“The dead guy is Sommer’s accountant.”
“Weird.”
“It’s past weird. Sommer’s luck giving out in the hospital after he lives through a cliff-hanger rescue is weird. Then his accountant coincidently dies the same week? Check this out-when the seaplane plopped down in Snowbank, the last words Sommer said to me were ‘Tell Cliff Stovall to move the money.’ Five days later you hand me a newspaper and I read that Cliff Stovall dies in the woods under bizarre circumstances.”
Amy considered the doodles on the notepad. The names, the address. The directions. The block letters: FOLLOW THE MONEY. “So those doodles-what does ‘follow the money’ mean?”
“It’s a cliche. But a very durable one. People being who they are, it never wears out.”
“Be more specific; exactly what does it mean, in this circumstance, associated with Hank Sommer’s name?” she asked.
Broker cleared his throat. “When somebody draws five fouls in the first quarter, what’s the first thing you think.”
“Too many things going wrong for normal play,” Amy said. “But that’s hypothetical law-school bullshit. Give me facts.”
“Okay, that morning at the hospital, when Sommer was choppered out. His wife was there.”
“Yeah?”
“Did you notice the young stud who came up with her?”
“Broker, I sort of kept my distance that morning.”
“Mrs. Sommer isn’t just a young, sexy trophy wife; she comes with heavy baggage, like her old boyfriend, who has apparently now moved into Sommer’s house.”
Amy raised her cup and studied the faint coffee ring it left on the table. “So? She observes briefer decent intervals than the rest of us.” She raised her eyes. “It’s only the oldest story in the world.”
Broker continued, unfazed. “On the trip, Sommer and his wife were fighting about money. They were feuding on his cell phone. At one point he got so pissed he threw the phone in the lake. Dane and Falken said he moved all his finances into a trust because she was giving money to the boyfriend. It involves money,” Broker insisted.
“What does?”
“The accountant’s death.”
Amy reread the article. “It says here he had a history of drinking and self-mutilation.”
“I don’t buy it. He was sitting on Hank’s estate which the wife wanted. She had to take Hank out of the hospital because of financial difficulties.”
“They were married. There’s probate. Where the hell are you going with this?”
Broker pursed his lips. He kept seeing the smug young guy standing next to Jolene in the hospital parking lot, his handsome, gloating face. Like he’d just won the lottery. “The boyfriend,” he said.
“C’mon, Broker. The wife is now a de facto widow. So she decides to seek the comfort and support of her young stud/ex-boyfriend. It might be sleazy, but it’s not breaking any laws. Is it?”
Broker brooded under his thick eyebrows. “I’ll bet if I toss the boyfriend he comes up dirty.”
“If that’s all you’ve got, you don’t have much,” Amy said.
“Actually I have less than that.” Broker stood up and walked from the kitchen area through the main room to the coat hooks near the door. With a swipe of his index finger he speared Sommer’s key ring off a hook. “All I’ve really got is Sommer’s Ford Expedition, which I’m returning today. To his house. That means I’ll get to go in and pay my respects, check out the wife, check out the boyfriend, and check out Sommer. What if I get in there later this afternoon and he looks me dead in the eye? What then?”
Amy squinted at him suspiciously as he came back toward the table. “I see what you’re trying to pull.”
Broker, aghast, held up his hands in protest. “What?”
“You’re trying to suck me into this project of yours.”
Broker smiled. “How am I doing?”
Amy raised her chin. “Maybe I’ll tag along just to prove I’m right and you’re full of shit?”
“But what if I’m right?” Broker countered.
Amy’s features conducted a mobile tug of war between practicality and curiosity. “And you can get me in to see him?”
Broker nodded. “Shouldn’t be too hard. The wife never met you. You could be anybody. Hell, you could be my girlfriend.”
Amy smiled politely. “But what if the wife isn’t dumb. What if she sees I’m way too smart to get mixed up with some lame-duck, middle-aged, half-married guy?”
“Ha,” said Broker, grinning.
“Ha, yourself. If we take the Ford down, how do we get back?” she asked.
“I have a buddy who runs a farm near Sommer’s place. He’s got my truck. I’ve been meaning to bring it back up north.”
“How long will we be gone?”
Broker shrugged, “A couple days?”
Amy thought about it and said, “I get one day at the Mall of America; it’ll save me a trip and I can get some shopping out of the way.”
“Deal.”
“Okay, I’ll go to keep you honest,” Amy said.
“Great. Let me throw some things in a bag, then we’ll go to your place and drop off your wheels,” Broker said.
Amy’s barely winterized rented cabin overlooked Lake Shagawa on the outskirts of Ely. As Broker came through the door he saw a computer, lots of books, cross-country skis, snow shoes, a pile of busted-out running shoes. He also smelled something. Propane gas.
It never failed to amaze him how natives could ignore every rule of winter survival, from going out in sub-zero temperatures in tennis shoes to living with leaky gas connections on their stoves.
Immediately Broker went to the sink, mixed some dish-washing detergent with water in a glass, crossed to the stove, and dabbed the suds on the connector stem, and saw bubbles blister up in the suds. “Do you have any wrenches?” he asked
“What?”
“You’re streaming gas. You’re going to blow up.”
And Amy, who had mastered the life-and-death complexities of an anesthesia machine, said, “Oh, the stove always smells a little.” She pointed. “Wrenches are in the drawer to the right of the sink. There should be some Recto Seal there, too.”
While Amy threw clothes into a duffel, Broker turned off the gas, unthreaded the valve, regooped the fitting, retightened it, tested it, and went to the bathroom to wash up. She’d hung a grotesque poster on the back of her bathroom door that showed the gross folds of a ridiculously obese human face. Mouth open, tongue out, its sex was impossible to determine. A hand-lettered caption over the picture announced: INTUBATE THIS!
As he dried his hand she moved in next to him, opened the cabinet, and removed several slim jars of various face oils and emollients. Then she picked up a palm-sized plastic wafer-her diaphragm-passed it under his nose, weighed it briefly in her hand, and dropped it in a cosmetic bag.
Broker frowned mildly at her clowning.
“I could always get hit by lightning,” she said airily, spinning on her heel.
He bet she was a demon for detail in the OR, but she was lax in her bathroom. He snagged her elbow, pulled her back, selected the tube of Gynol vaginal lubricant from a shelf, and tossed it to her. “Just in case it’s not greased lightning.”
Amy pursed her lips. “And I had you figured for a prude.”
Broker shrugged. “Hey, I was young once. You know how it goes: you drink too much, you wake up in a strange apartment with a lizard nesting in your mouth and her big scaly sister snoring in bed next to you, so you stagger for the bathroom, grab for a toothbrush. .” He made a face. “I’ve brushed my teeth with that stuff at least once in my life.”
