking into Shyla’s blue eyes, I realized how troubled she was. Damn, I thought. “I’d like to help,” I said, exhaling smoke. “But that’s really something for the police to deal with.”

Her eyes flashed. “You sound like my mother,” she said. “I already talked to the police, filed a report. They just shrugged at me.” She leaned forward, slender hands knotted. “I’m sure something awful has happened to Daddy. You’ve got to help me.”

Stalling, I asked, “Well, how long has it been since—”

“Thursday,” she said. “He called me Thursday. Said things were getting fixed. He sounded really happy. But after that I heard nothing. Yesterday I went to his place. He hasn’t been there. No one’s seen him.” Taking a cigarette out of her small purse, she put it to her lips, bending forward to accept my light. Nodding her thanks, she took a big hard hit and looked at me, exhaling. “I am so scared, Ben,” she said quietly. “He never goes away without letting me know. Never.”

“ ‘His’ place,” I said, waving out the wood kitchen match. “Your parents divorced?”

“Separated,” she answered. “He moved out four months ago. My mother has been such a bitch to him.” She took another drag. “So how about it?” she asked, brightening. “Will you help me?”

Hating myself now, I said, “Wish I could. But I don’t do that kind of stuff any more. Been out of it for years.”

“But you used to,” she pressed. “I heard all about you. Marge has told me things, and Mrs. Janusevicius—”

“Be careful what you believe,” I advised. “The stories get wilder in the retelling.”

“I heard you were awesome,” she said quietly.

I shook my head. “Work with the police, Shyla. This kind of thing, it’s their job.”

Now she was blinking, and I feared what was coming. “What they said, Marge, and Mrs. J, and the colonel and everybody — what they told me,” she said, voice shaking a bit, “is that you always came through for your friends.” She stared straight at me, blue eyes shiny. “Aren’t I your friend, Ben?”

The cell phone whistled just as I was wheeling my Mustang out of the parking lot. Bracing the wheel with my knee, I jammed the shifter into third with one hand and pressed SND with the other. “Perkins.”

“You called?” came Carole’s voice.

“Morning, Your Honor,” I said, and braced myself. “About tonight.”

“Yes?”

“Instead of picking up Rookie at the courthouse, how’s about if I swing by your place later, around suppertime.”

“Works for me,” she answered. “But doesn’t that take you out of your way?”

“Most likely not. I’ve got some running around to do up that way today.”

Pause. “But it’s only nine A.M. now.”

“I know,” I said hastily. “So, is it—”

“Why don’t you just pick her up at the daycare when you’re ready? They’re open until—”

“Be less pressure,” I said, “if we do the handoff up at your house.”

Long pause. “What are you up to, Ben?”

Damn. This is what happens, when they’ve known you for years and have clocked all your moves. I sighed. “I’m doing some checking up for a friend of mine.”

“Now there’s a phrase I haven’t heard in awhile,” she said. “ ‘Checking up.’ ” From her tone you’d think I’d uttered a most odious obscenity. “What sort of ‘checking up,’ Ben?”

“Shyla Ryan, woman I work with,” I said. “College kid. Temps for Marge in the rental office during breaks. Her dad’s dropped out of sight, she asked if I’d do some looking around. I told her I’d help out.”

The tension was so tangible I could almost touch it. “God, this scares me,” she whispered “All those familiar terms. ‘Dropped out of sight.’ ‘Looking around.’ ‘Help out.’ ”

“Nothing to be scared of,” I said. “It’s something simple. Trust me.”

“You promised to stay out of that work.”

“It’s not ‘work.’ I’m not getting paid.”

“Don’t fence with me!” she flared “Back then you didn’t get paid either, half the time. That didn’t stop you from getting stabbed and beaten up and shot.”

I shook my head. “Nobody’s getting shot.”

I heard her intake of breath, uncharacteristically shaky. “Is this Shyla person... special to you?” Knowing what she was really asking, I replied patiently, “She’s a kid. We work together. I know how you feel about this, but... I sat there and looked at her and listened to her. In my mind’s eye she looked like Rookie twenty years down the line.”

I heard her inhale. “How manipulative of you to drag Rachel into this.”

“Happens to be the truth,” I said mildly.

Another pause. “You won’t forget to pick up her tonight,” she said.

“I won’t forget.”

In the background I could hear a female voice. Carole murmured something. To me she said, briskly, “You did promise me, you know. And Rachel, too.”

“I know. And I’ve been keeping it. And I know this nudges it.”

“Just so we understand each other. No rough stuff. Promise?”

I took a deep breath. “Promise.”

“All right.” She sounded cheerier, if only a little. “At least you told me. That’s an improvement.”

