The Midnight Plan of the Repo Man (30 page)

I thought about it. “I don't know,” I admitted.

“Should you have told them?”

“Well it's a little late to bring that up now, don't you think?”

“I
have
tried to bring it up. Why are you so confrontational? Have you ever heard of subtlety?”

“Alan, I go up to people and take their cars away from them. There usually isn't a lot of room for subtlety.”

“So now what?”

I shrugged. “I don't know.”

We were both silent. Finally I exhaled. “Well, let's go call on Alice Blanchard, as long as we're this close to town. We keep showing up, maybe she'll write us a check just to get rid of us.”

*   *   *

Mrs. Blanchard's eyes were even colder than Wexler's had been, once she saw who was standing on her doorstep. “Yes?”

“Mrs. Blanchard? I don't know if you remember—”

“Yes,” she interrupted, “of course I remember. I told you I couldn't help you.”

“Yes, but that wasn't true, was it? You were lying to me.”

“I don't have to talk to you.”

“You sent checks drawn on an account that was closed. That's a misdemeanor,” I informed her.

A contemptuous smile briefly touched her lips. “Really? Doesn't it have to be in exchange for goods or services?”

“I think she's right,”
Alan noted.

“Look, there doesn't have to be any trouble, here. I don't have to tell your husband, or anything.”

For just a moment I thought this might worry her, but then she appeared to decide she could weather that particular storm. “My husband is at the bank, if you want to talk to him.”

“Mrs. Blanchard…”

“Please don't come back here again.” She shut the door firmly, a vague scent of flowery perfume floating in the air.

“Well, that went pretty well,”
Alan said.

“I don't get it.” I leaned back and looked at the house. While not as grand as Wexler's, it spoke of a solidly upper-middle-class lifestyle. Was Mrs. Blanchard some sort of crazy person? What else made sense?

I raised my hand to knock on the door again, but then dropped it. I had no idea what I would say to her anyway.

“Let's go,”
Alan said softly.

“Okay.”

I turned around on the front porch and found myself face-to-face with the reason Mrs. Blanchard had been sending those checks to Jimmy Growe.

 

 

22

The Numbers Stop Adding Up

 

She was probably eight years old. She was wearing a sweatshirt cut impatiently short at the sleeves and her cheeks were flushed with exertion plus just a hint of sunburn. She had something of her mother's bearing, with an upright neck, but the vivid green eyes, the black hair falling casually onto her forehead, even the shape of her face, were all Jimmy Growe, translated into little girl. She eyed me curiously as she bounded up the stairs, banging the front door open like an assault team. “Mom, some man is here!”

Her mother had been standing just inside the house—I got the feeling she'd been watching me through the peephole. Our eyes met.

“Looks just like Jimmy,”
Alan informed me unnecessarily.

Alice Blanchard reacted as if she'd heard him, her face losing its defiance, deflating into resignation. She eased the door shut behind her, protecting her child from our conversation, and motioned for me to sit on a wooden chair. She settled into the porch swing.

I tried to piece it together. “You took those checks from the bank so—”

“No!” She cut me off with a fierce stare. “I made some mistakes issuing the accounts and I was embarrassed to tell anyone, so I brought them home. Later I found out there was a log for me to sign, so people found out anyway.”

“But then…”

“Then his name came into the bank on the last day I was there. Jimmy Growe. He applied for a credit card. When I saw it I just stared, I couldn't believe it. I brought his application home and put it in the same drawer. I don't know what I thought I was going to do, and then I decided I wasn't going to do anything. I went upstairs to throw away the application, and I saw the starter packets. That's when I decided to send him a check for a thousand dollars.”

“I don't get it,”
Alan confessed.

“So you sent him the checks to…” I spread my hands. I didn't get it, either.

“Look, Mr. uh…”

“McCann,” I informed her after an awkward pause. I found myself ridiculously disappointed that such a pretty woman didn't remember who I was.

