Unidentified Woman #15 (19 page)

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”

“The man who was shot…”

“He was working security for someone called the Boss. From what I saw, it looks like he’ll be okay.”

“I was five feet from him when the shooting started.”

“Actually, you were farther away than that.”

Nina cocked her head as if I had ruined a perfectly good story. Neither of us spoke until we put a full mile behind us. Nina opened her eyes and grinned slightly.

“At least I got some pearl earrings out of the deal,” she said. A block later, she asked, “Who was the other man, the one who dove into the snowdrift?”

I explained.

“For what it’s worth, you were wonderful,” I told her. “You were great. Stashing the bug in the sweaters so I could hear those guys, masterful.”

“Do you think it was Fifteen in the car? Do you think she’s the one who shot Karl Olson? I hope she did. I mean—it would prove she’s alive. I’ve been worried ever since your gun showed up in Highland Park. I don’t want her to be a murderer. On the other hand…”

Nina’s words pretty much captured the mixed emotions I was feeling, too, so I kept quiet.

“Was the drive-byer trying to hit Kispert and the security guy, or just shooting randomly?” she asked.

“Drive-byer?”

“You know what I mean.”

“He might have been trying to scare everyone and Troop just got in the way.”

“Yeah, well, mission accomplished because now I’m plenty scared. The gun wasn’t very loud.”

“Probably something small.”

“Like a .25 caliber Colt?”

“Like a .25 caliber Colt.”

“One of the handguns Fifteen stole.”

“It might be unconnected to her. Rival criminals fighting over turf. Craig seemed concerned that someone might be moving in on the operation.”

“I like that theory better than Fifteen shooting up the place.”

“So do I. Unfortunately, she’s our primary suspect until we can find someone we like better.”

“Speaking of suspects—McKenzie, buying the pearls just now, how big a crime is that?”

“Gross misdemeanor punishable by ninety days in jail and/or a seven-hundred-dollar fine. ’Course, in your case, it’s two counts.”

“That’s not funny.”

“Assuming the county prosecutor can prove you knew the merchandise was stolen when you bought it.”

“Of course I knew—”

I put an index finger to my lips. “Shhhhh.”

“What about when I told Mitch I wanted a Japanese Akoya pearl necklace? How bad would it be if he actually stole one?”

“Aiding and abetting felony theft, five years, ten thousand dollars.”

Nina stared at me for a moment before resting her head back against the seat and closing her eyes again.

“Will you visit me in prison?” she asked.

“Every Wednesday between six and eight
P.M.
”

*   *   *

We were on Radio Drive heading north toward I-94 when I saw the flashing lights in my rearview mirror. The lights came from the grille of an unmarked police car. I might have said “Uh-oh” as I pulled to the side of the road.

Nina turned her head to look.

“Should I throw the earrings out the window?” she asked.

“Why? Are they stolen?”

Nina gave me a hard look as I stopped the car. She settled back in the seat and stared straight ahead.

“This isn’t nearly as much fun as I thought it was going to be,” she said.

A moment later, Detective Shipman walked up to the driver’s-side window. I powered it down.

“Is something wrong, Officer?” I asked.

“I don’t even know where to begin,” she said. “Hello, Nina.”

Nina leaned forward and turned her head to see past me.

“I’m Jean Shipman. We met at a barbecue last August.”

“I remember,” Nina said. “You’re Bobby’s girl.”

“There’s a Caribou coffeehouse a couple of blocks up. Meet me there. We have much to talk about.”

“No,” Nina said.

“Excuse me?”

“Ward 6 on Payne Avenue. Do you know it?”

“Yes…”

“Meet us there instead.”

Shipman hesitated for a few beats before agreeing. I powered up the window as she returned to her vehicle. Nina held out her hand, and I turned my head to look at it. The hand was trembling.

“The last thing I need right now is caffeine,” she said.

