The Hunting Wind: An Alex McKnight Mystery (23 page)

“It’s a long story,” she said. “Can you come to my house?”

“I can do that,” I said. “Are you sure you want me to? Your friends in the bar wouldn’t like it if they found out.”

“I showed you my gun, didn’t I?” She put the hairbrush back in her bag. “I’m not as good as my mother, but I think I have some sense of what’s inside a person, as soon as I meet them. I think you’re telling the truth.”

“I’ll follow you,” I said. “Lead the way.”

She got out of the truck and went to her own car, got in and pulled back out onto the road. I followed her for a half mile, until she turned left into a gravel driveway that was heavily rutted. There was an old wooden fence running along the front of the property,
so I couldn’t see the house from the road. As soon as I did see it, I knew it was the biggest house in town.

The driveway snaked around to the front door, but she didn’t stop there. She kept going until the driveway stopped at the side of the house. I pulled in behind her, next to a small boat on a trailer. The plastic tarp that covered it was tied down with enough rope to withstand a hurricane.

She took me in the side door. There was a low concrete porch, and then a path that led down to a small boathouse. A late-morning wind was coming in off the lake.

“Nice house,” I said as I stepped inside. There was little room to take your coat off in, and then a large living room done up in white pine, with big roughhewn beams running across the ceiling. I saw a few nautical maps framed on the walls, and a mariner’s barometer set inside a gold wheel. Somehow, I knew she hadn’t decorated the place herself.

“I’m renting it,” she said. “You’ll never guess who from.”

“Captain Nemo,” I said.

“Chief Rudiger,” she said.

“That’s wonderful,” I said. “He’ll be so happy if he finds out I was here.”

“For what he’s charging me, I should be able to entertain anybody I want. Can I get you a drink?”

“A beer?” I said. “I didn’t get much service at Rocky’s.”

When she left, I looked out the big picture window at Lake Michigan. It was calm now, but I knew that could change without much warning. A pair of binoculars sat on the windowsill—one of those Leica
models that cost at least five hundred dollars. I picked them up and looked out at the lake, spotted a freighter in the distance. It was heading north, probably from Chicago. It would go under the Mackinac Bridge, sneak around Drummond Island, and then head through the Soo locks. If I go home right now, I thought, I’ll be able to see it again, coming through Whitefish Bay.

Maria came back into the room with two beers and two glasses. She was one of those women who always surprise you with how good they look, even if they’ve only been away for thirty seconds. The beers in her hands didn’t hurt the effect.

“He’s got good taste in binoculars,” I said. “Why’s he renting this place, anyway? Where does he live now?”

“He’s got a little place in town,” she said, putting the bottles down on a coffee table. “He says he doesn’t need this big place now that his wife is dead and his kids are moved out. So he rented it to me. Not that I need this big a place, either. It’s just temporary.”

“Until what?” I said.

She looked at me. “Until I move someplace for real,” she said. “Now sit down here and tell me more about Randy.”

I obeyed her. I sat down and poured myself a beer. She sat down on the couch next to me.

“So, you do remember him,” I said, “from 1971?”

“Yes,” she said. “Of course I remember him.”

“It was almost thirty years ago.”

“It could be eighty years,” she said. “I’d still remember.”

“He certainly is one of a kind, but—”

“Alex, I know I already asked you this,” she said, “but why did he come here, really? Do you really think he was—what did you say? Trying to scam me?”

I looked at her. “I told you before. At first, I thought it was because he wanted to find you again. Because he thought you were the one who got away.”

“You believed him.”

“Yes,” I said. “If I had seen you in person, it would have been easy to believe.”

“I appreciate the flattery,” she said. “But even so, Alex, most people wouldn’t have come all the way down here to help him.”

“I’m a complete idiot,” I said. “I think I’ve established that pretty well.”

“No,” she said. “You believed him because that’s the kind of man you are.”

“The idiot kind.”

She smiled. “What do you believe now? Do you really think he came here to steal money from me?”

“It seems to be his calling,” I said. “I think his record speaks for itself.”

