Curse of the Jade Lily (29 page)

“Yeah,” I said.

“This is Mr. Fiegen.”

There’s that “mister” again,
my inner voice reminded me.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I just spoke to Branko Pozderac and Jon Hemsted.”

“Really?” I glanced at my watch. “It took them this long before they started whining?”

“Branko is livid.”

“What’s he got to complain about? The man’s lucky to be alive.”

“He’s a foreign national.”

“He’s a racist. He’s also a crook. Come to think of it, so are you.”

“Do we need to go through this again, McKenzie?”

“Why don’t you tell me why you’re calling?”

“You have something that belongs to me.”

“Are you referring to the letter? I’m going to hang on to that for a while.”

“If you think you’re going to blackmail me—”

“I just want to make sure that you keep your end of the deal.”

“Do we still have a deal?”

“You tell me.”

“I was told that the Jade Lily was destroyed.”

“No, you weren’t.”

“Donatucci said—”

“What did he say? Think about it.”

Fiegen paused for a long moment.

“What are you up to?” he asked.

“I told Pozderac, although I don’t think he was listening, and now I’m telling you—I’ll be in touch.” I turned off my cell phone and set it in front of me. “I was starting to like it here. I was going to suggest we hang around for a while, have a few more drinks.”

“Still could,” Herzog said.

I closed my eyes and leaned back as far as I could without disturbing my collarbone. It had already been a long day.

“Sometimes, Herzy…”

I didn’t finish the thought, so Herzog finished it for me.

“You a cop,” he said. “You always be a cop.”

“If you say so.”

Herzog pointed at the check.

“I always tip twenty percent,” he said.

FIFTEEN

The street where Von Tarpley lived in Burnsville rose upward from the Minnesota River valley to a hilltop section of homes that must have looked impressive when they were first built in the decade following World War II. Times have changed. The average American home has doubled in size since the 1950s, and in today’s era of McMansions and three-and-a-half baths, Tarpley’s yellow two-story colonial with attached garage now seemed small, quaint, and out of place. It still had its Christmas lights up, which wasn’t particularly surprising. Minnesotans usually put them up around Thanksgiving when the ground is comparatively snow free and take them down when the snow melts in April. The question was—did Von still turn them on? Some people argue that Christmas lights must be extinguished the day after Christmas. Others hold out for New Year’s Day. Still others, in a staggering breach of etiquette, light them up well into February. Those that keep them shining all year ’round—well, they’re just plain nuts. My mother had been a big believer in the Twelve Days of Christmas and turned off the lights on January fifth. After she died, my father kept up the tradition, and now I did.

We parked just down the street from the house and sat watching. No other cars approached or left; no one walked by. The street wasn’t used by anyone except the people who lived on it, and then just for transportation. It had been skillfully plowed, and most of the sidewalks and driveways abutting it had been cleared of snow. However, only a hole big enough to allow a car to pass had been carved out of the huge mound thrown up onto Tarpley’s driveway, and only a narrow path had been shoveled on his sidewalk, allowing room for just one person to pass. I kept thinking “his.” I had to remind myself that Tarpley had been dead for over a week now.

I unlatched the door of the Jeep Cherokee and shoved it open with my good arm.

“Want me t’ wait?” Herzog asked.

“Come with,” I said.

“Why?”

“You’re scarier than I am.”

“Fuckin’ Girl Scouts scarier ’an you.”

We made our way down the street and up the driveway. I knocked on the door. Von Tarpley opened it as if she had been expecting someone else. When she saw it was me, her face drained of color. I was mistaken about Herzog. I didn’t need him to frighten the woman. She was ready to be afraid of anyone for any reason, even a guy with a bum shoulder and ankle who couldn’t run her down if he tried.

“I know you,” she said, although by the sound of her voice it seemed she wasn’t quite sure.

“Mrs. Tarpley?” I said. “My name is McKenzie. We met in the corridor outside the police department a few days ago.”

She nodded her head as if it had all come back to her. “You’ve been hurt,” she said.

“A minor accident, I said. “This is my associate Mr. Herzog. We represent the City of Lakes Art Museum. I hope we’re not disturbing you.”

