Down Here

pedal isn’t hyper-sensitive, but if you step on it hard we’ll launch like a rocket. The brakes are a little stiff when you first touch them; they take a little pressure. But if you floor them, we’re going to stop. I mean, right now, like someone dropped an anchor into the road behind us.”

“You’re making me nervous.”

“Oh, great,” I said. “The first time I ever let anyone drive my baby and you tell me you’re nervous.”

“J.,” she giggled. “Stop it.”

“Your Audi’s a front-driver. This one’s not. If you get on the gas too hard in a corner, the rear end’s going to want to come around.”

“You make it sound like a ticking bomb.”

“It’s nothing of the kind,” I said. “Only reason I’m saying all this is that it’s a great contrast to what you’re used to driving. Take it slow, get used to it, and it’ll practically drive itself. You’ll see.”

“I . . .”

“Come on, Laura. I’ll bet you’ll be perfect at it, the first time.”

She gave me a look I couldn’t read. Then she put her left foot on the brake and pulled the lever down into drive.

I nodded approval. Laura took her foot off the brake, and the Plymouth started to creep forward. She delicately feathered the gas and we picked up speed.

“There’s nobody around,” I told her. “Give it a little gas.”

“This isn’t so bad,” she said. “I could just . . . Oh!” she gasped, as the Plymouth shifted stance and shot forward.

I had expected her to deck the brakes, but she just backed off the gas, got it under control instantly.

“It is fast,” she said.

I made her try the brakes a few times, to get used to the pedal.

“I can feel the power,” she said. “Like a huge dog, on a leash.”

“Let’s give it some running room,” I said, pointing toward the highway.

^“What a wonderful car this is, J. It was so nice of you to let me drive it.”

“My pleasure.”

“I was . . . wondering.”

“What?”

“Well, how come you . . . The outside of the car is so . . .”

“Grungy?”

“At least. But it runs so beautifully. Is it the money?”

“If you mean, did I put my money into the engine and the transmission and the suspension and then kind of run out of cash, the answer is ‘yes.’ But it’s been this way for a long while now, and I think I may actually like it better.”

“Better? Why?”

“It’s kind of . . . special-sweet to have something very fine, something that most people wouldn’t even recognize. They’d have to drive my car to know what it was.”

“And you’re not going to let them?” she said, smiling in the night.

“Why should I?” I answered. “I’m building her for me. Not for my ego.”

“What does that mean, for you, not your ego?”

“It means she’s perfect for me. Just for me. I don’t care if anyone else thinks I’m driving a rust-bucket; I know I’ve got a jewel.”

“Is that the way you are—?”

“About everything,” I assured her. “Everything in my life. Right down the line.”

O’Hare was in its usual state of high cholesterol, but the three of us had plenty of time to catch our connector to Cedar Rapids. On the way out, Pepper had ended up seated next to an elderly lady; Mick and I were side by side. By the end of the trip, the old woman wanted to take Pepper home with her. Mick and I hadn’t exchanged a single word.

All they had left at the car-rental agency was an Infiniti SUV. Mick kept calling it a stupid cow every time he had to take a curve.

He found the address easily: a smallish wood-frame house on a side street. Pepper turned around in the front seat so she could face me.

“You want us to go in with you, chief?”

“I think it might help if you did,” I said. “But if Mick’s going to pull his—”

“I’m in the fucking room,” he said.

“Mick!” Pepper said, punching him on the arm hard enough to floor most middleweights. “Come on!”

“The paper says she’s from around here,” Mick said. “She came home. If anyone here scares her, it’s not going to be me.”

“Let’s go,” I said.

^“Miss Eberstadt? My name is Michael Range. This is my assistant, Margaret Madison. And her husband, Bill. We apologize for coming by without notice, but I thought it would be better if you got to look us over before we asked you anything. People can give a real false impression over the phone.”

“I . . . What do you—?”

That’s when Mick took over. “We all work for a lawyer, ma’am,” he said. “Mr. H. G. Davidson, from New York City. I don’t mean I’m from there; I guess you can tell,” he went on, a warm, friendly smile on his transformed face. “I’m a paralegal, Mr. Range is an investigator, and Margaret here is an administrative assistant. Anyway, there’s a case back there that concerns you, a little bit, and we were sent out here. Well, I guess the truth is, the boss sent Mr. Range out, and we came along for the ride. I wanted to take Margaret home to see my folks, anyway.”

“What does this have to do with—?”

“Could we come inside for a little bit, ma’am?” Mick asked, in a voice I never would have recognized. “Unless this town has changed a lot since I was last home, I wouldn’t want to be talking about stuff like this out on the front step.”

“I . . . All right,” the target said.

Pepper and I watched in respectful silence as Mick danced with Eileen Eberstadt for almost an hour. We listened to her explain that her initial report had “all been a big mistake, like going to New York in the first place,” and how she “had nothing against anyone.”

Mick countered gently, explaining that Wolfe, the only one who had ever prosecuted Wychek, was now being charged with shooting him, and any help she might be able to provide would be greatly . . .

But the woman held firm, until I stood up and walked over to where she was sitting.

“Everything costs,” I said, softly. “And everybody pays. The only question is when, and how much. There’s a lot of people behind Ms. Wolfe. Serious people. Very committed. You’ve got your reasons for lying—don’t waste my time,” I said, when she opened her mouth to speak—“and nobody cares about them. We’re not cops, and we’re not the bad guys, either. We’re not on anyone’s side except Ms. Wolfe’s. But we have a job to do, and now you’re it.”

“I’m not going to—”

“Just tell me what he took,” I said, even more softly. “Just tell me that one thing, and we’re gone.”

I tossed “forever” into her long silence.

“A skirt,” she said, looking down. “A little red pleated skirt. It was the bottom half of my cheerleader’s outfit. From high school.”

^“I got a call,” Davidson said.

I didn’t say anything, just watched the smoke from his cigar turn blue in the band of sun that came in the top of his office window.

“Toby Ringer, you remember him?”