She looked out the big window at the lake. “I do have money to steal,” she said. “My husband’s business was very successful, before . . . before he died.”

“You said Harwood killed him.”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell me about it?”

She took a deep breath. “Alex, when I met Randy, I was very young. But he was the first, if you know what I mean. When he left without saying a word, it hit me very hard. I didn’t think I would love another
man ever again. But then a man came to see my mother. A man named Harwood. Charles Harwood. He kept coming back, and he always paid her a hundred dollars for each reading. That was a great deal of money in those days. He drove a big convertible, too. My father was very interested in this man. And this man, this Charles Harwood, he was obviously very interested in me. He asked me many times to go driving with him in his big convertible, but I always turned him down. My father was angry with me. Eventually, he persuaded me to go with Harwood. ‘Just a little trip around town,’ my father said. ‘What is the harm, a short trip in the car? With this man who pays your mother a hundred dollars every time he sees her.’ So I went with this man, and he drove around Detroit with the top down. He asked me all these questions, but I didn’t feel like talking to him. So he finally shut up and just drove me back home. I thought that would be the end of it, but the next week he was back, asking me to go driving with him again. I went with him, and this time I did not say one single word the entire time. But he kept coming back, and he kept giving my mother a hundred dollars every time, and he kept asking me to ride in his car. And I would go and not say a word. Until finally one day he drove right out of the city and through all the suburbs and right out into the countryside. I was scared. But I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want him to know how scared I was. He drove all the way out to a farm in Oakland County, right down this little dirt road in the middle of nowhere, and when he finally stopped, I was sure he would do something terrible to me. But he didn’t. He just sat there and looked out at the farm,
and then he told me that he and his partner had just bought the place and that they were going to build a golf course. And then they’d find more land and build another one, and then another one. And they would both become very rich. He asked me if I had ever thought what it would be like to have lots of money, but before I could answer him, his partner showed up. He drove right up behind us in his beat-up little car, and he came up to see who this young girl was sitting in Harwood’s convertible. His name was Arthur Zambelli.”

She paused to take a long drink; then she looked out the window at the lake again and continued.

“Arthur Zambelli was everything that Harwood wasn’t. He was kind and gentle. And he didn’t care about money, even though he would end up having a lot of it. He just didn’t think about it. All he wanted to do was build things. And eat. And drink good wine. And champagne. The man loved champagne. He told me that every single day of your life should be special enough to celebrate with champagne. Which sounds kind of corny, but he made you believe it. We were married for ten years, Alex. Almost ten years. Our ten-year anniversary would have been . . .”

She stopped again, a small smile coming across her face, then disappearing.

“Harwood was not happy when I chose Arthur over him. He tried not to show it. He would have left the partnership in a second, but he wasn’t about to walk away from the golf course deal. And then after that, there was another deal, and then another deal. There was always another property to buy. Another hotel or golf course or resort to build. They were very successful.
I married Arthur, and eventually Harwood married another woman. We spent a lot of time together, all four of us. We had to. But the way Harwood looked at me, and the way he talked to me whenever we were alone, I knew he hadn’t forgotten.

“Harwood’s marriage didn’t last. I wasn’t surprised. The more I got to know him—I mean, with all the time we had to spend with him . . . My God, Alex, he is the most horrible man. He had Arthur fooled so badly. For years, I tried to warn him. I tried to convince him to dissolve their partnership. I think he would have, too, if Harwood hadn’t . . .”

She stopped.

“What did he do?” I said.

“Arthur was out on one of the properties one night. He liked to do that—just walk around for a couple days to get a feel for the land. They found him the next morning at the bottom of a drainage ditch. His neck was broken. They said he walking alone and he must have fallen, but I knew better. Harwood killed him. I know he did.”

“When was that?”

“It was just six months before Delilah was born,” she said. “We had been trying for so long to have children. Can you believe it? He never even saw his own baby. I’ve been a widow for eighteen years now, and I’ve been running from Harwood the whole time.”

“How can you run that long?” I said. “Eighteen years.”

