The Last Kind Word (Mac McKenzie #10)

The Last Kind Word (Mac McKenzie #10) Page 17

Josie glanced over her shoulder at Roy. He found something on the wall that seemed to demand his immediate attention and was pretending not to listen to us.

“Good,” she said. “On that happy note, I think we should be thinking about sleep. Jill, you’re with me in the master bedroom.”

Jill drifted toward the doorway while watching her husband as if she expected him to stop her. When he didn’t, she disappeared into the bedroom.

“Roy, why don’t you, Dad, and Jimmy take the bunk beds. Dave, you stay out here with Mr. Dyson.”

“In case I decide to run off with the silverware,” I added.

Jimmy grinned. He was the only one who did.

Blankets and pillows were doled out. Jimmy, Roy, and the old man went quietly into their bedroom while the women went into theirs. Skarda bedded down on the sofa across from me. When he wasn’t looking, I took the county-issued sneakers he had been wearing when we escaped and pushed them farther back under the sofa where no one could see them.

FOUR

I couldn’t sleep; wasn’t sure I wanted to. It was well past midnight and Skarda was snoring softly when I rolled off my sofa, went to the refrigerator, and found a beer. It was in a blue and white can, the kind of beer I would ridicule even before I quit the St. Paul Police Department to collect a seven-digit reward on an embezzler. But I was stuck in a North Woods cabin with Fagin and his pickpockets, and beggars can’t be choosy. I took it out onto the deck, opened it, sat in a chair, propped my feet on the railing, and took a long pull. The air was crisp, yet I didn’t mind. A half moon hung in the sky, its beams reflecting off the borderless black water just visible beyond the trees.

I drank slowly while my inner voice debated my options. It kept coming back to the same one—Jump into the Jeep Cherokee and get the hell out of here. Since becoming a man of leisure I sometimes worked as an unlicensed private investigator doing the occasional favor for friends. But the people I was working for, they weren’t actually my friends, and this was frickin’ dangerous.

On the other hand, so far everything had gone exactly as planned. Besides, there was something exhilarating about being undercover, knowing that at any moment you could give yourself away. I understood why some cops like it so much …

I blamed Harry, real name Brian Wilson, special agent working out of the Minneapolis office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I called him Harry because when I met him five years ago he reminded me of the character actor Harry Dean Stanton. He had been working at the time with an agent of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives named Chad Bullert. I blamed him, too.

Three days ago—was it only three days?—Bullert ambushed me in the clubhouse of the Columbia Golf Course in Minneapolis. I liked Columbia—it was a short course with narrow fairways that favored course management over distance. After playing eighteen holes, Harry and I had stopped in the clubhouse to talk it over. The waitress had just served our drinks when Bullert appeared, behaving as if meeting us like that had been as lucky as picking the Gopher 5. All of my internal alarm systems flared at once. It wasn’t that I had any fear of Bullert, whom I hadn’t seen since that frigid night in Lakeville. It was that he was wearing a suit, a tie, and black wingtips. Clearly he hadn’t come to Columbia for a good walk spoiled, as Twain might have put it.

After taking a seat, Bullert said, “McKenzie, I was just thinking about you.”

“Is that right?”

“How’s the shoulder?”

I flexed it to show that my broken collarbone had healed nicely. “Good as new,” I said.

“The concussion—no lingering symptoms, I hope.”

“Nothing for a couple of months now, thanks for asking,” I said. “Why are you asking?”

“I heard you got banged up a while back. Something about a museum heist.” He was staring at Harry now, looking for assistance. The FBI agent’s expression suggested that he was uncomfortable about giving it, although it occurred to me that Bullert would not have known I was going to be at the golf course if Harry hadn’t told him. I took a sip of my beverage and waited for the shoe to drop. It didn’t take long.

“Busy these days?” Bullert asked.

“I manage to keep occupied,” I said.

“Doing favors for friends, I hear.”

“McKenzie’s a born kibitzer,” Harry said.

Bullert pointed at my drink. “Buy you another?”

I rested the palm of my hand on top of the glass. “No, I’m good.”

Bullert nodded.

Harry nodded.

I nodded, too, but then I hate to be left out.

“What?” I asked. “What do you want, Chad?”

“How come you never gave me a nickname like Harry?”

“I did. I called you Alec because you look like the actor Alec Baldwin, but I haven’t seen you for five years so it didn’t stick.”

Bullert turned to Harry. “Do I look like Alec Baldwin?”

“No,” Harry said.

“What do you guys want?” I asked.