“Jimmy never paid a dime to help with Vicki. When my family found out I was pregnant, I was completely cut off. Do you understand how hard it is to raise a baby by yourself? The church found me a place to live and gave me a job in the nursery, or I would have had to go on welfare.”

“Did Jimmy know about your daughter?”

“No! He dumped me before I knew I was pregnant.”

I could feel Alan straining as hard as I was to comprehend how it all fit together.

“So those checks you sent…” I tried again.

Her stare was cold. “They're as worthless as he is. And every time he got one, it was a reminder of what he did to me, and the obligations he was avoiding.”

“That makes no sense whatsoever,”
Alan stated, sounding almost awed.

“Mrs. Blanchard, if you'll excuse me for saying it, but don't you think that's a little subtle for Jimmy? I'm not sure he's capable of grasping the whole picture, there.”

She stared at nothing. “It's not for Jimmy that I sent them.”

“She loved him,”
Alan blurted suddenly.
“It's not about the girl, it's about him leaving her.”

I stirred. “I guess I understand,” I said, though actually I guessed I really didn't. Alan's epiphany wasn't helping, either. I cleared my throat. “But when he cashed them, he got into a real bind.”

Her eyebrows arched. “Mister, I really couldn't care less about that.”

I chewed on my lip a little, thinking it over. I decided she probably did care, that knowing Jimmy had gotten himself in trouble was a bonus for her in this weird payback scheme.

“Mrs. Blanchard…”

She watched me in what I could swear was anticipation.

“Don't you think that Jimmy has a right to know his daughter? He's matured over the past few years.”

“No, I do not,” she replied smoothly. “We have a family here, now. I married William three years ago. He's talking about adopting Vicki someday. Our lives are on track.” She gestured to the house, clearly a big step up from her circumstances of a few years ago. “William wants us to have a child of his own.” She absently gazed over my shoulder, pulling on an earlobe.

“Still, for Jimmy, it has all turned out to be very expensive.”

I let the statement lie there until she understood where I was heading. When she did her eyes widened slightly, then became milky with contempt. “How much?”

“I'd say thirty-five hundred. We'll get some money out of the motorcycle he bought.”

“And for you?”

“Pardon?”

“How much is your personal fee?”

“Oh. No, that's not what this is about. I just need to recover my employer's money, that's all.” I didn't see the need to mention that Milt had already paid me $500 for this recovery.

She reached for her purse and wrote a check in quick, angry strokes. “This means I'll never see you again, and you won't tell Jimmy about Vicki.”

“Not unless you send Jimmy more checks.”

“You have a despicable profession, Mr. McCann.” She flung the check at me and left me there on the porch.

“I'm going to guess that was not your typical repo assignment,”
Alan observed as we drove away from the Blanchard house.

I was quiet.
“What is it?”
Alan demanded.

“Well, you're a father, Alan, did you hear what she said? William is ‘thinking' of adopting Vicki. He wants a baby of ‘his own.'”

“Yeah,”
Alan grunted.
“You're right.”

“Sounds like the bank president is a jerk.”

“That still doesn't connect the dots for me with her sending the checks,”
Alan complained.
“What was the point of that?”

“I thought you said you understood her!”

“No, I said that I get that she bears a grudge against Jimmy because he broke her heart.”

I sighed.

“What is it? Why are you acting so moody?”

“Alan, Jimmy is my best friend in the world.”

“Ruddy, you cannot tell him about Vicki. That's none of his business.”

“None of his business? He's got a daughter! You of all people should understand that!”

“What I understand is that we cannot start messing in other people's lives,”
he lectured.

“Oh, that's just great, Alan. You come into my head, you start calling me “we,” when I sleep at night you're driving around in my truck, and you think it's a bad idea to mess with other people's lives? Can you not experience
irony
in there, Alan?”

He adopted a hurt silence.

“Why do I have to be the one to handle all this crap?” I asked the world.

By the time I reached Kalkaska, he was back to psychoanalysis. Apparently being inside my head made him feel he could get inside others'.
“Wexler is the evil one. He hit me with the shovel, and he's the one who shot me.”

