Practice to Deceive (23 page)

She looked at my crutch like she was seeing it for the first time.

“You expect me to believe that?”

I didn’t say if I did or didn’t. Instead, I said, “Moving?”

“I am unless you want to pick up the lease.”

I shook my head.

“I didn’t think so,” she said, placing the lamp inside the carton. Next, she picked up a crystal ashtray and started wrapping that. I took my hand out of my pocket.

“I take it Field didn’t leave you anything.”

Crystalin looked at me like I was the dumbest human being alive. Then she started to laugh. “No, he didn’t leave me anything.”

“Not much job security, being a mistress,” I said.

“Not much,” she admitted. “But it was fun while it lasted. I drove a nice car, lived in a nice apartment, wore nice clothes, even got a year of college out of it. I can’t complain.”

“Still, it would have been nice if he remembered you,” I suggested.

“I suppose.”

“How much was Field worth?”

“I have no idea.”

“None?”

“He paid the rent, he made the payments on the Porsche, he covered my tuition and the credit card expenditures. That was all I cared about.”

“Tell me,” I said, “was Field here Saturday morning, around ten, ten-thirty?”

She didn’t answer, still kneeling at the carton, wrapping.

“It’s easy enough to check,” I suggested. “This apartment building uses video cameras for security. We’ll just call the office and ask to see the tape.”

“Yeah, all right, he was here,” Crystalin admitted, rising to her feet. “And you’re a dick.”

I’ve been called worse
, I told myself, watching her move, making sure her hands stayed empty. “How long?”

“He stayed just long enough to tell me we were through, OK?” Crystalin said. “Ten minutes, tops. Long enough to tell me the apartment and Porsche were paid up only to the end of the month, that the credit card was canceled. Course, the card was canceled a few days before. He said you did that somehow. Did you?”

I ignored the question. “He broke up with you?” I asked.

“Yeah. Waltzed in without knocking, like usual. Told me he loved his wife. Told me he loved his daughter. Told me we were through. Bullshit like that.”

“Maybe it wasn’t bullshit,” I suggested, not knowing why I was defending the man.

“Levering Field didn’t love anything but money. I asked him once if his wife knew about us and he said she didn’t. So I asked him what he would do if she found out. He told me that since she was having an affair, too, he didn’t think it would be a problem.…”

Amanda had lied to me. Good.

“Do you know who Amanda was sleeping with?” I asked.

“No,” Crystalin answered. “I didn’t ask. It didn’t interest me.”

“No reason why it should.”

“I’ve known a lot of men—trust me on this, OK?—I’ve known a lot of men who wouldn’t think twice about cheating on their wives but who would have coronaries if their wives cheated on them. And I told Levering that. I told him most men would go nuts. Know what he said? He said, ‘It’s all right with me. It’s good for business’.”

“What did he mean by that?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Crystalin replied. “I’m only saying, the man didn’t give a shit about his wife or family, OK?”

“Then why did he leave you?”

“For another woman.”

“You’re kidding!” I said.

She smiled at me and said, “Thank you,” like I was paying her a compliment.

“Are you sure?”

Crystalin nodded. “After he left, I went out on the balcony. It overlooks the parking lot. I’m going to watch him drive away, OK? A woman was leaning on his car, waiting for him.”

“Ever see her before?”

“Can’t say. She was wearing a hooded scarf—red, with matching gloves. Very stylish. The slut.”

“His secretary?”

“I don’t know his secretary.”

“His secretary is blond.”

“I don’t know.”

“His wife?” I was grasping.

She shook her head.

“What happened next?”

“They chatted, they got into the car, they drove off.”

I nodded for no particular reason, then asked, “Was he carrying a briefcase?”

“A briefcase? Yeah, Ring had one. Black, I think. He had it when he walked in, never set it down. Why? What was in it?”

“Did he have it when he left?”

“Sure. He handed it to the woman before they got into the car.”

“And you have no idea who the woman was?”

“Hey, if the wife is the last to know, where do you think that leaves the mistress? Next to last, that’s where it leaves her.”

I
HAD PARKED
in the second row of the lot outside Crystalin’s building. In the front row, three stalls to the left, was a ’91 Honda Accord nearly the same color as the Colt. In fact, if you were in a hurry, you might mistake it for my car. I did. Until I noticed that all the windows had been smashed, fragments of safety glass scattered everywhere.