“What do you want?”

“We’d like to ask you a few questions about the Jade Lily.”

“I already told the police and that insurance investigator everything I know.”

“I appreciate that, ma’am.” Von raised an eyebrow at the word “ma’am.” “Perhaps you’d be kind enough to discuss the matter with us as well?”

She looked past me at Herzog. “Are you the last?” she asked. “I talk to you, will I finally be done with all of this?”

“I suppose,” I said.

“Because I’m tired of it. Tired of the whole thing. Patrick was cremated yesterday.”

“Sorry I missed the service,” I said.

“There was no service.”

Von stepped away from the open door and allowed us to enter her living room. It was small and cramped and littered with cardboard boxes, many of them with handwritten labels that corresponded to various rooms—kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom. Most of them were stacked on top of the chairs, sofas, and tables. The furniture was relatively new yet unimpressive. It looked like the kind of stuff a man might buy without consulting his wife. There were two arches. The one in front of me led to the kitchen. The one to my left led to a room I couldn’t identify—dining room, probably. A carpeted staircase led to the upstairs bedrooms and bath. I could hear music in the distance, Stacey Kent’s crystal-clear voice singing about love in a hotel made of ice, but I couldn’t determine which room it came from.

“Excuse the mess,” Von said by way of explanation. “I’m getting ready to move. The real estate agent will put the house up for sale and start conducting tours right after I get packed.”

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“Phoenix. I have friends there.”

“It’s warm in Phoenix.”

“Warmer than here.”

“When are you leaving?”

“End of the week.”

I stared at the packing crates and wondered—what if I started opening boxes and looked inside? What would I find?

“Somehow I expected you to be older,” Von said.

“Hmm, what?”

“I expected you to be older. I know we met before, and yet I expected you to be an older man. As old as my husband, anyway.”

I shot a glance at Herzog. He was standing near the door, an impassive expression on his face, as if he were watching the opening credits of a movie and wondering if it would be worth the ticket price or not. I looked back at Von. Here was a woman who could give Heavenly Petryk a run for her money. She wore little makeup and no jewelry, not even a wedding ring—the pale band of skin at the base of her fourth finger, left hand was already returning to normal. Her long brown hair was tied back, and she was casually, almost sloppily dressed—clothes chosen for the task of packing cardboard boxes. Yet there was no question that there was a real woman beneath the loose-fitting clothes. The color had returned to her lovely face, giving her the look of a college girl ten years her junior. Her scent was light and fresh in the stale air of the house. Her voice was unexpectedly husky and deep, with a rich resonance that seemed to vibrate in the silence that followed her words. Certainly she didn’t look or behave like a woman whose husband had been murdered a week ago—there was nothing sulky or mournful in her expression or movements.

“You were expecting me?” I asked.

“No, but I recognized the name. McKenzie. Not from when we met, either. You’re the one they hired to take the Jade Lily back to the museum after the ransom was paid.”

Her candor caught me by surprise. To disguise my reaction, I glanced around the living room looking for a diversion. There was a stack of framed photographs resting on one of the boxes. The top photograph was apparently a wedding photo of Von and her husband standing on a lush green hill. He was wearing a dark suit. She was wearing a simple white sheath that somehow made Kate Middleton’s bridal gown look like a dishrag—or maybe it was just the way she wore it. A pond surrounded by birch trees lay below them. I knew where it had been taken—I had been there—but didn’t say. I held it up for Von to see.

“That was taken nearly two years ago,” she said. “I’m a lot older than I was then.”

They were not married when Tarpley was hired by the museum,
my inner voice said.
That came later.

“Where did you meet your husband?” I asked.

“At an art exhibit.” She took the photograph from my hand and set it back on the pile. “I thought he was dashing. Swear to God. When he was offered the job at City of Lakes, I followed him here. I thought it would be an adventure. Became a tearjerker, instead. Three-hanky special. Aren’t you going to ask why?”

“Why?”

“I told the police. They didn’t want to hear it. I told the insurance investigator. He didn’t believe me. You’re going to be different somehow?”