“Yes,” I replied. “It is.”

Randy Ryan’s apartment building was in Bloomfield Township, well north of the city, off Telegraph and Long Lake. It was a long low single story brick structure, capped with a massive layer of icy snow. The eaves were fringed with long, lethal-looking icicles stabbing downward. For Bloomfield, the place seemed low-rent and highly transient. Might as well have put “Divorced Dads Welcome” on their sign out front.

The parking lot sported a white ’Vette and a blue Crown Vic but no large black Ford Expedition with white fuzzy dice dangling from the mirror. I wedged my Mustang in a parking spot between the Vic and a mountainous pile of plowed snow.

Huddled in my peacoat, fists clenched in pockets for warmth, I crunched across the hard-packed white stuff toward the door of Apartment 3. Already I knew what I’d find. Second-hand mismatched furniture. Worn appliances. Neutral colors on the walls, the trim, in the carpet. TV and maybe a CD player. And few personal touches except — if Shyla’s description of their relationship was any indication — a picture or two of her arm-in-arm with her dad, smiling at the camera.

Five minutes later I left, my expectations fully confirmed. Only there was just one picture, of Shy-la alone, probably her high school graduation portrait a couple of years earlier. Her hair had been brown then and longer. She looked younger and more innocent, one to whom less had happened. Same blue eyes, though.

Of Ryan himself there was no recent sign. As Shyla had told me, the sinks were dry, the bed was neatly made, and what looked like several days’ worth of mail scattered the foyer carpet. To the front storm door were stuck three yellow tried-to-deliver sticky notes, from UPS or OOPS or somebody like that. The earliest one was dated December thirtieth.

I’d knocked on the other seven doors. The two that answered claimed no knowledge of Randy Ryan, past or present. I reboarded the Mustang and, heat on high, headed south on Telegraph. Normally four lanes each way, Telegraph was down to two narrow lanes now. They were walled with high white drifts that were already turning gray-black from tailpipe crud. The traffic ran slow and sullen, the lights especially lengthy at Quarton and Maple.

Worst of all was the sprawling interchange where Telegraph intertwined with the Reuther and the Lodge freeways. There the cars, the SUV’s, and the big rigs crept along in ten foot lurches. They noisily merged and disengaged like icy, metallic, salt-encrusted lovers, tailpipes sending up thick streams of inky exhaust like plumy cats’ tails into the frigid midmorning air. I just lived through it, smoking a cigar, playing Buddy Guy’s latest on the CD, tolerant, patient. Downright tranquil even. Surely in no hurry to meet Randy Ryan’s estranged wife.

“Oh, you,” she said, grimacing at me through the storm door. “Jennifer told me about you. Come on in, I guess.”

Jennifer? I wondered. Then, as I stepped inside, it clicked. “Thanks for your time,” I said. “I’m just wondering if—”

“I know why you’re here,” Virginia Ryan said, turning on me. Physically, she was quite different from Shyla, besides being older. Short and quite round, lipless and worn, she had short wavy dark hair and deep worry fines. Her eyes were as narrow and hard and colorless as shards of window glass. She wore dark stirrup pants and a light sleeveless shirt. Silver wedding rings twinkled as she gestured. This was, I sensed, a woman who liked to throw things, starting with words and moving on, as needed, to heftier items. “You’re trying to find that sorry, sleazebag, soon-to-be-ex-husband of mine.”

“No,” came another voice as Shyla entered the room. “He’s looking for Daddy. Hi, Ben,” she added, giving me a small wave.

“Hey, kid.”

The three of us stood, for a moment seemingly immobilized by tension. The living room of the small Redford Township ranch-house was a kaleidoscope of beige: dark, medium, and light. The furniture and decorations were rounded, puffy, and plush. The scent was potpourri and sweetish, with the hint of recently baked bread and remote tobacco smoke. “Can we sit down?” I asked.

“Well,” the mother said, “I’m going to. You do what you want.” She went to the sofa and sat on its edge, facing me, and hovered over the coffee table. On it was scattered piles of what looked like mail. “As to Randy, I’ll tell you the same thing I’ve told Jennifer.” She ripped open an envelope, using considerably more force than needed. “He’s taken that money he stole and run off with that hillbilly slut girlfriend of his.”

Shyla, who stood in the archway to the dining room, scowled. “That’s so unfair. You don’t know anything about a girlfriend—”

“I have all the evidence I need,” her mother cut in flatly, unfolding an ad.

“And the money thing, too,” Shy-la charged on, “you don’t know that. You’re just connecting dots. It’s what you always do. You sit around and stew about things and—”

“For God’s sake!” Virginia snapped, slamming the ad down. “The police were here, Jennifer! Your father’s boss has filed a complaint!”

