Brian Freeman - The Cold Nowhere

He gestured to Serena and the two of them joined Lenny at the front of the church. The car dealer sat with his legs apart and his knees bent. Steam rose from the white coffee cup. He stared up at the altar, a frown on his face.

‘Feels odd, huh, being in a place like this,’ Lenny said. ‘Talking about sins.’

‘Do you want to go somewhere else?’ Stride asked.

‘Nah, get it over with. If the Catholics are right about purgatory, I’m screwed anyway.’

He could hear the slur of the scotch in Lenny’s voice.

‘You said you didn’t arrange for Rebekah’s murder,’ Stride said. ‘Convince me.’

Lenny’s face twitched. He sipped his coffee. ‘What do you guys want? It’s not like I can prove it. All I can tell you is, I didn’t have a motive in the world to kill Rebekah. We were rich. We were happy. She was there with me when I didn’t have money, and she was there with me when I did. It’s not like I had some mistress waiting in the wings to take her place. I never got married again, because there was no one else in the world for me except her.’ He glanced between Stride and Serena. ‘You two, you’re lucky. You found each other after Stride lost his wife. I never had the same experience, and believe me, it’s not for lack of women trying to convince me otherwise.’

‘Tell us about the last trip you took,’ Serena said. ‘Who knew you were leaving town to go to the Keys?’

Lenny shrugged. ‘Who didn’t? Everybody at the dealership knew. Most of the politicos. I’m sure Rebekah told dozens of people. We weren’t trying to hide it. Hell, I told K-2, so he could arrange some extra drive-bys while we were gone. Would I do that if I was planning to stage some kind of phony robbery? Get serious.’

‘Exactly what happened on the trip?’

‘Nothing happened,’ Lenny said. ‘It was the usual convention stuff. Boring speeches and a lot of parties, booze, and shrimp. We were having a ball until Rebekah started spewing out bad lobster from both ends. She decided to go home early. I offered to go with her, but she insisted I stay and finish out the convention. I got a limo to take her back to Miami, and she flew home. By the time she got to Minneapolis, she felt good enough to drive our car back to Duluth. She made it home around midnight. That’s when she got shot.’

‘Who knew she was coming back early?’

‘Nobody except me and a few people at the convention, unless she talked to some of her friends. You’ve got her phone records, you tell me. She called me while she was driving home to say she was okay. That was the last time I spoke to her.’

‘When did you get back?’ Stride asked.

‘A day later. I got a limo to drive me home from MSP.’

‘Weren’t you concerned when you couldn’t reach Rebekah?’

Lenny shrugged. ‘I was busy with the convention. I tried a couple times and got the machine. No big deal. I figured she was doing one of her social or charity things. Or she was shopping.’

‘Can you think of any reason why someone would have wanted her dead?’ Serena asked.

‘Rebekah? No way. Was she tough? Sure. Did she have a bitchy side if you crossed her? Absolutely. I mean, hell, she was a rich Jewish housewife, what do you expect? But nobody had any reason to kill her. I’m telling you, some bastards thought we were gone, they broke in to rob me blind, and Rebekah showed up at the wrong time. That’s what happened. If I came home with her, I’d be dead, too.’

‘Okay,’ Stride said. ‘Let’s talk about the ring.’

Lenny glanced at the front of the church, where K-2 stood with his arms crossed across his scrawny chest. The car dealer tugged on the waistband of his tracksuit. ‘What about it?’

‘You knew it was missing. Why didn’t you tell us about it?’

‘I told you, I thought I did.’

‘You’re lying. You never filed an insurance claim.’

‘It must have slipped my mind. Hell, my wife was dead. You think I was worried about insurance money?’

Stride zipped up his leather jacket. ‘We’re done, Lenny. My next stop is at the News-Tribune to find a reporter to write the story.’

‘Lenny!’ K-2 called from the front of the church. ‘I already told you how this has to go. If you’ve got something to say, you better say it.’

Lenny squeezed his fists together. ‘All right! Yeah, all right, I didn’t tell you about the ring. I just wanted the whole thing to go away.’

‘Were there other items of jewelry missing?’ Stride asked.

‘Yeah, some big earrings. A couple bracelets and necklaces. Expensive stuff, but it’s not like I could describe it. I knew I’d given her things that weren’t in the stash you recovered.’

‘What about cash?’ Stride asked. ‘We found about five thousand dollars in cash at Fong’s apartment. Back then, you said that was all of it. Was that a lie?’

‘There was more,’ Lenny admitted. ‘A lot more.’

‘How much?’

‘Upwards of fifty thousand dollars,’ he said.

Stride exhaled in disgust. ‘Unbelievable.’

‘Why did you have that kind of cash in your house?’ Serena asked.

‘Let’s just say that in my business there are some transactions that are best handled in cash, okay?’

‘Bribes,’ Serena said.

‘Incentives. Bonuses. The fact is, if I told you people how much money was really taken back then, you’d have started asking questions that I didn’t want to answer. My political career would have been over before it started, and the IRS would have started nosing around, too.’

Stride shook his head. ‘So instead, you said nothing. You knew there had to be accomplices in your wife’s murder, and you gave them a free pass.’

‘Rebekah was dead and nothing was going to bring her back!’ Lenny retorted. ‘She would have told me to do exactly what I did. She would have said I was crazy to screw it up just to put a couple thugs behind bars.’

K-2 strolled down the church aisle toward the three of them. ‘This is all under the cone of silence, Lenny, but don’t think I’m going to forget it. If your act isn’t clean right now, you better clean it up fast. Is that crystal clear, my friend?’

‘I hear you,’ Lenny muttered. ‘Are we done? Can I go now?’

He started to get up, but Serena put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Not so fast, Mr. Keck.’

‘What? What else do you want? I’ve told you everything.’

‘We still have a problem.’

Lenny looked plaintively at K-2. ‘This is nuts. Come on, Kyle, get me out of here.’

The chief studied his friend’s face. ‘Why don’t you hear the lady out?’

Lenny scowled and laced his hands together in his lap. ‘Fine. What’s the problem?’

‘If Fong was involved in the burglary, then the split’s wrong,’ Serena said.

‘Huh?’

‘We found five thousand dollars,’ Serena explained. ‘If they stole fifty, Fong should have had a lot more money in that box. Particularly if he had the gun and did the job himself. Where’s the rest of it?’

‘What are you asking me for? Maybe he stashed some of it somewhere else. He had a girlfriend, right? He probably gave it to her. Or maybe he was just a patsy and somebody framed him.’

‘If Fong was a patsy — if he was really innocent — then we have an even bigger problem,’ Stride told him.

Lenny squirmed in the pew. He looked at K-2 for rescue again, but the chief’s face was stone. ‘What do you mean? I don’t get it.’

‘Why frame someone if the police are going to keep looking for accomplices?’ Stride asked.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Lenny said.

‘If this was a setup, then someone planted five thousand dollars in Fong’s house for us to find,’ Stride said, leaning in close to the car dealer’s face. ‘Why bother? They had to know we’d keep looking for the rest of the money. And the jewelry, too. What could they gain by framing Fong if you were going to turn around and tell us that we’d only recovered a fraction of what was stolen?’