Nate didn’t disappoint. He loaded a plate full of all the fried stuff first: egg rolls, crab wontons, chicken.
“Lubes up the pipes,” he explained to me.
I got a big plate of chicken fried rice with an egg roll, tossed on some soy sauce, and sat across from him. Watching Nate eat Chinese buffet was like watching a conveyor belt dump ingots into a blast furnace.
“Your boy is bad news,” he finally said, after most of his first plate was demolished. Nate signaled the waitress over and ordered a beer, went up to the buffet, and loaded on mostly chicken things: garlic chicken, sweet-and-sour chicken, Kung Pao chicken.
I stuck with my water and rice.
“Or at least, he was bad news,” Nate continued, pausing every now and then to clean the various sauces and juices that accumulated in the corners of his mouth.
Once Nate had demolished his second plate, I figured he’d take a moment to tell me what he’d found. I was right. He pushed away plate number two and pulled out a notebook.
“Teddy Armbruster, as you know him, was born in Chicago as Edward Abrucci,” he said. “Born in Chicago in 1960. First arrested at age twelve. Assault. More arrests through his teens, which earned him a stay at the juvenile correctional facility near Rockford, Illinois.”
Nate flipped to the next page of his notebook. “Apparently our man moved to Detroit after he was released. His crime pattern changed too. He graduated from assaults and robberies to extortion.”
“Mob?”
Nate nodded. “As his crimes became more ‘organized,’ to make a bad pun, his arrests disappeared. His last brush with the law was in 1987 for extortion. He beat it. Since then, he’s been clean.”
I thought about that while Nate went back up to the buffet. Now he was moving on to seafood: more crab wontons, lobster with soybeans, and shrimp fried rice.
“So do you think he’s really clean now? Has he gone legit?” I asked Nate when he got back to the table.
He shrugged his shoulders and shoveled in the food. “He could be clean or just a whole lot more polished,” he said.
“So far three people have been murdered,” I said. “Jesse Barre. Larry Grasso. And Rufus Coltraine. All people within his orbit.”
“They were in a lot of other people’s orbits too,” Nate said, soy sauce dripping down his chin.
“Maybe Shannon had killed Jesse for her guitars, then framed her husband for it,” I suggested.
“And why would a woman worth about a hundred million dollars need to kill someone for guitars? They were expensive, but not that expensive.”
“Had to be the ex-husband then,” I said. “He was still in love with Shannon, tried to win her back by killing Jesse Barre and stealing her guitars. And then he framed Coltraine for it. They were buddies in prison.”
Nate stopped eating. I knew it was big if he stopped eating.
“They were?”
I nodded. “I talked to a guy I know at Jackson.”
“So you think that was the case?” he said.
“It’s a definite possibility. But I don’t think Grasso was working alone. Someone was pulling his strings, maybe using his love for Shannon against him.”
“Maybe it was Shannon herself.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I heard the woman speak. It wasn’t Shannon. I didn’t recognize the voice.”
Nate pushed his plate away from him and belched, a low rumbling passage of gas that reminded me of a coal mine being exhumed.
“Don’t mess with this guy, John,” he finally said. “I think people who fuck with Teddy Armbruster end up being hurt. And hurt badly.”
“Someone else may be fucking with Teddy Armbruster. And it isn’t me.”
•
By the time I got back to my office, it was late. The only people more tired than me were the guys at the Chinese restaurant in charge of replenishing the buffet.
I checked my watch. Nearly five o’clock. I checked the mail for a package from Molly but no dice. Most courier services finished up by six. I had a bad feeling in my gut, and it was only partially from watching Nate ingest the caloric equivalent of a small family.
Whatever Molly had intended to send me should have been here by now. I wondered about the interruption. Had the man heard Molly? Was she in trouble?
I weighed the pros and cons of waiting. It didn’t take long. Sitting around waiting for a courier made little sense. I thought about calling, but that didn’t seem like a good idea either. She was constantly in someone’s presence. Someone who was always listening. It would be better just to show up. Be the asshole PI who needed to be dealt with. That chore would fall to the lowly personal assistant.
Besides, with a sinking feeling in the pit of my guts, I wondered, what if the courier never comes?
The drive back to Shannon Sparrow’s temporary compound took less than five minutes, but as I pulled closer, I saw that someone had gotten there ahead of me.
Blue and red flashing lights pulled me closer. Please, God, no, I thought. Don’t let this happen.
The driveway was choked with police cars. I pulled over into the grass next to the driveway and jogged toward the door. A cop stopped me, a thick-necked bull with a shiny black crew cut. I didn’t recognize him, and I didn’t see Ellen around.
I looked past him and saw Erma and Freda being questioned by two detectives.
And on the floor was a body.
Even from here I could see that it was a small body. Swimming in a large pool of blood.
Molly.
Chapter Forty
“How did you manage to get here before me?” a voice asked. I turned, and Ellen walked toward me, her thumbs hooked in her gun belt.
I was staring out at Lake St. Clair. The water was smooth and green, waiting for a giant freighter to plow through the center of its body.
I couldn’t stop thinking about how another life had been taken and how Molly had tried to get in touch with me. I should have done more. I should have driven to see her immediately after her call was interrupted. Goddamnit, I thought.
“John,” my sister said.
“I should have known,” I said.
“Just start at the beginning,” she said. So I did. I detailed my conversation with Molly, the note with the phone number, waiting for a courier that never showed up, and the decision to drive over here on my own.
Ellen didn’t respond when I finished.
“So what’s your best guess?” she said.
“Honestly,” I said. “I have no clue.”
“You don’t know what she was trying to get to you?”
I shook my head. Ellen turned and looked out at the lake.
“Her neck was broken,” she said. “Apparently.”
“Ah, Jesus.”
“They’re saying she fell down the stairs.”
That brought me off the car. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me. Fell down the stairs? I don’t think so.”
“No other signs of injury. Two witnesses say they saw it happen.”
“The pork queens? Erma and Freda?”
“They heard a loud crash,” Ellen said. “Rushed in and found the victim at the foot of the steps.” I could tell Ellen wasn’t buying it either; she was just laying out the official story so far.
“Oh my God,” I said. “What total bullshit.”
“It isn’t bullshit until it’s proven to be bullshit.” I heard what she was saying.
“If it’s the last goddamned thing I do,” I said.
I kept thinking of Molly. Of her crisp way of speaking, her little daily planner clutched to her chest. So in control. And then the vision of her sprawled out at the base of the stairs.