“Did you ever get his side of it?” Shyla asked hotly. She was hugging herself, and her blue eyes were a tad glassy. “Of course not. Because you want to believe—”

“Whoa!” I interjected, making the T with both hands. “Hold the phone. Steady on, as we say.” The women looked at me, expressions eerily identical in their annoyance. “One thing at a time, if we could.”

“Who asked you?” Virginia retorted, head cocked at an angry angle.

“I did,” Shyla said.

“None of this is any of your business, Jennifer!”

“I’m involved in it, too, you know,” Shyla replied stubbornly.

“Please,” I said, holding up both hands. “Let me get the information I need, and I’ll scoot.”

Virginia ripped open another envelope and huffed a sigh. “Whatever.”

“Okay.” I picked through the scraps of facts in my head, framing questions. Or trying to. It had been a long, long time. Surely this was easier years ago. “You mentioned a girlfriend and evidence. What can you tell me about that?”

Virginia gave Shyla a cold smile and a glance. “I found a greeting card she sent him. A sexy greeting card. Left nothing to the imagination.”

“Because you went through his briefcase!” Shyla put in. “You always do that, Virginia. Snoop through people’s private things.”

“He’s my husband,” her mother answered. “He’s not allowed to have secrets from me.” Shyla, rolling her eyes, hugged herself tighter and looked away. “So I checked our phone bills, line by line,” Virginia went on, opening another envelope. “There were lots of long distance calls to Georgia. Which makes sense because that’s where Plant Two is and Randy calls there a lot. But I found a lot of other Georgia calls, to just one particular number. Place called MO-tee-yay. That’s how I found out about her.”

“I don’t buy it,” Shyla said airily.

I looked at the mother. “Can you give me the woman’s name and number? I’ll need to touch base with her.”

Virginia shrugged. “You want to waste your time, that’s your business.”

I looked at her again, seemingly engrossed in a bill of some kind. More there than met the eye. I was pretty sure Shyla was blind to it. To see what I saw, you have to have lived a lot of years, taken a lot of shots. “Now, on this embezzlement thing—”

“Alleged embezzlement,” Shyla corrected.

“Yes, thank you.” Virginia was ignoring me, but I talked to her anyway. “You said a cop came out here? What jurisdiction?”

“Farmington Hills, I think,” Virginia said, setting the bill aside. “That’s where the main plant is.” She picked up a catalogue-sized envelope and shredded the end open. “I don’t remember the officer’s name.” She extracted some papers. “It was so embarrassing,” she whispered, “that bastard putting me through this.”

Then, staring at the papers in her hands, she froze. “Oh,” she said, more to herself than to us, “for God’s sake.” Squinting at the papers, she whispered, “He sold it. The son of a bitch sold it.”

“What?” Shyla asked guardedly.

Virginia looked at her daughter. “The farm!” she answered. “He sold the farm!” Looking at the paper again, she read; “ ‘Please consider this formal acknowledgment of the sale of the property located at’ blah blah blah.” In grim silence she skimmed farther. “Two hundred twenty — two hundred twenty-three thousand dollars, less our standard commission of.’ ” With a toss she skittered the paper onto the coffee table top and looked up at Shyla with weary anger. “This is your father,” she said, tone deceptively mild. “He cheated on me, he stole from his company, and now he’s stolen from us.”

“I don’t believe it,” Shyla said.

“That was our estate,” Virginia murmured. “I’m entitled to half of it as part of the settlement. Now he’s run off with it.”

“It was in his family,” Shyla put in. “It was Daddy’s before you married him. You aren’t entitled to a dime of it.”

“Oh, so you’re a lawyer now!” Virginia sneered. “Grow up, little girl. This is him,” she charged on, waving the letter. “This is your father. This is what he’s about. He’s a liar and a cheat and a crook. He betrayed me, and you just wait, he’ll betray you, too!”

Raising her head, Shyla replied, “He’s the best daddy a girl could ever want.”

Though there’s no such thing as good timing in a situation like this, to me it seemed like high time to leave. I rose. “I’d better get going,” I told Virginia. “Could I trouble you for the info on that woman down in Georgia?”

After a moment’s frozen silence, Virginia got wearily to her feet. “I suppose,” she grumped. “Why are you even wasting your time with this? Can’t you see what’s going on here? Don’t you have better things to do?”

Feeling Shyla’s eyes on me, I shrugged. “Said I’d help out.”

“I suggest,” Virginia Ryan said, “that you just let it go.”

With a glance at Shyla, who was watching me tensely, I said easily, “Thing about me is, once I get started, I don’t quit. Not unless the client waves me off.” Some things have changed, I thought. But not that. I looked at Shyla. “Do I keep going?”

