Brian Freeman - The Cold Nowhere

Lowball Lenny opened the door for Stride and Serena at his mansion in the Congdon Parkway.

His home was a mammoth, Tudor-style house from the Duluth robber-baron days, at least a century old, with brick walls and sharp gables criss-crossed with wooden beams. The roof was lined with red clay shingles. Chunks of snow and ice made the flagstone sidewalk treacherous. Mist clung to the frigid morning and made the house look as if it were hovering in the clouds.

Stride remembered Lenny’s home perfectly. Even ten years later, he could map its rooms and staircases and its odd maze of hallways in his memory. He’d spent dozens of hours here in the wake of Rebekah Keck’s murder.

‘Hey, you guys,’ Lenny said. ‘Back so soon?’

‘May we come in?’ Stride asked.

‘Yeah, of course.’

Lenny waved them between the Corinthian columns on the porch through glass doors that led to the foyer. The interior was dark and laden in dust, like a Gothic house of horrors. The ornate wallpaper hadn’t been updated in decades, and portions of it were bubbled and peeling. Stride saw heavy antiques, mostly in cherry wood. Lenny had eclectic, expensive collectibles, too. A Kieninger grandfather clock. Limoges china. A Civil War bayonet mounted on the wall. It was sad to imagine one rich old car dealer, living alone in this dense, depressing splendor.

Stride saw a single modern electronic device near the doorway. The house had an alarm panel with a keypad for entering a security code. He wondered if Lenny had changed the code after the home invasion. The numbers stuck in his head from the murder investigation. Sometimes the oddest details refused to vacate his brain.

1789.

That was the code. Most people used birthdays or anniversaries, but not Lenny. He’d told them the code was absolutely random, four numbers he’d drawn from the air. That had been the one mystery in a case that seemed to have no mystery at all.

Where did Fong Dao get the security code?

‘You guys want anything?’ Lenny asked, leading them into a wood-paneled study. A fire roared in the fireplace, spitting and growling like an angry bear. The room was hot, and Lenny’s forehead glowed with sweat.

‘No, thanks,’ Stride said.

‘You sure? Juice, Danish, whatever? Hell, a mimosa if you want it.’

He shook his head and Lenny took a seat in a huge leather armchair by the fire, where he’d been reading the sports section of the News-Tribune . He shoved the paper onto a circular coffee table and waved them to a lavish old sofa, with white fluff spilling out where the upholstery was worn. Everything in the house was expensive, but much of it was in disrepair.

Lenny wore a tracksuit, as he had in the office, but this one was navy blue, not chocolate brown. He wore fluorescent sneakers rather than golf shoes.

‘So what’s up?’ he said with a wary smile.

Serena reached into her pocket and extracted a plastic evidence bag. ‘Do you recognize this ring?’

‘You’re too far away for these old eyes, honey,’ Lenny said.

She crossed the room and held the ring close to Lenny’s face. Even inside the bag, the fire and the Tiffany lamp on the coffee table made the stones glitter. He held out his hand to take it, but as he studied the ring he pulled his arm back. The smile washed away from his face.

‘Where did you get that?’ he asked.

‘Do you recognize it?’

‘It looks like a ring I gave my wife many years ago.’

‘Was it custom?’

‘Yes, Rebekah designed it herself. It was one of a kind.’

‘This is the ring your wife is wearing in the painting in your office, isn’t it?’ Serena asked.

‘That’s right. I’ll ask you again, where did you get it?’

Stride leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. ‘For the last ten years, a girl named Cat Mateo has been wearing it on a chain around her neck. Her father gave it to her.’

‘Is her father this Hmong immigrant who killed Rebekah? Fong Dao?’

‘No.’

‘So how did he get it?’

‘That’s a very good question,’ Stride said.

Lenny picked up a flowered china cup that was filled with steaming coffee. He took a sip and licked his lips. ‘Keep me posted. I’ll be interested in what you find out, of course.’

Serena returned the plastic bag to her pocket. ‘You’re pretty calm about this, Mr. Keck. We thought you’d be upset.’

‘Finding Rebekah’s ring doesn’t change what happened,’ he said. ‘My wife is gone. You’ll forgive me if I’m not anxious to revisit that ugly period in my life, Ms. Dial. It’s over.’

‘No, I’m afraid it’s not,’ Serena told him. ‘Not anymore.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Margot Huizenfelt was in your office two days before she disappeared,’ Serena said. ‘Then she immediately started looking for this girl Cat. We’ve been struggling to find a connection, and now we think we know what it is. Margot saw the painting of your wife on your office wall. She saw the ring and she remembered that very distinctive piece of jewelry hanging around the neck of a young prostitute she interviewed a few months ago. Needless to say, a reporter like Margot would have smelled a story. A big story. We think that story got her killed.’

‘I don’t know what to tell you,’ Lenny said. ‘This is all news to me.’

‘Did Margot comment on the painting of your wife when she was with you?’ Serena asked. ‘Did she ask you about the ring or about what happened to Rebekah?’

‘No, she didn’t. Like I already told you, we talked about her new truck. That’s all.’

Stride could see the anxiety in Lenny’s face. The sweat on his skin from the hot fire became drips running down his cheeks and neck. The more he tried to hide his reaction behind a mask of calmness, the more obvious it became that the car dealer was terrified to see that ring again.

‘You’re holding out on us, Lenny,’ Stride said. ‘What’s going on?’

Lenny put down his china cup and folded his arms across his chest. ‘I’m telling you, Jon, I don’t know what the hell is going on. If I knew anything at all, I would clue you in, but I don’t.’

‘Have you seen the ring since it disappeared in the burglary?’

‘Obviously not, if this girl had it.’

‘Did anyone mention to you that they’d seen a ring like Rebekah’s?’

‘No! Don’t you think I’d call you if I heard something like that?’

‘Actually, I’m not sure you would. Maybe you’d try to get it back yourself instead. Maybe you’d start looking for the girl who was wearing it. Is that what happened?’

‘I didn’t do anything like that. No one told me about the ring.’

‘Cat has been with some wealthy men,’ Serena reminded him. ‘That may include some men who are friends of yours. People who’ve been in your office or knew your wife.’

‘She was also at your party on the Charles Frederick ,’ Stride said, ‘along with a dozen salesmen who’ve known you for years.’

‘Nobody said anything about the ring!’ Lenny repeated. ‘Nobody. Look, everybody who buys a car from Lowball Lenny winds up in my office. Okay? That painting of Rebekah is up there for the whole world to see. So maybe I’ve got a customer whose wife isn’t so hot for blow jobs and he likes to get some outside action from time to time. See where I’m going with this? He sees the painting when he’s in my shop buying a Focus, and he thinks, hey, I’ve seen that ring before, around the neck of that little hottie I paid fifty bucks for a suck last month. Next thing you know, he’s trying to find her.’

‘How much is the ring worth?’ Serena asked.

‘At least seventy-five thousand bucks. Probably a lot more now. People would do nasty things for that kind of dough.’