“Get inside, it’s cold out here,” Broker said.
“
Broker went through the open door. More alert now, he stood on the cold back deck, letting his eyes adjust to the gathering dark. Then he scanned the edge of the forest that abutted the backyard. His fingers moved to the key on the thong around his neck.
He was absolutely certain the door had been closed.
But not locked.
After confirming the flat, he went back inside and told Nina, “Those tires are practically brand-new.” He reached for his coat, flipped on the yard light. As he went through the garage, searching for the cat, he thought back over the day, trying to fix on a road event. At the school, maybe? Distracted, had he run up on the curb? That could bust the seams on a radial.
No cat.
He stood in the drive and stared at the Toyota’s swayback posture. The left rear tire mashed flat. Focusing. If he climbed the curb this morning, it would have been the right front…
He shivered in a gust of wind. The shiver moved deeper, under his skin; he was merely annoyed, innate suspicion a deeper shift and stir. He looked up at the black rumpled clouds, suffused with early moonlight. Shivered again. He’d need his gloves.
Back in the kitchen, he took the time to address Kit, who sat glumly picking at her food. “Don’t worry, we’ll find Old Bun.” Then he added one of his mom’s lines from his own childhood. “Nothing gets lost in the house.”
“What about kitty?” Kit demanded.
“I’ll put some food in a bowl on the back deck.” To Nina he just threw a workmanlike shrug. “Gotta change a flat. Might as well get it out of the way. You guys go on with dinner. I’ll just be a few minutes.”
Nina raised her hand as if trying to snag an elusive thought from midair. Then she said, “Take out the garbage, pickup in the morning.”
He nodded. “Good catch.” A positive sign. She was making ordinary connections. But he had his own connections going. As he went out the door, instinct directed his hand toward the heavy-duty flashlight hanging on a lanyard under the shelf where they kept the gloves and hats.
Because…
He just didn’t remember hitting anything that could take out a big honking new snow tire. So before he unloaded the jack and wrenches, he walked carefully around the truck, inspecting the tracks in the mashed snow. He recognized the cleat marks of his Eccos, Kit’s Sorels. Nothing out of place there. He removed the full-size spare from the undercarriage.
As he pried off the hubcap and loosened the lugs, it continued working on him. He fiddled in the snowpack, making sure it was secure where he set the jack, levered up the jack handle. As the truck heaved up, the obvious racheted up in his mind. He was staring right at it. Stenciled in white type on the side of the rolling garbage bin next to the garage.
The only thing he’d hit today, in a manner of speaking, was Klumpe.
Efficiently Broker changed the tire, lowered the truck, stowed his tools, and then minutely inspected the pancaked flat with his flashlight. If there was a puncture, it was out of sight, buried deep between the new tread. He tossed the flat in the truck bed, dusted off his work gloves, turned up his collar. Getting colder, the snow starting to squeak under his boots.
Slowly he wheeled the tall garbage bin down the long drive and positioned it, handles back. He scanned up and down the muzzy white ribbon of road. The ridge of snow the plow had thrown up was undisturbed, no sign of a vehicle having stopped on the shoulder near his house.
Okay. Broker fingered the tinfoil pouch of rough-wrapped cigars from his pocket, removed one of the stogies, took out his lighter, and lit up. Slow walk back up the drive.
The usual cautions. Don’t assume. Probably nothing. Still…Klumpe came across as a rube who might strike out. Nutty wife egging him on.
So take a look around, walk the perimeter. Broker retrieved the flashlight and walked a circuit of the house, keeping an eye out for the cat. A few minutes later the flashlight beam picked up a wet yellow-green glare, out of place against the snow. Next to the unused doghouse behind the garage.
Broker stooped and inspected the frozen gob of meat resting in a pool of unfrozen liquid in a brown bowl. He could see the red residue of tomato soup still clinging to the bowl’s rim.
Same bowl he’d served Kit lunch in today. Before they went out skiing…when Nina was sleeping upstairs…
Broker immediately switched off the flashlight, a deeper reserve of energy kicking in. He strained his eyes, tracking the tree line, adjusting to the dark.
Had someone been in the house?
Chapter Eleven
When he arrived back at his truck, Gator stowed his skis in the back, got in, started it up, and cranked the heater all the way over. He blew on his chilled fingers, stroked the warmth on his right side, where the kitty nestled in his pocket. Lit a Camel.
While he waited for the heater to kick in, curious, he removed the folder from under his jacket. Flipped it open.
Hmmm…
Suddenly he didn’t need the heater to warm up.
Gator, who considered himself as an entrepreneur, had done time for transporting cocaine, which he saw as a purely economic gamble. A way to make a lot of money fast to finance his own shop. He’d accepted prison as a penalty for flawed planning. He’d never used coke or anything stronger than the occasional social beer. He believed that stuff about genetic predispositions; given his old man, he eventually gave up even the beer and drew the line at caffeine and nicotine. So he’d never really felt a drug rush.
Maybe this hot trickle fanning out inside his chest was how it feels coming on…
’Cause, no shit! The folder was full of old search warrants.
Fingers trembling, he squinted to make out a handwritten memo. Right there on the top, stapled to the front page. His lips moved, reading the personalized heading: “From the Desk of Dennis Lurrie, Chief of Narcotics Division, Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension
Gator held his breath. This must be how it feels to be in a spotlight, onstage. He paused to stroke the kitten squirming in his pocket.
Lucky black kitty.
He started to read. The deepening cold was forgotten as he struggled through the clumsy cop legalese.
Boring, the way they write this stuff. God…