Her tone was both assertive and lacking in self-confidence. It was the tone of a woman who was skating on dangerously thin ice and knew it.

“Unlike them, I’m not looking to arrest anyone,” I said.

Von caught my eyes and held them, as if she were looking for a crack that would allow her to see inside my brain. She threw a furtive glance at Herzog, then came back to me.

“What exactly do you want?” she asked.

“Like you said, I’m the guy they hired to get the Jade Lily back.”

“The Lily was blown up.”

“Who says?”

“Maybe it was the insurance guy who said, I don’t remember.”

“Uh-huh. I was blown up, too. You could say I’m a little bit miffed about that.”

Von went to a purse that rested on yet another box. She fumbled for a cigarette and lit it with a plastic lighter, laying down a blue smoke screen between us.

“You guys should probably leave,” she said. “I don’t mean to be rude. I have a lot on my mind.”

I’ll bet,
my inner voice said.

“You said the police didn’t believe your story,” I said.

“Oh, they believed it. They just didn’t want me to repeat it.”

“Try me.”

Von blew some more smoke.

“One last time?” she asked.

“Sure.”

“Where to begin?”

“Start with the robbery.”

“No, the story begins before that.”

“Start where you like.”

“I suppose it begins with the cop.”

“What cop?”

“Lieutenant Scott Noehring of the Minneapolis Police Department. He’s a hero, you know. It said so in the newspaper.”

Von paused for a moment as if she expected me to respond. When I didn’t, she took a long drag of the cigarette and resumed talking with the exhale.

“He appeared one day not long after Patrick started his new job with the museum,” Von said. “He explained that he knew all about Patrick’s past, and if Patrick didn’t cooperate, he would give the information to City of Lakes and every other museum he could think of, effectively blackballing him from his profession.”

“What information?”

Von had enough of the cigarette and put it out in a pristine ashtray. I wondered if smoking was a habit or just something she was using as a prop.

“Let me finish,” she said. “Patrick gave in to the cop. He started paying the blackmail. A thousand dollars a month. Doesn’t sound like much until you start adding up the months. Twelve in a year. Twenty-four over two years. The cop wasn’t satisfied with the amount, so he registered Patrick as a confidential informant. I’m not even sure what a confidential informant is, how it works, but whatever, all the money the police paid Patrick went into the cop’s pocket. I begged Patrick to tell me what happened. Finally he did. He told me that when he was a senior in high school he was accused of being a child molester. Of being a pedophile. He said the accusations had followed him ever since.”

“Was it true?”

“Technically. What happened, at least what Patrick told me happened, when he was a senior in high school he had sex with a freshman…”

“I was told the kid was more like nine.”

Von flashed her remarkable brown eyes at me. I didn’t know if she was annoyed that I asked the question or that I had interrupted her story again.

“High school freshman,” she said. “It was backseat-of-a-parked-car stuff. The freshman’s parents found out and went ballistic. They called the police, called the prosecutor. They weren’t satisfied with a charge of statutory rape. They bullied the prosecutor into also charging Patrick as a child molester. Eventually all the charges were dropped. The sex was consensual, after all. Both parties were kids. Word got out just the same. It always does, doesn’t it? Patrick was ostracized in school. His parents pretty much disowned him. This happened thirty-five years ago. The charges followed him, still. Every job application has the same line—‘Have you ever been convicted of a felony?’ Patrick was never convicted, but investigators looking into his background could see what he was accused of. Some labels you can’t shake off.”

“Did the City of Lakes Art Museum know this when they hired him?” I asked.

“I think so. That woman, Perrin something, I think she knew but didn’t care. If word got out, though, got out to the public, she’d care one heckuva lot.”

“So Patrick allowed Noehring to blackmail him.”

“I’m not sure if ‘allowed’ is the right word, but yes. At least until he decided he had had enough. Or maybe it was I who made that decision.”

“You?”

“I told Patrick I was leaving him.”

“Because of the blackmail?”

“I didn’t want to live like that anymore. A woman wants a man who—ahh, let’s just say I made a mistake when I married Patrick.”