asked.
“Here.” Cork handed over the sealed envelope. He looked at the plane while Salguero signed the receipt. “The Jacobys own a fleet?”
“The jet is Lou’s,” Salguero said. “This baby is all mine. I built her myself.”
“How’s Lou doing?” Dina asked.
Salguero inspected the envelope. “We buried his favorite child this morning, but you know Lou. A mule could kick him and he wouldn’t grunt. He simply takes it out on everyone around him.” Tony looked toward the Cozy Caribou Cafe. “I need something to eat before I head back. How is the food here?”
“Reasonably priced and mostly deep-fried,” Cork said.
“Perfect.” Salguero began long strides in that direction.
They sat on the deck in the cool air of early October, the only ones outside. The waitress was reluctant to seat them there, but Salguero insisted.
“I have been cooped up for hours,” he explained with a stunning smile and Spanish accent.
Cork never drank on duty, but he decided that, having handed off the evidence envelope, he was done for the day. He ordered a beer. So did Dina.
“A hamburger, bloody,” Salguero told the waitress.
“We don’t serve them rare anymore. Health reasons.”
Tony closed the menu and held it out. “I will sign an agreement. If I get poisoned, it’s my own fault.” The waitress didn’t take the menu or put anything down on her pad. Salguero finally tossed his hands up. “All right, cook it any way you please, just make sure the beer is cold.”
“Beer?” Cork said. He looked toward the plane Salguero had to fly back to Chicago. “Should you be drinking?”
“I have flown hundreds of thousands of miles, Sheriff, without a single incident. But tell you what. If I crash I will make certain it is into an empty field.” He smiled pleasantly.
“Have you flown long?”
“My father had his own planes. He flew himself everywhere, to the pampas, the rain forest, wherever he had investments. From the time I was a young boy, I dreamed of flying.”
“The pampas?”
“I am from Argentina. Buenos Aires.”
Cork said, “How long have you worked for the Jacobys?”
“Five years. But I’ve known them most of my life. My father and Lou Jacoby are old friends.”
“So you know them well?”
Salguero grinned, showing beautiful white teeth. “What do you want to know?”
“Everybody keeps referring to Eddie as Lou’s favorite child. Near as I can figure, he was mostly a son of a bitch.”
“No, Sheriff. He was a bastard. Born out of wedlock. That is no secret. But I also think he was born out of love. Eddie’s mother was the true treasure of Lou’s life, and I think that when he looked at their son, what he really saw was Eddie’s mother. Would you not agree?” he said to Dina.
She shrugged. “That’s one explanation. I’m more inclined toward the sick-puppy theory myself.”
“What’s that?” Cork said.
“Lou’s other children have done just fine in their lives, become responsible adults. If Lou died tomorrow, they’d probably grieve but they’d be fine. Eddie was like a sick puppy, always needing Lou. But I think in his way Lou needed Eddie just as bad. Maybe, in fact, that’s why Eddie never really grew up, never learned how to be a responsible man. Lou never gave him the chance to be one.”
The waitress delivered the beers.
“I think I will have that burger to go,” Tony said. “And do you have a men’s room?”
“Inside.”
Salguero followed her in.
Dina sipped her beer. “This is good.”
“Leinenkugel’s. Local favorite.” He took a swallow from his bottle and looked where Salguero had gone. “So. Argentina. A story there?”
“Tony’s family had money,” Dina replied. “When the Argentine economy collapsed, they lost it all. Pretty simple.”
Salguero returned just as the burger was delivered in a paper sack, along with a tab for the food and the beers. He threw money on the table.
“Your beer is on Lou,” he said. Then to the waitress: “Sorry if I gave you a hard time, miss. I have a long trip still ahead of me.”
She smiled into his handsome face. “You were no problem at all.”
He picked up the evidence envelope and the burger sack and started toward his plane.
“Need to gas up?” Cork asked.
“There is an airport in Wisconsin midway that I use for that purpose.” He opened the plane door, tossed the envelope and the sack inside, then looked back at Cork. “I don’t know what it is that I’m taking back, but I hope it helps to find the person who killed Eddie.”
“I’m sure it will.”
Cork stepped away as the engine kicked over and the prop began to spin. Salguero swung the plane around and took off into the wind. He circled back, tilting his wings in salute as he flew over.
Cork said, “Lost a fortune and now he flies for the Jacobys. He seems to take it well.”
“Doesn’t he,” Dina said, watching as the plane disappeared into the southeast.
27
He dropped Dina at her car in the Sheriff’s Department lot, then went home.
He couldn’t remember the last time the house had been so empty. The air felt close, smelled stale, and he realized that he’d left without opening the curtains or lifting the windows. He spent a few minutes going through the rooms doing just that. On the desk in Jo’s office, he found notes she’d scribbled to herself as she’d scrambled to rearrange her schedule. He sat in her chair and felt the slight indentation that over time she’d left in the cushion, and he thought how small her hips were and how good they felt pressed against him in bed. On the floor in Stevie’s room lay a sheet of paper, crayons, and a pair of scissors. Stevie had drawn a crude face on the paper and colored it green. For Halloween, he wanted to be the Hulk and he’d been trying to make a mask, but his work had been interrupted. In the living room, lying open on an end table next to the sofa, was a book Jenny had been reading, The Beet Queen, her place marked with a tarot card that held the image of a skeleton. In the kitchen, as he passed Annie’s softball glove hanging on a hook by the back door, he leaned to it and breathed in the smell of oiled leather. His family had been gone less than a day, but they’d left behind silence and a deep, painful loneliness that Cork was glad he would not have to endure for long. Every man’s life ought to be about something, he believed, and he was comfortable with the knowledge that his was about family.
But so was Lou Jacoby’s, apparently, a man Cork didn’t admire in the least and with whom he felt he had little in common.
He didn’t know what to do with that, so he let it go. He was exhausted, hungry, and couldn’t get out of his mind the image of Carl Berger’s right arm hung up on barbed wire. He went upstairs to shower, hoping it might refresh him a little. He thought that afterward he would go to the Broiler for dinner.
Half an hour later, as he was coming downstairs, the doorbell rang. When he opened the door, he found Dina Willner standing on his front porch, a grocery bag in one hand and a twelve-pack of Leinenkugel’s in the other.
“I figured after the kind of day you’ve had, you might need a little company,” she said. “So I brought dinner. Hope you like New York strip.”
Cork’s surprise probably showed on his face. “I don’t know, Dina.”
“Look, you just relax.” She squeezed past him into the house. “I’ll do the cooking. Just show me to the