*   *   *

Ward 6 was a small yet highly regarded bar and restaurant located in a 130-year-old building in the Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood of St. Paul, about three minutes’ drive from police headquarters on Oak Street. Before Prohibition, it had been a “tied house,” one of those neighborhood taverns that was owned by Hamm’s Brewery and served only Hamm’s products, and it still boasted the original bar. None of that seemed to interest Nina, though. She was concerned only with the shot of amaretto that she threw down in one gulp and chased with one of the joint’s notorious adult milk shakes. I might have said something about the danger of drinking alcohol that tasted like candy, except the look in her eye told me it’d be best to keep my opinions to myself.

I ordered a beer, and Shipman had black coffee. She seemed fascinated by Nina and kept watching her even while she spoke to me.

“If you show me yours, I’ll show you mine,” she said.

“You first.”

“I was at the garage sale. I didn’t see you, but I saw Nina.”

I had no doubt that Nina was listening intently, yet she did not react to the sound of her own name.

“What else did you see?” I asked.

“I saw the drive-by shooting. Rather, I should say, I heard it. I was looking down at the time. It took me a moment to figure out what happened. I pursued the car, only by then it had too much of a lead. I lost it.”

“Butterfingers,” I said. “Did you at least get a license plate number?”

Shipman shook her head.

“By the time I returned to the scene, the circus was packed up and gone,” she said. “I sent a bulletin to the hospitals. What do you think the chances are that the shooting victim will seek treatment in an emergency room?”

“From what I saw, his wound didn’t seem too serious.”

“I’m working with a detective out of the Minneapolis PD named John Luby. Know him?”

“I met him at the duplex the other day.”

“We put together a kind of an informal task force. We think that my killing and his killing are connected, yet we have no evidence to prove it. It’ll become a formal joint operation once we find a way to tie them together. In the meantime, Luby’s working his side of the river and I’m working mine. So far he’s found nothing about Karl Olson that we don’t already know.”

“What about Oliver Braun?”

“Everyone we’ve talked to said he was a good kid, and I have no reason to doubt it. He worked as an intern for Merle Mattson—she’s a Ramsey County commissioner. The job satisfied a requirement for his political science degree, but it ended last November right after the election. The last time Mattson saw Oliver was when she gave him a glowing letter of recommendation. That was over three months ago. She wept when we told her about the kid.”

“I don’t trust tears, especially from politicians.”

“Neither do I, but hers were genuine.”

“Girlfriends?”

“His parents think Oliver might have been dating someone, but he had a habit of keeping his relationships to himself. Something about an unfortunate incident that occurred when he brought a date to a family wedding a couple of years ago.”

“They can’t confirm that he was seeing El?”

“No. We asked his friends about her. They don’t seem to know much either, except that they haven’t seen Elbers around since Christmas. Apparently they broke up—like your Deer River source suggested. Truth is, we’ve found nothing definitive to connect Elbers and Braun since Christmas except your gun and the telephone call. Which brings me to the flyers we dug out of the trash at the duplex. I’m guessing you found them, too, since you were at the garage sale in Woodbury as well as the one yesterday in Arden Hills. So, McKenzie, what do you know that I don’t?”

“I think the garage sales are being conducted by a shoplifting and burglary ring,” I said.

“I could have told you that. How are the kids living in the duplex connected? How is Elbers connected?”

“Except for the flyers, I honestly don’t know.”

“C’mon, McKenzie.”

“I was told that El posted the names Craig and Mitch on her Facebook page. Mitch and Craig are the names of two of the people involved with the garage sales. I don’t know if that makes El their acquaintance, friend, customer, or colleague.”

“What about Oliver Braun? Has his name ever popped up on Elbers’s page?”

“Not since Christmas.”

“What do you make of the drive-by?”

“What do you make of it?”

“Could be your girl looking for some payback. Someone threw her off the back of that damn truck. Maybe it was Mitch and Craig.”

“Or it could be a rival gang.”

“What makes you think so?”

I couldn’t answer honestly without revealing that we had been conducting electronic surveillance. Probably Shipman wouldn’t have cared. On the other hand … Nina must have understood my predicament, because she jumped in without a moment’s hesitation.

“I overheard them talking,” Nina said. She spoke without touching the mic still pinned to her lapel or even glancing at it—a mistake others might have made. “They also said something about getting out of the business while the getting’s good, so if you’re going to arrest them…”

“I might do just that, or at least get Woodbury to do it for me since the sale was held outside of my jurisdiction. Craig and Mitch wouldn’t be the first to try to deal themselves out of the jackpot. I don’t suppose you know who they are or where I can find them?”