That didn't sound right to me. “But where's his motive? Burby had motive.”

“I just can't see Burby doing something like that.”

“You sound as if you like the guy.”

“Ruddy. Come on. He's an accessory to murder. To
my
murder. Of course I don't like the guy.”

“Plus, he's sleeping with your wife,” I reminded him.

“Thank you for that. Truly. Thanks ever so much.”

I pushed open the door to the Black Bear and halted, looking around. The atmosphere inside the place reminded me of Nathan Burby's funeral home, subdued, even mournful. Kermit and Becky stood next to each other behind the bar, watching me with fearful eyes as I walked up to them. “What is it?” I asked.

Becky held out a handful of bank inquiries. “We got more of these today than we got new business to replace them.”

I looked back and forth between Kermit and Becky.
“They had to refund more than they got in new business today. The operation ran at a loss,”
Alan explained to me.

“We lost money running numbers,” I translated. They both nodded. I took a step toward Kermit. “How could this happen?”

He retreated, inching behind Becky. “We only got in two thousand, and we had to give back forty-eight hundred,” he stammered.

“I don't mean the
math,
Kermit,” I snapped. “What's going on here? Did the psychic have a flock of deadbeats or something?”

Kermit shrugged. “We don't really have any way of knowing what happened.”

“Did you ask the people who send the numbers?”

“We don't get to talk to them, Ruddy,” Becky explained. “They just fax us the computer printouts.”

I glared at Kermit. “You call them. Now. We need to figure out what's happening here.”

“Stop it!” Becky said shrilly. “Stop pushing everyone around.”

“What are you talking about? This is his deal, he should get control of it.”

“You're not the boss of this, Ruddy. You're not the boss of me!” her eyes flared angrily.

“I'm not … Becky, I'm your older brother.”

“So what?”

“She's really angry,”
Alan murmured, as if I couldn't tell.

I took a breath. “I just think Mom and Dad would have wanted me to look after you,” I said reasonably.

“Look after
me
?” Becky's face flushed. “Why do you think they left the business to me? Because they knew you couldn't run it. You were in prison.”

I shook my head sadly.

“The truth is, Ruddy, the shame of what you did, that's what killed them.”

There. The ugliest thought I'd ever had, the worst notion ever to occur to me, coming from her lips. I stared at her and saw no pity, nothing but anger, cold and cruel. I whirled on Kermit, my finger like a gun barrel. “This is all because of you!”

“Get out, Ruddy. Just get out!” Becky shrieked at me.

I spun and angrily kicked a chair out of the way. In the truck, I vented on Alan. “Didn't I tell her Kermit's scheme was crazy? Didn't I tell her there was something wrong with running numbers?” I raged.

“Maybe it is just a bad day. All businesses have bad days.”

“Come on, Alan. It has turned my own sister against me!”

He was quiet for a minute.
“So your parents died when you were in prison?”

“Yeah.” I felt the heat leaking out of me. I realized I was driving toward East Jordan, but didn't turn around. Maybe I'd move there. “First Dad, then my mom.”

“I didn't know that.”

“Well—there you have it.”

“Sounds like you and Becky have some things to work out about it.”

I didn't reply.

“I'm just suggesting that the two of you need to talk,”
Alan elaborated after a pause.
“Okay? Why aren't you saying anything?”

“I really can't talk right now, Alan,” I whispered hoarsely. I gripped the steering wheel and stared straight ahead.

For want of anything better to do, I drove to the East Jordan Library and camped out in front of the microfiche machine. We found another story about Alan in the “Still Missing” category, though vague reference was made to police seeking to question him in relation to the fatal firebombing at the nursing home. Alan was incensed. I combed backward, seeking stories about the PlasMerc factory, but most of the ink from that time was devoted to the aftermath of the nursing home fire, the worst disaster in the county's history. I glanced through the profiles of the victims, most of them elderly people, and stopped dead at one name: Liddy Wexler.