Pretty Girl Gone (2 page)

“You met with her this afternoon.”

I had no reason to deny it.

“You are
friends.
” Muehlenhaus made the word sound like an accusation.

I stood slowly, trying to maintain the same bored expression. Norman did the same. Despite the bloodstained handkerchief he held to his nose, he looked like he was perfectly willing to go another round. I gestured toward the Picassos on the wall.

“Gentlemen, do I need to break more stuff?”

“Mr. McKenzie, please.” The youngest of the four men at the end of the table moved toward me. “Please.” He gestured toward my chair. I took a seat.

“First, allow me to apologize for the clumsy manner in which we brought you here today,” he said, but there was neither remorse nor regret in his voice. “We were all quite anxious to speak with you and to judge for ourselves your capabilities.”

“Capabilities?”

“Indeed,” Muehlenhaus said.

“I’m Troy Donovan. Allow me to introduce my colleagues.”

While Donovan recited the names, I attached numbers gleaned from the
St. Paul Pioneer Press
business section—something I never read until I became filthy, stinking rich. Through his banks and investment
groups, Muehlenhaus held paper on a large chunk of the metropolitan area. If the Twin Cities were a corporation, he’d be the senior partner. Prescott Coole ruled an empire of over two hundred convenience stores and gas stations throughout Minnesota and Wisconsin. Glen Gunhus made a quarter from every railroad car that rolled into and out of the state of Minnesota. Carroll Mahoney, probably considered middle class by his colleagues, was founder and first president of the 22,000-member Federation of Minnesota State County and Municipal Employees and therefore a valuable friend regardless of income. I had never heard of Donovan, yet somehow I didn’t believe he had gained access to this exclusive circle by selling magazine subscriptions door-to-door. Collectively, they and their friends were known as the Brotherhood by us peons, and they moved and shook the Twin Cities into whatever shape that suited them.

Each of the men nodded when he was introduced to me, but none smiled and none of them made an attempt to shake my hand. Except for Troy Donovan. He rounded the conference table, took my hand, and gave it a firm squeeze. He smiled. True, it was a smile devoid of humor or goodwill and the tone of his voice was politely demanding, like he was speaking to a trespasser, but at least he made an effort.

“I’ll be blunt, if I may.” Donovan glanced at Muehlenhaus. The old man nodded and Donovan said, “We have been informed that the first lady has been made quite upset over something the past few days and we wish to learn what it is.”

I felt the icy grip of panic on my shoulder. The answer Donovan sought was folded twice and resting inside my jacket pocket.

Lindsey Bauer Barrett was the most attractive first lady in the history of Minnesota, maybe in the history of all fifty states. The week after her husband was elected governor they were both featured in
People
magazine. The following week it was
Glamour
. By my estimate, her face must
have appeared at least a dozen times in national publications during the two years since the inauguration and Lord knows how many times in the local media. Which made the heavy knit hat and sunglasses all the sillier. Who was she kidding?

I found her sitting alone at the Groveland Tap in an old-fashioned wooden booth, the kind with high backs that you can’t see over. It wasn’t hard.

“Honestly, Zee. You need to work on your disguise.”

“McKenzie,” she whispered. She grabbed my wrist and pulled me into the booth while glancing around to see if anyone had noticed her.

The Groveland Tap was a neighborhood joint in St. Paul where you could get a cold beer, a bowl of chili, watch the ball game on one of a half dozen TVs, and shoot some stick in the back room. In the evenings it was crowded with college kids from St. Catherine, St. Thomas, and Macalester. During the day it belonged to the families and business folk that lived and worked in the Macalester-Groveland area. The lunch hour crowd filled most of the tables and booths, but no one paid attention to Lindsey except a heavyset man with relentless eyes who sat alone near the door.

I sat across from her. She removed the sunglasses and smiled, her eyes sparkling like ice water. Lindsey had always possessed a kind of Renaissance quality that came very close to real beauty. Not the kind of fragile beauty flaunted so carelessly by teenage rock princesses, beauty that erodes inexorably with time. Rather it was a lasting beauty, the kind that inspires the imagination, like the canvas of a Pre-Raphaelite master that a discerning collector might study for hours, days, perhaps even a lifetime; examining, evaluating, analyzing each line, each curve, each brush stroke until he falls helplessly, hopelessly, permanently in love. I had thought so even when I was a kid, even before I knew what fine art looked like.