“Yes!” Shyla said, fists thrusting upward, beaming at me.

By now the traffic had eased up some. Even so, the massive drifts of snow made Telegraph slow as I motored north. To get to Farmington Hills I needed the Reuther freeway west, and it was once again stop-and-go through the metastatic clover leaves of Reuther/Lodge/North-western/Telegraph. Turning off Buddy Guy, I used the opportunity to mash out Doreen Mason’s 706 area-code number on the cell phone.

“Hah. This is Doh-reen,” recited the high, breathy, voice on tape some seven hundred miles south. “Ah cain’t tawk now, but if you leave your name, an’ your number, Ah’ll—” Hitting END, I tossed the cell phone on the bucket seat and returned my full attention to my driving. I could have left a message, but some creaky old detective instinct told me not to. Better to try again later and catch her off-guard.

At the Farmington Hills police station I was kept waiting for a long time in the dim, stuffy, noisy visitor area. How well I remembered this waiting-around jazz from way back when. Detective work, I recalled, was long stretches of boredom interrupted by extended periods of waiting. Interspersed, at the oddest times, with quick bursts of pure terror, which for me, back then, had been a diseased form of fun. Like the times I almost got garroted, and thonked in the head with a ball bat, and shot in the butt.

But that was then, back in those bad old days of seemingly endless Republican presidents. I’m too old for that now, I told myself. Besides, I swore an oath to Carole and Rachel, the women in my life. No rough stuff. Dragging myself away from the memories, I killed time scoping out the other visitors who drifted in and out of the cop house. Their grumpy demeanor was typical of involuntary visitors. I amused myself trying to determine which were perpetrators, which were perpetratees. And which were both (attorneys, natch) and which were that most dubious and threatened of species, the innocent bystander.

“Mr. Perkins?”

I glanced over at the plain steel door by the counter and nodded. The man, a short, well-built specimen in dark pants and a tieless white shirt, strolled toward me. No smile, I noticed as I rose. No greeting. No offer of a handshake. Just, “You’re here about Randy Ryan?”

“Yes. Appreciate your seeing me, Detective—”

“Shanahan. So where is he?” the cop asked abruptly, hooking hands in his pants pockets.

That caught me off-guard. I studied the lawman briefly. He had very curly dark hair cut quite short, a squarish, flat, cop face with just the faintest of age lines, gray eyes of Navy steel. He was younger than me, which was no surprise, there being, I’ve noticed, more of those each day.

“That’s what I’d like to know,” I answered.

He blinked. “What’s your interest?”

“His daughter asked me to find him,” I replied. The cop said nothing. Remembering that to be a rather effective investigative technique, I made a mental note. “Talk to him lately?”

“Not since Thursday,” Shanahan answered. “He was supposed to turn himself in. Never showed.”

“So you’re charging him?”

“Embezzlement. His employer swore out a complaint.”

“How’s it look?”

“Dead-bang, man. Couple hundred grand. A slam-dunk.” Shanahan seemed to relax just slightly. “Buzz is, he’s a bright guy, but no matter how hard I look, I don’t see anything all that clever about how he worked it. Dumb stealing from dumber.” Typical, he could have said but did not have to.

Poor Shyla, I thought. “So you talked to him Thursday?”

“Yeah, he called in. Surprised hell out of me,” Shanahan added, looking anything but surprised. “I guess he sensed we were set to scoop him. Said he’d come in voluntarily.” He shook his head. “Just a diversionary tactic. I waited till eight, got caught in the snowstorm, missed my kid’s hockey game. No sign of Ryan, then or since. From that I am forced to infer that he has skipped.”

Which of course made Virginia Ryan’s theory look better and better. I thought for a moment. “So I take it you’ve posted surveillance teams at the airports and train stations and bus stations and—”

“Yeah, right,” Shanahan said, with just the faintest smile. “We’ve put the word out. He’ll turn up. He’ll bust a red light or get ratted out by a friend or — hey,” he said, squinting at me, “maybe you’ll even find him. You’re some kind of detective, I take it?”

“Used to be.”

“Not any more?”

“Nope,” I replied, smiling. “Went legit.”

Next stop was Ryan’s employer’s place on Northwestern. Instead of heading there right away, I fired up the Mustang motor to get some heat into the frigid car, and hit SND on the cell phone to redial Doreen Mason’s number. While listening to it ring, I looked idly at the phone bill Virginia Ryan had given me. Fully half the entries were highlighted in bright yellow and were virtually identical — to the 706 number in a Georgia town called Motier, which Ryan had pronounced MO-tee-yay but was actually, I suspected, pronounced Mo-TEER.