I looked around the lot but saw nobody. Then I looked up at the building. Cyrstalin was on her balcony, looking down.

I
PARKED IN
the lot across the street from the Butler Square Building, but I did not go to my office. Instead, I hobbled over to Levering Field’s building and took the elevator up. The doors to his office suite were locked, and a sign indicated that the previous occupant was no longer at that address.

“Nobody’s home,” a voice informed me as I stood outside the door. I turned toward it. It belonged to a woman, no longer young, who was carrying two white bags emblazoned with the name of a bakery down on Sixth Street.

“A young woman used to work here,” I announced. “Miss Portia?”

“Penny? Sure, I knew her,” the woman informed me as I walked with her to another suite of offices, this one occupied by architects.

“How well?”

“Well enough. We had lunch together a few times. Why?”

“I’m trying to find her.”

The woman shrugged as I opened a glass door for her. “Try her at home.”

“Where’s home?”

“Ann Arbor, Michigan.”

M
C
G
ANEY AND
C
ASPER
were waiting in my driveway when I arrived home following my therapy.

“Let’s go,” Casper said.

“Go where?”

“ACA wants to talk with you,” McGaney answered.

“Tell him to call my lawyer.”

I went to walk past him. McGaney blocked me.

“We can do this easy, or we can do it hard,” Casper said. “You won’t like hard.”

“You guys watch too much television,” I told them.

They didn’t so much as smile.

I went.

T
HE
ACA
DID
not rise when I was ushered into his office. He did not extend his hand, did not say, “Hey, Taylor, how’s it going?” Instead he left me and my police escort standing there while he scribbled in a file on his desk. It wasn’t that he was ignoring us. We were simply beneath his notice.

After a few moments he said, “Do you know why you’re not in jail?”

“You talking to me?” I asked.

The ACA shut the file, rolled his chair away from his desk, and shouted, “Lisa!”

Lisa scurried into the office, all blue eyes, short blond hair and skin like milk in a pitcher. An out-state girl from good Scandinavian stock. She reached around me and took the file from the ACA’s hands. My eyes followed her out the door.

“I received a telephone call from Mrs. Field this afternoon. And another from her attorney,” the ACA said. “Are you listening?”

“Hmm? Sorry, I was thinking about something else,” I answered as Lisa closed the office door behind her.

“You don’t want to mess with me, Taylor,” the ACA warned, his face close to mine. “Because nothing will give me greater pleasure than to prove to you just how tough I am.”

He stepped back, looking at me with a patient expression like he knew he was smarter than I was and was just waiting for the opportunity to demonstrate it. I didn’t care for the expression.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said. “You’re tough as nails. So, tell me about the phone calls that got your Jockey’s in a knot.”

Ooooh, he didn’t like that at all, and for a moment, I thought he really would throw me in jail. Instead, he returned to the chair behind his desk, tried hard to keep his voice calm, and nearly succeeded. “Mrs. Field claims you broke into her home and assaulted her.”

“I was invited into her house, and
she
assaulted
me
; she pointed a Smith & Wesson thirty-eight at my heart.”

“What heart?” Casper snorted.

The ACA chose to ignore us both. Instead, he reminded me, “The Ramsey County court issued a restraining order forbidding you to contact the Fields or go near them or their home.…”

Jesus, I’d forgotten about that.

“You violated that order. That’s a misdemeanor in this county.”

Oh, man.

“Ninety days, pal. Ninety days minimum,” the ACA said, holding up nine fingers in case I was confused.

“I was acting within the scope of my employment as a private investigator,” I claimed quickly.

“That’s your defense?”

“It’s the best I can do right now. Give me a few minutes.”

The ACA surprised me by smiling. “Are you always such a smartass?” he asked.

“Only when I’m frightened,” I admitted freely.

The ACA regarded me for a moment. Then he smiled some more. Then he shook his head. Then he said, “You’re not in jail because I already thought out your position in this, and it just might have some merit. And because you did us a favor with your information about the briefcase. It was something we had not considered,” he said, glancing at McGaney and Casper.