“It’s good to see you,” I said.

“Long time,” she told me.

A waitress appeared, set two menus before us, and asked for drink orders. Lindsey requested iced tea after first being assured that the Groveland Tap brewed its own. I had the same.

The waitress grinned brightly. “It’ll be just a moment, Mrs. Barrett.” Lindsey nodded her approval. The waitress departed and Lindsey sighed deeply, pulled off the knit hat, and dropped it on the bench next to her.

“Ah, the joys of celebrity,” I told her.

“I wanted our meeting to be secret.”

“Why?”

The waitress reappeared. I wondered when I had last seen such brisk service.

“Here you go, hon,” she said, setting the beverages before us. “Would you like to order now?”

“Later, perhaps,” Lindsey said.

“I’m Terry, Mrs. Barrett. You just give me a wave when you’re ready.”

“Thank you, Terry.”

The waitress left without once looking at me.

Lindsey frowned.

“Shake it off, Zee,” I said, like she was a teammate who had just gone down swinging. “You grew up not far from here. People would recognize you even if you weren’t the first lady.”

“Zee. Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a good, long time.”

“How’s Linda?” I asked, just to be polite.

“Working on her fourth marriage.”

“Too bad.”

“She should have stayed with you.”

“We were children when we knew each other. If we had stayed together, it would have only ended up being the
first
marriage for both of us.”

“You never did marry, did you?”

“No.”

“What’s holding you back?”

“I’m still waiting for you to realize that I’m the man you’ve been searching for your entire life and that you made a terrible, terrible mistake marrying Barrett. That’s why you called, right?”

“McKenzie, you are a terrible flirt.”

“When you say that, do you mean I flirt a lot or that I don’t do it well?”

“Both.”

“Why did you call?”

She didn’t reply. Instead, she gazed at our drinks for a few moments, and then at the walls of the booth and finally at me. She was dressed in silk and cashmere; a long, charcoal-colored wool coat hung on the hook next to the booth. She looked like she had never wanted for anything, but that was merely a carefully cultivated illusion. I knew her when she worked the camera counter at Walgreen’s to put herself through school.

“What is it, Zee?”

“Probably nothing. It’s just—It just makes me so angry.”

“What does?”

“I heard that you do favors for people.”

“Sometimes. For friends.”

“Am I a friend?”

“You know you are.”

“Perhaps you can do a favor for me—for old time’s sake.”

“Sure.”

“Be careful. You haven’t heard what it is yet.”

“Doesn’t matter.
If
I can help you, I will—for old time’s sake.”

Her voice was serious, yet her mouth formed a smile that was almost giddy, as if she had gone some time without hearing good news. Lindsey reached into her bag and brought out an 8½ by 11 sheet of white paper folded twice and slid it across the table to me. I unfolded it. It was a hard copy of an e-mail. It read:

John Allen Barrett murdered his high school sweetheart, Elizabeth Rogers, in Victoria, Minnesota, and the police covered it up so he could become a basketball hero. If he runs for the U.S. Senate, I will expose him to the world.

“Whoa,” I said.

“It’s a lie.” She spoke the word like she had just discovered its meaning. “A big lie.”

“I should hope so.”

I examined the e-mail more closely. It was unsigned. The gobbledygook in the “from” field was unpronounceable. It had been addressed to Lindsey Bauer and sent at 6:57
P.M
. Friday, three days earlier. The subject line was empty.

“Lindsey Bauer,” I said.

“It was sent to my dot-com account,” Lindsey said. “I have a dot-gov address through the state, but this was sent to my private e-mail address.”

“How many people have your private address?”

“I don’t know. Not many.”

I folded the paper and slid it across the table to her. “What do you want me to do?”

She slid it back. “This is political, I know it is. Someone is trying to mess with Jack through me, and I want to know who.”

“You want to know who sent the e-mail?”

“Exactly.”

“That’s it?”