“Ah don’t wont inny!” came a loud female voice in my ear.

“Ms. Mason?” I asked.

“Will you leave me alone,” she charged on, accent a foot thick. “I don’t buy things on the phone, and I never will, and—”

“I’m not a salesman,” I said. “I’m calling about Randy.”

Her pause was just a tad too long. “Who?”

“Randy Ryan,” I said, and took the plunge, no doubt a bit too precipitously. “Is he there?”

Cell phone static hissed in my ear for a moment. “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” she said. “Who are you?”

“Name’s Perkins,” I said. “I’m calling from Michigan. I’m looking for Randy.” An inspiration came, and I went with it. “His daughter asked me to find him.”

“Yeah?” Doreen asked tone challenging. “His daughter, huh.” Pausing she asked abruptly, “What’s her name?”

“Shyla.”

“No. Her real name,” she prodded cagily.

“Jennifer. And her mother’s Virginia. And he works for Brighton-Leopold.” Or worked I thought but did not say. “I know the whole deal,” I said quietly. “I got your number from Virginia.” Doreen did not reply. I sensed she was not all that quick on the uptake. “What made you think I was a salesman?” I asked.

“Caller I.D. said ‘anonymous,’ ” she answered “That usually means telemarketer.” Static hissed again for a moment, and when Doreen spoke again, she sounded tired. “Randy’s not here. I don’t know where he is.”

Of course she could have been lying. I did not need to hark back to my investigating days to recall that people frequently he, even when they don’t have to. But I decided to go with it for now. “Are you still... involved with him?”

“No. He broke it off.”

“When?”

“Last week he called.”

“When last week?”

“I don’t know. Wednesday, Thursday, what does it matter? He called and said it was over, done with. Said he was going away for a long time. Said it was the best for all concerned.” With each phrase I heard the emotion welling up in her. Now she paused, and when she spoke again, she sounded steadier, and quite dull. “I told him it was all right. I told him whatever he wanted, whatever was best for him.” She sighed. “I’ve always heard about ‘if you love something, let it go.’ What they don’t talk about is how much it hurts.”

I let a silence grow, thinking about what she had said. “So you don’t know where he is.”

“No, sir.”

Keeping my voice easy I said, “Don’t know if I buy that, Doreen. I mean, he’s flown the coop and took a pot of money with him, and you were his sweetie—”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” she cut in, tone pointed. “If he’d asked me, I’d be with him this instant. He’s the sweetest, kindest man. But I knew, somehow I knew all along, it would never end up that way. And I was right.”

I believed her.

“If she’d ever been nice to him,” Doreen murmured. “That’s all the man ever needed was a little kindness. And love. And acceptance. That’s all. If she’d ever given him that, he’d never have looked at me twice. I ain’t no prize.”

“Not to pick a light with you but you seem like a very nice person to me.”

That brought a hint of warmth, a touch of playfulness to her tone. “Aw, what do you know from all the way up there? Listen... when you find him?”

“Yes?”

“Tell him I’m praying for him.”

Brighton-Leopold Corp. was one of those downsized, streamlined, New Age companies with no receptionist. The foyer of the large flat anonymous building was in fact empty except for a row of plastic visitor chairs and a table scattered with magazines and literature. A vacant desk bore a phone and a sign saying “Please call the extension of the person you are seeing, and have a seat.”

With the sign was a helpful list of about fifty names and extensions. Randy Ryan’s name was on it. But there were no titles or positions or helpful hints like, “This guy is Randy’s boss.” Then I noticed several names in a clump: LEOPOLD N., LEOPOLD P., LEOPOLD T. There being no Brighton listed, I did the next best thing and called the first Leopold.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Leopold?”

“He’s in a meeting.”

“It’s very urgent. It’s about Randy Ryan.”

“Oh. Surely. Please hold.” From the quickening in the young man’s voice, I inferred that the mention of Ryan had struck a nerve. I waited. Almost at once the gray steel door buzzed and opened, and a short, roundish man bustled through. As I hung up the phone, the man wheezed, “Where’s Randy?”

I stood and said, “Wish I knew, sir. I’m Ben Perkins. You’re Mr. Leopold?”

“Neal.” His black hair was a bushy black mop around a fleshy face anchored with thick glasses. He wore dark pants and a nondescript dress shirt unbuttoned at collar and cuffs. He had the look of a teddy-bearish absentminded professor, but his eyes were steady and careful as he stuck a pawlike hand out for me to shake. “Have you seen him?”

“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.”

“A parishioner?” Collins asked, eyebrow arched. “Please, have a seat.”

Okay, I was nervous, as I always am around people with a direct line to God. I sat on a sofa under the light of a floor lamp. Had it not been on, we’d have both been in deep shadows. The light from outside had dimmed considerably in the darkening sky. Looked like another storm, I thought.