“That’s what you get when you take a veteran investigator off the job and replace her with a couple of trainees,” I told him. “These guys, they couldn’t find Canada on a map of North America if you spotted them Mexico.”

I did not look at McGaney and Casper, but I could feel their eyes burning holes in my back.

“There are approximately twenty minutes unaccounted for after Field left his bank,” the ACA said. “We’re trying to determine where he went. Do you know?”

“Levering had a mistress,” I volunteered.

“Crystalin Wolters, age twenty-two, Cathedral Hill Apartments,” McGaney recited behind me. I wasn’t surprised. I was joking when I said they couldn’t find Canada. Sort of.

“My money’s on Amanda,” I announced.

“How much?” McGaney asked, like he was looking to cover my bet.

“Mrs. Field was shopping with her daughter when Field was killed,” Casper said.

“Who says?” I asked.

“Her daughter,” said McGaney.

“And two video cameras at the Rosedale Shopping Mall,” Casper added.

That stopped me for about three seconds. “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “I figured she paid to have it done, anyway. Michael Zilar.”

“Whom nobody has seen or heard from,” McGaney said.

“That doesn’t mean he’s not out there,” I reminded him.

The ACA was smiling again. “An upper-middle-class woman from St. Paul, outraged that her husband is having an affair, hires a professional killer from Chicago, brings him to the Twin Cities, and has him shoot her husband in her own living room. Is that your theory?”

“It’s done all the time,” I replied.

“Uh-huh. And exactly why did she also have you shot? I forget.”

“I indirectly told her about the affair.”

He continued smiling, adding a head shake.

“Kill the messenger,” I added. “Haven’t you ever heard that phrase before?”

The way he and the detectives looked at me, I had a feeling they weren’t impressed by my deductive reasoning. Truth be told, neither was I. Amanda could have killed me and probably would have gotten away with it, but she didn’t. That had to count for something. I decided to try a new theory.

“Has anyone interviewed Field’s secretary?”

“Penny Portia?” McGaney asked. “She’s clean.”

“Sure of that are you?”

He didn’t say if he was or wasn’t.

“She might have the money,” I volunteered.

McGaney yawned.

“How did you get so smart?” the ACA asked me.

“It’s amazing what you learn just by paying attention,” I answered, trying to bluff my way through.

“Well, pay attention to this. You are not to go near Mrs. Field again. Or her daughter. You are not to contact them in any way. Understand?”

“I understand.”

“You violate the restraining order again and it’s no longer a misdemeanor. Uh-uh. It becomes a gross misdemeanor. I’ll put you away for a year and make you serve every blessed day.”

“I understand.”

“You had better because honest to God, I get another phone call, you are his-tor-y.”

T
HERE WERE SEVENTEEN
messages on my answering machine. A few callers wanted to buy my house or my car or my baseball cards featuring the 1927 Yankees. One was confirming a dental appointment I hadn’t made. Another wanted to thank me for volunteering to go door-to-door to collect money for the Clean Water Act and asked when they could get their materials to me. Five callers had read my file at the dating service and wanted to arrange dinner—all of them were men. A plumber, cable TV technician, and an interior decorator complained that no one had been home to receive them as promised. And a member of a storefront church said he could feel my pain and wondered when he could come over and comfort me.

The tape was rewinding when the telephone rang again. I answered it.

“This is Finnegan Siding. You called about an estimate for your house.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Sir, we have your name and—”

“Listen. I have stucco walls. Why would I want fucking aluminum siding?” I was shouting now.

“Sir, there is no reason to be abusive.”

I hung up the phone. The doorbell rang. I opened the door. A delivery man from a home shopping service stood on the other side, holding a box of groceries.

“Your order, sir.”

“I didn’t order anything! Get away from me! Goddammit!”

I slammed the door. My breath was coming fast. I pressed my head against the wall. “Relax,” I told myself. I’ve always found it easier to control my emotions in a crowd than when I was alone. When alone, it required more effort, somehow. Often, I answered my anger or frustration by shooting hoops in my driveway. Only my wounds wouldn’t permit it. So instead, I stood there, reciting the roster of the 1987 Twins by position: “Bert Blyleven, Tim Laudner, Kent Hrbek, Steve Lombardozzi, Greg Gagne, Gary Gaetti …”