“Can you do it?”

“Sure, but . . .” I gestured toward the heavyset man near the door. “Why not use your own people?”

“Because then it becomes public record. My e-mails through the state, all of Jack’s e-mails—that’s public record. You can get copies through the Freedom of Information Act. But what’s sent to me personally, that’s private.”

“Unless you make it public.”

“It could be that’s what all this is about. It would make a nice headline, wouldn’t it: First Lady Asks Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, ‘Is the Governor a Murderer?’ ”

She smiled slightly, and in that moment I knew she was hiding something. I didn’t know why I knew, yet I did. Probably it was because I had seen her smile often when she was younger and I recognized that it wasn’t the same. All of my internal alarm systems fired at once. The noise was so loud in my head I was amazed that everyone in the restaurant wasn’t diving for the door.

“What the e-mail says, is it true?”

Her eyes were sharp, but not angry, as she considered the question.

“Of course it’s not true.”

“Because that would have been my first question.”

“It’s an outrageous lie.”

“Not who sent it, but if it’s true.”

“I’m sure that’s exactly what the writer wants you to ask.”

“Have you spoken to the governor about it?”

“Certainly not.”

“Does he even know about the e-mail?”

“He has enough to worry about without this nonsense.”

The alarm bells just kept getting louder and louder. I felt sweat on my forehead and trickling down my back. I considered removing my bomber jacket, decided to leave it on.

“Was the e-mail sent to anyone else? To the governor?”

“I don’t know. If Jack received one, he didn’t tell me.”

“Why send it to you?”

“To drive a wedge between us.”

“Between you and the governor.”

“Yes.”

“If that was the case, why accuse the governor of murder? Why not just say he’s sleeping with one of his assistants?”

“If I knew who sent the e-mail, maybe then I’d know the answer to that, too.”

She had me there.

“Is Jack running for the Senate?”

“People have been asking him about it, only he hasn’t decided, yet. That’s confidential, by the way.”

“Apparently not.” I slid the paper off the table and into my inside jacket pocket. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense, though. The threat goes into effect if Jack runs for senator, not governor.”

“I’ve been thinking about it almost constantly since I received the e-mail. I have no answers. You will help me, though, won’t you, McKenzie?”

“You know I will. But, Zee, I gotta ask, why me?”

“I told you.”

“You told me why you didn’t go to the state, not why you came to me.”

“You’re smart. You’re tough.”

“C’mon, Zee.”

“If I’ve learned one thing as a politician’s wife, I’ve learned this—plausible deniability. I go to a private investigator, someone that can be compelled to talk, and the media learns about it, what can I say, what can I do? I go to you, an old friend from the neighborhood, who’s to know, and if they did . . . ?” She shrugged.

“I could rat you out?”

“No. Not you.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you never told anyone why you broke up with my sister the evening of the senior prom, not in all these years.” She smiled at me. “It’s true, isn’t it? You’ve never told anyone. Not even your good friend Bobby Dunston.”

“Not even Bobby.”

“And you never told anyone about us.”

“No.”

“Most men would have. Certainly most men who were seventeen years old would have. They’d have bragged about it every chance they could. Not you.”

“Not me.”

“You’re an honorable man, McKenzie. You were an honorable man even when you were a kid.”

I supposed she was paying me a compliment, so I said, “Thank you.”

“Do you ever think of that evening?”

“Yes.”

“What do you think?”

The question made me squirm against the back of the wooden booth. “Let’s just say I cherish it and let it go at that.”

“Do you really?”

I nodded.

“I always feel guilty.”

“Why?”

“I used you.”

“In what way?”

“The night of the prom when I learned that my sister was sleeping with my boyfriend, that they had been together that entire spring—you know, I would have married Michael that spring if he had asked me.”

“That’s what made it so—is ‘sordid’ the right word?”

Lindsey nodded and stared at her tea. When she looked back at me her eyes were moist.

“I didn’t behave much better,” she said. “The evening I invited you over to the house, it wasn’t to return all those gifts that my sister had taken from you—your records, your sweatshirt. It was because she had taken something from me and I wanted to prove I could just as easily take something that belonged to her.”