“Yes, a parishioner,” I said as Collins sat down in his desk chair, facing me. “Randy Ryan.”

“Mm,” the reverend said, expression placid, not at all wary.

Not knowing how much to tell him, I stuck with the essentials. “He’s missing. Hasn’t been seen since Thursday.”

“Oh no.”

“Unless, of course, you’ve heard from him.”

“No, I have not.”

“But you saw him that day, right?”

Collins considered that. “What is your interest, if I may ask?”

“His daughter asked me to find him.”

“You’re a detective?”

“Not hardly. Just a friend, helping a friend out.”

“I see.”

He said nothing. Neither did I until it occurred to me that he had ducked my question. “You saw Randy last Thursday, right? I know he was here, he made a phone call from here.” And maybe more than one, I realized.

“Thursday, Thursday,” Collins murmured. “Yes, of course. The day of the big storm.”

“Whatever.” I felt that incomparable rush that you get when you’re onto something. “What was he here about?”

The priest tipped his head back a bit, watching me, expression kind, perhaps even a bit amused. “You know I can’t talk about things like that, Ben,” he answered. “And besides, it’s not really what you need to know.”

I wanted to retort, Look, you be the preacher and I’ll be the detective, okay? But that would have been impertinent. I did my best to smile back. “Then what is it I really need to know, Father?”

“Where he was headed when he left here. And I can tell you that.” He smiled. “Home.”

Another fond hope blown to bits. I mean, after seeing Neal Leopold I thought I had figured out what Randy’s deal was. I hoped, upon meeting Father Dave, that he would confirm it. Instead he felt obliged to play coy and sent me ricocheting back into the icy outdoors on yet another wild goose chase. “Home,” my Aunt Lizzie’s butt. No way did Randy go home last Thursday after seeing the padre. He had not been back there. I was sure of it.

Even so, I wheeled north toward Randy’s Long Lake apartment. Might as well check it out again. Nothing else to do. I felt fatigue in my legs and back, a numbing of the spirit, the sour taste of having been laughed at. This was such a joke. I never liked going over the same unfruitful ground a second and third time. It always meant that I’d missed something. Had been less than brilliant. Had been, as Raeanne likes to say, “a mere mortal.”

Feeling sour, I smoked a cigar. I went over Randy’s chronology again, probing for soft spots. Propelled the Mustang north in the thick Telegraph Road traffic, piloting along between the high walls of plowed blizzard snow. Did the litany, each time ending up with “home.” Which made no sense.

Unless.

What if home did not mean Randy’s apartment? What if home meant Redford Township, where he’d lived with Virginia and Shyla?

Well now. This was more interesting. And it made all kinds of sense, given the other things Randy had done that day. But if he had gone there, Virginia would have mentioned it. Wouldn’t she?

But she had not. Why not?

Perhaps because... because something really ugly had happened?

Availing myself of a median crossover, I switched sides to southbound Telegraph and motored along, Red-ford-bound. I made fairly good time despite the old snow, new snow, and traffic. I thought about Virginia’s flinty eyes, the set of the scowl on her face, the tone of utter contempt and loathing in her voice as she spoke of her errant husband. The sense I had had that this was a woman who threw things with grim purpose and deadly aim. I remembered how she had tried repeatedly to wave me off the case. Oh, my imagination did all kinds of things as the big Mustang wheels ate up several snow-packed miles. I pictured Virginia aiming a pistol. Randy going down. Blood splattering a beige wall. His body wrapped in plastic, entombed under a snow-covered pile of boards behind the garage...

Of course the scenario was dumb and obvious, but most real-life murders are just that. I played around with different elements as Tel-Twelve Mall approached. This was always one of the worst traffic choke-points in all of metro Detroit, and today was no exception. As the traffic lurched along in its stop-and-go fashion, I wound back the tape in my mind and replayed how it might have gone down. Randy leaving the church, inspired, fervent, anxious to get to her. Motoring south on Telegraph, just as I was doing. Except that this had been Thursday afternoon when the blizzard hit, the big Alberta Clipper, right? So he was in a hurry, trying to get there before everything shut down. He had come flying along here and—

And just as I was doing now, Randy had approached the interlocking cloverleaves where Telegraph met Reuther Freeway/Lodge Freeway/Northwestem Highway.

But Thursday there had not been snowpack on the macadam and lines of crawling cars and walls of plowed snow on both sides and flurries flying in the air. Thursday had been, as Father Dave had said, “the day of the storm.” The Alberta Clipper had struck right about the time Randy barreled south on Telegraph. There had been a howling wind and snow pouring down like porridge. The pavement had slickened up, and there’d been nothing on the sides of the road to stop him from—

And that’s when it came to me.