“Not all the time,” she said. “I move; he finds me. I move again, and a few years later, he finds me again. . . .”

“Maria, what does he want from you? Does he hate you that much just because you married his partner instead of him?”

“It’s not that,” she said. “There’s more to this than just a personal vendetta. A few years before Arthur died, they bought about seven hundred acres up near Traverse City. There was nothing up there then, but now the whole county is booming. There are so many new resorts up there right now, and this land they bought, it’s right next to one of the big golf courses, with a little ski mountain even. We could sell that land for twenty million, easy.”

“So why don’t you?”

“Alex, the old partnership still owns that land. Harwood-Zambelli. And there’s a provision in the partnership that both partners have to agree before selling any jointly owned property.”

“And you can’t agree? Why wouldn’t you both want to sell it?”

“It’s not so simple,” she said. “The terms are very specific about what happens if either partner dies. A surviving spouse takes over the partner’s vote and is entitled to half of the profits. A divorced spouse only gets twenty percent, and no vote. Harwood’s ex-wife is fighting that one, even though she signed the prenuptial agreement. Michigan’s a pretty strong common-property state, so she has a shot at it.”

“So what does that have to do with you?” I said. “You’re a surviving spouse. He can’t change that. Unless—”

“Unless I’m no longer surviving,” she said. “There’s a provision for that, too. Just like the divorce clause. Twenty percent to my estate, and no vote. Arthur
didn’t realize what he was doing when he signed that agreement, Alex. He didn’t know he was signing my death warrant.”

“So twenty percent instead of fifty percent,” I said. “Out of twenty million. He’d kill you for the difference of what, six million dollars?”

“I think it’s safe to say that he would do that for six million dollars, yes.”

I took a hit off my beer and thought about that one.

“I can’t see your brother running away,” I said. “Ever. How come he hasn’t killed this guy by now?”

“He almost did,” she said. “When Arthur died, I told Leopold what I suspected. He went after Har-wood, tried to kill him. Thank God he didn’t. He would have gone to jail. Since then, Leopold has always wanted to make a stand, to stay in one place and dare Harwood to come get me. That house in Farmington, that’s the first house that any of us have owned outright. Delilah’s in high school now. I want her to finish there. Leopold promised me that she’d be safe. They watch her every minute.”

“I know,” I said. “I saw that firsthand.”

“So you did,” she said. “So you did. And I’m close enough, I can see her sometimes. We’re very careful about it. We meet on weekends. We make sure nobody follows her.”

“Randy wasn’t careful,” I said. “That white Cadillac, it belongs to a private investigator.”

“How do you know?”

“My partner ran the plate,” I said. “His name is Whitley. He works out of Detroit.”

“Harwood must’ve hired him,” she said. “He’s done that before.”

“Well, we could contact him ourselves,” I said. ‘Tell him to lay off.”

“He’d send somebody else,” she said. “Now that he’s found me again. Or he’d come himself. . . .”

“Maria, why don’t you just sign away the full partnership money? Tell him you’ll take the twenty percent and forfeit the rest?”

She looked at me.

“You could stop running,” I said.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe that’s what I should do.”

“You already have money. You said so yourself. The money your husband left you, right?”

She looked out at the lake. “It may be too late,” she said. “I should have done that eighteen years ago. Maybe even ten years ago. It’s an obsession with him now. After all this time, I don’t think he’d settle for less than everything. Every dollar, Alex.”

When she faced me again, I saw tears in her eyes. God help me, all I could think about was how lovely she was. That was the only word for her. Not beautiful, not pretty. Maria was lovely.

“Every dollar,” she said. “And my life, Alex. He wants me to die.”

I wanted to reach out and take her hand. But I didn’t. “Okay,” I said. “Okay. I’m sorry. I’m sure I can’t imagine what it’s been like.”

“And now Randy shows up,” she said. “It’s unbelievable.”

“Maria, you still haven’t told me why you said that stuff in the bar, about not remembering him.”

She looked down at the glass in her hand. It was empty.

“Maria?”

She didn’t say anything.