I considered handing over the intel Smith had given me in the lobby of the condo two days earlier, yet kept it to myself.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Uh-huh. What about the time and location of the next garage sale?”

“If I hear anything, I’ll let you know.”

Shipman thought that was fair enough and said she’d be in touch. She left, leaving me to pick up the cost of her coffee. Nina watched her through the window. She didn’t speak until Shipman was driving away.

“You didn’t tell her everything.”

“She didn’t tell me everything either,” I said.

“But why didn’t you tell Shipman about Kispert and the Boss and all the rest?”

“I have a plan. She wouldn’t approve.”

“It’s not because you don’t like her, is it? It’s not because you want to prove that you’re smarter than she is?”

“Of course not. You have to understand, Shipman just wants to close her case. That’s fine. That’s her job. I’m willing to help, too. First, though, comes Fifteen. We’re trying to protect her, remember? At least until we know if she’s guiltless or not. That’s why we got involved in the first place.”

“If you say so.”

“Oh, and for the record—I
am
smarter than Shipman. If I was still in harness, I’d be Bobby’s partner, not her.”

“As long as we have our priorities straight.”

Nina ordered a second adult milk shake.

“I can see why Fifteen likes these things,” she said. “I’m feeling much better already.”

ELEVEN

Monday morning and the sun was shining bright in a cloudless sky, yet it gave no warmth. At least not much. We were experiencing another setback in our march toward spring—a high of twenty-eight degrees. The weather geek on Minnesota Public Radio said we should be happy about it, though, because it was a mere ten degrees below our average for that date in March. Which gave you an idea of how our winter was going—that we would be thankful when the temperature dipped ten degrees below normal.

I figured Kenwood Real Estate must have originated in Kenwood, one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Minneapolis, and branched out from there, because it now had offices scattered all over the place. The one I wanted was located in a converted white colonial on Rice Street in Roseville, not far from Steichen’s, the now shuttered family-owned sporting goods store where I used to buy all of my equipment starting when I played peewee hockey and Little League baseball. It had been driven out of business after sixty years by the all-things-to-all-people discount giant down the street that I have never set foot in—not that I’m bitter. Yet the sight of Steichen’s empty, unplowed parking lot was the reason I was in a surly mood when I stepped inside the colonial and asked for Emily Hoover.

It hadn’t been hard to learn her name. All I needed to do was Google the addresses of the houses in Arden Hills and Woodbury to learn that they were indeed for sale through Kenwood Real Estate—they of the blue and white signs—and Hoover was handling the transactions. It hadn’t occurred to me that Mitch and Craig’s garage sales were being held without permission from the owners until I saw the signs at both locations, yet it made perfect sense. I remembered arresting a suspect years earlier who dealt drugs out of a fourplex that he had been hired to convert into condominiums. The only reason we caught him was that the owner dropped by one day to check on the contractor’s progress and discovered him plastering over bullet holes in a wall.

The pretty young thing manning the reception desk led me deeper into the building. The ground floor was laid out like a bank. There were a half-dozen desks, each with a computer terminal on top and a couple of chairs in front. The desks were separated only by a few yards of empty carpet. It was easy to hear the conversations going on around you. I figured that would work to my advantage.

The receptionist led me to Emily Hoover’s desk. She was a handsome woman in her late fifties with a trim figure and streaks of gray running through her otherwise auburn hair. She rose to greet me. I shook her hand and told her my name was Nick Dyson and I was interested in purchasing the property in Arden Hills near Round Lake. She offered me a chair and began working her computer. The receptionist returned to her own desk near the door. I leaned forward and informed Emily that I was also interested in the property in Woodbury. Her fingers froze above the keyboard. It told me all I needed to know.

“I have three questions, Ms. Hoover.” I spoke softly, yet her eyes flew across the room to see if someone was listening just the same. “Question one—do the owners of the homes know what happened there this weekend? Question two—does your employer know? Question three—do you want me to tell them?”