Leaning forward, gripping the deep-dish Mustang wheel, I stared through the windshield. I thought about angles and distances and timing, the vastness of the clover-leaf. The great expanses of open land with its slopes and gullies and blind spots. I thought about Virginia Ryan again, too, but this time there was no gun in her hand, as I knew in my heart there had never been.

Hitting the brakes, I halted the Mustang in the left-hand lane, right in the middle of the cloverleaf. Traffic continued to pass on my right. I mashed the four-way lights, shut off the engine, and got out.

Instantly the wind tried to bite me through. I turned up the collar of my peacoat and buttoned it tight and jammed the cell phone in my back pocket. The wall of snow rose eight feet or more, a slanting slope of grayish white interspersed with big black icy chunks. Bracing myself, I began to climb up the wall of icy snow, virtually on all fours, freezing my hands as I clambered up, shoes slipping, fingers freezing as I fought for purchase.

I was halfway up when a male voice hollered from down below. “Hey, moron!”

Looking down, I saw a big beefy guy leaning through the window of his white Olds Intrigue. “What’re you doing parking there, ya idiot? Jamming up all the traffic here!”

“Got business” I called back. “Possess your soul in patience. Jackass,” I added, just for his information.

“You move that damn car,” he bawled, “or I’ll rearrange your face for ya!”

I hesitated. From inside came that dark chuckling feeling I remembered so well, the feeling of all-righty-then, let’s party. And I thought about going back down there and dragging him through the window and using him for a pogo stick or something.

But “no rough stuff,” Carole had said.

And I had promised.

And all the man wanted was a clear ride home.

So I grinned and waved. “Back in a minute,” I called and, with final scrambling effort, propelled myself over the summit of the snowdrift and down the other side.

Stretched out before me was a rising snowy plain, truly tundra as far as I could see, unmarked by anything, manmade or otherwise. I was calf-deep in the icy white stuff, but down here it was loose and wet, biting like frozen fingers through the soles and sides of my utterly inappropriate shoes. My enthusiasm for my brainstorm began to wane. I mean, there was no evidence here, none that I could see. Unless you looked a certain way at the surface of the snow. Was there an unnatural unevenness there? Kind of like faint ruts, way way down? Hard to tell, especially in the gray light with flurries angling down. We’d gotten, after all, twenty-one inches of snow on Thursday. Plenty enough to cover his tracks if he’d come skidding through here early enough.

But where would he have ended up?

The slope rose and then crested. From here I could not see what was beyond it. Quelling one more urge to turn around and get back into the nice warm Mustang, I tramped uphill through the knee-deep snow. It packed its way up under my pants cuffs and down into my shoes, causing my feet and lower legs to dampen and then numb. Hugging myself, I forced myself ahead, eyes on the prize, the crest of the slope. Beyond was a whole lot more white nothing. But this was a downslope, with several intermediate mounds, leading to what looked like a gully and another hill beyond. Amazing that this vast open area could exist here in the heart of a cloverleaf. Invisible to anyone passing by, especially with those walls of plowed snow alongside the roads.

Following the path of least resistance, I marched down the slope, aiming for the halfway point between two of the intermediate mounds. My legs were now numb from the knees down. The wind had picked up and was waging a serious attack on my coat. I hunched as I tromped along, hands fisted in the coat pockets. My chin was buried in the collar, mouth muttering monotonous oaths on the general theme of the things I do, the things I do. The snow fell thicker and dusk did, too. I did not realize how bad my vision was getting until I was barely twenty feet from the thing.

It was the first manmade object I’d encountered. It was a large, slanted rectangle, white, of course, being covered with snow except for just a black tip up high, the right angle of what appeared to be a rear fender.

My breath caught in my throat. Incipient hypothermia forgotten, I spread my arms and ran, high-stepping. The vehicle was nose-down, thrust like a blunt spear into what had to have been a sharp depression in the ground. Of course I could not tell that for sure, given the drifts of snow. As I drew nearer, I could see the whitish feint outlines of a rear wheel and a roof line. The ghostly silhouette of an urban assault vehicle, perhaps of the Ford Expedition variety.

Panting, I thrashed to a stop at the vehicle and brushed at the window. Peering in, I squinted long and hard. As my vision adjusted to the deeper dimness, I could just barely make out the interior white fuzzy dice hanging crazily from the sideways rear view mirror and, on the passenger side, the feint, crumpled outline of a body.

“So, it’s true then,” Shyla murmured, eyes downcast. “He did do all those things Virginia said.”

“ ’Fraid so,” I replied.

We stood in a hallway of the emergency room at Metro Detroit General. Around us bustled orderlies and nurses and people pushing gurneys bearing bodies, not all of them animate. The closed door in front of us said EXAM ROOM 2. NO ADMITTANCE. I was finally starting to thaw out and was leaving little puddles of melted snow on the linoleum floor around me.

Shyla shivered in her coat and hugged herself, half turned from me. “But why?” she asked softly.

I shrugged. “He’s just a man. People do bad things sometimes. It’s what happens.” I could relate. I thought, but did not say, that Randy Ryan had shown all the signs of a man who had gotten just so sick of himself. I could relate to that, too.

“What’s important,” I added, “is he was turning things around, trying to make things right.”

The young woman’s pale face crumpled, and she tottered to me, engulfing herself in a big hug. “It’s just so unfair!” she murmured into my neck through sobs. “Now he won’t get the chance to finish the job.”

I patted her back. “Don’t be too sure of that, kid. Doc says he’s got a fighting chance of—”

“Is this the room?” came a voice from behind me. We turned to see Virginia Ryan approaching, hatless, wearing a dark winter coat, short dark hair askew, lipless face pale, eyes icy as the outside. “Where is he?”

“What are you doing here, Virginia?” Shyla asked, disengaging from me.

“Your detective friend called me,” the mom said. “Which is only right, since I’m still your father’s wife, Jennifer. Surprised?”

Shyla’s eyebrows arched. “Not that Ben called you,” she said. “Surprised you’d care enough to show.”

Virginia stepped closer to us and glanced at the door.

“How is he?”

“He’s in a coma,” I answered. “Way dehydrated. Core temp is low. But in a way the freezing cold actually helped him. Retarded the bleeding from his crash injuries.”

“Will he live?” Virginia asked evenly.

“They won’t say for sure, naturally,” I answered. “Even if he does, he might lose some—”

The exam room door opened, and a nurse looked out at us. “Ms. Ryan?” Both women stepped forward. “Only one at a time,” the nurse commanded.

Shyla shot her mom a look. “Can I go first, Mother?” she asked.

“Very well, Shyla.”

The daughter went inside and closed the door. For long moments the mother and I just stood there. I could not help wondering if they were giving up on him in there, if I had been too late, with all my banging around and rookie mistakes. What Virginia was thinking was anyone’s guess. Presently she asked with the usual abruptness, “Well, are you going to tell me?”

“Tell you what, ma’am?”

“What he was doing up there. How he got in this fix.”

“Well, before the crash, he’d been to see his priest.”

“Confessing all?” Virginia asked, trying to sound hard and cynical and not quite succeeding.

“Don’t know about that,” I answered easily. “I do know about some of the other things he did while he was with Father Dave. If you’re ready to hear.”

She stared at me. “Well?”

I looked at her. Ready or not, I thought, here it comes. “Well, from Father Dave’s office he called his lady friend in Georgia and told her it was over. He called his boss to tell him he’d be making restitution for the money he stole. He called Detective Shanahan to tell him he was turning himself in. He called Shyla to tell her everything was getting fixed.” Virginia’s expression did not change. I thought my words were just bouncing off her, bouncing off the armor of her preconceived notions. “I know these things for a fact.”

“And then,” she said, “he took off from there, headed for the airport. He was blowing town. He did all that stuff to throw everyone off the scent—”

“That’s one way to connect the dots,” I cut in. “But there’s another way.”

She was looking at me intently now. “Yes?”

“Number one, if he were headed for the airport, he’d have turned west. Instead, he kept going south. You know where he was bound for, Virginia. You know it in your heart.”

“Where?” she asked, voice small.

“To your house. To see you. My guess is, to beg for your forgiveness.”

Just then came Shyla’s voice from inside the exam room: “Yes!”

Virginia blinked. Her throat worked She cupped her mouth with a hand that trembled I reached for the doorknob and opened the door. With a last glance at me, Virginia dashed through, and the door eased shut again.

Suddenly alone, I stared at the closed door. Reached out for the knob again, hesitated, let my hand drop. Under these circumstances the last thing they needed was me hanging around. I had never felt so suddenly useless. For a moment the unfairness of it blazed in my mind. Over already? Where was the applause, the admiration, the atta-boys? Where were the simple thank-yous, for heaven’s sake?

But this too I remembered from the old days. The better the job you’ve done for a client, the less you exist for them when the job is over. Once they’re out of the woods, clients make haste to forget how desperate they were for your help. It’s just human nature.

But that was okay, I thought as I headed for the exit. I had, after all, promises to keep and better things to do. Such as go home and change out of my wet clothes and then pick up the girl of my dreams from her daycare.